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.  

No matter who is said to lead it, the IRBO is set to continue in a new form. As the post WWII system recedes, the framework being imposed to take its place is completely alien to the people who live in the former western, liberal democracies.

Thus, we too must be transformed if we are to accept the realignment. We are being conditioned to believe in the promise of the new IRBO and the global technocracy it is built upon.

Keep reading

House Weaponization Committee Report Warns of AI-Enabled Censorship Echoing 2020 Social Media Suppression

A Republican report from the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday raised alarms over possible AI-enabled censorship on a massive scale, reminiscent of Twitter and Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop exposé in 2020.

The accusations focus on a series of AI tools currently under development. Financial backing for this venture has reportedly come from the Biden administration, leading to concerns about the permeation of political influence in freedom of speech.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

According to the report, the administration has invested millions of funds in AI research. The objective of this activity, as stated, is the creation of handy tools capable of targeting and suppressing “misinformation.” Once operational, these utilities could ostensibly be handed over to major social media platforms.

Keep reading

The Greatest Trick Big Brother Ever Pulled

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” is a quote generally attributed to Charles Baudelaire – or possibly Keyser Söze depending on who you ask on the internet. Something similar can be said about Big Brother.

When you think about what our emerging surveillance state will look like, you think 1984. You imagine East Germany powered by Google and Amazon. You recall your favorite dystopian sci-fi film – or maybe horror stories of China’s social credit system. Thoughts of a frustrated middle-aged police chief from a mid-sized Midwestern town attempting to procure security cameras with innovative new features probably don’t come to mind. You definitely don’t think of a guy in a lawn chair jotting down the license plate numbers of passing vehicles in a notebook. And that’s partly how the surveillance state is going to emerge as it creeps its way into one small town at a time.

Whether a surveillance state is the end goal is hard to say. The police chief of Pawnee, Indiana probably isn’t plotting the development of his own mini-Oceania. But, 18,000-plus mini-Oceanias operating across multiple platforms with varying degrees of integration, both locally and nationally, is undoubtedly the direction in which we are heading as salespeople peddle shiny new surveillance gadgets to cities big and small, making often unverified but intuitively appealing claims of how their devices will decrease crime or prove to be useful investigative tools.

Facial recognition tends to be the surveillance gadget that receives the most attention these days. You’ve seen it in movies and maybe feel some unease over visions of government agents sitting in a penumbrous room illuminated only by the faint glow of countless monitors with little boxes tracking the faces of every person walking down a busy city street. Likely, by now, you’ve also probably heard of facial recognition being used for relatively petty purposes or leading to incidents in which innocent people were harassed or arrested because a program made a mistake. Maybe you’ve even been following the efforts to ban the technology.

Yet, other surveillance gadgets that aren’t quite as sexy or as prevalent in pop culture manage to remain under the radar of even the most privacy-conscious as they are promoted through law enforcement peer referral programs organized by surveillance gadget companies seeking to have their devices in every town in America.

Keep reading

Bodycam Maker Axon Is on a Mission to Surveil America with AI

Axon, maker of Tasers and police body cameras, has acquired a surveillance company that allows police to tap into camera networks in schools, retail stores, and other locations in cities and towns across America and apply AI technology to the footage. The move comes as Axon is trying to expand its cameras into retail and healthcare settings.   

Axon acquired Fusus for an undisclosed sum, according to a news release posted on Thursday. The acquisition “expands and deepens” the companies’ so-called real time capabilities. Fusus operates what it calls “real time crime centers (RTCC)” which allow police and other public agencies to analyze a wide array of video sources at a single point and apply AI that detects objects and people. These centers are reminiscent of the Department of Homeland Security’s Fusion Centers—where intelligence from a diverse number of sources is collected and shared among agencies—and have already expanded to over 250 cities and counties. 

“With Fusus, hospitals, schools, retail stores, houses of worship, event venues and residential communities—whole cities and towns—are better protected and, importantly, can contribute to greater safety for everyone,” an Axon blog on the Fusus acquisition states. 

Keep reading

MARS ROVER SPOTS MYSTERIOUS POLYGONS HIDDEN BENEATH THE RED PLANET’S SURFACE

Researchers operating China’s Zhurong rover say they have spotted a series of mysterious polygons hidden beneath the planet’s surface, similar to polygons NASA spotted on the surface of Mars in 2012. The newly discovered features, however, were detected more than 35 kilometers beneath the planet’s surface.

While researchers believe that these polygon structures could have formed due to extreme environmental shifts in Mars’ ancient past, their exact nature and formation remain a mystery.

The discovery was initially made during the rover’s one-year mission, which lasted from May 2021 to May 2022, in the Utopia Planitia region. Described by researchers from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the largest impact crater in the entire solar system, the researchers behind this mysterious find say that Utopia Planitia “has both experienced and recorded variations of the Martian palaeoclimate.”

By using the rover’s ground penetrating radar, researchers scoured a 1.2-kilometer-wide area for various geological features. As a result, 16 mysterious polygons were spotted below a depth of 35 meters, meaning they were likely formed billions of years in the planet’s past.

Keep reading

SCIENTISTS SUCCEED IN PRODUCING A DURABLE “TIME CRYSTAL”

Researchers at Germany’s TU Dortmund University report that they have developed an ultra-robust time crystal. Their study, published in Nature Physics, offers new insights into the potential applications and the physics governing time crystals, and offers a new method for keeping them stable. 

Time crystals represent a new phase of matter, first theorized in 2012 by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. Unlike traditional crystals, which exhibit repeating patterns in space, time crystals display patterns that repeat in time. This means their atomic structures undergo periodic motion even without external energy, defying the traditional laws of thermodynamics that govern equilibrium in most systems.

The importance of the TU Dortmund team’s work lies in its demonstration of an ultra-robust time crystal within a semiconductor material. The time crystal they developed can maintain its periodic oscillations over extensive periods, roughly 40 minutes, which is millions of times longer than previous attempts. 

Keep reading

Infrared Sensors Can Now Peer Around Corners 

Just because an object is around a corner doesn’t mean it has to be hidden. Non-line-of-sight imaging can peek around corners and spot those objects, but it has so far been limited to a narrow band of frequencies. Now a new sensor can help extend this technique from working with visible light to infrared. This advance could prove help make autonomous vehicles safer, among other potential applications.

Non-line-of-sight imaging relies on the faint signals of light beams that have reflected off of surfaces in order to reconstruct images. The ability to see around corners may prove useful for machine vision—for instance, helping autonomous vehicles foresee hidden dangers to better predict how to respond to them, says Xiaolong Hu, the senior author of the study and a professor at Tianjin University in Tianjin, China. It may also improve endoscopes that help doctors peer inside the body.

The light that non-line-of-sight imaging depends on is typically very dim, and until now, the detectors that were efficient and sensitive enough for non-line-of-sight imaging could only detect either visible or near-infrared light. Moving to longer wavelengths might have several advantages, such as dealing with less interference from sunshine, and the possibility of using lasers that are safe around eyes, Hu says.

Now Hu and his colleagues have for the first time performed non-line-of-sight imaging using 1,560- and 1,997-nanometer infrared wavelengths. “This extension in spectrum paves the way for more practical applications,” Hu says.

Keep reading

Congress pushes bill to let Americans SUE if fake porn images of them are published after Taylor Swift deep fake scandal

A group of lawmakers are stepping in to try and take down Taylor Swift ‘deep fake’ perpetrators with a bill that would allow Americans to sue if fake porn images of them are published. 

Popstar Taylor Swift became the latest target of nonconsensual deepfakes after artificial intelligence generated sexually explicit images of her flooded the internet this week. 

The dozens of graphic images showed Swift in a series of sexual acts while dressed in Kansas City Chief memorabilia after she became a regular at football games to support of her boyfriend Travis Kelce. 

Swift is now considering legal action against the deepfake porn website that posted the images amid calls from fans and even the White House for legislative action to combat the growing issue. 

Lawmakers decided to step in to combat the rise of nonconsensual deepfakes with a new bill that allows victims to take action against fake porn made in their likeness.

The DEFIANCE Act of 2024 was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Senator Amy Klobuchar, R-Minn.

Keep reading

The US Has Failed to Pass AI Regulation. New York City Is Stepping Up

AS THE US federal government struggles to meaningfully regulate AI—or even function—New York City is stepping into the governance gap.

The city introduced an AI Action Plan this week that mayor Eric Adams calls a first of its kind in the nation. The set of roughly 40 policy initiatives is designed to protect residents against harm like bias or discrimination from AI. It includes development of standards for AI purchased by city agencies and new mechanisms to gauge the risk of AI used by city departments.

New York’s AI regulation could soon expand still further. City council member Jennifer Gutiérrez, chair of the body’s technology committee, today introduced legislation that would create an Office of Algorithmic Data Integrity to oversee AI in New York.

If established, the office would provide a place for citizens to take complaints about automated decisionmaking systems used by public agencies, functioning like an ombudsman for algorithms in the five boroughs. It would also assess AI systems before deployment by the city for bias and discrimination.

Several US senators have suggested creating a new federal agency to regulate AI earlier this year, but Gutiérrez says she’s learned that there’s no point in waiting for action in Washington, DC. “We have a unique responsibility because a lot of innovation lives here,” she says. “It’s really important for us to take the lead.”

Keep reading

CUTTING-EDGE ANALYSIS OF THE WINCHCOMBE METEORITE CONFIRMS PRESENCE OF LIFE-SUPPORTING ORGANIC COMPOUNDS

German researchers using a cutting-edge, chemical-free detection method have confirmed the presence of organic compounds in the Winchcombe Meteorite, including nitrogen and amino acids. The new findings confirm similar results from a previous analysis of the well-known space rock, although this is the first time such a detection was made without chemical treatments.

“The team of researchers are now the first to demonstrate, to a high degree of precision, the existence of some important nitrogen compounds in this meteorite with amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons – without applying any chemical treatment, and by using a new type of detector design,” a press release announcing the findings explains.

WITNESSES SPOTTED WINCHCOMBE METEORITE FALLING OVER ENGLAND IN 2021

The Winchcombe meteorite gained some level of media attention after it was witnessed by a network of cameras falling from the sky over Winchcombe, England, in February 2021. This allowed researchers to locate it within days, offering those who study space rocks one of the most pristine specimens ever collected.

“Normally, meteorites are tracked down in the cold and hot deserts on Earth, where the dry climate means that they don’t weather very fast, but they do change as a result of humidity,” explained Dr. Christian Vollmer from the Institute of Mineralogy at Münster University. “If a meteorite fall is observed soon after the event and the meteorite is quickly collected, as was the case in Winchcombe, they are important ‘witnesses’ for us regarding the birth of our solar system – which makes them especially interesting for research purposes.”

Keep reading