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The xz utils supply chain attack is now two years old, and a sobering new analysis finds that most automated security scanners still cannot reliably detect the kind of threat it represented. The attack worked not through malicious code alone, but through a long, patient social engineering campaign that eroded trust at a human level — something no scanner is built to see.
Shifting to space, China has launched a reusable rocket widely seen as a direct rival to SpaceX's Falcon Nine, and it did so with virtually no advance notice. The move underscores how seriously Beijing is investing in commercial launch capability, and how quickly the competitive landscape beyond Earth's atmosphere is being redrawn — largely outside Western view.
And on the question of who gets to compete in the global AI race, venture capitalist Songyee Yoon of Principal Venture Partners makes a compelling point from the floor of HumanX: building AI for markets outside the United States means far more than translation. It requires rethinking models from the ground up around language, culture, and a semiconductor supply chain that remains deeply fragile for much of the world.
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