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big tech's nuclear power race

Big tech goes nuclear

America’s leading technology companies are now engaged in their own nuclear power race. Advertising and search giant Google has announced that it has signed the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMR), to be developed by Kairos Power. By investing in its own nuclear energy facilities, Google has now joined the ranks of Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle in investing heavily in nuclear facilities to power the rollout of new services based around their prematurely launched artificial intelligence (AI) services. According to a recent report from US Madison Avenue investment bankers, Jeffries: “If it feels like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are suddenly everywhere, it’s because they are. GPUs drive computation across a wide range of industries and applications, from big data analytics to machine learning [AI].”

Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Critical infrastructure under increased attack

France-based Schneider Electric became the latest utility company to succumb to a ransomware attack on January 17, when some of its business divisions serving several critical industries were taken down. Although access to the system was eventually re-opened on January 31st, the incident underlines the growing seriousness of cyber-attacks aimed at the West’s critical infrastructure. Schnieder Electric has an annual turnover of over 42 billion and employs over 150,000 people. The ransomware attack on Schneider Electric coincides with news that, in the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently neutralized a botnet controlled by a Chinese threat group. The White House had previously authorized the FBI to take down the botnet after federal agencies and private sector researchers had accused cyberespionage gang Volt Typhoon of a major campaign aimed at a wide range of the US’s critical infrastructure.

United States Energy Firm Hacks

Top 10 US energy firms hit by 3rd-party attacks

Nine out of ten of the world’s leading energy companies, including the top ten US energy companies, experienced a third-party data breach sometime in the last 12 months. According to cybersecurity ratings company Security Scorecard, while only four percent of leading energy companies worldwide suffered a direct data breach, most were compromised via a supplier, contractor, or other third-party organization.     “Fueling the global economy and daily life, reliance on the energy sector elevates it as a prime target for cyberattacks. Amid economic and political uncertainties, concerns about safeguarding this vital sector intensified. Energy attacks not only result in financial losses and disruptions but ripple through manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation sectors,” says Security ScoreCard. 

Nuclear Hacks

Nuclear facility reportedly hacked by Russia and China

In what is an urgent and stark warning to nuclear facilities around the world, UK nuclear facility Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, is reported to have been hacked by groups linked to China and Russia. The 70-year-old sprawling six-square-kilometre facility, located on the North-West coast of England, holds the planet's largest store of plutonium as a result of processing nuclear waste from decades of atomic power generation and weapons programs. The UK authorities do not know exactly when the hack originally occurred, according to The Guardian newspaper, although breaches are said to have been detected as long ago as 2015, when sleeper malware, used to attack systems remotely and at will over a long period, was found to have been embedded. In what amounts to a national scandal for the UK, it is still not yet known if the malware has actually been eradicated.

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