A Taliban video distributed last month documented the purported seizure of an abandoned U.S. military base by Taliban forces in a remote province of Afghanistan. The 7-minute video was analyzed in a recent report (pdf) from the DNI Open Source Center.
The video “glorifies the Taliban victory by highlighting the group’s triumphant entry into the ‘captured base,’ the symbolic burning of an American flag, and the [local Taliban governor] touring the area.” A copy of the OSC report, obtained by Secrecy News, may be found here.
The OSC report was discussed by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times in his Inside the Ring column today (the second item). Other aspects of the video were previously reported in Wired’s Danger Room and Al-Jazeera.
“One thing became increasingly clear: AI doesn’t simply introduce a new category of risk. It changes the speed, scale, complexity, and interaction of risks that already exist.”
In an ideal world, we would not have state or federal climate intervention research bans. We would have researchers and institutions that would not shy away from revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly of these technologies and doing so responsibly.
“What excites me is that it’s very tempting to be very discouraged, and say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these archaic institutions that are calcified and you could never change them.’ But I think we’re in the middle of a technological revolution that will upend lots of things, and does provide a window.”
Ask people what worries them most right now, and they’ll say the cost of living and their livelihoods, not climate change. But those concerns are not separate.