wired.com: By Noah Shachtman

The Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of “synthetic telepathy.” But unlike old-school mind-melds, this seemingly psychic communication would be computer-mediated. The University of California, Irvine explains:

The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target. [ read more ]

wired.com: By Noah Shachtman

Environmental groups have been warning for years that tense parts of the world could get even worse with the advent of global climate change, and even spark whole new conflicts. Now, the nation’s spies are saying pretty much the same thing.

The U.S. intelligence community has finished up its classified assessment of how our changing weather patterns could contribute to “political instability around the world, the collapse of governments and the creation of terrorist safe havens,” Inside Defense reports. Congress was briefed on the report last week. And on Wednesday, leading spies — including National Intelligence Council chairman Dr. Thomas Fingar and Energy Department intelligence chief Rolf Mowatt-Larsen — will testify on the Hill about the 58-page document, “The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.” [ read more ]

cnn.com: By Jon Fortt

Tech visionary Lawrence Lessig made a sobering prediction Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference: “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event,” he said, “an event that demonstrates the instability of the Internet, and that inspires the government to a response.”

He said he believes this digital disaster – a major hacker attack or other act of cyber-terrorism in the next 10 years – will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act.

[ read more ]

sciam.com: By JR Minkel

Researchers outline project to send long-distance, ultrasecure messages on Earth via the International Space Station

Researchers hope to send an experiment to the International Space Station (ISS) by the middle of the next decade that would pave the way for transcontinental transmission of secret messages encoded using the mysterious quantum property of entanglement.

When two particles such as photons are born from the same event, they emerge entangled, meaning they can communicate instantaneously no matter how far apart they are. Transmitting entangled pairs of photons reliably is the backbone of so-called quantum key distribution—procedures for converting those pairs into potentially unbreakable codes. Quantum cryptography, as it is known, could appeal to banks, covert government agencies and the military, and was tested in a 2007 Swiss election. [ read more ]

dni.gov: Six Technologies with Potential Impacts on US

To support the development of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) was asked to identify six potentially disruptive civil or dual use technologies that could emerge in the coming fifteen years (2025). A disruptive technology is defined as a technology with the potential to causes a noticeable-even if temporary- degradation or enhancement in one of the elements of US national power (geopolitical, military, economic, or social cohesion).

The six disruptive technologies were identified through a process carried out by technology analysts from SRIC-BI’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and its European office in Croydon, England. [ read more ]

reuters.com: By Randall Mikkelsen

Crime groups operating as “mobsters without borders” have gained significant footholds in global markets and provide logistic support to terrorists, the United States said on Wednesday.

Launching a campaign against such international criminals, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said they were more adaptable and sophisticated than La Cosa Nostra and other syndicates the U.S. government set out to defeat half a century ago.

“These international criminals pose real national security threats to this country,” Mukasey said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He cited recent cases, many with links to the former Soviet bloc. [ read more ]

Scientific American: A recent shift in U.S. military strategy and provocative actions by china threaten to ignite a new arms race in space. But would placing weapons in space be in anyone’s national interest? [ read more ]

msn.com: In the next 25 years, these technological advances, made famous in movies and on TV, will become reality. How accurate are our prognostications? Check back with us in 2033.

[ read more ]

Seed Magazine: Hoarding nuclear secrets - even from enemies - can be downright dangerous.

For over 70 years, scientists, by dint of their unique ability to inform policymakers, have occupied a special position in driving the ways governments treat nuclear secrets. Enrico Fermi went so far as to write, “secrecy was not started by generals, was not started by security officers, but was started by physicists.” [ read more ]

lifeboat: The Book of Ratings rates danger symbols (via Ian Albert). Very enjoyable, and brings up the question of how to mark new threats. All the truly cool transhuman technologies are going to require warning signs.

Maybe we should define a RFID standard for this kind of hazard warnings, if it doesn’t already exist? Every container or dangerous object has a RFID tag that enables a “danger detector” to tell that there is a particular problem nearby.[ read more ]