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
Video Overview featuring Brian Micheal Jenkins: Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections
To date, OODA Loop coverage of U.S. port labor and supply chain disputes has been focused on the West Coast-based ILWU and PMA. The looming longshoremen strike in Canada, the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. all the way down to the Gulf Coast and Houston – has a different labor organizational structure and history, which…
Building on the insights from the initial Brian Jenkins’-led report “Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections”, following is a horizon scan of wargame efforts, red teaming, tabletop exercises, and scenario planning reports that have been in our research queue for months and now have a robust context for serious review…
The September 2024 OODA Network Monthly Meeting—held on Friday, September 20, 2024—featured a presentation by OODA Network member Brian Jenkins (followed by a question-and-answer session) on the recently released report “Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections: A Practical Guide for State and Local Governments.”
Recently, the non-profit bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) provided the incoming presidential administration and Congress with ten new cyber policy recommendations.
The White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) recently released a Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security, which addresses BGP deficiencies and, in coordination with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, established a public-private stakeholder working group to develop resources and materials to collectively advance the report’s recommendations.
The National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQIAC) published its second independent assessment of the National Quantum Initiative (NQI) program, focusing on quantum networking and the role that testbeds play in the research and development of quantum networking technologies. The report, titled Quantum Networking: Findings and Recommendations for Growing American Leadership identifies six findings and seven recommendations.
The arrival and continued emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has made a huge impact on the cyber ecosystem. With any new technology, the possibilities seem endless for its capabilities and uses. Generative AI has already been globally welcomed with estimates that 40% of companies in the world are using it in some capacity, and 82% are either using it…
The year 2024 will require a reorientation to new realities, largely driven by the acceleration of disruptive technologies grinding against the inertia of stale institutions that would rather we snack on the comfort food of the past than the buffet of the future. In this post, the reorientation required is an understanding of the broad…
As a pre-read in the run-up to the OODA Network monthly meeting this Friday, September 20, 2024, we have compiled OODA Loop research related to and inspired by the “early warning” statement from the forward of “Addressing the Threat of Political Violence in the 2024 Elections” voicing concern “that the country’s deep divisions and dark…
Is the scale of and strategic focus on critical technology innovation, specifically materials science basic research, already an insurmountable competitive advantage for China in the Great Power Competition with the U.S.? Find a discussion of the core issue here.
SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn astronaut mission finally launched via Space X’s Falcon-9 Rocket launch two days ago – and the first spacewalk by civilian astronauts on a commercial spacecraft was successful earlier this AM. In this post, find the on-demand video of the Falcon 9 rocket launch and the spacewalk here – along with What…
This post captures some key content from the OODAcast, including observations from OODA Network Members who were in positions to know what the national security situation was before, during, and after the attacks.
Recently, the United States, South Korea, and Japan convened its third trilateral dialogue focused on countering the cyber threat posed by North Korea (DPRK).
On Thursday I watched Daniela Rus, one of the world’s top experts on AI-powered robots, address a packed room at a Boston robotics expo. Rus spent a portion of her talk busting the notion that giant fleets of humanoids are already making themselves useful in manufacturing and warehouses around the world. That might come as…
Just two years ago, prompt engineering was hailed as a hot new job in tech. Now, it has all but disappeared. At the beginning of the corporate AI boom, some companies sought out large language model (LLM) translators—prompt engineers who specialized in crafting the most effective questions to ask internal AIs, ensuring optimal and efficient…
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet on Tuesday with US President Donald Trump in the two leaders’ first face-to-face discussion since Carney’s election. Trump has imposed tariffs on Canada, who is the closest ally of the US as well as its top trading partner. Trump also claims that Canada should not be…
The leader of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, has failed to win enough votes to become chancellor of Germany. Merz fell short by six votes in just the first round of voting in parliament. He had been widely anticipated to win the parliamentary vote, but his failure to secure the majority means…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning of a new plan that will bring an intensive escalation in Israel’s campaign against Gaza. Netanayahu announced on Monday that Israel is on the verge of forcefully entering Gaza. His security cabinet has approved a new plan in which tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers would seize territory,…
The vanishing of U.S. government foreign economic support through Trump’s ending of U.S.A.I.D. is proving detrimental to Colombia. When the country had signed a peace agreement with rebels in 2016, seen as a landmark deal, the U.S. had increased aid to Colombia in support. The deal was designed to prevent drugs traveling from Colombia to…
Last year, over 90% of IT and security leaders stated that their organization experienced a cyberattack. Of organizations experiencing a successful ransomware attack, 86% admitted that they paid the requested ransom in order to recover their data. The most common identified attack types were data breaches, malware on devices, cloud or SaaS breaches, phishing, and…
Kelly Benefits, a benefits administrator, broker, and payroll solutions provider, has disclosed the scale of its recently disclosed data breach. The impact of the hack is much larger than was originally believed, and now is known to have impacted 400,000 individuals. Attackers were able to access personal information, including Social Security numbers, tax ID numbers,…
President Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal slashes $491 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s budget. This is nearly a 17% reduction to the agency’s budget, which is approximately $3 billion. While the specific itemized cuts were not detailed, the budget cuts would broadly target disinformation and misinformation programs and offices, as well…
The DragonForce ransomware group is claiming credit for the recent disruptive cyberattacks on several UK retailers. The cyberattacks began around two weeks ago, and M&S was hit first, followed by Co-op and Harrods. M&S has since shut down online purchases, and still has not brought its systems back to normal operations. Co-op said that customer…
Figure AI, the robotics company aiming to build the first commercially viable humanoid worker, recently announced it secured a staggering $675 million in funding from some of the biggest names in tech and venture capital, including Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Intel. Now valued at $2.6 billion, the San Jose, California-based startup is in…
The Cuban air defense system has modernized its S-125 Pechora missiles, thanks to technical cooperation with Belarus. This was confirmed by the Belarusian State Military-Industrial Committee through its official channel on Telegram. The modernization was carried out by specialists from the Belarusian company ALEVKURP, who upgraded the S-125-2BM Pechora-2BM missile system, an enhanced version of…
According to recent pictures published on social networks on May 3, 2025, North Korea has begun the mass production of one of the world’s most powerful rocket launcher systems—the KN-25. This marks a significant step in militarizing its long-range precision artillery forces. The KN-25, armed with 600mm guided rockets and capable of striking targets up…
Japan and China have accused each other of violating the airspace around the Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands, which Beijing also claims. The latest territorial flap came as both appeared to have warmer ties while seeking to mitigate damages from the US tariff war. Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it lodged a “very…
Japan has no plans to threaten to sell its $1 trillion-plus holdings of U.S. Treasuries in trade talks with Washington, its finance minister said on Sunday, clarifying earlier remarks that the bond holdings could be used as a bargaining chip. “My comments were made in response to a question whether Japan could, as a bargaining…
India and Pakistan have significantly upgraded their military capabilities since the nuclear-armed neighbours clashed in 2019, posing increased risks of escalation even in a limited conflict, former military officers and experts say. Pakistan says India plans a military incursion after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for a deadly attack on domestic tourists in Indian Kashmir last…
Satellite imagery has captured a United States aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, where China claims sovereignty over most of the waters, claims that overlap with those of a number of other countries. The U.S. Seventh Fleet, which maintains America’s naval presence in the Western Pacific Ocean, confirmed the deployment of USS Nimitz in…
A16z Crypto led a $25 million investment round into Miden, an independent blockchain project spun out of Polygon Labs. Miden closed its $25 million seed rounds led by a16z Crypto, 1kx, and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital Partners, Symbolic Capital, P2 Ventures, Delta Fund, MH Ventures, as well as from angel investors, including…
AI-powered defense startup Anduril Industries on Monday said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ireland-based tactical communications systems maker Klas. Anduril, along with software maker Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, Reuters reported last month…
Huawei is building a production line for advanced chips as part of a network of semiconductor facilities in Shenzhen that seeks to break China’s dependence on foreign technologies. The tech group is the key player behind three manufacturing sites in Guanlan, a district of the southern city where Huawei is based, according to multiple people…
At the GTC 2025 conference, Nvidia announced its plans for a new, Boston-based Nvidia Accelerated Quantum Research Center or NVAQC, designed to integrate quantum hardware with AI supercomputers. Expected to begin operations later this year, it will focus on accelerating the transition from experimental to practical quantum computing. “We view this as a long-term opportunity,”…
Trade tensions overshadow the industry’s supply chains as the US pushes to lead the next wave of robotics innovation and efforts for increased automation. While not a headline topic at this week’s Robotics Summit & Expo held in Boston, concern over tariffs loomed in the background, according to media reports. Industry insiders quietly voiced worries…
Tether is about to enter the $25 billion crypto artificial intelligence sector, according to a post by its CEO Paolo Ardoino on X. Tether AI, according to Ardoino, is a “fully open-source AI runtime, capable of adapting and evolving on any hardware and device, no API keys, no central point of failure, fully modular and…
Last month, an A.I. bot that handles tech support for Cursor, an up-and-coming tool for computer programmers, alerted several customers about a change in company policy. It said they were no longer allowed to use Cursor on more than just one computer. In angry posts to internet message boards, the customers complained. Some canceled their…
At a recent electronics exhibition in Shanghai, semiconductor companies featured slogans such as “Offering complete domestic solutions” and “Use Chinese chips, love Chinese chips.” That is the hope. The reality is that, love them or not, China still needs certain American chips that are essential for cars and other industrial goods. The vulnerability was revealed…
A team led by Rice University bioscientist Caroline Ajo-Franklin has discovered how certain bacteria breathe by generating electricity, using a natural process that pushes electrons into their surroundings instead of breathing on oxygen. The findings, published in Cell, could enable new developments in clean energy and industrial biotechnology. By identifying how these bacteria expel electrons…
China is rapidly redefining their approach to modern warfare by shifting its focus to small, low-cost, AI-powered drones. Recent state media reports highlight the deployment of micro drones across the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including a new model weighing less than a kilogram. This drone features a coaxial dual-rotor system for superior lift, modular payloads,…
Cryptography experts say the race to fend off future quantum-computer attacks has entered a decisive but measured phase, with companies quietly replacing the internet plumbing that the majority of the industry once considered unbreakable. Speaking at Cloudflare’s Trust Forward Summit on Wednesday, encryption leaders at IBM Research, Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare outlined how organizations…
From cars to iPhones to semiconductors, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US is a cornerstone of Donald Trump’s economic agenda. As the country’s factories struggle to find workers, with half a million jobs remaining unfilled in March, the Trump administration and some executives have envisaged robots taking up the slack. Industry experts, however, are…
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said the company is planning to source more than 19 billion chips from the US for its devices. The company will source tens of millions of processors from a new facility in Arizona this year, Cook said. The CEO is referring to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. plants…
A federal judge issued a landmark ruling last year, saying that Google had become a monopolist in internet search. But in a hearing that began last week to figure out how to fix the problem, the emphasis has frequently landed on a different technology, artificial intelligence. In U.S. District Court in Washington last week, a…
South Africa is withdrawing peacekeepers from the eastern Congo. South Africa has annouced that it will withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the rebel-controlled eastern Congo. Other nations have also withdrawn their peacekeeping forces from the region. Congo government forces have also withdrawn from the region after being defeated by M23 rebel forces. Read more: https://apnews.com/article/south-africa-congo-troops-peacekeepers-1fe2ba588d0e85d087eb2ba9e24b768f
Israel has launched additional strikes in Syria. Israel’s military has launched strikes near Damascus as tensions between the government and the Druze population esclate. Tensions between the two have escalated due to increased attacks on Druze communities by gunmen. The government of Syria has condemned Israel’s action and said it was taking steps to protect…
Venezuela has said it will go ahead with holding elections for officials in disputed territory. Venezuela has said it will defy a ruiling from the UN’s high court ordering it to not hold elections for officials of the disputed Essequibo region. Venezuela has asserted that it is the rightful owner of the territory while Guyana…
Germany’s AfD party has been labeled as an extremist party. Germany’s AfD party has been labeled as an extremist party by a government watchdog. The designation carries no official penality unless the government moves to formally ban the party. The AfD has pledged to defend itself in Court. Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alternative-for-germany-extremism-63106110e79b588cd21fd02639364a22
Ransomware groups claims to have attacked a CBS affiliate. The Lynx ransomware group has claimed to have attacked a CBS affliaite. The group added the Chattanooga, TN affliate to its list of victims. The Lynx ransomware group is a relatively new group that has thus far attacked 196 organizations. Read more: https://cybernews.com/cybercrime/lynx-ransomware-strike-cbs-affiliate-wdef-tv/
The government of Peru has been attacked by the Rhysida ransomware gang. The Rhysida ransomware gang has claimed to have attacked the government of Peru. The Peruvian government has denied that an attack has occured. Researchers have said that the information posted by Rhysida appears to be authentic which implies it likely has stolen some…
Harrods has confirmed that it was the vicitm of a cyberattack. Harrods has confirmed that it was the victim of a cyberattack although it says that the attack was unsuccessful. Customers had repeated issues accessing the stores webpage earlier this week. This is the third major UK retailer to have been attacked in recent weeks.…
A major European employment platform exposed the data of millions of users. The employment platform, beWanted, has exposed the data of millions of its users. Researchers found that the company had an unsecured database with users personal information stored on it. The company has been notified of the issue, but has not yet responded. Read…
The U.S. Army is embarking on its largest overhaul since the end of the Cold War, with plans to equip each of its combat divisions with around 1,000 drones and to shed outmoded weapons and other equipment. The plan, the product of more than a year of experimentation at this huge training range in Bavaria…
I spoke to Zuckerberg in person at Meta Headquarters on Monday afternoon (which makes this one worth listening to), before the LlamaCon keynote on Tuesday and Meta’s earnings on Wednesday; I was briefed about some of the LlamaCon announcements, and had access to the new Meta AI app. In addition, just before the interview I…
Microsoft on Wednesday launched several new “open” AI models, the most capable of which is competitive with OpenAI’s o3-mini on at least one benchmark. As it says on the tin, all of the new permissively licensed models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — are “reasoning” models, meaning…
A quantum computer can solve optimization problems faster than classical supercomputers, a process known as “quantum advantage” and demonstrated by a USC researcher in a paper recently published in Physical Review Letters. The study shows how quantum annealing, a specialized form of quantum computing, outperforms the best current classical algorithms when searching for near-optimal solutions…
Humanoid robots may outgrow the auto industry in economic impact, said Morgan Stanley estimating that the market could swell to $5 trillion in annual revenue by mid-century as adoption will grow across industrial, commercial, and eventually at household use. Morgan Stanley sees a billion of robots in use by 2050, with early adoption starting in…
Dustin Childs can still describe the best demonstration of a winning hack at an international tournament he’s ever seen. It happened almost a decade ago. The participants had to find a way to break into a Windows workstation that was hardened with firewalls and up-to-date software to make it more secure. One member of a…
The fortunes of Big Tech are diverging in a rapidly changing business landscape, as demand for artificial intelligence fuels growth in cloud and digital ads while consumer electronics take a battering from President Donald Trump’s global trade war. AI came to the rescue of earnings at Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet in their March quarter, offering…
A Kenyan opposition MP was killed in a targeted attack. A Kenyan opposition MP was killed in Nairobi in what is being described as a targeted attack. Tensions in Kenya have cooled since the end of a major protest movement. The two main political parties agreed to a pact to reduce reduce tensions and cooperate…
Israel has carried out strikes in Syria to protect Druze communities. Israel’s government has said the nation carried out strikes to defend Druze communities against attacks. Druze communities in Syria have come under attack by militia groups in recent days. The new Syrian government has been accussed of not doing enough to protect vulnerable minorities.…
North Korea and Russia have begun construction of their first road connection. North Korea and Russia have begun construction of a road linking together their two countries. This would be the first road connecting the two countries built in the modern era. Russian and North Korean ties have grown stronger in recent years as North…
Germany’s two major parties have agreed to form a coalition government. The two major German political parties have agreed to form a coalition government. The center-right party has agreed to allow the center-left party to hold the justice, finance, and defense minister positions as part of the deal. The deal means that the German parliament…
France has said that Russian group have been responsible for dozens of attacks against the country. France has said that it found Russian groups to be responsible for dozens of attacks against the country in the past year. The government said that the groups employed a range of tactics that included phishing, vulnerability explotation, back…
Ascenion has disclosed that it was the victim of a data breach. The healthcare organization Ascension has disclosed that it was the victim of a data breach. The company has said that over 100,000 people have been impacted by the breach. The company also said that the breach was caused because of a vulnerability in…
A Canadian electric utility company has disclosed that it it is responding to an ongoing cyber attack. The Canadian electric utility Nova Scotia Power has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack in April. The utility’s parent company was also affected by the same attack. The company said that power generation was…
The British retailer Co-op was the victim of a cyber attack. The British retailer Co-op disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack. They are the second major British retailor to have suffered a cyber attack in recent days. The company said that the attack did not cause major disruptions to its operations.…
Germany’s Merck KGaA has struck a deal to buy U.S. biotech company SpringWorks Therapeutics for an equity value of $3.9 billion to add rare cancer therapies ahead of expected revenue losses linked to expiring patents. The deal came at a price tag about 20% lower than what analysts expected due to lack of other serious…
Artificial intelligence and data analytics firm Palantir is using its military intelligence background to deliver AI-powered solutions to major retailers to reinvent their supply chain network or make operations more efficient. “We took a lot of the learnings from data integration analytics and putting data in the hands of operators that we learned in the…
Anthropic agrees with the U.S. government that implementing robust export controls on domestically made AI chips will help the U.S. compete in the AI race against China. But the company is suggesting a few tweaks to the proposed restrictions. Anthropic released a blog post on Wednesday stating that the company “strongly supports” the U.S. Department…
Chinese start-up DeepSeek quietly open-sourced a new specialist artificial intelligence (AI) model on Wednesday, just a day after Alibaba unveiled the third generation of its Qwen family, as competition heats up in the race to advance generative AI capabilities. Hangzhou-based DeepSeek uploaded its latest open-source Prover-V2 model to Hugging Face, the world’s largest open-source AI…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday that China is “not behind” in artificial intelligence, and that Huawei is “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world.” Speaking to reporters at a tech conference in Washington, D.C., Huang said China may be “right behind” the U.S. for now, but it’s a narrow gap.…
Quantum computing has long been announced as “just around the corner,” but several companies are now determined to make this a commercial reality, with the promise of solving complex problems beyond classical computers’ reach. The problems in question are wide-ranging, from medicine and cybersecurity to materials science and chemistry. But first, there are very practical…
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Copyright © 2025 — All Rights Reserved.
Notifications
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence