Russian troops in Ukraine have allegedly been using SpaceX’s Starlink terminals to get internet access during the ongoing war that has seen hundreds of thousands of casualties on each side. And now, House Democrats are finally asking hard questions of SpaceX leadership about how this could be happening, according to an open letter published on Thursday.
The letter to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell from some top Democrats in the House makes the case that Starlink’s high-speed satellite internet access is considered essential to Ukraine’s continued ability to fight against Russia’s invasion, which first started in February 2022.
The letter from the Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, stresses that Russia’s use of Starlink tech would be “potentially in violation of U.S. sanctions and export controls.”
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on February 15 that Russian troops have been using Starlink internet for “quite a long time,” according to Ukraine’s Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov.
Russia is believed to be acquiring the Starlink terminals from black market sellers, sometimes posing as German appliance manufacturers according to the Journal, but SpaceX leaders presumably have insight into who and how these terminals might be used by illicit Russian actors. For example, Musk shut off Starlink access for Ukrainian-controlled devices in Crimea early in the war, ostensibly to stop an “escalation” of the conflict.
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]]>I have my country and my convictions. And I don't want to give up on either. I can't betray either one. If your convictions mean anything, you must be ready to stand up for them. And, if necessary, make sacrifices [for them]. If you're not ready [to do that], then you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those aren't convictions or principles; they're just thoughts in your head.
It so happens that in today's Russia, I have to pay for my right to have and to openly express my convictions by sitting in solitary confinement. And, of course, I don't like being in prison. But I won't renounce my convictions or my homeland. My convictions aren't exotic, sectarian, or radical. On the contrary, everything I believe in is based on science and historical experience. Those in power must change. The best way to elect leaders is through honest and free elections. Everyone needs a fair court. Corruption destroys the state. There should be no censorship. The future lies with these principles.
Alexey Navalny, Russia's most famous dissident, has died. (4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024).
Returning to Russia in 2021, after having been treated in Berlin for novichok poisoning, Navalny was immediately arrested on arrival at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. Since then, he has been in and out of (but mostly in) solitary confinement all over the country, with his final station being the Polar Wolf penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Siberia.
On Monday, he had been visited by his parents. In reacting to the news of her son's death, his mother reacted:
"I don't want to hear any condolences. We saw our son in the colony on Feb. 12th. He was alive, healthy, cheerful."
More info here.
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]]>The European Parliament has reached a provisional deal on EU regulations to strengthen consumers' right to repair.
Negotiations over the bill have been ongoing for a while now - the rules were first proposed in March 2022, and the hope is that new requirements will be finalized in 2024.
The thinking is that consumers should be better informed about the lifespan and repairability of products before buying them, and there should be measures to boost repair after the legal guarantee period has expired.
All told, the bill looks set to bolster the repair sector. Manufacturers must make spare parts and tools available for "a reasonable price" and be prohibited from using contractual clauses or hardware or software blocks to obstruct repairs. While singling no company out specifically, the European Parliament said: "In particular, they should not impede the use of second-hand or 3D issued spare parts by independent repairers."
Other consumer rights in the deal include options for borrowing a device while their own is being repaired or opting for a refurbished unit, an additional one-year extension of the legal guarantee for repaired goods, and free online access to indicative repair prices.
Under the regulation, manufacturers must inform customers of the duty to repair and be obligated to fix "common household products," such as a washing machine or smartphone. The European Parliament has left open the possibility of adding more items over time.
[...] It will be a while before this all goes into effect, though. Once both Council and Parliament adopt the directive, member states will have 24 months to get it into national law.
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]]>Although China cannot flood the global market with chips produced with cutting-edge fabrication technologies, strong subsidies for the semiconductor sector in China make it possible for the country to flood the market with chips made on legacy process technologies, thus undercutting much-needed sales that generate revenue that is vital for R&D at Western firms. This tactic could spur the U.S. government to impose tariffs on products using mature processing nodes, reports Bloomberg.
[...] China is known for providing hefty funds to its chipmakers. For example, China-based SMIC invested $24 billion in capital expenditures from 2020 to 2023 with support from banks, local governments, and state-controlled funds, far exceeding its earnings in the period, according to Nikkei. Other semiconductor companies also have generous support from the government, which is how they can quickly expand production capacity using tools that they can procure without any limitations and start producing chips like display driver ICs (DDICs) or power management ICs (PMICs) that are sold in billions of units every year.
[...] The survey's findings are set to guide the U.S. in formulating responses that could include the imposition of tariffs or the use of other trade tools to counteract China's aggressive expansion in the semiconductor industry. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has already indicated that the U.S. is ready to use every tool it has to stop China from flooding the market with low-cost legacy chips. However, she clarified that the most stringent export controls would remain reserved for more advanced process technologies and not for these older generation nodes, so Chinese companies will still be able to procure legacy chipmaking tools.
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]]>If Congress does not pass a measure to fund the government by Sunday, October 1, a partial shutdown of the United States government will begin. Much of the federal government is funded each fiscal year by 12 appropriations bills. None of the appropriations bills for the 2024 fiscal year have been signed into law, which is not especially uncommon at the start of a new fiscal year. Instead, Congress authorizes funding at the levels from the previous fiscal year through a continuing resolution (CR), and then the appropriations bills are signed into law when they are ready. The Senate is scheduled to vote on such a CR on Saturday, though any Senator can refuse the expedited process for debating the bill, and delay the vote until Monday. Although the CR is expected to pass the Senate with bipartisan support, the House is highly unlikely to pass any funding bills before the government shutdown begins.
The impending government shutdown is likely to have significant effects on scientific research, as noted in a Nature article:
Fuelled by infighting among Republicans in the House of Representatives over spending cuts, the United States is barreling towards a government shutdown. Lawmakers in the US Congress have until 30 September (the end of the fiscal year) to reach an agreement over how to keep money flowing to federal agencies, or the government will have to close many of its doors and furlough staff — including tens of thousands of scientists — without pay. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, work at science agencies will stop, interrupting experiments, delaying the approval of research grants and halting travel to scientific conferences.
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]]>The decision, published Friday, was hailed by conservative litigation group the New Civil Liberties Alliance as a victory for free speech. But Eric Goldman, a professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, believes Biden administration foes may have scored an own-goal.
The lower court ruling [PDF], from Louisiana federal district Judge Terry A. Doughty on July 4, partially granted an injunction that broadly limited the extent to which US government agencies can deem content so potentially harmful that they urge social media sites to remove it from their services.
Judge Doughty determined that the plaintiffs – the State of Missouri, the State of Louisiana, Dr Aaron Kheriaty, Dr Martin Kulldorff, Jim Hoft, Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya, and Jill Hines – made sufficiently strong arguments that their speech was suppressed at the direction of the government that they are likely to succeed at trial.
In short: the judge partially granted their request to prohibit the government from telling social media companies how to moderate content.
The United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'
"Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the court is only examining it in terms of plaintiffs' likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario," Judge Doughty wrote in a memorandum explaining his ruling.
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"
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]]>On tech, the EU doesn't speak for Europe:
The European Commission of President Ursula von der Leyen vowed in 2019 to make "a Europe fit for the digital age," dubbing the 2020s Europe's "digital decade."
Building on the European Union's flagship privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Brussels's regulatory race to the top gained historic momentum over the past four years. And from digital markets to content moderation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, computer chips and data governance, the Commission has left little on the table in terms of regulation.
Bolstered by mended ties with the administration of United States President Joe Biden and increased coordination with the U.S. through the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the von der Leyen Commission seems to have achieved the impossible in an often rancorous 27-member bloc — a unified Europe around a common digital agenda.
But this narrative of unity obfuscates a much more complex reality in which the Commission's policies are dominated by its two largest — and most zealously regulatory — countries: France and Germany. In fact, Europe's smaller but most tech-oriented members rarely feel heard in the halls of Brussels, even as they often disagree with the Commission's agenda.
Privately, officials from these countries say the Commission's strategy will hamper innovation by imposing complex compliance rules on smaller companies that can't afford to implement them. They also worry that foreign investment — particularly from U.S. investors, which are responsible for a whopping 76 percent of foreign investment in European tech companies — will wane as the Commission goes after large American tech firms. And many lament that Brexit took away the United Kingdom's counterbalancing voice, leaving a vacuum for France and Germany to fill.
While these concerns are rarely aired publicly, simply put, Central and Northern Europe know that when it comes to tech, the EU doesn't speak for Europe.
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]]>China appeals to Japan to halt export restrictions as chip war escalates:
China is urging Japan to repeal restrictions on the export of chip-making technology, citing violations of international and trade regulations.
Beijing's condemnation is the latest development in the ongoing chip war between the US and China, which has seen moves from both nations to thwart each other's semiconductor manufacturing prowess.
The Japanese government's move to impose a ban on chip exports comes days after China banned the use of Semiconductors manufactured by US-based chipmaker Micron, citing a cybersecurity issue.
[...] In January, the US convinced The Netherlands and Japan to join it in expanding a ban on exports of chip-making technology to China.
According to analysts, Washington's strategy to strike a deal with the two countries was a significant move, as some of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment are headquartered in these nations.
The US first imposed restrictions on exports of chips to China in 2015, extending them in 2021 and twice in 2022. The most recent restrictions were introduced in December.
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]]>Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election:
Artificial intelligence was once something the average person described in the abstract. They had no tactile relationship with it that they were aware of, even if their devices were often utilizing it. That's all changed over the past year as people have started to engage with AI programs like OpenAI's DALL-E and ChatGPT, and the technology is rapidly advancing.
As AI is democratized, democracy itself is falling under new pressures. There will likely be many exciting ways it will be deployed, but it may also start to distort reality and could become a major threat to the 2024 presidential election if AI-generated audio, images, and videos of candidates proliferate. The line between what's real and what's fake could start to blur significantly more than it already has in an age of rampant disinformation.
"We've seen pretty dramatic shifts in the landscape when it comes to generative tools—particularly in the last year," says Henry Ajder, an independent AI expert. "I think the scale of content we're now seeing being produced is directly related to that dramatic opening up of accessibility."
It's not a question of whether AI-generated content is going to start playing a role in politics, because it's already happening. AI-generated images and videos featuring president Joe Biden and Donald Trump have started spreading around the internet. Republicans recently used AI to generate an attack ad against Biden. The question is, what will happen when anyone can open their laptop and, with minimal effort, quickly create a convincing deepfake of a politician?
There are plenty of ways to generate AI images from text, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It's easy to generate a clone of someone's voice with an AI program like the one offered by ElevenLabs. Convincing deepfake videos are still difficult to produce, but Ajder says that might not be the case within a year or so.
"To create a really high-quality deepfake still requires a fair degree of expertise, as well as post-production expertise to touch up the output the AI generates," Ajder says. "Video is really the next frontier in generative AI."
Some deepfakes of political figures have emerged in recent years, such as one of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling his troops to surrender that was released last year. Once the technology has advanced more, which may not take long considering how quickly other forms of generative AI are advancing, more of these types of videos may appear as they become more convincing and easier to produce.
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]]>If you still want your Mao memorabilia, you better hurry down to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, while you still have the chance.
In China, the State Council is somewhat comparable to the Cabinet. Headed by the Prime Minister and consisting of the heads of the various Ministries (Defense, Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Justice, Civil Affairs, State Security, Public Security and so on), it handles the day-to-day running of the country while formulating economic policy.
Its operational procedures are described in a document, conveniently titled "Working Procedures for the State Council". On March 18, an updated version of that document was published, and it has a couple of changes.
First off, the State Council now has to "report any major decisions, major events and important situations" to the Central Committee "in a timely manner." Previous edition sentences like "administration according to law, seeking truth from facts, democracy, openness, pragmatism and integrity" have been scrapped, as has the requirement for the State Council "to correct illegal or inappropriate administrative actions", or to "guide and supervise" the bureaucracy. In other words, its wings have been seriously clipped.
Secondly, any and all references to Marxism/Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are now verboten. Only references to Xi Jinping Thought are allowed, as that is "the essence of Chinese culture and the spirit of the times".
To drive the point home, the Central Committee of the CCP launched another nationwide disciplinary campaign among its 96 million members.
This round will check them for loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping, weeding out "black sheep" and "two-faced" officials.
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]]>Shortly after coming into office, President Joe Biden moved to restore net neutrality. He signed a sweeping executive order to promote competition, calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring back the Obama-era internet rules rolled back by the Trump administration.
But close to two years later, the FCC remains deadlocked with only four of its five commissioner slots filled — and Biden may be running out of time.
Biden's pick for a new FCC commissioner was Gigi Sohn, a former FCC official and public interest advocate. Sohn would have secured a long-awaited Democratic majority at the agency. After she was nominated in October 2021, however, a well-funded opposition organized a brutal opposition campaign against her. The culture-war campaign called Sohn an "extremist" and a "censor" because of past tweets criticizing Fox News and former President Donald Trump, largely ignoring her decades-long professional record. After more than 16 months and three separate confirmation hearings, Sohn withdrew her nomination earlier this month, citing the "unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks" by broadband and cable lobbyists and their friends.
It's unlikely Biden will pick someone as critical of cable companies again — but Republicans could try to thwart even a centrist candidate
Now, the White House has been forced to start over, prolonging a vacancy that continues to obstruct the administration's broadband agenda. The White House hasn't announced a new nominee or when they're hoping to confirm someone, but it's unlikely that Biden would pick someone as critical of cable companies as Sohn. Republicans and "dark money" groups have already proved that they're willing to spend millions to block progressive nominees. With so little time left in Biden's first term, stakeholders may even try to thwart a more moderate nominee, especially if there's an opportunity to continue the stalemate past the 2024 election.
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]]>It's unclear if the two lawmakers know what messenger RNA is exactly:
Two Republican lawmakers in Idaho have introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for anyone in the state to administer mRNA-based vaccines—namely the lifesaving and remarkably safe COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. If passed as written, it would also preemptively ban the use of countless other mRNA vaccines that are now in development, such as shots for RSV, a variety of cancers, HIV, flu, Nipah virus, and cystic fibrosis, among others.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Tammy Nichols of Middleton and Rep. Judy Boyle of Midvale, both staunch conservatives who say they stand for freedom and the right to life. But their bill, HB 154, proposes that "a person may not provide or administer a vaccine developed using messenger ribonucleic acid [mRNA] technology for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state." If passed into law, anyone administering lifesaving mRNA-based vaccines would be guilty of a misdemeanor, which could result in jail time and/or a fine.
While presenting the bill to the House Health & Welfare Committee last week, Nichols said their anti-mRNA stance stems from the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines were initially allowed under emergency use authorizations (EUAs) from the Food and Drug Administration, not the agency's full regulatory approval. "We have issues that this was fast-tracked," she told fellow lawmakers, according to reporting from local news outlet KXLY.com.
The EUAs for the two mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were issued in December 2020, and the FDA has subsequently granted full approval to both (Pfizer-BioNTech's in August 2021 and Moderna's in January 2022). This was pointed out to Nichols in the hearing last week.
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]]>Opponents say laws preventing underage porn access are vague, pose privacy risks:
After decades of America fretting over minors potentially being overexposed to pornography online, several states are suddenly moving fast in 2023 to attempt to keep kids off porn sites by passing laws requiring age verification.
Last month, Louisiana became the first state to require an ID from residents to access pornography online. Since then, seven states have rushed to follow in Louisiana's footsteps. According to a tracker from Free Speech Coalition, Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced similar laws, and laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia are seemingly closest to passing. If passed, some of these laws could be enforced promptly, while some bills in states like Florida and Mississippi specify that they wouldn't take effect until July.
But not every state agrees that rushing to require age verification is the best solution. Today, a South Dakota committee voted to defer voting on its age verification bill until the last day of the legislative session. The bill's sponsor, Republican Jessica Castleberry, seemingly failed to persuade the committee of the urgency of passing the law, saying at the hearing that "this is not your daddy's Playboy. Extreme, degrading, and violent pornography is only one click away from our children." She told Ars that the bill was not passed because some state lawmakers were too "easily swayed by powerful lobbyists."
"It's a travesty that unfettered access to pornography by minors online will continue in South Dakota because of lobbyists protecting the interests of their clients, versus legislators who should be protecting our children," Castleberry told Ars. "The time to pass this bill was in the mid-1990s."
Lobbyists opposing the bill at the hearing represented telecommunications and newspaper associations. Although the South Dakota bill, like the Louisiana law, exempted news organizations, one lobbyist, Justin Smith, an attorney for the South Dakota Newspaper Association, argued that the law was too vague in how it defined harmful content and how it defined which commercial entities could be subjected to liabilities.
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]]>TikTok's CEO agrees to testify before Congress for the first time in March:
As Congress prepares to vote on a nationwide TikTok ban next month, it looks like that ban may already be doomed to fail. The biggest hurdle likely won't be mustering enough votes, but drafting a ban that doesn't conflict with measures passed in the 1980s to protect the flow of ideas from hostile foreign nations during the Cold War.
These decades-old measures, known as the Berman amendments, were previously invoked by TikTok creators suing to block Donald Trump's attempted TikTok ban in 2020. Now, a spokesperson for Representative Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Ars that these measures are believed to be the biggest obstacle for lawmakers keen on blocking the app from operating in the United States.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that lawmakers' dilemma in enacting a ban would be finding a way to block TikTok without "shutting down global exchanges of content—or inviting retaliation against US platforms and media." Some lawmakers think that's achievable by creating a narrow carve-out for TikTok in new legislation, but others, like McCaul, think a more permanent solution to protect national security interests long-term would require crafting more durable and thoughtful legislation that would allow for bans of TikTok and all apps beholden to hostile foreign countries.
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]]>Biden faces a renewed push, domestically and internationally, to drop charges against Assange, who is languishing in a UK jail:
The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that "a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy".
But the biggest test of Biden's commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.
[...] Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange's protracted prosecution.
Five major media organizations that relied on his trove of government secrets, including the Guardian and the New York Times, put out an open letter earlier this month saying that his indictment "sets a dangerous precedent" and threatens to undermine the first amendment.
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]]>Ukraine war: Russia denies responsibility for Poland blast
US President Joe Biden has said it is "unlikely" that a missile that killed two people in Poland on Tuesday was fired from Russia.
Russia has denied it was to blame for the missile that landed in Przewodow, on the Ukrainian border.
Poland said it was Russian-made, but US officials said initial findings indicated it was fired by Ukrainian air defences.
More than 90 Russian missiles were fired at Ukraine on Tuesday, Kyiv said.
Although the military said 77 were shot down, some of the missiles hit Lviv, not far from Ukraine's western border with Poland.
During the Russian attacks, two Polish workers were killed in a blast at a farm building in Przewodow, 6km (4 miles) from the border.
Earlier reported story:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zelenskyy-kherson-9202c032cf3a5c22761ee71b52ff9d52
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pounded Ukraine's energy facilities Tuesday with its biggest barrage of missiles yet, striking targets across the country and causing widespread blackouts, and a U.S. official said missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, where two people were killed.
A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy shook his fist and declared: "We will survive everything."
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller did not immediately confirm the information from a senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. But Mueller said top leaders were holding an emergency meeting due to a "crisis situation."
Polish media reported that two people died Tuesday afternoon after a projectile struck an area where grain was drying in Przewodów, a Polish village near the border with Ukraine.
Neighboring Moldova was also affected. It reported massive power outages after the strikes knocked out a key power line that supplies the small nation, an official said.
I bet the reaction will be "Mmrrr-hhhhh... not enough/too soon for Article 5".
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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]]>UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after failed budget and market turmoil
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned Thursday following a failed tax-cutting budget that rocked financial markets and which led to a revolt within her own Conservative Party.
Truss said in a statement outside Downing Street: "We set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit."
"I recognize though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to announce that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party."
The party is now due to complete a leadership election within the next week, faster than the usual two-month period. Graham Brady, the Conservative politician that is in charge of leadership votes and reshuffles, told reporters he was now looking at how the vote could include Conservative MPs and the wider party members.
Truss was in office for just 44 days, on 10 of which government business was paused following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Live updates: BBC, The Guardian, CNN, NYT.
Liz Truss resigns as prime minister after Tory revolt
Liz Truss: UK prime minister resignation speech in full
Pound rallies as Liz Truss announces resignation
Liz Truss (Wikipedia).
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]]>US Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) introdced S.4913 - Securing Open Source Software Act of 2022 the other day. It has been read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Here is the US Senate's press release:
U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation to help protect federal and critical infrastructure systems by strengthening the security of open source software. The legislation comes after a hearing convened by Peters and Portman on the Log4j incident earlier this year, and would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to help ensure that open source software is used safely and securely by the federal government, critical infrastructure, and others. A vulnerability discovered in Log4j – which is widely used open source code – affected millions of computers worldwide, including critical infrastructure and federal systems. This led top cybersecurity experts to call it one of the most severe and widespread cybersecurity vulnerabilities ever seen.
[...] The overwhelming majority of computers in the world rely on open source code – freely available code that anyone can contribute to, develop, and use to create websites, applications, and more. It is maintained by a community of individuals and organizations. The federal government, one of the largest users of open source software in the world, must be able to manage its own risk and also help support the security of open source software in the private sector and the rest of the public sector.
The Securing Open Source Software Act would direct CISA to develop a risk framework to evaluate how open source code is used by the federal government. CISA would also evaluate how the same framework could be voluntarily used by critical infrastructure owners and operators. This will identify ways to mitigate risks in systems that use open source software. The legislation also requires CISA to hire professionals with experience developing open source software to ensure that government and the community work hand-in-hand and are prepared to address incidents like the Log4j vulnerability. Additionally, the legislation requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidance to federal agencies on the secure usage of open source software and establishes a software security subcommittee on the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.
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]]>Senate passes massive package to boost U.S. computer chip production
[....] The 64-33 vote represents a rare bipartisan victory a little more than three months before the crucial November midterms; 17 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting yes. The package, known as "CHIPS-plus," now heads to the House, which is expected to pass it by the end of the week and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature.
[....] The centerpiece of the package is more than $50 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research.
Supporters on Capitol Hill, as well as key members of Biden's Cabinet, have argued that making microchips at home — rather than relying on chipmakers in China, Taiwan and elsewhere — is critical to U.S. national security, especially when it comes to chips used for weapons and military equipment.
[...] The final chips bill is a slimmed-down version of a much broader China competitiveness package that House and Senate lawmakers had been negotiating. Earlier, the Senate passed its bill, known as USICA, while the House passed its own version, the America COMPETES Act. But lawmakers couldn't resolve their differences, and leading Democrats decided to switch their strategy and scale back the legislation.
The package also includes tens of billions more in authorizations for science and research programs, as well as for regional technology hubs around the country.
If passed, will this be well spent? Will the US actually be globally competitive in chip manufacture?
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]]>Russia Says It Will Quit the International Space Station After 2024
The new head of Russia's space agency announced on Tuesday that Russia will leave the International Space Station after its current commitment expires at the end of 2024.
"The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made," said Yuri Borisov, who was appointed this month to run Roscosmos, a state-controlled corporation in charge of the country's space program.
The pronouncement came during a meeting between Mr. Borisov and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Borisov told Mr. Putin that Russia would fulfill its commitments through 2024. "I think that by this time we will begin to form the Russian orbital station," he said.
Mr. Putin's response: "Good."
However:
Russian Space Station to Replace ISS Will Be Built No Earlier Than 2028:
"We propose to build it in two stages. If the decision on its construction is made before the end of the year, then the first stage will begin in 2028 with the launch of the Science Power Module by the Angara-A5M launch vehicle," Solovyov said in an interview with the Russian Space magazine.After that, the node and gateway modules will be launched on the same rocket. The first will be similar to the module that is already part of the International Space Station. The second will be used for spacewalks.
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]]>Russia’s Gazprom has told customers in Europe that it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of “extraordinary” circumstances, according to a letter seen by the Reuters news agency, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian state gas monopoly said in a letter dated July 14 that it was retroactively declaring force majeure on supplies from June 14. The news comes as Nord Stream 1 (NS1), the key pipeline delivering Russian gas to Germany and beyond, is undergoing 10 days of annual maintenance scheduled to conclude on Thursday.
The letter added to fears in Europe that Moscow may not restart the pipeline at the end of the maintenance period in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, heightening an energy crisis that risks tipping the region into recession.
Known as an “act of God” clause, force majeure is standard in business contracts and defines extreme circumstances that release a party from their legal obligations. The declaration does not necessarily mean that Gazprom will stop deliveries, rather that it should not be held responsible if it fails to meet contract terms.
[...] Russian gas supplies have been declining via major routes for some months, including via Ukraine and Belarus as well as through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
[...] The grace period for payments on two of Gazprom’s international bonds expires on July 19, and if foreign creditors are not paid by then the company will be technically in default.
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]]>The MIT Technology Review writes in a long form article about how DARPA has rediscovered Free and Open Source Software, or at least the latter, and how it is now found everywhere across the board. As far as the Internet and the World Wide Web goes, its ubiquity has been a given since they were founded on it, but nowadays even at least 70% of closed source, proprietary products also contain lots of it. DARPA is worried about the kernel Linux in particular and the vetting process for adding code to the project specifically.
Now DARPA, the US military's research arm, wants to understand the collision of code and community that makes these open-source projects work, in order to better understand the risks they face. The goal is to be able to effectively recognize malicious actors and prevent them from disrupting or corrupting crucially important open-source code before it's too late.
DARPA's "SocialCyber" program is an 18-month-long, multimillion-dollar project that will combine sociology with recent technological advances in artificial intelligence to map, understand, and protect these massive open-source communities and the code they create. It's different from most previous research because it combines automated analysis of both the code and the social dimensions of open-source software.
"The open-source ecosystem is one of the grandest enterprises in human history," says Sergey Bratus, the DARPA program manager behind the project.
"It's now grown from enthusiasts to a global endeavor forming the basis of global infrastructure, of the internet itself, of critical industries and mission-critical systems pretty much everywhere," he says. "The systems that run our industry, power grids, shipping, transportation."
Recently, software appears to have been occupying a lot of attention over in Washington, DC. Unfortunately occasional lines in mainstream articles indicate that it is M$ and M$ lobbyists are steering the policy discussion there. It appears that they are spending an enormous amount of time in direct contact with politicians and policy makers, all the while log4j is still getting milked by them as a distraction from all the actively exploited vulnerabilities in their own products.
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]]>U.S. may lose silicon wafer factory if Congress can't fund CHIPS Act, commerce secretary says:
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday that she believes GlobalWafers will follow through on its plan to build a silicon wafer factory in Texas — but only if Congress passes funding for the CHIPS for America Act by the time the August recess begins.
"This investment that they're making is contingent upon Congress passing the CHIPS Act [funding]. The CEO told me that herself, and they reiterated that today," Raimondo said in an interview on "Mad Money."
"It has to be done before they go to August recess. I don't know how to say it any more plainly. This deal ... will go away, I think, if Congress doesn't act," she added.
GlobalWafers, a Taiwan-based semiconductor silicon wafer firm, said Monday that it plans to build a facility to produce the component in Sherman, Texas. The facility could create up to 1,500 jobs and produce 1.2 million wafers a month, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
The CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) for America Act incentivizes investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry. While it was passed in January 2021, a funding package has not been approved by Congress.
McConnell warns Dems of fallout for reviving Biden bill:
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell threatened Thursday to derail a bill designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States if Democrats revive their stalled climate and social policy package.
The rejuvenation of the Democratic reconciliation package, central to President Joe Biden's agenda, remains a work in progress and is far from certain. But with some signs of progress in the negotiations, McConnell is moving to complicate Democratic plans by warning that Republicans would react by stopping separate semiconductor legislation from moving over the finish line in the coming weeks, despite its bipartisan support.
"Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill," McConnell tweeted, referring to the shorthand name for the computer chips bill that passed the Senate last year.
Both chambers of Congress have passed their versions of the legislation, which would include $52 billion in incentives for companies to locate chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. Lawmakers are now trying to reconcile the considerable differences between the two bills, but at a pace that has many supporters worried the job won't get done before lawmakers break for their August recess.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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]]>The world's biggest surveillance company you've never heard of:
For example, the research found 55,455 Hikvision networks in London. "From my experience of just walking around London, it would probably be several times over that. They're in almost every supermarket," says Samuel Woodhams, a researcher at Top10VPN who carried out the study.
The prevalence of Hikvision cameras overseas has caused anxieties around national security, even though it hasn't been proved that the company transfers its overseas data back to China. In 2019, the US passed a bill banning Hikvision from holding any contracts with the federal government.
What really made Hikvision infamous on the global stage was its involvement in China's oppressive policies in Xinjiang against Muslim minorities, mostly Uyghurs. Numerous surveillance cameras, many equipped with advanced facial recognition, have been installed both inside and outside the detention camps in Xinjiang to aid the government's control over the region. And Hikvision has been a big part of this activity. The company was found to have received at least $275 million in government contracts to build surveillance in the region and has developed AI cameras that can detect physical features of Uyghur ethnicity.
Presented with questions about Xinjiang by MIT Technology Review, Hikvision responded with a statement that did not address them directly but said the company "has and will continue to strictly comply with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, following internationally accepted business ethics and business standards."
Adding Hikvision to the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals List) would do more than ratchet up tensions between the US and China—it would open up a new front in international sanctions, one in which tech companies increasingly find themselves embroiled in geopolitical power struggles.
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]]>Economist says China must seize TSMC if the US tightens sanctions:
The importance of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known as TSMC, to the global economy cannot be understated. The world's largest chip manufacturer has a 54% share of the global chip market, which makes an economist's call for China to seize TSMC if the US imposes harsh sanctions on the country all the more concerning.
Bloomberg reports that Chen Wenling, chief economist at the government-run China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said, "If the US and the West impose destructive sanctions on China like sanctions against Russia, we must recover Taiwan."
Chen singled out TSMC in the speech at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University last month. "Especially in the reconstruction of the industrial chain and supply chain, we must seize TSMC," she added.
TSMC is reportedly set to build six chip fabs in the US, though it has announced just one so far. "They [TSMC] are speeding up the transfer to the US to build six factories there," Chen said. "We must not let all the goals of the transfer be achieved."
Chen does talk about the scenario only taking place if the US hit China with Russia-like sanctions, which were put in place after it invaded Ukraine. Taiwan has long said it is an independent nation, while China insists it is part of its territory and has no qualms about using force to bring it under control.
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]]>Big Telecom Convinces Missouri Lawmakers To Block Funding For Broadband Competition:
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) set aside $42.5 billion to be spent by the states on expanding access to affordable broadband. But state by state, telecom lobbyists are working hard to ensure that this money only goes toward "unserved" locations, and can't be used to potentially create competition in markets they already serve.
Last month we noted how states like Illinois, at the direct demand of companies like AT&T, have been passing restrictions on who can or can't access these funds. That includes blocking some cooperatives or local governments from building broadband networks. Since that's expressly forbidden by the IIJA, these states are risking all broadband funding
In other instances it's a bit more subtle than that. Missouri, for example, just passed a bill (once again directly demanded by AT&T) stating that "no federal funds received by the state, political subdivision, city, town, or village shall be expended for the construction of retail broadband internet infrastructure unless the project to be constructed is located in an unserved area or underserved area."
On its face it doesn't seem controversial. But if you know how the U.S. telecom sector and policy actually works, its intention becomes more clear. The bill doesn't just block funding for areas that are already served, it blocks access to projects in areas incumbent ISPs claim they might serve someday:
the current version of the bill would allow incumbent ISPs to block federal funding to competitors if they vaguely indicate they have eventual interest in upgrading an area. Historically, state and federal regulators in fealty to regional monopolies aren't consistent about following up on fiber deployment promises, potentially perpetuating longstanding Internet access coverage gaps.
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]]>Greene offers bill to abolish Section 230
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday is introducing a bill to abolish Section 230 — the law the protects online platforms from liability — on the heels of Twitter accepting Elon Musk's offer to buy the company and take it private.
Greene's bill would eliminate the law making online platforms not liable for content posted by third parties and replace it with a provision to require "reasonable, non-discriminatory access to online communications platforms" through a "common carrier" framework that Greene compared to airlines or package delivery services.
Republicans have long claimed that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias, pointing to tweets that have been taken down and the removal of entire feeds from networks.
[....] Titled the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, Greene's measure will serve as the House version of a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.).
To combat the alleged bias against conservatives, it would prevent online communications platforms from exerting "undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, political or religious group or affiliation, or locality" and would provide consumers a mechanism to sue for violations.
Should any platform be liable for someone else's speech? Even if they engage in moderation?
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]]>Amazon, Google Busted Faking Small Business Opposition To Antitrust Reform:
For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like "environmentalists for big oil" or "Americans who really love telecom monopolies." These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren't popular, or great for innovation or markets.
Case in point: this week both Politico and CNBC released stories showcasing how Amazon and Google had been funding a "small business alliance" that appears to be partially or entirely contrived. The group, the Connected Commerce Council, professes to represent small U.S. businesses, yet has been busy recently lobbying government to avoid antitrust reform (which would, generally, aid small businesses).
When Politico reached out to companies listed as members of the organization, most of them had mysteriously never heard of it, and were greatly annoyed their company names were being used for such a purpose:
The four-year-old group listed about 5,000 small businesses in its membership directory before it removed that document from its website late last month. When POLITICO contacted 70 of those businesses, 61 said they were not members of the group and many added that they were not familiar with the organization.
Google is not your friend!
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]]>House Committee Investigating Amazon's Labor Practices:
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has opened an investigation into Amazon's labor practices during severe weather, according to a letter the members sent to Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive.
"We are concerned about recent reports that Amazon may be endangering the health and safety of its workers, including requiring them to work in hazardous conditions during tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme weather conditions," indicates the letter, signed by the chair of the committee. [...]
The investigation will focus on the December tornado who hit amazon's delivery station in Edwardsville, Illinois, killing six people. Most employees at the facility were not direct Amazon employees. They were contracted delivery drivers, a complication that hampered the response when authorities could not easily determine how many people were at the scene.
[...] "Our goal remains to support our employees and partners, the families who have lost loved ones, the surrounding community, and everyone affected by the tornadoes," Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Friday. "We will respond to this letter in due course."
What does YOUR workplace do in severe weather?
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]]>Europe's Biggest Lithium Mine Is Caught in a Political Maelstrom:
Only red-roofed houses interrupt the vast carpet of fields that surround the village of Gornje Nedeljice, in western Serbia. To resident Marijana Petković, this is the most beautiful place in the world. She's not against Europe's green transition, the plan to make the bloc's economy climate neutral by 2050. But she is among those who believe Serbia's fertile Jadar Valley—where locals grow raspberries and keep bees—is being asked to make huge sacrifices to enable other countries to build electric cars.
Around 300 meters away from Petković's house, according to the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, there is enough lithium to create 1 million EV batteries, and the company wants to spend $2.4 billion to build Europe's biggest lithium mine here. But Petković and other locals oppose the project, arguing it will cause irreparable damage to the environment. When asked about that claim, a spokesperson for Rio Tinto told WIRED that throughout the project, the company has "recognized that Jadar will need to be developed to the highest environmental standards." Petković is not convinced. "I want the western countries to have the green transition and to live like people in Jadar," she says. "But that doesn't mean that we need to destroy our nature."
Officially, the Jadar mine is not happening. After months of protests against the project, the government conceded, and in January it was canceled. "As far as Project Jadar is concerned, this is an end," Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabić said on January 20, after Rio Tinto's lithium exploration licenses were revoked.
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]]>Severe drought and mandatory water cuts are pitting communities against each other in Arizona:
As the climate crisis intensifies, battle lines are beginning to form over water. In Arizona -- amid a decades-long megadrought -- some communities are facing the very real possibility of losing access to the precious water that remains.
Outside the city limits of Scottsdale, where the asphalt ends and the dirt road begins, is the Rio Verde Foothills community. Hundreds of homes here get water trucked in from Scottsdale, but those deliveries will end on January 1, 2023.
That's because last summer, for the first time ever, drought conditions forced the federal government to declare a tier 1 water shortage in the Colorado River, reducing how much Arizona can use.
[...] "We are what I call the 'sacrificial lamb' for the bigger areas," Irwin told CNN. "In my opinion, look somewhere else -- we need to be able to sustain ourselves."
The scarcity of water in the state is pitting small towns against fast-growing metropolitan communities.
[...] Arizona's population growth and extreme drought have increased demand for water in limited supply. Kathleen Ferris, a senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy in Arizona, says water scarcity in the state has resulted in the "haves" and the "have nots," and likened the coming water battles to the days of the Wild West. "Once you have your water rights, you defend it," Ferris said. "That's the way it works."
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]]>Finland's Spy Service Warns of Russian Interference, Attacks:
Finland must brace for Russian interference and hybrid attacks as it weighs whether to join the NATO military alliance, the security services warned on Tuesday.
The Nordic nation shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia and has remained militarily non-aligned since the end of World War II to avoid provoking its eastern neighbour.
[...] "The whole of Finnish society must be vigilant towards Russian attempts to influence Finnish decision-making regarding the NATO question," Antti Pelttari, head of the Finnish security services Supo, said.
Releasing its updated terrorism threat report, Supo on Tuesday highlighted the danger of "widespread Russian interference and illegal surveillance," but kept the national terror threat at level two, or "elevated", on a scale of four.
[...] Finland has previously been subject to so-called hybrid tactics from Moscow, such as repeated airspace incursions, or the release in 2016 of 1,700 migrants across the Finnish border.
Earlier this month the transport authority Traficom said it had received "numerous" reports from aircraft of GPS interference in eastern Finland, but was unable to identify the source of the interference.
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]]>U.S. charges 4 Russian government workers with hacking energy sector:
The U.S. Justice Department fired another legal salvo against Russia on Thursday, announcing indictments against four Russian government employees for an alleged hacking campaign targeting the energy sector that lasted for years and targeted computers in 135 countries.
An indictment in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charges that Evgeny Viktorovich Gladkikh, who worked at a Russian Ministry of Defense research institute, conspired with others to damage critical infrastructure outside the United States, causing emergency shutdowns at one foreign facility. Thosecharged in the indictment, under seal since June 2021, also allegedly tried to hack the computers of a U.S. firm that managed similar facilities in the United States.
A separate indictment filed in Kansas alleges that a hacking campaign launched by Russian's federal security service, or FSB, targeted computers at hundreds of energy-related entities around the world. That indictment was also filed under seal last summer.
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]]>Russia considers accepting Bitcoin for oil and gas:
Russia is considering accepting Bitcoin as payment for its oil and gas exports, according to a high-ranking lawmaker.> Pavel Zavalny says "friendly" countries could be allowed to pay in the crypto-currency or in their local currencies.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he wanted "unfriendly" countries to buy its gas with roubles.
The move is understood to be aimed at boosting the Russian currency, which has lost over 20% in value this year.
[...] However, Russia is still the world's biggest exporter of natural gas and the second largest supplier of oil.
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]]>Proposed law in Minnesota would ban algorithms to protect the children:
Minnesota state lawmakers are trying to prohibit social media platforms from using algorithms to recommend content to anyone under age 18. The bill was approved Tuesday by the House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee in a 15-1 vote. The potential state law goes next to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee, which has put it on the docket for a hearing on March 22.
The algorithm ban applies to platforms with at least 1 million account holders and says those companies would be "prohibited from using a social media algorithm to target user-created content at an account holder under the age of 18." There are exemptions for content created by federal, state, or local governments and by public or private schools.
"This bill prohibits a social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok, and others, from using algorithms to target children with specific types of content," the bill summary says. "The bill would require anyone operating a social media platform with more than one million users to require that algorithm functions be turned off for accounts owned by anyone under the age of 18." Social media companies would be "liable for damages and a civil penalty of $1,000 for each violation."
Tech-industry lobbyists say the bill would violate the First Amendment, prevent companies from recommending useful content, and require them to collect more data on the ages and locations of users.
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]]>As China quietly joins sanctions against Russia, Xi might be too rational to risk arming Putin:
The protracted war in Ukraine has plainly caught China off guard and led to some confusion and mixed reports about the extent to which President Xi Jinping's regime supports Moscow's offensive. China continues to withhold explicit criticism of the Russian invasion and may still be working to formulate a coherent response. But beyond the rhetoric out of Beijing, the evidence suggests China is not acting to undermine the economic and financial sanctions on Russia and indeed has moved to support the drive to isolate Russia economically.
We believe this is the result of a cost-benefit calculation by Xi, who appears to be far more rational than Russia's President, Vladimir Putin.
Consider the following. From the outset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two major Chinese state-controlled banks have reportedly refused to provide US dollar-denominated letters of credit to finance imports from Russia. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in which China is the largest shareholder, announced a suspension of any new lending to Russia. The New Development Bank (the so-called BRICS Bank), which is headquartered in Shanghai, made a similar announcement.
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]]>The Battle for the World's Most Powerful Cyberweapon [Ed's Comment: If paywalled try https://archive.fo/cbnUR]
In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. As they set up the equipment, the engineers made a series of calls to their bosses in Herzliya, a Tel Aviv suburb, at the headquarters for NSO Group, the world's most notorious maker of spyware. Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.
The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO's premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.
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]]>Growing extremism can and has turned almost anything into a political struggle in which people pay diminishing attention to the topics and more to the 'tribal' group that they may be associated with. We've seen the effects on the functioning on the US congress, as well as in how laws on various topics have been playing out lately.
But the idea that without a center, things fall apart, may be more real than we thought, as this article at ScienceBlog about a Cornell study describes: https://scienceblog.com/527200/tipping-point-makes-partisan-polarization-irreversible/
It seems that up to a point, it is possible to reverse the polarization. Beyond that tipping point, it cannot. From what I've seen, the US is probably in the vicinity of that tipping point. The pattern described here sounds an awful lot like the period-doubling path to chaos, a mathematical construct in which a function that has a single stable state in one range of numbers starts developing two stable states, and then four, until stability is lost and the set devolves into chaos. If this reflection has any validity in the political or social realms, then we should also have seen the same pattern play out within discussions that turn to chaos.
Is there predictive power in this observation by the researchers at Cornell? If so, can anything be done to head it off, or are we all doomed to watch it play out?
Journal Reference:
Michael W. Macy, Manqing Ma, Daniel R. Tabin, et al. Polarization and tipping points [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102144118)
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]]>(Deliberately keeping summary politically neutral. There will be plenty of blame to go around if this goes anywhere.)
Today, House Energy and Commerce Committee [...] issued the following statement on a comprehensive legislative draft that establishes a national privacy standard to protect Americans and sets clear rules for consumer privacy and data security in the U.S.
"We now share more of our personal information online than ever before. Everything from information about where we bank, what we buy at the grocery store, to where we drive, and how well we sleep. In order to ensure that our information is protected, we need one national privacy law that supports small businesses and innovation, promotes transparency, and incentivizes solutions for data security. [...]
I assume they mean "supports individuals" instead of "supports small businesses", and that by "small business", they mean any business smaller than the federal government.
Commerce Committee [...] privacy framework is guided by Leader Rodgers' four principles—which she outlines here [...]
Principle #1: The internet does not stop at state lines, so why should one state set the standard for the rest of the country? Creating arbitrary barriers to the internet may result in different options, opportunities, and experiences online based on where you live.
Principle #2: A lack of transparency has led to where we are today and any federal bill must ensure people understand how their information is collected, used, and shared. We must also ensure that companies who misuse personal information must be held sufficiently accountable.
Principle #3: Any federal bill must ensure companies are implementing reasonable measures to protect people's personal information.
Principle #4: We must also protect small businesses and innovation. We know that in Europe, investments in startups are down more than 40% since their data protection and privacy law—the General Data Protection Regulation—went into effect. We must guard against a similar situation here. We want small businesses hiring coders and engineers, not lawyers.
Maybe it's just me, but looking at Principle #1, it occurs to me that the internet does not stop at national borders any more than at state lines.
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]]>Biden becomes first president to issue proclamation marking Indigenous Peoples' Day:
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples' Day on Friday, becoming the first US president to do so, the White House said.
"The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society," Biden wrote in the proclamation Friday. "Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation."
Biden also marked a change of course from previous administrations in his proclamation marking Columbus Day, which honors the explorer Christopher Columbus. In that proclamation, the President acknowledged the death and destruction wrought on native communities after Columbus journeyed to North America in the late 1500s, ushering in an age of European exploration of the Western Hemisphere.
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]]>Biden signs bill to help victims of 'Havana syndrome'
President Biden on Friday signed into law a bill that provides financial support to U.S. government officials who have fallen victim to "Havana syndrome," mysterious health symptoms that have affected U.S. personnel in various parts of the world.
"We are bringing to bear the full resources of the U.S. Government to make available first-class medical care to those affected and to get to the bottom of these incidents, including to determine the cause and who is responsible," Biden said in a written statement Friday. "Protecting Americans and all those who serve our country is our first duty, and we will do everything we can to care for our personnel and their families."
Havana Syndrome: 'Attacks have stepped-up in their brazenness,' says national security expert
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]]>An Israeli defense contractor on Monday unveiled a remote-controlled armed robot it says can patrol battle zones, track infiltrators and open fire. The unmanned vehicle is the latest addition to the world of drone technology, which is rapidly reshaping the modern battlefield.
Proponents say such semi-autonomous machines allow armies to protect their soldiers, while critics fear this marks another dangerous step toward robots making life-or-death decisions.
The four-wheel-drive robot presented Monday in Lod was developed by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries’ “REX MKII.”
It is operated by an electronic tablet and can be equipped with two machine guns, cameras and sensors, said Rani Avni, deputy head of the company’s autonomous systems division. The robot can gather intelligence for ground troops, carry injured soldiers and supplies in and out of battle, and strike nearby targets.
It is the most advanced of more than half a dozen unmanned vehicles developed by Aerospace Industries’ subsidiary, ELTA Systems, over the past 15 years.
Several other sites carrying very similar stories:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/13/israeli-firm-introduces-armed-combat-drone-to-patrol-borders
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-09-israeli-firm-unveils-armed-robot.html
https://slickgunsnews.com/robogrunt-israel-to-patrol-its-borders-with-armed-robots/
https://newsnationusa.com/news/usanews/washington/israeli-firm-unveils-armed-robot-to-patrol-volatile-borders/
Previously: Israel Assassinated Iranian Nuclear Scientist Using a Remote-Controlled Machine Gun
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]]>Explainer: Australia's nuclear-powered submarine deal is fueling anger in the country. Here's why
The US and UK will be sharing technology and expertise with Australia to help it build nuclear-powered submarines as part of a newly-announced defense pact between the three countries. The move has sparked fury in France, which has lost a long-standing agreement to supply Australia with diesel-powered subs.
But it's not only the French who are furious. Anti-nuclear groups in Australia, and many citizens, are expressing anger over the deal, worried it may be a Trojan Horse for a nuclear power industry, which the nation has resisted for decades.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke personally to her Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, to tell him the vessels would not be welcome in the waters of her country, which has been a no-nuclear zone since 1984.
French ambassador: Australia made a 'huge mistake' canceling submarine contract
The French ambassador to Australia issued a sharp rebuke of the country's decision to cancel a submarine contract with France, calling it a "huge mistake," according to a report from The Associated Press.
Ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault said that the original agreement was based on sincerity and trust. However, the diplomat said, "This has been a huge mistake, a very, very bad handling of the partnership," according to the news wire. "I would like to be able to run into a time machine and be in a situation where we don't end up in such an incredible, clumsy, inadequate, un-Australian situation," Thebault said.
[...] The deal is a blow to France, which was set to help provide 12 diesel-electric submarines under a deal worth roughly $66 billion, the AP noted.
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]]>WSJ News Exclusive | WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Wouldn't Go to Supermax if Extradited, U.S. Says:
LONDON—The U.S. government has given assurances to the U.K. that Julian Assange wouldn't be held under the strictest maximum-security conditions if extradited to the U.S., a concession aimed at resolving Washington's yearslong battle to put the WikiLeaks founder on trial on espionage charges.
The U.S. has also assured British authorities that Mr. Assange, if convicted, would be permitted to serve any jail time in his native Australia, according to excerpts of a court ruling provided by the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service, the public prosecutor's office for England and Wales.
A U.K. court on Wednesday formally allowed a U.S. government appeal against a January ruling blocking Mr. Assange's extradition. No date for a hearing has yet been set.
A British judge in January refused to grant a U.S. request to extradite Mr. Assange on the grounds that he would likely commit suicide if incarcerated in a federal maximum-security, or "Supermax," prison and subjected to added security measures, such as solitary confinement, which are common pretrial arrangements in national-security cases.
The U.S. has given the U.K. a package of assurances that Mr. Assange won't be held at ADX, a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Colorado, or subjected to extra security measures, according to the excerpts of the ruling, potentially removing a key impediment to his potential extradition.
[...] Experts said the Justice Department's offer to allow Mr. Assange to serve out any sentence in Australia was unusual, given that inmates usually only apply for such a move once they have been convicted, under the international prisoner transfer program.
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]]>Chinese-owned firm acquires UK's largest semiconductor manufacturer:
The UK's largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips.
Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China's Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK's largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles.
Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling and the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, told CNBC on Monday that he would be very surprised if the deal was not being reviewed under the National Security and Investment Act, new legislation brought in to protect key national assets from foreign takeover.
"The semiconductor industry sector falls under the scope of the legislation, the very purpose of which is to protect the nation's technology companies from foreign takeovers when there is a material risk to economic and national security," he said.
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]]>The vote was 69-28 in a Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, signaling the growing bipartisan interest in reining in large tech companies' power, just days after House lawmakers from both parties unveiled a series of bills that could force Silicon Valley companies to change their business practices and in the most severe cases, break the companies up.
Khan, who is aligned with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, is well-known for her 2017 paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," which argued that decades-old antitrust laws aren't equipped to deal with the e-commerce giant and the unique ways it exerts its dominance. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Khan previously worked as a counsel for the House Judiciary's antitrust panel, where she helped lead an investigation into the tech giants. That probe's findings of monopoly-style tactics and anti-competitive behavior at Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon gave rise to the recent bills introduced by House lawmakers.
Khan, 32, will be one of the youngest commissioners in the FTC's history after a meteoric rise since writing the Amazon paper as a law school student. She is an associate professor at Columbia Law School, and previously worked as a legal adviser to FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra (D).
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]]>Ohio lawmakers want to abolish vaccine requirements:
[...] Lawmakers are working on legislation to call off the lottery immediately. They're also trying to head off any plans for "vaccine passports." And last month, they introduced a sweeping antivaccination bill that would essentially demolish public health and vaccination requirements in the state—and not just requirements for COVID-19 vaccines, requirements for any vaccine.
[...] State Rep. Beth Liston (D-Dublin) blasted the bill, telling The Columbus Dispatch, "Not only would it prevent schools, businesses and communities from putting safety measures in pace related to COVID, it will impact the health of our children... This bill applies to all vaccines—polio, measles, meningitis, etc. If it becomes law we will see worsening measles outbreaks, meningitis in the dorms, and children once again suffering from polio."
[...] "At its core, this proposal would destroy our current public health framework that prevents outbreaks of potentially lethal diseases, threatens the stability of our economy as it recovers from a devastating pandemic and jeopardizes the way we live, learn, work and celebrate life," the letter said.
[...] "HB 248 would put all Ohioans at risk while increasing the cost of health care for families, individuals and businesses," spokesperson Dan Williamson said. "This proposal applies to all immunizations, including childhood vaccines. If passed, this legislation could reverse decades of immunity from life-threatening, but vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis."
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]]>Biden asks intel community to 'redouble' efforts probing COVID-19 origins
President Biden on Wednesday announced a ramped-up effort to determine the origins of COVID-19, reflecting a new acceptance in U.S. political and public health circles that the virus might have emerged naturally or from a Chinese lab in the city of Wuhan.
Biden asked the U.S. intelligence community to "redouble their efforts" to come to a definitive conclusion on the disease's origins, calling on them to report back to him within 90 days.
"As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China," Biden said in a statement. "I have also asked that this effort include work by our National Labs and other agencies of our government to augment the Intelligence Community's efforts. And I have asked the Intelligence Community to keep Congress fully apprised of its work."
"The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence," Biden added.
Top intelligence officials including Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines acknowledged at a hearing in April that a laboratory accident was a plausible scenario that the intelligence community was investigating.
Also at The Guardian, CNBC, and Politico.
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]]>Tossing vaccine priority list, Biden tells states to open eligibility by May 1:
On the first anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic, US President Joe Biden announced that he will direct states to open vaccine eligibility to all American adults no later than May 1, a dramatic acceleration of the national immunization plan that has been sluggish and, at times, chaotic.
"That's much earlier than expected," Biden said in a televised, prime-time address. It doesn't mean every American over age 18 will have their shot by then, Biden cautioned, but you'll be able to get in line.
The announcement means that carefully crafted prioritizations for vaccines will soon no longer apply. The White House COVID-19 Response Team landed on May 1 for the deadline after concluding that national vaccination efforts would be far-enough along by the end of April to make the prioritizations obsolete anyway.
"If we all do our part, this country will be vaccinated soon," Biden said, "our economy will be on the mend, our kids will be back in school, and we'll have proven once again that this country can do anything."
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]]>FCC approves $50 monthly internet subsidies for low-income households during pandemic:
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved final rules for a new broadband subsidy program that could help struggling families pay for internet service during the pandemic.
The agency's $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit Program provides eligible low-income households with up to a $50 per month credit on their internet bills through their provider until the end of the pandemic. In tribal areas, eligible households may receive up to $75 per month. The program also provides eligible households up to $100 off of one computer or tablet.
The congressionally created program is aimed at closing the digital divide, which has become painfully apparent over the past year as millions of Americans have been forced to work and learn remotely. Some have also raised concerns that the digital divide could affect access to the vaccine as signups typically happen online.
[...] Last year, Congress passed a coronavirus relief package that contained provisions for the FCC's new program. And the FCC has established a fresh task force this year to improve the data it collects on broadband availability, which could ultimately help the agency better target its efforts to close the gap.
[...] "This is a program that will help those at risk of digital disconnection," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "It will help those sitting in cars in parking lots just to catch a Wi-Fi signal to go online for work. It will help those lingering outside the library with a laptop just to get a wireless signal for remote learning. It will help those who worry about choosing between paying a broadband bill and paying rent or buying groceries."
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