OUR PICKSTerrorists Are Using Consumer Drones | Rising Foreign Terror Threats in U.S. | Wargames and AI: A Dangerous Mix, and more
· Terrorists Are Using Consumer Drones—and It’s Getting Harder to Stop Them
Hamas used commercially available consumer drones as a means to reduce the technological gap that exists vis a vis Israel’s military
· Wargames and AI: A Dangerous Mix That Needs Ethical Oversight
AI’s integration into wargames can subtly influence leadership decisions on war and peace—and possibly lead to existential risks
· Chicago Gang Leader Admits to Repeatedly Attempting to Provide Money to ISIS, Trafficking Fentanyl
The 41-year-old believed that he had given the money to a confidential source, believing it would be sent to an ISIS soldier in combat in Syria
· Arizona Man Charged for Allegedly Inciting “Religiously Motivated Terrorist Attack” That Killed 2 Officers, Bystander in Australia
Investigators say the attack was premeditated, and that it involved “advanced planning and preparation against law enforcement.”
· Six French Teens Await a Verdict Over Their Alleged Roles in Islamic Extremist Killing of a Teacher
The teacher was beheaded by an Islamic extremist after he showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class for a debate on freedom of expression
· Intelligence Report Warns of Rising Foreign Terror Threats in U.S. Amid Israel-Hamas War
DHS report mirrors FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony on Capitol Hill, during which he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I see blinking lights everywhere I turn”
· Personal Data in the Cloud is Under Siege. End-to-end Encryption Is Our Most Powerful Defense.
Breaches are at an all-time high. Policymakers and technologists must urgently work together to keep data safe, and there is no stronger protection for data in the cloud than end-to-end encryption.
· The Universities That Don’t Understand Academic Freedom
Leaders of prestigious institutions who can’t say whether advocating “the genocide of Jews” is allowed on campus seem to have a basic literacy problem with free speech
Terrorists Are Using Consumer Drones—and It’s Getting Harder to Stop Them (Erik English, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was shocking as much for its brutality as its effectiveness. Warfare experts have noted Hamas’s use of commercially available consumer drones as a means to reduce the technological gap that exists vis a vis Israel’s military. Many have noted that Hamas implemented strategies from the ongoing war in Ukraine to make effective use of drone technology, but the situation is more complicated than that.
Wargames and AI: A Dangerous Mix That Needs Ethical Oversight (Ivanka Barzashka,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
In early November, world leaders assembled for the first global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, the once top-secret British site where codebreaking technology helped secure victory in World War II. The summit aimed to understand risks from frontier AI (highly capable general-purpose models that can perform a wide variety of tasks), particularly when used by “bad actors,” and galvanize international action.
AI’s integration into wargames can subtly influence leadership decisions on war and peace—and possibly lead to existential risks. The current landscape of human-centric wargaming, combined with AI algorithms, faces a notable “black box” challenge, where the reasoning behind certain outcomes remains unclear. This obscurity, alongside potential biases in AI training data and wargame design, highlights the urgent need for ethical governance and accountability in this evolving domain. Exploring these issues can shed light on the imperative for responsible oversight in the merging of AI with wargaming, a fusion that could decide future conflicts.
