(Maurice Sikkink) - You are keeping your photos off social media, that's great. But what can the platforms storing years of our memories learn from them?

By Maurice Sikkink

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 12, 2026

When I got married last year, I didn't want the wedding all over the internet. Apart from my LinkedIn, I'm pretty much invisible online, so it would have felt odd to have one of the most personal days of my life show up on other people's Instagram and Facebook feeds.

With my kids, I feel even more strongly about it. I know that once someone publishes a photo of them online, I have no control where it ends up, who's looking at it and with what intention, or what some future piece of software might do with it.

That's my own point of view, but it also matched with something we'd been noticing.

Working on a photo-sharing service, I’ve noticed that people are a lot more careful with their photos now than they used to be. I don’t have exact numbers for it, but you can tell from the questions they ask before they sign up. How easy is it to share photos with others? How much can I store? And then, more often: where are the photos stored? That one comes up especially from people in Europe. Who can access them, do you scan them, do you use them for AI? People really do dig through our FAQ and terms to find out the answers. To me, that says privacy has moved out of the small print and into the main reasons people choose a product.

My own family photos got me thinking about this from another angle too. Most of the conversation is about whether photos are published on Insta. Although I do know some successful influencers who don't mind and show their entire family online.

But at my children's school, for instance, there's a lot of attention around posting pictures of other people's kids, and at weddings couples now regularly ask guests not to put everything online. Or even just put the phones down. I've been at weddings from which I have no photos at all, only bride and groom had a photographer and didn't show the photos to anyone except one printed album at their house. Fair enough, but keeping photos off Instagram doesn't mean you stop keeping them somewhere and they just become some kind of secret.

You still want the grandparents to see the kids. Me, personally, I still wanted our wedding guests to send us their pictures. They have to live somewhere.

So the question I keep coming back to is: whether the place you store them is looking at them. Not who can see your photos, but whether the service holding them is analyzing their content. Ten or fifteen years of photos says a huge amount about a person: your kids growing up, your partner, your house, your holidays, your friends, where you spend your weekends, and probably a pile of weird screenshots and photographed documents and just awkward poses and places as well. With current AI, a library like that is something software can actually read and make sense of.

And this isn't just a theoretical thing. Google Photos explains that it uses algorithms to detect faces and group photos of the same person when its Face Groups feature is on. Apple Photos also recognizes people, places and scenes, although Apple says this analysis happens on your own device.

That doesn't necessarily mean these companies are doing anything wrong. And analyzing photos is also not the same as using them to train AI models. Google says it doesn't use people's personal Google Photos data to train generative AI models outside Google Photos. But I think it's important to understand the difference, especially when we're talking about years of private family pictures.

So what can you actually do about it? I would start with the privacy policy of whichever service holds your photos. Look for things like facial recognition, AI, machine learning and model training. Does the service analyze your photos? Does it happen on your own device or on their servers? Can you turn it off? And are your photos used for anything beyond storing and sharing them?

If you can't find the answers, ask the company directly. From my experience, people are already doing that a lot more often.

Funnily enough, I never really thought about these questions being so important when choosing where to keep photos. It was the questions from customers that made me think about it more seriously.

And perhaps that's the bigger point. We are becoming more careful about who gets to see our photos, but we should probably be just as careful about what happens to them where we store them.

Disclaimer: The author is the founder of Yogile, a photo-sharing service that competes with some of the products mentioned.

Maurice Sikkink

Maurice Sikkink is the Founder of Yogile, a private photo storage and sharing platform. With over 15 years of experience in photo-sharing technology, he has seen firsthand how people's attitudes toward privacy have changed. He is particularly interested in how AI is reshaping the way we store, share and protect our personal memories.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

(Andre Granito) - We paid for and tested nine VPNs. The advertised monthly price rarely matched the bill.

By Andre Granito

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 7, 2026

This year we paid for and tested nine VPNs (virtual private networks). From every angle. Today I am explaining my VPN research, focusing on the pricing aspects.

While starting our research, I was already surprised. One of the biggest VPN brands was offering a two-year plan at $3.49/month. However, on the checkout page, the total due jumped "a little bit": $94.23, paid upfront, because the deal actually covers 27 months (24 + 3 bonus months).

Monthly prices are one unit, not the full charge. The ads were offering $2.00-$4.99/month. But the real charge was from $56.94 to $119.76. Looking at the real monthly plan, without long-term commitment, the price is around $9 to $16.45.

And this doesn't happen only with this specific provider, or only in the VPN niche.

Personally, and professionally, it is common for me to have problems while registering or renewing domains with popular domain registrars. They offer amazing deals on yearly plans. This way you are locked in with the company, because transferring domain names is not something website owners usually do, I don't really need to explain why. However when the renewal charge comes, you are always surprised.

Median renewal increase of more than 85%. Four out of nine more than doubled, and the biggest jump was +232%.

On the other hand, this is not a general rule: one went up only 8%, and two didn't change at all.

Now, this is the point I want you to understand. Paying for at least five years of coverage cost $158 with the cheapest option and $511 with the most expensive.

This assumes renewal prices stay the same. Taxes and future promos aren't included.

In fact, bonus months and odd timeframes make comparison very difficult. One provider is a good example: $72 buys 36 months (12 paid + 24 free), so $2/month. But the renewal is $72 for only 12 months, which means $6/month.

My tip for you is: compare the effective monthly cost in the whole term.

I found very irritating the fact that many companies find themselves with the right to mislead and deceive their customers. Capitalism expects the seller and the buyer to complete a "transaction" when one offers something the other finds valuable at the price offered. If you need to deceive your customers to keep your company running, something is deeply wrong, and probably it is time to rethink it, move to a different niche, or simply shut it down.

Informed consumers are capable of driving this type of company out of the market.

Beyond the hidden catches in the pricing of these services, you need to keep an eye on other things.

During our research, we realized that most of them offer some kind of free trial, but almost all of those ask for a credit card and convert it into a subscription.

Only one of the nine offered a free trial with no credit card in the desktop app. Paid trials cost between $0.99 and $2.

All nine VPN services we tested refunded 100% of our money. Six on the same day, two the next day and the slowest after 7 days.

While researching one company, we had a few problems getting the refund. In fact, a support agent made our work very difficult from the first question we sent them. After some days of testing, we asked for a refund, and he would not approve it, even though our request was 100% within their terms, accusing us of "using services without paying for it" while testing and asking for refunds.

After disagreements and a heated argument, he instantly deleted our account; this automatically logged me out of the site, preventing me from contacting support again. I was stunned. Later that same day, I received the money back in my bank account.

One last tip about refunds: Purchases done through App Store or Google Play Store always follow the store rules, not the VPN provider's.

About half of the nine VPN providers we tested had a verifiable no-logs policy, the same percentage applies when we search for independent audits.

With one of them, a Domain Name System (DNS) leak test showed our real internet provider's DNS while the VPN was connected.

And here we get to the most important point of this article. When we talk about subscribing to a VPN provider - this can also relate to other niches - we have two possibilities:

1- You are indeed hiring a VPN service that will make your internet navigation safer and more private. Your data and path are actually protected. You are able to access streaming content from other countries, that are blocked in your region.

2- You are buying, paying for a service that is selling your data.

The latter - where you are the product - normally happens when we try to go for the cheapest option.

There are a few free plans I'd trust. With most free VPNs, ask how they make money. Often, the answer is your data.

In this case, there seems to be no difference between the VPN company and your internet service provider; you are simply swapping one company that sees your traffic for another. A VPN company selling your data might be even more dangerous than your internet service provider.

Without further ado, here are 5 simple things that apply to any subscription:

1- The amount charged today;

2- The actual term, including bonus months;

3- The renewal price and term;

4- Who processes the refund (provider or store);

5- Whether the trial requires a credit card.

If you are experienced and have purchased various online services, you have likely encountered some of these issues before and know the steps to take before committing, especially regarding annual or long-term plans.

However, the tips in this article can still be helpful, even to the most experienced internet users.

Often, pricing and renewal rates are the catch.

At other times, unusual terms and bonuses are introduced to confuse you.

And in some cases, depending on the niche, you might end up signing up for something that does you more harm than good.

The only way to avoid unpleasant surprises is to pay close attention to the five points mentioned above, plus the terms of service. Yes, it is tedious, but necessary.

Between May and July 2026, we paid for a plan from each of nine VPN providers (CyberGhost, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, PrivateVPN, Proton VPN, PureVPN, Surfshark, Turbo VPN and VPN.ac), tested them hands-on (baseline speed tests from Latin America), and then requested refunds. All were one-month plans: CyberGhost VPN (1 month plan), NordVPN (Complete Plan, monthly), Private Internet Access (1 month plan), PrivateVPN (1 month plan), Proton VPN (VPN Plus, monthly), PureVPN (Max, monthly), Surfshark (One+, monthly), Turbo VPN (Platinum, monthly), VPN.ac (1 month plan).

The long-term prices in this article come from each provider's U.S. checkout, in U.S. dollars, rechecked on August 14, 2026. These prices are for each provider's cheapest plan, not the higher tiers we bought for testing. All prices are before tax, because tax depends on where you buy. Renewal figures are the renewal prices shown at checkout or in each provider's terms; we did not wait years to watch them charge.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Reviews Ally, which earns affiliate commissions from the nine VPN providers tested here. We paid for every subscription ourselves, and no provider reviewed or approved this article.

Andre Granito

Andre Granito is a software engineer, founder & lead reviewer at Reviews Ally, an independent site that buys and tests software with its own money. He paid for, tested and requested refunds from nine VPN providers, and published the pricing and refund data. He also tests other types of software.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

(NewsUSA) - Americans across the political spectrum agree on how the country should approach artificial intelligence, according to a new report by Gallup and the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan initiative with a goal of making recommendations to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness in artificial intelligence.

In the report, "Looking to the Future: American Priorities for AI in 2026," majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents similarly endorsed survey responses on the need for education and regulation regarding the use of AI. The report was based on a nationally representative survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults conducted online in June 2026 using Gallup’s U.S. panel.

"The key finding in this year's data is that Republicans, Democrats, and independents want the same things: teach STEM, train workers on the job, put safety and security ahead of speed, and let independent experts test these systems before the public depends on them," said Ylli Bajraktari, president of SCSP. "America's edge in this competition will not come from adoption alone; it will come from a public that has reason to trust what it is adopting,” he said.

Americans’ concerns about the impact of AI on the job market persist, with 70% stating that AI will destroy more jobs than it creates over the next decade, respondents consistently supported the need for AI education. 

Notably, 72% respondents support promoting STEM education as a channel to train workers to use AI in their future jobs, and 66% support creating on-the-job training programs that teach AI skills. However, respondents overall were split on adding AI skills to core K-12 classes such as reading or math, with 45% in support and 44% opposed.

In terms of security, 79% of respondents say the government should maintain safety and data-security rules even if such rules slow AI development, compared to 7% who would prioritize speed. Approximately two-thirds (60%) of respondents agreed that the U.S. government should create AI regulations, and 75% favored testing and evaluation of new AI systems by independent experts before such systems are widely disseminated.

On preparing the workforce, 72% of Americans support promoting STEM education to equip workers with the skills to use AI in their future jobs, and 66% support creating on-the-job training programs that teach workers AI skills. Republicans, Democrats, and independents express similar levels of support for both. Opinions remain split on adding AI skills to core K-12 classes like math or reading, with 45% in support and 44% opposed.

Half of the respondents (51%) say they use AI at least sometimes at work, school, or in their personal lives, up from 39% in 2025. Two in three (68%) describe themselves as knowledgeable about AI, up from 60% last year. The new report also shows increased trust among regular AI users since last year, but increased skepticism among non-users. 

"The public is becoming more experienced with AI while simultaneously becoming more cautious about its economic implications," said Gallup Principal, Justin Lall. "That combination of firsthand use and lingering concern makes workforce preparation more important than ever."

The data suggest room for compromise where attitudes towards AI diverge among parties. Republican respondents were more likely to favor mandatory age requirements, increasing AI in manufacturing, increasing energy production for AI systems, and reducing AI regulation. Democrat respondents were more likely to favor increasing government funding for AI research at colleges and universities. However, a majority of respondents across parties showed similar support for allowing companies and universities to use government resources for AI research. 

Visit scsp.ai to view the full report and learn more. 

(NewsUSA) - BIX, the neo-finance app that pairs a self-custody crypto wallet with a Visa card, is accelerating its push into the United States, appointing David Imonitie as head of US sales as it works toward near-nationwide availability.

The company currently supports eligible residents of 29 US states, subject to identity verification and programme requirements, and says it is targeting expansion to 49 states within six to eight months, subject to applicable approvals and partner readiness.

"We are excited about the states we are open in and have great expectations for the rest. That will not dampen our enthusiasm or our work ethic in growing customer acquisition. The other states will open, and in the meantime we will grow," Imonitie said.

BIX is not a new entrant. The app and its virtual card programme are already operating, and the company describes the current phase as an expansion of an established business rather than an initial launch.

The product combines a self-custody wallet with a Visa card programme. Users hold USDC or USDT across supported combinations of Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Base, Solana and Optimism, and spend against that balance at merchants worldwide. Purchases run through Visa and settle to the merchant in fiat.

Standard membership is free and a virtual Visa card costs $9.99. The company says there are no funding fees, with a 1% FX fee applied to eligible foreign-currency purchases under the US programme. Spending limits are, in BIX's description, flexible and customizable based on the user's deposited collateral, subject to programme requirements.

The business operates as Bix Ltd, registered in the Cayman Islands with operating offices in Dubai. BIX is a finance app rather than a bank, with card issuing and other regulated financial services delivered through third-party institutions under their respective arrangements.

Several additions are in development. BIX Plus, at $119 a year, will bundle access to Visa Signature cards with eligible benefits such as airport lounge access, rental-car insurance and travel discounts, with packages depending on programme and country. Lounge access does not necessarily include complimentary visits.

Plus will also introduce virtual accounts, supporting incoming payments and outgoing fiat transfers connecting stablecoin balances with ACH, SEPA and SWIFT, including details such as IBANs. Physical cards are planned at $99, separate from membership, with a 0.6% BIX ATM withdrawal fee.

The most substantial change in the pipeline is direct wallet-linked spending, under which eligible card purchases will draw against supported wallet balances without a separate top-up. Until that rollout completes, card funding uses a separate smart contract.

Crypto cards have existed for years, but the category has been held back by two problems: volatile assets unsuited to everyday spending, and custody arrangements that required users to hand their assets to a provider. Dollar-pegged stablecoins addressed the first. Self-custody models are an attempt at the second.

Imonitie said it was the simplicity of the product that drew him to the role.

"What made me decide to take this role was very simple. I wanted to be at the forefront of the future of payments. The simplicity that BIX provides was undeniable and exciting for all people, whether you understand crypto or not."

Availability remains the sector's binding constraint. No provider in the category currently offers uniform nationwide US coverage, and expansion timelines depend on approvals and partner institutions rather than on product readiness.

More at bix.fi and on Instagram.

David Imonitie is head of US sales at BIX. Find him on Instagram.

(NewsUSA) - For decades, companies trying to reach consumers followed a familiar formula: create a compelling story, earn or secure media exposure, and make sure the information could be found through search engines.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing that equation.

Millions of consumers are increasingly asking platforms such as ChatGPT, Google’s AI tools, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity for recommendations and answers instead of simply typing keywords into a traditional search box. For businesses, that raises a new question: What information will AI systems find when they try to understand a company, product or organization?

It is a question that News USA has been thinking about from an unusual vantage point.

Founded nearly four decades ago, News USA built its business around content syndication—the distribution of editorial-style articles through a large network of news and information publishers. The company has worked with more than 32,000 organizations over its history, helping companies and nonprofits place informative content in media outlets around the country.

Today, that established distribution infrastructure is finding a new role.

“Companies used to think primarily about whether people could find them on Google,” said Rick Smith, founder and CEO of News USA. “Now they also have to think about what artificial intelligence knows about them, where that information comes from and whether their competitors are more visible.”

News USA can distribute a single editorial article across thousands of news and information websites, creating a broad digital footprint rather than relying on a single media placement.

That distinction could become increasingly significant in an AI-driven information environment.

AI platforms evaluate enormous amounts of information published across the web when generating answers. While no company can guarantee what an AI system will say or cite, having accurate, useful information about an organization appearing across independent third-party websites can expand the body of information available online about that organization.

News USA is now combining its traditional syndication capabilities with a growing focus on AI visibility—examining how brands appear in AI-generated answers and how third-party media coverage may contribute to their broader digital authority.

The change reflects a larger transformation underway throughout marketing and public relations.

Traditional publicity is no longer simply about getting an article published. Companies increasingly need to consider how information travels from publishers to search engines and ultimately into AI-powered discovery tools.

For Smith, the technology may be changing, but the underlying principle has not.

“Whether someone is reading a newspaper, searching Google or asking an AI assistant,” he said, “credible third-party information still matters. Our job is to help organizations get their stories into places where people—and increasingly machines—can discover them.”

After nearly 40 years of syndicating stories, that may give an old communications model a surprisingly important role in the newest generation of information technology.

(NewsUSA) - Quantum information science, engineering, and technologies (QISET) is in its second phase, now rapidly evolving from lab-based projects to real-world applications that are impacting the strategies and finances of the federal government and the private sector, according to experts at the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan initiative with a goal of making recommendations to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness in artificial intelligence.

In the first phase of QISET development, known in the industry as Quantum 1.0, quantum mechanics and science fostered the development of lasers and transistors. Today, Quantum 2.0 activity centers around developments in areas including photonics, microelectronics, and specialized materials. 

As the United States seeks to up its game in quantum information science, SCSP highlights the history, foundation, and future of place-based quantum innovation in a new limited newsletter, "Quantum States," which examines how different states and regions are leading the way.

States were assessed across a range of metrics, including cited quantum information science research, patents, the volume of both 'pure play' and quantum-enabling  companies, the number of military research facilities, breadth of the full quantum stack (defined as computing, sensing, and networking), and the number of quantum-related job openings. 

"Developing a robust ecosystem of quantum technologies is not a one-size-fits-all approach, in which local leadership is guaranteed by hosting the most companies within a region. Rather, it requires a cohesive, strategic effort leveraging strengths within that state," according to the SCSP experts. 

Currently, California leads in most aspects of Quantum 2.0, including industrial capacity, talent pipelines, and market ecosystems, but other established hubs include New York, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, and Massachusetts. 

However, several other states are poised to become players, including, Texas, North Carolina, and Florida given their high number of PhDs awarded, and the presence of Quantum research centers in many of their academic institutions. 

"The most successful quantum states build strong synergies between pillars of a quantum ecosystem: academia, NIST, national labs, startups, and private industry," according to the SCSP experts. Ultimately, true quantum hubs emerge where industry, academia, and government actively connect.

Visit scsp.ai to learn more and for future editions of the Quantum States newsletter.

(NewsUSA) - Proposed rule changes at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) could weaken the research enterprise that underpins American technology leadership, according to experts at the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit, nonpartisan initiative that makes recommendations to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness in emerging technologies.

OMB has proposed the most sweeping revision in years to the regulations governing federal grants and research awards. SCSP has filed formal comments urging the agency to revise the rule before finalizing it.

Accountability for taxpayer dollars is not optional, and SCSP supports OMB's stated goals of transparency, research integrity, and stewardship, said Ylli Bajraktari, president of SCSP, in a recent article. Political accountability and scientific expertise are not enemies. But applied without clear limits, the rule risks damaging the innovation engine that has been the backbone of America's scientific success, he said.

The new regulations contain several concerning provisions, said Bajraktari. Specifically, "Senior political appointees would review every discretionary award, reviewers would be directed to weigh presidential policy priorities, peer review would be explicitly downgraded to 'advisory,' and agencies could terminate active research awards simply because priorities changed after the work began," he said.

The stakes are measurable, according to SCSP's 2026 Tech Competition Scorecard, which found that China holds a decisive overall lead in robotics for advanced manufacturing, and that the narrow U.S. lead in quantum is eroding under Beijing's coordinated, state-backed strategy. Meanwhile, the federally funded share of national research and development dropped by nearly one-third between 2010 and 2019, and federal AI research spending remains far below the $32 billion annual level recommended by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. America already faces a funding gap, Bajraktari said, and should not compound it with a confidence gap.

The proposed changes take their cues from a termination-for-convenience model of government contracting, but research grants are different, Bajraktari emphasized. A research grant supports multiyear experiments, doctoral researchers, and laboratory partners using custom equipment and generating data over time. Stopping that work midstream destroys value that reimbursement cannot recover. The losses also reach companies, investors, national labs, and startups that make decisions based on whether federally funded research is stable and merit-driven.

"When award decisions look political rather than technical, or when a grant can vanish because priorities shifted, private partners hedge, talent looks elsewhere, and the whole geometry of innovation weakens," said Bajraktari.

SCSP's comments ask OMB to consider four points before finalizing any changes to how research grants are handled.

• Keep merit at the center. Scientific and technical merit, evaluated by qualified experts, should remain the primary basis for selecting research proposals. Senior appointees have a legitimate oversight role in compliance, security, and program fit, but should not substitute their judgment for expert evaluation of scientific quality, and any override should be documented in writing against published criteria.

• Make awards durable. Competitively awarded research grants should not be terminable simply because policy priorities changed after the fact. Reserve termination for legal violations, security concerns, or performance failures, and give recipients a chance to respond and to wind down responsibly.

• Account for the private sector. Before changing how research awards work, agencies should ask whether the change will deter co-investment, interrupt commercialization pathways, or push globally mobile talent toward America's competitors.

• Assess the competitive impact. OMB's own analysis counts only paperwork costs and calls them modest. Forgone discoveries and deterred capital are real national security costs even when they never appear as a line item, so major changes to federal research policy should come with a technology-competitiveness impact assessment.

SCSP also urged OMB to slow down. An October 1 effective date would impose new selection and termination frameworks on fiscal year 2027 awards before agencies have built the procedures to implement them well, Bajraktari said.

Visit scsp.ai to learn more.

(NewsUSA) - Gaming has transformed over the past three decades. In 1999, fewer than one in five players reported playing online, according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and today, nearly 90 percent do. As gaming has become increasingly social, it has evolved into a digital third place where people come together to play, connect, and build community.

The ESA also found that 67 percent of Americans ages 5 to 90 play video games at least an hour a week, and across the country, friendships and relationships that begin over a game controller are increasingly spilling off the screen and into people's lives. Discord has become the digital living room where those friendships actually live and grow — where players text, talk, and video chat, both during games and in the stretches between them. Discord broadens the cultural role of “digital third places” beyond a single game to a space where all your gaming friends play.

Discord, which is free to join, is different from other platforms — there are no algorithmic feeds, no broadcasting of your life, and no endless scrolling. People connect through 1:1 Direct Messages, Group Direct Messages, and Servers, which are invite-based communities organized around a game, a friend group, or a shared interest. Activity happens in small, private spaces among friends, where high-quality streaming and voice chat across devices let people hang out together as naturally as if they were in the same room. Discord now counts more than 90 million daily active users worldwide, and gaming remains the center of gravity: 89% of Discord users play games. 

Gene Ludington from Pennsylvania has gamed with the same group of friends for more than 20 years. The tools have changed, but the group hasn't. “We can voice chat, video chat, text, share memes, videos, pics, and gifs, or stream what we're most excited about,” he said. For his circle, Discord has “become the communication glue that holds us all together.”

That glue is critical for maintaining friendships across distances. And nobody understands this better than veterans. Stack Up, a nonprofit founded in 2015 to support military veterans through gaming, has built its community on Discord — with weekly game nights, town halls, and a peer support channel staffed around the clock by trained volunteers. Because the community spans time zones, someone is always available to connect.

Video games offer a shared activity and a low-pressure reason to keep showing up, similar to a Saturday softball league or a weekly pickup game. According to research by CivicScience, adults who play team sports report better social and mental health outcomes than those who play individually, and similarly, a recent study from researchers at Imperial College London found that gamers feel less alone than non-gamers.

It’s no wonder that gaming has grown to look so much like traditional athletics. When the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) formed in 2016, only seven colleges and universities had varsity esports programs. Today, NACE supports 300 programs across the country, helping students compete, earn scholarships, and build lifelong friendships with teammates and the broader esports community.

The bonds created through gaming often transcend the game itself. When Faith Hobart from Kansas City, Kansas got married last January, many of the guests in the room were people the couple had first met through a video game.

Hobart and her husband connected on January 1st, 2021, and added each other on Discord. It was there that they spent hours talking about their futures, playing together, and ultimately falling in love. Four years to the day later, they married, and many of the people in the online community they'd built were there in person. “They saw our relationship grow from friends, to developing crushes, to dating, getting engaged, and finally getting married,” she said.

The guests weren’t there because of a game. They were there because conversations that started on Discord became a community, then friendships, then — for the Hobarts — a marriage.

Getting started is easy. Discord is free to download on phones, consoles, or desktops, and setting up an account only takes a few minutes. From there, you can connect with your friends that you already game with, or join an existing Server built around the games and interests you love. Joining a Server takes just one click — no matter if it's a link a friend sends you, or one you find by browsing Discord's directory of communities. Whether you’re looking to reconnect with your longtime crew or make your first gaming friend, the front door to your digital third space is open. 

(NewsUSA) - Modern conflict goes beyond troops and physical weapons. Warfare tactics now include cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, election interference, and economic coercion.

Dr. Teija Tiilikainen, director of the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), outlined hybrid security threats in an interview on NatSec Tech, a podcast produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) covering emerging technology and national security.

Hybrid CoE defines hybrid threats as "a mixture of different tools used against democracies, against the democratic principle, against democratic practices in our societies to undermine trust in government," Tiilikainen said — tools used by authoritarian regimes to shore up their own power. What sets them apart: "The whole logic of these threats is to surprise us unprepared." The toolkit spans cyber and information operations, election interference, instrumentalized migration, and attacks on critical infrastructure from energy grids to data cables.

Artificial intelligence has raised the stakes. AI "is a huge tool to affect the so-called cognitive sphere, our understanding of reality," Tiilikainen said. When threat actors deploy it ahead of elections or on social media, "we don't know with whom we are communicating." Increasingly, "we don't necessarily recognize the real actors from AI produced actors." AI may eventually help defenders, she noted, but for now attackers hold the advantage.

Tiilikainen singled out the information space. In the Russian war against Ukraine, "How do we see the war, who is the victim, who is the responsible actor? This tends to vary not only in Europe, but also outside Europe, very much due to efficient and successful Russian disinformation campaigns." Information is "a very dangerous tool in the hands of hybrid threat actors," she said, amplifying every other tool they use.

Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are the principal state actors, she said, often working through proxies: criminals, hackers, extremists, and unwitting citizens. Attribution is "very, very difficult," and "this is one of the assets that the threat actors are using."

Countering them "all starts with our broad societal resilience," Tiilikainen said. More proactive measures include international sanctions and publicly calling out responsible states. "China, for instance, is still quite keen on maintaining its reputation as a responsible international actor," she said.

Education matters too. Tiilikainen pointed to the Nordic and Baltic states, where an informed public helps small countries defend themselves, and to Ukraine and Taiwan, which have used transparency to expose and correct disinformation. The private sector must also engage, since much critical infrastructure is privately owned.

Hybrid threats are dangerous because they are hard to see, and they test vulnerabilities with larger conflict in mind. "We have the old saying that this is about preparing the battlefield," she said. "From that point of view the threat to democracies can be very existential."

Progress has been made — "I see resilience being strengthened" — but more is needed to prepare for "the malign use of modern technologies." Failure to do so, she warned, would "weaken the credibility of the democratic principles."

Visit scsp.ai to learn more.

(NewsUSA) - Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) refers to AI systems that can operate autonomously with minimal human oversight. Unlike existing AI systems that generate responses based on prompts, evolving agentic AI can independently set goals, create plans, and execute multi-step tasks.

“AI is beginning to help build better AI,” according to experts at the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan initiative with a goal of making recommendations to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness in artificial intelligence.

If a self-accelerating loop in which AI capability improves and AI development compounds, the pace of capability development will far outrun projections, said Ylli Bajraktari, president of the SCSP, in a recent newsletter about agentic AI.

“An agent that can navigate complex bureaucratic systems, identify exploitable vulnerabilities, and act without leaving a clear attribution trail represents a qualitative expansion of adversarial capability,” Bajraktari emphasized.

In terms of global security, the United States should be aware that our adversaries will deploy agentic AI systems in areas where governance is weakest. Agentic AI systems could be used for coercion, espionage, and influence.

Contrary to what many policymakers might think, effective governance of agentic AI involves not the AI model that is the engine, it is the scaffolding built around it, the SCSP experts explained. This scaffolding includes:

Connectors to bridge the model to real-world infrastructure, such as email, booking systems, and financial platforms.

Memory that allows the AI system to learn and adapt across interactions over time.

Planning capabilities that break large objectives into smaller tasks, identify failure, and navigate obstacles without human intervention.

Permission structures that define what the system can access and act upon.

Guardrails that determine what the system will refuse to do (such as spending limits or human sign-offs).

Accountability remains a challenge, and governance is falling short in three key ways, according to SCSP. First, responsibility is untraceable when using AI; there is not way to determine who authorized what if an AI agent is acting on your behalf. In addition, current frameworks don’t ask whether an AI agent performed a task safely or whether it caused harm, only that the task was completed. Finally, agentic AI builds personal profiles that may include data more sensitive than an individual wants by accumulating information on patterns of behavior, preferences, and inferences.

Despite these challenges, agentic AI is not a technology to be feared or deferred, the SCSP experts emphasize. Institutions that prioritize understanding, shaping, and governing agentic AI will determine their own competitive position, and also impact the character of the environment in which agentic AI operates globally.

Visit scsp.ai to learn more about how the United States should pursue effective governance of agentic AI.