Ukraine’s drone strikes spur hasty Russian plans for underground data centers
Russian tech companies are scrambling to harden and hide their data centers underground after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged facilities housing AI supercomputers and disrupted cloud services for millions of Russian users. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is requiring data center owners to reserve computing capacity for emergency state needs and has even authorized possible use of foreign data centers.
These consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine come as the Russian military has bombarded Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles nearly night and day in recent months, along with specifically targeting Ukrainian data centers since late September. But Ukraine has retaliated with its own drone strikes on military and infrastructure targets across Russia, degrading or knocking out data centers operated by Russian tech giant Yandex, the state-owned bank Sberbank, social media site VKontakte, and the Russian Ministry of Finance.
Now, state-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom has raised the possibility of moving some Russian data centers underground in talks with the nickel and palladium mining company Norilsk, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. The industry publication Data Center Dynamics also pointed to a recent proposal by a Russian regional governor to build data centers within open-pit coal mines while planting green public parks above as camouflage.
On November 2, Putin also signed a decree ordering Russian data center operators to set aside 10 percent of available space and capacity in case the Russian government requires it, according to independent Russian news publication Meduza. That may indicate growing Kremlin concerns about the vulnerability of Russian cloud computing infrastructure during its war with Ukraine.
Putin’s decree also allows a special Russian government commission to authorize use of foreign data centers in consultation with Russia’s Federal Security Service. That marks a notable policy change because Putin and the Russian parliament previously enacted Russia’s “Sovereign Internet Law,” which has blocked Russian companies from using cloud computing infrastructure outside Russia’s borders.
Russia’s push for a sovereign and increasingly closed Internet has resulted in a highly centralized system under a few Russian tech companies like Yandex. That hyper-centralized system has now proven vulnerable during wartime, as Ukrainian drone strikes on key Russian data centers created widespread disruptions for popular payment and digital banking apps, e-commerce platforms, video streaming services, and ride-hailing and food delivery apps, among others.
Yandex has also been forced to relocate all three of its main supercomputers after Ukrainian drone strikes targeted the AI data centers where they were originally housed, Meduza reported.
By comparison, Ukraine’s decentralized digital services have proven much more resilient despite years of Russian drone and missile attacks, especially as the government has taken more steps to disperse crucial energy and telecommunications nodes and bury more supporting infrastructure underground.
A big boost came from US tech giants Amazon and Microsoft, which helped Ukraine migrate government resources and other crucial digital services to cloud regions elsewhere in Europe shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Ukrainian government has also used SpaceX’s Starlink satellite terminals—paid for by the United States and European countries such as Poland and Germany—as a backup communications system.
Trump Scrambles to Halt Military Aid to Israel to Deprive El-Sayed of a Talking Point
The United States will stop providing $4 billion in annual aid to Israel starting next year, President Donald Trump claimed in an Election Day interview. While the U.S. will continue to sell arms to its closest Middle East ally, Trump’s announcement — should it actually hold true — could represent a seismic shift in American foreign policy.
Still questions remain and experts are dubious that the claim is what it seems.
Trump told Fox News during a phone call on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approached him with the idea years ago. He did not state specifically why he waited to announce the decision in the midst of a midterm vote in which his party is expected to lose its lock on Congress, but noted that U.S. aid to Israel has become a Democratic talking point, singling out Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. “The left uses the $4 billion payment — that everybody knows about, it’s no secret — as a signal of unfairness,” said Trump.
An August 2026 Fox News poll found 55 percent of Michigan voters oppose continued military assistance to Israel, including 70 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents, and 35 percent of Republicans.
U.S. public support for Israel has fallen since the Gaza war began in 2023, particularly among Democrats, as Netanyahu’s government has slaughtered civilians with impunity. Almost 75,000 Gazans have been killed and nearly 176,000 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. A recent U.N. report said, “Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Amid the slaughter, sympathy for Israel among all Americans fell from roughly 50 percent to 36, while sympathy for Palestinians rose to 41 percent, according to a February Gallup poll. Among Democrats, support for Israel plummeted from more than 50 percent in 2001 to roughly 17 percent this year. October 2026 polling from the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s D.C.-based IMEU Policy Project and YouGov found a majority of voters in six key swing states — Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — support halting the transfer of bombs to Israel.
“You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash,” Trump said. “Look, we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it. And I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money.”
“President Trump is a serial liar who has announced over $20 billion in weapons giveaways to Israel since taking office and launched a war at Israel’s request that has already cost every U.S. household over $2,000 — the equivalent of $262 billion,” said Hamid Bendaas, IMEU Policy Project’s communications director. “He and other politicians realize our taxpayer funding for Israel is a liability. That’s why he and his allies in Congress are at this very moment trying to advance legislation to conceal support for Israel by integrating Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon. This is a bait and switch that would result in Americans funding Israeli weapons makers in record amounts.”
“This is a bait and switch that would result in Americans funding Israeli weapons makers in record amounts.”
Others expressed skepticism about Trump‘s claim of an immediate end of annual aid in 2027. “It’s not plausible there will be a total cut-off starting January 1,” said Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over U.S. military assistance to Israel, noting that funding is baked into existing and pending legislation. “My guess is that he was speaking off the cuff with the next 10-year memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel in mind, but did so in a way that is at best inaccurate or imprecise.”
A decade ago, President Barack Obama signed an unprecedented MOU with Israel to give its military $38 billion between 2019 and 2028, amounting to almost $4 billion a year.
Paul was hopeful, however that Trump’s statement would allow Republicans license to join Democratic colleagues in paring down future funding. He said it was a recognition of the bipartisan demand by the American people for an end to that military aid.
Trump’s announcement did not address the proposal in the National Defense Authorization Act, which would inextricably link the U.S. armed forces and the Israeli military, giving Israel leverage over the Pentagon.
“Initial reporting on Trump’s statement omits a crucial fact: that the National Defense Authorization Act contains a provision intended to protect U.S. tax dollars flowing to Israel from the massive shift in U.S. public opinion against funding Israeli aggression,” Annelle Sheline, who served as a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, told The Intercept. “The provision would move U.S. funding out of security assistance under the purview of the State Department — which carries legal provisions like the Leahy Laws, transparency requirements, and an annual congressional vote — into the Pentagon procurement process, which has none of these.”
Sheline added, “Insulated from public opinion and away from public visibility, U.S. funding to Israel is likely to grow exponentially.”
With his popularity in free fall in the U.S., Trump teased the possibility of decamping for Israel and taking Netanyahu’s job as the Israeli prime minister battles for his political life after an inconclusive election last week. “In fact, if people ever got tired of me in the U.S., I’ll move to Israel, become prime minister,” Trump declared during his Fox appearance.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for further details.
How We’re Covering the Midterms — and the Aftermath
This has been a midterm election cycle unlike any other. Wealthy donors spent staggering sums. Both parties moved to redraw congressional district lines. President Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly questioned whether the results could be trusted even before a single ballot was counted. At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that said the federal government would contest any outcome in which Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent in Alaska, was not victorious.
Newsrooms, including ours, have tried to plan how we will cover an election in which the losing side refuses to accept the will of the voters. Was the Alaska lawsuit a single data point or a harbinger?
As we prepare to write about Nov. 3 and beyond, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to game out what might happen in the future — not our strong suit. The record shows that journalists are pretty good at telling readers what happened, particularly if we have some time and some data to sift through, and much less good at forecasting the future.
And yet we have to plan. Over the past few weeks we have prepared our reporters and editors to cover every scenario we can imagine. None of us have forgotten the chaos of 2020 when Trump was urged by advisers to send the military to seize voting machines in states he had lost. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as lawmakers gathered to certify Joe Biden’s victory underscored the sense that literally anything was possible in the aftermath of elections.
We will have reporters on the ground in 11 key states covering voting, with even more in Washington, D.C., and others on standby. Our reporters have detailed what experts will be watching. But elections are no longer confined to Election Day (early voting and voting by mail constitute a huge share of the electorate). And our plans for covering voting stretch back many months.
Over the past year, we’ve tried to use the techniques of accountability journalism to add new facts to this pivotal moment in American history.
We have focused considerable attention on the mechanics of elections, a once-arcane issue that has become a central aspect of the MAGA movement’s argument that Trump’s 2020 loss was “rigged” by his opponents. We examined how the Trump administration depleted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the arm of the federal government charged with safeguarding election systems. We discovered that Department of Homeland Security officials had asked CISA to obtain a voting machine and hack it without informing the manufacturer of any vulnerabilities found. The plan wasn’t acted on, but its existence made CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference. CISA and DHS didn’t respond to our questions, but a White House spokesperson said Trump “has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections.”
One of our most detailed election stories traced the career of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who spearheaded the legal attacks on the 2020 results. Mitchell leads a coalition of what she calls “election believers” — people who scour the voting results for errors that they believe point to larger conspiracies. Changes she’d hoped Trump could push through before the midterms, such as compelling states to turn over confidential voter information to the Justice Department, have been blocked by the courts. But she has nonetheless become the voice of a well-funded national movement, one which has the president’s ear. When Trump is weighing what to do in the aftermath of this week’s vote, our reporting strongly suggests that Mitchell will be among the people he listens to.
We asked to speak with Mitchell multiple times. She declined but told us in an email: “What we focus on is making sure the election process is accurate, transparent, and honest. The ONLY steps I’ve urged the Administration to take are those that will give the voters — ALL voters — confidence that the outcomes are correct.” A White House spokesperson said she has no official role in election policy but is an effective private advocate.
We have also spent time doing the traditional work of investigative reporting, looking closely at candidates’ records in public office. A newsroom like ours can’t cover every race, so we focus our resources on areas where we have particular expertise.
Our team in Texas has covered state Attorney General Ken Paxton for years, and we kept our focus once he announced he would run for the U.S. Senate. One story looked at his travels, revealing that only 1 in 6 of his nearly 1,000 out-of-state trips were linked to his official duties. Texas taxpayers paid $3.3 million for Paxton’s security detail to accompany him. (Paxton didn’t answer our questions, but his office said he “faced numerous security threats.”) That has become an issue in the Senate campaign.
Another opportunity arose from an investigation that was seemingly not related to the midterms: our examination of the Trump administration’s handling of the Justice Department. We began many months ago to look for promising cases that had been dropped and found out the FBI had been looking into pay-to-play allegations involving prominent Democratic and Republican members of Congress. The case included a bipartisan list of political figures such as Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine running in a closely contested race this year, and James Clyburn, a leading Democratic representative from South Carolina who’s also on the ballot this year.
Our first story revealed that Collins helped a little-known defense contractor win millions in federal contracts while the company’s CEO helped bankroll her 2020 reelection effort through a donation made via a shell company. Our second story revealed that the FBI was looking into interactions that Clyburn and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July, had with the same contractor. Collins has denied all wrongdoing. “A donation would never cause Congressman Clyburn to increase his support for the donor’s request,” Clyburn’s office said. Graham’s communications director wrote that “any allegations of quid-pro-quo behavior … are simply false.” The FBI stopped examining the allegations after Trump purged the bureau. Our coverage likewise has become an issue in the Maine race.
We stand at a moment of uncertainty in our history as a democracy. Trump has made his willingness to smear news organizations an essential aspect of his appeal. He routinely insults reporters to their face and has attempted to ban some outlets from the White House and Air Force One because he didn’t like the stories they wrote about him. He has diverted hundreds of federal agents from their jobs fighting drug cartels and organized crime to search for evidence that noncitizens have illegally voted in federal elections. Hardly any were found.
I’m deeply reluctant to make any predictions about how all this will end. ProPublica prepared for an array of dire scenarios in November of 2024 that might arise from a close election. None of them came to pass as Trump decisively prevailed. A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the Alaska Senate race results over the weekend, and the Trump administration’s plans to appeal stand on shaky legal ground.
The one thing I know for certain is that we will keep digging into the story of what really happened in this election, whoever wins.
US Funds $3 Million in Projects To Digitize Syria’s Business and Property Records
[DAMASCUS] Syria has launched a $1 million US-funded project to digitize company registration and more than 5 million commercial documents, with plans to connect government offices across all 14 governorates and simplify procedures for businesses. The initiative, announced Sunday, November 1, is part of a broader effort to modernize government services and attract investment as the country rebuilds after years of war.
The project, funded by the US State Department and implemented in cooperation with Syria’s Ministry of Industry, Internal Trade and Consumer Protection and the US-based international development organization Creative Associates International, is scheduled to take six months.
The ministry’s media office told The Media Line that approximately 500,000 investors and companies are expected to benefit from the initiative, which will also include training government employees to operate and maintain the new digital systems.
According to the ministry, the project involves establishing a modern data center, digitizing more than 5 million historical commercial documents, and connecting 14 ministry directorates across Syria’s governorates to a centralized system.
A planned online platform will allow Syrian and foreign investors to register companies and commercial agencies, submit applications, and monitor their progress remotely, reducing reliance on paper documents and visits to government offices.
Speaking at the launch ceremony in Damascus, Minister of Industry, Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Basel Abdul Hannan described the project as a step toward improving the business environment and simplifying administrative procedures. He said the initiative would also strengthen transparency, cybersecurity, and government efficiency.
Mohammad Hmeish, a representative of Creative Associates International in Syria, said the project forms part of the US State Department-funded Governance and Economic Recovery Program, which supports the modernization of government institutions and economic services.
The commercial-registration initiative was followed Monday, November 2, by a separate $2 million US-funded agreement to digitize Syria’s property records.
Under that agreement, the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment will work with Creative Associates International to establish five electronic archiving centers serving Damascus, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Hama, and Raqqa governorates, along with a central data facility in Damascus.
The project will also provide equipment and technical training to employees responsible for maintaining property records, with the aim of preserving ownership documents, improving access to information, and supporting future property transactions.
The preservation of property records is particularly important in Syria, where years of conflict, displacement, and damage to government infrastructure have complicated efforts to document ownership and resolve property disputes.
Together, the two projects represent $3 million in announced US funding for the modernization of Syria’s commercial and property-registration systems.
The initiatives also reflect growing US-Syrian cooperation on civilian institution-building, with Washington supporting programs intended to strengthen government administration, improve the investment climate, and facilitate economic recovery.
Officials expect the new systems to reduce processing times, improve access to records, and make administrative procedures more transparent. Their effectiveness will depend on completing the planned infrastructure, training personnel, and ensuring that digitized documents remain accurate, secure, and accessible.
For businesses and property owners, the practical test will be whether transactions that currently require paper records and visits to government offices can eventually be completed through reliable electronic systems.
China’s tech boom borrowing the playbook of its property bust
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On October 28, 2026, Unitree, China’s top robotics company, released its first quarterly report since going public in Shanghai. Third-quarter profit fell 17.4%, even as the stock traded at more than 465 times earnings. Those numbers explain why its founder, Wang Xingxing, looked so grim on listing day two months ago.
Then, on August 19, Wang struck the gong on Shanghai’s STAR Market as Unitree debuted at 445 billion yuan (US$66 billion), yet the new billionaire did not smile. One day later, Xu Jiayin, founder of the property giant Evergrande and once China’s richest man, stood white-haired in court where he was sentenced to life in prison.
A Chinese proverb says the waves behind drive the waves ahead, and the waves ahead die on the shore. Most of the commentary those two days saw it as a handover from the old economy to the new.
But the state made both men rich in the same way, just two decades apart. Xu’s career was an attempt to turn state authorization into private property, converting land quotas and bank loans that the state can revoke at any time into balance-sheet assets and offshore trusts.
His imprisonment shows that such authorization can be withdrawn in full. Wang’s 445 billion yuan valuation rests on similar state backing. Permission to list has become today’s version of the land permit, as Beijing swaps the land in its hands for equity shares.
For three decades, local governments paid for China’s build-out by selling land to developers, an engine of land finance that is stalling as the property market shrinks. Its replacement is what Chinese analysts call “equity finance,” which raises public money from shares the state holds rather than from the land it sells.
Both models spend tomorrow’s money today. While land was a bet on people moving into cities, the new bet is that technology companies will one day earn what investors have already paid for them.
Equity finance is still small beside land finance. In 2025, local governments collected 4.15 trillion yuan from land sales and 464.4 billion yuan from companies they own. Land-sale revenue dropped another 27.9% in the first nine months of 2026.
Because dividends alone cannot plug that gap, the source of the money has shifted. Local governments put up money to incubate high-tech companies, the companies get permission to list, and households buy the shares with their savings.
Consider ChangXin Memory Technologies, a chipmaker listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market. It had accumulated losses of 36.65 billion yuan on its way up, yet was worth over 3 trillion yuan on its first day of trading. Hefei, an inland city known for betting public money on technology, invested 24.8 billion yuan into ChangXin over 10 years, and its municipal investment platform now holds shares worth nearly 900 billion yuan on paper.
This is the Hefei model. Once a company lists, the platform can pledge the shares to a bank for cash that goes into the next up-and-coming company. Shares have replaced land as collateral, and the robust borrowing continues as before.
In 2020, Jack Ma criticized Chinese banks for a “pawnshop mentality” in which nothing moves without collateral. Days later, his Ant Group’s planned $37 billion listing was suspended by regulators. Six years on, the pawnshop still stands; only the collateral has changed.
The same regulators now fast-track the firms the state has picked. More than 40 robotics companies are now reportedly queuing to list. Unitree won approval in a record 104 days.
Persuading Chinese people to spend has been a perennial struggle for Beijing, and this listing wave is designed to put the vast pool of savings sitting in banks to work. A bank deposit earns about 1% a year in China, and capital controls keep savings out of foreign shares and funds.
The stock market is the only open door. Yet the STAR Market requires at least 500,000 yuan in stocks and funds and two years of trading experience, so most households cannot buy in directly.
The approach may produce a few world-class companies. But if the state were good at running businesses, China would not have spent 40 years building a market economy. Under land finance, a city took the cash and moved on.
With equity finance, the city stays on as a shareholder and pledges its stock to banks for loans, so any rival from another province that hurts the company’s share price also shrinks the city’s collateral.
Once local governments live off their own companies, they will no doubt seek to protect them. That, in turn, would motivate erecting hidden barriers to trade from province to province, undermining Beijing’s goal of a unified national market.
Wang’s grim face on listing day answered the question of where wealth comes from in China today: from how close you stand to the people who write the rules.
Unitree earned 278 million yuan in 2025. At that pace, earning back its debut valuation would take 1,600 years, a calculation Wang, an engineer, can surely make. Households paid for the property boom with mortgages. They are now paying for China’s tech boom with their savings.
Yanyou Chen is a master’s candidate in international affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
UN warns Gaza waste collection crippled by Israeli restrictions
The UN on Tuesday warned that public health risks are rising in the Gaza Strip as solid waste collection is hampered by Israeli restrictions, Anadolu reports.
Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a news conference that “partners supporting the collection of solid waste warn that only half of their vehicle fleet is operational.”
“That’s because of persistent Israeli restrictions on the entry of enough engine oil and spare parts required to keep the vehicles running. As a result, public health risks are increasing as only some of the trash can be collected,” he said.
“A wider range of critical supplies must be allowed into Gaza, with less red tape and more crossings open for deliveries,” he said. “Humanitarian funding is also critical, especially as people face their fourth winter in dire displacement conditions.”
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, launched with US support in October 2023, has killed more than 74,000 victims and injured over 175,000, while destroying 90% of civilian infrastructure.
Despite a ceasefire that has been in effect since Oct. 10, 2025, Israel has continued shelling, shooting and demolishing Palestinian structures — expanding the destruction.
READ: 14 students, 8 education workers killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza in October
California fights “preposterous” Trump admin demand to scrap state broadband laws
California is accepting $1.86 billion in broadband grant funding from the Trump administration, but the state is not accepting the Trump administration’s demand that it stop enforcing a net neutrality law and other telecom regulations.
California’s stand against the Trump administration could result in multiple legal battles involving the state, federal government, and Internet providers seeking government funds. Although California told the federal government it would accept the money, it is reserving the right to challenge the condition imposed by the US. The state could delay or cancel plans to distribute broadband grants depending on how the process unfolds.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) decided last year that states must agree not to enforce any rate regulation or net neutrality rule on ISPs that receive money from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. California had to decide whether to accept its share of the fund despite that restriction.
State officials argue that California should be able to obtain the money and keep enforcing its laws because the Trump administration’s demand would violate the state’s constitutional rights. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) made its view clear in a carefully worded letter yesterday to Assistant Secretary of Commerce and NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth.
“The CPUC cannot be bound by any terms or conditions that are unconstitutional or not authorized by law and it expressly does not waive or concede any arguments or challenges concerning the legality, interpretation, or applicability of any term or condition,” CPUC President John Reynolds told Roth.
Reynolds’ letter also said the CPUC cannot prevent other California agencies from enforcing state laws, suggesting that the attorney general would maintain the right to punish misbehaving Internet providers.
California fighting “preposterous demand”
Reynolds’ letter acknowledged that the NTIA may not agree with the CPUC’s stance and said the state thus will not distribute any funding to ISPs until after the state and federal agency sort out any differences. If the NTIA refuses to change its position, California could sue the Trump administration on the grounds that the condition is unconstitutional.
The NTIA does not appear likely to bend. “As noted in the Department’s response to CPUC, the terms and conditions of the award constitute the entire agreement between NTIA and CPUC. No part of the letter outlining CPUC’s concerns is incorporated into or made part of the award,” an NTIA spokesperson told Ars today.
Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge supported CPUC’s position. The Trump administration’s demand to preempt state laws is “brazen and meritless,” the group said.
“This administration’s preposterous demand that industry be given a blanket waiver from affordability requirements, net neutrality and privacy protections, and any other commitments to connect and serve Americans has no basis in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which established BEAD. And, as the commission points out, the NTIA has no authority to alter California state law or require California agencies to not enforce the law,” said Raza Panjwani, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge.
The CPUC voted to ratify the funding plan in September. But Reynolds said in yesterday’s letter to the Trump administration that his agency’s acceptance of the funds is “based on the CPUC’s best understanding of the effect of Section 50” of the BEAD terms and conditions. Section 50 of the BEAD rules says each state:
shall commit that it will not enforce any law, regulation, order, contracting requirement, or other enforceable obligation that directly or indirectly regulates the rates, terms, and conditions of broadband Internet service… or imposes net neutrality rules, open access, or other utility-style rules on broadband Internet service, against a Subgrantee or its affiliates anywhere it provides service within the State (i.e., both BEAD and non-BEAD locations), while that Subgrantee has any subgrant that is still within its period of performance, extended period of performance, or federal interest period.
The BEAD rules specify that a net neutrality rule is one prohibiting ISPs from “blocking content, throttling speeds, imposing data caps, or engaging in paid prioritization.” ISPs obtaining BEAD funding could be exempt from such laws for up to 14 years.
California calls US rule “vague and ambiguous”
Reynolds’ letter said the NTIA-imposed condition is “vague and ambiguous as to its scope and its relationship to Section 47 U.S.C. § 1702(g)(2)(A)(i) of the BEAD statute,” the US law that created the BEAD program. He wrote:
The CPUC does not interpret Section 50 to require the CPUC to waive, release, or otherwise forfeit any rights, claims, arguments, or defenses concerning potential implications of Section 50 that may violate applicable laws. Further, the CPUC’s acceptance of funds under this award should not be understood as agreement either to refrain from compliance with mandatory legal duties or obligations, or to constrain other State of California entities in the exercise of their authorities to enforce state law, which is outside the scope of the CPUC’s authority. Moreover, California’s net neutrality law expressly provides that “any waiver of the provisions of this title is contrary to public policy and shall be unenforceable and void.” Likewise, many of the CPUC’s own programs that touch on broadband Internet access service are mandated by the California Public Utilities Code, and are neither discretionary nor waivable.
The NTIA today updated its BEAD progress dashboard to reflect that California has signed its final agreement with the federal agency. California was the last state or territory to turn in its final agreement.
“All 56 states and territories have signed and returned their award agreement, finalizing the process,” the NTIA’s updated dashboard page said.
ISPs could insist state laws are invalid
California could face legal problems if and when it distributes the money, which is to be given to Internet service providers in exchange for deploying broadband in unserved and underserved areas. ISPs could insist that they don’t have to follow state law and sue California, or simply decide to violate consumer protection laws and defend against any lawsuits the state attorney general might file against them.
Reynolds apparently hopes to avoid that outcome by holding discussions with the NTIA to resolve any disagreement over the enforceability of California state law.
“To the extent that NTIA and the CPUC disagree about the CPUC’s obligations under Section 50 and other terms and conditions, the CPUC will execute any subgrant agreements if and when the CPUC and NTIA are able to resolve such disagreements and any other applicable conditions are met,” Reynolds wrote. “To that end, we will direct our staff to work diligently and cooperatively with NTIA staff to find such a solution.”
Whether California’s strategy works “depends on what happens next,” Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick, a longtime proponent of net neutrality and other telecom regulations, told Ars today.
“The letter doesn’t change the terms of California’s award: Condition 50 is still in it, and only a court or NTIA agreeing in writing can take it out,” she said. “The letter puts California’s position on the record before any contracts with providers are signed and preserves California’s legal arguments against Condition 50.”
Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office declined to comment when contacted by Ars today. A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom said California is not giving up its right to enforce state laws against Internet providers.
“California is accepting federal broadband funding to bring high-speed Internet to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, many of them in rural and underserved communities,” a governor’s spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars. “We’re ready to get these projects built with our local and federal partners. Connecting these communities is the goal, and so is protecting them. California’s laws, including our net neutrality protections, still stand.”
Net neutrality and throttling laws
California’s net neutrality law prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and says ISPs may not require fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to Internet users. The first Trump administration lost an attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws, and California defeated ISPs that challenged the state law in court.
California also has a law that prohibits mobile providers from throttling first responders during emergencies. That law was passed in 2019, a year after Verizon throttled an “unlimited” data plan used by Santa Clara County firefighters during a wildfire. Local wildfire-preparedness groups warned that the BEAD condition could prevent California from enforcing the throttling law and requirements for battery backups on cell towers.
According to van Schewick, “California has strong arguments that Condition 50 is illegal. Congress designed BEAD to get broadband built while making sure the providers who take the money follow the law: the statute directs states to ensure funded providers can carry out their work ‘in compliance with all applicable Federal, State, and local laws.’”
But van Schewick said the letter is just an initial step. “The real test comes the first time a BEAD provider blocks a competitor’s app, throttles firefighters, or walks away from a price commitment,” she said. “If the state enforces its laws when that happens, the letter will have protected Californians. If the state looks the other way, Condition 50 will have worked exactly as the providers intended, without a single court ever ruling on it.”
Electric aviation is taking off in unexpected ways
The call came from a home in Hyde County, a rural expanse of coastal farmland and marsh in North Carolina. Paramedic Quinn Reece jumped into an electric aircraft with one seat, two wings, and eight propellers. It is called a BlackFly, and at about 14 feet long it looks like an oversized drone. Moments later it rose like a helicopter, then flew like an airplane.
As she raced toward the emergency at about 60 mph, a dispatcher described the location. Reece quickly realized that the app the county uses for emergency response had given the wrong location. Because she had flown over the area before, Reece had an idea of the correct location. She zipped over in the aircraft, confirmed where the call had come from, and relayed the information to paramedics headed that way. She was on the scene and administering care 20 minutes before they arrived.
That is exactly what Brook Cox, the county’s emergency medical services chief, hoped to see. She launched the six-month trial with a company called Pivotal in March to see if its BlackFly could help medics more quickly reach patients in a county that covers 1,459 square miles of land and water. The county conducted more than 300 training flights prior to using the aircraft for two 911 calls.
Air taxis and flying cars have long defined the promise of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs. This is the vision the Federal Aviation Administration has highlighted through the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, which works with manufacturers to test the emerging aircraft in real-world settings. Last week, Archer Aviation announced plans for aerial taxi services in three Texas cities and Joby Aviation began demonstrations in Florida.
Hyde County is among those exploring more immediate uses for these machines. The FAA program considers emergency medical response an important application, particularly in rural areas. Similar aircraft powered by the sun that can stay aloft for weeks are being developed to monitor climate threats like wildfires, methane emissions and ice melt.
The great promise of electric aviation is to help decarbonize flight. These developments point to a fast-approaching future for electric aviation. It just might not arrive in the form we expected.
Pivotal’s BlackFly can take off like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, making it a promising tool for emergency response in rural areas, where it can launch quickly, fly directly to an emergency, and land close to the scene. Courtesy of Pivotal
Kristina Menton, Pivotal’s vice president of flight, points to a December 2024 flight as proof the technology could be a boon to EMS. A BlackFly took off from a Los Angeles County fire station and landed in a backyard in Malibu, demonstrating it could fly directly to a private address.
Menton acknowledged that single-seater aircraft are a new approach for a field that has typically employed separate crews for flight and EMS operations. BlackFly’s simplified controls allow one person to serve as both pilot and medic. “The aircraft is a breeze,” Cox said. “It really takes the guesswork out of it because you have a screen and you have all these prompts that you have to go through.”
Carl Dietrich, who founded Jump Aero in 2019 to build electric aircraft for EMS, sees Pivotal’s work as proof of concept rather than competition, something that can only help the sector grow. “It shows that other organizations believe that this is a real opportunity,” he said.
Jump Aero is building a different kind of aircraft, the JA1 Pulse, which has been in development for seven years. Dietrich expects it to reach 288 mph, compared with 63 mph for the BlackFly. He said eVTOLs aren’t necessarily replacing helicopters or ambulances, but adding something new to emergency response: an aircraft that is easy to fly and can launch almost immediately without warming up.
“It’s ideal for rapid response missions because you don’t pay any maintenance penalty for going to full power instantly,” he said. This is particularly important in a field that aims to arrive within eight minutes of a call, while rural response times average nearly 15 minutes.
There are, of course, limitations, including battery range and weight capacity. The BlackFly can travel 20 miles on a charge and carry 200 pounds, while the JA1 Pulse is good for 70 miles and 350 pounds. The aircraft clearly aren’t meant to transport patients; their utility lies in being able to quickly reach an emergency and stabilize a patient until an ambulance arrives. Reece carried a cardiac monitor, airway supplies, and a “primary response bag” of essential gear that would allow her to assess a patient and begin treatment immediately.
Rural areas may present an easier path to introducing the technology, said April Zhang, director of advanced air mobility at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. “In the urban area, it’s probably more challenging to find the right landing and takeoff sites,” she said. Menton said other counties are already looking at Hyde County’s experience and considering similar programs.
Zhang points to the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program as a way for manufacturers and public agencies to collaborate on applications. Beyond EMS, she sees traffic surveillance and cargo deliveries as other potential uses.
FAA policy may also give public agencies an easier path to using eVTOLs than commercial operators. Andrew Mearns, a commercialization consultant at Multicopter Aerospace Consulting, said EMS organizations can often operate under the FAA’s public aircraft rules, which could allow them to fly without the credentials required of a commercial pilot.
Cost is another appeal. Pivotal’s model sells for $190,000, while Mearns said helicopters can cost from $500,000 to $10 million. Operating costs will vary with the specific model, but generally speaking an electric aircraft will be about 20 percent cheaper than a similarly sized machine that burns fossil fuels, Mearns said.
Emergency response is one avenue where electric aviation is beginning to find a practical use. Another is taking shape much higher in the atmosphere.
Unmanned stratospheric aircraft can reach altitudes of 65,000 feet, about twice as high as commercial aircraft. Solar-powered versions can remain aloft for weeks or months, making them well suited to long-term environmental monitoring.
“If you imagine these solar-powered aircraft just circling the L.A. County area, collecting soil moisture, vegetation moisture data, with complex math models and deep learning mapped to that, you can have improved risk profiles better than the models that are currently there,” said Craig Mascarenhas, an aerospace researcher at Harvard University. The aircraft could also spot fires more quickly and help map them for first responders.
Mascarenhas leads engineering research for Harvard’s branch of the Stratospheric Airborne Climate Observing System, where he is helping develop and deploy solar-powered electric aircraft with Electra.Aero, MIT and others. He said their applications go beyond wildfires.
“It’s hurricane monitoring and tracking, methane emiss monitoring, understanding ice dynamics across the world,” he said. “The instruments will be swapped, but the topology of the aircraft will remain the same.”
The aircraft themselves could offer environmental benefits too. Mascarenhas said eVTOLs could reduce greenhouse gas emissions when they replace fuel-burning helicopters, but the climate case is less clear when they replace efficient ground transportation.
“Vertical flight is inherently energy-intensive, and an electric aircraft is not necessarily more energy-efficient or lower-carbon per passenger-mile than an electric car, bus, or train,” he said.
For Pivotal, EMS in Hyde County is just the beginning. Menton said the company’s broader vision is to “revolutionize transportation” by making short electric flights accessible to more people.
But for now, some of the technology’s most immediate uses may be the specialized applications already being tested in places like Hyde County and high above it.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was the victim of a massive heist in late October. Approximately US$6.36 billion of funds were stolen within the space of 20 minutes in an attack that has been described as the largest of its kind in history.
The source of the attack has not yet been officially confirmed. But the FBI and blockchain analytics company TRM Labs identified North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking unit as the group most likely to have been behind it. Two other blockchain analytics firms, Chainalysis and Elliptic, have supported this attribution.
This is not the first time North Korea has been linked to cyber-attacks. Several other cryptocurrency exchange thefts in recent years have been attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers. These include the 2019 Upbit and 2025 Bybit hacks, where funds worth US$42 million and US$1.5 billion respectively were stolen.
Therefore, while Pyongyang has always denied any involvement in state-sponsored cyber warfare, it is not surprising that North Korea has once again been mentioned in connection with a major crypto heist.
The development of its cyber capabilities intensified in the 1990s. The Korea Computer Center was set up in 1990 to oversee national IT development. And in 1995, North Korea’s then-leader, Kim Jong-il, directed the military to develop cyber capabilities as a strategic component of national defence.
IT education was further institutionalised from 1998 onward after computer education was made compulsory for all students from the fourth year of middle school.
North Korea began conducting major cyber-attacks in the 2000s. Early operations primarily targeted South Korea. But its cyber operations gradually expanded beyond the Korean peninsula, with the 2017 WannaCry attack a prominent example of this development.
This attack targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system and demanded ransom payments in the form of bitcoin cryptocurrency. It was estimated to have affected more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries, causing billions of US dollars in damage.
North Korean students are selected for specialized cyber training from a young age. Picture: KCNA / EPA
North Korea’s state-led cyber operations start with the selection of young students who demonstrate outstanding academic performance, particularly in science and mathematics. These students are provided with specialised computer training at the elite Kumsong Middle School in Pyongyang.
They then advance to one of several colleges, including Mirim College, Moranbong College, Kim Il Sung University or the Kim Chaek University of Technology. In these colleges, students undergo training programmes combining military studies with advanced cyber skills.
As of 2024, North Korea was estimated to have trained roughly 8,400 state-sponsored cyber personnel through these programmes. This figure is likely to have increased since then.
Clear strategic goals
North Korea’s investment in cyber personnel training is driven by clear strategic goals. The main objectives of early North Korean cyber-attacks were to create social disruption in what Pyongyang sees as hostile states.
Examples include the 2013 DarkSeoul attack and the 2014 cyber-attack on Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power. In the DarkSeoul attack, around 32,000 computers belonging to major South Korean broadcasting networks and financial institutions were disrupted by malware.
The attack on Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power involved the theft and disclosure of personal employee information, nuclear power plant blueprints and technical documents. Both attacks aimed to disrupt critical systems and generate public anxiety. They allowed North Korea to exert pressure on its adversaries without engaging in direct military confrontation.
In recent years, however, North Korea’s cyber operations have shifted towards making money. The more recent cyber operations are part of the country’s broader efforts to maintain regime stability and fund its nuclear programme following years of international sanctions.
In 2024, a UN panel of experts estimated that the money stolen in North Korean cyber-attacks generated half of North Korea’s foreign currency income. One unnamed panel member added that stolen money funds “40% of the weapons of mass destruction programs.”
Several measures are in place to defend against North Korean cyber operations. These include financial sanctions and international efforts to disrupt money-laundering networks. Governments worldwide also work closely with the private sector to exchange intelligence, identify suspicious transactions and trace and recover stolen cryptocurrency.
But the current measures have not been sufficient to prevent attacks. A key reason for this is the fact that international investigations and enforcement remain constrained by national jurisdictions and sovereignty.
As in the physical world, one country cannot access data or conduct an investigation within another country’s territory without its consent. Digital evidence can be also be quickly deleted or altered, so reliance on international cooperation can make an effective and timely response difficult.
Preventing North Korean cyber operations completely may be unrealistic. But there are several ways to make these activities less profitable and more difficult to carry out. These include strengthening identity verification procedures to prevent North Korean IT workers from gaining employment with false identities.
They also include improving information-sharing between governments and private companies and enhancing cyber resilience. This would minimise the damage to targeted organisations and help them recover more quickly when attacks occur.
Ultimately, the goal should not only be to prevent attacks, but also to disrupt the networks that enable them, limit the financial gains and reduce their impact.
 shows a cruise missile being launched from a North Korean submarine off the east coast of North Korea, 12 March 2023 (issued 13 March 2023). According to North Korean state media, two cruise missiles were launched from a 8.24 Yongung submarine, and travelled aroud 1,500 km before striking a sea-borne target. The missile launch occured a day before the scheduled start of US-South Korean joint military drills. EPA-EFE/KCNA EDITORIAL USE ONLY</p>
<p> ” data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/cde.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/11357092-1.jpg?fit=640%2C424&ssl=1″></span><figcaption>epa10519110 A photo released by the official North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) shows a cruise missile being launched from a North Korean submarine off the east coast of North Korea, 12 March 2023 (issued 13 March 2023). According to North Korean state media, two cruise missiles were launched from a 8.24 Yongung submarine, and travelled aroud 1,500 km before striking a sea-borne target. The missile launch occured a day before the scheduled start of US-South Korean joint military drills. EPA-EFE/KCNA EDITORIAL USE ONLY</figcaption></figure>
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<p>North Korea has claimed it successfully tested a cluster warhead for a strategic cruise missile, alongside its ability to strike targets using a vertical trajectory, according to South Korean media reports citing state news agency Yonhap.</p>
<p>The North Korean Institute of Warheads said the test confirmed the capabilities of a medium-sized cluster warhead capable of covering an area of five to six hectares at maximum strike density.</p>
<p>The regime has previously announced plans to introduce different types of cluster warheads by the end of the year. Similar munitions for tactical ballistic missiles were tested last Saturday.</p>
<p>North Korea’s Institute of Cruise Missile Systems also claimed the missile had achieved full vertical-strike capability through improvements to its control during the final stage of flight.</p>
<p>South Korean analysts believe the technology could be intended to target underground military facilities and tunnels. A vertical trajectory could increase impact speed and destructive power.</p>
<p>South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said its military maintained operational readiness and possessed precision-strike capabilities significantly more advanced than those claimed by Pyongyang.</p>
<p>Cluster munitions scatter smaller explosives over wide areas, with unexploded devices posing long-term risks to civilians. North Korea is not a signatory to the 2008 convention banning their use, production and stockpiling.</p>
<p>via UA</p>
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