Doing the Math on the Dangers of AI | The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers | Zumwalt-Class Stealth Destroyer, and more

Now, the United Nations has taken a first step toward filling in these data gaps with the latest installment of its periodic report on e-waste around the world. Released last month, the new Global E-Waste Monitor shows the staggering scale of the e-waste crisis, which reached a new record in 2022 when the world threw out 62 million metric tons of electronics. And for the first time, the report includes a detailed breakdown of the metals present in our electronic garbage, and how often they are being recycled.

Zumwalt-Class Stealth Destroyer: Hypersonic Missile Truck or Giant Failure?  (James Holmes, National Interest)
Zumwalt-Class: Will it be a success or failure in the long run? It is neither fast nor cheap nor easy to swap out a warship’s major armament for something completely different. Nor is success foreordained.
The buzz surrounding these three U.S. Navy’s Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers, the otherworldly-looking men-of-war, has been muted of late. That’s because, for good reasons and bad, DDG-1000s remain a warship class of the future seven and one-half years after the lead ship formally entered service. Late last summer USS Zumwalt put into Pascagoula, Mississippi, to have its gun mounts removed and replaced with vertical launch cells—in effect silos embedded in the ship’s main deck and the innards below—for firing intermediate-range hypersonic missiles under the “Conventional Prompt Strike” program.
Conventional Prompt Strike is a U.S. Navy venture undertaken in conjunction with the Army’s “Long Range Hypersonic Weapon” program. If it bears fruit the collaboration will produce a “common hypersonic glide body,” a hypersonic guided missile deployable with both the sea and ground services. Hypersonics fly at Mach 5 or above and can maneuver to avoid an enemy’s defensive fire. Their characteristics boost the probability of a kill. Zumwalt’s vertical launch system will house a dozen of these lightning-quick missiles within four bulky large-diameter (87 inches wide) tubes. Pascagoula shipyard Huntington Ingalls Industries is slated to finish the backfit by 2025. 
But can it? The schedule’s the rub. 

Extreme Right-Wing Terrorist Group Terrorgram to Be Banned in UK  (The Telegraph)
Terrorgram, an extreme Right-wing terrorist group, is set to become the first online organization to be banned in the UK. The move would mean support for the group would be illegal, with punishments of up to 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine. A draft proscription order was laid in Parliament on Monday, and will come into effect on Friday if it is agreed by MPs. James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said: “The Terrorgram collective spreads vile propaganda and aims to radicalise young people to conduct heinous terrorist acts. “This is why we are outlawing membership or support for the group – we will not tolerate the promotion or encouragement of terrorism in the United Kingdom. “It will become the first online terrorist network to be proscribed, alongside 80 other extreme Right-Wing and Islamist organizations, as we continue to disrupt and outlaw terrorist groups to protect the British people.” Terrorgram will become the sixth extreme Right-wing terrorist group to be banned in the UK, on the list of 81 banned organizations.

German Culture Scene Unites Against Far-Right AfD Party  (Stuart Braun, DW)
As the populist, anti-immigrant AfD (Alternative for Germany) party were rising fast in the German polls in 2023, national culture collective Die Vielen (The Many) decided to act. The alliance of some 4,500 theaters, galleries and cultural institutions had been on hiatus since the COVID-19 pandemic. But Die Vielen members saw the upcoming European elections, to be held from June 6-9 — along with local and state ballots and a 2025 federal vote — as an existential threat to the pluralist democracy that allows artistic expression to flourish. Having initiated protests against the AfD in the run-up to the 2019 European elections, Die Vielen’s new campaign, “Shield & Shine,” brings grassroots art collectives and curators together with high art orchestras, stagehands, opera houses and audiences to create culture events that double as open forums for debate.  The goal, as articulated at a campaign launch in April, is to “stretch thousands of democratic protective umbrellas over all federal states” and hence neutralize the “normalization of right-wing extremist politics in democratic parliaments.”

The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers  (Dell Cameron, Wired)
The ability of the United States to intercept and store Americans’ text messages, calls, and emails in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come.
On Saturday, US president Joe Biden signed a controversial bill extending the life of a warrantless US surveillance program for two years, bringing an end to a months-long fight in Congress over an authority that US intelligence agencies acknowledge has been widely abused in the past.
At the urging of the agencies and with the help of powerful bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill, the program has also been extended to cover a wide range of new businesses, including US data centers, according to recent analysis by legal experts and civil liberties organizations that were vocally opposed to its passage.