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
We continue our effort to underscore certain patterns and themes found throughout the OODAcast library of over 80 conversations with leaders and decision-makers. In May of 2020, OODA CTO Bob Gourley had a conversation with Boston Merdian’s co-founder and partner JC Raby. JC has more than 16 years of investment banking experience in mergers and…
On January 19th, the President signed National Security Memorandum (NSM) 8, “Improving the Cybersecurity of National Security, Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Systems”. NSM8 appeared to have been inspired by Project Warp Speed – specifically, the elimination of layers of reportage and bureaucracy when trying to innovate with unprecedented speed and scale. With NSM8…
The reality is 34% of all breaches in 2018 were caused by insiders, yet less than 20% of U.S. organizations possess effective security programs to combat it. The results range from information leakage and national security breaches to workplace violence and even reputational damage. Insiders’ unintentional actions can be equally damaging. How can a serious…
This is part of a series providing insights aimed at corporate strategists seeking competitive advantage through better and more accurate decision-making. The full series is available at our special section on Decision Intelligence. Members are also invited to discuss this topic at the OODA Member Forum on Slack. Broadly speaking, a weapon is anything that provides an…
There is every indication that Iran’s government will pass “The Cyberspace Users’ Rights Protection Bill,” a piece of legislation that would introduce alarming changes to how the government can monitor and control Internet use. Iran asserts that the bill is designed to enhance the security of Internet users, particularly during times of political tension where…
A recent CSET Issue Brief takes a very quant-based approach to create a snapshot of the international Ph.D. graduate students trained in the U.S. For years, the conventional wisdom has been that a) Domestic U.S. universities are training a disproportionate amount of international Ph.D. graduate students, and b) The U.S. is impacting its strategic opportunity…
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…
A Cambrian Explosion in innovation in cryptocurrency related products and services is underway. The uptake in cryptocurrency interest by institutions has been so large that it is probably prudent for all businesses to review their internal strategies regarding cryptocurrencies, not just as financial assets but as a way to improve internal innovation and positioning for…
As OODA CTO Bob Gourley recently pointed out: “We are so pleased with the quality of work and the professionalism in recent reporting from our government agencies on the nature of the cyber threat. In particular, the Joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) released yesterday is one of the best.” The Joint CSA to which Bob refers…
According to the 2022 DIA Challenges to Security in Space report, “As China’s and Russia’s space and counterspace capabilities increase, both nations are integrating space scenarios into their military exercises…the expansion of Chinese and Russian space and counterspace weapons combined with the general rise of other foreign space capabilities is driving many nations to formalize…
This post discusses standards in intelligence, a topic that can improve the quality of all corporate intelligence efforts and do so while reducing ambiguity in the information used to drive decisions and enhancing the ability of corporations to defend their most critical information.
Our Artificial Intelligence tracking, research, and analysis fall into four categories: Surfacing business strategy insights based on current AI capabilities; Tracking Responsible and Ethical AI frameworks and projects; Exponential technologies, including AI, and Great Power competition; and tracking AI applied technology in various industry verticals (along with market drivers). Following are some general AI research…
Leverage these open source tools to provide your organization with the best in class information to inform business strategy, operations, and risk awareness levels around the world. Firms that understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own Cognitive Infrastructure will have an advantage over those that do not attend to this crucial function within an…
The frequent targeting of India’s energy stakeholders is a disconcerting turn of events and underscores the increasing interest of nation states’ willingness to target critical infrastructure for their own advantage. The ability to initiate a series of strategic power outages and energy disruptions to bring a China-favorable resolution to the forefront is an equally enticing…
What should leaders do when operating in an environment like today’s, where serious threats of Russian cyber attacks against US infrastructure make a very high end attack a very real possibility? We recommend leaders consider the following four strategic actions: – Understand what is new about the threat – Contextualize the threat for your business…
I will fly to India on Monday for a brief trip, and so I just spent an hour struggling through a very buggy online visa application process. Once I’d finished, since I now know what’s involved, I asked ChatGPT 4o about it. Most of these points are partially or completely wrong. This is an ‘unfair’ test.…
We’ve seen two approaches to AI in mobile tech this year: “AI That’s Not Your Phone” and “AI That Does Random Stuff on Your Phone.” The “Not Your Phone” group includes devices like the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin, two small gadgets that sought to make AI more useful by building it into…
Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark made a phone call using a new technology called “immersive audio and video” that improves the quality of a call with three-dimensional sound, making interactions more lifelike, the company said on Monday. “We have demonstrated the future of voice calls,” said Lundmark, who was also present in the room when the…
Earlier this year, the open source AI code community and company Hugging Face, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, made waves by announcing the hiring of a former robotics engineer from Tesla’s Optimus program to lead its new effort — an open-source robotics program called “Le Robot.” Today, that engineer, Remi Cadene, of Paris, France, posted…
Artificial intelligence is skewing the venture capital market. Not the tech itself, but the billions flooding into foundational model makers and their brethren. By the numbers: AI companies raised $12.4 billion in May, according to CrunchBase, representing a whopping 40% of the global total. It’s as if much of the industry returned to pre-pandemic norms, while the…
On Sunday, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region, stated that Russian forces seized control of a Ukrainian border village. Led by a Chechen-based special forces unit, Russian forces took control of Ukraine’s Ryzhivka, located in the Sumy region opposite the southern Russia Kursk region. Kadyrov has maintained the position of leader of his…
On Sunday, Israeli minister Benny Gantz announced his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government. Gantz’s exit signifies the departure of the only centrist presence within the far-right coalition. While Gantz’s exit does not significantly hinder Netanyahu’s government, it does leave him surrounded by hardliners, with no end in sight to the war in…
On Sunday, Iran’s Guardian Council approved the country’s hard-line parliament speaker, plus five others to run in the country’s presidential election. This upcoming June 28 presidential election comes following a helicopter crash that killed former late President Ebrahim Raisi, along with seven others. However, the Guardian Council barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running in…
On Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the lower house of France’s parliament in a surprise announcement sending voters back to the polls in the coming weeks. The decision to dissolve the lower house of France’s parliament comes after Macron’s party faced a humbling defeat by the far-right in European elections. There will be two rounds…
Microsoft has decided to disable the controversial Windows Recall feature amidst facing public pressure. The Windows Recall feature, default on Copilot and PCs was largely viewed as a security and privacy risk for users. The feature required users to manually opt out of AI-based software. This AI creates a “searchable digital memory of everything ever…
On Friday, cybersecurity vendor Tenable announced plans to acquire Eureka Security to improve data security posture management. Eureka Security is an Israeli early-stage startup focused on the competitive DPSM (data security posture management) field. Eureka launched in 2022 and is based in Tel Aviv. The security start-up is backed by YL Ventures, and began with…
This week, AirMDR announced it raised $5 million in seed funding, contributed to by Foundation Capital and Storm Ventures. AirMDR is an AI-powered autonomous managed direction and response (MDR) startup that was founded in 2013. Based in Menlo Park, CA, the startup essentially relies on AI to systematically triage security, investigate alerts, and deploy responses.…
This week, SolarWinds announced patches for several high-severity vulnerabilities in Sev-U and the SolarWinds platform. Among the new patches is one for a bug reported by a penetration tester for NATO. The latest SolarWinds platform, version 2024.2 includes three new security defect patches, as well as multiple bug fixes. The first issue was reported by…
The boom in artificial intelligence will increase banks’ dependence on big U.S. tech firms, creating new risks for the industry, European banking executives said. Excitement around using artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services – widely used already for detecting fraud and money-laundering – has soared since the launch of OpenAI’s viral chatbot ChatGPT in late…
How private are your conversations with ChatGPT? That’s a tricky question to answer. OpenAI says that no one can view your chats unless you specifically choose to share them. However, the company does store and maintain a history of your conversations and acknowledges that their content can be used for training. If you’re concerned about…
Humane, the AI hardware startup founded by ex-Apple designers, is seeking a buyer after its AI Pin’s lukewarm debut, according to a source familiar with the matter. The company is currently in talks with HP and other firms, including more than one telecom company, the source told CNBC. Humane has hired investment bank Tidal Partners to advise…
On Thursday, DuckDuckGo unveiled a new “AI Chat” service that allows users to converse with four mid-range large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Mistral in an interface similar to ChatGPT while attempting to preserve privacy and anonymity. While the AI models involved can output inaccurate information readily, the site allows users to…
Apple is gearing up to reveal a new AI system on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac next week at WWDC 2024 — and it will be called Apple Intelligence, according to a report from Bloomberg. In addition to providing new “beta” AI features across Apple’s platforms and apps, it will reportedly offer access to a…
On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit a UN school complex functioning as a shelter for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza. Israel claimed that the shelter was simultaneously protecting Hamas militants, targeting three classrooms in the building which held 20 to 30 Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Dozens were killed in…
Cuban officials have stated that four Russian vessels, one of which is a nuclear-powered submarine, will arrive in Havana between June 12 and June 17. Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that none of these vessels are carrying any nuclear weapons, and do not pose a threat. However, the deployment of these vessels so close…
After Iran’s refusal to allow inspectors to access the country’s uranium program, the UN passed a resolution censuring Iran. Iran’s nuclear program has advanced greatly over the past year, and it is believed the program may be only days or weeks from developing the bomb-grade fuel needed to create around three nuclear weapons. France, Britain,…
If the Houthis don’t stop their attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea, the U.S. and its allies are planning to block funds from reaching the group. These funds come as part of a UN peace plan which included the payment of $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia to civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas. If…
Interpol and the FBI worked on a joint operation to find the attackers attempting to sabotage Interpol’s Red Notice system, leading to the detainment of four people in Moldova. The Red Notice system alerts law enforcement globally about criminals, and is an essential tool for Interpol. The multinational operation between Interpol and the FBI uncovered…
After $5.3 million was stolen in January 2023 through a BEC scheme, the U.S. government just announced that it is attempting to recover the money. An unnamed workers union in Massachusetts lost the money when it fell for a phishing email requesting the transfer of $6.4 million to a different bank account. $5.3 million of…
An espionage campaign named “SickSync” is using cyber attacks to target defense forces in Ukraine using a malware called SPECTR. The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has determined the actor behind these attacks to be a group called Vermin which is associated with security agencies of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). The attacks…
Akamai researchers are warning that Chinese attackers are using previously publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in ThinkPHP in new attacks. The bugs, CVE-2018-20062 and CVE-2019-9082, were patched over five years ago, but are now being exploited again in recent attacks. A Chinese threat actor has been using the flaws to fetch files from compromised servers in China,…
For months, I’ve been writing about concerns that OpenAI, under Sam Altman’s leadership, is far more excited about pushing out new AI products than doing the hard work of making them safe. Well, those safety practices are now a national news story. Last week, Jan Leike, who led the superalignment team at OpenAI, left the…
French AI startup Mistral is introducing new AI model customization options, including paid plans, to let developers and enterprises fine-tune its generative models for particular use cases. The first is self-service. Mistral has released a software development kit (SDK), Mistral-Finetune, for fine-tuning its models on workstations, servers and small datacenter nodes. In the readme for the SDK’s…
Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the…
“What do you see right now?” a man asks a humanoid robot standing behind a table. “I see a red apple on a plate in the centre of the table, a drying rack with cups and a plate, and you standing nearby, with your hand on the table,” the robot replies. “Great—can I have something…
For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have. The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total overhaul. Capable of…
On Wednesday, the United States, Russia, and China amongst others congratulated the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on his election victory. Following the world’s largest democratic election this week, Prime Minister Modi’s administration began preparing for the swearing-in ceremony for the government. This will be a record third term for Modi. According to local…
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others as a means of targeting and striking Western targets. This warning comes in response to NATO allies supplying Ukraine with arms and allowing them to use their weapons to attack Russia. Putin also reaffirmed Russia’s ability to use nuclear weapons…
According to three U.S. officials, United States President Joe Biden did not consult Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before publicly airing a Gaza ceasefire proposal. The Gaza ceasefire proposal was jointly developed by Israel and the United States before being sent to Hamas. According to U.S. officials, the decision to unilaterally announce the ceasefire proposal…
On Wednesday, a senior U.S. official stated that Russia has plans to send combat vessels into the Caribbean region this Summer as part of naval exercises. According to the senior U.S. official, these Russian naval exercises also include potential stops in Venezuela and port calls in Cuba. While the U.S. does not view these exercises…
Russian organizations are the targets of cyber attacks that utilize a Windows malware dubbed Decoy Dog. Positive Technologies, a cybersecurity company tracked the activity of the threat actor group, using the codename Operation Lahat. It was through this tracking that positive technologies were able to attribute the attacks to the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group…
On Tuesday, several London hospitals announced they had to cancel operations and were unable to see patients as a result of a cyberattack. The cyberattack targeted a company that supplies pathology and laboratory services known as Synnovis. The attack was a ransomware attack that ultimately rendered all pathology services unable to work intermittently. The National…
On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it dismantled a huge 911 S5 proxy botnet, with its administrator being arrested. The U.S. Treasury Department also announced sanctions against three Chinese nationals earlier this week, who are accused of involvement in the creation and operation of the 911 S5 botnet. The Justice Department announced the arrest…
On Wednesday, an FBI official announced they obtained more than 7,000 LockBit ransomware decryption keys, urging victims to reach out. At the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security, the assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, Bryan Vorndran pleaded with victims. He announced that the agency would be able to help victims recover stolen data…
Cisco on Tuesday launched a $1 billion fund to invest in artificial intelligence startups, joining a list of big technology companies rushing to take stakes in small AI firms. The company, through its investment arm, is investing in Cohere, Mistral AI and Scale AI, among others, and has already committed nearly $200 million of the…
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) genie is out of the bottle. AI has transcended speculative innovation to become a cornerstone of contemporary business strategy, positioned at the forefront of an information revolution. With its profound ability to reshape operations, enhance productivity, and redefine workforce dynamics, AI has evolved from a supplementary tool to an indispensable asset…
When the tech industry describes AI’s role in its products, it hardly chooses language at random. Terms such as assistant and copilot reinforce that the human user remains firmly in charge—a comforting notion for anyone stressed over AI’s loose-cannon tendencies or even the prospect of it eventually rendering humans less essential to business processes. And then…
When a 23-year-old Sam Altman took the stage at Apple Inc.’s annual developer conference in 2008, he gushed about being able to use the company’s new App Store to promote his software, a friend-locating service called Loopt. “We think this is a new era of mobile, and we’re thrilled to be part of it,” Altman…
The advent of A.I. — artificial intelligence — is spurring curiosity and fear. Will A.I. be a creator or a destroyer of worlds? In “Can We Have Pro-Worker A.I.? Choosing a Path of Machines in Service of Minds,” three economists at M.I.T., Daron Acemoglu, David Autor and Simon Johnson, looked at this epochal innovation last year: The…
An anonymous high-profile government organization located in Southeast Asia was the target of a Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage operation. Codenamed Crimson Palace, the cyber espionage operation involved accessing critical IT systems, reconnaissance, and lifting sensitive military and technical data information. The threat actor group also deployed various malware targeting command-and-control (C2) communications to support Chinese…
After receiving permission from President Biden to fire American-made weapons into limited areas of Russia just a few days ago, Ukraine has now officially struck Russia using western weapons. Kyiv fired a U.S.-made artillery system over the border, striking a Russian military facility and destroying Russian missile launchers in the Belgorod region. Yehor Chernev explained…
Yesterday, President Biden announced new restrictions which would prevent most migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border from seeking asylum. The restrictions will aim to ease the ability of immigration officers to lawfully remove migrants, reducing the burden of Border Patrol agents. These new measures will be put into effect when the amount of migrants…
This morning, a gunman opened fire on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The gunman was injured by return fire, and was subsequently arrested and taken to a hospital. The Lebanese military has stated that the attacker was a Syrian national and that they were further investigating the incident. Although the Lebanese military did not release…
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs organized and paid for a campaign last year to influence U.S. lawmakers and Americans to support Israel’s military and the war. The ministry put around $2 million towards the operation, hiring the Tel Aviv firm Stoic to carry out the operation. The campaign began in October 2023, and is still…
Narendra Modi has won his third term as India’s leader, however, the election was much closer than was predicted. Instead of winning by a large margin, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) lost dozens of seats. Following the release of the election results, India’s stock markets quickly plunged. This loss of seats will force Modi to…
Daily activities are becoming increasingly more digitized, reliant on systems which were created without security in mind. These systems are essential to sectors such as energy, health, water, telecommunications, and agriculture, making our world increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a recent warning, urging water systems to increase their security…
RansomHub has recently claimed responsibility for the April 2024 cyberattack on Frontier Communications. RansomHub is a ransomware group, and over the weekend they added Frontier onto its leak site. The group claims to have stolen 5GB of data from Frontier, containing the information of over 2 million customers. The information includes addresses, names, emails, Social…
A group of OpenAI insiders are calling for massive change to the AI industry. They say that currently, the AI industry, and specifically OpenAI, employs a culture of recklessness and secrecy. They want the AI industry to introduce greater transparency, as well as protections for whistle-blowers. The group claims that OpenAI has not taken proper…
On Tuesday, several hospitals in London were hit by a ransomware attack. Synnovis, a company which supplies pathology laboratory services, were the victims of a cyberattack which affected the company’s IT systems. This incident had a major impact on the delivery of services in several hospitals, and operations and appointments had to be canceled. Blood…
As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes industry after industry, we will soon witness not just the automation of tasks but also the proliferation of elevated mediocrity—a tidal wave of “good enough” AI-driven outputs that will flood markets with astonishing speed. This relentless pace of disruptive imitation will do more than enhance productivity—it will spawn a cottage…
Generative AI tools have made remarkable strides in medicine since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Research has shown that AI, with expert clinician oversight, can significantly enhance diagnostic accuracy, treatment recommendations, and patient monitoring and analysis. And yet, despite its impressive capabilities and buzz, generative AI is still in the early stages of adoption—both…
A group of OpenAI insiders is blowing the whistle on what they say is a culture of recklessness and secrecy at the San Francisco artificial intelligence company, which is racing to build the most powerful A.I. systems ever created. The group, which includes nine current and former OpenAI employees, has rallied in recent days around shared…
You could easily walk the entire Automate floor without spotting a single humanoid. There was a grand total of three, by my count — or, rather, three units of the same nonworking prototype. Neura was showing off its long-promised 4NE-1 robot, amid more traditional form factors. There was a little photo setup where you could…
Dressed austerely in a black turtleneck and blazer despite the warm early May day, Vinod Khosla surveys the packed auditorium in the bowels of the U.S. Capitol complex before setting the stakes of the debate at hand. “Winning the race for AI means economic power, which then lets you influence social policy or ideology.” Khosla’s next…
On Tuesday, 642 million votes were cast in the world’s largest election in India, and have been counted. India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the expected winner of the election, which would result in a third consecutive term. The exit polls of the election project a huge win for Modi. However, the exit polls…
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Copyright © 2025 — All Rights Reserved.
Notifications
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence