North Korean Hiring Fraud Runs on AI and US Laptop Farms
(Alessandro Mascellino – Infosecurity Magazine) A North Korean scheme to plant fake IT workers inside Western companies has been exposed from the inside, after one of its operatives tried to infiltrate the very firm that tracks the fraud. Risk intelligence provider Nisos recently detailed how a supposed Florida-based AI architect applied for a remote job at the company in June 2025, and how the application unraveled into a look inside an active fraud cell. – North Korean Hiring Fraud Runs on AI and US Laptop Farms – Infosecurity Magazine
FortiBleed Exposes Admin Passwords for 75,000 Fortinet Firewalls
(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) Security researcher Bob Diachenko found a server sitting open on the internet containing what appeared to be valid Fortinet VPN credentials, including usernames, email addresses, and plaintext passwords for tens of thousands of organizations. He posted about it on LinkedIn. Kevin Beaumont, one of the most trusted independent voices in network security, then obtained the dataset, worked through it with Hudson Rock, and confirmed what nobody wanted to hear. “Massive Fortinet/FortiGate bruteforce/active exploitation campaign uncovered in action. Thousands of top vendors instances are listed in the files like this (see screenshot). This one alone has 21,634 domain names – from Chevron to Fortinet itself. All – with potentially working passwords to the FortiGate appliances obtained through various menas.” Bob Diachenko wrote on LinkedIn. – FortiBleed Exposes Admin Passwords for 75,000 Fortinet Firewalls
Anthropic and South Korea partner on AI safety and cybersecurity
(DigWatch) Anthropic has opened an office in Seoul and announced a series of partnerships across South Korea’s AI ecosystem, alongside a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Science and ICT on AI safety. The company said the Seoul office will serve as a long-term hub for collaboration with South Korean enterprises, startups, researchers and developers using Claude. Senior Anthropic leaders travelled to Seoul this week to open the office and meet partners, customers, and developers. – Anthropic opens Seoul office and announces new partnerships across the Korean AI ecosystem \ Anthropic
Spain backs AI gigafactory to boost European technological sovereignty
(DigWatch) Spain has approved a €719 million investment in a national AI gigafactory project aimed at expanding advanced computing capacity and strengthening European technological sovereignty. The investment was authorised by Spain’s Council of Ministers through the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service. The investment will be channelled through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), which will establish a public-private consortium to develop the project and submit a bid under a forthcoming European Commission call for AI gigafactories. – Spain backs AI gigafactory to boost European technological sovereignty | Digital Watch Observatory
IWF backs Pope Leo XIV call for responsible AI development
(DigWatch) The Internet Watch Foundation has welcomed Pope Leo XIV’s reflections on AI, arguing that AI systems must be developed with stronger safeguards to protect children from abuse. In a blog post, the IWF said the Pope’s message that technology should serve the common good and remain subject to human judgement and accountability reflects the risks its analysts are already seeing online. – Technology for Good: Reflections on the Pope’s First Encyclical
Finland links communications networks to security and digital growth
(DigWatch) Finland’s Ministry of Transport and Communications has completed the first phase of the TUUTTI project, concluding that secure and reliable communications networks are essential to both national security and digital economic growth. The report, published on 17 June 2026, provides an overview of Finland’s communications networks, markets and services, and identifies long-term decision points affecting network investment, security and future development. – Overview of communications networks completed: High-quality connections are the foundation of security and growth – Finnish Government
US backs photonics expansion for AI data centres under CHIPS Act
(DigWatch) The Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Program Office has signed a letter of intent to provide up to $50 million in direct funding to Coherent Corp. under the CHIPS and Science Act. According to the CHIPS Program Office, the proposed funding would support the expansion of Coherent’s facility in Sherman, Texas, which it describes as the first and largest high-volume 150mm indium phosphide semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States. – The Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Program Announces a Letter of Intent with Coherent for up to $50 Million to Expand Indium Phosphide Production | NIST
Japan and the Philippines partner on an AI-powered disaster risk platform
(DigWatch) The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Philippines Department of Science and Technology (DOST) have agreed to collaborate on the GATES programme, a national geospatial and AI initiative aimed at strengthening disaster risk reduction and data-driven governance. The Geospatial Analytics & Technology Solutions (GATES) programme is led by DOST and aims to integrate fragmented disaster-risk, geospatial, climate, hazard and strategic datasets from across government into a unified and interoperable data ecosystem. The programme uses geospatial analytics and artificial intelligence to support digital transformation, evidence-based policymaking, and science, technology, and innovateon. – JICA and DOST Collaborate to Advance an AI-Ready National Data Platform for Disaster Risk Analytics ｜ About JICA – JICA
UK unveils AI tools to speed up planning decisions and housing delivery
(DigWatch) The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have unveiled two AI tools designed to modernise England’s planning system and accelerate housing delivery. One new AI prototype is being tested by Barnet, Camden and Dorset councils and aims to reduce average decision times for routine householder planning applications from eight weeks to four. The system triages applications and provides planning officers with preliminary assessments to support decision-making. – AI tool to slash planning decision times as government accelerates push to build 1.5 million homes – GOV.UK
New AI breakthrough in cardiology balances patient data privacy and diagnosis
(DigWatch) Researchers at the University of Kansas have developed a new AI model designed to improve the analysis of electrocardiogram (ECG) data while strengthening protections for patient privacy. The innovation responds to growing concerns that AI-enhanced ECGs can reveal sensitive personal attributes beyond heart activity. The model, known as PP-VAE, aims to preserve clinically relevant insights, such as indicators of heart disease and mortality risk, while reducing the risk of exposing biometric and demographic information, including age and sex. The system uses advanced neural network architectures to separate clinically relevant signals from identifiable personal characteristics. – New AI model protects patient privacy in ECG data
INTERPOL report warns of rising cybercrime across Asia-Pacific
(DigWatch) INTERPOL has published its 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment Report, covering the period from January 2024 to March 2025. The report documents a rise in cybercrime across the region, attributing the trend to expanding digital infrastructure, the adoption of new technologies and increasingly organised criminal networks. More than half of the countries surveyed reported that cybercrime accounts for over 30% of all crimes recorded nationally. Phishing and related online scam techniques were identified as the most common and financially damaging forms of cybercrime, with 33 % of surveyed countries recorded over 10,000 such cases. – New INTERPOL report highlights escalating cyber threats across Asia and South Pacific
ChatGPT set to join Pentagon’s GenAI.mil platform
(DigWatch) Mohammed Husain, OpenAI’s Strategic Delivery Lead for Cyber, said at the Defense One Tech Summit in Virginia that the company expects to launch ChatGPT on GenAI.mil, the US Department of Defense’s enterprise-wide generative AI platform, in early July. The deployment would extend ChatGPT access to more than 3 million defence, civilian, and military personnel. – ChatGPT set to join Pentagon’s GenAI.mil platform | Digital Watch Observatory
When the Algorithm Finds You First: A Case for Social Media Age Restrictions
(Claudia Wallner – RUSI) The UK government has now confirmed that it will introduce social media age restrictions for under-16s, with legislation expected before Christmas and implementation planned for spring 2027. In practice, this refers primarily to age limits on mainstream social media platforms rather than a wider ban on internet use or screen time as such. Similar measures are already in place or under active consideration elsewhere, such as in Australia, where an under-16s ban took effect in December 2025, while Canada has now announced legislation of its own. Much of the discussion so far has focused on children’s mental health and wellbeing and on the design features platforms use to maximise children’s time online. However, the case for tighter age restrictions is also a security and prevention argument. Young people now move through an online environment that exposes them not only to cyberbullying and addictive design features, but also to misogynist communities, violence-glorifying subcultures, self-harm and eating disorder content, violent extremist milieus, and, in some cases, recruitment efforts by hostile state or criminal actors. – When the Algorithm Finds You First: A Case for Social Media Age Restrictions | Royal United Services Institute
The Hour That Worked: What Midnight Hammer Teaches About AI-Era Command
(Burak Oktenli – RUSI) On the night of 21 June 2025, seven B-2 Spirit bombers flew eastward from Missouri towards Iran while a second group of bombers flew west into the Pacific, towards Guam, as a decoy. The deception held: as General Dan Caine, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, later told reporters, ‘Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems did not see us throughout the mission.’ Over roughly 25 minutes, the strike package dropped 14 30,000-pound bunker-busters on the Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites, while a submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan. Operation Midnight Hammer has been analysed largely as a feat of tactical execution, and it was. But its most instructive feature for the alliance is quieter, and concerns the architecture of command rather than the skill of the aircrew. The decisive choices in Midnight Hammer were not made in the cockpit, nor improvised in the operations centre under time pressure. They were made years in advance, embedded in the design of the weapon and the structure of the mission. That is a model of disciplined command for an age in which machines compute faster than humans can deliberate, and the contrast with what came nine months later, the much larger, AI-accelerated Operation Epic Fury, should concentrate allied minds, British and European ones included. – The Hour That Worked: What Midnight Hammer Teaches About AI-Era Command | Royal United Services Institute
Navy preps science-and-tech strategy built for speed and focus
(Bradley Peniston – Defense One) A new Navy science-and-tech strategy will push technology to the fleet faster and concentrate limited research funds on problems that industry won’t solve on its own, the service’s research chief said Tuesday. The Office of Naval Research strategy, called “Feed S&T at Speed to the Fleet and Force,” is in final production, Chief of Naval Research Rachel Riley said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “Speed is, of course, the word of the year in our business,” she said during a panel discussion that included Jarred Conley, principal director for maritime efforts at the Defense Innovation Unit. Riley said the document urges closer collaboration with DIU, warfighters, and other stakeholders. She said it also aims to explain “in plain English” what ONR does and what the Navy wants from industry. ONR is working to “de-layer and simplify” its bureaucracy, so that the limiting factor on technology development is “the physical science and not the processes and the policies around it,” she added. – Navy preps science-and-tech strategy built for speed and focus – Defense One
AI is taking some parts of background checks from ‘months to hours,’ clearance agency says
(David DiMolfetta – Defense One) The nation’s largest counterintelligence unit aims to use artificial intelligence tools to speed security clearance reviews for people and companies seeking to do sensitive work on behalf of the government. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency can use AI to reduce parts of the vetting process from “months to hours,” said Mark Nehmer, an agency analytics and innovation chief who spoke Tuesday on a panel at the Defense One Tech Summit in Virginia. DCSA is the Defense Department’s main agency for conducting background investigations and vetting personnel for access to classified information, and serves as a key determinant for whether companies are eligible to work with military and intelligence agencies. – AI is taking some parts of background checks from ‘months to hours,’ clearance agency says – Defense One
NATO has ‘changed a lot’ in four years, transformation leader says
(Bradley Peniston, Defense One) NATO has “really changed a lot in the last three to four years,” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the alliance to rethink how it learns, experiments, and operates, a top NATO transformation official said. Now the alliance is moving away from long, platform-centered modernization cycles and toward faster experimentation, interoperability, and “system-of-systems” approaches, said Maj. Gen. Dominique Luzeaux, NATO’s digital transformation champion and special advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. He spoke Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. Luzeaux pointed to Ukraine’s ever increasing use of unmanned ground, air, surface, and undersea systems—and how the main lesson is more than just drones are useful. – NATO has ‘changed a lot’ in four years, transformation leader says – Defense One
Shaped charges from coffee grounds? Pentagon science chief describes future of war
(Bradley Peniston – Defense One) When the Pentagon’s science and technology chief looks at Ukraine, he sees a war fought with weapons invented, produced, and fielded since the conflict erupted. “The fact that you can bring relevant capability to the fight, as the Ukrainians and allies have done in the conflict with Russia, that essentially didn’t exist at the beginning of the fight,” Joseph Jewell, assistant defense secretary for science and technology, said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “That’s the new thing here.”. It’s a thing the United States must learn to do, Jewell said. Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry “to a large extent, sprung up almost overnight because of urgency. I think with our industrial resources, we certainly could do things at that scale and even in a more sophisticated way. And we need to do it,” he said. Jewell noted that Ukraine has taken the Russian Navy out of the fight without much of a navy of its own. “The way they were able to do that, well, there are several things. First of all, their weapon systems were small, relatively undetectable. Second of all, they had a lot of them,” he said. There is still a need for expensive, highly capable weapons, Jewell said, “But the exquisite effect may be helped along by leveraging a hundred or a thousand drones controlled by AI. And I think that’s what we’re starting to see modern warfare evolve into. Now, of course, the model is a lot of people in Ukraine who are actually manually controlling these first-person drones. I think the natural evolution of that is AI-controlled or AI-enabled.” – Shaped charges from coffee grounds? Pentagon science chief describes future of war – Defense One
Poland weighs joining X-BAT autonomous vertical-takeoff fighter program
(Jaroslaw Adamowski – Defense News) California-based defense technology firm Shield AI has offered Poland a role in its X-BAT autonomous vertical-takeoff fighter jet program, with the country potentially hosting some of the manufacturing activities for the aircraft, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “Their intention is to also cooperate with Poland, and to produce in Poland, for the X-BAT program, the first autonomous combat aircraft in the world,” Tusk said at a June 16 press conference in Warsaw. “It’s top-tier technology, a chance for air domination in case of an armed conflict, and an incredibly ambitious project with regard to technology and innovativeness.” – Poland weighs joining X-BAT autonomous vertical-takeoff fighter program
European consortium launches SHIELD-6G project to develop cybersecurity capabilities for future 6G networks
(DigWatch) A consortium of 19 organisations from across Europe has launched SHIELD-6G (Scalable, Hybrid, and Intelligent End-to-End Defense for 6G Networks), a research and innovation project aimed at developing cybersecurity technologies for future 6G communications networks. The project is coordinated by University College Dublin and brings together universities, research institutes, telecommunications operators, technology companies, and small and medium-sized enterprises from 10 European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Estonia, and Türkiye. – SHIELD-6G Project to Advance 6G Network Security Kicks-Off at UCD – NovaUCD
UK expands AI-powered planning tools across England
(DigWatch) The UK Government has announced major progress in its efforts to modernise the planning system through AI, including the nationwide rollout of the Extract tool and continued development of the Augmented Planning Decisions (APD) prototype. Extract, developed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the government’s Incubator for AI (i.AI), is now available to local authorities across England following successful trials. The tool automates the processing of complex planning documents and could save the average council around 255 hours of manual work. – Scaling the UK government’s AI vision
Italian competition authority investigates Apple over DMA interoperability rules
(DigWatch) The Italian Competition Authority has launched an investigation into Apple Inc., Apple Distribution International Ltd and Apple Italia S.r.l. over their compliance with interoperability requirements under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). According to the authority, the Digital Markets Act requires Apple to provide third-party consumer cloud service providers with free and effective interoperability with its iOS and iPadOS operating systems under conditions equivalent to those available to iCloud. – AGCM – The Italian Competition Authority launches investigation into Apple under the Digital Markets Act on the interoperability of Apple’s designated operating systems iOS and iPadOS with alternative consumer clouds
EU court clarifies age verification rules for pornographic websites
(DigWatch) The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has clarified the conditions under which EU Member States may require age verification for users of pornographic websites and restrict the rebroadcasting of information about certain roadside checks. The ruling concerns joined cases involving WebGroup Czech Republic, NKL Associates and Coyote System. The cases were referred by France’s Council of State and concerned French measures requiring pornographic websites to verify users’ ages and allowing restrictions on geolocation driving assistance services that rebroadcast information about certain roadside checks. – EU court clarifies age verification rules for pornographic websites | Digital Watch Observatory
Western Balkans schools explore AI in education with UNESCO and UNICEF support
(DigWatch) Educators from across the Western Balkans gathered in Sarajevo to discuss the rapid rise of AI in education and its implications for teaching and learning. The regional conference brought together more than 80 teachers and practitioners from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Supported by UNESCO, UNICEF, the French Institute and the Croatian Cultural Society ‘Napredak’, the event focused on both the opportunities and risks associated with AI adoption in education. Discussions covered ethical use of AI, data protection, safeguarding learner well-being and maintaining educational integrity in digital environments. – AI and Education: towards a human-centred future of digital learning
South Korea and Saudi Arabia expand cooperation on AI and digital transformation
(DigWatch) South Korea and Saudi Arabia have agreed to strengthen cooperation in AI and digital transformation as part of a broader partnership spanning energy, advanced industries and critical mineral supply chains. The agreement was signed in Riyadh by South Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-Kwan and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. – MOU with Saudi Arabia raises cooperation in energy, minerals, AI : Korea.net : The official website of the Republic of Korea
Swiss parliament weighs AI apps in media copyright bill
(DigWatch) Swiss lawmakers want the government to examine whether AI applications should be covered by a media copyright bill that would require online services to compensate publishers for displaying extracts from newspaper articles. The Swiss Senate unanimously referred the media copyright bill and related rights bill back to the federal government on Wednesday. The House of Representatives had already approved the request in March by 157 votes to 29, with two abstentions, making the decision final. – Swiss parliament weighs AI apps in media copyright bill | Digital Watch Observatory
Canada enacts cybersecurity legislation to protect critical infrastructure
(DigWatch) Canada has strengthened its national cybersecurity framework after Bill C-8, the Act Respecting Cyber Security (ARCS), received Royal Assent.The legislation is designed to strengthen the security of critical infrastructure and telecommunications networks that support essential services across Canada. The new law amends the Telecommunications Act by making security an explicit policy objective and granting the government additional powers to require action against threats targeting telecommunications systems. – Government of Canada Strengthens Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure with Royal Assent of Bill C‑8 – Canada.ca
European Parliament backs AI Act simplification and nudifier app ban
(DigWatch) The European Parliament has approved amendments to parts of the EU AI Act as part of the digital omnibus package, postponing some compliance deadlines while adding a ban on AI systems used to create non-consensual sexually explicit content. MEPs backed the changes with 423 votes in favour, 57 against and 174 abstentions. The measures are intended to simplify compliance for companies while preserving the AI Act’s risk-based structure and core safeguards. – AI Act: EP approves simplification measures and “nudifier” app ban | News | European Parliament
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