Iran has made it no secret that it plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to help better its military capabilities, but Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is now turning to Iran's private sector in a move he thinks will boost his crippling economy. On Sunday, Raisi met with private sector companies to announce Tehran's intent to invest in digital businesses. Raisi claimed the move would not only help develop Iran's AI capabilities, but help achieve his goal to grow the economy by 8%, reported pro-government media outlet Tasnim News Agency. However, experts remain skeptical about whether the move will actually fix Iran's economic woes and said they are more concerned by the abilities AI would grant Tehran when it comes to the battlefield. An Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicle, the Shahed-136, is being displayed at Azadi Square in western Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 11, 2024, during a rally to mark the 45th anniversary of the victory of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In this study, we introduce "CosmoAgent," an innovative artificial intelligence framework utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) to simulate complex interactions between human and extraterrestrial civilizations, with a special emphasis on Stephen Hawking's cautionary advice about not sending radio signals haphazardly into the universe. The goal is to assess the feasibility of peaceful coexistence while considering potential risks that could threaten well-intentioned civilizations. Employing mathematical models and state transition matrices, our approach quantitatively evaluates the development trajectories of civilizations, offering insights into future decision-making at critical points of growth and saturation. Furthermore, the paper acknowledges the vast diversity in potential living conditions across the universe, which could foster unique cosmologies, ethical codes, and worldviews among various civilizations. Recognizing the Earth-centric bias inherent in current LLM designs, we propose the novel concept of using LLMs with diverse ethical paradigms and simulating interactions between entities with distinct moral principles. This innovative research provides a new way to understand complex inter-civilizational dynamics, expanding our perspective while pioneering novel strategies for conflict resolution, crucial for preventing interstellar conflicts. We have also released the code and datasets to enable further academic investigation into this interesting area of research.

The next era of war and deterrence will be defined by AI. The AI winner of this decade will be economically and militarily dominant for the next 50 years. The faster that we confront this reality, the faster we can act in ensuring America does not lose. China is currently outpacing the United States (for which there are numerous supporting facts). The United States, both the government and AI technologists, need to start acting. The AI War is at the core of the future of our world.

In his new book The Last War: How AI Will Shape India's Final Showdown With China, Pravin Sawhney, the editor of FORCE magazine, disquietingly forebodes a grim scenario for 2024: "If India and China were to fight a war in the near future, India faces the prospect of losing the war within 10 days. China could take Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh with a minimum loss of life, and there is very little that India could do about it." Is it the imagination of a defence analyst running wild? Far from it -- such scenarios have been predicted by other analysts too. A US military blog, Mad Scientist, which looks at the future of warfare, visualised a similar scenario for 2035 in February 2020, wherein China, in collusion with Pakistan, defeats India in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

A new federal commission on artificial intelligence is being led by Democrats. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (AI), a federally appointed commission, held its first meeting Monday chaired by former Google executive and billionaire Eric Schmidt, a major donor and informal adviser to former President Barack Obama. The commission's vice chairman is Robert Work, who was deputy defense secretary in the Obama administration. Additionally, the AI commission has hired as a staff member Ylli Bajraktari, a former National Security Council staff member under Mr. Obama. Mr. Bajraktari also was a former aide to Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

"Military capability" deployed to counter illegal drone flights at Gatwick Airport has been withdrawn, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed. The Army was deployed as hundreds of flights were cancelled on 20 December following repeated drone sightings. Gatwick said it had spent £5m to prevent future attacks, but would not comment on the nature of the system. Sussex Police said no arrests have been made since a couple were released without charge on 23 December. More than 140,000 passengers were affected by cancellations and delays during the 36 hours of chaos.

UK Defence Minister Gavin Williamson meets members of the US-UK Defence Innovation Board. UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has launched the new artificial intelligence (AI) hub at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) in Porton Down, Salisbury. The launch was announced at the joint US-UK Defence Innovation Board meeting conducted to explore major areas of co-operation between the nations and ensure military capabilities into the future. Williamson said: "The relationship we have with our US partners is indispensable to both our nations. In the face of evolving global threats, we must harness new technologies and approaches to stay ahead of our adversaries and keep us safe.

Change comes hard in much of Europe, particularly in the defense community. But no less than in the United States, European nations are wrestling with the implications of machine learning and artificial intelligence -- in the military as well as civilian society. During several trips to Europe in the last six months, we have noted a significant uptick in the number of NATO political and military leaders discussing AI's impact on the alliance's military capability. There seems to be a two-speed discussion going on. European defense industry officials we talked to had no qualms about harnessing AI to reduce manufacturing costs and improve customer satisfaction.

On July 20, China's State Council issued the "Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" (新一代人工智能发展规划), which articulates an ambitious agenda for China to lead the world in AI. China intends to pursue a "first-mover advantage" to become the "premier global AI innovation center" by 2030. Through this new strategic framework, China will advance a "three in one" agenda in AI: tackling key problems in research and development, pursuing a range of products and applications, and cultivating an AI industry. The Chinese leadership thus seeks to seize a "major strategic opportunity" to advance its development of AI, potentially surpassing the United States in the process. This new plan, which will be implemented by a new AI Plan Promotion Office within the Ministry of Science and Technology, outlines China's objectives for advances in AI in three stages. First, by 2020, China's overall progress in technology and applications of AI should keep pace with the world's advanced level, while its AI industry becomes an important economic growth point.