![]() US Considers Chinese Investment in Artificial Intelligence a National Security Threat. The US Department of Defense is struggling to get its arms around all of the new security issues that have come with our current technological explosion. One unexpected consideration on the table is placing stricter limitations on investment capital from China flowing into American companies that are working on artificial intelligence. If you had any doubt that Russian hackers attempted to meddle with the United States electoral…Read more Technology is the fastest growing industry in the American economy according to recent data. And with all the political talk about “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS,” it’s a bit surprising to see the government floating plans to limit investment in American companies. But that’s exactly what the Pentagon is proposing according to Reuters. From the report: Of particular concern is China’s interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years. ![]()
![]() Twitter introduced an updated privacy policy on Wednesday that has users worried about how their private information is being tracked, stored and used. In the policy. The Irony trope as used in popular culture. The intended meaning is an inversion of the plain meaning. Pretty simple, really, but somehow a difficult concept. The worry is that cutting- edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries. The U. S. government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter- agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of U. S. companies on national security grounds. Reuters was able to view an unreleased Pentagon report that outlines the ways in which Chinese investors have found loopholes in CFIUS that allow them to avoid setting off any regulatory triggers. The report recommends that new legislation be drafted to update the rules governing foreign investment. It also advises that a list of critical technologies be compiled and restrictions should be placed on Chinese investment in those areas of development. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke to the US Senate at a hearing on Tuesday and he insisted that the CFIUS “needs to be updated to deal with today’s situation.”The second most powerful man in the Senate, John Cornyn, has begun drafting legislation according to one of his aides. You heard that right. A top Republican is pushing for more regulation and less investment. Time will tell if Republican’s can get behind another one of the Pentagon’s recommendations that goes against everything they stand for. The report is asking for greater flexibility on the immigration policy for Chinese graduate students studying in the US. It suggests that these students should be allowed to stay in the US after finishing their studies. The research firm Rhodium Group found that China funneled $4. US last year. It has increased that investment by 1. Tech lobbyists will surely be out in full force to fight any sort of regulatory increases. The new age of security threats includes encryption, online organization, cyberattacks, rapid spread of disinformation, autonomous vehicles, drones, unprecedented surveillance powers, and now, apparently, the pumping of billions of dollars into our economy.[Reuters]. French Resistance - Wikipedia. The French Resistance (French: La Résistance) was the collection of French movements that fought against the Nazi Germanoccupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War. Résistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis in rural areas), who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first- hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The men and women of the Résistance came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés; academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics (including priests) and also citizens from the ranks of liberals, anarchists and communists. The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1. Provence on 1. 5 August, by providing military intelligence on the German defences known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle. The Résistance also planned, coordinated, and executed acts of sabotage on the electrical power grid, transport facilities, and telecommunications networks. It was also politically and morally important to France, both during the German occupation and for decades afterward, because it provided the country with an inspiring example of the patriotic fulfillment of a national imperative, countering an existential threat to French nationhood. The actions of the Résistance stood in marked contrast to the collaboration of the French regime based at Vichy, the French people who joined the pro- Nazi Milice française and the French men who joined the Waffen SS. After the landings in Normandy and Provence, the paramilitary components of the Résistance were organised more formally, into a hierarchy of operational units known, collectively, as the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Estimated to have a strength of 1. June 1. 94. 4, the FFI grew rapidly and reached approximately 4. October of that year. Although the amalgamation of the FFI was, in some cases, fraught with political difficulties, it was ultimately successful, and it allowed France to rebuild the fourth- largest army in the European theatre (1. VE Day in May 1. 94. Nazi occupation[edit]Following the Battle of France and the second French- German armistice, signed near Compiègne on 2. June 1. 94. 0, life for many in France continued more or less normally at first, but soon the German occupation authorities and the collaborationist Vichy régime began to employ increasingly brutal and intimidating tactics to ensure the submission of the French population. Although the majority of civilians neither collaborated nor overtly resisted, the occupation of French territory and the Germans' draconian policies inspired a discontented minority to form paramilitary groups dedicated to both active and passive resistance. French Resistance fighter Lucien Pélissou's identity document. One of the conditions of the armistice was that the French pay for their own occupation; that is, the French were required to cover the expenses associated with the upkeep of a 3. This burden amounted to approximately 2. German reichsmarks per day, a sum that, in May 1. French francs. (The artificial exchange rate of the reichsmark versus the franc had been established as one mark to twenty francs.) Because of this overvaluation of German currency, the occupiers were able to make seemingly fair and honest requisitions and purchases while, in effect, operating a system of organized plunder. Prices soared, leading to widespread food shortages and malnutrition, particularly among children, the elderly, and members of the working class engaged in physical labour. Labour shortages also plagued the French economy because hundreds of thousands of French workers were requisitioned and transferred to Germany for compulsory labour under the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO). The labour shortage was worsened by the fact that a large number of the French were also held as prisoners of war in Germany. Beyond these hardships and dislocations, the occupation became increasingly unbearable. Onerous regulations, strict censorship, incessant propaganda and nightly curfews all played a role in establishing an atmosphere of fear and repression. The sight of French women consorting with German soldiers infuriated many French men, but sometimes it was the only way they could get adequate food for their families. As reprisals for Résistance activities, the authorities established harsh forms of collective punishment. For example, the increasing militancy of communist resistance in August 1. A typical policy statement read, "After each further incident, a number, reflecting the seriousness of the crime, shall be shot." During the occupation, an estimated 3. French civilian hostages were shot to intimidate others who were involved in acts of resistance. German troops occasionally engaged in massacres, such as the destruction of Oradour- sur- Glane, where an entire village was razed and the population murdered (save for a few scant survivors) because of persistent resistance in the vicinity. In early 1. 94. 3, the Vichy authorities established a paramilitary group, the Milice (militia), to combat the Résistance. They worked alongside German forces that, by the end of 1. France. The group collaborated closely with the Nazis, and was the Vichy equivalent of the Gestapo security forces in Germany. Their actions were often brutal and included torture and execution of Résistance suspects. After the liberation of France in the summer of 1. French executed many of the estimated 2. Many of those who escaped arrest fled to Germany, where they were incorporated into the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen SS. A Chronological Overview of the Resistance[edit]1. The refus absurde[edit]In the aftermath of France's defeat in June 1. Germany would win the war, and given the apparent inevitability of the Reich's victory, the widespread feeling was that resistance was futile. The experience of the Occupation was a deeply psychologically disorienting one for the French as what was once familiar and safe become strange and threatening. Many Parisians could not get over the shock experienced when they first saw the huge swastika flags hanging over the Hôtel de Ville and on top of the Eiffel Tower. The British historian Ian Ousby wrote: "Even today, when people who are not French or did not live through the Occupation look at photos of German soldiers marching down the Champs Élysées or of Gothic- lettered German signposts outside the great landmarks of Paris, they can still feel a slight shock of disbelief. The scenes look not just unreal, but almost deliberately surreal, as if the unexpected conjunction of German and French, French and German, was the result of a Dada prank and not the sober record of history. This shock is merely a distant echo of what the French underwent in 1. Ousby wrote that by the end of summer of 1. And so the alien presence, increasingly hated and feared in private, could seem so permanent that, in the public places where daily life went on, it was taken for granted". At the same time France was also marked by disappearances as buildings were renamed, books banned, art was stolen to be taken to Germany and people started to disappear as under the armistice of June 1. French were obliged to arrest and deport to the Reich those Germans and Austrians who fled to France in the 1. Resistance when it first began in the summer of 1. Jean Cassou called refus absurde ("absurd refusal") of refusing to accept that the Reich would win and even if it did, it was better to resist. Many résistants often spoke of some "climax" when they saw some intolerable act of injustice, after which they could not longer remain passive. The résistant Joseph Barthelet told the British SOE agent George Miller that his "climax" occurred when he saw the German military police march into the Feldgendarmerie in Metz a group of Frenchmen, one of whom was a friend. Barthelt recalled: "I recognized him only by his hat. Only by his hat, I tell you and because I was waiting on the roadside to see him pass. I saw his face all right, but there was no skin on it, and he could not see me. Both his poor eyes had been closed into two purple and yellow bruises".
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