Tag: technology

War Department Expands Use Of High-Energy Laser And Microwave Capabilities

The Department of War (DOW) has announced the selection of four high-energy laser and high-powered microwave systems to expand its operational capabilities across the United States.

The directed-energy systems were selected following a counter-drone pilot program by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, according to an Oct. 5 DOW statement.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of the task force.

“This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland,” Ross said.

The four systems selected for the pilot are laser weapon systems from defense companies Boeing, Kord, and AeroVironment, and a microwave system from Epirus.

The pilot program comes after Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard said during a symposium in Alabama on Aug. 13 that American military bases were ill-equipped to defend against swarm drone attacks.

Jarrard warned that small, unmanned aircraft systems or drones were quickly proliferating in the open market, posing a major security threat in the hands of malicious actors.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) does not have the decision speed to respond to swarms of small drones, said Jarrard, who is vice commander of NORAD’s United States Element.

“We don’t have the sensors,” Jarrard said. “So we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that, and obviously we’ve seen it used. We’re seeing it used on a daily basis around the world, and we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate that threat, but we’re not there yet.”

During a Sept. 30 address at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called drone warfare the “biggest battlefield revolution” in many generations.

The latest pilot phase will test the performance of the directed-energy systems, providing real-time data and feedback on requirements, costs, and best practices of these technologies, the DOW said in the statement.

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US Grants Safety Feature Exemption For Self-Driving Trucks

Federal regulators have approved a five-year exemption for self-driving trucking companies from rules that require drivers to place warning devices around a stopped truck.

The Department of Transportation said Wednesday it has agreed to allow autonomous trucking companies to use warning beacons mounted on the truck cab to avoid needing human drivers. The decision removes a hurdle for companies seeking to expand commercial driverless operations in the United States.

Companies must notify the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) beforehand if they want to operate under the exemption. They must also report any crashes involving a vehicle while the cab-mounted warning beacons are activated or should have been activated.

Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo and Aurora jointly sought a waiver of the rule in 2023.

Pennsylvania-based Aurora sued FMCSA in early 2025 over the decision not to approve the waiver during the Biden administration. The company said in October 2025 that it was filing to dismiss the lawsuit after the department issued a three-month waiver. That waiver was extended several times.

Aurora filed a new application in April, seeking a five-year exemption to allow trucks to use beacons instead of roadside warnings.

The company, which has around 20 self-driving trucks in on-road operations, told Reuters that warning beacons enhance roadside safety without putting a person in harm’s way.

In May last year, it said it was launching a commercial self-driving truck service in Texas, hauling between Dallas and Houston. The company said it planned to expand that service to El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix by the end of 2025, adding it had briefed officials before the driverless launch.

Aurora said in its July 2026 shareholder letter filed with the SEC that it is targeting 200 driverless trucks in operation by year-end.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in the United States, said last year that its representatives testified at the Nevada Capitol in Carson City, asking lawmakers to support legislation requiring all commercial vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds to have a trained human safety operator behind the wheel.

“For Big Tech companies to think they can come into any state and replace the jobs of hardworking union members with this dangerous and inferior technology is an insult to professional drivers everywhere,” Peter Finn, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, said in April 2025. “SB 395 is critical to protecting the middle class. That is why we are demanding that Nevada lawmakers vote in favor of this legislation.”

The legislation, SB 395, passed the Nevada Senate but failed to advance in the state’s assembly.

The Epoch Times reached out to Aurora for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

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‘Bunker Mode’: OpenAI’s Jaw-Dropping Math Blitz Draws Boycott, Warning Over Crypto Wallets

OpenAI just unleashed hundreds of AI-generated mathematical papers in a single release, which include breakthroughs on problems that have frustrated researchers for generations. The pace of discovery here has started to freak out mathematicians – who are now calling for a boycott – while top minds in crypto are raising a chilling question: could AI eventually undermine the mathematics protecting digital wallets before quantum computing?

On October 6, the company published 722 manuscripts covering 372 groups of related findings, all generated by an internal AI model that has not been released to the public. The papers appeared in a public GitHub repository. OpenAI says the work emerged from testing the model on roughly 4,000 research problems, with each result in the final collection using, on average, computing power equivalent to about three hours of ChatGPT Pro’s thinking mode. The collection includes claims about prime numbers, geometry and the mathematics underlying computing, touching problems that have resisted some of the world’s best minds for decades.

Perhaps the most startling claim concerns the Riemann hypothesis, a mathematical puzzle dating to 1859 that deals with the hidden patterns governing prime numbers – the building blocks from which every whole number greater than one can be made.

For math nerds: 

Mathematicians study those patterns through a special mathematical function, looking in particular at the points where it equals zero. The full Riemann hypothesis predicts that all the important zeros fall along one precise line. OpenAI’s model has not proved that. Instead, it claims to have ruled out zeros across an enormous, permanently defined region where previous proofs offered a much narrower guarantee. If the claim holds up, it would be a major advance toward understanding one of mathematics’ most famous unsolved problems.

For specialists, the dividing line in the new claim is a value of 7/8, while the full hypothesis would require 1/2. The related equations are known as the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions. For everyone else, the point is simpler: the AI claims to have established a far stronger limit on where these crucial mathematical points can appear, without claiming to have settled the entire puzzle.

Other OpenAI papers claim progress on the Hodge conjecture – which concerns the structure of complex geometric shapes – though only for a class of objects called CM abelian varieties.

Math nerds rejoice? Or panic?

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Russia’s Crown Jewel Refinery Ablaze After Drone Strike, Data Center Also Hit In War First

Ukrainian drones have hit a major Russian industrial hub and oil refinery which lies very far away from the front lines of fighting, in Western Siberia, north of the Kazakh border.

The Omsk Oil refinery and industrial complex is located well over 1500 miles from the Ukrainian border. Regional Governor Vitaly Khotsenko announced Telegram that several drones were shot down by air defenses, but that one made it through to impact.

Ukraine’s General Staff was quick to own up to the Thursday attack, stating, “The destruction of such facilities is the exercise by Ukraine of its inalienable right to self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter and is aimed at reducing the military-economic potential of the Russian Federation.”

While the extent of potential damage to the refinery itself remains unknown, images from local residents showed explosions and fire in the area near the oil refinery.

Emergency crews are active at the scene of the facility, Russia’s largest, which is owned by Gazprom Neft

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US To Deploy Anti-Ship Missile System To Japanese Island Near Taiwan

The US military will deploy an anti-ship missile system to Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni, which lies just 68 miles east of Taiwan, an unprecedented move that will ratchet up tensions with China.

US Marines will deploy with the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS, as part of Keen Sword, the largest joint US-Japanese biennial military exercise.

The NMESIS has a range of about 115 miles, putting it within striking range of vessels patrolling the eastern coast of Taiwan. According to The South China Morning Post, China has stepped up coast guard and naval activity in the area in response to maritime boundary talks announced in May between Japan and the Philippines.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, told China’s Global Times that the deployment increases the risk of miscalculation between the US and China and that Beijing may respond by conducting its own military drills in the area.

The Okinawa Defense Bureau first disclosed the deployment on October 1, and it will also include a Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or Maidas, a ground-based air defense system also used by the Marine Corps’ littoral force.

The first Marine Littoral Regiment was established in 2022 as part of the Marine Corps’ Force Design strategy, which is explicitly focused on preparing for a potential conflict with China. The idea was to create mobile Marine units equipped with anti-ship missiles and other weapons that can rapidly deploy along what is known as the First Island Chain, a string of archipelagos stretching from Japan’s southern islands through Taiwan and the Philippines and into the southern South China Sea.

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More Ukrainian-Style One-Way Attack Drones Seized In Mexico

The emergence of fiber-optic one-way attack drones among Mexican cartels signals a troubling security threat just south of the US border.

Images published by local outlet Luz Noticias show that the Mexican Army seized Category 1 suicide drones with fiber-optic cable reels and improvised explosives. This is sparking ongoing concerns that low-cost attack drones associated with the Ukraine-Russia war and the US-Iran conflict are spreading to narco-terrorists in the Western Hemisphere.

Mexican troops found 15 drones and more than 40 improvised explosive devices in the municipality of El Rosario during security patrols on Monday. The municipality is situated in southern Sinaloa.

Here’s what the outlet said:

During the inspection , Mexican Army personnel located and seized drones , drone controllers , fiber optic cables, batteries, improvised explosive devices , chargers, cartridges, long guns , tactical vests, and ballistic plates.

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Finland orders halt to work on two Google data centres

Finnish authorities have ordered a halt to building work at two planned Google data centres amid concerns over the clearance of more than 300 hectares of forest.

The sites form part of Google’s record €13bn (£11bn; $15bn) investment in Finland, announced less than a month ago and described by the company as its largest single investment in Europe.

The Finnish Supervisory Agency (LVV) said work at one site was carried out without a mandatory environmental impact assessment and ordered measures that would “significantly alter the environment” to be suspended by 23 October.

Google said it had “fallen short of our own high standards in this instance” and would follow the agency’s guidance.

The orders relate to preparatory work carried out at the planned data centre sites in Muhos and Kajaani.

According to LVV’s head of environment Tommi Muilu, work at the sites included the removal of trees and topsoil, the construction of site roads and storage areas, and changes to ditches.

Tuike Finland, the company behind Google’s data centre projects, has been asked to provide an explanation and set out how it intends to proceed by 14 October. The agency said it could begin “enforcement proceedings” if the company failed to comply with its demand.

Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, had previously told the AFP news agency that “nature sites which should be preserved” had been felled. The conservation group had previously called for work to be halted while the environmental requirements were examined.

In a statement to the BBC, Google said: “We understand the concerns and have fallen short of our own high standards in this instance.”

It said it had “acted in good faith under the Forestry Act”, carried out nature surveys and put measures in place to protect areas of high environmental value.

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OpenAI Shops $30 Billion Round To UAE Funds, BlackRock As Altman’s ‘Bad Things’ Remark Draws Bipartisan Fire

With its planned IPO on ice for the moment, OpenAI is pitching a $30 billion funding round to a group of United Arab Emirates sovereign funds led by Abu Dhabi’s MGX, along with BlackRock, at a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation, Bloomberg reported Monday. There is no lead investor, and the price was set by OpenAI rather than negotiated. Meanwhile CEO Sam Altman has sparked a firestorm in DC with comments that the world should accept “some bad things happening” for the benefits of AI.

The OpenAI round

The UAE funds are considering an investment up to $10 billion between them at that $1.4 trillion valuation – which is is 64% above the $852 billion post-money valuation of the $122 billion round in March. The figure would also place OpenAI’s valuation above Anthropic, which was at $965 billion in May.

OpenAI’s annualized revenue has reportedly passed $40 billion, up 70% since July. That makes the ask roughly 35x run-rate for a company that Fortune says booked $6.7 billion of revenue and an operating loss in Q2, and that the FT reported spent $34 billion last year. One FT source said OpenAI “needs capital.” OpenAI says the March round left it with plenty. OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO on June 8. Then, on Sept. 12, Altman told Fortune it wouldn’t be 2026 – “an ill-advised moment to go public,” given what’s going on with safety (and then just recently said ‘screw it’ – AI is worth the danger). That said, in April the WSJ reported that OpenAI had missed revenue and user targets and that CFO Sarah Friar was worried the company might not be able to pay for future compute contracts if revenue failed to catch up.

Then there’s the backstop. As we reported last November, Friar suggested the federal government could “backstop” OpenAI’s data-center financing. In June, as we detailed, Altman began floating a plan to hand small OpenAI equity stakes to ordinary Americans, which we read as a backdoor backstop. We asked at the time whether the bailout would come before the IPO or after. Nobody mentioned the third option: a $30 billion bridge round, priced by the issuer, in between.

DeepSeek

Overnight, Bloomberg also reported that DeepSeek is close to locking in at least 80 billion yuan ($12 billion) of new funding, with signed term sheets that could take the total to 100 billion yuan – twice the 50 billion it originally set out to raise. Tencent and CATL are writing the biggest checks. This is the same round DeepSeek paused in late July, as we noted, after transcripts leaked of founder Liang Wenfeng saying that Huawei was giving DeepSeek about 16,000 Ascend 950s while the internet giants got hundreds of thousands, and that DeepSeek could get hold of some processors he called “noncompliant.” The round restarted in August at a valuation of about $74 billion and has now blown through its target. On annualized revenue reported at $400-500 million in July, that valuation is well over 100x sales. OpenAI at 35x looks cheap next to it.

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House Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Flock ALPR Data

A new US bill, Ban Flock Act, has been introduced, with the aim of stopping the federal government from using automated license plate readers (ALPRs).

“Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, who is planning a Senate version.

“Going to the doctor? Flock knows. Dropping your kid off at school? Flock is tracking you. Flock is always watching,” he continued.

According to the text of the House bill, H.R. 10691, federal agencies and officials are to be banned from acquiring, possessing, accessing or using ALPRs, or data collected by these devices, without an Act of Congress that explicitly authorizes it.

This would include data collected by private security networks, homeowners’ associations, commercial parking operators, and data brokers.

Any such authorization must set data retention at no more than 48 hours, and “rigorous protections for due process, privacy, free speech and association.”

State and local governments that have ALPRs would not be eligible for grants from the Justice, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security departments.

The bill, whose sponsors in the House are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and in the Senate Jeff Merkley, also seeks to make sure that no federal money is used to buy, lease, or operate ALPRs, while evidence obtained in violation of the proposed legislation would be inadmissible in federal court.

Individuals would be able to sue for actual and punitive damages, while state attorneys general would be able to sue to enforce the ban.

Toll systems would be exempt from the ban, but the data collected would have to be deleted within 48 hours of payment, and could not be checked against a law enforcement hot list.

“AI-powered cameras are keeping track of our every move and weaponizing this data against working people to make record profits,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Merkley noted that the right to privacy includes the freedom to move around the community without every move being monitored.

The Ban Flock Act is not the first attempt of its kind – in early September, Republicans Thomas Massie and Eric Burlison introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, that also seeks to cut federal funding to state and local governments that use ALPRs, as well as biometric surveillance cameras.

In August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered Flock cameras to be removed from state highways within 30 days, a year after the state approved $4.6 million for 440 of these devices.

Earlier in the summer, Senator Josh Hawley launched an investigation into Flock, and later expanded it to include Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada.

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Your Car Is Sharing More Private Data Than Your Smartphone. Who’s Getting It?

Modern vehicles, like every other technology device we own, from smartphones to fridges and even dog collars, are connected to the internet 24/7. They learn from us, know things about us, and most of the time use that information to make our lives easier. Cars, specifically, collect vital driving and behavior data that is borderline impossible to opt out of if you want to use your vehicle’s modern convenience features. And a new study recently found that your sensitive information (some of which isn’t even car-related) is being shared with far more parties than you realize.

The only way you’ll be surprised by what you’re about to read is if you’ve been in a coma for the last decade or two. But even for those of us who are mildly aware of how the technology we rely on every day interacts with us and the data we generate, this recent study by Boston’s Northeastern University in partnership with Consumer Reports will make you raise an eyebrow—several times.

The study covered 21 vehicles of 19 different brands (listed below) and 30 companion mobile apps that process and handle user data.

You can peruse the 18-page paper here, but you can also see the main takeaways below:

  • Companion Apps Share Data That Goes Beyond Car Stuff: 70% of companion apps contacted more than five unique ATA (advertising, tracking, analytics) domains, typically sharing location, timing, and other data packets. For most test vehicles, adding the automaker or third-party (usually pre-installed) app at least doubles the number of ATA companies exposed to the owner’s data. The Envista and Nissan Ariya, which were nearly silent on their own, each reach 20+ ATA companies once the app is counted. myCadillac contacted 51 ATA domains.
  • How Many Third-Party Apps Your Car Contacts Wildly Varies: Over Wi-Fi, vehicles contacted at most four first-party domains but averaged about 9 integrated third parties. The Tesla Model 3 contacted 34 ATA domains and the Cybertruck 23, while the Mercedes EQS and Buick Envista contacted no third parties. Thirteen of the 21 vehicles contacted Google ATA domains, including ones like doubleclick.net that aren’t needed for core services. Vehicles with Android Automotive and Google services contacted many more trackers, and even sibling brands differed; oddly enough, the Envista, Lyriq, and Blazer did not behave in the same manner.
  • Some Apps Share Your VIN With Vendors, Something Not Even Your Smartphone Can Do: Seven apps (19 of 21 cars) transmitted personal information to ATA third parties: all four GM apps, HondaLink, Lincoln, and MyNissan. VINs were the most common, sent to recipients including Google, Microsoft, and Meta. The worry is that a VIN plus an email, phone number, or location lets an ad company link a specific person to their browsing and purchase history. The study also highlights that a VIN can’t be reset the way a phone’s advertising ID can. Also, I just published a blog this week about how I enjoyed Honda’s infotainment with Google Built-in, and cracked a joke about the price I am willing to pay for convenience.
  • OEMs Mostly Pass the Buck to Their Partners and Vendors: Of 17 manufacturers contacted for the study, 14 responded. All said their vendor contracts covered data flows. Five blamed embedded browsers in their apps, and seven said reading third-party terms is the consumer’s responsibility. Of course, if you opt out or simply don’t use the features, then you wouldn’t be utilizing your car to its full potential. Tesla warned about reduced functionality or inoperability, while Rivian warned about disabled navigation and over-the-air updates. The privacy policies disclosed that data may go to third parties but not which ones or why. Only Honda changed course. It had Amplitude delete the location data it received and stopped the app from sending it. Go Honda.
  • Gathering This Data Wasn’t Easy: Even if you only use the official apps pre-installed in your car, some of these may connect to your phone and ultimately open your browser. Once it does, the whole flow of data changes because it follows your phone’s browser settings, not your car’s. This means your car is now receiving cookies and browsing data and sharing them in ways you weren’t aware of or expected.

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