An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: China appears to have suspended its surveillance balloon program following a major diplomatic incident earlier this year, when one of the country's high-altitude spy balloons transited the United States, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN. US officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February, the sources said. The US has not observed any new launches since the episode occurred... The US intelligence community believes that Chinese Communist Party leaders did not intend for the balloon to cross over the United States, and even reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program over the incident, one of the sources said...

The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials. The suspension of the program is likely China's way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is "a positive step" and likely Beijing's way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship...

The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon's remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country...In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a "domain awareness gap" that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time. The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: Firefly Aerospace just set a new responsive-launch record. The company's Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday (Sept. 14) at 10:28 p.m. EDT (7:28 p.m. local California time; 0228 GMT on Sept. 15), kicking off a mission for the U.S. Space Force called Victus Nox. The rocket roared off the pad just 27 hours after the U.S. Space Force gave the order -- less time than on any previous national security mission. The wheels for Victus Nox (Latin for "conquer the night") began turning in September 2022, when the Space Force awarded contracts to Texas-based Firefly and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary headquartered in the Los Angeles area that built the mission's payload.

On Aug. 30 of this year, Firefly and Millennium entered the mission's "hot standby" phase, a six-month period during which they could receive a launch-alert notice at any time. After receipt of that notice, Millennium and Firefly would have 60 hours to get the satellite from Millennium's Southern California facilities to Vandenberg, fuel it up and mate it to the Alpha rocket's payload adapter. The alert came through recently, and the mission teams hit their ambitious timeline. "Upon activation, the space vehicle was transported 165 miles [266 kilometers] from Millennium's El Segundo facility to Vandenberg Space Force Base where it was tested, fueled and mated to the launch adapter in just under 58 hours, significantly faster than the typical timeline of weeks or months," Space Force officials said in the emailed statement.

The teams then had to wait for the launch order, which would give them Victus Nox's orbital requirements. They would then have just 24 hours to update Alpha's trajectory and guidance software, encapsulate the satellite in its payload fairing, get the payload to the pad, mate it to Alpha and get the rocket ready to launch, Firefly wrote in a statement. The teams managed that task as well. They were ready to launch as soon as the first window opened, which was 27 hours after the Space Force gave the order. Victus Nox's speed goals didn't end with the successful liftoff. The teams now aim to get the satellite up and running within 48 hours of its deployment. The report notes that the previous response-launch record for a U.S. national security mission was 21 days, which was set in June 2021.

The cloud-based system the Air Force is co-developing with Canada to enable instantaneous combat data-sharing is just about ready for prime time, although the looming threat of a budget gap may slow its global deployment. The Drive reports: Cloud-based command-and-control (CBC2), a pillar of the service's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), will hit initial operating capability roughly on schedule next month, Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, integrating program officer for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management, told The War Zone and other outlets this week at the Air, Space, and Cyber conference near Washington, D.C. It's headed to three unspecified base locations within the first half of 2024, Cropsey said, with others to follow at "more scale" as what's anticipated to be a five-year rollout plan gets underway. [...] CBC2 is designed to replace the hardware-based Battle Control System-Fixed, which provides command-and-control for Canada and the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. Officially made a program in 2022, CBC2 is "a set of microservice applications," according to an Air Force release, that can take in more than 750 radar feeds and deliver them to a single user interface. "The system then allows operators to create machine-generated courses of action to help shorten the tactical C2 kill chain and send a desired effect via machine-to-machine connections," the release adds.

In addition to delivering data faster and streamlining communication, CBC2 will build in new artificial intelligence elements. A January Government Accountability Office report states that it will build upon Pathfinder, an AI-empowered prototype that ingests "data that would in the past have been ... left on the cutting room floor," as North American Aerospace Defense Command chief Gen. Glen VanHerck put it in remarks reported by C4ISRNet. A September 2020 paper (PDF) from the Canada Institute described Pathfinder as "giving new life to old sensors" for NORAD's defense. "In a recent demonstration," the paper stated, "The Pathfinder system was tied to Federal Aviation Administration radars, and without any modification to the radars themselves, consistently demonstrated an ability to effectively detect and track very small unmanned aircraft, previously thought to be beyond the capability of the system."

The Pentagon is considering the development of a vast network of AI-powered technology, drones and autonomous systems within the next two years to counter threats from China and other adversaries. WSJ: Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, will provide new details in a speech later Wednesday about the department's plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an array of thousands of air-, land- and sea-based artificial-intelligence systems that are intended to be "small, smart, cheap."

The U.S. is seeking to keep pace with China's rapidly expanding military amid concerns that the Pentagon bureaucracy takes too long to develop and deploy cutting-edge systems. [...] One approach could be to build on the capabilities demonstrated by Task Force 59, the U.S. Navy's network of drones and sensors designed to monitor Iran's military activities in the Middle East.

The future of wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness tracking rings, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community. The Intercept: The federal government has shelled out at least $22 million in an effort to develop "smart" clothing that spies on the wearer and its surroundings. Similar to previous moonshot projects funded by military and intelligence agencies, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and superpowers, but the basic applications are on brand for the government: surveillance and data collection. Billed as the "largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles," the SMART ePANTS -- Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems -- program aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video, and geolocation data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an August 22 press release. Garments slated for production include shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, all of which are intended to be washable.

The project is being undertaken by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the intelligence community's secretive counterpart to the military's better-known Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. IARPA's website says it "invests federal funding into high-risk, high reward projects to address challenges facing the intelligence community." Its tolerance for risk has led to both impressive achievements, like a Nobel Prize awarded to physicist David Wineland for his research on quantum computing funded by IARPA, as well as costly failures. "A lot of the IARPA and DARPA programs are like throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator," Annie Jacobsen, author of a book about DARPA, "The Pentagon's Brain," told The Intercept. "It may or may not stick."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Russia's military intelligence unit has been targeting Ukrainian Android devices with "Infamous Chisel," the tracking name for new malware that's designed to backdoor devices and steal critical information, Western intelligence agencies said on Thursday. "Infamous Chisel is a collection of components which enable persistent access to an infected Android device over the Tor network, and which periodically collates and exfiltrates victim information from compromised devices," intelligence officials from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand wrote (PDF). "The information exfiltrated is a combination of system device information, commercial application information and applications specific to the Ukrainian military."

Infamous Chisel gains persistence by replacing the legitimate system component known as netd with a malicious version. Besides allowing Infamous Chisel to run each time a device is restarted, the malicious netd is also the main engine for the malware. It uses shell scripts and commands to collate and collect device information and also searches directories for files that have a predefined set of extensions. Depending on where on the infected device a collected file is located, netd sends it to Russian servers either immediately or once a day. When exfiltrating files of interest, Infamous Chisel uses the TLS protocol and a hard-coded IP and port. Use of the local IP address is likely a mechanism to relay the network traffic over a VPN or other secure channel configured on the infected device. This would allow the exfiltration traffic to blend in with expected encrypted network traffic. In the event a connection to the local IP and port fails, the malware falls back to a hard-coded domain that's resolved using a request to dns.google.

Infamous Chisel also installs a version of the Dropbear SSH client that can be used to remotely access a device. The version installed has authentication mechanisms that have been modified from the original version to change the way users log in to an SSH session. [...] The report didn't say how the malware gets installed. In the advisory Ukraine's security service issued earlier this month (PDF), officials said that Russian personnel had "captured Ukrainian tablets on the battlefield, pursuing the aim to spread malware and abuse available access to penetrate the system." It's unclear if this was the vector.

Under an ambitious program, dubbed Replicator, the Pentagon aims to field thousands of autonomous systems within two years to counter China. The effort is being spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Politico reports: Hicks said the time is right to push to rapidly scale up innovative technology. The move comes as the U.S. looks to get creative to deter China in the Indo-Pacific and Pentagon leadership has taken stock of how Ukraine has fended off Russia's invasion. "Industry is ready. The culture is ready to shift," Hicks said. "We have to drive that from the top, and we need to give it a hard target." "The great paradox of military innovation is you're going to have to make big bets and you've got to execute on those bets," she added.

With Replicator, the Pentagon aims to have thousands of autonomous systems across various domains produced and delivered in 18 to 24 months. Hicks declined to discuss what specific platforms might be produced under the program -- such as aerial drones or unmanned ships -- citing the "competition landscape" in the defense industry as well as concerns about tipping DOD's hand to China. The Pentagon will instead "say more as we get to production on capabilities."

Autonomous weapons are seen as a potential way to counter China's numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops in a rapidly narrowing window. Fielding large numbers of cheap, expendable drones, proponents argue, is faster and lower-cost than exquisite weapons systems and puts fewer troops at risk. Another major aim of the Replicator initiative is to provide a template for future efforts to rapidly field military technology. She said lessons from the Replicator program could be applied throughout the Pentagon, military services and combatant commands.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. But what really distinguishes the Air Force's pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon.

Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill... The emergence of artificial intelligence is helping to spawn a new generation of Pentagon contractors who are seeking to undercut, or at least disrupt, the longstanding primacy of the handful of giant firms who supply the armed forces with planes, missiles, tanks and ships. The possibility of building fleets of smart but relatively inexpensive weapons that could be deployed in large numbers is allowing Pentagon officials to think in new ways about taking on enemy forces.

It also is forcing them to confront questions about what role humans should play in conflicts waged with software that is written to kill...
The article adds that the U.S. Air Force plans to build 1,000 to 2,000 AI drones for as little as $3 million apiece. "Some will focus on surveillance or resupply missions, others will fly in attack swarms and still others will serve as a 'loyal wingman' to a human pilot....

"A recently revised Pentagon policy on the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems allows for the autonomous use of lethal force — but any particular plan to build or deploy such a weapon must first be reviewed and approved by a special military panel."

The US acted aggressively last year to limit China's ability to develop artificial intelligence for military purposes, blocking the sale there of the most advanced US chips used to train AI systems. From a report: Big advances in the chips used to develop generative AI have meant that the latest US technology on sale in China is more powerful than anything available before. That is despite the fact that the chips have been deliberately hobbled for the Chinese market to limit their capabilities, making them less effective than products available elsewhere in the world. The result has been soaring Chinese orders for the latest advanced US processors. China's leading Internet companies have placed orders for $5 billion worth of chips from Nvidia, whose graphical processing units have become the workhorse for training large AI models.

The impact of soaring global demand for Nvidia's products is likely to underpin the chipmaker's second-quarter financial results due to be announced on Wednesday. Besides reflecting demand for improved chips to train the Internet companies' latest large language models, the rush has also been prompted by worries that the US might tighten its export controls further, making even these limited products unavailable in the future. However, Bill Dally, Nvidia's chief scientist, suggested that the US export controls would have greater impact in the future. "As training requirements [for the most advanced AI systems] continue to double every six to 12 months," the gap between chips sold in China and those available in the rest of the world "will grow quickly," he said.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a prototype pipeline for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can "distill" binary executables into human-intelligible code so that it can be updated and deployed in "weeks, days, or hours, in some cases." The work is part of a five-year, $10 million project with the agency. The Register reports: After running an executable through the university's "distillation" process, software engineers should be able to examine the generated HAR, figure out what the code does, and make changes to add new features, patch bugs, or improve security, and turn the HAR back into executable code, says GT associate professor and project participant Brendan Saltaformaggio. This would be useful for, say, updating complex software that was written by a contractor or internal team, the source code is no longer or never was to hand and neither are its creators, and stuff needs to be fixed up. Reverse engineering the binary and patching in an update by hand can be a little hairy, hence DARPA's desire for something a bit more solid and automatic. The idea is to use this pipeline to freshen up legacy or outdated software that may have taken years and millions of dollars to develop some time ago.

Saltaformaggio told El Reg his team has the entire process working from start to finish, and with some level of stability, too. "DARPA sets challenges they like to use to test the capabilities of a project," he told us over the phone. "So far we've handled every challenge problem DARPA's thrown at us, so I'd say it's working pretty well." Saltaformaggio said his team's pipeline disassembles binaries into a graph structure with pseudo-code, and presented in a way that developers can navigate, and replace or add parts in C and C++. Sorry, Java devs and Pythonistas: Saltaformaggio tells us that there's no reason the system couldn't work with other programming languages, "but we're focused on C and C++. Other folks would need to build out support for that." Along with being able to deconstruct, edit, and reconstruct binaries, the team said its processing pipeline is also able to comb through HARs and remove extraneous routines. The team has also, we're told, baked in verification steps to ensure changes made to code within hardware ranging from jets and drones to plain-old desktop computers work exactly as expected with no side effects.

The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. Space.com reports: The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the ground stations that support them and transmissions sent between the two.

Master Sgt. Desiree Cabrera, 75th ISRS operations superintendent, said the new unit will revolutionize the targeting capabilities of not just the Space Force, but also the entire U.S. military: "Not only are we standing up the sole targeting squadron in the U.S. Space Force, we are changing the way targeting is done across the joint community when it comes to space and electromagnetic warfare." The 75th ISRS will also analyze adversary space capabilities including "counterspace force threats," according to the Space Force's statement. Counterspace forces refer to adversary systems aimed at preventing the U.S. from using its own satellites during a conflict.

One of the most productive scientific collaborations of the 21st century is pulling apart, as deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China lead researchers to sever ties. From a report: The decoupling, which began in recent years with investigations into Chinese researchers in the U.S., has accelerated as tensions have risen between the superpowers. Now some U.S. lawmakers are pushing to let a landmark agreement to cooperate on science and technology, signed in 1979 and renewed routinely since, expire this month. China has built itself into a powerful engine of scientific discovery in recent decades, partly with American help, and many in Washington fear that China could gain a security and military advantage unless the U.S. takes decisive steps to cut off cooperation in scientific research.

Many scientists warn, however, that Washington would be severing ties as China is making its greatest contributions to scientific advancements, and cutting it off risks slowing American progress in critical areas such as biotechnology, clean energy and telecommunications. While the U.S. remains the world's pre-eminent science power, fundamental scientific research has grown borderless in the era of globalization, much as business has. More than 40% of America's scientific production -- measured by the number of high-quality papers that U.S.-based scientists produce -- involves cooperation with researchers abroad, according to Clarivate, a London-based data firm that tracks global scientific research. China and the U.S. are each other's No. 1 partner in producing scientific research, with collaborative research between the two consistently among the most-cited papers across fields, according to an analysis of Clarivate's data by Caroline Wagner, a professor of public policy at Ohio State University.

US Representative Don Bacon said he is among those whose emails were hacked in an espionage campaign that Microsoft has attributed to China. From a report:Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska and a strong advocate for US military support to Taiwan, posted on social media that the FBI had notified him that the Chinese Communist Party hacked into his personal and campaign emails over the course of a month, from May 15 to June 16. "The CCP hackers utilized a vulnerability in the Microsoft software, and this was not due to 'user error,'" he wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, received an email from Microsoft indicating he may have been hacked and advising him to change his password on June 16, according to Maggie Sayers, Bacon's press secretary. She said that following subsequent notification from the FBI that he had been hacked, Bacon determined emails relating to political strategy, fundraising and personal banking information may have been breached. As a former US Air Force intelligence officer, he is careful to avoid writing sensitive emails relating to China and Taiwan, she said.

The top U.S. agency for consumer financial protection will announce plans at the White House on Tuesday to regulate companies that track and sell people's personal data, part of the Biden administration's widening scrutiny of that industry's privacy practices, officials said. From a report: Data brokers' conduct can be "particularly worrisome" because the sensitive data driving the use of artificial intelligence can be collected from military personnel, people experiencing dementia, and others, according to Rohit Chopra, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "The CFPB will be taking steps to ensure that modern-day data brokers in the surveillance industry know that they cannot engage in illegal collection and sharing of our data," he said in a statement. President Joe Biden last year called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to help protect the data privacy of women seeking reproductive healthcare who may face law enforcement action in some states. The FTC has also sued an Idaho company for selling mobile phone geolocation data, saying it could be traced to places like abortion clinics, churches and addiction treatment centers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The founder and former CEO of Russia's largest internet company, Arkady Volozh, has slammed Vladimir Putin's "barbaric" war in Ukraine, becoming one of the most prominent Russian businessmen to express criticism of what Russia still calls euphemistically its "special military operation." "I've been asked a lot of questions over the past year, and especially a lot of them came up this week. I would like to clarify my position," he said in a statement released to the media. "I am totally against Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine, where I, like many, have friends and relatives. I am horrified by the fact that every day bombs fly into the homes of Ukrainians," said Volozh, describing himself "as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur, computer scientist, investor, and philanthropist." "Despite the fact that I have not lived in Russia since 2014, I understand that I also have a share of responsibility for the actions of the country," he added. "There were many reasons why I had to remain silent. You can argue about the timeliness of my statement, but not about its substance. I am against war."

In June 2022, Volozh quit as CEO of Yandex (YNDX), which also operates Russia's most popular search engine, after he was sanctioned by the European Union over Russia's actions in Ukraine. "Volozh is a leading businessperson involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilization of Ukraine," the EU said. "Yandex is also responsible for promoting State media and narratives in its search results, and de-ranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin, such as content related to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." In his statement, Volozh said after moving to Israel in 2014, he has been working on developing Yandex's international projects. "But in February 2022, the world changed, and I realized that my story with Yandex was over."

"After the outbreak of the war, I focused on supporting talented Russian engineers who decided to leave the country and start a new life. It turned out to be a difficult task that required a lot of effort, attention and caution," he said. "Now these people are outside of Russia and can start doing something new in the most advanced areas of technology. They will be of great benefit to the countries where they remain," he added. Volozh went on to say that when Yandex was created, "We believed that we were building a new Russia -- an open, progressive, integrated into the global economy, known in the world not only for its raw materials." However, "over time, it became clear that Russia was in no hurry to become part of the global world. At the same time, the pressure on the company grew," he said. "But we did not give up, we did our best despite the external conditions. Has it always been possible to find the right balance? Now, looking back, it is clear that something could have been done differently."

Private equity and venture capital funds targeted in Biden administration's crackdown. From a report: After President Joe Biden announced a ban on US investment in some of China's critical tech industries, the founder of a Shanghai-based semiconductor start-up felt forced to react. "After the news came out, I was determined to move the team out of China, at least part of the team," the person said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Otherwise, the financing will be very limited." The US ban, announced in an executive order on Wednesday and due to come into force next year, aims to block investment in quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence in an effort to stop China's military from accessing American funding and knowhow.

For their part, US investors are trying to work out the potential impact of Biden's order on their holdings in China and weighing up strategies to comply or exit. Private equity groups General Atlantic, Warburg Pincus and Carlyle Group have poured billions into China in recent years as they sought the huge returns from betting on the nation's emergence as a technological superpower. Seeing the writing on the wall, though, many have already pulled back. Buyout groups struck deals in China worth $47bn in 2021, but that fell rapidly to just $2.4bn in 2022 and $2.8bn so far this year, figures from Dealogic show.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to block and regulate high-tech U.S.-based investments going toward China -- a move the administration said was targeted but it also reflected an intensifying competition between the world's two biggest powers. The order covers advanced computer chips, micro electronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence. Senior administration officials said that the effort stemmed from national security goals rather than economic interests, and that the categories it covered were intentionally narrow in scope. The order seeks to blunt China's ability to use U.S. investments in its technology companies to upgrade its military while also preserving broader levels of trade that are vital for both nations' economies.

The officials previewing the order said that China has exploited U.S. investments to support the development of weapons and modernize its military. The new limits were tailored not to disrupt China's economy, but they would complement the export controls on advanced computer chips from last year that led to pushback by Chinese officials. The Treasury Department, which would monitor the investments, will announce a proposed rulemaking with definitions that would conform to the presidential order and go through a public comment process. The goals of the order would be to have investors notify the U.S. government about certain types of transactions with China as well as to place prohibitions on some investments. Officials said the order is focused on areas such as private equity, venture capital and joint partnerships in which the investments could possibly give countries of concern such as China additional knowledge and military capabilities. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded in a statement early Thursday that it has "serious concern" about the order and "reserves the right to take measures."

"We hope the U.S. side respects the laws of the market economy and the principle of fair competition, does not artificially obstruct global economic and trade exchanges and cooperation and does not put up obstacles for the recovery and growth of the world economy."

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce also said the executive order "seriously deviates from the market economy and fair competition principles the United States has always advocated. It affects the normal business decisions of enterprises, disrupts the international economic and trade order and seriously disrupts the security of global industrial and supply chains."

After a hurricane hit Florida, 484 buildings just at the Tyndall Air Force base were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Five years later, it's part of a $5 billion, nine-year rebuilding effort the Washington Post describes as rare "blank slate." The plan is "not merely to rebuild it, but to construct what the U.S. military calls 'the installation of the future,' which will be able to withstand rising seas, stronger storms and other threats..." The rebuild at Tyndall, which is expected to continue into 2027, marks the largest military construction project undertaken by the Pentagon. "Think of it as the Air Force throwing its Costco card down on the table and buying buildings in bulk," said Michael Dwyer, deputy chief of the Natural Disaster Recovery Division. A dizzying array of new technologies and approaches have been incorporated into the effort, from semiautonomous robot dogs patrolling the grounds to artificial intelligence software designed to detect and deter any armed person who enters the base.

But the most robust funding is aimed at making Tyndall more efficient, connected and resilient in the face of a warming world. Structures under construction — from dormitory complexes to a child care center to hangars that will house three new squadrons of the F-35A Lightning II later this year — are being built to withstand winds in excess of 165 mph. Steel frames, high-impact windows, concrete facades and roofing with additional bracing are among the features meant to weather the stronger storms to come.

At nearby Panama City, sea level rise has accelerated in recent years, with federal data showing seas have risen there more than 4 inches since 2010. Planners factored in the potential for as much as 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, and as a result placed the "vast majority" of new buildings at elevations that should be safe from storm surges for decades, Dwyer said. In addition, sensors placed near the low spots of buildings will send alerts the moment a flood threatens. The Air Force also has created a "digital twin" of Tyndall — essentially, a virtual duplicate of the base that allows officials to simulate how roads, buildings and other infrastructure would hold up in different scenarios, such as a hurricane or historic rainfall events.
Other efforts include restoring the beach's 10-foot sand dunes and its rocky shoreline, along with "the installation of submerged oyster reef breakwater that can reduce wave energy and erosion."

But the article points out that the Air Force also has a second hope for their base: "that the lessons unfolding here can be replicated at other bases around the world that will face — or already are facing — similar threats...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: China will place export controls on drone and drone equipment in order to "safeguard national security and interests," its commerce ministry announced Monday, in a move that could impact the war in Ukraine. The restrictions on equipment will require vendors to seek permission to export certain drone engines, lasers, imaging, communications and radar gear, and anti-drone systems. Consumer-grade drones with certain specifications are also subject to the controls, which come into effect September 1. All civilian drones not included in the controls are prohibited from being exported for military purposes, an unidentified ministry spokesperson said in an online statement. "China's modest expansion of the scope of drone control this time is an important measure to demonstrate its commitment as a responsible major country to implement global security initiatives and maintain world peace," the statement said, adding that China has "consistently opposed the use of civilian drones for military purposes."

More than 50% of drones sold in the US are made by Shenzhen-based DJI, the world's top drone manufacturer, with DJI models popular among US public safety agencies, according to two US lawmakers. They earlier this year introduced legislation that would restrict the company from operating on US communications infrastructure. The US last year placed sweeping controls banning Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license. Beijing last month imposed export controls on two elements essential for manufacturing semiconductors. The controls go into effect August 1.

Drones have already figured into US-China tensions. The US added DJI to an investment blacklist in 2021, alleging that the firm played a role in facilitating human rights abuses against China's Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang. The company was already on the US entity list, barring it from buying American technology. DJI denied having done anything to justify being placed on the list. On Tuesday, following the ministry announcement, DJI released a statement on its website saying it has never designed or marketed equipment for military purposes and would "actively cooperate" with the new export control policy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Joe Biden has determined that Colorado Springs will be the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command, reversing a Trump administration decision to move the facility to Alabama, the Pentagon announced Monday. The decision will only intensify a bitter parochial battle on Capitol Hill, as members of the Colorado and Alabama delegations have spent months accusing each other of playing politics on the future of the four-star command.

The command was reestablished in 2019 and given temporary headquarters in Colorado while the Air Force evaluated a list of possible permanent sites. With an eye on Russia and China, its job is to oversee the military's operations of space assets and the defense of satellites. Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Biden notified the Department of Defense on Monday that he had made the decision, after speaking with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and weighing the input of senior military leaders. "Locating Headquarters U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs ultimately ensures peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period," Ryder said in a statement. "It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute and integrate military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests." Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and U.S. Space Command chief Gen. James Dickinson all support Biden's decision, Ryder added.

The most significant factor Biden weighed in making the decision was the impact such a move would have on the military's ability to confront the changing threat from space, according to a senior administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. Keeping the headquarters at Colorado Springs "maintains operational readiness and ensures no disruption to its mission or to its personnel," according to the official. The command is set to achieve "full operational capability" this month, the official said. A move to Alabama, by contrast, would have forced the command to transition to a new headquarters in the mid-2020s, and the new site would not have been open until the early to mid-2030s, the official said. "The president found that risk unacceptable, especially given the challenges we may face in the space domain during this critical time period," according to the official.