Category: Technology

That smartphone, in fact any cell phone, in your pocket, doesn’t have to have the GPS activated for it, and thus you, to be tracked. That also applies to all these modern cars with any sort of ‘connectivity’ even if a subscription for some of the services has been paid for.
Just saying.
That’s how they tracked down this guy and also one of the ways they tracked down the murderer of the college students in Idaho 3 years ago.

Brown University shooting: What to know about person in custody

A person of interest is in custody after a gunman opened fire at Brown University over the weekend, killing at least two people and wounding nine others, officials announced.

Providence Police Department Chief Col. Oscar Perez said Sunday that the individual detained is a man in his 20s. Authorities are not currently searching for anyone else in the case.

The attack took place one day earlier at the Providence, Rhode Island, school at about 4 p.m., law enforcement said, prompting a shelter-in-place order that forced students and faculty to spend the night on campus.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley later told reporters that of the nine people shot, one has been discharged, one remained in critical condition and the other seven victims were in stable condition.

Officials have not yet released the names of those who were killed. Smiley also said that not all of the victims’ families have been notified as of early Sunday afternoon.

Law enforcement was still reviewing surveillance footage, coordinating with prosecutors, collecting evidence and speaking to witnesses on Sunday to gather more information about the suspected shooter, Perez explained.

Here’s what we know so far about the person in custody in connection to the Brown shooting, including where he was reportedly detained:

Who is person of interest in Brown University shooting?

Police have released few details about the person of interest, aside from confirming the man is in his 20s. Authorities initially described the shooting suspect as a man who wore all black.

No charges had been announced in connection to the case as of Sunday afternoon, and Perez told reporters the person detained has not yet been named a suspect in the shooting.

“It takes time, we have to make sure we have all the right evidence to prosecute,” Perez said during an afternoon press conference.

Gov. Daniel James McKee asked the nation to pray for the victims, their families and all those involved.

“The community is suffering and in pain,” McKee said during the press conference. “We stand with you.”

Where was the person taken into custody?

The person detained was taken into custody early in the morning at a hotel in Coventry, according to an update from the FBI. Coventry is located in Kent County, about 16 miles southwest of Brown,

FBI Director Kash Patel said law enforcement used cellular data to track the person of interest to a hotel room where he was detained by US Marshals and Providence police, based off a tip from the Coverntry Police Department.

The person, local  WJAR-TV reported, was apprehended at the Hampton Inn there.

@FBIBoston established a command post to intake, develop and analyze leads, and run them to ground.

We activated the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team, to provide critical geolocation capabilities.

As a result, early this morning, FBI Boston’s Safe Streets Task Force, with assistance from the @USMarshalsHQ & the @Coventry_RI_PD, detained a person of interest in a hotel room in Coventry, RI, based off a lead by the @ProvidenceRIPD .

We have deployed local and national resources to process and reconstruct the shooting scene – providing HQ and Lab elements on scene.

We set up a digital media intake portal to ingest images and video from the public related to this incident.

And the FBI’s victim specialists are fully integrating with our partners to provide resources to victims and survivors of this horrific violence.

This FBI will continue an all out 24/7 campaign until justice is fully served.

Thanks to the men and women of the FBI and our partners for their continued teamwork. Please continue praying for the victims and their families – as well as all those at Brown University.

The ATF’s Quiet Digital Transformation — And Why It Matters

Here’s something most Americans don’t know: when a federally licensed firearms dealer goes out of business, they’re required to send their transaction records to the ATF. These records — Form 4473s documenting every gun sale — end up at the National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The ATF uses them to trace firearms recovered at crime scenes back to their original point of sale.

For decades, these records existed primarily on paper. Millions of documents, stored in shipping containers and warehouses, searchable only through painstaking manual labor. Tracing a single firearm could take days.

That’s changing. The ATF has been digitizing these out-of-business records for years, and according to Gun Owners of America, the agency digitized over 50 million records in 2021 alone, bringing the total to nearly one billion. In 2022, the Biden administration finalized a rule requiring dealers to retain records indefinitely rather than destroying them after 20 years — meaning even more records will eventually flow to the ATF when those dealers close.

The question at the center of the debate: does this constitute a federal gun registry by another name?

Continue reading “”

“technology changes, rights don’t”

Where’s My EMP Rifle? Why Tomorrow’s Anti-Robot Weapons Are Already Protected by the 2nd Amendment

If Elon Musk gets his way, Tesla’s Optimus robots and full-self-driving cars aren’t just sci-fi—they’re the next multi-trillion-dollar industry.

Musk is openly talking about humanoid robots doing factory work, replacing human labor, and rolling out in the thousands in the next few years. (The Times of India)

Put that together with weaponized drones, autonomous systems, and AI everywhere, and you can see where this goes: at some point, the threat to you and your family may not be a human attacker at all, but a machine—whether it’s criminal misuse of robots, hostile code, or a rogue state’s toys.

So here’s the obvious question almost nobody in the gun-control world wants to touch:

If the Supreme Court says the Second Amendment covers “all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” why wouldn’t a future EMP rifle or anti-robot weapon be protected? (Justia Law)

If the right to keep and bear arms is tech-neutral, then the logic of Heller, McDonald, Caetano, and Bruen doesn’t stop with muskets, Glocks, and AR-15s. It runs straight into the age of Tesla robots and directed-energy weapons.

Lets makes that case—and swat down the usual anti-gun talking points on the way.

The Supreme Court Already Answered The “But It Didn’t Exist In 1791!” Argument

The anti-gun side’s favorite dodge is simple: “If it didn’t exist when the Founders wrote the Second Amendment, it’s not protected.”

The Supreme Court has already burned that argument to the ground—twice.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court went back to founding-era dictionaries to define “arms” and found they meant “weapons of offence, or armour of defence” and “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” (Teaching American History)

That definition isn’t about flintlocks or bayonets. It’s about function: offensive or defensive weapons you can carry.

Then in Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Court took the next step and hammered it home:

“The Court has held that ‘the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’” (Justia Law)

That’s not vague. That’s not soft. That’s a straight-up rule:

  • If it’s a bearable arm—a carried weapon for offense or defense—
  • It’s presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.

Stun guns weren’t around in 1791. The Court said: Doesn’t matter. They’re arms.

So, if tomorrow there’s a shoulder-fired EMP rifle or some compact anti-robot beam weapon you sling like a carbine, it fits the same box:

  • Bearable? Yes.
  • Weapon? Yes.
  • In existence in 1791? Irrelevant under Heller and Caetano.

On text alone, that future tech starts in the protected column.

Continue reading “”

Guardsman learns to fly autonomous Black Hawk in less than an hour.

A U.S. Army National Guardsman with no previous aviation background learned to successfully maneuver Sikorsky’s optionally piloted Black Hawk helicopter in less than an hour, according to a company release.

In a training first, the Guardsman, using a handheld touchscreen tablet, controlled the Optionally Piloted Vehicle Black Hawk and planned its tasks during Exercise Northern Strike 25-2, a large, biannual multinational exercise sponsored by the National Guard Bureau that took place in Michigan this August. The exercise sees units practice a wide variety of offensive and defensive operations jointly in battle scenarios.

The Guardsman, whose name has not been released, used the OPV Black Hawk to transport a 2,900-pound water buffalo slingload entirely by remote control, according to the Thursday release.

Additional first-time demonstrations that took place during the exercise included delivering airborne troops to drop zones at different altitudes and a simulated medical evacuation, the release noted. The airborne drop exercise saw the helicopter perform a back-to-back action while controlled by the Guardsman operating the OPV from a Coast Guard vessel over 70 nautical miles away on Lake Huron. After ordering the helicopter to unload cargo, the soldier then used it to drop airborne troops.

The OPV Black Hawk also completed a first-ever performance of six hookups and dropoffs of HIMARS launch tubes, according to Sikorsky’s parent company Lockheed Martin.

“In contested logistics situations, a Black Hawk operating as a large drone offers commanders greater resilience and flexibility to get resources to the point of need,” said Rich Benton, vice president and general manager of Sikorsky, in a release.

Although it retains the ability to be operated by a pilot, the OPV Black Hawk can be programmed to perform tasks remotely and optionally controlled as it carries out its assigned duties.

Matrix technology, a system developed in a joint program by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Sikorsky, allows the aircraft to transition from piloted to uncrewed, according to DARPA.

Sikorsky also utilizes Matrix technology in its completely autonomous take on the UH-60L Black Hawk, nicknamed the “U-HAWK,” which it unveiled during the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention this year in Washington.

Printer Panic: Everytown 3D Gun Summit Targets Technological Advancement

Recently, Everytown for Gun Safety hosted a 3D Printed Firearms Summit in New York City with the goal being to “build cross-sector collaboration and chart actionable strategies to stem the tide of 3D-printed firearm (3DPF) related violence.”  The gathering of gloom is seemingly a leftover from the Biden-Harris administration, which convened similar confabs of gun control absolutists. One positive note is that these kinds of anti-gun “summits” must now be funded with Everytown’s own money rather than by taxpayers through Biden’s defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Media hype ahead of the summit warned, “We’re at the start of a new public safety crisis and there is no time to waste,” and “3D-printed firearms are the new frontier in the fight against gun violence.” Everytown is apparently measuring this crisis by “recovery data from twenty U.S. cities submitted exclusively to Everytown” according to their Facebook post. Exclusive crime-related data given just to Everytown may raise its own kinds of red-flags to consider.

While 3D printing is a newer and developing technology, homemade firearms, or PMFs — privately made firearms — are not. Since the birth of our nation, citizens have enjoyed the right to create their own privately made firearms. A review of the basic facts on PMFs would have made for a helpful presentation at the summit.

As far as federal law is concerned, individuals can legally make firearms for personal use without a license as long as the person isn’t prohibited from possession of firearms, the firearm is detectable, and the firearm isn’t made or sold for profit. Firearms and related items that are illegal under federal and/or state law, however, are still illegal. Items that are already regulated by federal and/or state law are still regulated.

Firearms continue to be heavily regulated regardless of how they are manufactured. Articles referring to 3D printed firearms are a mishmash of terms interchanging 3D printed firearms with “ghost guns” and undetectable firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, to name just a few, continue to govern firearms produced by 3D printing.

The mere absence of a serial number does not make a gun undetectable and if 3D printers were capable of producing undetectable firearms, such guns would already be illegal to manufacture and possess anywhere in the country.

Continue reading “”

It’s one thing to use these systems in K-12 schools, where firearms are generally prohibited, but what happens when these systems are rolled out in places where we can exercise our Second Amendment rights? Even if AI successfully determines someone has a pistol, it can’t know whether or not someone is lawfully carrying. Suspicion of carrying a firearm alone shouldn’t be reason enough to stop and search someone, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, especially in places where concealed carry licensees are uncommon.

Superintendent Defends Detection System That Misidentified Bag of Chips for a Gun

Superintendent Dr. Myriam Rogers defended Baltimore County’s AI detection system after it misidentified a bag of chips for a gun, resulting in a 16-year-old being ordered to the ground at gunpoint.

WMAR reported 16-year-old Taki Allen was waiting outside his school after football practice. While waiting, he ate a bag of Doritos then stuffed the empty bag into his pocket.

In about 20 minutes police arrived on scene in response to a warning sent by the school’s AI detection system.

Allen said, “Police showed up, like eight cop cars, and then they all came out with guns pointed at me talking about getting on the ground. I was putting my hands up like, ‘what’s going on?’ He told me to get on my knees and arrested me and put me in cuffs.”

The detection system misidentified the empty bag, labeling it a gun instead.

Superintendent Rogers defended the system: “The program is based on human verification and in this case the program did what it was supposed to do which was to signal an alert and for humans to take a look to find out if there was cause for concern in that moment.”

Tech Crunch noted the system alert had actually been canceled upon review, but the principal reported the alert to the school resource officer because she had not learned of the cancellation. The resource officer subsequently called local police.

AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea

This week’s Amazon Web Services outage had some people waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

A Domain Name System (DNS) resolution problem affected AWS cloud hosting, resulting in an outage that impacted more than 1,000 web-based products and services and millions of people.

Perhaps one of the most avoidable breakdowns came via people’s beds. The reliance on the Internet for smart bed products from Eight Sleep resulted in people being awoken by beds locked into inclined positions and sweltering temperatures.

As spotted by Dexerto, the AWS outage caused smart mattress covers from Eight Sleep to malfunction. These “Pod” mattress covers connect to a physical hub, and users can set the covers to temperatures between 55° and 110° Fahrenheit via a companion app. Eight Sleep also sells smart mattress bases that let people control their bed’s elevation with the app. As of this writing, the Pods’ MSRPs range from $2,449 to $3,249, and the base has a $1,950 MSRP. Eight Sleep also sells its Autopilot feature through an annual subscription that starts at $199. Autopilot is supposed to help automatically set Eight Sleep devices to users’ optimal sleeping conditions. Pod purchases require a one-year subscription to Autopilot.

Pods have on-device buttons for controlling the temperature without a phone, but the devices require an Internet connection for the adjustments to work. That limitation led to disturbing wake-up calls during the AWS outage as Eight Sleep smart beds became uncontrollable.

As one user on Reddit said:

I woke up too hot in the middle of the night last night and kept double-tapping like a maniac to adjust the temp[erature] down since I wasn’t getting any haptic feedback. I only found out why after I got up in the morning.

It would be somewhat understandable that Autopilot stops working because Eight Sleep’s backend is down but not being able to even adjust the temperature locally is ridiculous and completely unacceptable for such a high-end (and expensive) product.

A person on X wrote: “Would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position due to an AWS outage. Cmon now.”

Some users complained that malfunctioning devices kept them awake for hours. Others bemoaned waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.

Even more basic features, such as alarms, failed to work when Eight Sleep’s servers went down.

Eight Sleep will offer local control

Eight Sleep co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti addressed the problems via X on Monday:

The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep. That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.

We are taking two main actions:

1) We are restoring all the features as AWS comes back. All devices are currently working, with some experiencing data processing delays.

2) We are currently outage-proofing your Pod experience and we will be working tonight-24/7 until that is done.

On Monday evening, Franceschetti said that “all the features should be working.” On Tuesday, the company started making an offline mode available that works over Bluetooth when Eight Sleep’s servers are down, The Verge reported today.

“During an outage, you’ll still be able to open the app, turn the Pod on/off, change temperature levels, and flatten the base,” Eight Sleep co-founder Alexandra Zatarain told the publication.

Eight Sleep users will be relieved to hear that the company is making their products usable during Internet outages. But many are also questioning why Eight Sleep didn’t implement local control sooner. This isn’t Eight Sleep’s first outage, and users can also experience personal Wi-Fi problems. And there’s an obvious user benefit to being able to control their bed’s elevation and temperature without the Internet or if Eight Sleep ever goes out of business.

For Eight Sleep, though, making flagship features available without its app while still making enough money isn’t easy. Without forcing people to put their Eight Sleep devices online, it would be harder for Eight Sleep to convince people that Autopilot subscriptions should be mandatory. Pod hardware’s high prices will deter people from multiple or frequent purchases, making alternative, more frequent revenue streams key for the 11-year-old company’s survival.

After a June outage, an Eight Sleep user claimed that the company told him that it was working on an offline mode. This week’s AWS problems seem to have hastened efforts, so users don’t lose sleep during the next outage.

This is what can happen when a state decides to be the NICS point of contact for dealers. Of course, states actually do this to make an illegal registry of, if not guns, gun owners. And, you have to wonder just how real the “hack” is, as opposed to the state goobermint simply wanting to shut down dealers for however long they want.

Nevada Cyberattack Leaves Gun Buyers in Limbo

Many gun sales in the Silver State have been stuck on hold for the past few weeks after a cyberattack on multiple state agencies, and there’s no telling when the state’s background check system will be back online.

Hannah Miles, owner of Guns N Ammo in Gardnersville, Nevada, tells Bearing Arms that she currently has more than 20 background checks pending; all from customers who’ve paid for their firearms but can’t take possession because of the outage. Miles adds that she’s heard it could be a couple of months before the problem is rectified, and the state has offered no alternative for FFLs to conduct the checks while the system is offline.

The cyberattack took place on August 24, so it’s already been more than two weeks of frustration for gun buyers and sellers. Individuals who hold a valid Nevada concealed carry license are exempt from the background check requirement on gun sales, but the outage is impacting everyone else.

Gun store owners told News 4-Fox 11 the outage has affected gun sales, but they were more concerned with the cyberattack affecting Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights.

“The state’s priority should be the constitutional rights of the citizens,” said Michael Alaimo, owner of Rightful Liberty Arms in Reno. “When you go to the state website, it doesn’t say anything about the firearms. Everything says about payroll and DMV, and those are not rights. You know the right to bear arms is in our constitution.”

Alaimo said roughly half of his sales are to people that require a federal background check, while the other sales are to concealed carry permit holders.

Meanwhile, Marcus Hodges, Reno Guns & Range’s assistant general manager, said he has a table ‘piling up with firearms’ that cannot be given to customers.

“There are some people that are foregoing the sale at this point in time. Unfortunately, it’s affecting everybody in the state,” Hodges said.

Nevada is what’s known as a Point of Contact state, meaning Nevada FFLs contact the state’s Department of Public Safety’s Records Bureau instead of going to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System directly. According to the state, “the advantage to this is that the Point of Contact Firearms Program has access to Nevada criminal history records.”

The disadvantage, of course, is that an untold number of Nevadans are now unable to exercise their Second Amendment rights because of this cyberattack. That’s a real problem, from both a practical and constitutional standpoint.

A right delayed is a right denied, and at the moment the right to keep and bear arms is being denied to every first-time gun buyer in Nevada who doesn’t hold a valid carry license. There is no way for them to legally acquire a firearm unless they can find a seller who fits in the state’s narrow exceptions to its universal background check law, and that’s not going to be possible for many residents.

The effects on gun sellers are equally profound. Most people aren’t going to spend money on a gun if they can’t actually take possession of it until some unknown date in the future, and the inability to process background checks for weeks on end will certainly have an impact on the finances of many FFLs. It’s possible that some shops will have to cut staff or even close entirely if these delays last much longer.

I’m honestly not sure what it would take to allow FFLs to go directly to NICS itself, but unless there’s a provision in state law that allows for that in the case of a system failure it would most likely involve litigation, and the prospects of any legal relief are slim. I’m not aware of any lawsuit that’s been filed over the delays, but even if gun stores or gun buyers were to sue it would take some time to get before a judge, and even longer to obtain injunctive relief. By then the system may once again be operational, and my guess is that most FFLs don’t want to spend the money hiring an attorney and suing the state if there’s a chance their lawsuit will be mooted by the time they get their day in court.

At this point, though, it might be worth the effort. If nothing else, lawmakers need to revise or amend the state’s background check law to allow FFLs to go directly to NICS if and when the DPS Records Bureau is unable to conduct background checks in the future. That won’t fix the ongoing problems, but it would at least prevent them from re-occurring the next time the state gets hit with a cyberattack.

How ‘Ghost Gun’ Rules Are Running Slap Into Reality

Privately made firearms, billed in the media as “ghost guns,” have been part of the fabric of America since before this country was a country. You often had to buy all of the parts, then assemble it yourself with a bit of woodworking.
Now, those days are back, and lefty politicians hate it. Sucks to be them.
See, today, the technology is different, but the principle is the same. You buy some parts, make some other things, and in the end, you’ve got a gun. Only now, with technology, while some are trying to ban “ghost guns,” they’re running straight into the reality that the digital landscape isn’t playing well with their hopes and desires.

“ There is a ghost in the shell, and authorities are attempting to exercise it before it becomes what radicals are calling the “new Second Amendment.”

According to law enforcement sources, 3D-printed ghost guns are one of the fastest-growing threats to public safety. In just three years, the ability for any New Yorker to produce a killing device in their own home has grown exponentially. In 2022, police said the lower receiver of a handgun could be made using most 3D-printers, leaving would-be gun manufacturers only to have to order the additional parts. Now, in 2025, about 96% of a firearm can be made in any home, leaving only screws and springs to be added to make it operable.
Police say this rapid progression of the deadly tech is being spearheaded by fringe groups through online chat rooms, open-source file-sharing websites and video platforms like Odysee. Cops say these gun aficionados are sharing their own designs on these pages, not necessarily because they are dangerous trigger-pullers themselves, but because they are looking for glory from their peers. However, once these schematics hit the web, anyone and everyone can access them.

The ‘New Second Amendment’

Dubbed “3D2A” and ”3D Printing For All communities,” these groups not only aim to share information with one another over the net but also to help perfect their designs, with the aim of making the weapons more durable, effective, and easier to use.
“I started this group due to too many people who want to control the actions of others. Free speech is encouraging, and like minds prosper. If you want to post about 3A stuff also, feel free. This group doesn’t restrict any topic; all I ask is no bashing members,” the description of one 3D printing Facebook group read. ”
The moment it became viable to 3D print the receiver of a firearm, any hope for gun control evaporated. Anyone with a few hundred dollars and an Amazon account–and some of them are unscrupulous enough to use someone else’s few hundred dollars via identity theft–can get the means of creating firearms all their own. The other parts needed are minor repair parts that not only aren’t serialized, but really can’t be.
Plus, if you somehow restrict those, someone out there will come up with designs that use off-the-shelf springs and screws.
Of course, lawmakers have banned “ghost guns” in a number of states, but how has that worked out for them? About the same as what we see when they banned felons from buying guns. It’s almost like criminals break the law as a matter of course, and that gun control only impacts criminals.
Whoops.
Then again, it’s not like these people can comprehend cause and effect. If they could, they’d have stopped being progressives years ago. Instead, we have this inane bunch running things in far too many states.
If it were just their proggie fellow travelers, I’d be fine with it, but there are good people trapped there who get caught up in this fiasco, and that’s a major issue, which is why they need to get this smacked through their thick skulls.

An online acquaintance often toys with AI to see how it ‘thinks’.

I tried this out with Bing’s Copilot to see what it would produce about the legal view that a $0 tax on NFA guns could be used in court against the NFRTR registry. My text is in bold black blockquote. It so happens, Copilot has similar views to many of the greater legal minds out there. (Not really surprised.) Also note it’s flattering tone.

Continue reading “”

Generation capacity hasn’t kept up.
Besides building more nuke plants, maybe they shouldn’t have shut down all those coal fired ones.

TVA urges power conservation as temperatures climb.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is asking all electric power consumers, including Hartselle Utilities customers, to voluntarily reduce electricity usage beginning today as extreme heat continues to strain the power system across the region.

The sustained high temperatures have created significant demand on TVA’s power grid, prompting the call for energy conservation to help ensure system reliability across its seven-state service territory.

Ty Chancellor, general manager of Hartselle Utilities, said customers can take several steps to help reduce demand. He encouraged residents to set their thermostats to 78 degrees or the highest temperature they can safely and comfortably tolerate. He also suggested turning off lights and unplugging electronics in rooms not in use, and delaying the use of large appliances such as washers, dryers and dishwashers until after the request is lifted. Additional measures include taking shorter showers to limit hot water usage and sealing windows and doors to keep cool air inside.

“These steps are vital to maintaining power system stability, avoiding service interruptions, and ensuring a reliable supply of electricity during this period of high demand,” Chancellor said.

“These procedures are precautionary measures to ensure the grid continues function appropriately during peak usage times,” he added. “TVA is continuously working to get additional generation online to assist with peak demand during this hot weather period.” 

The request applies to all residential, commercial and industrial power users in the region. Additional resources for saving energy and lowering electricity bills are available on TVA’s EnergyRight Solutions website.

“By working together, we can help safeguard the power system and minimize the risk of outages for everyone,” Chancellor said.

So, basically China’s version of our Nitro Zeus.
What really does interest me is whether or not they had an actual ‘Nitro’ (Direct Action – do not ask) part of that.

US Officials Find ‘Rogue’ Communication Devices in Chinese Power Inverters

Remember “Volt Typhoon?” That was the name given to a group of Chinese hackers who were identified last year by Microsoft. Volt Typhoon was a state sponsored effort to gain access to US infrastructure including communications and utilities. At the time, FBI Director Christopher Wray said this about the effort.

“The fact is, the PRC’s targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he said. And, he added, the immense size—and expanding nature—of the CCP’s hacking program isn’t just aimed at stealing American intellectual property. “It’s using that mass, those numbers, to give itself the ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” he said.

Here we are just over a year later and US officials are now expressing concern about another element of our energy infrastructure: solar power inverters. Solar panels generate DC power but the electrical grid runs on AC power. A solar inverter converts the DC power into AC power compatible with the grid. Many of these power inverters are made in China and now officials are finding evidence that some of them have “rogue” communications devices built in to them.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said….

The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said…

Using the rogue communication devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure, and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.

“That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,” one of the people said.

So, how this might work is the US finds itself in a conflict with China. Say, for instance, China invades Taiwan and the US attempts to stop them. Suddenly, power grids around the country start misbehaving or fail completely. This is clearly the kind of attack on domestic infrastructure that Volt Typhoon was aimed at as well.

The unnamed US officials don’t name and names but we have a pretty clear idea which Chinese companies could be involved just based market share.

Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of inverters, accounting for 29% of shipments globally in 2022, followed by Chinese peers Sungrow and Ginlong Solis, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie…

While Huawei decided to leave the U.S. inverter market in 2019 – the year its 5G telecoms equipment was banned – it remains a dominant supplier elsewhere.

Though discovered in the US, the presence of unregistered equipment has raised alarm in Europe.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC), the body which represents the interests of some Europe-based PV companies, said that: “With over 200GW of Europe’s solar capacity relying on these inverters—equivalent to more than 200 nuclear power plants—the security risk is systemic.”…

Last week, PV Tech spoke to a leading European inverter manufacturer at the Intersolar Europe trade show in Munich, who said that the risk of cyberattacks to cut power supply from solar inverters was “real”, and that “it’s very clear inverter companies could switch off the grid if they want to.”

All Chinese companies are legal required to cooperate with CCP intelligence services, giving them anything they ask. So it’s not really a shock that this would happen. China has shown for years that it will attempt to exploit every opportunity to spy, steal our technology and gain control of our networks. At this point we really should just assume this is happening everywhere, all the time.

Still out of commercial power, this early Thursday morning, as is a large section of the western part of the city, as of the time of writing this. The sounds of gas generators can be heard in the neighborhood from several different direction.

Mere low Earth orbit in a space station? It’s too bad we haven’t taken up asteroid mining yet

What’s it like to be 70 years old in space? “All those little aches and pains heal up.”

Not many people celebrate their birthday by burning a fiery arc through the atmosphere, pulling 4.4gs in freefall back to planet Earth, thudding into the ground, and emptying their stomach on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

No one has ever done it on their 70th birthday.

Perhaps this is appropriate because NASA astronaut Don Pettit is a singular individual. His birthday is April 20, and when the Soyuz spacecraft carrying him landed at dawn in Kazakhstan, the calendar had turned over to that date. John Glenn, then 77, was older when he went to space. But no one as old as Pettit had spent as long as he had in orbit, 220 days, on a mission.

On Monday, a little more than a week after returning from orbit, Pettit met with reporters at Johnson Space Center. “It’s good to be back on planet Earth,” he said. “As much as I love exploring space, going into the frontier, and making observations, you do reach a time when it’s time to come home.”

Flying in space at 70 years old

Pettit first went into space at the age of 47 for his first of three long-duration missions to the International Space Station. Since then, he has flown a shorter shuttle mission and two more space station increments. All told, he has lived in space for 590 days, the third-most all-time among NASA astronauts.

“I’ve got a few creaks and groans in my body, but basically I feel the same as I did 20 years ago, and coming back to gravity is provocative,” he said.

After every one of his missions, Pettit said the readjustment to gravity for him has been a challenge. He added that the surprising thing about spaceflight is that it’s not so much your large muscles that ache, but the smaller ones.

“A week ago, I was on station, and I was doing really heavy squats, I was doing dead lifts, I could float around with the greatest of ease, even though I had no trapeze,” he said. “I was at the peak of my game. And then you come back to Earth, and it’s like, God, I can’t even get up from the floor anymore. It’s humbling. But it isn’t about the large muscle groups. It’s about the little, tiny muscles that everybody forgets about because they’re just there and they work. When you’re in weightlessness, these muscles don’t work anymore. And they take a six-month vacation until you come back to Earth. And now, all of a sudden, they start groaning and talking to you, and it takes a while to get all these little muscles tuned back up to being an Earthling.”

In terms of aging, Pettit said, like a lot of older people, he wakes up after a night sleeping on Earth with a sore shoulder or a stiff neck. That’s just part of the process. But microgravity took some of those aches and pains away.

“I love being in space,” he said. “When you’re sleeping, you’re just floating, and your body, all those little aches and pains heal up. You feel like you’re 30 years old again and free of pain, free of everything. So I love being on orbit. It’s a great place to be for me and my physiology.”

The space station isn’t old, either

Pettit has visited the space station on all four of his spaceflights. He lived there, near the beginning of the station’s lifetime, as part of Expedition 6 in 2002. More than two decades later he said the station is operating at full capacity, delivering on its promise of robust scientific research, studies of long-duration spaceflight, and much more. Asked if he felt nostalgic about the station coming to an end in 2030—NASA plans to de-orbit the facility at that time—Pettit said the laboratory should live on.

“I’m a firm believer we don’t need to dump the space station in the ocean at 2030 if we don’t want to,” he said. “If we as a society decided to keep [the] space station, we could keep it like a B-52. I mean, how many years is it they’ve been flying? It’ll be flying close to 100 years by the time the Air Force finally retires the B-52, and it’s basically the same airframe with the same aerodynamics, but everything else is new. There’s no limit to what we can do to [the] space station, except for our will to keep refurbishing it and having the funding necessary.”

And maybe that’s because he wants to go back. Pettit did not rule out flying into space again. For now, he wants to take a few weeks to allow his body time to re-adjust to gravity. He wants to enjoy some time with his family. But soon, he knows, space will start to call to him again.

“I call it the explorer’s paradox,” he said. “When you’re back in civilization, you want to be out there wherever your wilderness happens to be; and then when you’re in your wilderness, it’s like, wow, I need to be back with my family. I think it’s probably gone on for as long as humanity has had people who go off into the wilderness. When the flight docs say I’m ready to go back, I’m ready to do it. And I know John Glenn flew at age 76, something like that, and I’m only 70, so I’ve got a few more good years left. I could see getting another flight or two in before I’m ready to hang up my rocket nozzles.”

We actually have one of, if not the, largest known deposits of these strategic minerals right here in the U.S. We’ve just been too politically lazy, letting the foreign controlled econutz and business owners overly motivated by the bottom line to develop the mining

China’s New Weapon Isn’t a Missile. It’s a Magnet.

On April 4, the Chinese government issued sweeping new export controls on critical rare earth elements in response to the Trump Administration’s reciprocal trade plan. And while the categories of rare earths included — samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium — are unknown to most Americans, they are embedded in everything from smartphones to stealth bombers.

These new restrictions are not just a new volley in the ongoing back-and-forth between Washington and Beijing. For those paying attention, this is a strategic maneuver that puts pressure directly on the backbone of U.S. national defense and the broader high-tech economy.

While the move is couched in the language of national security and non-proliferation compliance, its timing and scope are not accidental. China is leveraging its near-total dominance over the global rare earth supply chain to shape geopolitical outcomes and force the U.S. to respond.

To better understand the government’s options, it’s helpful to know more about what these rare earth elements do. Dysprosium and terbium are used to produce high-temperature-resistant magnets essential for electric motors in guided missiles, aircraft, drones, and naval propulsion systems. Samarium-cobalt magnets power everything from F-35 jet actuators to targeting systems. Gadolinium is a key component in military-grade sonar. Scandium-aluminum alloys reduce weight while maintaining strength in aerospace structures. Lutetium is increasingly used in advanced radiation detection and positron emission tomography (PET) systems.

These are not luxury materials. They are irreplaceable components in mission-critical systems. It is impossible to build an advanced hypersonic glide vehicle, a submarine-launched cruise missile, or a battlefield drone swarm without them.

China dominates the pipeline for these materials entering the rest of the world, controlling approximately 70 – 85% of their global production and processing capacity. In many cases, such as with dysprosium and terbium, China is not just the dominant supplier, it is the only economically viable one.

The implications of the new restrictions extend far beyond defense. These same elements are foundational to industries that define modern civilization: consumer electronics, factory automation and robotics, health care, electric and hybrid vehicles, wind turbines, medical imaging, semiconductors, appliances, and more. Now Beijing is threatening to block them from those it considers its adversaries.

China has a history of leveraging their advantage in this sector. In 2010, China restricted rare earth exports during a territorial dispute with Japan. In 2023, it imposed curbs on gallium, germanium, and graphite (important in semiconductor production) in response to U.S. chip export bans. Last year, it strengthened restrictions on gallium and germanium and added antinomy and superhard materials.

This latest move is most expansive yet. It targets a broader array of elements, and the regulatory language is sweeping, covering metals, oxides, alloys, compounds, magnets, and even mixed-material targets used in thin-film manufacturing. China is proving that it is willing to endure economic blowback to assert long-term strategic control, and as tensions with the U.S. rise, the boundaries of a new materials Cold War are being drawn.

The Trump Administration is watching this carefully and has already begun taking aggressive steps toward putting the U.S. in a greater position of rare earth and critical mineral self-sufficiency. But American progress in this area over the past 20 years has been sluggish. Building rare earth processing plants is capital-intensive and geopolitically challenging.

Fortunately, the U.S. can access its own rare earth resources within its borders. The Mountain Pass deposit in California is now scaling up production, although it still sends a substantial amount of its mined ore to China for processing. It also largely lacks the heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium. Another very large resource, located in Nebraska, can produce these defense-critical rare earths in additional to establishing global U.S. dominance in production of the rare earth scandium. That project could move to construction immediately, given adequate financing.

But China’s dominance in midstream processing, the chemical separation and purification that turns mined rock into usable materials, remains unrivaled.

To address this challenge, the U.S. must treat rare earth independence not as an industrial policy footnote but as a core national security imperative. That means accelerated investment in mining, extraction, refining, and recycling capacity, all backed by government dollars, loans and loan guarantees, and streamlined permitting. Importantly, as President Trump’s recent Critical Minerals Executive Order proposes, the Defense Production Act should be fully leveraged to jumpstart rare earth projects on U.S. soil.

Further, any domestic investment must be met with greater cooperation between Washington and allied nations that can counter China’s monopoly. Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Australia should be part of a coordinated, supply-secure bloc for critical materials.

The wars of the future may not start with missiles, but with minerals. And unless the U.S. invests in securing access to the elements that power our technologies, we may soon find ourselves on the wrong side of a digital and defense divide.