Top technology stories: US government launches new AI cybersecurity challenge; China outlines new rules for facial recognition technology; How to make AI more energy efficient.
• Encryption and segmentation: These operate on the assumption some fraction of the network is already compromised. Restricting the reach and utility of any captured data and accessible networks will mitigate the damage even on breached systems.
• SBOM documentation: Regulatory compliance can be driven by industry organizations and the government, but it will take time to establish standards. SBOM documentation is an essential foundation for best practices.
If “democracy dies in darkness,” and that includes lies of omission in reporting, then cybersecurity suffers the same fate with backdoors. The corollary is “don’t roll your own crypto” even if well-intentioned. The arguments for weakening encryption to make law enforcement easier falls demonstrably flat, with TETRA just the latest example. Secrets rarely stay that way forever, and sensitive data is more remotely accessible than at any time in history. Privacy and global security affect us all, and the existence of these single points of failure in our cybersecurity efforts are unsustainable and will have unforeseeable consequences. We need to innovate and evolve the internet away from this model to have durable security assurances.
Tech executives, researchers and government officials are gathering in Seattle this week to figure out ways to add a new dimension to America’s chip industry — figuratively and literally.
“We’re going to talk about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent domestic microelectronics manufacturing,” Mark Rosker, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office, said today at the opening session of the ERI 2.0 Summit at the Hyatt Regency Seattle.
Dr. Joni L. Rutter, Ph.D., (https://ncats.nih.gov/director/bio) is the Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS — https://ncats.nih.gov/) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she oversees the planning and execution of the Center’s complex, multifaceted programs that aim to overcome scientific and operational barriers impeding the development and delivery of new treatments and other health solutions. Under her direction, NCATS supports innovative tools and strategies to make each step in the translational process more effective and efficient, thus speeding research across a range of diseases, with a particular focus on rare diseases.
By advancing the science of translation, NCATS helps turn promising research discoveries into real-world applications that improve people’s health. The NCATS Strategic Plan can be found at — https://ncats.nih.gov/strategicplan.
Led by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and backed by the UK government, FlyZero has concluded that green liquid hydrogen is the optimum fuel for zero-carbon emission flight and could power a midsize aircraft with 280 passengers from London to San Francisco directly, or from London to Auckland with just one stop.
FlyZero, the UK study into zero-carbon emission commercial air travel, has published its vision for a new generation of aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen, today Thursday 17th March.
The report “Our Vision for Zero-Carbon Emission Air Travel” marks the conclusion of a 12-month study which set out to consider the feasibility of zero-carbon emission aircraft. The project concludes aviation can achieve net zero 2050 through the development of both sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and green liquid hydrogen technologies.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe marks five successful years in space, achieving milestones like touching the Sun and collecting more than double the expected data. The mission’s continuing journey promises to deepen our understanding of space weather and the Sun’s effects on Earth. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe.
NASA
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.” NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.
Among NASA’s 11 winners is one long-shot prospect that could benefit greatly from some government cash.
After the U.S. government imposed crippling sanctions against select Chinese high-tech and supercomputer companies through 2019 and 2020, firms like Huawei had to halt chip development; it is impossible to build competitive processors without access to leading-edge nodes. But Jiangnan Computing Lab, which develops Sunway processors, and National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi kept building new supercomputers and recently even submitted results of their latest machine for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell prize.
The new Sunway supercomputer built by the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi (an entity blacklisted in the U.S.) employs around feature approximately 19.2 million cores across 49,230 nodes, reports Supercomputing.org. To put the number into context, Frontier, the world’s highest-performing supercomputer, uses 9,472 nodes and consumes 21 MW of power. Meanwhile, the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi does not disclose power consumption of its latest system.
The need for transparency around AI-generated content is clear, but the value of measures like watermarks is not.
A few miles away, White House aides and reporters scrambled to figure out whether a viral online image of the exploding building was in fact real.
It wasn’t. It was AI-generated. Yet government officials, journalists, and tech companies were unable to take action before the image had real impact. It not only caused confusion but led to a dip in financial markets.
Continue reading “Why watermarking AI-generated content won’t guarantee trust online” »
BERLIN, Aug 7 (Reuters) — Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC’s (2330.TW) board of directors on Tuesday will decide in favour of building a factory in the German city of Dresden, the Handelsblatt daily reported, citing government sources in Germany.
The German government will provide 5 billion euros ($5.49 billion) to support the construction of the factory, Handelsblatt’s report said on Monday.
The German economy ministry declined to comment on the report, as did the government of the eastern state of Saxony, where Dresden is located.
