Tag: technology

What happens if the robot army is defeated?

Many of the national security establishment’s leading voices say America’s military needs to rapidly modernize by embracing the digital future through adopting Artificial Intelligence, network-centric warfare, and uncrewed weapons.

Some even claim that such technology has already fundamentally changed the nature of war. The Pentagon’s technologists and the leaders of the tech industry envision a future of an AI-enabled military force wielding swarms of autonomous weapons on land, at sea, and in the skies.

However, before the United States fully mortgages its security to software code and integrated circuits, several questions must be addressed. Assuming the military does one day build a force with an uncrewed front rank, what happens if the robot army is defeated? Will the nation’s leaders surrender at that point, or do they then send in the humans?

The next major question is, what weapons will the humans wield? It is difficult to imagine the services will maintain parallel fleets of digital and analog weapons. Judging by current trends, Pentagon leaders are much more likely to invest the bulk of their procurement budgets in purchasing autonomous or “optionally manned” systems like the XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle.

Those promoting such a future appear ignorant of a very simple truth: war is a human endeavor. Wars are fought to serve human ends. The weapons used are only the means to achieve those ends.

The humans on both sides of a conflict will seek every advantage possible to secure a victory. When a weapon system is connected to the network, the means to remotely defeat it is already built into the design. The humans on the other side would be foolish not to unleash their cyber warriors to find any way to penetrate the network to disrupt cyber-physical systems.

The United States may find that the future military force may not even cross the line of departure because it has been remotely disabled in a digital Pearl Harbor-style attack.

Technology certainly has its place in the military. Uncrewed aerial vehicles fill many of the roles traditionally performed by pilots flying expensive aircraft to take just one example. In certain circumstances, troops on the front lines should have the ability to employ technology directly.

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Someone Invited Kamala Harris To Speak At A Major AI Conference And Hoo Boy…

Someone thought it was a good idea to invite Kamala Harris to speak at AI conference HumanX at Fontainebleau in Las Vegas over the weekend, and it was obviously a disaster.

Harris delivered a word salad complete with Doritos on the side.

“Former Vice President Harris will share her vision for the future of AI, emphasizing the responsibility to shape this technology in a way that promotes human rights, privacy, and equal opportunity,” Business Wire suggested when Harris was announced as a speaker.

Instead she blathered on about how she is obsessed with nacho cheese Doritos.

“We did DoorDash ’cause I wanted Doritos. And the red carpet part was about to start and nobody wanted to leave to go to the grocery store,” Harris was filmed saying.

“So it was DoorDash … So I was willing to give up whatever might be the tracking of Kamala Harris’ particular fondness for nacho cheese Doritos for the sake of getting a big bag of Doritos as I watched the Oscars,” she furthered blathered, sounding completely drunk and breaking into inane cackling.

She continued, “And you can debate with me if it should be a right – I think it should. To expect that the innovation would also be weighted in terms of solving their everyday problems, which are beyond my craving for Doritos… but about whatever – and I know the work is happening – the scientific discoveries, for example to cure longstanding diseases I would love it if there was an investment in resources and solving the affordable housing issue in America.”

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The Singularity Has Already Happened

In mathematics, a singularity is where the equations go “non-linear”. Inputs go in, but the outputs are beyond understanding. In physics, it’s where the laws of three-dimensional Cartesian reality break down.

Ray Kurzweil hijacked the term and applied it to AI and exponential computing power: Moore’s Law would bring us all past the point where technology accelerates beyond human comprehension.

For Techno-Utopians, among them – the transhumanists, the Singularity will bring about a kind of eschatological event, a computerized “End Times” like a Rapture moment wherein technology acquires more brainpower than all of humanity combined, and deftly solves all our problems (unless the techno-doomers are right, and it annihilates us instead).

In Frazzledrip Overdrive, a recent piece that looked at ever-accelerating Future Shock, and the iterations of mass formation psychosis that causes – I was probably guilty of “burying the lede”.

It was that my current working theory is that “The Singularity” has already occurred:

I think that we are already in the post-singularity era. Right now. 

It happened within the last couple years with the AI wave – of third major technological wave of this century (internet, crypto, now AI) and the eighth major technological leap since the industrial revolution (electricity, radio/TV, telephones, semi-conductors, personal computers).

Now we’re past the point where the code is coding. The feedback loop there is already underway, and it too is accelerating…

What I mean by that is because we’re using AI and LLMs to cut code (create programming source code), and beyond that, those AI engines are producing computer code that is itself generating more code – we’ve essentially crossed the defining barrier of what the Singularity is supposed to be – which technology creating more intelligent versions of itself.

Granted – it has not resulted in an instantaneous Rapture-like moment of technological quantum leap across all aspects of our reality yet.

But if you haven’t noticed – since the advent of GPT 3 in 2023, itself an iteration of previous LLMs that were playing over at least a decade, the newer, faster, smarter iterations have been coming at a faster cadence and at shorter intervals.

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Laser Light Transformed Into a Supersolid in Groundbreaking Experiment

An international team of physicists has transformed laser light into a supersolid, marking an entirely new process for achieving this mysterious state of matter.

On the quantum level, matter often exhibits strange behaviors, and the supersolid state is one of the most counterintuitive examples. In this state, atoms arrange into a crystal lattice like a solid but also flow without friction, a property typically associated with liquids.

The Quest to Understand Supersolids

Scientists first proposed the idea of a solid that could demonstrate fluid-like flow in the 1960s, with theoretical exploration intensifying in the 1970s.

Helium was initially considered the most promising candidate for achieving this exotic phase of matter. However, early experiments attempting to produce a solid with superfluid properties yielded disappointing results. In the 1980s, physicist John Goodkind used ultrasound techniques to identify anomalies in matter that suggested supersolids might be feasible.

By the 2000s, new experimental data provided stronger hints of supersolid behavior, though some findings conflicted with theoretical predictions, making the state even more elusive.

Creating a Supersolid With Laser Light

For decades, researchers believed that achieving a supersolid state required ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensates combined with electromagnetic fields. This method, which was only successfully demonstrated in recent years, produced a material structured like table salt but also capable of flowing.

The latest research, however, takes an entirely different approach, creating a supersolid without using atoms at all.

The team began with a piece of gallium oxide designed with precise ridges to interact with an incoming laser beam. When the laser light struck the semiconductor’s ridges, it produced a quasiparticle known as a polariton. The shape of the ridges then constrained the polariton’s motion, forcing it into a supersolid state.

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What? Texas Needs Equivalent Of 30 Nuclear Reactors By 2030 To Power AI Data Centers

The AI infrastructure trade (aka the Power-Up America basket which we recommended one year ago before it soared into the stratosphere), had taken a back seat in recent weeks, with some marquee names such as a Vertiv, Contellation, Oklo and others, tumbling from record highs amid growing speculation that China’s DeepSeek – and other cheap LLM alternatives – will lead to far lower capex demands than what is currently projected.

But while the occasional hiccup is to be expected, the endgame for US infra/nuclear stocks looks (millions of degrees) bright. Consider Texas, where demand on the state power grid is expected to expand so immensely that it would take the equivalent of adding 30 nuclear plants’ worth of electricity by 2030 to meet the needs. That’s according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the grid.

The forecast is based on the addition of new data centers needed to power artificial intelligence. And it’s raising concerns about whether infrastructure in the state, which last week we said wants to be “king of nuclear power as the Next AI trade unfolds” – will be able to expand fast enough…. and at what cost.

Coming out of the pandemic, electricity demand on the Texas grid was already growing faster than anywhere else in the country, Bloomberg reports. And now that’s being supercharged by AI, with the state vying to become the data-center hub of the country, if not the world.

Individual projects are already starting to request 1 gigawatt of power and they pose new risks to maintaining a stable grid, said Agee Springer, Ercot’s senior manager of grid interconnections. A gigawatt is typically enough to power 250,000 homes in Texas. The data centers “present a reliability risk to the Ercot system,” said Springer, who spoke on a panel at Infocast’s ERCOT Market Summit in Austin this week.

“We’ve never existed in a place where large industrial loads can really impact the reliability of the grid, and now we are stepping into that world.”

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State Department To Use AI To Revoke Visas of Students Who ‘Appear Pro-Hamas’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-driven effort to revoke the visas of foreigners in the US who “appear pro-Hamas” in a crackdown targeting pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Axios reported on Thursday.

The report said the effort will involve AI-assisted reviews of social media accounts of tens of thousands of foreign students in the US on visas that will look for “evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.”

The language in the report suggests that any foreign students who attend pro-Palestine demonstrations or express sympathy for Palestinians online could be swept up in the crackdown since opponents of the Israeli siege on Gaza or US military support for Israel are often labeled “pro-Hamas.”

Civil liberty groups have strongly criticized President Trump’s promises to deport foreign students who attend pro-Palestine protests since the speech of foreigners inside the US is supposed to be protected under the First Amendment.

“If we open the door to expelling foreign students who peacefully express ideas out of step with the current administration about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should expect it to swing wider to encompass other viewpoints too,” Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said in an op-ed for MSNBC in January.

“Today it may be alleged ‘Hamas sympathizers’ facing threats of deportation for their political expression. Who could it be in four years? In eight?” McLaughlin added.

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This Is How The Military Wants AI To Help Control America’s Nuclear Arsenal

While it has long been a world-ending threat in science fiction, U.S. Air Force and Space Force officials see artificial intelligence (AI) playing important, if not critical roles in the command and control enterprise at the heart of America’s nuclear deterrent capabilities.

AI has the potential to help speed up decision making cycles and ensure that orders get where they need to go as fast and securely as possible. It could also be used to assist personnel charged with other duties from intelligence processing to managing maintenance and logistics. The same officials stress that humans will always need to be in or at least on the loop, and that a machine alone will never be in a position to decide to employ nuclear weapons.

A group of officers from the Air Force and Space Force talked about how AI could be used to support what is formally called the Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) architecture during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Warfare Symposium, at which TWZ was in attendance. The current NC3 enterprise consists of a wide array of communications and other systems on the surface, in the air, and in space designed to ensure that a U.S. nuclear strike can be carried out at any time regardless of the circumstances.

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Computer with 800,000 human neurons launches for $35,000

Australian company Cortical Labs launched the world’s first commercial biological computer made from human brain cells fused with silicon hardware.

As reported in New Atlas, the CL1 uses 800,000 lab-grown human neurons on electrode arrays to create dynamic neural networks that learn and adapt more quickly than traditional AI while using far less power. A full rack of CL1 units consumes only 850-1,000 watts, a fraction of what traditional AI requires.

Cortical Labs said in their launch statement, “Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI) is inherently more natural than AI, as it utilizes the same biological material – neurons – that underpin intelligence in living organisms.”

Each unit houses living brain tissue in what the team describes as a “body in a box … it has pumps to keep everything circulating, gas mixing, and of course temperature control,”explains Chief Scientific Officer Brett Kagan.

The system can be purchased for US$35,000 or accessed remotely through cloud-based “Wetware-as-a-Service.” Potential applications include drug discovery and robotic intelligence development.

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Hydrogen Breakthrough: New Palladium Nanosheet Tech Could Accelerate Green Energy Revolution

Scientists have developed a cost-effective alternative to platinum for use in hydrogen production, replacing the expensive metal with palladium nanosheets to reduce costs and accelerate the shift to clean energy.

As global temperatures surpass the preindustrial benchmark outlined in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the need for large-scale hydrogen production has become more urgent to accelerate the transition to zero-emission alternatives. However, the widespread adoption of hydrogen technology has been hindered by its dependence on costly platinum-based catalysts, making it economically unfeasible for everyday use.

Novel Hydrogen Development

Dr. Hiroaki Maeda and Professor Hiroshi Nishihara of the Tokyo University of Science (TUS) led a team consisting of other researchers from TUS, as well as contributors from Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, Kyoto Institute of Technology, RIKEN SPring-8 Center, and the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan. The team produced a breakthrough in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) technology with their bis(diimino)palladium coordination nanosheets (PdDI), nearly duplicating platinum’s efficiency at a significantly lower cost.

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Mysterious Naval Vessel Spotted In Washington State Is A New DARPA Drone Ship

Aslender, partially covered naval ship that recently emerged in Washington state is the Defiant, a new medium-sized uncrewed surface vessel (USV) designed from the keel up to operate without any humans ever onboard. Developed under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, Defiant could be an important stepping stone for the U.S. Navy’s ambitions to add larger and more capable USVs to its fleets.

DARPA confirmed to TWZ that construction of the Defiant, also known by the hull code USX-1, was completed earlier this month. As noted, the first indications that the vessel had been launched came from residents in Washington state who spotted it being pushed by a tug through the Saratoga Passage in Puget Sound north of Seattle. This area of the Sound is also just a few miles from the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island. User @IntelWalrus on X was first to bring this to our attention.

The 180-foot-long, 240-metric ton Defiant is now set to “undergo extensive in-water testing, both dockside and at sea” and “is scheduled to depart for a multi-month at sea demonstration in spring 2025,” according to DARPA. It is unclear where exactly the vessel is currently docked. Serco Inc. is the primary contractor for the USV, which it has been developing since 2020. The company has told TWZ in the past that the core Defiant USV without any add-on mission systems has an approximately $25 million price tag.

The U.S. military has historically categorized uncrewed vessels like Defiant with lengths under 200 feet and displacements under 500 tons, but that are larger than ones with speedboat and jetski-type designs, as medium USVs (MUSV). Large USVs (LUSV) have been defined as ones up to 300 feet long and that displace up to 2,000 tons.

A picture of Defiant in the Puget Sound, as well as additional images DARPA has now released, show much of the vessel literally still under wraps. However, the overall hullform, along with the mast at the center sporting various commercial navigation radars and other antennas, is in line with models and computer-generated renders of the design shown in the past. An additional smaller mast with more radars and other antennas is also present on the bow.

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