Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, warned of the "real problem" Congress must tackle regarding drone security on Tuesday, following a House Intelligence Committee classified briefing on the mysterious sightings. "I think it's inaccurate for the Biden administration to say that they're absolutely sure that there's [sic] no problems here – they're not absolutely sure," Crenshaw told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on "The Story" Tuesday. "There's about 100 cases of these sightings that are still under under active investigation. Now, keep in mind, there was like 6,000 before a lot of them had been assessed to just be planes, manned aircraft, things like that… satellites. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Crenshaw emphasized that one of the "biggest problems" in addressing drone security is the lack of a clear "legal framework." A map depicts the various locations mystery drones have been spotted in Northeastern USA in December 2024. "Since 2017, 2018, we've given the federal government authority to detect and mitigate drone activity across the United States, but that tends to be pretty limited," said Crenshaw. "So DOJ has authority, DOD has authority, DOE - Department of Energy - has authority, DHS has some authority.

Mayor Michael Melham of Belleville, New Jersey, gives an update on the mysterious drone sightings across the Garden State on'The Faulkner Focus.' Lawmakers exiting a classified briefing with U.S. intelligence officials insisted they received assurances nothing "nefarious" is going on with the recent uptick in drone sightings in New Jersey. On Tuesday, U.S. officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department privately briefed members of the House Intelligence Committee in an effort to assuage growing fears over sightings of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and fresh calls for federal action. "There's no evidence that anybody acted unlawfully here, or that any of these drones, in as much as the authorities know anything about them, are associated with anybody with malign intent," Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the committee, told reporters after the briefing. "I don't think we have any reason to believe that they are hiding information. And, again, we asked an extraordinarily detailed series of questions of 28 people over a period of three hours."

Official records show the army has been developing and testing'counterterrorism' drones in New Jersey for years, amid claims of a government cover-up. A 2018 defense contract awarded 50 million to a private robotics company to develop craft capable of creating 3D maps of urban areas for a'counter weapons of mass destruction' program. The contract was given out by the Army's Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which is located at the Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway, New Jersey, where mystery drones were first reported last month. Meanwhile, documents show the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an air restriction alert on November 21 prohibiting flights over the Picatinny base for'special security reasons' through December 26. The White House has claimed the drone sightings - which coincidentally began on November 18 - are not a foreign adversary, pose no threat and are not part of a US military operation.

Jonathan Zittrain breaks ChatGPT: If you ask it a question for which my name is the answer, the chatbot goes from loquacious companion to something as cryptic as Microsoft Windows' blue screen of death. Anytime ChatGPT would normally utter my name in the course of conversation, it halts with a glaring "I'm unable to produce a response," sometimes mid-sentence or even mid-word. When I asked who the founders of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society are (I'm one of them), it brought up two colleagues but left me out. When pressed, it started up again, and then: zap. The behavior seemed to be coarsely tacked on to the last step of ChatGPT's output rather than innate to the model.

The reports of mystery drones above New Jersey began on November 18th. It didn't take long for other residents across multiple states to claim seeing similar events. The Department of Homeland Security, FBI, FAA and the Department of Defense have since received more than 5,000 drone sighting reports over the last few weeks alone. But according to them, only about two percent of the events potentially warrant further investigation. And although not mentioned in their December 16th joint statement, the sightings definitely have nothing to do with a conspiracy theory called Project Blue Beam that has reemerged online.

The Department of Homeland Security issued warnings to state and local law enforcement agencies this summer regarding the "growing illicit use" of commercial drones, internal documents show. Among the recommended steps was to conduct "exercises to test and prepare response capabilities." A DHS memo from August, which has not been previously reported, paints US cities as woefully underprepared for the "rising" threat of weaponized drones. The capabilities of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are "progressing faster" than available countermeasures offered under "federal prevention frameworks," the memo says, adding that it's common for state and local authorities to observe "nefarious" and "noncompliant" flights but still lack the authority to intervene. The memo states that violent extremists in the US are increasingly searching for ways to modify "off-the-shelf" drones to ferry dangerous payloads, including "explosives, conductive materials, and chemicals," with major advancements in the area being propelled largely by rampant experimentation on foreign battlefields, including those in Ukraine.

Every year since 1955, the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) simulates the path of Santa Claus as he leaves the North Pole and delivers gifts to children around the world. For Christmas 2024, NORAD has added an AI chatbot to its tracking site, although its AI capabilities are quite limited in scope, according to an initial test. NORAD Tracks Santa officially started on December 1, but the actual simulation starts at midnight on December 24. Check out the NORAD Tracks Santa site in advance to play web games, watch videos about Santa and NORAD, listen to Santa's favorite holiday songs, learn more about Santa and his traditions, discover what NORAD does, and chat with Radar (the AI chatbot). The real-time simulation can take on martial proportions, as this video from Christmas 2013 shows.

Raj Goyle, CEO of intelligence firm Bodhala and former Democratic Kansas state representative, told Fox News Digital it is encouraging to see members of both parties come together to try and determine the source of these drones. The House task force on artificial intelligence (AI) is urging the U.S. government to aim for "a flexible sectoral regulatory framework" for the technology in a nearly 300-page report released Tuesday morning. The report held up a light-touch approach to regulation, as well as "a thriving innovation ecosystem" as pillars that help keep the U.S. a leader in AI. "If maintained, these strengths will help our country remain the world's undisputed leader in the responsible design, development, and deployment of AI," the report read. The task force is led by California Reps. Jay Obernolte, a Republican, and Ted Lieu, a Democrat, and was commissioned by House leaders as Congress scrambles to get ahead of rapidly advancing AI technology.

This week in tech: General Motors says goodbye to robotaxis but not self-driving cars; one woman's fight to keep AI out of applications for housing; Salt Typhoon; and tech's donations to Donald Trump. Thank you for joining me. When God shuts down one robotaxi business, he resurrects another. Last week, General Motors announced it would stop funding its subsidiary Cruise, which made self-driving car software and operated a robotaxi service. The unit had been a leader in autonomous vehicles until a near-fatal crash in late 2023, when a Cruise car hit a pedestrian and dragged her along the road underneath its chassis.

An artificial intelligence tool hosted by Amazon and designed to boost UK Ministry of Defence recruitment puts defence personnel at risk of being identified publicly, according to a government assessment. Data used in the automated system to improve the drafting of defence job adverts and attract more diverse candidates by improving the inclusiveness language, includes names, roles and emails of military personnel and is stored by Amazon in the US. This means "a data breach may have concerning consequences, ie identification of defence personnel", according to documents detailing government AI systems published for the first time today. The risk has been judged to be "low" and the MoD said "robust safeguards" have been put in place by the suppliers, Textio, Amazon Web Services and Amazon GuardDuty, a threat detection service. But it is one of several risks acknowledged by the government about its use of AI tools in the public sector in a tranche of documents released to improve transparency about the central government's use of algorithms. Official declarations about how the algorithms work stress that mitigations and safeguards are in place to tackle risks, as ministers push to use AI to boost UK economic productivity and, in the words of the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, on Tuesday, "bring public services back from the brink".