As the New Year Approach, a Small Reminder for the US Quantum Wizards
December 19, 2019
When it comes to supercomputers, IBM’s Watson is the number one machine. Despite environmental and human rights issues, China wants to be a world leader in quantum research and artificial intelligence. Tech In Asia shares how, “China Quantum Research Team Uses AI To Crack Processing Time In Supercomputer Race.” AI is apparently the key to making supercomputers billions of times faster than they currently are.
China has some of the world’s largest quantum research facilities and they have developed machine learning processes that have cut down on calculation times. The Chinese supercomputers would calculate the ties between subatomic particles. Quantum technology was designed to understand how quantum mechanics work, thus the need for the supercomputers. With the new AI, discovering correlations between subatomic particles faster than anything that has been invented to date. How would it work?
“ ‘It works like the separation of minerals,’ said professor Li Chuanfeng, a lead scientist of the study with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui province. ‘The AI tells us whether an ore contains gold, iron, or copper, so we can make use of them for different purposes. This was not possible before,’ Li said.
Until now, quantum researchers have had to measure a complete set of physical properties to determine the type of link between particles. It is a difficult, time-consuming job and, when the number of particles increases, the workload grows exponentially. ‘At the end of the day, we might be able to tell this is not a piece of gold, and that would be it. There is no way to know more,’ Li said. This method will increase the supply of resources for quantum information processing significantly.”
USTC has experimented with quantum mechanics for years and the university has a large amount of data for the AI to learn from. The AI designed to measure particles’ physical properties is 90% accurate and works in less than a second, when before it required over an hour. USTC plans to train the AI with larger data sets and is working on a quantum computer than is predicted to be one trillion times faster than today’s most powerful supercomputer.
Sounds impressive, but not as interesting as the number of engineers the Middle Kingdom possesses.
Whitney Grace, December 19, 2019
Azure Is Better at Hybrid Computing Because AWS Is an Orchid
December 12, 2019
There’s an interesting explanation of the DoD’s JEDI award in “Opinion: Microsoft Fairly and Squarely Beat Amazon in $10 Billion Pentagon Cloud Contract.” The reason is:
In 2017, Microsoft designed Azure Stack to meet hybrid cloud computing needs, a distinction from AWS, which was designed for cloud-only computing needs without the flexibility of leveraging on-premise servers. That has led Amazon to chase Microsoft with hybrid-cloud offerings such as AWS Outposts, which launched in November of 2018 — well after the Pentagon bid had been opened. As of the first half of 2019, Microsoft was the only company among the top three cloud providers that has a generally available hybrid cloud. Microsoft’s Windows operating system has run on servers for decades, and it was a natural extension to offer Azure Cloud to run on-premise. Microsoft’s hybrid strategy has resulted in 95% of Fortune 500 companies using Azure today. That is a staggering statistic, which shows the superiority of hybrid cloud compared with traditional cloud computing. As J.B. Hunt, one of Azure’s Fortune 500 customers, said: “Microsoft didn’t ask us to bend to their vision of a cloud.”
Amazon is unlikely to agree. Amazon’s lawyers definitely will view this explanation as insufficiently developed to justify dropping the lawsuit.
The problem is that “one throat to choke” seems like a great idea. But the reality is that there usually are many throats to choke regardless of who is the contract winner.
The idea of a common platform or framework, data harmonization, and smooth access control are easy to talk about.
Reality is a little more chaotic. Read the original write up and decide. Then consider how likely it is that a single individual or a small business has a single throat to choke when something goes wrong. Throat choking is preceded by finger pointing, and none of the technology giants deliver reliability, ease of use, and fantasy land solutions.
Reality. Messy. Azure is a hybrid. AWS is an orchid. Neither is guaranteed a long, healthy existence if the gardener forgets to water the plants, the insects decide to chow down, or a road grader grind ouy a new information highway.
Lawyers? Guaranteed money. Other parties? Not guaranteed much.
Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2019
Spain Wants to Tax Google
December 12, 2019
International agreements about taxing corporations are complex. Spain, like France, is not kicking back and letting the status quo prevail. El Pais (paywalled, gentle reader) reported that Spain is planning on going ahead with Google tax despite US tariff threats. You can access the story and the paywall block at this link.
The newspaper stated:
After US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 100% on French products, on Monday the EU closed ranks, announcing that it would respond “united” to a measure of this kind.
How much would companies subject to the tax have to pay? Think in terms of three percent.
When will the tax become more than terrace talk? As soon as Spain formulates its new government. Or mañana.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2019
Countries Want Technological Backdoors
December 11, 2019
“Think of the children” is usually a weak claim people use to justify questionable actions, but law enforcement officials across the world are protecting children the correct way by teaming together to prevent child exploitation on the Internet. Ars Technica shares the story in the article, “Think Of The Children: FBI Sought Interpol Statement Against End-To-End Crypto.” Law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, want there to be backdoors in technology for warranted search and surveillance.
US Attorney General William Barr and his UK and Australian peers asked Facebook to delay its plan to use end-to-end encrypt for all its company’s messaging tools. The FBI and the Department of Justice are encouraged other international law enforcement organizations to join their plea at the International Criminal Police Organization’s 37th Meeting of the Interpol Specialists Groups Group on Crimes Against Children. Delaying end-to-end encryption would find child sexual exploitation. Interpol has not officially supported the delay plea yet.
“The draft resolution went on to lay responsibility for child exploitation upon the tech industry: ‘The current path towards default end-to-end encryption, with no provision for lawful access, does not allow for the protection of the world’s children from sexual exploitation. Technology providers must act and design their services in a way that protects user privacy, on the one hand, while providing user safety, on the other hand. Failure to allow for Lawful Access on their platforms and products, provides a safe haven to offenders utilizing these to sexually exploit children, and inhibits our global law enforcement efforts to protect children.’”
Barr and his peers want technology experts should to agree with them about backdoors. Facebook and other social media companies already comply by terms in the CLOUD Act, a law to provide law officials with data no matter in the world it is located. Barr claims that if Facebook and other companies do not comply, they are allowing children to be exploited further. Research has shown, however, that encryption has had little effect on impeding law officials.
Facebook and other companies state there is not a backdoor skeleton key to any technology and if they did design one it would put people at risk.
Law enforcement officials have the right mindset, but they are missing the essential purpose of encryption and how a backdoor could be exploited by bad actors, including those who harm children.
Whitney Grace, December 11, 2019
China Develops Suicide Detecting AI Bot
December 10, 2019
Most AI bots are used for customer support, massive online postings, downloading stuff, and criminal mischief. China has found another use for AI bots: detecting potential suicides. The South China Morning Post shared the article, “This AI Bot Finds Suicidal Messages On China’s Weibo, Helping Volunteer Psychologists Save Lives.” Asian countries have some of the world’s highest suicide rates. In order to combat death, Huang Zhisheng created the Tree Hole bot in 2018 to detect suicidal messages on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Tree Hole bot finds potential suicide victims posting on Weibo, then connects them with volunteers to discuss their troubles. Huang has prevented more than one thousand suicides.
In 2016, 136,000 people committed suicide in China, which was 17% of world’s suicides that year. The World Health Organization states that suicide is the second leading cause of death in people ages 15-29. Other companies like Google, Facebook, and Pinterest have used AI to detect potential suicidal or self-harmers, but one of the biggest roadblocks are privacy concerns. Huang notes that saving lives is more important than privacy.
The Tree Hole bot works differently from other companies to find alarming notes:
“The Tree Hole bot automatically scans Weibo every four hours, pulling up posts containing words and phrases like “death”, “release from life”, or “end of the world”. The bot draws on a knowledge graph of suicide notions and concepts, applying semantic analysis programming so it understands that “not want to” and “live” in one sentence may indicate suicidal tendency.
In contrast, Facebook trains its AI suicide prevention algorithm by using millions of real world cases. From April to June, the social media platform handled more than 1.5 million cases of suicide and self-injury content, more than 95 per cent of which were detected before being reported by a user. For the 800,000 examples of such content on Instagram during the same period, 77 per cent were first flagged by the AI system first, according to Facebook, which owns both platforms.”
Assisting potential suicide victims is time consuming and Huang is developing a chatbot that can hopefully take the place of Tree Hole volunteers. Mental health professionals argue that an AI bot cannot take the place of a real human and developers point out there is not enough data to make an effective therapy bot.
Suicide prevention AI bots are terrific, but instead of making them volunteer only would it be possible, at least outside of China to make a non-profit organization staffed by professionals and volunteers?
Whitney Grace, December 10, 2019
Amazon: What Does the S Team Do without a Policeware Leader?
December 9, 2019
GeekWire published the members of Jeff Bezos’ S Team. The idea is that the TV show A Team has been upgraded by 17 letters. There is an S Team member for fashion and for Alexa, but none for policeware. You can get the list of S Team members in “Amazon Expands Bezos’ Elite ‘S-Team,’ Adding 6 Execs from Emerging Branches of the Company.” Perhaps the omission of a public sector Amazon manager signals that the company is not interested in government contracts, work for law enforcement departments, and countries interested in using Amazon’s blockchain technology? That is a possibility. DarkCyber believes that there is a commitment at Amazon for policeware and developing services to assist authorities in determining if tax returns are on the up and up. The apparent exclusion of a designated policeware “owner” suggests that the company wants to continue its low profile approach to this high potential revenue sector.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2019
Amazon Trumped?
December 5, 2019
DarkCyber does not have a dog in this fight. The fight? Jeff Bezos versus the President of the United States. If the information in “Trump Bezos Round 2: Amazon Faces Broad Antitrust Probe of Cloud Business” is accurate, lawyers involved in the matter will have a very good chance to generate some billable hours.
The write up reminds the reader that Amazon lost the $10 billion Department of Defense JEDI deal. Amazon then sued on the basis of the President’s pushing back against Amazon.
The write up reports:
But now, as Bloomberg details, investigators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have been asking software companies recently about practices around Amazon’s cloud unit, known as Amazon Web Services. Specifically, the outreach by the FTC signals that the agency, which is already looking at Amazon’s conduct in its vast online retail business, is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether it could be violating antitrust laws and harming competition.
Interesting. Mr. Bezos has money and a newspaper. The President has presidential things. Will presidential things trump the Bezos bulldozer?
In a comment to the write up, Sticky_Pickles said: “When you try to sue the government…”
But DarkCyber is thinking of the lawyers working on the matter. Winners.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
Why Is MiningLamp Getting Ink?
December 3, 2019
The question “Why is MiningLamp getting ink?” is an interesting one to some people. The firm was founded in 2014. The company was a product of bunsha practiced by Miaozhen Systems, a company engaged in advertising “analysis.” The company is funded by Tencent, China Renaissance, and Sequoia Capital China. The firm may have revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Data about the influence of the Chinese government is not available to the DarkCyber team at this time. MiningLamp may have received as much as $290 million from its backers.
Companies want publicity to get sales leads, attract investors, create buzz to lure new hires, and become known to procurement professionals in government agencies.
We noted talk about MiningLamp at a couple of law enforcement and intelligence conferences. The company provides policeware and intelware to customers in China and elsewhere. You can read about the firm on its Web site at this link. (Be patient. The service seems to provide a high latency experience.) Product pages also seem to be missing in action.
Nevertheless, “Chinese Data Mining Firm MiningLamp, Now a National AI Champion, Began by Helping Police Solve Crimes” does not talk about a dearth of public information. The write up states that “MiningLamp’s business analytics tools are used by more than 200 companies in the Fortune 200.” That’s a lot of big companies embracing investigative software. Judging from the attendees at law enforcement and intelligence conference, these big companies are finding out about a Chinese company somehow.
The news story states that “Like Palantir, this Chinese start up uses AI to help corporate clients convert huge volumes of data into actionable information.” Palantir is a big ticket item. Perhaps price is a factor or Fortune 200 companies want to rely on a business intelligence system operated by a company located outside the span of control of some government authorities.
The company has been named a Chinese champion. The article reveals:
Although not as well known as US equivalent Palantir Technologies, which reportedly contributed to America’s success in hunting down Osama bin Laden, MiningLamp’s data mining software is used to spot crime patterns, track drug dealers and prevent human trafficking.
DarkCyber thinks that any company which has 200 Fortune listed companies as customers is reasonably well known.
We learned:
“Cases are being resolved on our platforms every day” in more than 60 cities and regions in China, said founder and CEO Wu Minghui. “We can run fast analysis on potential drug dealers or major suspects, improving the overall case-solving efficiency several hundred times.”
China: Marketing Blockchain
December 2, 2019
For two decades, China has been referred to as a sleeping dragon due to its growing economic prominence. China has yet to overtake the United States as the world’s top economic power and there are many reasons for this. One reason is China’s authoritarian government and another is the country’s substandard business practices. Lying is an international business tool, but one is more likely to be held accountable in the US than China. The International Business Times shares one of China’s newest tall tales, “China’s Blockchain Tech Adoption Inflated? New Expose Reveals Truth Behind Tall Claims.”
As part of China’s desired economic dominance, President Xi Jinping wants his country to be a leader in computer technology, such as blockchains. Xi wants blockchain technology adopted into commercial, economic, and industrial practices, but most Chinese companies that claim to offer blockchain do not.
“According to the Global Times, which is a Chinese state-run media house, numerous companies in China seem to find it simpler to claim that they are utilizing blockchain technology than to truly practice its application. Various Chinese firms across a variety of industries reportedly state that they are employing the use of blockchain tech in some form or another, but lack real evidence to prove that they are doing so. Global Times in their expose report that out of over 3,000 registered businesses, about 500 firms claim to be incorporating blockchain tech in their day-to-day operations, but only about 40 of these companies have been able to demonstrate that they are actively doing so.”
One of China’s problems is that when the government makes demands, the people are forced to adapt or else. Companies say they are harnessing blockchain technology to appease Xi and other leaders, but also to appeal to clients due to its buzzword power. Another problem in China is the amount of “get rick quick” scams. All Chinese industries are loaded with them and due to the country’s lack of checks and balances, they are a lot easier to run. The National Emergency Center of China states there are 755 tokens in the Chinese crypto currency market (crypto currencies use blockchain to operate) and 102 are believed to be Ponzi schemes, while most of the crypto currencies do not have funding.
China’s government, corrupted businesses, and other factors are keeping the sleeping dragon in a long doze.
Whitney Grace, December 2, 2019
TikTok Messaging
November 29, 2019
Is TikTok a platform for anti-nation state propaganda? (If you don’t know about TikTok, this write up will make no sense. Stop reading.)
The answer is, “Yep.”
A good explanation of what young people are doing with short videos appears in “Teen Who Went Viral with TikTok Hair Tutorial Tells ITV News People Need to Know about China Threat to Uighur Muslims.”
This is important for several reasons:
- TikTok is a China based outfit. DarkCyber thinks that Chinese officials will be talking about TikTok and coming up with some creative ideas to prevent hair tutorial type information from going global.
- Teens and other TikTok users may be difficult to guide down the path of truth and justice. More meetings will be necessary.
- More attention on the Uighur matter may not be desirable. More meetings will ensue.
Net net: TikTok may be invited to some meetings and given an opportunity to be re-educated. Just a thought. Russia re-educated Apple about Crimea. China and Russia may share ideas when their joint military exercise with Iran takes place.
Worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2019
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