DTN 120: Silicon Valley’s Arms Dealer
Plus: Cyborg beetles, robotic beehives, tree-planting drones, pulling water from thin air, US Army tests laser weapons, rare earth deal with China, and more.
Meet Silicon Valley’s Arms Dealer Will Somerindyke
“For years, Will Somerindyke sold weapons of war around the world: artillery shells to Ukraine, grenades to U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. With relationships with dozens of top military buyers, he quickly turned his company Regulus Global into one of America’s major international arms dealers.
Now, as Silicon Valley investors swarm to back multi-billion dollar defense startups with increasing fervor, Somerindyke is looking to make the jump from munitions middleman to manufacturer. He’s been quietly working on Union, a new venture-backed startup he claims will modernize ammunition factories with autonomous robotics and precision machining.”
- Large language models are improving exponentially
- US Army trials laser-based directed energy weapons for air defense
- Devices that pull water out of thin air poised to take off
- Bezos-backed methane-tracking satellite lost in space
- Satellites keep breaking up in space. Insurance won't cover them
- Huawei patents 3,000km solid-state battery with 5-minute charge
- How robotic hives and AI are lowering the risk of bee colony collapse
- ‘The magnets will flow’: US, China ink deal on rare earths
- Google inks its first fusion power deal with Commonwealth Fusion Systems
A pilot project in the north of Canada's Quebec province is using drones to plant new black spruces and jack pines and help reforestation efforts in areas devastated by wildfires.
In response to record-breaking wildfires that devastated forests in 2023, Canada is using drones to accelerate reforestation efforts in hard-hit areas like northern Quebec. The company Flash Forest is deploying drones that plant seed capsules containing nutrients and fungi to improve tree growth. Each drone can plant up to 50,000 trees per day, targeting recent burn zones where natural regeneration is unlikely. Indigenous communities, including the Cree Nation, are actively involved in the effort, working directly with Flash Forest to plan the local reforestation. (via Phys.org)
- Modular bioprocess platforms for gene-edited therapies
- Gene therapy restored hearing in deaf patients
- Surprising ion transport behavior in nanofiltration membranes could reshape lithium recovery
- AI predicts material properties using electron-level information without costly quantum mechanical computations
- Edible microlasers made from food-safe materials can serve as barcodes and biosensors
- 'Cyborg' beetles could revolutionize urban search and rescue
- Robotic eyes mimic human vision for superfast response to extreme lighting
- AI pinpoints promising materials that capture only CO₂ from air
- New catalyst cuts precious palladium expenditure 100-fold by using recycled waste
- Unique method enables simulation of error-correctable quantum computers
- Discovery in quantum materials could make electronics 1,000 times faster
- AN Venture Partners lines up $200M freshman fund to champion Japanese innovation
- Portal Biotech raises $35M Series A for enhanced biotech warfare defense
- Construction robotics company Civ Robotics raises $7.5M in Series A funding
- Clinical-stage medical device company Liquet Medical closes seed funding round
- Feliqs raises $9M in Series A financing to develop small molecule therapeutics for rare pediatric retinal diseases
- Field Medical closes $35M Series B funding for pulsed field ablation technology
- Catalio Capital closes over $400M Fund IV
- Argon AI raises $5.5M in seed funding to build AI-native workspace for life sciences
- Longevity startup Circulate Health raises $12M in seed funding
- Radiopharmaceutical company Primo Biotechnology raises NT$220M in Series A funding
- Terra CO2 raises additional $124.5M in Series B funding to scale sustainable cement production
- Bob Langer-founded Syntis Bio gets $33M Series A for obesity, rare disease drugs
- Satellite startup Skynopy raises $17.6M in seed funding to expand its ground station service
- Nuclear energy company Steady Energy raises €32M in funding
- Animal health biotechnology company Gallant raises $18M in Series B funding
- ZeroRISC gets $10M funding for open-source silicon security solutions
- Xona raises $92M for unhackable PNT constellation
- Geothermal exploration and development compnay Ignis Energy eloses $13.6M Series A funding round
- Planet Labs Germany, a leading provider of daily Earth observation data and insights, awarded €240M for satellite services deal
AI arms race drives engineer pay to more than $10M / Two Chinese nationals arrested in US for espionage / A spacecraft carrying human remains and cannabis crashes into the ocean / One in four Americans reject evolution, a century after the Scopes monkey / People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics / AI is ruining houseplant communities online / A brief history of children sent through the mail / James Webb space telescope reveals its first direct image of an exoplanet / Texas brothers buy abandoned Boeing 727 for $10k / Melbourne man discovers extensive model train network underneath house / A literary magazine accessible only via telnet / It's known as 'the list'–and it's a secret file of AI geniuses / Scientists retrace 30k-year-old sea voyage, in a hollowed-out log / Many ransomware strains will abort if they detect a Russian keyboard installed / Thousands in Norway told they had won life-changing sums in lottery error / Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT / What's stopping America from going all-in on heat pumps? / In China, coins and banknotes have all but disappeared / Nearly one in 10 ‘Tier 1’ subcontractors to defense primes are Chinese firms / Mexican drug cartel hacker spied on FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants
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