FBI: Russian Honeypot Tried To Sex Obama Cabinet Official

Russian Spy Anna Chapman may have been trying to sexually entice a U.S. cabinet member, an FBI official says. Photo: Facebook/EnglishRussia.com

If the arrest of Russian spy Anna Chapman seemed abrupt, it’s because the FBI began to fear she was out to sexually ensnare a member of President Obama’s cabinet.

That seems too crazy to be true, even in a case as bizarre as Chapman’s. But the FBI’s counterintelligence chief tells a BBC interviewer that Chapman was getting “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership.”

“They were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue,” says C. Frank Figliuzzi, the assistant FBI director for counterintelligence, according to the Independent. That alleged — repeat: alleged — sexual “closeness” prompted Figliuzzi’s agents to shift from monitoring Chapman’s crew of ten spies to arresting them in 2010.

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Robots Conquer Fires, Jungle, Sandstorms in New Navy Training Ground

The Navy's "Octavia" robot fights a fire at the new Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mark Riffee/Wired

This is Octavia. A disturbingly lifelike robot, she’s stationed in the Navy’s brand-new Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (or, yes, LASR) to teach human sailors how to work with robots and to learn, in turn, how to work with human sailors. Oh, and she fights fires — like the one a Navy scientist lights in a cavernous hangar bay.

While the fire starts burning inside a series of partitions, the scientist — playing the role of a fireman — silently gesticulates at Octavia. The robot’s sensors and algorithms are meant to process the incomplete, contradictory or incorrect information that we humans spew every day. Octavia quickly processes and wheels herself through the entrance way. Once she’s in front of the fire, she sprays her nozzle full of flame-retardant fluid at the blaze. Octavia uses a bit too much, though: Her infrared cameras triangulate a position to the fire, but she lacks heat sensors, so she tends to overdo it.

But that’s par for the course in this gleaming, 2-week-old, 50,000-square-foot complex on the campus of the Naval Research Laboratory. Robots and their sensors come here to work out. Hard. That is, they perform tests to increase their autonomy from their human overlords in a range of realistic and varied environments, from simulated jungles to simulated deserts.

 

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Sat Spies North Korea Readying Rocket Launch

North Korea's Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Photo: JHU / DigitalGlobe, Inc.

North Korea appears to be ramping up preparations for its internationally-condemned mid-April rocket launch, new satellite images have revealed.

The images, released by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, show a mobile radar trailer — which engineers use to gather real-time information about the rocket’s engines and guidance systems — and rows of seemingly empty fuel and oxidiser tanks.

Wired U.K.

The institute’s North Korean analysts 38 North have scrutinized satellite imagery taken last week of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the North Pyongan province. They appear to show that North Korea has “undertaken more extensive preparations than previously understood.”

It is no secret that North Korea plans to launch the Unha-3 rocket carrying the Kwangmyongsong-3 (Bright Star 3) satellite some time between 12 and 16 April to coincide with the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the country. North Korea has said that the 100-kilogram satellite will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 500 kilometers for two years to study the country’s crops and natural resources.

However, Washington says that North Korea uses these sorts of launches to test missile systems for nuclear weapons that could target the United States. North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, but analysts do not think that it has the technology needed to shrink a nuclear weapon and mount it onto a missile.

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DHS Uses Wartime Mega-Camera to Watch Border

The Department of Homeland Security wants to mount a powerful camera on a Raven Aerostar blimp like this to spy on miles of border at once. Photo: Raven

One legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has arrived on the southern border of the United States. The Department of Homeland Security recently completed tests of a powerful camera, one that cut its teeth in the war zones, that captures video of entire miles of border in a single frame. DHS thinks mega-cameras on blimps and aerostats might be the future of border security — if its analysts can only keep up with the glut of data they’ll gather.

The system itself, a wide-area surveillance camera suite known as Kestrel, earned its stripes during the wars. That got DHS interested. “You had this imager flying that was able to archive and save imagery and reconstruct [bomb] emplacement so troops could go after [insurgents] later,” John Applebee, who manages the border camera program for DHS, tells Danger Room. “It also was used for other things every day, like troop protection or perimeter protection, just as we imagine its uses along the continental borders of the United States.”

So for a week of tests, the department mounted Logos Technologies’ Kestrel imager on a 75-foot long Raven Aerostar aerostat tethered 2000 feet above the Arizona desert. DHS reports in a statement that Kestrel helped spot “more than 100 illegal attempted entries and alleged illicit activities in progress.”

“We can see miles from this with a single image frame,” Applebee enthuses. “Within every pixel, you have high-resolution, good, detailed resolution, like high-d-caliber imagery. In every frame, across the frame.”

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Navy: We’re 4 Years Away From Laser Guns on Ships

 
          

The dream of sailors, nerds and sailor-nerds everywhere is on the verge of coming true, senior Navy technologists swear.  Within four years, they claim they’ll have a working prototype of a laser cannon, ready to place aboard a ship. And they’re just months away from inviting defense contractors to bid on a contract to build it for them.

“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all.

Or they will be, if ONR’s plans work out as promised — not exactly a strong suit of proposed laser weapons over the decades. (Note the decided lack of blast at your side.) First step in reaching this raygun reality: Finish up the paperwork. “The contract will probably have options go through four years, but depending on which laser source the vendors pick, we may be able to demo something after two years,” says Roger McGiness, who works on laser tech for Deitchman. “Our hope afterwards is to move to acquisition.”

Translated from the bureaucrat: After the Office of Naval Research can prove the prototype works, it’ll recommend the Navy start buying the laser guns. That process will begin in “30 to 60 days,” adds Deitchman, when his directorate invites industry representatives for an informal idea session. Deitchman and McGiness plan on putting a contract out for the prototype “by the end of the year.”

If this sounds like a rapid pace of development for the ultimate in science fiction weaponry, there are two major explanations why the Navy thinks the future makes a pew-pew-pew noise. The first is technological. The second is bureaucratic.

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