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Will Roper is the former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics. He is currently on the advisory committee for the Defense Innovation Board and, since he founded the company in 2022, is the CEO of Istari, Inc. To coin a phrase, Roper is part of the “AFWERX Mafia” that has…
An Israeli Defense destroyed a ballistic missile above the earth’s atmosphere, “a notable technological achievement, but one with potentially serious legal and geopolitical implications.”
What should the U.S. learn from some of the challenges faced by the cognitive infrastructure of other countries? Following are global updates (since our initial analysis over the course of 2022) of formal nation-state cognitive infrastructure efforts, for good and for ill, and conditions on the ground in various countries.
National Security policy and cybersecurity innovation at the physical layer – to solve some of the vexing security issues and as a strategic opportunity for technological advantage and American competitiveness – is starting to show an interesting sensemaking pattern across a variety of industry sector and think tank sources. Take a look here.
Major global, multinational announcements and events related to AI governance and safety took place last week. We provide a brief overview here. In an effort to get off the beaten path, however, and move away from these recent nation-state based AI governance efforts, two recent reports are framing some really interesting isues: How Might AI…
An accelerator for Ukrainian unmanned aircrafy systems (UAS), known as Brave1, figures prominently in the efforts at public/private partnership and defense tech innovation in Ukraine. Details here – including how your organization can partner with the effort or submit a solution for consideration by the Brave1 accelerator.
This article illuminates the changing landscape, drawing comparisons and distinctions between it and the journey of Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) officers over the past 20 years. It aims to offer a nuanced commentary on the increased accountability of CISOs.
While cyberwars may continue to take center stage in the global polycrisis, the climate crisis holds pole position, arguably only threatened in its existential threat dominance by negative prognostications of the future impact of artificial intelligence. For now, the climate crisis continues to maifest in a very future now, real world manner – with recent…
While many of the hacktivist groups seem at this point unsophisticated in how they are conducting their operations, there are those that are more capable and more experienced.
Competing cyber capabilities (on a spectrum from nation-state to non-state actors alike) and cyber-based conflict will continue to restructructure, reformulate, discombobulate, and transform the very essence of what power, prestige, international governance, and geopolitical strategy are in the 21st century. Fueled by the Global Polycrisis, Cyberwars will continue to take center stage. Further jagged transitions, strategies, binaries…
Further jagged transitions, strategies, binaries fractures, major developments, and crucial events are compiled here as globalization is transformed and The Global Chip IT Supply Chain Disruption continues astride as functions of the Global Polycrisis.
Further geopolitical players and regions of the global polycrisis (jagged transitions, strategies, binaries fractures, major developments, and crucial events) summarized here include: The Americas, The Northern Frontier of Mexico, The Arctic, and Africa .
Polycrisis: A cluster of interdependent global risks create a compounding effect, such that their overall impact exceeds the sum of their individual parts. In this era of global polycrisis, leaders are also reacting to the fundamental macro economic trend of the last thirty years – which is the fundamental driver of the tetonic shifts in geopolitics…
The future is now. The Bioeconomy in 2023 is showing clear signs of opportunities for advantage created by the exponential disruption of the industrial base (including that of defense), coupled with exponential biotechnology innovation to build the bioeconomy of the future. The State of the Bioeconomy in 2023 includes: Exponential Organizational Ecosystems at Speed and…
The Origins Story and the Future Now of Generative AI – The fast moving impacts and exponential capabilities of generative artificial intelligence over the course of just one year.
In January, Chinese President Xi Jinping gathered the country’s most powerful corporate chieftains including Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and Alibaba’s Jack Ma in a highly publicised meeting. Among them was Wang Xingxing, the 35-year-old CEO of little-known robotics startup Unitree Robotics. His ascendancy to the country’s top industrial ranks underscores the sector’s rising importance in…
After Google and OpenAI offered up AI news on Tuesday, Microsoft has followed with announcements of its own, including details of two “deep reasoning” agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot that it claims are the first of their kind, dubbed Researcher and Analyst, as well as new capabilities for custom AI agents. Researcher relies on OpenAI’s…
Google’s game-changing “Project Astra” live camera and screen sharing AI features are slated to roll out this month, and at least one user now claims to already have access to these powerful new functions in Gemini Live, the company’s live AI chatbot. Two main features have now been seen in the wild, as revealed in…
With President Trump’s recent efforts to take over Greenland, the world’s largest island, his administration will now send Vice President JD Vance to visit a military base there. Officials in Greenland have made clear that they do not want the visit to occur, and have branded it as “aggressive.” Anti-Trump sentiment has been steadily increasing…
The U.S. announced yesterday that both Russia and Ukraine have agreed to stop attacks on vessels in the Black Sea. Additionally, they will halt military strikes on energy infrastructure. These agreements are the most significant step in the war thus far towards a larger ceasefire. However, it is not yet clear when the partial truce…
Reports came out this week revealing that the Indian government had meddled in Canada’s 2022 general election. Canadian intelligence officials have discovered that Indian agents and proxies organized support for Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party leader. The officials said that there is no evidence that Poilievre or those close to him were aware of the…
This week, the U.S. lifted multimillion-dollar bounties which had been out for three senior Taliban officials. The move represents a significant shift by the current administration towards the militants, who were part of deadly attacks during the U.S. war in Afghanistan but have now refashioned themselves as more moderate within the Taliban. The move was…
Researchers have alerted to a critical vulnerability that was recently found in Next.Js, an open-source JavaScript framework. The exploit allows attackers to bypass authorization, gaining access to targeted systems. A patch for the zero-day was released last week, but Vercel, the company that created and maintains Next.js, says that they are not aware of any…
Numotion, the U.S.’s largest provider of wheelchairs and other mobility solutions, has been the victim of a data breach. Almost 500,000 people have been impacted by the incident. Numotion recently discovered that some email accounts of employees were hacked between September and November 2024. Emails in the compromised accounts were determined to contain customer information,…
Chinese state-sponsored hackers have allegedly spent four years inside of the systems of an undisclosed major Asian telecommunications company. Cybersecurity company Sygnia discovered the breach and is tracking the activity under the name Weaver Ant. The company has described the malicious actor as being stealthy and persistent in their act of cyber espionage. This discovery…
New Jersey may not have the best reputation, perhaps sullied by inevitable comparisons to MTV’s Jersey Shore or the Sopranos. But what it does have is its critical role—albeit underrated—as a biotech hub. Competing with South San Francisco and Boston, New Jersey is among the leading global centers for biomedical research, home to some of…
Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups are overhauling their business models as they fight to remain competitive following the widespread adoption of rival DeepSeek’s technology across the country. Zhipu, once considered China’s most prominent large language model start-up, has pinned its hopes on an initial public offering to sustain its cash-intensive growth as it focuses on building…
Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum is raising at least $750 million at a $6 billion pre-money valuation, according to two people familiar with the matter. BlackRock is leading the fundraising effort, which has not yet been completed, one of the people said. Unlike some quantum computing startups using exotic materials, PsiQuantum is aiming to modify traditional…
The second big open weight LLM release from China today – the first being DeepSeek v3-0324. Qwen’s previous vision model was Qwen2.5 VL, released in January in 3B, 7B and 72B sizes. Today’s Apache 2.0 licensed release is a 32B model, which is quickly becoming my personal favourite model size – large enough to have…
Agibot, a Shanghai-based robotics start-up co-founded by former Huawei Technologies “Genius Youth” recruits, is targeting production of up to 5,000 robots this year, according to a senior executive, matching Elon Musk’s Optimus plans. The company, also known as Zhiyuan Robotics, plans to deliver between 3,000 and 5,000 robots this year, a significant increase from the…
Microsoft launched its AI-powered Security Copilot a year ago to bring a chatbot to the cybersecurity space, and now it’s expanding it with AI agents that are designed to autonomously assist overwhelmed security teams. Microsoft is unveiling six of its own AI agents for its Security Copilot, as well as five that have been created…
China has narrowed the AI development gap with the United States to just three months in some areas, because firms such as DeepSeek have worked out how to use chips and apply algorithms more efficiently, the CEO of Chinese startup 01.AI Lee Kai-fu said. Lee, a prominent figure in the global artificial intelligence space and…
Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist from the Atlantic magazine, was accidentally included in a top-secret chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, where Trump administration officials discussed upcoming attacks on the Houthis in Yemen. The Trump administration has confirmed the breach in a statement shared with the media by the National Security Council. Critics are calling…
The United Nations is significantly reducing its international work force in Gaza as a result of Israeli strikes, one of which hit a U.N. compound. The U.S. will reduce its workforce by about one-third in what will be its first drawdown since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war in 2023. Over 280 U.N. staff members…
The U.S. and Russia have completed a 12-hour round of talks in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, attempting to secure a partial ceasefire in Ukraine. A joint statement is expected to be released with the results of the talks on Tuesday. U.S. officials will hold more talks with Ukrainian negotiators soon. President Trump stated that he…
President Trump has announced that any country purchasing oil or gas from Venezuela will be subject to a 25-percent tariff in trade with the United States. These tariffs were announced on Monday morning and will be enacted on April 2. In the announcement, Trump criticized Venezuela for enabling migration to the U.S., additionally attacking the…
In an Interpol-led crackdown, over 300 suspects were arrested across seven African countries in a crackdown on cybercriminal rings. These cybercriminals had been targeting businesses and individuals, affecting over 5,000 entities. The crackdown effort was called Operation Red Card and ran from November 2024 to February 2025. In the operation, almost 2,000 devices were seized.…
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it is going to investigate if Chinese telecommunications equipment and service providers which are considered national security threats are still operating in the US. Some companies on a FCC list of national security risks are believed to still be operating in the U.S. despite their presence on the…
A hacker posted an advertisement attempting to sell millions of data records which they allegedly stole from the company. The actor claimed that they had stolen the data of over 140,000 Oracle Cloud tenants. A cloud security firm analyzed the hacker’s claims and believed that the attack was enacted with a known Oracle product vulnerability.…
Korean chip startup FuriosaAI has turned down an $800 million takeover offer from Meta Platforms Inc., choosing instead to grow the business as an independent company, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Meta had been in discussions about acquiring Seoul-based FuriosaAI since the start of this year, said the person, who asked not…
A compact, deep-sea, cable-cutting device, capable of severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication or power lines, has been unveiled by China – and it could shake up global maritime power dynamics. The revelation marks the first time any country has officially disclosed that it has such an asset, capable of disrupting critical undersea networks.…
A little over a year ago, Joseph Coates was told there was only one thing left to decide. Did he want to die at home, or in the hospital? Coates, then 37 and living in Renton, Wash., was barely conscious. For months, he had been battling a rare blood disorder called POEMS syndrome, which had…
Researchers at QuTech, in collaboration with Fujitsu and Element Six, have demonstrated a complete set of quantum gates with error probabilities below 0.1%. While many challenges remain, being able to perform basic gate operations with errors occurring below this threshold, satisfies an important condition for future large-scale quantum computation. The research was published in Physical…
The Bot Company, the robotics startup founded by former Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt, has raised $150 million in a round led by Greenoaks, according to Reuters, citing unnamed sources. Vogt founded the startup with Paril Jain, who led the AI tech team at Tesla, and former Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek. Vogt did…
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-0324. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek just released the latest version of their enormous DeepSeek v3 model, baking the release date into the name DeepSeek-V3-0324. The license is MIT (that’s new – previous DeepSeek v3 had a custom license), the README is empty and the release adds up a to a total of 641 GB of…
Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter. Ant used domestic chips, including from affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., to train models using the so-called Mixture of Experts machine learning approach,…
China’s armed forces are more ready than ever to surround the self-ruled island of Taiwan, cut it off from the world and try to squeeze it into submission. The more that China prepares, the greater the risk that Beijing decides to shift without notice from drills to war. Taiwan relies on imports for 96% of…
President Trump has indicated he is open to supplying Ukraine with more weapons in exchange for access to the country’s mineral resources. Ukraine is on board, but putting the plan into practice might not be so easy as many of the minerals of interest are in areas under Russian occupation or threatened by Moscow’s advance.…
US President Donald Trump’s outreach to Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on a possible new nuclear deal is an attempt to avoid direct military action, US special envoy Steve Witkoff has said. This comes after Trump sent a letter to the Iranian leadership seeking to engage in talks over Iran’s nuclear activities and warning…
An Israeli air strike on a hospital in southern Gaza has killed at least two people, including a senior Hamas official and a 16-year-old boy. Israel’s military said the attack had been carried out with “precise munitions in order to mitigate harm”, following an “extensive intelligence-gathering process”. Israel has killed four members of Hamas’s political…
Apps like Signal, WhatsApp, Confide, Telegram and others use encryption to scramble messages so only the intended end-user can read them, and they typically aren’t stored on government servers. Some automatically delete messages, and some prevent users from screenshotting or sharing messages. While such apps promise increased security and privacy, they often skirt open records…
A ransomware group known as Cloak has claimed responsibility for a disrupting cyberattack on the Virginia Attorney General Office’s systems. The incident became public in mid-February, when the state’s top prosecutorial agency told employees that nearly all its computer systems, internal services and applications, and website were down, and that internet connectivity and VPN access…
Companies the US has said are linked to the Chinese military are a bigger part of the US economy than I thought, according to a new report. One-third of the US supply chain relies on firms that the Pentagon categorizes as “Chinese military companies,” according to a report published this week by Boston-based cybersecurity firm…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday walked back comments he made in January, when he cast doubt on whether useful quantum computers would hit the market in the next 15 years. At Nvidia’s “Quantum Day” event, part of the company’s annual GTC Conference, Huang admitted that his comments came out wrong. “This is the first…
The U.S. Department of Treasury announced today that it has removed sanctions against Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer used by North Korean Lazarus hackers to launder hundreds of millions stolen in multiple crypto heists. The Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022 for helping launder over $7 billion since…
Today, we’re excited to announce AI Labyrinth, a new mitigation approach that uses AI-generated content to slow down, confuse, and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and other bots that don’t respect “no crawl” directives. When you opt in, Cloudflare will automatically deploy an AI-generated set of linked pages when we detect inappropriate bot activity,…
Commercial quadcopters have been on the mainstream gadget scene for 15 years, proliferating across industries and among hobbyists. There’s a swanky DJI store on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, and you probably have a neighbor, not to mention a roofer, who owns a drone. So when researchers at the embedded-device security firm Red Balloon started…
Global competition is heating up among large language models (LLMs), with the major players vying for dominance in AI reasoning capabilities and cost efficiency. OpenAI is leading the pack with ChatGPT and DeepSeek, both of which pushed the boundaries of artificial intelligence. Amid this AI arms race, OpenAI’s latest trademark application with the United States…
In the world of cybersecurity and privacy, hearing the words AI and Gmail uttered in the same breath is usually going to be a cause for concern. After all, we are constantly warned about the dangers of dangerous AI-powered attacks locking people out of their Gmail accounts and the difficulty users have in getting genuine…
Indonesia has enacted a new law which allows officers to hold more positions in the government. Indonesia’s Parliament has approved a law which allows officers to hold more positions within the government without resigning from the military. The Parliament unaminously approved the law. This repeals parts of a law passed in 2024 which restrict military…
Strikes have continued in Gaza following Israel’s resumption of hostitlies. Strikes in Gaza have continued since Israeli’s resumption of hostitlitles. Hamas has responded with rocket attacks into Israel. Israel has also enforced a blockade around Gaza City. Internal divisions within the Israeli government have also begun to grow after the country’s Attorney General ruled the…
M23 rebels have continued their offensive in eastern Congo. M23 rebels have continued their offensive in eastern Congo. The group has captured a mineral-rich minning town in its latest offensive. Calls for a ceasefire have increased as the scale of the conflict has grown. This latest offensive has cut off several supply routes for the…
Russia and Ukraine have carried out a large scale prisoner exchange. Russia and Ukraine have carried out one of the largest prisoner exchanges of the war. This exchange saw 175 prisoners swapped by each country. This exchange has been planned for several weeks and is not related to on-going talks for a ceasefire. Read more:…
Microsoft’s recently revealed quantum computer was dealt another blow this week, as data presented by the firm at the world’s biggest annual gathering of physicists failed to convince researchers that the device works as advertised. “Thanks for waking up early and coming out today. I appreciate you all in the back,” said Chetan Nayak at…
Nvidia will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on chips and other electronics manufactured in the US over the next four years, its chief executive has said, as the company tilts its supply chain back from Asia in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The huge spending projection from the world’s most valuable semiconductor…
Mercedes-Benz is trialling using humanoid robots made by U.S.-based company Apptronik for tasks such as moving components to the production line or carrying out quality checks, the latest automaker to experiment with robots in manufacturing. The German company has invested a low double-digit million-euro sum in Apptronik, a Texas-based firm founded in 2016 that is…
According to CorPower Ocean, the WACE (Wave energy AI-based Control Enhancement) project, running until November 2025, aims to optimize performance and control strategies for wave energy converters (WECs). This follows CorPower Ocean’s recent €32 million Series B funding round to advance its technology towards commercialization. The investment came after its full-scale C4 device withstood record-breaking…
As drones continue to reshape the nature of warfare, the limitations on range and power are becoming the difference between success and defeat on the battlefield. Now, an Israel-based drone company and U.S. manufacturing company Mach Industries are working together to co-produce hydrogen fuel cell powered drones, which offer big advantages in range but have…
Every time you type a question into ChatGPT, you are, probably without knowing it, making several monopolies richer. Actually, it’s no different if you use one of ChatGPT’s many competitors. Nearly all of them use chips from Nvidia Corp., which sells around 92% of the particular components — called artificial intelligence accelerators — that make…
OpenAI is a startup, which means we don’t have real data about the business. At the same time, OpenAI is clearly one of the defining companies of this era, and potentially historically significant. We cover all of this and more, including: Altman’s background, the OpenAI origin story, and the genesis of ChatGPT, which changed everything.…
Nigeria’s President has suspended the govenor and declared a state of emergency in an oil-rich state. Nigeria’s President has declared a state of emergency and suspended the govenor and lawmakers of the oil-rich Rivers state. This comes after a serires of attacks against oil pipelines in the region. The govenor was also facing an impeachment…
Taiwan’s President has annouced an increase in defense spending. Taiwan’s President has annouced that the new defense budget will see an increase which will bring military spending to 3% of GDP. Taiwan plans to modernize its forces and replace ageing equipment. The move comes as US officials have critized the country’s military prepardness and China…
Germany has approved increased spending for defense and infrastrcuture. Germany’s parliament has given its approval to changes to the Country’s debt rules. The proposal was brought as part of a broader plan to stimulate the economy and increase the Country’s defense capabilities. The proposal also allows for increased aid to Ukraine to be added to…
Germany has reopended its embassy in Syria. Germany has reopened its Embassy in Syria after closing it 13 years ago. The German Foreign Ministry said that it was important for Europe to have a presence in the country. The Ministry has said that the embassy will not have a large staff or a permant ambassador.…
A Chinese search engine operater has denied a data breach occured after personal information was exposed. The Chinese search engine operater has denied that a data breach occured after an executive’s daughter posted the personal information of users online. The company has said that executive’s are not allowed to access the data of users. The…
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