Defense startup Anduril has moved closer to its ambition to build a new industry giant with the acquisition of drone maker Area-I. Combining Anduril's cutting-edge AI with Area-I's proven air vehicles could breed a formidable new range of smart drones. This was the first time the Valkyrie had launched another drone. Area-I was in the headlines this week with the U.S. Air Force reporting the successful launch of one of their Altius-600 drones from an XQ-58 Valkyrie unmanned jet, hinting at plans for a future of unmanned motherships releasing fleets of drones. The Anduril acquisition is likely to take the already successful Altius to another level by opening up a new range of missions. Anduril, founded in 2017, aims to bring a fast-paced Silicon Valley approach to the defense sector, challenging the existing giants like Boeing BA, Northrop Grumman NOC and Raytheon which are geared to the traditional crawling pace of military acquisition: "We deploy in hours, not years," states their website.

The three-year contract will be split across multiple bidders. It replaces the 10-year, $10 billion JEDI cloud-computing contract terminated in July, which was planned to consolidate the Pentagon's patchwork of data systems to give defense personnel better access to real-time information and artificial-intelligence capabilities. The Pentagon said the contract was canceled because of its evolving needs. The project was mired in years of squabbling between Microsoft Corp. MSFT 0.26%, which won the bidding, and Amazon.com Inc., AMZN 2.15% which contended the process was politically motivated under the Trump administration.

The corporate war to provide cloud computing for US warfighters is over. Late Friday, the Department of Defense announced that Microsoft has won the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, known as JEDI. The decision was the culmination of a two-year process that also included Google, IBM, and Oracle, and where Amazon was long seen as the favorite. JEDI, potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years, has been positioned by the Pentagon as crucial to modernizing its use of technology--and making the US military more deadly. "We must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform," DoD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said in a statement.

The corporate war to provide cloud computing for US warfighters is over. Late Friday, the Department of Defense announced that Microsoft has won the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, known as JEDI. The decision was the culmination of a two-year process that also included Google, IBM, and Oracle, and where Amazon was long seen as the favorite. JEDI, potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years, has been positioned by the Pentagon as crucial to modernizing its use of technology--and making the US military more deadly. "We must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform," DoD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said in a statement.

WASHINGTON – Amazon, Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies putting the world at risk through killer robot development, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons. Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to deadly AI, whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future. "Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they're currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?" The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years, with critics warning they would jeopardize international security and herald a third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and the atomic bomb. A panel of government experts debated policy options regarding lethal autonomous weapons at a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva on Wednesday.

After 9/11, the U.S. enforced stricter control on immigration. This enforcement led to the birth of Homeland Security and ICE, but what is ICE exactly? SAN FRANCISCO – Hundreds of Google employees are calling on the company to pledge it won't work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A group of employees called Googlers for Human Rights posted a public petition urging the company not to bid on a cloud computing contract for CBP, the federal agency that oversees law enforcement for the country's borders. Bids for the contract were due Aug. 1.

Microsoft plans to continue to provide its technology to the U.S. military, despite worries among the software maker's own employees that advances in the field of artificial intelligence could empower weapons to act autonomously and kill people. The company laid out its reasoning Friday in a blog post by Brad Smith, Microsoft's president. He wrote that he and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed employee concerns about the issue in a meeting Thursday, and conceded not all the workers were satisfied. In a letter published on blogging site Medium, the employees wrote that they joined Microsoft with'the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering.' Microsoft has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) on a'longstanding and reliable basis' for four decades.

Jeff Bezos has hit out at tech firms who refuse to work on military projects. Google recently pulled out of bidding for a lucrative $10bn Pentagon contract, saying the deal would be'inconsistent with its principles', leaving Amazon and Microsoft among those in the race. Microsoft employees called today for it to pull out of bidding for the same contract, saying that they joined Microsoft with'the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering.' 'If big tech companies are going to turn their back on US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,' Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the Wired25 summit in San Francisco. 'We are going to continue to support the DOD and I think we should,' Bezos replied.

Microsoft employees have hit back at the firm's plan to bid for a controversial $10bn Pentagon contract. In a letter published on blogging site Medium, the employees wrote that they joined Microsoft with'the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering.' They also accused Microsoft executives of betraying the company's artificial intelligence principles--ones that state A.I. should be'fair, reliable and safe, private and secure, inclusive, transparent, and accountable'--in pursuit of'short-term profits.' In a letter published on blogging site Medium, the employees wrote that they joined Microsoft with'the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering.' It comes after Google dropped out of the bidding for a huge Pentagon cloud computing contract that could be worth up to $10 billion, saying the deal would be'inconsistent with its principles'.

Silicon Valley has a long and secretive history of building hardware and software for the military and law enforcement. In contrast, a recent wave of employee protests against some of those government contracts has been short, fast, and surprisingly public--tearing through corporate campuses, mailing lists, and message boards inside some of the world's most powerful companies. The revolt is part of a growing political awakening among some tech employees about the uses of the products they build. What began as concern inside Google about a Pentagon contract to tap the company's artificial-intelligence smarts was catalyzed by outrage over Trump administration immigration policies. Now, it seems to be spreading quickly.