Mark Tyson reports via Tom's Hardware: The German Navy is searching for a new storage system to replace the aging 8-inch (20cm) floppy disks which are vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates. According to an official tender document, the ideal answer to the German Navy's problems would be a drop-in floppy disk replacement based upon a storage emulation system, reports Golem.de. Germany's Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates' data acquisition system and, thus "central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation," according to the source report.

The F123s are specialized in submarine hunting, and they are also being upgraded in terms of the weapon systems and weapon control systems. Swedish company Saab is the general contractor for the F123 modernizations. It won't be trivial to replace three decades old computer hardware seamlessly, while retaining the full functionality of the existing floppies. However, we note that other companies have wrestled similar problems in recent years. Moreover, there are plenty of emulator enthusiasts using technologies for floppy emulation solutions like Gotek drives which can emulate a variety of floppy drive standards and formats. There are other workable solutions already out there, but it all depends on who the German Navy chooses to deliver the project.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A data breach at the phone surveillance operation mSpy has exposed millions of its customers who bought access to the phone spyware app over the past decade, as well as the Ukrainian company behind it. Unknown attackers stole millions of customer support tickets, including personal information, emails to support, and attachments, including personal documents, from mSpy in May 2024. While hacks of spyware purveyors are becoming increasingly common, they remain notable because of the highly sensitive personal information often included in the data, in this case about the customers who use the service. The hack encompassed customer service records dating back to 2014, which were stolen from the spyware maker's Zendesk-powered customer support system.

mSpy is a phone surveillance app that promotes itself as a way to track children or monitor employees. Like most spyware, it is also widely used to monitor people without their consent. These kinds of apps are also known as "stalkerware" because people in romantic relationships often use them to surveil their partner without consent or permission. The mSpy app allows whoever planted the spyware, typically someone who previously had physical access to a victim's phone, to remotely view the phone's contents in real-time. As is common with phone spyware, mSpy's customer records include emails from people seeking help to surreptitiously track the phones of their partners, relatives, or children, according to TechCrunch's review of the data, which we independently obtained. Some of those emails and messages include requests for customer support from several senior-ranking U.S. military personnel, a serving U.S. federal appeals court judge, a U.S. government department's watchdog, and an Arkansas county sheriff's office seeking a free license to trial the app. Even after amassing several million customer service tickets, the leaked Zendesk data is thought to represent only the portion of mSpy's overall customer base who reached out for customer support. The number of mSpy customers is likely to be far higher. mSpy's owners, a Ukraine-based company called Brainstack, have yet to publicly disclose the breach. You can visit Have I Been Pwned to see if your email address was involved in a breach.

Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams writes: Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning -- cutting them off from crucial online services. They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers -- and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza. Microsoft says they violated its terms of service -- a claim they dispute. He also said being cut off from Skype was a huge blow for his family. The internet is frequently disrupted or switched off there because of the Israeli military campaign - and standard international calls are very expensive. [...] With a paid Skype subscription, it is possible to call mobiles in Gaza cheaply -- and while the internet is down -- so it has become a lifeline to many Palestinians.

Some of the people the BBC spoke to said they suspected they were wrongly thought to have ties to Hamas, which Israel is fighting, and is designated a terrorist organization by many countries. Microsoft did not respond directly when asked if suspected ties to Hamas were the reason for the accounts being shut. But a spokesperson said it did not block calls or ban users based on calling region or destination. "Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity," they said, without elaborating.

NATO is helping finance a project aimed at finding ways to keep the internet running should subsea cables shuttling civilian and military communications across European waters come under attack. From a report: Researchers, who include academics from the US, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland, say they want to develop a way to seamlessly reroute internet traffic from subsea cables to satellite systems in the event of sabotage, or a natural disaster. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Science for Peace and Security Programme has approved a grant of as much as $433,600 for the $2.5 million project, and research institutions are providing in-kind contributions, documents seen by Bloomberg show.

Eyup Kuntay Turmus, adviser and program manager at the NATO program, confirmed the project was recently approved and said by email that implementation will start "very soon." The initiative, which hasn't yet been publicly announced, comes amid intensifying fears that Russia or China could mine, sever or otherwise tamper with undersea cables in an attempt to disrupt communications during a military crisis. Data carried through cables under the sea account for roughly $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day, and nearly all of the NATO's internet traffic travels through them, according to the treaty organization. As a result, NATO has been ramping up efforts to protect cables over the course of the past several months.

"Images captured from space show the growth of Cuba's electronic eavesdropping stations," reported the Wall Street Journal this week, citing a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

But they added that the stations "are believed to be linked to China," including previously-unreported construction about 70 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. (The Journal had previously reported China and Cuba were "negotiating closer defense and intelligence ties, including establishing a new joint military training facility on the island and an eavesdropping facility.") At the time, the Journal reported that Cuba and China were already jointly operating eavesdropping stations on the island, according to U.S. officials, who didn't disclose their locations. It couldn't be determined which, if any, of those are included in the sites covered by the CSIS report.

The concern about the stations, former officials and analysts say, is that China is using Cuba's geographical proximity to the southeastern U.S. to scoop up sensitive electronic communications from American military bases, space-launch facilities, and military and commercial shipping. Chinese facilities on the island "could also bolster China's use of telecommunications networks to spy on U.S. citizens," said Leland Lazarus, an expert on China-Latin America relations at Florida International University... Authors of the CSIS report, after analyzing years' worth of satellite imagery, found that Cuba has significantly upgraded and expanded its electronic spying facilities in recent years and pinpointed four sites — at Bejucal, El Salao, Wajay and Calabazar... "These are active locations with an evolving mission set," said Matthew Funaiole, a senior follow at CSIS and the report's chief author.
The CSIS web site shows some of the satellite images. "Pinpointing the specific targets of these assets is nearly impossible," they add — but since Cuba has no space program, "the types of space-tracking capabilities observed are likely intended to monitor the activities of other nations (like the United States) with a presence in orbit." While China's own satellites could also benefit from a North America-based groundstation for communications, the Cuban facilities "would also provide the ability to monitor radio traffic and potentially intercept data delivered by U.S. satellites as they pass over highly sensitive military sites across the southern United States."

The think tank points out that one possibly-installed system would be within range to monitor rocket launches from Cape Canaveral and NASA's Kennedy Space Center. "Studying these launches — particularly those of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusable first-stage booster rocket systems — is likely of keen interest to China as it attempts to catch up to U.S. leadership in space launch technology."

Ars Technica's Eric Berger writes: On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr. Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were "safely in orbit." The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said. However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail. As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.

The three-satellite constellation known as SARah -- the SAR is a reference to the synthetic aperture radar capability of the satellites -- was ordered in 2013 at a cost of $800 million. The first of the three satellites, SARah 1, launched in June 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was built by Airbus in southern Germany, and it has since gone into operation without any problems. The two smaller satellites built by OHB, flying with passive synthetic aperture radar reflectors, were intended to complement the SARah 1 satellite, which carries an active phased-array radar antenna. [...] According to the Der Spiegel report, the Bundeswehr says the two SARah satellites built by OHB remain the property of the German company and would only be turned over to the military once they were operational. As a result, the military says OHB will be responsible for building two replacement satellites. Shockingly, the German publication says that its sources indicated OBH did not fully test the functionality and deployment of the satellite antennas on the ground. This could not be confirmed.

America's Justice Department "is pushing for Boeing to plead guilty to a criminal charge," reports Reuters, "after finding the planemaker violated a settlement over fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday." Boeing previously paid $2.5 billion as part of the deal with prosecutors that granted the company immunity from criminal prosecution over a fraud conspiracy charge related to the 737 MAX's flawed design. Boeing had to abide by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement for a three-year period that ended on Jan. 7. Prosecutors would then have been poised to ask a judge to dismiss the fraud conspiracy charge. But in May, the Justice Department found Boeing breached the agreement, exposing the company to prosecution.
A guilty plea could "carry implications for Boeing's ability to enter into government contracts," the article points out, "such as those with the U.S. military that make up a significant portion of its revenue..." The proposal would require Boeing to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in connection with the fatal crashes, the sources said. The proposed agreement also includes a $487.2 million financial penalty, only half of which Boeing would be required to pay, they added. That is because prosecutors are giving the company credit for a payment it made as part of the previous settlement related to the fatal crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights. Boeing could also likely be forced to pay restitution under the proposal's terms, the amount of which will be at a judge's discretion, the sources said.

The offer also contemplates subjecting Boeing to three years of probation, the people said. The plea deal would also require Boeing's board to meet with victims' relatives and impose an independent monitor to audit the company's safety and compliance practices for three years, they said.
"Should Boeing refuse to plead guilty, prosecutors plan to take the company to trial, they said..." the article points out.

"Justice Department officials revealed their decision to victims' family members during a call earlier on Sunday."

The Wall Street Journal reports that a European initiative studying the feasibility data centers in space "has found that the project could be economically viable" — while reducing the data center's carbon footprint.

And they add that according to coordinator Thales Alenia Space, the project "could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros between now and 2050." The study — dubbed Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty — was funded by the European Union and sought to compare the environmental impacts of space-based and Earth-based data centers, the company said. Moving forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its results. Space data centers would be powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, aiming to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator said... Space data centers wouldn't require water to cool them, the company said.
The 16-month study came to a "very encouraging" conclusion, project manager Damien Dumestier told CNBC. With some caveats... The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization... The study found that, in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, a new type of launcher that is 10 times less emissive would need to be developed. ArianeGroup, one of the 12 companies participating in the study, is working to speed up the development of such reusable and eco-friendly launchers. The target is to have the first eco-launcher ready by 2035 and then to allow for 15 years of deployment in order to have the huge capacity required to make the project feasible, said Dumestier...

Michael Winterson, managing director of the European Data Centre Association, acknowledges that a space data center would benefit from increased efficiency from solar power without the interruption of weather patterns — but the center would require significant amounts of rocket fuel to keep it in orbit. Winterson estimates that even a small 1 megawatt center in low earth orbit would need around 280,000 kilograms of rocket fuel per year at a cost of around $140 million in 2030 — a calculation based on a significant decrease in launch costs, which has yet to take place. "There will be specialist services that will be suited to this idea, but it will in no way be a market replacement," said Winterson. "Applications that might be well served would be very specific, such as military/surveillance, broadcasting, telecommunications and financial trading services. All other services would not competitively run from space," he added in emailed comments.

[Merima Dzanic, head of strategy and operations at the Danish Data Center Industry Association] also signaled some skepticism around security risks, noting, "Space is being increasingly politicised and weaponized amongst the different countries. So obviously, there is a security implications on what type of data you send out there."
Its not the only study looking at the potential of orbital data centers, notes CNBC. "Microsoft, which has previously trialed the use of a subsea data center that was positioned 117 feet deep on the seafloor, is collaborating with companies such as Loft Orbital to explore the challenges in executing AI and computing in space."

The article also points out that the total global electricity consumption from data centers could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. "That's roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency."

Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations."

NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department over his alleged role in one of the largest U.S. government breaches of classified material. As a result, he will avoid imprisonment in the United States. CNN reports: Under the terms of the new agreement (PDF), Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence -- which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served in a high-security prison in London while he fought extradition to the US. The plea deal would credit that time served, allowing Assange to immediately return to Australia, his native country. The plea deal must still be approved by a federal judge.

Assange had faced 18 counts from a 2019 indictment for his alleged role in the breach that carried a max of up to 175 years in prison, though he was unlikely to be sentenced to that time in full. Assange was being pursued by US authorities for publishing confidential military records supplied by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011. US officials alleged that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.

French universities are becoming hotbeds for AI innovation, attracting investors seeking the next tech breakthrough. Ecole Polytechnique, a 230-year-old institution near Paris, stands out with 57% of France's AI startup founders among its alumni, according to Dealroom data analyzed by Accel. The school's approach combines STEM education with humanities and military training, producing well-rounded entrepreneurs. "AI is now instilling every discipline the same way mathematics did years ago," said Dominique Rossin, the school's provost. "We really push our students out of their comfort zone and encourage them to try new subjects and discover new areas in science," he added.

France leads Europe in AI startup funding, securing $2.3 billion and outpacing the UK and Germany, according to Dealroom.

MattSparkes shares a report from NewScientist: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen so many landmines deployed across the country that clearing them would take 700 years, say researchers. To make the task more manageable, Ukrainian scientists are turning to artificial intelligence to identify which regions are a priority for de-mining, though they expect some may simply have to be left as a permanent "scar" on the country. The model considers vast amounts of data, including tax and property ownership records, agricultural maps, data on soil fertility, logs from the military and emergency services of where bombs and shells have landed, information gleaned from satellite images and interviews with local civilians and the military. Even climate change models and data on population density derived from mobile phone operators could be assessed. The AI then weighs factors such as civilian safety and potential economic benefits to determine the importance of a given piece of land and how urgent it is to make it safe. Ihor Bezkaravainyi, a deputy minister at Ukraine's Ministry of Economy, is leading the team, and he likens the task of de-mining during an ongoing war to designing and building a submarine entirely underwater, except that the water is on fire. "It's a big problem," he says.

Bipartisan agreement on government internet subsidies seems unlikely as Democrats and Republicans propose conflicting bills to reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auctions. The Democratic bill aims to fund the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, while the Republican version does not. "While some Republicans supported earlier efforts to extend the subsidy program, those efforts did not go through in time to keep it from ending," notes The Verge. From the report: The Senate Commerce Committee canceled a Tuesday morning markup meeting in which it was set to consider the Spectrum and National Security Act, led by committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA). When she introduced it in April, Cantwell said the bill would provide $7 billion to continue funding the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the pandemic-era internet subsidy for low-income Americans that officially ran out of money and ended at the end of May. The main purpose of the bill is to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission's authority to run auctions for spectrum. The proceeds from spectrum auctions are often used to fund other programs. In addition to the ACP, Cantwell's bill would also fund programs including incentives for domestic chip manufacturing and a program that seeks to replace telecommunications systems that have been deemed national security concerns. The markup was already postponed several times before.

Cantwell blamed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, for standing in the way of the legislation. "We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Senator Cruz said 'no,'" Cantwell said in a statement late Monday. "He said 'no' to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones -- including more than one million Texas families." In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cantwell said her Republican colleagues on the committee offered amendments to limit the ACP funding in the bill. She said the ACP shouldn't be a partisan issue and stressed the wide range of Americans who've relied on the program for high-speed connections, including elderly people living on fixed incomes and many military families. "I hope my colleagues will stop with obstructing and get back to negotiating on important legislation that will deliver these national security priorities and help Americans continue to have access to something as essential as affordable broadband," she said.

Cruz has his own spectrum legislation with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auction authority, with a focus on expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum, commonly used for 5G. But it doesn't have the same ACP funding mechanism. Some large telecom industry players prefer Cruz's bill, in part because it allows for exclusive licensing. Wireless communications trade group CTIA's SVP of government affairs, Kelly Cole, told Fierce Network that the Cruz bill "is a better approach because it follows the historical precedent set by prior bipartisan legislation to extend the FCC's auction authority." But other tech groups like the Internet Technology Industry Council (ITI), which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, support Cantwell's bill, in part because of the programs it seeks to fund.

"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China's growing influence in the Philippines..." reports Reuters.

"It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found."

Reuters interviewed "more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers," and also reviewed posts on social media, technical data and documents about "a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military" — some active for more than five years. Friday they reported the results of their investigation: Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military's propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines — China's Sinovac inoculation. Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus — Tagalog for China is the virus.

"COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don't trust China!" one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: "From China — PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real." After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military's anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China's vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China's shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law...

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China's vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details. A Pentagon spokeswoman... also noted that China had started a "disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19."
A senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign told Reuters that "We didn't do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China's."

At least six senior State Department officials for the region objected, according to the article. But in 2019 U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper signed "a secret order" that "elevated the Pentagon's competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the StateDepartment when conducting psyops against those adversaries."

[A senior defense official] said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper's 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at "broad population messaging," such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID...

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using "disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government."

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign — General Dynamics IT — won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.

The Pentagon announced the first winners of its $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch program, with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin securing a spot for the first time alongside Elon Musk's SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA). These companies will compete for contracts through mid-2029 under the program's Phase 3, which is expected to include 90 rocket launch orders. CNBC reports: Under the program, known as NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1, the trio of companies will be eligible to compete for contracts through mid-2029. ULA and SpaceX have already been competing for contracts under the previous Phase 2 edition of NSSL: In total, over five years of Phase 2 launch orders, the military assigned ULA with 26 missions worth $3.1 billion, while SpaceX got 22 missions worth $2.5 billion. Blue Origin, as well as Northrop Grumman, missed out on Phase 2 when the Pentagon selected ULA and SpaceX for the program in August 2020. But with Phase 3, the U.S. military is raising the stakes -- and widening the field -- on a high-profile competition for Space Force mission contracts. Phase 3 is expected to see 90 rocket launch orders in total, with a split approach of categories Lane 1 and Lane 2 to allow even more companies to bid.

The dream of perpetual, emissionless flight is getting closer to reality. Aviation giants, telecoms, investors, and military agencies are pouring millions into developing these prototypes, which could revolutionize aerial surveillance, emergency communications, and more.

Solar planes absorb energy via panels covering their wings and bodies, allowing them to fly indefinitely as long as the sun shines. Advances in battery technology now enable longer flights and overnight operation, albeit with less power than jet fuel. These slow, lightweight aircraft can fly at altitudes and durations impossible for humans, making them ideal for monitoring, telecom, and disaster response. Companies like BAE Systems, Airbus, and Skydweller are racing to commercialize solar planes, with hopes of offering services by 2026-2027. The unregulated stratosphere is a key focus, with planes acting as "steerable satellites." WSJ adds: Most of the companies trying to commercialize solar planes are building aircraft that are lightweight, autonomous and can fly at altitudes and for lengths of time that humans can't tolerate. Unlike balloons, solar planes are steerable, a big advantage for monitoring a target on the ground or providing telecom coverage without being blown off course. They are also cheaper and closer to Earth than satellites, putting them in a sweet spot for services that can't currently be offered by either, executives in charge of solar-aircraft projects say. The planes can capture higher resolution photos or video than satellites, or deliver broadband internet from the air, another thing satellites can't do.

Longtime Slashdot reader MattSparkes shares a report from NewScientist: Quantum computing experts are baffled by the UK government's new export restrictions on the exotic devices (source paywalled), saying they make little sense. [The UK government has set limits on the capabilities of quantum computers that can be exported -- starting with those above 34 qubits, and rising as long as error rates are also higher -- and has declined to explain these limits on the grounds of national security.] The legislation applies to both existing, small quantum computers that are of no practical use and larger computers that don't actually exist, so cannot be exported. Instead, there are fears the limits will restrict sales and add bureaucracy to a new and growing sector. For more context, here's an excerpt from an article published by The Telegraph in March: The technology has been added to a list of "dual use" items that could have military uses maintained by the Export Control Joint Unit, which scrutinizes sales of sensitive goods. A national quantum computer strategy published last year described the technology as being "critically important" for defense and national security and said the UK was in a "global race" to develop it. [...] The changes have been introduced as part of a broader update to export rules agreed by Western allies including the US and major European countries. Several nations with particular expertise on quantum computer technologies have added specific curbs, including France which introduced rules at the start of this month.

Last year, industry body Quantum UK said British companies were concerned about the prospect of further export controls, and that they could even put off US companies seeking to relocate to the UK. Quantum computer exports only previously required licenses in specific cases, such as when they were likely to lead to military use. Oxford Instruments, which makes cooling systems for quantum computers, said last year that sales in China had been hit by increasing curbs. James Lindop of law firm Eversheds Sutherland said: "Semiconductor and quantum technologies -- two areas in which the UK already holds a world-leading position -- are increasingly perceived to be highly strategic and critical to UK national security. This will undoubtedly create an additional compliance burden for businesses active in the development and production of the targeted technologies."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation. The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel, four Israeli officials said. The ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out, according to the officials and the documents. The campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X. At its peak, it used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. The accounts focused on U.S. lawmakers, particularly ones who are Black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel's military.

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles. The Israeli government's connection to the influence operation, which The New York Times verified with four current and former members of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and documents about the campaign, has not previously been reported. FakeReporter, an Israeli misinformation watchdog, identified the effort in March. Last week, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, said they had also found and disrupted the operation. The secretive campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to sway American opinion on the war in Gaza.

American Lidar, a company registered in Michigan in December, is a subsidiary of China-based lidar maker Hesai Group, which the U.S. has labeled a security concern, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing policymakers and national-security experts. Chinese firms facing regulatory or reputational problems are rebranding and creating U.S.-domiciled businesses to sell their wares as the Biden administration expands the government entity lists that restrict Chinese companies' business dealings in the U.S., the report said.

These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company. Hesai became a target in the U.S.-China tech-trade war after allegations that its laser sensors could be used to collect sensitive American data, and was added to the Defense Department list that designates companies as Chinese military entities operating in the U.S. BGI Genomics and DJI are also facing similar challenges and are attempting to rebrand or license their technology to American startups to avoid sanctions.

China has set up its third planned state-backed investment fund to boost its semiconductor industry, with a registered capital of 344 billion yuan ($47.5 billion), according to a filing with a government-run companies registry. Reuters: The hundreds of billions of yuan invested in the sector puts into perspective President Xi Jinping's drive to achieve self-sufficiency for China in semiconductors. That commitment has taken on renewed urgency after the U.S. imposed a series of export control measures over the last couple of years, citing fears Beijing could use advanced chips to boost its military capabilities.