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As Competition with China Heats Up, Japan Turns to Africa for Critical Minerals
Demand for such minerals is expected to grow sharply in the coming years. There are, however, supply constraints, as only a limited number of countries produce them. Tokyo has signed agreements with a number of African countries as competition with China for key raw materials and minerals heats up.
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We Could Soon Be Getting Energy from Solar Power Harvested in Space
The idea of space-based solar power (SBSP) – using satellites to collect energy from the sun and “beam” it to collection points on Earth – has been around since at least the late 1960s. Despite its huge potential, the concept has not gained sufficient traction due to cost and technological hurdles. space-based solar power is technologically feasible, but to be economically viable, it requires large-scale engineering, and therefore long-term and decisive commitment from governments and space agencies.
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Using Quantum Computing to Protect AI from Attack
Despite their incredible successes and increasingly widespread deployment, machine learning-based frameworks such as AI remain highly susceptible to adversarial attacks – that is, malicious tampering with their data causing them to fail in surprising ways. AI can thus be fooled into making mistakes, sometimes risking lives — but quantum computing could provide a strong defense.
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Tech Breakthrough Could Increase States’ Use of Geothermal Power
Lawmakers in some states have been laying the groundwork to add geothermal power to the electrical grid and pump underground heat into buildings. Now, a technological breakthrough could dramatically expand those ambitions — and perhaps unleash a new wave of policies to tap into geothermal sources. If the technology’s promise is fulfilled, geothermal could power as much as 20% of the U.S. grid.
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What Is Most Likely Going on in Area 51? A National Security Historian Explains Why You Won’t Find Aliens There
One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.” As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.
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Natural or Not? Identifying Genetically Engineered Organisms
Ever since gene editing became feasible, researchers and health officials have sought tools that can quickly and reliably distinguish genetically modified organisms from those that are naturally occurring. Following the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the world at large became aware of this need. Now, such tools are being built. The development of new tools to detect modified bacteria, viruses, and cells has bolstered national security against biological threats.
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Develop 3D Printable Robots for Search-and-Rescue Operations
Researchers are developing a small and flexible 3D-printed robots with integrated fluidic circuits that can be rapidly fabricated for specific disasters. These robots can aid rescue efforts by exploring areas that pose potential hazards to humans or are otherwise inaccessible, including earthquake debris, flooded regions, and even nuclear accident sites.
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New Message Encryption Scheme Inspired by the Sudoku Puzzle
Researchers discuss a novel advance in data security in which the Japanese puzzle known as Sudoku promises a cryptographic system for text information that works even in situations where computational power is limited.
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Freezing Out the Risk of Thermal Attacks
Thermal attacks use heat-sensitive cameras to read the traces of fingerprints left on surfaces like smartphone screens, computer keyboards and PIN pads. Hackers can use the relative intensity of heat traces across recently touched surfaces to reconstruct users’ passwords. A team of computer security experts have developed a set of recommendations to help defend against ‘thermal attacks’ which can steal personal information.
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Better Resources to Mitigate Explosive Threats
Every second counts when responders encounter an explosive device, and critical decisions must be made quickly in order to neutralize the threat while also ensuring the security of civilians, property, and the responders themselves.
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The New Technology Which Is Making Cars Easier for Criminals to Steal, or Crash
There is much talk in the automotive industry about the “internet of vehicles” (IoV). This describes a network of cars and other vehicles that could exchange data over the internet in an effort to make transportation more autonomous, safe and efficient. There are many benefits to IoV, but some of these systems might also make our vehicles prone to theft and malicious attack, as criminals identify and then exploit vulnerabilities in this new technology. In fact, this is already happening.
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The Impending Privacy Threat of Self-Driving Cars
With innovations often come unintended consequences—one of which is the massive collection of data required for an autonomous vehicle to function. The sheer amount of visual and other information collected by a fleet of cars traveling down public streets conjures the threat of the possibility for peoples’ movements to be tracked, aggregated, and retained by companies, law enforcement, or bad actors—including vendor employees.
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Safeguarding U.S. Laws and Legal Information Against Cyberattacks and Malicious Actors
NYU Tandon School of Engineering researchers will develop new technologies to secure the “digital legal supply chain” — the processes by which official laws and legal information are recorded, stored, updated and distributed electronically.
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Randomized Data Can Improve Our Security
Huge streams of data pass through our computers and smartphones every day. In simple terms, technical devices contain two essential units to process this data: A processor, which is a kind of control center, and a RAM, comparable to memory. Modern processors use a cache to act as a bridge between the two, since memory is much slower at providing data than the processor is at processing it. This cache often contains private data that could be an attractive target for attackers.
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Major Update to NIST’s Widely Used Cybersecurity Framework
The world’s leading cybersecurity guidance is getting its first complete makeover since its release nearly a decade ago. NIST has revised the framework to help benefit all sectors, not just critical infrastructure.
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.