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Category: military – Page 6

An arms race is unfolding in our cells: Transposons, also known as jumping genes or mobile genetic elements as they can replicate and reinsert themselves in the genome, threaten the cell’s genome integrity by triggering DNA rearrangements and causing mutations. Host cells, in turn, protect their genome using intricate defense mechanisms that stop transposons from jumping.

Now, for the first time, a retrotransposon has been caught in action inside a cell: Refining cryo-Electron Tomography (cryo-ET) techniques, scientists imaged the retrotransposon copia in the egg chambers of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster at sub-nanometer resolution. The paper is published in the journal Cell.

Among the international team of scientists achieving this detailed visualization are three scientists with Vienna BioCenter ties: Sven Klumpe, currently in the laboratory of Jürgen Plitzko at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, will join IMBA and IMP to build a group as a Joint Fellow; Julius Brennecke, a Senior Group Leader at IMBA, the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; and Kirsten Senti, staff scientist in the Brennecke group. Also involved in this collaboration is the group of Martin Beck at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt.

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Description: We are the targets for numerous information campaigns, as companies, politicians, cybercriminals, and nation states guzzle up the digital dust of our online selves. These information campaigns are designed to trigger our survival instincts in order to prevent us from thinking, and instead trigger an emotional reaction. Dr. Schwartz will discuss this rivalry for power, and how we must first learn how to calm our survival brain in order to defend our cognitive terrain against the onslaught of information warfare.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Tamara Schwartz, USAF (ret.), is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity and Strategy at the York College of Pennsylvania, and an affiliate researcher with Cybersecurity at MIT-Sloan Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, an international cybersecurity think tank. While on active duty, Dr. Schwartz’s thought leadership informed the standup of Cyber Command and the design of various command centers supporting Joint Space, Cyber, and Global Strategic Operations, and her work at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan earned her the 2011 Information Operations Officer of the Year. More recently, Dr. Schwartz was a member of the 2020 “Dr. Evil task force,” with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, identifying future threats to inform DoD investments in emerging technology. She received her B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, her M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Dayton, and her Doctorate of Business Administration from the Fox School of Business, Temple University. Her research expertise includes Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity as a strategic competitive advantage, and information warfare.

Information Warfare, by Dr. Tamara Schwartz.
https://he.kendallhunt.com/product/in… College of Pennsylvania, Cybersecurity Management https://www.ycp.edu/academics/program… Weapons of Mass Disruption https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…

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Microsoft’s Majorana 1 quantum chip introduces a breakthrough Topological Core, enabling stable and scalable qubits.

By leveraging topoconductors, this innovation paves the way for million-qubit machines capable of solving complex scientific and industrial challenges. With DARPA

Formed in 1958 (as ARPA), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements, by collaborating with academic, industry, and government partners.

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Rufo Guerreschi.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rufoguerreschi.

Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI
https://www.cbpai.org/

0:00 Intro.
0:21 Rufo Guerreschi.
0:28 Contents.
0:41 Part 1: Why we have a governance problem.
1:18 From e-democracy to cybersecurity.
2:42 Snowden showed that international standards were needed.
3:55 Taking the needs of intelligence agencies into account.
4:24 ChatGPT was a wake up moment for privacy.
5:08 Living in Geneva to interface with states.
5:57 Decision making is high up in government.
6:26 Coalition for a Baruch plan for AI
7:12 Parallels to organizations to manage nuclear safety.
8:11 Hidden coordination between intelligence agencies.
8:57 Intergovernmental treaties are not tight.
10:19 The original Baruch plan in 1946
11:28 Why the original Baruch plan did not succeed.
12:27 We almost had a different international structure.
12:54 A global monopoly on violence.
14:04 Could expand to other weapons.
14:39 AI is a second opportunity for global governance.
15:19 After Soviet tests, there was no secret to keep.
16:22 Proliferation risk of AI tech is much greater?
17:44 Scale and timeline of AI risk.
19:04 Capabilities of security agencies.
20:02 Internal capabilities of leading AI labs.
20:58 Governments care about impactful technologies.
22:06 Government compute, risk, other capabilities.
23:05 Are domestic labs outside their jurisdiction?
23:41 What are the timelines where change is required?
24:54 Scientists, Musk, Amodei.
26:24 Recursive self improvement and loss of control.
27:22 A grand gamble, the rosy perspective of CEOs.
28:20 CEOs can’t really say anything else.
28:59 Altman, Trump, Softbank pursuing superintelligence.
30:01 Superintelligence is clearly defined by Nick Bostrom.
30:52 Explain to people what “superintelligence” means.
31:32 Jobs created by Stargate project?
32:14 Will centralize power.
33:33 Sharing of the benefits needs to be ensured.
34:26 We are running out of time.
35:27 Conditional treaty idea.
36:34 Part 2: We can do this without a global dictatorship.
36:44 Dictatorship concerns are very reasonable.
37:19 Global power is already highly concentrated.
38:13 We are already in a surveillance world.
39:18 Affects influential people especially.
40:13 Surveillance is largely unaccountable.
41:35 Why did this machinery of surveillance evolve?
42:34 Shadow activities.
43:37 Choice of safety vs liberty (privacy)
44:26 How can this dichotomy be rephrased?
45:23 Revisit supply chains and lawful access.
46:37 Why the government broke all security at all levels.
47:17 The encryption wars and export controls.
48:16 Front door mechanism replaced by back door.
49:21 The world we could live in.
50:03 What would responding to requests look like?
50:50 Apple may be leaving “bug doors” intentionally.
52:23 Apple under same constraints as government.
52:51 There are backdoors everywhere.
53:45 China and the US need to both trust AI tech.
55:10 Technical debt of past unsolved problems.
55:53 Actually a governance debt (social-technical)
56:38 Provably safe or guaranteed safe AI
57:19 Requirement: Governance plus lawful access.
58:46 Tor, Signal, etc are often wishful thinking.
59:26 Can restructure incentives.
59:51 Restrict proliferation without dragnet?
1:00:36 Physical plus focused surveillance.
1:02:21 Dragnet surveillance since the telegraph.
1:03:07 We have to build a digital dog.
1:04:14 The dream of cyber libertarians.
1:04:54 Is the government out to get you?
1:05:55 Targeted surveillance is more important.
1:06:57 A proper warrant process leveraging citizens.
1:08:43 Just like procedures for elections.
1:09:41 Use democratic system during chip fabrication.
1:10:49 How democracy can help with technical challenges.
1:11:31 Current world: anarchy between countries.
1:12:25 Only those with the most guns and money rule.
1:13:19 Everyone needing to spend a lot on military.
1:14:04 AI also engages states in a race.
1:15:16 Anarchy is not a given: US example.
1:16:05 The forming of the United States.
1:17:24 This federacy model could apply to AI
1:18:03 Same idea was even proposed by Sam Altman.
1:18:54 How can we maximize the chances of success?
1:19:46 Part 3: How to actually form international treaties.
1:20:09 Calling for a world government scares people.
1:21:17 Genuine risk of global dictatorship.
1:21:45 We need a world /federal/ democratic government.
1:23:02 Why people are not outspoken.
1:24:12 Isn’t it hard to get everyone on one page?
1:25:20 Moving from anarchy to a social contract.
1:26:11 Many states have very little sovereignty.
1:26:53 Different religions didn’t prevent common ground.
1:28:16 China and US political systems similar.
1:30:14 Coming together, values could be better.
1:31:47 Critical mass of states.
1:32:19 The Philadelphia convention example.
1:32:44 Start with say seven states.
1:33:48 Date of the US constitutional convention.
1:34:42 US and China both invited but only together.
1:35:43 Funding will make a big difference.
1:38:36 Lobbying to US and China.
1:38:49 Conclusion.
1:39:33 Outro

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In today’s AI news, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek wrapped up a week of revealing technical details about its development of a ChatGPT competitor, which was achieved at a fraction of the typical costs, in a move that is poised to accelerate global advances in the field. Over the past few days, DeepSeek published eight open-source projects on GitHub, the world’s largest open-source community.

In other advances, TikTok is preparing to sunset its creator marketplace in favor of a new, more expanded experience, the company has informed businesses and creators via email. The online platform, which connects brands with creators for collaborating on ads and other sponsorships, will stop allowing creator invitations or the creation of new campaigns as of Saturday the company says.

Ll need a Mac with an M1 chip or higher, which means Intel-based Macs are out of the loop. + And, Hume AI has unveiled Octave, an innovative text-to-speech (TTS) system that leverages large language model (LLM) technology to generate contextually aware and emotionally nuanced speech. The incredibly human-like voice tool competitively positions Octave as a leader in AI-driven voice synthesis. Traditional TTS systems often produce context-insensitive speech, which leads to monotonous output.

In videos, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, returns to the Hard Fork podcast for a candid, wide-ranging interview. We discuss Anthropic’s brand-new Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, the A.I. arms race against China, and his hopes and fears for this technology over the next two years. Then, we gather up recent tech stories, put them into a hat and close out the week with a round of HatGPT.

And, at the 2025 MIT Bangkok Symposium, Startups and VC Lightning Talks session, the early-entrants include Yunus Sevimli (Almond Fintech), Abhi Yadav (iCustomer), Anuj Bhalla (serviceMob), and Korawad Chearavanont (Amity Solutions). Editors note: I met serviceMob at an Imagination In Action event organized by John Werner of Link Ventures at the MIT-CSAIL Stata Center.

Then, Sam Witteveen looks at olmOCR, the OpenOCR system from Allen AI. There is some additional links for more context of this open OCR project. The collaboration, the blog post about the project, and the macOS version of the product.

Continue reading “DeepSeek Ends Week-Long Marathon To Disclose AI Model Details” | >

The year one hundred two thousand twenty-three. A giant meteorite the size of Pluto is approaching the Solar System. It flies straight to Earth. But as the meteorite crosses Saturn’s orbit, a swarm of miner probes approaches it. The scan revealed no minerals on the object, so the searches returned with nothing.
Meanwhile, the Space Security Center in Alaska military personnel are setting up a laser. The Solar System witnesses a sudden flare and nothing remains of the dwarf-sized meteorite. Now, unless hydrogen miners on Jupiter post videos of another annihilation on social media… This is what the world will look like when humanity finally becomes a Type Two civilization on the Kardashev scale. We’ll have almost infinite energy reserves, the ability to prepare for interstellar flights, or to instantly destroy any threat. But will humanity really be safe? And what can ruin a Type Two civilization?

#eldddir_space #eldddir_earth #eldddir_homo #eldddir_animals.
#eldddir_disaster #eldddir_ocean #eldddir_bombs #eldddir_future #eldddir_tech #eldddir_jupiter #eldddir_mars #eldddir_spacex #eldddir_rockets

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There’s an arms race in medicine—scientists design drugs to treat lethal bacterial infections, but bacteria can evolve defenses to those drugs, sending the researchers back to square one. In an article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a University of California, Irvine-led team describes the development of a drug candidate that can stop bacteria before they have a chance to cause harm.

“The issue with antibiotics is this crisis of antibiotic resistance,” said Sophia Padilla, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry and lead author of the new study. “When it comes to antibiotics, can evolve defenses against them—they’re becoming stronger and always getting better at protecting themselves.”

About 35,000 people in the U.S. die each year from from pathogens like Staphylococcus, while about 2.8 million people suffer from bacteria-related illnesses.

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Smart bullets are real—and they might already be in use. From DARPA’s EXACTO to Russia’s secretive programs, guided bullets have come a long way since The Fifth Element. Here’s what we know.

Got a beard? Good. I’ve got something for you: http://beardblaze.com.

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Cyber Warfare, Explained.
Use code JOHNNYHARRIS at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/johnnyharris.

From influencing elections to disrupting nuclear facilities, the threat of cyber warfare is both ever-present and mostly ignored. Israel, America, and Russia are just a few of the countries in the ever growing cyber arms race.

My videos go live early on Nebula. Sign up now and get my next video before everyone else: https://www.nebula.com/johnnyharris.

Check out all my sources for this video here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gaOjUIm3ucnKpQawfkaP_YXn…sp=sharing.

– VIDEO CHAPTERS -
0:00 Intro.
3:13 A New Type of Weapon.
5:50 Zero Days.
12:52 Cyber Warfare 2.0
24:49 Silent Timebombs.
28:18 Outro.

Check out my new channel with Sam Ellis — Search Party: https://youtube.com/@SearchParty.

Continue reading “Why Hacking is the Future of War” | >

“Acquisitions and programs are moving forward,” an SDA spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceNews, adding that the agency is preparing to release a fresh solicitation for the 10 satellites in the near future.

Tranche 3 Tracking Layer proposals

In parallel with efforts to correct procurement missteps, SDA is advancing the first major satellite acquisition since Tournear’s removal: a 54-satellite procurement for the Tranche 3 Tracking Layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). This next-generation missile tracking constellation builds on the foundation of earlier tranches, expanding coverage and improving real-time threat detection capabilities.

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