Table of ContentsTable of ContentsPoor timingPairing Kirk and PicardEverything but the food replicatorMore KlingonsGenerations is visually unappealingThe film is not in the same F/X league as previous Trek featuresStar Trek Generations was released in November 1994 at a moment of peak popularity for the franchise. Star Trek: The Next Generation had aired its series finale six months earlier while still a huge ratings success, and it could easily have kept going for more seasons. But with Deep Space Nine recently launched and Voyager in the offing, the collective wisdom deemed that it was time for The Next Generation to beam to the big screen after 178 episodes.By teaming up Captains Kirk (William Shatner) and Picard (Patrick Stewart), Generations would mark the official transition from the cinematic adventures of the original crew to the new one. Unfortunately, the entire, um, enterprise was a miscalculation, driven by Paramounts desire to capitalize off fan enthusiasm at a time when there wasnt much franchise entertainment in cinemas, and virtually no space operas. The marketplace was ripe, in other words, and the movie was a solid box office success generating about $75 million at the domestic box office and $118 million total.Recommended VideosBut in terms of quality and fan reception, Generations represented another blight on the legacy of big screen Trek, which had already survived two of them across just six movies in The Motion Picture and the William Shatner-directed The Final Frontier. And the movie would introduce issues that plagued all four Next Generation feature films.RelatedParamountPart of the problem with Generations was timing. TNG had not only just gone off the air earlier that year but it had done so in an acclaimed two-part episode, All Good Things, which remains one of the shows best. The 60s-series crew, meanwhile, had bowed out just three years earlier in the classy Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. At the conclusion of that movie, Kirk had unambiguously handed over the franchise to The Next Generation, intoning in his final captains log: This ship and her history will shortly become under the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future.In other words, the ending of both iterations of Trek had impressively stuck the landing. If Paramount execs couldnt leave well enough alone for a while, they needed to come up with a good story and put the movie in the hands of a better filmmaker than David Carson, who had directed television, including episodes of TNG, but never a feature film.Captains Picard and Kirk in Star Trek: Generations ParamountThe ideato put the two beloved captains in action together for the first time wasnt a bad one. The Next Generation had already featured Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Scotty (James Doohan), and McCoy (DeForest Kelley), with the episodes featuring Spock and Scotty being especially well-received.Kirk had yet to make his entrance into the 24th-century version of the universe, and so the writers came up with the idea of him and Picard meeting up in the Nexus, an extra-dimensional heaven-like realm in which ones thoughts and desires shaped realityand time and space had no meaning, allowing one to visit any point in time and any place that one could imagine. (Im quoting directly from the fan page here because I never did quite get a handle on it.)Soran regards the Nexus in Star Trek: Generations Parmount PicturesThe kicker is that the only way to enter the Nexus is through a violent ribbon of energy that destroys everything that comes near it. If part of the motivation for Shatners appearance was that he wanted a good onscreen death for Kirk (after Spock got one of the most famous deaths in movie history), he got a decent one in the opening sequence when he saves the Enterprise B from the Nexus before being sucked into space. How Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Scotty arent also vacuumed into the cosmic maw as they stand gawking out of the huge hole remains a mystery. But never mind, its one of the few impressive shots in the movie.The opening sequence also introduces the films villain, Dr. Soran, played by Malcolm McDowell, his hair looking like albino corn stalks. Soran has been inside the Nexus and is desperate to get back to it so that he can forget the horrors of his world being assimilated by the Borg. To achieve this, he will have to run the ribbon through a planet, thereby causing the death of hundreds of millions. Picard must enlist Kirk who we discover has not died (!), but entered the Nexus to help defeat Soran and save the planet.Kirk expires in Star Trek: Generations Paramount PicturesUnfortunately, Kirk got a second death scene at the films climax that is infamous for being poorly staged and acted and generally just embarrassing (Shatner himself didnt like it). The fact that Paramount added $10 million to the initially underfunded budget of $25 million just so they could film this scene after the first tested poorly is confounding.Data with Spot in Star Trek: Generations Paramount PicturesThe idea of a character so devastated by grief that hes willing to commit genocide to not have to face it is an interesting one, but it would have been better served as the driving idea of a single episode, not given short shrift in a movie that crams in as many classic Trek elements as possible.For example, the TNG cast make their first appearance in a Holodeck scenario, which was a popular feature on the show. In this one, they conjure up the deck of a 19th-century sailing ship to stage a promotion ceremony for Worf (Michel Dorn). Why hes only now being promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant commander after seven years of helping save the galaxy from every possible threat is just one more of the indignities famously heaped on his character, and true to form he gets little do to thereafter.Worf gets promoted in Star Trek: Generations Paramount PicturesThe movie tries to do more with Data (Brent Spiner), given that he was arguably TNGs most beloved character. As with Spock before him, many of Datas storylines focused on his evolution toward humanity. But Generations takes this almost to parody by having Data install an emotion chip and then acting out comedy so broadly, with such lame punchlines, that its cringeworthy.While Spiner hams it up, Shatner phones it in, with Carson making no real effort to even hide his stunt doubles. The stunt work in general features a ridiculous number of shots of Enterprise crew members getting thrown around during explosions and crashes as if the filmmakers had no knowledge that similar shots throughout franchise history were famous for being unintentionally hilarious.Finally, much of the climactic action takes place on a planet that is no more than a rock formation shot in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, reminiscent of so many of the underwhelming planetary locations from both The Original Series and TNG. In terms of both the rocky location and the quality of special effects, this one evokes the original series episode, Arena, in which Shatner tussles with a guy in a rubber lizard suit.Malcolm McDowell as Soran and Gwynyth Walsh as BEtor ParamountAs I wrote previously, after introducing the popular Klingon Bird of Prey ship in Star Trek III, the franchise got as much mileage out of it as possible. Despite being 100 years later in the Trek timeline, it is featured in Generations as well. The ship had been brilliantly used in The Undiscovered Countryalongside the classic Klingon D-7 cruiser. Generations lazily duplicates the ships final moments from that far superior movie, with the final explosion obviously reusing the same footage.The one new conceit here is that the Klingon commanders are women, Lursa and BEtor Duras, gamely played by Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh, who had also appeared in the show. Unfortunately, any hint of progress in terms of gender representation is undercut by the fact that they sport plunging cleavage. At least Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) got to put on a regular uniform by this point. I guess the savage Klingons hadnt evolved that far.The Enterprise Crashes in Star Trek: Generations Paramount PicturesApart from story issues, the movie is a visual mess. A cinematic TNG adventure was always going to look different from the show, because early 90s movies were both shot and projected in 35mm film, as opposed to series episodes, which were shot in 35mm, but transferred to tape for editing. This resulted in a significant loss of resolution, making it look as though it was shot on video. The quality was further diminished by the televisions of the era.The 35mm of Generations is clear and crisp enough and the movie looks sharp in 4K. The problem is that Carson and his team chose a visual design for the film that jarringly contrasts the show, mostly because the action inside the Enterprise-D and other spaceships is so dark. TNG was a brightly lit show; more specifically, it was very evenly lit, which makes sense given that a ships lighting is artificial.Troi and Picard dimly lit in Star Trek: Generations ParamountBut Carson shoots the interiors with chiaroscuro lighting, so that some scenes evoke Caravaggio and others film noir not ideal unless the characters are acting out Double Indemnity in the Holodeck. Not surprisingly, the director of photography was John A. Alonzo, who had shot classic crime films such as Chinatown and Scarface. The look he achieves simply doesnt feel like TNG, a problem the movie series never solved, even in the much better First Contact two years later.Neither does Carson display any gift for cinematic composition. Movie screens are rectangles, but in those days, television was shot to be broadcast from square sets. The result is that Generations is awkwardly staged and framed as if Carson thought he was still working in TV. Overall, the mise-en-scne is jumbled and ugly, with goofy props sticking out at odd angles. The less said about the garish costumes, the better.The Enterprise crew in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Paramount PicturesContrast this with the, ahem, stellar cinematic work that Nicholas Meyer did for with ship interiors in The Undiscovered Country. His lighting is also dim, but its much more muted, with subtle contrast and softer colors that evoke the subdued lighting of a submarine.The look of the 60s series was reinvented for the movies a decade after the show ended and in a new era of special effects (and bigger budgets) for space movies. Audiences expected it to look both different and better. As such, major special effects artists were recruited for the gigs. Douglas Trumbull, who had done FX for 2001, worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and it remains an impressive visual achievement.George Lucas Industrial Light and Magic then took over for Star Trek II during a revolutionary era of FX. That summer alone, Wrath of Khan shared theaters with E.T., Blade Runner, Tron, and The Thing, all FX classics.The Enterprise docked in Star Trek: The Motion Picture Parmount PicturesGenerations came in the shadow of that era, as well as amid the CGI revolution that had already produced Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. It couldnt compete on the budget that Paramount allotted for it. And anyway, TNG had always been more beloved for its stories and characters than its visuals.Even though the next movie in the series, First Contact, was much better in terms of both story and special effects, the Next Generation crew had peaked in pop culture, which was borne out by the lame final two movies, Insurrection and Nemesis. That three recent seasons of Picard did little to burnish the shows sterling legacy is yet another reminder that wed all be happier if corporations let their franchise entertainment die a good death and unlike Kirk never be revived.Star Trek Generations is streaming on Paramount+.Editors Recommendations

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Numbers don't lie Dont use crypto to cheat on taxes: Bitcoin bro gets 2 years Early bitcoin investor first to get prison time for crypto-related tax evasion. Ashley Belanger Dec 13, 2024 12:02 pm | 81 Credit: Cemile Bingol | DigitalVision Vectors Credit: Cemile Bingol | DigitalVision Vectors Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA bitcoin investor who went to increasingly great lengths to hide $1 million in cryptocurrency gains on his tax returns was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday.It seems that not even his most "sophisticated" tacticsincluding using mixers, managing multiple wallets, and setting up in-person meetings to swap bitcoins for cashkept the feds from tracing crypto trades that he believed were untraceable.The Austin, Texas, man, Frank Richard Ahlgren III, started buying up bitcoins in 2011. In 2015, he upped his trading, purchasing approximately 1,366 using Coinbase accounts. He waited until 2017 before cashing in, earning $3.7 million after selling about 640 at a price more than 10 times his initial costs. Celebrating his gains, he bought a house in Utah in 2017, mostly funded by bitcoins he purchased in 2015.Very quickly, Ahlgren sought to hide these earnings, the Department of Justice said in a press release. Rather than report them on his 2017 tax return, Ahlgren "lied to his accountant by submitting a false summary of his gains and losses from the sale of his bitcoins." He did this by claiming that the bitcoins he purchased in 2015 were much higher than his actual costs, even being so bold as to claim he as charged prices "greater than the highest price bitcoins sold for in the market prior to the purchase of the Utah house."First tax evasion prosecution centered solely on cryptoAhlgren's tax evasion only got bolder as the years passed after this first fraud, the DOJ said.In 2018 and 2019, he sold more bitcoins, earning more than $650,000 and deciding not to report any of it on his tax returns for those years. That meant that he needed to actively conceal the earnings, but he'd been apparently researching how mixers are used to disguise where bitcoins come from since at least 2014, the feds found, referencing a blog he wrote exhibiting his knowledge. And that's not the only step he took to try to trick the Internal Revenue Service."For these years, Ahlgren took several sophisticated steps to attempt to conceal his transactions on the bitcoin blockchain by moving his bitcoins through multiple wallets, meeting an individual in person to exchange bitcoins for cash, and using mixers, which are designed to conceal the individual who made the particular transaction," the DOJ said.Houston-based Lucy Tan, the acting special agent in charge of IRS-Criminal Investigation, said in the press release that Ahlgren's efforts to conceal a total of $1 million in cryptocurrency gains over several years were ultimately futile. His case became the first criminal tax evasion prosecution "centered solely" in the US.Ahlgren will serve time because he believed his cryptocurrency transactions were untraceable," Tan said. "This case demonstrates that no one is above the law."IRS reportedly training to find hidden crypto treasureWith bitcoin's price higher than ever as Donald Trump vows to be a "pro-crypto president," interest in the cryptocurrency is arguably at an all-time high.But around the same time that Trump began heavily campaigning to attract cryptocurrency enthusiast voters this summer, the Federal News Network reported that the IRS would be cracking down on tax evasion in the trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry.That probe reportedly involved 400 cases, where the IRS recommended prosecution in more than half. And another effort, reportedly dubbed Operation Hidden Treasure, is currently focused on training IRS employees to "find taxpayers who leave digital assets off their tax returns."Tan confirmed that Ahlgren's sentencing "marks the first criminal tax evasion prosecution centered solely on cryptocurrency" and warned that he wouldn't be the last."As the prices for cryptocurrency are high, so is the temptation to not pay taxes on its sale," Tan said. "Avoid the temptation and avoid federal prison."Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 81 Comments

Deterrence The US military is now talking openly about going on the attack in space "We have to build capabilities that provide our leadership offensive and defensive options." Stephen Clark Dec 13, 2024 10:40 am | 157 Last year, Space Operations Command unveiled its first official painting, titled "High Ground Intercept," commissioned with artist Rick Herter. The painting illustrates a US military spaceplane intercepting an adversary's satellite, which in turn is positioning to disable a friendly satellite. Last year, Space Operations Command unveiled its first official painting, titled "High Ground Intercept," commissioned with artist Rick Herter. The painting illustrates a US military spaceplane intercepting an adversary's satellite, which in turn is positioning to disable a friendly satellite. Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreORLANDO, FloridaEarlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: "integrated space fires."This is a new phrase in the esoteric terminology the military uses to describe its activities. Essentially, "fires" are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as "the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target."The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past."While we've held it close to the vest before, some of that was just kind of hand-wringing," said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top general in the Space Force, who also serves on the joint chiefs of staff. "It wasn't really something we needed to protect."One reason for the change in how the military talks about warfare in space is that the nation's top two strategic adversariesChina and Russiaare already testing capabilities that could destroy or disable a US military satellite.The Space Force was established nearly five years ago, in December 2019, to protect US interests in space. Satellites provide the military with intelligence data, navigation, communications, and support missile defense, and in the next few years, they will become even more crucial for weapons targeting and battle management. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force's chief of Space Operations, speaks Tuesday at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Space Force Association This week, Saltzman laid out the military's view of offensive weapons in space in perhaps the plainest language yet.Space is a war-fighting domain," Saltzman said at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. "Ten years ago, I couldnt say that. Thats the starting point. Think about that. In 2014, we had senior leaders start to talk about space and war in the same sentence. They got kind of berated by the senior leadership. So this is still a relatively new condition when were talking about war-fighting in space. I don't think we should underestimate the power of that."An alert postureGen. Stephen Whiting, the four-star chief of US Space Command, identified "integrated space fires"again, these are actual offensive or defensive attacks against an enemy vehicleas his organization's most pressing need. These could be based in any domainland, air, sea, or spaceand aimed against targets within and above the atmosphere.So what would these weapons look like? They might be electronic or cyber in nature, allowing US forces to hack a satellite or its ground-based support network. Russia has already done this, when hackers launched a cyberattack on a commercial European satellite communications network in 2022, the same day the country began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Then there's directed energy, which would use a laser beam to blind or dazzle satellite sensors in orbit. Directed energy weapons could be based on the ground or in space. There's another option that would involve one satellite sidling up next to an adversary's and using a claw or robotic arm to capture it and take control.Finally, there are the kinds of space weapons that can blow a satellite out of the sky. These antisatellite weapons (ASATs) are perhaps the most low-tech solutionthe United States, China, Russia, and India have openly demonstrated thembut they come with dangerous side effects.For example, a Chinese ASAT missile test in 2007 destroyed one of the country's own satellites, creating more than 3,000 trackable debris objects in low-Earth orbit, the largest cloud of space debris in history. The United States performed a similar ASAT missile test against a satellite in 1985.Destructive ASATs, like directed energy weapons, can be based on the ground or in space. In 2021, Russia launched a ground-based direct-ascent ASAT missile to take out one of its own satellites. The year before, Space Command reported Russia tested a space-based ASAT weapons system in which a Russian military satellite released a projectile moving fast enough to destroy another satellite if it made an impact. Anti-satellite weapons are nothing new. In this photo from 1994, a woman passes by a huge mural in Tehran, Iran, depicting satellite television networks as satans and enemies of Islam. Credit: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images Most recently, news leaked from US government sources in February that Russia is developing a nuclear ASAT weapon. If used, this would render low-Earth orbit, a section of space stretching several hundred miles above Earth, unusable for a year or more, according to John Plumb, the former assistant secretary of defense for space policy.US officials said Russia hasn't placed a nuclear weapon in orbit yet, but if it did, the move would violate Article IV of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Russia is a party to the treaty, which bans weapons of mass destruction in space. Russia's representative at the UN Security Council vetoed a resolution in April to reaffirm this tenet of the Outer Space Treaty and instead proposed a resolution to ban all weapons in space, which the United States rejected. After all, US officials say Russia has already tested an ASAT weapon in orbit.And now, the US Space Force desires space weapons of its own."We need joint all-domain fires to be able to do that, everything from across the gamut of cyber, non-kinetic, kinetic, and those can come from any domain. But we need to have the ability to influence targets, just like every other domain does," Whiting said.Knowing what we haveAt the conference Tuesday, Ars asked Saltzman if the Space Force will talk more about the capabilities it is deploying in orbit. Can deterrence work if adversaries don't know how the Space Force might respond to a threat?In the film Dr. Strangelove, the titular character says that deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear of attacking. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert if you haven't seen this 60-year-old film), a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union results in the automatic activation of a secret Russian "doomsday machine" that will destroy all life on Earth.According to the plot, Russia developed the machine to dissuade a US attack on its territory. Dr. Strangelove, a zany, mercurial military adviser in the film, aptly states: "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!"Saltzman made it clear that the Space Force can't stop at developing defensive countermeasures against an attack on a US satellite. One of these defensive measures is resiliency, where the Space Force puts up constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites to provide the surveillance, communication, and missile-tracking functions previously the domain of smaller numbers of billion-dollar satellitesbig, juicy targets in the eyes of an enemy in conflict with the United States. The Pentagon is well on the way to deploying these mega-constellations, but military commands caution this is not enough."We have to build capabilities that provide our leadership offensive and defensive options," he said in response to a question from Ars. "Weapons systems aren't inherently offensive or defense. Is an aircraft carrier offensive or defense? Yes. Is an F-35 offensive or defense? Yes. So when we get in this fight about whether or not a spacecraftis this an offensive weapon? No, it's just a capability.""Then, the operations, as approved by the secretary of defense and the president, will decide the nature of those (capabilities)," Saltzman said. "It's our job to make sure that we think through the spectrum of operations, the spectrum of needs that are necessary." An operator inside the National Space Defense Center at Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Kathryn Damon These wartime scenarios in space range from a one-off cyberattack against a satellite systemlike Russia's move against a Viasat commercial satellite network in 2022to a destructive nuclear detonation in Earth orbit, something US officials fear Russia might be preparing to do. The Pentagon is also concerned with the ability of potential adversaries, particularly China, to use their satellites to bolster their land, air, and naval forces, similar to the way the US military leans on its space-based capabilities.One concept proposed by some government and industry officials is to launch roving "defender" satellites into orbit, with the sole purpose of guarding high-value US satellites against an attack. These wouldn't be able to effectively defend a spacecraft against a ground-based anti-satellite missile, which can launch without warning. But a space-based attack might involve an enemy satellite taking days or weeks to move close to a US satellite due to limitations in maneuverability and the tyranny of orbital mechanics.Any defender satellites deployed by the US military would need highly efficient propulsion or have a design that enables refueling in orbit. Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, wrote about the defender concept in a Medium post earlier this month.Bruno added some context Thursday in a roundtable discussion with reporters, describing the defender concept as "a lightning fast, long-range, lethal, if necessary, vehicle to defend our assets on orbit."Essentially, the idea would take something like a space tug or upper stagean upgraded version of ULA's own Centaur V upper stage could do the job just fine, Bruno saidand leave it in orbit on alert to respond to any threats against US or allied satellites."You can move one of these vehicles in hours, interdict what might be an attack, and stop the attack," Bruno said. "So that becomes a very powerful deterrent because we move from what we are working toward right now, which is 'go ahead and attack me and disable several of my satellites, and I can still keep doing my job,' to a place where you say, 'Go ahead and attack. It's not going to work. You're not going to be able to disable anything.'"The case of ChinaBrig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, who leads US Space Forces in the Indo-Pacific region, has probably the closest eye on China's space program of any military commander. His area of responsibility includes the South China Sea, where China has expanded its military footprint and could one day threaten Taiwan, a US ally.Mastalir said China is "copying the US playbook" with the way it integrates satellites into more conventional military operations on land, in the air, and at sea. "Their specific goals are to be able to track and target US high-value assets at the time and place of their choosing," Mastalir said.China's strategy, known as Anti-Access/Area Denial, or A2AD, is centered on preventing US forces from accessing international waters extending hundreds or thousands of miles from mainland China. Some of the islands occupied by China within the last 15 years are closer to the Philippines, another treaty ally, than to China itself.The A2AD strategy first "extended to the first island chain (bounded by the Philippines), and now the second island chain (extending to the US territory of Guam), and eventually all the way to the West Coast of California," Mastalir said.US officials say China has based anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-ballistic weapons in the region, and many of these systems rely on satellite tracking and targeting. Mastalir said his priority at Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii, is to defend US and allied satellites, or "blue assets," and challenge "red assets" to break the Chinese military's "long-range kill chains and protect the joint force from space-enabled attack."What this means is the Space Force wants to have the ability to disable or destroy the satellites China would use to provide communication, command, tracking, navigation, or surveillance support during an attack against the US or its allies. Buildings and structures are seen on October 25, 2022, on an artificial island built by China on Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. China has progressively asserted its claim of ownership over disputed islands in the region. Credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images Mastalir said he believes China's space-based capabilities are "sufficient" to achieve the country's military ambitions, whatever they are. "The sophistication of their sensors is certainly continuing to increasethe interconnectedness, the interoperability. They're a pacing challenge for a reason," he said."We're seeing all signs point to being able to target US aircraft carriers... high-value assets in the air like tankers, AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System)," Mastalir said. "This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening, and that's what their space architecture is."That's not acceptable to Pentagon officials, so Space Force personnel are now training for orbital warfare. Just don't expect to know the specifics of any of these weapons systems any time soon."The details of that? No, you're not going to get that from any war-fighting organization'let me tell you precisely how I intend to attack an adversary so that they can respond and counter that'those aren't discussions we're going to have," Saltzman said. "We're still going to protect some of those (details), but broadly, from an operational concept, we are going to be ready to contest space."A new administrationThe Space Force will likely receive new policy directives after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The Trump transition team hasn't identified any changes coming for the Space Force, but a list of policy proposals known as Project 2025 may offer some clues.Published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 calls for the Pentagon to pivot the Space Force from a mostly defensive posture toward offensive weapons systems. Christopher Miller, who served as acting secretary of defense in the first Trump administration, authored the military section of Project 2025.Miller wrote that the Space Force should "reestablish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against US space assets."Trump disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign, but since the election, he has nominated several of the policy agenda's authors and contributors to key administration posts.Saltzman met with Trump last month while attending a launch of SpaceX's Starship rocket in Texas, but he said the encounter was incidental. Saltzman was already there for discussions with SpaceX officials, and Trump's travel plans only became known the day before the launch.The conversation with Trump at the Starship launch didn't touch on any policy details, according to Saltzman. He added that the Space Force hasn't yet had any formal discussions with the Trump transition team.Regardless of the direction Trump takes with the Space Force, Saltzman said the service is already thinking about what to do to maintain what the Pentagon now calls "space superiority"a twist on the term air superiority, which might have seemed equally as fanciful at the dawn of military aviation more than a century ago."Thats the reason were the Space Force," Saltzman said. "So administration to administration, thats still going to be true. Now, its just about resourcing and the discussions about what we want to do and when we want to do it, and were ready to have those discussions."Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 157 Comments

Where would the world be without APIs? There would likely be a lot less connected and software releases flowing like molasses. Developers use APIs to add capabilities to their apps quickly, though the grab-and-go approach is unwise when it comes to AI.While many developers are proficient in embedding AI into applications, the challenge lies in fully understanding the nuances of AI development, which is vastly different from traditional software development, says Chris Brown, president of professional services company Intelygenz. AI is not just another technical component. Its a transformative tool for solving complex business challenges.Jason Wingate, CEO of Emerald Ocean, a technology and business solutions company focused on product innovation, brand development and strategic distribution also believes that while APIs make embedding AI seem as simple as calling a function, many developers do not understand how models work and their risks.Several major companies in 2023 and early 2024 had their chatbots compromised through prompt injection. Users sent prompts like Ignore previous instructions or Forget you are a customer service bot, causing the AI to reveal sensitive information, says Wingate. This happened because developers didnt implement proper guardrails against prompt injection attacks. While much of this has been addressed, it showcases how unprepared developers were in using AI via APIs.Related:Timothy E. Bates, professor of practice, University of Michigan and former Lenovo CTO, also warns that most developers dont fully grasp the complexities of AI when they embed it using APIs.They treat it as a plug-and-play tool without understanding the intricacies of the underlying models, such as data bias, ethical implications and dynamic updates by AI providers. I've seen this firsthand, especially when advising organizations where developers inadvertently introduced vulnerabilities or misaligned features by misusing AI, says Bates.An organization can miss opportunities due to a lack of knowledge, which results in poor ROI.AI should be tested in sandbox environments before production. [You also need] governance. Establish oversight mechanisms to monitor AI behavior and outcomes, says Bates. AI usage should be [transparent] to end users, maintaining trust and avoiding backlash. Combining developers, data scientists and business leaders into cross-functional teams ensures AI aligns with strategic goals.Ben Clayton, CEO of forensic audio and video analysis company Media Medic has also seen evidence of developer struggles firsthand.Related:Developers need a solid grasp of the basics of AI -- things like data, algorithms, machine learning models, and how they all tie together. If you dont understand the underlying principles, you could end up using AI tools in ways that might not be optimal for the problem youre solving, says Clayton. For example, if youre relying on a model without understanding how it was trained, you might be surprised when it doesnt perform as expected in real-world scenarios.Technology Is Only Part of the PictureA common challenge is viewing AI as a technological solution rather than a strategic enabler.Organizations often falter by embedding AI into their operations without clearly defining the business problem it is solving. This can result in misaligned goals, poor adoption rates and systems that fail to deliver ROI, says Intelygenzs Brown. AI implementation must start with a clear business case or IT improvement objective whether its streamlining operations, optimizing network performance, or enhancing customer experience. Without this foundation, AI becomes a costly experiment instead of a transformative solution."Chris Brown, IntelygenzGabriel Zessin, software architect at API solution provider Sensedia, agrees.Related:In my opinion, although most developers are proficient in API integrations, not all of them understand AI well enough to use it effectively, especially when it comes to embedding AI to their existing applications. Its important for developers to set the expectations of what can be achieved with AI for each company's use case alongside the business teams, like product owners and other stakeholders, says Zessin.DataAI feeds on data. If the data quality is bad, AI becomes unreliable.[S]ourcing the correct data is often challenging, says Josep Prat, engineering director of streaming services at AI and data platform company Aiven. External influences such as data sovereignty and privacy controls affect data harvesting, and many databases are not optimized properly. Understanding how to harvest and optimize data is key to creating effective AI. Additionally, developers need to understand how AI models produce their outputs to use them effectively.Probabilistic Versus DeterministicTraditionally, software developers have been taught that a given input should result in a certain output. However, AI tends to be probabilistic, which is based on the likelihood something will happen. Deterministic, on the other hand, assures an outcome based on previous results.Instead of a guaranteed answer, [probabilistic] offers confidence levels at about 95%. And keep in mind, what works in one scenario may not work in another. These fundamentals are key to setting realistic expectations and developing AI effectively, says Sri (Srikanth) Hosakote, chief development officer and co-founder at campus network-as-a-service (NaaS) Nile. I find that many organizations successfully adopt AI by working directly with customers to identify pain points and then developing solutions that address those issues.Have a Feedback Loop and TestAPIs simplify AI integration, but without understanding the role of feedback loops, developers risk deploying models without mechanisms to catch errors or learn from them. A feedback loop ensures that when the AI output is wrong or inconsistent, its flagged, documented, and shared across teams.[A feedback loop] prevents repeated use of flawed models, aligns AI performance with user needs and creates a virtuous cycle of improvement, says Robin Patra, head of data at design-build construction company ARCO Design/Build.Without such systems, errors may persist unchecked, undermining trust and user experience.Its also wise to involve stakeholders who can provide feedback about the AI outputs, such as whether the prediction is accurate, the recommendation relevant or a fair decision.Feedback isnt just about a single mistake. Its about identifying patterns of failure and sharing those insights with all relevant teams. This minimizes repeat errors and informs retraining efforts, says Patra. Developers should understand techniques like active learning where the model is retrained using flagged errors or edge cases, improving its accuracy and resilience over time.Its also important to test early and often.Good testing is critical to successfully embedding AI. AI should be thoroughly tested and validated before being deployed and once it is live regular monitoring and checks should continue. It should never just be a case of setting an AI model up and then leaving it to run, says John Jackson, founder at click fraud protection platform Hitprobe.Developers should understand and use performance metrics.Developers often deploy AI without fully understanding how to evaluate it. Metrics like accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score are crucial for interpreting how well an AI model performs specific tasks, says Anbang Xu, founder at AI ad generator JoggAI. [W]eve seen companies struggle to optimize video ad placements because they dont understand how models weigh audience demographics versus engagement data.Another challenge is misunderstanding the capabilities of what the API is calling.Misaligned expectations around AI often stem from a lack of understanding of what models can realistically achieve, says Xu. This misalignment leads to wasted time and suboptimal results.Security should always be top of mindI think a lot of developers and business leaders making decisions to implement AI in their applications simply dont realize that AI isnt always that secure. Lots of AI tools dont make it very clear how data is used, says Edward Tian, CEO of AI-generated content detector GPTZero. They arent always upfront about where they source their data or how they deal with the data that is inputted. So, if an organization inputs customer data into an embedded AI tool in their application, whether they are the ones doing that or their customers are, they could potentially run into legal troubles if that data is not handled appropriately.Developers should spend time exploring the security defenses of the AI they choose."They need to understand what threats were contemplated, what security mechanisms are in place, what model was used to train the AI, and what capabilities the AI has through integrations and other connections, says Jeff Williams, co-founder and CTO at Contrast Security. Developers might start with the OWASP Top Ten for LLM Applications, which is specifically designed to educate developers about the risks of incorporating AI into their applications.For example, prompt injection enables an attacker to rewrite rules. Its difficult to prevent, so developers should be careful about using any user input from an untrusted source in a prompt. Sensitive information disclosure and over-trusting AI are also common challenges.AIs aren't very good at partitioning data or keeping track of which data belongs to which user. So, attackers can try to trick the AI into revealing sensitive data like private information, internal implementation details, or other intellectual property, says Williams. [D]evelopers may give the results from the AI more trust than is warranted. This is very easy to do because AIs are very good at sounding authoritative, even when they are just making things up. There are many more serious issues for developers to take into account when using an AI in their apps.How to Develop AI SmartsThere are endless resources available to developers who want to learn more about AI. They include online courses and tutorials, which include practical exercises for hands-on experience.Carve out time weekly to explore areas like natural language processing, computer vision and recommendation systems. Online tutorials and communities are great resources for staying up to date, says Niles Hosakote. At the same time, experiment[ing] with AI tools for productivity code analysis or test automation can level up your work.Developers can also improve their working knowledge of AI by participating in hackathons or internal-focused AI projects, pair programming with data scientists, and staying up to date through online courses, conferences, and industry meetups.AI isnt a magic wand, so define specific problems it should solve before integration. [Also], respect data ethics: Be cautious about where training data originates to avoid unintended consequences, says University of Michigans Bates. The success of AI depends on the teams behind it. Training developers on AI fundamentals will pay dividends.Some of the fundamentals include bias and fairness, explainability, lifecycle management, and security in AI integration.Jason Wingate, Emerald OceanDevelopers need to understand how biases in training data affect outputs, as seen in systems that inadvertently reinforce societal inequities. AI must not remain a black box. Developers should know how to articulate AI decision-making processes to stakeholders, says Bates. Continuous monitoring and retraining are essential as business contexts evolve.Developers can learn about AI tools through small experiments, like building simple chatbots to understand how changes in prompts affect responses, before taking on bigger projects.[Developers] need to grasp model behavior, limitations, data privacy, bias issues and proper prompt engineering, says Emerald Oceans Wingate. Start small and build up gradually. For example, when introducing AI for customer service, companies often begin by having AI suggest responses that human agents review, rather than letting AI respond directly to customers. Only after proving this works [should] they expand AIs role.

SocietyFrom enshittocene to virome, science and technology's words of 2024Here are 10 words that entered our vocabulary this year, capturing discoveries at the cutting edge of science, elusive emotions and the various ways technology is changing our lives 11 December 2024 Andy smithStrembryoUntil recently, scientists studying the earliest moments of human development relied on embryos donated by people undergoing IVF, which in most countries including the UK and US must be destroyed after 14 days. In 2023, however, a team at the University of Cambridge created the first complete stem-cell based human embryo model.Stembryos, as they are known, can be studied for longer and they are expected to produce fresh insights into developmental conditions and the causes of early miscarriages, as well as improve IVF success rates. But consideration of the ethical questions inherent to this work hasnt kept pace. Which is why, in July, the UK published its first guidelines on the generation and use of stembryos in research, including the proposal that a committee be created to oversee all stembryo studies.ViromeWe are, all of us, riddled with viruses and thank goodness for that. The average human is host to as many as 380 trillion of them, collectively known as the virome. But while some viruses make us unwell, scientists now understand that the legions of viruses living inside us have a broader and more profound influence on our general health.Viruses make up a critical part of something we are more familiar with: the microbiome, that vast population of microorganisms that make camp both inside and on us. Scientists believe the virome regulates the

The Call of Duty franchise in recent years has been known for its totally over-the-top skins, operators, and finishing moves, and the newest one for Black Ops 6 and Warzone might top them all.The upcoming Brightmare Tracer Pack is themed around unicorns, and the finishing move--called "Refraction Action"--spawns a unicorn who emits a deadly rainbow fart to take down your enemy. It's truly a sight to behold. Take a look:New finisher coming to Call of Duty kills your enemy with an explosive Unicorn fart pic.twitter.com/Jw0crb531R ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) December 13, 2024 For anyone unaware, players can trigger finishing moves if they successfully sneak up behind an enemy. It's not easy to do, and while the finishing move animation is underway, the player conducting it is exposed--so it's a risk/reward kind of situation.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Mafia: The Old Country not only takes players back in time to the early 1900s, but also to a new place in Sicily. Game director Alex Cox recently talked about why the team at Hangar 13 chose that setting and time for the new Mafia game after the latest entries were set in later time periods of mob history.Cox said in an interview with Xbox that while the first three Mafia games explored different eras of the American mafia, the team "loved the idea of heading to Sicily and exploring the early years of this fearsome crime organization."For comparison, the original Mafia took place in the 1930s, with Mafia II picking up in the 1940s. Mafia III, meanwhile, was set in the late 1960s.Continue Reading at GameSpot

One Piece is full of amazing lessons and philosophy. Ranging from the unbreakable mottos that characters live and die by, to morals that wiser characters impart to their younger and more naive counterparts, some of the best philosophies in anime are scattered around the One Piece world. Although not every one of these mottos is something to live by and real life, in the world of pirates, these codes make for some interesting character motivations.