Author: Frank Salvato

Israel’s Water Authority announced that the Soreq B desalination plant in the central region at Rishon Lezion has officially entered full operational status, capable of producing 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water annually, significantly bolstering the nation’s potable water supply; with six desalination facilities now contributing roughly 800 million cubic meters, desalination is projected to meet 70-80 percent of the country’s drinking water needs while additional “manufactured” water from recycled sewage and brackish sources bring total non-natural supply to around 1.5 billion cubic meters, with a seventh plant in Western Galilee expected online in 2027. Sources https://www.timesofisrael.com/desalination-plant-in-central-region-goes-into-full-operation/https://www.gov.il/en/pages/project-desalination-sorek-bhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Israel Key Takeaways…

Microsoft’s January 2026 security update for Windows 11, identified as KB5074109 and pushed on Patch Tuesday, has been tied to a wave of serious problems on physical PCs running versions 24H2 and 25H2, including black screens and “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME” errors that leave machines unable to boot without manual intervention, prompting Microsoft to investigate the issue after receiving limited reports and to advise affected users to use recovery tools or uninstall the update while it works on a permanent fix. Sources https://www.theverge.com/news/869199/microsoft-windows-11-unmountable-boot-volume-issue-january-2026-updatehttps://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/how-to-fix-boot-issues-after-installing-the-january-2026-update-for-windows-11https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/some-pcs-cant-boot-after-latest-windows-11-security-update-no-fix-in-sight-mostly-affects-24h2-and-25h2-versions Key Takeaways In-Depth The fallout from Microsoft’s January 2026 Windows 11 security update has escalated into a significant concern for…

Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems has secured a follow-on contract valued at $228 million to supply its Iron Fist active protection system (APS) for integration on U.S. Army Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, extending an existing partnership under General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems and continuing efforts to modernize the Bradley fleet’s defensive capabilities, with the hard-kill system designed to detect and intercept a range of battlefield threats including anti-tank missiles, rockets, unmanned aerial systems, and kinetic projectiles while enhancing survivability and reinforcing U.S.–Israeli defense cooperation. Sources https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-884593https://www.elbitsystems.com/news/elbit-systems-awarded-228-million-follow-contract-provide-iron-fist-aps-us-army-bradley-ifvhttps://thedefensepost.com/2026/01/26/us-bradley-iron-fist/amp/ Key Takeaways • The U.S. Army awarded Elbit Systems a $228 million follow-on…

French automaker Renault announced a significant shift into military manufacturing with plans to build long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the French military and Ukraine, partnering with defense contractor Turgis Gaillard under the oversight of France’s Directorate General for Armament (DGA). The initiative marks Renault’s first foray into defense production since World War II and could involve a contract worth up to approximately €1 billion over ten years, with factories in Le Mans and Cléon repurposed to produce drones similar to the Iranian Shahed loitering munition design. Renault confirmed the project follows a request from the French Ministry of the…

At the Cybertech Global conference in Tel Aviv, Israel’s National Cyber Directorate head Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Karadi warned that a large-scale, artificial-intelligence-driven cyber war is imminent, predicting nations will face coordinated offensive and defensive AI agents capable of disrupting critical infrastructure sectors like energy, transportation, and telecommunications without a single bullet being fired, and revealed that his agency handled more than 26,000 serious cyberattack incidents in 2025, a 55 percent increase from the previous year, while outlining a new multi-year national cyber defense plan focusing on cloud security, cyber AI, and readiness for the quantum era, together with enhanced…

Former CIA chief technology officer Bob Flores warned at the Tel Aviv Cyberweek that the rapid development of artificial intelligence could mirror the unregulated growth of the Internet unless strong security frameworks are built into AI systems from the beginning, stressing that past failures to prioritize security have left the current digital ecosystem vulnerable and that without deliberate safeguards, AI could be misused in ways that threaten financial systems, national infrastructure, and defense domains, requiring proactive governance, validation mechanisms, and best practices to mitigate emerging AI-driven threats. Sources https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-884770https://www.jpost.com/latest-articleshttps://www.threads.com/@thejerusalem_post/post/DUB-NQlD6Qf/the-internet-creators-failure-to-implement-security-protocols-early-on-cant-be Key Takeaways • Former CIA technology chief Bob Flores cautioned that…

NASA has announced the rollout of its most powerful and efficient supercomputer yet, named Athena, housed at the Modular Supercomputing Facility at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and now available to researchers following a beta period, delivering over 20 petaflops of peak performance to support complex mission modeling, advanced simulations for rocket launches and next-generation aircraft, and large-scale data analysis while cutting utility costs and expanding computational capacity to meet evolving agency needs through a hybrid approach combining supercomputing and commercial cloud resources. Sources https://www.nasa.gov/technology/computing/nasa-launches-its-most-powerful-efficient-supercomputer/https://sciencesprings.wordpress.com/2026/01/28/from-the-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration-nasa-launches-its-most-powerful-efficient-supercomputer/https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/resources/environment.html Key Takeaways • NASA has brought its Athena supercomputer online as the…

Epirus, a U.S. defense technology firm founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and military veterans, is advancing its Leonidas high-power microwave (HPM) system as a cutting-edge directed energy weapon aimed at countering growing drone threats by disabling swarms and electronic targets with bursts of weaponized electromagnetic energy; recent demonstrations include a December 2025 live-fire test at a U.S. government site where Leonidas successfully defeated fiber-optic-guided unmanned aerial systems—drones normally immune to traditional jamming—and U.S. military interest is underscored by Army contracts and past demonstrations showing dozens of drones neutralized in seconds, positioning Leonidas as a scalable, software-defined, non-kinetic element in layered…

Nudify Apps Continue Spreading Across Major App Stores Despite Explicit Policy Bans An investigation by the Tech Transparency Project found that Apple’s App Store and Google Play continue to host dozens of artificial-intelligence “nudify” applications that allow users to generate sexualized or nude images from ordinary photos without consent, despite both companies maintaining policies that prohibit explicit content and non-consensual imagery; the report identified 55 such apps on Google Play and 47 on Apple’s App Store, collectively accounting for more than 705 million downloads and approximately $117 million in revenue, raising renewed concerns that enforcement of existing rules is weak…

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has confirmed that a critical security flaw in the widely used WinRAR file archiver—tracked as CVE-2025-8088 and patched in July 2025—is being actively exploited in ongoing cyberattacks by both nation-state actors, including groups linked to Russia and China, and financially motivated cybercriminals. Attackers are exploiting this path-traversal vulnerability by crafting malicious RAR archives that silently drop malware into Windows systems—often placing payloads into startup folders to ensure persistence and automatic execution. These campaigns have been observed targeting government, military, technology, commercial, and other organizations globally, using a range of malicious payloads from remote access trojans to…