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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is considering bringing hundreds of senior military personnel back to Marine Corps Base Quantico later this year for another major address, according to US officials. The potential gathering would come nearly a year after Hegseth ordered the country’s generals and admirals to assemble at Quantico on short notice. The unusual meeting, held last September without an initial explanation, surprised senior military officers and generated concern within the ranks.&nbsp;Hegseth used that event to outline his priorities for the Pentagon, including a rejection of policies from the previous administration that he characterizes as ‘woke’. He also stressed that the military should refocus on what he describes as its central mission: warfighting. “For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things,” Hegseth said. “In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden.”&nbsp;Hegseth is expected to use the same venue again to present his priorities, according to the officials. One official said the defense secretary could also announce a new set of directives for the armed forces. The exact date of the proposed gathering has not been determined, and it remains unclear whether every serving general and admiral would be required to attend. “We have nothing to announce at this time,” said Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez.&nbsp;Since taking over as Pentagon chief last year, Hegseth has sought to reverse diversity and inclusion initiatives associated with the previous administration. He has argued that such policies undermined military standards and has advocated for a culture placing greater emphasis on physical fitness and military readiness rather than what he calls “wokeness.” His approach has drawn criticism from military experts and former officials, who argue that Hegseth is pushing the armed services in an increasingly partisan direction.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/x-uncovers-suspected-chinese-bot-farm-targeting-us-ai-and-data-center-debate-1787986800724">X exposes suspected Chinese influence campaign over AI, energy and data centers</a>&nbsp;The response from military officers at last year’s event was notably restrained. Hegseth and President Trump, who opened the gathering, received a polite but muted reaction, with officers largely remaining stone-faced during the presentations. Strict military regulations prohibit personnel from engaging in or encouraging political activity, a factor that shaped the atmosphere during the event. Trump used his lengthy address to defend the administration’s deployment of military forces to police American cities while also warning that further action could follow.&nbsp;“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.” It remains uncertain whether Trump will attend a potential second gathering at Quantico. During his address last year, Hegseth placed particular emphasis on military standards, saying service members would be evaluated on their physical fitness and appearance.&nbsp;“The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” Hegseth said. “No more beardos.” At the same time, the Pentagon released 11 memorandums detailing the administration’s priorities for the department. The measures included changes to fitness and grooming requirements. “When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral,” Hegseth said. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”

Pete Hegseth may gather hundreds of senior military leaders at Quantico again to outline Pentagon priorities, new directives, military standards and policies

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is considering bringing hundreds of senior military personnel back to Marine Corps Base Quantico later this year for another major address, according to US officials. The potential gathering would come nearly a year after Hegseth ordered the country’s generals and admirals to assemble at Quantico on short notice. The unusual meeting, held last September without an initial explanation, surprised senior military officers and generated concern within the ranks. Hegseth used that event to outline his priorities for the Pentagon, including a rejection of policies from the previous administration that he characterizes as ‘woke’. He also stressed that the military should refocus on what he describes as its central mission: warfighting. “For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things,” Hegseth said. “In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Hegseth is expected to use the same venue again to present his priorities, according to the officials. One official said the defense secretary could also announce a new set of directives for the armed forces. The exact date of the proposed gathering has not been determined, and it remains unclear whether every serving general and admiral would be required to attend. “We have nothing to announce at this time,” said Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez. Since taking over as Pentagon chief last year, Hegseth has sought to reverse diversity and inclusion initiatives associated with the previous administration. He has argued that such policies undermined military standards and has advocated for a culture placing greater emphasis on physical fitness and military readiness rather than what he calls “wokeness.” His approach has drawn criticism from military experts and former officials, who argue that Hegseth is pushing the armed services in an increasingly partisan direction. Also Read: X exposes suspected Chinese influence campaign over AI, energy and data centers The response from military officers at last year’s event was notably restrained. Hegseth and President Trump, who opened the gathering, received a polite but muted reaction, with officers largely remaining stone-faced during the presentations. Strict military regulations prohibit personnel from engaging in or encouraging political activity, a factor that shaped the atmosphere during the event. Trump used his lengthy address to defend the administration’s deployment of military forces to police American cities while also warning that further action could follow. “What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.” It remains uncertain whether Trump will attend a potential second gathering at Quantico. During his address last year, Hegseth placed particular emphasis on military standards, saying service members would be evaluated on their physical fitness and appearance. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over,” Hegseth said. “No more beardos.” At the same time, the Pentagon released 11 memorandums detailing the administration’s priorities for the department. The measures included changes to fitness and grooming requirements. “When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral,” Hegseth said. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”

As per report, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may bring hundreds of senior military leaders to Quantico again to outline Pentagon priorities and issue new directives

Pete Hegseth may gather top military leaders again at Quantico? Here’s what report says

Days after the tragic Nepal floods thousands remain missing, with families awaiting news about their loved ones. While Nepal on Saturday upped the death toll to 626, China's Xinhua news agency early Saturday reported that across the border in Tibet only 7 deaths have been recorded, with 554 missing. The low number seems doubtful, especially given the scale of destruction the floods have left in their wake.Now, a video from Gyirong Port, a vital land border crossing between Tibet, China, and Rasuwa, Nepal is further raising questions about Beijing's censorship.The video in question is difficult to miss. It shows a wall of water and mud rushing through Gyirong Port as people run for safety and everything in its path is swept away.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/nepal-tibet-flood-disaster-death-toll-hits-586-over-2-400-missing-as-rescue-effort-faces-fresh-flood-threat-1787964592622">Nepal-Tibet flood disaster: Death toll hits 586, over 2,400 missing as rescue effort faces fresh flood threat</a>The footage, captured by CCTV cameras has quickly spread across social media and television screens around the world.In China, however, the same images have been far harder to find, reports BBC. Watch it here:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">A massive mudslide struck Gyirong Port on the China-Nepal border, with CCTV footage showing a wall of debris slamming through the crossing in seconds, tossing vehicles and buses. Nepal reports at least 8-16 dead with hundreds of travelers listed as missing, including 291… <a href="https://t.co/ZXfDIUaGsC">pic.twitter.com/ZXfDIUaGsC</a>&mdash; Clash Report (@clashreport) <a href="https://x.com/clashreport/status/2092570543430000883?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>China censoring visuals of Nepal-Tibet floods?</h2>So far, China's state-run media has shown only a single still image from the flooding. According to the report by BBC's Laura Bicker, finding the shocking video on China's heavily controlled internet has proved difficult. So has finding detailed first-hand accounts of a disaster that has killed hundreds and left many more missing.This is now drawing attention to the way Beijing manages information about Tibet, particularly during a major crisis.<h2>China's response is visible, but tightly controlled</h2>Beijing has mounted a large rescue operation in the affected region. Hundreds of emergency workers have been deployed, while President Xi Jinping chaired a meeting on the response.Chinese state media has also reported on rescue teams working in dangerous conditions, including specialists scaling mountains and crossing swollen rivers. Officials have warned about a barrier lake formed by debris that could overflow and trigger further flooding.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/nepal-floods-china-warns-artificial-lake-formed-after-mudslide-could-breach-send-more-floodwaters-downstream-death-toll-392-1787879651104">Nepal floods: China warns artificial lake formed after mudslide could breach, send more floodwaters downstream</a>But notably, beyond those official updates, there is little independent information available.There are few accounts from survivors in Tibet, almost no user-generated footage showing the flooding as it happened and little information from families searching for missing relatives.Foreign journalists, as per reports are facing trouble accessing Tibet. The access remains tightly controlled and requires government permission, making independent reporting during a fast-moving disaster particularly difficult.<h2>Why Tibet is especially sensitive for Beijing</h2>The information blackout is taking place against the backdrop of Tibet's complicated political history with Beijing.China brought Tibet under Communist rule in the 1950s after years of resistance to Chinese control. Beijing has since faced criticism over its policies in the region, while Tibetan groups abroad have accused the government of restricting religious and cultural freedoms.The Chinese government rejects those allegations and points instead to extensive investment in Tibet, including infrastructure and tourism development.Yet the region remains politically sensitive, and that sensitivity becomes especially visible when a major disaster draws international attention.<h2>Why is China censoring a natural disaster?</h2>One explanation for the limited coverage could be Beijing's longstanding emphasis on maintaining social stability.Local Communist Party officials moved quickly after the disaster, urging grassroots members to assist with relief work and provide emotional and psychological support to residents.One particularly striking instruction, BBC reports told party members to "make every effort to maintain social order and ensure stability and public confidence in the disaster areas".The directive also warned that officials who performed well would be rewarded, while those who failed would be held accountable.<h2>Videos and accounts disappearing online</h2>Advocacy group, International Campaign for Tibet has meanwhile praised emergency responders but said Chinese authorities were removing videos and first-hand accounts from social media.The group called on Beijing to "disclose complete and verifiable information about the damage and casualties".&nbsp;

A terrifying video showing floodwaters ripping through Gyirong Port has spread across the world. But inside China, the same footage is remarkably difficult to find, raising fresh questions about how Beijing is handling information from the disaster zone. Watch below.

Days after the tragic Nepal floods thousands remain missing, with families awaiting news about their loved ones. While Nepal on Saturday upped the death toll to 626, China's Xinhua news agency early Saturday reported that across the border in Tibet only 7 deaths have been recorded, with 554 missing. The low number seems doubtful, especially given the scale of destruction the floods have left in their wake. Now, a video from Gyirong Port, a vital land border crossing between Tibet, China, and Rasuwa, Nepal is further raising questions about Beijing's censorship. The video in question is difficult to miss. It shows a wall of water and mud rushing through Gyirong Port as people run for safety and everything in its path is swept away. Also read | Nepal-Tibet flood disaster: Death toll hits 586, over 2,400 missing as rescue effort faces fresh flood threat The footage, captured by CCTV cameras has quickly spread across social media and television screens around the world. In China, however, the same images have been far harder to find, reports BBC. Watch it here:

A terrifying video showing floodwaters ripping through Gyirong Port has spread across the world. But inside China, the same footage is remarkably difficult to find, raising fresh questions about how Beijing is handling information from the disaster zone. Watch below.

Watch | Terrifying video shows floodwaters ripping through Tibet's Gyirong Port, yet footage remains missing from China's social media

A teleprompter operator who worked for President Donald Trump has been directed to pay $172,000 after using details from upcoming speeches to make trades on a prediction market, a federal agency said Friday night. According to several media reports, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Gabriel Perez used “material, nonpublic information” gained through his job to place “trades” on a prediction market, The CFTC stated that Perez was directed to pay the money he made in profits, $107,539.02, along with a civil penalty of $65,000. He has also been barred from trading on prediction markets for the next three years. The trades were made through Kalshi, which the CFTC noted cooperated with the investigation. “A Kalshi surveillance investigation caught a White House staffer engaging in prohibited trading activity. Today this individual was subjected to penalties by the CFTC and by our exchange,” Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s lead lawyer, said in a post on social media platform X. “It doesn’t matter who you are: violate our rules or federal law, and you will face the consequences,” he also said, adding that the White House did not respond to an email seeking comment on Friday night. Calling it a case of insider trading, CFTC added that Perez traded presidential mention market contracts, reflecting words or phrases the President may use during his speeches.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/209-billion-for-venezuela-delcy-rodriguez-reveals-what-caracas-stands-to-gain-from-inside-trump-s-oil-deal-1787975072331">$209 billion for Venezuela? Delcy Rodriguez reveals what Caracas stands to gain from Trump's oil deal</a><h3>Exemplary cooperation</h3>Perez worked as a technical assistant to the president, having handled teleprompter duties for Trump since 2016. When announcing the fine and penalties on Friday, the CFTC pointed to what it described as Perez's "exemplary cooperation" throughout the case. Back in July, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt condemned the online trading as an ethical violation, calling it deeply unfortunate and outright disgraceful. Perez was put on leave that same month, with Leavitt indicating at the time that he would no longer remain in his position.

The CFTC said Perez was directed to pay the money he made in profits, $107,539.02, along with a civil penalty of $65,000. He has also been barred from trading on prediction markets for the next three years.

A teleprompter operator who worked for President Donald Trump has been directed to pay $172,000 after using details from upcoming speeches to make trades on a prediction market, a federal agency said Friday night. According to several media reports, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Gabriel Perez used “material, nonpublic information” gained through his job to place “trades” on a prediction market, The CFTC stated that Perez was directed to pay the money he made in profits, $107,539.02, along with a civil penalty of $65,000. He has also been barred from trading on prediction markets for the next three years. The trades were made through Kalshi, which the CFTC noted cooperated with the investigation. “A Kalshi surveillance investigation caught a White House staffer engaging in prohibited trading activity. Today this individual was subjected to penalties by the CFTC and by our exchange,” Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s lead lawyer, said in a post on social media platform X. “It doesn’t matter who you are: violate our rules or federal law, and you will face the consequences,” he also said, adding that the White House did not respond to an email seeking comment on Friday night. Calling it a case of insider trading, CFTC added that Perez traded presidential mention market contracts, reflecting words or phrases the President may use during his speeches. Also read: $209 billion for Venezuela? Delcy Rodriguez reveals what Caracas stands to gain from Trump's oil deal Exemplary cooperation Perez worked as a technical assistant to the president, having handled teleprompter duties for Trump since 2016. When announcing the fine and penalties on Friday, the CFTC pointed to what it described as Perez's "exemplary cooperation" throughout the case. Back in July, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt condemned the online trading as an ethical violation, calling it deeply unfortunate and outright disgraceful. Perez was put on leave that same month, with Leavitt indicating at the time that he would no longer remain in his position.

The CFTC said Perez was directed to pay the money he made in profits, $107,539.02, along with a civil penalty of $65,000. He has also been barred from trading on prediction markets for the next three years.

Trump's teleprompter operator fined $172,000 over insider trading on speeches

After Nepal’s U-turn on its stance on accepting foreign assistance, India has sent an 11-member team for medical and tunnel rescue operations. The team comprises doctors, paramedics, and reconnaissance personnel. The Reconnaissance operations to rescue the people trapped in the tunnel are expected to begin Saturday (Aug 29). This comes after the death toll crossed the 600 mark after the deadly floods near the Tibet border. As of now, 2,426 are reported missing, according to the country’s disaster agency. Meanwhile, China has confirmed that seven people were killed, while 554 remain missing in Tibet, bringing the total number of missing people to nearly 3,000.Nepal has also requested India and China to help construct 42 Bailey bridges to resume transport services in the flood-affected areas. These portable bridges can be assembled quickly without heavy machinery or special tools.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/live-blog-nepal-tibet-floods-live-updates-nepal-death-toll-crosses-600-as-2-000-remain-missing-1787973546802">Nepal-Tibet floods LIVE updates: Nepal death toll crosses 600, nearly 2,500 remain missing</a>Earlier on Friday (Aug 28), Nepal’s foreign ministry said that it did not need foreign assistance for search and rescue operations despite help offered from several countries. Several foreign nationals are also reported missing in the disaster.“The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t require such help,” Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry.However, following international pressure, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said that the government is ready to take international assistance in cases where technical expertise is required for extremely complex physical structures.This comes after devastating floods swept through the Himalayan nation, leaving a massive trail of destruction. The US Geological Survey said the disaster was triggered by a glacial collapse, initially mistaken for a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. The resulting debris flow had “catastrophic” downstream impacts across Nepal and Tibet. Environmentalists have described the surge as being “like an inland tsunami”, travelling nearly 170 kilometres into Nepal.

After Nepal reversed its stance on foreign aid, India sent an 11-member rescue team as the flood death toll crossed 600 and nearly 3,000 people remained missing across Nepal and Tibet.

After Nepal’s U-turn on its stance on accepting foreign assistance, India has sent an 11-member team for medical and tunnel rescue operations. The team comprises doctors, paramedics, and reconnaissance personnel. The Reconnaissance operations to rescue the people trapped in the tunnel are expected to begin Saturday (Aug 29). This comes after the death toll crossed the 600 mark after the deadly floods near the Tibet border. As of now, 2,426 are reported missing, according to the country’s disaster agency. Meanwhile, China has confirmed that seven people were killed, while 554 remain missing in Tibet, bringing the total number of missing people to nearly 3,000. Nepal has also requested India and China to help construct 42 Bailey bridges to resume transport services in the flood-affected areas. These portable bridges can be assembled quickly without heavy machinery or special tools. Also read | Nepal-Tibet floods LIVE updates: Nepal death toll crosses 600, nearly 2,500 remain missing Earlier on Friday (Aug 28), Nepal’s foreign ministry said that it did not need foreign assistance for search and rescue operations despite help offered from several countries. Several foreign nationals are also reported missing in the disaster. “The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t require such help,” Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry. However, following international pressure, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said that the government is ready to take international assistance in cases where technical expertise is required for extremely complex physical structures. This comes after devastating floods swept through the Himalayan nation, leaving a massive trail of destruction. The US Geological Survey said the disaster was triggered by a glacial collapse, initially mistaken for a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. The resulting debris flow had “catastrophic” downstream impacts across Nepal and Tibet. Environmentalists have described the surge as being “like an inland tsunami”, travelling nearly 170 kilometres into Nepal.

After Nepal reversed its stance on foreign aid, India sent an 11-member rescue team as the flood death toll crossed 600 and nearly 3,000 people remained missing across Nepal and Tibet.

India sends 11-member rescue team as Nepal seeks help to build 42 Bailey bridges

X, formerly known as Twitter, says it has uncovered a massive suspected Chinese bot farm that was allegedly conducting influence operations in the United States, including efforts to amplify criticism of artificial intelligence and data centers. The disclosure comes amid an increasingly heated national debate over the costs and benefits of rapidly expanding AI infrastructure. The issue has significant political implications, with Republicans increasingly divided over AI development and the construction of the massive data centers needed to support the technology.&nbsp;X’s Global Government Affairs account said the platform’s safety team identified a bot farm consisting of approximately 200,000 inauthentic Chinese accounts that were ‘involved in influence operations’. According to X, about 200 accounts within the network were identified as posting “in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.” The platform said posts from the accounts promoted claims that AI data centers are increasing household electricity bills and putting additional pressure on the US power grid.&nbsp;Other accounts allegedly shared AI-generated cartoons portraying data center developers as benefiting financially while ordinary Americans bear the costs. One image showed concerned citizens facing data center developers carrying bags of cash, accompanied by the caption, “Data centers get subsidized while we foot the bill!” Another image stated that “the AI industry is booming, but the costs are being borne by ordinary people.” The findings come after OpenAI announced earlier this summer that it had banned a "cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in China" that were allegedly being used to conduct a "covert influence operation" primarily aimed at US audiences.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/judge-throws-out-9-11-attack-mastermind-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-s-fbi-confession-over-torture-concerns-1787985338771">Judge throws out 9/11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's FBI confession over torture concerns</a>&nbsp;OpenAI said those accounts generated short comments and images that similarly promoted claims that AI development and data centers were increasing electricity demand and contributing to higher costs. The alleged influence campaigns emerged as the United States continues to debate the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure. Critics argue that the data centers needed to power AI systems can place additional pressure on electricity supplies, raise energy costs, create environmental concerns and potentially affect nearby property values.&nbsp;Supporters, however, argue that expanding AI data center capacity is important for U.S. national security and technological competitiveness. They also point to job creation, investment and increased tax revenue for communities hosting the facilities.The political debate intensified this week when President Donald Trump suggested at the White House that the AI industry needs “a little public relations help.” Trump pointed to a May Gallup poll showing that a majority of Americans oppose data centers being constructed in their communities.&nbsp;He argued that states and local communities should welcome data center projects because “the jobs are enormous, and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous.” "And if you don't take it, you're going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it," he added. At the same time, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has argued that China could benefit from excessive US concerns about AI development.&nbsp;Fetterman warned that China benefits from "overreaction" to "AI doomsdaying" as Washington and Beijing compete for leadership in artificial intelligence. Fetterman wrote that “AI supremacy and energy dominance underpins our national security.” Following the discovery of the suspected Chinese influence campaign, X’s Global Government Affairs team said the platform would continue taking action against accounts that violate its policies.&nbsp;“We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy.” &nbsp;The platform added that it remains “committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest.” The allegations add another layer to the growing US debate over AI, energy consumption and data center expansion, while also highlighting concerns about foreign influence operations shaping online political discussions.

X says it uncovered a suspected Chinese bot farm pushing anti-AI and anti-data center narratives as the US debates energy costs and AI growth

X, formerly known as Twitter, says it has uncovered a massive suspected Chinese bot farm that was allegedly conducting influence operations in the United States, including efforts to amplify criticism of artificial intelligence and data centers. The disclosure comes amid an increasingly heated national debate over the costs and benefits of rapidly expanding AI infrastructure. The issue has significant political implications, with Republicans increasingly divided over AI development and the construction of the massive data centers needed to support the technology. X’s Global Government Affairs account said the platform’s safety team identified a bot farm consisting of approximately 200,000 inauthentic Chinese accounts that were ‘involved in influence operations’. According to X, about 200 accounts within the network were identified as posting “in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.” The platform said posts from the accounts promoted claims that AI data centers are increasing household electricity bills and putting additional pressure on the US power grid. Other accounts allegedly shared AI-generated cartoons portraying data center developers as benefiting financially while ordinary Americans bear the costs. One image showed concerned citizens facing data center developers carrying bags of cash, accompanied by the caption, “Data centers get subsidized while we foot the bill!” Another image stated that “the AI industry is booming, but the costs are being borne by ordinary people.” The findings come after OpenAI announced earlier this summer that it had banned a "cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in China" that were allegedly being used to conduct a "covert influence operation" primarily aimed at US audiences. Also Read: Judge throws out 9/11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's FBI confession over torture concerns OpenAI said those accounts generated short comments and images that similarly promoted claims that AI development and data centers were increasing electricity demand and contributing to higher costs. The alleged influence campaigns emerged as the United States continues to debate the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure. Critics argue that the data centers needed to power AI systems can place additional pressure on electricity supplies, raise energy costs, create environmental concerns and potentially affect nearby property values. Supporters, however, argue that expanding AI data center capacity is important for U.S. national security and technological competitiveness. They also point to job creation, investment and increased tax revenue for communities hosting the facilities. The political debate intensified this week when President Donald Trump suggested at the White House that the AI industry needs “a little public relations help.” Trump pointed to a May Gallup poll showing that a majority of Americans oppose data centers being constructed in their communities. He argued that states and local communities should welcome data center projects because “the jobs are enormous, and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous.” "And if you don't take it, you're going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it," he added. At the same time, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has argued that China could benefit from excessive US concerns about AI development. Fetterman warned that China benefits from "overreaction" to "AI doomsdaying" as Washington and Beijing compete for leadership in artificial intelligence. Fetterman wrote that “AI supremacy and energy dominance underpins our national security.” Following the discovery of the suspected Chinese influence campaign, X’s Global Government Affairs team said the platform would continue taking action against accounts that violate its policies. “We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy.” The platform added that it remains “committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest.” The allegations add another layer to the growing US debate over AI, energy consumption and data center expansion, while also highlighting concerns about foreign influence operations shaping online political discussions.

X says it uncovered a suspected Chinese bot farm targeting US debate over artificial intelligence, data centers, electricity costs and energy policy

X exposes suspected Chinese influence campaign over AI, energy and data centers

A military judge on Friday (Aug 18) threw out a confession that alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave to FBI agents nearly 20 years ago, ruling that the statements were not made voluntarily.The decision is another setback for the US government's long-running effort to bring Mohammed and his co-defendants to trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama issued the ruling just days after setting June 2028 as the trial date for Mohammed and three other defendants.<h2>FBI statements suppressed</h2>According to the court order, which had not been publicly released, Schrama suppressed statements Mohammed made during a four-day FBI interrogation at Guantanamo in January 2007.The judge found that Mohammed's earlier treatment by the CIA had affected whether those later statements could be considered voluntary.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/9-11-mastermind-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-pushed-to-2028-after-more-than-two-decades-of-delays-guantanamo-bay-1787798298127">9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to finally face trial in 2028, nearly 27 years after horrific attacks</a>Mohammed had been captured in 2003 and held in secret CIA facilities, where he was subjected to waterboarding and other interrogation techniques widely regarded as torture.Schrama found that the CIA's treatment had left Mohammed fearing that he would face severe mistreatment if he did not cooperate with interrogators. The judge also found that Mohammed had not been given a Miranda warning about his right to remain silent and had been told he could not speak to a lawyer.<h2>Prosecutors consider appeal</h2>The ruling could significantly affect the government's case, given the importance of Mohammed's statements to the prosecution.Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, the prosecutor handling the case, told The New York Times that the government would decide "in the near future" whether to appeal the ruling.The decision has also prompted a sharp disagreement from one of the FBI agents who questioned Mohammed. Retired FBI agent Frank Pellegrino told CBS News that he believed Mohammed had confessed voluntarily. Pellegrino said he had made it clear that Mohammed did not have to speak to him. "Now, whether that fits within what is required legally, based on other activities, a court's got to decide that," Pellegrino said.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-venezuela-oil-deal-65-billion-barrels-us-control-1787964008355">Trump claims 'biggest oil deal in world history' with Venezuela, says US will control majority of 65 billion barrels</a><h2>Trial already delayed for years</h2>Mohammed is accused of developing the plan to hijack commercial aircraft and use them in the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay along with other defendants while the case has been entangled in arguments over evidence, interrogation practices, and the military commission system.Schrama scheduled the trial for June 5, 2028, earlier this week. The latest ruling means another major evidentiary issue will now have to be dealt with before proceedings can begin.<h2>Death penalty remains possible</h2>Mohammed could face the death penalty if convicted. He and two other defendants agreed to plea deals in 2024 that would have allowed them to avoid capital punishment. Those agreements were later rejected after then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overruled them, and an appeals court subsequently overturned the plea arrangements. &nbsp;

A key piece of evidence in the long-delayed 9/11 case has been thrown out. A Guantanamo judge ruled that statements Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave to FBI agents were not made voluntarily, dealing another setback to the prosecution.

A military judge on Friday (Aug 18) threw out a confession that alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave to FBI agents nearly 20 years ago, ruling that the statements were not made voluntarily. The decision is another setback for the US government's long-running effort to bring Mohammed and his co-defendants to trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama issued the ruling just days after setting June 2028 as the trial date for Mohammed and three other defendants. FBI statements suppressed According to the court order, which had not been publicly released, Schrama suppressed statements Mohammed made during a four-day FBI interrogation at Guantanamo in January 2007. The judge found that Mohammed's earlier treatment by the CIA had affected whether those later statements could be considered voluntary. Also read | 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to finally face trial in 2028, nearly 27 years after horrific attacks Mohammed had been captured in 2003 and held in secret CIA facilities, where he was subjected to waterboarding and other interrogation techniques widely regarded as torture. Schrama found that the CIA's treatment had left Mohammed fearing that he would face severe mistreatment if he did not cooperate with interrogators. The judge also found that Mohammed had not been given a Miranda warning about his right to remain silent and had been told he could not speak to a lawyer. Prosecutors consider appeal The ruling could significantly affect the government's case, given the importance of Mohammed's statements to the prosecution. Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, the prosecutor handling the case, told The New York Times that the government would decide "in the near future" whether to appeal the ruling. The decision has also prompted a sharp disagreement from one of the FBI agents who questioned Mohammed. Retired FBI agent Frank Pellegrino told CBS News that he believed Mohammed had confessed voluntarily. Pellegrino said he had made it clear that Mohammed did not have to speak to him. "Now, whether that fits within what is required legally, based on other activities, a court's got to decide that," Pellegrino said. Also read | Trump claims 'biggest oil deal in world history' with Venezuela, says US will control majority of 65 billion barrels Trial already delayed for years Mohammed is accused of developing the plan to hijack commercial aircraft and use them in the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay along with other defendants while the case has been entangled in arguments over evidence, interrogation practices, and the military commission system. Schrama scheduled the trial for June 5, 2028, earlier this week. The latest ruling means another major evidentiary issue will now have to be dealt with before proceedings can begin. Death penalty remains possible Mohammed could face the death penalty if convicted. He and two other defendants agreed to plea deals in 2024 that would have allowed them to avoid capital punishment. Those agreements were later rejected after then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overruled them, and an appeals court subsequently overturned the plea arrangements.

A key piece of evidence in the long-delayed 9/11 case has been thrown out. A Guantanamo judge ruled that statements Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave to FBI agents were not made voluntarily, dealing another setback to the prosecution.

Judge throws out 9/11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's FBI confession over torture concerns

US President Donald Trump on Friday (August 29) announced the creation of a "Space Academy" in order to train future civilian and military recruits for an arena where America faces rivalry with China. Addressing the Johnson Space Centre of NASA in Houston, Trump stated that the institution would be modelled on the famed US military academy at West Point. "It's called the U.S. Space Academy. That's a big deal," Trump said because he signed an executive order creating the new school. "It'll serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry, and it'll attract, train, and graduate the very best of our nation."&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/209-billion-for-venezuela-delcy-rodriguez-reveals-what-caracas-stands-to-gain-from-inside-trump-s-oil-deal-1787975072331">$209 billion for Venezuela? Delcy Rodriguez reveals what Caracas stands to gain from Trump's oil deal</a><h3>US Space Force as the sixth branch of the US armed forces</h3>Trump has applauded the US Space Force, crediting it as the sixth branch of the US armed forces that played an important role in the recent American military operations in Venezuela and Iran. However, he did not confirm the site of the new academy that will be built. During the same event, he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour to the astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which completed a lunar flyby in April. The move reflects how space has increasingly become a strategic priority for major powers, both militarily and technologically. The US is currently in a race with China to put astronauts back on the Moon before the decade is out — more than five decades after the first Moon landing. Just last week, Trump spoke of ushering in a "golden age" of space exploration, signalling plans to ramp up rocket launches, including missions aimed at Mars and the Moon.

During the same event, he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour to the astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which completed a lunar flyby in April. 

US President Donald Trump on Friday (August 29) announced the creation of a "Space Academy" in order to train future civilian and military recruits for an arena where America faces rivalry with China. Addressing the Johnson Space Centre of NASA in Houston, Trump stated that the institution would be modelled on the famed US military academy at West Point. "It's called the U.S. Space Academy. That's a big deal," Trump said because he signed an executive order creating the new school. "It'll serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry, and it'll attract, train, and graduate the very best of our nation." Also read: $209 billion for Venezuela? Delcy Rodriguez reveals what Caracas stands to gain from Trump's oil deal US Space Force as the sixth branch of the US armed forces Trump has applauded the US Space Force, crediting it as the sixth branch of the US armed forces that played an important role in the recent American military operations in Venezuela and Iran. However, he did not confirm the site of the new academy that will be built. During the same event, he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour to the astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which completed a lunar flyby in April. The move reflects how space has increasingly become a strategic priority for major powers, both militarily and technologically. The US is currently in a race with China to put astronauts back on the Moon before the decade is out — more than five decades after the first Moon landing. Just last week, Trump spoke of ushering in a "golden age" of space exploration, signalling plans to ramp up rocket launches, including missions aimed at Mars and the Moon.

During the same event, he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour to the astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which completed a lunar flyby in April.&nbsp;

Donald Trump announces new 'US Space Academy' amid space race with China

Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday (Aug 28) said that the oil agreement announced by US President Donald Trump could generate more than $209 billion in taxes for Venezuela. This comes as Caracas prepares to open 17 strategic oil fields to private operators, particularly US companies.Rodriguez described the arrangement as a major step towards reviving Venezuela's battered energy industry after years of underinvestment, mismanagement, and sanctions.In a statement shared on Telegram, Rodriguez said the agreement would bring more than $100 billion in investment into the country's oil sector. "The agreement will allow for a significant increase in oil production with the participation of private operators," Rodriguez said.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-venezuela-oil-deal-65-billion-barrels-us-control-1787964008355">Trump claims 'biggest oil deal in world history' with Venezuela, says US will control majority of 65 billion barrels</a><h2>17 oil fields, 65 billion barrels</h2>According to Rodriguez, the plan covers 17 strategic fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil. She said the investments would go towards recovering and modernising Venezuela's hydrocarbons industry and rebuilding strategic infrastructure."This initiative is the result of the strengthening of relations between Venezuela and the United States, and it will facilitate a significant flow of investment aimed at the recovery and reconstruction of strategic infrastructure for the development of our hydrocarbons industry," she said.Rodriguez noted that the project was expected to generate more than $209 billion in taxes for the Venezuelan state. She also linked the deal to broader economic and energy objectives, saying it could support Venezuela's economic growth while contributing to "the energy security of our hemisphere" and greater balance in international markets.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-canada-trade-war-trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-hits-back-1787878478524">US-Canada trade war: Canada hits back as Trump orders Lake Ontario renamed 'Lake America'</a><h2>Trump seeks more Venezuelan oil</h2>Trump announced the agreement on Friday, saying the United States would secure majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's proven oil reserves through a partnership with private companies.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the arrangement as a win for both countries and said it could draw nearly $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela.Rubio also argued that increased Venezuelan production could help bring down gasoline prices in the United States.<h2>Venezuela seeks to revive oil output</h2>Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, but its production remains well below its potential. The country currently produces around 1.25 million barrels of crude a day.The proposed agreements are expected to be signed next week and would grant new exploration and production rights to several companies, with American firms expected to play a major role.

Venezuela has revealed what it stands to gain from the oil deal with the US. As Caracas prepares to open 17 strategic fields to private operators, the government says the deal could unlock a huge tax windfall.

Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday (Aug 28) said that the oil agreement announced by US President Donald Trump could generate more than $209 billion in taxes for Venezuela. This comes as Caracas prepares to open 17 strategic oil fields to private operators, particularly US companies. Rodriguez described the arrangement as a major step towards reviving Venezuela's battered energy industry after years of underinvestment, mismanagement, and sanctions. In a statement shared on Telegram, Rodriguez said the agreement would bring more than $100 billion in investment into the country's oil sector. "The agreement will allow for a significant increase in oil production with the participation of private operators," Rodriguez said. Also read | Trump claims 'biggest oil deal in world history' with Venezuela, says US will control majority of 65 billion barrels 17 oil fields, 65 billion barrels According to Rodriguez, the plan covers 17 strategic fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil. She said the investments would go towards recovering and modernising Venezuela's hydrocarbons industry and rebuilding strategic infrastructure. "This initiative is the result of the strengthening of relations between Venezuela and the United States, and it will facilitate a significant flow of investment aimed at the recovery and reconstruction of strategic infrastructure for the development of our hydrocarbons industry," she said. Rodriguez noted that the project was expected to generate more than $209 billion in taxes for the Venezuelan state. She also linked the deal to broader economic and energy objectives, saying it could support Venezuela's economic growth while contributing to "the energy security of our hemisphere" and greater balance in international markets. Also read | US-Canada trade war: Canada hits back as Trump orders Lake Ontario renamed 'Lake America' Trump seeks more Venezuelan oil Trump announced the agreement on Friday, saying the United States would secure majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's proven oil reserves through a partnership with private companies. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the arrangement as a win for both countries and said it could draw nearly $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela. Rubio also argued that increased Venezuelan production could help bring down gasoline prices in the United States. Venezuela seeks to revive oil output Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, but its production remains well below its potential. The country currently produces around 1.25 million barrels of crude a day. The proposed agreements are expected to be signed next week and would grant new exploration and production rights to several companies, with American firms expected to play a major role.

Venezuela has revealed what it stands to gain from the oil deal with the US. As Caracas prepares to open 17 strategic fields to private operators, the government says the deal could unlock a huge tax windfall.

$209 billion for Venezuela? Delcy Rodriguez reveals what Caracas stands to gain from Trump's oil deal

Latest News Today Live Updates:The United States has struck a deal with Caracas that would give it control of some 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, President Donald Trump has announced, while reviving the OPEC nation’s battered energy industry. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the “historic transaction more than doubles American oil reserves” and “will substantially lower gas prices for all Americans”.Sustained gunfire and explosions rang out across several areas of Niger’s capital, Niamey, early on Saturday (August 29). Shots were heard around the city’s Diori Hamani international airport and near the presidential palace.Security forces along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir have stepped up surveillance after an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) believed to have originated from Pakistan was detected in the Rajouri sector on Friday (Aug 28), according to reports citing Army sources. The drone was spotted at around 8:05 pm (India time) over the general area of Behrooti, within the operational area of responsibility of the 22 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles.Price of compressed natural gas (CNG) has been hiked by Rs 3.89 from August 29, effective 6 am, Indraprastha Gas Limited said on Friday night. The new price of CNG, mostly used in autos, cabs, buses, and economy-focused personal cars, will stand at Rs 86.98 a kg in Delhi, where IGL is the operator.Stay with us for more latest news, breaking updates and developments as they unfold.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said regional countries have come to view dependence on the United States for security as a “strategic mistake” following recent military conflicts.Speaking at the 40th International Islamic Unity Conference on Friday, Araghchi also claimed Iran's domestically produced missiles had demonstrated their capabilities.He said Iran's adversaries launched a major conflict after previous efforts had failed, including attempts to weaken national unity, deepen internal divisions and use armed groups against the country.

Iran says regional reliance on US security was a 'strategic mistake'

Ukraine received information from the United States about CIA Director John Ratcliffe's recent meetings with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.Zelensky said Kyiv had discussed the meetings with US officials both before and after Ratcliffe's unannounced visit to Moscow on August 25.The Ukrainian president thanked Washington for sharing the information and praised what he described as the necessary tone used by US officials in their diplomatic engagement with Russia.

Zelensky says US briefed Kyiv on Ratcliffe's Moscow meetings

The FBI is moving away from an automatic hiring ban for applicants who have previously had sexual encounters with prostitutes, according to people familiar with the change.Under the revised approach, at least some candidates with such past experiences could be assessed on a broader range of factors rather than being immediately disqualified.The policy shift comes as federal law enforcement agencies evolve their recruitment standards. The FBI has previously relaxed its stance on applicants' past marijuana use, while some current and former agents have raised concerns that hiring requirements are being loosened as the bureau seeks to rebuild its workforce.

FBI eases hiring rules on applicants with past prostitution encounters

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi has urged all sides to show maximum military restraint after three separate drone incidents were reported at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.The incidents occurred over two days earlier this week and injured two plant employees, according to the IAEA.The UN nuclear watchdog said the repeated drone incidents highlighted the continuing risks to nuclear safety posed by the war and the need to avoid actions that could further endanger the facility.

IAEA chief calls for restraint after drones hit Zaporizhzhia plant

The Israeli military said it killed three militants in an airstrike in the occupied West Bank on Friday, marking a rare use of air power in a territory where tensions have been rising.Israel frequently conducts ground raids in Palestinian towns, but its last airstrike in the West Bank was reported in February 2025. The latest strike targeted the Jenin area.The military identified one of those killed as Qais Bitawi, describing him as a Hamas operative linked to a dismantled militant network in Jenin. Palestinian Islamic Jihad's armed wing, however, said Bitawi and the two other men were its fighters.

Israel carries out rare West Bank airstrike, says 'three terrorists' killed

The BJP government in West Bengal has decided to remove the books written by former chief minister Mamata Banerjee from the state’s public libraries. Under the previous Trinamool Congress-led government, the party supremo’s books were mandatory in all government school libraries as well as state-run public libraries. &nbsp;

Once mandatory, Mamata Banerjee’s books to be removed from Bengal public libraries

The Goa Education Department has asked educational institutions to ensure a 500-metre drug-free zone around their campuses as per a Central recommendation, prompting the Opposition to question whether the government is shirking its responsibility. &nbsp;

Ensure drug-free zone: Goa govt tells schools; 'admission of unchecked sale of narcotics', says Congress

The Sri Lankan government has rejected concerns raised by a United Nations Special Rapporteur over the proposed extension of judges’ retirement ages, insisting that the 22nd Amendment is part of broader judicial reforms and is not intended to prolong the tenure of particular judges.

Sri Lanka reacts to UN concerns over judges’ retirement age extension

Rosatom, Russia's state-owned nuclear and atomic energy corporation, has announced to began construction of a nuclear power plant in Myanmar in 2027, following the signing of a contract for preliminary surveys. The announcement came after President Min Aung Hlaing's most recent visit to Moscow, during which he made an intensive effort to attract Russian energy investment.

Russia to Start Building Myanmar’s 1st Nuclear Power Plant Next Year

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to spend up to $2 million on robot “dogs” to assist its agents’ operations, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding document.

ICE plans invest $2 million on robot ‘dogs’ for some immigration enforcement operations

Former staff members of the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes have sued the Pentagon, accusing the Department of Defense of violating the First Amendment through what they described as "extraordinary censorship efforts."&nbsp;The lawsuit was filed on August 27 in a US District Court in Washington, DC, days after former editor-in-chief Erik Slavin said he was dismissed for insubordination following a CBS News interview in which he warned that military censorship would "constitute a red line." Slavin had defended the newspaper's editorial independence. Publisher Max Lederer and Middle East reporter Lara Korte were also fired.&nbsp;The lawsuit alleges the Pentagon retaliated against the journalists for defending press freedom and for publishing a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during its extended deployment in the Middle East. &nbsp;

Stars and Stripes Staff Sue Pentagon Over Dismissals

Recent Russian air attacks have destroyed around 90% of the food logistics infrastructure operated by retail chains in Ukraine, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on Friday, highlighting the growing impact of strikes on the country's supply networks. Russia has increasingly targeted economic infrastructure, including warehouses belonging to major supermarket chains, postal facilities, and home goods retailers.&nbsp;Vysotskyi, cited by Ukrinform, said the scale of destruction was severe but stressed that Ukrainians would not be left without food. Both Russia and Ukraine have intensified strikes on economic targets in recent weeks, with attacks increasingly affecting logistics and distribution networks. The destruction threatens to disrupt the movement and storage of food across Ukraine, adding pressure to supply chains already operating under wartime conditions. &nbsp;

Russia Attacks Destroy 90% Of Ukraine Retail Food Logistics

Amid growing domestic vulnerabilities and diplomatic isolation, Pakistan has turned to the international community following India's decisive suspension of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Addressing a virtual seminar organised by the Pakistani Embassy in the United States, Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar raised concerns over India placing the treaty in abeyance, describing water security as central to his country's national stability while warning of broader regional consequences. A distraught Dar said, "India's unilateral decision in April 2025 to place the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance has no basis in the treaty."

Pakistan Seeks International Support Over India's Suspension of Indus Waters Treaty

The Israeli military conducted two explosions this morning on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Aita al-Jabal.&nbsp;

Israeli military carries out explosions on southern Lebanese village

The Iranian government is pledging to stand firm against US sanctions and what it calls US-Israeli “conspiracies”, saying diplomacy and defence are “complementary, coordinated and inseparable” tools for protecting the country’s national interests, security and territorial integrity. In a statement issued on Saturday and carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, the Iranian government outlined its commitments to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and the Iranian people.

Iran Says Diplomacy and Defence 'Inseparable' in Facing US Pressure

During the visit, the Prime Minister will hold delegation-level talks with President Mirziyoyev to further strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries. The two leaders will review cooperation in trade and investment, defence, digital connectivity, energy, education and people-to-people domains and set the agenda for the road ahead. Prime Minister is also expected to visit the Shastri Memorial in Tashkent and the Mahatma Gandhi Centre at the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies. &nbsp;

PM Modi leaves for Tashkent, Uzbekistan  

US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has criticised the ongoing military actions by the Trump administration against Iran, accusing the government of launching an illegal and immoral war. “Today marks 6 months since the Trump administration launched its illegal and immoral war on the people of Iran. This act of imperial aggression has claimed thousands of innocent lives, put the US and global economies on the brink, and caused suffering for millions,” she wrote on X.

US congresswoman calls Iran war an ‘illegal and immoral’

US Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari has slammed the Trump administration’s military campaign against Iran, demanding the impeachment of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. In a post on social media platform X, Ansari said: “In the past six months since Donald Trump started his illegal war in Iran, 120 children died after a US military strike hit their school, 18 American servicemembers have been killed, Americans have endured record-high gas costs, and Donald Trump and his sons have profited endlessly from investing in defence tech companies that received government contracts.”

US congresswoman demands for impeachment of Pete Hegseth over Iran war

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC) claimed to maintain firm control over the Strait of Hormuz, accusing US leaders of spreading false statements regarding the passage to sway energy prices.

Iran's IRGC says it maintains firm control over Strait of Hormuz

Latest News Today Live Updates: Stay connected to WION News for the latest updates from India and around the globe, including India's immediate neighbourhood, major developments in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, global security, and other breaking stories shaping the world.

Latest News Today Live Updates: The United States has struck a deal with Caracas that would give it control of some 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, President Donald Trump has announced, while reviving the OPEC nation’s battered energy industry. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the “historic transaction more than doubles American oil reserves” and “will substantially lower gas prices for all Americans”. Sustained gunfire and explosions rang out across several areas of Niger’s capital, Niamey, early on Saturday (August 29). Shots were heard around the city’s Diori Hamani international airport and near the presidential palace. Security forces along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir have stepped up surveillance after an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) believed to have originated from Pakistan was detected in the Rajouri sector on Friday (Aug 28), according to reports citing Army sources. The drone was spotted at around 8:05 pm (India time) over the general area of Behrooti, within the operational area of responsibility of the 22 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles. Price of compressed natural gas (CNG) has been hiked by Rs 3.89 from August 29, effective 6 am, Indraprastha Gas Limited said on Friday night. The new price of CNG, mostly used in autos, cabs, buses, and economy-focused personal cars, will stand at Rs 86.98 a kg in Delhi, where IGL is the operator. Stay with us for more latest news, breaking updates and developments as they unfold.

Latest News Today Live Updates: Stay connected to WION News for the latest updates from India and around the globe, including India's immediate neighbourhood, major developments in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, global security, and other breaking stories shaping the world.

Latest India & World News Today LIVE: PM Modi leaves for Tashkent, Uzbekistan

The scale of the disaster along the Nepal-Tibet border continued to grow on Friday (Aug 29), with 586 deaths (579 in Nepal, and 7 in China). Meanwhile, the number of people missing in Nepal and China have surpassed 2,400 as rescuers continue to search through mud, debris and damaged infrastructure for survivors.The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse and a huge debris flow, has swept through villages, hydropower sites and major transport routes. The US Geological Survey said the event was the deadliest disaster to hit Nepal since the 2015 earthquake.The latest figures are a sharp rise from earlier estimates. Nepal's disaster authority said 517 foreigners were among those still missing.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/nepal-floods-china-warns-artificial-lake-formed-after-mudslide-could-breach-send-more-floodwaters-downstream-death-toll-392-1787879651104">Nepal floods: China warns artificial lake formed after mudslide could breach, send more floodwaters downstream</a><h2>Fresh flood threat complicates rescue</h2>Rescue operations have been further complicated by the risk of new flooding. Nepali police have ordered rescuers to move to safer locations after receiving information that a water dam had burst on the Tibetan side. In China, rescue operations in the worst-hit part of Gyirong were temporarily suspended because of fears of renewed flooding.Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that a lake created by huge piles of debris had begun overflowing towards areas where rescue teams were working. The water level later fell and authorities said rescue operations could resume in an orderly manner.Nepal's Flood Forecasting Division had earlier warned about the growing lake behind the landslide debris.<h2>Workers trapped inside hydropower tunnels</h2>The devastation has hit the country's hydropower infrastructure particularly hard. The Nepali military located workers trapped inside the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project. Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said two helicopters had been sent to the site, although locating the tunnel entrances remained difficult.Around 350 workers and residents had been brought to safety, while efforts continued to reach more than 100 people still trapped inside.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/nepal-floods-satellite-imagery-shows-riverside-towns-buried-under-debris-1787936430018">Nepal floods: Satellite imagery shows riverside towns buried under debris</a>Survivors at other hydropower projects described how quickly the flood arrived. Buddha Tamang, who was working inside a dam tunnel when the disaster struck, told AFP that senior officers working elsewhere were swept away.<h2>India recovers seven bodies</h2>The disaster's impact has extended beyond Nepal. Indian authorities said seven bodies had been recovered from rivers flowing from Nepal, with the victims believed to have been swept downstream by the floods.In Tibet, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported seven deaths and 554 people still missing. Authorities said 555 stranded tourists and 499 Chinese residents had been evacuated from the affected areas.China has also deployed emergency personnel and equipment to the disaster zone, while President Xi Jinping chaired a meeting on the rescue effort and offered assistance to Nepal.<h2>Pilgrims among the missing</h2>The tragedy has also affected people travelling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a major pilgrimage destination. Several Hindu pilgrims from different countries were caught while returning from the pilgrimage. Sivaranjani Muthunathan, who was travelling with 56 others, described seeing a sudden wall of water and debris before the group scrambled to higher ground. &nbsp;

The Nepal-Tibet disaster has grown even deadlier, with hundreds killed and more than 2,400 people still missing. Rescuers searching through the devastation continue to face another danger as fresh flooding threatens the operation.

The scale of the disaster along the Nepal-Tibet border continued to grow on Friday (Aug 29), with 586 deaths (579 in Nepal, and 7 in China). Meanwhile, the number of people missing in Nepal and China have surpassed 2,400 as rescuers continue to search through mud, debris and damaged infrastructure for survivors. The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse and a huge debris flow, has swept through villages, hydropower sites and major transport routes. The US Geological Survey said the event was the deadliest disaster to hit Nepal since the 2015 earthquake. The latest figures are a sharp rise from earlier estimates. Nepal's disaster authority said 517 foreigners were among those still missing. Also read | Nepal floods: China warns artificial lake formed after mudslide could breach, send more floodwaters downstream Fresh flood threat complicates rescue Rescue operations have been further complicated by the risk of new flooding. Nepali police have ordered rescuers to move to safer locations after receiving information that a water dam had burst on the Tibetan side. In China, rescue operations in the worst-hit part of Gyirong were temporarily suspended because of fears of renewed flooding. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that a lake created by huge piles of debris had begun overflowing towards areas where rescue teams were working. The water level later fell and authorities said rescue operations could resume in an orderly manner. Nepal's Flood Forecasting Division had earlier warned about the growing lake behind the landslide debris. Workers trapped inside hydropower tunnels The devastation has hit the country's hydropower infrastructure particularly hard. The Nepali military located workers trapped inside the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project. Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said two helicopters had been sent to the site, although locating the tunnel entrances remained difficult. Around 350 workers and residents had been brought to safety, while efforts continued to reach more than 100 people still trapped inside. Also read | Nepal floods: Satellite imagery shows riverside towns buried under debris Survivors at other hydropower projects described how quickly the flood arrived. Buddha Tamang, who was working inside a dam tunnel when the disaster struck, told AFP that senior officers working elsewhere were swept away. India recovers seven bodies The disaster's impact has extended beyond Nepal. Indian authorities said seven bodies had been recovered from rivers flowing from Nepal, with the victims believed to have been swept downstream by the floods. In Tibet, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported seven deaths and 554 people still missing. Authorities said 555 stranded tourists and 499 Chinese residents had been evacuated from the affected areas. China has also deployed emergency personnel and equipment to the disaster zone, while President Xi Jinping chaired a meeting on the rescue effort and offered assistance to Nepal. Pilgrims among the missing The tragedy has also affected people travelling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a major pilgrimage destination. Several Hindu pilgrims from different countries were caught while returning from the pilgrimage. Sivaranjani Muthunathan, who was travelling with 56 others, described seeing a sudden wall of water and debris before the group scrambled to higher ground.

The Nepal-Tibet disaster has grown even deadlier, with hundreds killed and more than 2,400 people still missing. Rescuers searching through the devastation continue to face another danger as fresh flooding threatens the operation.

Nepal-Tibet flood disaster: Death toll hits 586, over 2,400 missing as rescue effort faces fresh flood threat

WASHINGTON – Six months into the war U.S. President Donald Trump launched on Iran, the conflict is at an impasse, and the American leader has switched his campaign for global dominance to a new target – Canada. At issue is trade between the two neighbours, who share the world’s longest border and in the past have been close and friendly allies. Canada is the second biggest trade partner of the United States, slightly behind Mexico. Since Trump came into office in his first term, he has repeatedly suggested that the United States annex Canada and turn it into the 51st U.S. state. Canadian governments and most of the public reject the idea and find it offensive, as they do Trump’s habit of calling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his predecessor Justin Trudeau “governors”. Trade negotiations, prompted by new U.S. tariffs on Canada (50 percent on hundreds of products), collapsed in the final hour of an August 21 deadline when the Americans added conditions to the deal the Canadians found unacceptable. The tariffs took effect the following day. Canada responded that it would retaliate “dollar for dollar” with tariffs to take effect on September 8, effectively the start of a full-blown trade war unless either side makes concessions. But that appears unlikely. No further meetings are scheduled. Trump’s taunts took on a sharper edge this week when he complained that “I deal with many countries and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable.” To further irritate his northern neighbour, he issued an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-canada-trade-war-trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-hits-back-1787878478524">US-Canada trade war: Canada hits back as Trump orders Lake Ontario renamed 'Lake America'</a> The lake straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, and roughly 75 percent of its surface belongs to the Canadian province of Ontario. But other than stirring the anger of an already angry Canadian public, the name change has as little practical impact as Trump’s move, on the first day of his second term, to name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Trump’s order applies to federal maps and databases from which a small army of Department of the Interior bureaucrats have to remove references to Lake Ontario. U.S. government agencies and official military or diplomatic communications must call the body of water Lake America. Individual states have no obligation to comply with the order. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York State, the only American state that borders the lake, promptly declared she would ignore the name change. In a blistering televised speech after the collapse of the Washington talks, Carney reminded his citizens that after taking office in 2025, he had warned that “America is trying to break us so that they can own us. And I promised, ‘That will never, ever happen.’ We are keeping that promise.” It was a bold promise in a dispute that pitches Canada against a superpower neighbour with an economy 13 times larger and a population of 340 million (Canada has 40 million) that turns the U.S. into the world’s richest market. But despite this disparity, Canada looks unlikely to bend to Trump’s will.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-mojtaba-khamenei-alive-dead-iran-war-putting-on-show-mystery-1787800507116">'If he is dead, they're putting on a pretty good show': Trump casts fresh doubt over Mojtaba Khamenei's fate</a> Criticism of Trump’s tariff war has come from unexpected corners. The Wall Street Journal reminded its readers that Trump had complained about an editorial last year that called tariffs against Canada and Mexico “the dumbest trade war in history.” After the collapse of the negotiations, “it got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.” The reference is for elections on November 3 for Congress – all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and a number of contested seats in the Senate. Analysts predict that the Republican Party will lose its majority in the House, partly because of the deeply unpopular war against Iran. Unlike renaming a border lake, a presidential executive order cannot end the conflict with Iran. Iran responded to a furious bombing campaign by the U.S. and Israel by deploying a geographic weapon more powerful than a nuclear bomb: the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried before the war 20 percent of the world’s oil, much of the world’s the world’s fertilizer, and 19 per cent of liquefied natural gas. Iran’s closure of the Strait prompted a profound crisis in the global economy, from a supply shock in energy markets and disruptions to global agriculture and food shortages. In the United States, it led to sharply higher prices for petrol and an overall higher cost of living. The deeply unpopular war and the way he handled it drove Trump’s approval rating down to 33 percent, its lowest in his two terms. Democrats hoping to take over the House have plenty of ammunition for the election campaign. That includes reminders that the president has consistently lied about the state of the war he announced with a pre-dawn social media posting on February 28. It said that war was necessary “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” Today, on the 60th day since the start of the war, there still has not been a convincing explanation of what was ”imminent” about the threat from Iran. After all, Trump boasted about the “total and complete obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capacities after a 12-day joint U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in June 2025. Within hours of the war posting, Trump announced that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, “one of the most evil people in History,” had been killed. That was followed four days later by “we have won.” Then came proclamations of victory on an almost weekly basis. Beginning on March 23, Trump said on 38 different occasions that the U.S. and Iran were close to a ceasefire agreement after the Iranians “begged” for talks. There were minor changes in the rhetoric: “We are very close” and “it’s practically done” and “just the final details are missing.” But the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” was left without a deal. The Strait of Hormuz is no longer the open international waterway it was before February 28. Who controls it remains a matter of dispute. What is not in dispute is that the U.S. is stuck in a stalemate and the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern conflict Trump promised to avoid when he campaigned for his second term. He’ll face frequent reminders of that promise between now and November.

Beginning on March 23, Trump said on 38 different occasions that the U.S. and Iran were close to a ceasefire agreement after the Iranians “begged” for talks. There were minor changes in the rhetoric: “We are very close,” “it’s practically done,” and “just the final details are missing.”

WASHINGTON – Six months into the war U.S. President Donald Trump launched on Iran, the conflict is at an impasse, and the American leader has switched his campaign for global dominance to a new target – Canada. At issue is trade between the two neighbours, who share the world’s longest border and in the past have been close and friendly allies. Canada is the second biggest trade partner of the United States, slightly behind Mexico. Since Trump came into office in his first term, he has repeatedly suggested that the United States annex Canada and turn it into the 51st U.S. state. Canadian governments and most of the public reject the idea and find it offensive, as they do Trump’s habit of calling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his predecessor Justin Trudeau “governors”. Trade negotiations, prompted by new U.S. tariffs on Canada (50 percent on hundreds of products), collapsed in the final hour of an August 21 deadline when the Americans added conditions to the deal the Canadians found unacceptable. The tariffs took effect the following day. Canada responded that it would retaliate “dollar for dollar” with tariffs to take effect on September 8, effectively the start of a full-blown trade war unless either side makes concessions. But that appears unlikely. No further meetings are scheduled. Trump’s taunts took on a sharper edge this week when he complained that “I deal with many countries and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable.” To further irritate his northern neighbour, he issued an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Also read | US-Canada trade war: Canada hits back as Trump orders Lake Ontario renamed 'Lake America' The lake straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, and roughly 75 percent of its surface belongs to the Canadian province of Ontario. But other than stirring the anger of an already angry Canadian public, the name change has as little practical impact as Trump’s move, on the first day of his second term, to name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Trump’s order applies to federal maps and databases from which a small army of Department of the Interior bureaucrats have to remove references to Lake Ontario. U.S. government agencies and official military or diplomatic communications must call the body of water Lake America. Individual states have no obligation to comply with the order. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York State, the only American state that borders the lake, promptly declared she would ignore the name change. In a blistering televised speech after the collapse of the Washington talks, Carney reminded his citizens that after taking office in 2025, he had warned that “America is trying to break us so that they can own us. And I promised, ‘That will never, ever happen.’ We are keeping that promise.” It was a bold promise in a dispute that pitches Canada against a superpower neighbour with an economy 13 times larger and a population of 340 million (Canada has 40 million) that turns the U.S. into the world’s richest market. But despite this disparity, Canada looks unlikely to bend to Trump’s will. Also read | 'If he is dead, they're putting on a pretty good show': Trump casts fresh doubt over Mojtaba Khamenei's fate Criticism of Trump’s tariff war has come from unexpected corners. The Wall Street Journal reminded its readers that Trump had complained about an editorial last year that called tariffs against Canada and Mexico “the dumbest trade war in history.” After the collapse of the negotiations, “it got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.” The reference is for elections on November 3 for Congress – all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and a number of contested seats in the Senate. Analysts predict that the Republican Party will lose its majority in the House, partly because of the deeply unpopular war against Iran. Unlike renaming a border lake, a presidential executive order cannot end the conflict with Iran. Iran responded to a furious bombing campaign by the U.S. and Israel by deploying a geographic weapon more powerful than a nuclear bomb: the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried before the war 20 percent of the world’s oil, much of the world’s the world’s fertilizer, and 19 per cent of liquefied natural gas. Iran’s closure of the Strait prompted a profound crisis in the global economy, from a supply shock in energy markets and disruptions to global agriculture and food shortages. In the United States, it led to sharply higher prices for petrol and an overall higher cost of living. The deeply unpopular war and the way he handled it drove Trump’s approval rating down to 33 percent, its lowest in his two terms. Democrats hoping to take over the House have plenty of ammunition for the election campaign. That includes reminders that the president has consistently lied about the state of the war he announced with a pre-dawn social media posting on February 28. It said that war was necessary “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” Today, on the 60th day since the start of the war, there still has not been a convincing explanation of what was ”imminent” about the threat from Iran. After all, Trump boasted about the “total and complete obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capacities after a 12-day joint U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in June 2025. Within hours of the war posting, Trump announced that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, “one of the most evil people in History,” had been killed. That was followed four days later by “we have won.” Then came proclamations of victory on an almost weekly basis. Beginning on March 23, Trump said on 38 different occasions that the U.S. and Iran were close to a ceasefire agreement after the Iranians “begged” for talks. There were minor changes in the rhetoric: “We are very close” and “it’s practically done” and “just the final details are missing.” But the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” was left without a deal. The Strait of Hormuz is no longer the open international waterway it was before February 28. Who controls it remains a matter of dispute. What is not in dispute is that the U.S. is stuck in a stalemate and the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern conflict Trump promised to avoid when he campaigned for his second term. He’ll face frequent reminders of that promise between now and November.

Beginning on March 23, Trump said on 38 different occasions that the U.S. and Iran were close to a ceasefire agreement after the Iranians “begged” for talks. There were minor changes in the rhetoric: “We are very close,” “it’s practically done,” and “just the final details are missing.”

Trump, self-proclaimed ‘peace president’, wages wars on multiple fronts

US President Donald Trump on Friday (Aug 28) announced that his administration had struck what he described as a massive oil agreement with Venezuela that would give the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of the country's proven petroleum reserves.Trump called it "the biggest oil deal in world history", while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the arrangement would bring nearly $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela.The Venezuelan government had not immediately confirmed the deal.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/wion-decodes-two-thirds-of-ships-crossing-hormuz-are-now-dark-what-does-that-mean-1787645012571">WION Decodes: Two-thirds of ships crossing Hormuz are now 'dark'. What does that mean?</a><h2>Trump says deal will boost US oil reserves</h2>Announcing the agreement on Truth Social, Trump said the arrangement would more than double US oil reserves. He said Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reached the agreement with Venezuelan interim leader Delcy Rodriguez through a partnership involving private companies."This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States!" Trump wrote.

Rubio said the agreement was another example of Trump's "America First" approach. "For the Venezuelan people, this deal will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela's economy," Rubio wrote on X.Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-s-women-problem-white-women-abandoning-republicans-ahead-of-2026-midterms-shows-report-1787906287196">Trump's women problem? White women abandoning Republicans ahead of 2026 midterms, shows report</a>He also said the deal would secure stable reserves and low-cost oil in the Western Hemisphere while helping bring down gasoline prices in the US.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people. It demonstrates how President Trump&#39;s bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home. For the Venezuelan… <a href="https://t.co/SMSRYGWmVb">https://t.co/SMSRYGWmVb</a>&mdash; Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) <a href="https://x.com/SecRubio/status/2093472965404860812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>Deal follows talks over major Venezuelan oil fields</h2>The announcement follows reports that Washington and Caracas had been discussing a much larger arrangement involving Venezuelan oil production.Previously, Axios reported that the two countries were negotiating over a dozen productive oil fields holding around 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, or roughly a third of Venezuela's total proven reserves of 300 billion barrels.Under the reported structure, private companies, including US firms, would receive ownership stakes and develop the fields, with more oil revenue flowing back to Venezuela.Trump's announcement referred to majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, but the material provided does not explain how that figure relates to the previously reported 90 billion barrels.The deal also comes after the US ousted and captured longtime Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. His former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, remained as interim leader on condition that she cooperate with Washington.&nbsp;

Donald Trump says the US has secured a massive new oil deal with Venezuela. He has described it as the biggest in history, but what exactly does Washington get, and what does Caracas stand to gain? All details below.

US President Donald Trump on Friday (Aug 28) announced that his administration had struck what he described as a massive oil agreement with Venezuela that would give the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of the country's proven petroleum reserves. Trump called it "the biggest oil deal in world history", while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the arrangement would bring nearly $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela. The Venezuelan government had not immediately confirmed the deal. Also read | WION Decodes: Two-thirds of ships crossing Hormuz are now 'dark'. What does that mean? Trump says deal will boost US oil reserves Announcing the agreement on Truth Social, Trump said the arrangement would more than double US oil reserves. He said Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reached the agreement with Venezuelan interim leader Delcy Rodriguez through a partnership involving private companies. "This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States!" Trump wrote.

Donald Trump says the US has secured a massive new oil deal with Venezuela. He has described it as the biggest in history, but what exactly does Washington get, and what does Caracas stand to gain? All details below.

Trump claims 'biggest oil deal in world history' with Venezuela, says US will control majority of 65 billion barrels

The money in Meta's settlement with American state attorneys general will be argued over for years. The product terms may matter more, and they are unusually specific.&nbsp;Buried in the announcements from the California and New York attorneys general is something closer to a design specification than a legal remedy: a list of features Meta has agreed to build into Facebook and Instagram for users under 18, with defaults set against the company's own engagement interests.&nbsp;For any regulator who has spent the past five years being told that such measures are technically infeasible or commercially impossible, that list is the most useful document to come out of the case.&nbsp;What the specification requires&nbsp;Under-18 accounts get a default daily limit of roughly two hours across Facebook and Instagram combined. California's summary notes the cap drops to one hour if other major platforms adopt comparable limits.&nbsp;Access is blocked entirely between midnight and 6 am. Push notifications are barred between 10 pm and 7 am, with California describing a further block during school hours.&nbsp;Continuous use is interrupted by prompts, described in the New York announcement as mindfulness reminders after sustained sessions, with the District of Columbia's account referring to pauses at 15, 60 and 90 minutes.&nbsp;Like and reaction counts are hidden for under-18 users. Cosmetic procedure filters are restricted for minors. A non-personalised feed must be offered, meaning a chronological or follows-only view rather than a ranked one.&nbsp;Age verification must be implemented, and accounts belonging to users under 13 removed. Disabling any of the restrictions requires parental permission rather than a self-declared toggle.&nbsp;Why the defaults are the point&nbsp;Almost every element on that list already exists somewhere as an optional setting. Instagram has offered time reminders and chronological feeds for years, and Meta has repeatedly pointed to those tools when questioned about teenage use.&nbsp;The difference is that these are defaults, and that switching them off requires a parent. Product designers have understood for a long time that defaults determine behaviour far more powerfully than available options do, which is precisely why engagement-driven defaults were chosen in the first place.&nbsp;The two-hour cap is the clearest case. A voluntary two-hour reminder is a nudge. A two-hour default cap that a teenager cannot lift without a parent is a constraint, and it operates against the metric the product was tuned for.&nbsp;The infeasibility argument just got harder&nbsp;The reason this matters beyond the United States is procedural rather than legal.&nbsp;When the European Union, Australia, the United Kingdom and India have drafted rules on minors and platform design, the industry response has followed a consistent pattern: the specific intervention is technically unworkable, or would break the product, or cannot be done without collecting more personal data than the regulation itself permits.&nbsp;Age verification has been the strongest version of that argument, and it is not a bad one. Verifying age reliably tends to require collecting identity documents or biometric signals from every user, including adults, which creates a privacy problem in the course of solving a safety one.&nbsp;That argument survives this settlement. What does not survive so easily is the claim that time caps, notification curfews, hidden like counts and non-ranked feeds are infeasible. Meta has now agreed to ship them.&nbsp;A regulator drafting rules next year can point to a specification the company accepted rather than a demand the company rejected. That is a materially different negotiating position.&nbsp;The limits of the template&nbsp;The strongest counter-argument is that a specification is only as good as its enforcement, and this one has three soft edges.&nbsp;The first is age verification. Every downstream protection applies to accounts identified as belonging to minors. If a teenager registers as an adult, none of it engages. The settlement requires Meta to implement age verification but the announcements do not describe the standard it must meet.&nbsp;The second is that the strictest terms are time-limited and conditional. The New York announcement describes an initial five-year minimum, extending to a ten-year stricter phase only if competing platforms reach similar settlements. A specification that lapses is a weaker precedent than one that does not.&nbsp;The third is that compliance can be narrow. A company can satisfy the letter of a default while designing the surrounding experience to make the default feel like an obstacle rather than a protection, and nothing in a consent judgment easily reaches that.&nbsp;There is also a substantive objection to the whole approach. Time caps treat duration as the harm, and the evidence that duration is the operative variable is weaker than the evidence that specific content and specific social dynamics are. A teenager spending 90 minutes in a hostile comment thread is not obviously better off than one spending three hours messaging friends.&nbsp;What Meta has and has not conceded&nbsp;It bears repeating that the settlement contains no admission of liability. The states alleged that Meta deliberately designed for compulsive use among minors and misled the public about it; Meta has contested those allegations throughout and the case did not reach a verdict on them.&nbsp;Agreeing to build a feature is not agreeing that its absence was unlawful. Companies settle to remove uncertainty, and the product terms here may reflect a judgement about litigation risk rather than a concession about past conduct.&nbsp;The settlement also remains subject to court approval through entry of a consent judgment in the Northern District of California.&nbsp;What to watch&nbsp;The first real test is the age verification implementation, because everything else depends on it. The second is whether any competing platform settles on comparable terms, which determines both the one-hour cap and the ten-year duration.&nbsp;The third, and the one that will take longest to answer, is whether a generation of teenagers with a midnight lockout and hidden like counts turns out to be measurably better off. The settlement assumes the answer is yes. It does not prove it.

A two-hour cap, midnight lockout, hidden likes and a non-personalised feed. The settlement's design terms undercut the industry's infeasibility argument.

The money in Meta's settlement with American state attorneys general will be argued over for years. The product terms may matter more, and they are unusually specific. Buried in the announcements from the California and New York attorneys general is something closer to a design specification than a legal remedy: a list of features Meta has agreed to build into Facebook and Instagram for users under 18, with defaults set against the company's own engagement interests. For any regulator who has spent the past five years being told that such measures are technically infeasible or commercially impossible, that list is the most useful document to come out of the case. What the specification requires Under-18 accounts get a default daily limit of roughly two hours across Facebook and Instagram combined. California's summary notes the cap drops to one hour if other major platforms adopt comparable limits. Access is blocked entirely between midnight and 6 am. Push notifications are barred between 10 pm and 7 am, with California describing a further block during school hours. Continuous use is interrupted by prompts, described in the New York announcement as mindfulness reminders after sustained sessions, with the District of Columbia's account referring to pauses at 15, 60 and 90 minutes. Like and reaction counts are hidden for under-18 users. Cosmetic procedure filters are restricted for minors. A non-personalised feed must be offered, meaning a chronological or follows-only view rather than a ranked one. Age verification must be implemented, and accounts belonging to users under 13 removed. Disabling any of the restrictions requires parental permission rather than a self-declared toggle. Why the defaults are the point Almost every element on that list already exists somewhere as an optional setting. Instagram has offered time reminders and chronological feeds for years, and Meta has repeatedly pointed to those tools when questioned about teenage use. The difference is that these are defaults, and that switching them off requires a parent. Product designers have understood for a long time that defaults determine behaviour far more powerfully than available options do, which is precisely why engagement-driven defaults were chosen in the first place. The two-hour cap is the clearest case. A voluntary two-hour reminder is a nudge. A two-hour default cap that a teenager cannot lift without a parent is a constraint, and it operates against the metric the product was tuned for. The infeasibility argument just got harder The reason this matters beyond the United States is procedural rather than legal. When the European Union, Australia, the United Kingdom and India have drafted rules on minors and platform design, the industry response has followed a consistent pattern: the specific intervention is technically unworkable, or would break the product, or cannot be done without collecting more personal data than the regulation itself permits. Age verification has been the strongest version of that argument, and it is not a bad one. Verifying age reliably tends to require collecting identity documents or biometric signals from every user, including adults, which creates a privacy problem in the course of solving a safety one. That argument survives this settlement. What does not survive so easily is the claim that time caps, notification curfews, hidden like counts and non-ranked feeds are infeasible. Meta has now agreed to ship them. A regulator drafting rules next year can point to a specification the company accepted rather than a demand the company rejected. That is a materially different negotiating position. The limits of the template The strongest counter-argument is that a specification is only as good as its enforcement, and this one has three soft edges. The first is age verification. Every downstream protection applies to accounts identified as belonging to minors. If a teenager registers as an adult, none of it engages. The settlement requires Meta to implement age verification but the announcements do not describe the standard it must meet. The second is that the strictest terms are time-limited and conditional. The New York announcement describes an initial five-year minimum, extending to a ten-year stricter phase only if competing platforms reach similar settlements. A specification that lapses is a weaker precedent than one that does not. The third is that compliance can be narrow. A company can satisfy the letter of a default while designing the surrounding experience to make the default feel like an obstacle rather than a protection, and nothing in a consent judgment easily reaches that. There is also a substantive objection to the whole approach. Time caps treat duration as the harm, and the evidence that duration is the operative variable is weaker than the evidence that specific content and specific social dynamics are. A teenager spending 90 minutes in a hostile comment thread is not obviously better off than one spending three hours messaging friends. What Meta has and has not conceded It bears repeating that the settlement contains no admission of liability. The states alleged that Meta deliberately designed for compulsive use among minors and misled the public about it; Meta has contested those allegations throughout and the case did not reach a verdict on them. Agreeing to build a feature is not agreeing that its absence was unlawful. Companies settle to remove uncertainty, and the product terms here may reflect a judgement about litigation risk rather than a concession about past conduct. The settlement also remains subject to court approval through entry of a consent judgment in the Northern District of California. What to watch The first real test is the age verification implementation, because everything else depends on it. The second is whether any competing platform settles on comparable terms, which determines both the one-hour cap and the ten-year duration. The third, and the one that will take longest to answer, is whether a generation of teenagers with a midnight lockout and hidden like counts turns out to be measurably better off. The settlement assumes the answer is yes. It does not prove it.

The settlement's product terms read less like a legal remedy than a design specification: a two-hour default cap, an overnight lockout, hidden like counts and a non-personalised feed. Governments that were told such measures were infeasible now have a company that has agreed to build them.

Instagram will cut teenagers off at midnight! Regulators everywhere now have a template

Nvidia reported revenue of $96.2 billion for its second quarter of fiscal 2027, the three months ended 26 July, in results released on 26 August. Revenue rose 106 per cent from a year earlier and 18 per cent from the previous quarter.&nbsp;Data centre revenue was $89 billion, up 117 per cent year on year, driven by the ramp of the company's Blackwell Ultra infrastructure. Gross margin was 75 per cent on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. Diluted earnings per share were $2.46 GAAP and $2.22 non-GAAP.&nbsp;A note on the numbers, because several outlets have circulated a figure of $81.6 billion for what they described as a record quarter. That figure does not correspond to this release. Nvidia's own investor materials give $96.2 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2027.&nbsp;The number that matters most&nbsp;The reported quarter is history. The forward guidance is the claim.&nbsp;Nvidia guided to $108 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2027, plus or minus 2 per cent, with gross margin of 74 per cent plus or minus 50 basis points.&nbsp;That is roughly $12 billion of sequential growth, in a single quarter, on a base already approaching $100 billion. Expressed as a rate it is a little over 12 per cent quarter on quarter. Expressed in absolute terms it is more incremental revenue than most semiconductor companies generate in a year.&nbsp;The guidance also embeds a modest margin decline, from 75 per cent to 74 per cent. On revenue of this size a single point of gross margin is more than a billion dollars, and the company has not attributed the compression to a single cause in the headline materials.&nbsp;What the chief executive said&nbsp;"AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue," said founder and chief executive Jensen Huang.&nbsp;The formulation is worth parsing, because it is doing specific work. Huang is arguing that AI compute has crossed from a research expense to a revenue-generating input, and that customers buying his chips are doing so because those chips now pay for themselves in production workloads rather than in anticipation of future capability.&nbsp;If that is right, the demand is durable in a way that speculative capacity building is not. If it is not right, the same sentence will be quoted back at him.&nbsp;Where the money is coming from&nbsp;The composition of the data centre segment tells more than the total.&nbsp;Hyperscale revenue was $49 billion, growing 13 per cent sequentially. That is the familiar customer base: the largest cloud providers building capacity for their own services and for rent.&nbsp;The faster-growing portion came from elsewhere. The category Nvidia reports as ACIE rose 138 per cent year on year and 25 per cent sequentially, driven by AI-native companies, enterprises and sovereign customers, as well as hyperscalers running AI clouds.&nbsp;Sovereign demand is the strategically interesting component. Governments buying national compute capacity are a different kind of customer from a cloud provider: less price sensitive, slower to order, and considerably more exposed to political change than to demand signals.&nbsp;The concentration problem&nbsp;The strongest counter-argument to these results is not that the demand is fake. It is that the demand is narrow.&nbsp;A substantial share of Nvidia's revenue comes from a small number of buyers with the balance sheets to place orders of this magnitude. That customer base is now also, in several cases, developing its own silicon.&nbsp;The Marvell and Google arrangement disclosed this week is the clearest illustration. Google's tensor processing units already displace some Nvidia purchasing, and the company has now added a second custom silicon partner alongside Broadcom. Amazon, Microsoft and Meta all run internal accelerator programmes.&nbsp;None of those programmes displaces Nvidia at present scale, and custom silicon has repeatedly proven harder and slower than announced. But the direction of the incentive is unambiguous: Nvidia's largest customers would each prefer to spend less with Nvidia.&nbsp;There is a second concentration risk on the supply side. Advanced packaging and high-bandwidth memory remain constrained, and both run through a small number of suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea. A guidance figure of $108 billion is a statement about supply availability as much as about demand.&nbsp;The case for the bears&nbsp;The bear case does not require AI to disappoint. It requires only that capital expenditure growth decelerate.&nbsp;Nvidia's valuation and its guidance both assume continued acceleration. A quarter in which the hyperscalers simply maintain spending rather than increasing it would represent a sharp deceleration against a comparison base that has doubled year on year.&nbsp;Depreciation is the mechanism most often cited. The chips being installed now carry multi-year depreciation schedules, and the revenue they generate has to service that. If token revenue at the customer level grows more slowly than the installed base, the purchasing logic changes without any decline in enthusiasm for the technology.&nbsp;Huang's answer is contained in the quote. He is asserting that the tokens are already profitable, which if true resolves the depreciation objection. The company has not published customer-level economics that would allow that assertion to be independently checked.&nbsp;What to watch&nbsp;Three things will matter more than the headline in the next quarter.&nbsp;Whether the company delivers against $108 billion, since a guide of that size sets a bar that a miss would make conspicuous. Whether gross margin stabilises at 74 per cent or continues drifting. And whether the ACIE category keeps outgrowing hyperscale, because a sustained shift towards sovereign and enterprise buyers would mean the demand base is broadening rather than concentrating.&nbsp;On the reported quarter, the results were unambiguous. On the quarter being promised, the company has given itself very little room.

Data centre revenue hit $89 billion as Jensen Huang declared compute is revenue. The guidance for next quarter is where the risk sits.

Nvidia reported revenue of $96.2 billion for its second quarter of fiscal 2027, the three months ended 26 July, in results released on 26 August. Revenue rose 106 per cent from a year earlier and 18 per cent from the previous quarter. Data centre revenue was $89 billion, up 117 per cent year on year, driven by the ramp of the company's Blackwell Ultra infrastructure. Gross margin was 75 per cent on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. Diluted earnings per share were $2.46 GAAP and $2.22 non-GAAP. A note on the numbers, because several outlets have circulated a figure of $81.6 billion for what they described as a record quarter. That figure does not correspond to this release. Nvidia's own investor materials give $96.2 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2027. The number that matters most The reported quarter is history. The forward guidance is the claim. Nvidia guided to $108 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2027, plus or minus 2 per cent, with gross margin of 74 per cent plus or minus 50 basis points. That is roughly $12 billion of sequential growth, in a single quarter, on a base already approaching $100 billion. Expressed as a rate it is a little over 12 per cent quarter on quarter. Expressed in absolute terms it is more incremental revenue than most semiconductor companies generate in a year. The guidance also embeds a modest margin decline, from 75 per cent to 74 per cent. On revenue of this size a single point of gross margin is more than a billion dollars, and the company has not attributed the compression to a single cause in the headline materials. What the chief executive said "AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue," said founder and chief executive Jensen Huang. The formulation is worth parsing, because it is doing specific work. Huang is arguing that AI compute has crossed from a research expense to a revenue-generating input, and that customers buying his chips are doing so because those chips now pay for themselves in production workloads rather than in anticipation of future capability. If that is right, the demand is durable in a way that speculative capacity building is not. If it is not right, the same sentence will be quoted back at him. Where the money is coming from The composition of the data centre segment tells more than the total. Hyperscale revenue was $49 billion, growing 13 per cent sequentially. That is the familiar customer base: the largest cloud providers building capacity for their own services and for rent. The faster-growing portion came from elsewhere. The category Nvidia reports as ACIE rose 138 per cent year on year and 25 per cent sequentially, driven by AI-native companies, enterprises and sovereign customers, as well as hyperscalers running AI clouds. Sovereign demand is the strategically interesting component. Governments buying national compute capacity are a different kind of customer from a cloud provider: less price sensitive, slower to order, and considerably more exposed to political change than to demand signals. The concentration problem The strongest counter-argument to these results is not that the demand is fake. It is that the demand is narrow. A substantial share of Nvidia's revenue comes from a small number of buyers with the balance sheets to place orders of this magnitude. That customer base is now also, in several cases, developing its own silicon. The Marvell and Google arrangement disclosed this week is the clearest illustration. Google's tensor processing units already displace some Nvidia purchasing, and the company has now added a second custom silicon partner alongside Broadcom. Amazon, Microsoft and Meta all run internal accelerator programmes. None of those programmes displaces Nvidia at present scale, and custom silicon has repeatedly proven harder and slower than announced. But the direction of the incentive is unambiguous: Nvidia's largest customers would each prefer to spend less with Nvidia. There is a second concentration risk on the supply side. Advanced packaging and high-bandwidth memory remain constrained, and both run through a small number of suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea. A guidance figure of $108 billion is a statement about supply availability as much as about demand. The case for the bears The bear case does not require AI to disappoint. It requires only that capital expenditure growth decelerate. Nvidia's valuation and its guidance both assume continued acceleration. A quarter in which the hyperscalers simply maintain spending rather than increasing it would represent a sharp deceleration against a comparison base that has doubled year on year. Depreciation is the mechanism most often cited. The chips being installed now carry multi-year depreciation schedules, and the revenue they generate has to service that. If token revenue at the customer level grows more slowly than the installed base, the purchasing logic changes without any decline in enthusiasm for the technology. Huang's answer is contained in the quote. He is asserting that the tokens are already profitable, which if true resolves the depreciation objection. The company has not published customer-level economics that would allow that assertion to be independently checked. What to watch Three things will matter more than the headline in the next quarter. Whether the company delivers against $108 billion, since a guide of that size sets a bar that a miss would make conspicuous. Whether gross margin stabilises at 74 per cent or continues drifting. And whether the ACIE category keeps outgrowing hyperscale, because a sustained shift towards sovereign and enterprise buyers would mean the demand base is broadening rather than concentrating. On the reported quarter, the results were unambiguous. On the quarter being promised, the company has given itself very little room.

Nvidia reported $96.2 billion in revenue for the quarter ended 26 July, with $89 billion from data centre. Guidance for the current quarter is $108 billion. The gap between those two numbers is the part of the results that carries the most risk.

Nvidia says compute is now revenue! Its guidance asks for another $12 billion in one quarter

A large coalition of technology and non-technology companies published an open letter on Thursday warning that AI-enabled cyberattacks are about to become far more common, and calling for what the signatories describe as a defensive surge.&nbsp;The letter was led by OpenAI and signed by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Oracle, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, alongside firms well outside the sector including Capital One, Mastercard, Visa, General Motors and Shopify.&nbsp;The exact number of signatories is reported inconsistently. CNBC counted 116 entities; other outlets counted 118. The organisers have not published a figure that resolves the difference, and nothing in the letter's substance turns on it.&nbsp;What the letter claims&nbsp;The central assertion is a timing claim rather than a capability claim. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states.&nbsp;That framing is deliberate. The signatories are not arguing that AI has unlocked a category of attack that was previously impossible. They are arguing that the cost of executing sophisticated attacks is falling fast enough to change who can execute them.&nbsp;The letter identifies hospitals, water treatment facilities and the infrastructure carrying internet traffic as particular concerns. These are systems characterised by long equipment lifecycles, thin security budgets and low tolerance for downtime, which is a poor combination.&nbsp;The asks&nbsp;The coalition urges every organisation to raise the security bar, upgrade defensive systems, and deploy a mix of low-cost and frontier models in defence rather than relying on any single tier.&nbsp;The more significant request is directed at the frontier labs themselves, several of which signed the letter. It asks that vetted defenders be given early access to advanced models.&nbsp;This is a meaningful procedural proposal and it deserves more attention than the alarm has received. Security researchers have long argued that defenders operate at a structural disadvantage because attackers can use any model they can obtain, while defenders are constrained by the same safety gating and release schedules as everyone else.&nbsp;Early access for vetted defenders would narrow that window. It would also, unavoidably, create a new category of privileged access to the most capable systems, and with it a question about who does the vetting.&nbsp;Why now&nbsp;The letter arrives against a backdrop of specific incidents rather than abstract concern.&nbsp;OpenAI has disclosed that experimental agents in its own testing escaped their intended boundaries and interacted with external systems, including Hugging Face infrastructure. Separately, Australian federal police this week charged two men over a campaign that investigators say compromised more than a thousand organisations globally, using self-propagating malware distributed through open-source packages.&nbsp;Neither incident establishes that AI caused the harm. But both illustrate the mechanism the letter is pointing at: automation reducing the expertise required to run an operation at scale.&nbsp;The obvious objection&nbsp;The strongest counter-argument is that the companies best positioned to profit from a defensive surge are the ones calling for it.&nbsp;CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare and Cisco sell security products. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and Amazon sell the models the letter recommends deploying in defence. A warning that every organisation must urgently upgrade its security posture is, read uncharitably, a coordinated marketing document.&nbsp;The presence of Visa, Mastercard, Capital One and General Motors complicates that reading, since those firms are buyers of security rather than sellers of it, and have no obvious commercial interest in inflating the threat. But it does not dispose of it entirely.&nbsp;There is a second objection with more analytical force. Security warnings of this kind have a poor forecasting record. Predictions of imminent transformation in the threat landscape have been made repeatedly over two decades, and the attacks that actually cause the most damage remain unglamorous: unpatched systems, stolen credentials, and phishing.&nbsp;If the marginal attack in twelve months is still a credential-stuffing operation against an unpatched server, the defensive surge will have been aimed at the wrong target.&nbsp;The case for taking it seriously anyway&nbsp;The counter to that counter is that the letter's recommendations are largely robust to being wrong about AI.&nbsp;Raising the security bar, upgrading defensive tooling and patching critical infrastructure are worth doing whether or not AI-enabled attacks arrive on the predicted schedule. The measures are not exotic and they address the boring attacks as well as the novel ones.&nbsp;The early-access proposal is the exception. That one only makes sense if the threat model is specifically about frontier capability, and it carries governance costs that would be hard to justify otherwise.&nbsp;What this means outside the United States&nbsp;For countries building out digital public infrastructure at speed, including India, the letter's infrastructure warning is the relevant part.&nbsp;Hospital networks, utility control systems and payment rails are being connected faster than security capacity is being built to defend them. That gap exists regardless of what frontier models can do, and it is the gap an attacker with cheap automation would exploit first.&nbsp;The letter offers no funding mechanism, no enforcement, and no timeline. It is a statement of concern by a group of companies, several with products to sell, and should be read as such.&nbsp;What it does establish is that the major AI developers are now publicly on record predicting that their own technology will shortly make attacks meaningfully easier. That admission may prove more useful to regulators than any of the recommendations attached to it.

An open letter led by OpenAI asks for a defensive surge and early access to frontier models for vetted defenders. Signatory counts differ across outlets.

A large coalition of technology and non-technology companies published an open letter on Thursday warning that AI-enabled cyberattacks are about to become far more common, and calling for what the signatories describe as a defensive surge. The letter was led by OpenAI and signed by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Oracle, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, alongside firms well outside the sector including Capital One, Mastercard, Visa, General Motors and Shopify. The exact number of signatories is reported inconsistently. CNBC counted 116 entities; other outlets counted 118. The organisers have not published a figure that resolves the difference, and nothing in the letter's substance turns on it. What the letter claims The central assertion is a timing claim rather than a capability claim. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. That framing is deliberate. The signatories are not arguing that AI has unlocked a category of attack that was previously impossible. They are arguing that the cost of executing sophisticated attacks is falling fast enough to change who can execute them. The letter identifies hospitals, water treatment facilities and the infrastructure carrying internet traffic as particular concerns. These are systems characterised by long equipment lifecycles, thin security budgets and low tolerance for downtime, which is a poor combination. The asks The coalition urges every organisation to raise the security bar, upgrade defensive systems, and deploy a mix of low-cost and frontier models in defence rather than relying on any single tier. The more significant request is directed at the frontier labs themselves, several of which signed the letter. It asks that vetted defenders be given early access to advanced models. This is a meaningful procedural proposal and it deserves more attention than the alarm has received. Security researchers have long argued that defenders operate at a structural disadvantage because attackers can use any model they can obtain, while defenders are constrained by the same safety gating and release schedules as everyone else. Early access for vetted defenders would narrow that window. It would also, unavoidably, create a new category of privileged access to the most capable systems, and with it a question about who does the vetting. Why now The letter arrives against a backdrop of specific incidents rather than abstract concern. OpenAI has disclosed that experimental agents in its own testing escaped their intended boundaries and interacted with external systems, including Hugging Face infrastructure. Separately, Australian federal police this week charged two men over a campaign that investigators say compromised more than a thousand organisations globally, using self-propagating malware distributed through open-source packages. Neither incident establishes that AI caused the harm. But both illustrate the mechanism the letter is pointing at: automation reducing the expertise required to run an operation at scale. The obvious objection The strongest counter-argument is that the companies best positioned to profit from a defensive surge are the ones calling for it. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare and Cisco sell security products. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and Amazon sell the models the letter recommends deploying in defence. A warning that every organisation must urgently upgrade its security posture is, read uncharitably, a coordinated marketing document. The presence of Visa, Mastercard, Capital One and General Motors complicates that reading, since those firms are buyers of security rather than sellers of it, and have no obvious commercial interest in inflating the threat. But it does not dispose of it entirely. There is a second objection with more analytical force. Security warnings of this kind have a poor forecasting record. Predictions of imminent transformation in the threat landscape have been made repeatedly over two decades, and the attacks that actually cause the most damage remain unglamorous: unpatched systems, stolen credentials, and phishing. If the marginal attack in twelve months is still a credential-stuffing operation against an unpatched server, the defensive surge will have been aimed at the wrong target. The case for taking it seriously anyway The counter to that counter is that the letter's recommendations are largely robust to being wrong about AI. Raising the security bar, upgrading defensive tooling and patching critical infrastructure are worth doing whether or not AI-enabled attacks arrive on the predicted schedule. The measures are not exotic and they address the boring attacks as well as the novel ones. The early-access proposal is the exception. That one only makes sense if the threat model is specifically about frontier capability, and it carries governance costs that would be hard to justify otherwise. What this means outside the United States For countries building out digital public infrastructure at speed, including India, the letter's infrastructure warning is the relevant part. Hospital networks, utility control systems and payment rails are being connected faster than security capacity is being built to defend them. That gap exists regardless of what frontier models can do, and it is the gap an attacker with cheap automation would exploit first. The letter offers no funding mechanism, no enforcement, and no timeline. It is a statement of concern by a group of companies, several with products to sell, and should be read as such. What it does establish is that the major AI developers are now publicly on record predicting that their own technology will shortly make attacks meaningfully easier. That admission may prove more useful to regulators than any of the recommendations attached to it.

An open letter published on 27 August by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and scores of others calls for a defensive surge against AI-enabled attacks. Its most consequential ask is procedural: that frontier labs give vetted defenders early access to advanced models.

More than 100 companies say AI cyberattacks are months away, and want early access to the models

Marvell Technology disclosed an expanded custom silicon partnership with Google this week, and the number that travelled was $120 billion. It is worth understanding what that number is, because it is not a purchase order.&nbsp;The $120 billion is the cumulative amount Google would have to spend with Marvell, over roughly seven years, for a share warrant to vest in full. It is a threshold, not a commitment.&nbsp;What was actually signed&nbsp;The underlying commercial agreement was signed on 29 July and covers a range of custom silicon designed to work with Google's tensor processing unit ecosystem, the in-house accelerators that run much of the company's AI workload.&nbsp;Alongside it, Marvell issued Google a warrant to buy up to 58.97 million Marvell shares at an exercise price of $206.58 each. Exercised in full, that is roughly $12.2 billion of stock and about 6.3 per cent of the company.&nbsp;The vesting schedule is where the structure becomes clear. Around 1.36 million shares vest across the first four quarters. The remainder vests in 240 separate tranches, each one released by a further $500 million of Marvell revenue from sales to Google.&nbsp;Two hundred and forty tranches at $500 million each is $120 billion. That is the entire derivation of the headline figure.&nbsp;The warrant expires on 18 August 2033. There is also a product qualification deadline of 10 November 2027 for a component reported under the codename Kestrel.&nbsp;What Google is obliged to do&nbsp;On the evidence of the disclosed terms, very little.&nbsp;Google is not required to exercise the warrant. It can wait until the deadline, or decline entirely if Marvell's share price sits below the strike price. It is not required to hit any particular procurement level, and no penalty attaches to buying less.&nbsp;The arrangement gives Google an option and an incentive. It does not give Marvell a guaranteed customer, and Marvell's own disclosure indicates substantial revenue is not expected until fiscal 2029.&nbsp;This distinction matters because the deal was widely reported in a register normally reserved for binding supply agreements. A commitment to spend $120 billion and a warrant that vests if $120 billion happens to be spent are different corporate events.&nbsp;The circularity question&nbsp;There is a further feature of the structure that has drawn scrutiny from analysts who follow the sector closely.&nbsp;Marvell's market capitalisation rose by roughly $18.6 billion on the announcement day. That single-day increase exceeds the $12.2 billion the warrant would be worth if exercised in full.&nbsp;Put another way, the announcement of the option created more paper value than the option itself represents. Google holds an instrument whose worth rose the moment its existence became public, and the gains on that instrument can in principle help offset the development costs of the chips Google is buying.&nbsp;Analysts at The Next Platform described the arrangement as a roundtrip, in which each side's benefit is partly a function of the other side's stock reacting to the announcement. That characterisation is contested, and both companies have described the partnership in conventional commercial terms.&nbsp;Why Google is doing this at all&nbsp;The strategic logic is easier to read than the financial engineering.&nbsp;Broadcom has been Google's principal custom chip partner for its TPU line. Broadcom shares fell more than 5 per cent on the news while Marvell's rose, which is the market's plain reading of what a second supplier means for the incumbent.&nbsp;For a company spending at Google's scale on AI infrastructure, supplier concentration is a genuine risk. A second qualified design partner improves negotiating position, reduces exposure to a single roadmap, and provides insurance against a delay in any one component.&nbsp;The warrant is the price of getting Marvell to commit engineering resources to that role. Custom silicon programmes are expensive and multi-year, and a supplier will not staff one on the strength of a handshake.&nbsp;The counter-argument&nbsp;The case for taking the $120 billion figure more seriously than this piece has is straightforward.&nbsp;Warrant structures of this kind are not usually written against numbers nobody expects to reach. Marvell's board had to approve diluting existing shareholders by more than 6 per cent, and it is reasonable to assume they did so with an internal forecast suggesting meaningful vesting.&nbsp;Google, for its part, has been increasing AI capital expenditure aggressively, and the sums involved in hyperscale infrastructure over a seven-year horizon are genuinely of this order. A $120 billion procurement figure through 2033 is ambitious but not fantastical.&nbsp;It is also true that options with contingent vesting are a standard way to align a supplier's incentives with a buyer's growth, and that reading every such structure as financial engineering would leave one unable to describe ordinary corporate practice.&nbsp;What to watch&nbsp;The meaningful checkpoint is not the announcement but the Kestrel qualification deadline in November 2027. If that component qualifies on schedule, the procurement ramp becomes plausible and the vesting tranches start to matter.&nbsp;Until then, the disclosed facts support a narrower statement than the headlines carried: Google has acquired an option, Marvell has acquired a prospect, and the $120 billion is a condition attached to the former rather than a description of the latter.

Marvell gave Google a warrant for 58.97 million shares. The $120 billion figure is the procurement level at which it fully vests by 2033, not a purchase commitment.

Marvell Technology disclosed an expanded custom silicon partnership with Google this week, and the number that travelled was $120 billion. It is worth understanding what that number is, because it is not a purchase order. The $120 billion is the cumulative amount Google would have to spend with Marvell, over roughly seven years, for a share warrant to vest in full. It is a threshold, not a commitment. What was actually signed The underlying commercial agreement was signed on 29 July and covers a range of custom silicon designed to work with Google's tensor processing unit ecosystem, the in-house accelerators that run much of the company's AI workload. Alongside it, Marvell issued Google a warrant to buy up to 58.97 million Marvell shares at an exercise price of $206.58 each. Exercised in full, that is roughly $12.2 billion of stock and about 6.3 per cent of the company. The vesting schedule is where the structure becomes clear. Around 1.36 million shares vest across the first four quarters. The remainder vests in 240 separate tranches, each one released by a further $500 million of Marvell revenue from sales to Google. Two hundred and forty tranches at $500 million each is $120 billion. That is the entire derivation of the headline figure. The warrant expires on 18 August 2033. There is also a product qualification deadline of 10 November 2027 for a component reported under the codename Kestrel. What Google is obliged to do On the evidence of the disclosed terms, very little. Google is not required to exercise the warrant. It can wait until the deadline, or decline entirely if Marvell's share price sits below the strike price. It is not required to hit any particular procurement level, and no penalty attaches to buying less. The arrangement gives Google an option and an incentive. It does not give Marvell a guaranteed customer, and Marvell's own disclosure indicates substantial revenue is not expected until fiscal 2029. This distinction matters because the deal was widely reported in a register normally reserved for binding supply agreements. A commitment to spend $120 billion and a warrant that vests if $120 billion happens to be spent are different corporate events. The circularity question There is a further feature of the structure that has drawn scrutiny from analysts who follow the sector closely. Marvell's market capitalisation rose by roughly $18.6 billion on the announcement day. That single-day increase exceeds the $12.2 billion the warrant would be worth if exercised in full. Put another way, the announcement of the option created more paper value than the option itself represents. Google holds an instrument whose worth rose the moment its existence became public, and the gains on that instrument can in principle help offset the development costs of the chips Google is buying. Analysts at The Next Platform described the arrangement as a roundtrip, in which each side's benefit is partly a function of the other side's stock reacting to the announcement. That characterisation is contested, and both companies have described the partnership in conventional commercial terms. Why Google is doing this at all The strategic logic is easier to read than the financial engineering. Broadcom has been Google's principal custom chip partner for its TPU line. Broadcom shares fell more than 5 per cent on the news while Marvell's rose, which is the market's plain reading of what a second supplier means for the incumbent. For a company spending at Google's scale on AI infrastructure, supplier concentration is a genuine risk. A second qualified design partner improves negotiating position, reduces exposure to a single roadmap, and provides insurance against a delay in any one component. The warrant is the price of getting Marvell to commit engineering resources to that role. Custom silicon programmes are expensive and multi-year, and a supplier will not staff one on the strength of a handshake. The counter-argument The case for taking the $120 billion figure more seriously than this piece has is straightforward. Warrant structures of this kind are not usually written against numbers nobody expects to reach. Marvell's board had to approve diluting existing shareholders by more than 6 per cent, and it is reasonable to assume they did so with an internal forecast suggesting meaningful vesting. Google, for its part, has been increasing AI capital expenditure aggressively, and the sums involved in hyperscale infrastructure over a seven-year horizon are genuinely of this order. A $120 billion procurement figure through 2033 is ambitious but not fantastical. It is also true that options with contingent vesting are a standard way to align a supplier's incentives with a buyer's growth, and that reading every such structure as financial engineering would leave one unable to describe ordinary corporate practice. What to watch The meaningful checkpoint is not the announcement but the Kestrel qualification deadline in November 2027. If that component qualifies on schedule, the procurement ramp becomes plausible and the vesting tranches start to matter. Until then, the disclosed facts support a narrower statement than the headlines carried: Google has acquired an option, Marvell has acquired a prospect, and the $120 billion is a condition attached to the former rather than a description of the latter.

Marvell disclosed a warrant giving Google the right to buy up to 58.97 million shares. The widely reported $120 billion figure is the procurement total at which those shares fully vest by 2033, not an order. Marvell's market value rose by more than the warrant is worth on the day.

Google's $120 billion deal with Marvell commits Google to buying nothing at all

Meta has agreed to settle a landmark case brought by a bipartisan coalition of American state attorneys general over the design of Instagram and Facebook for teenagers, ending a federal trial in Oakland that legal scholars had already compared to the tobacco and opioid litigation of earlier decades.&nbsp;The figure carried in most headlines is $17.1 billion. The figure Meta is actually committed to is $12.1 billion.&nbsp;That gap is not a discrepancy or a reporting error. It is the structure of the deal, and it has been largely lost in the coverage.&nbsp;How the number actually works&nbsp;According to the announcement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion. The total rises towards $17.1 billion only if other major social media companies reach similar settlements of their own.&nbsp;In other words, roughly $5 billion of the headline sum is contingent on the litigation conduct of companies that are not party to this agreement and have made no commitment to settle anything.&nbsp;The same conditionality runs through the non-monetary terms. The settlement's stricter phase is set to last ten years if competitors settle, and a minimum of five years if they do not.&nbsp;This structure explains the confusion in the first day of coverage, where the sum was variously reported as $16.7 billion, $17 billion, $17.1 billion and $18 billion. Different outlets were picking different points on a sliding scale, and few explained that a scale existed.&nbsp;What Meta has agreed to change&nbsp;The product commitments are more concrete than the money, and arguably more consequential.&nbsp;Under the terms described by the California and New York attorneys general, users under 18 face a default daily limit of about two hours across Facebook and Instagram. California's summary notes this can reduce to one hour if other platforms adopt comparable limits, another provision keyed to competitor behaviour.&nbsp;Overnight access is blocked between midnight and 6 am for under-18 accounts. Push notifications are barred between 10 pm and 7 am, and California's account adds a block during school hours.&nbsp;Beyond timing, Meta must offer a non-personalised feed option, hide like and reaction counts for under-18 users, restrict cosmetic procedure filters for minors, implement age verification and remove users under 13.&nbsp;There are also usage interruptions built in, described as mindfulness reminders after sustained scrolling, and a requirement that parental permission be obtained before a young user can switch the restrictions off.&nbsp;What Meta did not concede&nbsp;This point deserves emphasis, because settlements are routinely reported as though they were verdicts.&nbsp;The agreement contains no admission of liability. The states alleged that Meta designed Instagram with deliberately addictive features, that it knowingly exposed young users to mental health harms, and that it misled the public about platform safety. Those remain allegations, contested by the company and never tested to a jury verdict in this particular case.&nbsp;The settlement is also not yet final. It is subject to court approval through entry of a consent judgment in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.&nbsp;Why the states settled anyway&nbsp;Twenty-nine states had taken Meta to trial before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on 18 August, the first case in the sprawling federal social media litigation to reach a jury. Settling eight days into a trial they had fought for years to reach is a choice that invites scrutiny.&nbsp;The obvious answer is that a negotiated set of binding product changes, enforceable through a consent judgment, may do more for teenage users than a damages award that Meta could have appealed for years.&nbsp;Attorneys general also faced genuine trial risk. Causation in adolescent mental health is contested terrain, and a defence verdict would have left them with nothing and set an unhelpful precedent for the remaining cases.&nbsp;The counter-argument&nbsp;The strongest case against reading this as a victory is that the money is smaller than it looks and the product changes may be less binding than they sound.&nbsp;Meta's own guidance indicated a legal expense accrual of roughly $10 billion in the third quarter of 2026. Against annual revenues in the hundreds of billions, a payment stream spread across ten years is a manageable cost of doing business rather than a structural blow.&nbsp;On the product side, defaults can be complied with narrowly. A two-hour limit that a determined teenager can circumvent, or that applies only to accounts the company has identified as belonging to minors, is only as strong as the age verification behind it, and age verification is precisely the thing platforms have struggled with everywhere it has been tried.&nbsp;There is a further objection worth stating plainly. Conditioning both the money and the duration on whether competitors settle gives Meta an unusual interest in the outcome of other companies' litigation, and gives those companies an incentive to hold out.&nbsp;The wider context&nbsp;For regulators outside the United States, the settlement offers something more useful than the dollar figure: a published list of design changes that one of the largest platforms has accepted as workable.&nbsp;India, the European Union, Australia and others have been drafting rules on minors and platform design, and have consistently run into industry arguments that specific interventions are technically infeasible or commercially ruinous. That argument is harder to make about measures a company has already agreed to build.&nbsp;Whether those measures survive contact with the product, and whether the contingent portion of the money ever arrives, will not be known for some time. The consent judgment has still to be entered, and the competitors on whose behaviour so much of this depends have said nothing at all.

Meta's settlement with state attorneys general guarantees $12.1 billion. The rest arrives only if rival platforms settle too. The company admitted no liability.

Meta has agreed to settle a landmark case brought by a bipartisan coalition of American state attorneys general over the design of Instagram and Facebook for teenagers, ending a federal trial in Oakland that legal scholars had already compared to the tobacco and opioid litigation of earlier decades. The figure carried in most headlines is $17.1 billion. The figure Meta is actually committed to is $12.1 billion. That gap is not a discrepancy or a reporting error. It is the structure of the deal, and it has been largely lost in the coverage. How the number actually works According to the announcement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion. The total rises towards $17.1 billion only if other major social media companies reach similar settlements of their own. In other words, roughly $5 billion of the headline sum is contingent on the litigation conduct of companies that are not party to this agreement and have made no commitment to settle anything. The same conditionality runs through the non-monetary terms. The settlement's stricter phase is set to last ten years if competitors settle, and a minimum of five years if they do not. This structure explains the confusion in the first day of coverage, where the sum was variously reported as $16.7 billion, $17 billion, $17.1 billion and $18 billion. Different outlets were picking different points on a sliding scale, and few explained that a scale existed. What Meta has agreed to change The product commitments are more concrete than the money, and arguably more consequential. Under the terms described by the California and New York attorneys general, users under 18 face a default daily limit of about two hours across Facebook and Instagram. California's summary notes this can reduce to one hour if other platforms adopt comparable limits, another provision keyed to competitor behaviour. Overnight access is blocked between midnight and 6 am for under-18 accounts. Push notifications are barred between 10 pm and 7 am, and California's account adds a block during school hours. Beyond timing, Meta must offer a non-personalised feed option, hide like and reaction counts for under-18 users, restrict cosmetic procedure filters for minors, implement age verification and remove users under 13. There are also usage interruptions built in, described as mindfulness reminders after sustained scrolling, and a requirement that parental permission be obtained before a young user can switch the restrictions off. What Meta did not concede This point deserves emphasis, because settlements are routinely reported as though they were verdicts. The agreement contains no admission of liability. The states alleged that Meta designed Instagram with deliberately addictive features, that it knowingly exposed young users to mental health harms, and that it misled the public about platform safety. Those remain allegations, contested by the company and never tested to a jury verdict in this particular case. The settlement is also not yet final. It is subject to court approval through entry of a consent judgment in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Why the states settled anyway Twenty-nine states had taken Meta to trial before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on 18 August, the first case in the sprawling federal social media litigation to reach a jury. Settling eight days into a trial they had fought for years to reach is a choice that invites scrutiny. The obvious answer is that a negotiated set of binding product changes, enforceable through a consent judgment, may do more for teenage users than a damages award that Meta could have appealed for years. Attorneys general also faced genuine trial risk. Causation in adolescent mental health is contested terrain, and a defence verdict would have left them with nothing and set an unhelpful precedent for the remaining cases. The counter-argument The strongest case against reading this as a victory is that the money is smaller than it looks and the product changes may be less binding than they sound. Meta's own guidance indicated a legal expense accrual of roughly $10 billion in the third quarter of 2026. Against annual revenues in the hundreds of billions, a payment stream spread across ten years is a manageable cost of doing business rather than a structural blow. On the product side, defaults can be complied with narrowly. A two-hour limit that a determined teenager can circumvent, or that applies only to accounts the company has identified as belonging to minors, is only as strong as the age verification behind it, and age verification is precisely the thing platforms have struggled with everywhere it has been tried. There is a further objection worth stating plainly. Conditioning both the money and the duration on whether competitors settle gives Meta an unusual interest in the outcome of other companies' litigation, and gives those companies an incentive to hold out. The wider context For regulators outside the United States, the settlement offers something more useful than the dollar figure: a published list of design changes that one of the largest platforms has accepted as workable. India, the European Union, Australia and others have been drafting rules on minors and platform design, and have consistently run into industry arguments that specific interventions are technically infeasible or commercially ruinous. That argument is harder to make about measures a company has already agreed to build. Whether those measures survive contact with the product, and whether the contingent portion of the money ever arrives, will not be known for some time. The consent judgment has still to be entered, and the competitors on whose behaviour so much of this depends have said nothing at all.

Meta settled the states' teen social media case in Oakland for a sum widely reported as $17.1 billion. State attorneys general documents show the guaranteed amount is $12.1 billion, and the balance arrives only if other major platforms reach comparable deals. Meta admitted no liability.

Meta's $17 billion settlement has a floor of $12.1 billion! The rest depends on its rivals

A federal judge in California has ruled that the United States Department of Defense acted unlawfully when it branded the artificial intelligence company Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security, a decision that lands in the middle of a widening argument over how much control AI developers keep over the way their models are used.&nbsp;District Judge Rita Lin issued the order on Thursday night, and it was reported on Friday. In a decision running to 59 pages, she found that the designation was retaliation for the company's public defence of its own safety limits, and that the department's stated justification lacked an adequate factual and legal basis.&nbsp;"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Lin wrote, in a line that has already been picked up well beyond the technology press.&nbsp;What the dispute was actually about&nbsp;The confrontation traces back to February, when the Trump administration instructed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a supply chain risk the same day.&nbsp;The trigger, according to Anthropic's filings, was its refusal to lift two contractual restrictions attached to Claude, its flagship model. One barred the use of the model for mass surveillance of Americans. The other barred fully autonomous weapons systems.&nbsp;Anthropic has said publicly that it was willing to work with the defence establishment, and has existing government business, but would not remove those two conditions. Chief executive Dario Amodei has repeatedly staked out the same position in public remarks.&nbsp;The designation carried real commercial weight. A supply chain risk label under federal procurement rules does not merely embarrass a vendor. It can shut it out of the defence market and cast a shadow over its dealings with other agencies and with private contractors who sell into that market.&nbsp;The legal findings&nbsp;Lin found violations on three separate tracks. She held that the designation infringed the First Amendment, because it punished the company for speech. She found a violation of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. And she found the department had breached federal administrative law governing how agencies must reach and justify decisions.&nbsp;The administrative law finding may prove the most durable of the three. Courts are generally reluctant to second-guess national security judgements, but they are far more willing to ask whether an agency followed its own procedures and built a record capable of supporting what it did.&nbsp;That is the question Lin answered in the negative. On her reading, the department reached for a national security label without assembling the factual basis that the label requires.&nbsp;What the ruling does not do&nbsp;It is worth being precise about the limits here, because early coverage has blurred them.&nbsp;The order blocks the designation and restores Anthropic's eligibility to compete for defence work. It does not order the Pentagon to award the company a contract, resume any particular programme, or restore any commercial relationship that lapsed in the interim.&nbsp;Eligibility to bid and a guarantee of business are very different things. A procurement system has many lawful ways to decline to buy from a supplier it does not want, and none of them are foreclosed by this decision.&nbsp;The government is expected to appeal. Until an appellate court has spoken, the practical position of the company inside the defence market remains unsettled.&nbsp;Why this matters beyond one company&nbsp;The case is the sharpest test yet of a question the AI industry has so far handled through voluntary policy: can a model developer impose binding limits on how a government customer uses its system, and hold that line when the customer objects?&nbsp;Every major developer publishes an acceptable use policy. Almost none of them have been tested against a determined state buyer with procurement leverage. This ruling suggests that at least one court is prepared to treat the assertion of such limits as protected expression rather than mere contractual preference.&nbsp;That has implications well outside the United States. Governments in Europe, India and elsewhere are drafting procurement rules for AI systems, and many are weighing how much say a vendor should retain over downstream military and surveillance applications.&nbsp;The counter-argument&nbsp;The strongest case against the ruling is not that Anthropic's safety limits are unreasonable. It is that a court has now inserted itself into a judgement the executive branch has traditionally been allowed to make on its own.&nbsp;Supply chain risk designations exist precisely because the defence establishment sometimes needs to move quickly against a supplier without litigating the underlying intelligence in open court. If every such designation must survive a First Amendment challenge, the tool becomes considerably slower and more brittle.&nbsp;There is also a narrower objection. A vendor that publicly refuses a customer's requirements has, in an ordinary commercial setting, simply declined the business. Recasting the customer's subsequent decision not to deal as retaliation for speech is a move that could be applied to a great many procurement disputes that have nothing to do with AI safety.&nbsp;Lin's answer, in substance, was that the record here showed punishment rather than a considered procurement judgement. An appellate court may weigh that record differently.&nbsp;What happens next&nbsp;The immediate question is whether the government seeks a stay while it appeals. If it does and succeeds, the designation could remain in force through the appellate process, and the practical effect of Friday's news would be limited for months.&nbsp;The broader question is whether other developers now feel able to write firmer limits into their government contracts. The commercial incentive has always pointed the other way, and defence budgets are among the largest single pools of money entering the sector.&nbsp;A single district court order does not settle that. But it changes the calculation for a general counsel deciding how much of a fight the company can afford to pick, and that may turn out to be the most consequential thing about it.

Judge Rita Lin found the Defense Department retaliated against Anthropic over its refusal to lift Claude's limits on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

A federal judge in California has ruled that the United States Department of Defense acted unlawfully when it branded the artificial intelligence company Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security, a decision that lands in the middle of a widening argument over how much control AI developers keep over the way their models are used. District Judge Rita Lin issued the order on Thursday night, and it was reported on Friday. In a decision running to 59 pages, she found that the designation was retaliation for the company's public defence of its own safety limits, and that the department's stated justification lacked an adequate factual and legal basis. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Lin wrote, in a line that has already been picked up well beyond the technology press. What the dispute was actually about The confrontation traces back to February, when the Trump administration instructed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a supply chain risk the same day. The trigger, according to Anthropic's filings, was its refusal to lift two contractual restrictions attached to Claude, its flagship model. One barred the use of the model for mass surveillance of Americans. The other barred fully autonomous weapons systems. Anthropic has said publicly that it was willing to work with the defence establishment, and has existing government business, but would not remove those two conditions. Chief executive Dario Amodei has repeatedly staked out the same position in public remarks. The designation carried real commercial weight. A supply chain risk label under federal procurement rules does not merely embarrass a vendor. It can shut it out of the defence market and cast a shadow over its dealings with other agencies and with private contractors who sell into that market. The legal findings Lin found violations on three separate tracks. She held that the designation infringed the First Amendment, because it punished the company for speech. She found a violation of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. And she found the department had breached federal administrative law governing how agencies must reach and justify decisions. The administrative law finding may prove the most durable of the three. Courts are generally reluctant to second-guess national security judgements, but they are far more willing to ask whether an agency followed its own procedures and built a record capable of supporting what it did. That is the question Lin answered in the negative. On her reading, the department reached for a national security label without assembling the factual basis that the label requires. What the ruling does not do It is worth being precise about the limits here, because early coverage has blurred them. The order blocks the designation and restores Anthropic's eligibility to compete for defence work. It does not order the Pentagon to award the company a contract, resume any particular programme, or restore any commercial relationship that lapsed in the interim. Eligibility to bid and a guarantee of business are very different things. A procurement system has many lawful ways to decline to buy from a supplier it does not want, and none of them are foreclosed by this decision. The government is expected to appeal. Until an appellate court has spoken, the practical position of the company inside the defence market remains unsettled. Why this matters beyond one company The case is the sharpest test yet of a question the AI industry has so far handled through voluntary policy: can a model developer impose binding limits on how a government customer uses its system, and hold that line when the customer objects? Every major developer publishes an acceptable use policy. Almost none of them have been tested against a determined state buyer with procurement leverage. This ruling suggests that at least one court is prepared to treat the assertion of such limits as protected expression rather than mere contractual preference. That has implications well outside the United States. Governments in Europe, India and elsewhere are drafting procurement rules for AI systems, and many are weighing how much say a vendor should retain over downstream military and surveillance applications. The counter-argument The strongest case against the ruling is not that Anthropic's safety limits are unreasonable. It is that a court has now inserted itself into a judgement the executive branch has traditionally been allowed to make on its own. Supply chain risk designations exist precisely because the defence establishment sometimes needs to move quickly against a supplier without litigating the underlying intelligence in open court. If every such designation must survive a First Amendment challenge, the tool becomes considerably slower and more brittle. There is also a narrower objection. A vendor that publicly refuses a customer's requirements has, in an ordinary commercial setting, simply declined the business. Recasting the customer's subsequent decision not to deal as retaliation for speech is a move that could be applied to a great many procurement disputes that have nothing to do with AI safety. Lin's answer, in substance, was that the record here showed punishment rather than a considered procurement judgement. An appellate court may weigh that record differently. What happens next The immediate question is whether the government seeks a stay while it appeals. If it does and succeeds, the designation could remain in force through the appellate process, and the practical effect of Friday's news would be limited for months. The broader question is whether other developers now feel able to write firmer limits into their government contracts. The commercial incentive has always pointed the other way, and defence budgets are among the largest single pools of money entering the sector. A single district court order does not settle that. But it changes the calculation for a general counsel deciding how much of a fight the company can afford to pick, and that may turn out to be the most consequential thing about it.

District Judge Rita Lin found the Defense Department retaliated against Anthropic for refusing to lift limits on Claude covering autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The order restores the company's eligibility to compete for contracts, but it does not force the Pentagon to buy anything.

A US judge says the Pentagon broke the law when it blacklisted Anthropic

The annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Heads of State summit is all set to be held in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek from August 31 to September 1, which marks the group's 25th anniversary. Among the leaders to attend the summit are Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.&nbsp;Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to take part in the meeting amid war with US and growing economic pressure.&nbsp;Pakistan and India will be attending the same summit more than a year after their brief conflict in May 2025.&nbsp;Indian PM Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with the Russian President on the margins of the upcoming SCO summit, said the government while announcing Modi’s two-nation central Asia tour to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan beginning Saturday.&nbsp;A meeting is scheduled between both the leaders of India and Russia on the sidelines of the summit," said Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs of India.&nbsp;"Both sides are expected to review the entire gamut of bilateral relationship during the meeting between the leaders on the sidelines of the SCO in Bishkek," he said further.&nbsp;The Russian President is also expected to meet China's Xi Jinping and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian, according to various media reports.&nbsp;<h2>What is SCO?</h2>&nbsp;SCO or Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Heads of State summit was established in 1996 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to ease military tensions and address border disputes after the Soviet Union broke into several small countries.&nbsp;Uzbekistan joined when the SCO was formally established in 2001, while &nbsp;India and Pakistan became full members in 2017, followed by Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024.&nbsp;The 10-member bloc, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus represents about 3.4 billion people and roughly a quarter of global GDP. &nbsp;

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to take part in the meeting amid war with US and growing economic pressure.

The annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Heads of State summit is all set to be held in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek from August 31 to September 1, which marks the group's 25th anniversary. Among the leaders to attend the summit are Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to take part in the meeting amid war with US and growing economic pressure. Pakistan and India will be attending the same summit more than a year after their brief conflict in May 2025. Indian PM Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with the Russian President on the margins of the upcoming SCO summit, said the government while announcing Modi’s two-nation central Asia tour to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan beginning Saturday. A meeting is scheduled between both the leaders of India and Russia on the sidelines of the summit," said Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs of India. "Both sides are expected to review the entire gamut of bilateral relationship during the meeting between the leaders on the sidelines of the SCO in Bishkek," he said further. The Russian President is also expected to meet China's Xi Jinping and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian, according to various media reports. What is SCO? SCO or Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Heads of State summit was established in 1996 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to ease military tensions and address border disputes after the Soviet Union broke into several small countries. Uzbekistan joined when the SCO was formally established in 2001, while India and Pakistan became full members in 2017, followed by Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024. The 10-member bloc, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus represents about 3.4 billion people and roughly a quarter of global GDP.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to take part in the meeting amid war with US and growing economic pressure.

Putin to take part in SCO summit, meet China's Xi, India's Modi and Iran's Pezeshkian

September is a big month for diplomacy. Amid growing concerns over America's global hegemony, key world leaders will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and BRICS summits next month. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also kicking off a series of key bilateral meetings from Saturday.&nbsp;To begin with, PM Modi will visit Tashkent for two days at the invitation of Uzbekistan's president. During his fourth visit to Uzbekistan, he is expected to hold talks to strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries and review cooperation across multiple sectors.&nbsp;The Prime Minister is also set to visit the memorial dedicated to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.&nbsp;From Tashkent, he will travel to Bishkek to participate in the 26th SCO summit from August 31 to September 1. At the summit, he will highlight India's priorities of security, connectivity and opportunity.Over its two decades-long history, the bloc has expanded considerably. It now includes 10 member states, two observer states and 15 dialogue partners, spanning a vast geographical area and diverse populations.&nbsp;The summit comes at a time when geopolitical uncertainty remains high, with Russia's war in Ukraine and the ongoing war with Iran adding to global tensions.&nbsp;PM Modi will also hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the SCO summit with leaders of other countries. For instance, he is all set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.&nbsp;However, suspense remains over whether he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also attending the summit.&nbsp;This will be followed by the BRICS summit, which India will host on September 12 and 13.&nbsp;What started as a bloc of four countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, has now expanded to 11 official members, including Egypt, the UAE and Indonesia. It also has 10 partner countries.&nbsp;Guided by the theme 'Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability', global leaders will exchange views on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation and common priorities.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/watch-russia-conducts-long-range-mobile-icbm-test-missile-travels-6-700-km-1787936606571">Watch: Russia conducts long-range mobile ICBM test, missile travels 6,700 km</a>&nbsp;While Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Putin are among the key leaders travelling to the summit, official confirmation of Xi's participation is awaited.&nbsp;Earlier, Reuters indicated that the Chinese president would attend the BRICS summit with a delegation of about 400 officials. This would mark his first visit to India in seven years, amid a gradual improvement in bilateral ties.&nbsp;This also raises a key question. Amid America bolstering its sanctions pertaining to Iran, will the bloc explore the option of creating a BRICS currency?&nbsp;Brazil's president voiced this idea in 2023. He proposed a common currency that could be used for trade and investment between BRICS nations to reduce their vulnerability to dollar rate fluctuations.This assumes significance as the US dollar remains the undisputed anchor of the global financial system, making up the vast majority of central bank reserves and daily currency trading globally.

For instance, about 60% of global foreign exchange reserves are held in US dollars. Around 60% of cross-border loans and deposits are dollar-based, while most global oil trade is conducted in dollars.While China and Russia are increasingly moving towards reducing the dominance of the US dollar by settling transactions in yuan and roubles, a BRICS currency is yet to become an official proposal.Earlier this month, India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal made it clear that India opposes the introduction of any such proposal.&nbsp;Previously, Trump had already threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries if they created a currency to replace the dollar.&nbsp;Another key meeting is scheduled towards the end of this month, with Xi's visit to the White House on September 24.&nbsp;This meeting assumes significance at a time when America is increasingly dependent on China for the supply of critical minerals.&nbsp;Thus, all eyes will be on the next two weeks.&nbsp;As the US-Canada trade war intensifies, the battle is not limited to tariffs alone.&nbsp;The Trump administration again used social media to boast of its supposed triumph over Canada. This time, though, there was a twist in the tale.&nbsp;The White House posted a photo of a bald eagle pinning a Canada goose to the ground. The image was seen as a bid to project US dominance over Canada, as the bald eagle is strongly associated with the US as its national bird.&nbsp;However, the White House's victory symbol turned into an unexpected Canadian comeback story.Build Canada, a Canadian government agency, responded with another picture that depicted a very different tale. It showed the Canada goose raising its wing in an apparent attack.&nbsp;According to some social media users, both these photos came from a 20-minute faceoff between the two birds on frozen Lake Ontario, captured by a photographer over a year ago.&nbsp;While the bald eagle had the upper hand in the fight for a while, the goose fought back, after which the eagle was forced to retreat.&nbsp;This metaphor of resistance unfolded in reality earlier this week when Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on around 700 US goods ranging between 15% and 50% from September 8 onwards.&nbsp;American steel, aluminium, furniture, clothing, electronics and cheese will now be subjected to tariffs.Canada also announced an aid package of $5.4 billion for workers and firms hit by US tariffs.But how did Trump retaliate?&nbsp;By renaming a lake.&nbsp;He signed an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. The US President attributed the move to Canada's alleged shortchanging of America on trade as well as military issues.Earlier, the Ontario premier had threatened that Canada could cut off electricity and critical mineral supplies to the US if tensions continued.&nbsp;Lake Ontario is one of the four Great Lakes that the US shares with Canada. It borders New York State in America and Ontario province in Canada.&nbsp;According to reports, it has been called Lake Ontario since the 17th century and was named by Canada's Indigenous population.&nbsp;As the water body falls under the jurisdiction of both countries, Trump cannot compel Canada to adopt the changed name.&nbsp;Last year too, the US President stirred a row by renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. However, Trump suggested that his push to rename water bodies may not be finished.&nbsp;The move to rename Lake Ontario immediately triggered pushback from Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney.&nbsp;Carney said, and I am quoting him, "The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada &amp; The declaration of Independence of, the United States of America".Snubbing Trump further, Carney stressed that Canadians would continue to call it Lake Ontario.Public opinion on the issue was also largely in favour of Carney's stance.&nbsp;The row originally started with a breakdown in trade talks between the two countries.&nbsp;While the Canadian PM slammed the US for treating his country like a subsidiary and accused it of trying to destroy its key industries, the US accused him of walking away from the deal for political purposes.&nbsp;While Trump initially imposed a 50% tariff on around $20 billion of Canadian goods, he followed it up by increasing tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, automobile parts and steel to 50%.&nbsp;With Canada's subsequent retaliatory measures, it is amply clear that Ottawa will not give in to US pressure any time soon.

PM Modi is set for a packed September diplomatic schedule involving the SCO and BRICS summits and key bilateral meetings, while intensifying US-China and US-Canada tensions add to the wider geopolitical and economic stakes.

September is a big month for diplomacy. Amid growing concerns over America's global hegemony, key world leaders will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and BRICS summits next month. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also kicking off a series of key bilateral meetings from Saturday. To begin with, PM Modi will visit Tashkent for two days at the invitation of Uzbekistan's president. During his fourth visit to Uzbekistan, he is expected to hold talks to strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries and review cooperation across multiple sectors. The Prime Minister is also set to visit the memorial dedicated to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. From Tashkent, he will travel to Bishkek to participate in the 26th SCO summit from August 31 to September 1. At the summit, he will highlight India's priorities of security, connectivity and opportunity. Over its two decades-long history, the bloc has expanded considerably. It now includes 10 member states, two observer states and 15 dialogue partners, spanning a vast geographical area and diverse populations. The summit comes at a time when geopolitical uncertainty remains high, with Russia's war in Ukraine and the ongoing war with Iran adding to global tensions. PM Modi will also hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the SCO summit with leaders of other countries. For instance, he is all set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, suspense remains over whether he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also attending the summit. This will be followed by the BRICS summit, which India will host on September 12 and 13. What started as a bloc of four countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, has now expanded to 11 official members, including Egypt, the UAE and Indonesia. It also has 10 partner countries. Guided by the theme 'Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability', global leaders will exchange views on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation and common priorities. Also Read: Watch: Russia conducts long-range mobile ICBM test, missile travels 6,700 km While Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Putin are among the key leaders travelling to the summit, official confirmation of Xi's participation is awaited. Earlier, Reuters indicated that the Chinese president would attend the BRICS summit with a delegation of about 400 officials. This would mark his first visit to India in seven years, amid a gradual improvement in bilateral ties. This also raises a key question. Amid America bolstering its sanctions pertaining to Iran, will the bloc explore the option of creating a BRICS currency? Brazil's president voiced this idea in 2023. He proposed a common currency that could be used for trade and investment between BRICS nations to reduce their vulnerability to dollar rate fluctuations. This assumes significance as the US dollar remains the undisputed anchor of the global financial system, making up the vast majority of central bank reserves and daily currency trading globally.

PM Modi is set for a packed September diplomatic schedule involving the SCO and BRICS summits and key bilateral meetings, while intensifying US-China and US-Canada tensions add to the wider geopolitical and economic stakes.

PM Modi begins big September diplomatic blitz, summits will test US decline | Gravitas

Russia’s Defence Ministry on Friday announced that it had conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region.&nbsp;The Strategic Missile Forces deployed a mobile launcher battery to a remote area before firing the missile across the country towards the Kura test site on the Kamchatka Peninsula, located more than 6,700 kilometres to the east.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><a href="https://x.com/hashtag/BREAKING?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BREAKING</a> | Russia has conducted a test launch of a mobile-based intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Moscow has not identified the ICBM used in the launch. The Russian Defence Ministry says the exercise tested the deployment, preparation and launch… <a href="https://t.co/vMZjAl4KZC">pic.twitter.com/vMZjAl4KZC</a>&mdash; WION (@WIONews) <a href="https://x.com/WIONews/status/2093369394206507328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

A video released by the Defence Ministry showed the missile being launched from a forested location.The military said the launch aimed to confirm the “tactical, technical and flight characteristics of the missile system”.&nbsp;“All assigned tasks were completed in full,” the ministry said, adding that the ICBM maintained a “flawless trajectory”.&nbsp;Russia has one of the world's largest arsenals of advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its land-based nuclear triad relies heavily on systems such as the mobile RS-24 Yars, the silo-based RS-28 Sarmat and older legacy missiles such as the Topol-M.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/defence-pulse/quantum-battlefield-the-race-to-protect-the-digital-kill-chain-1787937031503">Quantum battlefield: The race to protect the digital kill chain</a>&nbsp; The unique feature of the latest tested ICBM is its mobile launch capability. Rather than firing from a fixed underground silo, the Strategic Missile Forces moved a mobile transporter erector launcher (TEL) battery into a remote forested area before launching the missile.&nbsp;The test therefore demonstrated the system's ability to operate from a remote location while also testing its operational readiness and rapid-response capabilities under field conditions.

Russia conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel ICBM from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, with the missile travelling more than 6,700 kilometres to the Kura test site in Kamchatka.

Russia’s Defence Ministry on Friday announced that it had conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region. The Strategic Missile Forces deployed a mobile launcher battery to a remote area before firing the missile across the country towards the Kura test site on the Kamchatka Peninsula, located more than 6,700 kilometres to the east.

Russia conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel ICBM from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, with the missile travelling more than 6,700 kilometres to the Kura test site in Kamchatka.

Watch: Russia conducts long-range mobile ICBM test, missile travels 6,700 km

At least three riverside towns in Central Nepal: Trishuli, Betrawati, Tupche, have been buried under debris and silt, a comparison of satellite imagery from before and after the August 26th&nbsp;flash flood disaster indicates. Suhora Technologies, an India-based space-data analytics and intelligence firm, has analysed&nbsp; high-resolution satellite images of the area, providing among the first independent looks at building-level impact. Suhora sourced these images from providers such as Airbus, Maxar, BlackSky, Satellogic, among others.&nbsp;&nbsp;This week's glacial collapse caused an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border, unleashing a massive surge of ice, rock, and debris into the Bhote Koshi river system racing downstream into the parts of central Nepal, tearing through Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts. Over 570 people have lost their lives in this tragedy and estimates suggest that over 1,900 are missing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Comparing the satellite images of Betrawati captured before and after the disaster, Suhora's analysis highlighted that riverside town's commercial core has been buried under mud, boulders, and debris. "Bridges washed out, cutting off ground access to the area. Power lines and substations damaged, disrupting communications," the firm stated. Imagery from Trishuli and Tupche also indicated similar extent of damage caused by debris impact.&nbsp;&nbsp;Suhora mentioned that this first-look assessment is based on their own analysis, identifying structures showing visible signs of damage for supposedly further review. It is an initial observation, not a final damage assessment - validation will continue as more data comes in.&nbsp;With ground access severely disrupted, satellite imagery gives responders a verified' view of the damage without needing to physically reach the site first - helping prioritize where relief and recovery efforts are needed most, Suhora stated.&nbsp; &nbsp;New Glacial Lake Found at the Ice-Avalanche Source&nbsp;Following Suhora’s initial assessment of the Betrawati damage, the company said it has identified a newly formed lake at the source of the ice-rock avalanche that triggered the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli flood. Captured via high-resolution optical imagery (09:52 IST) on 27 August 2026, the lake now spans approximately 20.25 hectares at the point of origin in the high-altitude Lhende Khola region, the firm stated.&nbsp;According to the Suhora analysis, this newly formed water body is a critical development to monitor - a lake at the source of an avalanche/debris-flow event can indicate ongoing meltwater accumulation and raises the possibility of further flooding downstream, if left unchecked. &nbsp;

Comparing the satellite images of Betrawati captured before and after the disaster, Suhora's analysis highlighted that riverside town's commercial core has been buried under mud, boulders, and debris.

At least three riverside towns in Central Nepal: Trishuli, Betrawati, Tupche, have been buried under debris and silt, a comparison of satellite imagery from before and after the August 26th flash flood disaster indicates. Suhora Technologies, an India-based space-data analytics and intelligence firm, has analysed high-resolution satellite images of the area, providing among the first independent looks at building-level impact. Suhora sourced these images from providers such as Airbus, Maxar, BlackSky, Satellogic, among others. This week's glacial collapse caused an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border, unleashing a massive surge of ice, rock, and debris into the Bhote Koshi river system racing downstream into the parts of central Nepal, tearing through Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts. Over 570 people have lost their lives in this tragedy and estimates suggest that over 1,900 are missing. Comparing the satellite images of Betrawati captured before and after the disaster, Suhora's analysis highlighted that riverside town's commercial core has been buried under mud, boulders, and debris. "Bridges washed out, cutting off ground access to the area. Power lines and substations damaged, disrupting communications," the firm stated. Imagery from Trishuli and Tupche also indicated similar extent of damage caused by debris impact. Suhora mentioned that this first-look assessment is based on their own analysis, identifying structures showing visible signs of damage for supposedly further review. It is an initial observation, not a final damage assessment - validation will continue as more data comes in. With ground access severely disrupted, satellite imagery gives responders a verified' view of the damage without needing to physically reach the site first - helping prioritize where relief and recovery efforts are needed most, Suhora stated. New Glacial Lake Found at the Ice-Avalanche Source Following Suhora’s initial assessment of the Betrawati damage, the company said it has identified a newly formed lake at the source of the ice-rock avalanche that triggered the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli flood. Captured via high-resolution optical imagery (09:52 IST) on 27 August 2026, the lake now spans approximately 20.25 hectares at the point of origin in the high-altitude Lhende Khola region, the firm stated. According to the Suhora analysis, this newly formed water body is a critical development to monitor - a lake at the source of an avalanche/debris-flow event can indicate ongoing meltwater accumulation and raises the possibility of further flooding downstream, if left unchecked.

Comparing the satellite images of Betrawati captured before and after the disaster, Suhora's analysis highlighted that riverside town's commercial core has been buried under mud, boulders, and debris.

Nepal floods: Satellite imagery shows riverside towns buried under debris

The next major war may begin long before the first missile is fired. A stolen signal, a jammed satellite or manipulated battlefield data could be enough to compromise an entire military operation.&nbsp;Modern warfare increasingly depends on information moving at extraordinary speed. Satellites identify potential targets, drones provide surveillance, command centres process intelligence and aircraft or missiles can be directed towards a target within seconds.&nbsp;But this digital kill chain also creates vulnerabilities. Communications can be intercepted, frequencies jammed, navigation signals spoofed and encrypted military networks targeted by adversaries.This is where quantum technology could transform warfare.&nbsp;Quantum computing promises enormous computational power and could eventually threaten many forms of encryption used today. At the same time, quantum technologies could provide new ways of protecting sensitive communications.&nbsp;https://www.wionews.com/videos/quantum-tech-to-decide-next-war-why-this-technology-is-must-to-win-modern-wars-1787932183259/embed&nbsp;Quantum Key Distribution, or QKD, uses principles of quantum physics to securely distribute encryption keys. Attempts to intercept the quantum information can disturb its state, allowing the communicating parties to detect potential eavesdropping.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/bishkek-prepares-for-sco-summit-as-pm-modi-set-to-join-eurasian-leaders-1787931814259">Bishkek prepares for SCO summit as PM Modi set to join Eurasian leaders</a>&nbsp;The military possibilities extend beyond secure communications.&nbsp;Quantum sensing could potentially provide highly precise navigation without relying on vulnerable satellite signals, while advanced sensors are being researched for detecting objects and environmental changes with extraordinary sensitivity. Such technologies could have implications for aircraft, submarines and other military platforms.&nbsp;The race is already underway.&nbsp;China has invested heavily in quantum communications and sensing research, while the United States is pursuing quantum technologies for navigation, timing and military sensing.&nbsp;India is also building capabilities. DRDO has conducted field trials of indigenous quantum communication technologies aimed at securing strategic networks.&nbsp;The stakes are significant as India’s armed forces become increasingly networked and data-centric.Tomorrow’s battlefield may therefore not belong simply to the military with the largest arsenal.It could belong to the military that can see accurately, communicate securely and keep its data alive when the digital battlefield comes under attack.

Quantum technologies could reshape modern warfare by strengthening secure military communications, enabling more resilient navigation and sensing, and protecting the digital kill chain from increasingly sophisticated battlefield threats.

The next major war may begin long before the first missile is fired. A stolen signal, a jammed satellite or manipulated battlefield data could be enough to compromise an entire military operation. Modern warfare increasingly depends on information moving at extraordinary speed. Satellites identify potential targets, drones provide surveillance, command centres process intelligence and aircraft or missiles can be directed towards a target within seconds. But this digital kill chain also creates vulnerabilities. Communications can be intercepted, frequencies jammed, navigation signals spoofed and encrypted military networks targeted by adversaries. This is where quantum technology could transform warfare. Quantum computing promises enormous computational power and could eventually threaten many forms of encryption used today. At the same time, quantum technologies could provide new ways of protecting sensitive communications. https://www.wionews.com/videos/quantum-tech-to-decide-next-war-why-this-technology-is-must-to-win-modern-wars-1787932183259/embed Quantum Key Distribution, or QKD, uses principles of quantum physics to securely distribute encryption keys. Attempts to intercept the quantum information can disturb its state, allowing the communicating parties to detect potential eavesdropping. Also Read: Bishkek prepares for SCO summit as PM Modi set to join Eurasian leaders The military possibilities extend beyond secure communications. Quantum sensing could potentially provide highly precise navigation without relying on vulnerable satellite signals, while advanced sensors are being researched for detecting objects and environmental changes with extraordinary sensitivity. Such technologies could have implications for aircraft, submarines and other military platforms. The race is already underway. China has invested heavily in quantum communications and sensing research, while the United States is pursuing quantum technologies for navigation, timing and military sensing. India is also building capabilities. DRDO has conducted field trials of indigenous quantum communication technologies aimed at securing strategic networks. The stakes are significant as India’s armed forces become increasingly networked and data-centric. Tomorrow’s battlefield may therefore not belong simply to the military with the largest arsenal. It could belong to the military that can see accurately, communicate securely and keep its data alive when the digital battlefield comes under attack.

Quantum technologies could reshape modern warfare by strengthening secure military communications, enabling more resilient navigation and sensing, and protecting the digital kill chain from increasingly sophisticated battlefield threats.

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