Not a day goes by without some fascinating new advance in deep learning, yet most of the conversation around deep learning in the cybersecurity realm has focused on its defensive capabilities, using AI algorithms to hunt through network and server logs to ferret out anomalous activity. This raises the fascinating question of what deep learning might be capable of as an offensive weapon of cyberwarfare. In the leadup to the US presidential election, the US Government proudly proclaimed that it had deployed its cyber warriors to burrow deep inside of Russian infrastructure systems in preparation for possible retaliatory strikes: "U.S. military hackers … penetrated Russia's electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin's command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. deem it necessary." Such widespread infiltration likely took immense resources and preparation from a massive team of cyber experts. What if an organization like the NSA could instead simply fire up a deep learning algorithm, point it at the Kremlin and let the tool take it from there?

For the first time in many years, US companies clearly face a real change in sentiment and political risk in sending or keeping work offshore. It's clear that the new Trump administration combined with other secular forces – Brexit and the U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric, for example – signals a step back and pause in globalization. I think it's reasonable to believe that, to a larger extent than before, all directors in companies will be pressured to not use labor arbitrage and potentially pressured to repatriate work that has already been moved offshore. The problem this poses for companies is that executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their company. So far, president-elect Trump has gone after high-profile consumer goods companies and manufacturing companies.

This drone swarm was a product of the Strategic Capabilities Office, and outgoing Secretary of Defense Ash Carter praised the work, saying "This is the kind of cutting-edge innovation that will keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. This demonstration will advance our development of autonomous systems." Autonomy and swarming are centerpieces in many predictions about the next century of war. The Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones that have so far most embodied how the United States fights wars are big, expensive, and vulnerable machines, with human pilots and sensor operators controlling them remotely. These drones also operate in skies relatively free of threats, without fear that a hostile jet will shoot them down.

Britain's top law enforcement official says it is legal to kill militants overseas if they pose an immediate or otherwise unstoppable threat. Attorney General Jeremy Wright is using a speech Wednesday to lay out the legal basis for the use of lethal force. Excerpts were released in advance. A Royal Air Force drone strike in Syria killed three Islamic State group fighters in 2015, including two Britons. It was the first such strike acknowledged by the British government.

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and the Omidyar Network, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's nonprofit, have each committed $10 million to fund academic research and development aimed at keeping artificial intelligence systems ethical and preventing building AI that may harm society. The fund received an additional $5 million from the Knight Foundation and two other $1 million donations from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Jim Pallotta, founder of the Raptor Group. The $27 million reserve is being anchored by MIT's Media Lab and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, the name of the fund, expects to grow as new funders continue to come on board. Mossberg: Streaming TV is beginning to look a lot like cable Recode Daily: Spy chiefs warned Trump of a report that Russia has dirt on him Here's how to watch Donald Trump's first press conference since winning the election While AI has obvious benefits -- it can be used to scan through troves of data to detect cancer and automate driving to reduce fatalities -- a lot of very smart people, including the White House and Elon Musk's nonprofit Open AI, have warned how artificially intelligent systems can go awry.

In his final Twitter post as President Obama's deputy Chief Technology Officer, Ed Felten dryly notes one of his accomplishments: "Robot apocalypses: 0." Robots and automation have received lots of attention over the past year, with much of the interest ranging from alarmist to curious. Elon Musk has said that robots will take your job. And, at the recently concluded 50th annual Consumer Electronics Show, companies rolled out robots to monitor your child and brew your coffee and tea. Robots are everywhere, except, as it turns out, in the data. To be clear, I don't mean there's no data about robots.

Norway has become the first country to switch off FM radio despite concerns about the move being premature. The northern county of Nordland stopped broadcasting using analogue frequencies on Wednesday as the Government plans to roll out digital-only radio over the course of the year. Oslo hopes the measure will save 200 million Norwegian krone (£19 million) a year as the country has struggled to make sure its ageing FM equipment still emits signals over its vast, sparsely populated territory, which is covered in signal-blocking fijords and forests. Stephen Lax, a lecturer in Communication Technology at the University of Leeds, told the New Scientist that Norway's geography made analogue radio transmission particularly difficult. He said: "Norway has many mountains and valleys that the robust nature of DAB can help with. "Additionally, its FM radio infrastructure was coming to the end of its life, so they would've needed to either replace it or fully commit to DAB anyway.

A huge telescope in Chile is going to be modified so that it can look for aliens. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope will be altered so that it can better look for potentially habitable and habited planets in Alpha Centauri, the star system that is closest to Earth. The modifications are part of a deal between the ESO and Breakthrough Starshot, a huge venture that eventually hopes to send out tiny spacecraft deep into space, among other projects. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

The rise of cloud-based multinational entities (MNE's) like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. has proven that far from being a passing fad, virtual and cloud-based businesses have come to stay creating a new frontier for both tax regulators and departments. Global tax laws have however, failed to keep pace with the fast-paced evolution in the tech world creating challenges for tax assessors and departments as they race to determine, plan for, as well as comply with new standards. While uncertainties persisted, loopholes were exploited mainly in the knotty area of Transfer Pricing (TP). Increasingly improving tax audit procedures have made the area of TP potential minefield for multinational companies not just regarding compliance with overall tax rules but also, regarding its tax planning activities. Multinationals like GOOGLE, Amazon and Microsoft, have fallen foul of new regulations with costs ranging from a couple of millions to billions of dollars.

Multiple weaknesses were exposed in public institutions in connection with last year's election. First, cybercriminals tried to hack the outcome, then pollsters failed to read voter sentiment accurately. Finally, fake news crept into our news feeds, distorting our collective view of the real world. Can big data technology and artificial intelligence put us back on the straight and narrow? We'll soon get to find out.