A war, by any other name, would smell as sweet.
US Cyber
Command attacked Russian troll farm on Election Day 2018
The United States Cyber
Command launched an offensive campaign to silence one of Russia’s
most notorious troll operations on the day of the 2018 midterm
elections, according to a
new report by The Washington Post. The operation
targeted the Internet Research Agency, a private company linked to
the Kremlin and often used for disinformation campaigns.
The US operation seems to
have taken the IRA entirely offline during Election Day, to the point
that many employees complained to systems administrators that they
were unable to access the internet, according to the Post’s
sources.
… It’s one of the most
aggressive publicly reported campaigns the cyber command has yet
taken, and the legal status of such actions remains in flux. In
theory, infrastructural attacks against agents of a foreign
government could have significant diplomatic repercussions, and run
the risk of being taken as an act of war. But in
practice, these actions are rarely officially attributed and
political blowback is typically minimal.
The official database of the Ministry of Silly
Walks? Every ache and pain is reflected in my ‘silly walk.’
Chinese
police test gait-recognition technology from AI startup
South
China Morning News: “You can tell a lot of things from the way
someone walks. Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Watrix says
its software can identify a person from 50 metres away – even if
they have covered their face or have their back to a camera –
making it more than a match for Sherlock Holmes. Known as gait
recognition, the technology works by analysing thousands of metrics
about a person’s walk, from body contour to the angle of arm
movement to whether a person has a toe-in or toe-out gait, to then
build a database. “With facial recognition people need to look
into a camera – cooperation is not needed for them to be recognised
[by our technology],” said Huang Yongzhen, co-founder and chief
executive of Watrix, in an interview in Beijing.
Features like this have given Watrix an edge in
catching runaway criminals, who tend to avoid surveillance, said
Huang. Police on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing,
have already run trials of gait recognition technology, said Huang,
and the company officially launched its 2.0 version last week, which
supports analysis of real-time camera feeds at a mega-city level.
“We are currently working with police on criminal investigations,
such as tracking suspects from a robbery scene,” said Huang, who
was dressed all in black for the interview in his company office.
“Currently, China has about 300,000 wanted criminals on the loose
and counting. [Our software’s] database includes those with a prior
gait record…”
Self-driving fighters.
Avalon
2019: Boeing to partner with Australia on development of multimission
unmanned aircraft system
Boeing and Australia's
Department of Defence (DoD) are to partner in developing a concept
demonstrator for a large unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that will
support and protect air combat missions.
… Dr Shane Arnott, director of Boeing's
Phantom Works International, said system development had been under
way for some time, but declined to say for how long.
The first flight will take place in Australia and
is scheduled for 2020. The model unveiled at Avalon was
representative of the intended flight vehicle, he said.
Although the platform would be powered by a single
light commercial jet engine to save costs, "it will need to take
off from the same runways and run the same speeds" as the
aircraft with which it was teamed.
The system is not remotely piloted but will be
semi-autonomous and controlled from both the ground and the air, he
explained. "The intention is the teaming system will be an
extension of the air power assets that it will be supporting,"
Arnott explained.
I
have concerns.
Is war
coming to South Asia?
… On February 26, the Indian military launched
what it said were retaliatory air raids which allegedly
destroyed a "terrorist" training camp in Pakistan's
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Pakistan for its part also responded
with air raids across the line of control (LoC) which separates
Indian- from Pakistan-administered Kashmir
and claims to have downed
two Indian fighter jets.
Military standoffs or escalations between India
and Pakistan are not new, nor is the use of military means to settle
scores. However, what sets this round of escalation apart is that
this is the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war that the two
countries attack targets deep within each other's territories.
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