I don’t know whether to file this under creepy, or ridiculous, but being able to communicate directly through EEG read telepathy? Wow. Pentagon Preps Soldier Telepathy Push |
Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds.
At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the Pentagon’s mad-science division Darpa. The agency’s budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.” That’s on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy. Read more at www.wired.com |
Even though we know how to orderly evacuate our low-rise buildings. However, such incidens always get reported on NPR. Air Force One Backup Rattles New York Nerves |
It’s the “improve U.S offensive capabilities in cyberwarfare” part that worries me. New Military Command to Focus on Cybersecurity
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Politics
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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to create a new military command to coordinate the defense of Pentagon computer networks and improve U.S. offensive capabilities in cyberwarfare, according to current and former officials familiar with the plans. |
The initiative will reshape the military’s efforts to protect its networks from attacks by hackers, especially those from countries such as China and Russia. The new command will be unveiled within the next few weeks, Pentagon officials said. Read more at online.wsj.com |
The old thinking goes that this kind of intelligence breach is organized and operated by large, sovereign intelligence agencies operating under some kind of government control. While this may still be the case, who exactly is responsible for this kind of data breach could be anyone–from competetive defense contractors to the agora of terrorist organizations one might choose to pin blame on.
Tech
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Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project
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Attacks like these — or U.S. awareness of them — appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official briefed on the matter. “There’s never been anything like it,” this person said, adding that other military and civilian agencies as well as private companies are affected. “It’s everything that keeps this country going.”
Many details couldn’t be learned, including the specific identity of the attackers, and the scope of the damage to the U.S. defense program, either in financial or security terms. In addition, while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, they weren’t able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.
Former U.S. officials say the attacks appear to have originated in China. However it can be extremely difficult to determine the true origin because it is easy to mask identities online. Read more at online.wsj.com |
If “domestic rightwing* terrorists” are “not currently planning acts of violence”, then what exactly makes them terrorists?
Who’s more ignorant: Right wingers or the goverment they’re afraid of?
Homeland Security document targets most conservatives and libertarians in the country
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If it’s this easy for silly vandals to cut FIBER, imagine what a motivated…um…person bent on creating “terror” can do. |
California: Vandals Cut Phone Cables, Police Say
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Tens of thousands of residents in Silicon Valley woke up to find themselves without Internet access or landline or wireless phone service after vandals apparently severed fiber optic cables, according to the police. Officials suspect that saboteurs opened manhole covers in San Jose and San Carlos, south of San Francisco, in the early morning hours and cut multiple fiber optic cables belonging to AT&T and Sprint. Approximately 52,000 Verizon landline and wireless customers were also without service. The police said they had no motive for the sabotage. AT&T is offering $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Konami Announces a Game Based On A 2004 Battle In Fallujah
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| “The idea for the game … came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. … ‘The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that’s what they grew up playing,’ said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami… More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game’s action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor’s guilt after he was taken out of combat.”Read more at games.slashdot.org |
“But, it turns out, just about every assumption the Army had about its future was wrong. America’s wars wound up being against terrorists and insurgents, not other big armies. The enemy weapons of choice in those fights — metal-shredding roadside bombs — made a priority of more armor, not less. The U.S. military-industrial complex’s attempts to make the combat vehicles electric floundered.” Pentagon Chief Rips Heart Out of Army’s ‘Future’ |
| As one Capitol Hill source put it, “They wanted to make it too
big to fail, and in the process, made it a failure.”Read more at blog.wired.com |
Who should you trust with cybersecurity?
- Our most secretive, virtually unaccountable agency that has an excellent track record of counterintelligence–and happens to have the largest brain trust in the Federal Government?
- An incompetent cabinet-level agency cobbled together in the wake if 9-11 that’s still trying to find its footing–but is perhaps one of the most scrutinized and examined parts of our Federal Bureaucracy.
While we’re still squabbling about defense, at least the Air Force (tagline: “Air, Space, Cyberspace”) seems to have offensive cybersecurity under control…right? NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to 'Grave Peril', Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress |
The government's national cybersecurity efforts would be in “grave peril” if they were dominated by the intelligence community, said Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division.
Yoran told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that although the Department of Homeland Security, which currently oversees the government's cybersecurity efforts, has demonstrated “inefficiency and leadership failure” in those efforts, moving the cyber mission to the National Security Agency “would be ill-advised” due to the agency's lack of transparency.
Two weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair told the House intelligence committee that the NSA should take over government cybersecurity duties, because the agency has the smarts and the skills for the job. Read more at blog.wired.com |
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