Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Home > OODA Analysis and Briefs
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015 has been the bedrock of the U.S. government’s formal mechanism for sharing cyber threat information with the private sector. As its sunset clause approaches (September 30, 2025), it’s not merely a legislative formality; it’s a crucial moment for policymakers to assess whether the mechanism, born from years of debate,…
China’s growing control of ports in Latin America and the Caribbean represents a potential strategic vulnerability for the United States, with 37 projects linked to Chinese firms raising concerns over supply chains, surveillance, and geopolitical leverage.
Global competition for critical minerals—from lithium and cobalt to rare earths—has elevated supply chain resilience to a national security issue. Two new reports frame the stakes.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress, details how the Arctic is undergoing rapid transformation due to climate change and intensifying great power competition. Melting ice is reshaping trade, energy, and security dynamics, forcing the United States to reassess its strategic posture as an Arctic nation.
Editor’s note: Disasters are no longer rare, isolated events. They are increasing in frequency, cost, and complexity, testing the limits of our nation’s emergency response system. Yet, time and again, we see government rushing to react after tragedy strikes rather than preventing or preparing for the worst before it happens. To protect communities, save lives,…
Agentic AI is evolving from experimental tools into self-directed, networked ecosystems that promise to reshape how enterprises operate, innovate, and compete. Recent impressive, exhaustive articles on the role of the agentic mesh architecture in this Agentic AI-driven future of the enterprise are the foundation of this analysis.
As we prepare to address “Privacy in the Age of AI and Constant Connection” at OODAcon 2025, the debate over decentralized personal data ownership is emerging as a potential path to restoring control and resilience in a world of ubiquitous surveillance.
The Askwith Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) recently engaged in a discussion of the future of education and “thinking” – with origins in work done by the U.S. IC on why certain superforecasters consistently outperformed experts in predicting geopolitical events.
The new National Cyber Director, Sean Cairncross wants to counter cyber adversaries, to “shift the burden of risk in cyberspace from Americans to them.” Imposing more costs on adversaries is clearly the right answer, but success cannot just be measured by the number of adversary operations the U.S. government has frustrated, such as DarkSidev, Trickbot, REvil, or the Internet Research…
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) has released a new report capturing how companies are approaching risk assessments for artificial intelligence.
Cognitive Warfare in Cyberspace: A Brief Look at China, Russia, and the United States Cognitive warfare has emerged as one of the most significant dimensions of modern conflict. Unlike traditional military operations aimed at seizing territory or kinetic assets, cognitive warfare seeks to influence, disrupt, or dominate how populations think and perceive reality. It is…
IBM and NASA are developing a digital twin of the Sun to improve prediction of solar storms—advances that could safeguard satellites, power grids, and digital infrastructure against the next major geomagnetic disruption.
Allen Control Systems (ACS), a leader in autonomous precision robotics, today announced it has been awarded a contract in collaboration with defense contractor ManTech to integrate its Bullfrog™ autonomous weapon system onto U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) maritime platforms directly supporting the warfighter. ACS is building the next generation of autonomous weapon systems to meet…
The search continued on Tuesday for 22 people still missing people following Typhoon Bualoi that caused flooding and landslides in Vietnam and has killed at least 26. Eight fishermen are among those unaccounted for, as well as four members of the same family — a father, a mother and two children — in Tuyen Quang…
A strong offshore earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 shook the central Philippines late Tuesday, sending panicked people dashing out into streets, damaging a stone church and prompting a local tsunami warning. The earthquake was centered about 17 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Bogo city in Cebu province. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and…
At least 13 people were killed and 32 others were injured after a powerful explosion hit Quetta in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The bomb went off on the corner of FC (Frontier Constabulary) Headquarters on Zarghun Road in Quetta on Tuesday afternoon. The blast was so powerful that it was heard across Model Town and adjoining…
Rescuers ran oxygen and water to students trapped in the unstable concrete rubble of a collapsed school building in Indonesia, as they desperately worked to free survivors Tuesday a day after the structure fell. At least three students were killed, more than 100 were injured and dozens were presumed buried in the rubble. Rescue workers,…
]The US Air Force is putting a permanent drone presence on the Korean Peninsula, reviving a World War II-era squadron to bolster security amid simmering military tensions in the region. The 431st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron was activated on Monday at Kunsan Air Base on South Korea’s west coast, south of the capital Seoul. It will…
Afghanistan’s main airport is at a standstill as the country grapples with the fallout of a nationwide internet shutdown imposed by the Taliban government. The Taliban has yet to give an official reason for the decision, which took effect on Monday, but did say it would last until further notice. The UN said it risked…
CoreWeave Inc. has signed a deal to supply Meta Platforms Inc. with as much as $14.2 billion worth of computing power, underscoring the massive costs of developing and running advanced AI models. “They loved our infrastructure in earlier contracts and came back for more,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Intrator said in an interview. As part…
DoorDash Inc., the largest food-delivery app in the US, unveiled a delivery robot and a smart scale for restaurants, showcasing the company’s yearslong effort to develop hardware. DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang showed off the four-wheeled autonomous robot, named Dot, at a gathering Monday for reporters at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. Dot stands 4-foot, 6-inches…
Google Drive for desktop is adding ransomware detection using an AI model trained on “millions of real-world ransomware samples” that will “look for signals that a file has been maliciously modified.” When Google’s AI believes it has detected ransomware activity on a Windows or macOS system, like trying to encrypt or corrupt files en masse,…
Raleigh Orthopaedic is one of North Carolina’s largest independent orthopedic practices with 54 providers and six locations across the state. It has been specializing in musculoskeletal care for more than 100 years. Managing the daily call volume for such a large footprint – which spans busy clinics, surgery centers and therapy facilities – became increasingly…
Meta Platforms Inc. is acquiring chips startup Rivos Inc., according to a person familiar with the deal, part of an effort to bolster its internal semiconductor development and control more of its infrastructure for artificial intelligence work. Rivos is developing its own graphics processing unit, known as a GPU, which is the chip that powers…
For an industry that’s only just getting started, there’s a lot of hype around humanoid robots. You can thank Elon Musk and his bold pronouncements around Tesla Inc.’s Optimus robot. Morgan Stanley also threw gasoline on the hype fire with its forecast of nearly 1 billion humanoids in service by 2050 amid a $5 trillion…
This summer, the Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, invited Rishabh Agarwal to join the company’s new A.I. lab, offering him millions of dollars in stock and salary. With the new lab, Mr. Zuckerberg said he wanted to build “superintelligence,” a technology that could eclipse the powers of the human brain. Though no one knew how…
Crew evacuated after missile strike causes substantial damage. A missile strike set the Minervagracht cargo ship ablaze in the Gulf of Aden on Monday, forcing all 19 crew members to evacuate by helicopter. Two mariners suffered injuries in the attack, which caused substantial damage to the vessel. The assault marks the most serious incident in…
Prime minister and cabinet dismissed as interim government forms. Rajoelina announced the dismissal of Prime Minister Christian Ntsay and his government on Monday, though they will remain in interim roles until replacements are chosen. He invited applications for government positions and set a three-day deadline to review proposals for a new prime minister. The president…
Beijing positions itself as alternative to American global leadership. Chinese Premier Li Qiang used his U.N. General Assembly speech to portray China as a responsible global leader while criticizing “unilateralism” and “hegemonism”—terms Beijing typically associates with the United States. Li promoted Xi Jinping’s “Global Governance Initiative” and emphasized China’s commitment to lowering tariffs, reducing emissions,…
Foreign minister rejects visa in solidarity with sanctioned president. Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio renounced her U.S. visa to protest the State Department’s revocation of President Gustavo Petro’s travel permit, with Finance Minister Germán Ávila following suit hours later. The State Department canceled Petro’s visa after he participated in a New York protest against the Gaza…
Teenagers recruited via Telegram to conduct surveillance operations. Two 17-year-old boys were arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of spying for pro-Russian hackers who recruited them through Telegram. One teen was allegedly spotted near Europol, Eurojust, and the Canadian embassy carrying a Wi-Fi sniffer used to map networks and intercept data. Prosecutors confirmed the arrests…
Information sharing law enters uncertain period without reauthorization. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act faces expiration at the end of September 2025 due to a sunset clause, as Congress has not yet reauthorized it amid competing priorities like the debt ceiling debate. The law encourages companies to report cyber threats without liability concerns and facilitates sharing…
Government provides emergency funding after production shutdown. The UK government announced a £1.5 billion loan guarantee for Jaguar Land Rover to support its supply chain following a cyberattack that shut down production lines in late August. The loan, backed by UK Export Finance and repayable over five years, aims to bolster cash reserves for a…
Third-party vendor compromise exposes customer contact information. Harrods disclosed Sunday that 430,000 online customers had their basic personal information compromised through a third-party software provider, marking the retailer’s second breach in 2025. The exposed data includes names, contact details, and internal marketing labels, but no passwords, payment information, or order history were accessed. Harrods stated…
U.S. electronics warfare specialist Epirus recently demonstrated its flagship Leonidas weapon at a live fire trial in Indiana. The Leonidas system is a high-power microwave (HPM) weapon that “delivers weaponized electromagnetic interference to counter swarms of robotic, asymmetric threats.” During the demo, the latest version of Leonidas successfully disabled all 61 of the 61 drones.…
At least 12 forest guards have been killed after gunmen attacked a community in northcentral Nigeria, local police said Monday. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the killings on Sunday in Oke-Ode, a community in the state of Kwara, police spokesperson Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi said in a statement. Such attacks are common in Nigeria’s northern…
Police in Madagascar’s capital fired teargas on Monday at thousands of people who returned to the streets for a third round of youth-led protests against water and power cuts, with many calling for the government’s resignation. Inspired by the so-called “Gen Z” protests in Kenya and Nepal, the demonstrations are the largest the Indian Ocean…
Heavy rain and strong winds from the former Typhoon Bualoi flooded roads, knocked off roofs and caused at least 12 deaths in central Vietnam before weakening to a tropical storm that moved Monday into Laos, state media reported. The storm tore through communities, damaging houses, schools and power poles, sweeping away temporary bridges and flooding…
The foreign ministers of North Korea and China agreed to deepen bilateral ties and resist hegemonism, a likely reference to their pushbacks against the United States. Their meeting in Beijing on Sunday came about three weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first summit in more than…
Denmark has temporarily banned civil drone flights in its airspace as it prepares to host a top European Union meeting on defense and the war in Ukraine, and after a surge of suspicious drone activity at several airports and military sites last week. The ban, which runs from Monday to Friday, aims to eliminate any…
Late last year, Finnish special forces seized control of the Eagle S, a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker, after it dragged its anchor and severed critical undersea cables. The maneuver — what would later be described as a “turning point” — was the first time Finnish forces had boarded and seized any foreign ship since…
Fascinating new paper from Google DeepMind which makes a very convincing case that their Veo 3 model – and generative video models in general – serve a similar role in the machine learning visual ecosystem as LLMs do for text. LLMs took the ability to predict the next token and turned it into general purpose…
You’ve probably heard of vibe coding — novices writing apps by creating a simple AI prompt — but now Microsoft wants to introduce a similar thing for its Office apps. The software maker is launching a new Agent Mode in Excel and Word that can generate complex spreadsheets and documents with just a prompt. A…
When you buy a robot, you don’t expect it to be secretly reporting back to servers in China. Yet that’s exactly what researchers have found in Unitree’s humanoid and quadruped robots — popular machines already deployed in labs, homes, and even police departments. A new study suggests these constant data streams may not be an…
Swift, the entity that runs the messaging system used by financial institutions globally to send instructions on tens of millions of transactions a day, will add a blockchain-based ledger to its infrastructure. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift for short, has kicked off work to design and build the ledger with more…
Caltech physicists have created the largest neutral-atom quantum computer to date, trapping 6,100 cesium atoms as qubits in a single array. The result, published in Nature on Thursday, represents a significant increase over previous arrays, which contained only hundreds of qubits. Researchers scaled their system from the hundreds of qubits typical in past experiments to…
Renowned roboticist Rodney Brooks has a wake-up call for investors funneling billions into humanoid robot startups: you’re wasting your money. Brooks, who co-founded iRobot and spent decades at MIT, is particularly skeptical of companies like Tesla and the high-profile AI robotics company Figure trying to teach robots dexterity by showing them videos of humans doing…
Where is Russia in the AI race? The US and China aspire to artificial intelligence supremacy. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are spending billions of dollars to position themselves as AI hubs. Governments from South Korea to Kazakhstan have issued strategies for sovereign AI programmes. Russia boasts an enviable history of engineering talent.…
In the initial years of the AI boom, comparisons to the dot-com bubble didn’t make much sense. Three years in, growing levels of debt are making them ring a little truer. Early on, wealthy tech companies were opening their wallets to out-joust each other for leadership in artificial intelligence. They were spending cash generated largely…
Protesters demand healthcare improvements amid World Cup construction boom. Hundreds of young Moroccans protested across at least 11 cities, blocking highways and chanting “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” Police in riot gear arrested over 120 demonstrators, including some giving press interviews. The leaderless movement was organized primarily through TikTok and Discord after…
NATO deploys counter-drone systems as Denmark bans civilian flights. Denmark observed more drones at military sites overnight Sunday following multiple sightings over five airports last week. NATO announced enhanced Baltic Sea surveillance under Operation Baltic Sentry, with Germany deploying the frigate FSG Hamburg and counter-drone systems to Copenhagen ahead of this week’s EU summit. Denmark…
Storm kills at least 21 and cuts power to hundreds of thousands. Typhoon Bualoi made landfall in Ha Tinh province early Monday, bringing winds up to 133 kph and storm surges over one meter. The storm killed at least 20 people in the Philippines before reaching Vietnam, where authorities evacuated over 240,000 people and grounded…
Parliament debates withdrawing from the nonproliferation treaty as currency plummets. The UN reimposed sanctions on Iran Sunday through a “snapback” mechanism, freezing assets, halting arms deals, and penalizing ballistic missile development. Iran’s parliament met in closed session to discuss responses, including potentially withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, though lawmakers said this wouldn’t mean pursuing…
Interpol operation targets romance scams across 14 nations. Interpol arrested 260 suspects across 14 African countries in July and August for online romance and extortion schemes that defrauded over 1,400 victims of nearly $2.8 million. Ghanaian authorities arrested 68 people accused of using fake identities to charge victims bogus shipment fees and blackmail them with…
Hackers steal developer credentials to support fake IT worker scheme. North Korea’s DeceptiveDevelopment campaign targets cryptocurrency and decentralized finance developers with fake job offers to steal identities and deploy malware, including BeaverTail, InvisibleFerret, and OtterCookie. ESET reports that the stolen developer information is handed to fraudulent North Korean IT workers tracked as WageMole, who use…
Updated malware steals crypto by replacing clipboard wallet addresses. Microsoft discovered a new XCSSET variant that monitors macOS clipboards to hijack cryptocurrency transactions by swapping wallet addresses with attacker-controlled ones. The malware spreads through malicious Xcode projects and includes a Firefox info-stealer module that targets browser history, cookies, passwords, and credit card data. The updated…
Ransomware attack on HR supplier Miljödata compromises employee information. Volvo North America confirmed a data breach after ransomware gang DataCarry attacked its HR software provider, Miljödata, exposing employees’ names and Social Security numbers. The attack impacted over 870,000 accounts across dozens of companies, including SAS airline, Lund University, and multiple Swedish municipalities, after DataCarry published…
Valar Atomics has broken ground on its Ward 250 test reactor at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL), stepping into the U.S. advanced nuclear race. This event makes Valar the second company in the Department of Energy’s pilot reactor program to begin construction after Aalo Atomics in Idaho. The Ward 250 is a helium-cooled,…
At least 100 people are feared dead following the collapse of a gold mining pit in Nigeria’s Zamfara State, survivors and residents said on Friday. The pit at the Kadauri mining site in the Maru local government area caved in on Thursday while scores of artisanal miners were working underground, witnesses told Reuters. Rescue operations…
South Korea’s military said it fired warning shots early Friday to drive away a North Korean merchant ship that briefly crossed the disputed western sea boundary between the rival neighbors. The ship crossed the Northern Limit Line near the South Korean border island of Baengnyeong around 5 a.m. but retreated after South Korea’s military issued…
At least 40 civilians were killed on Sept. 21 when airstrikes by the Nigerien Air Force mistakenly hit a weekly market in Injar village, near Chical, Kourfey Commune of Tillaberi Region. The victims included women, children, and elderly persons, sparking outrage across Niger where authorities have come under criticism for repeated civilian casualties during air…
A tropical storm blew out of the central Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 10 dead, knocking down trees and power and prompting the evacuation of more than 433,000 people from landslide- and flood-prone villages long battered by typhoons. Bualoi was the latest of back-to-back storms from the Pacific to threaten Asia. Typhoon Ragasa, one…
A fire broke out at the national data infrastructure center Friday, halting dozens of online government services, the interior ministry said. The blaze is presumed to have started from a battery at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, about 140 kilometers south of Seoul, at about 8:15 p.m., with fire authorities currently working to…
Unidentified drones flew over France’s Mourmelon-le-Grand military base overnight on Monday, triggering increased security measures at the facility that houses the 501st tank regiment and has trained Ukrainian soldiers, domestic media reported. Military officials told French outlets that small aircraft spotted over the Marne department base were “not drones piloted by military personnel,” according to…
Russia has agreed to equip and train a Chinese airborne battalion and share its expertise in airdropping armored vehicles that analysts say could boost Beijing’s capacity to seize Taiwan, according to newly obtained documents that show the two nations’ deepening military cooperation. The agreements allow Beijing to access training and technology in one of the…
Anthropic is stepping up its global enterprise ambitions. The $183 billion artificial intelligence startup has grown its business customer base from under 1,000 to more than 300,000 in just two years, as demand for Claude’s models accelerates across industries and regions. On Friday, the company announced it will triple its international workforce and expand its…
The Trump administration is developing a policy that would require semiconductor companies to match their domestic production with the number of chips their customers import to the U.S. If chipmakers fail to maintain 1:1 ratio over time, they would have to pay a massive import tariff, reports the Wall Street Journal. The plan is intended…
Microsoft has long offered a variety of marketplaces for businesses in its ecosystem. For cloud solutions, there is the Azure Marketplace, while for everything around productivity, and, more recently, AI tools, there is Microsoft AppSource. But starting today, the company is combining both of these marketplaces under the aptly named “Microsoft Marketplace” banner. As businesses…
Cisco on Thursday announced a new software tool aimed at weaving together quantum computers from various makers into a single cloud, making it easier to develop useful applications. Major tech firms such as Microsoft, IBM and Google are investing in building out their own quantum computers, which use properties of quantum physics to solve difficult…
Humanoid robots are having a moment—from viral videos to billion-dollar valuations. The reality behind the headlines is more complex. While demonstrations dazzle, most deployments remain early-stage, with heavy reliance on human supervision. These robots, typically bipedal with dexterous movement, advanced sensing and vision, and AI-powered reasoning, drew about $2.5 billion in venture capital investment in…
Google today updated the 2.5 Flash model available in the Gemini app across three areas. All responses now benefit from improved organization and formatting, like the use of headers, lists, and tables. When asking for homework help (especially involving complex subjects), you’ll get “clearer explanations” thanks to improved reasoning capabilities. Meanwhile, image understanding now allows…
The windswept town of Ellendale, N.D., population 1,100, has two motels, a Dollar General, a Pentecostal Bible college—and a half-built AI factory bigger than 10 Home Depots. Its more than $15 billion price tag is equivalent to a quarter of the state’s annual economic output. The artificial-intelligence boom has ushered in one of the costliest…
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Copyright © 2025 — All Rights Reserved.
Notifications
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence