Showing posts with label spy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spy. Show all posts

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Spies & Algorithms 2024

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24-5-4 MI6: How Chinese spies infiltrate Western governments - Times > .
24-5-8 [TikTok chaos as XiPaganda tool; microchips & Taiwan] - Feriss > .
24-5-3 Amy Zegart: Mossad; TikTok = National Security vs Free Speech - Hoover > .
Intelligence & Geostrategy 
Ruscia Espionage
Societal Manipulation 
USA Internal Surveillance 

Sunday, April 30, 2023

XiParanoia

Cultural Devolution 2.0 ... bullies will be bullies
23-5-28 Xina threatens companies with the new spying law - VisPol > .
24-4-17 [XiP00gandistic Hypocrisy & Strategic Dicklomatic Stumbles] - Digging > .
23-12-2 Huawei: [Subsidized Weapon in Chip War versus USA] - Update > . 
23-10-23 Xina's Threats Pushing Philippines Closer to US - WSJ > .
23-10-20 Pentagon Report [re X(IR) threat] & Chip Curbs - Update > .
23-10-19 BRI, Hamas fit into XiXiP's Middle East [NoXious] strategy - Lei > .
23-10-17 Xina’s Illegal Man-Made Military Islands = Ecological Disaster - Map > .
23-10-15 World Against [Xina’s Woof Whiners] | US-Xina | Trade - Update > .
23-10-13 Xina's plunging birthrate - Update > .
23-10-12 Causes of the Crisis between Hamas and Israel - Spaniel > .
23-10-12 Xina Supporting Hamas in the Israel/Palestine Conflict - laowhy86 > .
23-10-12 [Xina's self-serving platitudes and blame-US XiPaganda] - Update > .
23-9-29 Decoding P00ti-PooXi blueprint for NoXious World Order | DW > .
23-9-25 Xi's Transforming Xina [for the worse] - Xina's Changing Trajectory - Dig > .
23-9-24 $6.5T Problem: BRI, Unproductive, Decaying Infrastructure | EcEx > .
23-9-18 Xina's Economic Decline: Middle-Income Trap, Causes, Challenges - Dig > .

At the end of April 2023, Xina pushed through a reform of its counter-espionage law. This law now directly affects companies. Now the information and data of companies are also covered by this law, so that anyone who has handled sensitive information of a project or a company in Xina could be charged with nothing less than the counterespionage law. A law that carries not only prison sentences but also summary trials.

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Incontinent Security

23-6-16 ‘So many red flags’ | Narcissistic SDO* leaker Jack Teixeira > .
23-4-20 [Dumbass Deviant] Under Investigation by FBI, DOJ, NCIS - Jake > .
23-4-20 [Dumbass Deviant] vs Sarah Bils 'Murican Accent - Jake > .
23-4-19 Pentagon Docs LEAK! What do alleged leaked documents reveal? - U24 > .
23-4-16 Lax Security for Tw*ts | Every Orc Lives in Fear - Jake > .
23-4-14 Jack Teixeira in court, charged over Pentagon leaks - BBC > .
23-4-14 [Narcissism and immaturity of treasonous wrong-wing gamer] - Times > .
23-4-10 Leak Debate: Ukraine's Offensive Plans Real? - Matters > .

"For weeks, allegedly classified documents from various parts of the US government concerning the Russian war on Ukraine have been circulating on the internet. The "New York Times" was the first of now many media to report on these leaks—without publishing the documents themselves. Copies of these can still be found quite easily, for example on pro-Russian telegram channels. But beware, there are also obvious fake and manipulated versions going around. [Jake Teixeira, "OG", was arrested 23-4-13.] The US-Government is now scrambling to assess and contain the fallout from this leak, while the rest of the world is asking themselves the following questions."

23-4-6 Military analysts said the [leaked] "documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed."

Modifications could point to a predictable "effort of disinformation by Moscow", analysts said. However, the "disclosures in the original documents, which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans, represent a significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine."

The "documents do not provide specific battle plans", such as "how, when, and where Ukraine intends to launch its offensive, which American officials admit is likely coming in the next month or so. Because the documents are five weeks old, they offer a snapshot of time — the American and Ukrainian view, as of March 1, of what Ukrainian troops might need for the campaign."


*SDO = Social Dominance Orientation 
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a [disordered] personality trait measuring an individual's support for social hierarchy and the extent to which they desire their in-group be superior to out-groups. SDO is conceptualized under social dominance theory as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups.

Individuals who score high in SDO desire to maintain and, in many cases, increase the differences between social statuses of different groups, as well as individual group members. Typically, they are dominant, driven, tough, and seekers of power. People high in SDO also prefer hierarchical group orientations. Often, people who score high in SDO adhere strongly to belief in a "dog-eat-dog" world. It has also been found that men are generally higher than women in SDO measures. A study of undergraduates found that SDO does not [?] have a strong positive relationship with authoritarianism. Felicia Pratto and her colleagues have found evidence that a high social dominance orientation is strongly correlated with conservative political views, and opposition to programs and policies that aim to promote equality (such as affirmative action, laws advocating equal rights for homosexuals, women in combat, etc.).

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

23-1-28 Xitty Balloon 23-2-4

Analyses vary widely ...........
23-6-29 Xinese Spy Balloon Used US Tech to Spy on America - Focus > .23-3-8 Xina's balloons part of strategy to beat US militarily | Digging > .23-2-23 Fantasy or reality? How did Xi blunder into “balloon gate”? - Lei > .
23-2-13 PZ - It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a [xtooopid Xinese] Spy Balloon > .
23-2-13 Xitty Fiasco Continues - Xina pulls a tu quoque - Focus > .
23-2-12 Pentagon: US jet downs 4th high-altitude object nr Lake Huron > .
23-2-12 US fighter jet shoots down 'unidentified object' over Canada | DW > .
23-2-12 New images show FBI analyzing Xinese spy balloon - CNN > .
23-2-12 Xina's Spy Balloon Controversy: XiXiP's Civil-Military Integration > .
23-2-12 Xina Caught With Pants Down - Spy Balloon Drama - cfc > .
23-2-11 Xina's Balloon: One Question NO ONE Is Asking! - da Vinci > .
23-2-11 Anand describes object shot down by NORAD - CNN > .
23-2-9 99 Red Spy Balloons: The Chinese Dirigible Debacle - Animarchy > .
23-2-9 US Shares Xinese Balloon Info With 40 Nations | Focus > .
23-2-8 Xina On [Spy] Balloon: 'It’s America’s Fault' | Update > .
23-2-8 Shootin' Balloons: A History - History Guy > .
23-2-7 Spy balloons vs satellites: Surveillance capabilities - Forces > .
23-2-7 Shmooper Bowl - Hoover > .
23-2-7 Xinese Spy Balloon: Legal To Shoot Down? - Legal Eagle > .
23-2-6 [LYING] XiXiP's repeated incursions into US airspace - PBS > .
23-2-5 Spy balloon astonishes US defense officials - MSNBC > .
23-2-4 What's behind Xinese spy balloon; where next? - Lei > .

Xina's LIES, excuses, blame shifting
In contract law, force majeure (from Law French: 'overwhelming force', lit. 'superior force') is a common clause in contracts which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, epidemic, or sudden legal change prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract. Explicitly excluded is any event described as an act of God, which covers a separate domain and legally differs, though it is related to contract law. In practice, most force majeure clauses do not entirely excuse a party's non-performance but suspend it for the duration of the force majeure.

Unidentified flying objects - timeline
23-2-4: US military shoots down suspected surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina. It had drifted for days over the US, and officials said it came from China and had been monitoring sensitive sites
23-2-10: US downs another object off northern Alaska which officials said lacked any system of propulsion or control
23-2-11: An American fighter jet shoots down a "high-altitude airborne object" over Canada's Yukon territory, about 100 miles (160 km) from the US border. It was described as cylindrical and smaller than the first balloon
23-2-12: US jets shoot down a fourth high-altitude object near Lake Huron "out of an abundance of caution"

Monday, August 9, 2021

TTP - Thousand Talents Scam - Qiming

21-12-23 How China's Biggest Spies were CAUGHT in 2021 - serpentza > .
23-8-27 [Qiming is new name for TTP intellectual poaching plan] - Update > .
23-4-16 R-U Hybrid Warfare: P00paganda, cyber, hybrid methods - Perun > .
22-11-19 G20 '22 Biden-Xi meeting = "start of a new Cold War" - Times > .
22-9-21 Western scholars debate decoupling; Xi plots tech dominance - Digging > .
22-3-24 Chinese Influence Over Australian Universities | JoAnd > . full > .

TTP - Thousand Talents Scam ..

In response to widespread Western negative reaction and pushback, Xina has attempted to duck beneath the radar by relabeling its scheme to poach intellectuals and steal intellectual property. The current iteration of the program is called Qiming, administered by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Qiming Venture Partners (啟明創投; Qǐmíng chuàngtóu) is a Xina based Venture capital firm. It primarily invests in Technology, Internet and Healthcare related companies across Xina. It is headquartered in Shanghai with offices in Beijing, Suzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. It mainly focuses on investments in China. Investors include Princeton University, Duke University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2017, it set up its American branch, Qiming Venture Partners (USA). The branch is headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California.

The Thousand Talents Plan or Thousand Talents Program (TTP), or Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Programs was established in 2008 by the central government of China to recognize and recruit leading international experts in scientific research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Both the United States and Canada have warned that China intends to use scientists who are involved with this plan to gain access to new technology for economic and military advantage.


The success of the program in recruiting U.S.-trained scientists back to China has been viewed with concern from the U.S., with a June 2018 report from the National Intelligence Council declaring an underlying motivation of the program to be “to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of US technology, intellectual property and know-how” to China

In January 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, for lying about his ties to the program

In May 2020, the FBI arrested a former researcher at the Cleveland Clinic for failing to disclose ties to the Thousand Talents Program. 

In June 2020, it was reported that the National Institutes of Health had investigations into the behavior of 189 scientists. In November 2020, Song Guo Zheng, a TTP participant, pled guilty to making false claims to the FBI about his ties to the Chinese government during his employment at Ohio State University.

In November 2019, the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held an open hearing on the China's Talent Recruitment Plans, including the TTP, and called the programs a threat to national security. The report from the hearing cited TTP contracts as violating research values, TTP members willfully failing to disclose their membership to their home institutions, and cited numerous cases against TTP members for theft of intellectual property and fraud. One TTP member stole proprietary defense information on U.S. military jet engines. The report indicated that "TTP targets U.S.-based researchers and scientists, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship, who focus on or have access to cutting-edge research and technology."

In August 2020Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned both Canadian universities and Canadian research institutions of the TTP, saying that it recruited researchers and scientists around the world to persuade them to share their research and technology — either willingly or by coercion.

The program grew out of the "Talent Superpower Strategy" of the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2007. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council of the People's Republic of China elevated the program in 2010 to become the top-level award given through China's National Talent Development Plan to strengthen innovation and international competitiveness within China. In 2019, the program was re-branded as the "National High-end Foreign Experts Recruitment Plan." The United Front Work Department's Western Returned Scholars Association is the official representative body for program participants.

1000 Talent Plan professorship is the highest academic honor awarded by the State Council, analogous to the top-level award given by the Ministry of Education. The program includes two mechanisms: resources for permanent recruitment into Chinese academia, and resources for short-term appointments that typically target international experts who have full-time employment at a leading international university or research laboratory.

The program has three categories:
  • Innovative 1000 Talents plan (Long term / Short term) – for Chinese scholars below 55 years of age
  • Foreign 1000 Talents plan (Long term / Short term) – for foreigners only below 55 years of age
  • Young scholar 1000 Talents plan or Overseas Young Talents Project of China — for those below 40 years of age
The program has been praised for recruiting top international talent to China, but also criticized for being ineffective at retaining the talent.

Conflict of interest and fraud concerns: Although the program has successfully attracted top international talent to China, its efficacy in retaining these talented individuals has been questioned, with many of the most talented scientists willing to spend short periods in China but unwilling to abandon their tenured positions at major Western universities. Additionally, some Thousand Talents Plan Professors have reported fraud in the program including misappropriated grant funding, poor accommodations, and violations of research ethicsDismissals due to undisclosed connections to the TTP have taken place. Individuals who receive either of China's two top academic awards, the Thousand Talents Professorship and the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar award, have become targets for recruitment by China's wealthiest universities so frequently that the Ministry of Education issued notices in both 2013 and 2017 discouraging Chinese universities from recruiting away top talent from one another [poaching].

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Drone Comparisons - Military UCAVs

23-6-30 Directed Energy Weapons - Lasers vs Drones, Missiles - T&P > .
23-6-13 NATO IAMD | NATO Integrated Air and Missile Defence > .
23-6-13 Drones and the Dystopian Future of War - Journeyman > .
23-6-11 Rocket Roulette: Ruscia uses drones & missiles against Ukraine - U24 > .
23-6-7 Ukrainian Defense Tech Boom - War Startups - U24 > .
23-2-12 Small Drones & Loitering Munitions - Cheap Precision - Perun > .
22-11-16 Taiwan Pushes Drone Warfare to Counter Xina - Uncensored > .
2013 Rise of the Drones (FULL doc) | NOVA | PBS > .
22-11-11 Economics of Kamikaze Drones - nwyt > . skip > .
22-10-27 Pooti's [Desperate] Iranian Drones | Peter Zeihan, Ben Hodges > .

Drone Comparisons - Military UCAVs ..

An unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), also known as a combat drone, colloquially shortened as drone or battlefield UAV, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance and carries aircraft ordnance such as missiles, ATGMs, and/or bombs in hardpoints for drone strikes. These drones are usually under real-time human control, with varying levels of autonomy. Unlike unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aerial vehicles, UCAVs are used for both drone strikes and battlefield intelligence. 

An unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aerial vehicle, is an unarmed military UAV that is used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance. Unlike unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), this type of system not designed to carry aircraft ordnance such as missiles, ATGMs, or bombs for drone strikes. The main purpose is to provide battlefield intelligence.

Aircraft of the UCAV type have no onboard human pilot. As the operator runs the vehicle from a remote terminal, equipment necessary for a human pilot is not needed, resulting in a lower weight and a smaller size than a manned aircraft. Many countries have operational domestic UCAVs and many more have imported armed drones or have development programs underway.

TAI Anka Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
TAI Anka is the serial production variant of Anka medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which was developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) for the Turkish Armed Forces.

This drone is designed to assist both night and day can take on any weather condition that comes its way. The Tai Anka serves the Turkish armed forces. And is equipped with real-time imagining system and Intelligent surveillance due to that it can spot moving targets on ground

Dassault nEUROn Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
The nEUROn UCAV is a european-based consortium project being led by the French concern of Dassault.

The Dassault nEUROn is an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) technology demonstrator intended to provide participating European powers with a viable, long-term UCAV weapons-capable solution.
 
Dimensionally, the nEUROn has been given a running length of 31 feet with a wingspan of 41 feet, putting it on par with a full-sized manned aircraft design or similar UCAV product such as the Lockheed RQ-170 "Sentinel". It sits empty at 4,900 kilograms and displaces at 7,000 kilograms under a full mission load while power will be derived from a single Rolls-Royce-Turbomeca Adour / SNECMA M88 turbofan engine centrally-located in the fuselage. Maximum speed is estimated at just over 900 miles per hour with a service ceiling expected to reach 46,000 feet. The flight controls and weapons delivery
will be designed will full autonomy in mind, human interaction being held as backup should the need arise.

Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Our next drone is the S-70 Okhotnik, also known as the Hunter B. This machine flown aircraft belonged to the Russians and was developed by Sukhoi and the Russian Aircraft Corporation.
 
Russia is accelerating the development of multiple long-range attack UAVs to compete with the US and China who are ahead in the combat drone race. This six-generation aircraft is somewhat similar to the Mikoyan Skat fighting jet and features its best qualities

Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Bayraktar TB2 is a medium altitude and long-range tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system manufactured by Baykar Makina, for the Turkish Armed Forces.

This aircraft is not human-driven but is remotely controlled and has autonomous flight operations. The Bayraktar TB2 was developed by Turkey′s Baykar company to serve the Turkish Air Force and aid in reconnaissance and intelligence combat

Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
The RQ-170 Sentinel is a high altitude and long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed and manufactured by Skunk Works, a division of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the United States Air Force (USAF).

The RQ-170 Sentinel, created by Lockheed Martin, was designed to serve the United States Air Force working with the CIA. This drone differs from others we have seen today as it is tailless and built with specialized features

The UAV can capture real-time imagery of the battlefield and transfer the data to the ground control station (GCS) through a line of sight (LOS) communication data link.
General Atomics MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The RQ-1 Predator is a long-endurance, medium-altitude unmanned aircraft system for surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

MQ-1 Predator, created by General Atomics. The maximum take-off weight is a little over 2250lbs with an air cruise of up to 217 km/ h 135 miles per hour at 25,000 feet.
Surveillance imagery from synthetic aperture radar, video cameras and a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) can be distributed in real-time both to the front line soldier and to the operational commander, or worldwide in real-time via satellite communication links.
This machine is powered by a Rolls-Royce AE 3007 turbofan-engine. It is packed with 8,500 pounds of thrust and 36 hours of flight time. RQ-4 Global Hawk is used frequently by NASA and has a distinct look, as you would have noticed. The RQ-4 Global Hawk has a Synthetic-Aperture-Radar (SAR) with high resolution.

Larger UAVs are used for strategic reconnaissance. The most important of these is the U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk, a jet-powered craft 44 feet (13 metres) long and with a wingspan of 116 feet (35 metres). The Global Hawk has a cruise speed of 391 mph (629 km) per hour and an endurance of some 36 hours, and it carries a variety of photographic, radar, and electronic sensors.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

Defence Regulations

Defence Regulations were emergency regulations passed between the lead-up and end of WW2, providing emergency powers to prosecute the war. Two Acts of Parliament were passed as enabling legislation to allow the Defence Regulations to be promulgated. 1) The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939 was passed immediately before war was declared. 2) The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1940 was passed in the aftermath of the German attack on France in 1940. The 1940 Act allowed Defence Regulations to be made on matters such as industrial conscription.

The main Defence Regulations were the Defence (General) Regulations 1939, which were amended at various points throughout the war. Other Defence Regulations covered narrower fields of life. These included Defence Regulation 18B, which provided a framework for internment. 18B allowed the internment of people suspected of being Nazi sympathisers. The effect of 18B was to suspend the right of affected individuals to habeas corpus.

The Defence Regulations were Orders in Council and could amend any primary or secondary legislation within the limits of the enabling Acts to allow the effective prosecution of the war.

Originally the regulations did not create any capital offences, since the law of treason was thought to be sufficient. Defence Regulation 2A provided that "If, with intent to assist the enemy, any person does any act which is likely to assist the enemy or to prejudice the public safety, the defence of the realm or the efficient prosecution of the war, he shall be liable to penal servitude for life."

However, in 1940 amendments to the regulations created two capital offences: "forcing safeguards" (breaking through roadblocks etc.) under regulation 1B, and looting under regulation 38A. A third new capital offence, called treachery, was created soon afterwards by the Treachery Act 1940.

Since the emergency conditions created by the war persisted after the conflict was over, the last of the Defence Regulations, mainly those on food rationing, were not abolished until the early 1950s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Regulations .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Regulation_18B .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom .

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Treachery Act 1940


The Treachery Act 1940 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted during World War II to facilitate the prosecution and execution of enemy spies, and suspended after the war and later repealed. The law was passed in the month after Nazi Germany invaded France and Winston Churchill became prime minister (23 May 1940).

The Treachery Act was deemed necessary because treason still had its own special rules of evidence and procedure which made it a difficult offence to prove and prosecute (see Treason Act 1695). The new offence of treachery, a felony, was designed to make securing convictions easier as it could be proved under the same rules of evidence as ordinary offences. It was also needed because there was doubt whether the treason laws were applicable to German saboteurs.

Sixteen people were shot by firing squad or hanged for treachery. The first British subject to be executed under the law was George Johnson Armstrong, who was hanged at HMP Wandsworth on 10 July 1941. Duncan Scott-Ford was also executed for treachery in November 1942. German agent Josef Jakobs, the last person to be executed in the Tower of London, was court-martialled and executed by firing squad under this Act. The last person to be executed under the Treachery Act was the British soldier Theodore Schurch, executed on 4 January 1946, who was the last person to be executed in the United Kingdom for an offence other than murder.

George Johnson Armstrong (1902 – 9 July 1941) was the first British citizen to be executed under the Treachery Act 1940. Only four other British subjects were executed under this Act; saboteur Jose Estelle Key (a Gibraltarian), Duncan Scott-FordOswald John Job (born in London to German parents) and Theodore Schurch.

Armstrong was an engineer by occupation. He was tried on 8 May 1941 at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey in London) and convicted for communicating with the German Consul in BostonMassachusetts, to offer him assistance before the United States entered the Second World War.

His appeal on 23 June 1941, at the Court of Criminal Appeal, was dismissed, and on 10 July 1941 at the age of 39 Armstrong was executed by hanging at HM Prison Wandsworth by Thomas Pierrepoint.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Repressive Authoritarianism - China

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Those whose policies are anathema to society MUST resort to repressive, authoritarian control. Analogous to the negative impacts of authoritarian parenting styles, the result is a dissatisfied society dominated by nervous, creativity-impaired, functionally-incompetent, petty officials. A formula for stagnation or regression, not long-term success.

Friday, February 28, 2020

AI & Cyberthreats

22-1-23 How Governments Fund Cyberattacks - VisPol > .
24-4-15 AI Deception: How Tech Companies Are [Scamming Investors] - ColdF > .
24-2-19 AI Played Wargames - Result Not Reassuring - Sabine > .
24-1-6 R-U War: First Сyberwar in History 1 - UA > .
23-9-24 Combat Drones & Future Air Warfare - Humans + Wingman - Perun > .
23-9-30 Internet Backbone = Hidden Infrastructure - B1M > .
23-8-29 Major FBI Operation Targeted Qakbot Botnet - Director Wray > .
23-8-18 AI Origins to Catastrophism vs Optimism - gtbt > .
23-5-6 Artificial Intelligence: What's next? - Sabine Hossenfelder > .
23-3-3 Generative AI, ChatGPT, CG Art: Future of Work - Patrick Boyle > . skip > .
22-9-29 Is Your Laptop's Microphone Spying On You? - Seytonic > .
22-9-29 Pegasus: The Most Dangerous Virus In The World - Tech > .
22-8-6 Pegasus Spyware Leaks - Seytonic > .
22-6-21 Understanding R-U War (16) - Technology c Lucia Velasco > .
22-4-25 Ronan Farrow: How Democracies Spy on their Citizens | A&Co > .
22-4-19 How Cyberwarfare Actually Works (Stuxnet +) - Wendover > .
22-3-25 Cyberwarfare during/outset of Russian Invasion of Ukraine - nwyt > .
22-2-24 Pegasus: Israel's Spy system has Scandalized the World - VisPol > .

⧫ R&D ..
⧫ Surveillance, Spyware ..
⧫ Wargaming, Hypothetical Warfare ..

UK spies will need artificial intelligence - Rusi report: UK spies will need to use artificial intelligence (AI) to counter a range of threats, according to a report based on unprecedented access to British intelligence. Adversaries are likely to use the technology for attacks in cyberspace and on the political system, and AI will be needed to detect and stop them. 

The future threats could include using AI to develop deep fakes - where a computer can learn to generate convincing faked video of a real person - in order to manipulate public opinion and elections. It might also be used to mutate malware for cyber-attacks, making it harder for normal systems to detect - or even to repurpose and control drones to carry out attacks. In such cases, AI will be needed to counter AI.

AI is unlikely to predict who might be about to be involved in serious crimes, such as terrorism - and will not replace human judgement. Acts such as terrorism are too infrequent to provide sufficiently large historical datasets to look for patterns - they happen far less often than other criminal acts, such as burglary.

Even within that data set, the background and ideologies of the perpetrators vary so much that it is hard to build a model of a terrorist profile. There are too many variables to make prediction straightforward, with new events potentially being radically different from previous ones.

In practice, in fields like counter-terrorism, the report argues that "augmented" - rather than artificial - intelligence will be the norm - where technology helps human analysts sift through and prioritise increasingly large amounts of data, allowing humans to make their own judgements.

The Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think tank also argues that the use of AI could give rise to new privacy and human-rights considerations, which will require new guidance. Any kind of profiling could also be discriminatory and lead to new human-rights concerns.

One of the thorny legal and ethical questions for spy agencies, especially since the Edward Snowden revelations, is how justifiable it is to collect large amounts of data from ordinary people in order to sift it and analyse it to look for those who might be involved in terrorism or other criminal activity. A related question concerns how far privacy is violated when data is collected and analysed by a machine versus when a human sees it.

Privacy advocates fear that artificial intelligence will require collecting and analysing far larger amounts of data from ordinary people, in order to understand and search for patterns, that create a new level of intrusion. The authors of the report believe new rules will be needed.


sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...