DroneUp CEO Tom Walker speaks with Fox News Digital about his Congressional testimony calling for a nationalized database of drone pilots and flights amid changing technology, while warning the country's airspace regulations are unprepared. As drone technology rapidly advances, industry experts are warning Congress about potential airspace lapses creating the next national security threat if left unregulated. In a U.S. House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing held last week, drone industry experts testified about the looming threats to airspace safety posed by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). "More than half of all near misses with commercial and general aviation are with drones," Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp, told Fox News Digital. Drone experts are asking Congress for a centralized database to track flights and pilots in an attempt to fill gaps in airspace regulations.

Recent progress in AI capabilities has heightened concerns that AI systems could pose a threat to national security, for example, by making it easier for malicious actors to perform cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure, or through loss of control of autonomous AI systems. In parallel, federal legislators in the US have proposed nascent 'AI incident regimes' to identify and counter similar threats. In this paper, we consolidate these two trends and present a timely proposal for a legally mandated post-deployment AI incident regime that aims to counter potential national security threats from AI systems. We start the paper by introducing the concept of 'security-critical' to describe sectors that pose extreme risks to national security, before arguing that 'security-critical' describes civilian nuclear power, aviation, life science dual-use research of concern, and frontier AI development. We then present in detail our AI incident regime proposal, justifying each component of the proposal by demonstrating its similarity to US domestic incident regimes in other 'security-critical' sectors. Finally, we sketch a hypothetical scenario where our proposed AI incident regime deals with an AI cyber incident. Our proposed AI incident regime is split into three phases. The first phase revolves around a novel operationalization of what counts as an 'AI incident' and we suggest that AI providers must create a 'national security case' before deploying a frontier AI system. The second and third phases spell out that AI providers should notify a government agency about incidents, and that the government agency should be involved in amending AI providers' security and safety procedures, in order to counter future threats to national security.

Drones have become a "threat to national security", the prisons watchdog has said, after a surge in the amount of weapons and drugs flown into high-security jails. Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, called for urgent action from Whitehall and the police after inquiries found that terrorism suspects and criminal gangs could escape or attack guards because safety had been "seriously compromised". His demands follow inspections at two category A prisons holding some of England and Wales's most dangerous inmates. HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire had thriving illicit economies selling drugs, mobile phones and weapons, and basic anti-drone security measures such as protective netting and CCTV had been allowed to fall into disrepair, inspectors found. In a report released on Tuesday, Taylor said the police and prison service had "in effect ceded the airspace above two high-security prisons to organised crime gangs" despite knowing they were holding "extremely dangerous prisoners".

Mr Taylor's warnings come in damning reports into the respective conditions at the maximum security jails. His inspection teams found serious and repeated failings of security and safety, with clear evidence of gangs arranging delivery by air of items including weapons, drugs and phones to inmates. "This is a threat to national security," said Mr Taylor. "The potential for serious weapons to be able to get into our prisons in increasing numbers means that there is a risk, particularly with these Category A prisons, particularly with some of the riskiest men in the country who are either connected to organised crime gangs or they're terrorists. "The potential for them to be able to commit serious offences within prison, or potentially to be able to escape or to cause something like a hostage situation is an enormous concern."

FIRST ON FOX: A pro-tech advocacy group has released a new report warning of the growing threat posed by China's artificial intelligence technology and its open-source approach that could threaten the national and economic security of the United States. The report, published by American Edge Project, states that "China is rapidly advancing its own open-source ecosystem as an alternative to American technology and using it as a Trojan horse to implant its CCP values into global infrastructure." "Their progress is both significant and concerning: Chinese-developed open-source AI tools are already outperforming Western models on key benchmarks, while operating at dramatically lower costs, accelerating global adoption. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which spans more than 155 countries on four continents, and its Digital Silk Road (DSR), China is exporting its technology worldwide, fostering increased global dependence, undermining democratic norms, and threatening U.S. leadership and global security." The report outlines how Chinese AI models censor historical events that could paint China in a bad light, deny or minimize human rights abuses, and filter criticism of Chinese political leaders.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) spending bill has just been release and it grants DJI a year's grace before it's potentially banned in the US, The Verge reported. It was expected that DJI and rival Autel could be banned by the end of 2024 because of the Countering CCP Drones Act provision. However, the bill gives DJI an extra year to prove to an "appropriate national security agency" that its products don't pose a national security risk in the US. Failing that, the bill authorizes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to place DJI's drones on its covered list for 2026, meaning retailers would no longer be able to import them. It also means that the products (including drones and cameras like the Osmo Pocket 3) would be prohibited from connecting to US networks, and their internal radios would no longer be authorized by the FCC.

The creators of artificial intelligence need to abandon their "tech utopian" mindset, according to the terror watchdog, amid fears that the new technology could be used to groom vulnerable individuals. Jonathan Hall KC, whose role is to review the adequacy of terrorism legislation, said the national security threat from AI was becoming ever more apparent and the technology needed to be designed with the intentions of terrorists firmly in mind. He said too much AI development focused on the potential positives of the technology while neglecting to consider how terrorists might use it to carry out attacks. "They need to have some horrible little 15-year-old neo-Nazi in the room with them, working out what they might do. You've got to hardwire the defences against what you know people will do with it," said Hall.

The next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is likely to include a machine more complex than the human brain, since the existing 100 trillion connections of GPT-4 are only a factor of 6 shy of the number of synapses in the human brain. Although the machine will be trained on human-made texts, it will develop its own qualities of mind by learning from new personal experiences. It will likely mature similarly to the way that children become independent adults who take legal responsibility for their actions. Humanity gave birth to an alien baby in its technological belly. Alarm bells are starting to sound about the existential risk that AI may bring as an alien entity.

According to Peter K. Manning, in Anglo-American societies, the purpose of the police is to "sustain politically defined order and ordering via tracking, surveillance, coercion and arrest" (2014: p.6). Consisting of several authoritatively coordinated and legitimate organizations (ibid.), the policing sector serves governments in protecting their communities, preventing crime and disorder, and ensuring justice (The Policy Circle, 2022). The police's position as acting in the communities' interest suggests that their functions are heavily dependent on public trust and societal consensus concerning social justice and fairness (Manning, 2014). While there are large numbers of police officers employed in Australia (67,200 in 2021), a number which is expected to increase in the future (Australian Industry and Skills Committee, 2022), Ransley & Mazerolle (2009) have argued that trends in public governance and regulation have caused the increased pluralization and privatisation of policing efforts. Nowadays, the policing sector thus constitutes a large network of private, public and welfare organizations geared at controlling and preventing crimes (ibid.). In this essay, I will thus focus on data science opportunities for a variety of stakeholders involved in ensuring public security and order.

In video reviews of the latest drone models to his 80,000 YouTube subscribers, Indiana college student Carson Miller doesn't seem like an unwitting tool of Chinese spies. Yet that's how the U.S. is increasingly viewing him and thousands of other Americans who purchase drones built by Shenzhen-based SZ DJI Technology Co., the world's top producer of unmanned aerial vehicles. Miller, who bought his first DJI model in 2016 for $500 and now owns six of them, shows why the company controls more than half of the U.S. drone market. "If tomorrow DJI were completely banned," the 21-year-old said, "I would be pretty frightened." Critics of DJI warn the dronemaker may be channeling reams of sensitive data to Chinese intelligence agencies on everything from critical infrastructure like bridges and dams to personal information such as heart rates and facial recognition.