Tag: technology

The rise of Silicon Valley’s techno-religion

In downtown Berkeley, an old hotel has become a temple to the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of humanity. Its name is Lighthaven.

Covering much of a city block, this gated complex includes five buildings and a small park dotted with rose bushes, stone fountains and neoclassical statues.

Stained-glass windows glisten on the top floor of the tallest building, called Bayes House after an 18th-century mathematician and philosopher.

Lighthaven is the de facto headquarters of a group of people who call themselves Rationalists.

This group has many interests involving mathematics, genetics and philosophy.

One of their overriding beliefs is that AI can deliver a better life – if it does not destroy humanity first.

The Rationalists believe it is up to the people building AI to ensure that it is a force for the greater good.

They were talking about AI risks years before OpenAI created ChatGPT, which brought AI into the mainstream and turned Silicon Valley on its head.

Their influence has quietly spread through many tech companies, from industry giants like Google to AI pioneers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Many of the AI world’s biggest names – including Dr Shane Legg, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind; Anthropic’s chief executive, Dr Dario Amodei; and Dr Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who now leads safety work at the US Centre for AI Standards and Innovation – have been influenced by Rationalist philosophy. Mr Elon Musk, who runs his own AI company, said that many of the community’s ideas align with his own.

Mr Musk met his former partner, pop star Grimes, after they made the same cheeky reference to a Rationalist belief called Roko’s Basilisk.

This elaborate thought experiment argues that when an all-powerful AI arrives, it will punish everyone who has not done everything they can to bring it into existence.

But these tech industry leaders stop short of calling themselves Rationalists, often because that label has over the years invited ridicule.

The Rationalist community is tightly entwined with the Effective Altruism movement, which aims to remake philanthropy by calculating how many people would benefit from each donation. This form of utilitarianism aims to benefit not just people who are alive today, but also all the people who will ever live.

Many Effective Altruists (EA) have decided that the best way to benefit humanity is to protect it from destruction by AI.

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Ukraine Claims Drone Strike On 5 Russian Fighter Jets At Crimean Base

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) announced it conducted a successful drone assault on a Russian airbase in Saky, a city in Crimea, in the overnight hours. This comes after weekend attacks deep inside Russia which hit oil refineries and a military-linked electronics factory.

The SBU claimed direct hits on five Russian military aircraft at the base, which reportedly destroyed one Su-30SM fighter jet and damaged another. Ukraine also said its drones hit three additional Su-24 bombers, along with an attack on a depot storing aviation munitions.

The Saky airfield has long been a key hub for Russian military activity in the Black Sea region. The SBU hailed the strike as “significant” – given that a single Su-30SM jet is worth up to around $50 million.

“The successful special operation carried out by the SBU in Saky marks another step toward weakening the enemy’s capacity to wage its war of aggression against Ukraine,” the SBU said.

However, Russia has yet to confirm or deny the Crimea airbase strike, or the jet losses – and is not likely to. If accurate, the aircraft destruction would mark the biggest such assault since Operation Spiderweb on June 1st, which targeted four airbases deep inside Russian territory.

Ukraine claimed it took out 41 Russian military aircraft in that operation, but Moscow consistently said this figure was exaggerated – but never disclosed a precise damage assessment.

The Su-30SM is a two-seat, twin-engine multirole fighter aircraft introduced by Russia early last decade, while the Su-24 is a twin-engine, supersonic strike aircraft developed by the Soviet Union – both of which are frequently used for combat missions in Ukraine.

Soon after Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine’s military vowed there would be more such attacks to come. Russia has of late been pummeling Ukrainian cities with drone and missile strikes, so it appears Kiev is mounting more and more cross-border revenge attacks over the last several days.

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‘Relatively Simple’ AI Trading Bots Naturally Collude To Rig Markets: Wharton

In what should come as a surprise to nobody, ‘relatively simple’ AI bots set loose in simulations designed to mimic real-world stock and bond exchanges don’t just compete for returns; they collude to fix prices, hoard profits, and box out human traders, according to a trio of researchers from Wharton and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. 

As Bloomberg reports;

In simulations designed to mimic real-world markets, trading agents powered by artificial intelligence formed price-fixing cartels — without explicit instruction. Even with relatively simple programming, the bots chose to collude when left to their own devices, raising fresh alarms for market watchdogs.

Put another way, AI bots don’t need to be evil — or even particularly smart — to rig the market. Left alone, they’ll learn it themselves. 

According to Itay Goldstein, one of the researchers and a finance professor at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, “You can get these fairly simple-minded AI algorithms to collude … It looks very pervasive, either when the market is very noisy or when the market is not noisy.”

The phenomenon suggests that AI agents pose a challenge that regulators have yet to confront – with the trio’s research having already drawn attention from both regulators and asset managers. They have been invited to preset their findings at a seminar, while some quant firms – unnamed by Winston Dou (Goldstein’s Wharton colleague) – expressing interest in clear regulatory guidelines and rules for AI-powered algorithmic trading execution.

“They worry that it’s not their intention,” said Dou. “But regulators can come to them and say: ‘You’re doing something wrong.’”

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Ukraine’s Anti-Graft Agencies Say They Uncovered Major Drone Procurement Bribery Case

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies said on Aug. 2 they had uncovered a large-scale bribery scheme involving the procurement of military drones and electronic warfare equipment.

This came just days after the agencies’ independence was restored following mass protests over government efforts to curb their powers.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said in a statement on Saturday that the alleged plot involved a sitting lawmaker, current and former regional officials, National Guard personnel, and a company executive.

Investigators alleged that those involved had refined a scheme over the past two years to systematically siphon off budget funds allocated by local authorities for defense needs, and to secure “unfair benefits in particularly large quantities.”

Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, identified the accused lawmaker as Oleksii Kuznetsov of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.

Party leader Davyd Arakhamiia later said on Telegram that Kuznetsov’s membership in the parliamentary faction would be suspended while the investigation is underway, and that a disciplinary panel was weighing his expulsion.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Ukrainian parliament’s press office with a request to forward a comment request to Kuznetsov.

In a separate statement, the party said it supported the work of NABU and SAPO, and stressed that responsibility for corrupt acts “must be borne by everyone, regardless of position, status or political affiliation.”

It said the recently passed law restoring the agencies’ independence “created additional guarantees for their work,” for them to act decisively and professionally in combating corruption.

Zelenskyy said in a statement posted on X on Saturday that he had been briefed on the investigation by the heads of NABU and SAPO, confirming that a lawmaker, local officials, and several National Guard servicemembers had been “exposed for bribery.”

“I am grateful to the anti-corruption agencies for their work,” he wrote. “There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork in uncovering it, and ultimately, a fair sentence. It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law passed on Thursday guarantees them all the tools necessary for a real fight against corruption.”

The law he referred to marked a dramatic about-face for his administration.

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Israeli spyware firms are fueling the global surveillance state

Last week another batch of peaceful pro-Palestine protestors were arrested by British police on suspicion of terrorism offenses, including a disabled man in a wheelchair, as the UK continues its descent into authoritarianism on behalf of Israel.

If any of these protestors had their phones on them at the time of arrest, the police will most likely have scraped them for data using sophisticated spy tech software. Protestors not arrested will have been caught on mobile cameras that sit atop police vans in the UK, and their faces, perhaps even their voices, will have been captured, analyzed and cross referenced against a police database.

And in a perverse twist, this spyware technology – technology which now underpins the insidious and growing capabilities of the modern surveillance state – will most likely have been made in Israel by Israeli spies.

But it’s not just in the UK.

Spy tech developed by former Israeli spies is being used on an industrial scale by various agencies in western democracies, from police forces to national security agencies to militaries. Some has been declared illegal, some skirts legal boundaries, and much remains hidden.

The scale of usage, and the range of capabilities provided by this Israeli spy tech, is vast. From face and voice recognition software, to interception and wiretap technology, to covert location tracking, to forced data extraction from smartphones and other devices.

The tech, built by software engineers who cut their teeth writing code to enable and enforce Israeli domination over, and apartheid against Palestinians, is being sold to security services, police forces and immigration agencies across the West.

While much of the information in this article isn’t new, it hasn’t been summarized in one place before. The implications for global civil liberties of Israel’s dominance in spy tech have also not been articulated, and past media coverage has sometimes omitted the Israeli link to these companies. This article will outline the primary players, the sellers and the buyers, and also identify recent contracts, previously undocumented, between Israeli spytech and Western buyers.

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Palantir Secures Historic $10 Billion Army Contract for AI-Driven Defense

The U.S. Army has awarded Palantir Technologies a monumental $10 billion contract, consolidating dozens of existing agreements into a single enterprise deal over the next decade.

This landmark agreement, announced on July 31, 2025, positions Palantir as a cornerstone of the Army’s data and software infrastructure. It underscores a strategic shift toward leveraging commercial AI to enhance military readiness and efficiency.

The contract streamlines 75 separate agreements, offering volume-based discounts and eliminating redundant procurement costs.

This approach maximizes buying power while delivering cutting-edge data integration and AI tools to soldiers faster. The deal reflects a broader Pentagon push to modernize warfare capabilities amid rising global tensions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific.

Palantir’s role builds on its success with the Maven Smart System, which received a $795 million boost earlier this year to expand AI-driven targeting across U.S. forces.

The system fuses intelligence from drones, satellites, and sensors to identify threats in near real-time, maintaining human oversight for critical decisions.

This capability has proven vital in conflicts like Ukraine, where rapid data analysis drives battlefield outcomes.

Founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, Palantir has deepened its federal footprint, securing $373 million in U.S. government revenue in Q1 2025 alone, a 45% increase year-over-year.

The Trump administration’s emphasis on cost efficiency and commercial partnerships has propelled Palantir’s rise, with new contracts spanning the Navy, ICE, and CDC.

Critics, however, warn that such dominance by a single vendor could stifle competition and innovation.

The Army’s enterprise agreement not only enhances operational efficiency but also aligns with President Trump’s vision of a leaner, tech-driven military.

By consolidating contracts, the Army projects significant savings, freeing resources for mission-critical programs.

Palantir’s software, like the Foundry platform, enables seamless data integration, empowering soldiers with actionable intelligence.

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Russian Drone Found At Military Base In Lithuania Which Hosts NATO Troops

A suspected errant Russian drone has breached a NATO country’s airspace this week – though certainly not for the first time, and is setting off the proverbial alarm within Lithuania’s military

The drone was discovered crashed at a Lithuanian military training area after entering the country’s airspace from Belarus, after first being spotted early Monday morning, Lithuania’s army reported on Friday. The military first tracked in on radar over Belarusian airspace, near the border.

Several area residents actually captured footage of it flying over Vilnius before it vanished, and later was found on the ground at the military training base.

“It’s likely the same drone that breached our airspace on Monday. Initial analysis suggests it may be a Gerbera model, though this is still being confirmed,” the Lithuanian military said in the statement.

At least one Lithuanian lawmaker has portrayed the drone breach incident as intentional, also given it ended up at a military site.

“This looks like a provocation,” said Mindaugas Sinkevičius, interim leader of Lithuania’s ruling Social Democratic Party, while describing that the sensitive area where it was found leads to the conclusion that the breach was on purpose or a test of sorts.

It has been identified as a Gerbera drone, a type which Russia’s military often utilizes as a decoy to mislead or distract air defense systems in Ukraine.

Interestingly, the Gaižiūnai training grounds near Rukla – where it was recovered – actually hosts a NATO multinational battalion, regional reports say.

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Is AI Turning Us Into Dummies?

That AI is turning those who use it into dummies is not only self-evident, it’s irrefutable. ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study

“Of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.’ Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.

“The task was executed, and you could say that it was efficient and convenient,” Kosmyna says. “But as we show in the paper, you basically didn’t integrate any of it into your memory networks.”

AI breaks the connection between learning and completing an academic task. With AI, students can check the box–task completed, paper written and submitted–without learning anything.

And by learning we don’t mean remember a factoid, we mean learning how to learn and learning how to think. As Substack writer maalvika explains in her viral essay compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting, digital technologies have compressed our attention spans via what I would term “rewarding distraction” so we can no longer read anything longer than a few sentences without wanting a summary, highlights video or sound-bite.

In other words, very few people will actually read the MIT paper: TL/DR. Here’s the precis: Your Brain on ChatGPT (mit.edu).

Here’s the full paper.

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.

To understand the context–and indeed, the ultimate point of the research–we must start by understanding the structure of learning and thinking which is a complex set of processes. Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is a framework that parses out some of these processes.

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), developed by John Sweller, provides a framework for understanding the mental effort required during learning and problem-solving. It identifies three categories of cognitive load: intrinsic cognitive load (ICL), which is tied to the complexity of the material being learned and the learner’s prior knowledge; extraneous cognitive load (ECL), which refers to the mental effort imposed by presentation of information; and germane cognitive load (GCL), which is the mental effort dedicated to constructing and automating schemas that support learning.

Checking the box “task completed” teaches us nothing. Actual learning and thinking require doing all the cognitive work that AI claims to do for us: reading the source materials, following the links between these sources, finding wormholes between various universes of knowledge, and thinking through claims and assumptions as an independent critical thinker.

When AI slaps together a bunch of claims and assumptions as authoritative, we don’t gain a superficial knowledge–we learn nothing. AI summarizes but without any ability to weed out questionable claims and assumptions because it has no tacit knowledge of contexts.

So AI spews out material without any actual cognitive value and the student slaps this into a paper without learning any actual cognitive skills. This cognitive debt can never be “paid back,” for the cognitive deficit lasts a lifetime.

Even AI’s vaunted ability to summarize robs us of the need to develop core cognitive abilities. As this researcher explains, “drudgery” is how we learn and learn to think deeply as opposed to a superficial grasp of material to pass an exam.

In Defense of Drudgery: AI is making good on its promise to liberate people from drudgery. But sometimes, exorcising drudgery can stifle innovation.

“Unfortunately, this innovation stifles innovation. When humans do the drudgery of literature search, citation validation, and due research diligence — the things OpenAI claims for Deep Research — they serendipitously see things they weren’t looking for. They build on the ideas of others that they hadn’t considered before and are inspired to form altogether new ideas. They also learn cognitive skills including the ability to filter information efficiently and recognize discrepancies in meaning.

I have seen in my field of systems analysis where decades of researchers have cited information that was incorrect — and expanded it into its own self-perpetuating world view. Critical thinking leads the researcher to not accept the work that others took as foundational and to spot the error. Tools such as Deep Research are incapable of spotting the core truth and so will perpetuate misdirection in research. That’s the opposite of good innovation.”

In summary: given that AI is fundamentally incapable of performing the tasks required for authentic innovation, we’re de-learning how to innovate. What we’re “learning” is to substitute a superficially clever simulation of innovation for authentic innovation, and in doing so, we’re losing the core cognitive skills needed to innovate.

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AI reveals unexpected new physics in dusty plasma

Physicists have used a machine-learning method to identify surprising new twists on the non-reciprocal forces governing a many-body system.

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the findings by experimental and theoretical physicists at Emory University, based on a neural network model and data from laboratory experiments on dusty plasma—ionized gas containing suspended dust particles.

The work is one of the relatively few instances of using AI not as a data processing or predictive tool, but to discover new physical laws governing the natural world.

“We showed that we can use AI to discover new physics,” says Justin Burton, an Emory professor of experimental physics and senior co-author of the paper. “Our AI method is not a black box: we understand how and why it works. The framework it provides is also universal. It could potentially be applied to other many-body systems to open new routes to discovery.”

The PNAS paper provides the most detailed description yet for the physics of a dusty plasma, yielding precise approximations for non-reciprocal forces.

“We can describe these forces with an accuracy of more than 99%,” says Ilya Nemenman, an Emory professor of theoretical physics and co-senior author of the paper.

“What’s even more interesting is that we show that some common theoretical assumptions about these forces are not quite accurate. We’re able to correct these inaccuracies because we can now see what’s occurring in such exquisite detail.”

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In search of riches, hackers plant 4G-enabled Raspberry Pi in bank network

Hackers planted a Raspberry Pi equipped with a 4G modem in the network of an unnamed bank in an attempt to siphon money out of the financial institution’s ATM system, researchers reported Wednesday.

The researchers with security firm Group-IB said the “unprecedented tactic allowed the attackers to bypass perimeter defenses entirely.” The hackers combined the physical intrusion with remote access malware that used another novel technique to conceal itself, even from sophisticated forensic tools. The technique, known as a Linux bind mount, is used in IT administration but had never been seen used by threat actors. The trick allowed the malware to operate similarly to a rootkit, which uses advanced techniques to hide itself from the operating system it runs on.

End goal: Backdooring the ATM switching network

The Raspberry Pi was connected to the same network switch used by the bank’s ATM system, a position that effectively put it inside the bank’s internal network. The goal was to compromise the ATM switching server and use that control to manipulate the bank’s hardware security module, a tamper-resistant physical device used to store secrets such as credentials and digital signatures and run encryption and decryption functions.

The group behind the attack is tracked in the industry under the name UNC2891. The financially motivated threat group has been active since at least 2017 in targeting the infrastructures of banks. It has earned a well-deserved reputation for proficiency in its use of custom malware in attacks targeting Linux, Unix, and Oracle Solaris systems.

In 2022, Google’s Mandiant division said it had observed UNC2891 spending years inside a targeted network, during which time the intrusion went largely unnoticed. Mandiant researchers went on to identify CakeTap, a custom rootkit for Solaris systems. Among other things, CakeTap manipulated messages passing through an infected ATM switching network, most likely for use in unauthorized cash withdrawals using fraudulent bank cards. Mandiant documented two other custom pieces of malware, which the company named SlapStick and TinyShell.

Group-IB’s report on Wednesday shows that UNC2891 is still active and finding new and advanced ways to burrow into bank networks without detection.

“One of the most unusual elements of this case was the attacker’s use of physical access to install a Raspberry Pi device,” Group-IB Senior Digital Forensics and Incident Response Specialist Nam Le Phuong wrote. “This device was connected directly to the same network switch as the ATM, effectively placing it inside the bank’s internal network. The Raspberry Pi was equipped with a 4G modem, allowing remote access over mobile data.”

To maintain persistence, UNC2891 also compromised a mail server because it had constant Internet connectivity. The Raspberry Pi and the mail server backdoor would then communicate by using the bank’s monitoring server as an intermediary. The monitoring server was chosen because it had access to almost every server within the data center.

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