Sikorsky has completed flight testing and handed the first UH-60MX Black Hawk over to the US Army this week. The aircraft has landed at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where the Combat Capabilities Development Command will put it through its paces. From here the real testing begins, with the helicopter expected to demonstrate just how much it can handle on its own.

This project has been in the works for nearly a decade. Sikorsky partnered with DARPA through the ALIAS program to develop a kit that adds advanced autonomous flight control to existing helicopters, and the UH-60MX is the result of that work, built on the familiar UH-60A airframe that the Army knows well. In 2025 the original mechanical flight controls were replaced with fly-by-wire electronics, giving the MATRIX autonomy system the ability to step in and take over whenever the mission calls for it.

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MATRIX essentially acts as the helicopter’s brain, with onboard sensors continuously scanning the surrounding environment and feeding data into the system, which then handles flight path planning, landing zone selection, and obstacle avoidance in real time. Pilots on board see their workload drop significantly as the routine tasks are handled automatically, and ground operators can direct the aircraft from a tablet. Soldiers with no flight experience have been learning to manage basic missions in around an hour of practice time.

The same autonomy package has already been tested across the UH-60A, UH-60L, and UH-60M variants, accumulating hundreds of flight hours on a Sikorsky owned test aircraft and proving itself reliable across a wide range of conditions. A standout run in 2022 saw the helicopter complete its own pre-flight checks, take off, fly a full route autonomously, and land successfully, all while handling simulated equipment failures along the way.

Now in the US Army’s hands, the focus shifts to real world evaluation. Testing will push the helicopter through demanding environments to see how it performs under pressure, how smoothly it transitions between crewed and autonomous modes, and how effectively the ground stations handle remote oversight. All of it feeds into the Strategic Autonomy Flight Enabler initiative, which is working toward a single kit that can be deployed across the entire Black Hawk fleet and carried forward into future designs.

Helicopters will soon be able to support troops in areas too dangerous to send a crew into or too remote for regular human oversight, and missions can be flown in low visibility conditions or contested airspace without putting soldiers at risk. The open architecture of MATRIX also means new sensors and software can be added down the line without tearing the whole system apart and starting over.
[Source]

The Coruna exploit kit is an evolution of the framework used in the Operation Triangulation espionage campaign, which in 2023 targeted iPhones via zero-click iMessage exploits.

The software has been expanded to target modern hardware, specifically including Apple’s A17 and M3 chips, as well as operating systems up to iOS 17.2.

Coruna contains five full iOS exploit chains leveraging 23 vulnerabilities, among them CVE-2023-32434 and CVE-2023-38606 also used in Operation Triangulation.

After analyzing the exploit code for the two security issues, Kaspersky researchers determined that Coruna ran an updated version of the exploit used in Operation Triangulation that had started since 2019.

Additional code similarities led to the conclusion that the kit is the successor to the malicious framework leveraged in the Triangulation campaign that also targeted iPhones on Kaspersky’s network.

“During our analysis we’ve discovered that the kernel exploit for CVE-2023-32434 and CVE-2023-38606 vulnerabilities used in Coruna, in fact, is an updated version of the same exploit that was used in Operation Triangulation,” the researchers say in a report today.

Kaspersky’s analysis shows that the attack begins in Safari with a stager that fingerprints the device, selects suitable RCE and PAC exploits, and then retrieves encrypted metadata for subsequent stages.

The payload downloads additional encrypted components, decrypts them using ChaCha20, decompresses them with LZMA, and parses custom container formats to obtain package information.

Based on the device’s architecture and iOS version, it selects and executes the appropriate kernel exploit, Mach-O loader, and launcher to deploy the spyware implant.

Kaspersky’s findings indicate that the payloads support targeting ARM64 and ARM64E architectures, with explicit checks for A17, M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips.

Also, the package IDs and system checks indicate that the exploits can target:

• iOS < 14.0 beta 7
• iOS < 14.7
• iOS < 16.5 beta 4
• iOS < 16.6 beta 5
• iOS < 17.2

Boris Larin, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), says the connection with Triangulation became evident after analyzing Coruna’s binaries.

“Coruna is not a patchwork of public exploits; it is a continuously maintained evolution of the original Operation Triangulation framework.”

Additionally, the developers continued to update the framework by including checks for newer processors (e.g., M3) and iOS builds.

Since Coruna has also been used in financially-motivated campaigns aiming to steal cryptocurrency via fake exchange websites, Larin notes that “what began as a precision espionage tool is now deployed indiscriminately.”

Operation Triangulation was a highly sophisticated iOS espionage campaign that used multiple zero-day exploits to silently infect iPhones and deploy spyware implants.

It was discovered by Kaspersky during internal WiFi network monitoring in June 2023, though the campaign had started four years earlier.

In late 2023, the same researchers found that these attacks leveraged undocumented features in Apple chips to bypass hardware-based security protections.

Another exploit kit, dubbed DarkSword, was disclosed earlier this month by researchers at mobile security companies Lookout and iVerify, and Google.

Like Coruna, DarkSword is being used by multiple threat actors, but all appear to be leveraging it for espionage operations. It should be noted that DarkSword is now publicly available, which increases the risk of cybercriminals starting to leverage it against unpatched iPhones.

Apple has published a bulletin to address all these recently uncovered exploit kits, noting that fixes for all flaws have been made available via security updates for the latest, as well as earlier, iOS versions.

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• Sony has shut down Dark Outlaw Games one year after its founding
• The studio was reportedly in the early stages of developing its project
• Sony is making additional cuts elsewhere, including in mobile development, and “around 50 people” have been laid off

Sony has shut down Dark Outlaw Games one year after its founding, and is also making cuts across mobile game development.

As spotted by Eurogamer, ResetEra user J-Soul first broke the news that a new project was “still in the early stages” of development when Sony pulled funding from the “incubation studio” founded last year under Call of Duty Zombies veteran Jason Blundell.

We spoke with Sarthak Kumar Barik and Stephen Conneely about the engineering sector and how team dynamics are evolving with the times.

As technologies advance, siloed working environments have the potential to become a thing of the past, particularly as we find more convenient and effective ways to stay in contact with globally dispersed peers. 

The engineering space is no different and for Stephen Conneely, the director of QA engineering at Fidelity Investments Ireland, interdisciplinary engineering has reshaped how teams deliver results, especially in an environment where AI-assisted development has become more commonplace.  

Conneely told SiliconRepublic.com, “Teams bring together software engineers, quality engineers, analysts and platform specialists to jointly own problems end‑to‑end, with AI tools supporting activities such as test design, code review, and documentation.

“This shared ownership reduces hand‑offs and allows risks to surface earlier, while maintaining strong governance and accountability. Quality is designed in from the start, with disciplines collaborating to decide where AI accelerates delivery and where human validation remains critical.”

He explained, this is all happening in an atmosphere where engineers are expected to understand how their work impacts adjacent systems, data integrity and the client experience. “The result is teams that move faster with confidence, using AI as an enabler rather than a shortcut and delivering more predictable outcomes in complex environments.”

This is echoed by Workhuman’s Sarthak Kumar Barik, a principal engineer who stated, “As a platform team, our work does not exist in isolation. Product teams across the organisation own use cases built on the same legacy foundation and they face the same migration challenges, often without the same depth of context.” 

It is the responsibility of engineers and other employees, he finds, to close that gap in knowledge. He explained this can be achieved by translating the migration experience into reusable patterns, clear guidance and well-defined integration points that other teams can adopt without starting from scratch. 

He said, “We work alongside product teams as active partners, helping them map their existing behaviour to the new platform, identifying where the gaps are, and making sure each migration they undertake is faster and less risky than the one before. The goal is that knowledge compounds across the organisation rather than staying locked within a single team.”

A more tangible example of this reshaping, he explained, is in how the organisation uses artificial intelligence in the engineering workflow. Workhuman ran an AI-assisted workshop where developers provided context about the system, its architecture, data flows and constraints and used this as the foundation for AI-generated code. 

He said, “The difference compared to generic prompting was striking. When AI is given the real context of your system it becomes a genuine accelerator, producing code that is relevant, grounded and faster to review and adapt. This has changed how both our team and the product teams we support think about velocity.”

Adding, “Interdisciplinary engineering, for us, is less about organisational charts and more about shared context. When platform and product teams work from the same understanding of the system, the target and the tools available, progress accelerates across the board.”

With that in mind, what skills and processes do engineers need to be on top of to ensure they are keeping pace with change across the sector?

Fundamentals and the future

For Conneely, the most in demand skills, in today’s engineering landscape, are a combination of the fundamentals alongside the adoption of emerging technologies. He said, “We continue to prioritise deep capability in software engineering, quality engineering, cloud platforms and data, but increasingly value engineers who can use AI‑assisted tooling responsibly to improve productivity, quality and decision making.”

Engineers should also prioritise the ability to critically evaluate AI‑generated output, apply sound engineering judgement and  develop the ability to understand where human oversight is essential. As well as adopt a systems thinking, automation-first approach and risk-based decision making, which he said are as important as framework or language expertise. 

“Just as critical are communication skills, particularly in regulated environments where engineers must explain technical decisions, including AI usage, in clear business terms. As technology evolves, learning mindset and adaptability are now core competencies rather than nice‑to‑haves.”

Similarly, for Barik, the challenge is often in matching critical but older systems, with newer, more advanced models and processes. He explained, the challenge is not just technical, but more intuitive, as you have to figure out whether you are actually making progress when the system is deeply coupled and cannot be taken offline.

He said, “We defined the target architecture upfront, not as an aspiration but as a concrete end state against which every decision is measured. From there, we decomposed the system into smaller subsystems with a roadmap of agreed milestones. Each milestone represents a discrete, verifiable unit of progress, a subsystem dialed down in the legacy platform and enabled in the new one. 

“Every pragmatic shortcut taken along the way is recorded as technical debt, so the team always knows exactly what remains rather than discovering it later. The most powerful measure of progress has been observability. By instrumenting both old and new systems, we track in real time what percentage of load is flowing through the new platform versus the legacy one. 

“A subsystem is not truly migrated until the traffic data confirms it. Progress is not a milestone ticked off, it is a measurable, visible shift in where the load is flowing.”

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The signs that AI could lead to mass job displacement are already piling up: entry-level job postings in the U.S. have sunk 35% since 2023, mass layoffs have swept across Big Tech, and even AI leaders themselves are warning about what’s coming. 

Backstage at the Axios AI Summit in Washington on Wednesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said a venture capitalist recently told him he’s writing software investments down to zero in large part due to the strides of Anthropic’s Claude, and a major law firm told him it’s not hiring first-year associates because AI can now handle much of the work once assigned to junior lawyers.

Warner says the fear of AI-related job loss is “palpable,” even as data from one AI company suggests AI hasn’t yet started taking jobs. As those fears grow, they’re bleeding over into a different fight, which is who should foot the bill.

Warner has a proposal: tax the data centers powering the AI boom and use that revenue to help workers through the transition. He hasn’t introduced legislation yet, but the idea is gaining urgency as public anger toward AI and data centers grows.

Across the U.S., there’s been pushback on data centers, including a bill on Wednesday introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), calling for a data center moratorium. The loudest concerns are about noise, pollution, and rising electricity costs. But there’s a bubbling resentment underneath those concerns, a resistance to suffering the potential ill effects of having a data center in your backyard that powers the technology some fear will replace workers. 

Warner doesn’t plan to support his colleagues’ bill. On stage at the event, he said: “A data center moratorium simply means China is gonna move quicker, and this is one where we can’t lose.”

There’s no stuffing the genie back into the bottle when it comes to AI and data centers, he added. And while Warner believes in strict requirements that ensure data centers don’t pass their water and power costs to residents, he told TechCrunch he thinks there’s another way for communities to extract their “pound of flesh” in a way that addresses the underlying job loss fears. 

“I’ve thought for a long time there’s an obligation from the industry to help figure this out and help pay for it, but one of the questions I was asking was, Who should pay?” Warner told TechCrunch. “Should it be the chip makers, Jensen [Huang, Nvidia’s CEO]? Should it be the large language model companies? Should it be the Goldman Sachs of the world who are using these tools to cut back on a number of first-year associates?”

Ultimately, he said, he thinks the “easiest place to extract the pound of flesh is probably going to be from the data centers.”

That could look like putting data center tax revenue toward training for new nurses or funding AI upskilling programs — so long as there’s a “tangible benefit to communities” as they navigate this economic transition AI companies have foisted on them. 

Warner sees it as a way to balance the need to build data centers with some obligation to the communities bearing their costs

The idea is not without precedent. Warner pointed to Henrico County, Virginia which used the tax revenue from a local data center to kickstart a new affordable housing project.  

Finding a way to connect data centers to a tangible benefit to the community will be essential, he says, because otherwise, “the pitchforks are coming out.”

The public mood suggests he could be on to something. According to a recent NBC News poll, AI has a lower public approval rating than Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with 46% of registered voters viewing AI negatively compared to only 26% viewing it positively. In Virginia, that is playing out in a proposal to repeal the state’s tax breaks for data center buildouts, which cost the state and localities nearly $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue in one of the world’s largest data center markets. Warner says other states might follow suit. 

AI and data centers, he said, are “easy to demonize.”

Harvey’s platform uses AI agents to reduce manual effort for lawyers by running complete workflows for high-volume and increasingly complex tasks.

AI legal-tech start-up Harvey has raised $200m at a valuation of $11bn.

The new funds will be used to further develop the company’s AI agents for legal firms and in-house legal departments, and grow the engineering teams that support them.

The funding round was co-led by returning investors GIC and Sequoia, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Conviction Partners, Elad Gil, Evantic and Kleiner Perkins.

Harvey’s platform uses AI agents to reduce manual effort for lawyers by running complete workflows for high-volume and increasingly complex tasks, according to the company, which has now raised more than $1bn to date.

“AI isn’t just assisting lawyers. It’s becoming the system through which legal work gets done,” said Winston Weinberg, CEO and co-founder of Harvey.

“The law firms and in-house teams leading the way are building agents that execute complex workflows so lawyers can focus on judgement, strategy and outcomes.”

The company said it runs more than 25,000 custom agents executing work in fields such as contracts, compliance, litigation, due diligence, and mergers and acquisitions.

“Harvey has become the platform on which legal work runs,” said Pat Grady, partner at Sequoia.

“More than 100,000 lawyers around the world run their most critical work on Harvey, and we believe it’s positioned to become one of the most important companies of the next decade.”

Harvey was founded in 2022 and is based in San Francisco. It claims more than 1,300 customers – including “global law firms and Fortune 500 enterprises” – in more than 60 countries around the world.

In January, Harvey began hiring for roles at a new Dublin office. At the end of last year, the company was valued at $8bn.

The legal-tech start-up sector is a lively one at the moment.

Two weeks ago, Swedish player Legora announced a Series D raise of $550m, bringing the company’s valuation to $5.55bn.

Last November, Canadian company Clio closed a $500m Series G funding round, taking it to a $5bn valuation, and also unveiled its plans for an office in Dublin.

Norwegian software company Newcode will also open a Dublin office after raising more than $6.5m this week, adding to its existing locations in the US and Europe.

And last November, Ireland and UK-based company TrialView secured $4.1m in a growth funding round led by Elkstone Ventures.

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