Sunday, May 16, 2021

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dWeb Says . . .

Posted: 16 May 2021 04:53 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

The post dWeb Says . . . appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

You should be totally freaked out by the DarkSide attack on Colonial Pipeline

Posted: 16 May 2021 02:40 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Andy Meek

We've seen this movie before. After warnings go unheeded, a predictable, completely avoidable disaster strikes the US — in the process, revealing a soft, exposed underbelly of risk. And the people who get paid to stop this kind of thing from happening never seem to learn, most of the time, until it's too late — or nearly.

This time, it was the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline which took the US to the brink of a major national energy crisis, based on a confidential analysis from the US Energy Department as well as the national Homeland Security Department — both of which surmised that a cascade of bad outcomes was about to unfold, if this Colonial Pipeline thing had gone on a little longer. Just a few more days of the pipeline's operational network being offline, for example, and the lack of diesel would have forced buses and various mass transit options to shut down, for one thing. And the domino effect would have also included factories and refiners likewise being put on ice — because a continued shutdown of Colonial's network would have left them with nowhere to distribute their product.

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And all because a Russian criminal extortion ring threw a ransomware attack at the IT network – not even the operational side! — of a US fuel pipeline.

Oh, and a quick update on that gang: If you believe the official headlines, the developers behind the DarkSide ransomware are said to have been taken offline, perhaps a result of the Biden administration exerting pressure quietly behind the scenes. Or as a result of our cyberspooks unleashing God-knows-what. At any rate, cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter's Zero Day Substack notes that the latest chatter about the ransomware gang points to its website, which previously was only accessible via Tor, now being unavailable. And that's not all.

Someone from a rival ransomware gang reportedly left a message on a dark web forum in recent days that said the DarkSide founders had lost access to the site which they used to host and publish stolen data from their victims. Other infrastructure, such as their payment server, was also supposedly taken away from the DarkSide ring.

At the same time, not everyone is buying this turn of events — specifically, they're not buying the notion that just one week after pulling off the Colonial attack, the DarkSide extortionists have been forced, no pun intended, to go dark.

"I sincerely hope the Infosec community and media don't lose their minds over thinking DarkSide is actually shutting down when it's almost certainly a rebranding attempt to avoid the heat," Robert M. Lee, CEO of the security firm Dragos, tweeted on Friday.

Likewise, from Kimberly Goody, manager of the financial crime analysis team at FireEye: "Mandiant has observed multiple actors cite a May 13 announcement that appeared to be shared with DarkSide RAAS affiliates by the operators of the service. This announcement stated that they lost access to their infrastructure, including their blog, payment, and CDN servers and would be closing their service … The post cited law enforcement pressure and pressure from the United States for this decision."

Here's the key point from Goody, however: "We have not independently validated these claims and there is some speculation by other actors that this could be an exit scam."

All of which is to say, all signs point to the fact that we got very, very lucky this time. Even so, what happened to Colonial Pipeline almost guarantees that critical infrastructure in the US will be hit again, and the outcome will probably be even worse next time.

Why? Well, for one thing, the victims in this case actually paid the ransom (nearly $5 million). That sends a message to the next extortion ring that wants to try this, as does what happened next — the DarkSide attackers gave Colonial a decryption tool that sounds like it was pretty terrible and slow to work, so Colonial resorted to doing the mitigation they could have done without paying up in the first place. Another signal sent to the next DarkSide. Worst of all, the Russians who broke into Colonial's network provided something of a roadmap for the next time, showing that it doesn't take much effort at all to produce chaos in a portion of the US, given how vulnerable so many interconnected systems are. In this case, the hackers hit a pipeline's IT network, and Colonial itself took the pipeline down themselves — a dream come true for the bad guys.

Darkside is Ransomware-as-a-Service. For the most part, affilates carry out intrusions and deploy the Darkside ransomware which comes with substantial support. Profits are split between the parties. For more context and tactical detail see our report. https://t.co/pmpixfvI07

— John Hultquist (@JohnHultquist) May 11, 2021

The sort of good news here is that federal officials maybe, just maybe, got scared straight. Private enterprises control some 80% of critical infrastructure in the US, and there are reports that the Biden administration was already starting to view the Colonial Pipeline situation through a political lens — according to The New York Times, President Biden told aides in recent days that the lines at gas stations over the past week were a political disaster in the making, causing many in the administration to flash back to the oil crisis during the Carter presidency.

Nothing here, however, has changed the fact that I remain unshakably worried about the US in general, and in our ability to not even start to do the right thing until some disaster has already exacted a terrible price. The Colonial situation, for me, is a kind of near do-over of the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, for example, when warning signs were ignored and when the broader population no doubt assumed that the deployment of technology, of multiple redundancies, and of experts and agencies paid to stop this or that threat, would hopefully mean that the worst wouldn't strike us here.

Making these two situations embarrassingly worse is the abundance of warnings that were, and will be, ignored. With the coronavirus pandemic, for example, we saw what was happening in the rest of the world — in places that dealt with it first, like China. Rather than shore up our defenses, though, political leadership at the time told everyone it can't happen here. Likewise, we've seen what hackers can do in a situation like Colonial's, yet we will be attacked again because someone, somewhere, will not be ready.

#ColonialPipeline
I’m an old lady who is having a difficult time understanding why a company is forced to pay $5,000,000 to regain its operating system. When I worked in IT we prepared for such situations before they happened pic.twitter.com/LaIzG9qGWx

— Vera – Biden&Harris Will Make America Great Again (@prayerfeathers) May 14, 2021

It is a weakness and a pretty scary shortcoming of the US, but our belief in the infallibility of our technological power, in our multiple protective redundancies, and in experts and federal agencies has proven to be misplaced time and time again. Here's another, unrelated example: I was utterly floored by an incident described by journalist Carol Leonnig in her new book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.

"Just before 11:30 p.m. on a rainy Friday night in March 2017, a young man clambered over a five-foot-high fence and landed on the far northeast corner of the White House complex. His slender frame passing over the spiked black fence-line triggered a sensor that alerted Secret Service officers to a possible breach."

She goes on to write how, since it was at night, the officers on duty struggled to get a visual of where this guy actually was on the complex, as they frantically roamed themselves. Which helped the 26-year-old intruder, in the confusion, to hop over two more barriers and also slip past not one, not two, but three staffed security posts — and walk all the way up to the east entrance to the White House. This guy even put his face up to the window and jiggled a door handle to see if it was locked.

"Over the course of 17 minutes," Leonnig writes, the intruder "enjoyed a relaxed ramble around the grounds, eluded a team of 15 trained security professionals who were alerted to a likely burglar and crossed 200 yards of White House property without being stopped." He even had time to sit down and tie his shoe.

That's because of a slew of failures in the Secret Service's supposedly high-tech defenses which combined to leave one of the most protected houses in the world vulnerable to a random intruder. They included a sensor on the White House fence malfunctioning, which meant that once the guy jumped over, an alarm that was supposed to sound inside didn't. According to Leonnig, there are also motion-activated lights on the White House grounds that the intruder should have triggered, but same story — they weren't working. An officer who caught up to the intruder tried to radio for help, but couldn't. His radio was busted. And a camera covering the portion of the grounds where the intruder was roaming was, you guessed it, broken.

That unforgivably idiotic series of failures reminded me of all the broken defenses, the busted tripwires and the missed warnings that led to the coronavirus pandemic being as awful as it's been in the US — more than 585,000 official deaths from the virus and counting, as of the time of this writing, based on Johns Hopkins University data.

Same with Colonial Pipeline. Everyone who knows anything about cybersecurity has been waiting for this line to be crossed, for attackers to start wreaking havoc on the US power grid, and other key pieces of infrastructure. It's only a matter of time.

"Every fragility was exposed," Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told The New York Times about the Colonial Pipeline attack. "We learned a lot about what could go wrong. Unfortunately, so did our adversaries."

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Buy NowWe've seen this movie before. After warnings go unheeded, a predictable, completely avoidable disaster strikes the US — in the process, revealing a soft, exposed underbelly of risk. And the people who get paid to stop this kind of thing from happening never seem to learn, most of the time, until it's too late — or nearly.
This time, it was the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline which took the US to the brink of a major national energy crisis, based on a confidential analysis from the US Energy Department as well as the national Homeland Security Department — both of which surmised that a cascade of bad outcomes was about to unfold, if this Colonial Pipeline thing had gone on a little longer. Just a few more days of the pipeline's operational network being offline, for example, and the lack of diesel would have forced buses and various mass transit options to shut down, for one thing. And the domino effect would have also included factories and refiners likewise being put on ice — because a continued shutdown of Colonial's network would have left them with nowhere to distribute their product.

And all because a Russian criminal extortion ring threw a ransomware attack at the IT network – not even the operational side! — of a US fuel pipeline.

Oh, and a quick update on that gang: If you believe the official headlines, the developers behind the DarkSide ransomware are said to have been taken offline, perhaps a result of the Biden administration exerting pressure quietly behind the scenes. Or as a result of our cyberspooks unleashing God-knows-what. At any rate, cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter's Zero Day Substack notes that the latest chatter about the ransomware gang points to its website, which previously was only accessible via Tor, now being unavailable. And that's not all.
Someone from a rival ransomware gang reportedly left a message on a dark web forum in recent days that said the DarkSide founders had lost access to the site which they used to host and publish stolen data from their victims. Other infrastructure, such as their payment server, was also supposedly taken away from the DarkSide ring.
At the same time, not everyone is buying this turn of events — specifically, they're not buying the notion that just one week after pulling off the Colonial attack, the DarkSide extortionists have been forced, no pun intended, to go dark.
"I sincerely hope the Infosec community and media don't lose their minds over thinking DarkSide is actually shutting down when it's almost certainly a rebranding attempt to avoid the heat," Robert M. Lee, CEO of the security firm Dragos, tweeted on Friday.
Likewise, from Kimberly Goody, manager of the financial crime analysis team at FireEye: "Mandiant has observed multiple actors cite a May 13 announcement that appeared to be shared with DarkSide RAAS affiliates by the operators of the service. This announcement stated that they lost access to their infrastructure, including their blog, payment, and CDN servers and would be closing their service … The post cited law enforcement pressure and pressure from the United States for this decision."
Here's the key point from Goody, however: "We have not independently validated these claims and there is some speculation by other actors that this could be an exit scam."
All of which is to say, all signs point to the fact that we got very, very lucky this time. Even so, what happened to Colonial Pipeline almost guarantees that critical infrastructure in the US will be hit again, and the outcome will probably be even worse next time.
Why? Well, for one thing, the victims in this case actually paid the ransom (nearly $5 million). That sends a message to the next extortion ring that wants to try this, as does what happened next — the DarkSide attackers gave Colonial a decryption tool that sounds like it was pretty terrible and slow to work, so Colonial resorted to doing the mitigation they could have done without paying up in the first place. Another signal sent to the next DarkSide. Worst of all, the Russians who broke into Colonial’s network provided something of a roadmap for the next time, showing that it doesn't take much effort at all to produce chaos in a portion of the US, given how vulnerable so many interconnected systems are. In this case, the hackers hit a pipeline's IT network, and Colonial itself took the pipeline down themselves — a dream come true for the bad guys.


The sort of good news here is that federal officials maybe, just maybe, got scared straight. Private enterprises control some 80% of critical infrastructure in the US, and there are reports that the Biden administration was already starting to view the Colonial Pipeline situation through a political lens — according to The New York Times, President Biden told aides in recent days that the lines at gas stations over the past week were a political disaster in the making, causing many in the administration to flash back to the oil crisis during the Carter presidency.
Nothing here, however, has changed the fact that I remain unshakably worried about the US in general, and in our ability to not even start to do the right thing until some disaster has already exacted a terrible price. The Colonial situation, for me, is a kind of near do-over of the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, for example, when warning signs were ignored and when the broader population no doubt assumed that the deployment of technology, of multiple redundancies, and of experts and agencies paid to stop this or that threat, would hopefully mean that the worst wouldn't strike us here.
Making these two situations embarrassingly worse is the abundance of warnings that were, and will be, ignored. With the coronavirus pandemic, for example, we saw what was happening in the rest of the world — in places that dealt with it first, like China. Rather than shore up our defenses, though, political leadership at the time told everyone it can't happen here. Likewise, we've seen what hackers can do in a situation like Colonial's, yet we will be attacked again because someone, somewhere, will not be ready.


It is a weakness and a pretty scary shortcoming of the US, but our belief in the infallibility of our technological power, in our multiple protective redundancies, and in experts and federal agencies has proven to be misplaced time and time again. Here's another, unrelated example: I was utterly floored by an incident described by journalist Carol Leonnig in her new book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.
"Just before 11:30 p.m. on a rainy Friday night in March 2017, a young man clambered over a five-foot-high fence and landed on the far northeast corner of the White House complex. His slender frame passing over the spiked black fence-line triggered a sensor that alerted Secret Service officers to a possible breach."
She goes on to write how, since it was at night, the officers on duty struggled to get a visual of where this guy actually was on the complex, as they frantically roamed themselves. Which helped the 26-year-old intruder, in the confusion, to hop over two more barriers and also slip past not one, not two, but three staffed security posts — and walk all the way up to the east entrance to the White House. This guy even put his face up to the window and jiggled a door handle to see if it was locked.
"Over the course of 17 minutes," Leonnig writes, the intruder "enjoyed a relaxed ramble around the grounds, eluded a team of 15 trained security professionals who were alerted to a likely burglar and crossed 200 yards of White House property without being stopped." He even had time to sit down and tie his shoe.
That's because of a slew of failures in the Secret Service's supposedly high-tech defenses which combined to leave one of the most protected houses in the world vulnerable to a random intruder. They included a sensor on the White House fence malfunctioning, which meant that once the guy jumped over, an alarm that was supposed to sound inside didn't. According to Leonnig, there are also motion-activated lights on the White House grounds that the intruder should have triggered, but same story — they weren't working. An officer who caught up to the intruder tried to radio for help, but couldn't. His radio was busted. And a camera covering the portion of the grounds where the intruder was roaming was, you guessed it, broken.
That unforgivably idiotic series of failures reminded me of all the broken defenses, the busted tripwires and the missed warnings that led to the coronavirus pandemic being as awful as it's been in the US — more than 585,000 official deaths from the virus and counting, as of the time of this writing, based on Johns Hopkins University data.
Same with Colonial Pipeline. Everyone who knows anything about cybersecurity has been waiting for this line to be crossed, for attackers to start wreaking havoc on the US power grid, and other key pieces of infrastructure. It's only a matter of time.
"Every fragility was exposed," Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told The New York Times about the Colonial Pipeline attack. "We learned a lot about what could go wrong. Unfortunately, so did our adversaries."colonial pipeline, darkside, Ransomware
Tech News at http://dWeb.News

The post You should be totally freaked out by the DarkSide attack on Colonial Pipeline appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Perfect Storm: Grocery Prices Skyrocket; Meat Prices Soar; Corn Hits $7; Gas Prices Going Nuts; Extreme Weather Events

Posted: 16 May 2021 09:34 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

woman wearing blue jeans riding red shopping cart

Beware: Food Prices Spike — Will Continue to Rise

Consumers will Pay the Price, Ultimately

woman wearing blue jeans riding red shopping cart
Photo by Jeremias Oliveira on Pexels.com

By Daniel Webster dWeb.News

"It seems to be a perfect storm as far as ingredients, labor and every other element we're looking at," Joe Grendys, the billionaire owner of Koch Foods told Forbes. "The inputs going into producing these products have gone up at a pace we haven't seen in quite some time."

Research firm NielsenIQ reports that seafood has climbed 18.7 percent while baked goods have increased 7.5 percent in the 13 week period ended April 24. 

Grocery store prices overall are up 3.3 percent from March 2020 to March 2021, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). If you ordered from a restaurant during that time, your meal costs rose 3.7 percent.

The big reason for the price increases is corn, which helps animals put on weight quickly and is one of the single largest expenses in livestock production. The price of a bushel of corn has increased to over $7 from just above $3 a year ago, the highest prices for corn in a decade. When corn was last above $5, in 2010 through 2014, producers and independents went bankrupt across the meat industry.

Earlier this month, R-CALF, the lobbying organization for the nation's 5,000 independent cattlemen, warned that rising grain prices would put some of the last independent producers left in the meat industry out of business. Between 2010–14, thousands of independents were driven out of the beef industry. 

R-Calf president Bill Bullard said $7 corn in a competitive livestock market would not create as bad of a problem. But he says he's now heard of producers like one that's been in business 46 years questioning if they will make it another season. 

"Any additional shock throws it into another downward spiral. That’s what is happening now. The cattle producers' prices are so severely depressed that any minor shock to the live cattle supply chain now has severe consequences."

R-Calf president Bill Bullard

READ MORE: FLIPPIN' BONKERS!: GAS HITS $7 GALLON

hamburger and fries photo
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Pexels.com

Consumer Price Index Increase

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose last month to 4.2 percent over the previous April. That is the highest inflation rate since September 2008. Most importantly, the core CPI, which tracks food and energy prices rose 0.9 percent. Consequently, that was 0.6 percent above projections.  

Short-Term Volatility

Food prices can move almost instantly with a change in weather, geopolitics, social unrest, and a variety of other factors. 

A combination of events has come together to impact current food prices.

READ MORE: Gas Prices Hit $3 Per Gallon Average, First Time Since 2014

Oil and Supply Chain

Gasoline is used to fuel everything from tractors used in the planting and harvesting of grains, vegetables, and fruit to delivery of those products in addition to meat and fish. As a result, any price increase in oil contributes to price increases in food.

In addition to gas prices, problems in the supply chain impact not only food prices but other grocery store items. For instance, remember the toilet paper shortage?

Extreme Weather

Extreme weather events, as well as gradual changes, have had an impact on the food supply. The most recent major weather event is the winter storm that wreaked havoc deep into Texas. 

The immediate impact of that storm was knocking out the power grid. That left people without heat and electricity as temperatures dropped to record lows. However, the long-term impact has slashed the supply of many food sources. 

Losses from that one storm have been estimated at $600 million. Of that, $14 million in milk, cattle, and poultry were lost. In addition, a vast array of fruits and vegetables were destroyed.

Government Supplements

Government policy has had some effect on food costs by driving up corn prices. More corn is going into fuel tanks. As a result, less is going into stomachs.

The U. S. government pays subsidies to use corm for biofuels. As a result, the price of corn has risen and there is less corn to eat. The creation of ethanol consumes 37 percent of the nation's corn. That's more than six times the amount used in 2000.

The Pandemic

You've heard it before, but it bears repeating. The pandemic upended the food supply and helped drive up the cost of food and many other goods.

The pandemic accelerated in March of last year. Many states and cities instituted safety measures that lead to more people eating at home more often. That increased the demand for groceries.  Meanwhile, nations began closing their borders to limit the spread of COVID-19. That disrupted shipping which further limited the food supply. As a result, prices went higher.

Limited Stockpiles

The World Trade Organization (WTO) limits the amount certain foods, such as corn and wheat, can be stockpiled. That policy is designed to level the playing field between countries that subsidize farmers and those that do not. This policy is effective in times of abundance. However, it worsens the problem during shortages. 

assorted salami in big food market
Photo by Maria Orlova on Pexels.com

Rising Meat Prices

Another factor increasing food prices is an increase in meat consumption – especially pork. People around the world are becoming more affluent.  As a result, those who could not afford meat a few years ago now can. 

So, you say, just raise more animals. Fine, but the animals you want to eat have to eat as well. That leads to a need for more grain. That increase in demand raises grain prices even more. That leads to higher meat prices.  

The Darkness Before The Dawn

Reading all the above and watching prices climb at the grocery may lead you to think the solution is simply not to eat.  That's been tried and most agree the results are not satisfactory.

Take heart, the high prices we are experiencing today and, perhaps, for the rest of the year are not permanent.

USDA Predictions

The Department of Agriculture is expecting grocery prices to rise another one to two percent in 2021, before stabilizing as the pandemic passes. Restaurant food costs will grow by another two to three percent, says the USDA. 

The Agriculture Department is even predicting beef and veal prices will drop between 1.5 to 2.5 percent by the end of the year.

Of course, the USDA projections can not predict whether a hurricane, tornado, flood or other natural disasters will disrupt the food supply. 

READ MORE: Prices Skyrocket — on EVERYTHING

woman wearing mask in supermarket
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Conclusion

There are many things you can not do about food prices. You can not increase grain yields, cut transportation costs, or change the weather. However, you are not powerless. You can exercise a plan of action to minimize the effects of rising food prices.

There are many sources for inexpensive recipes online and in publications. You can also set a budget and stick to it. Here are some other ideas for fighting food costs.

The post Perfect Storm: Grocery Prices Skyrocket; Meat Prices Soar; Corn Hits $7; Gas Prices Going Nuts; Extreme Weather Events appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 9, 2021

Posted: 16 May 2021 08:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from GeekWire

Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 9, 2021.

Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.

Most popular stories on GeekWire

Seattle teen entrepreneurs sell their health-tech startup and take a break from college

The news: Seattle entrepreneurs Sage Khanuja, 17, and Nikolas Ioannou, 18, have sold their telemedicine startup Spira to Galileo, a New York-based healthcare company. … Read More

Why this Seattle deli ditched third-party delivery services: 'I don't want them anywhere near our food'

Jonny Silverberg, co-owner of Seattle's Schmaltzy's Delicatessen, remembers his breaking point. … Read More

Report: Pentagon may cancel JEDI cloud computing contract amid legal battle and political criticism

The Pentagon is considering "pulling the plug" on the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. … Read More

Internal memo: Longtime Amazon exec Jeff Blackburn returns after brief hiatus to lead new entertainment unit

Blackburn's back. Longtime Amazon exec Jeff Blackburn is returning to the Seattle tech giant, just a few months after he departed and spent five weeks at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. … Read More

Jeff Bezos will reportedly join the billionaire boating class with a $500M luxury sailing superyacht

It's not exactly the type of vessel that would putter around near the shores of Amazon's South Lake Union campus in Seattle, but Jeff Bezos is reportedly looking to set sail with a boat of his own. … Read More

SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell as Blue Origin's CEO? New book about Jeff Bezos says she was asked

When it comes to his Blue Origin space venture, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos likes to say "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." But a new book claims Bezos was so concerned about the slow pace of progress five years ago that Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, was asked about becoming Blue Origin's CEO. … Read More

Melinda Gates reportedly consulted with divorce lawyers since 2019

The news: Melinda Gates has been working with divorce lawyers since 2019, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. … Read More

Washington state plans to fully reopen by June 30 as governor pushes COVID vaccine incentives

Washington state will move to fully reopen and lift restrictions put on the economy by COVID-19 by June 30, Gov. … Read More

'Amazon Unbound' is a portrait of a company 'getting perilously close to invincible'

"I wonder what unit profitability was in 2017 without advertising?" That seemingly mundane question, posed by Jeff Bezos during a meeting of Amazon's senior leadership team, won't get as much attention as other details from business journalist Brad Stone's new book, "Amazon Unbound" — especially not when compared to revelations about the billionaire's relationship with a helicopter pilot, and his ensuing battle with a supermarket tabloid. … Read More

Madrona Venture Labs raises $8M, unveils plan to turn its investors into co-founders of spinouts

The news: Madrona Venture Labs, the startup studio associated with Madrona Venture Group, has raised $8 million for its fourth fund. … Read More

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of May 9, 2021.… Read MoreGeekWire Weekly

The post Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 9, 2021 appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

How End User Computing (EUC) is Digitally Transforming the Post-Pandemic Workplace

Posted: 16 May 2021 07:40 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Dipti Parmar

Since the start of the global pandemic, many column inches have been devoted to the inevitable rise in home-working. No business could have foreseen a situation in which the majority of their workforce would have to work from home for months on end.

Even before many companies were forced to make (and help) their employees work from home due to COVID-19 restrictions, we noted a definite trend towards the emergence and spread of the gig economy. Consultants and freelancers kept a lot of projects and campaigns going efficiently in a variety of organizations and industries.

Most countries are working towards vaccinating their citizens, and it stands to reason that people are slowly beginning to return to their "regular" offices. This means companies again need to respond to new realities in workforce behaviors and set up tools and IT infrastructure that enable employees to get the job done equally well from home, office, and away locations.

End-User Computing (EUC) is Digitally Transforming

Although many businesses, small and large, have embraced digital transformation, there are challenges in implementing these technologies successfully at all levels. The workforce has to be adequately equipped to keep supply chains going, the product line churning, and providing efficient customer service as usual.

Companies that fail to do this risk lagging behind and a hurried implementation process risk leaving employees with insufficient training to take advantage of the transition.

The disruptive post-pandemic future

That said, a 2020 McKinsey survey of 800 executives worldwide suggests that workplaces and companies face a disruptive post-pandemic future due to accelerated (and ad-hoc) digitization and automation. This is because many businesses were forced to expedite tech implementation that enabled employees to work remotely.

The Post-Pandemic Workplace

This now-from-home, now-from-the-office work culture could become the norm in the future is neither the responsibility nor a potential worry for the end-user.

Employees and independent workers who comprise today's workforce simply expect to be able to use devices, apps, and software that they like and are comfortable with — if they are to deliver work on time.

They couldn't care less about barriers or complexities posed by the IT architecture of the company.

It is up to CIOs, CTOs and other IT leaders of your company to make sure they're able to use their devices and apps of choice and have enough flexibility to carry out the tasks at hand productively.

The answer is End User Computing.

What is End User Computing (EUC)?

Put simply, EUC is an umbrella term used to describe the scalable technology that IT teams use. The tech provides access to workstations, applications, and data to end-users in an organizational setting.

The broader ecosystem includes apps, mobile devices, cloud interfaces, laptops, smartphones, wearable devices, and so on. In essence, it's any software and hardware that companies and their employees use in their day-to-day jobs. This includes making it easier for non-coders to develop and use simple applications without help from the core IT team.

In a nutshell, computing and network technology are used to connect and share data securely amidst employees and stakeholders both internally and externally.

How Is EUC Implemented?

There are two ways companies can implement end-user computing:

On-premises data centers

Larger companies and organizations have internal data centers that can have their employees log in using their own devices from anywhere, using a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) setup.

VDI uses virtualization and hyper-convergence technology to create desktop images called virtual machines (VMs) and deliver them to end users' devices when they login to the company's data center.

Each VM is allotted a working set of data, applications, storage, and compute power necessary for the user to complete their tasks, according to their role.

Over the cloud

For leaner organizations that don't need full control over their resources, it is simpler to access VDI's equivalent over a public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) enables you to access your AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure apps via a simple HTML browser as well as integrate with SaaS, IaaS and PaaS resources from popular cloud vendors.

This means users need no more than a WiFi connection and a browser-enabled device to access their favorite apps and keep working without any hitches.

Why EUC Is Synonymous with Business Transformation

Many companies are comfortable with the public cloud and SaaS model that lets their users log in with commodity devices to their networks. Further, these solutions are low cost as well as scalable.

However, the new models of EUC with VDI and DaaS ensure increased security, interoperability with legacy apps and infrastructure, as well as identity management and a consistent user experience from any location or via any connection. From power users' point of view, it offers the DevOps triad of continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment.

These are the specific advantages:

More Freedom for Employees

Traditionally, the work computer and its capabilities were controlled and constricted. People could rarely change the personalization settings or install apps of their choice. In contrast, EUC affords employees more flexibility in the form of software, hardware, content formats, data access, and querying capabilities.

This flexibility makes it easier for employees not only to do their jobs better but also to connect with one another as well as customers.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

BYOD is the natural shift to user-centric IT, providing a seamless connection between employee's personal and professional lives. EUC empowers employees to use their preferred devices, and therefore, operate in a more comfortable and convenient tech environment. They can better use their expertise with their chosen technology while saving your business from spending more on new devices.

BYOD is not just popular in companies now; many schools, hospitals, and government agencies are also starting to save costs and digitize faster this way.

A More Mobile Workforce

A study by FlexJobs found that 96% of employees wanted to have some form of remote work even after the end of the pandemic. Further, they use at least one laptop and one mobile device to access their work remotely.

While this means IT teams might have to adapt to new realities and problems in endpoint configuration and control, EUC tech is sufficiently advanced to accommodate hardware-agnostic device management. With granular policy implementation, you can set up and configure devices remotely within minutes to ensure your workforce benefits from maximum uptime.

Centralized Management

With an increasingly high number of desktops, both virtual and real, and mobile devices connecting from various locations, your IT teams might be excused for fearing a loss of control. Not only do you have to manage users across different geographies, but also with varying hardware/software configurations and insecure connections to boot.

EUC, however, allows admins to manage these devices from a unified, singular interface. It enables the installation of applications, updates, and security patches, using just a few clicks or automated API calls. Plus, you can use the same tech to onboard new employees and apply policies.

The VDI or DaaS management interface lets you monitor the number and nature of apps installed by users on their devices. You can also add or remove users to optimize compute and network usage during peak or idle times.

Granular Security

Security is a considerable concern in many EUC implementations, given the wide variety of devices involved. As a result, businesses must adapt to meet the ever-increasing security requirements.

Measure Security

EUC solutions provide measures such as embedded security or multi-factor authentication to tackle these concerns. Businesses in the finance, government, or health sector, where data security is a grave concern, can ensure sensitive data is not stored on user devices.

You'd do best to implement a zero-trust architecture (ZTA) model. Make sure all devices and users are authenticated every time they connect to the company network, and then give access only on an as-needed basis.

Final Thoughts

The transformation of work culture, as well as technology, will continue to pick up the pace beyond the end of the pandemic. While adapting to these new norms in the wake of COVID-19 poses a challenge, businesses have the perfect opportunity to embrace the long-lasting benefits EUC software provides.

Balance user needs with business needs

When you focus on balancing user needs with business needs, you are bound to achieve business objectives quickly. Blending a consistent user experience with security and ease of use will improve both productivity and creativity in your organization, attracting more users into the ecosystem.

Businesses that ride these transformations by offering a dependable and user-friendly experience to remote workers are more likely to build a stronger brand and improve work-life balance for their employees.

The post How End User Computing (EUC) is Digitally Transforming the Post-Pandemic Workplace appeared first on ReadWrite.

Since the start of the global pandemic, many column inches have been devoted to the inevitable rise in home-working. No business could have foreseen a situation in which the majority of their workforce would have to work from home for months on end. Even before many companies were forced to make (and help) their employees
The post How End User Computing (EUC) is Digitally Transforming the Post-Pandemic Workplace appeared first on ReadWrite.Connected Devices, Data and Security, Work

The post How End User Computing (EUC) is Digitally Transforming the Post-Pandemic Workplace appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Elon Musk says he’s working with dogecoin to improve transaction efficiency

Posted: 16 May 2021 07:40 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Chris Smith

If you see dogecoin price surging yet again on cryptocurrency exchanges, social media, and the news, that's because Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been propping the meme coin on Twitter again. Musk has had a massive influence on doge, which rose spectacularly from less than 5 cents a few months ago to nearly 70 cents last week. The coin then fell sharply just as Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, a show where he made various references to the meme coin and continued to drop in the past few days alongside bitcoin and most of the market.

The same Musk surprised fans last week when he said that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin payments for electric cars, as bitcoin isn't energy efficient. The announcement came just as abruptly as the news that Tesla would accept bitcoin payments for vehicles less than two months ago. Musk is back on the doge bandwagon, revealing on Twitter that he's working on making this particular coin more efficient.

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It's unlikely that Musk or Tesla were unaware of exactly how energy efficient bitcoin mining was when Tesla decided to buy $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin earlier this year or when it enabled bitcoin payments. And some still debate Musk's claim that crypto mining can't be eco-friendly.

But Musk's decision to stop accepting bitcoin payments briefly accelerated the coin's price drop last week. Bitcoin rebounded a few hours later, although it's still trading a few thousand dollars below the price at the time of Musk's tweet.

The Tesla exec said at the time that the company will not be selling any bitcoin and plans to use the cryptocurrency in the future. Tesla is considering other digital tokens as well, Musk said, without naming any names:

Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin's energy/transaction.

A few days before that, but after his SNL appearance, Musk ran a poll on Twitter asking followers whether they want Tesla to accept doge. Over 78% of the more than 3.9 million votes answered yes.

Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

After saying that Tesla will no longer process bitcoin payments, the CEO wrote on Twitter that he "strongly believes in crypto, but it can't drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal." A few hours later, he revealed that he is "working with doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency," adding that it's "potentially promising."

The tweet is somewhat cryptic, as Musk has not elaborated what that means. Dogecoin started as a meme coin a few years ago, without having any real purpose. Even so, it developed a cult following, and its popularity exploded in the past few months. It's unclear how Musk plans to make use of it for Tesla or other projects, but his SpaceX already announced that doge payments would fund a mission to the moon.

Dogecoin is trading at 55 cents at the time of this writing.

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Buy NowIf you see dogecoin price surging yet again on cryptocurrency exchanges, social media, and the news, that's because Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been propping the meme coin on Twitter again. Musk has had a massive influence on doge, which rose spectacularly from less than 5 cents a few months ago to nearly 70 cents last week. The coin then fell sharply just as Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, a show where he made various references to the meme coin and continued to drop in the past few days alongside bitcoin and most of the market.

The same Musk surprised fans last week when he said that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin payments for electric cars, as bitcoin isn't energy efficient. The announcement came just as abruptly as the news that Tesla would accept bitcoin payments for vehicles less than two months ago. Musk is back on the doge bandwagon, revealing on Twitter that he's working on making this particular coin more efficient.

It's unlikely that Musk or Tesla were unaware of exactly how energy efficient bitcoin mining was when Tesla decided to buy $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin earlier this year or when it enabled bitcoin payments. And some still debate Musk's claim that crypto mining can't be eco-friendly.

But Musk's decision to stop accepting bitcoin payments briefly accelerated the coin's price drop last week. Bitcoin rebounded a few hours later, although it's still trading a few thousand dollars below the price at the time of Musk's tweet.

The Tesla exec said at the time that the company will not be selling any bitcoin and plans to use the cryptocurrency in the future. Tesla is considering other digital tokens as well, Musk said, without naming any names:
Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin's energy/transaction.
A few days before that, but after his SNL appearance, Musk ran a poll on Twitter asking followers whether they want Tesla to accept doge. Over 78% of the more than 3.9 million votes answered yes.

After saying that Tesla will no longer process bitcoin payments, the CEO wrote on Twitter that he "strongly believes in crypto, but it can't drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal." A few hours later, he revealed that he is "working with doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency," adding that it's "potentially promising."

The tweet is somewhat cryptic, as Musk has not elaborated what that means. Dogecoin started as a meme coin a few years ago, without having any real purpose. Even so, it developed a cult following, and its popularity exploded in the past few months. It's unclear how Musk plans to make use of it for Tesla or other projects, but his SpaceX already announced that doge payments would fund a mission to the moon.

Dogecoin is trading at 55 cents at the time of this writing.Bitcoin, dogecoin, Elon Musk, Tesla
Tech News at http://dWeb.News

The post Elon Musk says he's working with dogecoin to improve transaction efficiency appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Why You’re Having More Weird, Vivid Dreams During the Pandemic

Posted: 15 May 2021 11:10 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

illuminated neon sign

An interesting side effect of the coronavirus pandemic is the number of people who say they are having vivid dreams.

Many are turning to blogs and social media to describe their experiences.

While such dreams can be confusing or distressing, dreaming is normal and considered helpful in processing our waking situation, which for many people is far from normal at the moment.

While we are sleeping

Adults are recommended to sleep for seven to nine hours to maintain optimal health and well-being.

Read more:  Having Weird Dreams? There's a Neurological Reason for That

When we sleep we go through different stages which cycle throughout the night. This includes light and deep sleep and a period known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which features more prominently in the second half of the night. As the name implies, during REM sleep the eyes move rapidly.

Dreams can occur within all sleep stages but REM sleep is considered responsible for highly emotive and visual dreams.

We typically have several REM dream periods a night, yet we do not necessarily remember the experiences and content. Researchers have identified that REM sleep has unique properties that help us regulate our mood, performance and cognitive functioning.

Some say dreams act like a defence mechanism for our mental health, by giving us a simulated opportunity to work through our fears and to rehearse for stressful real-life events.

This global pandemic and associated restrictions may have impacts on how and when we sleep. This has positive effects for some and negative effects for others. Both situations can lead to heightened recollection of dreams.

Disrupted sleep and dreams

During this pandemic, studies from China and the UK show many people are reporting a heightened state of anxiety and are having shorter or more disturbed sleep.

Ruminating about the pandemic, either directly or via the media, just before going to bed can work against our need to relax and get a good night's sleep. It may also provide fodder for dreams.

When we are sleep deprived, the pressure for REM sleep increases and so at the next sleep opportunity a so-called rebound in REM sleep occurs. During this time dreams are reportedly more vivid and emotional than usual.

More time in bed

Other studies indicate that people may be sleeping more and moving less during the pandemic.

If you're working and learning from home on flexible schedules without the usual commute it means you avoid the morning rush and don't need to get up so early. Heightened dream recall has been associated with having a longer sleep as well as waking more naturally from a state of REM sleep.

If you're at home with other people you have a captive audience and time to exchange dream stories in the morning. The act of sharing dreams reinforces our memory of them. It might also prepare us to remember more on subsequent nights.

This has likely created a spike in dream recall and interest during this time.

The pandemic concerns

Dreaming can help us to cope mentally with our waking situation as well as simply reflect realities and concerns.

In this time of heightened alert and changing social norms, our brains have much more to process during sleep and dreaming. More stressful dream content is to be expected if we feel anxious or stressed in relation to the pandemic, or our working or family situations.

Hence more reports of dreams containing fear, embarrassment, social taboos, occupational stress, grief and loss, unreachable family, as well as more literal dreams around contamination or disease are being recorded.

An increase in unusual or vivid dreams and nightmares is not surprising. Such experiences have been reported before at times associated with sudden change, anxiety or trauma, such as the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, or natural disasters or war.

Those with an anxiety disorder or experiencing the trauma first-hand are highly likely also to experience changes to dreams.

But such changes are also reported by those witnessing events like the 9/11 attacks second-hand or via the media.

Problems solved in dreams

One theory on dreams is they serve to process the emotional demands of the day, to commit experiences to memory, solve problems, adapt and learn.

This is achieved through the reactivation of particular brain areas during REM sleep and the consolidation of neural connections.

During REM the areas of the brain responsible for emotions, memory, behaviour and vision are reactivated (as opposed to those required for logical thinking, reasoning and movement, which remain in a state of rest).

The activity and connections made during dreaming are considered to be guided by the dreamer's waking activities, exposures and stressors.

The neural activity has been proposed to synthesise learning and memory. The actual dream experience is more a by-product of this activity, which we assemble into a more logical narrative when the remainder of the brain attempts to catch up and reason with the activity on waking.

Please … go to sleep

If disrupted sleep and dreams are problematic or distressing for you, consider how your sleep schedule and behaviour has changed with the pandemic. Maybe seek advice for supporting your sleep and well-being during this time.

My colleagues and I at the Sleep/Wake Research Centre have produced several information sheets on sleep during the pandemic.

We are also conducting a survey concerning the sleep of people living in New Zealand. This explores factors affecting sleep during the pandemic, and participants can comment on their dreaming.

The post Why You're Having More Weird, Vivid Dreams During the Pandemic appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Having Weird Dreams? There’s a Neurological Reason for That

Posted: 15 May 2021 10:53 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

Our dreams’ weirdness might be why we have them, argues new AI-inspired theory of dreaming

IMAGE
This illustration represents the overfitted brain hypothesis of dreaming, which claims that the sparse and hallucinatory quality of dreams is not a bug, but a feature, since it helps prevent the brain from overfitting to its biased daily sources of learning CREDIT: GEORGIA TURNER

The question of why we dream is a divisive topic within the scientific community: it’s hard to prove concretely why dreams occur and the neuroscience field is saturated with hypotheses. Inspired by techniques used to train deep neural networks, Erik Hoel (@erikphoel), a research assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts University, argues for a new theory of dreams: the overfitted brain hypothesis. The hypothesis, described May 14 in a review in the journal Patterns, suggests that the strangeness of our dreams serves to help our brains better generalize our day-to-day experiences.

“There’s obviously an incredible number of theories of why we dream,” says Hoel. “But I wanted to bring to attention a theory of dreams that takes dreaming itself very seriously–that says the experience of dreams is why you’re dreaming.”

A common problem when it comes to training AI is that it becomes too familiar with the data it’s trained on–it starts to assume that the training set is a perfect representation of anything it might encounter. Data scientists fix this by introducing some chaos into the data; in one such regularization method, called “dropout,” some data is randomly ignored. Imagine if black boxes suddenly appeared on the internal screen of a self-driving car: the car that sees the random black boxes on the screen and focuses on overarching details of its surroundings, rather than the specifics of that particular driving experience, will likely better understand the general experience of driving.

“The original inspiration for deep neural networks was the brain,” Hoel says. And while comparing the brain to technology is not new, he explains that using deep neural networks to describe the overfitted brain hypothesis was a natural connection. “If you look at the techniques that people use in regularization of deep learning, it’s often the case that those techniques bear some striking similarities to dreams,” he says.

With that in mind, his new theory suggests that dreams happen to make our understanding of the world less simplistic and more well-rounded–because our brains, like deep neural networks, also become too familiar with the “training set” of our everyday lives. To counteract the familiarity, he suggests, the brain creates a weirded version of the world in dreams, the mind’s version of dropout. “It is the very strangeness of dreams in their divergence from waking experience that gives them their biological function,” he writes.

Hoel says that there’s already evidence from neuroscience research to support the overfitted brain hypothesis. For example, it’s been shown that the most reliable way to prompt dreams about something that happens in real life is to repetitively perform a novel task while you are awake. He argues that when you over-train on a novel task, the condition of overfitting is triggered, and your brain attempts to then generalize for this task by creating dreams.

But he believes that there’s also research that could be done to determine whether this is really why we dream. He says that well-designed behavioral tests could differentiate between generalization and memorization and the effect of sleep deprivation on both.

Another area he’s interested to explore is on the idea of “artificial dreams.” He came up with overfitted brain hypothesis while thinking about the purpose of works of fiction like film or novels. Now, he hypothesizes that outside stimuli like novels or TV shows might act as dream “substitutions”–and that they could perhaps even be designed to help delay the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation by emphasizing their dream-like nature (for instance, by virtual reality technology).

While you can simply turn off learning in artificial neural networks, Hoel says, you can’t do that with a brain. Brains are always learning new things–and that’s where the overfitted brain hypothesis comes in to help. “Life is boring sometimes,” he says. “Dreams are there to keep you from becoming too fitted to the model of the world.”

For more in depth research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100244

Erik Hoel is also the author of The Revelations, a novel publishing April 6 from Abrams Books: https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/revelations_9781419750229/.

The post Having Weird Dreams? There’s a Neurological Reason for That appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

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Young Student Reporter Who Interviewed President Obama Dies at 23

Posted: 15 May 2021 10:19 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

He was the 11-year-old student reporter who gained national recognition from his interview with President Barack Obama at the White House in 2009. Damon Weaver has died of natural causes at age 23, Politico reports.

Weaver was 23 died May 1, his sister, Candace Hardy, told the Palm Beach Post. Additional details were not released. He had been studying communications at Albany State University in Georgia.

Weaver was only 11 when he conducted his iconic interview with Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room on Aug. 13, 2009, asking questions that focused primarily on education.

He covered asked the president about school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.

Weaver then asked Obama to be his "homeboy."

The post Young Student Reporter Who Interviewed President Obama Dies at 23 appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Deadliest Warning Yet: China Pledges to Defeat the US in a Military Conflict

Posted: 15 May 2021 09:46 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Daniel Webster

Beijing, China — Amid tensions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan, China has issued a warning that the US will be defeated if the two superpowers go to war. United States President Joe Biden has a few major international issues to deal with right now.

China’s Global Times, which is a Chinese Government news outlet, published an editorial revealing the threat in response to joint military drills carried out by the US.

Citing Global Times editorial piece, Express.co.uk reported that the threat is in response to joint military drills carried out by the US. The US joined drills with Japan, Australia and France this week in a show of force against Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, China had described the military exercises in southern Japan involving troops and hardware from France, Japan, the United States and Australia as a waste of fuel, adding that the drill had “no impact” on the country.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was "deadly earnest about [China] becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world," President Biden said while addressing a socially-distanced gathering of lawmakers in the House chamber, with all the vaccinated attendees dutifully wearing their masks.

"He and others – autocrats – think that democracy can't compete in the 21st century with autocracies, because it takes too long to get consensus," he said, appearing to veer off script, according to prepared remarks circulated by the White House before the speech.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and now United States President Joe Biden Photo: Wikipedia commons

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea and has overlapping territorial claims with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Beijing also claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.

“The Global Times put out an editorial saying the US would be defeated if any conflict broke out in the South China Sea. Many see the drills as a show of force aimed at China as Japan works towards consolidating military alliances in an effort to deter its neighbouring superpower,” said RT America’s Alex Mihailovich.

He further said, “The drills appeared to irritate China rather than contain it.”Former UK MP George Galloway said that this would prompt an increase in military preparedness from China.

“What a spur this must be to China’s own warship development. If they are not fools, they will be building so many warships right now that no-one will dare to steam up the East China Sea and threaten them in any way,” Galloway said.

Earlier this week, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army released videos showing marines training for island landing drills in an apparent threat to Taiwan. Video footage released by the PLA Navy shows marines from the Eastern Theatre Command in a recent landing exercise for a simulated invasion, Express.co.uk reported.

China has been increasing its maritime activities in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea over the past few months, partly in response to Beijing’s concerns over the increasing US military presence in the region because of escalating Sino-US tensions.

Beijing issues deadliest war warning yet as China states it is now 'ready to beat' US
Beijing issues deadliest war warning yet as China states it is now 'ready to beat' US

Asia News International contributed to this report

The post Deadliest Warning Yet: China Pledges to Defeat the US in a Military Conflict appeared first on dWeb.News Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy
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