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An investigation by Gladstone AI in coordination with the State Department has found minimal security measures and cavalier attitudes among tech professionals about threats posed by foreign espionage.
… Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in the Mideast to push for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, hours after Benny Gantz, the centrist member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, resigned over what he says is Israel’s lack of a plan for postwar Gaza.
… Nearly 90 countries are sending representatives to a Ukraine peace summit that Russia refuses to attend.
… The European Parliament election has dented Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s authority and boosted the country’s conservatives and far right.
… India is probing an attack by suspected militants in Kashmir that killed nine people on a Hindu pilgrimage in an incident that could inflame tensions between nuclear-armed New Delhi and Pakistan.
… The latest Ukrainian military aid shipment marks the 59th time the Pentagon has dipped into its stock to supply Ukraine with weapons since Russia invaded more than two years ago.
… And South Korea is blaring news and music from the pop group BTS northward across the demilitarized zone in response to North Korea’s “filth balloons.”
Some of the nation’s top artificial intelligence labs have pitiful security measures in place to protect them from espionage, leaving potentially dangerous AI models exposed to thieves and spies, according to U.S. government-backed researchers.
The firm Gladstone AI, which advises federal agencies on AI issues, recently met with insiders from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and other leading AI outfits as part of a sweeping probe into security measures across the sector.
Jeremie Harris, Gladstone AI CEO, told The Washington Times of disconcerting security practices, including “folks taking their laptops out down the street to the nearest Starbucks and just hacking away on them.”
The Gladstone team conducted the probe into AI safety in coordination with the State Department and found minimal security measures and cavalier attitudes among AI professionals about safety and threats posed by foreign espionage.
The North Korean regime has maintained near-total control over domestic information via a triple-tier system of human surveillance. Dictator Kim Jong-un now appears to be trying to buttress this system by using a high-technology, Chinese-style spyware system to keep out unwanted messages.
While attempts to install digital surveillance networks had long been hobbled by an inconsistent power supply, limited network capacities and a lack of hardware, there are indications that North Korea is now succeeding, according to a dispatch from South Korea by Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon.
“One of the things that is impossible to ignore in the last few years is how China has developed into a society that has used digital surveillance to monitor and control its citizens,” Martyn Williams, a senior fellow with the Stimson Center’s North Korea-focused media 38 North, recently told reporters in Seoul. “So, it is natural to assume that North Korea would adopt the digital technologies that China is using.”
Despite its isolation and poverty, “North Korea has a really high level of aptitude when it comes to software engineering, but it does not have a large hardware industry,” Mr. Williams said. “All its smartphones come from Chinese companies, but the security software on them is all developed domestically.”
Senior Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, are engaged in corruption and hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth by using relatives to disguise their activities, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.
By 2012, Mr. Xi had amassed at least $376 million in company investments, an indirect 18% stake in a rare-earth mineral company worth more than $311 million, and $20.2 million holdings in a technology company, states the report produced by the research service for members of Congress in advance of a congressionally mandated assessment from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that the forthcoming U.S. intelligence assessment is expected to undermine Mr. Xi’s 12-year anti-corruption campaign, which included investigations into millions of Chinese Communist Party members. The report said 266 members of the CCP Central Committee have been ousted, including Defense Minister Li Shangfu, also a former member of the Central Military Commission, and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
The stated intentions of terrorist groups such as ISIS-K and al Qaeda, combined with the growing capabilities they have demonstrated in recent successful and failed attacks around the world, and the fact that several serious plots in the United States have been foiled point to an uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusion, according to Harvard scholar Graham Allison and former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.
“Put simply, the United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead,” the two assert in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs.
“Fortunately, the United States has learned a great deal over the past 30 years about how to combat terrorist threats, including threats that are not yet well defined,” write Mr. Allison and Mr. Morell. “President Joe Biden and his administration should now use that playbook. It includes steps the intelligence community should take to better understand the threat, steps to prevent terrorists from entering the United States, and steps to put pressure on terrorist organizations in the countries where they find sanctuary.”
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recounts President Reagan’s historic speech at Normandy 40 years ago, including Reagan’s reflection at the time that “Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue” and “here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.”
“Today, we must be vigilant against those seeking to expand their oppressive rule worldwide,” writes Mr. Walker, a Washington Times columnist. “Freedom must never be taken for granted — abroad or at home. The conditions that led to the start of World War II could easily happen again. We must never forget history, or we will be doomed to repeat it.”
“Forty years ago,” Mr. Walker writes, “President Reagan concluded his remarks commemorating the D-Day Invasion with these words, ‘Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.’”
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