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Cybersecurity incidents are unavoidable, but boards can govern in ways that make it much harder on adversaries to put the business at risk.
After decades of stagnation, space innovation keeps pushing the boundaries of the possible with new firsts emerging on a monthly basis. This topic was explored at length OODAcon 2023, with a deep dive into the emerging opportunities, economies, and risks associated with the rapid development of space-based technologies, resource acquisition, and shift from the public…
This post provides insights which can help us all contemplate the future in a digital world.
Recently, a Russian cybersecurity company published a report on nation-state offensive cyber campaigns that have been targeting Russia in 2023. Perhaps more surprising were the alleged sources of this activity, using telemetry data from Russia’s largest telecom to identify threat actors from China and North Korea as driving the majority of what the company observed during the year. Per…
The next ten years will be marked by all the uncertainties and unintended consequences that underpin so many doom and gloom scenarios. It is time to start tracking the abundance and breakthroughs that will also come fast and furious in the next decade – equally as overwhelming, while also breathtaking, positive, highly technical and scientific…
What is the future of blockchain innovation? And how might blockchain technologies enable new models for business and governance? The topic of building trust back into the blockchain was examined at length at OODAcon 2023.
2023 has been marked by what some are characterizing as the double exponential pace of artificial intelligence innovation and commercial deployment. Following are some of the most prescient developments of the last few weeks.
How do we maintain societal trust as individuals migrate from platform to platform, identities get impersonated, and technologies like ChatGPT and Midjourney produce conversations and images indistinguishable from the truth through malicious prompts or hallucinations? This topic was examined at length OODAcon 2023, exploring the trust threats and emerging trust wars and looking to identify…
We frequently ask members of the OODA Network for insights into the environment. In this post we get the views of Robert Shaughnessy on the dynamics around AI, national security and critical infrastructure with a focus on near term developments.
As we discussed at OODAcon 2023, historically unprecedented technological disruption is now well underway on an exponentially accelerated timeline. The challenge now is activating positive outcomes while mitigating risk (ideally, with an eye towards proactive containment of unintended consequences by way of preventative strategies). Grand Challenges and Innovation Accelerators will be central to these global…
This post captures the gist of a discussion at OODAcon 2023 between Michael Gibson, author of Paper Belt on Fire and founder of the 1517 Fund, and OODA CEO Matt Devost.
Jake Sotiriadis, Ph.D. is the Director of The Center for Futures Intelligence at the National Intelligence University. Sotiriadis and his co-authors have penned an impressive article on the potential for the use of generative AI in scenario planning and foresight strategy – including a simulation run by the authors to inform the insights of the…
The revolution in Generative AI is one of many factors changing the cybersecurity equation. OODAcon 2023 examined this topic by bringing together leaders who have been making a difference in this domain for years.
After a full year of running the Unrestricted Intelligence application we have over 1100 registered users of the application. Over 20,000 questions have been asked of the system. Building the application Unrestricted Intelligence generated several lessons we provided in early 2033, including many shown here.
As allies and adversaries alike are actively making sizable investments in quantum systems, the U.S. will need to maintain momentum to secure a global leadership position in quantum science. Following is an ecosystem assessment and an update on USG legislative efforts for maintaining American strategic competitiveness through the National Quantum Initiative Act.
Hugging Face has achieved a remarkable breakthrough in AI, introducing vision-language models that run on devices as small as smartphones while outperforming their predecessors that require massive data centers. The company’s new SmolVLM-256M model, requiring less than one gigabyte of GPU memory, surpasses the performance of their Idefics 80B model from just 17 months ago…
Scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical “red line” and has replicated itself. In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves. “Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue…
Gabon will hold a presidential election on April 12. Gabon’s parliament has adopted legislation which allows for a presidential election to be held on April 12. The Cabinet has also authorized the electoral process to begin. However, the legislation that the parliament approved is controversial as it allows currently serving members of the military to…
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has visited Lebanon for the first time in a decade. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has visited Lebanon for the first time in a decade. The visit comes as Lebanon is navigating a ceasefire with Israel and contending with the fall of the Assad Regime in Syria. The visits comes after Lebanon…
Pakistan’s parliament has passed a bill to grant the government more power over social media. Pakistan’s ruling party has passed a bill through the lower house of the parliament to give the government more power over social media. The opposition party boycotted the session in protest of the bill. Advocacy groups has expressed concerns that…
Ukraine is seeking to attract younger recruits to increase enlistment rates. Ukraine is seeking to attract younger recruits to serve in its armed forces. The initiative comes as the war with Russia is entering its 3rd year and manpower levels are getting low. The recruitment campaign seeks to reassure young people that the military will…
PayPal has been fined for exposing New Yorker’s social security numbers. New York has fined PayPal $2 million for failing to protect the data of New Yorker’s. The company was found to be using under-trained staff to manage customer data. This left customer’s personal vulnerable to theft. PayPal has taken steps to better secure customer…
A database containing information on nearly all Georgian citizens was found to be exposed. Researchers discovered a database containing the personal information of nearly Georgian citizens. The database was found to be unsecured and had no clear owner. The database has sense gone missing. Researchers said the data within it appeared to be related to…
The Department of Justice has arrested several individuals related to a North Korean program. The Department of Justice has arrested several individuals who were involved with a North Korean program to trick companies into hiring North Koreans for remote positions. The FBI has said that the operation involved North Korean agents using several different identities…
A Department of Defense contractor has been the victim of a cyberattack. Stark AeroSpace has been the victim of a ransomware attack. The company is a key contractor for the US military and is involved with missile production. The INC ransomware group claimed to have stolen hundreds of documents from the company and is threatening…
Daniel Ek’s body-scanning start-up Neko Health has raised $260mn in new capital to fuel expansion of its clinics to the US, as the Spotify founder aims to build what he called the Apple of healthcare. Ek co-founded Neko in Sweden alongside entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, its chief executive, in 2018, financing the venture for its first…
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and several collaborating institutions have successfully demonstrated a machine-learning technique to accelerate the discovery of materials for film capacitors—crucial components in electrification and renewable energy technologies. The technique was used to screen a library of nearly 50,000 chemical structures to identify a compound with record-breaking…
An international team of researchers have unveiled a hybrid quantum-classical model that successfully designed two promising small molecules to target a protein implicated in cancer, marking a significant step in the use of quantum computing for drug discovery. The study, published in Nature, demonstrated how combining quantum and classical computational tools could enhance the design…
The day after Christmas, a small Chinese start-up called DeepSeek unveiled a new A.I. system that could match the capabilities of cutting-edge chatbots from companies like OpenAI and Google. That alone would have been a milestone. But the team behind the system, called DeepSeek-V3, described an even bigger step. In a research paper explaining how…
If you’re looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans in the world are struggling to create tests that A.I. systems can’t pass. For years, A.I. systems were measured by giving new models a variety of standardized benchmark tests. Many of these tests consisted of…
The US Army is taking the next step in recompeting its multi-billion dollar mixed-reality goggle production contract with an official ask to industry to send in viable options. The service published its new Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Next request for information today, giving interested companies until Feb. 26 to respond with their solutions for…
We may look back at 2024 as the year when LLMs became mainstream, every enterprise SaaS added copilot or virtual assistant capabilities, and many organizations got their first taste of agentic AI. CIOs were given significant budgets to improve productivity, cost savings, and competitive advantages with gen AI. AI at Wharton reports enterprises increased their…
The security of Haiti’s capital is in question as gang violence continues to increase. Rising gang violence in Haiti’s capital has lead to concerns that the government will collapse. Haiti’s interim government has asked for the international police mission to be replaced by a UN backed peacekeeping force in order to restore order. The United…
The M23 rebel group has begun to advance on a major city in eastern Congo. The M23 rebel group has begun to advance on Goma which is one of the largest cities in eastern Congo. The rebel advance was confirmed by Congolese authorities. The advance has also caused thousands of civilians to flee the area…
Israel has launched a series of raids across the West Bank. Israel has launched a series of raids across the West Bank targeting which have targeted several cities and villages. The raids come as a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip has just commenced. There have also been reports of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians across the…
Italy has faced criticism for releasing an individual accused of war crimes. Italy has faced criticism after it released a Libyan warlord. An Italian Court ruled that the arrest of the warlord was illegal and ordered him released. The International Criminal Court and rights groups have criticized Italy for allowing the warlord to return to…
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced considerably in recent years, particularly in the domain of language. However, despite its rapid commodification, its use in biomedical research is still in its infancy. The two main avenues for using large language models (LLMs) are end-user-ready platforms, which are usually provided by large corporations, and custom solutions developed…
Dynamic circuits are powerful tools that give us the ability to measure qubits in the middle of a quantum circuit execution, and then perform classical logical operations within the circuit based on the outcome of those mid-circuit measurements. All of this occurs in the blink of an eye, before the circuit execution is complete, allowing…
The US military is reportedly considering a tactic that involves deploying a submarine near the Chinese coast to release a large number of drones from under the water. These drones would then form a swarm in the air and launch surprise attacks on the People’s Liberation Army fleet during any potential attempt to land in…
Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago. The state-owned utility is betting interest will be strong, with tech giants such as Amazon.com and Microsoft in need of clean energy to…
Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1bn into OpenAI rival Anthropic, boosting its position in the start-up as Silicon Valley titans rush to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. The Alphabet-owned search behemoth had already committed about $2bn to Anthropic and was now increasing its stake in the group, according to four people…
On Tuesday, China has launched its first heterogeneous humanoid robot training centre in Shanghai’s Pudong District. The Humanoid Robot Kylin Training Ground aims to advance cross-disciplinary robotics, including AI and machine learning, and can currently train over 100 robots, with plans to scale up to 1,000 by 2027. The centre will collaborate with local robotics…
President Trump on Tuesday announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence. The venture, called Stargate, adds to tech companies’ significant investments in U.S. data centers, huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. Stargate could eventually invest as much…
The day after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the U.S., Russian President Valdimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met to discuss bilateral ties. Putin and Xi discussed their prospective contacts with their prospective contacts with the new administration, and spoke for over an hour and a half. The two…
Australia has discovered the recent surge in anti-Semitic crime in the country to be the cause of foreign actors paying local criminals to commit anti-Semitic attacks. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that detectives investigating the attacks had concluded that foreign actors were involved. Ongoing inquiries hope to identify “who is paying those criminals,…
Israel’s top general has resigned over the security and intelligence failures on the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi oversaw Israel’s response to the deadly attack in which at least 1,139 people were killed. He is the most senior Israeli official to resign over the assault. In Halevi’s resignation letter,…
Newly appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio began his new position on Tuesday after he was sworn in by Vice President JD Vance. He began his term by meeting with his counterparts from India, Japan, and Australia to discuss issues in the Indo-Pacific. Rubio was Trump’s first cabinet secretary to be confirmed. He has been…
In 2024, Cloudflare observed a large increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The company blocked the largest ever observed DDoS attack during the last three months of 2024. The attack was a 5.6 terabit per second (Tbps) UDP DDoS assault, compared to Cloudflare’s previous record of 3.8 Tbps. This DDoS attack was launched by a…
Researchers have discovered a new supply chain attack that is targeting a South Korean VPN provider. The attack is being conducted by a China-aligned APT group, PlushDaemon. In the attacks, PlushDaemon is compromising the VPN’s legitimate installer and replacing it with a malicious version containing a backdoor. The threat group has been operating since at…
PowerSchool, a California-based education technology giant, was the victim of a cyberattack in late 2024. Now, the company is notifying students and educators that their personal information was compromised in the attack. The incident occurred on December 28 in the company’s Student Information Systems (SIS) environment. No products other than PowerSchool SIS were affected in…
Mirai botnet spinoffs are behind a recent wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks across the globe. One of the spinoffs is exploiting Internet of Things (IoT) device vulnerabilities to establish botnet networks. Another is targeting North American, European, and Asian organizations with DDoS attacks. These campaigns demonstrate Mirai’s ongoing reach. The botnet has spawned variants…
In 2021, a severe snowstorm hit Texas. When it did, the state’s isolated grid could not access surplus power from neighbouring regions, leaving 4.5 million homes and businesses without electricity. To understand why, one has to know that the U.S. electrical grid comprises three major interconnections: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the independent…
Artificial intelligence research is filled with dramatic forecasts. AI will affect almost 40% of jobs around the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. It will increase global GDP by $7 trillion — or 7% — over 10 years, predicts Goldman Sachs. Or it will grow between $17.1 and $25.6 trillion annually, if you prefer…
Investment company RTW Investments has launched a new biotech company called Prolium Bioscience, to advance the development of ICP-B02, a CD20×CD3 bispecific antibody originating from China’s Keymed Biosciences and developed in partnership with InnoCare Pharma. The agreement grants Prolium exclusive rights to develop and commercialise the drug globally in non-oncology indications and outside Asia for…
A deadly, multi-car collision in San Francisco on Sunday evening marks the first time in the U.S. that a truly autonomous vehicle, with no one in the driver’s seat, has been involved in a fatal collision, according to federal transportation records. A self-driving Waymo car, which is not being blamed for the crash, was among…
Quantum computing is a rapidly advancing field that poses significant challenges to the cryptographic foundations of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Here’s a look at the potential risks: Cryptocurrencies rely on cryptographic techniques like elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to secure transactions and wallets. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could leverage Shor’s algorithm to break ECC, exposing private…
Few industries appear to have more potential for disruption by artificial intelligence than the law. Like games such as Go, which DeepMind took on to demonstrate the power of neural networks, legal systems have sets of rules and precedents. Give an AI model enough data and it can pass its bar examination. So the law…
Are you a marathon runner? AI is coming for your job, too. China is organizing what could be one of the weirdest races in history: a half-marathon where 12,000 humans will compete against an army of humanoid robots to see who’s the best long-distance runner. The 21-kilometer race in Beijing’s Daxing district isn’t just another…
This panel at OODAcon 2024 delved into the complex challenges posed by China across cyber threats, propaganda, supply chain vulnerabilities, and intellectual property theft.
The Israeli military has begun raids in the West Bank, describing them as part of a counterterrorism operation. The raids come after Jewish extremists attacked several Palestinian villages in the West Bank on Monday night. These attacks by Jewish extremists occurred just hours after U.S. President Trump removed sanctions on far-right settler groups and dozens…
On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, a pact fighting against climate change which includes all but four countries. Withdrawing from the agreement, the U.S. joins Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only four countries not part of the pact. This is part of the new…
On Sunday, the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza increased dramatically. According to United Nations officials, over 630 trucks entered the strip on the first day of the ceasefire. This is the highest number since the war began more than 15 months ago. U.N. Relief Chief Tom Fletcher said that over 300 of the trucks…
Yemen’s Houthis have stated that if the Gaza ceasefire is fully implemented, they will limit their attacks on commercial vessels to Israel-linked ships only. This announcement may reduce disruptions which have affected world maritime trade for over a year. On Sunday, the Sanaa-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Centre (HOCC) said that it is stopping sanctions against…
A new combination ransomware threat involves malicious actors first email bombing then posing as tech support via Microsoft Teams. More than 15 incidents using these tactics have been observed by Sophos MDR in the past three months. In order to successfully pose as IT support, the attackers spam the targeted employee’s inbox with a large…
HPE is now investigating claims of a data breach after IntelBroker announced on a cybercrime forum that he was selling files from HPE systems. The malicious actor is currently offering to sell source code and other data which he allegedly stole from the tech giant. Additionally, he is offering access to services used by HPE,…
A malicious actor known as DoNot Team has been connected to a new string of highly targeted cyber attacks. The new android malwares is named Tanzeem, which means “organization” in Urdu. Tanzeem is an app which is supposed to function as a chat application, but instead shuts down once installed and necessary permissions are granted.…
Imagine a teammate that works tirelessly, learns continuously, and adapts to your needs. That’s the promise of AI agents. With the ability to observe, plan, and act autonomously, AI agents open a new chapter of end-to-end transformation across industries—streamlining processes, driving data insights, and augmenting human potential like never before. Put simply, AI agents are…
The field of artificial intelligence has long been dominated by the U.S. and Europe. Recently, however, AI research has become more collaborative across countries outside of the West, according to a Rest of World analysis. The findings show that over the past 10 years, AI researchers in non-Western countries are participating in more transnational research…
According to the Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), TEAMER has facilitated testing and refinement for two oscillating water column (OWC) technologies, enabling UH to push the boundaries of wave-powered solutions for ocean observation and shoreline protection. An OWC is a type of wave energy converter (WEC) that harnesses energy from waves. It uses the power…
China dominates the global market for the small, inexpensive drones that have transformed the world’s battlefields—and Beijing hasn’t been shy about keeping the industry under its thumb. For U.S. companies, dependence on China has become untenable, particularly as Beijing shows it is willing to cut off their access to essential supplies. In Taiwan, that spells…
There are more eyes on quantum computing (QC) today than there were on generative AI the day before ChatGPT was released in November 2022. This should give everyone pause as to what is possible for QC in 2025. Agentic AI and QC have dominated headlines in the early days of 2025. On one side, there…
Two new videos from Chinese companies make it clear: it’ll soon be no use trying to run from robots. Rapid upgrades in speed and agility mean robot dogs can now sprint at near-Olympic pace, and humanoids are running smoothly over tough terrain. Let’s start with the humanoid – Unitree’s G1 Bionic. We’ve written quite a…
The next wave of artificial intelligence won’t just generate text, images, code and videos – it will make autonomous decisions and pursue goals. As remarkable as tools like ChatGPT are, they represent just the beginning of AI’s true potential. Enter agentic AI: the next evolution of AI that will fundamentally change how machines interact with…
As Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president dawns, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians see a hard road ahead in their war with Russia, and many have come to hope for a ceasefire without expelling Russian forces. The president-elect boasted on the campaign trail that he would quickly reach a settlement to stop the fighting. Some…
Attacks by rebel National Liberation Army (ELN) fighters in northeast Colombia have forced thousands of people to flee the area following failed attempts to hold peace talks with the rebel ELN. The ELN launched an assault in the northeastern Catatumbo region last Thursday on a rival group composed of ex-members of the now-defunct FARC armed…
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