Artificial intelligence voice agents with various capabilities can now guide interrogations worldwide, Pentagon officials told Defense News. This advance has influenced the design and testing of U.S. military AI agents intended for questioning personnel seeking access to classified material.
Now, seven years after writing about physical torture in “The Rise of A.I. Interrogation in the Dawn of Autonomous Robots and the Need for an Additional Protocol to the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” privacy attorney Amanda McAllister Novak sees an even greater need for bans and criminal repercussions.
Drone manufacturer Quantum Systems and the Lithuanian electronics company ADV Defense have signed an agreement for future cooperation.
The agreement lays the foundation for industrial partnership in the Baltic region, focusing on the use of unmanned systems in Lithuania and along the eastern flank.
The memorandum of understanding was signed at the German-Baltic Defense Industry Conference in Vilnius.
The partnership aims to combine German and Lithuanian expertise with technological innovations to create mission-proven unmanned systems and strengthen the defense-industrial base of the region.
Lithuanian company ADV Defense. Photo credits: company website
The agreement supports Quantum Systems’ long-term strategy of establishing a strong industrial presence on NATO’s eastern flank. Currently, the company is building a large electronics manufacturing facility in Lithuania, which is set to double the production capacity of ADV Defense.
U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams tank units have conducted intensively training at the Bemowo Piskie Training Area in Poland, with crews manoeuvring at least one of the vehicles through a water obstacle and mud fields.
Tanks were delivered from multiple locations across Poland to take part in the Forward Land Forces expansion exercise, with the Polish Armed Forces assisting in the coordination of rail transfers and managing of the training site.
Exercises were designed to rehearse mobility, sustainment, and positioning of heavy armour in Eastern Europe, simulated cold, mud-heavy terrain, and unpredictable temperature changes, which are common in the autumn and winter, and which can make it particularly difficult to operate tanks.
U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams Tank During Exercises in Poland
Poland is one of just three foreign countries to host permanent foreign deployments of U.S. Army tank units, alongside Germany and South Korea, with the M1A2 SEPv2 variant being stationed there.
The Abrams is one of two tank types alongside the Russian T-80 to use a gas turbine engine, which provides higher mobility particularly in muddy terrain.
Germany has unveiled a new variant of the Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH 2000) 155mm tracked self-propelled howitzer at the KNDS Deutschland facility in Munich, the the PzH 2000 A4, has the country has made investments not seen in decades in modernising its ground forces.
The new variant’s primary improvements are its greater digitisation, and superior network integration and electronic systems, with Defence Minister Boris Pistorius particularly highlighting its new digital backbone and improved fire controls.
PzH 2000 Howitzer
An updated power and cooling architecture has also been integrated, and was designed with a split between the generator and thermal management systems, improving energy efficiency and facilitating further expansion of electronics.
A surge in defence spending across Europe has led Germany to seek to play a leading role in modernising its neighbours’ equipment inventories, including by marketing new variants of the PzH 2000.
The newest fighter type in the Russian Armed Forces inventory, the Su-30SM2, has been intensively combat tested since it began to enter service in early 2022, with the outbreak of full scale hostilities between Russia and Ukraine just weeks after it became operational providing significant opportunities to further refine operational tactics.
New details on the fighter’s performance in the theatre have been provided by the Russian state arms export conglomerate Rostec, which reported: “Aircraft of this type have confirmed their effectiveness in the special military operation.
They have a record of hundreds of destroyed aerial and ground targets, including Patriot systems.” “Thanks to its powerful radar, the Su-30SM2 can ‘see’ farther and more accurately, which facilitates the crew’s operation.
In turn, its advanced electronic warfare system allows the fighter to effectively counter enemy air-launched weapons,” the report added.
Russian Navy Su-30SM2 Fighter
The Su-30SM first entered service in the Russian Air Force in 2012, following the termination of the ambitious Soviet MiG 1.42 fifth generation fighter program in 2001, and major delays to the more conservative Su-57 fifth generation program. The aircraft was developed as an enhanced derivative of the USSR’s most capable fighter type the Su-27 air superiority fighter, and directly replaced Soviet built Su-27s in frontline roles.
This has been a major conspiracy theory going back several years if not more, that Venezuela had been using these machines to rig their own elections and thus wasused to play a big role in election fraud in USA.
Trump knew enough to evade that system in 2024, so he must be well aware of the game.
Trump typically acts on several levels at once, which do not become fully apparent until later, often much later.
Bombing Iran’s nukes is an example of that.
The deep reason for the bombing is everyone in the ME wanted it done and so did Russia and China.
It was not just for Israel.
In fact, the attack lowered Israeli PR stock because destroying the nukes destroyed their most plausible reason for attacking Iran and Gaza. ABN
This video is self-described as speculative but presents a very notable, and probably telling, coincidence of ‘intelligence-grade activity’.
See the link above for comments on this video.
One possibility is the planes dropping very low were releasing and picking up drones, possibly used in Kirk’s murder.
Drones make sense to me as their technology is surely far beyond what we know publicly.
A shot from a super-fast mini-drone with a small projectile that explodes a micro-second after impact would account for Kirk’s neck wound not acting like an entry, but an exit, wound. ABN
René Obermann, the head of the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, has called on European countries to equip themselves with tactical nuclear weapons. His statement came in response to the threat posed by Russia’s Iskander missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
According to Obermann, Russia is openly threatening Europe with its Iskander missiles deployed in Kaliningrad, Reuters reports.
“Our Achilles’ heel, it seems, is what Russia is quite openly threatening us with: more than 500 tactical nuclear warheads on Iskander missiles, stationed right on our doorstep in Kaliningrad, as well as those recently deployed in Belarus,” Obermann said on Wednesday, November 19, speaking at the Berlin Security Conference.
In September, Russia deployed Iskander-M systems in the Kaliningrad region, aiming them toward Warsaw. The Airbus chief noted that Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and other concerned states should develop a joint nuclear deterrence program against Russia.
China’s aircraft carrier program has continued to make accelerated progress, with the country having completed eight carrier warships while having at least two more, both of them supercarriers, under construction, positioning its naval aviation capabilities to rival those of United States in the 2030s.
Nine days after the commissioning of China’s first supercarrier the Fujian on November 5, the country’s eighth carrier and first of the Type 076 class, the Sichuan, began its first sea trails on November 14, with the two ships having highly complementary capabilities and roles in the Navy.
The Fujian and the Sichuan are two of the world’s first three aircraft carriers alongside the U.S. Navy supercarrier USS Gerald Ford to integrate electromagnetic catapult systems. This new technology allows the ships to provide considerable energy to aircraft upon launch to facilitate higher takeoff weights, which is expected to be a common feature of all future Chinese aircraft carriers.
Where the Fujian is an 85,000 ton vessel capable of generating very rapid sorties by launching up to three aircraft simultaneously, the Sichuan is a much smaller 50,000 ton ship that blurs the line between an amphibious assault ship, like the lighter Type 075 class on which its design is based, and a full aircraft carrier. The Sichuan was designed to accommodate a smaller air wing, which is expected to be comprised largely if not entirely of unmanned aircraft, including new types of unmanned stealth fighters such as the GJ-11.
Melania Trump has told troops to brace for a brave new world of robots on the battlefield in a speech described by critics as ‘dystopian.’
The First Lady was speaking to military personnel and their families at Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina, on Wednesday.
Melania said that AI represented the most profound change to warfare since the creation of nuclear weapons and warned that the race for the technology was not one that America could afford to lose.
‘Artificial intelligence is propelling America’s military into a new era. We are moving from human operators to human overseers – fast,’ the First Lady said.
‘The shift from soldiers to machines is already underway. Autonomous helicopters, swarming drones, and recon aircraft are here now. Fighter-less jets and autonomous bombers are on the way.’
‘To win the AI war, we must train our next generation, for it’s America’s students who will lead the Marine Corps in the future,’ Melania said.
The First Lady continued, ‘Technology is changing the art of war … AI will alter war more profoundly than any technology since nuclear weapons.
‘The most significant change will be speed. Speed in weaponry, decision-making, detection, attack, and defense. Artificial intelligence will take center stage in the theater of war, it already plays a meaningful role on the battlefield.
‘Of course, it is the Marine who will always play the most critical role in realizing mission success.’
Operation Cast Thy Bread was a top-secret biological warfare operation conducted by the Haganah and later the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) beginning in April 1948 during the 1948 Palestine war.
The operation involved the deliberate contamination of drinking water wells with typhoid bacteria, violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Its primary objectives were to frighten Palestinian Arabs and prevent them from returning to villages captured by the Yishuv, as well as to make conditions difficult for Arab armies attempting to retake territories. The operation resulted in severe illness among local Palestinian citizens.
Evidence from British, Arab, and Red Cross documents confirms that Zionist forces introduced poison into wells in Acre and Eilabun in Galilee, leading to a typhoid epidemic and “a state of extreme distress” among the inhabitants of Acre, which had been allocated to a future Arab state under the United Nations Partition Plan. The contamination of Acre’s aqueduct played a significant role in the rapid fall of the city to Haganah forces in May 1948. The Haganah also poisoned the depopulated Palestinian Arab village of Bayt Mahsir and water sources in Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
The operation was initially carried out by ordinary IDF soldiers, but later entrusted to the Mista’arvim, an undercover unit that specialized in sabotage operations within enemy territory and disguised themselves as Palestinians. The biological agents were produced by a unit within the army’s Science Corps, known as HEMED BEIT, which was established in February 1948 under the direction of Yigael Yadin. The operation was authorized and overseen by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and IDF Chief of General Staff Yigael Yadin.
In May 1948, during Operation Shalach, four Israeli Special Forces soldiers disguised as Arabs attempted to poison the water supply in Gaza to hinder the advance of the Egyptian army; they were captured and executed by an Egyptian military court. Plans were also made to expand the campaign into neighboring Arab states such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, but these were not carried out. Despite its use, the operation did not achieve the crippling effects its advocates had hoped for and was discontinued by December 1948.
Historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Z. Kedar have uncovered official Israeli military documentation that confirms the operation, providing new details about its scope, organization, and authorization. The operation was codenamed “Cast Thy Bread” and was part of a broader strategy during the Nakba, the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of approximately 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland. While Israel has vehemently denied the allegations, denouncing them as “wicked libel” and accusing Arab states of antisemitic incitement, the newly unearthed documents have cast doubt on these denials.
Four Chinese coast guard ships entered Japanese territorial waters in the East China Sea.
The vessels entered waters near the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, an area Beijing claims as disputed.
According to the Japanese Coast Guard, the Haijing-class ships entered waters near Minamikojima, part of the Senkaku archipelago, between 10:15 and 10:30 a.m. on Sunday and left the area around noon.
Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing have increased after Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, said this month that the use of military force in a conflict over Taiwan could be considered a “survival-threatening situation.”
This classification provides Japan with legal grounds for possible intervention.
American Buddhist Net 