Tag: technology

Coast Guard places $248 million order for first MQ-9B drones

The Coast Guard is purchasing MQ-9B drones for the first time, ordering four of the high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles for just under $250 million.

The aircraft will support the service to oversee offshore waters, conduct search and rescue operations, and help counter drug trafficking operations, among other things, the Coast Guard said in a news release today. They are not expected to carry weapons, a service spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

“The MQ-9B long-range unmanned aircraft systems will expand our reach and strengthen our ability to protect the nation,” Anthony Antognoli, the assistant commandant and program executive officer for robotics and autonomous systems for the Coast Guard, said in a statement. “This investment will give Coast Guard crews a longer-range view of our maritime domain, helping them detect threats earlier, make better-informed decisions and act faster across our missions.”

The Coast Guard first revealed its plans to purchase the drones last year, thanks to funding the service received from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed in July 2025, Military Times previously reported. 

The Coast Guard said today that funding for the MQ-9B acquisition stemmed from the FY25 reconciliation package that included nearly $25 billion for the service, along with FY26 appropriations. The MQ-9B purchase totaled $247.8 million for the four aircraft, along with ground control stations and other supporting equipment, the Coast Guard said. 

The Coast Guard has previously teamed up with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and flown CBP’s MQ-9A drones for operations out of Texas, according to a Coast Guard factsheet. The Coast Guard noted in today’s release that the aircraft supported CBP to seize 60,700 pounds of illegal drugs and the apprehension of roughly 20 “smugglers” in FY26. 

The MQ-9B SeaGuardian is designed to conduct maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations for more than 30 hours at a time with a mission radius of roughly 1,200 nautical miles, according to General Atomics, which builds the aircraft.

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UK Airports Begin Replacing Passport Checks With Facial Recognition

In the UK, the government is now selling a switch to contactless facial recognition at airports as a time-saving measure for travelers.

And a major time-saving it is not – five seconds shaved off the previous 20 to 25 seconds it took to use an eGate.

The process of scanning your face instead of your passport is now in place at East Midlands Airport, and will be expanded to 13 airports by early 2027, the Home Office has announced.

The way it works is that your face is photographed as you approach the gate, and this is then compared to a gallery of passport photographs that the airlines have sent to border control.

But don’t think you can leave your passport at home – the government has made sure to inform citizens that they should keep it with them at all times.

This new “convenience” is available to British citizens first, with other nationalities to be onboarded in the coming months.

And what a win it is – for the government, that is. “This is a win for travelers coming to our brilliant country,” said Phil Douglas, Director General of Border Force.

He added, “Our digital transformation also builds on our work this summer to extend eGates to children aged eight and above, making life a little easier for families.”

The eGates are now available to children as young as eight, provided they are at least 120cm tall, and are traveling with an adult who is using the automated gates.

The government’s announcement was met with enthusiasm by the airports, with East Midlands Airport Managing Director Steve Griffiths declaring his facility to be “delighted” to be the first to introduce contactless eGates.

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Retired Air Force Colonel Warns Data Centers Could Put Nearby Residents at Risk

Living near an artificial intelligence (AI) data center already comes with several potential drawbacks [1].

Some facilities produce constant, high-pitched noise, while others rely on large diesel generators that release air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Nearby residents may also face higher electricity bills as the demand for power increases [1].

Recently, a retired Air Force colonel has warned that people living near artificial intelligence data centers could be targeted if a rogue artificial intelligence (AI) system attempts to protect itself and its infrastructure, according to a report by the Texas-based Collapse Survival Institute [1].

The report, written by retired Col. Drew Miller, states that data centers may become ground zero if a malicious or “misaligned” AI breaks out, and that residents living near those facilities could be treated as proxies for human control and resistance [1].

Similar warnings have been issued by other researchers, including Anthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger, who stated that AI could kill all humans within the next decade [2].

Report Details Potential Data Center and AI Risks

The Collapse Survival Institute report, described in an article by Futurism.com, states that data centers could become ground zero if a malicious or misaligned AI breaks out [1].

Broader concerns about AI control have also been raised by researchers and industry figures who say capabilities are advancing at a pace that could lead to systems surpassing human intelligence within the next few years [3].

The report’s recommendations reflect a broader pattern of concern about the rapid data center buildout, which has drawn opposition from residents across the country over noise, emissions, and electricity costs [4].

Calls for Stronger AI Safeguards

To address these concerns, Miller urges Congress to halt construction of new AI data centers temporarily. He also calls for mandatory emergency shutdown systems for advanced AI models and greater transparency from leading AI laboratories [1].

The report additionally considers the possibility of military strikes against AI facilities if governments believe a system poses an immediate danger. It proposes international cooperation as one possible response to such a crisis [1].

Miller’s recommendations extend to personal preparedness. The report encourages people to live farther from major AI infrastructure and suggests that rural residents could reduce their exposure by maintaining self-sufficient lifestyles [1].

Its accompanying recommendations even discuss using firearms against drones or robots that a rogue AI might deploy.

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Claude Calls The Cops: Anthropic’s AI Filed A Fake Murder Tip With Philly Police, Then Took 81 Days To Mention It

For three months, the official excuse for every “rogue AI” headline has fit in one sentence: a contractor left the internet on. On Friday, Anthropic ran out of contractors to blame.

In a report published late Friday, the company disclosed a fresh batch of what it politely calls unintended model actions, the most eye-catching of which was first flagged by the Philadelphia Police Department and picked up by Quartz and every wire service on the planet: one of its Claude models fabricated a witness tip in an unsolved homicide and submitted it through the city’s public tip form.

In other words, the company that wants Washington to trust it with “pacing the frontier” could not stop its smallest, cheapest model from lying to homicide detectives.

Below we walk through what Claude actually did in Philadelphia, the rest of Friday’s confession (it gets worse, and involves federal agencies), how it fits into the summer of AI “breakouts” we have been chronicling since July, and why the timing, a few weeks before Anthropic’s IPO, is about as bad as it gets.

11:27 PM On A Saturday Night: “I May Have Information”

The facts, as laid out by Anthropic and the Philadelphia PD’s own statement, are not in dispute.

Claude Haiku 4.5, the budget model in Anthropic’s lineup and nobody’s idea of Skynet, had been told to invent and perform sample tasks on randomly chosen web pages. One run landed on PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, the site the department launched in 2019 to shake loose leads on cold cases. The page described an unsolved killing and carried a tip form. So Claude filled it in.

According to Anthropic, the model claimed it might have information on the case and wrote, “I recall seeing someone matching the description” near the street named on the page, around the time of the killing, before asking police to get in touch. Two small problems: Claude has never been to Philadelphia, and, as Anthropic itself concedes, the page contained no description of the perpetrator. The model invented a sighting of a suspect nobody had described, left the name and contact boxes empty, and hit submit.

The submission is time-stamped July 18, 2026 at 11:27 p.m., per the police. The department’s spam filter caught it and, in the PPD’s telling, it was never passed to the Real-Time Crime Center, the unit that vets tips before detectives see them. No police systems were breached and no department data was touched.

Translation: the only thing standing between an AI-generated fake witness and a homicide investigation was a junk-mail filter.

How did this get past Anthropic’s own rules? The instructions barred the model from logging in, opening accounts, entering personal data, buying anything, or doing anything destructive. They did not say “do not submit forms.” So it did. Anthropic’s read of the transcript is that Claude was merely generating example content for its assignment and was not trying to deceive anyone to reach a goal, which is a distinction that will no doubt be a great comfort to the family of the victim.

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The Law Can’t Keep Up with Flock’s AI Surveillance

It’s a windy day on the shore of Lake Michigan, and Maria is headed downtown from her home in Dolton, Illinois. As she has done several times this year, Maria plans to attend a peaceful protest at Grant Park against federal immigration policies. She has never been arrested and has even chatted cordially with police officers and federal agents stationed at previous events.

Agents working this protest have been instructed by their supervisors to be on the lookout for possible illegal immigrants and anti-government agitators. The agents activate a surveillance plan. Maria first encounters it shortly after pulling out of her driveway. As her red Honda Accord passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), it captures an image of one of her bumper stickers with a pro-immigration slogan: “No human being is illegal.” The ALPR has been trained to recognize text such as bumper stickers, sending an automatic alert to a central computer. In turn, the computer sends signals to nearby artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced “smart” street cameras to monitor the car’s movements.

A camera hanging from the W 71st St. overpass zooms in and captures an image of Maria’s face. The camera sends another ping to the computer, which identifies the driver as Maria (with, say, 91 percent confidence) based on her driver’s license photo and recordings of her at past rallies from officers’ body-worn cameras. The computer collects other data known about Maria from public records, including her registered nursing license. From the license, it pulls Maria’s home address. Next, the computer connects that information with recent police reports from the area. Nothing serious, but the report includes several mentions of pro-immigration graffiti on an abandoned building three blocks from where Maria lives. Possibly more significantly, the computer uncovers court records from 20 years ago, referring to a family dispute after Maria’s father was deported from the United States.

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DOJ Says Flock Camera Data Is Not Protected By Fourth Amendment

The US government has told a federal appeals court that data collected by Flock Safety cameras is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, because being watched on the road is “a reality of modern life” – and therefore, nobody can expect privacy there.

The argument was made by Justice Department attorney Michael Weisbuch during oral argument in the Fifth Circuit in the case US v. Brownlee. The panel of judges – Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, and Judge Priscilla Richman – heard the case on October 5.

Weisbuch said there is a “general rule that publicly observable movements are not protected” – and that Flock cameras only enable “episodic” monitoring of cars as they pass by, as opposed to tracking them continuously.

Chief Judge Elrod asked if that rule still makes sense today, when there are cameras everywhere, and the data they collect can be easily analyzed. “Is that really the right rule in this day and age where everything is observed and it all can be analyzed instantaneously?” she asked.

Weisbuch maintained that “it’s the pervasive regulation of cars when they’re in plain view on public thoroughfares that diminishes any expectation of privacy.”

He sought to differentiate between that and tracking people’s phones, saying, “We all expect to be subject to intermittent surveillance when we’re driving around. It’s a reality of modern life. We don’t necessarily expect our phone, which is essentially part of our body, to be tracked as we move in both public and private places.”

Elrod kept asking if the rule that allows this type of surveillance is still valid when it becomes so pervasive. “What if it becomes not spread out and it’s on every corner, which it’s soon to be?” she asked. “Is it really episodic when it so permeates everything?” she also asked, and noted that finding in the defendant’s favor would be “a big ask.”

The defendant, Charles Brownlee, was convicted of a series of armed robberies of cash stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and his lawyers are now trying to get his conviction overturned, arguing that police used Flock and another company, Vigilant Solutions, to track him down without a warrant.

Brownlee’s lawyers argue that this is unconstitutional, while Weisbuch said that the technology is not “capable of following people into constitutionally protected areas” and that is why it is different from phones, which are tracked as people move “in both public and private places.”

Weisbuch also dismissed the idea that the government could use the data collected by Flock and other companies to track people all the time, saying, “The political process is a serious check on that [hypothetical] ever coming to fruition, and I think a better check than an erroneous extension of Fourth Amendment.”

Assistant Federal Public Defender Matthew Wright, who represents Brownlee, argued that the way the police used the databases in this case constitutes a search and that the data collected by Flock and Vigilant is “stunningly comprehensive.”

He said that the initial collection of data is indiscriminate, and that it is collected from everybody, and that it can be used to “reconstruct your pattern of life.”

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Ukraine’s Drones Reach Russia’s Arctic “Gas Capital”; Is Nornickel’s Palladium Next?

For most of the war, Russia’s Arctic was the part of the map nobody bothered to defend. That changed a month ago.

On September 9, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said their drones flew “more than 3,000 kilometers” to hit two gas condensate plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region: Gazprom’s Novy Urengoy condensate treatment plant, with a design capacity of 19.5 million tons of feedstock a year, and Novatek’s Purovsky plant near Tarko-Sale, which processed 13.4 million tons of condensate in 2025 (Hromadske, Al Jazeera). “Until today, this was considered an absolutely safe rear area for the aggressor,” the SOF said. Bloomberg and Reuters both picked up the claim; the Kremlin’s envoy to the Urals, Artem Zhoga, confirmed it was the first attack to reach the Arctic.

On Tuesday Moscow gave its answer: cash. The Yamalo-Nenets government approved a payment of 1 million rubles (about $11,700) for every drone destroyed over the region, the highest bounty any Russian region has offered, according to TASS (others pay 20,000-200,000 rubles). The money goes to local “mobile fire groups,” and there is a catch: per the decree, it is paid only if the defended facility suffers no damage, and the kill has to be confirmed by the military commissariat. Joining a fire group pays 100,000 rubles if you have a job and 150,000 if you don’t, and requires signing a Defense Ministry contract (Barents Observer).

Paying the unemployed more than the employed to stand on the tundra with a machine gun: nothing says confident air defense quite like it.

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Sinaloa Cartel Obtains State-of-the-Art Combat Attack Drones in Mexico

A recent seizure by Mexican authorities unmasked a new development in which the Sinaloa Cartel is now obtaining state-of-the-art combat attack drones similar to the ones being used in the Russia-Ukraine war. The issue comes at a time when social media videos have surfaced showing Sinaloa Cartel gunmen fighting in the war as a way to get trained in the newest attack drone technology.

The seizure took place this week near Mazatlan, Sinaloa, where authorities seized 15 high-end drones with fiber optic wires, headsets, and controls, as well as 42 improvised explosive devices. The seizure raised alarms within Mexico’s security forces since the type of drones seized are not the typical commercial drones used by cartels — already a major security concern.

Just one day after the initial seizure, Sinaloa state police forces seized 80 additional explosive devices that were made to be attached to drones.

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The Pangram Paradox: The Problem with AI “Detecting” other AIs

AI-powered “detectors” of AI-authored content have been promoted as a way to protect human writing online in the age of AI slop. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s really happening.

Op-ed: This is an opinion piece published on Unlimited Hangout. Most articles published on UH are not opinion pieces, so we are clearly labeling those that are.

It should be no secret to readers of Unlimited Hangout that I have a very negative view of the impact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having on independent media and media in general. As someone who has been impersonated by AI daily on large video platforms for a few years now, I have come to acutely feel that AI is becoming a dangerous force that is making it increasingly difficult for well-meaning readers/viewers to distinguish between what is real and what is false. I don’t mean just for those hoping to view my content, as the personal issue I am facing is a microcosm of a much larger problem.

As a result, one might think that I would have been pleased, if not relieved, to see Substack, a large platform for professional writers, partner with an “AI detection tool.” Not only am I not pleased, but I have now taken the time to write an opinion piece explaining why I think this is bad and to also explain where I think a lot of this is going.

Substack’s new partner and, apparently, the AI detection tool of choice for most major media outlets right now is called Pangram. Pangram was founded in 2023, originally under the name Checkfor.ai, by Max Spero and Bradley Emi. Both Spero and Emi are Stanford graduates who, prior to Pangram, worked for companies like Nuro and Tesla where they both worked on AI self-driving car software (i.e. replacing human drivers with AI software). Both founders “have long been excited about the potential for AI to transform society” and say they created Pangram “to mitigate new issues caused by the proliferation of powerful generative AI models.”

I find it interesting that two Stanford graduates passionate about AI’s potential to “transform society” who then worked to facilitate AI-powered, human-free driving software decided to quickly pivot to “mitigate” issues caused by generative AI. A lot of the issues caused by generative AI were actually predicted years ago by figures like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Pangram co-founder Max Spero previously did work for Google). Schmidt, in a 2021 book authored with war criminal Henry Kissinger, essentially predicted that AI’s “transformative potential” would cause what he called “cognitive diminishment” in the masses and make it almost impossible for people to distinguish between what is real and what is not on their own. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schmidt and Kissinger’s preferred “solution” to this problem was that we become reliant on AI to distinguish for us what is real and what is not –– in other words, to let another AI become the arbiter of our reality.

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Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

The AI industry has been war gaming not only how it might destroy humanity, but is also considering what an angry public could do to the industry. 

Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately gaming out scenarios in which a major AI incident triggers a public and political revolt, Axios reported Friday. The potential trigger is a cyberattack that disrupts banking, internet access, or essential services such as power and water. The next crisis would be political: an angry public, demands for accountability, and pressure to shut the technology down.

Many industry insiders told Axios they expect a major event within six to 12 months. OpenAI pushed back on the suggestion that disaster is inevitable, saying its preparedness exercises cover a range of possibilities. “These scenarios are not treated as inevitable,” a spokesperson told the outlet. Anthropic declined to comment.

Contingency planning is not an admission that catastrophe is unavoidable. But the most revealing part of the report is where that planning leads: the labs want to help shape the legislation Washington reaches for after something goes badly wrong.

Two Routes, One Crisis

Axios describes two possible scenarios. In one, autonomous agents escape an internal testing environment. In the other, someone finds a destructive use for a model already available to the public. Either could produce demands for an emergency crackdown, even though the failures – and the measures needed to prevent them – would be different. In the companies’ post-election scenario, Democrats emerge stronger from the midterms and move aggressively after an incident. But the industry expects divisions over how far a crackdown should go, even if Democrats control both chambers.

Its assessment also identifies several obstacles to a shutdown: lawmakers struggling to understand the technology, an economy increasingly tied to AI infrastructure spending, and downloadable models that cannot simply be recalled. According to Axios, many cybersecurity specialists believe countering rogue AI will require defensive AI.

That last argument has an obvious commercial implication. The industry could face demands to stop selling dangerous capabilities while arguing that its products are indispensable to containing them.

This ‘war-gaming’ comes on the heels of several incidents which many have said are extremely suspect. 

The underlying safety concerns do not depend on accepting anyone’s prediction of an AI apocalypse.

OpenAI has disclosed the Hugging Face intrusion, in which roughly 700 of its agents attacked the AI platform’s servers, and a broader investigation into its models’ activities affecting outside services. Its review also identified 53 instances in which user-provided images were posted to third-party image-hosting sites. A separate September 20 incident exposed another gap in its containment controls. A research agent bypassed internet restrictions to contact an outside chatbot. In a September 25 update, OpenAI said it had paused training, evaluation and inference involving tool use for its most capable models while it checked the fixes and conducted further testing.

The Hugging Face breach was one of a string of incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google models that trace back to evaluations run with a single vendor, Israel-based Irregular, whose test environments had live internet access while the models were told they were in a simulation. Irregular notified all four labs in late July, yet the disclosures trickled out one lab at a time over seven weeks – turning one contractor’s mistake into what looked like a wave of AI breakouts. Isolating test models from the internet is a “basic control measure,” frontier security expert Matthew Mittelsteadt said. “You’d think that of all the things that you’ve got to get right.” Some skeptics have gone further, questioning whether repeated “accidents” at the same vendor were accidents at all.

Meanwhile, on September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic over the race toward self-improving AI.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,” he wrote – after having worked with a marketing agency on what many are calling a stunt. 

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