war
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YouTube warned by EU official to keep a close eye on Israel-Hamas war content
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton is asking Alphabet to be "very vigilant" when it comes to Israel-Hamas-related content posted on YouTube.
Palantir shows off an AI that can go to war
Palantir, the surveillance company founded by billionaire mogul Peter Thiel, wants to get in on America's Forever War action.
Hitting the Books: America might not exist if not for a pre-Revolution smallpox outbreak
As historian Andrew Wehrman explains in The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution that our downright violent resistance to, and demand for freedom from, this disease also helped galvanize our mobilization of independence from England.
Boston Dynamics and other industry heavyweights pledge not to build war robots
Boston Dynamics, along with five other industry leaders announced on Thursday that they will not pursue, or allow, the weaponization of their robots, according to a non-binding, open letter they all signed.
Microsoft will 'scale down' its operations in Russia
Microsoft is shrinking its business in Russia following that country's invasion of Ukraine.
Hitting the Books: When the military-industrial complex came to Silicon Valley
In his latest book, War Virtually, professor of Anthropology at San José State University, Roberto J González examines the military's increasing reliance on remote weaponry and robotic systems are changing the way wars are waged.
Hitting the Books: How American militarism and new technology may make war more likely
In Future Peace, Dr. Robert H. Latiff, Maj Gen USAF (Ret), explores how the American military's increasing reliance on weaponized drones, AI and Machine Learning systems, automation and similar cutting-edge technologies, could create the perfect conditions for getting a lot of people killed.
Microsoft blocked Russian cyberattacks targeting Ukraine
Microsoft said it has disrupted cyberattacks from a Russia-linked group called Strontium (aka APT28 and Fancy Bear) targeting Ukraine and the West.
Airbnb is suspending its operations in Russia and Belarus
Airbnb is halting operations in Russia and Belarus, CEO Brian Chesky announced in a tweet.
Recommended Reading: The redesigned WWE Network
WWE Network 2.0: How WWE rebuilt its streaming service after a split with Disney Chris Welch, The Verge After a flashy reveal at CES a few years ago, the WWE Network is by all accounts a success, amassing well over a million subscribers by early 2019. Disney threw a wrench in the plans when it bought BAMTech, the company that had successfully constructed streaming services for the likes of Major League Baseball and HBO Now. It was also what WWE relied on for its 24/7 buffet of choke slams and live events. WWE saw the writing on the wall, and rebuilt its streaming library from the ground up.
Hitting the Books: 'Dirty bomb' fears spawned America's nuclear spy force
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's biggest fight is in the studio
When Infinity Ward head Patrick Kelly introduced the single-player portion of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to journalists in May, he sat at the front of a dim, intimate theater in the heart of his studio, and spoke as if he were divulging a delicious secret. This Call of Duty was going to be different than the 15 iterations that had come before, he said. It was going to be real. He showed off a preview of the solo campaign that began under a pile of rubble, right after a bombing in the fictional country of Ursekstan. The main character, a young girl named Farah, heaved at the debris and screamed as she found her mother crushed to death beside her. By the end of the demo, Farah had witnessed her father's violent murder, stabbed and killed a cartoonishly homicidal Russian soldier, run through poison gas, hidden from mass execution squads, and fired her first gun. "The vision for the game, the first thing we're trying to do is, we're trying to reflect the world we all live in," Kelly said at the beginning of the presentation. "We talk about like, you could see the story unfolding on CNN or a Frontline talking about it. Because we want this game to be as relevant as possible in the world that we live in, and a lot of the events, and a lot of the things that shaped the game, are based on the world that we live in."
The UK's high-energy lasers could zap drones and missiles out of the sky
The UK wants to take down enemy drones and missiles with high-energy light beams. The Ministry of Defense (MOD) announced that it's developing laser and radio frequency weapons. Referred to collectively as Direct Energy Weapons (DEW), they're powered by electricity, operate without ammunition and are fueled by a vehicle's engine or a generator.
The next Call of Duty campaign is an emotional hellscape
Jaws, not Saw. That's one of the guiding mantras for the developers building Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this year's installment of the legendary first-person-shooter franchise. Modern Warfare comes out on October 25th and it's at once an homage to the series' history and a completely new vision for Call of Duty, with the single-player campaign thrusting classic characters like Captain John Price into overwrought situations that are ripped from current, real-world headlines.
Israel is the first to respond to a cyberattack with immediate force
It's no longer novel for militaries to respond to cyberattacks with physical force (the US used a drone strike in 2015), but now they're being treated with the same urgency as real-world bullets and missiles. Israel Defense Forces have launched an airstrike on a Gaza Strip building believed to house Hamas digital warfare operatives after the militant group reportedly failed in an attempted "cyber offensive." Details of the virtual attack weren't available, but the IDF said it was "ahead of them all the time."
The 'Wallace and Gromit' studio is creating an emotional WWI game
Games set in real-world conflicts don't necessarily glorify war, but it's rare that they fully address the horrors of war. For every poignant story like Valiant Hearts, there's many more titles that might only offer token commentary. Wallace & Gromit's Aardman Animation Studios, Bandai Namco and DigixArt want to change that. They've unveiled 11-11: Memories Retold, a narrative adventure about two World War I soldiers who meet under the "most unlikely of circumstances."
Experience the horror of a Syrian air raid in 'Hero'
I've never seen a warzone, but I got a small virtual taste of what it might be like at the Tribeca Film Festival. Hero is a multisensory interactive experience that drops you into a city in Syria right before an air raid. You're a spectator (and subsequent participant) to the minutes before and after a bomb falls and destroys everything around you. I can't tell you too much about what happens without potentially ruining it for you, but suffice to say I became part of the community and through a simple act, briefly took on the titular role. It sounds self-aggrandizing, but that's the whole point of the experience -- to let the viewer know they have the ability to save lives and make a difference.
This year we took small, important steps toward the Singularity
We won't have to wait until 2019 for our Blade Runner future, mostly because artificially intelligent robots already walk, roll and occasionally backflip among us. They're on our streets and in our stores. Some have wagged their way into our hearts while others have taken a more literal route. Both in civilian life and the military battlespace, AI is adopting physical form to multiply the capabilities of the humans it serves. As robots gain ubiquity, friction between these bolt buckets and we meat sacks is sure to cause issues. So how do we ensure that the increasingly intelligent machines we design share our ethical values while minimizing human-robot conflict? Sit down, Mr. Asimov.
North Korea claims Trump declared war with a tweet
Can you start a war with a tweet? Probably not, but that isn't stopping North Korea from claiming otherwise. Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho tells the media that President Trump "declared war" on his country with a Twitter post suggesting North Korea wouldn't "be around much longer" if Ri's thoughts echoed those of regime leader Kim Jong Un. That language gives North Korea "every right" to defend itself, Ri argues, including the right to shoot down bombers flying outside of its airspace. In theory, that means attacking if the US repeats the B-1B flight it performed as a show of force on September 23rd.
Elon Musk urges the UN to limit AI weapons
Elon Musk has signed his name alongside more than 100 others to ask the UN to regulate the use of autonomous weapons systems. The group of concerned engineers, many of whom are respected in the field of AI, is asking the global body to "protect civilians" from "misuse" of AI-driven weapons. They believe that smart, self-guided kill bots would become the tool of choice for despots and tyrants.
