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A source told reporter Renee Dudley something she found hard to believe: that Microsoft was running tech support for the Department of Defense through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary. The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.

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“We should draw a sharp distinction between oil as a cause of war and oil as an instrument in warfare,” says Dag Harald Claes.

He is a professor of political science at the University of Oslo and has researched oil, energy, and international politics for many years.

Claes has recently published a new book examining the role of energy and oil in wars and conflicts.

Oil has come to symbolize modern war and conflict, he explains.

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Chinese AI labs have stunned the world, again. In the space of about a month, Chinese AI start-up labs Z.ai and Moonshot have each launched a model that is nearly as intelligent as competitors from OpenAI and Anthropic but far cheaper. Silicon Valley start-ups are already using Z.ai’s GLM-5.2, and Moonshot’s Kimi-K3 likely isn’t far behind in that market.

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When the Strait of Hormuz first closed at the start of the 2026 Iran war, the world braced for the “largest energy crisis in history.” Before the conflict began, almost 20 percent of the world’s traded oil passed through the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran’s blockade of the strait effectively erased 15 million barrels per day from circulation overnight. 

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In this episode of the podcast, host Paul Roberts interviews Nishawn Smagh of the firm GreyNoise Intelligence about the findings of their State of the Edge report, an analysis of GreyNoise data on risks stemming from compromised edge devices such as broadband routers, VPN gateways, smart home devices and more. Shawn and Paul talk about how attackers are turning edge devices into their favorite entry point, and strategies for organizations to counter the growing risk of compromised edge devices.

The post Edge Devices Are Your Cyber Underbelly. Here’s Why. appeared first on The Security Ledger with Paul F. Roberts.

Cybersecurity agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States issued a call to action on Monday for cyber defenders. The message was clear: artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful weapon for cyber attackers; defenders must act urgently to improve their cyber defenses.

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There are a lot of ways for disaster victims to get help in the immediate aftermath of a flood or fire. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gives out temporary housing assistance and pays for debris removal, insurance companies pay to rebuild homes and replace lost valuables, and charity groups pass out food and water. 

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In the last year or so, artificial intelligence companies have rolled out a spate of web browsers equipped with AI agents. A user might ask one of these agents to plan a vacation and it will open browser tabs to research routes and restaurants, then make reservations and add events to the user’s calendar. How well it does any of this varies.

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Droughts in the United States are becoming more intense and unpredictable, and the nation needs to develop a new drought assessment framework to better understand and address them, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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The expertise of the South Asian sub-region is robust, so the title of Worst Defense Acquisition System is in safe hands. But Britain’s allies in a post-American world should worry that Blighty is as far up the list as it is.

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Fighting along key transport routes pushes up food prices in areas far from the conflict itself, according to a new study. Researchers examined the price of maize and other staples during the war in Somalia between government forces and Al-Shabaab, an Islamist terrorist group. They found that although the fighting was concentrated in the southwest of the country, the impact of price rises was felt 900 kilometers (560 miles) away—equivalent to the length of the U.K.

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