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There are no coincidences: The recent arrival of 4 B-52 bombers in Guam – along with the Marines and the official opening in January of a reactivated, expanded U.S. military base on the U.S. territory – might have something to do with a recent cyberattack on the mobile, television, internet, and telephone services of the…
It has been one year since the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA) was signed into law – and only a couple of weeks since the release of the 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy. In the shadow of these cybersecurity milestones, this month CISA announced two major initiatives to address the ongoing,…
On March 27th, the White House released an Executive Order on Prohibition on Use by the United States Government of Commercial Spyware that Poses Risks to National Security, “which has been in development for months, seeks to address a growing number of incidents of spyware abuse abroad as well as reports of it being used improperly…
While the recent EO ban on commercial spyware use within the USG included a list of previous directives and legislative activity that lead to the issuance of the EO, the real back story is found at The Pegasus Project – the global investigative reporting collaboration which broke the story on the NSO Group and the…
Randall Fort is a seasoned security, intelligence, and technology leader known for his grasp of enterprise mission needs – and his ability to track the rapidly advancing capabilities of technology to meet those needs. His background includes time as the Director of Global Security for Goldman Sachs. He also led one of the most highly…
A Chatham House Rules discussion of the recent Silicon Valley Bank failure and what lies ahead from the March OODA Network Member Call.
Beijing recently released a white paper, China’s Law-Based Cyberspace Governance in the New Era, in which it presents its views on the future of the Internet, emphasizing the importance of a rules-based approach and quickly linking China’s successful development to the adherence of such values. The white paper stresses key areas to include but are not limited to…
The “Why and How” of the DoD Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) We are sensitive to the time management constraints of our members and readers, but if your organization has a stake in the evolving national security investment and American competitiveness ecosystem, this archived video provides an up-to-the-minute update from a major player organization and…
Understanding how COVID-19 emerged is of great importance, and the US Intelligence Community (IC) has produced some of the most important assessments of this topic. Much of the recent coverage of the Intelligence Community’s assessment of the origin of COVID-19 has focused on which agencies hold which view. But the IC’s report has a lot…
The signal from the future featured in this post, at least for this writer, is a definitive data point about the accelerated onslaught of the climate crisis. More so than any of the information contained in the most recent report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the arrival of this signal in…
OODA hosts a monthly video call to help members optimize opportunities and reduce risk to discuss items of common interest to our membership. These highly collaborative sessions are always a great way for our members to meet and interact with each other while talking about topics like global risks, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, and current or…
This week, the Washington Post reports that China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladamir Putin ended their three-day meeting in Moscow as signatories of “two agreements, one affirming their partnership and one setting out plans for economic cooperation, which they discussed at a joint news conference,” including, as the WSJ reported, “ten documents on economic cooperation…
On October 13, 2022, HAMAS acknowledged that it had established a cyber unit dubbed the “al-Quds Electronic Army” as early as October 2014. Since its inception and over the course of several years, the group executed numerous cyber attacks against Israeli security force and army organizations. The targets disrupted included command-and-control systems of kibbutz communities in the Gaza Envelope,…
Starting at 10 AM EST, Wednesday, March 23, 2023: Full Hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce – “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms”
The evolving responsibilities of board members to cyber security and cyber risk were highlighted as a theme in the OODA Almanac 2023. While cybersecurity has been a focus of corporate boardrooms in the past, it is about to become a required focus as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeks to have companies identify a…
The Mideast and Turkey are suffering from a sharp increase in the amount of cyber threats. In the past year, organizations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey experienced on average over 10 attacks. Many experts expect that this next year will be much worse. These countries are being pressured to modernize their…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is warning the healthcare sector about Trinity ransomware attacks. Trinity is a relatively new type of ransomware and was first spotted in May of this year. The ransomware adds a “.trinitylock” extension to encrypted files. A leak site contains a list of Trinity’s victims. The ransomware…
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, a new frontier is emerging that promises to reshape our world in ways we can scarcely imagine. This frontier is Quantum AI, the powerful fusion of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. It’s a field that’s generating immense excitement and speculation across industries, from finance to healthcare, and it’s not…
Hugging Face has released an innovative new Python package that allows developers to create AI-powered web apps with just a few lines of code. The tool, called “OpenAI-Gradio,” simplifies the process of integrating OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs) into web applications, making AI more accessible to developers of all skill levels. The release signals a…
In a series of joint reports published since 2023, we have argued that the world is undergoing the fastest technological and scientific revolution in human history. Given the profound implications for our country, affecting everything from the economy and public services to security and the UK’s place in the world, we have urged all political…
When investors poured $6.6 billion into OpenAI last week, they seemed largely unbothered by the latest drama, which recently saw the company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, along with chief research officer Bob McCrew and Barret Zoph, a vice president of research, abruptly quit. And yet those three departures were just the latest in an…
John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for discoveries that helped computers learn more in the way the human brain does, providing the building blocks for developments in artificial intelligence. The award is an acknowledgment of A.I.’s growing significance in the way people live and work.…
Mozambique’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections are set to take place on Wednesday. Mozambique’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections are scheduled to begin on Wednesday. The elections take place against a backdrop of instability in the country’s northern provinces caused by a long running jihadist insurgency. A series of financial scandals has also harmed the ruling party’s…
Ukraine has targeted a key Russian oil terminal in Crimea. The Ukrainian General Staff announced that they carried out a successful strike on a Russian oil terminal in Crimea. This strike is reported to be part of a strategy of destroying Russia’s ability to supply its forces in Ukraine. Ukraine has continued to request permission…
An investigation has begun into the cause of the sinking of New Zealand naval vessel. On Sunday, a New Zealand naval vessel sank near Samoa. Divers have inspected the wreck of the sunken New Zealand naval vessel and found no fuel to be leaking. The Navy said that there was no lose of life because…
Corruption allegations have emerged against members of Haiti’s transitional presidential council. Three members of Haiti’ transitional presidential council have been accused of corruption. The members have said they will not step down, but the council has modified its rules so that they will not hold the rotating presidency. The council has said they are focused…
ADT has announced their systems were hacked. ADT has announced that its systems were hacked on October 2nd. This is the second hack of ADT’s systems this year with an earlier attack occurring in August. ADT has said that customer data was likely not accessed, but employee accounts were compromised. There is currently no information…
American Water Works has been forced to shutdown operations due to a cyber attack. American Water Works has suspended some operations due to a cyber attack. American Water Works provides water services in 24 states. The company said that its water treatment facilities were not compromised by the attack. The company has said that it…
Reports indicate that major telecommunications companies have been compromised by Chinese hackers. Major US telecommunications companies have potentially been compromised by a Chinese linked group. The Salt Typhoon APT has allegedly compromised the companies by gaining access to the system the companies use to execute wire taps for the US government. The companies did not…
Russia’s state media was shut down by a cyberattack. A cyberattack on Monday shutdown the website and broadcast of the Russian state media company. The Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that an attack had taken place. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Ukraine was responsible for the attack. Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/russian-state-media-company-hit-by-unprecedented-cyberattack-kremlin-says-2024-10-07/
Open-source large language models (LLMs) continue to revolutionize the cybersecurity landscape, serving as a strong catalyst for increasing innovation and enabling startups and established vendors alike to accelerate time-to-market. From new generative AI applications to advanced security tools, these models are proving the foundation of the future of gen AI-based cybersecurity. Open-source models gaining traction…
The pipeline from OpenAI to Anthropic remains strong as ever, with cofounder Durk Kingma becoming the latest high-profile figure to make the move. On Tuesday, Kingma, one of the lesser-known cofounders of OpenAI, joined Anthropic, best known for developing the rival AI chatbot Claude. In a series of posts on X, Kingma revealed that he’ll…
It was quite a surprise when Adam Selipsky stepped down as the CEO of Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit. What was maybe just as much of a surprise was that Matt Garman succeeded him. Garman joined Amazon as an intern in 2005 and became a full-time employee in 2006, working on the early AWS products.…
During a visit last month to the world’s first humanoid robot factory, the latest edition of Agility Robotics Inc.’s bot lay flat on a table. There were shiny, stainless-steel actuators at its shoulder and hip joints, along with collections of circuits and sensors destined for the head and torso, all connected by neatly ordered sets…
Big tech’s AI champ is looking a little battered these days. Microsoft was an early mover on generative artificial intelligence, and investors benefited handsomely. The software company’s stock surged nearly 57% last year in its best annual performance since 1999, according to FactSet data. But the cold splash of reality that AI stocks have received…
US Vice President Kamala Harris has skirted a question on whether Benjamin Netanyahu can be considered a “close ally” of the United States, as critics accuse the Israeli prime minister of stymying Washington’s stated goal of de-escalation in the Middle East. In an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Harris said the US has been…
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan has said at least two of its citizens were killed and a third injured after their convoy was attacked near Karachi airport. In the statement early on Monday, the Chinese Embassy condemned the “terrorist attack” and requested “the Pakistani side to thoroughly investigate the attack, severely punish the perpetrators, and…
Israel intensified its fight on two fronts Sunday, stepping up operations against Hamas in Gaza and carrying out more airstrikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the region braced for Israel to hit back at Iran for its barrage of ballistic missiles last week. The Israeli military appeared to label the vast majority of northern Gaza…
Diplomats thought both Israel and Hezbollah supported a call for a temporary cease-fire. Then Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader, Mr. Nasrallah. Officials from the United Nations, France and the United States had drafted a statement calling for a three-week cease-fire aimed at preventing a broader conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, and shared it with the two…
Apple plans to release its highly marketed Apple Intelligence on October 28th, together with an iOS 18 update. Since Apple announced its in-house AI at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the tech world has been buzzing about its features and possible release date. Apple Intelligence was expected to roll out with the company’s latest iPhone…
Comcast says over 230,000 customers were affected by a data breach at Financial Business and Consumer Solutions. Initially disclosed in April 2024, the incident was discovered on February 26, 2024, but the attackers had access to FBCS’s network for two weeks before that and could view and exfiltrate certain data, including personal information. In a…
Okta has resolved a vulnerability that could have allowed attackers to bypass sign-on policies and gain access to applications. The issue, Okta says in a security advisory, was introduced on July 17 and only affects Okta Classic users, under certain conditions. The configured conditions could include device-type restrictions, authentication requirements defined outside the Global Session…
Russian authorities this week announced the arrest of 96 individuals for their suspected ties with recently disrupted anonymous cryptocurrency exchanges. The arrested individuals are believed to be linked to the UAPS and Cryptex exchanges, which were disrupted last week by law enforcement in the US and the Netherlands. UAPS was allegedly created and operated by…
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) has launched the Critical Technology Credit Program to support emerging defense technologies by providing much-needed financing for small and mid-sized companies. Why It Matters: Bridging the “valley of death” between research and commercialization is a significant challenge for defense tech startups. The OSC’s credit program…
OpenAI introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT on Thursday: an interface it calls “canvas.” The product opens a separate window, beside the normal chat window, with a workspace for writing and coding projects. Users can generate writing or code directly in the canvas, then highlight sections of the work to have the model…
Cumulative losses from cryptocurrency hacks exceeded $120 million in September, marking 2024’s second-lowest monthly loss from hacks after April. Centralized exchanges remain frequent targets for crypto hackers, leading to significant losses month after month. In September, crypto exchanges BingX and Indodax accounted for more than half of the losses. Blockchain investigation firm Peckshield noted that…
Artificial intelligence company Cohere unveiled significant updates to its fine-tuning service on Thursday, aiming to accelerate enterprise adoption of large language models. The enhancements support Cohere’s latest Command R 08-2024 model and provide businesses with greater control and visibility into the process of customizing AI models for specific tasks. The updated offering introduces several new features…
As expected, NVIDIA recently ventured into the AI landscape with powerful open-source multimodal large language models (LLMs) dubbed NVLM 1.0 with the flagship model, NVLM-D-72B featuring up to 72 billion parameters. The AI model performs exceptionally in vision-language tasks and enhances text accuracy. Compared to other proprietary models, NVIDIA’s NVLM-D-72B AI model’s accuracy and performance improve…
Google is bringing some big AI updates to its main Search platform and Google Lens visual search software. On Thursday the company announced it will start rolling out AI-organized search results pages for users in the US. The tech giant also says it’s bringing the ability to search for information about live videos shot in…
In February, the artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI unveiled technology called Sora that let people generate photorealistic videos — like woolly mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow — simply by typing a sentence into a box on a computer screen. Because of concerns over how the technology might be misused, and perhaps the high cost of…
New NATO Secretary-General reiterates support for Ukraine. Mark Rutte, NATO’s new Secretary-General, has made his first trip to Ukraine. During this visit, he reiterated the Alliance’s commitment to supporting Ukraine. Rutte also pledged to work with the next US President regardless of who is elected. Rutte and Ukrainian President Zelensky discussed the Alliance’s plans to…
The Dominican Republic has announced plans to deport up to 10,000 Haitians per week. The Dominican Republic has announced that they intend to deport up to 10,000 Haitians per week. The announcement comes after the government previously warned that if the UN Mission in Haiti failed, they would take drastic action. The Dominican Republic has…
Dockworkers union suspends strike. The International Longshoremen’s Association has announced that they have reached a deal with the United States Maritime Alliance to suspend their strike. This comes after a three day strike which disrupted port operations across the Gulf and East Coasts. The strike has been suspended until January 15th to allow for a…
Israel has issued additional evacuation warnings across Lebanon. Israel has issued additional evacuation warnings to Lebanese civilians living outside of the United Nations buffer zone. The expanded warnings indicate that Israel is likely planning to expand the scope of their military operations. The war in southern Lebanon has so far displaced nearly 1.2 million people.…
Microsoft has updated Defender to automatically detect unsafe WiFi. Microsoft has announced that Defender has been updated to detect unsafe WiFi connections. Defender has also been updated with the ability to create a VPN connection between a user’s computer and Microsoft’s servers if an unsafe connection is detected. This feature has been available to some…
The Dutch Government has stated that a hack of a police database was conducted by a state actor. The Dutch Justice Minister has said that a hack of a police database was conducted by a foreign government, but declined to name a specific nation. The database contained information on all employees of the Dutch police…
US authorities have sized domains linked to phishing campaigns. The FBI in partnership with Microsoft has seized 41 domains and shutdown another 66. The domains were linked to phishing campaigns that were run by groups associated with the Russian Federal Security Service. The phishing campaigns were aimed at US companies, former employees of the US…
Russian authorities have arrested individuals involved with a large cyber crime organization. The Investigative Committee of Russia in Moscow has announced that they have broken up a large cyber crime organization. They announced that 96 individuals were detained. Russian authorities said that the group operated a payment system called UAPS and a crypto exchange called…
While large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly effective at complicated tasks, there are many cases where they can’t get the correct answer on the first try. This is why there is growing interest in enabling LLMs to spot and correct their mistakes, also known as “self-correction.” However, current attempts at self-correction are limited and…
Google initially rolled out Gemini Live, its conversational AI voice chat, in just one language: English. Today, the company is expanding the service to a handful of other languages, starting with French, German, Portuguese, Hindi, and Spanish. And while support for these languages does appear to be imminent for a lot of people, the company…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” that demand for the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence chip Blackwell is “insane.” “Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first,” Huang said during the interview, which aired on Wednesday. Shares of Nvidia were up about 3% on Thursday morning. Blackwell,…
While ChatGPT created a new way to use our devices, technology is more than just what we see on our screens. Research in the realm of spatial artificial intelligence and robotics is developing as we speak, and it’s bringing the technological focus back into the physical world. “When we’re talking about AI, people are mostly talking…
Corporate assistants have long been the keepers of company gossip and secrets. Now artificial intelligence is taking over some of their tasks, but it doesn’t share their sense of discretion. Researcher and engineer Alex Bilzerian said on X last week that, after a Zoom meeting with some venture capital investors, he got an automated email from…
OpenAI has asked investors to avoid backing rival start-ups such as Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, as it secures $6.6bn in new funding and seeks to shut out challengers to its early lead in generative artificial intelligence. The San Francisco-based group, led by chief executive Sam Altman, announced on Wednesday it had completed its latest…
The United Kingdom has decided to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The deal will also guarantee that the important Diego Garcia U.S. military base will remain for the coming future. The U.S. base will be guaranteed operation for the next 99 years. The base helps prevent the Indian Ocean from “being…
According to a new report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 700,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti. More than half of these people are children. This is a 22 percent rise from June. Haiti is facing unrest and instability as powerful armed groups and gangs fight for influence and control in the…
Israel has barred United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared Guterres “persona non grata” and said that he failed to properly respond to Iran’s missile attack on Israel. Katz additionally accused Guterres of “backing terrorists, rapists, and murders,” calling him “a stain on the history of the…
The Ukrainian town of Vuhledar has been claimed by Russia after almost three years of fighting over the territory. Yesterday, Ukraine announced that it was pulling the last of its troops out of the ruins of the town. Vuhledar is a mining town that has been an important defense base in eastern Ukraine throughout the…
A Chinese threat group, Mustang Panda, is likely behind a recent series of cyber-espionage attacks. The attacks give the hackers remote access to victim machines. The operations begin with a malicious email, ultimately using Visual Studio Code to disperse Python malware. This malware gives the actors access to the infected machines. In the campaign, a…
In August 2024, Andariel, a North Korean state-sponsored actor, targeted three different U.S. organizations. Andariel is associated with the infamous Lazarus Group and is also tracked as APT45. The attacks were likely financially motivated but were unsuccessful in deploying ransomware on the organizations’ networks. Andariel is part of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). In…
A critical Zimbra vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45519, is being actively exploited by hackers. The flaw allows attackers to execute commands on vulnerable installations. These attacks began on September 28. Zimbra Collaboration, created by Synacor, is a “cloud-hosted collaboration software and email platform.” The vulnerability is an operating system command injection vulnerability. It can be exploited…
Google is working on artificial intelligence software that resembles the human ability to reason, similar to OpenAI’s o1, marking a new front in the rivalry between the tech giant and the fast-growing startup. In recent months, multiple teams at Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been making progress on AI reasoning software, according to people with knowledge…
OpenAI is betting that artificial intelligence-powered assistants will “hit the mainstream” by next year as tech groups, including Google and Apple, race to bring so-called AI agents to consumers. AI agents, which can reason and complete complex tasks for people, have become the newest front in the battle between tech companies as they look to…
Hollywood in the 1970s and ’80s often imagined a world where technology is so evolved it is almost human, from “Star Wars,” in which R2-D2 and C-3PO are not just tools but also friends to humans, to “The Terminator,” in which an assassin-robot is disguised as a human. Science fiction is about to become reality.…
OpenAI has completed a deal to raise over $6.5 billion in new funding, giving the artificial intelligence company a more than $150 billion valuation, and bolstering its efforts to build the world’s leading generative AI technology. The deal is one of the largest-ever private investments, and makes OpenAI one of the three largest venture-backed startups,…
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