The U.S. military’s push for an AI overhaul takes center stage this week in Washington, where government officials will huddle with top tech minds at a symposium hosted by the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) symposium.

The symposium starting Tuesday assembles defense and intelligence officers, Big Tech powerhouses and smaller companies, academics and foreign government officials. It culminates with a final classified session in Virginia featuring briefings from the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. 

National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace will be tracking the event for insights on what may be to come for the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative. 

Mr. Lovelace offered up a separate exclusive interview with Taiwanese tech leader Ethan Tu, founder of Taiwan AI Labs, who warns that China is waging an increasingly influential and sophisticated war of information manipulation while many Americans appear to be disregarding the fight. Mr. Tu touts his company’s “Infodemic” platform as a diagnostic tool for nontechnical users to detect and understand cognitive warfare on social media and across the internet.

Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen claim to have hit a Belize-flagged, British-registered commercial cargo ship with a missile strike in the Gulf of Aden.

The crew of Rubymar cargo vessel abandoned the ship that was at risk of sinking Monday after an attack likely to escalate the ongoing clash between U.S. forces and the Houthis, who’ve engaged in a months-long campaign to disrupt global shipping — claiming their attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.

The latest developments come days after Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, warned that elements of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are operating “inside Yemen, and they are serving side by side with the Houthis, advising them and providing target information.”

Despite intense efforts by the Biden administration to forge a cease-fire and forestall the coming battle for Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear again over the weekend that Israel’s mission to destroy Hamas will continue as long as the terror group resists and wields power inside Gaza.

Times Special Correspondent Seth J. Frantzman delivers a dispatch from Kibbutz Magen on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, from which one can clearly see Rafah, a city along the Egyptian border. Rafah is now the focal point for a looming Israeli offensive and a frantic international diplomatic effort to head off more Palestinian civilian deaths, more bloodshed on both sides and more weeks and months of fighting.

Cairo’s role in the days ahead is likely to be crucial. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, speaking at the Munich Security Conference this weekend in Germany, reiterated that the full-scale displacement of Gaza Palestinians to his country was unacceptable, but he hinted that even Cairo was not willing to stomach a wholesale killing of civilians as Israel and Hamas fighters battle in Rafah’s streets.

As the crisis on the U.S. southern border raged last year, the top official at Homeland Security’s border agency spent time trying to procure fentanyl lollipops for an unusual trip to the United Nations, according to whistleblowers, who also claimed Customs and Border Protection’s mismanagement of its medical service contract contributed to the factors that cost an 8-year-old migrant girl her life while in CBP custody. 

Cybernetic implants such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink project sound cool, but are cause for great concern, according to Tom Basile, who notes that “the first version of Neuralink, called Telepathy, allegedly enables people to control their phone, computer or almost any device, just by thinking.” Neuralink is a long-lead project for Mr. Musk, as medical and pharmaceutical processes generally are, before being made broadly available for human use.

Mr. Basile argues that the procedure “raises serious concerns” affecting bioethics and personal freedoms. “The road to perdition is paved with good intentions,” he writes. “We’re just not mature enough as a species to be even remotely ready for this, and we won’t be in five or 10 years, either.”