https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/ recent bookmarks from jm 2025-12-09T10:03:53+00:00 https://archive.is/9qbX0#selection-3631.37-3735.16 jmCambodia’s 2019 census put O’Smach’s population just over 9,850, but that doesn’t include the prison-like, office-dormitory compounds that have appeared here over the past five years, with the capacity to house 10,000 more. Around 50 sites like these now line the Cambodia-Thailand border, designed to house a slice of the trillion-dollar cybercrime industry—primarily teams running investment scams, dubbed “pig butchering” for the way they fatten their targets up; sextortion scams that blackmail victims, including children, by threatening to make sexual images public; scams that impersonate police to gain account access; and fraudulent online gambling sites. Once aimed largely at the Chinese public, these now target victims worldwide and rake in tens of billions of dollars a year in Cambodia alone. The compounds evolved from a casino industry that caters mostly to Chinese tourists and Thai day-trippers and has been linked to human trafficking, drug smuggling, and the endangered wildlife trade. From 2016, physical casinos were dwarfed by the online gambling industry (outlawed by Cambodia in 2019), which progressed to illegal sites and outright scams. Operators rent space in casinos and purpose-built compounds controlled by Chinese criminals, Myanmar warlords, and the Cambodian political elite. Scam companies rely heavily on forced and trafficked labor from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to chat with targets, pose as romantic interests and employees at fake investment platforms, and persuade them to make deposits. Survivors tell us that torture, rape, and beatings are common. As the fighting raged in July, some trafficking victims reached out for help, saying they were locked in their dorms by their bosses. Videos shot from inside these sites show missiles flying overhead, explosions thundering outside, some workers appearing to break out and run, and damage from shelling in the grounds. ]]> scams phishing pig-butchering war grim-meathook-future thailand cambodia scammers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3a608454859d/ 2025-12-04T13:07:52+00:00 https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1pbt4m0/unauthorized_edit_to_ukraines_frontline_maps/ jmA live map that tracks frontlines of the war in Ukraine was edited to show a fake Russian advance on the city of Myrnohrad on November 15. The edit coincided with the resolution of a bet on Polymarket, a site where users can bet on anything from basketball games to presidential election and ongoing conflicts. If Russia captured Myrnohrad by the middle of November, then some gamblers would make money. According to the map that Polymarket relies on, they secured the town just before 10:48 UTC on November 15. The bet resolved and then, mysteriously, the map was edited again and the Russian advance vanished. ]]> polymarket betting war future cyberpunk fraud ukraine russia https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4ac3effec1f2/ 2024-07-08T11:41:33+00:00 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext jmIn recent conflicts, [..] indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. ]]> death gaza israel war genocide https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e4285cd11d92/ 2024-04-15T08:54:27+00:00 https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/ai-and-israels-dystopian-promise-of-war-without-responsibility/ jm In Gaza we see an “indiscriminate” and “over the top” bombing campaign being actively rebranded by Israel as a technological step up, when in actuality there is currently no evidence that their so-called Gospel has produced results qualitatively better than those made by minds of flesh and blood. Instead, Israel’s AI has produced an endless list of targets with a decidedly lower threshold for civilian casualties. Human eyes and intelligence are demoted to rubber stamping a conveyor belt of targets as fast they can be bombed. It’s a path that the US military and policy makers should not only be wary of treading, but should reject loudly and clearly. In the future we may develop technology worthy of the name Artificial Intelligence, but we are not there yet. Currently the only promise a system such as Gospel AI holds is the power to occlude responsibility, to allow blame to fall on the machine picking the victims instead of the mortals providing the data. ]]> ai war grim-meathook-future israel gaza automation war-crimes lavender gospel https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4cb06082d4c6/ 2024-04-04T10:58:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes jmTwo sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using [cheaper] unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants. ]]> ai israel war genocide gaza grim war-crimes collateral-damage https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3c7f42c8a58b/ 2023-12-01T12:21:58+00:00 https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ jmAccording to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.” According to the sources, the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972 and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process. In the majority of cases, the sources added, military activity is not conducted from these targeted homes. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” one source, who was critical of this practice, recalled. Another source said that a senior intelligence officer told his officers after October 7 that the goal was to “kill as many Hamas operatives as possible,” for which the criteria around harming Palestinian civilians were significantly relaxed. As such, there are “cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate pinpointing,” said the source. ]]> ai gaza palestine israel war-crimes grim-meathook-future habsora war future hamas https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cf754ad64959/ 2023-10-12T11:13:09+00:00 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2023/10/10/we-just-saw-the-future-of-war-00120788 jm [..] The famous maxim “‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” — apocryphally attributed to the writer William Gibson — takes on a very different meaning from the one now commonly understood. Big, rich states might inflate their defense budgets and boast of systems like Israel’s Iron Dome, but the extent to which sophisticated technology is “distributed” across a broad consumer landscape is enough for highly motivated smaller actors to do whatever violence they wish. ]]> culture politics world war israel tech gaza palestine https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:13a6c09d752c/ 2023-04-26T22:16:19+00:00 https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvb4x/palantir-demos-ai-to-fight-wars-but-says-it-will-be-totally-ethical-dont-worry-about-it jmPalantir also isn’t selling a military-specific AI or large language model (LLM) here, it’s offering to integrate existing systems into a controlled environment. The AIP demo shows the software supporting different open-source LLMs, including  FLAN-T5 XL, a fine-tuned version of GPT-NeoX-20B, and Dolly-v2-12b, as well as several custom plug-ins. Even fine-tuned AI systems off the shelf have plenty of known issues that could make asking them what to do in a warzone a nightmare. For example, they’re prone to simply making things up, or “hallucinating.” GPT-NeoX-20B in particular is an open-source alternative to GPT-3, a previous version of OpenAI’s language model, created by a startup called EleutherAI. One of EleutherAI’s open-source models -- fine-tuned by another startup called Chai -- recently convinced a Belgian man who spoke to it for six weeks to kill himself.  What Palantir is offering is the illusion of safety and control for the Pentagon as it begins to adopt AI. [...] What AIP does not do is walk through how it plans to deal with the various pernicious problems of LLMs and what the consequences might be in a military context. AIP does not appear to offer solutions to those problems beyond “frameworks” and “guardrails” it promises will make the use of military AI “ethical” and “legal.” ]]> palantir grim-meathook-future war llm aip military ai ethics https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:93f35e6885c9/ 2023-03-21T09:58:42+00:00 https://www.theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mideast-region-and-1819594296 jm fair-and-balanced iraq usa war history 2003 the-onion funny satire balance https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f2d171702f19/ 2023-02-16T14:38:41+00:00 https://www.wired.com/story/eric-schmidt-is-building-the-perfect-ai-war-fighting-machine/ jm ai war us-politics eric-schmidt silicon-valley military weapons https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1e510484cbed/ 2022-10-25T14:24:43+00:00 https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclear-war-would-kill-you-and-almost-everyone-else/ jm nuclear-war grim-meathook-future nuclear war lets-not famine climate nuclear-winter https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8efbf0e71073/ 2022-04-05T08:49:33+00:00 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1510910740261134338 jm genocide politics russia ukraine war https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8924030d08ae/ 2022-03-21T12:27:31+00:00 https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-edf7240a9d990e7e3e32f82ca351dede jmWe are still flooded by messages from people wanting to learn the fate of loved ones we photographed and filmed. They write to us desperately and intimately, as though we are not strangers, as though we can help them. When a Russian airstrike hit a theater where hundreds of people had taken shelter late last week, I could pinpoint exactly where we should go to learn about survivors, to hear firsthand what it was like to be trapped for endless hours beneath piles of rubble. I know that building and the destroyed homes around it. I know people who are trapped underneath it. And on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had bombed an art school with about 400 people in it in Mariupol. But we can no longer get there. ]]> mariupol ukraine war journalism https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:89308072fe58/ 2022-03-07T12:37:55+00:00 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/telegram-harm-reduction-users-russia-and-ukraine jm apps communication eff encryption ukraine russia war security https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:51ce53aa1ace/ 2022-03-02T09:52:15+00:00 https://twitter.com/hiddenmarkov/status/1497351111656751109 jm ethics security google crowdwork crowdsourcing warfare war ukraine grim-meathook-future https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:600af00c269b/ 2021-05-20T14:04:56+00:00 https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/was-a-flying-killer-robot-used-in-libya-quite-possibly/ jmLast year in Libya, a Turkish-made autonomous weapon — the STM Kargu-2 drone — may have “hunted down and remotely engaged” retreating soldiers loyal to the Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, according to a recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. [....] the Kargu-2 signifies something perhaps even more globally significant: a new chapter in autonomous weapons, one in which they are used to fight and kill human beings based on artificial intelligence. The Kargu is a “loitering” drone that can use machine learning-based object classification to select and engage targets, with swarming capabilities in development to allow 20 drones to work together. The UN report calls the Kargu-2 a lethal autonomous weapon. Its maker, STM, touts the weapon’s “anti-personnel” capabilities. ]]> machine-learning ai kargu-2 drones war grim-meathook-future stm un https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cc5c245c1f25/ 2020-07-17T20:05:12+00:00 https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34204/turkey-now-has-a-swarming-quadcopter-suicide-drone-that-it-could-export jmIt seems very possible that, in addition to providing these improved Kargu [drones] to the Turkish armed forces, STM could also seek to export them, proliferating this capability further around the world. STM has already said that it has received serious inquires about the Kargu series from at least three unnamed potential foreign customers. Turkey, as a whole, has become a powerhouse of drone development and production, employing larger types to great effect in Syria and Libya just this year. This is precisely the type of weapon we have been warning about for years now. The fact that it is already here and potentially exportable should be yet another wake-up call to the level of threat low-end drones pose to U.S. and allied forces, as well as domestic infrastructure and VIPs.  "I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical and it's unmanned," U.S. Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said at an event hosted by the Middle East Institute last week. "I'm not talking about large unmanned platforms, which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with, as we would any other platform." "I'm talking about the one you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for a thousand dollars, four quad, rotorcraft or something like that that can be launched and flown," he continued. "And with very simple modifications, it can make made into something that can drop a weapon like a hand grenade or something else." ]]> drones war terrorism ai autonomous scary kargu kerkes turkey stm https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2e3c0b19c047/ 2020-06-18T14:17:54+00:00 https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-06-18-this-war-of-mine-will-be-added-to-polish-schools-reading-list jmThis War of Mine, which was first released in 2014, drew on the experiences of the Bosnian people during the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. It won widespread acclaim for its realistic portrayal of the human cost of war, and had sold more than 4.5 million units in April 2019. The game will be included in the Polish reading list for the 2020/21 academic year, but will only be available to students aged 18 and above due to its age rating in the country. It will be recommended for those studying sociology, ethics, philosophy, and history, and will be available to students of those subjects for free. ]]> war history bosnia sarajevo games gaming poland school https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3ab29b1397a8/ 2017-07-24T17:00:34+00:00 https://boardgamegeek.com/article/26449801#26449801 jm reviews siege sarajevo history war boardgames this-war-of-mine heavy https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05cc04554e5f/ 2016-02-05T15:34:13+00:00 http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/cold-war-missile-defense-los-angeles jm war history la sf california nike-missiles missiles nuclear-war nike-hercules cold-war 1950s https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d059f1756f1a/ 2015-06-03T15:20:19+00:00 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-25/violence-algorithms jmThe modern state system is built on a bargain between governments and citizens. States provide collective social goods, and in turn, via a system of norms, institutions, regulations, and ethics to hold this power accountable, citizens give states legitimacy. This bargain created order and stability out of what was an increasingly chaotic global system. If algorithms represent a new ungoverned space, a hidden and potentially ever-evolving unknowable public good, then they are an affront to our democratic system, one that requires transparency and accountability in order to function. A node of power that exists outside of these bounds is a threat to the notion of collective governance itself. This, at its core, is a profoundly undemocratic notion—one that states will have to engage with seriously if they are going to remain relevant and legitimate to their digital citizenry who give them their power. ]]> palantir algorithms big-data government democracy transparency accountability analytics surveillance war privacy protest rights https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:358d87638405/ 2015-03-10T16:12:31+00:00 http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/03/ukraine-tomorrows-drone-war-alive-today/107085/ jmThe most sophisticated UAV that has come out of the Ukrainian side since the start of the conflict is called the PD-1 from developer Igor Korolenko. It has a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, a five-hour flight time, carries electro-optical and infrared sensors as well as a video camera that broadcasts on a 128 bit encrypted channel. Its most important feature is the autopilot software that allows the drone to return home in the event that the global positioning system link is jammed or lost. Drone-based intelligence gathering is often depicted as risk-free compared to manned aircraft or human intelligence gathering, but, says Korolenko, if the drone isn’t secure or the signature is too obvious, the human coasts can be very, very high. “Russian military sometimes track locations of ground control stations,” he wrote Defense One in an email. “Therefore UAV squads have to follow certain security measures - to relocate frequently, to move out antennas and work from shelter, etc. As far as I know, two members of UAV squads were killed from mortar attacks after [their] positions were tracked by Russian electronic warfare equipment.” (via bldgblog)]]> via:bldgblog war drones uav future ukraine russia tech aircraft pd-1 crowdfunding https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d9e9683fa5f5/ 2014-04-24T22:10:43+00:00 http://boingboing.net/2014/04/23/syrias-lethal-facebook-check.html jmAn anonymous tip from a highly reliable source: "There are checkpoints in Syria where your Facebook is checked for affiliation with the rebellious groups or individuals aligned with the rebellion. People are then disappeared or killed if they are found to be connected. Drivers are literally forced to load their Facebook/Twitter accounts and then they are riffled through. It's happening daily, and has been for a year at least." ]]> boing-boing war facebook social-media twitter internet checkpoints syria https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:61d86bd22b36/ 2014-01-14T10:22:46+00:00 http://www.operationwardiary.org/ jm via:luke war history war-diaries wwi uk britain https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dcdfda7678ae/ 2013-03-14T11:40:41+00:00 http://blog.storyful.com/2013/03/13/the-changing-nature-of-conflict-and-technology/#.UUDhwFhYCc1 jm storyful war syria future tanks battle video youtube hd panopticon https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:65fdbd20d9f7/ 2013-03-07T16:43:02+00:00 http://publicintelligence.net/tactical-chat/ jmDespite the U.S. military’s massive spending each year on advanced communications technology, the use of simple text chat or tactical chat has outpaced other systems to become one of the most popular paths for communicating practical information on the battlefield.  Though the use of text chat by the U.S. military first began in the early 1990s, in recent years tactical chat has evolved into a “primary ‘comms’ path, having supplanted voice communications as the primary means of common operational picture (COP) updating in support of situational awareness.”  An article from January 2012 in the Air Land Sea Bulletin describes the value of tactical chat as an effective and immediate communications method that is highly effective in distributed, intermittent, low bandwidth environments which is particularly important with “large numbers of distributed warfighters” who must “frequently jump onto and off of a network” and coordinate with other coalition partners.  Text chat also provides “persistency in situational understanding between those leaving and those assuming command watch duties” enabling a persistent record of tactical decision making. A 2006 thesis from the Naval Postgraduate School states that internet relay chat (IRC) is one of the most widely used chat protocols for military command and control (C2).  Software such as mIRC, a Windows-based chat client, or integrated systems in C2 equipment are used primarily in tactical conditions though efforts are underway to upgrade systems to newer protocols.  (via JK)]]> via:jk war irc chat mirc us-military tactical-chat distcomp networking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8557ddbd83db/ 2012-12-16T20:40:40+00:00 http://windsandbreezes.org/the-eire-markings/ jm ireland eire history wwii the-emergency war geography mapping https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:62a0d30b6e93/ 2012-12-05T21:06:57+00:00 http://danteslab-eng.blogspot.ie/2012/04/mig-in-middle.html jm security mig war mitm https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:64814b04f2f0/ 2012-06-12T12:16:19+00:00 http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/ jm via:oceanclub gaming games civ sid-meier 1984 politics war future strategy https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ac594a9887e4/