Aiper Scuba V3

MSRP $949.99

Released February 2026

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“The Scuba V3 punches above its weight-class with both outstanding performance and value”

Pros

• Lightweight
• Cleans well
• Intuitive app

Cons

• Will not clean the water surface
• Mediocre battery life

Instant Insight 

I have always maintained that owning a pool is like owning a boat – you will spend 90% of your time maintaining and cleaning it and 10% of your time enjoying it, especially if you live in Oregon as I do. Over the years, we have seen robot cleaners evolve from erratic, cord-tangled wall-bumpers to reliable vacuums, and technology keeps getting better, especially in the age of AI. Priced at $1,199 MSRP (with a street price currently around $970 USD), the Aiper Scuba V3 is not trying to be the cheapest impulse buy at the pool store, but instead, positions itself as a premium AI-driven assistant that brings sophisticated navigation of high-end robot vacuums to the bottom of your backyard oasis.  

New for 2026, the Aiper Scuba V3 robotic pool cleaner has new AI features and more value, although it sacrifices some tech to offer such a good value. The Scuba V3 is currently priced between the top-of-the-line Scuba X1 Pro Max ($1699) and the Scuba X1 ($899.99), offering newer AI-focused features for just $70 more. The Scuba V3 is equipped with AI Vision and dToF(Direct Time of Flight) sensors, which give this pool cleaner more of an organized purpose than recklessly bouncing around the pool.  

During my tests, the Scuba V3 proved to be a reliable, hardy worker with long battery life. If you already have a pool cleaner that is a few years old and working great, it’s not worth spending money on the Scuba V3, but if you are in the market, then I would recommend jumping into the pool cleaner ecosystem. Paired with the Aiper EcoSurfer S2 skimmer, both of these devices should do the job in keeping your pool spotlessly clean.  

Aiper V3 Specifications:  

Here is how the Aiper Scuba V3 measures up : 

Design and Weight: Like a paper tank 

Like most pool cleaners on the market, the Scuba V3 uses a tank tread design to move the unit around. And like the rest of the products in the Aiper robot pool cleaner line-up, the casing is made up of a piano black finish that looks high-quality. Rather than the gold or carbon fiber surround found on the more expensive Aiper units, the V3 has some light blue trim, which would indicate more of a value virtue signal. Dimension-wise, the Scuba V3 is considerably smaller than the Scuba X1 or Scuba X1 Pro Max, which are not only taller, longer, and wider, but also considerably heavier.

I put some charts below that show the weight of the Scuba V3 compared to others in its price range – it comes in on the lighter side in the comparison (when not wet), which is nice for those who really have trouble pulling these cleaners out of their pool. Aiper sells a caddie to help you transport their pool cleaners to and from the pool, but would surmise that most people can skip the caddie, as the V3 is pretty light.  

I found that the tank treads did a great job moving the V3 around my pool, and they stuck to the side of the pool without issue, despite a suction lower than that of higher-end models. Underneath, you have four scrubbing brushes – two in the front and two in the back – that do a good job agitating algae, mineral deposits, and debris before the suction kicks in. The debris is funneled into a newly designed 3.5-liter collection basket wrapped in a Micromesh filter.

The overall build quality feels premium; the plastics are thick, the moving parts feel solid, and there are no flimsy latches that feel destined to snap off after a single summer in the sun. I noted in my Beatbot Aquasense 2 Ultra review that they put extra screws and parts in the box, which is a clear sign to me that something is going to wear out. 

The Aiper Scuba V3 is a thoughtful and rugged piece of engineering.  

When you are dealing with robotic pool cleaners, dry weight directly correlates to user experience, specifically, how miserable it is to pull the machine out of the water once it has finished its cleaning cycle. Here is how the competitive landscape breaks down: 

• The Featherweights (Under 20 lbs): The Aiper Scuba V3 (18.1 lbs) and the Dolphin Liberty 400 (17.9 lbs) are the clear winners here. Aiper managed to pack the V3 with a complex AI vision system and heavy-duty tank treads without inflating its mass. It is incredibly easy to retrieve one-handed using the included hook. We also included the corded Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus (20.8 lbs) as a baseline to show that premium cordless tech doesn’t necessarily mean a heavier machine. 

• The Middleweights (23 to 25 lbs): The highly anticipated Beatbot Sora 70 (23.0 lbs) sits right in the middle of the pack. While it is about five pounds heavier than the Scuba V3, that extra weight is justified by its internal buoyancy chambers, which allow it to float up and clean the surface of the water (a feature the V3 lacks). The older Aiper Scuba S1 Pro (25.0 lbs) and Beatbot Aquasense Pro (24.3 lbs) also live in this tier, representing the maximum weight most users can comfortably lift without straining their backs. 

• The Heavyweight (30+ lbs): Aiper’s flagship model, the Scuba X1 Pro Max (33.1 lbs), is an absolute behemoth. While it offers a staggering 5-hour battery life and 8,500 GPH of suction, pulling 33 pounds of dead weight (plus trapped water) out of the deep end is a genuine physical workout. 

Ultimately, the Scuba V3 strikes a near-perfect balance, offering premium AI navigation in a chassis light enough that anyone in the family can confidently deploy and retrieve it. 

Navigation: The most important part of any robot cleaner 

I get asked a lot about what makes these pool cleaners so much better than the other, and the answer is simple: Does it clean the pool to your satisfaction, and is it low maintenance? Sounds simple, but as you know, it’s not that easy. Pools come in a lot of shapes and depths, so to get a pool clean, you need a good brain to tell the cleaner how to navigate (and you need long battery life, too).  

Powered by what Aiper calls its “Cognitive AI Navium Mode” and “VisionPath Adaptive Path Planning,” this robot uses an integrated underwater camera combined with dToF (Direct Time of Flight) optical sensors. Think of dToF as a form of laser radar; it sends out light pulses and measures how long they take to bounce back, creating a highly accurate 3D map of your pool’s interior. When you drop the Scuba V3 into the water, it doesn’t just wander. It assesses the shape of the pool, detects obstacles with its optical sensors, and plans a precise, overlapping, lawnmower-style route. 

But the really cool trick is the “AI Patrol” mode. I actively tested this by tossing a handful of fine potting soil and a few sunken leaves into the deep end. The Scuba V3’s camera has a 2-meter detection range and is trained to recognize over 20 different types of debris. As it cruised nearby, I literally watched the robot alter its path, turn directly toward the dirt pile, and suck it up before resuming its standard grid.

It was like watching a predator spot its prey. 

There is a very visible difference in how the Scuba V3 seems to navigate compared to the Scuba X1, for example. The V3 looks very “aware” almost like a living being; it’s creepy at first. Furthermore, Aiper equipped the front of the unit with dual LED headlights. This allows the AI vision system to function perfectly during night cleanings, illuminating the murky depths so it never loses its way. And for the privacy-conscious, Aiper guarantees zero image storage and zero image upload – what happens in your pool, stays in your pool.  

Performance: Suck it up, kid 

In all my robot pool cleaner testing, I am still wondering what the point of diminishing returns is when it comes to gallons per hour (GPH) of suction. Spend more on a pool cleaner and get a higher suction rate, but what is the minimum you need for good performance in the category? I have yet to find that out. The Scuba V3 measures in at 4800 GPH, which isn’t nearly at the top of its class, but not weak either. The higher-end and slightly more expensive Scuba X1 comes in at 6600 GPH, which feels like A LOT more compared to the V3, but in my tests, the Scuba V3 did just fine.

During my two-week testing period, my pool was subjected to a barrage of spring pollen, wind-blown sand, and the inevitable barrage of leaves. The V3 offers multiple cleaning modes, but “Auto” (which hits the floor, walls, and waterline) and “AI Patrol” were my easy-option choices. Let’s talk about the filtration first. The basket utilizes a 3-micron MicroMesh filter. For context, a single strand of human hair is about 70 microns thick.

This mesh is so fine that it doesn’t just trap leaves and twigs; it captures that incredibly annoying, cloudy silt and fine sand that usually blows right through the exhaust of cheaper robotic vacuums. You can pull the micro-mesh filter out and use the standard filter if you want. I’m located here in Western Oregon, where I do not need to deal with sand or fine debris, as you might get in Arizona or Nevada, so I typically stick with the standard filter.  

Wall climbing is where the Scuba V3 truly shows off. It scales the vertical walls of my pool effortlessly. But the standout feature is the JetAssist™ horizontal waterline cleaning. Many robots will climb a wall, poke their nose out of the water, and fall back down. The V3 climbs up to the waterline and then uses a directed jet of water to push itself horizontally along the pool tile, vigorously scrubbing the scum line with its dual brushes.

It looks like it is defying gravity. 

It did a solid job of cleaning the waterline, cleaning about 1 inch higher up on the side; it literally hit the brick surround that hangs over the pool. One area that the V3 needs help with (and most pool cleaners do) would be the stairs. The Scuba V3 would make it up the first step no problem, then struggle with the second on occasion. I still had to manually clean the stairs every couple of weeks to finish the job thoroughly, though.   

It is important to understand where the Scuba V3 sits in terms of raw power. Here is a quick visual breakdown of how it compares to its direct competitors: 

• Aiper Scuba X1 Pro Max: 8,500 GPH  

• Aiper Scuba S1 Pro: 6,000 GPH 

• Beatbot Aquasense Pro: 5,500 GPH 

• Aiper Scuba V3: 4,800 GPH 

• Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus: 4,500 GPH 

The Aiper App and connectivity: Now with a weather forecast 

I’ve always liked the Aiper app and find it to be easy to operate their products. It’s also easy to set up a new Aiper device with the app. Like their previous products, you need to install the app, turn the Scuba V3 into Bluetooth mode, connect the device to the app, and then set up Wi-Fi. 9/10 on the ease of use scale.  

I find the interface to be clean and functional. It’s easy to find instructions and support for your product through the app in the event that you throw out the setup guide. Aiper calls their app AI Navium because it’s an “advanced, cognitive AI mode designed for intelligent pool and yard management”. The key selling points by Aiper include:  

• Cognitive Cleaning plans: It will generate weekly cleaning plans based on AI analysis 

• Weather/History Sync: Analyzes local weather and past cleaning logs to determine optimal cleaning times 

• Vision Path Integration: Combines AI vision and dToF (direct time of flight) sensors for precise navigation 

• Smart Yard management: You can store different yards and products so that the system can schedule devices based on yards.  

AI Navium is an attempt by Aiper to get you to buy into their entire ecosystem of products so they can fully automate your yard. From sprinkler systems to pool cleaners and pool skimmers. I can’t really give you a detailed review of the AI Navium ecosystem based on a couple of products.

I love the idea of scheduling based on the weather, but it feels more gimmicky than anything. For me, it’s as simple as dumping the cleaner into the pool and coming back a few hours later and expecting the pool to be clean. How the cleaner does that isn’t really important to me.  

I want to point out, like I do for all of my pool cleaner reviews, that once the cleaner is submerged, you will lose a Wi-Fi connection to it. WiFi signals will not travel through water unless you have a special Wi-Fi communication device like the Aiper HydroComm, which will set you back $300-$400.

The Aiper HydroComm product not only extends Wi-Fi to your submerged cleaner, but also gives you pool chemical readings so you know if you need to add more chemicals to your pool. You decide if you need something like that. For me, personally, I am not changing the cleaning settings mid-cycle, so I am perfectly fine without a Wi-Fi connection while it’s underwater.  

Skimming off the top 

The Aiper Scuba V3 does have one feature missing that might be important to a lot of people – the ability to skim the top of the water to get floating debris. Here is why I don’t think this is that important: I would prefer to have a dedicated skimmer like the Aiper EcoSurfer S2 than to have it built into the pool cleaner itself. Once my pool bottom and walls are clean, I will pull the cleaner out, but I like to keep the EcoSurfer S2 running all day and sometimes all night.

Since it’s powered by solar, the battery literally never runs out, so you have a product that will likely suck up the debris before it hits the bottom of the pool. It’s like preventative maintenance, and I think the Aiper Ecosurfer S2 is the best skimmer on the market. Aiper sells both the Scuba V3 and the Ecosurfer S2 together in a package that saves you around a hundred bucks; that’s what I would personally recommend. 

If you want a pool cleaner that also skims on the top, there are plenty to choose from, but I highly recommend you get one with long battery life so it has plenty of time to clean the surface. Larger pools might give your pool cleaner an impossible challenge in this department if you do not size up the cleaner’s battery with your pool.  You can read my Aiper Surfer S2 review if you want to know more about it.

Battery life 

Battery life is what will really matter to you, especially if you have a larger pool. In my real-world testing, a full charge reliably delivered around 140 to 150 minutes of continuous cleaning. For my standard 15,000-gallon pool, this was more than enough time for the V3 to meticulously scrub the entire floor, climb every wall, and trace the entire waterline. Once the V3 was finished with the floor and walls, I had about 30 minutes of batter life leftover, not enough for another cleaning before it needed a recharge, but enough time leftover for me to run some errands and know that it’s still floating at the surface waiting for retrieval (the Scuba V3 will find an edge of the pool and float there thanks to its fans, waiting for you to pick it up out of the pool).  

Aiper packs a wireless charging dock with the Scuba V3, which lets you just set the robot on the dock without plugging anything into it. Typically, only more expensive robot cleaners come with a dock like this. The Beatbot Sora 70, for example, doesn’t come with a wireless dock and has a price tag of over $300 more. Using the charging dock, fully charging the Aiper Scuba V3 took a few hours to get to a full charge – pretty standard.  

The chart at the top of this response illustrates how the Aiper Scuba V3’s battery life stacks up against leading cordless robotic pool cleaners in the $900 to $1,900 price bracket. 

As the data shows, the Aiper Scuba V3 ($949) sits squarely in the middle of the pack with its 150-minute run time. Here is a breakdown of what that means for your purchasing decision: 

• The Direct Competitors: The Scuba V3 goes toe-to-toe with the Polaris Freedom, which typically retails for around $1,300 and offers an identical 150-minute battery life. However, the V3 heavily outperforms the similarly priced Dolphin Liberty 400 (~$1,200), which taps out after just 90 minutes of cleaning. 

• The Budget Alternative: Interestingly, Aiper’s own older model, the Scuba S1 Pro ($549), actually delivers 30 more minutes of runtime (180 minutes total) for less money. While you sacrifice the V3’s advanced AI Vision navigation and wireless charging dock by dropping down to the S1 Pro, it remains a fantastic option if sheer battery longevity on a budget is your top priority. 

• The Premium Upgrades: If you have an exceptionally large pool that demands marathon cleaning sessions, you will have to pay for it. The Beatbot Aquasense Pro ($1,861 and one of my favorites) pushes past the 3-hour mark with 205 minutes of bottom-cleaning endurance, while Aiper’s flagship Scuba X1 Pro Max ($1,830 and another favorite of mine) dwarfs the competition with an astonishing 300 minutes (5 hours) of battery life on a single charge. 

Ultimately, while the Scuba V3 doesn’t claim the crown for the longest-lasting battery on the market, 150 minutes is more than sufficient for the average 15,000-to-20,000-gallon residential pool. 

Durability and Warranty 

When you drop $1,199 on a piece of technology that lives underwater, you want absolute confidence that it isn’t going to short out or fall apart after a few months. The Aiper Scuba V3 feels incredibly robust. The outer shell is made of a high-impact, UV-resistant plastic that showed absolutely no signs of fading or chalking despite sitting out in the sun for hours on end. The tank treads are thick rubber, showing minimal wear even after aggressively scrubbing abrasive pool plaster for two weeks. 

Internally, the brushless motors are sealed tightly, and the elimination of the physical charging port via the new wireless dock removes the most common point of failure for underwater electronics (water leaking into the battery compartment). 

Aiper backs the Scuba V3 with a comprehensive 2-year warranty. In the world of pool robotics, 2 years is the standard benchmark, though some higher-priced competitors (like Beatbot) stretch to 3 years. Aiper’s customer service has built a solid reputation over the last few years, offering 24/7 support and a 30-day free return window if the robot simply doesn’t gel with your pool’s specific layout. Furthermore, Aiper regularly pushes over-the-air firmware updates via the AI Navium app, ensuring the robot’s navigation algorithms continue to improve over time. 

Full disclosure on my part: I only had the Aiper Scuba V3 for about a month, and while I had no issues with reliability, one month isn’t nearly long enough to test a pool cleaner in my opinion. So I’ll come back to the review and update it after I have the Scuba V3 for a while longer. I would recommend checking out the customer reviews on their website and any user reviews that might show up on Amazon, Google, and Reddit.  

Should you buy the Aiper Scuba V3? 

If you are in the market for a new pool cleaner, I would highly recommend the Scuba V3 and the Ecosurfer S2. With both products, you will have a spotless pool in no time. I think the Scuba V3 is a great value for the price; you get an effective cleaner built by a supportive company, a wireless charging doc and a very intuitive app to use.  

How I Tested The Aiper Scuba V3 

To evaluate the Aiper Scuba V3, I used it as my exclusive pool cleaning solution for 14 consecutive days in a 15,000-gallon, rectangle-shaped, in-ground plaster pool located in a high-wind environment prone to heavy debris. Testing involved subjecting the robot to both high-load days (deliberately dumping measured amounts of fine potting soil, sand, and larger cherry tree leaves into the deep end) and low-load days featuring standard ambient dust and bugs. 

I tested the robot in all available app modes, closely monitoring the AI Patrol’s ability to recognize and divert toward specific debris clusters. Battery runtimes were measured from the moment the robot submerged to the exact moment it engaged its Smart Waterline Parking feature. Navigational efficiency was visually tracked to ensure overlapping floor coverage without repeated blind spots, and the wireless charging dock was evaluated for ease of use and consistent charging times in an uncovered outdoor environment. 

Quadcopters tend to have very poor efficency because of their high disk loading. High disk loading– that is, how much weight each square meter of area swept by the propellers must carry–is almost unavoidable with conventinal quadcopters, which are controlled by throttling the four props. Make the propellers too big, and their inertia slows down that control loop, leading to stability problems. [rctestflight] had an idea to solve this, by borrowing a technology from the world of fixed-wing aviation: variable-pitch propellers.

In aircraft use, they are not new, dating back to the end of the first world war. They’re made for everything from the largest turboprops to the  75 kW(100 HP) Rotax 912. By varying the propeller pitch, you can keep the engine turning in its ideal RPM range but still vary thrust by taking a larger or shallower ‘bite’ out of the air with each sweep of the prop. You can probably see how this applies to the quadcopter: a well-designed pitch-change mechanism is going to be much quicker than throttling a big prop with lots of rotational inertia. That’s the theory.

To test it, [rctestflight] builds some large 3D-printed variable pitch props, hooks them up to regular drone motors via a belt drive, before going on–you guessed it–an RC test flight. To make that work, he’s got the pitch servo being driven from what should be the flight controller’s thrust output to each motor. Aside from the vibrations from imperfect balance on the 3D-printed props, it flies quite well– and much better with pitch control than trying to vary the RPMs of those heavy props. He’s even able to reverse the propeller pitch, making this perhaps the first quadcopter capable of autorotation. Well, almost, given that it lost control and came apart when he cut the throttle.

As for efficiency, it is exactly what you’d expect from this disk loading– so, higher than a conventional quad–even with losses from the belt drive and the high-friction surface of a 3D print. Speaking of 3D-prints, the props did hold up to the maximum RPMs he could throw at them, so no ‘kaboom’ in this video. There is a fun rotary subwoofer bonus at the end, though.

Overall, [rctestflight] thinks his variable-pitch quadcopter proves the concept, but that if you’re going to all this effort you may as well build a helicopter and have fewer points of failure. We kind of have to agree. That is how it worked out historically, after all.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen hackers trying to improve drone efficiency– there was the hybrid ‘giant propeller’ drone a while back, and the ‘slap a wing on it’ technique featured more recently.

The gaming mouse world has pretty much been the same for the last few years, with the only real improvement being weight savings. Now, Logitech has just introduced a new high-end gaming mouse in India, the Pro X2 Superstrike, and it’s bringing something genuinely new to the table. With it, the company is trying to rethink how mouse clicks work entirely, replacing traditional mechanical switches with a new system designed for faster response and better control. Here’s what you need to know about it.

A New Way to Click

The biggest highlight of the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE is its Haptic Inductive Trigger System (HITS), which ditches conventional microswitches in favor of inductive analog sensing paired with real-time haptic feedback.

In simpler terms, clicks aren’t just registered—they’re felt instantly. The system allows players to adjust the sensitivity of each click, with multiple actuation levels and reset points to suit their playstyle. Whether you prefer quick taps in FPS games or more deliberate clicks in strategy titles, the mouse can be tuned accordingly. Logitech claims this setup can reduce click latency by up to 30 milliseconds, and if this is true, it’ll reshape the landscape altogether. We have the Pro X2 for testing purposes, so keep an eye out for the full review dropping soon.

Beyond the click tech, the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE packs serious hardware. It features Logitech’s HERO 2 sensor with up to 44K DPI and supports an 8K polling rate, meaning it sends data to your PC every 0.125 milliseconds. The mouse is also capable of tracking extremely fast movements, with support for high acceleration and precise tracking even during rapid flicks. Despite all that, Logitech has kept the weight down to around 65 grams, making it suitable for long gaming sessions without fatigue. It also includes PTFE feet for smoother gliding and a battery life of up to 90 hours, which should easily last through extended sessions.

The Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE will be available in India in a Lunar Eclipse color option, priced at ₹23,995.

A threat actor tracked as UNC6783 is compromising business process outsourcing (BPO) providers to gain access to high-value companies across multiple sectors.

According to the Google Threat Intelligence Group, dozens of corporate entities have been targeted through this method to exfiltrate sensitive data for extortion.

Austin Larsen, GTIG principal threat analyst, says that UNC6783 typically relies on social engineering and phishing campaigns to compromise BPOs working with targeted companies.

However, there have been instances where the hackers have also contacted support and helpdesk staff within targeted organizations, in an attempt to obtain direct access.

The researchers say that UNC6783 may be linked to Raccoon, a persona known to have targeted multiple BPOs that provide services to large companies.

In social engineering attacks over live chat, the threat actor directs support employees to spoofed Okta login pages hosted on domains that impersonate those of the target company and follow the pattern [.]zendesk-support<##>[.]com.

Larsen says that the phishing kit deployed in these attacks can steal clipboard contents to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) protection, enabling the attacker to register their device with the organization.

Google has also observed attacks where UNC6783 distributed fake security updates to deliver remote access malware.

After stealing sensitive data, the threat actor proceeds to extort victims, contacting them via ProtonMail addresses with payment demands.

While GTIG did not offer more information about Raccoon, threat intelligence account International Cyber Digest recently disclosed that someone using the alias “Mr. Raccoon” claimed a breach at Adobe, which the company has yet to confirm.

The attacker claimed to have gained access to Adobe data after compromising an India-based BPO working for the company. They deployed a remote access trojan (RAT) on an employee’s computer and subsequently targeted the employee’s manager in a phishing attack.

Mr. Raccoon said that they stole 13 million support tickets containing personal data, employee records, HackerOne submissions, and internal documents.

In conversations with BleepingComputer, the threat actor behind the CrunchyRoll breach confirmed that they were also behind the Adobe attack, but did not provide any evidence.

Google’s Mandiant listed several defense recommendations against UNC6783 attacks, including deploying FIDO2 security keys for MFA, monitoring live chat for abuse, blocking spoofed domains that match Zendesk patterns, and regularly auditing MFA device enrollments.

Automated pentesting proves the path exists. BAS proves whether your controls stop it. Most teams run one without the other.

This whitepaper maps six validation surfaces, shows where coverage ends, and provides practitioners with three diagnostic questions for any tool evaluation.

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from the ah-yes,-the-ministry-of-truth dept

Remember when the Biden administration set up something called the “Disinformation Governance Board” and the entire MAGA universe lost its collective mind? It was the “Ministry of Truth.” It was “government speech police.” It was the single most Orwellian thing any American administration had ever done in the history of civilization. Nina Jankowicz, the researcher tapped to lead it, received death threats. The whole thing was shut down within weeks because of the outcry.

Of course, all of it was an exaggeration. That board was actually set up to coordinate efforts to counter foreign disinformation — not to police Americans’ speech. We said so at the time, even while criticizing DHS for the monumentally stupid way they named and rolled it out. The name was terrible. The communication around it was worse. But the underlying mission — helping coordinate the government’s own efforts to respond to (not censor) foreign influence operations — was legitimate and, frankly, important in this era of information warfare.

Well, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just signed a cable doing something that sounds vaguely similar, but way worse. Specifically, he’s directing U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide to launch coordinated campaigns countering foreign propaganda — and the cable explicitly endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool for the effort. It also admits that this is pure psyops work:

The cable instructs those embassies and consulates to pursue five broad goals: countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls “telling America’s story”. Embassies are told to recruit local influencers, academics and community leaders abroad to carry counter-propaganda messaging, an approach designed to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed.

“These campaigns seek to shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms,” the cable says. “Using digital platforms, state-controlled media, and influence operations, they pose a direct threat to US national security and fuel hostility toward American interests.”

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Notably, the cable tells diplomatic offices to coordinate their work with “the Department of War’s Psychological Operations” – the military unit more commonly known as Miso, or Military Information Support Operations, formerly Psyop, which is part of the Pentagon.

This is far more expansive than anything the Disinformation Governance Board ever even contemplated — and the same people who screamed about the Ministry of Truth are, once again, completely silent.

Kate Klonick has written an excellent deep dive on this for Lawfare, tracing the structural transformation that made this possible. She puts it plainly:

The idea that the State Department would issue a formal cable endorsing a specific social media platform by name as a tool of U.S. diplomacy—let alone military psychological operations—would have been, until recently, almost unthinkable. But the structural transformation that has taken place over years has made the news feel almost ordinary today. It was a transformation that dismantled, piece by piece, the legal accountability, operational independence and institutional resilience that once made such a cozy relationship between government and platforms inconceivable.

And see if any of this sounds familiar:

Rubio identifies five operational goals—countering hostile messaging, expanding information access, exposing adversarial behavior, elevating local voices sympathetic to U.S. interests, and “telling America’s story”—and instructs embassies to recruit local influencers and community leaders to carry U.S.-funded narratives in ways designed to feel organically local rather than centrally directed.

Why, that sounds quite similar to what the Biden DHS said about the Disinformation Governance Board. Except, suddenly: no partisan freakout. No weeks of stories on Fox News. No screaming in the NY Post about speech police. Gee. I wonder why.

The U.S. State Department is instructing embassies to recruit local influencers to carry U.S.-funded narratives in ways designed to feel organically local rather than centrally directed. This is, by definition, a covert influence operation. It’s the kind of thing that, when other countries do it, we call propaganda. It’s the kind of thing the Global Engagement Center was specifically designed to expose.

Oh, right. About the Global Engagement Center.

You may recall that one of the early moves of the returning Trump administration was to shut down the GEC, the State Department office specifically created to help identify and counter foreign influence campaigns. At the time, Rubio — the same Marco Rubio who just signed this cable — framed the shutdown as a free speech victory:

Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving. This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.

That was always a lie. The GEC (just like the Disinformation Governance Board) didn’t “silence and censor” Americans. It studied foreign influence campaigns — the kind run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, by ISIS recruitment networks, by Chinese state-linked information operations — and helped expose them. It’s the kind of work that requires sustained expertise, institutional knowledge, and sophisticated analytical capacity. The kind of thing you can’t just spin up overnight when you suddenly realize you need it.

So all of the hand-wringing about the Disinformation Governance Board, the GEC, and the idea that governments were too close to social media platforms was a bunch of nonsense all along. It was always about trying to gain and then keep power, destroying the institutions that dealt with foreign disinformation campaigns until they could capture them for their own purposes.

Klonick traces how Twitter/X became susceptible to exactly this kind of capture:

Musk systematically dismantled Twitter’s trust, safety, and content moderation infrastructure. The teams that had worked, however imperfectly, to maintain platform integrity not just for commercial reasons but to limit the spread of coordinated inauthentic behavior, state-linked influence operations, and targeted harassment were gone within months of Musk’s ownership. With both the corporate accountability architecture and the internal operational safeguards stripped away, the platform’s amplification and suppression mechanics became, in effect, tools that could be deployed at anyone’s, but namely Musk’s, discretion.

Before Musk’s acquisition, the major US tech platforms — whatever their flaws — generally bent over backwards to avoid being captured as instruments of state messaging.

The Rubio cable, on the other hand, specifically endorses X’s Community Notes feature as a tool for countering “anti-American propaganda operations without compromising free speech.” Klonick correctly identifies this as:

…a remarkable exercise in circular reasoning: the government endorsing, for use in state-directed information operations, a moderation tool on a platform owned by a former (and perhaps still current) senior government advisor.

But it’s worse than circular reasoning. Community Notes is a crowdsourced system. Its outputs are determined by which users participate and how they coordinate. While it’s (actually very cleverly) designed to avoid brigading attacks, that does not mean it’s perfect in avoiding manipulation. If the U.S. government can organize sympathetic actors to use Community Notes to surface pro-American narratives as part of a formal PSYOP-adjacent campaign, then so can every other government on the planet. China can coordinate its own actors. Russia already runs exactly these kinds of operations. Iran has entire units dedicated to this. The cable essentially advertises to every adversary exactly how to game the system — and the people who actually understood these vulnerabilities, the trust & safety teams, the GEC researchers, the disinformation scholars, are exactly the people this administration spent years attacking and driving out of their jobs.

Oh, unless they expect Elon Musk to tilt the playing field to their advantage — which is exactly the kind of thing these very same people were loudly freaking out about when Biden was president.

Now, some might point out that the broader “censorship industrial complex” crusade wasn’t only about counter-messaging efforts like the DGB and the GEC. It was also about the Murthy v. Missouri case, which dealt with something categorically different: the allegation that the Biden administration pressured platforms to remove third-party users’ speech. The Rubio cable, by contrast, directs government employees themselves to use the platform for their own messaging. These are genuinely different things.

But the supposed animating principle behind the entire crusade was that the government had no business being entangled with social media platforms on matters of information and speech. Not just “the government shouldn’t pressure platforms to remove user content,” but the much broader claim that any government-platform coordination on information amounted to a sinister censorship machine.

Jim Jordan’s “censorship industrial complex” hearings didn’t just target White House communications with platform trust & safety teams. They went after researchers. They went after the GEC. They went after nonprofits studying foreign manipulation. The message was that any institutional involvement in the information ecosystem was inherently suspect. That principle, it turns out, had an expiration date — specifically, January 20, 2025.

And remember, in the Murthy case itself, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the Biden admin’s communications with platforms constituted coercion. The plaintiffs couldn’t even establish standing because they couldn’t show the government actually changed platform behavior. Meta felt totally comfortable telling the White House “no” — as Zuckerberg himself admitted repeatedly on Joe Rogan, just weeks before telling Elon he was happy to silence people at the Trump White House’s request.

So the same political movement that treated government staffers sending cranky emails — emails that platforms felt perfectly free to ignore — as an existential constitutional crisis now sees nothing wrong with a formal State Department cable directing coordination with a specific privately-owned platform and military PSYOP. If the principle only matters when your political opponents are the ones in the White House, it was always just about weaponizing the systems of government for your own benefit.

Klonick puts the broader structural picture together:

The privatization of Twitter removed all traces of public accountability. The gutting of content moderation infrastructure removed operational resistance. The political alliance between the administration and the tech sector removed institutional resistance. And now a formal diplomatic cable removes the last pretense of arms-length separation between U.S. government messaging objectives and the platforms that carry them.

The legal questions that Murthy left unresolved—about when government pressure on private platforms crosses the constitutional line—will almost certainly be relitigated in this new context. But the more immediate reality is that the internet Americans and global audiences navigate is increasingly shaped not merely by the preferences of platform owners and advertisers, but by the strategic communication objectives of the U.S. government, implemented through platforms that have every financial and regulatory reason to cooperate.

This is the pattern we’ve watched unfold for years: wrap your power grab in the language of the thing you’re destroying. Call fact-checking “censorship.” Call attempts to expose foreign influence campaigns “the speech police.” Dismantle the institutions that actually did the thing you claim to value, then use the resulting vacuum to do exactly what you falsely accused your opponents of doing — only bigger, more openly, and with military coordination.

The sheer audacity of the sequencing is what makes all of this so infuriating. They spent years pointing at the Disinformation Governance Board and screaming “Ministry of Truth!” They shut down the Global Engagement Center while Rubio called it censorship. They destroyed the research infrastructure and the institutional knowledge that actually helped identify and counter foreign influence operations. And now, having cleared the field of anyone who might push back, they’re running their own influence operations through a platform with no independent oversight, no transparency mechanisms, and no institutional resistance — and they’re doing it openly, through formal diplomatic channels, in coordination with military psychological operations.

Klonick closes with the right question:

The question is no longer whether the government can use social media as a tool of statecraft. It already is. The question now is whether any institution—legal, normative, or structural—retains the capacity to check it.

Given that the people who claimed to care about checking government entanglement with social media are now the ones wielding it most aggressively — and spent years systematically destroying every institution that might have served as a check — don’t hold your breath.

Filed Under: counterspeech, disinformation, disinformation governance board, foreign influence, global engagement center, marco rubio, psyops, state department

Companies: x

As the world held its breath on Tuesday night, news of a ceasefire and the potential reopening of the Strait of Hormuz brought a collective sigh of relief. But with shipments stalled in the strait for over a month, the disruption to global shipping will not resolve immediately.

“Traffic through Hormuz dropped by about 95 percent [during this conflict]. As a result, prices surged, and not just for crude oil but also for refined products like jet fuel, diesel, and gas oil,” says Carsten Ladekjær, CEO at Glander International Bunkering, which specializes in supplying fuel and lubricants to the global shipping industry.

The impact has been uneven across regions. Countries heavily dependent on Middle Eastern energy—particularly in Asia—have been most affected. India sources around 55 percent of its energy imports from the region, China about 50 percent, Japan 93 percent, South Korea 67 percent, and Singapore 70 percent, according to Ladekjær.

While the ceasefire signals a possible reopening, key details remain unclear. “Even with a ceasefire, reopening won’t be immediate,” Ladekjær says. “There’s a backlog, with ships waiting to leave, and likely a controlled process for who gets out first. Iran still appears to be managing that.”

Energy markets reacted quickly. Brent crude fell to around $94 from $110 earlier in the week—a drop of roughly 15 percent.

“Refined products like diesel and jet fuel have dropped even more, because markets are forward-looking—they price in expectations,” says Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst and head of research at Global Risk Management. “But we’re still well above prewar levels, which were around $60 to $70.”

A System Under Backlog

Around 1,000 ships remain in the Gulf, including hundreds of tankers awaiting passage.

As of this writing, more than 800 cargo ships and tankers are stuck inside the Persian Gulf, with over 1,000 additional vessels waiting on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz.

Under normal conditions, roughly 150 vessels pass through the strait daily. Experts say clearing the backlog will take time, as ships must be sequenced through, refueled, and repositioned.

Ships began passing through the Strait of Hormuz after the ceasefire announcement.

Elif Acar/Getty Images

“That’s a logistical nightmare. We don’t yet know what the current capacity will be, especially from a security standpoint,” says Lohmann Rasmussen. “It’s not something that can be solved overnight. There are logistical issues, security issues, and even communication challenges.”

Though the market has already seen a correction, that doesn’t mean prices at the pump or in storage will drop immediately.

Google is issuing you its periodic reminder that you aren’t tethered to Microsoft’s operating system if you own a PC. In fact, the search giant is making it easier than ever to switch over to ChromeOS Flex.

As part of a new partnership with Back Market, a refurbished electronics company, Google is now offering ChromeOS Flex USB Kits to make installing its signature OS a breeze on PCs and Macs alike.

Whether you’ve been purposefully avoiding a Windows 11 update or you’re one of the more than 500 million computer owners with a PC that is too old for an operating system upgrade, your Windows 10 PC hasn’t received an update since last October when Microsoft ended its support for it. (Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates program will keep pushing critical updates your way until this coming October for $30, a fee I doubt many people clinging to an old PC are willing to pay.)

When your operating system stops getting updates, you’re facing down the barrel of a security nightmare — no more exploits will get fixed, leaving your system (and potentially sensitive data) vulnerable to bad actors. Google’s ChromeOS Flex continually supports older devices than Windows 11, which could make it a good alternative until you upgrade to another PC.

The new Back Market USB kit is available now for $3, or you can download ChromeOS Flex for free by following the simple instructions included at the end of this article.

A quick ChromeOS Flex history lesson

Google’s ChromeOS isn’t available to install on a laptop or desktop like Windows or Linux, but the next best thing is Google’s ChromeOS Flex. Formerly known as Neverware CloudReady, the OS is primarily built for businesses and education. But ChromeOS Flex is free for personal use, and it’s so lightweight that it’s great for breathing new life into a computer that’s struggling from the demands of Windows, MacOS or Linux. 

Google acquired Neverware in December 2020, and the result was ChromeOS Flex. While CloudReady was good, Flex is much closer to the experience you’d get with a Chromebook or other ChromeOS device. That includes the official Chrome browser, support for Family Link (or school-issued) accounts, and Phone Hub, which lets you connect to an Android phone to view notifications and share files between the phone and laptop. The one thing you don’t get is access to the Google Play Store and Android apps.

ChromeOS Flex runs well even on old hardware. That’s why it’s such a good option for repurposing a laptop that can no longer run current versions of Windows, MacOS or Linux. Google guarantees Flex to work, however, only on a growing list of certified models. If your model isn’t certified, that doesn’t mean it won’t work, though. It just means that full functionality and performance aren’t a given.  

You choose: Trial run or full install

One of the best features of ChromeOS Flex is that you can run it off a USB flash drive or SD card to test it out first without completely overwriting your current OS. For best performance, it’s not recommended to run Flex full-time from a flash drive, but it will let you see if it works for your needs. 

Installing ChromeOS Flex is quick and painless. The first step is to gather everything you need:

• A USB thumb drive or SD card 8GB or larger

• A Windows, Mac or Linux computer to install ChromeOS Flex on

Note that installing ChromeOS Flex will completely erase your entire hard drive. Any important files should be backed up first. You’ll also need a ChromeOS, Windows PC or Mac device with the current version of the Chrome browser installed. This will be used to create the ChromeOS Flex USB installer, and it doesn’t need to be the same device you plan to install it on. The thumb drive will also be completely erased when creating the installer.

To run ChromeOS Flex, the target laptop (or desktop) will need to be Intel or AMD x86-64-bit compatible (newer than 2010 for the best experience), have 4GB RAM or more, have at least 16GB of storage and you’ll need full administrator access to the BIOS. Once you have everything you need, it’s time to create the USB installer. 

• Open a Chrome browser window on a ChromeOS, Windows PC or Mac device and add the Chromebook Recovery Utility extension via the Chrome web store. This is what you’ll use to build the USB/SD card installer. 
• Go to the Chrome browser’s extensions menu located at the top right of the Chrome browser window (it looks like a tiny puzzle piece). Click on it, and a drop-down list of extensions will appear. Find the Chromebook Recovery Utility on the list and click on it to launch. The utility might need to be toggled on, too, which can be done by clicking on Manage Extensions at the bottom of the drop-down list of extensions. 

• When the Chromebook Recovery Utility launches, you’ll be asked to identify what model Chromebook you’ll be recovering. However, there will be a link labeled Select a model from a list in the dialog box. Click that link, and from the Select a manufacturer drop-down list that appears, select Google Chrome OS Flex. Below that drop-down is another labeled Select a product from which you’ll choose Chrome OS Flex.  
• Next, insert your flash drive or SD card into the device you’re using to create the installer, select it as your target drive and then click Create now. The creation process takes up to 20 minutes but mine was done in half that time. Once the installer is finished, the drive can be ejected and is ready to use. 

You’re almost done. It’s time to grab the laptop you want to convert to a Chromebook. Make sure the laptop is turned off and insert your ChromeOS Flex installer thumb drive or SD card. 

The next step is to boot the laptop from the thumb drive instead of the internal storage drive. This requires you to press a boot key while the laptop is booting. Boot keys vary by manufacturer. For instance, on a MacBook Air, the boot key is the Option key. Google has a list of boot keys for major manufacturers if you’re not sure what yours is.   

Turn on the laptop and, as it boots, press the boot key to interrupt the boot process. You may need to press and hold the key, or press it repeatedly, to enter the boot menu. If done correctly, the laptop should give you the option to select which drive you’d like to boot from: the laptop’s internal drive or your USB drive. Select the USB drive and press Enter. 

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If you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll see the ChromeOS Flex splash screen followed by a Welcome to ChromeOS Flex screen. (If not, retrace your steps using Google’s installation guide.) From there, you can choose to test the OS and run it directly from the flash drive or install ChromeOS Flex on the internal storage. Doing the latter gives you the best performance; however, it also erases all content from the internal drive, and the native OS can’t be recovered. If you aren’t 100% certain you want to use ChromeOS Flex, try running it from the USB drive first. 

The full OS installation can take up to 20 minutes (my MacBook Air took less than 5 minutes, though). Regardless of how you run it, the setup process is the same. Select a Wi-Fi network, agree to Google’s terms of service, choose whether the Chromebook is for yourself or a child, and then sign in with your Google account information. 

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Ta-da, Chromebook! At least, close enough for most needs. Performance will depend on what your laptop has. My install was on an early 2015 MacBook Air, and it’s much faster than it was with MacOS on it. The only downside for my particular model is that the built-in webcam is not supported, but an external USB webcam worked just fine. 

If you’ve got a USB flash drive and an old laptop, it’s certainly worth the minimal effort to test out and, again, it’s free. 

from the more-of-that-famous-prosecutorial-discretion dept

Never underestimate the stupidity of law enforcement. When things could just be left alone and everything would turn out OK, officers insist on inserting themselves into the equation, ensuring maximum pain and humiliation for everyone involved.

In this case, a Fairhope, Alabama officer decided he couldn’t simply do nothing when coming across a grandmother at a “No Kings” protest. Here’s how this started, as detailed by Liliana Segura for The Intercept:

In the body camera footage, a police officer parks his black SUV on the grass, a rosary swinging from the rearview mirror. He exits his car, moves briskly past a pair of protesters, and points an accusatory finger at the suspect: a 7-foot-tall inflatable penis holding an American flag.

The alleged crime? Unclear. There’s no sound at first, only the silent spectacle of a person in a penis suit turning toward a cop with a stance that says, “Who, me?” A handmade sign comes into view in the person’s right hand. It reads “No Dick Tator.”

You can see the whole thing for yourself here:

It’s really an amazing recording. It includes several high points, including cops trying to stuff a person who’s inside an inflatable penis into the back of a cop car before deciding it might be easier to separate the person and the costume… before struggling to fit the costume itself into the trunk of a cop car. It also includes superbly stupid things like this:

Fairhope Police Cpl. Andrew Babb was less amused.

“I’m serious as a heart attack,” he tells Gamble when the audio begins to play on the 14-minute body camera video. “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you.”

He demands to know how she could possibly justify such an obscene display: “I would like to hear how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.”

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Every easily-offended, would-be censor has the same go-to for complaining about stuff they don’t like: “how would I explain that to my children?” I don’t know, man. They’re your kids. Take any approach you want, including ignoring the question. It’s not on the rest of the world to make sure you never have to have an uncomfortable conversation with your kids. If you can’t figure it out, maybe you shouldn’t be in the business of raising kids, much less in the business of enforcing laws.

There are also plenty of far less funny moments, like the fact that three cops decided to get involved in pinning 62-year-old Renea Gamble to the ground for the crime of… well, that was all pretty much undecided at the point the officers decided to enforce their will with their power.

Corporal Andrew Babb obviously didn’t know the law, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech,’” Babb continues. “‘This is a family town and being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated.’”

A. It actually is freedom of speech.

B. Every town is a “family town,” unless you happen to live in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Everything about the arrest is a non-starter. And yet, local prosecutors — propelled forward by supportive local government officials — are still trying to pin criminal charges on Renea Gamble. Mayor Sherry Sullivan claimed the costume was an “obscene display” which would “not be tolerated in Fairhope.” City Council president Jack Burrell claimed the costume “violated community standards” Neither assertion is true, which means neither statement can support an arrest, much less the bringing of criminal charges.

Some of the initial enthusiasm for punishing Gamble was stifled when her arrest went viral, resulting in a nationwide discussion of this ridiculous situation. But apparently the town thinks it’s now safe to proceed with saddling Gamble with a criminal record.

Rather than dropping the case, the city attorney slapped Gamble with additional charges earlier this year: disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement. Her trial, first set to take place months ago, has been delayed multiple times. It is now set for April 15.

The “peace” wasn’t disturbed until Officer Babb decided he was going to take Gamble’s costume personally. And “giving a false name to law enforcement” is really stretching things when all Gamble did was sarcastically respond “Auntie Fa” when officers demanded her name after stripping her of her inflatable penis.

So, the case continues, which is only going to bring more embarrassment to town leaders and law enforcement officials. The backlash that greeted the arrest will return, which means the arresting officer may want to consider employment elsewhere. Hopefully, this will all end with the town cutting a check to Gamble for violating her rights.

Until then, Gamble is going to keep on doing what she does:

Gamble has tried to keep a low profile since her arrest. At the No Kings protest last week, though, the “No Dick Tator” sign appeared in the hands of a masked woman who wore dark sunglasses and a bandana over her face.

It was Gamble, again wearing an inflatable costume.

She was dressed as an eggplant.

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People who view dissent as a threat, if not inherently unlawful, cannot ever hope to win. Acts like this only embolden those already involved in dissent and attract others to join the cause. They may have the power, but the people have the inflatable genitals and the will to use them.

Filed Under: alabama, andrew babb, david gespass, fairhope pd, free speech, jack burrell, no kings, penis, renea gamble, sherry sullivan, trump administration

The death of a duck in the Austin, Texas enclave of Mueller Lake has neighbors raising concerns about autonomous vehicles and whether they belong there.

While humans are responsible for killing animals with their cars all the time, this incident has brought negative attention to the new technology. Local media picked up on the duck incident after a resident posted in a Mueller neighborhood Facebook group that an Avride autonomous vehicle (with a human safety operator behind the wheel) ran over and killed a duck, and did not stop afterwards. “It didn’t slow down or hesitate at all, just steamrolled through,” the post, which KXAN reported on, reads.

Residents’ familiarity with this particular duck, which was nesting in a pot located outside of a local Italian eatery, has added to the outrage and mistrust of the autonomous vehicle technology. For those concerned about the future of the duck’s eggs, local residents have them in an incubator, Axios’ Austin reports.

An Avride spokesperson confirmed with TechCrunch that the vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time. Avride hasn’t paused testing on public roads altogether. However, the company has adjusted its area of operations by excluding certain streets around the lake in Mueller neighborhood where the incident with the duck occurred, according to spokesperson Yulia Shveyko.

The resident also claimed in their post that the vehicle failed to stop at a stop sign. Avride told TechCrunch it did not find evidence to support that claim. The vehicle came to complete and appropriate stops at all relevant stop signs.

Shveyko said the team has reviewed vehicle data and behavior, including replaying the scene multiple times in simulation. Avride is now evaluating potential improvements to the technology to help avoid similar situations in the future, she said. Notably, this includes running a series of controlled experiments in simulation to ensure that any changes do not negatively impact the vehicle’s safety performance in other scenarios.

Avride isn’t the only company testing or commercial deploying autonomous vehicles in the city. Zoox has been testing in the city. Tesla and Waymo, in partnership with Uber, also operate a commercial robotaxi service in parts of Austin.