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An update to our report on what executives need to know about the business impact of biological sciences.
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash” is a seering insight attributed to cultural theorist Paul Virilio – and is oft quoted here at OODA Loop. We review here some of the new “inventions” that are part and parcel of the emergence…
While it is promising to see that these areas are being addressed at the highest levels of government, there is still one glaring omission that has yet to be treated with the same level of seriousness by the Executive Office – data privacy. The United States has various laws at both the state and federal levels that address…
Trade Clusters are yet another development in the way globalization transformed over the course of 2023. William Alan Reinsch, Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business, at the The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provides a working definition and framed some the core characteristics of what he calls “trade clusters”.
The future of AI was a broad theme at OODAcon 2023 which was discussed not only at a session dedicated to the topic, but in the context of the impact of AI on cybersecurity and autonomous systems. Find those discussions here. One of the tactical insights from OODAcon 2023 was related to generative AI. The…
In this post, we have separated the wheat from the chaff in the AI ecosystem, surfacing and highlighting some of the most prescient AI/ML breakthroughs and promising public/private partnerships. Companies and organizations featured here include Google DeepMind, The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), The National Science Foundation (NSF), The International Union for Conservation of Nature…
Last year, OODA CTO Bob Gourley spoke with MITRE Futurist Charles Clancy on our Quantum Enabled Future. During that conversation, Clancy also shared some research he and and his team on Web3 and the Future of the Internet, which dovetailed nice into our Digital Self-sovereignty research efforts. Following is another valuable contribution from the MITRE…
If you could not make our webinar featuring OODA network expert Chris Ward you can catch a replay at this link:
A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent published an article in which he states that misinformation and not tampering with election systems remains the primary threat against U.S. elections. More here.
The first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) was released last week by The United States Department of Defense (DoD). THE NDIS “offers a strategic vision to coordinate and prioritize actions to build a modernized defense industrial ecosystem.” Details here.
Early warning systems are flashing red – indicating a growing “perfect storm” of all the unintended consequequences we have experienced to date based on:an unregulated tech sector coupled with cyberwarfare tactics and kompromat innovation This time out, it will all play out with exponential speed, scale and volume over the course of 2024.
A recent Gallup poll combined with a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimate of fraud losses show that criminals are stealing 10s or 100s of billion dollars from 21 million Americans each year.
China has articulated a “Talent Superpower Strategy.” But does the U.S. have an equivalent workforce and talent strategy for educating, training, attracting and retaining the talent required for exponential technology innovation to insure American Competitiveness? A recent Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report explores this challenge.
While the release of ChatGPT and enterprise-level deployment of Large Language Models have been impactful, all organizations should also be digging deeper into recent AI and deep learning history and ask the question: “How is Deepmind’s Alphafold representative of the future architectures, ecosystems, platforms and value creation opportunities in our industry sector and subsectors?”
An analysis of the latest Alphafold breakthrough – Enformer, a neural network architecture that accurately predicts gene expression from DNA sequences – and the What’s Next? of the future of AI and Genomics.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, still reeling about the fact that Chinese startup DeepSeek managed to build a much cheaper but just as powerful AI chatbot, now says that the cost of using AI will drop by 10 times each year. Altman said OpenAI will make “better models” that will also be cheaper. US President Trump…
Microsoft announced an expansion to its Copilot bug bounty program to include more consumer products and provide researchers with higher incentives. The same as before, bug hunters can earn up to $30,000 for critical-severity vulnerabilities in multiple Copilot AI products and services, but the payouts for medium-severity flaws have been increased. Per the program’s rules,…
Cybersecurity startup ThreatMate, an AI-powered attack surface management platform, announced raising $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Top Down Ventures’ Founders Fund I. The platform relies on AI to provide enterprise-grade cyber protections against threats and to deliver comprehensive visibility into an organization’s attack surface. The new investment will be used to…
China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on Tuesday the inclusion of a major US biotech company on its “unreliable entity list” while stating that the firm’s “discriminatory measures against Chinese enterprises” harmed the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies. Leading American genomic sequencing firm Illumina is the first biotech company on Beijing’s list. More than…
The cost of clean energy technologies worldwide, such as wind, solar and battery storage, are expected to fall further this year, a report by BloombergNEF showed on Thursday, despite rising protectionism in the form of tariffs on green energy imports. New wind and solar farms already undercut the production costs of new coal and gas…
In a breakthrough achievement towards making quantum computing practical on a large scale, scientists at the University of Oxford have successfully demonstrated distributed quantum computing for the first time. By allowing small quantum devices to work together rather than overloading a single machine, the researchers achieved quantum teleportation of logical gates, according to the findings…
The US Air Force is developing a low-cost cruise missile known as the Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM), which could evolve into an air-launched counter-drone weapon, The War Zone reported. Whether the weapon will be a jack-of-all-trades or master of none in the drone warfare era is unclear. The ERAM program, launched to meet the…
Humanoid robots could soon move in a far more realistic manner — and even dance just like us — thanks to a new software framework for tracking human motion. Developed by researchers at UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, MIT, and Nvidia, “ExBody2” is a new technology that enables humanoid robots to perform realistic movements based…
While the AI market has in recent days seemed to collapse around DeepSeek and OpenAI, there are of course many other teams of brilliant engineers fielding large language models (LLMs) that are worth a look as users and enterprises seek to use the latest and greatest. Take Mistral AI, the French startup that made headlines…
Amazon said Thursday it plans to boost its capital expenditures to $100 billion in 2025, as it continues its investments in artificial intelligence. The capex figure exceeds last year’s spending of roughly $83 billion. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had predicted in October that the company’s 2025 capex would surpass last year’s figure, primarily driven by…
The Bank of England has halved its growth projection for the UK. The Bank of England halved its growth projection for the UK at its recent meeting. They also lowered the main interest to 4.50% which is the lowest level since 2023. The move is a blow to the Labour government which has prioritized increasing…
The Philippine Vice President has been impeached after facing several allegations related to official misconduct. The Philippine Vice President has been impeached after facing scrutiny for several scandals. The Vice President was impeached an accusations of plotting to assassinate the President, corruption, and not taking a strong stance against Chinese aggression. The impeachment comes after…
France has adopted a budget. The French government has adopted a budget after several fractious debates. The Prime Minister was forced to use special constitutional powers to force the budget through. The far left and far right parties opposed the move, but enough members voted in favor to overcome the opposition. The budget aims to…
Additional police forces have arrived in Haiti to support on going operations. 200 additional Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti to support on going operations within the country. Haitian police and international forces have thus far been unable to restore order in the crisis ridden nation. Other nations in the region have continued to…
Cisco has patched several vulnerabilities in its enterprise security product. Cisco has patched several vulnerabilities in its enterprise security product. The vulnerabilities could allow threat actors to compromise devices by using administrative level privileges to compromise APIs. Cisco has said they working to resolve other vulnerabilities that users have identified in its products. Read more:…
Spanish police have arrested an individual wanted in connection with several cyber attacks against NATO. Spanish police have arrested an individual wanted in connection with several cyber attacks against NATO and US military infrastructure. The police were able to identify him after he launched a cyber attack against the Spanish civil guard. Police also seized…
A major US hiring platform has exposed the data of several million users. The US online hiring platform Foh&Boh has exposed the data of millions of job seekers. The site stored applicant data on an exposed AWS server. The server has been exposed for an unknown amount of time. The exposed data largely relates to…
Researchers have uncovered a large network of malicious apps targeting Android users in India. Cyber security researchers have uncovered a large network of malicious apps targeting Android users in India. The apps intercepted SMS messages and used those messages to initiate transactions. The apps also had systems to ensure they could not be deleted from…
The European Commission has announced the opening of a new Biotech and Biomanufacturing Hub, supporting start-ups and small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in bringing new innovations to the EU market. The Hub, hosted on the EU Commission’s Your Europe portal, is in all EU languages and explains such things as: the sources of EU funding…
Apple Inc., which counts China as its biggest manufacturing hub and the US as its largest market, is now at the center of an escalating geopolitical fight that threatens to span tariffs and regulatory probes. The Trump administration’s new 10% levy on Chinese-made goods is poised to squeeze the company at an already-challenging time, when…
Google (GOOG) aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, Google’s head of quantum told Reuters on Wednesday, in a challenge to Nvidia’s predictions of a 20-year wait. “We’re optimistic that within five years we’ll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers,” founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut…
ChatGPT no longer requires you to log in to use the AI chatbot’s search engine, OpenAI announced on Wednesday. With the feature, ChatGPT will surface responses based on information from the web while presenting a list of sources it used to inform its answer. OpenAI first launched its search engine to paid ChatGPT subscribers last…
Boston Dynamics Wednesday announced a partnership designed to bring improved reinforcement learning to its electric Atlas humanoid robot. The tie-up is with the Robotics & AI Institute (RAI Institute), earlier known as The Boston Dynamics AI Institute. Both organizations were founded by Marc Raibert, a former MIT professor who served as Boston Dynamics’ CEO for…
When 102 humanoid robots from 10 different companies converged last month at a sprawling 4,000-square-metre facility on the outskirts of Shanghai, trained in essential tasks – walking, making beds, washing dishes, screwing bolts and even welding – it showed how China is on the fast track to a future where humans and humanoid robots seamlessly…
Google is bringing its experimental “reasoning” artificial intelligence model capable of explaining how it answers complex questions to the Gemini app. The Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking update is part of a slew of Gemini 2.0 AI rollouts announced by Google today, including its latest Gemini 2.0 Pro flagship model. This comes as the search giant…
A Chinese software engineer who worked for Alphabet Inc.’s Google faces new charges of economic espionage by the US Justice Department for allegedly stealing trade secrets to boost China’s AI industry. Linwei Ding, who was indicted in March, now faces seven counts of economic espionage along with seven counts of theft of trade secrets under…
Last week, DeepSeek sent Silicon Valley into a panic by proving you could build powerful AI on a shoestring budget. In some respects, it was too good to be true. Recent testing has shown that DeepSeek’s AI models are more vulnerable to manipulation than those of its more expensive competitors from Silicon Valley. That challenges…
Quantum researchers at Google created a new approach to quantum simulation that combined analog and digital approaches, proving out a new way of testing the supercomputers of the future. The team used a quantum simulator made up of 69 superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, to test out their approach. Their research—published Wednesday in Nature—revealed the…
In just a few days, France will host the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, with heads of state flocking to Paris to meet global tech leaders. They’ll most likely announce some big investments and diplomatic agreements focused on safety or the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the summit, early-stage VC firm Galion.exe, growth investment…
Figure AI announced that it had signed its second major commercial partner, bringing the dream of humanoid robots from labs into everyday life closer than ever. CEO Brett Adcock said the deal might make it possible to ship 100,000 humanoid robots over the next four years. While details of the new customer remain under wraps,…
Amazon is using math to help solve one of artificial intelligence’s most intractable problems: its tendency to make up answers, and to repeat them back to us with confidence. The issue, known as hallucinations, have been a problem for users since AI chatbots hit the mainstream over two years ago. They’ve caused people and businesses…
Google on Tuesday updated its ethical guidelines around artificial intelligence, removing commitments not to apply the technology to weapons or surveillance. The company’s AI principles previously included a section listing four “Applications we will not pursue.” As recently as Thursday, that included weapons, surveillance, technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” and…
U.S. President Trump stated on Tuesday that the U.S. will “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling Palestinians elsewhere. He claims that his new redevelopment plan could turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump also said that his administration would work to supply housing and an unlimited number of jobs for people in…
Lawmakers impeached Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines on Wednesday, escalating political tensions in the country. Duterte faced four complaints over alleged misuse of millions in public funds. Additionally, she had pronounced plans to assassinate President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., his wife, and his cousin who is speaker of the House of Representatives. She…
U.S. President Trump will cut off U.S. engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and extend a funding band on UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Trump has already withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) since taking office. The withdrawal from UNRWA coincides with Israeli…
The Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group has declared a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for humanitarian reasons. The unilateral ceasefire began on Tuesday. Last week, the group seized Goma, the main city in eastern DRC, with the help of thousands of Rwandan troops. The United Nations estimates that over 900 people were…
Russian hackers have been observed exploiting a 7-Zip zero day against Ukrainian entities. The exploited flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-0411, was discovered in September 2024 in 7-Zip version 24.09. It was patched around two months later. The bug allows an attacker to bypass the Mark-of-the-Web (MoTW) protection mechanism, which prevents the automatic execution of untrusted files.…
A new tactic is being used by ransomware actors in their ransomware notes. These malicious actors are now posting advertisements to solicit insider information. Researchers believe that multiple groups including Sarcoma and another group impersonating LockBit are using the new strategy. The ransomware note attempts to entice the employee to give up insider information, offering…
A new malicious practice is being called “infrastructure laundering,” where attackers exploit mainstream hosting providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Researchers have linked the China-based Funnull content delivery network (CDN) to this practice. During infrastructure laundering, threat actors operate “hosting companies” who rent IP addresses from these mainstream providers, then mapping…
Japanese electronics maker Casio’s UK website was compromised after being injected with a web skimmer. The skimmer was found to have collected buyers’ personal and payment card information. The same skimmer has allegedly been added to at least seventeen other undisclosed websites. After victims entered and submitted their personal, contact, and payment info, the skimmer…
Valentine’s Day is in two weeks, and the traditional gifts are already flying off store shelves: jewelry, watches, colognes, cards, and boxes and boxes of chocolate. All thoughtful, personal gifts—yet the process of manufacturing them is anything but warm and fuzzy. Production lines around the world have been busy churning out consumer goods at scale,…
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the buzzword of our time. It’s a term that often conjures images of robots and self-learning machines, but in reality, AI is a broad umbrella with many distinct subfields. Two of the most talked-about developments today are generative AI and agentic AI. The crucial thing to grasp is that they…
Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, believes that quantum computing, a technology that could revolutionize industries from medicine to materials science, may be closer than some experts think. In a recent interview on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast, Gates suggested that useful quantum computers could arrive in as little as three to five…
Last Friday, AI startup OpenAI filed a new application to trademark products associated with its brand — “OpenAI” — with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Normally, this wouldn’t be newsworthy. Companies file for trademarks all the time. But in the application, OpenAI hints at new product lines both nearer-term and of a more…
China retaliated to Donald Trump’s opening trade war tariffs by targeting a handful of American companies and slapping levies on some US goods, in a move seemingly designed to avoid escalating tensions between the world’s biggest economies. Beijing imposed a 15% levy on less than $5 billion of US energy imports and a moderate 10%…
Self-driving truck startup Waabi is partnering with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks, an important milestone as it gets closer to a commercial launch. The tie up also marks Volvo’s second partnership to co-develop self-driving big rigs with a startup partner. In May 2024, Volvo teamed up with Aurora Innovation to…
As artificial intelligence reshapes industries, it is critical for businesses to view AI governance not merely as a regulatory obligation but as an ethical imperative. With years of experience researching and advocating for the responsible use of AI, I have witnessed firsthand the profound benefits and significant risks it brings to society. Issues such as…
A week-long standoff at a Ukrainian agency is beginning to disrupt arms contracts. The standoff between Ukraine’s defense minister and the official overseeing weapons procurement began over a week ago, and remains unsolved. Over 80 defense companies “are unable to receive payment for completed orders and sign new contracts.” These companies accounted for around a…
China has retaliated against Trump’s new tariffs by imposing ones of its own. On Tuesday, China announced that there would be 10 percent tariffs on imports from the U.S. of crude oil, agricultural machinery, displacement vehicles, and some trucks. Additionally, China imposed a 15 percent tariff on imports from the U.S. of coal and liquefied…
New information has led American officials to now believe that Iran is developing plans for a faster, cruder way to develop an atomic weapon. The intelligence warns that Iranian weapons engineers and scientists are looking for a quick way to develop an atomic weapon in just months if Tehran chooses to race for a bomb.…
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, and U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the threatened U.S. tariffs would be paused for one month. The measures were expected to come into effect on Tuesday, but social media posts confirmed the agreement delaying the tariffs just one day before. Sheinbaum stated that…
A new phishing campaign is targeting the X accounts of high-profile individuals. Targets include journalists, political figures, and even an X employee. Malicious actors are attempting to hijack the accounts of these individuals and exploit them to commit cryptocurrency fraud. While the campaign is most prominent on X, it is not contained to just the…
Globe Life, an insurance firm, has revealed that a malicious actor may have compromised the data of around 850,000 individuals. A data breach in October 2024 may have led to the compromise of personal, health, and insurance information of hundreds of thousands of people. The attack was discovered when a threat actor attempted to extort…
The data of over one million individuals was compromised in the recent data breach of Connecticut healthcare provider Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC). The incident was discovered on January 2, when the organization found unusual activity on its network. The attacker was able to access or exfiltrate patient health records, containing information such as Social…
The Python Package Index (PyPI) package repository has been found to contain two malicious packages leveraging the DeepSeek name. Although they were only up for around 30 minutes, the packages were downloaded 36 times. The malicious attack began on January 29, when the packages were published. They appeared to be client libraries to access and…
Irish biotech GH Research has said the phase 2 win for its inhaled depression drug has “paved the way for future commercial success.” The inhaled mebufotenin candidate, dubbed GH001, was evaluated in the midstage study of 81 patients with treatment-resistant depression. The 40 patients who received GH001 saw an average 15.2 point reduction on the…
Meta’s total investment in virtual and augmented reality is set to top $100bn this year, as its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has declared 2025 will be a “defining year” for its smart glasses. In its latest annual report, Meta revealed it invested $19.9bn in its Reality Labs division last year, hitting a new high after…
UBS offers Swiss retail and wealth clients the ability to make fractional gold investments through its UBS key4 gold product. It is managed using a permissioned blockchain, the UBS Gold Network, but now the bank wants to explore making the offering available outside of Switzerland. Hence, it ran a proof of concept (PoC) using ZKsync,…
A hint to the future arrived quietly over the weekend. For a long time, I’ve been discussing two parallel revolutions in AI: the rise of autonomous agents and the emergence of powerful Reasoners since OpenAI’s o1 was launched. These two threads have finally converged into something really impressive – AI systems that can conduct research…
A team of engineers, physicists and computer specialists at Canadian company, Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., has unveiled what they describe as the world’s first scalable, connected, photonic quantum computer prototype. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they designed and built their modularized quantum computer, and how it can be…
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