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The Next Launch Attempt Window is Saturday, March 11 from 13:00 to 16:00 ET.
Bitcoin-based ordinal inscriptions are the “new, new thing” and an opportunity to frame and make more accessible issues surrounding designing, quantifying, and measuring exponential innovation. To start: the recent growth metrics of what are being described as the “NFTs of Bitcoin” – Ordinal Inscriptions aka Ordinals – from Jason Nelson at Decrypt: “On Monday, February…
The Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community is an unclassified report released each year concurrent with Congressional testimony to Congress by the Director of National Intelligence. The report focuses on what the ODNI believes are the most direct, serious threats to the U.S. during the next year. OODA leverages the details of this…
Wesley Spurlock, Senior Advisor, Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), reached out via email recently with the following update: “…the Administrator of the Small Business Administration and the Secretary of Defense announced the Small Business Investment Company Critical Technologies Initiative. (SBICCT).”
Of the research outlets we have discovered since the launch of OODALoop.com, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), OpenAI, and the Stanford Internet Observatory are best-in-class sources on topics of vital interest. A new report – “Generative Language Models and Automated Influence Operations: Emerging Threats and Potential Mitigations” – is the result of…
On Friday 10 March at 5:30pm Eastern we are hosting a special OODA Salon featuring the highly regarded expert in international crime and law enforcement (and long term friend of OODA) John Sullivan. John and other special invited expert guests will discuss the geopolitical and business impacts of the kidnappings and killings of Americans in…
The Ukraine crisis has revealed how geopolitical conflict can quickly spill over into cyberspace and bring in an assortment of other state and nonstate actors. Geopolitics has always been a powerful motivator in catalyzing aggressive and even hostile activity. Pakistan has been watching the crisis closely, purposefully remaining neutral as to avoid any unwanted attention…
The world is in a contest for geopolitical advantage. Perhaps that has always been the case. We merely substituted the reconnaissance and surveillance of telegrams, telephones, signal flags, wigwags, and morse code for a continuous cycle of largely uninterrupted destruction, espionage, sabotage, and surveillance in cyberspace. What is certain is that cyberspace is now in…
The Biden-Harris administration through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology [on February 28th] launched the first CHIPS for America funding opportunity for manufacturing incentives to restore U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, support good-paying jobs across the semiconductor supply chain, and advance U.S. economic and national security.
Bob Gleichauf, EVP, Global Technology at In-Q-Tel, explains why the legislation needs a “check engine light” to indicate problems and anticipate challenges, as well as maximize taxpayer return on their CHIPS investment.
Camille Stewart Gloster, Deputy National Cyber Director, Technology and Ecosystem Security, RECENTLY released the following request for information on a topic of urgent concern to the OODA Community. We hope you and your organization will consider participating in this information-sharing process.
A good strategy has three major components: a description of the goals you are trying to achieve, an explanation of how you are going to achieve those goals, and what things look like when your strategy is working, or a definition of “success.” As fine a piece of work as the new National Cybersecurity Strategy…
Overall, the 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy is the best the government has ever produced.
Partners and Counsel from the law firm WilmerHale consider how [Legal and Business Risk] + AI = “early learnings from the explosive popularity of generative AI to develop guardrails to protect against their worst behavior and use cases before this technology pervades all facets of commerce. To that end, businesses should be aware of the…
WICKED6 is back in 2023 and OODA LLC is a Media Sponsor of the event. Join 3,000 women and girls from around the world playing cyber games in Discord over a 24-hour period. Drop in to hear female cybersecurity pros – newbies and CISOs alike – share their expertise and regional perspectives.
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,…
Apple’s most important new product of the year (sorry, it’s not a $3,500 headset) will arrive this month. Apple Intelligence, a suite of software tools bringing what Apple describes as artificial intelligence to its devices, will be released through free software updates for owners of some iPhones, Macs and iPads. The initial version of Apple…
In retaliation for recent assassinations of top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, Iran launched 180 missiles at Israel yesterday. Iran stated that the missile attack was in response to the assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader. An Iranian commander was assassinated as well. The missile attacks escalated the conflict between…
Yesterday, Mexico’s first female president was inaugurated. Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor and climate scientist, is the first woman and Jewish person to lead Mexico as an independent nation. Ms. Sheinbaum won the June elections by the largest margin of victory since Mexico became a democracy. She has vowed to continue the policies of her…
Thousands of U.S. dockworkers have gone on strike, shutting down 36 East Coast ports. The dockworkers are demanding better pay and job protections. This is the first port strike of this magnitude in five decades. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was behind the strike. The ILA is asking for the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX)…
Yesterday in Tel Aviv, two gunmen opened fire in Tel Aviv on a light rail train. Authorities are describing the shooting as a terror attack, but a group has not yet claimed responsibility. At least six were killed and 12 more were injured in the attack. The gunmen were killed on the scene. This shooting…
FIN6 is a threat group that typically targets multinational financial organizations and job seekers. Now, the group has changed tactics to impersonating job seekers as a way to target those who do the hiring. In the spear-phishing campaign, the attackers spread the “more_eggs” backdoor which can execute secondary malware payloads. The more_eggs backdoor is part…
After recently seizing websites of the LockBit ransomware group, law enforcement has been able to arrest more members of the group. Europol arrested an alleged LockBit developer, and law enforcement in Spain arrested one of the main facilitators of LockBit’s infrastructure. Additionally, Russian national Aleksandr Viktorovich Ryzhenkov was revealed to be a LockBit affiliate and…
After suffering four data breaches affecting millions of customers, T-Mobile has reached a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC stated that T-Mobile has failed to protect customer proprietary network information (CPNI), providing third-parties with access to CPNI without customer consent. Additionally, T-Mobile did not protect the personal information of customers and failed…
Over 140,000 phishing websites have been linked to Sniper Dz, a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform. This indicates that many cybercriminals are using Sniper Dz for credential theft. The platform contains a catalog of phishing pages, giving phishers the option to host these pages or download templates. The platform is completely free. However, credentials stolen using Sniper…
Liquid AI, a startup co-founded by former researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has announced the debut of its first multimodal AI models: the “Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs).” Unlike most others of the current generative AI wave, these models are not based around the transformer architecture…
A week after announcing a wave of updates for its enterprise suite of Copilot AI-powered products, Microsoft is launching new Copilot capabilities on Windows for all users, including a tool that can understand and respond to questions about what’s on your screen. Refreshed Copilot apps for iOS, Android, Windows and the web are rolling out…
Microsoft has launched its answer to Google’s AI-powered search experiences: Bing Generative Search. On the heels of a pilot in July, Bing Generative Search — albeit still under development — began rolling out to all U.S. users this morning. The easiest way to invoke it is by searching “Bing Generative Search” on Bing; Microsoft also…
Serve Robotics has announced a pilot partnership with Wing Aviation to expand the range of its autonomous food delivery without requiring restaurants to install new equipment to accommodate drone pickups. Serve, which was spun out of the app-based delivery company Postmates in 2021, has been making Uber Eats food deliveries in Los Angeles for a few…
Nvidia sits at the centre of what we’ve dubbed the AI-financial complex, but there are a lot of people that want to make bank from the market frenzy. Cerebras Systems has now filed for an IPO, and it will be an interesting test of just how AI-mad investors have become. As mainFT quoted a VC…
Israeli forces have begun an offensive in southern Lebanon. Israeli military forces have begun a limited ground offensive into southern Lebanon. The Israeli government has said that the offensive aims to eliminate the threat to north Israel. Early reporting indicates that Israeli ground forces have not engaged yet engaged Hezbollah in direct clashes. The US,…
Austria’s far-right party has won the national election. Austria’s Freedom Party has won the national parliamentary election. This marks the first time since World War Two that a far right party has won a national election in Austria. It is unlikely that the party will be able to form a government as most other parties…
Sentiment about the economy remains optimistic among Japanese business. Japan’s central bank has released the results of a quarterly survey on business sentiment. The survey results were in line with expectations, and reinforced the belief that Japan’s economy is on stable ground. The survey also showed that consumers expected inflation to continue to be above…
The trial of the National Rally’s alleged embezzling of EU funds has begun. The National Rally has been accused of embezzling EU funds meant to pay the salaries of assistants for Members of the European Parliament. The National Rally and its leadership have denied the charges. If the Party or its leaders are found guilty…
The FBI has issued a warning about Iranian sponsored cyber attacks. The FBI has issued a warning about Iranian sponsored cyber attacks. The FBI warned that senior officials, current or former, journalists, activists, lobbyists, and senior think tank personnel are priority targets. The FBI also warned that attacks are largely based around social engineering attacks…
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