“Unblinking Eye” pre-crime tech gets investment boost from UK government
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the pace of terrorism accelerates agencies around the world are trying to find the needles in the data haystack that can help them predict attacks before they happen. In the movie Fast and the Furious 7 movie a secretive US government agency created...
New pre-crime tech detects shoplifters before they commit the crime
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s that can predict outcomes from users behaviours are becoming increasingly common, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of that is the area of pre-crime detection. It’s watching, and knows a crime is about to take place before it happens – this is the...
Chinese researchers turned hard drives into covert listening devices
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are many ways people can spy on you, and now they can listen in on your conversations by monitoring your hard drives vibrations. Everything can be hacked in order to spy on “stuff” it seems, whether it’s hacking ultra secure air gapped systems,...
Chinese researchers hack “Unhackable” quantum encryption, reveal method
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Quantum communications systems, and quantum encryption, are supposed to be unhackable, but they aren’t. According to experts, and the pioneering companies looking to commercialise the technology, the greatest promise of quantum communications, such as the world’s first quantum video call that took place recently,...
SK Telecom launches Quantum Encryption Gateway “to make self-driving cars unhackable”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Autonomous cars and vehicles present a clear opportunity for cyber criminals to wreak chaos on our roads, but first they’d have to break the vehicles’ unbreakable quantum encryption. If you, like many people, have ever wondered how we’ll be able to stop cyber criminals...
US Military puts the call out for autonomous AI’s that can defend its networks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF After the US Pentagon announced it can no longer keep up with the variety or voracity of cyber attacks the US DOD wants to develop autonomous AI’s that can. After a damning admission from the Pentagon that warned that the US military can no...
The US Pentagon releases it’s plan to become a world leader in AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence has great promise in the civilian and military realms, and as countries weaponise it the US doesn’t want to be left behind. The Pentagon, which last year embedded the world’s best robo-hacker into its critical systems to protect them from cyber attacks,...
US Pentagon surrenders and admits it can no longer keep pace with cyber attacks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the volume and variety of global cyber attacks increase exponentially this is a wake up call that we need a new way to defend ourselves. The US military’s cybersecurity capabilities aren’t advancing fast enough to stay ahead of the “onslaught of multipronged” attacks...
The Pentagon hires the world’s best poker playing AI to play War Games
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Poker is a game of bluff, and acting without perfect information, and so too is war. Over the past year the US Pentagon has installed an autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robo-hacker called Mayhem to monitor and protect its most critical systems from cyber attacks,...
Researchers successfully weaponise AI to create a “Biometric master key”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As criminals continue to weaponise artificial intelligence they are inevitably going to find new ways to exploit weaknesses in existing security systems. Just like any lock can be picked if you have the right key any biometric scanner can be fooled. For years now...
DARPA propose creating an AI that can monitor the whole world for threats
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An AI capable of monitoring the whole world for threats, of any kind, is a huge undertaking and could become the world’s first “global” intelligence platform. DARPA already has a reputation as the mad scientist lab of the US military, thanks to a range of...
Breakthrough AI hacking tool cracks millions of user passwords in minutes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence is a cyber security game changer, for better and worse, and we need to be better prepared for what’s coming. Last year the credit reporting agency Equifax announced that malicious hackers had leaked the personal information of over 143 million people after their system...
UK and Singapore set 2021 deadline to launch world’s first quantum communications cubesat
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Unlike traditional communications technologies quantum communications are unhackable, so countries are racing to deploy them. Highly secure global communication based on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), a secure communications cryptographic protocol that’s based on the eerie phenomenon of quantum mechanics, could eventually be made possible...
US proposes to regulate AI the same way it regulates weapons exports
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI can be both very beneficial, but also in the wrong hand very dangerous, and the US is thinking about regulating it in the same way they regulate military hardware. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has the capability to be one of, if not the,...
New Russian laser weapon obliterates targets in seconds
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The next generation of warfare will include many things, from autonomous hunter killer robots and intelligent hypersonic weapons, and lasers. As what’s being termed the new Cold War hots up I’m seeing a surge in the pace of development of fully and semi-autonomous weapons...
US military genetics program to turn marine life into giant living sensor networks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we learn more about the genetic code and how to modify it organisations around the world are starting to look into new ways of turning nature to their advantage. A few months ago I wrote about how DARPA, the bleeding edge research arm...
A year after china beat it the US is getting it’s own hackproof quantum network
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The US is increasingly falling behind China in the development of new quantum technologies, and now they’re trying to catch up. A few years ago, Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the NSA, who recently released his own surveillance application for vulnerable reporters and...
Inside Google’s plan to make sure AI is safe
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes more deeply embedded into our every day lives it is imperative that there are safeguards in place to make sure it’s safe. Making sure Artificial Intelligence (AI) does what we want and behaves in predictable ways will be crucial as the...
Worldwide surveillance, Hawkeye satellites use radio to track illegal shipping
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Over $3Trillion worth of goods are transported illegally, and this new technology gives law enforcement a major new weapon in the race to find them. A little while ago I talked about a company called Planet, that can watch the world, and everything on...
Snowdens smartphone app turns security on its head to protect “people at risk”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When it comes to security and surveillance governments hold all the cards, Edward Snowden wants to change that. In today’s world digital security is just as important as physical security to those who find themselves constantly online in hostile countries or environments, and while...
