Amazon in £3bn punt on artificial intelligence start-up

By Calum Muirhead

Updated: 03:34 EDT, 26 September 2023

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Former high-ranking intelligence official David Grusch has made waves all summer, charging in public and classified settings that the US government has hidden crashed non-human spacecraft from both the public and, illegally, from Congress.

Grusch added to his sworn testimony and classified whistleblower complaint in a new interview with BBC radio Thursday — describing his claims of a classified UFO reverse-engineering program and UFO-related deaths as ‘an act of truth to power.’

He warned that America’s alleged top secret UFO portfolio opens ‘a Pandora’s Box for potential military weapons development-type reverse engineering activities.’ 

And, for the first time, Grusch’s attorney in his active whistleblower complaint, Charles McCullough, also came forward to speak publicly on his client’s allegations.

McCullough, the former Inspector General of the US Intelligence Community (ICIG) appointed by President Obama in 2011, told BBC radio that Congress needs more information on UFOs ‘to properly oversee things going on in the executive branch.’

While Grusch has asserted he has ‘firsthand access’ to some evidence in support of his claims, neither Grusch nor McCullough has said that the UFO whistleblower has seen crashed craft or recovered ‘non-human intelligences’ with his own eyes. 

‘Our government relies on congressional oversight, the checks and balances of congressional oversight,’ McCullough told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight this past Thursday.

‘David’s allegation, at its base, is essentially that Congress does not have access to the information it needs to properly oversee things going on in the executive branch,’ McCullough said. 

McCullough — who served as Obama’s top legal watchdog over America’s spy agencies, after a decade with the FBI — also confirmed that his client Grusch did, in fact, brief both House and Senate intelligence committees behind closed doors.  

‘He’s briefed both of the intel committees,’ McCullough told BBC radio, ‘and he’s had a two-hour hearing with two-hours of testimony last week.’

And the intelligence committees appear to have taken Grusch’s testimony quite seriously. 

Last month, Senate intel member Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, in partnership with Republican Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Rounds of South Dakota, led efforts to appoint a nine-member review panel to assess all classified government records on UFOs. 

That amendment, which contained language echoing Grusch’s claims, has since passed a Senate vote. 

Critics, however, have been quick to point to a statement made by McCullough’s law firm in June, which appeared to dramatically distance the firm from aspects of the news media’s reporting on Grusch and their client’s own extraordinary claims. 

While critics speculated that McCullough might have regretted his involvement with Grusch, the former civil servant nevertheless has stood by his client — quite literally while attending the House oversight committee’s UFO hearing last week.

‘It is unlikely that Grusch, speaking to Congress under oath, would perjure himself so brazenly over such specific, falsifiable facts,’ another past Obama-appointee, former Defense Department official Marik von Rennenkampff, wrote in The Hill this week. 

‘Particularly with his high-profile attorney sitting directly behind him.’ 

If Grusch knowingly provided false material to the ICIG in his formal complaint, the UFO whistleblower could face a fine of up to $10,000 for the criminal offense, under Title 18 § 1001 of the US criminal code, or worse, up to five years in prison, or both.

Such penalties raise intriguing, unresolved questions about both Grusch and the firsthand witnesses whom he says he has referred to the current US Intelligence Community Inspector General. 

‘Given the significant penalties for making false statements to an inspector general,’ von Rennenkampff wrote, ‘it is extremely unlikely that multiple high-level, highly-cleared officials would falsely claim to have first-hand knowledge of myths and rumors.’

Grusch waxed philosophical when asked by BBC Radio 4 why he chose to come forward with his extraordinary accusations of federal government malfeasance on the UFO issue.  

‘I believe the US government should be held accountable for potentially overclassifying or misclassifying basic science,’ Grusch told the BBC. 

‘I found that to be very important, for the public at large to understand, you know, their place in the cosmos, their place in the universe.’ 

‘It boils down to a sense of duty,’ Grusch said, ‘an act of truth to power.’

While Grusch is still forbidden from disclosing certain information, per the terms of his Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review agreement with the Pentagon, he did manage to clarify and reemphasize key facts in his new interview.    

‘There’s certain things that I have firsthand access to that I can’t publicly discuss at this time,’ Grusch said. 

‘However, myself and other colleagues interviewed 40 individuals, both current and former highly distinguished intelligence and military personnel that were specifically on these [UFO crash retrieval] programs.’ 

‘And those that were willing I directed to the Intelligence Community Inspector General. So, the Inspector General was able to interview these people that do have direct firsthand information.’

Grusch noted that the classified UFO program has existed in some form or another for over 89 years and that it leveraged secrecy protocols first put in place for the Manhattan Project: the top secret US military effort that built the first atomic bomb during World War II. 

‘They weren’t sure how ontologically shocking it was gonna be to the world populace,’ Grusch said. ‘So, they decided to keep it under wraps for many years.’

A film premiering next month will shine a light on a secret U.S. group which UFO researchers claim is helping to cover up the discovery of alien spacecraft.

The film, God versus Aliens, has interviews with two experts about the ‘Collins Elite’, a supposed secretive group within the U.S. military which has helped to cover up alien abductions and crashed spacecraft since the 1950s.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, British director of the film Mark Christopher Lee said: ‘A lot of people know about Majestic 12, a supposed committee of military leaders and politicians interested in UFOs: it’s out there in pop culture, along with Area 51.

‘But two of my interviewees believe that this is a smokescreen, and the real organization is the Collins Elite, based in the Wright Patterson Air Base [in Ohio].

‘These people are said to work in a private organization on behalf of the government, because there are no freedom of information requests (FOIA) to private companies.’

The Wright Patterson Air Base was home to the Project Blue Book investigation into UFO reports which began in 1947 – and there have been previous rumors of a secret ‘UFO room’ at the base.

Lee told DailyMail.com that his interviewees – UFO author Brian Allan and alleged abductee Tony Topping – suggest that the members of the Collins Elite believe that aliens are demonic, or wish to label them as being so.

Both suggest that the Collins Elite has worked to suppress information about UFOs, claiming UFOs to be demonic or Satanic in origin.

In the film, Brian Allan, who also serves as an editor for Phenomena Magazine, says: ‘The Americans established an agency, the Collins Elite. I’ve spoken to one of the guys who they approached, Anglican Pastor Ray Boeche.

‘The Defense Intelligence Agency were looking at this demonic element, and they labelled these sorts of aliens as ‘non human entities’. They believed that there was a demonic component to the UFO phenomenon: they are not invading us, it’s Biblical.’

Tony Topping believes that the group’s conclusions come from some of its members’ origins in right-wing Christian evangelism, and suggests that the group may have access to crashed alien spacecraft. 

Topping believes that the work of the group may mean that aliens are portrayed as demonic or evil if the U.S. government ever reveals more information about UFOs to the world.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual says that the ideas that supposedly motivated the Collins Elite may have continued within the Pentagon.

Watson, who was not involved in the film, told DailyMail.com that Luis Elizondo, the former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program at the Pentagon, claims an unnamed senior official told him that he should stop investigating UFOs because they are Satanic.

Watson said: ‘The Collins Elite seems to have been an unofficial and informal group inside the Pentagon, who regarded aliens as demonic.

‘There is no hard evidence for such ideas, and it is worrying that small secretive groups within US Government agencies with such beliefs could have an undue influence on policies and actions based on mere rumour and speculation.

‘We have already seen this with the pressure to have alien disclosure based on the suppositions of a handful of campaigners inside and outside the US government.

Watson says, ‘Those with a religious viewpoint are likely to regard UFOs as Satanic and Reverend Paul Inglesby backin 1978 wrote a book on the subject: UFOs and the Christian, where he warned that the subject was riddled with falsehoods and the unwary. 

‘He even warned the Queen that she should not attend the premiere of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, because it featured mind control and ungodly aliens.’

Lee says that the film includes both sceptical and more ‘out there’ perspectives, ranking theories around the Collins Elite among the ‘out there’ theories.

There is no documentary evidence for the existence of such a group.

The film also includes an interview with Harvard professor Avi Loeb who recently claimed to have salvaged what he believes might be alien technology from an object that fell into the sea in 2014.

Loeb claims in the film that extraterrestrials will probably send AI drones to Earth, rather than ‘manned’ vehicles – which could mean that the drones make ‘first contact’ with AI systems on Earth.

Loeb suggests that the alien machines might feel ‘kinship’ with AIs they meet on Earth.

The film includes an interview with Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project.

Shostak says that advancing technologies – including AI-powered sky scans – will mean that aliens will be found by 2036 (he has previously placed a famous bet that this will happen).

The film also examines the likely impact of alien ‘first contact’ on world religions, with Shostak suggesting that aliens might bring new gods with them – and that if they are more technologically advanced, people on Earth might worship the new alien gods.

Lee, a musician with band The Pocket Gods who also produces the TV show Nub TV, says the film is a passion project, as he is a Christian fascinated by the paranormal.

He believes the project is very timely.

Lee says, ‘What’s happening in America at the moment with disclosure in US Congress and whistleblowers coming forward, some very credible people that work for the US government that are willing to testify under oath that there is something unusual, unexplained.’

‘God versus Aliens’ is released on August 10 via Sky Television in Britain and worldwide via Nub TV on Ayozat.com.

Ivy League students at one of America’s most expensive colleges will be taught by AI next year.

The teachers of Harvard University’s popular intro-level coding course — which typically gets about 1000 students each semester — are ‘experimenting’ with a ChatGPT-powered teaching assistant.

Professor David Malan, who runs the course, justified plans for the introduction of the ‘CS50 bot’ by noting that the course has often deployed new software in its syllabus. 

A ChatGPT AI teacher, he said, was simply an ‘evolution of that tradition’, he said in a statement. 

‘Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher:student ratio for every student in CS50… providing them with software-based tools that, 24/7, can support their learning at a pace and in a style that works best for them individually.’ 

In his statement to the Crimson, Harvard’s newspaper, Professor Malan specified that he and the course’s staff were ‘currently experimenting with both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models.’

Outside of the Ivy League, however, developers and software engineers have struggled to incorporate maker OpenAI’s new ChatGPT-4 into their workflow, calling into question their new algorithmic co-worker’s ability to code.

‘Is it just me or GPT-4’s quality has significantly deteriorated lately?’ asked one user of the Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y-combinator’s Hacker News forum.

‘It generates more buggy code,’ the user wrote, ‘and overall it feels much worse than before.’

Others in the community described the AI’s software skills as  ‘significantly worse‘ than past versions of ChatGPT, prone to ‘superficial responses‘ and nearly ‘lobotomized‘ in its answers to coding prompts.

With the full cost of a four-year degree from Harvard hovering somewhere $334,000, based on rates for the 2022-23 school year, paying students will likely want and expect that the CS50’s staff’s ‘experimenting’ with ChatGPT will have fully worked out the kinks by September.

CS50, according to the Crimson, is one of Harvard’s most popular offerings on the online learning platform edX, which the school launched in collaboration with MIT in 2012.

The two universities sold off edX to educational technology company 2U for $800 million in 2021 — with the stipulation that the platform be run as a public benefit entity that also offers its courses as ‘free to audit.’

While Prof. Malan did acknowledge that ‘early incarnations’ of AI programs like ChatGPT have been likely to ‘occasionally underperform or even err,’ he nevertheless voiced his belief that his own AI teaching assistant will cut down on busy work. 

‘[A]ssessing, more qualitatively, the design of students’ code has remained human-intensive,’ Malan said. 

‘Through AI, we hope to reduce that time spent, so as to reallocate [teaching fellows’] time toward more meaningful, interpersonal time with their students, akin to an apprenticeship model.’

College, as the saying goes, is not about teaching students what to think, but how to think — and Malan’s parting comments on the new CS50 bot echoed this teaching philosophy.

‘We’ll make clear to students that they should always think critically when taking in information as input,’ Malan said, ‘be it from humans or software.’

The Director of National Intelligence on Friday released to Congress their long-awaited report into Intelligence Community conclusions about the origins of COVID-19, and their assessment of the ‘lab leak’ theory. 

In March, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill to declassify intelligence on the origins of COVID-19.

The DNI’s 10-page report did not provide any fresh conclusions as to the Wuhan lab, and shows the various agencies are divided as to the origin of the pandemic.

The Department of Energy, which oversees biological research labs in the U.S., concluded with ‘low confidence’ in February of this year that the virus most likely came from a lab in Wuhan. The FBI concluded the same with moderate confidence. 

The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies disagree, saying the pandemic likely begun naturally. 

The CIA, meanwhile, is on the fence and has been unable to say with certainty how it begun, given repeated blocks imposed by the Chinese authorities. 

‘The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,’ the report states.

The Intelligence Community (IC) was asked to explore ‘whether the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—was the result of natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident.’

The report states that both natural exposure and lab leak could be the source of the outbreak, and none of the U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded definitively how the pandemic begun.

‘All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,’ the report says.

The report notes that the Wuhan lab did work with the Chinese army on bioweapons programs.

Scientists in the lab were employed from 2017-19 ‘to enhance China’s knowledge of pathogens and early disease warning capabilities for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military.’

The report notes, however, that they have not found any evidence that COVID-19 was manufactured by the lab technicians.

‘Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis,’ the report says. 

‘We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.’

The DNI noted that the lab had one of the world’s largest collections of bat samples, and has worked with pangolins and mice, among others, to study coronaviruses.

The lab worked to genetically alter the viruses. 

But they do not believe that COVID-19 resulted from their experimentation.

‘We assess that some scientists at the WIV have genetically engineered coronaviruses using common laboratory practices,’ the report states. 

‘The IC has no information, however, indicating that any WIV genetic engineering work has involved SARS-CoV-2, a close progenitor, or a backbone virus that is closely-related enough to have been the source of the pandemic.’

The DNI did say there was concern about the safety protocols in the lab, although they could not definitively say that lax safety caused a lab leak.

‘Some WIV researchers probably did not use adequate biosafety precautions at least some of the time prior to the pandemic in handling SARS-like coronaviruses, increasing the risk of accidental exposure to viruses,’ the report says. 

‘Before the pandemic, the WIV had been working to improve at least some biosafety conditions and training. 

‘We do not know of a specific biosafety incident at the WIV that spurred the pandemic and the WIV’s biosafety training appears routine, rather than an emergency response by China’s leadership.’

The report points to ‘a need to update aging equipment, a need for additional disinfectant equipment, and improvements to ventilation systems.’

The DNI report discusses illnesses among scientists working at the lab in the fall of 2019, with symptoms similar to COVID.

But again they say the evidence is not definitive either way.

‘Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19. 

‘The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19.’

A new intelligence community report reveals that the number of Americans improperly searched by the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) dramatically declined over the last year.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its 10th Annual Statistical Transparency Report for calendar year 2022 Friday that details the surveillance work of the intelligence community and how it ensures the protection of American civil liberties.

The report, first obtained by DailyMail.com, specifically includes information on the ‘scope’ of the government’s use of FISA and the number of unauthorized searches of Americans by the FBI, which it reveals has decreased from 3.4 million to just over 204,000 in a span of a year. That amounts to a 93.99 percent reduction.

The report comes as Congress is tasked with making reforms to FISA’s Section 702 before an end of year deadline for reauthorizing the provision. The Section 702 provision allows U.S. federal intelligence agencies to conduct targeted searches of foreigners, but sometimes Americans are improperly searched in the process. 

Last April, ODNI released data on the FBI’s Section 702 queries for the first time for the 2021 calendar year, finding that the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans.

The findings sparked outrage by lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum and calls to overhaul FISA. In addition, of the 3.4 million queries, about 30 percent were found to be in error. 

However, ODNI says that this year it used a ‘new methodology that more closely aligns with how other agencies count such queries.’

The agency also blamed a ‘duplicative counting method’ that landed at the massive 3.4 million figure in 2021.

The 2022 report released Friday shows a significant decline in the number of warrantless searches of Americans by the FBI under Section 702 – down to 204,090 compared to 3.4 million the prior year. 

‘This reduction occurred following a number of changes FBI made to its systems, processes, and training relating to U.S. person queries,’ ODNI explains as the reason for the significant decrease. 

The report also says that due to the formerly used duplicative counting method, the more accurate number for 2022 under the ‘de-duplicated counting method’ should actually be 110,383 unauthorized searches of Americans – and it would have been 2.9 million in 2021 (not 3.4 million).

That would amount to a 95.97 percent reduction. 

‘FBI’s de-duplicated query figures report the number of unique U.S. person query terms FBI personnel have used to query unminimized FISA Section 702-acquired information during the relevant time periods,’ states the report.

‘FBI used the following methodology to arrive at these figures, which is comparable to CIA’s and NCTC’s counting methodology, described elsewhere in this report, for queries conducted by those agencies in databases which combine contents and noncontents.’

The top Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are still pledging to reform Section 702 by the end of the year, despite the dramatic decline.

Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., commented on the report in a statement to DailyMail.com Friday.

‘While there was a sharp decline in U.S. person queries from December 2021 to November 2022, it is incumbent upon Congress, not the Executive Branch, to codify reforms to FISA Section 702.’

‘Without additional safeguards, a clean reauthorization of 702 is a non-starter.’

‘Section 702 of FISA is an irreplaceable national security tool that allows the Intelligence Community to collect information from foreign persons outside the United States,’ they continued.

‘However, we must protect the American people’s privacy and civil liberties. That is why the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence supports reforming our foreign surveillance tools and increasing transparency and accountability while maintaining the critical effectiveness of FISA Section 702.’

In March, LaHood revealed that his name was improperly searched by the FBI conducting a Section 702 query. 

‘I want to make clear the FBI’s inappropriate querying of a duly elected member of Congress is egregious and a violation not only that degrades the trust in FISA, but is viewed as a threat to the separation of powers,’ LaHood said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.

‘I have had the opportunity to review the classified summary of this violation, and it is my opinion that the member of Congress that was wrongfully queried multiple times solely by his name was in fact me.’ 

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan called Section 702 renewal ‘the most important thing we are going to do this Congress’ during a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday.

‘Americans are being picked up in this incidental collection. We don’t know the number, my guess is it’s pretty darn big. They won’t tell us and without probable cause that database is being searched 3.4 million times with all kinds of error rates,’ Jordan summed up.

‘How about we just get the FBI out of the [Section 702] business altogether?’ he urged.

Last December, ODNI declassified a 2021 report that included instances of numerous FISA abuses. 

The FBI said in a statement after the publication of the ODNI report, the agency has made ‘extensive changes’ to the query process.

‘Although we cannot comment on specific queries, the FBI has made extensive changes over the past few years – changes that post-date the period covered in the reports raised in the hearing today – to address 702 compliance issues, including standing up a whole new Office of Internal Audit currently focused on FISA compliance and instituting new policies requiring enhanced pre-approval requirements before certain ‘sensitive’ U.S. person queries can be run,’ said an FBI spokesperson at the time.

‘For example, ‘sensitive’ queries involving elected officials now require Deputy Director approval. We look forward to sharing the impact of our reforms. The FBI takes seriously its role as stewards of our 702 authorities, which are indispensable to fulfilling our mission of protecting Americans from foreign threats from countries like China, Russia, and Iran,’ the statement continued.