European defense planners are testing a new, highly networked vision of warfare built around autonomous sensing, data sharing, and rapid targeting. During a NATO exercise called Hedgehog in the forests of eastern Estonia last spring, 3,000 British soldiers used an experimental automated intelligence system described as a “digital targeting web.” The network, assembled in just four months, linked all battlefield “sensors” that search for targets with all the “shooters” that can fire on them, creating what the military framed as a single, shared wireless electronic brain. Coming 80 years after total war last reshaped Europe, these trials reflect a shift toward more automated, drone-heavy conflict, along with a warning that leaning too hard on this new mathematical approach to warfare could prove dangerously risky.
Alongside these shifts in military technology, a new geoengineering startup is courting controversy with a plan to artificially cool the planet. Stardust Solutions, based in Israel, claims it can address climate change by flying specially outfitted aircraft into the stratosphere and dispersing engineered particles designed to reflect sunlight away from Earth. The company has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year for this service, promising that the intervention will lower temperatures without causing environmental side effects. The proposal, which would effectively allow one private company to influence the global thermostat, has been turned into a narrated feature on MIT Technology Review’s podcast feed, highlighting both the technical ambitions and the geopolitical stakes.
Solar geoengineering researchers quoted in the piece are skeptical that Stardust Solutions will find the government customers it needs to carry out a worldwide deployment in the next decade, and they criticize the notion of a private firm unilaterally setting the global temperature. The newsletter also flags a broader mix of technology stories, including accusations that Amazon’s artificial intelligence tools listed products for sale without retailers’ consent, growing political backlash to energy-hungry data centers, renewed investment in nuclear power, and Meta’s struggles with both its Ray-Ban smartglasses rollout and its handling of online gambling ads. A closing feature revisits the long fallout from Yahoo China’s decision to share user data with Chinese authorities, detailing how dissident Xu Wanping spent nine years in prison after being identified through his Yahoo email address and is now among several former political prisoners suing the company over what happened after his release.
