JERUSALEM – The Israeli military says it has shot down an unmanned aircraft that attempted to infiltrate Israeli airspace from neighboring Syria. In a statement, the military said it intercepted the drone Saturday above the Golan Heights using a Patriot missile. It was not immediately clear if the drone had reached the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan when it was shot down. It also was not known who was operating the drone. In September, Israel also shot down an Iranian-made drone sent by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the same area. Both Iranian and Hezbollah forces have been backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Fingerspitzengefühl: A German word used to describe the ability to maintain attention to detail in an ever-changing operational and tactical environment by maintaining real-time situational awareness. The term is synonymous with the English expression of "keeping one's finger on the pulse". The problem with fingerspitzengefühl traditionally, in addition to pronouncing it, has been it is hard for an individual to scale up. In a world of sensors, AI and mobile devices, having real-time situational awareness is far easier than ever before. In fact, today the challenge is not how to do it, but what to do with the massive volume of data that can be provided.

Certain political leaders are reminding us of their fragile humanity with increasing frequency these days. Prone to wild acts of emotion, and unable to resist the urge to push their personal agenda at the expense of the greater good, it's enough to make the concept of an AI-controlled government sound utopian by comparison. We're already seeing small crumbs of evidence that they understand how AI can make public services more efficient and citizen-friendly. But these are very early days in discussing and figuring out how such technology could help us enforce laws, organize labor and welfare, and so on, in ways most people would be comfortable with. What's more likely – dare I say, inevitable – is that governments will find ways to take advantage of AI in smaller increments, and this will eventually compound to form a political system in which machines are doing most of the'thinking' work.

In September, Israel also shot down an Iranian-made drone sent by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the same area. Both Iranian and Hezbollah forces have been backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war.

The United States military said Saturday it has carried out a new drone strike against the Shabab extremist group in Somalia, killing "several" militants. A statement by the U.S. Africa Command said the strike was carried out Friday night in Lower Shabelle region, about 20 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu. It came a day after another strike in the Bay Region, about 100 miles west of Mogadishu. Friday's airstrike was the 23rd the U.S. military has carried out this year against the Al Qaeda-linked Shabab and the far smaller Islamic State group in Somalia. The Trump administration earlier this year approved expanded military operations against extremists in the Horn of Africa nation. The latest U.S. drone strike was carried out in coordination with Somalia's government, the U.S. statement said.

MOGADISHU, Somalia – The United States military said Saturday it has carried out a new drone strike against the al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia, killing "several" militants. A statement by the U.S. Africa Command said the strike was carried out Friday night in Lower Shabelle region, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the capital, Mogadishu. It came a day after another strike in the Bay Region, about 100 miles west of Mogadishu. Friday's airstrike was the 23rd the U.S. military has carried out this year against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab and the far smaller Islamic State group in Somalia. The Trump administration earlier this year approved expanded military operations against extremists in the Horn of Africa nation. The latest U.S. drone strike was carried out in coordination with Somalia's government, the U.S. statement said.

BDA Goes … continued • "… using Big and Smart Data as well as methods and tools based on semantic technologies will provide more transparency, enable precise and well-founded decisions and improve planning processes, which will result in more efficient and user-centric processes and systems …" • "Integrating things, data and semantic opens opportunities for knowledge discovery, and further makes it possible to provide advanced and intelligent services."

Friday's airstrike was the 23rd the U.S. military has carried out this year against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab and the far smaller Islamic State group in Somalia. The Trump administration earlier this year approved expanded military operations against extremists in the Horn of Africa nation.

Public perception of artificial intelligence technology, in 2017, seems to lie somewhere at the intersection of existential fear and cautious optimism. Yet there's a growing movement of people who believe AI is crucial to the evolution of our species. Ray Kurzweil, Google's guru of AI and futurism, spoke last week at the Council for Foreign Relations, in an intimate Q&A session. His views on the future of humanity might seem radical to a public that's been cutting its teeth on doomsayer headlines featuring Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warning about World War III. He's quick to point out that today, right now, is the best our species has ever had it.

The use of machine learning to garner insights about the future is one of the benefits of the technology most oft cited by enterprise. For historians, however, its true potential lies in its ability to reveal new things the past - potential that is now being realized on a massive scale. There have been a number of projects conducted by historians in recent years that have leveraged data analytics. Real Clear Politics, for example, applied text mining tools to 34 years of state of the union addresses, starting with Ronald Reagan in 1981, to analyze their political tone. They looked at the language used to chart each speech ideologically (on a left-right political scale) based on its content.