China is overtaking US in artificial intelligence: researchers

 

China is poised to overtake the United States in artificial intelligence with a surge in academic research on the key technology, an analysis published Wednesday showed.

The analysis by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence showed China has already surpassed the US in published papers on AI — although many of these were considered “medium-quality” or “low-quality.”

A Chinese Spy Worked In Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Office For Twenty Years

 

We can only imagine the twenty-four hour media blitz that would be unleashed if this had happened with the Trump campaign, or on anyone’s staff even remotely associated  with President Trump past or present.

But when the story first broke in the middle of this week of a mole working on behalf of the Russian Chinese government on a powerful Democrat Senate Intelligence Committee member’s staff, it passed in the mainstream media with a yawn, and though slowly gaining visibility still hasn’t been covered by some of the large cable networks or newspapers.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was “mortified” upon learning that a Chinese spy had worked in her office for nearly 20 years.

China Industrial Policy Seeks to Steal ‘Crown Jewels’ of U.S. Tech

Getty Images

 

White House exposes Chinese economic aggression

China’s government is using a multi-pronged strategy to systematically steal advanced American technology as part of economic aggression against the United States, according to a White House report.

The report, based in part on declassified intelligence from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, provides some of the first public details on China’s industrial policies that have produced the world’s second largest economy, often at the expense of American companies.

Forget OPEC, China Controls Oil Prices

 

U.S. shale has taken a lot of headline space recently as the biggest headwind for oil prices and the highest stumbling block for OPEC’s efforts to prop them up by cutting production. Yet, there may be another factor that could bring down oil prices as soon as next year…

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China has been building a strategic crude oil reserve for the last decade, but the size of that reserve remains undisclosed, with analysts making estimates based on China-bound cargoes and satellite imaging.

Will Blockchain Technology Replace Cash?

Wisdom from May of 2016 for today:

 

If Europe is heading toward a cashless society, the loss of freedom will follow.

The European Central Bank (ecb) decided on May 4 to withdraw the €500 banknote from circulation by the end of 2018. The stated reason is that the bill is often used for illicit cash transactions. Although most supporters of this policy say they don’t want to totally abolish cash, some economic analysts believe a cashless monetary system will be the next step, leading to the loss of many freedoms.

The German government also plans to limit all cash transactions to less than €5,000, saying that terrorism is often sponsored by high-cash transactions. The March terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, gave these advocates a significant push forward. Even after banning the €500 note, millions of euros could still be carried in a small handbag. Nobert Haring, a German economist and business journalist, explained in an interview with N-tv that terrorists would not be bothered by the planned limit on cash transactions. He said a total ban of cash would be required to have an effect on terrorists.

Mass Layoffs To Return With A Vengeance

Remember the mass layoffs of 2008-2009? The US economy shed millions of jobs quickly and relentlessly, as companies died and the rest fought for survival.

Then the Fed and the US government flooded the banks and the corporate sector with bailouts and handouts. With those giga-tons of liquidity sloshing around, as well as taking on massive amounts of new cheap debt, companies were able to finance their working capital needs, hire workers back, and even buy-back their shares en mass to make themselves look deceptively profitable. The nightmare of 2008 soon became a golden era of ‘recovery’.

Well, 2016 is showing us that that era is over. And as stock prices cease to rise, and in fact fall within many industries, layoffs are beginning to make a return as companies jettison costs in attempt to reduce losses.

Lights Out: The Top 7 Threats To America’s Power Grid

Revelations earlier last week that hackers linked to Russia attacked and took down the Ukrainian power grid are bringing to light once again major threats to the American power grid.

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American homes, industries, and businesses are deeply dependent on reliable electricity, so threats to the consistent delivery of electricity put modern life itself at risk.

“This perfect storm of policies will unavoidably raise electricity prices on Americans and seriously threaten grid reliability,” Warren continued.

How Safe is the US Electrical Grid?

All it takes is a hit on nine substations, then it’s lights out for America and back into the 1800’s for at least a decade — on top of up to 90% of American lives being lost due to the domino effects.

 

Throughout history, inexplicable natural phenomena have tended to instill an understandable fear in people. Accounts of the solar storm of August and September 1859 stand out for their tendency toward the whimsical and delighted.

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For telegraph operators in the Americas and Europe, however, the experience caused chaos. Many found that their lines were simply unusable—they could neither send nor receive messages. Others were able to operate even with their power supplies turned off, using only the current in the air from the solar storm.

Russia to Spend Over $2 Billion on Crimea Modernization

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Deputy Minister for Crimea Andrey Sokolov announced at an economic forum in Yalta on Saturday that the sum allocated for Crimea’s infrastructure development can be comparable to the funds spent on the preparation for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, adding that “in the coming years this sum will only increase.”

The US ‘manufacturing renaissance’ doesn’t exist, says new report

Despite all the much-heralded talk of the rebirth of manufacturing, a new report suggests that the trend may be vastly overstated

Have we been letting a good story get in the way of the facts?

The “manufacturing renaissance” has been the central point in the return of America’s industrial power. It even has its own national council.

Yet here are the facts: the United States may have added only about one new manufacturing job in the last few years for every five that were lost during the financial crisis and the recession that followed.

That’s according to a new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a non-partisan and non-profit think tank based in Washington, DC. The report was released early this morning.

Google Takes Over Operations Of Moffett Airfield From NASA, Will Invest $200M Into The Site

After years of using Moffett Field as the home and launch pad for the private jets of Google’s founders, the company has agreed to a deal in which it will lease the airfield from NASA for the next 60 years. As part of the lease, Google will take over operations of the airfield while the U.S. government retains ownership of the land.

In a press release, NASA announced that Planetary Ventures LLC, a shell organization operated by Google for real estate deals, will contribute $1.16 billion over the course of the lease, while reducing the government agency’s maintenance and operation costs by $6.3 million annually.

Guns, vandals and thieves: Data shows U.S. networks under attack

Early one morning in April last year, someone accessed an underground vault just south of San Jose, California, and cut through fiber-optic cables there. The incident blacked out phone, Internet and 911 service for thousands of people in Silicon Valley.

Such incidents, often caused by vandals, seem fairly common, but exactly how often do they occur? Since 2007, the U.S. telecom infrastructure has been targeted by more than a thousand malicious acts that resulted in severe outages, according to data obtained by IDG from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Freedom of Information Act.

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The reports themselves are confidential for national security and commercial reasons, but aggregate data provided by the FCC shows there were 1,248 incidents resulting in major outages over the last seven years.

Bitcoin firm CEO found dead after ‘suicide’

The background on Bitcoin isn’t all that clear, but with JP Morgan Chase & Co. it is. This bank has been known to be not-so ‘Obama friendly’ and subsequently became a large target of the Obama administration via extortion. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots. The public doesn’t care, either, as they see these executives as ‘one per-centers’ and ‘big evil bankers’, yet they can never put a face to these supposed villans and put all bankers in the same basket. America is infiltrated and overrun in every facet of society from the military to the banking industry and the judicial system to the school system.

See the following related articles for a background on JP Morgan Chase & Co.:

• J.P. MORGAN’S $13 BILLION SETTLEMENT CASTS DOUBT ON OBAMA DOJ’S PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION
• Burglarizing J.P. Morgan Chase, And Slapping Down Prudential: The New, Tyrannical Normal
• J.P. Morgan’s Legal Tally Grows (Again)

 

It appears bitcoin’s recent turmoil has claimed its first life.

Autumn Radtke, a 28-year-old American CEO of bitcoin exchange firm First Meta, was found dead in her Singapore apartment on Feb. 28.

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Radtke formerly worked with Apple and other Silicon Valley tech firms on developing digital payment systems.

Radtke’s death brings the number of questionable financial sector deaths this year to eight.

Google subsidiary to run nearby federal airfield

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The U.S. government has picked a Google subsidiary to run and renovate a federal airfield that is frequently used for the personal flights of the Internet company’s billionaire executives.

The decision announced Monday clears the way for Google’s Planetary Ventures LLC to take over management of the 1,000-acre Moffett Federal Airfield, a former U.S. Navy based 4 miles from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The airfield, which was built in the 1930s, has been managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center for the past 23 years.