Tag Archive for: Bigger

Cooperation or competition? China’s security industry sees the US, not AI, as the bigger threat


BEIJING — After years of breakneck growth, China’s security and surveillance industry is now focused on shoring up its vulnerabilities to the United States and other outside actors, worried about risks posed by hackers, advances in artificial intelligence and pressure from rival governments.

The renewed emphasis on self-reliance, combating fraud and hardening systems against hacking was on display at the recent Security China exhibition in Beijing, illustrating just how difficult it will be to get Beijing and Washington to cooperate even as researchers warn that humankind faces common risks from AI. The show took place just days after China’s ruling Communist Party warned officials of the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

Looming over the four-day meet: China’s biggest geopolitical rival, the United States. American-developed AI chatbot ChatGPT was a frequent topic of conversation, as were U.S. efforts to choke off China’s access to cutting-edge technology.

“This new technology contains a great potential danger,” said Fan Weicheng, Director of Tsinghua University’s Center for Public Safety Research. He clicked through a presentation featuring an AI-generated figure of Barack Obama speaking, illustrating the risks of deceptive images and video that can now be digitally created.

“The United States has a 21st century national security strategy. Russia has a national security strategy. Germany has a strategy. So does Japan,” Fan said. “We in China are also working on this.”

Chinese academics, Fan says, are working on an “early warning system” to identify and manage potentially disruptive technology, creating indexes and formulas to measure the impact emerging technology could have on China’s national security.

In the past decade, China’s AI technology has made rapid advances, fueled in part through cooperation with American research institutes and tech firms. As in the U.S., Chinese leaders are worried about advances in artificial intelligence.

A vendor sits near a board depicting surveillance cameras during...

A vendor sits near a board depicting surveillance cameras during Security China 2023 in Beijing, on June 9, 2023. After years of breakneck growth, China’s security and surveillance industry is now focused on shoring…

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Bigger Fleets Win | Proceedings


I’ve heard a lot of people saying recently, ‘Quantity has a quality all its own.’ And I just want to be clear: No, it doesn’t. That’s one of the dumbest damn things I’ve ever heard.”1 With respect to the quoted speaker, not only does quantity have a quality all its own, but it also almost always proves decisive in naval warfare when professional competence is equal.

Using technological advantage as an indicator of quality, historical research on 28 naval wars (or wars with significant and protracted naval combat) indicates that 25 were won by the side with the larger fleet. When fleet size was roughly equal, superior strategy and substantially better trained and motivated crews carried the day.2 Only three could be said to have been won by a smaller fleet with superior technology.3

When professional naval competence and strategic acumen were equal, the larger fleet usually won, even when the smaller fleet possessed technological advantages at the start of the conflict. A primary reason is that technological advantages were inevitably short-lived.4 In a war between equally competent technological near peers—absent a series of amazing strokes of luck—the larger fleet always won.5 (See Table 1.)

With the growing potential of a naval engagement between a shrinking U.S. fleet and a growing People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the three examples of technologically advanced but smaller fleets’ victories are not reassuring:

  • The Byzantine Empire’s naval forces versus Vikings, Slavs, Turks, and Arabs to about the year 1000 AD/CE. At that time, the Arabs learned to employ the equivalent of Greek fire.

• The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean versus Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire, and Indo-
regional allies, 1500–1580.

• The British East India Company and various European nations versus Imperial China circa 1840–1900.

All other wars were won by superior numbers or, when between equal forces, superior strategy, or admiralship. Often all three qualities act together, because operating a large fleet generally facilitates more extensive training and is often an indicator that leaders are concerned with strategic requirements. In the Napoleonic…

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Phishing in the Cloud: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat – DARKReading



Phishing in the Cloud: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat  DARKReading

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India’s battle with Pegasus tells a bigger tale of tech laws • The Register


Analysis NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware-for-governments keeps returning to the headlines thanks to revelations such as its use against Spain’s prime minister and senior British officials. But there’s one nation where outrage about Pegasus has been constant for nearly a year and shows little sign of abating: India.

A quick recap: Pegasus was created by Israeli outfit NSO Group, which marketed the product as “preventing crime and terror acts” and promised it would only sell the software to governments it had vetted, and for approved purposes like taking down terrorists or targeting criminals who abuse children.

Those promises are important because Pegasus is very powerful: targets are fooled into a “zero click” install of the software, after which their smartphones are an open book.

In July 2021, Amnesty International and French journalism advocacy organisation Forbidden Stories claimed Pegasus had been used well beyond its intended purpose, and claimed to have accessed a list of over 50,000 phone numbers NSO clients had targeted for surveillance.

Many were politicans, activists, diplomats, or entrepreneurs – jobs that are just not the sort of role NSO said it would let governments target with Pegasus.

Over 300 Indian residents made that list – among them opposition politicians, activists, and officers of the Tibetan government in exile.

NSO has offered no explanation, or theory, for how its promises turned to dust.

The New York Times reported Prime Minister Narendra Modi purchased Pegasus in 2017 as part of an overall weapons deal worth roughly $2 billion, but Indian politicians have resisted admitting to its acquisition or use.

The mere implication that India’s government had turned Pegasus against political opponents was dynamite and complaints poured in from those who felt they had been targeted.

Those complaints were heeded: in…

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