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The U.S. Government’s (USG) strategic alignment on all things quantum security has been encouraging over the course of 2022, culminating with the passage of the Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act in the Senate on Friday, December 16th, which is now ready for the President’s signature sometime this month. While still formative, dedicated new physical infrastructure and…
Recently, as part of their investigations into illegal wiretapping, Greek authorities raided an office of an Israeli company behind the Predator spyware, as well as five other companies believed to be connected in some capacity. The raids were the product of revelations of surveillance activities being conducted against dozens of prominent politicians, journalists, and businessmen,…
Following is a compilation of our 2022 series of posts on crypto and digital currency initiatives from around the globe, all of which are officially sanctioned to enhance national competitive advantage (in the event crypto overtakes the US dollar as the global reserve currency). The cumulative adoption rate of state-sanctioned crypto and digital currency legalization…
The Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act passed the Senate last week (on Friday, December 16th) and is ready for the President’s signature. The bill is an outgrowth of National Security Memorandum 8 (NSM8): “Improving the Cybersecurity of National Security, Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Systems”. NSM8 appeared to have been inspired by Project Warp Speed…
Optimizing intelligence processes to meet the needs of corporate decision-makers is a continuous challenge. Getting intelligence functions right can lead to observations on the business environment and analysis that will help drive the best decisions and actions. Getting intelligence functions wrong can waste money and time, and, at worse, put the company at risk by…
The future of space (especially as it relates to commercialization, exponential technologies, national security, cybersecurity, and the future of American competitiveness) is of keen interest here at OODA Loop. As we begin to wind down 2022, the following is a compilation of our research, analysis, risk awareness, pattern recognition, and sensemaking efforts related to the…
The Ukraine conflict has unleashed wiper malware variants that are being used against both Ukraine and Russia. The onset of the crisis saw the deployment of a series of wiper attacks of varying levels of intensity and destruction starting in January 2022 and continuing to the present. WhisperGate, HermeticWiper, IsaacWiper, and CaddyWiper, among others, have…
The 2022 OODA Loop Series: Autonomous Everything is concerned with automation in all its technological forms, including legacy working assumptions about the term itself. Autonomous Everything includes a broad autonomous future in areas such as Security Automation, Automation and the Workforce, Automation – or Augmentation – of the workforce, and Automation of AI/Machine Learning Training Models and Industry Standardization. …
On December 14th, 1:30-4:30pm EST, join AFWERX live here to learn about new opportunities in AFWERX 3.0! Hear the Director, Col Nathan Diller, and the new incoming Director, Col Elliott Leigh describe program enhancements across AFWERX. As the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force and powered by the Air Force Research Laboratory,…
DARPA Forward has been taking national security innovation on the road. Since August – and through December 2022 – six regional events were scheduled at leading research and development universities nationwide to connect Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency leaders with new communities of talent and partnerships. The ultimate goal: to energize regional and national innovation…
During my opening remarks for OODAcon this year, I noted several moments where the advancement of technology has taken me by surprise including the DARPA cyber grand challenge finale at Def Con and the images I was able to create with GPT. During our happy hour, former Congressman Will Hurd, who sits on the board…
Like a lost chapter from Kim Stanley Robinson’s now seminal near-future science fiction novel The Ministry for the Future, reporting from Info France 2, Collectif Bassines Non-Merci, Le Huffington Post, Midi Libre, France24, The New York Times, and Le Monde details the recent clashes in the French western region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine (and other parts of…
In this Q&A, OODA Network Member Brian Jenkins talks about the future of bioterrorism threats, what effect the war in Ukraine has had on the COVID-19 response, whether partisanship delivered a “mortal blow” to America and whether there’s cause for optimism in the face of the uncertainty brought on by multiple global, simultaneous crises.
Recent Artemis I coverage by Elizabeth Howell over at Space.com, including details on the launch of an Artemis 1 tracker from NASA.
Editor’s note: We asked Max Schindler to help us better comprehend challenges and make actionable recommendations for improving the ability of enterprises to adopt new technologies. This is the first of a series he is producing on this topic-bg The rapid change in creation, integration, and adoption of new technology has fundamentally shifted the way…
An Iranian hacking group tried to go after the WhatsApp accounts of staffers in the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Meta Platforms said Friday. Meta said it discovered the network of hackers, who posed as tech support agents for companies including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, after individuals who received…
Nearly two years since ChatGPT sparked a global generative AI fever, CIOs have turned talk into action, shifting priorities, setting up experiments and mitigating roadblocks along the way. But as enthusiasm for generative AI shows signs of cooling, tech leaders will likely need to recalibrate their strategy. Generative AI is approaching a moment of reckoning,…
For centuries, the biggest goal of science was alchemy — to turn lead into gold. It turns out this is actually possible in nuclear physics and is called transmutation. Bombard mercury with neutrons in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator…and presto! Gold. Today, thanks to AI, we are witnessing potentially the greatest transmutation in history.…
Meta and Spotify are once again teaming up — this time, on the matter of open source (or to be precise, open-weight) AI which the companies claim are being hampered by regulations. In joint statements published to both companies’ respective websites on Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek complain that EU…
Hugging Face, the open-source AI powerhouse, has taken a significant step towards democratizing low-cost robotics with the release of a detailed tutorial that guides developers through the process of building and training their own AI-powered robots. The tutorial, published today, builds upon the company’s LeRobot platform launched in May and marks a significant move to…
State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services provided by Amazon or its rivals to access advanced U.S. chips and artificial intelligence capabilities that they cannot acquire otherwise, recent public tender documents showed. The U.S. government has restricted the export of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years, citing the need to limit…
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that in an overnight raid, Ukrainian forces attempted to strike the Kursk Nuclear Power Station. While Putin did not provide any evidence behind his claims, he said that Russia informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the attack. The IAEA is the United Nations nuclear watchdog. Ukraine has not…
Today, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Kyiv, Ukraine where he was greeted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This is India’s first visit to Ukraine by a prime minister since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The two leaders will begin talks today in a “friendly” and “historic” visit. It is expected…
Almost all rail freight traffic in Canada was shut down for a little less than 17 hours. How, the federal government has ordered arbitration and the end of the shutdown. The shutdown was threatening to disrupt the U.S. supply chain and harm Canada’s economy. Canada’s labor minister, Steve MacKinnon, said that he expects trains to…
On Thursday, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice ruled that Nicolàs Maduro won the country’s presidential election in July. The ruling comes amidst overwhelming evidence that Maduro’s opponent instead received the most votes. The court stated that “national and international experts” and tally reports from the vote machines verified Maduro’s victory. However, the court is filled…
A new information stealer is being used to target Apple users. The malware is called “Cthulhu Stealer” and is written in Golang but disguised as legitimate software. Victims who launch the unsigned file are asked to enter various passwords. Cthulhu Stealer can then harvest system information and access iCloud Keychain passwords. The malware also is…
A Latvian national is being charged in the U.S. for his activity involving the Karakurt cybercrime group. He was living in Moscow, Russia but has now been extradited to the U.S. this month. The Latvian, Deniss Zolotarjovs, is being charged with stealing data, extorting victims, and laundering ransom payments for the past three years. Zolotarjovs…
A near-field communication (NFC) traffic stealer is targeting Android users to obtain their banking information. NFC allows devices to communicate wirelessly when nearby. The attacker calls victims pretending to be a bank employee and notifies them about a security incident on their card. They ask for the victim to change their PIN and verify their…
Velvet Ant, a China-linked hacking group, used a CLI command injection zero-day to install malware on Cisco Nexus switches. Velvet Ant is a little known but accomplished espionage group. The hackers gained access to the Nexus switch by using valid administrator credentials. Then, they used a command injection vulnerability to jailbreak the device, giving them…
As AI tools become increasingly accessible, companies face a new trend: BYOAI or Bring Your Own AI. Sometimes also referred to as Shadow AI, this trend, reminiscent of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) movement, is reshaping how employees interact with technology in the workplace. As AI tools become more accessible and user-friendly, workers are…
Silicon Valley’s tech bros are having a difficult few weeks. A growing number of investors worry that artificial intelligence (AI) will not deliver the vast profits they seek. Since peaking last month the share prices of Western firms driving the ai revolution have dropped by 15%. A growing number of observers now question the limitations…
In a new letter, OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon insists that AI regulations should be left to the federal government. As reported previously by Bloomberg, Kwon says that a new AI safety bill under consideration in California could slow progress and cause companies to leave the state. A federally-driven set of AI policies, rather than…
Even the most capable robots aren’t great at sensing human touch; you typically need a computer science degree or at least a tablet to interact with them effectively. That may change, thanks to robots that can now sense and interpret touch without being covered in high-tech artificial skin. It’s a significant step toward robots that…
Is AI going to eliminate a lot of developers’ jobs? There is a gulf between developers and the general population when it comes to answering that question. If you were to ask developers if they think their jobs are in danger in the near term, most of them will quickly tell you that there is no…
A Greek flagged oil tanker was repeatedly attacked in the Red Sea, and is no longer under command. The British military reported that a Greek flagged tanker came under attack in the Red Sea, and is no longer command. The tanker reported being harassed by small boats and being struck with four projectiles. The tanker…
The UAE has officially recognized the Taliban’s ambassador as an official representative of Afghanistan. The UAE became the latest country to accept the credentials of a Taliban appointed ambassador. The move highlights the growing divide between the policy of Western aligned states and those within the region. The UAE decision’s comes after China also recognized…
Halliburton, a major oilfield firm, has been hit by a cyber attack. Reports indicate that Halliburton has been hit by a cyber attack. The company said that it was experts some issues but was working to resolve them with leading experts. Details on the attack are unknown at this time, but similar attacks on petroleum…
A new malware program has been deployed by a suspected North Korean hacker group. A new malware program called MoonPeak has been observed to be used by a group known as UAT-5394. The group is thought to be linked to North Korea and its Kimsuky group. The malware is similar to a previously deployed program…
Class action litigation claims manager data breach impacts potentially 139,000 people. Arden Claims, a class action litigation claims manager, has discovered that a security breach has potentially compromised 139,000 people’s personal data. The company discovered the breach after noticing suspicious activity on an email account. The company has conducted an internal investigation, and is notifying…
Indian and Polish Prime Ministers discuss defense cooperation and modernization during meeting. Indian Prime Minister Modi stopped in Poland for a series a meeting with Polish government officials. During these meetings cooperation on defense modernization was discussed as both nations seek to upgrade their defense capabilities. Prime Minister Modi is touring Europe and plans to…
US officials warn of exploited vulnerability in Dahua security cameras. US officials have issued a warning that a known vulnerability in Dahua security camera’s has been exploited in the wild. Dahua and other Chinese made tech products have been restricted from being imported to the United States prior to these vulnerabilities being exploited. Dahua has…
As tech companies race to deliver on-device AI, we are seeing a growing body of research and techniques for creating small language models (SLMs) that can run on resource-constrained devices. The latest models, created by a research team at Nvidia, leverage recent advances in pruning and distillation to create Llama-3.1-Minitron 4B, a compressed version of…
China’s internet giants are betting billions on incubating the country’s OpenAI challengers, with Alibaba Group and Tencent leading the charge. Since 2023, investors—including the country’s biggest tech companies—have valued at least six China-based startups developing large language models at more than $1 billion each. Most of these unicorns, dubbed China’s six “Little Artificial-Intelligence Dragons,” have…
OpenAI today announced that it is allowing third-party software developers to fine-tune — or modify the behavior of — custom versions of its signature new large multimodal model (LMM), GPT-4o, making it more suitable for the needs of their application or organization. Whether it’s adjusting the tone, following specific instructions, or improving accuracy in technical…
Robots capable of performing human-like tasks have so far been relegated to laboratories, factories, and captivating YouTube demos. But Unitree is readying its G1 humanoid robot for mass production with a $16,000 price tag that somehow feels both expensive and reasonable for a robot that looks this capable, as spotted by New Atlas. The Unitree…
Tech companies’ relentless push into artificial intelligence is coming at an undisclosed cost to the planet. Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are concealing their actual carbon footprints, buying credits tied to electricity use that inaccurately erase millions of tons of planet-warming emissions from their carbon accounts, a Bloomberg Green analysis finds. Recently Microsoft reported that its…
Ukraine launched an assault on Russia’s capital today in one of its largest ever drone attacks. Russian air defense forces shot down 11 drones over Moscow and nearby. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, “This is one of the largest ever attempts to attack Moscow with drones.” Drone attacks on the capital are very rare. This…
While U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has been pressing for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, many officials familiar with the negotiations say that major disagreements remain. Although Blinken announced that Israel had accepted the U.S. proposed cease-fire, Israeli and Hamas officials are now downplaying the idea that an agreement will be reached anytime soon. Israel…
In March, President Joe Biden approved a classified document detailing a secret nuclear strategy for confronting Russia, China, and North Korea. This document reorients America’s nuclear deterrent strategy, focusing on China’s nuclear arsenal expansion for the first time. The Pentagon believes that China’s nuclear stockpile will reach the level of the U.S. and Russia’s in…
Internet speeds in Pakistan have greatly slowed over the past few days. Many believe that the crash is caused by the Pakistani government testing a new firewall-like system. The system would allow the government to survey and control Pakistan’s internet. Millions of users and businesses are currently affected by the slowdown. The government is denying…
A cyberattack has disrupted the business operations of Microchip Technology. The attack has primarily affected the company’s manufacturing facilities, and it is difficult for the company to fulfill orders. Microchip Technology began to detect suspicious activity on its IT systems on August 17. Two days later the company determined that an unauthorized party had accessed…
A threat actor known as Blind Eagle is targeting organizations and individuals in Latin America. The targeted countries include Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Panama. The attacks are spread across different sectors, including “governmental institutions, financial companies, energy and oil and gas companies.” The attacks begin with a phishing email impersonating legitimate institutions and encouraging victims…
Quarkslab, a French security firm, found a major backdoor in RFID cards made by Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics group. The company is one of the top chip manufacturers in China. The backdoor allows for the instant cloning of the contactless smart cards. The cards are used around the world to open office doors and hotel rooms.…
A hacker has breached Toyota and stolen around 240GB of data. While the company has not disclosed any further information about the attack, it stated that it has contacted those affected by the incident. ZeroSevenGroup, the actor supposedly behind the attack, said that they hacked a U.S. branch of Toyota. However, Toyota has said that,…
OpenAI and Anthropic spend billions of dollars a year training models like GPT-4 and Claude, but competitive price dumping is making the business around these platforms rather precarious. Aidan Gomez, CEO of competing AI provider Cohere, says that selling access to models is quickly becoming a “zero margin business” in a podcast appearance on Monday.…
Today, I’m talking with Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub. GitHub is the platform for managing code — everyone from solo open-source hobbyists to the biggest companies in the world relies on GitHub to maintain their code and manage changes. But it’s been owned by Microsoft since 2018, which makes this a perfect Decoder episode…
ElevenLabs, a startup developing AI-powered tools to create and edit synthetic voices, is making its Reader app available across the world with support for 32 languages. The app, first released in June in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, lets users upload any text content — like articles, PDF documents or e-books — and listen to…
In case you hadn’t noticed, humanoid robots have joined the workforce. An evergreen staple of science fiction, autonomous AI-driven machines with feet, legs that bend at the knee, torsos, arms with hands and fingers, all topped with a head are now being deployed in real workplaces. Specifically: Amazon is piloting the use of Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot,…
Agents come in many forms, many of which respond to prompts humans issue through text or speech. Yet as organizations figure out how generative AI fits into their plans, IT leaders would do well to pay close attention to one emerging category: multiagent systems. In such systems, multiple agents execute tasks intended to achieve an…
Protestors and Haitian police clash in Port-au-Prince. Residents of neighborhoods that have been under attack by gangs for months began protesting Monday in Port-au-Prince. Haitian police set up barricades and deployed tear gas against the protestors. The protestors have said that the government’s response to rising gang violence has been ineffective and that the international…
Ukraine has begun large scale evacuations of Pokrovsk as Russian forces advance on the city. Ukraine has begun large scale evacuation efforts in Pokrovsk as Russian forces continue their advance on the city. Pokrovsk is a key defensive and logistic center for Ukrainian forces, and its capture would significantly hamper efforts to hold the Donetsk…
The United States has announced that Israel has agreed to a cease-fire proposal. The United States has announced that Israel has agreed to the terms of a cease-fire proposal. The details of the proposal are not known at this time, but the announcement said that it addressed several concerns of both parties. The announcement made…
A team of researchers have uncovered a massive network of Russian linked malicious domains. A team of researchers have uncovered a network of cites used by the FIN7 cyber gang. The organization acquired thousands of domains through Russian and Estonian domain resellers as part of a large scale phishing operation. FIN7 has previously been the…
Researchers have found that Chile’s largest pension fund exposed the personal data of millions of Chileans. A team of researchers identified that a database owned by Chile’s largest pension fund was not properly secured and left millions of Chilean’s personal data exposed. An unprotected cloud server and poor authentication protocols allowed the researchers to gain…
US officials say that Iran launched cyber attack against both the Trump and Harris campaigns. US officials announced that Iran was responsible for cyber attacks against the Trump and Harris campaigns. They also announced that Iran was conducting broader operations to influence the outcome of the election and sow discord. Iran denied these allegations. Read…
Doctors in India are protesting after female doctor was killed at her place of work. Following the killing of a female doctor at her place of work, doctors across India have started protesting the government’s failure to protect women. They have demanded that the government take steps to protect women’s rights and safety. The government…
An IRGC linked group has been found to be using a modular Trojan horse malware. APT 42, an Iranian linked IRGC group, has been found to be using a modular Trojan horse malware. This was discovered after the group deployed the malware as part of phishing attacks against Israeli citizens. This represents an interesting development…
A search engine is a vast mechanical Turk – a reinforcement learning engine that uses human activity to understand the web. PageRank used signal from links created by people, but once people started using Google at scale, that usage itself created far more signal: which results you clicked on, how you changed your searches to…
In today’s column, I continue my ongoing analysis of the latest advances and breakthroughs in AI, see my extensive posted coverage at the link here, and focus in this discussion on a recent research study that suggests modern-day generative AI and large language models (LLMs) have a semblance of a “shared imagination”. I will do…
Google has released the latest version of Imagen 3, its AI text-to-image generator, to users in the US, as spotted by VentureBeat. The tool, which you can access on Google’s AI Test Kitchen, is supposed to generate images with “better detail, richer lighting, and fewer distracting artifacts” compared to Google’s previous models. Google first announced…
Apple reportedly has “a team of several hundred people” working on a new product that attaches an iPad-style display to a robotic arm that uses actuators to tilt up and down as well as spin 360 degrees, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The tabletop device could reportedly serve multiple purposes, letting you…
Sean Ammirati has been teaching a class on entrepreneurship for more than a decade. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Ammirati has groups of mostly graduate students start businesses from scratch over the course of the spring semester. Some of the start-ups that his 49 students created this year were classic examples of the…
On Friday, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called for a weeklong cease-fire in Gaza to permit polio vaccinations. Shortly afterwards, the first case of polio in Gaza in many years was announced. Polio is highly contagious, primarily affecting young children, and can lead to death. The virus behind the disease was found in wastewater…
A suicide bomber attack killed 16 soldiers in southern Yemen, wounding 18 others. The attack occurred at a military post in the province of Abyan, and Yemeni pro-government soldiers were killed. The suicide bomber “drove a booby-trapped car into a site for the security forces.” Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has claimed responsibility for…
Ukraine has destroyed a key Russian bridge, greatly setting back Russian supply lines. It appears that Ukraine additionally tried to target at least one more bridge in the western Kursk region as it attempts to consolidate its territorial advances. Analysts say that the destruction of the critical bridge could make it difficult for Russia to…
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