🔥 Crowdstrike Outage Grounds Thousands of Flights, Amid Chaos Across Industries

Good Morning. 

The U.S. has experienced a significant boom in EV battery factory construction since 2019, with the Inflation Reduction Act accelerating domestic production plans to challenge China's dominance in the battery supply chain.

Automakers and battery manufacturers are now racing to establish North American production facilities to meet the growing demand for EVs and secure their supply chains.

— 🐈‍⬛ Acoustic Kitty

THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

A global IT outage caused by a faulty update in CrowdStrike's antivirus software, which protects Microsoft Windows devices, led to widespread disruptions across various industries.

The issue primarily affected businesses, causing flight cancellations, airport delays, and problems in banking, healthcare, and broadcasting services worldwide.

While CrowdStrike has deployed a fix, the solution requires manual intervention for each affected device, potentially leading to prolonged recovery times for some systems.

The incident highlights the vulnerability of modern digital infrastructure and the far-reaching consequences of a single software update gone wrong.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY & DIPLOMACY

Counterterrorism

• Israel intercepted a missile from Yemen after conducting airstrikes on Houthi targets in response to a deadly drone attack on Tel Aviv, escalating tensions and potentially opening a new front in the ongoing regional conflict.

• South Korea has intensified its anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts along the border in response to North Korea's repeated launching of trash-carrying balloons.

• Israel struck Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in southern Lebanon, escalating cross-border tensions amid ongoing conflicts in the region.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran is now capable of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon within "one or two weeks," highlighting escalating tensions despite Iran's new president favoring a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.

• Paris is implementing unprecedented security measures for the 2024 Olympics, including extensive police and military presence, AI-equipped surveillance, and tight access controls.

Military & Defense

• Ukrainian President Zelenskyy calls for long-range weapons to protect cities and troops from Russian attacks, following a massive overnight drone and missile assault on multiple Ukrainian regions.

• China and the Philippines have reached a deal to deescalate tensions at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, following a series of hostile confrontations.

• Experts interpret rival military exercises across the Indo-Pacific, involving Western allies and China-Russia, as signs of increasing strategic competition and potential conflict risks in the region.

• The U.S. Space Force is deploying new ground-based satellite jamming devices designed to counter Chinese and Russian satellite communications during conflicts, with 24 units expected to be in place by the end of the year.

Cybersecurity

• Australia's cyber intelligence agency warned of malicious websites and code claiming to aid recovery from the global CrowdStrike outage, urging users to rely only on official sources for updates and information.

• UK police arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the MGM Resorts hack, part of an ongoing international investigation involving the FBI into the Scattered Spider hacking group.

• The U.S. Postal Service was found to be sharing customers' postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn, and Snap through tracking pixels on its website, but has since stopped the practice after a TechCrunch investigation revealed the issue.

Counterintelligence & Espionage

• WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich faces 16 years in a Russian prison after losing his appeal against a wrongful espionage conviction in a secret trial condemned by the United States as a "sham".

• Russia has intensified its crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression since the Ukraine invasion, as Putin's regime tightens control through repressive laws, media censorship, and persecution of opposition figures.

Transnational Organized Crime

• The Democratic Republic of Congo summoned Uganda's diplomat to address UN allegations of Ugandan support for M23 rebels, which Uganda continues to deny.

• Germany plans to increase penalties for ATM bombings in response to a sharp rise in such crimes, including doubling minimum prison sentences and expanding investigative powers.

• Pakistan has condemned Germany for failing to protect its Frankfurt consulate from protesters and demanded the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the attack.

• Panama plans to start U.S.-funded deportation flights for migrants who crossed the Darien Gap within 2-3 months, as part of an agreement with the United States to curb unlawful immigration.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

NASA has canceled a $450 million program to map water ice deposits on the moon after cost overruns and scheduling delays.

That program, called Viper — the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover — was scheduled to fly on Astrobotic’s second lunar lander mission next year. The mobile robot was due to conduct a 100-day mission to map lunar ice and use a 1-meter drill to detect and analyze these ice deposits. It would’ve been NASA’s first resource-mapping mission off planet Earth. 

The agency said it would use Viper’s findings to inform future landing sites for crewed missions to the moon under its flagship Artemis program.

In other news…

China's Cyberspace Administration is testing and censoring AI language models to ensure they align with "core socialist values," requiring companies to implement extensive content filtering and generate politically correct responses to sensitive topics.

Malaysia is developing Johor state into a major data center and AI hub near Singapore, attracting tech giants with cheaper land and more energy, while planning a special economic zone to boost regional integration and development.

A nuclear fusion experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has set a new record for the strongest steady magnetic field confining plasma, using magnets from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, potentially advancing the development of fusion power reactors.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, Texas has seen at least 23 storm-related deaths, with heat-related fatalities increasing due to prolonged power outages in the Houston area, highlighting the need for better preparation and response to extreme weather events.

DEALS & FUNDING

Defense tech startup Saronic has raised $175M in Series B funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, to scale production of its autonomous surface vessels for potential military applications.

The company's focus on rapidly producing unmanned and autonomous vessels aligns with the U.S. Navy's goals for its future fleet and the Pentagon's Replicator initiative to counter China's military advancements.

In other news…

Nippon Steel has hired former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to help lobby for its controversial $14.9B bid to acquire U.S. Steel, which faces opposition from both major US political parties and concerns about national security implications.

OpenAI is in talks with semiconductor companies, including Broadcom, to develop new AI chips and expand its computing capacity, aiming to reduce reliance on Nvidia and maintain its competitive edge in the AI industry.

Intel Capital, the venture arm of Intel, has invested in numerous Chinese AI and semiconductor startups, raising concerns in Washington as the company simultaneously receives billions in U.S. government grants to compete with China in technology.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin's non-profit investment vehicle, Catalyst4, is funding a $25M round for biotech start-up Soneira to research the use of ibogaine, a psychedelic compound derived from an African shrub, as a potential treatment for traumatic brain injury and mental health disorders.

NOAA has awarded nearly $220M for coastal conservation and restoration projects across the U.S. to support The Nature Conservancy's work in multiple states and address climate change impacts and biodiversity loss.

NASA has contracted SpaceX to develop a super-powered Dragon spacecraft to safely de-orbit the International Space Station around 2030, guiding its controlled descent and splashdown into a remote ocean area.