Congress echoes Trump EMP concerns, Iran weapon feared

President Trump has made preparing for an electromagnetic pulse attack cool.

Long met with eye-rolling, the growing threat of an EMP attack on the nation’s electric grid and military bases by Iran or other foes has suddenly gone mainstream following Trump’s March executive order to assess the risks of a man-made or natural EMP hit.

The latest evidence was in the just-passed 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which adopted Trump’s action and ordered the National Guard to draw up a plan to thwart disaster from an EMP.

And several states are moving even faster. Wyoming just produced its blueprint to respond to an EMP assault that could knock out electricity, water services, hospitals, ATMs, cellular phones, and even vehicles for months.

“These are big and very important results,” said Peter Pry, a longtime champion of EMP preparation and adviser to the White House and military. “Things are taking off. This is a significant change, in a positive way,” he told us.

For proponents of developing protections from EMP, the fight has been a decadeslong slog. Trump has taken the threat seriously, though it’s unclear if his national security team shares his concerns, especially after EMP preparation proponent John Bolton was ousted as the national security adviser.

Also, some insiders fear that a strong lobbying campaign from the electric utility industry, which does not want to spend money to upgrade its infrastructure, is working to dull the president’s executive order.

‘Social credit score’: China set to roll out ‘Orwellian’ mass surveillance tool

China is developing a new high-tech system of mass surveillance and coercion aimed suppressing political dissent among its 1.4 billion people, while forcing American and Western businesses to conform to the government’s communist policies if they want to operate there.

The system that critics call an Orwellian national-level control system has been dubbed the Social Credit System (SCS) and was set for launch in the coming year, although recent reports from China now say the rollout could be delayed until 2021.

The massive system has been tested in several major Chinese cities and uses millions of surveillance cameras linked to supercomputers containing massive databases. Face and voice recognition technology then identifies and monitors people with the goal of controlling behaviors that range from dissident political activity to jaywalking, ostensibly as part of a financial credit monitoring system similar to those used in the West.

Vice President Mike Pence called out the program in a recent speech, warning that China’s surveillance state is “growing more expansive and intrusive — often with the help of U.S. technology.”

“By 2020, China’s rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life — the so-called social credit score,” Mr. Pence said. “In the words of that program’s official blueprint, it will ‘allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven, while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.’”

Facial recognition tools are widely used now in China bolstered by cameras deployed along streets, on buildings, in train stations, in classrooms and subway lines. With the emergence of next-generation 5G telecommunications technology, the reach of the surveillance networks is only expected to increase.

As part of the stepped-up surveillance, the Chinese government announced this month that all who purchase SIM cards for mobile phones must first produce a facial recognition print.

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Artificial Intelligence and the Adversary

What will Beijing do with the data it stole about American military service members and others?

Embracing AI: How thinking weapons will simplify — and vastly complicate — future warfare

For the Pentagon, it was an ominous glimpse into the future.

The date was July 11, 2014, and Ukrainian forces assembled about five miles from the Russian border in southeastern Ukraine were preparing for a final push to the border.

As Defense Secretary Mark Esper recounted to a forum sponsored by the National Security Commission on artificial intelligence this month, the Ukrainian troops, flushed with recent battlefield success against Russian-backed separatists, were feeling confident.

Suddenly, they heard the hum of Russian drones overhead, followed quickly by cyberattacks that jammed their communications, blinding their command and control systems.

Then a devastating fusillade of Russian artillery fire rained down on them, and in a matter of minutes, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were killed, hundreds more wounded, and most of their armored vehicles destroyed.

The Ukrainian offensive was stopped dead in its tracks.

“The world was quickly awakened to a new era of warfare advanced by the Russians,” Esper said. “It’s clear the threats of tomorrow are no longer the ones we have faced and defeated in the past.”

Fast forward five years to today when rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology, or AI, foreshadow a grave new world of thinking machines and killer robots that will change the nature of modern warfare as profoundly as smart bombs and GPS did during the 1991 Persian Gulf War nearly three decades ago.

“Whichever nation harnesses AI first will have a decisive advantage on the battlefield for many, many years,” said Esper, who has made accelerating AI research and development a top Pentagon priority. “We have to get there first.”

Simply defined, artificial intelligence is the ability of computer systems to solve problems and perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence.

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Bloomberg’s climate agenda finds success with privately funded state prosecutor in New Mexico

Stakeholder’ Capitalism in Action

By the left’s lights, PG&E is a perfect corporate citizen. Liberal California pols attack it anyway.

WATCH: Australian Broadcaster Takes Down The Spoiled Climate Protesting Students In Epic Fashion

Posted at 1:00 pm on September 21, 2019 by Brandon Morse

Alan Jones, an Australian broadcaster for Sky News had some choice words for students taking part in the climate protests that occurred on Friday, which featured these students ditching school in order to push the “we’re all going to die” narrative so beloved by the church of climate change.

Jones had a harsh reality check for these students, who he noted demand better action by people and government in the name of saving the environment (Jones calls it a “hoax”) while they themselves refuse to give up their own cushy lifestyles. His words came in the form of a letter which Jones said he might send to Al Gore.

“It says this: To all the school kids going on strike for climate change, you’re the first generation who have required air conditioning in every room. You want TV in every room, and your classes are all computerized. You spend all day and night on electronic devices,” said Jones

“More than ever, you don’t walk or ride bikes to school,” he continued, “but you arrive in caravans of private cars that choke suburban roads and worsen rush hour traffic.”

“You’re the biggest consumer of manufactured goods ever, and update perfectly good expensive luxury items to stay trendy,” said Jones. “Your entertainment comes from electric devices. Furthermore, the people driving your protests are the same people who insist on artificially inflating the population growth through immigration which increases the need for energy, manufacturing and transport.”

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If You Want ‘Renewable Energy,’ Get Ready to Dig

Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic

Democrats dream of powering society entirely with wind and solar farms combined with massive batteries. Realizing this dream would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen and would produce huge quantities of waste.

“Renewable energy” is a misnomer. Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste. The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste. Consider some other sobering numbers: