When the government published its proposals for striking new data-protection plans in the UK, all eyes were on cookie consents – those annoying pop-ups that appear in the foreground on many websites, asking whether you will accept cookies, tiny bits of text that can be used to track things about you, including:
Domestic media outlets, such as Newsisare speculating that this may pave the way for the South Korean acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines.
“The two leaders commit to greater nuclear energy collaboration and accelerating the development and global deployment of advanced reactors and small modular reactors by jointly using export promotion and capacity building tools, and building a more resilient nuclear supply chain…The US welcomes the ROK’s decision to join the US-led Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) program.”
White house press statement
SMRs are nuclear reactors that have a maximum power generating capacity of less than 300 megawatts. This type of reactor has been used on nuclear submarines for decades, although more recent studies have focused on utilizing it for civilian purposes. Experts say that securing SMR technology is a critical step in acquiring nuclear submarines.
The possibility of South Korea developing nuclear submarines is more than just speculation. According to a source familiar with the situation who wished to remain anonymous, a “technical briefing” regarding the country’s potential acquisition of nuclear submarines recently took place. The meeting is said to have been attended by officials from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration, the Republic of Korea Navy, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, and a major foreign company with expertise in nuclear submarines. Naval News reached out to the Ministry of National Defense (MND) for comment.
“The military will come to a decision after taking into account a multitude of factors, including South Korea’s security environment, technology, and budgetary constraints.”
South Korea MND statement
This latest development comes amid growing concerns about the country’s aircraft carrier program (CVX). Key members of the new administration, including the Minister of National Defense, have expressed reservations about the initiative. The Yoon Administration has also dismissed the previous administration’s pro-CVX Chief of Naval Operations just half a year after his appointment in December last year. Speculation is growing that the new administration might be planning on axing the CVX program and acquiring nuclear submarines instead.
WASHINGTON — The US Army has decided to cancel the science and technology research effort that could have led to a program to develop a strategic long-range cannon, the service confirmed.
Long-range precision fires is a top priority for the Army when it comes to developing a modernized force capable of facing off against advanced adversaries like China. The cannon could’ve provided a way to achieve artillery ranges of 1,000 nautical miles.
Congress directed the Army to stop funding the weapon in its fiscal 2022 appropriations act, and “based on that direction, the Secretary of the Army decided to terminate the [strategic long-range cannon] project this year,” Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett said in a May 20 statement to Defense News.
The decision also “eliminates potential redundancy, and ensures we effectively use tax dollars to achieve modernization objectives,” she wrote. “Pursuing the effort could cost billions of dollars even if the science and technology effort succeeded because the Army would have to enter into a development program, procure the system, and create entirely new units to operate it.”
The Army still has four other long-range fires programs set to reach operational Army units in 2023: the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, a midrange anti-ship missile and the Precision Strike Missile.
“Any unused funds originally allocated to LRC [the long-range cannon] will be reapplied against other S&T projects in accordance with the direction of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology,” Lovett stated.
During a House Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee hearing last week, Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told lawmakers the decision to cancel the S&T effort for the strategic long-range cannon was to avoid “redundancy” and “potential cost implications.”
Although full cost estimates are not normally made for programs in the S&T phase, Bush noted: “We did feel we had sufficient information based on similar programs that are in development and to understand the rough scope of such an effort, and the secretary believes that was enough information to support her decision.”
Some work on the cannon’s S&T effort was ongoing, but the Army had mostly taken a pause as it waited for a National Academy of Sciences report on the weapon’s technical feasibility, Brig. Gene. John Rafferty, who oversees the service’s long-range precision fires development, told Defense News in March 2021.
The independent study, congressionally mandated in FY20, was expected to be released last year, but was not yet made public by press time. Beginning in September 2020, the committee at the National Academy of Sciences held five meetings, the last of which took place in January 2021, according to its website.
According to FY21 budget justification documents, the Army planned to spend roughly $70 million in FY22 on advanced development of the program, but subsequent documents from FY22 and FY23 showed no plan to continue funding the effort beyond FY21.
The Army spent $62 million in FY21 to assess various aspects of the technology needed for the long-range cannon.
Jen
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LONDON/WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) – The US government has pushed new, increased funding into three technology companies since the start of the Ukraine conflict to help Russians sidestep censors and access Western media, according to five people familiar with the situation.
The financing effort is focused on three firms that build Virtual Private Networks (VPN) – nthLink, Psiphon and Lantern – and is designed to support a recent surge in their Russian users, the sources said.
VPNs help users hide their identity and change their online location, often to bypass geographic restrictions on content or to evade government censorship technology.
Reuters spoke to executives at all three US government-backed VPNs and two officials at a US government-funded nonprofit organization that provided them with financing – the Open Technology Fund (OTF) – who said the anti-censorship apps have seen significant growth in Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Between 2015 and 2021, the three VPNs received at least $4.8 million in US funding, according to publicly available funding documents reviewed by Reuters. Since February, the total funding allocated to the companies has increased by almost half in order to cope with the rise in demand in Russia, the five people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The funding flows through the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – a federal agency that oversees US government-backed broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – as well as via the Washington-based OTF, which is funded entirely by the US government and overseen by the USAGM.
Laura Cunningham, president of the OTF, said the organization had increased its support to the three VPNs because “the Russian government is trying to censor what their citizens can see and say online in order to obscure the truth and silence dissent.”
Censorship evasion tools, including the VPNs, backed by OTF averaged more than 4 million users last month in Russia, Cunningham added.
In a statement, USAGM also said it was supporting the development of a range of censorship circumvention tools, including VPNs. It also did not give precise data on their funding.
“With the Kremlin’s escalating crackdown on media freedom, we’ve seen an extraordinary surge in demand for these tools among Russians,” USAGM spokesperson Laurie Moy said.
Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to an emailed request for comment. In a statement, the Kremlin rejected allegations of online censorship: “We don’t censor the Internet. Russia regulates certain Web resources, like many other countries in the world.”
Martin Zhu, director of engineering at nthLink, said his app’s daily users in Russia had recently soared after it was promoted heavily by US government-funded news websites such as Voice of America: “The graph went from 1,000 one day to 10,000 the next day , to 30,000 the day after that, to 50,000 and straight up.”
“There are a lot of people in Russia who don’t trust Putin, and government media,” he
