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Can You Trust AI? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t
Across the internet, devices and services that seem to work for you already secretly work against you. Smart TVs spy on you. Phone apps collect and sell your data. Many apps and websites manipulate you through dark patterns, design elements that deliberately mislead, coerce or deceive website visitors. This is surveillance capitalism, and AI is shaping up to be part of it.
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Florida’s Home Insurance Crisis Isn’t Going Away
It’s hard to make money selling home insurance in Florida. For one thing, the state is very vulnerable to hurricanes, and those hurricanes are getting stronger thanks to climate change. A legal loophole has made the state a hotbed for fraudulent litigation over insurance claims, and companies lose even more money fighting those lawsuits. And reinsurers are charging insurance companies much higher fees owing to climate change-driven disaster losses.
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Chinese Legislation Targets U.S. Trade Sanctions
A day before U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing, China passed a sweeping new Foreign Relations Law that appears to be aimed at countering U.S. trade sanctions. The law comes as the government of President Xi Jinping is pushing back against American efforts to cut off its access to technology to make advanced computer chips and efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese suppliers.
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Maryland Think Tank Co-Director Charged for Acting as an Agent for China, Iran
Gal Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, allegedly evaded FARA registration while working to advance the interests of China in the United States and seeking to broker the illicit sales of Chinese-manufactured weapons to several countries, and the sale of Iranian oil to China.
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China’s Gallium and Germanium Controls: What They Mean and What Could Happen Next
From August, China is to restrict exports of gallium and germanium, two critical elements for making semiconductor chips. China dominates the supply of both elements. The restrictions look likely to lead to higher prices for gallium and germanium, as well as longer delivery times.
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U.S. Animal Industries Pose Serious Risk of Future Zoonotic Pandemics
Animal industries in the United States pose serious risk of future pandemics and the U.S. government lacks a comprehensive strategy to address these threats, a new study concludes. The study is the first to comprehensively map networks of animal commerce that fuel zoonotic disease risk in the U.S.
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Stressed for a Bit? Then Don’t Click It, Cybersecurity Experts Advise
Workers feeling a specific form of stress are more likely than others to become the victims of a phishing attack. Phishing psychology study explores what makes workers vulnerable.
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How Secure Are Voice Authentication Systems Really?
Voice authentication has increasingly been used in remote banking, call centers and other security-critical scenarios. Attackers can break voice authentication with up to 99 percent success within six tries.
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U.S. Agencies Buy Vast Quantities of Personal Information on the Open Market – a Legal Scholar Explains Why and What It Means for Privacy in the Age of AI
The issues pf the protection of personal information in the digital age is increasingly urgent. Today’s commercially available information, coupled with the now-ubiquitous decision-making artificial intelligence and generative AI like ChatGPT, significantly increases the threat to privacy and civil liberties by giving the government access to sensitive personal information beyond even what it could collect through court-authorized surveillance.
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As Cybercrime Evolves, Organizational Resilience Demands a Mindset Shift
Facing the threat of state-sponsored cyberattack groups, the financial motivations of organized cybercrime gangs and the reckless ambitions of loosely knit hacktivist collectives, organizations are fighting a cybersecurity battle on multiple fronts.
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Opportunities for Australia–ASEAN Collaboration on Critical Minerals
Southeast Asia’s energy transition is coming to life as the development of green technologies accelerates across the region. Securing critical minerals will be crucial to this process, and Australia should work with Southeast Asia to realize their mutual goals in this area.
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China-Based Chemical Manufacturing Companies Charged, Executives Arrested in Fentanyl Manufacturing
DOJ announced the arrest of two individuals and the unsealing of three indictments in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York charging China-based companies and their employees with crimes related to fentanyl production, distribution, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals.
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To Pay or Not to Pay? Ransomware Attacks Are the New Kidnapping
Over the past several years, ransomware attacks have become a persistent national security threat. The inability to respond effectively to this challenge has normalized what should be intolerable: organized cybercriminals harbored by hostile states regularly disrupting and extorting businesses and essential services, causing misery in the process.
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U.S. Policymakers Acting to Bolster Drug Supply Chains Amid Critical Shortages
Alarmed by persistent shortages of critically important drugs such as cancer medications, Adderall, and antibiotics, U.S. policymakers are taking steps to shore up the country’s pharmaceutical supply chains. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists has more than 900 drug and dose shortages on its drug shortage list, and the FDA lists more than 200. The number and length of supply disruptions has grown over the last 10 years.
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Germany Reforms Immigration Law to Attract and Retain Skilled Workers
From healthcare to IT, carpenters to technicians, Germany’s “help wanted” sign is blinking red. Germany has two million jobs to fill, and it needs 400,000 foreign workers to make up the shortfall every year. When the baby boomers retire en masse, the problem will only get worse. Now Germany is reforming its immigration laws to help close the gap, and bring in, and keep, foreign talent.
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The long view
Need for National Information Clearinghouse for Cybercrime Data, Categorization of Cybercrimes: Report
There is an acute need for the U.S. to address its lack of overall governance and coordination of cybercrime statistics. A new report recommends that relevant federal agencies create or designate a national information clearinghouse to draw information from multiple sources of cybercrime data and establish connections to assist in criminal investigations.
Trying to “Bring Back” Manufacturing Jobs Is a Fool’s Errand
Advocates of recent populist policies like to focus on the supposed demise of manufacturing that occurred after the 1970s, but that focus is misleading. The populists’ bleak economic narrative ignores the truth that the service sector has always been a major driver of America’s success, for decades, even more so than manufacturing. Trying to “bring back” manufacturing jobs, through harmful tariffs or other industrial policies, is destined to end badly for Americans. It makes about as much sense as trying to “bring back” all those farm jobs we had before the 1870s.
The Potential Impact of Seabed Mining on Critical Mineral Supply Chains and Global Geopolitics
The potential emergence of a seabed mining industry has important ramifications for the diversification of critical mineral supply chains, revenues for developing nations with substantial terrestrial mining sectors, and global geopolitics.
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”