Someone at the White House appears to be running software that could enable outsiders to rent access on the presidential network for just "a few dollars," as reported by Krebs on Security and The Register. That's according to findings from the security firms Layer3 Intel and Synthient, which discovered residential proxy activity on the White House network.
A residential proxy opens up a way for people to rent access to a home IP address and route their internet traffic through it, allowing them to conceal where their activity is actually coming from. Some apps and browser extensions include third-party software development kits (SDKs) that …
Security researchers found hundreds of servers hosting the penetration testing tool Artex exposed to the internet, allowing anyone access to the hacking tool.
An experiment in which AI models were asked to break into simulated networks showed the hacking skills of DeepSeek and GLM to be not far behind OpenAI’s most advanced cyber model, which isn’t public.
DUBLIN — Bomb threats targeting several of Ireland’s top media organizations are almost certainly linked to next week’s European Political Community summit in Dublin, a government official told POLITICO.
Newsrooms at Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, Virgin Media TV, the Irish Independent newspaper and Newstalk radio received identically worded emails Friday morning claiming bombs had been left inside their offices.
Three of the newsrooms were evacuated, disrupting RTÉ and Newstalk programs, while Virgin staff kept broadcasts running. Police confirmed they found no suspicious devices.
“We have expected a rise in hybrid threats to Ireland because of our hosting of the EU presidency, and the EPC meeting will be by far the biggest set-piece event of that presidency, so one must presume it’s no coincidence that we’re experiencing this spike in hybrid activity now,” the Irish official said.
The Irish government said the threats against media outlets were probably part of a European-wide pattern of threats that have targeted dozens of airlines this week, including Irish carriers Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Hackers also targeted supermarket refrigeration systems in at least seven European countries.
“It is not known yet who is responsible for these threats, whether it is individuals or a centralized or coordinated effort,” the Irish government said in a statement. “However, these threats come on the heels of the ongoing disruption to aviation around Europe caused by similar threats, and it seems likely that this is a coordinated campaign of disruption.”
Bomb threats also targeted at least 18 European flights Friday, after at least 22 the day before, raising concerns that the hoaxes may be part of a coordinated campaign to disrupt air traffic.
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told Spanish public broadcaster TVE on Friday that the bomb threats affecting flights could be “an attempt at hybrid aggression and war in some psychological way.” He added that “it cannot be a coincidence that so many identical events occur with the same modus operandi throughout Europe.”
Luis Gallego, CEO of airline group IAG, said: “It is clear that what they [the perpetrators] are looking for is to create chaos and disruption in the different airports.”
Fighter jets were scrambled in Hungary on Friday “in response to bomb threats involving three civilian passenger aircraft,” said Hungary’s Defense Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi.
Prague Airport said nine flights were targeted by bomb threats Friday alone, while France reported another four threats against aircraft flying over its territory that day. The Bulgarian government told AFP that two flights bound for Sofia were targeted by bomb threats on Friday.
Aviation professionals have said no threat should be underestimated. “No matter how remote the real possibility after a call that there is a bomb on board, we will treat it as if there is a bomb on board,” said Paul Reuter, an airline captain and vice president of the European Cockpit Association.
The Irish government official told POLITICO that the sudden increase in anonymous disruptions to airlines, supermarkets and now news outlets appeared to be timed to increase tensions ahead of Dublin’s hosting next Thursday of the EPC summit.
Created in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EPC brings together the leaders of 47 countries and representatives of several bodies, including NATO, to discuss strategic issues. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is also attending.
The Irish official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Friday’s threats freely, declined to identify Russia as the likely culprit. But he noted that EU partners — including Denmark, which faced a similar wave of so-called hybrid attacks in the run-up to its own 2025 hosting of the EPC — had drawn such links in the past.
Irish police Superintendent Liam Geraghty said the event posed an even tougher security challenge than hosting a U.S. presidential visit. “We have not seen a policing and security operation of this scale ever before in Ireland,” Geraghty told reporters.
PARIS — A group of European ambassadors posted in Paris questioned Marine Le Pen about her plans for France and the EU over a lunch on Wednesday, four officials with direct knowledge of the meeting told POLITICO.
The lunch at the lavish neoclassical Hôtel de Beauharnais — once home to Napoleon’s stepson, and now the residence of the German ambassador in the capital — mainly covered Le Pen’s future EU agenda, officials said.
Le Pen, who is comfortably leading the polls in the 2027 election race, has pledged to fight in Brussels to downsize EU institutions, turn the European Commission into a secretariat that would no longer have any competence on foreign policy, internal security or health, and to drastically cut France’s contribution to the EU budget.
The group of ambassadors from the eight countries that share a border with metropolitan France — Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco and Andorra — already met with conservative presidential candidate Bruno Retailleau in September. They are planning to host meetings with the other presidential hopefuls, including far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, at their respective embassies in the coming months.
“I don’t know if it reassured or worried them,” said an adviser to Marine Le Pen who accompanied her to the lunch. “What is sure is that they can now report back to their capitals what the National Rally wants to do,” the adviser added.
Le Pen was mainly questioned about her plans to downsize the EU and on bilateral issues, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump after his seismic defeat in the midterm elections.
While in the past, the National Rally has been supportive of Trump, the party has progressively distanced itself from the U.S. president. The National Rally’s Jordan Bardella on Wednesday said his party was not affected by the result and suggested that Trump’s popularity was undermined by the war in the Middle East and its economic consequences.
Le Pen has also been campaigning for a harsher approach on migration, which would involve stricter checks at the borders, potentially impacting countries whose envoys she met on Wednesday. All of them, apart from Andorra and Monaco, are part of the Schengen free-movement area.
“There is a general interest on what would her stance be on the key issues of mutual interest and cooperation on which we are working with France,” said one diplomat from a participating country.
“It was a very frank exchange. She told them what she says everywhere and she was able to elaborate on a number of topics a little more at length than she would do on TV,” the same adviser said, adding that Le Pen regularly meets ambassadors.
Back in December, Le Pen and her No. 2 Jordan Bardella also met with U.S. ambassador Charles Kushner. The far-right leaders are also preparing the ground for a possible election win by meetingtop French business executives.
Marcelo Wesfreid and Nicolas Camut contributed to this report.
PARIS — Far-left presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party set out leaving NATO and nationalizing defense companies in its official platform released Friday.
“Immediately withdraw from NATO’s integrated command and then, in stages, from the organization itself. Reject the tribute demanded by the United States of 5% of GDP devoted to defense spending,” read France Unbowed’s 222-page program.
However, France under Mélenchon would still provide assistance to European Union countries under EU treaties, the document added, echoing what the far-left leader previously told POLITICO.
An increasing number of polls place Mélenchon in second place in next year’s high-stakes election to replace President Emmanuel Macron. The top two vote-getters go on to a second round, which could see Mélenchon facing off against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who also pledges to take France out of NATO’s integrated command.
Unlike Le Pen’s far-right party, France Unbowed does not explicitly say it would stop providing assistance to Ukraine — but it does insist on the need for a diplomatic solution. Any peace agreement would need to lean on “collective security guarantees, between the belligerents and with the rest of Europe.”
France Unbowed wants more arms regulation, including of lethal autonomous weapons systems and nuclear weapons.
The far-left party is also pushing back against the “space arms race,” including by pledging to close NATO’s space center in Toulouse, but says France should have the means to guarantee its sovereignty. Unlike most other political parties, France Unbowed has strong interest in space policy, and argues in its presidential platform that France should acquire a space shuttle.
France Unbowed lawmakers have previously pushed for France to procure Dassault Aviation’s Vortex, a European reusable orbital spaceplane program spearheaded by the French aerospace manufacturer.
Overall, France should invest more in so-called critical enablers, meaning military equipment in areas such as communications, intelligence and logistics that are currently mostly provided by the U.S. via NATO. “They must be produced as a matter of priority,” the party wrote.
It also wants to nationalize some of the country’s main defense companies including ArianeGroup.
A more detailed platform specifically on defense will be released later, a France Unbowed lawmaker told POLITICO.
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is slated to visit Bulgaria and Romania next week, following a series of drone attacks on Black Sea vessels that have heightened security tensions along NATO’s eastern flank.
According to three European Commission officials familiar with the plans, von der Leyen is expected to travel to both countries before attending the COP climate summit in Turkey. “It’s now the deadliest shipping route in the world,” said one of the officials, who was granted anonymity to speak about security-related plans.
At least seven commercial vessels were reportedly struck by drones in the Black Sea last month, leaving two sailors dead and at least 25 missing. The attacks, which Romania blames on Russia, have brought the violence of the war in Ukraine dangerously close to NATO territory.
Romania has warned that the strikes are part of Moscow’s escalating aggression against Ukraine, while Bulgaria has stopped short of formally blaming Moscow, referring instead to drones coming from “an eastern direction.”
The security concerns reached Bulgaria’s shores Friday, when a local resident discovered a drone washed up near the coastal town of Shabla. The aerial vehicle appeared to have been carried ashore by the sea, said the municipality’s mayor, Mariyan Zhechev. The drone’s origin and whether it was connected to the recent attacks on commercial shipping have not been established.
It is unclear whether von der Leyen will be accompanied by anyone else such as European Council President António Costa or EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. In Bucharest on Monday she will meet with Romanian President Nicușor Dan and Prime Minister Luca Niculescu. On Tuesday, she will meet Bulgarian Prime Minsiter Rumen Radev in Varna and visit the Nikola Vapsarov Naval Academy.
The plans come as NATO allies step up surveillance over the Black Sea following the attacks on commercial shipping. Italian, British and American reconnaissance aircraft were spotted conducting simultaneous missions over the region Tuesday, according to Bulgarian broadcaster bTV, while France has extended the deployment of a maritime patrol aircraft in Romania.
The deteriorating security situation is also prompting diplomatic efforts to protect commercial shipping. Speaking at Saturday’s G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said India and Turkey had put forward proposals to help grain-carrying vessels navigate the Black Sea safely amid the continuing Russia-Ukraine war.
This article has been updated with details of Ursula von der Leyen’s itinerary in Romania and Bulgaria.
TALLINN — Europe shouldn’t open a diplomatic channel to Russian President Vladimir Putin, warned the leader of one of the continent’s most exposed nations.
“Europe should not be in a mediator’s position,” Estonia’s Prime Minister Kristen Michal told POLITICO in an interview this week. “You should not take the role of trying to please the dictator.”
European leaders have long feared the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump may pursue a Russia–Ukraine peace deal on terms that sideline Europe and disadvantage Kyiv. The most recent talks between Washington and Moscow have reignited debate in Brussels and national capitals about the need for Europe to have its own direct line to the Kremlin. Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a 90-minute call with Putin in late October.
The Estonian premier — whose country of 1.3 million people borders Russia and has been subject to Moscow’s persistent attempts to stoke internal unrest — warned against the idea of direct talks, saying it would weaken Europe’s position with Putin.
“For once, Europe has a plan which is actually working” by suffocating Russia economically with sanctions, Michal said. Being a mediator means “you are willing to lower the standards, for example, for Russia,” including when it comes to imposing and enforcing punitive sanctions, he said.
“You cannot [have] two roles. One role is backing up Ukraine and pressuring Russia. A second one is trying to have a form of mediation,” the Estonian leader said.
“Putin should understand that Europe is strong, keeping together and we have one voice,” he added.
U.S. officials will sit down with Ukrainian and Russian representatives next week. The talks, which will be the first face-to-face negotiations since February, will be held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said Monday.
The Estonian leader said Europeans “appreciate” the Trump administration’s attempts to broker a peace deal, “but the pressure should be very much on Russia,” he said. “The problem [is] sitting in [the] Kremlin. Nowhere else.”
With Trump’s Republican Party in crisis after a major loss in the U.S. midterm elections Tuesday, Europe is closely watching how the shift of power in the U.S. Congress will influence the president’s position on Ukraine.
“Elections have consequence. So this is a good thing in democracy, that you have checks and balances,” Michal said about the election outcome.
He added the electoral shift could move Washington further “to the better side, more value-based side. And when [the] U.S. is more value-based … that probably is a good message to Ukraine and to Europe.”
A woman walks across the border between Estonia and Russia at the Narva crossing on Dec. 15, 2024. | Marko Mumm/AFP via Getty Images
To heap pressure on Russia, Estonia has spearheaded a push — together with Poland and Sweden — to toughen up visa rules for Russians, including former fighters who fought on the battlefields in Ukraine. Tallinn has proposed an outright ban on allowing ex-soldiers from Russia’s armed forces access to the EU at large.
Officials believe the tourist visas allow Russian operatives easy access into the bloc to conduct so-called hybrid warfare campaigns — from flying drones over sensitive security sites to sabotage of infrastructure.
Michal said Europe had no time to waste as hybrid attacks keep disrupting services. “You should not have these kind of people running around Europe. So limit the visas,” he said.
LONDON — Andy Burnham jets off to the latest global COP climate summit early next week. The last time he went to this annual meeting of the world’s climate diplomats, he didn’t like what he saw.
“I’m just back from two days at COP26 and officially worried about the state of the climate debate,” Burnham, then the mayor of Greater Manchester, wrote in 2021, after a trip to that year’s U.N. conference in Glasgow.
This year’s edition, COP31, kicks off in Antalya, Turkey next week, with a focus on protecting countries hit hardest by the impacts of global warming and setting goals for electrifying world economies.
Burnham will be there — now as British prime minister. And that little-noticed article, published five years ago in the Evening Standard newspaper, says plenty about his political instincts on climate change.
2021 was the high point of the U.K. consensus on net zero. But the then-future prime minister criticized the summit for giving a “pulpit” to billionaire Jeff Bezos (who had earlier that year “burnt more carbon in a trip to space than most people consume in a lifetime”) and took aim at protesters “with the time to glue themselves to roads … reprimanding ordinary people under work and time pressures for using their cars.”
Burnham backed climate action, he insisted. But with its technocratic focus on “percentages and far-off dates, with remarkably little reference to the struggles of ordinary families,” there was a danger COP would send the wrong message: “That the drive to net zero will mean cost and inconvenience for ordinary people.”
Several years and one big job change later, those views have not changed.
Interviews with more than a dozen advisers, government officials, pollsters and MPs around Burnham reveal a PM convinced of the dangers posed to Britain and the world by runaway global warming — yet whose first instinct, sometimes to the frustration of climate advocates, is to prioritize cost of living and energy security worries at home.
“I think Andy does get the big picture climate emergency, the urgency with which we need to act,” said Dale Vince, a clean energy entrepreneur and former New Age traveler who has advised Burnham on energy. But “millions of people in our country are asking: ‘How do I pay the bill?’”
Many politicians are “out of touch with that,” Vince argued. “Andy doesn’t forget it.”
Mr Pragmatic
Burnham has been putting that approach into practice since taking power in July.
Like his predecessor Keir Starmer, he believes the long-term solution to Britain’s cripplingly high energy costs is cutting dependence on expensive, foreign-controlled fossil fuels. But Burnham is also readier to drive down costs associated with the net-zero transition, many of which also end up on voters’ bills.
U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey, left, Burnham meet constituents at a Westminster community center on Oct. 28, 2026. | Pool photo by Richard Pohle via WPA/Getty Images
In last month’s budget, Burnham’s Chancellor John Healey announced a new mantra: “first and foremost cheaper energy.” Renewables projects like solar and wind farms must now show how they’ll bring down bills if they want to get government support. A subsidy pot for low-carbon electric heat pumps was cut by up to £2.5 billion. Healey has promised to overhaul how energy costs are paid via bills in the new year.
Most controversially, Burnham has presided over the decision by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh to approve a new gas field in the North Sea, Jackdaw. Ministers argued more gas drilling off the Scottish coast would give a short-term boost to energy security, with some of its tax revenues routed into developing clean power.
A decision on the oilfield Rosebank, where climate-damaging emissions will be even higher, is expected by the end of the year.
There is a big difference, Burnham told MPs last month, between the “ideological” opposition of his anti-drilling Green Party rivals and his own “pragmatic approach.”
The team of rivals
Next week, Burnham will find out how that message plays on the global green stage.
He will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, a prominent climate advocate. A Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said Burnham’s choice of Miliband to run the Foreign Office — even as he lets Healey cut some green spending at home — was a deliberate “team of rivals” ploy to balance Labour’s progressive and centrist wings on climate.
“That’s the kind of the ideological fault line in the Cabinet, and it does run through climate, very much so,” the MP said.
Burnham’s visit to COP is expected to be a short one.
Those briefed on government planning expect him to attend for no more than a day. Emmanuel Macron, the French President, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — both also facing a backlash against the cost of living at home — are skipping the summit entirely.
While in Antalya, Burnham should try to land his message that letting energy costs spiral higher and higher is the quickest way for countries to lose political support for climate action, say supporters of his agenda.
“Bringing bills down would help the climate cause more than any speech,” argued Sunny Hundal, a former adviser at Britain’s biggest energy supplier Octopus and now boss of the Cheap Clean Energy Alliance campaign group. Nonetheless, he added: “If Britain is to not become a cautionary tale for the rest of the world, it has to show that the path to cleaner energy is through cheaper energy.”
‘Betrayal’
The U.K. is seen by countries on the deadly frontline of climate change as a key ally in COP negotiations — particularly around weaning the world off fossil fuels.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifts off from Van Horn, Texas, carrying Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk on July 20, 2021. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
That means Burnham’s North Sea policies might get a cool reception, said Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa.
“Jackdaw has certainly been noticed,” Adow said. “From Africa, it is deeply frustrating to see a wealthy country like Britain approve more fossil fuel production while asking developing countries to pursue a cleaner path. Decisions taken in London have consequences for people facing droughts and floods thousands of miles away.
“Andy Burnham should be under no illusion: approving Rosebank would be a betrayal of the communities he will hear from at COP31.”
Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and chair of the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, now expects Rosebank to get the go-ahead. Another Labour MP, the same quoted above, said Healey’s Treasury was “really pressuring” Fahnbulleh to approve the project because “it wants the tax revenue.”
Burnham’s decision to show off some climate consciousness by attending COP at all is, the same MP said, partly a move to placate Labour’s more green-minded backbenchers in advance of approving Rosebank.
“You get the feeling there’s political space being made for this shittier decision,” they said.
Esterson took a more generous view of Burnham’s agenda. “He recognizes the [climate] imperative, but he also recognizes the reality of taking people with [him]. I think that’s at the heart of his whole approach to being prime minister, actually.”
Political threats
Political rivals spy an opportunity.
“You can’t claim to be serious about climate leadership when you’re making it harder and more expensive for people to move away from fossil fuels,” said Pippa Heylings, energy security and net zero spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, attacking the “incoherence” of Burnham’s approach to climate.
Carla Denyer, a Green Party MP and former co-leader of her party, pointed to Jackdaw and the looming call on Rosebank. “The change Andy Burnham promised has so far failed to materialize when it comes to tackling the climate crisis,” she said.
Alienating voters worried about the climate carries political risks for Burnham, who has restored Labour’s lead in national opinion polls primarily by attracting Labour/Green swing voters, said polling analyst Steve Akehurst, director of Persuasion UK.
“None of the individual policy tweaks or changes to net zero are likely to matter on their own, but if they add up to an overall picture of backtracking on climate action it will present a big opportunity for [Green leader] Zack Polanski,” said Akehurst.
Taking climate “pragmatism” too far could alienate Labour’s existing voters, too. According to new Persuasion UK and YouGov polling shared with POLITICO, 22% of Labour’s 2024 voters list climate and environment in their top three priorities — but only 4% think Burnham does.
“It’s one of the few policy areas that Labour voters prioritise but don’t currently sense that the PM does,” Akehurst said.
But allies including Vince think Burnham’s strategy can head off a different political threat, this one coming from the right.
Heat pump subsidies, he argued, were only helping households that could already afford the additional costs of switching to clean heat. “Middle class subsidies is what we’re about at the moment in the pursuit of net zero, and I think it’s been a gift to Reform,” said Vince, referring to Nigel Farage’s right-wing party, which along with the Conservatives say they would scrap the U.K.’s 2050 net zero target.
“Icecaps and polar bears [are] all very well,” said Vince. “But when people are struggling to pay their energy bills — it’s not the primary thing that will persuade them.”
The U.S. government has scuttled a French push for the G7 to coordinate on advanced AI safety, with a White House official calling it “unnecessary bureaucracy.”
France’s digital minister Anne Le Hénanff told a French Senate hearing on Wednesday that she held two ministerial meetings in September and October to secure G7 commitments to a high-level working group to test frontier AI — the most advanced models — and share information about risks and incidents.
That effort “did not reach a successful conclusion” because the U.S. wanted to pursue its own approach, the French minister said.
“They are not prepared, at this stage, to issue a joint statement with the other six G7 nations, and have asked us to wait for the findings of their own assessment,” said Le Hénanff. “Naturally, we regret this, but we are continuing to move forward as Europeans on this issue.”
A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the French government proposed a “poorly defined body” to cooperate on AI that the administration feared would “create unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The official pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Super Intelligence Force, saying it brings government and industry together to accelerate innovation and ensure the safe deployment of models.
Digital Minister Anne Le Hénanff speaks in the French parliament in Paris on Oct. 28, 2026. | Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
France, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 for 2026, issued a chair’s summary statement after the Oct. 20 virtual G7 tech ministerial, which noted that ministers considered closer coordination on identifying risks and sharing incident information, as well as a dedicated high-level group. It was not a joint statement endorsed by all G7 members.
Trump began promoting “super intelligence” as a replacement for “artificial intelligence” at the U.N. General Assembly in late September. A week later, he ordered federal agencies to use the new term.
G7 ministers in May agreed to discuss secure AI and risk assessment, which was followed by the G7 leaders meeting the following month in Évian.
But the stakes have risen as advanced AI systems gain unprecedented cyber capabilities that can be used for both attack and defense. In July, Hugging Face disclosed an intrusion driven by an autonomous AI agent. OpenAI later said models used in an internal cybersecurity test had bypassed controls and compromised parts of its own research infrastructure and Hugging Face’s systems.
Le Hénanff said France would keep pushing the issue, citing INESIA, France’s national AI evaluation and safety institute, and Inria, its public research institute for digital science and technology, as resources for the work.
The White House official said: “Under President Trump’s leadership, America will continue to lead the world in SI innovation.”
Data is redefining modern defense operations. The ability to master and manage it is now a decisive factor in military victory or defeat. Few people know that better than Jean Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, assistant secretary general for cyber and digital transformation at NATO.
George Teas, vice president of solutions architecture, Elastic
In a recent interview preceding NATO Edge 26, the Alliance’s annual defense innovation show, Ellermann-Kingombe is very clear on the kind of digital transformation effort it takes to get the right data into the hands of military leaders operating in high-pressure situations, at exactly the time and place they need it.
Data-sharing must be a core design principle, he says: “The bottleneck is often not technology, but permission: classification boundaries, national rules and trust decisions.” Once data is well managed, an even bigger opportunity arises to use AI as “an enabler of military effectiveness,” he says, assisting commanders and operators further.
He adds: “For NATO, the biggest difference AI can make is in decision advantage. Modern operations generate volumes of data that no human organisation can process unaided at the speed required. AI can help fuse information, detect patterns, support planning, prioritise scarce resources and accelerate staff processes, providing commanders with better insight, earlier warnings and more resilient options.”
As powerful as it is, AI can only reliably accelerate defense mission outcomes if it is built on vast, relevant and quality data. Data is the fuel that will power the shift to software-defined defense, an approach that delivers military capability through flexible, modular software rather than rigid, hardware-bound platforms.
THE CHALLENGES OF MASTERING DATA
Software-defined defense, AI and the challenge of mastering the data that powers both, will be hot topics for attendees at NATO Edge 26, due to be held in Izmir, Türkiye, in November and expected to attract over 3,000 participants and more than 270 technology partners, including Elastic.
We will be there because we know that many attendees will be looking to better understand what software-defined defense will demand of them in data management terms.
As powerful as it is, AI can only reliably accelerate defense mission outcomes if it is built on vast, relevant and quality data. Data is the fuel that will power the shift to software-defined defense.
Bringing data together from many intelligent systems and smart devices demands real rigor. After all, in order to make critical operational decisions, military personnel need to be able to see the big picture, quickly searching for information in both structured and unstructured data formats across a vast array of different systems.
Defense data naturally lives wherever operations happen — across land, sea, air, space and cyber domains — and is stored in different formats like images, audio transcripts, documents and geospatial, reaching across thousands of different mission systems.
These can include communications systems that keep troops connected in the field; systems used to manage artillery devices; reconnaissance systems; radar stations; and geographical information systems that support military leaders in tracking assets, planning missions and routes, and analyzing risks and threats, including potential ambush sites and minefields.
In order to make critical operational decisions, military personnel need to be able to see the big picture, quickly searching for information in both structured and unstructured data formats across a vast array of different systems.
On top of all this, organizations like NATO face an additional layer of complexity. Building a common operational picture across the digital environments of 32 member nations requires multi-intelligence fusion of massive volumes of data held in disparate systems, from legacy databases and classified networks to cloud platforms and security tools.
OPERATIONAL ADVANTAGE
Addressing these challenges means turning all this data into operational advantage and mission readiness, accelerating the ability of armed forces to respond to situations by increasing their situational awareness and decision speed.
The answer is a data mesh architecture. Rather than consolidating everything into a traditional data lake, a data mesh approach manages data where it originates and lives, without moving or duplicating it; so it can be searched, queried and analyzed from multiple access points across the entire environment, including allied partners such as NATO member nations. That is what turns scattered data into one unified operational picture with near real-time insights, and context, giving commanders the situational awareness and decision speed that mission-readiness depends on. In my view, it is the most flexible and scalable way to get there.
It also speaks directly to the permission bottleneck Ellermann-Kingombe describes. Because data stays under the control of the nation or system that owns it, access can be governed by policy at the source, with classification boundaries and national rules enforced where the data lives rather than negotiated away in a central repository.
Rather than consolidating everything into a traditional data lake, a data mesh approach manages data where it originates and lives, without moving or duplicating it.
A data mesh approach is sustainable because of its reliance on open standards. They enable defense organizations to connect systems that were never designed to work together, from legacy platforms to dispersed infrastructure, so data stays findable and can be effectively analyzed across the environment. Interoperability stops being a barrier as new partners and data sources join, and new tools can be integrated without rebuilding systems or making major investments. The architecture scales alongside the Alliance’s growth.
Without a unified view, the risk of losing operational advantage to adversaries extends from the battlefield into cyberspace. Zero Trust depends on connecting authentication logs, network traffic and application telemetry where they already sit, so that traditionally separate domains can be visualized and analyzed together. When a user accesses sensitive data, the system must verify not only who they are but also their device status, network path, and the time and location of access. If those checks are slow or impossible, threats can remain undetected and escalate through systems. A data mesh built on open standards connects the pillars of a Zero Trust architecture, allowing organizations to accelerate implementation without replacing the tools they already have.
When the manual efforts of military data analysts struggle to keep pace with the scale and speed of events on the ground, AI can work faster and more accurately.
The same logic is already visible in large government organizations: CISA’s new SIEM-as-a-Service platform uses open standards to give US federal civilian agencies a consistent approach to threat detection and response.
As AI’s value in supporting human decision-making becomes increasingly clear, a data mesh architecture provides the foundation to apply agentic AI capabilities holistically. It enables complex organizations to analyze the vast amounts of data their systems generate, find actionable correlations and separate signals from noise. When the manual efforts of military data analysts struggle to keep pace with the scale and speed of events on the ground, AI can work faster and more accurately. It also lets analysts ask questions across structured and unstructured data and rapidly receive answers grounded in reliable sources.
The numerous tech challenges facing the modern military calls for closer NATO-industry cooperation, and that’s why NATO Edge 26 is such an important event. All 32 sovereign member states that make up the Alliance use different systems, yet they rely on secure, trusted data-sharing with each other as the foundation for cooperating on military operations and sharing intelligence. It’s vital that they can turn to industry innovators to support their operational needs.
At a time of great geopolitical uncertainty, with data increasingly considered a primary defense asset, NATO members face growing pressure to turn it into operational advantage and readiness before adversaries do. We look forward to discussing how at NATO Edge 26.
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A spokesperson for the Kremlin denied on Thursday that Russia had any involvement in the cyberattacks affecting supermarket refrigerators, calling the allegations “absurd.”
Dmitry Peskov said accusations of Russian involvement in the attacks are “unfounded,” according to reports in Russian media. These allegations are “becoming a persistent trend in European countries,” he added.
Supermarket refrigerators have been hacked in multiple European countries over the past few weeks, forcing retailers to throw away thawing fresh and frozen food. The attacks also hit French blood banks, though the country’s blood collection service said its supplies were not affected.
While pro-Russian hacker groups claimed the attacks on Wednesday, it is notoriously difficult to attribute a cyberattack to a specific actor definitively, and those groups quickly deleted the claims, according to the BBC.
Some cybersecurity experts say Russia is one of the main suspects. Xavier Bellekens, CEO of cybersecurity firm Lupovis, told POLITICO that clues pointed to “a Russian state-sponsored threat actor.” However, a report from cyber defense firm Sekoia noted that “Iranian-aligned actors have an established record” of targeting supermarkets, for instance in the U.S. and Israel.
Cybersecurity authorities in countries affected by the hacks haven’t publicly attributed the attacks.
BRUSSELS — At least 15 European flights were targeted by bomb threats Thursday, following seven similar incidents earlier in the week in which authorities found no explosives.
Irish airline Aer Lingus reported that one of its flights from Dublin to Rome was diverted to an airport in France following a security threat.
The office of French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that the plane landed safely in Évreux, northwest of Paris, and that the 157 people on board were taken to safety.
According to the BBC, two other flights were diverted Thursday following similar alerts: a Wizz Air plane from Milan to Warsaw, which was diverted to Vienna; and a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia, which was diverted to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Finnish carrier Finnair said that two of its aircraft — both departing from Helsinki and bound for Rome and Vienna — faced “faced unfounded or hoax bomb threats” and were subject to police checks after landing. The plane bound for Rome was also escorted by Italian fighter jets.
“Unfortunately, air traffic is sometimes subject to threats, as we have seen this week, when also other airlines in Europe have faced hoax bomb threats,” said spokesperson Päivyt Tallqvist.
Another bomb threat affected a flight operated by LOT from Warsaw to Brussels Airport on Thursday morning. Airport spokesperson Ihsane Chioua Lekhli told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that police carried out searches and no further security measures were deemed necessary.
LOT said that another aircraft scheduled to fly from Warsaw to Paris “was stopped while taxiing and directed to a designated parking stand” before departure.
“The aircraft and all baggage underwent a security screening,” said the airline, which added that no hazardous items were found and that the flight departed with a replacement aircraft.
Italian news agency ANSA reported that two flights bound for Milan Malpensa Airport — an Aegean Airlines flight from Thessaloniki and a Ryanair flight from Porto — were also searched following bomb threats.
Two other Ryanair flights bound for Sofia — one from Copenhagen and the other from Madrid — were also reportedly targeted by bomb threats.
Czech police said on social media that four flights bound for Prague Airport were also threatened, but officers assessed “the severity of the threats as low.”
Ben Smith, CEO of Air France–KLM, said that the threats were happening “in a coordinated way.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen this before,” he said during a Thursday earnings call, but added that the airline group is not making any requests of governments. “We’re quite confident that we have in place what we need to ensure that it has minimal or no impact on our operations.”
EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said: “It is too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked.”
He added that the EU-level information sharing mechanism for aviation security has been activated. “We don’t have information yet whether this is a cyber attack,” he said.
EU Aviation Safety Agency spokesperson Janet Northcote said: “The immediate safety threat from individual hoax threats is low. However, the higher number of diversions places an additional strain on the system.”
Seven passenger aircraft were searched on Monday and Tuesday by authorities in Spain, Poland, Italy and Bulgaria following bomb threats. No explosives were found, but the alerts also led to the temporary closure of Warsaw Chopin Airport.
The risk of someone successfully smuggling a bomb aboard an airplane is low, said Jan-Arwed Richter, CEO of JACDEC, an aviation-safety analysis firm.
“Today there is hardly any thinkable way to get explosives aboard a commercial flight,” he said. “The last real bombing of a flight took place on Oct. 31, 2015 on a flight from Egypt to Russia because of security loopholes and personnel shortcomings that were rectified immediately.”
Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping Europe’s job market. The Commission is hoping to do something about that.
Today on the show, Zoya Sheftalovich and Sarah Wheaton discuss the unveiling of Commissioner Roxana Mînzatu’s Education and Skills Package. In it, the EU executive sets out plans to boost vocational education and training for jobs that require physical presence and manual expertise — jobs that AI won’t be as likely to snap up in the future.
Next, the culprit behind this week’s cyberattack on supermarket freezers across Europe remains a mystery. But we explain why cybersecurity experts are looking toward Moscow.
Finally, some MEPs have AI doing their homework — and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is not happy about it.
Are you a young person nervous about your future job prospects? What is your game plan when it comes to finding a job in the age of AI? Let us know on WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
Europe is feeling more than a little bit of schadenfreude.
In a stunning U.S. midterm election, Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as several governorships, winning big in Republican strongholds like South Carolina, Texas and even Kansas. While some races were yet to be called Wednesday morning, the result is a monumental rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump.
For Europe, which has weathered Trump’s incessant verbal attacks and tariff threats for the last two years, it was a rare ray of hope in transatlantic politics — if not because Washington would become a more predictable partner, then at least because the U.S. president might be too distracted to focus his usual ire on Europeans.
European Parliament Vice President Sophie Wilmès, a former Belgian prime minister, heralded a “major shift in the balance of power in the U.S. Congress,” adding: “I hope it will lead to a calmer, more constructive relationship with Europe.”
It remains to be seen how Trump will shift his stance on Europe, if at all, with Congress no longer under his control. As president, he still retains many of the executive’s powers on foreign policy.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called the Democratic victory “historic” but cautioned against Europe expecting too much. “We will seek close contact with the Democrats,” he said Wednesday morning at the Berlin Security Conference. “But we do not know what the president will do after the election in the near future.”
Two senior EU figures — both regular Trump antagonists — couldn’t resist celebrating the result, though.
“American society voted against policies that only impoverish,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said. “Against hate. Against sexism. Against climate change denial and against the privileges of the elites.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski reshared his own tweet from June last year responding to Elon Musk, a key Trump ally. “See, big man, politics is harder than you thought,” he snarked.
Headache for Europe’s far right
For Europe’s ascendant far right, which has long balanced admiration for Trump with the reality that he is deeply unpopular across the continent, the midterms are an uncomfortable reminder of the political risks of being too closely associated with the U.S. president.
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally (RN), was keen to chalk up Trump’s “unfavorable” result to his decision to go to war with Iran more than anything else.
“It’s the case that the U.S. intervention in Iran has had a very strong impact on the U.S. economy, but also on the European economy,” he said Wednesday morning.
Bardella added that the RN’s presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was still leading in the French polls ahead of next year’s election and insisted defeats for nationalist politicians in Brazil, Hungary and now the U.S. did not bode ill for his party’s chances.
Jordan Bardella arrives for an event in La Seyne-sur-Mer, France, on Sept. 27, 2026. | Thibaud Moritz/AFP via Getty Images
But the cost-of-living crisis was top of American voters’ minds, according to polls. That’s also the case in European countries, from France to Spain to Greece, which are grappling with soaring rents and widespread anger at apparently impotent governments.
Marine Tondelier, leader of France’s Greens, said Trump had “made the United States the laughingstock of the world” and called the result a “warning for France” ahead of the presidential election in April.
“If our country brings the RN to power next year, it will meet the same tragic fate as the United States,” she said.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker sought to downplay the prospect of a shift in Washington’s foreign policy following the midterm elections, insisting that the issues facing the U.S. and its European allies remained unchanged.
“The foreign policy of the United States has not changed,” Whitaker said, adding that “the issues that we’re facing as a country and as an alliance are the same.”
European markets, meanwhile, greeted the results with cautious optimism. Paris, London and Frankfurt opened slightly higher on Wednesday, following the Democrats’ sweeping victory.
Reality check for Trump
For all the celebrations, European officials were also quick to acknowledge that a Democratic-controlled Congress does not automatically translate into a more accommodating U.S. administration.
Trump retains considerable room to maneuver on foreign policy, including on the issues that have most strained transatlantic ties: European security, trade and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
France’s Economy Minister Roland Lescure noted Wednesday morning that while Trump would be “quite weakened” domestically, the “unpredictable” president remained “in charge of international policy.”
But a hostile Congress could make it harder for him to push through his domestic agenda, while opening the door to greater scrutiny of his administration.
“Voters have a habit of balancing power,” Finnish MEP Mika Aaltola said on X, “and now the president’s hands are more tied in domestic and foreign policy.”
Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta was more emphatic.
Enrico Letta is pictured during an event in Milan, Italy on April 16, 2025. | Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images
“Europe is much stronger” thanks to the “blue wave,” he wrote on X.
Kathleen Van Brempt, vice-chair of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, shared a White House tweet predicting a Trump victory — and captioned it that it was, actually, America that won.
“And he lost,” she said.
Despite the ballot-box drubbing, Trump himself couldn’t resist a final shot at Europe, during an election night call with Fox News.
“You look at Europe, it’s dying. You look at what’s going on in France, what’s going on in Italy and all these other countries. I mean, they’re going through a terrible time. And they may not even survive, frankly,” he warned. “And we are thriving.”
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