The U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) released a rather terrifying report on Friday. It outlined some major cybersecurity flaws in U.S. ballistic missile systems. An article from ZDNet explained that the DOD IG found “no data encryption, no antivirus programs, no multifactor authentication mechanisms, and 28-year-old unpatched vulnerabilities,” amongst other issues.

DOD IG inspectors found that IT administrators at three of the five locations they visited had failed to apply security patches, leaving computers and adjacent network systems vulnerable to remote or local attacks. Investigators found that systems were not patched for vulnerabilities discovered and fixed in 2016, 2013, and even going as far as back as 1990. The DOD IG report is heavily redacted in this particular section, suggesting that MDA administrators are still patching these flaws.

Doctors are licensed. Some construction engineers are licensed. Health departments can pull the permit of an unsafe restaurant to operate. It’s all for public safety. The same goes for AI. This article discusses how “Using artificial intelligence in sensitive areas like criminal justice and healthcare should be regulated.” It goes further.

For instance, workers at Google criticized the search giant’s executives for considering signing a Defense Department contract that involved helping the government use image-recognition technology for military-purposes. Amid the backlash, Google dropped out of a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the agency, citing its internal policies against using machine learning for warfare and surveillance.

Microsoft has urged “thoughtful government regulation” of facial recognition technology. All this is something to watch.

In May, Apple recognized that some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices running iOS 11.3 or later had a problem with their microphones. For a time, Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers would fix the problem for free. However, since July, MacRumors has been contacted by a number of people complaining that they are now being charged for the repair. The repair costs $300 on out-of-warranty devices.

The exemptions abruptly ended in July of 2018, though, when Apple deleted its internal document related to the microphone issue and prevented free repairs from being processed through its service portal. Since then, many Apple retail and support employees have refused to acknowledge the policy ever existed. MacRumors has received several emails from affected customers since we published our article in July, but there has been little we can do to help. Apple did not respond to our original request for comment, so we’ve followed up today.