Late last year, the Pentagon announced the launch of its first-ever audit. Since then, it has emerged that the Defense Department didn't properly account for more than $800 million in construction projects, and that the full audit, which Politico reports "may never even be possible" is projected to cost $367 million in itself. "I anticipate … Continue reading CIA ‘black budget’ complicates Pentagon audit
Tag: DoD
It is no big secret that the U.S. military and its friends in private business want to wire their latest technology directly into the human brain. In late 2016, I wrote about the Defense Department using "electrical brain stimulators" to give its drone operators "minor brain zaps" to keep them awake, for instance. More recently, … Continue reading DARPA wants soldiers’ minds controlling machines, and vice versa
YouTube, the widely-used video uploading site owned by Google, which is in turn owned by Alphabet, whose former chairman and current board member Eric Schmidt is a key adviser to the Pentagon, has announced that -- in a Cass Sunsteinesque effort to combat the perceived threat posed by "conspiracy theories" -- it will begin showing … Continue reading YouTube to add ‘conspiracy theory’ disclaimers from Wikipedia
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted to approve a massive military budget of nearly $700 billion late last year and President Donald Trump has signed the legislation, but it remains unclear whether Congress will pass a bill appropriating the necessary funds as a potential government shutdown looms. Though the latest partisan disagreements over … Continue reading Pentagon balances secrecy, demands for more funding
In the past few years, various aspects of the United States' security clearance system for allowing individuals to access classified information have come under scrutiny, following some major failures and embarrassments. In 2014, a massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management led to the exposure of sensitive information on tens of millions of … Continue reading DoD grants temporary clearances to rapists, murderers to avoid ‘horrific impact’ on weapons development
An artificial intelligence arms race seems to be officially underway following Russian President Vladimir Putin's comment last week that whoever comes to dominate the field "will be the ruler of the world." This is one area, at least, where top U.S. policymakers can apparently agree with Putin. The military and the Central Intelligence Agency are … Continue reading CIA, DoD eager to tap AI capabilities they don’t understand
Late last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work announced the launch of an "Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team" under a new program called Project Maven. "As numerous studies have made clear, the Department of Defense (DoD) must integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning more effectively across operations to maintain advantages over increasingly capable adversaries and … Continue reading New Pentagon ‘Algorithmic Warfare’ team to ‘open Pandora’s box’ of A.I.
As the U.S. carries on its "counter-terror" crusade against a wide range of non-state actors within its own borders and outside of them into an era of ever-increasing information flows, the Pentagon is having trouble keeping up with its own intelligence collection capabilities. "The Department of Defense is grappling with an overwhelming preponderance of data, … Continue reading More A.I. suggested as solution to Pentagon intel overload problem
At the end of this month, regulations will come into effect requiring defense contractors to implement "insider threat" detection and prevention programs, with the aim of stopping security breaches. Yet the approach the Pentagon is taking seems to favor its larger contractors, while potentially stifling innovation from smaller competitors and contributing to the problem it … Continue reading DoD ‘insider threat’ rules may favor biggest contractors, make problem worse
In a development that is probably enthusiastically embraced by a subsection of them, video-gamers-turned-drone-operators for the US military are apparently taking another step in the direction of melding with machines: getting their brains jolted with electricity to stay awake as an alternative to taking stimulant drugs. Scientists working for the Defense Department have successfully "used … Continue reading Brain zaps for drone operators the latest in Pentagon ‘super soldier’ tech
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