The Schedule - Day 361
12/27/2023
Five eyes
Many links to recent news stories are mysteriously unable to find that page...
3 pieces from mid-late October
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ABC 7 San Francisco - World security leaders gather in Palo Alto to talk international technology threats Story by KGO • 2mo
On Tuesday the FBI hosted an unprecedented tech summit in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Security leaders from Five Eyes, a group formed after World War II in an effort to share intelligence, focused on technology threats.
Christopher Wray, FBI Director, said this is the first time they are standing together in a public setting.
"The Chinese communist party is the number one threat to innovation -- period. China has made economic espionage, stealing others work and ideas, a central component to its national strategy. And that espionage is at the expense of innovators in all five of our countries, and it's certainly true right here in Silicon Valley," Wray said.
Intelligence leaders of the Five Eyes represent the U.S., the U.K, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The summit is a joint effort to denounce China's hacking program -- now bigger than that of any other major nation combined.
Mike Burgess, Australian Security Intelligence Organization director, said this summer revealed behavior that goes beyond traditional espionage.
"The Chinese Government is involved in the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history," Burgess said.
The ASIO director said stealing intellectual property is the first step.
"And and then they use talent programs, joint ventures and acquisitions to harvest the expertise to exploit the intellectual property. Sometimes that technology is put to military use," Burgess said.
The heads of security are outlining the current threat environment reaches of different sectors.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said we are at a historic moment of emerging technologies.
"Authoritarian states are laser focused on this. We know that because they've said so publically, and we know it because our teams every week observe massive amounts of covert activity, by the Chinese communist party in particular. Not aimed in just our government or military secrets but aimed at startups, aimed at academic research, aimed at people who, in short, may understandably not think national security is about them," McCallum said.
The threat landscape is particularly high in the Bay Area.
Cybersecurity expert and SJSU Professor Ahmed Banafa there is no place in the United States with so much concentration of AI companies as much as the Bay Area.
"You look at San Francisco. They have a specific area of almost 20 top companies of AI. And they're going to be a target for espionage. They're going to be a target for stealing the secret. They're going to be a target for so many things," Banafa said.
Banafa said having this summit in Silicon Valley sends a message that intelligence leaders are aware of the threats.
"This move is an acknowledgement that new technology, especially AI, is going to change the world. Number two is, they're giving a message to anybody who's trying to conduct this kind of stealing technology, having their own spies inside the company," Banafa said.
Banafa said protecting intellectual property is national security.
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Google lays off dozens in its news division in latest round of cuts: report
By
Social Links forAriel Zilber
Published Oct. 19, 2023, 10:16 a.m. ET
Original link NY POST - https://nypost.com/2023/10/19/google-lays-off-dozens-in-its-news-division-report/
Dozens of workers in Google’s news division received word this week that they were losing their jobs as the company continues to downsize in a time of economic uncertainty, according to a report.
Between 40 and 45 employees at Google News were laid off, a spokesperson for the Alphabet Workers Union told CNBC.
The Alphabet-owned search engine has also slashed headcount at Verily, the health care analytics subsidiary, as well as Waymo, the robotaxi unit, according to the Information.
It is unclear how many people were fired from Verily and Waymo.
The job cuts, which came just before the company is set to release its third-quarter earnings results on Oct. 24, have raised questions among employees over whether additional layoffs could be in the offing.
The Post has sought comment from Google and the Alphabet Workers Union.
Google has laid off dozens of people from its news division, according to reports. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is seen above.AP
A spokesperson for Google told CNBC that the company still employs hundreds in its news division.
“We’re deeply committed to a vibrant information ecosystem, and news is a part of that long-term investment,” the spokesperson told CNBC.
“We’ve made some internal changes to streamline our organization. A small number of employees were impacted. We’re supporting everyone with a transition period, outplacement services, and severance as they look for new opportunities at Google and beyond.”
Google News is the search engine’s news aggregator that mines stories from thousands of publishers.
Articles that are listed on Google News provide valuable referral traffic to news sources.
Rob Ruenes, a staff software engineer at Google, posted a message on his LinkedIn page lamenting the layoffs.
“These are some of the best and brightest people I’ve ever worked with, and frankly, I don’t expect the calculus behind this decision will ever make sense to me,” Ruenes wrote.
“We’re definitely worse off without them.”
Earlier this year, Google laid off some 12,000 employees — around 6% of its workforce — as the company sought to navigate an uncertain economic landscape.
The company’s revenue growth dropped from 32% in late 2021 to 7% in the second quarter of this year — when it announced the most recent earnings figures.
Microsoft recently laid off around 700 workers at LinkedIn while other tech firms such as Stack Overflow, Flexport, and Qualcomm also announced layoffs.
This is the missing article that stated that the ENTIRE staff at Google News was laid off:
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