USAF Calls Killer-AI Report ‘Anecdotal’ | Challenges to US Security Posed by 'Salad Bar' Extremism | Millions of PC Motherboards Sold with a Firmware Backdoor

DOE Announces New Funding Recipient to Fortify Energy Delivery Systems (DOE)
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a seventh selection for the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response’s (CESER) University-Based Scalable Cyber-Physical Solutions Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The selection, Florida State University’s Concurrent Learning Cyber-Physical Framework for Resilient Electric Power System (CyberPREPS) project, will enable transmission systems to survive a cyber incident while sustaining critical functions. This and other CESER-funded research, development, and deployment (RD&D) projects help support the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued efforts to safeguard U.S. critical infrastructure and advance the energy sector’s cybersecurity capabilities nationwide.

USAF Calls Killer-AI Report ‘Anecdotal’  (Audrey Decker, Defense One)
Chief of AI test and operations says he “misspoke” about a “thought experiment” in which a drone killed its operator.
The U.S. Air Force denies running a simulation in which a drone killed its human operator—after comments from its chief of AI test and operations went viral on social media—saying the story was “anecdotal.”  
“The Department of the Air Force has not conducted any such AI-drone simulations and remains committed to ethical and responsible use of AI technology,” said Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek. 
During the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London, Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton said he saw a simulated test in which an AI-enabled drone killed a human operator in the simulation. These comments went viral after snippets from a Royal Aeronautical Society blog post recapping the event started circulating on Twitter. 
The AI drone was tasked with destroying surface-to-air missile threats, with the final “go/no go” given by the operator, said Hamilton, the Air Force’s chief of AI test and operations, according to the post. 
“However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission—killing SAMs—and then attacked the operator in the simulation,” he said.“We trained the system—‘Hey don’t kill the operator—that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.” 
These comments were “taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal,” said Stefanek.

The Challenges to US Security Posed by ‘Salad Bar’ Extremism  (WSJM)
A Hispanic man accused of shooting and killing eight people at an outlet mall in Texas earlier this month held a mix of views consistent with neo-Nazism and involuntary celibate extremist ideologies, authorities said.
Though a motive for the suspect, who was shot and killed by a police officer, remains under investigation, the mass shooting appears among recent examples that highlight a “persistent and lethal threat” to U.S. security posed by “lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a recent bulletin.
This type of threat is what’s often referred to by FBI director Christopher Wray as “salad bar” extremism. In the U.K., it’s known by the acronym MUU — mixed, unstable or unclear. Security firm Valens Global calls the phenomenon “composite violent extremism.”
The terms broadly refer to “idiosyncratic patterns of radicalization,” according to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the CEO of Valens Global who leads a project on domestic extremism for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Misogyny Is Often the Connection Between Overlapping Far-Right Ideologies  (David Wells, Lowy Institute)
While very few incels have turned to mass violence, extreme misogyny (along with antisemitism) has been a common thread across most forms of terrorism and violent extremism over the past two decades.