Tag: technology

Fiber Optic Drones That Can’t Be Jammed Are Leaving Webs of Wires Everywhere in Ukraine’s Battlefields

Web of death covers the Ukrainian fields.

Drones have become the most lethal weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war, from small user-quality quadcopters dropping bombs, up to sophisticated attack drones like the Iranian Shahed (called by Russians ‘Geran’) flying in swarms.

The inexpensive devices have all but retired the million-dollar tanks, and a technological EW race was on to find ways to jam the frequencies of the drones, disturbing the operator’s control and crashing them off-target.

That was going on for a while, until small, unjammable drones controlled by fiber-optic cables began dominating the battlefields.

They have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian operations that they leave massive trails of cabling everywhere, turning the battlefield into a tangled web.

Business Insider reported:

“As a counter to extensive electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with sprawling cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers are moving with greater caution.

‘You see the little webs, and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or it’s a part of a booby trap’, Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who for security reasons could only be identified by his call sign (“Predator” in Ukrainian), told Business Insider. Mines and traps have also been prominent threats in this war.”

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Amazon Data Center Linked to Cluster of Rare Cancers

For the hundreds of communities who’ve been saddled with data centers in recent years, the bulky fixtures are sources of unbearable noise, soaring energy prices, and plenty of electrical fires.

Add another grim possibility to that list: debilitating rare cancers.

Reporting on the “data center boom” in the state of Oregon, Rolling Stone tells the story of Jim Doherty, a cattle rancher and former county commissioner of Morrow, in eastern Oregon.

Doherty’s story began when he noticed a rise in bizarre medical conditions among the county’s 45,000 residents, linked to toxins in the local water. Working with the county health office, the rancher-turned-official began a survey of 70 wells throughout his jurisdiction — 68 of which, his testing found, violated the federal limit for nitrates in drinking water.

Of the first 30 homes he visited, Doherty told RS that 25 residents had recently had miscarriages, while six had lost a kidney. “One man about 60 years old had his voice box taken out because of a cancer that only smokers get, but that guy hadn’t smoked a day of his life,” he told the publication.

But the spike in cancer-causing pollution wasn’t just the fault of local farms, as Doherty expected. It had its roots in a 10,000 square foot data center by the commerce giant Amazon, which first went online in Morrow County in 2011.

Basically, the allegations go like this: industrial megafarms operating in the area are responsible for churning out millions of gallons of wastewater, laden with nitrates from fertilizers. All that waste has to go somewhere, which is one way of saying it mostly ends up in the ground.

Amazon’s hulking data center, thirsty for water to cool its blazing hot computer chips, supercharged this process, adding millions of gallons of wastewater a year to the heavy volume of farm runoff, which Morrow County was already struggling to keep up with. Soon even the deepest reaches of the local aquifer were tainted, according to RS, as huge volumes of data center and agricultural wastewater saturated the water table.

This meant that the data center itself began taking on the toxic sludge as it drew on groundwater to cool its electronics. When it did, evaporation only further concentrated the wastewater, which occasionally contained nitrate levels eight times higher than Oregon’s safe limit. The super concentrated data center water then made its way back into the waste system, where it ostensibly piled up all over again.

In response to the allegations, Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said that “our data centers draw water from the same supply as other community members; nitrates are not an additive we use in any of our processes, and the volume of water our facilities use and return represents only a very small fraction of the overall water system — not enough to have any meaningful impact on water quality.”

Morrow County residents, however, beg to differ.

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Trump Slammed Biden’s $52 Billion CHIPS Act. Then He Used It To Buy a Federal Stake in Intel.

In March, President Donald Trump blasted the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022. He called it “a horrible, horrible thing.” Passed under President Joe Biden, the CHIPS Act was essentially a $52 billion industrial policy slush fund intended primarily to bolster domestic production of computer chips.

When the law passed in 2022, the Biden administration said it was a “smart investment” that would “strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology” while bringing thousands of “good-paying manufacturing jobs back home.”

There was never much reason to believe in the previous administration’s industrial policy boosterism. Early grants largely went either to factories that were already in development and would have been built anyway or to facilities of questionable economic value that might not be completed even with the additional taxpayer funding.

So Trump was on solid ground when he told Congress, “You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever’s left over…you should use it to reduce debt, or any other reason you want to.” Yet in the months since, Trump has made use of CHIPS funding not to reduce the debt, but to pursue his own questionable industrial policy. His version is even less accountable and may well be even worse for taxpayers.

Among the recipients of CHIPS funding was computer chipmaker Intel, which was set to receive $11 billion to help fund the construction of semiconductor fabs in several states. By late summer, the company said it had already received more than $5 billion of the funds. But Intel struggled to fulfill those commitments, falling behind on factory construction in some places and laying off workers as it suffered from ongoing financial and managerial problems. By the middle of 2025, Intel looked very much like a failing business.

In theory, the CHIPS Act provided a mechanism for the federal government to retract the grant and get all or part of its money back should Intel fail to meet its obligations. It’s not clear whether the federal government would have exercised its option to take the money back, but it was an option—until Trump stepped in.

As the company flailed, Trump met with its CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. Trump first called for him to resign. Then in August, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would just take partial ownership of Intel. Essentially, the U.S. government would purchase a roughly 10 percent stake in the chipmaker, partially nationalizing the company. And funds from CHIPS would be used to do it.

Trump bragged about the deal, saying he planned to “do more of them.” The company’s stock price rose on the news, suggesting that investors liked it. But that’s probably because it was a good deal for the company, at taxpayer expense.

According to public financial filings, the federal government would disburse the remaining funds, about $6 billion, while clearing any obligations for the company to actually complete work on new domestic semiconductor fabs.

In exchange, the federal government would gain partial ownership—as well as all the financial risks stockholders usually have when they invest in companies. Those risks will now be borne by taxpayers. As Carnegie Endowment fellow Peter Harrell pointed out in a social media post, the move came with “a lot of downside risk.”

Fundamentally, Trump gave Intel a federal bailout, removing the company’s public obligations and accountability while loading more financial risk onto the public.

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An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study—Then It All Fell Apart

Aidan Toner-Rodgers, 27, sprung to the upper tiers of economics as a graduate student late last year from virtually out of nowhere.

While still taking core classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he wrote a paper on artificial intelligence’s workplace impact so rapidly influential it was cited in Congress. He appeared in the pages of The Wall Street Journal in December as the very picture of a wunderkind, in faded jeans with tousled hair, in between two of his mentors, including Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu. Toner-Rodgers’s work offered a surprising and even hopeful revelation about our high-tech future. He concluded that AI increased worker productivity and spurred innovation. Also, people didn’t like using it very much.

Within weeks, those mentors were asking an unthinkable question: Had Toner-Rodgers made it all up?

By the spring, Toner-Rodgers was no longer enrolled at MIT. The university disavowed his paper. Questions multiplied, but one seemed more elusive than the rest: How did a baby-faced novice from small-town California dupe some of academia’s brightest minds?

“There is no world where this makes any sense,” said David Autor, one of the MIT professors who had previously championed his student’s research. MIT, Autor and Acemoglu declined to comment on​ the specifics of the investigation into the research, citing privacy constraints.

Toner-Rodgers’s illusory success seems in part thanks to the dynamics he has now upset: an academic culture at MIT where high levels of trust, integrity and rigor are all—for better or worse—assumed. He focused on AI, a field where peer-reviewed research is still in its infancy and the hunger for data is insatiable.Expand article logo  Continue reading

What has stunned his former colleagues and mentors is the sheer breadth of his apparent deception. He didn’t just tweak a few variables. It appears he invented the entire study.

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The Dangers Of AI: Visualizing The Top Risks Companies Face

Companies are rushing to implement AI, but it’s not all smooth sailing.

More than half of businesses say the dangers of AI have led to at least one negative consequence.

But which issues plague businesses the most?

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross, breaks down the most common risks.

It’s a preview of the brand-new executive guide from Terzo and Visual Capitalist, AI’s Illusion of Truth: The Data Behind AI Errors.

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Suicides And Delusions: Lawsuits Point To Dark Side Of AI Chatbot

Can an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot twist someone’s mind to breaking point, push them to reject their family, or even go so far as to coach them to commit suicide? And if it did, is the company that built that chatbot liable? What would need to be proven in a court of law?

These questions are already before the courts, raised by seven lawsuits that allege ChatGPT sent three people down delusional “rabbit holes” and encouraged four others to kill themselves.

ChatGPT, the mass-adopted AI assistant currently has 700 million active users, with 58 percent of adults under 30 saying they have used it—up 43 percent from 2024, according to a Pew Research survey.

The lawsuits accuse OpenAI of rushing a new version of its chatbot to market without sufficient safety testing, leading it to encourage every whim and claim users made, validate their delusions, and drive wedges between them and their loved ones.

Lawsuits Seek Injunctions on OpenAI

The lawsuits were filed in state courts in California on Nov. 6  by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project.

They allege “wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter, and a variety of product liability, consumer protection, and negligence claims—against OpenAI, Inc. and CEO Sam Altman,” according to a statement from the Tech Justice Law Project.

The seven alleged victims range in age from 17 to 48 years. Two were students, and several had white collar jobs in positions working with technology before their lives spiraled out of control.

The plaintiffs want the court to award civil damages, and also to compel OpenAI to take specific actions.

The lawsuits demand that the company offer comprehensive safety warnings; delete the data derived from the conversations with the alleged victims; implement design changes to lessen psychological dependency; and create mandatory reporting to users’ emergency contacts when they express suicidal ideation or delusional beliefs.

The lawsuits also demand OpenAI display “clear” warnings about risks of psychological dependency.

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Trump’s New EO, “Genesis Mission”, Just Gave The Nation Over To Technocrats, Lock, Stock, and Barrel

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity.  Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth.  To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement.  In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.

Editor’s note: America is in a race with itself, but declared with upmost urgency. America’s AI Action Plan was written by Michael J. Kratsios, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and David O. Sacks, Special Advisor for AI and Crypto. The EO is undoubtedly ghost written by same two Arch-Technocrats. The phrase “accelerate scientific advancement” refers to “accelerationism”, which is part of the Dark Enlightenment. Marc Andreessen wrote in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto: “We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns. To ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever.” – End Editor’s note.

This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership.

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Putin scientists unveil ‘spy pigeons fitted with brain implants and cameras that can be controlled like drones’

A state-linked Moscow neurotechnology firm boasts its operators can steer flocks of the flying pests across the sky at will. 

Researchers have launched field tests of so-called ‘bird-biodrones’ known as PJN-1, ordinary pigeons surgically implanted with neural chips that allow technicians to direct their flight routes.

The birds can be steered remotely in real time, with operators able to upload flight commands by stimulating targeted regions of the brain.

The pigeon then ‘believes it wants to fly’ in the instructed direction, claim sources at Neiry, which has deep ties to the Kremlin’s hi-tech innovation machine.

Surgery is carried out in which electrodes are inserted into the brain with millimetre precision.

The birds wear tiny solar-powered backpacks containing onboard electronics, GPS tracking, and the receiver that transmits signals into the neural implant.

Chillingly, Neiry insists that ‘no training is required’, declaring that any animal becomes ‘remotely controllable after the operation’ – with pigeons capable of covering 310 miles a day, or more than 1,850 miles in a week.

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“It’s Utilities Versus Rent” – Data Centers Send Energy Prices Soaring

The surge in data center construction to power today’s AI and cloud computing demands has sent electricity prices skyrocketing over the last few years. And, as Bloomberg reports, it is only getting worse.

With electricity costs now as much as 267% higher compared to five years ago in some parts of the US, fingers are being pointed directly at data center activity for blame. And while some – especially generously funded lobbies – are eager to dissemble and distort, claiming that on the contrary, electricity prices are barely keeping up with inflation and that data centers have little to no impact on electrical bills, the map below shows that more than 70% of the nodes that recorded pricing increases are located within 50 miles of significant data center activity.

Take Nicole Pasture: the Baltimore resident said her utility bills are up 50% over the past year. She is also a judge who rules on rental disputes in the city’s district court and sees people struggling with their power bills.

“It’s utilities versus rent,” she said. “They want to stay in their home, but they also want to keep their lights on.”

New data center construction projects are announced weekly, sometimes every day. Some of the construction timelines have upwards of 100 MW of new data center demand being built only two years from groundbreaking. This has to be contrasted against the rate of new energy generation construction, with the recent vite among PJM Interconnection stakeholders resulting in a failure to even select a plan for how to add data centers to the grid. 

“The voting reflects the nearly impossible challenge of trying to ensure resource adequacy and control ratepayer costs, while also allowing data center development in a market that is already short on generation supply and faces a 5-to-7 year timeline to bring on new large-scale generating resources,” Jon Gordon, a director at Advanced Energy United, a clean energy trade group, said in a bulletin on the meeting.

While some utilities have been able to pass the burden of higher electricity costs onto the owners of the large loads, most of the costs of expanding grid capacity inevitably find their way to consumers.

According to Bloomberg, in northern Virginia, Dominion Energy cited data center demand, inflation and higher fuel costs when asking regulators to raise its customer bills by about $20 a month for the average residential user over the next two years. Dominion also forecasts peak demand would rise by more than 75% by 2039 with data centers. It would be just 10% without.

And it’s only getting worse: with hundreds of gigawatts of future power demand from data centers built by companies like Oracle and Microsoft, Goldman writes that “eight out of the 13 US regional power markets are already at or below critical spare capacity levels.”

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EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

European governments have taken another step toward reviving the EU’s controversial Chat Control agenda, approving a new negotiating mandate for the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation in a closed session of the Council of the European Union on November 26.

The measure, presented as a tool for child protection, is once again drawing heavy criticism for its surveillance implications and the way it reshapes private digital communication in Europe.

Unlike earlier drafts, this version drops the explicit obligation for companies to scan all private messages but quietly introduces what opponents describe as an indirect system of pressure.

It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.

Former MEP Patrick Breyer, a long-standing defender of digital freedom and one of the most vocal opponents of the plan, said the deal “paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance.”

According to him, the Council’s text replaces legal compulsion with financial and regulatory incentives that push major US technology firms toward indiscriminate scanning.

He warned that the framework also brings “anonymity-breaking age checks” that will turn ordinary online use into an exercise in identity verification.

The new proposal, brokered largely through Danish mediation, comes months after the original “Chat Control 1.0” regulation appeared to have been shelved following widespread backlash.

It reinstates many of the same principles, requiring providers to assess their potential “risk” for child abuse content and to apply “mitigation measures” approved by authorities. In practice, that could mean pressure to install scanning tools that probe both encrypted and unencrypted communications.

Czech MEP Markéta Gregorová called the Council’s position “a disappointment…Chat Control…opens the way to blanket scanning of our messages.”

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