Category: Return
This city bought 300 Chinese electric buses — then found out China can turn them off at will
A city had a rude awakening when it tested its electric buses for security flaws.
Some cities have gone all-in on their dedication to renewable energy and electric public transportation, but discovering that a jurisdiction does not actually control its own public property likely was not part of the idea.
‘In theory, the bus could therefore be stopped or rendered unusable.’
This turned out to be exactly the case when Ruter — the public transportation authority for Oslo, Norway — decided to run tests on its new Chinese electric buses.
Approximately 300 e-buses from Chinese company Yutong made their way to Norway earlier this year, with outlet China Buses calling it a “core breakthrough” in Chinese brands’ global reach.
Yutong offers at least 15 different types of electric buses ranging from 60- to 120-passenger capacity.
As reported by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten on Tuesday, Ruter conducted secret testing on some of its electric buses over the summer. It decided to look into one bus from a European manufacturer, as well as another from Yutong, to address cybersecurity risks.
The test results were shocking.
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Photo by Li An/Xinhua via Getty Images
Investigators discovered that the Chinese-built buses could be controlled remotely from their homeland, unlike the European vehicles.
Ruter reported that the Chinese can access software updates, diagnostics, and battery systems remotely, and, “In theory, the bus could therefore be stopped or rendered unusable by the manufacturer.”
The details were described by Arild Tjomsland, who helped conduct the tests. Tjomsland is a special adviser at the University of South-Eastern Norway, according to Turkish website AA.
“The Chinese bus can be stopped, turned off, or receive updates that can destroy the technology that the bus needs to operate normally,” Tjomsland reportedly said. He additionally noted that while the buses could not be steered remotely, they could still be shut down and used as leverage by bad actors.
Pravda Norway described the situation as the Chinese government essentially being able to decommission the buses at any time.
Photo by Lyu You/Xinhua via Getty Images
Norway’s transport minister praised Ruter for completing the tests and said the government would initiate a risk assessment related to countries “with which Norway does not have security policy cooperation.”
Ruter’s CEO, Bernt Reitan Jenssen, said the company plans on working with authorities to strengthen the cybersecurity surrounding its public infrastructure.
“We need to involve all competent authorities that deal with cybersecurity, stand together, and draw on cutting-edge expertise,” Jenssen said.
As a temporary fix, Ruter revealed the buses can be disconnected from the internet by removing their SIM cards to assume “local control should the need arise.”
There was no word as to whether the SIM cards are upsized for buses.
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Liberals, heavy porn users more open to having an AI friend, new study shows
A small but significant percentage of Americans say they are open to having a friendship with artificial intelligence, while some are even open to romance with AI.
The figures come from a new study by the Institute for Family Studies and YouGov, which surveyed American adults under 40 years old. Their data revealed that while very few young Americans are already friends with some sort of AI, about 10 times that amount are open to it.
‘It signals how loneliness and weakened human connection are driving some young adults.’
Just 1% of Americans under 40 who were surveyed said they were already friends with an AI. However, a staggering 10% said they are open to the idea. With 2,000 participants surveyed, that’s 200 people who said they might be friends with a computer program.
Liberals said they were more open to the idea of befriending AI (or are already in such a friendship) than conservatives were, to the tune of 14% of liberals vs. 9% of conservatives.
The idea of being in a “romantic” relationship with AI, not just a friendship, again produced some troubling — or scientifically relevant — responses.
When it comes to young adults who are not married or “cohabitating,” 7% said they are open to the idea of being in a romantic partnership with AI.
At the same time, a larger percentage of young adults think that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships; that number sits at a whopping 25%, or 500 respondents.
There exists a large crossover with frequent pornography users, as the more frequently one says they consume online porn, the more likely they are to be open to having an AI as a romantic partner, or are already in such a relationship.
Only 5% of those who said they never consume porn, or do so “a few times a year,” said they were open to an AI romantic partner.
That number goes up to 9% for those who watch porn between once or twice a month and several times per week. For those who watch online porn daily, the number was 11%.
Overall, young adults who are heavy porn users were the group most open to having an AI girlfriend or boyfriend, in addition to being the most open to an AI friendship.
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Graphic courtesy Institute for Family Studies
“Roughly one in 10 young Americans say they’re open to an AI friendship — but that should concern us,” Dr. Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies told Blaze News.
“It signals how loneliness and weakened human connection are driving some young adults to seek emotional comfort from machines rather than people,” she added.
Another interesting statistic to take home from the survey was the fact that young women were more likely than men to perceive AI as a threat in general, with 28% agreeing with the idea vs. 23% of men. Women are also less excited about AI’s effect on society; just 11% of women were excited vs. 20% of men.
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How China can use GPS against us — a disaster waiting to happen
China has developed multiple ways to avoid using a global positioning system — if it needs to — in the event it launches an attack on the West’s systems.
Using a combination of Cold War-era technology and advanced GPS methodology, China — in conjunction with other American adversaries — has insulated itself from attacks on its systems in order to achieve an operational edge for its most crucial technologies.
‘The United States and a lot of our Western allies are kind of uniquely vulnerable right now.’
GPS provides the required background for telecommunications networks, electric grids, banking systems, and also mass transport. In addition, it guides precision munitions and military equipment, while providing conventional navigation for the average person in their car or smartphone.
Aiden Buzzetti, president of the pro-America nonprofit Bull Moose Project, told Return in an exclusive interview that the United States is out in the open in terms of a potential GPS-related attack.
“We know that the Russians jam GPS … in the Baltics, the commercial flights in Sweden and Finland, and that general region will run into issues because of GPS interference by the Russians,” Buzzetti told Return. “The North Koreans do it, too. Basically all of the the main adversaries of the United States in some way or another practice GPS jamming. Whether it’s Iran going after bases … it’s a pretty consistent theme across the board.”
Because of this ongoing threat, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have all built a layer of protection surrounding their use of GPS.
“The United States and a lot of our Western allies are kind of uniquely vulnerable right now,” Buzzetti explained. “We rely a lot on the satellite signals, but in their own countries, they’ve been using some older technologies, some Cold War-era technologies and then newer terrestrial technologies to make sure that they’re not vulnerable to the same kind of attacks that we are.”
The technology Buzzetti is referring to ranges from unique and seemingly outdated to complex and futuristic.
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Aiden Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project
In a report about securing the U.S. 5G network and GPS infrastructure, Bull Moose wrote that enemies of the state have been hard at work “future-proofing” their positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities.
The same countries have engaged in “navigation warfare,” the document alleges, but have continuously implemented the following systems to give themselves a decisive strategic edge in electronic warfare:
Loran-C radio navigation network
This radio navigation system, first implemented in the 1950s, uses a receiver to determine its position by listening to low-frequency radio signals transmitted by radio beacons.
Operating at 100 kHz, China has continued its ongoing usage and integrated its systems with South Korea’s and Russia’s to create the regional Far East Radio Navigation Service, established in 1989.
Simply put, Loran-C is an old radio system that ships and planes use to calculate distance through the help of signals from radio towers.
Inertial navigation systems/quantum positioning
These systems use motion sensor and a computer to continuously calculate position based off a previously determined fixed point. In quantum positioning for example, gyroscopes and accelerometers are used to determine velocity and orientation without the use of external signals, unlike a GPS.
Gyroscopes measure angular velocity, while an accelerator measures the proper acceleration of an object, meaning how fast an object is speeding up or slowing down.
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A cell tower for 5G network among buildings is pictured on January 1, 2021 in Qingdao, Shandong Province of China. Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images
LEO satellites
In addition to these methods, China has significantly increased its use of low-Earth orbit satellites, launching dozens at a time as recently as this summer, along with launches dating back to 2024.
The result is now a network of LEO satellites that provides faster communication (internet), surveillance capabilities, and support for GPS systems that are much harder to jam than medium Earth orbit GPS signals.
Essentially, they could be considered China’s version of Starlink.
“China is ensuring that no single point of failure can knock out its navigation capabilities,” Buzzetti said, adding that if the United States does not work to shore up its systems, it could be vulnerable to attacks that take down entire categories of essential infrastructure. Because China has been diligent in ensuring it does not rely on GPS, he suggested, the United States should re-examine the companies that lobby and work within the United States on communications projects and, where necessary, abandon them.
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Anduril’s new Army helmets have ‘X-ray’ vision — how is that possible?
The incoming equipment for U.S. military members is so advanced that it not only looks like a video game but seems like the user is cheating.
The standard helmet for the Army has remained largely the same in the last few decades, save for key updates in blunt force protection. While there may have been additions that allow for microphones and night-vision attachments, nothing has even come close to what is on the horizon.
‘Think of it almost like a hive mind.’
Leaning more toward what a fighter pilot’s helmet is capable of, the new Eagle Eye warfighter helmet from Anduril Industries uses technology that is pretty hard to explain.
The company recently released a stunning display that looks like the first-person view of a video game. Providing a directional map in the bottom corner of the soldier’s view, the optics are immediately recognizable to anyone who has played a video game of that genre; a young man in the Army probably has.
A heads-up display reveals nearby enemies with a red blip, and the soldier digitally selects a tactical strike with a drone on an encroaching vehicle in seconds, all while chatting with other soldiers on his team.
The new helmets make this possible by using a “hive mind” technology that connects soldiers on the battlefield with drones, cameras, surveillance, and their squad mates on the ground; the results are fairly shocking.
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“The ability to have night vision, thermal vision, but also the ability to see where all the bad guys are, see where all the good guys are by fusing everyone’s view together. Think of it almost like a hive mind,” inventor Palmer Luckey recently told Joe Rogan.
“If I’m able to see something, you should be able to see it. If a drone can see it, you should be able to see it. Even if it’s on the other side of a building, you should be able to see it and effectively have X-ray vision. And I should be able to command and control all these other systems using this heads-up display interface,” Luckey continued.
Using “intelligence sensors,” the Eagle Eye helmets can detect cellphone signals, radio signals, and even where gunshots were fired, revealing their distance from the soldier.
The Anduril CEO showed Rogan that with a pair of connected augmented reality glasses, the soldier can see all the data being captured by the helmet and show it in real time to the user. This, in conjunction with any drones, cameras, or other soldiers wearing the tech, combine to form a network of data that Anduril says gives America the advantage in an “unfair fight.”
What this results in is the soldier being able to see everything at once, effectively seeing through walls or over hills; if anyone or anything on his team can see it, so can the individual.
Luckey showed off a sample video where a soldier could use the X-ray vision to track his allies through a sea can while engaging enemies, displaying them as skeletal-like figures. Once the allies saw the enemy, the user could see them through a wall too.
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Additionally, the helmets not only have thermal sensors, night-vision censors, and hearing protection, they also have sound amplification. Tactical technology allows the wearer to hone in on sounds coming from a certain direction, while canceling out noise from other directions to better focus on the target.
Anduril boasts that it used no taxpayer dollars to create Eagle Eye and is certainly pushing advanced military technology in the right direction.
The advancements come at the same time the company has revealed its anti-drone technology, in the form of a mobile kit for soldiers on the ground. Drone strikes have become an often-used instant-casualty tactic in the Russia-Ukraine war and are a constant threat for those operating without cover.
These products show that Luckey has put a very real focus on protecting the individual American fighter in attempt to prevent loss of life.
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