US Special Forces Request Two Tesla Cybertrucks For Missile Testing
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), which oversees special ops forces from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, has requested – via the Air Force Test Center – the acquisition of 33 vehicles, including two Tesla Cybertrucks, that will ultimately be sent to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
USSOCOM wrote in a Statement of Objectives document that the 33 “vehicle targets” must have all fluids and batteries from every vehicle removed, including the Cybertruck’s 1,600-pound battery.
USSOCOM units will use the “manufactured vehicles for target vehicle training flight test events,” according to a Controlled Unclassified Information document from the military.
The document continued, “In the operating theatre it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cyber trucks as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact. Testing needs to mirror real world situations. The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real world situations.”
The U.S. Military admitted that the Cybertruck is the most advanced truck on the market.
USSOCOM units are expected to use precision-guided munitions such as AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and GBU-69/B Small Glide Munitions against the Cybertrucks aimed to simulate realistic combat scenarios. We also suspect the GM-114R9X Hellfire and various forms of kamikaze drones could also be used in the testing.
The Department of Justice has launched two new investigations into New York Attorney General Letitia James and her office over her allegedly malicious targeting of political enemies.
The U.S. attorney in Albany, Daniel Hanlon, issued two subpoenas to James, the first one related to her office’s civil fraud case against President Trump, the New York Times reported.
The Justice Department reportedly believes her prosecution of Trump violated his Constitutional rights.
The second subpoena is related to her office’s long-running effort to dissolve the National Rifle Association (NRA), according to the Times.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has signed off on the probes, and a there is a grand jury underway in New York’s state capital Albany, Fox News reported Friday.
“The DOJ Is going after James because she took then former president Donald Trump to court ‘simply because she didn’t like him and campaigned on getting him,’” Fox reported. The Justice Department reportedly believes James violated Trump’s First Amendment rights dealing with free speech.
James had accused Trump of inflating his net worth to get a good deal on loans and other financial benefits.
Trump-hating Judge Engoron ruled in her favor and ordered the Trump Organization to pay a $454 million bond, prompting George Washington University law Professor Jonathan Turley to call it “absurdly out of line with not just the purpose of the law but the facts of the case.”
A New York Appeals Court later reduced Trump’s bond to $175 million, which he paid on March 31, 2024.
Trump fumed against Engoron and James on Truth Social after he paid the bond.
“He is a whacked out nut job who just made up a number out of thin air, just like he did on the value of Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said.
“Businesses won’t enter New York because of this decision, and many are fleeing. Think of it – I had to pay an enormous sum for the right to Appeal the ridiculous decision of a CROOKED Judge and A.G. This is Election Interference, and it all comes directly from Joe Biden and the White House. An attack, along with ALL OF THE OTHERS, on his political opponent, ME!”
After the 2024 election, James refused to drop the case, reasoning that presidents are not protected by immunity in civil cases.
Trump-connected GOP lawyer Mike Davis warned James back in November that if she continued her lawfare against Trump, “we will put your fat ass in prison.”
Davis made the stunning remarks during an appearance on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s “Benny Show.”
“Let me just say this to big Tish James, the New York Attorney General,” Davis began. “I dare you—I dare you to try to continue the lawfare against President Trump in his second term because, listen here sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time and we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights. I promise you that.”
“Think long and hard before you want to violate President Trump’s constitutional rights or any other American’s constitutional rights, sweetie. It’s not going to happen again, ” Davis added.
As of August 8, 2025, the civil case remained on appeal.
In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard formally revoked security clearances for James and dozens of other Democrat officials who weaponized the government to help Joe Biden or punish the regime’s political enemies.
In May, the Department of Justice launched a formal criminal investigation into James over mortgage fraud allegations involving her properties in Norfolk, Virginia and Brooklyn, New York.
AG Bondi has reportedly appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Martin as Special prosecutor to investigate that case, as well as similar allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). A grand jury in Virginia will investigate the mortgage fraud claims against James, and a grand jury in Maryland will investigate the allegations against Schiff, Fox News reported.
And now, the Justice Department has launched a separate investigation into James over her political targeting of Trump.
James’s personal lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called the latest investigation “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
“Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration,” he said. “If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with facts and the law.”
Geoff Burgan, a spokesman for James, said: “We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
Professor Turley, meanwhile, opined on X that he was “skeptical that such a prosecution could be sustained absent bombshell evidence uncovered by the grand jury.”
He added: “While the court was dead wrong, James prevailed in the case and that would be weighed in the balance.”
According to Fox News, the new allegations “stem from a resent strike force set up inside the Justice Department to investigate the alleged plot to tie Trump to Russia in 2016.”
That strike force has reportedly “expanded to other topics.”
Major countries and regional blocs in Africa are throwing their weight behind an ambitious plan to establish a “non-circulating” currency backed by critical minerals, which are crucial to technological development, defense, and economic growth.
Analysts say a denomination based on commodities could reduce Africa’s reliance on foreign currencies—especially the U.S. dollar—and decrease its dependence on loans from China, Europe, the United States, and global financial institutions like the World Bank.
The proposed monetary unit is provisionally called the African Units of Account (AUA), according to a plan formulated by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and KPMG South Africa.
The new currency is supported by the African Union and South Africa, the continent’s biggest economic power, and could soon be piloted in a test market.
The proposal says the AUA would be traded on the international foreign exchange market, and would be less susceptible to fluctuations in individual African currencies or the U.S. dollar, making it more attractive to investors.
Economists say the backing of the currency with mineral reserves could reduce the risk perceived by lenders, potentially leading to lower interest rates on loans for development projects, especially in Africa’s energy sector.
While some in Africa’s mining industry are optimistic about the potential of such a currency, others warn that China could “weaponize” it, given Beijing’s dominance in global critical minerals supply chains.
The International Energy Agency and other organizations project that demand for critical minerals like cobalt, copper, platinum, and lithium will spike fourfold shortly, with global powers in a race to secure supplies.
Africa is at the center of the competition.
It’s the world’s poorest and least developed region, but it holds almost a third of global reserves of critical minerals, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The minerals are essential for modern technologies like smartphones and computers, in electricity grids, and in weapons such as missile systems, fighter jets, and warships.
U.S. President Donald Trump regards critical minerals as vital to the future of the United States, and he wants to secure supply chains as soon as possible.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) lists 50 minerals essential to America’s economy and national security, including cobalt, lithium, manganese, platinum, tantalum, tungsten, and vanadium.
Most are found in Africa.
South Africa, for example, is the world’s largest producer of manganese and platinum; Zimbabwe is one of the world’s top lithium producers, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) mines approximately 70 percent of the world’s cobalt.
“A well-managed and structured critical minerals currency could strengthen Africa’s hand in global resources markets and free it to leverage its abundant natural resources,” said Moeletsi Mbeki, a South African economist.
This, he told The Epoch Times, is especially important at a time when the continent seeks to mitigate economic damage from global uncertainty caused by conflicts and “market turmoil.”
“If we consider the tariffs that Trump’s slapping around, and global trade wars happening now and in the future, maybe this new currency could prevent Africa from being collateral damage,” said Mbeki.
The AfDB and KPMG proposal said the currency would be backed by a basket of some of Africa’s most important critical minerals, and would be part of an initiative to create “a more unified and stable financial system.”
The framework document suggested that key producers of critical minerals pledge a pre-agreed proportion of proven commodity reserves to “promote regional financial integration, co-operation and cross-border trade.”
Moono Mupotola, AfDB director in Southern Africa, told The Epoch Times the bank is deciding on the minerals to be included in a “test” and is set to select a “pilot country” where a study of the feasibility of the new currency will happen.
Mbeki said the currency could help Africa take ownership of its critical minerals and their processing.
“We have all these minerals, but we don’t benefit much from them, because Africa’s value chain is so weak,” he explained.
“We process less than five percent of minerals domestically, which means the real profits are earned by foreigners, especially China.
“If we can use a common currency to unite Africa’s mining industries and their governments, it’s a real step towards more independence and greater local beneficiation and profits going into African pockets.”
Professor Hambaba Jimaima, international relations researcher at the University of Zambia, said Africa’s steps toward the currency are an indication that it wants as much economic independence as possible from both China and the West, as it prepares to be a prominent player in world affairs.
“Africa’s tired of being beholden to the West for aid and trade and to China for investment and loans,” he told The Epoch Times. “It wants to use critical minerals and a currency connected to them as a basis for industrialization and greater political clout.
“Africa has given away control of critical minerals to China. Africa wants this control back. It wants to mine and refine its own resources. Critical minerals are Africa’s trump card. The currency must be seen in this light.”
But other experts, like Ugandan economist and the East African country’s former finance minister, Ezra Suruma, are skeptical.
“Critical minerals are not yet the safe investment that gold is,” he told The Epoch Times. “Prices are volatile. If there’s more stability, then certainly the idea of a critical minerals currency is worth investigating.”
Frank Blackmore, KPMG South Africa lead economist, told The Epoch Times several factors hamper the creation of a resource-based currency.
“It’s going to take a long time for most African producers to reap full reward from their critical minerals,” he said.
“A lot of places don’t have adequate electricity; transport nodes are rundown. All of this counts against production. There are also shortages of skilled labor.”
Mbeki suggested, though, that the initial pool of minerals be used as collateral to fund development and industrialization.
“That fund could be used to encourage locally-controlled exploration and mining,” he said.
Mbeki also warns that China, as much as it often declares itself dedicated to African progress, could yet be “a fly in the ointment” in the establishment of a critical minerals-backed currency.
“China doesn’t usually support plans that could erode its power,” said the economist. “I can foresee the Chinese not being very cooperative in this regard, and they could even weaponize the currency to try to make sure that African countries toe their lines.
“As long as the Chinese have so much power in critical minerals supply chains, this new currency is on shaky ground.”
Mexico’s President Draws Red Line: US Kinetic Operations Against Drug Cartels Not Welcome On Her Soil
Following a New York Times report that President Trump has issued a directive authorizing the Department of Defense (DoD) to conduct direct military operations against certain Latin American drug cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has firmly rejected any U.S. military presence on Mexican soil.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out,” Sheinbaum said, who was quoted by a new NYT report. She added that her administration would review Trump’s order.
She emphasized, “It is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it has been brought up, we have always said no.”
Trump’s hemispheric defense push to secure the Americas has been to target drug cartels designated as FTOs. These targets include Cartel de los Soles, Tren de Aragua, and Sinaloa Cartel. The aim here is to disrupt the financial command and control nodes first, which is underway, then the physical structure of these organizations, all to break the flow of fentanyl and human trafficking into the U.S. through the southern border.
Mexican officials claim they had no advance warning of Trump’s directive. However, Sheinbaum said U.S. counterparts had hinted that they would deploy U.S. forces for capture/kill missions, maritime interdictions, and cross-border SOF raids against high-value cartel targets.
Trump’s new directive signals a hardened approach to ending the fentanyl crisis, mainly driven by FTOs in Mexico supplied with precursor chemicals from China. This drug death crisis claims more than 100,000 American lives each year and has become a central mandate for Trump to address.
This crisis, exacerbated by the Biden-Harris regime’s globalist, open-border, nation-killing policies, amounts to what some believe is hybrid warfare waged by the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. president is now moving to put a stop to this chemical warfare on its citizens.
Here’s more from NYT’s report:
It remains unclear what plans the Pentagon is drawing up for possible action, and the order raises a range of legal questions. It is also unclear what notice the Mexican government had: Although Ms. Sheinbaum said U.S. officials had told her and her team that the directive “was coming,” three people familiar with the matter said Mexican officials had been blindsided.
Depending on what the United States does, Mexico could pull back its cooperation on issues like security and migration, those people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
For months, Mexican officials have in public and in private rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory.
The issue of U.S. military action has long raised hackles in Latin America, where the United States’ history of interventions goes back well over a century.
Arturo Rocha, who resigned late last year from the Mexican foreign ministry, commented on the Trump’s new directive, stating, “They need Mexico’s cooperation and they need Mexico’s state and society to be functioning. This isn’t Afghanistan, where the state is broken, and you can do whatever you want as there’s a void.”
“This has always been Mexico’s deepest fear, this constant sense that we could be invaded by the U.S. again,” Rocha added. “It would have major implications in terms of cooperation with the U.S. going forward. The president has been clear that our sovereignty is a redline.”
The drug war in Mexico has been chiefly led by the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. But now the DoD appears to be getting involved, and U.S. military involvement across Latin America could spark geopolitical fallout with any country that doesn’t agree to participate in cleaning up FTO drug cartels.
Mexican banks may soon face U.S. sanctions to disrupt cartel money laundering operations. Trump has a mandate from the American people to stop the drug death crisis; a crisis that, for some reason, globalist Democrats allowed to accelerate through open borders and failed progressive policies on the city, state, and local level that have transformed some parts of U.S. cities into crime-ridden hellholes.
A coalition of European leaders released a joint statement on Aug. 9 welcoming the news of President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and stressing the need to ensure that European and Ukrainian interests are protected as the two leaders talk about ending the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Trump and Putin are scheduled to meet in Alaska on Aug. 15.
The joint statement included French, Italian, German, Polish, British, and Finnish leaders, as well as the president of the European Commission.
“We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests,” the leaders said, adding that they “agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
They also expressed support for the principle that “international borders must not be changed by force.”
“The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the statement said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on Aug. 9 that “the Ukrainian people deserve peace.”
“But all partners must understand what a dignified peace is,” he said, adding that Ukraine “will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated.”
Trump has said a deal could involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” parties.
After speaking with Zelenskyy, as well as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron took to X.
“Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,” he wrote.
“Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.”
The Trump–Putin meeting will follow White House special envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow on Aug. 6, during which time Witkoff met with Putin for three hours of talks. Details of their discussion have not been disclosed.
“President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace. And Zelenskyy wants to see peace,” Trump said on Aug. 8.
“Now President Zelenskyy has to get … everything he needs because he is going to have to get ready to sign something, and I think he is working hard to get that done.”
It also follows a meeting between Vice President JD Vance and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, as well as representatives of European allies and Ukraine, on Aug. 9 at Chevening House, a mansion outside of London, to discuss Trump’s peace push.
The Global Concentration of Data Center Infrastructure
Below, we show data center capacity worldwide in 2024:
With 53.7 GW of installed capacity, the U.S. accounts for 44% of the global total.
Given the intensifying demand for data centers, hyperscalers are facing infrastructure constraints. New data centers set to be built out by 2028 are completely booked, and Northern Virginia faces power capacity shortages causing project delays.
Meanwhile, public and private entities in China have invested billions in data centers, but an estimated 80% of new infrastructure stands unused.
As we can see, the EU trails behind with 11.9 GW of capacity. Still, electricity demand from data centers is expected to surge 150% by 2035, driven by approximately $231 billion in AI-related investment aimed at tripling capacity by 2032.
To learn more about data centers from a capacity perspective, check out this graphic on historical growth since 2005.
Passengers on a TFL train in London took matters into their own hands as a deranged lunatic completely exposed his genitals to the entire carriage, which contained children, then exploded into a rage when he was told to get off the train.
Video shows that the guy pulled down his pants for all to see and just stood there on the on Hammersmith and City line train in the middle of the afternoon.
When the guy was challenged by a male passenger, and told to pull up his pants or get off the train, he began repeatedly and aggressively screaming “F**K OFF.”
“What do you mean f**k off? You need to get off the f**king train. Now. There are kids on here,” the passenger responded.
The half naked guy then continued to yell and wave his own belt around, prompting more male passengers to step in and begin delivering what can only be described as an ass whipping.
As the train came to a stop at a station, the passengers threw the lunatic to the platform where one of them detained him.
British Transport Police issued a statement saying the man has been detained under the Mental Health Act.
“Officers were called to reports of a man exposing himself on the District Line at East Ham Underground station,” the statement reads, adding “The man had been assaulted by a number of other passengers and was initially arrested by an off duty officer, before being detained under the Mental Health Act and taken to hospital, where he remains.”
“An investigation into the incident is ongoing,” the statement concludes.
I’m amazed the cops didn’t arrest the men who complained and threw him off the train.
Instead of calling this what is was, a deranged potentially dangerous lunatic exposing himself and being dealt with accordingly, sections of the media and leftists online have decided to frame it as an attack on a a person having a “mental health crisis.”
This My London article claims “A man in a mental health crisis was beaten by members of the public,” describing the the man as “visibly appearing in distress.”
Others online complained about how the “crisis” guy was dealt with.
Nudity on public transport is unacceptable. The man in the viral video is clearly suffering a psychotic episode and the violence he received is excessive.
More of this needs to start happening instead of it being tolerated and allowed. He obviously had mental health issues but they did the right thing by subduing him so that he didn’t escalate into worse behavior, especially since there were kids on the train.
The London Evening Standard ran with the headline “Tube passengers attack naked man who exposed himself in front of children,” as if they started the incident.
Indecent exposure should be tolerated then – is that your inference? think not the guy then screams FO at those who ask him to pull trousers up! Are we expected to tolerate this now? He persisted in front of women & children – appropriate citizens arrest done
Unsurprisingly, others almost instantly started calling it a “racial” attack:
Yeah so this is not how you handle a man having psychotic episode or bad drug trip on a train surrounded by vulnerable people. It’s actually the opposite way you should handle this. They made a bad situation several times worse. Also likely there was some racial aspect to this. https://t.co/HGQq9oFG6R
— Economic relations? I hardly knew her! (@Jack_Witek) August 8, 2025
No doubt we’re going to hear more about this incident in the coming days.
* * *
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
Armenia might defect from the CSTO while Turkish and NATO influence could surge all along Russia’s southern periphery, which might embolden Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to defy Iran and Russia by building the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline if the West promises them Ukrainian-like military support…
The American, Armenian, and Azerbaijani leaders jointly unveiled the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) during their meeting at the White House on Friday. Previously known as the “Trump Bridge” per related media reports, it’s essentially the US replacement of the corridor that Russia envisaged in the November 2020 ceasefire that it mediated between those two rivals. Here are five background briefings about how this threatens to undermine Russia’s broader regional position:
To summarize, the US’ replacement of Russia in what Azerbaijan had up until now called the Zangezur Corridor removes Moscow’s ability to monitor Turkish arms exports to Central Asia, which could turbocharge its influence among Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan with time.
Those two are part of the Russian-led CSTO and the Turkish-led “Organization of Turkic States” (OTS), and it’s possible that the OTS might one day assume CSTO-like security functions that lead to those two’s defection from the CSTO.
The US would encourage that as a means of completing its long-attempted encirclement of Russia.
Moreover, the thaw in Armenian-Azerbaijani and correspondingly also Armenian-Turkish tensions could justify Yerevan’s official withdrawal from the CSTO (it already suspended its membership), which could then quickly lead to it, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan working more closely with NATO.
The removal of US legislative restrictions on military cooperation with Azerbaijan might make this a fait accompli.
These likely outcomes – the expansion of Turkish/OTS influence into Central Asia via TRIPP, Armenia’s official defection from the CSTO, and more US-led NATO influence all along Russia’s southern periphery – would already pose a formidable enough challenge to Russia’s broader regional position.
It might get even worse though if the aforesaid scenario sequence emboldens Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan (at the US and Turkiye’s urging) to unilaterally construct the long-discussed Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline.
The West has hitherto been unable to tap Turkmenistan’s gigantic gas reserves due to Afghanistan’s instability, the sanctions on Iran, and Iran and Russia opposing an underwater pipeline on environmental grounds (but which cynics suspect is meant to keep a major rival out of the global market).
Even so, US and Turkiye might think that Iran and Russia are weaker than ever, thus gambling that they can get them to agree under the threat of backing Azerbaijan with Ukrainian-like military support if war breaks out.
To be clear, neither Azerbaijan nor Turkmenistan has hinted at plans to violate the 2018 Caspian Sea Convention for regulating all five littoral states’ activities in this body of water, but the scenario can’t confidently be ruled out by Russian policymakers given their historic distrust of the West.
It’s unclear what they might do to preempt this latent threat to their country’s broader regional position, both the Caspian Conflict scenario and everything that could precede it, but they’re unlikely to take it lying down.
Vacuuming, Mopping, Mowing: The Household Robots Are Coming
According to data from Statista Market Insights, reported by Anna Fleck, global revenue of service robots for domestic tasks is set to nearly double from $13.5 billion in 2021 to $22.8 billion in 2027.
Meanwhile, the total number of consumer service robots worldwide will reach 39.7 million in 2025, rising to more than 50 million by 2027.
A consumer service robot here includes a robot designed for personal or household use, such as robot vacuum cleaners, robotic toys and even drones.
Population aging is one of the factors contributing to the need for more assistive robots, having led to the development of robotics solutions for elderly care, whether that’s for mobility assistance to help with daily tasks or as social robots for companionship.
This is the case in Japan, where strict labor laws and cultural acceptance of technology have created a good environment for the adoption of service robots in various industries, such as hospitality and retail.
Open-weight models make their training parameters, or weights, publicly available but tend not to provide access to the source code or datasets. Open-source models typically include access to the source code, weights, and methodologies.
With weights publicly accessible, developers can analyze and fine-tune a model for specific tasks without requiring original training data.
The weights for the new gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b models are free to download for developers to fine-tune and deploy in their own environments, OpenAI said.
“These open models also lower barriers for emerging markets, resource-constrained sectors, and smaller organizations that may lack the budget or flexibility to adopt proprietary models,” OpenAI said in an Aug. 5 statement. “Broad access to these capable open-weights models created in the US helps expand democratic AI rails.”
Amazon announced on Aug. 6 that OpenAI’s open-weight models are now available on its Bedrock generative AI marketplace in Amazon Web Services. It marks the first time an OpenAI model has been offered on Bedrock, Amazon said in a statement.
In May, Meta announced a collaboration with Red Hat to advance open-source AI for enterprise.
American AI companies and the Trump administration have been in broad agreement about the need for the United States to dominate the AI space, which requires the wide adoption of the American AI stack, including the hardware, models, software, applications, and standards.
On July 23, the White House released its AI action plan, which involves removing barriers for companies to accelerate innovation and build out infrastructure, along with using diplomacy to set AI standards internationally.
Chinese AI companies currently dominate the open-source space. Republican senators recently signed a letter asking the Commerce Department to examine data security risks and potential backdoors in Chinese open-source models such as DeepSeek.
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei told Chinese state-run media in June that Chinese AI development will include “thousands upon thousands of open-source software.” Chinese state-run media Global Times on Aug. 7 published an editorial opining that US efforts to curb China’s AI strategy would fail, as “China has embraced an open-source approach” to meet its vast needs.
Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese communist regime built open-source software alliances and directed its tech sector to enter the open-source community with the goal of reducing dependency on American proprietary software.
Over time, China has moved from consumer to contributor. According to a 2024 report by GitHub, China was the third biggest contributor of open source software on the platform. Though it is still far from leading in AI globally, it maintains a strong presence in AI open-source software.
Among the concerns about Chinese-run AI models are data harvesting, including for espionage purposes, and a lack of safeguards, which could allow for malware dissemination or the generation of harmful content.
OpenAI notes that once an open-weight model is released, “adversaries may be able to fine-tune the model for malicious purposes.”
To counter this, it fine-tuned the two new models “on specialized biology and cybersecurity data, creating a domain-specific non-refusing version for each domain the way an attacker might” and tested the models to see if they would continue to operate within safety guardrails.
“These processes mark a meaningful advancement for open model safety,” OpenAI stated. The company is also inviting third parties to find and report novel safety issues in its models for a chance to win a $500,000 prize.
Vetting Software for Security
Chris Gogoel, vice president and public sector general manager at mobile app security firm Quokka, says the proliferation of AI apps, especially AI assistant apps, has increased security risks for users exponentially.
It used to be that users would rely on different apps for different functions, segmenting the data collected and permissions given, but AI apps tend to be “do-everything” apps, Gogoel told The Epoch Times.
That elevated data collection translates into more inherent risk, he said. The data collected can also be more sensitive because users may be feeding the apps long passages or instructions revealing in-depth thoughts, intentions, and rationale, rather than simply having access to raw files.
With more data collected, the apps could be bigger targets of a potential breach to extract the data over a network or from a device. The bigger risk is if these apps come from sources that have not been proven to be secure. OpenAI has adopted an approach that values security, but there are plenty of other unvetted AI apps that have been downloaded millions of times, Gogoel said.
“‘What are these applications doing with our data?’ is a very serious question,” Gogoel added.
“The verification of what happens with that data, and where it goes, how it’s protected, becomes even more important, because if that data is misused, on accident or on purpose, you have a serious, serious problem,” he said, pointing to abuse of data being used to create deepfakes and phishing attacks.
Gogoel notes that the declarations a developer makes about what data their app collects may not be what the app does.
Sometimes, the developer might not know this is the case as they are often trying to jump on trends and launch apps in time to rise in the rankings, leading to mistakes like not using proper encryption, he said. They may fail to invest in security, perhaps using open-source software that contains flaws. App stores do not currently require verification of a developer’s declarations, and Gogoel advocates moving to a verify-first approach.
One bad app can spoil the bunch, he said.
Quokka, which began working with the Pentagon around its founding in 2011, provides mobile vetting services to the federal government and other clients, which led the firm to examine TikTok and ByteDance in 2018.
It found that TikTok not only requested ample permissions, but it would also connect with other apps on a user’s device to obtain permissions the user did not explicitly give. So, data collected by trusted applications for legitimate purposes may still present security risks if they come in contact with unvetted apps.
“It’s not something that we should be looking back after something has exploded and the fire is already raging, so to speak, and there’s tens of millions of users. We’re trying to enable, in our work, the ability to verify at every step,” Gogoel said. “Verify as soon as something hits the store, as soon as something hits your device, as soon as this brand new service comes out … that it does what it says on the tin and nothing else.”
