Langley Plants The Flag: CIA Takes Point In Post-Maduro Venezuela
January 28th, 2026Via: ZeroHedge:
The CIA is “quietly working” to establish a permanent footprint inside Venezuela to shape the country’s post-Maduro trajectory, according to a CNN report Tuesday – or rather it’s not-so-quietly, with sources saying Washington intends to run Caracas much the way it penetrated Ukraine after 2014.
While the State Department is planning an eventual reopening of a formal US embassy, setting up a CIA annex has been elevated to “priority number one,” an unnamed US official told CNN – though there are serious questions as to why the agency would want to advertise this all over CNN.
From that base, agency operatives would engage with the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez, cultivate opposition factions, and “target third parties who may be threats,” according to the source.
A former US official described the annex as a workaround to traditional diplomacy:
“Before diplomatic channels the annex can help set up liaison channels… that will allow conversations that diplomats cannot have.”
In other words, the intelligence apparatus moves first, with formal diplomacy to follow. According to the unnamed official:
“State plants the flag but CIA is really the influence,” one source familiar with the planning process told CNN, noting the agency’s near-term objectives include setting the stage for diplomatic efforts – including relationship building with locals – and providing security.
Of course, no thinking person was entertaining any illusions that it would be anything less than a Langley outpost in Latin America. This is par for the South American course.
Planned Obsolescence Documentary: The Light Bulb Conspiracy
January 28th, 2026Via: Documentary For Better World:
Related: Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade
AI Found 12 Vulnerabilities in SSL
January 27th, 2026If this was the case with OpenSSL…
Via: AISLE:
AISLE’s autonomous analyzer found all 12 CVEs in the January 2026 coordinated release of OpenSSL, the open-source cryptographic library that underpins a substantial proportion of the world’s secure communications. Some of these vulnerabilities had persisted in OpenSSL code for decades, evading the notice of thousands of security researchers.
Finding a genuine security flaw in OpenSSL is extraordinarily difficult. Even a single accepted vulnerability represents a rare achievement. The library’s maturity and the community’s vigilance make new discoveries exceptionally uncommon. This makes the January 2026 release an important milestone for autonomous security systems. As Tomáš Mráz, CTO of the OpenSSL Foundation, says,
“One of the most important sources of the security of the OpenSSL Library and open source projects overall is independent research. This release is fixing 12 security issues, all disclosed to us by AISLE. We appreciate the high quality of the reports and their constructive collaboration with us throughout the remediation.”
“Scientists Use AI to Create a Virus Never Seen Before”
January 26th, 2026Via: Daily Mail:
Lab–grown life has taken a major leap forward as scientists use AI to create a new virus that has never been seen before.
The virus, dubbed Evo–?2147, was created by scientists from scratch using new technologies that could revolutionise the course of evolution.
With just 11 genes, compared to the 200,000 in the human genome, this virus is among the simplest forms of life.
However, scientists believe that the same tools could one day create entire living organisms or resurrect long–extinct species.
This artificial virus was specifically created to kill infectious and potentially deadly E. Coli bacteria.
Based on a wild virus known to infect bacteria, scientists used an AI tool called Evo2 to create 285 entirely new viruses from scratch.
While only 16 were able to attack the E. Coli, the most successful were 25 per cent quicker at killing bacteria than the wild variants.
However, previous research has raised concerns that AI–designed pathogens could themselves become a deadly threat to humanity.
LED Lighting (350-650nm) Undermines Human Visual Performance Unless Supplemented by Wider Spectra (400-1500nm+) Like Daylight
January 26th, 2026Via: Scientific Reports:
Life evolved under broad spectrum sunlight, from ultraviolet to infrared (300–2500 nm). This spectrally balanced light sculpted life’s physiology and metabolism. But modern lighting has recently become dominated by restricted spectrum light emitting diodes (350–650 nm LEDs). Absence of longer wavelengths in LEDs and their short wavelength dominance impacts physiology, undermining normal mitochondrial respiration that regulates metabolism, disease and ageing. Mitochondria are light sensitive. The 420–450 nm dominant in LEDs suppresses respiration while deep red/infrared (670–900 nm) increases respiration in aging and some diseases including in blood sugar regulation. Here we supplement LED light with broad spectrum lighting (400–1500 nm+) for 2 weeks and test colour contrast sensitivity. We show significant improvement in this metric that last for 2 months after the supplemental lighting is removed. Mitochondria communicate across the body with systemic impacts following regional light exposure. This likely involves shifting patterns of serum cytokine expression, raising the possibility of wider negative impacts of LEDs on human health particularly, in the elderly or in the clinical environment where individuals are debilitated. Changing the lighting in these environments could be a highly economic route to improved public health.
In Conversation with Andrew Bridgen: Digital ID, Excess Deaths & Political Silence
January 26th, 2026Via: Digby Furneaux:
Microsoft Gave FBI a Set of BitLocker Encryption Keys to Unlock Suspects’ Laptops
January 23rd, 2026Letting Microsoft hold copies of your Bitlocker keys is very convenient—for the police.
Via: Forbes:
Early last year, the FBI served Microsoft with a search warrant, asking it to provide recovery keys to unlock encrypted data stored on three laptops. Federal investigators in Guam believed the devices held evidence that would help prove individuals handling the island’s Covid unemployment assistance program were part of a plot to steal funds.
The data was protected with BitLocker, software that’s automatically enabled on many modern Windows PCs to safeguard all the data on the computer’s hard drive. BitLocker scrambles the data so that only those with a key can decode it.
It’s possible for users to store those keys on a device they own, but Microsoft also recommends BitLocker users store their keys on its servers for convenience. While that means someone can access their data if they forget their password, or if repeated failed attempts to login lock the device, it also makes them vulnerable to law enforcement subpoenas and warrants.
In the Guam case, it handed over the encryption keys to investigators.
Microsoft confirmed to Forbes that it does provide BitLocker recovery keys if it receives a valid legal order. “While key recovery offers convenience, it also carries a risk of unwanted access, so Microsoft believes customers are in the best position to decide… how to manage their keys,” said Microsoft spokesperson Charles Chamberlayne.
He said the company receives around 20 requests for BitLocker keys per year and in many cases, the user has not stored their key in the cloud making it impossible for Microsoft to assist.
Korg Phase8 Acoustic Synthesizer
January 23rd, 2026There are probably fewer than five people who read Cryptogon who will be interested in the Korg Phase8, but I want to make sure they know about it. 🙂
Via: loopop:
Related: Korg Phase8 Acoustic Synthesizer
And Now… U.S. Unveils Plans for ‘New Gaza’ with Skyscrapers
January 23rd, 2026Via: BBC:
The US has unveiled its plans for a “New Gaza” that would see the devastated Palestinian territory rebuilt from scratch.
Slides showed dozens of skyscrapers stretching along the Mediterranean coast and housing estates in the Rafah area, while a map outlining the phased development of new residential, agricultural and industrial areas for the 2.1 million population.
They were presented during a signing ceremony at the World Economic Forum in Davos for President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace, which is tasked with ending the two-year war between Israel and Hamas and overseeing reconstruction.
“We’re going to be very successful in Gaza. It’s going to be a great thing to watch,” Trump declared.
“I’m a real estate person at heart and it’s all about location. And I said: ‘Look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property. What it could be for so many people.'”
Dangerously Cold Air to Surge Through Dozens of States
January 23rd, 2026Via: Accuweather:
The coldest air of the winter may visit many areas across the central and eastern United States, with AccuWeather RealFeel Temperatures of 50 below zero in the coldest spots.
More: State of Emergency Declared in Multiple States
