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Competing cyber capabilities (on a spectrum from nation-state to non-state actors alike) and cyber-based conflict will continue to restructure, reformulate, and transform the very essence of what power, prestige, international governance, and geopolitical strategy are in the 21st century – and large language models are the new force multiplier. Microsoft and OpenAI have quantified the…
Too many times the world has been caught flat-footed by technological advances. With generative AI there has been ample expectation of its capabilities for both good and bad not to be prepared for what is already materializing.
Recent restrictions on rice exports by India prompt this analysis of the on the ground conditions of global food insecurity, returning to some of the themes we explored in The Future of Food (In)Security and Agriculture Cybersecurity: Grain Hoarding, Rice Shortages and the War in Ukraine. In 2024, we are on the lookout for technological…
According to the Robot Report, The International Federation of Robotics recently “noted that the stock of operational robots around the world attained a new record of about 3.9 million units in 2022. The average robot density, or number of robots per 10,000 human workers, rose to 151 and the trend of using artificial intelligence in robotics and…
Consistent with our recent analysis of government regulation (or overregulation?) of AI, and the introduction of the concept of the “decontrol” of AI, the recent launch of the AI Safety Institute (organized as a public/private consortium) begs the same questions: although a public/private collaboration, is the AI Safety Institute an extension of an overall climate…
As noted in the first post in this series, it has become increasingly clear that the revolution in biological science will impact most every sector of the economy.
The near term opportunities and risks of the space economy and Space Force, innovation, and national security were discussed at length at OODAcon 2023. We return here to the two panels from the conference and a compilation of our space coverage as we head into a year in space ripe with innovation, critical missions, and…
ecently, more than 35 nations have signed a new international agreement to collaborate on reigning in the “hacker for hire” commercial market, in which private interests sell tools and services to support offensive cyber activities.
Various perspectives – on Latin American nearshoring and Indo-Pacific “friendshoring” with allied nations in an effort to secure and shorten global supply chains – as well as the emergence of “China +1” – four emergent manufacturing hubs – can be found here in this post.
In a previous post we asked “Is the US Government Over-Regulating Artificial Intelligence?” We followed it with some historical context and a summary of today’s government controls in “Regulations on Government Use of AI.” This post builds on those two to examine an example on how a decontrol mindset can help speed AI solutions into…
The Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) vehicle was also used recently by the Department of Defense (DoD) to award Advanced Technology International (ATI) “to serve as the consortium manager for the Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC). This DIBC OTA will enable rapid research and allow access to commercial solutions for defense requirements and innovations from industry,…
In previous posts in this series we reviewed foundational knowledge on bioengineering we recommend all business leaders possess and major topics that will impact the healthcare industry. In this post we go beyond healthcare to examine topics around application of biological sciences to other industries.
The Department of Defense (DoD) launched the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Investment Program (DBMIP) Which seeks “to strengthen domestic supply chains and sustain America’s global prominence in biotechnology. The DBMIP will execute investments through the Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), which helps lower barriers to allow DoD to work more expeditiously with…
Is your head still spinning from all the AI news of late? It will all seem so quaint when the useful humanoid robots arrive.
The future “architecture of space” will be distributed across a broad vision, inspired by science fiction, of what space can and will be in the future. Government agency-led contributions to this “architecture of space” will figure prominently – like the recent Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements – totalling $2.5 billion -…
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…
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launched a standalone artificial intelligence app Tuesday, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and marking the latest app to release as part of the larger AI race. Meta announced the launch of the app, which features an AI chatbot and a “discover” feed that allows users to see how others…
Japan and the Philippines are pledging to deepen the security ties between the two countries, amidst territorial disputes with China. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited the Philippines this week, his first time since assuming office, to discuss the countries’ relationship with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The two leaders have agreed to begin discussing…
The United Kingdom has reportedly joined the US in a strike against the Houthis in Yemen, for the first time since US President Trump has returned to office. Britain’s military announced that it had carried out a joint operation with the US forces overnight. The American military has not yet commented on the operation, but…
Russia has rejected Ukraine’s proposal to extend its unilateral three-day ceasefire in early May. On Tuesday, a Russian spokesperson confirmed that the Kremlin had seen Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer to extend the deal, and that the offer was unlikely to occur. The truce will occur from May 8 to 10. The dismissal comes as…
As Iran’s talks with the US over its nuclear program are progressing, Iran is accusing Israel of trying to hamper the negotiations. On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was influencing what US President Trump was allowed to discuss in the talks. The third round of negotiations between…
VeriSource Services, an employee benefit administrative services provider, is in the process of notifying around four million individuals that they are victims of a data breach on the company. The personal information of the millions of individuals was stolen. Compromised data includes dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses. Although VeriSource does not believe…
France is claiming that APT28, a Russian state-sponsored hacking group, has targeted around a dozen French organizations, including ones connected to the country’s government. APT28 has been active since at least 2004 and is connected to the Russian GRU and known to target European and American government, military, energy, and media organizations. French cybersecurity agency…
A recently released SentinelOne report states that cybersecurity vendors themselves are being faced by an overwhelming number of cyberattacks. The vendors not only have to protect their customers from these attacks, but themselves as well. Top threats to cybersecurity vendors include ransomware, Chinese government-sponsored hackers, and North Korean IT workers posing as job applicants. Although…
CISA has issued a warning about the ongoing exploitation of Broadcom, Commvault, and Qualitia product vulnerabilities. Broadcom’s recently patched flaw, CVE-2025-1976, is a code injection vulnerability that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. Commvault’s webserver vulnerability, CVE-2025-3928, can be exploited by a remote attacker. CVE-2025-42599, a buffer overflow vulnerability in Qualitia products, can…
Chinese tech company Alibaba on Monday released Qwen3, a family of AI models that the company claims can match and, in some cases, outperform the best models available from Google and OpenAI. Most of the models are — or soon will be — available for download under an “open” license on AI dev platform Hugging…
The era of fully automated strike drones are within technological reach, according to German drone start-up Stark, as the race to develop weapons capable of selecting and striking targets independently heats up. The war in Ukraine has accelerated investment in drone technology, with some companies touting their precision and lethality at a fraction of the…
The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has entered a new arena: satellite internet. Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and…
United Parcel Service Inc. is in talks with robotics startup Figure AI Inc. to use humanoid robots for some tasks in the logistics giant’s network, according to people familiar with the matter. UPS and Figure began having discussions about a partnership last year and have continued talks in recent months, said the people, who asked…
The U.S. cannot afford to fall behind China in the race to a working quantum computer, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote Monday. President Donald Trump and the U.S. government need to prioritize funding for quantum research, or China could surpass the U.S., endangering economic competitiveness and security, Smith wrote. “While most believe that the United…
Hugging Face, the startup best known for the AI developer platform of the same name, is selling a programmable, 3D-printable robotic arm that can pick up and place objects and perform a few other basic chores. Called the SO-101, the arm is the follow-up to Hugging Face’s previous robotic arm, the SO-100, released last year.…
Meta Platforms is launching a stand-alone artificial intelligence app and going head-to-head with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The new AI assistant offering will run on Meta’s Llama AI model, the company said Tuesday. It includes a Discover feed that shows how others are interacting with the tool and offer prompts. The news confirms previous CNBC reporting…
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney won a new term on Monday night in a turnaround moment for Canada’s Liberal Party. The party has surged in popularity following US President Trump’s aggressive stance towards Canada and threats to make the country the US’s 51st state. By winning a majority of seats in the House of Commons,…
On Monday, the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service made the announcement that he would step down from his position in June. The resignation ends his clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after multiple of his aides were accused of impropriety dealings with Qatar. Netanyahu had fired the head chief, Ronen Bar, back in…
Spain, Portugal, and parts of southwestern France were hit with widespread power outages on Monday, halting public transport, traffic, and flights. Residents were unable to perform basic functions, such as withdrawing cash from an ATM, as authorities worked to restore the electric grid. The cause of the outages are not yet known, but authorities have…
Cloudflare has reported that it mitigated 20.5 million DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2025, a 358% increase compared to the same time just one year ago in 2024. Their report highlights a significant rise in the number and size of DDoS attacks, seeing some of the largest ever recorded in Q1 of 2025.…
A recent Veeam report has quantified the refinement and pervasiveness of ransomware attacks, reporting that the percentage of companies impacted by ransomware attacks has declined from 75% to 69%. Despite the decline, the threat remains substantial, and ransomware attacks still pose a significant challenge to global organizations. Organizations must learn to recover more swiftly and…
A just-patched vulnerability in SAP’s NetWeaver Visual Composer Web-based software modeling tool is being actively exploited by attackers. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-31324, has a maximum CVSS score of 10 and affects all SAP NetWeaver 7.xx versions. The zero-day allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to upload files with no restrictions. Over 450 Internet exposed instances are vulnerable,…
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