Tag: technology

Germany Pressures Apple and Google to Ban Chinese AI App DeepSeek

Apple and Google are facing mounting pressure from German authorities to remove the Chinese AI app DeepSeek from their app stores in Germany over data privacy violations.

The Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Meike Kamp, has flagged the app for transferring personal data to China without adhering to EU data protection standards.

Kamp’s office examined DeepSeek’s practices and found that the company failed to offer “convincing evidence” that user information is safeguarded as mandated by EU law.

She emphasized the risks linked to Chinese data governance, warning that “Chinese authorities have far-reaching access rights to personal data within the sphere of influence of Chinese companies.”

With this in mind, Apple and Google have been urged to evaluate the findings and consider whether to block the app in Germany.

Authorities in Berlin had already asked DeepSeek to either meet EU legal requirements for data transfers outside the bloc or remove its app from German availability.

DeepSeek did not take action to address these concerns, according to Kamp.

Germany’s move follows Italy’s earlier decision this year to block DeepSeek from local app stores, citing comparable concerns about data security and privacy.

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Scientists Achieve the “Impossible,” Unlocking Room-Temperature Quantum Circuits Using Magnetic Graphene

Scientists have just taken a significant step toward a long-awaited dream by creating ultra-thin, magnetically-controlled quantum devices that don’t need bulky magnets to function. 

In a groundbreaking study, a research team led by physicists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has experimentally confirmed the elusive quantum spin Hall effect (QSH) in magnetic graphene, eliminating the need for an external magnetic field. This study represents a significant advancement in our understanding of quantum physics, opening up new possibilities for future technologies.

This first-of-its-kind achievement means future quantum circuitry could be smaller, faster, and far more practical than ever imagined.

“Spin is a quantum mechanical property of electrons, which is like a tiny magnet carried by the electrons, pointing up or down,”  lead author and researcher at TU Delft and Harvard University, Dr. Talieh S. Ghiasi, explained in a statement. “We can leverage the spin of electrons to transfer and process information in so-called spintronics devices.”

“Such circuits hold promise for next-generation technologies, including faster and more energy-efficient electronics, quantum computing, and advanced memory devices.” This breakthrough not only validates theoretical predictions but also propels us into a future of advanced and efficient technologies.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, detail how the team successfully induced a quantum spin Hall state in graphene by layering it on top of a van der Waals antiferromagnetic material called CrPS₄. 

This layered structure fundamentally alters the band structure of graphene, introducing spin-orbit and exchange interactions that are strong enough to give rise to exotic, topologically protected edge states. These special states allow electrons to move along the edges of the material without resistance and with their spins locked in opposite directions—a hallmark of QSH behavior.

For years, scientists have sought to harness spin—an intrinsic property of electrons—in place of charge to create next-generation “spintronic” devices. However, achieving long-distance, coherent spin transport —a state in which the spins of electrons remain in a fixed relationship over a long distance —has been notoriously difficult. Conventional methods required strong magnetic fields to split electron spins and create the necessary quantum edge states.

This study demonstrates that magnetism can originate from within. By carefully choosing a magnetic partner material for graphene—specifically, CrPS₄—the researchers induced both magnetism and spin-orbit coupling within the graphene itself. As a result, they achieved spin-polarized, helical edge states that persisted even at room temperature.

“The detection of the QSH states at zero external magnetic fields, together with the AH [anomalous Hall] signal that persists up to room temperature, opens the route for practical applications of magnetic graphene in quantum spintronic circuitries,” the researchers wrote in the study. This breakthrough paves the way for a new era of practical and efficient quantum technologies.

The experimental setup involved layering monolayer graphene on a flake of CrPS₄ and encapsulating it with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). CrPS₄ is an air-stable magnetic semiconductor with a Néel temperature of around 38 K and strong interlayer antiferromagnetic coupling.

Using advanced electrical transport measurements, the team demonstrated that this configuration induces staggered potential and spin-orbit interactions within the graphene. These alterations open a topological gap in the graphene’s bulk, allowing gapless “helical” edge states to form—essentially creating a quantum spin Hall insulator.

Key evidence was obtained by measuring the conductance of the device near the charge neutrality point at zero magnetic fields. The conductance plateaued at precisely 2e²/h—matching theoretical predictions for QSH states where two spin-polarized channels counter-propagate along opposite edges of the device without dissipation.

The researchers confirmed these observations across various device geometries and probing configurations, ruling out conventional transport mechanisms. They also observed a large anomalous Hall (AH) effect—a separate spin-related quantum phenomenon—which persisted even at room temperature, further validating the presence of induced magnetic and spin-orbit interactions in the system.

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The Next Energy Revolution Is Coming. Is The DOE Ready?

The last energy revolution that changed the world — natural gas fracking — happened in part thanks to the Department of Energy (DOE). Early R&D funding, support for horizontal drilling, and key public-private partnerships helped fracking get off the ground and turn America into an energy powerhouse.

Now, we are on the cusp of another energy revolution, this time focused on the clean technologies of advanced nuclear, geothermal, natural hydrogen, and fusion. Fortunately, the United States is rich in these energy resources. The challenge with these technologies isn’t a lack of supply; it’s the speed and scale at which we can bring this energy online. 

American innovators and entrepreneurs are ready to deliver solutions, but outdated bureaucracy and inefficiency within the DOE threaten to delay progress. With a leader like Secretary Chris Wright, who brings real-world experience from the private sector, the DOE has an opportunity to once again become a force multiplier for energy innovation — if it embraces smart, structural reforms.

Here’s where the DOE can start.

1. Streamline Contracting and Applications

The DOE’s current application and contracting process is burdensome and redundant. Companies often face unnecessary delays just trying to navigate paperwork, such as being required to secure community benefits agreements or labor partnerships before the technology in question is even commercially viable. To make matters worse, organizations must submit separate applications for each DOE program or office, even when pursuing similar goals.

The DOE can address this issue by standardizing applications across the department, eliminating duplicative requirements, and leveraging modern tools like AI to automate non-critical aspects of the process. These changes would increase efficiency, lower barriers to new entrants, and accelerate the introduction of transformative technologies to market.

2. Cut NEPA Red Tape — Where DOE Has Authority

While protecting the environment and holding polluters accountable is an essential role for the government, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been weaponized to stall or block critical energy projects. While the DOE does not have full control over NEPA’s broader structure, and Congress should seriously consider repealing this outdated law, DOE does have discretion over how NEPA is applied to its programs and supported projects.

One key opportunity is for DOE to expand the use of categorical exclusions — designations for projects that do not significantly impact the environment and therefore do not require full-scale environmental assessments. This is especially important for new energy technologies that haven’t yet reached commercial scale or environmental risk.

DOE can also streamline internal review timelines, accelerate grant negotiations, and release funding as soon as projects meet agreed-upon milestones. These kinds of administrative reforms are entirely within DOE’s control and could make a real difference in the pace of deployment.

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Big Data Centers Are Booming, But Secret Deals Draw Local Opposition

From Georgia to Oregon, New England to New Mexico, data center projects are drawing opposition in local government hearings by residents concerned about the voracious demand for electricity, water consumption, and noise. Critics also argue that data centers don’t produce the jobs other land uses generate.

In Texas, people in small towns question data center development in the broader context of rapid rural industrialization.

In Pennsylvania, ad hoc groups say data centers are tapping into nearby natural gas fields, increasing the frequency of fracking, and straining water supplies.

In Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and across the country, residents say the scale and proximity of these high-tech campuses degrade their neighborhoods and devalue properties.

Objections vary, depending on proposal and site, but a common complaint is state and local governments offering data center projects tax incentives that are often shielded from public scrutiny through nondisclosure agreements.

Companies say these pacts shield proprietary corporate intelligence, but the perceived lack of transparency fosters suspicion and anger when residents realize local planners are set to approve a proposal they knew little to nothing about until it appeared to be a done deal.

“Just from our experience, it seems like one of the big concerns is that, yeah, there is no community outreach,” Kamil Cook, Public Citizen’s Texas climate and clean energy associate, told the Epoch Times. “There’s no method by which the community can be informed in a way that actually makes it seem like their voice is valued and that they have a choice in these matters.”

Much of this local opposition appears rooted in the complaint that people “weren’t informed to begin with, were ignored at some point,” said Joe Warnimont, who co-authored a February HostingAdvice.com survey. The survey of 800 people in 16 states found that 93 percent agreed that “cutting-edge AI data centers are vital to the United States,” but only 35 percent want one in their town.

“The main insights are there is clearly a disconnect between what the local residents experience and what is being sold to these communities from developers,” Warnimont told The Epoch Times.

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AI = Slavery

I wrote in Part 1 about the human conditioning test for acceptance of artificial intelligence running our Government and Business World. The test was quite simple: How much “Self-Service” are people willing to take before we say “Enough is Enough!”.

We failed miserably. What’s worse, there seems no end to how much crap we can take. At least for as long as the food and EBT cards holds out.

Why is that important?

Its because self-service is what we will all be doing, endlessly, in an AI driven internet only world where human interaction is transactionally eliminated in all but social relationships.

Few bother to fight, especially when the alternative of resistance requires a certain amount of inconvenience, persistence and even courage.

After all, people still have Amazon and Bank of America accounts and take their offspring to Disneyland in between Church visits. Easy peasy.

We not only accept our self service Internet of Things world but do so gladly and even without asking for a discount that the generation ahead of us would and did require. Consequently, just like our Covid Lockdown test, we met a necessary standard proving we will do nearly anything we are told. Don’t believe me? How soon we forget.

How about people with MDs telling 80 olds to wear ill fitting dust masks in 90 deg heat? What about those same Doctors injecting infants with a near zero risk of dying from Covid with still experimental mRNA treatments after reports of severe injury was publicly known and easy to find (if not from your own patients)? Or, that we allowed churches to close for the first time in American history?

Only an illegal monopolistic and powerful brainwashing legacy media could make all that happen. But, it did happen because we lost our ability to distinguish truth from propaganda. Somehow, it seemed comfortable. And safe.

That means full steam ahead towards our future nightmare in a 1984 Brave New World. A world made possible in our lifetimes by Artificial Intelligence.

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Did AI Almost Start World War III?

Recall that the Covid fiasco went into overdrive when Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London generated a wildly incorrect estimate of the fatality rate of the virus from China. He had two forecasts, one without lockdowns (death everywhere) and one with (not terrible). The idea was to inspire the replication of the CCP’s extreme methods of people control in the West. 

That model, first shared in classified realms, flipped the narrative. Once select advisors – Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci among them – presented it to Trump, he went from opposing lockdowns to getting in front of the seemingly inevitable. 

Before long, every Gates-funded NGO was pushing more such models that proved the point. Masses of people observed the models as if they were an accurate reflection of reality. Major media reported on them daily. 

As the fiasco dragged on, so did data fakery. The PCR tests were generating false positives, giving the impression of an unfolding calamity even though medically significant infections were highly limited. Infections and even exposures were redefined as cases, for the first time in epidemiological history. Then came the subsidized “deaths from Covid” that clearly generated waves of misclassification that underscore the overestimation of the fatality rate.

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Scientists Use Magnetic Levitation to Search for Ultralight Dark Matter

Rice University scientists have developed a sensor that uses magnetic levitation to detect quantum-level oscillations caused by theoretical ultralight dark matter moving through the Earth.

While dark matter is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe, some theories suggest that ultralight dark matter, which behaves like a continuous wave, exerts rhythmic forces that can be detected if the equipment is sensitive enough.

The research team behind the magnetic levitation sensor’s design and construction says their initial tests did not detect ultralight dark matter. However, the experiments, which were supported by the National Science Foundation, provided critical new constraints that will aid ongoing dark matter search efforts.

“Our approach brings dark matter detection into a new realm,” explained Rice University physicist Christopher Tunnell, a postdoctoral researcher and an author on the study detailing the team’s findings.

According to a statement announcing the research, Tunnell and Dorian Amaral, the study’s first author and lead analyst, teamed up with Dennis Uitenbroek and Tjerk Oosterkamp, physicists from Leiden University, to build an ultralight dark matter sensor capable of detecting movements smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom.

First, the team placed a microscopic neodymium magnet inside a superconducting enclosure cooled to near absolute zero. According to Tunnell, by using magnetic levitation to suspend the magnet in this frictionless environment, “we’re giving it the freedom to move if something nudges it.”

After the device was completed, the team began monitoring their magnetically suspended particle for the rhythmic forces caused by ultralight dark matter. If the theories were correct, they hoped to detect interaction forces that differ based on baryon and lepton numbers. Called ‘conserved quantum numbers’ in particle physics, these figures remain constant in particle interactions within a theoretical model known as B−L. This means even the smallest change should be detectable.

According to the team’s statement, their magnetic levitation sensor did not detect the predicted signal of ultralight dark matter interactions. However, Tunnell says their experiments eliminated interactions at the narrow frequency band of around 26.7 Hz targeted by their study, further narrowing the search parameters for future studies.

“Every time we don’t find dark matter, we refine the map,” Tunnell said. “It is like searching for a lost key in your house — when you do not find it in one place, you know to look elsewhere.”

In follow-up experiments, the team says they hope to try something they’ve affectionately titled after the dance the group performed when they met at a climate protest and realized taking such a measurement was even possible: the “Polonaise.” Built using heavier magnets, more stable magnetic levitation, and boasting broader frequency coverage, the team says the Polonaise will probe areas of the theoretical dark matter landscape that current detectors have not explored, “seeking to identify ultra-weak forces in the most undisturbed environments possible.”

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ISIS-Inspired Drone War Plans Leaked From US National Security Council

According to leaked documents, British and American academics advised the U.S. National Security Council to encourage Ukraine to adopt ISIS-style drone tactics against Russian railways.

In a report published by investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg for The Grayzone on Monday, Project Alchemy, a secret academic-intelligence cell whose mission was “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia” was revealed as the network allegedly behind these plans.

The academic recommendations were delivered to Colonel Tim Wright, who served as the Biden administration’s Director for Russia at the National Security Council from August 2021 to July 2022. The proposals came from three key drone experts within a broader Ukraine Working Group composed of “approximately 60 experts hailing from states throughout NATO” who sought to “assist Ukraine’s defense (short of deploying combat forces).”

Zachary Kallenborn from George Mason University’s Schar School advocated for “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian railways, recommending Ukraine “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.”

An unnamed Durham University researcher identified as “M.E.D.” cited Islamic State’s “innovative” use of drones as documented in a July 2018 West Point paper, suggesting commercial drones could be “modified via a simple drop mechanism… to serve as effective munitions delivery platforms.”

Dominika Kunertova, formerly of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies and currently directing drone warfare research at the Atlantic Council, recommended targeting “anything that uses” railroads as opposed to the infrastructure itself.

These academic blueprints proved prophetic when Ukraine launched Operation Spider Web late last month conducting bold drone attacks inside Russia that killed seven people and injured more than 30, including two children.

The timing proved particularly significant as these attacks took place “on the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.”

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Smarter, Colder, Faster: Quantum Amplifier Breakthrough Makes Quantum Computing Up to 10x More Efficient

As quantum computing systems scale toward thousands—if not millions—of qubits, the role of the often overlooked quantum amplifier that listens to each qubit becomes increasingly critical. Researchers in Sweden have reported that the development of a smarter, ultra-low-power quantum amplifier could significantly alleviate one of quantum computing‘s major engineering challenges. 

Researchers in Sweden say they’ve engineered a smarter, ultra-low-power quantum amplifier that could dramatically ease one of quantum computing’s biggest engineering headaches.

A new study from Chalmers University of Technology, in collaboration with Low Noise Factory AB, unveils a cryogenic amplifier that switches on only when needed. This reduces energy consumption and thermal noise that threaten the fragile state of quantum bits or qubits. 

The breakthrough, detailed in IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, has the potential to pave the way for the realization of truly large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, marking a significant advancement in the field.

“This is the most sensitive amplifier that can be built today using transistors,” lead author and doctoral student at Chalmers​​, Yin Zeng, said in the Chalmers press release. “We’ve now managed to reduce its power consumption to just one-tenth of that required by today’s best amplifiers – without compromising performance. We hope and believe that this breakthrough will enable more accurate readout of qubits in the future.”

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China Reportedly On Verge Of 100 DeepSeek-Like Breakthroughs Amid Aspirations For World Domination

China is preparing to launch a tsunami of domestic AI innovation, with more than 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs (more here) expected within the next 18 months, according to former PBOC Deputy Governor Zhu Min, as reported by Bloomberg. This development signals Beijing’s intent to rapidly close the technological gap ahead of the 2030s. 

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s “Annual Meeting of the New Champions” in Tianjin, China, Min told the audience that 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs “will fundamentally change the nature and the tech nature of the whole Chinese economy.”

The emergence of DeepSeek, a low-cost, powerful AI model, has fueled Chinese tech stocks and underscored China’s AI competitiveness despite U.S. restrictions on advanced chips and domestic macroeconomic headwinds. Bloomberg Economics projects high-tech’s contribution to China’s GDP could rise from 15% in 2024 to over 18% by 2026.

Traders are rotating into Chinese equities, with the Hang Seng Index surging 25% year-to-date, significantly outperforming the S&P 500, which is up just 3.3% and effectively flat in real terms. China stocks outperformed soon after DeepSeek’s launch in January. 

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