EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has called for a new “diversification instrument“ to reduce Europe’s dependence on single suppliers of chips and rare earths. He made the proposal at the European Policy Center’s Brussels Economic Security Forum on Friday. The tool would force companies in sensitive sectors to source from at least three different suppliers.

“If it’s critical supplies, you have to have three different suppliers to make sure that you cannot be punished because of a political reason,” Šefčovič said. He cited the Energy Union as his model, an initiative he previously led to wean Europe off Russian energy after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The urgency is real. The EU relies on China for more than 90% of its rare earth supplies. Beijing imposed export controls on rare earth magnets last October during a tariff dispute with the United States, and halted chip shipments from Chinese-owned Nexperia after the Dutch government seized control of the company.

Those disruptions hit European carmakers and exposed the bloc’s vulnerability. “Recent industrial cases, in particular supplies of chips and rare earths, have reinforced my conviction that a step change is necessary,” Šefčovič said. “Every high-risk sector must be weaned off single-supplier dependence.”

The EU has since joined forces with Washington and other nations to find alternative sources. Sweden’s discovery of Europe’s largest rare earth deposit offered a long-term glimmer, but mining timelines stretch well beyond a decade. In the meantime, Europe remains exposed.

The proposal comes a day after Šefčovič urged Brussels and Beijing to address the EU’s “unsustainable” trade deficit with China. That deficit widened to €360 billion last year, up 18% from 2024. EU leaders are set to discuss China’s industrial overcapacity and subsidised exports at a summit on 18-19 June.

Šefčovič will also meet Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao in Brussels later this month. He told reporters the next step is a formal legal proposal. “We have to specify what to really do with the legal proposal,” he said.

The broader push to reduce chip dependency has already produced the EU Chips Act, which aims to double Europe’s share of global chip production to 20%. A Chips Act 2.0 was proposed by the Commission in June 2026 with new measures to cut strategic dependencies further.

JBL has taken the wraps off its most ambitious home speakers yet. The company is launching the next-generation Summit Everest and Summit K2 models as part of a new flagship Summit Series. This series was unveiled at High End Vienna 2026.

These aren’t just updates to existing speakers. They continue JBL’s long-running “Project” lineage — a designation reserved for the brand’s most technically advanced loudspeakers. In addition, they arrive as part of the company’s 80th anniversary celebrations.

The new range sits at the very top of JBL’s line-up, joining models like Makalu, Pumori, and Ama. However, the Everest and K2 are the clear headline acts. They are reference-level systems for listeners who want no-compromise performance at home.

The Summit Everest sits at the top of the stack, carrying forward the legacy of four previous Everest generations. It uses a redesigned mid and high-frequency system built around JBL compression drivers and a large-format HDI horn.

Advertisement

This is supported with dual 10-inch mid-bass drivers and dual 15-inch woofers, with the intent on delivering deep bass while maintaining precision across the full frequency range.

Advertisement

Slightly lower in the range, the Summit K2 follows a similar design philosophy but scales things back into a more “accessible” flagship format. Still, it uses JBL’s compression driver system and HDI horn design, paired with a 15-inch woofer and 10-inch mid-bass driver. This approach aims for the same sense of scale and clarity in a smaller footprint.

Both models share JBL’s updated internal architecture, including a redesigned crossover system intended to reduce signal loss and improve power handling. They have also reworked the cabinets, adding heavy internal bracing and damping to minimise unwanted resonance.

Furthermore, new isolation feet decouple the speakers from the floor, delivering cleaner bass response and sharper imaging.

Advertisement

Finish options lean fully high-end, with either high-gloss black with platinum accents or Macassar ebony veneer with gold detailing. Even the hardware has been treated as part of the design, using premium binding posts and high-grade internal wiring throughout.

Advertisement

Pricing underlines exactly where these sit in the market. The Summit Everest comes in at $159,990 per pair. Meanwhile, JBL prices the Summit K2 at $99,990 per pair, firmly placing both models in the ultra high-end territory when they arrive later in 2026.

Advertisement

Got yourself a new Kindle Paperwhite or Colorsoft? Great! Let’s get a cover on that ASAP. A good cover will guard against scratches, scrapes and potential breakages, as well as adding a general protective layer. (These models are all IPX8 waterproof, but you can’t be too careful.)

I’ve rounded up a selection of my favorite Kindle Paperwhite and Colorsoft cases below — these e-readers have the same proportions, so all the cases will work for either. I’ve included Amazon‘s own-brand options and covers from third-party retailers; patterned and plain options in a range of materials; covers that just snap over the front, and cases that envelope the entire Kindle. Most of these have auto-Sleep/Wake functions — so your Kindle will automatically sleep when you close the cover — as well as useful things like handles for a more secure grip. If you like to read and eat at the same time, look out for a case with a built-in stand, so you can keep both hands free.

A California man was sentenced to more than 26 years in federal prison for trafficking fentanyl and methamphetamine through Nemesis Market, one of the world’s largest dark web marketplaces.

39-year-old Darren Hughes of San Jose was convicted on drug trafficking charges in November 2025 and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John F. Kness on May 26.

According to court documents, Hughes operated a store that offered potential clients free samples of methamphetamine on Nemesis Market.

After sending one of the free meth samples to an undercover law enforcement agent who reached out, Hughes also sold the agent methamphetamine and fentanyl pills on five separate occasions in 2023, in exchange for cryptocurrency as payment.

On June 28, 2023, the Redwood City Police Department arrested Hughes in California after arranging another sale with undercover agents.

Detectives from the Street Crime Suppression Team also found approximately 672 grams of methamphetamine and a loaded 9mm “ghost gun” bearing no serial number when searching his vehicle.

​”Criminals selling poison on the dark web often act with impunity and brazenness because they mistakenly believe that they are beyond the reach of federal law enforcement. The Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will identify, investigate, and prosecute drug traffickers regardless of where they operate—and, even if they operate on the dark net,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros.

“Drug dealers once relied on street corners; today, they use the internet to reach customers worldwide. Dark web marketplaces may seem anonymous, but no platform is beyond law enforcement’s reach. Darren Hughes used the internet to profit from addiction and distribute dangerous drugs,” added IRS-CI SAC Adam Jobes.

The Nemesis Market launched in 2021 and quickly grew into one of the world’s largest illegal online markets before being taken down by German and American authorities in March 2024.

At its peak, the dark web cybercrime marketplace hosted more than 150,000 user accounts and 1,100 seller accounts, and processed over 400,000 orders (including roughly 17,000 for opioids like fentanyl, heroin, and oxycodone, and more than 55,000 for meth, cocaine, and crack cocaine).

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and Frankfurt’s cybercrime unit led the Nemesis Market shutdown on March 20, 2024, seizing infrastructure in Germany and Lithuania and confiscating roughly $100,000 in cash.

Investigations had begun in October 2022, involving German, Lithuanian, and American agencies, including the FBI, DEA, and the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Get the whitepaper

A new national AI strategy puts sovereignty front and centre as Canada moves to reduce its dependence on foreign cloud and AI providers.

On Wednesday, the European Commission launched its Technological Sovereignty Package, introducing new legislation to loosen the grip of US Big Tech on European cloud and AI infrastructure. Now Canada has followed suit with its own ‘AI for All’ strategy, built around six pillars and with the explicit goal of ensuring Canadians can “adopt, build and govern AI on their own terms”.

“We will strengthen Canadian sovereignty at a time when it is being deeply challenged,” the strategy states, in a clear reference to tense relations with its neighbours under the Trump administration.

“Too much Canadian innovation is captured and scaled elsewhere,” the strategy reads. “In an era where prosperity, resilience and sovereignty increasingly depend on the ability to build and govern AI on national terms, these are vulnerabilities Canada cannot leave unaddressed.”

The strategy, published yesterday (4 June), points to some of those “vulnerabilities” that Canada needs to address. Sovereign compute capacity is described as “nascent”, with Canadian organisations remaining heavily reliant on foreign providers for the infrastructure underpinning economic, scientific and public-sector activity.

GPU chip fabrication sits “almost entirely offshore”, and only 12pc of Canadian businesses currently use AI – well behind Nordic counterparts, the strategy claims, where adoption runs between 29 and 42pc. The strategy’s six pillars cover:

• safety and democracy protections
• AI skills and literacy for all Canadians
• accelerated adoption across the economy
• building sovereign compute infrastructure
• scaling Canadian AI champions
• forging trusted international alliances

On infrastructure, the Canadian government is committing to building a world-leading supercomputer by 2031 and growing sovereign cloud capacity to reduce dependence on foreign providers, echoing the EU’s CADA (Cloud and AI Development Act) proposals published on Wednesday.

Canada aims to increase business AI adoption from 12pc today to 60pc by 2034, create up to 250,000 new jobs through AI adoption by 2031, and create nearly $200bn in GDP gains from labour productivity improvements.

Priority sectors for investment will be: health and life sciences; energy and natural resources; transportation; agriculture; and manufacturing and robotics.

The strategy flags that Canada has already signed 20 new economic and defence international partnerships in the past year, 11 of which advance AI cooperation. The Canadian government said it will build a strategic multilateral alliance to move “from reliance to resilience” in key AI and technology capabilities.

For children and its citizens in general, the Canadian strategy commits to modernising privacy legislation, introducing online safety laws and providing free AI literacy training to 1m entry-level, post-secondary students.

Canada’s strategy and the EU’s sovereignty package this week are clear signs that the race to reduce dependence on a small number of US technology giants is now a mainstream policy priority on both sides of the Atlantic.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

OpenAI announced a new feature that it says will provide additional protection from prompt injection attacks, where malicious chatbot instructions are hidden in webpages and other content sources.

Among other things, Lockdown Mode will disable live web browsing (so you can only access cached content), the retrieval and display of images from the web (you can still generate images), deep research, and agent mode.

The company says that even with Lockdown Mode turned on, ChatGPT could still be vulnerable to prompt injections — which could, for example, “appear in cached web content or in an uploaded file, and could still affect the behavior or accuracy of a response.”

But the goal is to reduce the likelihood that sensitive data gets shared in the process.

“Lockdown Mode is not intended for everyone,” OpenAI says. “It is designed for people and organizations that handle sensitive data and want stricter protection from data exfiltration risks related to prompt injection.”

The company says it’s currently rolling Lockdown Mode out to self-serve ChatGPT Business accounts, as well as eligible personal accounts.

No no no, we are not sad. *slumps in the corner crying*

Microsoft is officially shutting down Collections, one of the more unique productivity features inside the Edge browser, and many users believe the move reflects the company’s growing obsession with AI-first experiences.

According to Microsoft’s support documentation, Collections in Edge is being discontinued beginning June 2026. The feature allowed users to save groups of webpages, images, notes, shopping links, and research material into organized visual boards directly inside the browser. For students, researchers, online shoppers, and multitaskers, Collections became one of Edge’s most practical hidden tools – and one of the few browser features that genuinely stood apart from Chrome and Safari.

Collections first launched as a productivity-focused tool that blended bookmarking, note-taking, and visual organization into a single interface. Unlike traditional bookmarks, users could drag webpages, screenshots, text snippets, and images into categorized boards that synced across devices. It became especially popular for planning trips, organizing research projects, comparing products, and saving inspiration from across the web.

Now, Microsoft appears ready to move on.

Edge is increasingly becoming an AI-first browser

The removal of Collections arrives as Microsoft aggressively transforms Edge into a platform centered around Copilot and generative AI features. Over the past two years, the company has integrated AI-powered assistants into nearly every part of Edge, from sidebar chat tools and webpage summarization to writing assistance and contextual search.

Critics argue that Collections represented a genuinely useful feature focused on human productivity rather than AI automation. Unlike some newer AI additions that users may ignore entirely, Collections solved a simple but common problem: organizing information gathered across the web without relying on third-party apps like Notion, Pinterest, or Pocket.

We at Digital Trends previously described the feature as one of the browser’s best hidden tools, particularly because it offered a more visual and intuitive alternative to cluttered bookmark folders. Users could quickly collect shopping comparisons, project research, recipes, or reading material into organized workspaces without leaving the browser.

Microsoft has not directly stated that AI features are replacing Collections, but the timing has fueled criticism that practical browser tools are increasingly being sacrificed to make room for AI-centric experiences and interface redesigns.

The broader concern extends beyond Edge itself. Across the tech industry, companies are rapidly reshaping products around generative AI, sometimes at the expense of smaller features users genuinely rely on every day.

Edge users may lose one of the browser’s most practical tools

For longtime Edge users, the shutdown represents the loss of one of the browser’s clearest identity features. While Chrome dominates browser market share, Edge often differentiates itself through smaller quality-of-life tools like vertical tabs, sleeping tabs, and Collections.

The removal could particularly frustrate users who built workflows around the feature for productivity, shopping research, or creative organization. Microsoft has not yet introduced a direct replacement that replicates the same visual organizational experience.

At the same time, the decision signals how seriously Microsoft is prioritizing AI integration across Windows and Edge. The company increasingly sees Copilot as the centerpiece of its software ecosystem, and browser development now appears heavily focused on AI-assisted experiences rather than traditional productivity utilities.

For some users, that future may sound exciting. For others, it may feel like another example of useful software features quietly disappearing in favor of AI tools they never asked for.

A security startup’s autonomous AI agent found 21 previously unknown vulnerabilities in FFmpeg, the open-source media library embedded in almost everything that touches video. The startup, depthfirst, says the run cost roughly $1,000 in compute. Some of the bugs had been hiding in the codebase for more than 20 years.

Days later, Google shipped Chrome 149 with patches for 429 security bugs, the most ever in a single browser release. Over 100 are critical or high severity. The two events arrived independently, but they point in the same direction: AI is finding vulnerabilities faster than humans can fix them.

Depthfirst’s agent scanned FFmpeg’s roughly 1.5 million lines of C and produced a reproducible proof-of-concept for each of the 21 zero-days. Most are heap or stack overflows in parsers and demuxers, spanning components from the TS demuxer to the VP9 decoder. One stack overflow in the service-description-table code dates to 2003.

Nine already carry CVE identifiers (CVE-2026-39210 through CVE-2026-39218). The rest have been fixed upstream but not yet numbered. Depthfirst has published proof-of-concept code.

FFmpeg is not new to AI-driven bug hunting. Google’s Big Sleep agent reported a run of FFmpeg bugs last year. Anthropic’s Mythos model pulled a 16-year-old H.264 flaw and others out of FFmpeg for about $10,000. Depthfirst claims to have done comparable work at a tenth of the cost.

Chrome 149’s record haul is a different story. Google has not attributed the 429 vulnerabilities to AI. But the company overhauled its bug bounty programme in April after a flood of AI-generated submissions, now asking researchers for concise reproducers instead of the long writeups AI tends to produce.

The worst bug, CVE-2026-10881, scores 9.6 on the CVSS scale. It is an out-of-bounds read and write in the ANGLE graphics engine that lets a crafted page escape Chrome’s sandbox and run code on the host. Google paid $97,000 for the report. Of the 22 critical bugs, 19 were found internally.

The pattern keeps repeating. An autonomous tool recently found an authenticated remote code execution flaw in Redis that had gone unnoticed for over two years. A February study showed an AI agent could reproduce working exploits for more than half of 100 real Linux kernel bugs, beating traditional fuzzing.

The hard problem is shifting. Finding these bugs has become cheap. Triaging the reports, shipping the fixes, and getting them installed has not. Much of that work still falls on volunteers and a thin layer of human triagers now expected to keep pace with machines. Mozilla patched 271 Firefox vulnerabilities found by Mythos in a single pass. The question is no longer whether AI can find the bugs. It is whether anyone can fix them fast enough.