As a crowd of 60 anti-vaxxers squeezed into the upstairs dining area of Jonathan’s Grille in Nashville on a recent Monday night, a moment of pride washed over Scott Armstrong.
Years ago, he had been let go from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor for refusing to get vaccinated. Now, unvaccinated people from all over the country were piling into the sports bar to meet others like them. There was a woman who flew in from New Jersey and another from Philadelphia. One group drove up from Florida.
They were there to attend a mixer hosted by Unjected, an anti-vaccination dating app that, according to its website, is “built on creating health-conscious relationships.” It was the second stop on Unjected’s four-city “Summer of Love” tour meant for singles who oppose the Covid-19 vaccine.
“We’re still some of the most persecuted people in society right now,” Armstrong, who now owns a video production company and helped organize the event, tells WIRED. “People still express this absolute hatred for us and for our beliefs in natural health. It just continues to encourage us to host these meetups.”
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The reorientation around in-person events to cure app fatigue is a major trend among dating apps struggling for signs of new life. According to ticketing platform Eventbrite, IRL dating events have been on the rise since 2025. Tinder, as part of its rebrand this year, announced it was investing in member meet-ups. But singles in the anti-vax community say for them the events are about connecting with people—potentially future partners—who, above all, believe in bodily autonomy.
Other platforms include the app Unjabbed, NoVax.Singles, Unjuiced.Date, and the Reddit-style dating and community site also named Unjabbed.net, whose members are spread across the US and Europe. PureBlood.Dating, which operates like a social club, launched earlier this year with a street marketing campaign, posting flyers around San Francisco to attract members that urged people to sign up for notifications on its website if they wanted to join a “community for unvaccinated singles to connect at real, in-person events.”
“This is really a pro-freedom movement. It’s not just an anti-vaccination movement,” says Shelby Hosana, the 32-year-old founder of Unjected. “Whatever goes in your body and whatever you do with your body is 100 percent your choice.”
Unjected was designed specifically for people against the Covid vaccine but, according to its site, it is against all vaccinations. Members operate on an honor system, though the app does offer a premium tier—“Unjected Verfied”—where they attest to their unvaccinated status by affidavit. In 2021, the same year it launched, Unjected was removed from the Apple App Store for violating Covid misinformation policies. The app was reaccepted into the App Store, in addition to being uploaded onto Google Play, in fall 2024, which Hosana attributes to “the timing in the world.” Donald Trump, who in the past promoted the myth that childhood vaccines were linked to autism, won reelection that November.
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Covid and other vaccines have been proven safe through rigorous trials and years of research, and prior to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, taking over the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflected those realities. Recommendations, according to the agency, are updated when warranted by new scientific research and are also monitored by the Food and Drug Administration, which collaborates with government and non-government partners to guarantee vaccine safety.
With the Trump administration weakening vaccine policies and more Americans opting out, the US is seeing a rise in the incidence of diseases that were largely stamped out. According to multiple recent reports, fatal illnesses that many vaccines are known to protect against are again on the rise in the US, including measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and various bacterial infections.
As tech giants rush to build out these massive AI data centers, critics have questioned the land, water and power being guzzled, including the protesters who staked out the Microsoft Build software conference focusing on AI in San Francisco this week.
One of the people positioned at the entrance to the Fort Mason event center, handing out leaflets detailing the effects of data centers being built, was Amy Herman. I spoke to her about her concerns.
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Watch this: AI Data Center Infrastructure Plans Continue to Draw Controversy
“I would say it’s more of an opposing viewpoint,” she clarified when I asked about the protest. “It’s not that we’re against technology, or against any sort of monetization of innovation.”
She said it’s more a challenge of balancing limited natural resources with big tech companies that don’t want to be held accountable for managing climate change while chasing technological advancement.
“What we’re doing on our planet and all the impacts that are happening, not just here in San Francisco but across the United States,” said Herman, adding that “the ripple effects of that are going to be felt.”
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In response to a request for comment, Microsoft said it “respects the right to peaceful protest.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke at the Build 2026 conference about changes the company is making to its data centers.
Corinne Reichert/CNET
During the Microsoft Build keynote on Tuesday morning, CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft would seek community permission to build data centers in the future.
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It’s aiming to get approval from local residents by improving the cooling systems and reducing water use by data centers; ensuring data centers don’t increase electricity prices for locals; adding to “the tax base that funds local hospitals, schools, parks and libraries,” and investing in AI training and non-profits in those areas.
Nadella called the rapid buildout of data centers “extraordinary” during a live podcast on Tuesday with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil of No Priors and Swyx of Latent Space.
“At this point, it’s clear that … we as an industry are very principled about ensuring that the benefits of all the stuff we’re talking about are felt in real ways at the community level,” Nadella said. “It has to be real, where people are saying, ‘It’s not changing the prices of energy for me, in fact, if anything, it’s bringing down the prices because long term there’s going to be a better grid, there’s going to be more energy … water is being replenished.’”
He emphasized the importance of getting communities to buy into AI technologies and the data centers that drive them.
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“All this has to be real. And if that is the case, then we’ll have permission,” he said. “If it is not, you won’t have permission; it’s as simple as that.”
He added that Microsoft is seeking to add jobs during and after construction of these massive data centers — but he said people are right to question it all.
“We have to take it as an industry very seriously,” Nadella said. “I think it’s good for communities to be skeptical, ask the hard questions.”
Some of the people asking those questions were on hand outside Microsoft Build alongside Herman, with colorful imagery depicting scenes of corporate greed, pollution and poverty, eager to speak with conference-goers.
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Herman said one of the major issues is that electricity prices in rural areas are much higher than they were before data centers were constructed in those communities, with people forced to choose between paying for medical support or their electricity bills.
Microsoft has more than 500 data centers in 80 regions, with the tech giant adding more data center capacity in the past 18 months than it did in the first decade of its Azure cloud services. And they’re not only in the US, but across the rest of the globe — Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America.
Nadella explained how Microsoft’s data center design would change and consume only the amount of water that a restaurant does in a year.
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Corinne Reichert/CNET
Speaking during the keynote about the Fairwater data center — “our first AI super factory” — Nadella broke down the three major workflows of such factories into AI training, inference and agent runtime.
“The entire system was designed from the ground up for AI,” Nadella said. “And we’re rethinking even the power delivery … how do we deliver hundreds of kilowatts per row while minimizing … the conversion loss that happens from the grid to the silicon?”
Fairwater went live ahead of schedule in April, with Nadella calling it “the world’s most powerful AI data center” in a post on social media site X.
He says there was a new approach to water use in the Fairwater AI data center’s cooling system, which is filled only once and then can operate “with zero water consumption” thereafter.
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“The daily water usage over the course of an entire year is roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use,” Nadella said on Tuesday.
Some data centers that are currently under construction “will use more energy than large cities,” according to Harvard Law School‘s Ari Peskoe.
Microsoft says Fairwater has “cost-efficient, reliable power,” with usage of around 140kW per rack, 1,360kW per row, as well as software and hardware solutions for reducing power during off-peak times and using “an on-site energy storage solution to further mask power fluctuations without utilizing excess power.” For comparison, the energy usage of a typical US residential utility customer is around 1.2kW.
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Data center protesters outside the Build conference came with signs colored to look like the Windows logo.
Corinne Reichert/CNET
During the keynote on Tuesday morning, Nadella said Microsoft’s new principles for building out data centers involve ensuring they “do not increase the electricity prices, making sure that we are replenishing all our water use, creating jobs in the local communities for the local residents, adding to the tax base, making sure we’re strengthening the communities by investing in local training and the nonprofits in the area.
“Only when we live up to these principles, do the hard work around it, is when we earn the permission to go ahead and innovate and build,” the CEO said.
When I asked Herman about Microsoft’s promises to give back to local communities after seeking their permission to build data centers there, she expressed doubtful hope.
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“If they’re actually that invested, I’d love to see them develop a more cooperative business development model that incorporates democratic values at the core of their operational agendas,” she said. “I haven’t seen that demonstrated in practice internally as a business, so why would I trust it at a local governance level?”
The test parts being printed on the Stratasys Fortus 450mc. (Credit: My Tech Fun, YouTube)
Professional Stratasys FDM printers demand a pretty hefty price premium over your typical hobbyist-level machine, with the gold-plating continuing even with the special filament cartridges that you buy for some of their printers.
This raises the question of in how far this eye-watering price tag is justified, and how much is just you paying for support and the brand name. After acquiring a spool of Stratasys ABS filament via a US viewer, [Dr. Igor Gaspar] set to work to try and answer this question.
The viewer had already liberated the spool of ABS+ P430 filament from its cartridge, making it easy to use that directly with the Bambu Lab FDM printer.
To make it a fair comparison, [Igor] also needed to have a sample printed on a real Stratasys printer, for which he used a local company’s services. An interesting sidenote here is that the US viewer’s company moved away from Stratasys to Bambu Lab printers.
[Igor] was able to see his test parts being printed on the Stratasys printer, as said company is in the same city. This showed him that it took 14 hours to print the parts versus 3.5 hours on the Bambu Lab printer, suggesting that his worries about the right printing parameters for the Stratasys filament were warranted. Sussing those out was thus paramount for a fair comparison and warranted some test prints.
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From a sheer aesthetic point of view the Stratasys-printed parts looked much cleaner, and their dimensional accuracy was also significantly better due to the slicer adjusting for this. Between the used Stratasys M30 and Bambu Lab ABS filaments there’s no clear winner, with both trading blows. Amusingly enough, the older Stratasys ABS type in the form of the ABS+ P430 filament performed the best of all when printed on the Bambu Lab printer at its preferred temperature setting.
Moral of the story is thus that – unless you really want to pay for that service contract – to loot old Stratasys ABS spool cartridges and use them in your hobbyist FDM printer. As [Igor] says in the conclusion, the nicer looks is probably due to them printing very thin layers, much finer than the 0.2 mm layers he used. This would also match the much longer print time and is thus something we can replicate on any FDM printer with a temperature-controlled printing environment.
It’ll be available for PC and mobile, and maybe Nintendo Switch down the line.
Hidden Folks BV
A sequel to the 2017 interactive hidden object game Hidden Folks is coming to PC and mobile in 2027. The developers released the trailer for Hidden Folks 2 during Summer Game Fest’s Wholesome Direct showcase, revealing it’ll bring back the illustrated black-and-white art style and silly sounds that defined the first.
“True to the original, the game is all about exploring the little stories scattered throughout each landscape, without time limits or any pressure to score points,” the team wrote in a Steam post. “The sequel features completely new themes and areas, improved graphical quality, a second (not text!) clue for those in need, lots of new mouth-made sounds, and various quality-of-life improvements.”
The team says it’s working to release Hidden Folks 2 “in the first few months of 2027.” It’ll be available on Steam, itch.io, the App Store, the Google Play Store and possibly Nintendo Switch, “if there’s demand.”
BoE’s Bailey says AI will soon do more than power grids can handle, forcing trade-offs between healthcare, defence, and other sectors.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned on Friday that artificial intelligence may need to be rationed because the power supply cannot keep up with its capabilities. He said companies and governments face “very big social choices” as energy constraints force trade-offs between sectors. The question is not whether AI can do more, but whether there is enough electricity to let it.
“AI is probably going to fairly soon be at a point where it can do more things, more big things than we have the power supply to achieve,” Bailey said at an event in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, with Bloomberg’s Stephanie Flanders and former Cabinet minister Ed Balls.
He framed the dilemma as a choice between competing priorities. “Do we want to make more very big breakthroughs in health?” he asked. Or “do we want to make more breakthroughs in drone technology to fight the Russians in Ukraine?” Bailey said the issue of potential trade-offs was recently raised with him by the head of a large AI firm, whom he did not name.
Bailey has previously argued that the UK economy is stuck between waves of technological innovation. The last wave was the internet. He sees AI as the most likely candidate to be the next general-purpose technology, but has cautioned that productivity benefits will take time to materialise.
On employment, Bailey was less alarmed. He said AI will both create and destroy jobs, pointing to roles like data scientists as examples of new positions that will emerge. “There will be jobs that don’t exist anymore,” he added, but signalled he is not concerned about a surge in mass unemployment.
That tracks with broader warnings that the UK’s AI ambitions may collide with its climate commitments. Bailey’s comments suggest the collision extends beyond carbon: the fundamental constraint may be physical infrastructure that simply cannot be built fast enough.
If you purchased an iPhone 16 or iPhone 15 when they launched, you may be able to claim some of the money from a class action lawsuit against Apple. It’s all tied to the new Apple Intelligence features the company previewed during launch — features that ultimately didn’t arrive on time.
And depending on what Apple announces at its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, you could end up seeing the money before some of those features actually arrive.
Apple last month settled a shareholder lawsuit and agreed to pay $250 million to customers who bought the iPhone 16 and some iPhone 15 models during a specified period. The lawsuit alleged that Apple misled customers by promising AI features that didn’t ship when the new devices did. Payouts between $25 and $95 per eligible device are expected.
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In a statement to CNET Mobile Managing Editor David Lumb, an Apple spokesperson said, “Apple has reached a settlement to resolve claims related to the availability of two additional features. We resolved this matter to stay focused on doing what we do best, delivering the most innovative products and services to our users.”
Why is there a lawsuit over Apple Intelligence?
When Apple advertised its new iPhone 16 lineup, it emphasized how they were optimized for AI features such as an enhanced Siri that could act as an intelligent agent. When the phones did arrive, Apple Intelligence wasn’t yet ready; its first features didn’t arrive until iOS 18.1 five weeks later.
According to the proposed settlement, “Apple allegedly saturated the market with deceptive ads, inducing consumers to purchase iPhones based on the promise of certain enhanced Siri features.”
Customers who purchased one of the following devices between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025, are eligible to receive a settlement payment:
iPhone 16
iPhone 16E
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are included because they had the processor and memory to run Apple Intelligence features.
It’s estimated that there are approximately 36 million customers eligible for this settlement.
Watch this: What iPhone Users Actually Want From the New Google-Powered Siri
How to claim your portion of the settlement
For now, you need to wait.
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As set forth in the settlement, Apple will provide a list of eligible customers and their contact information to a settlement administrator.
After the data has been verified, the company Verita will send email and postal notices to those customers directing them to a settlement website. That site has not yet been created. The deadline for filing your claim will be 90 days after your notice arrives.
When can you expect to receive a settlement payment?
According to the settlement, Apple must provide the information about affected customers within five days of the settlement approval, which is scheduled for June 17, 2026.
When the data is provided and verified, a 45-day notice period begins to inform potential consumers that they’re eligible for a payment.
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The actual payment of claims will occur within a 60-calendar-day window after the final details, such as exclusions and objections, have been worked out. That puts the first checks or deposits arriving sometime after September 2026, depending on court dates and possible extensions.
I’d like to believe I’m organized. Reality suggests otherwise. I’ve left my smartphone in the refrigerator and spent hours searching for it. I’ve misplaced my AirPods and Oura Ring for days at a time. I once lost my house key for three months, only to find it in one of my hoodies. My typical strategy isn’t to look harder; it’s to assume whatever’s missing will eventually reappear someday.
The problem is, lost items don’t always cooperate. Even seasoned travelers know that once luggage disappears onto an airport conveyor belt, all you can do is hope. That’s why Bluetooth trackers are essential. Yes, there are legitimateprivacyconcerns around tracking devices and misuse. But without Bluetooth and GPS trackers, I’d spend considerably more of my life wandering around my apartment wondering, “Where did I put that?”
In the competition between Tile and Chipolo for the most ubiquitous tracker, I would not have guessed that Chipolo would be the one to land exclusive collaborations with both Apple and Google (cough, antitrust congressional hearings, cough). Yet here we are. Chipolo has three separate product lines: the Chipolo Pop, Loop, and Card, plus bundles that work with the Chipolo app; all products are compatible with iOS and Android devices.
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WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu and I have tested several of these lines. They’re at a similar price point to Tile’s and come in a variety of colors. Setup is simple, especially if you use your phone’s native app. I currently have a Card in my wallet. It’s about the same size as one credit card and about as thick as two of them. It’s also loud enough for me to hear even when it’s in my wallet, inside my purse, and in another room. Like with the Tile, you can choose to get alerts if you leave the house without your keys. As with many trackers, the connection can get wonky—I sometimes have to walk around a bit—but it’s usually able to find an accurate last location. —Adrienne So
Best for Apple Devices
Apple’s long-awaited Tile competitor debuted in 2021; AirTags use Bluetooth connectivity and Apple’s special U1 location-finding chip to help you pinpoint location via the Find My app. The second-gen improves the ability to find the tracker’s location when using Apple’s Precision Finding feature, with up to 1.5 times greater range. With a new chime, it’s also 50 percent louder than its predecessor, and Apple says it can be heard from twice as far away as before.
WWDC 2026 is Tim Cook’s final Swan Song ahead of him leaving the firm later this year, and it gives him one opportunity to scrub clean one of the biggest blemishes on his time at Apple: the botched launch of the redesigned, smarter Siri.
Now don’t misunderstand me; Tim Cook has been a force to be reckoned with during his time at the helm, guiding the company through successive iconic product launches like the Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Silicon and much more – but I’m sure that the botched Apple Intelligence rollout still haunts his dreams.
Announced at WWDC 2024 and scheduled for release sometime during the iOS 18 era, the redesigned Siri was the star feature of Apple Intelligence and was supposed to be much smarter, essentially putting it on par with competing LLM-based assistants like Google Gemini.
Well, that didn’t happen, and it didn’t appear the following year in iOS 26 either, with plenty of leaks suggesting that it just wasn’t up to Apple’s standards.
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However, with Apple officially partnering with Google to use Gemini smarts to power Siri earlier this year, and plenty of leaks suggesting that Siri will be the true star of next week’s WWDC 2026, it looks like Tim Cook could finally right that wrong just before he hands the keys over to John Ternus.
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The long-awaited launch of the improved Siri
If the leaks are correct – and given that we’ve seen multiple reports from multiple sources, some with screenshots, it seems that it’s pretty much on the money – the real star of WWDC 2026 won’t be iOS 27, macOS Big Bear (or whatever it’s called), iPadOS 27 or watchOS 27.
No, it’ll be the long-awaited reveal of the smarter, more contextual Siri that Apple has been talking about for years at this point – and it might be the game-changer in AI that Apple has desperately needed to stay competitive in the space.
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Image Credit (Apple)
While Apple Intelligence has been available in some form since late 2024, it’s, on the whole, pretty lacklustre – both in its feature set and in how it actually performs – compared to Android alternatives. That’s true not only of writing tools and transcription but also of Apple’s performance in image-editing tech.
Really, it needed something smarter to reach the performance level of Android counterparts, and, well, it looks like the redesigned (and Gemini-powered) Siri could finally do that. Now, it’s not clear how much is from Apple and how much is from Google, but leaks suggest that the new Siri is going to be very capable indeed.
Image Credit (Bloomberg)
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You should expect all the staples of a modern AI assistant, including a much greater understanding of both you and what you want, by accessing things like emails, messages, files, photos, and more. That should allow Siri to help you find recent files, messages or general queries about files on your phone, all without knowing the exact specifics of what you’re looking for.
Image Credit (Apple)
It’ll also be able to ‘look’ at your screen and complete actions on your behalf, like asking Siri to add an address to a contact card, or send a photo you’re looking at in the Photos app to someone in iMessage.
It’s not just locked down to first-party apps either; it’s said to be able to perform actions across third-party apps, and while we don’t yet have a full picture of what that could entail exactly, Apple has suggested in the past that it’ll be able to move files from one app to another, edit a photo and then share it to someone, or get directions home and send the ETA to someone in WhatsApp.
It’ll also mark the first time that Siri has had an actual app; rumours suggest it’ll work in a similar way to the ChatGPT app, allowing for both text- and voice-based conversations, and just like the competition, you’ll be able to integrate services and apps into the chatbot to expand its feature set.
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Siri’s ambitions go way further than answering queries
That already sounds like a massive improvement over the underwhelming Siri experience Apple is offering right now, but Siri’s ambitions go far beyond a new chatbot experience.
According to a bunch of leaked screenshots that have been doing the rounds on the web over the past few weeks, Siri is going to be deeply integrated into other Apple apps.
That starts with the Camera app, which, in addition to offering photo and video modes, will supposedly offer a dedicated Siri mode. This would essentially replace the Visual Intelligence feature currently baked into the Camera Control button on iPhones, and would allow Siri to analyse the world and answer questions about what you’re seeing.
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Image Credit (Bloomberg)
More interesting is the Photos app; it’s rumoured to not only get two new Siri-powered features in Reframe and Extend – the former allows users to change the perspective of shots, while the latter would use generative image tech to expand the borders of the image – but also natural language photo editing, which would let users tell Siri what edits to make, either via voice or text.
Elsewhere, the Shortcuts app is said to be getting a significant Siri-powered overhaul that’ll allow users to create more complex shortcuts by simply describing what they want it to do, while Apple has also been dabbling in AI-generated wallpapers and a much-improved version of Image Playground for higher-quality images.
And, there’s no single doubt in my mind that it’s only possible thanks to Siri’s upgraded capabilities – though we’ll have to wait and see how it actually performs in users’ hands because, well, Apple Intelligence hasn’t exactly convinced me of its premiership so far.
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Apple’s on-device hook
Now I’m not going to pretend that these are entirely new AI features – they’re not. We’ve seen pretty much all of this on the Android side of things in one form or another (okay, bar the Shortcuts app – I still wish Google had an alternative to that app!), and it’d be easy to say that this is simple Apple playing catch-up to the competition.
But there’s a core difference here: Apple’s laser focus on privacy.
Image Credit (Apple)
Most Android-based AI tools, especially image-based tools, rely on cloud processing – and that means sending your private data to a cloud-based server somewhere, before the result is sent back to you via the web. Depending on what you’re doing, that could be a privacy nightmare.
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But Apple has always had a particular focus on privacy that stands in direct opposition to how Google does things with Android – and it seems that’ll continue with the new Siri experience.
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It’s said that Apple is aiming to keep as much processing on-device as possible to limit the amount of data that leaves the user’s device, and, where necessary, it’ll lean on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute systems that even Apple doesn’t have internal access to.
It’s also said that Apple will limit Siri’s memory, including restrictions on the information it can ‘remember’ and how long it’s kept, with users able to auto-delete chats and requests after set periods.
And it’s that focus on privacy that’ll really help Apple sell the upgraded Siri experience, even in the face of much more established options from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and the like. I just hope that it actually works as well as it sounds, because Apple can’t mess this up. Not again.
Former tech executive and VC Sriram Krishnan is leaving the Trump administration at the end of June.
“It is hard to express how big a privilege it has been to serve the American people and how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to do so,” Krishnan said in a post on X. “First and foremost, it has been an honor to serve under President [Donald Trump]. Without his leadership, we would not be leading in the AI race.”
Krishnan, who’s been serving as a senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence at the White House, was one of a number of tech industry figures to take roles in the second Trump administration. Krishnan has led product teams at Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook, and Snap, and he was most recently a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders threw their support behind Trump during the 2024 election.
Krishnan noted that the person he “worked [most] closely with over the last 18 months” was David Sacks, the investor and podcaster who stepped down as AI and crypto czar earlier this year and became co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
“[Sacks’] continuing advocacy for America winning on AI has been and continues to be crucial,” Krishnan said.
Next, Krishnan said he will be “building institutions” that tackle big challenges for “America and its allies.” According to The Washington Post, he’s planning to start an outside institution that will still give him a role in influencing Trump’s AI policy.
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“Whether it is energy, data centers or a clear path for Americans to experience the benefits of AI, there are many tough issues we all need to navigate together,” Krishnan said.
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DoE wants to keep 13 coal-fired power generators going at the same time as funding nuclear research
The Trump Administration is using Cold War-era rules to authorize up to $500 million in funding to keep 13 coal-fired power plants going and build a coal export terminal in California.
America’s Department of Energy (DoE) says it is securing the funding via the Defense Production Act (DPA), which grants the president authority to use federal financial incentives to stimulate private domestic industry deemed critical to national defense.
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At the same time, the DoE announced that one of the advanced nuclear reactor projects it has been sponsoring has achieved criticality ahead of a July 4 deadline set by President Trump.
That DPA funding includes up to $425 million for 12 projects to “expand and reinvigorate” the aging US coal power fleet, plus up to $75 million for the West Gateway Terminal Project in Oakland, California.
This will be an export terminal reached by rail, capable of handling more than 10 million tons annually, which the government hopes to export to nations such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia.
The pretext for authorizing funding via the DPA is that the DoE is ensuring the US maintains the industrial capacity and energy resources it needs to strengthen national security.
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Those projects chosen are intended to keep domestic coal mining alive and support reliable baseload power generation to boost the resilience of critical energy infrastructure, the DoE said.
The coal industry in America has been declining for decades. It delivered 578 million tons in 2023, less than half the amount produced in 2008 when coal production peaked, according to figures from the US Energy Information Administration.
And according to a report from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), it was largely due to natural gas becoming cheaper, rather than green energy rules or clean air legislation, while solar and wind have also proved a competitive threat to coal.
But the recent AI-driven datacenter build boom has pushed electricity demand upwards after years of stagnation, prompting coal-fired plants to stay online rather than retire.
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A group of environmental nonprofit organizations warned earlier this year that coal plants in America emit pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), both threatening human health, in addition to the greenhouse gases belched out.
The DoE is at least pushing ahead with new nuclear reactor technology. One of its advanced reactor designs, the Mark-0 from Antares Nuclear, has successfully completed what the agency calls a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the Idaho National Laboratory.
This is basically a test running a controlled, self-sustaining chain reaction, but with no electricity generation involved, simply to show that the reactor can operate safely.
Perhaps the reason for the announcement is that Energy Secretary Chris Wright promised in an interview with Bloomberg last year that at least one small nuclear reactor project would be online by July 2026.
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Sustaining a test chain reaction doesn’t really count as online in our book, but we’ll let that pass.
The DoE said the Mark-0 is the first of multiple advanced reactors anticipated to go critical by July 4, the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence.
“It is fitting that on the eve of our nation’s 250th anniversary, we are witnessing a historic moment for American energy,” Secretary Wright commented. “For the first time in more than four decades, a new privately developed non-light-water reactor has reached criticality in the United States.”
The DoE announced the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program last June, and in August disclosed a list of ten companies it has accepted to take part, including Antares Nuclear.
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In other news, the department also trumpeted that Japan is officially joining the Trump Administration’s Genesis Mission, billed as a national effort to use AI to drive scientific discoveries.
Japan’s RIKEN scientific research institute and Fujitsu began working with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Nvidia to build the compute infrastructure for Genesis back in January, but now the DoE says that Japan and the US are both contributing $500 million each to the project.
The move makes Japan the first, and so far only, international partner on Genesis. ®
Totally different attack from the break-in last month. Oh so that’s OK then
Oxford University students seeking work will be dismayed to learn that crooks have breached a second external platform provider for the university in as many months.
The institution’s CareerConnect platform, provided by Group GTI, was the target of the intrusion, which exposed users’ full names and email addresses. Those who don’t use single sign-on (SSO) had their encrypted passwords leaked, too.
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CareerConnect forms part of Oxford University’s career services department, supporting students and alumni to find work opportunities. It is available to students, alumni, research staff, and recruiters.
The same underlying technology powering the platform, which GTI markets as TargetConnect, is used by other universities in the UK and overseas, according to its website.
OxfordUni said the May 28 attack was enabled by a “security vulnerability,” which has since been fixed.
GTI has not publicly disclosed the security snafu itself, and did not respond to our requests for more information. The London-based tech company has not confirmed how many individuals were affected by the break-in, nor whether any data was stolen.
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It has also not explicitly stated which types of individuals were affected, although Oxford’s announcement listed “alumni, research staff, and employer users” as those who had their passwords forcibly reset following the attack.
“There is no evidence that course information, uploaded files, appointment information, or financial information were involved in this incident,” the announcement went on to say.
“GTI has stated this breach appeared to be focused on gathering credentials which may lead to phishing attempts.”
The university did not list current students as among those affected, but told student newspaper Cherwell that names and email addresses might be compromised, and said the attack was entirely separate from the one which hit Instructure’s Canvas last month.
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Twice bitten
Oxford University was just one of the circa 8,800 educational institutions affected by the mega breach at Canvas, a separate platform that’s also relied upon by schools, colleges, and universities.
Seemingly timed by ShinyHunters to coincide with exam season, students across multiple countries were left without access to learning materials, tests, and grades at a pivotal time of the year.
The scale of the attack was vast, affecting the usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information, and messages of up to 275 million students, teachers, and staff.
The severity of the situation, coupled with the inopportune timing, led to Instructure “reaching an agreement” with ShinyHunters to prevent the criminal gang from leaking all the data online.
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In cyberese, this implies Instructure paid the criminals an extortion fee in exchange for their word that they would delete the stolen data.
“We received digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs),” Instructure said, adding “We have been informed that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.” ®
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