DJI has lost its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense, failing to remove its designation as a Chinese Military Company. US District Court Judge Paul Friedman ruled the Pentagon has broad discretion to make such designations, finding sufficient evidence that DJI qualifies as a "military-civil fusion contributor" based on its recognition by China's National Development and Reform Commission as a National Enterprise Technology Center. The designation provides DJI substantial government benefits including cash subsidies, special financial support and tax benefits.

The judge rejected several of the DoD's other claims for insufficient evidence and noted the department confused two different Chinese industrial zones when attempting to prove DJI's factories were in state-sponsored areas. DJI faces a total import ban on new products this December and US customs has already stopped many consumer drone shipments. The company says it is evaluating legal options.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Flock Safety, whose drones were once reserved for police departments, is now offering them for private-sector security, the company announced today, with potential customers including including businesses intent on curbing shoplifting.Companies in the US can now place Flock's drone docking stations on their premises. If the company has a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly beyond visual line of sight (these are becoming easier to get), its security team can fly the drones within a certain radius, often a few miles.

"Instead of a 911 call [that triggers the drone], it's an alarm call," says Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now directs Flock's drone program. "It's still the same type of response." Kauffman walked through how the drone program might work in the case of retail theft: If the security team at a store like Home Depot, for example, saw shoplifters leave the store, then the drone, equipped with cameras, could be activated from its docking station on the roof. "The drone follows the people. The people get in a car. You click a button," he says, "and you track the vehicle with the drone, and the drone just follows the car." The video feed of that drone might go to the company's security team, but it could also be automatically transmitted directly to police departments.

The defense tech startup Epirus has developed a cutting-edge, cost-efficient drone zapper that's sparking the interest of the US military. Now the company has to deliver. The company says it's in talks with large retailers but doesn't yet have any signed contracts. The only private-sector company Kauffman named as a customer is Morning Star, a California tomato processor that uses drones to secure its distribution facilities. Flock will also pitch the drones to hospital campuses, warehouse sites, and oil and gas facilities. It's worth noting that the FAA is currently drafting new rules for how it grants approval to pilots flying drones out of sight, and it's not clear if Flock's use case would be allowed under the currently proposed guidance.

Microsoft has disabled the Israeli Defense Ministry's access to certain services and subscriptions, after finding evidence that the ministry used the tech company's cloud services to surveil Gaza citizens. WSJ adds: The software company made the move after an internal investigation indicated Israel's Defense Ministry used Microsoft's Azure cloud services for surveillance, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company probe is ongoing. "As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Thursday on Microsoft's company website.

Smith said Microsoft's investigation was guided by the company's "longstanding protection of privacy as a fundamental right." Microsoft opened the probe after the Guardian, the British news organization, reported in August that Israel used Azure to store data on Gaza civilians and surveil them. The issue has been the source of protests at the company.

Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear writes: The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has demonstrated its ability to launch and recover aircraft from its first electromagnetic catapult-equipped aircraft carrier, the CNS Fujian. Official imagery released by the PLAN today confirms that the new J-35 naval stealth fighters, KJ-600 airborne early warning and control aircraft, and J-15T fighter jet are carrying out carrier trials. Ben Lewis, a co-founder of PLATracker, told USNI News that the test was a "significant milestone" for the Chinese military's carrier program. "Once operational, the PLAN will have the capacity to field fifth-generation stealth carrier aircraft, supported by fixed-wing carrier-based airborne early warning and command aircraft, across the first island chain and Western Pacific Ocean," Lewis said.

Electromagnetic catapults offer several advantages, not least the fact that they can be more finely tuned to very different aircraft types, including ones that are larger and slower (like the KJ-600), or which are smaller and lighter, such as smaller drones. In contrast to the U.S. Navy, which gathered decades of experience with steam-powered catapults, China opted for electromagnetic ones for its first catapult-equipped carrier. It's worth noting that the U.S. Navy's USS Gerald R. Ford was the first carrier ever to get an aircraft into the air using what is also referred to as an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS). However, it has not launched an F-35C so far, making the J-35 the first stealth jet to achieve this feat. Based on earlier predictions, the F-35C may not do the same for some years.

A July combat training exercise involved a satellite dish-style antenna that "could fire enough electromagnetic energy to fry the satellite 22,000 miles away," reports the Washington Post. But "Instead, the salvo would be more covert — millisecond pulses of energy that would subtly disrupt the satellite's signals, which U.S. military forces were using to communicate in the Pacific Ocean." The goal was to disguise the strike as a garbled connection that could be easily remedied by securing a loose cable or a simple reboot, leaving U.S. service members frustrated without raising their suspicions. [And using less power "would make it harder for the Blue Team to track where the interference was coming from."] This is how the next war could start: invisible shots fired in space on the electromagnetic spectrum that could render U.S. fighter jets and aircraft carriers deaf and blind, unable to communicate. In this case, the "aggressors" targeting the U.S. satellite were not from China or Russia, but rather an elite squadron of U.S. Space Force Guardians mimicking how potential adversaries would act in a conflict that begins in orbit... Involving more than 700 service members and spanning 50 million square miles and six time zones, the training exercise, called Resolute Space, was observed firsthand exclusively by The Washington Post.
The article describes leadership at the U.S. Space Force "still honing their mission while jousting with adversaries, such as China, that are moving quickly and conducting combat-like operations in orbit... While the Space Force continues to evolve, many defense analysts and some members of Congress fear the United States has already ceded its dominance in space to China and others." With a budget of just $40 billion, the relatively tiny Space Force makes up just about 4 percent of the Defense Department's budget and less than 1 percent of its personnel. It has more than 15,000 Guardians, which also includes several thousand civilians. By comparison, the Army has nearly 1 million soldiers. The Space Force has been squeezed under the department of the Air Force and struggled to distinguish itself from the other branches...

China, Russia and others have demonstrated that they can take out or interfere with the satellites operated by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that provide the nation's missile warning and tracking, reconnaissance and communications. China in particular has moved rapidly to build an arsenal of space-based weapons... [R]ecently, several of China's satellites have engaged in what Space Force officials have called "dogfighting," jousting with U.S. satellites at high speeds and close ranges.

A large U.S.-made bomb left over from World War II was discovered at a construction site, reports the Associated Press: Police said the bomb was 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) in length and weighed about 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). It was discovered by construction workers in Quarry Bay, a bustling residential and business district on the west side of Hong Kong island... [A police official] said that because of "the exceptionally high risks associated with its disposal," approximately 1,900 households involving 6,000 individuals were "urged to evacuate swiftly." The operation to deactivate the bomb began late Friday and lasted until around 11:30 a.m. Saturday. No one was injured in the operation.

Bombs left over from World War II are discovered from time to time in Hong Kong. The city was occupied by Japanese forces during the war, when it became a base for the Japanese military and shipping. The United States, along with other Allied forces, targeted Hong Kong in air raids to disrupt Japanese supply lines and infrastructure.
"Bombs from the war have triggered evacuations and emergency measures around the globe in recent months," reports CBS News: Earlier this month, a 500-pound bomb was discovered in Slovakia's capital during construction work, prompting evacuations. In August, large parts of Dresden, Germany, were evacuated so experts could defuse an unexploded World War II bomb found during clearance work for a collapsed bridge. In June, over 20,000 people were evacuated from Cologne after three unexploded U.S. bombs from the war were found... In March, a World War II bomb was found near the tracks of Paris' Gare du Nord station. In February, more than 170 bombs were found near a children's playground in northern England. And in October 2024, a World War II bomb exploded at a Japanese airport.

"A cyberattack targeting check-in and boarding systems disrupted air traffic and caused delays at several of Europe's major airports on Saturday," reports the Associated Press.

"While the impact on travelers appeared to be limited, experts said the intrusion exposed vulnerabilities in security systems." The disruptions to electronic systems initially reported at Brussels, Berlin's Brandenburg and London's Heathrow airports meant that only manual check-in and boarding was possible. Many other European airports said their operations were unaffected... Airports said the issue centered around a provider of check-in and boarding systems — not airlines or the airports themselves. Collins Aerospace, whose systems help passengers check themselves in, print boarding passes and bag tags and dispatch their luggage from a kiosk, cited a "cyber-related disruption" to its MUSE (Multi-User System Environment) software at "select airports."
Brussels Airport initially reported a "large impact" on flight schedules," according to the article, with a spokesperson telling broadcaster VTM that by mid-morning nine flights had been canceled, with four more redirected to another airport and 15 delayed an hour or more. The airport later told Reuters there were "delays on most of the departing flights."

Reuters notes it's "the latest in a string of hacks targeting governments and companies across the world, hitting sectors from healthcare and defence to retail and autos.: A recent breach at luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover brought its production to a halt...

At Heathrow, Berlin and Brussels, 29 flight departures and arrivals had been cancelled as of 1130 GMT, aviation data provider Cirium said. In total, 651 departures were scheduled from Heathrow, 228 from Brussels and 226 from Berlin on Saturday... Brussels Airport said it had asked airlines to cancel half of their scheduled departing flights on Sunday to avoid long queues and late cancellations, signalling that the disruption would continue through the weekend.

A European Commission spokesperson said there were currently no indications of a "widespread or severe attack" and that the origin of the incident was still under investigation.

The Washington Post: The Trump administration unveiled a new crackdown Friday on journalists at the Pentagon, saying it will require them to pledge they won't gather any information - even unclassified - that hasn't been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey.

Under the policy, the Pentagon may revoke press passes for anyone it deems a security threat. Possessing confidential or unauthorized information, under the new rules, would be grounds for a journalist't press pass to be revoked.

"DoW remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust," the document says, using an acronym for the newly rebranded Department of War. "However, DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified."

For months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his staff have been tightening restrictions on Pentagon reporters while limiting military personnel's direct communication with the press. Like many defense secretaries before him, Hegseth has been deeply irritated by leaks. His staff this year threatened to use polygraph tests to stop people from leaking information, until the White House intervened.

It was "little more than empty fields" five years ago — but it's now "a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres)," reports the Guardian, "the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence." Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits. There have been some attempts to crack down on the centres and rescue the workers, who can be subjected to torture and trapped inside. But drone images and new research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveal that the number of such centres operating along the Thai-Myanmar border has more than doubled since Myanmar's military seized power in 2021, with construction continuing to this day.

Data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), a defence thinktank in Canberra, shows that the number of Myanmar scam centres on the Thai border has increased from 11 to 27, and they have expanded in size by an average of 5.5 hectares a month. Drone images and photographs of KK Park and other Myanmar scam centres, Tai Chang and Shwe Kokko, taken by the Guardian in August show new features and active building work... Myanmar's military junta has allowed the spread of scam centres inside the country as these criminal enterprises have become an essential part of the country's conflict economy since the coup, helping it rise to the top of the global list of countries harbouring organised crime. According to Aspi's analysis, Myanmar's military, which has lost huge swathes of territory since the coup and is struggling to retain its grip on power, cannot take meaningful measures against the scam compounds without endangering its precarious relations with the crucial armed militias who are profiting from them.
While 7,000 people were freed from the compounds earlier this year, "Thai police estimated earlier this year that as many as 100,000 people were held inside Myanmar scam centres," the article notes.

Elsewhere the Guardian reports that "The centres are run by Chinese criminal gangs," and describes people who unwittingly came to Thailand for customer service jobs, only to be trafficked to Myanmar's guarded "cyberslavery compounds" and "forced to send thousands of messages from fake social-media profiles, posing as a rich American investor to swindle US real estate agents into cryptocurrency scams." Since 2020, south-east Asia's cyber-slavery industry has entrapped hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to perform "pig butchering" — the brutal term for building trust with a fraud target before scamming them. At first, the industry mostly captured Chinese and Taiwanese people, then it moved on to south-east Asians and Indians — and now Africans.

Criminal syndicates have been shifting towards scamming victims in the US and Europe after Chinese efforts to prevent its citizens being targeted, experts told the Guardian. That has led some trafficking networks to seek recruits with English-language and tech skills — including east Africans, thousands of whom are now estimated to be trapped inside south-east Asian compounds, says Benedikt Hofmann, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's representative for south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The company behind the Proton Mail email service, Proton, describes itself as a "neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom." But last month, Proton disabled email accounts belonging to journalists reporting on security breaches of various South Korean government computer systems following a complaint by an unspecified cybersecurity agency. After a public outcry, and multiple weeks, the journalists' accounts were eventually reinstated -- but the reporters and editors involved still want answers on how and why Proton decided to shut down the accounts in the first place.

Martin Shelton, deputy director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, highlighted that numerous newsrooms use Proton's services as alternatives to something like Gmail "specifically to avoid situations like this," pointing out that "While it's good to see that Proton is reconsidering account suspensions, journalists are among the users who need these and similar tools most." Newsrooms like The Intercept, the Boston Globe, and the Tampa Bay Times all rely on Proton Mail for emailed tip submissions. Shelton noted that perhaps Proton should "prioritize responding to journalists about account suspensions privately, rather than when they go viral." On Reddit, Proton's official account stated that "Proton did not knowingly block journalists' email accounts" and that the "situation has unfortunately been blown out of proportion."

The two journalists whose accounts were disabled were working on an article published in the August issue of the long-running hacker zine Phrack. The story described how a sophisticated hacking operation -- what's known in cybersecurity parlance as an APT, or advanced persistent threat -- had wormed its way into a number of South Korean computer networks, including those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military Defense Counterintelligence Command, or DCC. The journalists, who published their story under the names Saber and cyb0rg, describe the hack as being consistent with the work of Kimsuky, a notorious North Korean state-backed APT sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023. As they pieced the story together, emails viewed by The Intercept show that the authors followed cybersecurity best practices and conducted what's known as responsible disclosure: notifying affected parties that a vulnerability has been discovered in their systems prior to publicizing the incident. Phrack said the account suspensions created a "real impact to the author. The author was unable to answer media requests about the article." Phrack noted that the co-authors were already working with affected South Korean organizations on responsible disclosure and system fixes. "All this was denied and ruined by Proton," Phrack stated.

Phrack editors said that the incident leaves them "concerned what this means to other whistleblowers or journalists. The community needs assurance that Proton does not disable accounts unless Proton has a court order or the crime (or ToS violation) is apparent."

An anonymous reader shares a report: An attempt to ban social media in Nepal ended this week in violent protest with the prime minister ousted, the Parliament in flames and soldiers on the streets of the capital. Now, the very technology the government tried to outlaw is being harnessed to help select the country's next leader, as more than 100,000 citizens are meeting regularly in a virtual chat room to debate the country's future.

More than 30 people were killed in clashes with the police during youth-led protests that convulsed the capital in a paroxysm of outrage over wealth inequality, corruption and plans to ban some social media platforms. After the government's collapse on Tuesday, the military imposed a curfew across the capital, Kathmandu, and restricted large gatherings. With the country in political limbo and no obvious next leader in place, Nepalis have taken to Discord, a platform popularized by video gamers, to enact the digital version of a national convention.

"The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord," said Sid Ghimiri, 23, a content creator from Kathmandu, describing how the site has become the center of the nation's political decision making. The conversation inside the Discord channel, taking place in a combination of voice, video, and text chats, is so consequential that it is being discussed on national television and live streamed on news sites.

A U.S. congressional hearing today on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) featured testimony from military veterans and witnesses describing encounters with mysterious craft, including glowing red squares, tic-tac-shaped objects emerging from the ocean, and videos of missiles striking unidentified orbs. While NASA maintains there's no evidence of extraterrestrial life, lawmakers stressed the need for transparency, whistleblower protections, and further investigation.

There were four witnesses at today's hearing:
Jeffrey Nuccetelli: U.S. Air Force veteran and self-described UAP witness who investigated the reported "red square" sighting above Vandenberg Air Force Base.
George Knapp: Award-winning journalist and chief reporter at KLAS-TV, known for his decades of UFO coverage and multiple Peabody Awards.
Alexandro Wiggins: Navy veteran of 23 years who reported witnessing a "Tic Tac" UAP aboard the USS Jackson in 2023 and noted his father's work at Area 51.
Dylan Borland: Air Force veteran and UAP witness with little public information or media exposure available.

"The public senses that it's real and the people in authority dismiss them," said Knapp, arguing that the public can handle the truth. One of the clips he showed lawmakers was of a drone operator tracking a glowing orb off the coast of Yemen before a missile struck the object. "That's a Hellfire missile smacking into that UFO and just bouncing right off," he said. "What the hell is that?" Knapp said the clip is not unique, claiming multiple video servers with similar UAP footage are being kept from Congress. Borland testified: "This craft interfered with my telephone, did not have any sound and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic."

An anonymous reader writes: Reuters News on Friday withdrew a four-minute video containing an exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussing the possibility that humans can live to 150 years old, after China state TV demanded its removal and withdrew the legal permission to use it.

The footage, which included the open mic exchange from the military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, was licensed by the China state television network, China Central Television (CCTV). The clips were edited by Reuters into a four-minute video and distributed to more than 1,000 global media clients including major international news broadcasters and TV stations around the world. Other news agency licensees of CCTV also distributed edits of the footage.

Reuters removed the video from its website and issued a "kill" order to its clients on Friday after receiving a written request from CCTV's lawyer. The letter said the news agency exceeded usage terms of its agreement. The letter further criticized Reuters "editorial treatment applied to this material," but did not specify details.

Anthropic is blocking its services from Chinese-controlled companies, saying it's taking steps to prevent a US adversary from advancing in AI and threatening American national security. From a report: The San Francisco-based startup is widening existing restrictions on "authoritarian" regimes to cover any company that's majority-owned by entities from countries such as China. That includes their overseas operations, it said in a statement. Foreign-based subsidiaries could be used to access its technology and further military applications, the startup added.

Anthropic's Dario Amodei has publicly advocated technological sanctions on China, particularly after DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with an advanced model this year. While Anthropic didn't name any companies, Chinese big tech firms from Alibaba to ByteDance have joined DeepSeek in an intensifying race to build AI services that can rival the likes of OpenAI in the US. Chinese entities "could use our capabilities to develop applications and services that ultimately serve adversarial military and intelligence services and broader authoritarian objectives," Anthropic said in its Friday post.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping were caught on a hot mic discussing organ transplants and immortality at the military parade in Beijing on Wednesday. The two leaders were captured on the stream as they walked with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Tiananmen Square, with the Russian translator saying: "Biotechnology is continuously developing," according to Reuters. "Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and (you can) even achieve immortality," the translator added.

Xi responded by saying that some predict that humans could live up to "150 years old." The Kremlin head later confirmed that the two leaders discussed immortality. "Modern means of healing, and medical means, all kinds of surgical means related to organ replacement, they allow humanity to hope that active life will continue not as it does today. The average age in different countries is different, but nevertheless, life expectancy will increase significantly," Putin told reporters, according to CNN.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: On a recent evening, a trio of Ukrainian drones flew under the cover of darkness to a Russian position and decided among themselves exactly when to strike. The assault was an example of how Ukraine is using artificial intelligence to allow groups of drones to coordinate with each other to attack Russian positions, an innovative technology that heralds the future of battle. Military experts say the so-called swarm technology represents the next frontier for drone warfare because of its potential to allow tens or even thousands of drones -- or swarms -- to be deployed at once to overwhelm the defenses of a target, be that a city or an individual military asset.

Ukraine has conducted swarm attacks on the battlefield for much of the past year, according to a senior Ukrainian officer and the company that makes the software. The previously unreported attacks are the first known routine use of swarm technology in combat, analysts say, underscoring Ukraine's position at the vanguard of drone warfare. [...] The drones deployed in the recent Ukrainian attack used technology developed by local company Swarmer. Its software allows groups of drones to decide which one strikes first and adapt if, for instance, one runs out of battery, said Chief Executive Serhii Kupriienko. "You set the target and the drones do the rest," Kupriienko said. "They work together, they adapt."

Swarmer's technology was first deployed by Ukrainian forces to lay mines around a year ago. It has since been used to target Russian soldiers, equipment and infrastructure, according to the Ukrainian military officer. The officer said his drone unit had used Swarmer's technology more than a hundred times, and that other units also have UAVs equipped with the software. He typically uses the technology with three drones, but says others have deployed it with as many as eight. Kupriienko said the software has been tested with up to 25 drones. A common operation uses a reconnaissance drone and two other UAVs carrying small bombs to target a Russian trench, the officer said. An operator gives the drones a target zone to look for an enemy position and the command to engage when it is spotted. The reconnaissance drone maps the route for the bombers to follow and the drones themselves then decide when, and which one, will release the bombs over the target.

A widely used Node.js utility called fast-glob, relied on by thousands of projectsâ"including over 30 U.S. Department of Defense systems -- is maintained solely by a Russian developer linked to Yandex. While there's no evidence of malicious activity, cybersecurity experts warn that the lack of oversight in such critical open-source projects leaves them vulnerable to potential exploitation by state-backed actors. The Register reports: US cybersecurity firm Hunted Labs reported the revelations on Wednesday. The utility in question is fast-glob, which is used to find files and folders that match specific patterns. Its maintainer goes by the handle "mrmlnc", and the Github profile associated with that handle identifies its owner as a Yandex developer named Denis Malinochkin living in a suburb of Moscow. A website associated with that handle also identifies its owner as the same person, as Hunted Labs pointed out.

Hunted Labs told us that it didn't speak to Malinochkin prior to publication of its report today, and that it found no ties between him and any threat actor. According to Hunted Labs, fast-glob is downloaded more than 79 million times a week and is currently used by more than 5,000 public projects in addition to the DoD systems and Node.js container images that include it. That's not to mention private projects that might use it, meaning that the actual number of at-risk projects could be far greater.

While fast-glob has no known CVEs, the utility has deep access to systems that use it, potentially giving Russia a number of attack vectors to exploit. Fast-glob could attack filesystems directly to expose and steal info, launch a DoS or glob-injection attack, include a kill switch to stop downstream software from functioning properly, or inject additional malware, a list Hunted Labs said is hardly exhaustive. [...] Hunted Labs cofounder Haden Smith told The Register that the ties are cause for concern. "Every piece of code written by Russians isn't automatically suspect, but popular packages with no external oversight are ripe for the taking by state or state-backed actors looking to further their aims," Smith told us in an email. "As a whole, the open source community should be paying more attention to this risk and mitigating it." [...]

Hunted Labs said that the simplest solution for the thousands of projects using fast-glob would be for Malinochkin to add additional maintainers and enhance project oversight, as the only other alternative would be for anyone using it to find a suitable replacement. "Open source software doesn't need a CVE to be dangerous," Hunted Labs said of the matter. "It only needs access, obscurity, and complacency," something we've noted before is an ongoing problem for open source projects. This serves as another powerful reminder that knowing who writes your code is just as critical as understanding what the code does," Hunted Labs concluded.

The mysterious X-37B space-plane — the U.S. military's orbital test vehicle — "serves partly as a platform for cutting-edge experiments," writes Space.com

And "one of these experiments is a potential alternative to GPS that makes use of quantum science as a tool for navigation: a quantum inertial sensor." This technology could revolutionize how spacecraft, airplanes, ships and submarines navigate in environments where GPS is unavailable or compromised. In space, especially beyond Earth's orbit, GPS signals become unreliable or simply vanish. The same applies underwater, where submarines cannot access GPS at all. And even on Earth, GPS signals can be jammed (blocked), spoofed (making a GPS receiver think it is in a different location) or disabled — for instance, during a conflict... Traditional inertial navigation systems, which use accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure a vehicle's acceleration and rotation, do provide independent navigation, as they can estimate position by tracking how the vehicle moves over time... Eventually though, without visual cues, small errors will accumulate and you will entirely lose your positioning...

At very low temperatures, atoms obey the rules of quantum mechanics: they behave like waves and can exist in multiple states simultaneously — two properties that lie at the heart of quantum inertial sensors. The quantum inertial sensor aboard the X-37B uses a technique called atom interferometry, where atoms are cooled to the temperature of near absolute zero, so they behave like waves. Using fine-tuned lasers, each atom is split into what's called a superposition state, similar to Schrödinger's cat, so that it simultaneously travels along two paths, which are then recombined.

Since the atom behaves like a wave in quantum mechanics, these two paths interfere with each other, creating a pattern similar to overlapping ripples on water. Encoded in this pattern is detailed information about how the atom's environment has affected its journey. In particular, the tiniest shifts in motion, like sensor rotations or accelerations, leave detectable marks on these atomic "waves". Compared to classical inertial navigation systems, quantum sensors offer orders of magnitude greater sensitivity. Because atoms are identical and do not change, unlike mechanical components or electronics, they are far less prone to drift or bias. The result is long duration and high accuracy navigation without the need for external references.

The upcoming X-37B mission will be the first time this level of quantum inertial navigation is tested in space.
The article points out that a quantum navigation system could be crucial "for future space exploration, such as to the Moon, Mars or even deep space," where autonomy is key and when signals from Earth are unavailable.

"While quantum computing and quantum communication often steal headlines, systems like quantum clocks and quantum sensors are likely to be the first to see widespread use."

"James Cameron has a confession: he can't write Terminator 7..." according to the Guardian, "because reality keeps nicking his plotlines." "I'm at a point right now where I have a hard time writing science-fiction," Cameron told CNN this week. "I'm tasked with writing a new Terminator story [but] I don't know what to say that won't be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science-fiction age right now...."

What Cameron should be looking for is a complete system reboot to reinvigorate the saga in the way Prey brought fans back to Predator and Alien: Romulus restored interest in slimy Xenomorphs. All evidence suggests that the 70-year-old film-maker is far more interested in the current challenges surrounding AI, superintelligences and humankind's constant efforts to destroy itself, which doesn't exactly lend itself to the sort of back-to-basics, relentless-monsters-hunt-a-few-unlucky-humans-for-two-hours approach that has worked elsewhere. The challenge here seems to be to fuse Terminator's core DNA — unstoppable cyborgs, explosive chase sequences, and Sarah Connor-level defiance — with the occasionally rather more prosaic yet equally scary existential anxieties of 21st-century AI doom-mongering. So we may get Terminator 7: Kill List, in which a single, battered freedom fighter is hunted across a decimated city by a T-800 running a predictive policing algorithm that knows her next move before she does. Or T7: Singularity's Mom, in which a lone Sarah Connor-type must protect a teenage coder whose chatbot will one day evolve into Skynet. Or Terminator 7: Terms and Conditions, in which humanity's downfall comes not from nuclear warfare but from everyone absent-mindedly agreeing to Skynet's new privacy policy, triggering an army of leather-clad enforcers to collect on the fine print.

Or perhaps the future just looks terrifying enough without Cameron getting involved — which, rather worryingly for the future of the franchise, seems to be the director's essential point.
"The only way out is through," Cameron said in the CNN interview, "by using our intelligence, by using our curiosity, by using our command of technology, but also, by really understanding the stark probabilities that we face."

In the meantime, Cameron is working on a new film inspired by the book Ghosts of Hiroshima, a book written by Charles Pellegrino, one of the consultants on Titanic. "I know what a meticulous researcher he is," Cameron told CNN in a recent interview. (Transcript here.) CAMERON: He's talked about this book for ages and ages and sent me early versions of it. So, I've read it with interest, great interest a number of times now. What compels me out of all that and what I think the human hook for understanding this tragedy is, is to follow a handful, specifically two will be featured of survivors, that actually survived not only the Hiroshima blast, but then went to Nagasaki and three days later were hit again.... This film scares me. I fear making this film. I fear the images that I'm going to have to create, to be honest and to be truthful.
CNN also spoke to former U.S. Energy secretary Ernest Moni, who is now a CEO at the nonprofit global security organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative: MONI: There remains a false narrative that the possession of these nuclear weapons is actually making us safer when they're not. That's the narrative I think, ultimately, we need to change. Harry Truman said, quite correctly, these nuclear weapons, they are not military weapons. Dropped on a city, they indiscriminately kill combatants, non-combatants, women, children, etc. They should not be thought of as military weapons, but as weapons of mass destruction, indiscriminate mass destruction when certainly dropped in an urban center.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

alternative_right writes: A team of researchers at Columbia University, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have developed "machines that can grow by consuming other machines." Video of the experiment shows tubular robots that move by extending their shafts to inch along the ground. As the tubes gather, they connect and form into more complex shapes like triangles and tetrahedrons. With each piece consumed, the whole moves faster and with more elegance.

"AI systems need bodies to move beyond current limitations. Physical embodiment brings the AI into the messy, constraint-rich real world -- and that's where true generalization has to happen," Phillipe Martin Wyder, lead researcher on the project, told 404 Media.