Digital age weapons developed by Israel to oppress Palestinians are rapidly being repurposed for much wider applications – against Western populations who have long taken their freedoms for granted. Israel’s status as a “startup nation” was established decades ago. But its reputation for hi-tech innovation always depended on a dark side, one that is becoming ever…
Advertised as the latest tool to give shoppers more convenience, facial recognition comes with deep costs to privacy and security. But can anyone remember Silicon Valley asking for permission to use your face? Mankind has long feared that some totalitarian state, as vividly described by visionary writers like George Orwell (1984), Aldous Huxley (Brave New…
A landmark Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the City of Berkeley’s cell phone right to know ordinance rejecting industries argument that the ordinance violates the first amendment. The Berkeley ordinance requires retailers to inform consumers that cell phones emit radiation and that “if you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt…
In the latest example of artificial intelligence at work, algorithms can now ‘undress’ a woman, or put false utterances into a politician’s mouth. What’s at stake is nothing less than our perception of reality. So then what is the big deal? If deepfake videos are just some sort of passing trend that will quickly lose…
It’s geopolitical, geoeconomic war. Cold, so far, but now about to descend to deep freeze. The US National Security Strategy unmistakably spells it out. China is a strategic competitor and must be contained, no holds barred, on all fronts: economic, military and most of all, technological. Enter the current, concerted offensive across the spectrum, from 5G…
In his highly acclaimed 2017 book, Destined for War, Harvard professor Graham Allison assessed the likelihood that the United States and China would one day find themselves at war. Comparing the U.S.-Chinese relationship to great-power rivalries all the way back to the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC, he concluded that the future risk…
