From the institutes, labs and civil-society groups.

Yet another Israeli mass surveillance company : Made by Israeli surveillance company Cognyte, the tech simulates a mobile phone tower, which forces nearby phones to connect to it. That enables cops to keep tabs on any phones in the vicinity ­ whether they’re owned by a suspect in a case or not. Cognyte’s contract with the state of Texas reveals that the simulator, called FalcoNet, can be concealed within the vehicles, hidden in a backpack for on-foot missions or attached to a helicopter. It’s th

Greetings from a world where…

Today's links How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump): Grant me the courage to change the things I can. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Chilling Effects; Billy Bragg v Myspace; Glenn Beck calls murdered Norwegian children "Hitler Youth"; Photog sues Getty for $1b copyfraud; Best paid CEOs perform worst; Olympics v "Olympics"; Alberta tar sands v "hot lesbians"; IoT security apocalypse; 3 Little Pigs in pidgin; The nasty party; Copyright extortionist infringed fel

Open source software is a critical pillar of the global economy. It underpins cloud computing, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, government and internet services by making technology accessible and observable to communities of experts. Cybersecurity is among the top three beneficiaries of open source software. The Open Secure AI Alliance — building on the leadership of […]

CSET’s Sam Bresnick and Fanny Chao shared their expert analysis in an op-ed published by War on the Rocks. The article examines Taiwan’s challenges in adopting artificial intelligence for military applications, highlighting how the gap between Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry and its limited military AI readiness could affect its ability to deter Chinese aggression and future collaboration with partners. The post Taiwan’s Tech Hurdles Threaten Military Capability and Potential Coali

The Trinity Legal Term ends on Friday 31 July 2026. The summer legal vacation will run until Thursday 1 October 2026 when the Michaelmas Legal Term will begin. On 23 July 2026, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (Lady Carmichael, Chamberlain J and Mr Shaw KC) handed down judgment in Kearney and BBC v Chief Constable of the Police […]

The Commission publishes new transparency guidelines and confirms the Code of Practice on AI-generated content, as attention turns to the EU's enforcement powers taking effect on 2 August.

New OpenAI research shows how AI is expanding what workers do, with ChatGPT users taking on tasks across roles and reshaping job boundaries.

The complexity of modern chip design continues to grow as engineering teams work to develop increasingly sophisticated CPUs, GPUs and AI systems. To help meet that challenge, NVIDIA is collaborating with industry leaders Cadence and Synopsys to optimize critical electronic design automation (EDA) applications for the NVIDIA Vera CPU. NVIDIA is now deploying Vera across […]

CSET’s Sam Bresnick shared his expert insight in an article published by The Wire China. The article examines how Nvidia’s network of partners in China has supplied organizations linked to China’s military and other U.S.-restricted entities, highlighting ongoing challenges in enforcing export controls on advanced AI technology. The post Nvidia’s China Partners and the PLA appeared first on Center for Security and Emerging Technology .

An Inside Look at the Relay Market Powering Token Resellers and Fraud Fascinating investigation by Matt Lenhard into the market that has grown up around reselling LLM tokens at a discount by pooling API keys from various sources. This looks to be mostly a thing in China. Resellers sell access to an LLM proxy that offers significant discounts on regular API pricing, which they achieve by abusing free trials, proxying through unprotected support bots, or sometimes through stolen credit cards or ch

As AI agents take on higher-stakes decisions, Lean programming language makes it possible to mathematically prove they will behave safely.

We need more details

Ruff v0.16.0 Astral shipped a significant new version of their Ruff Python linting tool a few days ago on July 23rd. I noticed today because my various CI jobs all started failing thanks to new default Ruff checks and my unpinned "ruff" dev dependency. From Brent Westbrook's announcement post: Ruff now enables 413 rules by default, up from 59 in previous versions. Since Ruff's default rule set was last modified in v0.1.0 , the number of rules in Ruff has grown from 708 to 968. Many of these rule

And what the incident can’t tell us about alignment

Next is the list of our inhouse experts working in this unit.

Today's links Apple's robo-repo: Privatizing the risk premium, socializing its costs. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Printed batteries; Monopoly credit cards; Mapping airport power outlets; EMI loves pirates; Mexican indigenous phone co-op; Sewer cover textiles; Surge pricing v antitrust; Carbon offsets v forest fires; Charter schools as money laundries. Upcoming appearances: Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend. Recent appearances: Where I've b

Biomni can analyze mountains of medical data, spot patterns humans might miss, and even design experiments—helping researchers make discoveries faster in the race to cure disease.

More than any of these eval scores, what is most exciting to me is something else: Opus 5 is our least prompt injectable model yet. It is a bit buried in the system card, but across PI evals and red teaming, Opus 5 is very hard to prompt inject successfully. — Boris Cherny , here's that System Card section , page 73 Tags: prompt-injection , anthropic , claude , generative-ai , ai , llms , boris-cherny

China is closing the gap, but it’s not because we have too much regulation on AI

Lower catch this year . As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.

Lawsuit Challenges Secret Government Policy that Collects, Stores, and Uses Personal Information About People Observing Immigration Enforcement SAN DIEGO — Privacy rights advocates and three individuals today filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful surveillance of those who peacefully observe and document federal immigration enforcement. Plaintiffs allege that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has … Continued

Lawsuit Challenges Secret Government Policy that Collects, Stores, and Uses Personal Information About People Observing Immigration Enforcement SAN DIEGO — Privacy rights advocates and three individuals today filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful surveillance of those who peacefully observe and document federal immigration enforcement. Plaintiffs allege that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has … Continued

How do I find ideas for what I write? Luckily, beyond law there is also theatre, where I do not have to choose between guilty and not guilty, where I can instead engage with social questions in all their ambivalence – though there too, crucially, you should not waffle, at least not without dramaturgical purpose. Because in theatre especially, you must think of the audience: away with overlong monologues, unnecessary scenes, confusing plots. Cut, cut, cut. I try to follow this rule when writing a

Senior fellow Gary Miller spoke with Cape Cellular about the exploitation of mobile network vulnerabilities to track US personnel during the Iran war. The post How Iran Uses Cellular Infrastructure to Target US Military Phones appeared first on The Citizen Lab .

The week in content moderation - edition #345

The Pentagon's push to integrate AI into weapons systems exposes a critical gap: no one can agree on what "autonomous weapons" means. The post The Pentagon’s Autonomous Weapons Definitions Don’t Need an Overhaul, They Need an Update appeared first on Just Security .

Hungary's anti-corruption win offers U.S. democracy advocates lessons, but success requires a credible messenger and a concrete plan. The post What Hungary’s Anti-Corruption Election Can Teach U.S. Democracy Advocates appeared first on Just Security .

Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news: IRAN WAR The U.S. military completed its latest round of strikes on Iran overnight, marking a 13th consecutive night of attacks, according to U.S. Central Command. Iranian state media […] The post Early Edition: July 24, 2026 appeared first on Just Security .

Today's links AI solipsists and AI cynics: You don't have to believe that AI "works" to believe that it's a good investment. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Malware v stolen computer; Industrial material made from old coffee and melted cups; Austro-Germany's weird tunnels; Health data v Silicon Valley; Amusement parks v load-balancing. Upcoming appearances: Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: Y

How the world's richest man explains the AI boom and 21st century economy. An interview with Quinn Slobodian, co-author of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.

A HUGE win for BFL!

The first known runaway AI agent - or a very bad marketing stunt? Martin Alderson's commentary on the OpenAI accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face includes a couple of details I hadn't considered. First, Hugging Face offers a truly rich target if you're trying to find potential vulnerabilities that require executing arbitrary code: Hugging Face has an enormous attack surface. They have more interfaces than I can count which run untrusted models and code. While they definitely have invested

Police departments across the country are lining up to launch drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs, and hundreds have cleared a necessary hurdle toward making deployment a reality, expanding aerial surveillance and data collection even in areas patrol officers typically can't reach. As of February 2026, over 1,000 public safety agencies —including police, fire, and other emergency management agencies—had received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) waivers needed to automate drone operation

Data brokers have been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years, including through critical media coverage, public hearings, private lawsuits, regulatory enforcement actions, and new state and federal regulatory frameworks. Despite all this public attention, there is little consensus as to who is a “data broker,” what risks and benefits are associated with data […]

Artificial intelligence has found a new way to make policymakers nervous. The latest fight concerns less what AI can do than who may build it, copy it, distribute it, and decide when those activities become a security threat. That fight will help define AI governance, the rules and institutions used to manage AI development, access, ... Open Models, Closed Minds: AI Policy Keeps Regulating the Wrong Thing The post Open Models, Closed Minds: AI Policy Keeps Regulating the Wrong Thing appeared fir

What are the broader lessons from this incident?