Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Start your day with intelligence. Get The OODA Daily Pulse.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Home > OODA Analysis and Briefs
These days, you never know where the next strategic metric will emerge. OODA Loop contributes to your efforts – signal tracking and sensemaking as part of your strategic foresight – essential to building out that organizational resiliency. This information cumulatively acts as an early warning system that allows for decision-making and action that has an…
While cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are not official exponential technologies, they are exponential-adjacent. Why? As we shared in our recent post “By Design, The Quantum List Companies are Strategically Structured for Exponential Speed and Scale” a driver fueling exponential technologies is information: Once any domain, discipline, technology, or industry becomes information-enabled and powered by information…
Mandatory security requirements, information handling restrictions, and security accountability are standards all organizations should be able and willing to implement, and which can be supervised by an oversight body like the FTC. It might not be a complete fix, but it would be a necessary start, and one that is desperately needed given the complexity…
At some point, like artificial intelligence, quantum will be “in the midst of a real-world paradigm shift: the final stages of a decades-long transition from the scientific discipline known as quantum computing (and its various sub-disciplines) into an array of applied quantum computing technologies made more widely available through innovative enterprise architectures unique to the…
While cryptocurrency heists and ransomware attacks dominate the headlines (due to their sheer volume and scale), other types of cybercrime have grown in alarming ways as well. AtlasVPN recently compiled a very compelling accounting and visualization of 2021 cybercrime trends and statistics. Cybercrimes of note include skyrocketing rates of phishing sites, romance scams, general online-based…
We continue with our research and analysis of the food and agriculture (FA) sector and the cyber threat vector as agriculture and food systems and cyber risk have become a central driving force and critical uncertainty – which we recommend all companies and organizations integrate into their foresight strategy, scenario planning, and strategic planning.
In early April, we began our research and analysis of crypto and blockchain security initiatives by tracking down the best-in-class research efforts and subject matter experts to explore the formative core issues surrounding the topic. In our initial post, we explored the recent blockchain bridge heists, growing national security concerns, and The Secure Blockchain Initiative…
On November 1, 2021, China’s “Personal Information Protection Law” (PIPL) went into effect. The PIPL protects the personal privacy of Chinese citizens, and perhaps more importantly, mandates that both Chinese and foreign companies that conduct business in China to comply to the rules set forth in the new legislation. PIPL defines what constitutes personal information,…
To help members optimize opportunities and reduce risk, OODA hosts a monthly video call 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…
The OODA team has participated in “wargame” and red team exercises for over 25 years ranging from traditional DoD Office of Net Assessment games to scenario planning for the Fortune 500. We have personally witnessed these exercises’ impact on establishing appropriate frameworks for thinking about future risks and opportunities. In November 2021, A report was…
Last year, OODA was proud to sponsor the first-ever U.S. Cyber Games. The inaugural US Cyber Games™ was created through the support of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Games brought together elite cyber athletes, coaches, and industry leaders to help scout, train, and recognize…
In a 2019 report by McKinsey, the authors characterized the status of blockchain innovation as “a transition point between Blockchain 1.0 and Blockchain 2.0. In the new era, blockchain-enabled cryptocurrency applications will likely cede their prominence to blockchain business applications that can potentially increase efficiency.” The semiconductor sub-vertical of the technology industry has largely been…
The better ransomware gangs persevere because of their ability to adapt to changing times. Conti has chosen a course of action that may ultimately prove its most strategic move yet. By disbanding, Conti removed itself from the public eye, scurrying to the safe harbors of other gangs. Its ultimate strength may be in this thoughtful…
A new research vector has emerged in the last couple of months at the “praxis” (or intersection) of agriculture and cyber risk based on the following nascent driving force and critical uncertainty: Ukraine is a crucial breadbasket in the global food system. The war is impacting the entire agriculture supply chain and value chain in…
As summer approaches, we return to our OODA Special Report on the business impacts of drought conditions. Initiated by OODA CTO Bob Gourley is his June 2021 post – How Drought In The US Should Impact Your Mid To Long Range Strategic Planning – about the unprecedented heatwave in the Pacific Northwest driven by climate…
North Korea has criticized a joint military exercise by the United States, South Korea and Japan, saying such drills show the relationship among the three countries has developed into “the Asian version of NATO”, state media reported. The drills called “Freedom Edge” included navy destroyers, fighter jets and the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt,…
TeamViewer has confirmed that the notorious Russian cyberespionage group APT29 appears to be behind the recent hacker attack targeting the company’s systems. APT29 is also known as Midnight Blizzard and known for high-impact attacks targeting important organizations, such as Microsoft. The breach only impacted its internal corporate IT environment, and did not affect its product…
Juniper Networks warns of a critical vulnerability leading to authentication bypass on Session Smart router and conductor products. The issue impacts all Session Smart routers and conductors running in high-availability redundant configurations, the company explains. An Authentication Bypass allows a network-based attacker to bypass authentication and take full control of the device. They have released…
On Thursday, GetReal Labs, a startup focused on combating malicious manipulated content and deepfakes, announced that it has emerged from stealth mode. The startup has been incubated for two years by Ballistic Ventures and UC Berkeley Professor Hany Farid. GetReal Labs seeks to tackle the issue of synthetically generated content on the internet by authenticating…
Shockwaves from the Russian government’s hack of Microsoft’s corporate infrastructure continue to spread with news that the software giant is notifying surprised customers that their emails were also stolen by the Midnight Blizzard hackers. According to published reports, Redmond’s incident response team is providing a secure portal for customers to view specifics of emails stolen.…
As 2024 moves into its second half, many CFOs have the same top strategic priority: Using AI and other automation techniques to do tasks previously performed by humans. The Q2 edition of the CFO Survey, done by the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, found that nearly…
On Thursday, OpenAI researchers unveiled CriticGPT, a new AI model designed to identify mistakes in code generated by ChatGPT. It aims to enhance the process of making AI systems behave in ways humans want (called “alignment”) through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which helps human reviewers make large language model (LLM) outputs more accurate. As…
Chinese search engine giant Baidu on Friday unveiled an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence (AI) model, Ernie 4.0 Turbo, as it seeks to maintain its position in China’s competitive AI market. The launch follows the October 2023 release of Ernie 4, which Baidu claimed rivaled OpenAI’s GPT-4 in capabilities. The new model will be…
New numbers out of Crunchbase this week see robotics investments once again trending in a positive direction. The previous two years presented a steady drop in overall numbers, following a record 2021 driven by pandemic-fueled job loss. As we head into the second half of the year, 2024 is on track to beat last year’s…
Brussels is preparing for an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s $13bn investment into OpenAI, after the EU decided not to proceed with a merger review into the most powerful alliance in the artificial intelligence industry. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, began to explore a review under merger control rules in January, but on Friday…
Voting has commenced for Iran’s snap presidential election following the death of former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash this past May. Iranians must choose between four candidates, all of whom are loyal to the supreme leader. The election comes at a time of increasing public frustration in Iran, and the country…
In what appears to be an attempted coup on Wednesday, a top Bolivian general and other military officials tried to storm the presidential palace. Although the coup quickly failed, the general was taken into custody hours later. General Juan José Zuñiga has stated that he was attempting to “re-establish democracy.” The attempted coup lasted three…
On Thursday, North Korea revealed that it had tested multiple-warhead missile technology for the first time. This announcement comes just days after Putin’s visit to the country, where an agreement between Russia and North Korea to support each other’s militaries was reached. North Korea’s testing of new military technology suggests that the country is ambitiously…
The bi-annual Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime exercises have begun in Hawaii. RIMPAC unites 29 countries and their militaries every other year for five weeks of training. The event aims to strengthen relations between the countries and make them prepared to protect “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Israel is participating in its third RIMPAC,…
Following the ransomware attack of a Chicago children’s hospital in January, it has now been revealed that 791,000 individuals were impacted. Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago fell victim to a ransomware attack from January 26 to January 31, 2024. During this period cybercriminals had access to the hospital’s systems. A wide…
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced charges against Amin Tomovich Stigal, a Russian national. Stigal is being charged for his role in the series of cyberattacks against Ukraine prior to Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022. It is believed that he is a part of Cadet Blizzard, a Russian-sponsored actor which operates…
In just the past three months, three new phishing campaigns have compromised over 40,000 users, including top-level executives. Using browsers, the attacks are able to target various industries, entering corporate environments. The attacks can get past network security and have demonstrated the ability to evolve. The three phishing campaigns are called LegalQloud, Eqooqp, and Boomer.…
Croatia’s largest hospital, the University Hospital Centre Zagreb, has been under cyberattack since Wednesday night. As a result, the hospital has primarily switched offline and has shut down its information system. While the hospital’s emergency service and medical laboratories are functioning as normal, medical reports cannot be printed out. This is greatly slowing down the…
Warehouses are the backbone of the supply chain industry. They are a critical link that ensures products are stored safely, tracked accurately, and dispatched timely to meet customer demands. The global warehousing and storage market grew to $714 billion in 2023. Today’s fast-paced logistics industry has increased the complexity of modern warehousing. From maintaining precise inventory…
Google is expanding an effort to allow its cloud customers to ground their enterprise AI chatbots in real-world facts, including a new partnership with Moody’s to use its financial data. Why it matters: Generative AI will make up information, but grounding these systems in known factual data can significantly lessen hallucinations. In April, Google announced…
AI is fueling a lot of wild ideas for our tech-driven future. If everything pans out, we won’t have to write our own essays, take our own notes, drive our own cars — hell, we might not even have to make our own art. That’s a tall order, obviously, but with AI’s rapid growth it’s…
a16z-backed Character.AI said today that it is now allowing users to talk to AI characters over calls. The feature currently supports multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. The startup tested the calling feature ahead of today’s public launch. During that time, it said that more than 3 million users had made…
OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati says AI may help expand humans’ creativity — but the technology could wipe out some creative jobs as well. On June 19, Dartmouth College’s school of engineering held a discussion with Murati about the potential effects OpenAI’s tools, such as ChatGPT, may have on different industries. During the conversation, the…
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was welcomed back to Australia following pleading guilty to violating U.S. espionage law. Assange arrived in Canberra after 7:30 pm on a private jet, greeting the media, followed by kissing his wife, Stella. This arrival marks Assange’s freedom from a 14-year legal battle. Shortly before entering the terminal building,…
In the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich went on trial on Wednesday behind closed doors on charges of espionage. The charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, as prosecutors allege that Gershkovich gathered secret information under the direction of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. According to prosecutors, the…
On Wednesday, a French appeals court upheld an arrest warrant issued for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President. The charges against al-Assad were Brough against him over an alleged use of banned chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. The warrant was approved in November 2023 by French judges, and cites charges of complicity both in crimes against…
In May Siemens informed customers that new updates containing patches for vulnerabilities, one medium-security, and two high-severity flaws. According to Siemens, the vulnerabilities have the potential to be exploited in attacks targeting the energy sector. One of the security holes known as CVE-2024-31484 could be exploited to read memory, accessing sensitive data for users. This…
In its ongoing battle with the China-linked Dragonbridge threat actor, Google continues to disrupt YouTube and Blogger activity conducted by the threat actor group. The social media activity is associated with Dragonbridge’s influence operations which have been ongoing since 2019. So far, Google has removed over 10,000 social media instances in the first quarter of…
The European Union announced new sanctions on Russia as a result of the war on Ukraine which target Moscow’s shadow tanker fleet. At the meeting in Luxembourg EU foreign ministers agreed to send Ukraine financial aid, and targeted Russia’s shadow fleet of tankers that are carrying liquefied natural gas throughout Europe. In a statement, the…
On Wednesday, Bulgaria announced it will press charges against Raja Ignatova, a fugitive nicknamed the “Crypto-queen”, that co-founded a cryptocurrency scheme. The cryptocurrency scheme ran by Ignatova is believed to have defrauded investors out of over $4 billion, and the FBI is offering over $5 million for information that could put Ignatova behind bars. Ignatova…
On Wednesday Kenyan President William Ruto withdrew tax hikes due to pressure from protestors who stormed the Kenyan parliament. The storming of the Kenyan parliament resulted in the eruption of demonstrations across Kenya and was viewed as a huge victory for the ongoing protest movement that began last week. The protest movement is youth-led and…
Etched, a startup that builds transformer-focused chips, just announced Sohu, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that claims to beat Nvidia’s H100 in terms of AI LLM inference. A single 8xSohu server is said to equal the performance of 160 H100 GPUs, meaning data processing centers can save both on initial and operational costs if the…
In May, when OpenAI first demoed an eerily realistic, nearly real-time “advanced voice mode” for its AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT, the company said that the feature would roll out to paying ChatGPT users within a few weeks. Months later, OpenAI says that it needs more time. In a post on OpenAI’s official Discord server, OpenAI says that…
It may resemble a human, but Fourier Intelligence’s GR-1 robot has six eyes instead of two — the robotics company recently updated its humanoid robot with six cameras that give it a full 360-degree view around it. Most other humanoid robots use a mix of cameras and sensors, including lidar, radar, and infrared, to understand…
It feels delightful when technology helps you do something useful or cool. It’s fantastic to point your phone camera at an unfamiliar tree and see that it’s an eastern redbud. Maybe you remember the first time you pulled up Google Maps directions or summoned an Uber, and it seemed like wizardry. The hottest technology now,…
YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a sceptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three…
Foreign police officers have officially landed in Haiti in a plan to stop gang violence in the country. Thus far, 400 Kenyan police officers have arrived, but the total numbers of the internal force will eventually reach 2,500. The officers will spread out across the capital, attempting to take control of the city back from…
The European Union is set to formally launch membership talks with both Moldova and Ukraine after receiving agreement from its member states. Negotiations will begin on Tuesday, but are expected to take years. However, it is hoped that the commencement of these talks will encourage the countries to continue to leave Russia and its influence…
Mark Rutte formerly served as the Dutch prime minister for almost 14 years. Now, he has been named the new secretary general of NATO. He will take over the position on October 1. Rutte is a harsh critic of Russia and Putin, and a strong supporter of Ukraine. His move into the position will come…
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for both Russia’s army chief and Russia’s former defense minister. They have been accused of directing attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine, which the ICC has classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov are the two…
Indonesia’s national data center has been disrupted by attackers using a LockBit variant. The hackers are requesting a ransom of $8 million, but so far the Indonesian government has refused to pay. The ransomware attackers used a LockBit variant called Brain Cipher to implement the attack. The disrupted data center supports over 200 Indonesian government…
The Polyfill.io service is used by many sites as a way to incorporate modern functions into web browsers, such as to create ads. However, after the service was recently acquired by a Chinese company, the company modified the JavaScript library to redirect users to malicious and scam sites. Some of the malware has been redirecting…
Six individuals have been added to the European Union’s sanctions list following their cyberattacks against EU members and Ukraine. The Netherlands proposed the sanctions because of the individuals’ malicious cyber activities. Two of the individuals, Ruslan Peretyatko and Andrey Korinets, are believed to be Russian military intelligence officers. They were formerly charged and sanctioned by…
A new security loophole has been discovered by researchers at Graz University of Technology. The researchers monitored changes in the speed of a user’s internet connection, allowing them to spy on the user’s online activities and figure out what websites the user was visiting. The vulnerability has been named SnailLoad. The flaw does not require…
On July 16, 1945, not long after dawn, a group of scientists and government officials gathered at a desolate stretch of sand in the New Mexico desert to witness humanity’s first test of a nuclear weapon. The explosion was described by an onlooker as “brilliant purple.” The thunder from the bomb’s detonation seemed to ricochet…
The world’s biggest record labels are suing two artificial intelligence startups, taking an aggressive stance to protect their intellectual property against technology that makes it easy for people to generate music based on existing songs. The Recording Industry Association of America said it filed twin lawsuits Monday against Suno AI and Uncharted Labs Inc., the…
ChatGPT creator OpenAI is tightening measures to block attempts from “unsupported countries and territories”, including mainland China and Hong Kong, to access its generative artificial intelligence (AI) services via application programming interfaces (APIs), according to a notice sent to Chinese developers, deepening the AI divide between China and the US. While Microsoft-backed OpenAI has rolled out…
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Alternative Machine have developed a humanoid robot system that can directly map natural language commands to robot actions. Named Alter3, the robot has been designed to take advantage of the vast knowledge contained in large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 to perform complicated tasks such as taking…
Google is rolling out a new Gemini AI side panel in Gmail that can help you write emails and summarize email threads. The company is also adding the Gemini side panel to Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. The launch of the new features comes shortly after Google announced them last month at its I/O developer…
On Monday, Somalia’s ambassador to the United Nations accused Ethiopian troops of making illegal incursions crossing their shared border. The crossing of the border by the Ethiopian troops led to confrontations with local security forces stationed at the border. Currently, there are around 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers stationed in the Horn of Africa, belonging to an…
According to authorities, dohttps://www.reuters.com/world/americas/avalanches-leave-dozens-stranded-chile-mountain-towns-2024-06-24/zens of people have been left stranded following avalanches in several mountain towns located East of Chile’s capital, Santiago. A culmination of heavy rain and snowstorms spanning the last few days have blocked roads, creating large piles of snow throughout central Chile, in the province of Maipo. As a result of the…
On Monday, the Kremlin outright blamed the United States for an attack committed against Crimea that killed at least four people, injuring 151. The attack on Crime was conducted using U.S.-supplied ATACMS, with Moscow warning the U.S. Ambassador that a “retaliation would follow”. According to Russian officials, the conflict is beginning the most dangerous period…
The stability of the U.S.-backed truce proposal is called into question as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would only accept a partial cease-fire deal. The partial cease-fire deal will not end the 8-month-long war in Gaza. Netanyahu stated that “we are committed to continuing the war after a pause, in order to complete…
According to Recorded Future, a suspected Chinese state-sponsored hacking group has increased targeting of Taiwanese organizations in government, technology, diplomatic, and education sectors. Cyberattacks conducted by the group RedJulliett between November 2023 and April 2024 are a stark example of the heightened tensions between China and Taiwan. These cyberattacks occurred in the midst of Taiwan’s…
A research team from the Craz University of Technology located in Austria recently disclosed the details of a new cyber threat tradecraft attack methodology. The newly disclosed methodology enables remote hackers to infer websites as well as other previously viewed content without requiring direct network traffic access. Typically, hackers require a person-in-the-middle (PitM) attack, or…
LivaNova, a medical device manufacturer, has notified 130,000 individuals of their personal data being compromised in a data breach in October 2023. According to a letter notifying the impacted individuals, the incident was discovered on November 19 around one month after threat actors lifted the personal information in an operation. According to LivaNova, the company…
The United States Department of Justice announced charges against four Vietnamese individuals who are thought to be behind cyberattacks which caused over $71 million in losses to companies. According to court documents, the four individuals belong to the cybercrime group FIN9, and are responsible for hacking the networks of multiple businesses. Over the course of…
As Apple enters the AI race, it’s also looking for help from partners. During the announcement of Apple Intelligence earlier this month, Apple said it would be partnering with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT into the revamped version of Siri. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and Facebook’s parent company Meta are in talks around…
China’s ByteDance is working with U.S. chip designer Broadcom on developing an advanced AI processor, two sources familiar with the matter said, a move that would help TikTok’s owner secure sufficient supply of high-end chips amid U.S.-Sino tensions. The 5 nanometre chip – a customised product known as an application-specific integrated chip (ASIC) – would…
OpenAI has been drip-feeding information about the future of its frontier AI models and whether this will be called GPT-5, GPT-5o, or something completely different. The latest remarks from CTO Mira Muratti suggest within two years we’ll have something as intelligent as a professor. This would likely build on the GPT-4o technology announced earlier this…
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Copyright © 2025 — All Rights Reserved.
Notifications
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence