AcidicBasicGlitch

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who voted against Noem, tore into her performance.

"It's really hard to imagine someone doing a worse job as the secretary of homeland security," Schiff said in an interview. "The draconian, inconsistent, inflammatory immigration policies; the lawlessness; the rendering of people outside the country to maximum-security prisons; the arrest of U.S. citizens; the constant, bizarre spectacle of her doing dress-up outside of a maximum-security prison; or in her various cosplay. It's embarrassing, and it takes the focus off of what should be the heart of that job, and that is protecting our homeland security."

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/67221665

Louisiana has become the first state to allow law enforcement to intercept and disable drones posing threats to public safety. Gov. Jeff Landry signed the groundbreaking "We Will Act" Act into law on Wednesday, June 18.

Well this is certainly odd timing... 😅

HB261 by Rep. Jack "Jay" Gallé Jr., R-District 104 (St. Tammany Parish) grants specially trained officers the authority to use both kinetic and non-kinetic methods to neutralize drones operating unlawfully near sensitive areas like schools and public events.

??? What that means??

"This law puts Louisiana on the front lines of drone defense," Gov. Landry said. "We are taking bold steps now to protect our people and our skies before tragedy strikes."

Violators face strict penalties, including fines up to $5,000, up to one year in jail, and mandatory forfeiture of the drone. The legislation comes amid growing concerns over unauthorized drone activities near sensitive locations.

Gov. Landry noted this move places Louisiana at the forefront of state-level drone policy, setting a precedent that may influence future legislation across the country.

Louisiana has become the first state to allow law enforcement to intercept and disable drones posing threats to public safety. Gov. Jeff Landry signed the groundbreaking "We Will Act" Act into law on Wednesday, June 18.

Well this is certainly odd timing... 😅

HB261 by Rep. Jack "Jay" Gallé Jr., R-District 104 (St. Tammany Parish) grants specially trained officers the authority to use both kinetic and non-kinetic methods to neutralize drones operating unlawfully near sensitive areas like schools and public events.

??? What that means??

"This law puts Louisiana on the front lines of drone defense," Gov. Landry said. "We are taking bold steps now to protect our people and our skies before tragedy strikes."

Violators face strict penalties, including fines up to $5,000, up to one year in jail, and mandatory forfeiture of the drone. The legislation comes amid growing concerns over unauthorized drone activities near sensitive locations.

Gov. Landry noted this move places Louisiana at the forefront of state-level drone policy, setting a precedent that may influence future legislation across the country.

This weird video of Landry signing the bill specifically mentions Louisiana's nuclear power facilities, then Landry tries to make light of everything by saying "They tell me the president is getting ready to do an executive order on some of this stuff... I didn't say that."

... This is fine.

The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on people through government databases, including their bank account numbers and medical claims. Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to police immigrants and punish critics, Democratic lawmakers and others have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access.

Republican lawmakers have also raised concerns about the Trump administration’s plans to consolidate data across government agencies.

Palantir’s work on such a project could be “dangerous,” Representative Warren Davidson, Republican of Ohio, told the Semafor news site this month. “When you start combining all those data points on an individual into one database, it really essentially creates a digital ID. And it’s a power that history says will eventually be abused.”

After The Times published the article about Palantir, the company said on X that the report “is blatantly untrue” and published a blog post denying it was a vendor on a project to unify databases across federal agencies.

In a statement on Monday, the company said, “Palantir does not build surveillance technology, and we are not building a central database on Americans — nor will we.”

Right, you just create new companies and collect that data from them

Guided by spies and artificial intelligence, the Israeli military unleashed a nighttime fusillade of warplanes and armed drones smuggled into Iran to quickly incapacitate many of its air defenses and missile systems. With greater freedom to fly over Iran, Israel bombarded key nuclear sites and killed top generals and scientists. By the time Iran mustered a response hours later, its ability to retaliate — already weakened by past Israeli strikes — was greatly diminished.

“This attack is the culmination of years of work by the Mossad to target Iran’s nuclear program,” said Sima Shine, the former Mossad research director who is now an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Israel’s element of surprise was enhanced by Iranian officials’ apparent assumption that Israel wouldn’t attack while talks over its rapidly advancing nuclear program were ongoing with the U.S.

Smuggling drones into Iran

The Mossad and the military worked together for at least three years to lay the operational groundwork, according to a former intelligence officer who said he had knowledge of the attack. This person spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject.

The attack built off knowledge Israel gained during a wave of airstrikes last October, which “highlighted the weakness of Iranian air defenses,” said Naysan Rafati, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

To further diminish Iranian air defenses and missile systems at the start of last week's attack, Mossad agents had smuggled precision weapons into Iran that were prepositioned to strike from close range, according to two current security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the missions. Those weapons included small, armed drones, which agents snuck into the country in vehicles, according to the former intelligence officer.

Using AI and human intelligence to select targets

To analyze information it gathered, Israel used the latest artificial-intelligence, or AI, technology, said an intelligence officer involved with selecting individuals and sites to target. He said AI was used to help Israelis quickly sift through troves of data they had obtained. That effort began last October according to the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media; it was one month before Netanyahu said he had ordered the attack plans.

An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year uncovered that the Israeli military uses U.S.-made AI models in war to sift through intelligence and intercept communications to learn the movements of its enemies. It's been used in the wars with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The intelligence officer involved in identifying the possible targets said options were first put into various groups, such as leadership, military, civilian and infrastructure. Targets were chosen if they were determined to be a threat to Israel, such as being deeply associated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard — a paramilitary force that controls Iran’s ballistic missiles.

The big picture: The U.S. has helped Israel intercept missiles, but made clear Israel is acting alone in attacking Iran. The U.S. message is that if Iran attacks Americans in response, it will be crossing a red line.

Six hours after Israel’s air strikes in Iran last Friday, farmers in Iraq could have looked up and seen Iranian drones traveling west: more than 100 of them flew on a 1,700-kilometer journey to Israel, with their propellers buzzing like Weedwackers.

Among them was the Shahed-136. Composed mostly of foam and plywood, each Shahed-136 drone is 3.5 meters long and has a 2.5-meter wingspan and a 40- to 50-kilogram warhead at its nose. The drone’s “brain,” a sensor the size of a cough drop, measures every movement while a credit-card-sized GPS onboard listens for microwave chirps from navigation satellites. The Shahed’s route (its waypoints in latitude, longitude and altitude) is uploaded before a booster rocket fires it into the sky. And it is loud: its 50-horsepower motor is slightly more potent than that of a 1960s Volkswagen Beetle and would be as noisy as a lawn mower or a moped at full throttle—now multiplied by 100 in what military strategists sometimes refer to as a rudimentary swarm.

Iran’s recent launch of drones at Israel—or Russia’s use of them against Ukraine, where Shahed drones are nicknamed “flying mopeds”—the swarm’s power is in its numbers. One missile with a similar range can cost upward of $1 million, but a Shahed can be knocked together for $20,000 to $50,000. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fires them from portable rails or from racks on trucks, and the small pulse rocket on the bottom of each drone slams it to cruise speed before falling off. The Center for Strategic and International Studies describes such drone salvos as tools “used as much to saturate air defenses as they are to attack targets, cluttering radar screens and forcing command centers to make decisions about where to fire their more capable surface-to-air missiles,” exactly the situation Israel faced.

Last Friday, as the more than 100 Iranian drones flocked toward Tel Aviv and were shot down by fighter jets, Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system and a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Mediterranean, they couldn’t adjust their course based on what was happening on the battlefield. 

The Shahed, which means “Witness” in Persian, is generally a “fire and forget” drone: it cannot transmit information back or receive updated trajectories (though it is often modeled in different ways, and some Shahed drones used by Russia have reportedly had communication equipment). Rather the swarmlike power of such attacks is based in their cost: in the one late last week, the IRGC could afford to fire drones in a wave so dense that fighter pilots, radar operators and Iron Dome crews had to sort through a moving cloud of identical radar blips.

The author seems like a total dick, but given the recent fear/rumor of the possibility of a false flag attacks on U.S. soil, I feel like something like this isn't inconceivable.

A resolution by Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia would require congressional approval before U.S. troops could engage in hostilities against Iran. He said Americans don’t want another “forever war.”