Authoritarian tech, and tower-building drones

Regardless of President Biden’s assurances at Wednesday’s United Nations assembly that the US just isn’t searching for a brand new chilly struggle, one is brewing between the world’s autocracies and democracies—and know-how is fueling it.

Late final week, Iran, Turkey, Myanmar, and a handful of different nations took steps towards turning into full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO), an financial and political alliance led by the authoritarian regimes of China and Russia.

The vast majority of SCO member nations, in addition to different authoritarian states, are following China’s lead and are trending towards extra digital rights abuses by growing the mass digital surveillance of residents, censorship, and controls on particular person expression.

And whereas democracies additionally use large quantities of surveillance know-how, it’s the tech commerce relationships between authoritarian nations that’s enabling the rise of digitally enabled social management. Learn the complete story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

Watch this group of drones 3D-print a tower

The information: A mini-swarm’s value of drones have been educated to work collectively to 3D-print some easy towers. Impressed by the best way bees or wasps assemble giant nests, the method has a number of drones work collectively to construct from a single blueprint, with one basically checking the others’ work because it goes. 

The way it works: One drone deposits a layer of constructing materials, and the opposite verifies the accuracy of all the things printed to date. The drones are totally autonomous whereas flying, however they’re monitored by a human who can step in if issues go awry.

Why it issues: In the future, the tactic may assist with difficult initiatives reminiscent of post-disaster building and even repairs on buildings which can be too excessive to entry safely, the group behind it hopes—and will assemble buildings within the Arctic and even on Mars. Learn the complete story.