Tag: technology

Technocracy: The Operating System For The New International Rules-Based Order

In this article, we will explore the true nature of the international rules-based order (IRBO) and examine the forces that shape it. We will consider if the narratives we are commonly fed stack up. 

It is widely accepted that the IRBO is undergoing disruptive change. That transformation is often reported as an eastward shift in the balance of power between nation states. 

It is said that this new, emerging international order will be founded upon a global multipolar system of sovereign states and international law. This new system allegedly stands in opposition to the fading, western “rules-based” model. 

This time, rather than relying upon western imperialism, the new international law-based system will emphasise multipolar cooperation, trade and respect for national sovereignty. It will instead be led by a Eurasian economic and technological power-block.

The apparent, ongoing antagonism of geopolitics looks likely to maintain the East-West divide we are familiar with. However, what is now being framed as the multipolar order is, in reality, the multistakeholder order. 

As we shall discover, nation states are not the driving force behind the current restructuring of global governance. The geopolitical narratives we are given are frequently superficial. 

Those leading the transformation have no allegiance to any nation state, only to their own globalist network and collective aspirations. In their hands, international law is no more of an impediment to their ambitions than a vague commitment to “rules.”

National governments are partners within this network formed of both state and non-state actors. Despite professed animosities, they have collaborated for decades to fashion the global governance complex that is now emerging.  

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HAARP’s aurora switch was turned on last week to create “artificial airglows”

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, has been a spectacular sight in the night sky recently. On 10 May 2024, the aurora was visible in many parts of the world, including the United States, Europe, and Asia.

According to corporate media, a powerful geomagnetic storm caused by a solar flare triggered the spectacular display of the northern lights. The storm was strong enough to cause disruptions to power grids and communication systems, but it also created a breathtaking sight for those who were able to see it.

In the United States, the aurora was visible in many parts of the country, including the northern states and even as far south as Alabama and California. In Europe, the aurora was seen in countries such as the UK, Germany and Norway.

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New Spectre-Style ‘Pathfinder’ Attack Targets Intel CPU, Leak Encryption Keys and Data

Researchers have discovered two novel attack methods targeting high-performance Intel CPUs that could be exploited to stage a key recovery attack against the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.

The techniques have been collectively dubbed Pathfinder by a group of academics from the University of California San Diego, Purdue University, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Google.

“Pathfinder allows attackers to read and manipulate key components of the branch predictor, enabling two main types of attacks: reconstructing program control flow history and launching high-resolution Spectre attacks,” Hosein Yavarzadeh, the lead author of the paper, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News.

“This includes extracting secret images from libraries like libjpeg and recovering encryption keys from AES through intermediate value extraction.”

Spectre is the name given to a class of side-channel attacks that exploit branch prediction and speculative execution on modern CPUs to read privileged data in the memory in a manner that sidesteps isolation protections between applications.

The latest attack approach targets a feature in the branch predictor called the Path History Register (PHR) – which keeps a record of the last taken branches — to induce branch mispredictions and cause a victim program to execute unintended code paths, thereby inadvertently exposing its confidential data.

Specifically, it introduces new primitives that make it possible to manipulate PHR as well as the prediction history tables (PHTs) within the conditional branch predictor (CBR) to leak historical execution data and ultimately trigger a Spectre-style exploit.

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Paris Olympics anti-terror system mistakes AC units for drones

An advanced French anti-drone system set to be deployed at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris has numerous flaws and is often unable to distinguish explosive-laden drones from air conditioners, The Times reported Monday, citing sources.

The French capital will host the Olympic Games between July 26 and August 11. To protect against terrorist threats, the local authorities intend to use the so-called Parade system, the deployment of which is estimated to cost €350 million ($376 million) over 11 years. The system, which consists of a radar, radio frequency direction finder, and jamming system is touted as being capable of diverting UAVs or forcing them to land.

However, according to the Times, despite the Games being just weeks away, during recent tests, the Parade system was reportedly found to be capable of detecting only one in three drones, and only within a range of 800 meters. The framework also “confused the propellers of air conditioning units with drones,” the paper’s source claimed.

Earlier media reports had suggested that the rollout of the Parade system was not going according to plan. While the delivery of six systems was initially scheduled for 2023, it was delayed for several months. A Senate committee subsequently launched a probe into the matter, but announced in March that it would not be releasing its findings.

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New York governor regrets saying Black kids in the Bronx don’t know what a computer is

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says she regrets making an offhand remark that suggested Black children in the Bronx do not know what the word ”computer” means.

Hochul, a Democrat, made the extemporaneous comment Monday while being interviewed at a large business conference in California to discuss expanding economic opportunities in artificial intelligence for low-income communities.

”Right now, we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word computer is. They don’t know, they don’t know these things,” Hochul said while on stage at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

The remark was not addressed during the interview and the governor went on to explain that her goal is to provide avenues for communities of color to access emerging artificial intelligence technologies as a means to address social inequality.

Still, the gaff drew immediate criticism from some political leaders in New York, including state Assemblywoman Amanda Septimo, a Bronx Democrat, who said the remark was ”harmful, deeply misinformed, and genuinely appalling.”

In a statement later Monday, Hochul said ”I misspoke and I regret it.”

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Microsoft’s latest Windows update breaks VPNs, and there’s no fix

Microsoft said this week that the most recent Windows security update for Windows 10 and Windows 11 may break VPN connections.

According to Microsoft (via Bleeping Computer), “Windows devices might face VPN connection failures after installing the April 2024 security update, or KB5036893.”

Microsoft has no fix at the current time, the company said. “We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release,” the company said.

Unfortunately, the list of affected clients is rather lengthy: Windows 11 (23H2, 22H2, and 21H2) as well as Windows 10 (22H2 and 21H2). If you’re a consumer and run into this issue, Microsoft advises that you first launch the Windows “Get Help” app to inform Microsoft of the problem and possibly work through a solution.

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Ukraine Unveils New AI-Generated Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman

On Wednesday, Ukraine unveiled its new AI-generated Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, who will now make official statements on behalf of Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

The new AI-generated spokeswoman’s name is Victoria Shi, and the AI-bot is modeled after Ukrainian singer Rosalie Nombre.

Ukraine released a teaser of their new AI spokeswoman on their Ministry of Foreign Affairs YouTube page.

In the AI-generated spokeswoman’s first announcement, the digital representative stated, “My name symbolizes our main goal – the victory of Ukraine, and my last name – the artificial intelligence that created me. My work will consist of reporting operational and verified information of the consular department of the MFA of Ukraine to the public.”

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Genocide profiteer IBM wins big on EU funding

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to select targets in Gaza during the current genocide has garnered many headlines.

Few who have paid close attention to how Israel tests new technology on Palestinians can be surprised. Israel had previously signaled that its May 2021 attack on Gaza gave it an opportunity to experiment with AI.

The proper response to those signals would have been to halt any funding of AI research involving Israeli firms and institutions. The European Union has taken the opposite approach.

In September 2023, the EU authorized a project aimed at realizing a future in which collaboration between humans and AI “takes center stage.”

Participants in the project include IBM Israel – a subsidiary of the US-based giant.

IBM has a long and ignoble history of providing technology to abusers of human rights. Among its past clients were the German government during the Nazi era and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

More recently, IBM has been awarded a series of contracts to run technology support centers for the Israeli military. Robotics are a core feature of the latest such center.

It is a near certainty that IBM products can be found in Israel’s toolbox during the current genocide.

No questions about IBM’s ties to the Israeli military seem to have been asked by EU officials before they rubber-stamped the aforementioned project in September.

I have seen a copy of an “ethics check” carried out on the project – named HumAIne – at the EU’s request.

The exercise was one of box-ticking.

It came to the conclusion that HumAIne had an “exclusive focus on civil applications.” The only significant recommendation was that “an independent ethics adviser must be appointed with the relevant accumulated expertise” so that the project could be monitored.

The recommendation did not address IBM’s connections to Israel’s military. It merely referred to “ethical concerns” surrounding the project, particularly “the involvement of humans in the evaluation of AI systems.”

While HumAIne was signed off by the Brussels bureaucracy before the genocidal war on Gaza was declared in October, the EU has okayed a huge number of new research grants to Israel since then.

IBM Israel is among the recipients of those new grants. It is taking part in a project on data-sharing innovations, which the EU authorized in mid-November.

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Report Sounds Alarm Over Growing Role of Big Tech in US Military-Industrial Complex

The center of the U.S. military-industrial complex has been shifting over the past decade from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to Northern California – a shift that is accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence-based systems, according to a report published Wednesday.

The report – entitled How Big Tech and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex – was authored by Roberto J. González, a professor of cultural anthropology at San José State University, for the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs.

The new paper comes amid the contentious rise of AI-powered lethal autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots; increasing reliance upon AI on battlefields from Gaza to Ukraine; and growing backlash from tech workers opposed to their companies’ products and services being used to commit or enable war crimes.

“Although much of the Pentagon’s $886 billion budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital (VC), and private equity firms,” González wrote.

“As Defense Department officials have sought to adopt AI-enabled systems and secure cloud computing services, they have awarded large multibillion-dollar contracts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle,” he added. “At the same time, the Pentagon has increased funding for smaller defense tech startups seeking to ‘disrupt’ existing markets and ‘move fast and break things.’”

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AI Chatbots Refuse To Produce ‘Controversial’ Output – Why That’s A Free Speech Problem

Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.

The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?

We are policy researchers who study free speech, as well as executive director and a research fellow at The Future of Free Speech, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt University. In a recent report, we found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.

Generative AI is a type of AI that creates content, like text or images, based on the data it has been trained with. In particular, we found that the use policies of major chatbots do not meet United Nations standards. In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial. Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

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