Memes and social networks have become weaponized, while many governments seem ill-equipped to understand the new reality of information warfare. How will we fight state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda in the future? In 2011, a university professor with a background in robotics presented an idea that seemed radical at the time. After conducting research backed by DARPA -- the same defense agency that helped spawn the internet -- Dr. Robert Finkelstein proposed the creation of a brand new arm of the US military, a "Meme Control Center." You'll learn about cybersecurity trends to watch and high-momentum startups with the potential to shape the future of security. In internet-speak the word "meme" often refers to an amusing picture that goes viral on social media. More broadly, however, a meme is any idea that spreads, whether that idea is true or false. It is this broader definition of meme that Finklestein had in mind when he proposed the Meme Control Center and his idea of "memetic warfare." From "Tutorial: Military Memetics," by Dr. Robert Finkelstein, presented at Social Media for Defense Summit, 2011 Basically, Dr. Finklestein's Meme Control Center would pump the internet full of "memes" that would benefit the national security of the United States. Finkelstein saw a future in which guns and bombs are replaced by rumor, digital fakery, and social engineering.

To answer questions about racial inequality, we often need a way to infer race and ethnicity from a name. Until now, a bulk of the focus has been on optimally exploiting the last names list provided by the Census Bureau. But there is more information in the first names, especially for African Americans. To estimate the relationship between full names and race, we exploit the Florida voter registration data and the Wikipedia data. In particular, we model the relationship between the sequence of characters in a name, and race and ethnicity using Long Short Term Memory Networks. Our out of sample (OOS) precision and recall for the full name model estimated on the Florida Voter Registration data is .83 and .84 respectively. This compares to OOS precision and recall of .79 and .81 for the last name only model. Commensurate numbers for Wikipedia data are .73 and .73 for the full name model and .66 and .67 for the last name model. To illustrate the use of this method, we apply our method to the campaign finance data to estimate the share of donations made by people of various racial groups.

A criminal gang used a swarm of drones to disarm and prevent law enforcement agents from carrying out a hostage rescue, an FBI official has revealed. A group of tiny drones amassed on the FBI agents outside an unidentified US city, making a series of'high-speed, low passes at agents in the observation post' in an attempt'to flush them' from their position, according to Defense One. 'We were then blind,' said Joe Mazel, head of the FBI's Operational Technology Law unit, at the AUVSI Xponential conference in Denver. 'It definitely presented some challenges'. The disconcerting incident casts a light on the growing ways that criminals, hackers and others are using drones to carry out a number of illicit activities.

The month-long launch window for NASA's new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet's soil--effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It's also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, and it may not be the last. Its mission is to peer deep into Mars with two main instruments. One is a probe that'll hammer 16 feet deep to take the planet's temperature and determine how much heat it's losing.

For more than a year, Tesla has defended its semiautonomous Autopilot as a vital, life-saving feature. CEO Elon Musk has lambasted journalists who write about crashes involving the system. "It's really incredibly irresponsible of any journalists with integrity to write an article that would lead people to believe that autonomy is less safe," he said during a tumultuous earnings call this week. "Because people might actually turn it off, and then die." This wasn't the first time Musk has made this argument about Autopilot, which keeps the car in its lane and a safe distance from other vehicles but requires constant human oversight, and has been involved in two fatal crashes in the US. "Writing an article that's negative, you're effectively dissuading people from using autonomous vehicles, you're killing people," he said on an October 2016 conference call.

As U.S. and Chinese officials engage in highly anticipated trade talks, officials from China have asserted that it will not discuss two of the biggest trade demands from the United States. One is about the U.S. trade deficit; the other is an issue that could become the greatest technology war in history: China's push into artificial intelligence. The United States has good reason to be concerned about China's hard stance. While the ongoing trade war is grabbing all the headlines, it's the tussle for dominance in the A.I. space that could shape the economic fortunes of the two world powers. Overshadowed by the dazzling A.I. advances made by the United States so far, China has been silently but resolutely building an ecosystem that is feeding and fueling its ambition to become a world leader in A.I. by 2030.

The US military is funding a radical'shape shifting' underwater robot than can transform between a sub and a humanoid robot. Called Aquanaut, it is billed as a'multipurpose subsea robot' and removes the need for a'mother' vehicle and tethers. Houston Mechatronics, the firm behind the gadget, is backed by the Defense Department. Called Aquanaut, it is billed as a'multipurpose subsea robot' and removes the need for a'mother' vehicle and tethers. Houston Mechatronics, the firm behind the gadget, is backed by the DoD.

LONDON, UK – Much has been made of the international race for AI supremacy between the respective global superpowers of China and the US, with some commentators even pushing an'AI Cold War' angle. These two key focal points for AI interest and innovation may impress with their sheer resources and spending, but some of the greatest advancements in AI are coming out of smaller economies with much less firepower. Britain has for centuries punched above its weight in enterprise and business, and is today considered to have one of the strongest digital economies in the world. As this small, rainy island looks inward and asks difficult questions about its place in the world, the British AI sector is one area where the path forward is clear – as the recent Lords AI report indicated. From their offices near St. Pauls Cathedral in London, TechUK are certainly at the crossroads of many different strands of innovation going into British tech and enterprise.

There is a general tendency among counterterrorism analysts to understate rather than hyperbolize terrorists' technological adaptations. In 2011 and 2012, most believed that the "Arab Spring" revolutions would marginalize jihadist movements. But within four years, jihadists had attracted a record number of foreign fighters to the Syrian battlefield, in part by using the same social media mobilization techniques that protesters had employed to challenge dictators like Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar Qaddafi. Militant groups later combined easy accessibility to operatives via social media with new advances in encryption to create the "virtual planner" model of terrorism. This model allows online operatives to provide the same offerings that were once the domain of physical networks, including recruitment, coordinating the target and timing of attacks, and even providing technical assistance on topics like bomb-making.

NASA's latest mission to Mars will study the atmosphere and listen for phenomenons like'marsquakes.' A solar array on the InSight Mars Lander gleams beneath lights being used to test the array's power-generating ability during testing at the Lockheed Martin satellite facility outside Denver in January before being packaged for transport to the launch site in California. VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. Roaring into the predawn sky, the Mars InSight lander launch will be visible to millions of California residents near Los Angeles as it begins its approximately 200-day journey atop a two-stage Atlas V rocket. This is NASA's first interplanetary launch from the West Coast, a decision made in large part because Vandenberg's launch pads are less busy than the ones at Cape Canaveral's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.