Latest news with #CamoGPT
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pentagon Says It's Using AI to Delete Pages About History That's Too Woke
In response to the massive blowback it received for taking down a webpage about famed baseball player Jackie Robinson, Pentagon officials admitted that they're using AI to carry out their purge of all "DEI" content in the military. On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell posted a video on X to provide "clarity" about why Robinson, a legendary figure who was the first to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, and an Army veteran who served during World War II, came into the crosshairs of the Trump administration's initiative to remove any references deemed too focused on diversity from official military websites and communications. Rather than fessing up to the racist snafu, Parnell suggested that artificial intelligence was at fault. "Because of the realities of AI tools and other software, some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed," Parnell said in the video. "We want to be very, very clear, history is not DEI." "When content is either mistakenly removed or if it's maliciously removed," Parnell emphasized strikingly, "we continue to work quickly to restore it." The controversy is the latest to stem from president Donald Trump's executive order directing the Department of Defense to eliminate military DEI initiatives and to excise any content that highlights race and gender. The saga began Wednesday when observers realized that a brief bio about Robinson's life suddenly returned a "Page Not Found" error with a URL containing the word "DEI." That sparked an explosion of outrage on social media so vociferous that not even the most hardline anti-woke crusaders in the administration could ignore it. Stepping up to the task, DoD public affairs official John Ullyot made a statement that didn't address whether the takedown of Robinson's biography was a mistake, and instead ranted about "Woke cultural Marxism." That only fanned the flames, and the backlash mounted. On Thursday, Ullyot was removed from his role, the Washington Post reported. The Robinson article has now been restored. The controversy is also emblematic of the Trump administration's eager adoption of AI to carry out its blitzkrieg of the federal government. Lackeys at Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency have fed sensitive government employee and financial data into an AI model, while using a another AI tool to assess the emails Musk demanded from all federal employees to justify keeping their jobs. DOGE is also training a custom AI chatbot to sift through government contracts and other expenditures. Meanwhile, the US Army is using an AI model called "CamoGPT" to remove DEI references in training materials. The use of the technology is nefarious in these contexts for a number of reasons, not least of all because it can be used to take the blame off Trump's anti-woke enforcers when they get caught doing something beyond the pale even by their standards. Since the tech works sweepingly and automatically, vast swathes of content can be wiped out on a moment's notice, and it's only in the exceptional cases like this one that there's enough attention to undo the damage. More on the Trump administration: Trump Ridiculed for Claiming He Rescued the Stranded Astronauts
WIRED
08-03-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
Cybercriminals Allegedly Used a StubHub Backdoor to Steal Taylor Swift Tickets
Lily Hay Newman Matt Burgess Mar 8, 2025 6:30 AM Plus: The world's 'largest illicit online marketplace' gets hit by regulators, police seize the Garantex crypto exchange, and scammers trick targets by making up ransomware attacks. Photograph:As Donald Trump's administration continues its relentless reorganization of the United States federal government, documents obtained by WIRED showed this week that the Department of Defense is looking at cutting as much as three-quarters of its workforce that's specifically focused on stopping proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the US Army is using its 'CamoGPT' AI tool to 'review' diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies per Trump administration orders. The military originally developed the AI service to improve productivity and operational readiness. US civil liberties organizations are pushing the director of national intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard, to declassify details about Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a central overseas wiretap authority that is notorious for also capturing a large number of calls, texts, and emails made or sent by Americans. And the US Justice Department on Wednesday charged 10 alleged hackers and two Chinese government officials over digital crimes spanning more than a decade as part of China's extensive hack-for-hire ecosystem. Ongoing analysis from a consortium of researchers led by Human Security found that at least a million low-price Android devices, like TV streaming boxes and tablets, have been compromised as part of a scamming and ad fraud campaign known as Badbox 2.0. The activity, which the researchers say comes out of China, is an evolution of a previous effort to backdoor similar devices. And there's more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn't cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there. Cybercriminals Allegedly Used a Backdoor to Steal Taylor Swift Tickets Two people who allegedly worked as part of a group to access nearly 1,000 tickets to concerts and other events—many for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour—before selling them on for more than $600,000 profit were arrested and charged with the potential crimes in Queens this week. Tyrone Rose, 20, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned in connection to the theft and sales, according to Queens district attorney Melinda Katz. Between June 2022 and July 2023, it is alleged that 350 orders—totaling 993 tickets—on ticketing platform StubHub were accessed at a third-party contractor called Sutherland. 'The Sutherland employees, defendant Tyrone Rose and an unapprehended accomplice, allegedly used their access to StubHub's computer system to find a backdoor into a secure area of the network where already sold tickets were given a URL and queued to be emailed to the purchaser to download,' the district attorney's office wrote in a statement. They then emailed URLs to another accomplice who has since died, the office says, before posting the tickets to StubHub for resale. While the investigations are ongoing, the District Attorney's office claimed the proceeds of the cybercrime totaled around $635,000 and also involved tickets for Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships. Payment Provider Linked to 'Largest Illicit Online Marketplace' Loses Banking License Every year, criminals make billions from the operations of highly organized scam compounds in Southeast Asia. As these operations have grown in sophistication, so has the wider ecosystem that supplies them with the technology and services needed to run the scams. And experts say there's no bigger marketplace than Huione Guarantee—a Cambodian gray market selling scam services that researchers claim has facilitated more than $24 billion in transactions. This week, according to a report by Radio Free Asia, the banking arm of Huione Guarantee's parent company, Huione Group, had its financial license suspended by officials in Cambodia. According to the report, the Huione Pay service had its license withdrawn for failing to comply with 'existing regulations.' The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and crypto tracing firm Elliptic previously had linked money moving through Huione Pay to cyberscamming. 'They are willing facilitators of pig butchering and other fraud, so any regulatory action against them should be welcomed,' Elliptic founder Tom Robinson claimed to Radio Free Asia. Russian Cryptocurrency Exchange Garantex Taken Down in Law Enforcement Action The US Department of Justice announced an operation this week with Germany and Finland to disrupt the digital infrastructure behind notorious Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex. For years, the platform has allegedly been used for money laundering and other criminal transactions, including sanctions evasion. The DOJ claimed in its announcement that 'transnational criminal organizations—including terrorist organizations' have utilized the exchange. Law enforcement said that the platform has processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since April 2019. US authorities said they froze over $26 million in funds used to facilitate money laundering as part of the Garantex takedown. Scammers Are Impersonating Notorious Ransomware Attackers to Extort Targets The FBI warned this week that scammers pretending to be attackers from the BianLian ransomware gang are demanding ransoms from corporate executives in the US. The demands include claims that the group has breached a company's network and threaten to publish sensitive information unless a target pays up. Such criminal digital extortion is common enough that scammers apparently feel that they can plausibly make the claims and intimidate targets without even attacking them. The FBI says that the scammers' ransom demands say that they come from BianLian and range from $250,000 to $500,000 payable via a QR code that links to a Bitcoin wallet. The real BianLian group has links to Russia and has targeted US critical infrastructure since June 2022, according to a November alert from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
WIRED
06-03-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
The US Army Is Using ‘CamoGPT' to Purge DEI From Training Materials
Mar 6, 2025 8:34 AM Developed to boost productivity and operational readiness, the AI is now being used to 'review' diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility polices to align them with President Trump's orders. The United States Army is employing a prototype generative artificial intelligence tool to identify references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) for removal from training materials in line with a recent executive order from President Donald Trump. Officials at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)—the major command responsible for training soldiers, developing leaders, and shaping the service's guidelines, strategies, and concepts—are currently using the AI tool, dubbed CamoGPT, to 'review policies, programs, publications, and initiatives for DEIA and report findings,' according to an internal memo reviewed by WIRED. The memo followed Trump's signing of a January 27 executive order entitled, 'Restoring America's Fighting Force,' which directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to eliminate all Pentagon policies seen as promoting what that the commander-in-chief declared 'un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories' regarding race and gender, a linguistic dragnet that extends as far as past social media posts from official US military accounts. In an email to WIRED, TRADOC spokesman Army Maj. Chris Robinson confirmed the use of CamoGPT to review DEIA materials. '[TRADOC] will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President. We ensure that these directives are carried out with the utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives,' Robinson says. 'Specific details about internal policies and tactics cannot be discussed. However, the use of all tools in our portfolio, including CamoGPT, to increase productivity at all levels can and will be used.' Developed last summer to boost productivity and operational readiness across the US Army, CamoGPT currently has around 4,000 users who 'interact' with it on a daily basis, Capt. Aidan Doyle, a CamoGPT data engineer, tells WIRED. The tool is used for everything from developing comprehensive training program materials to producing multilingual translations, with TRADOC providing a 'proof of concept and demonstration' at last October's annual Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference in Washington, DC, according to Robinson. While Doyle declined to comment on the specifics on how TRADOC officials were likely using the CamoGPT to scan for DEIA-related policies, he described the process of searching through documents as relatively straightforward. 'I would take all the documentation you want to examine, order it all in a collection on CamoGPT, and then ask questions about the documents,' he says. 'The way retrieval-augmented generation works is that the more specific your question is to the concepts inside the document, the more detailed information the model will provide back.' In practical terms, this means that TRADOC officials are likely inputting a large number of documents into CamoGPT and asking the LLM to scan for targeted keywords like 'dignity' or 'respect' (which, yes, the Army is currently using to screen past digital content) to identify materials for subsequent alteration and bring them in line with Trump's executive order. By using CamoGPT, the work of eliminating DEIA-related content will likely result in a rapid change to the US Army's documentation. 'We're competing with 'control+F' in Adobe Acrobat,' Doyle says. CamoGPT isn't the only AI chatbot in the Pentagon's arsenal: The US Air Force's NIPRGPT has seen extensive use among airmen since its launch in June for 'summarization of documents, drafting of documents and coding assistance,' according to DefenseScoop. The AI-assisted assessment of US military training materials comes amid a government-wide effort to root out DEIA initiated the day Trump returned to the Oval Office in January to start his second term. Detailed in Trump's January 27 executive order, the Defense Department's purge has taken the form of the closure of service-specific DEIA offices and program, a department-wide review of past DEI initiatives, and even the removal of historical content related to the famed all-Black Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force basic training materials, the latter of which was swiftly reversed amid public outcry. Originally inspired by the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, CamoGPT is a product of the Army's Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C), the organization formed in 2018 as part of Army Future Command to spearhead AI research and development efforts by 'leveraging a soldier workforce to build experimental prototypes,' as Eric Schmitz, AI2C's operations and intelligence portfolio lead, tells WIRED. 'The mission is to make AI accessible to the Army through experimentation, and we have an ethos and culture that is very much a start-up ethos.' Schmitz says. 'We are product-centric and believe AI is inherently software-driven: You can do all the research you like in academia, but if you don't have software to deliver it to somebody and find out if it's useful software, then you'll never know if your AI is useful in the real world.' In response to the arrival of ChatGPT, AI2C quickly spun up a CamoGPT prototype based on an open-source LLM in June 2024. The center's approach to CamoGPT is 'model agnostic,' according to Schmitz: While the system currently relies on tech giant Meta's open-source Llama 3.3 70B LLM, the underlying model is 'expendable' should a better version hit the market. What really matters is building software that the average soldier will actually use in their day-to-day operations, an achievement that might influence its long-term adoption across the force. 'When you talk about how the Army doesn't build software well, it's because user adoption is not a priority, but it's a massive priority to us,' Schmitz says. Whether CamoGPT proliferates more broadly across the Army remains to be seen, and Schmitz and Doyle emphasized that AI2C's role is laser-focused on experimental prototyping rather than building products ready for immediate fielding. But with the entire federal government reorienting itself in the name of 'efficiency,' the success of CamoGPT's application to Trump's DEIA overhaul may end up cementing its utility for military planners. 'You need to be ruthlessly critical of what you have built and what you plan to build and hyper focused on driving user adoption,' Schmitz says. 'The core question is: How do you build something that's so valuable that people say they can't live without it?'
