In the New York Times coverage of the CrowdStrike update bug that caused havoc starting last Friday, there’s a lovely deadpan line eleven paragraphs in:

Apple and Linux machines were not affected by the CrowdStrike software update.

Even while sympathizing with those directly and indirectly affected, it’s hard not to be a little smug. The larger question is, could a similar kind of problem affect Macs? That would be bad for us Mac users but less so for the world, given that Macs are used in fewer mission-critical situations than Windows-based PCs and may not even be as relied upon as iPads for vertical market tasks like point-of-sale applications, medical record tracking, and education management. What about iPhones? I have less of a sense of how mission-critical they are to businesses and other organizations, but there are certainly millions of individuals whose lives would be upended if their iPhones were suddenly bricked. They would have trouble making calls and texts, taking public transit, making purchases, navigating to unfamiliar destinations, and much more.

At The Eclectic Light Company blog, Howard Oakley examines the possibility of Macs being affected by something similar. He concludes that the likelihood is increasingly unlikely overall and is no longer a significant risk for Apple silicon Macs. On Windows, CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor code almost certainly runs as a kernel-mode driver with elevated privileges, which is why its bug can prevent a PC from booting successfully. On the Mac, the equivalent approach would require a kernel extension (kext), but Apple deprecated kexts starting in macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019, pushing developers to use System Extensions instead. Kernel extensions can run on Apple silicon Macs only if the user drops system security to Reduced Security and explicitly allows third-party kexts to load. Don’t do that unless you have a really good reason.

In fact, the Mac version of CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor reportedly used a kext on Intel-based Macs prior to Big Sur but has since switched to an EndpointSecurity System Extension. System Extensions run with standard user privileges, so even if one suffered from a critical bug, it shouldn’t be able to cause a kernel panic.

What about iOS and iPadOS? They’re even more secure than macOS because they have never allowed kernel extensions and don’t support anything like macOS’s System Extensions. All iOS and iPadOS apps are sandboxed, so they can’t affect the system or any other app. That’s not to say that iOS and iPadOS are perfectly secure or reliable, but they’re certainly among the best consumer-grade operating systems.

Apple devices may not be as vulnerable to a bug in an update to third-party software like CrowdStrike, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. Apple itself regularly releases updates, and while it’s essential to install them to patch security vulnerabilities, Apple’s engineers could make a mistake that would cause problems for millions. Howard Oakley’s article reminded me of when an Apple update inadvertently disabled Ethernet (see El Capitan System Integrity Protection Update Breaks Ethernet, 29 February 2016). Apple quickly addressed the problem, but the lack of Ethernet prevented some Macs from getting the revised update, requiring manual intervention.

What should happen to reduce the chances of an outage like this happening again?

Plenty of other lessons could be taken away from the CrowdStrike debacle, but I worry that it will fall out of the headlines too soon for other companies to learn from CrowdStrike’s mistakes.

The Millennium Project, in collaboration with the World Futures Study Federation and the World Academy of Art and Sciences, has launched an open letter urging the incoming President of the UN General Assembly to address the development, security, and governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The letter, spearheaded by Ambassador Héctor Casanueva, is calling for the creation of a specialized agency for AI governance to ensure that AI developments prioritize human rights and wellbeing on a global scale.

The letter emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive, multi-stakeholder, and multilateral governance system to address the growing concern regarding AI safety and regulation. It proposes the establishment of a committee of the willing to draft a UN Convention on AI, which would cover both Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to pave the way for a specialized Agency that oversees the safe development of AI in various forms.

Individuals who support the letter are encouraged to endorse it by sending their name, title, and institutional affiliation to Héctor Casanueva by August 4, 2024. The letter also provides background information on AGI for reference and encourages recipients to advocate for AGI governance at their national level.

This initiative underscores the significance of global collaboration in addressing the challenges and opportunities that AI presents, highlighting the need for a unified approach to ensure the ethical and responsible development of AI technologies.

A new software was implemented to calculate the power flow sensitivity matrix helping describe line flow changes when load or generation changes.

Researchers for the National Transmission Planning Study (NTP Study) approached the Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization Capability (MSOC) team, a part of the Computational Science Center, within the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Energy Systems Integration Facility, to create a nodal representation of the U.S. transmission system with 95,000 buses and 130,000 transmission lines.

The MSOC team works with the Grid Planning and Analysis Center (GPAC) and researchers across NREL on grid modernization, energy systems integration, and mobility electrification projects.

The existing software for modeling the transmission system is not capable to scale and support the size of the analysis envisioned in the study, which requires to model the entire U.S. for every node and hour of the year and use that data to link with other modeling frameworks.

The NTP Study is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office and conducted in partnership with NREL and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The study required robust calculations and modeling of transmission constraints to provide transmission beneficial for electricity customers nationwide, informing transmission planning processes, and identifying strategies to accelerate decarbonization while maintaining system reliability.

We looked at the software and knew we could help the NTP Study with more efficient processes, and we had a talented postdoctoral researcher, Alessandro Castelli, who could help, said Jose Daniel Lara, a GPAC researcher, the lead developer of NREL’s Sienna framework. We collaborated with scientists in GPAC and implemented new software to calculate the power flow sensitivity matrix — which describes how line flows change when load or generation changes — up to 20 times faster while using five times less memory on large-scale instances.

The improvements were integrated into a software package, PowerNetworkMatrices, which is part of the Sienna modeling ecosystem. The software directly calculates a specific section instead of calculating an entire matrix to pick out a small section.

The approach is more efficient, helping reduce computational bottlenecks. The MSOC team plans to continue collaborating on the NTP Study to make more computational improvements to project workflows.

MSOC wanted to help researchers run simulations without simplifying them. MSOC’s work enabled the optimization model answerable for the NTP Study team to focus on the experiments to be conducted.

With the technical challenges solved through this NREL collaboration, the NTP Study can more effectively highlight transmission options that benefit customers and inform transmission planning throughout the country, Lara added.

The NTP Study and its key findings will be released by the end of 2024.

US Air Force, Boeing reach deal on prototype E-7

RAF FAIRFORD, England — The Air Force has reached an agreement with Boeing to build the first rapid prototype E-7 battle management aircraft, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters over the weekend.

The terms of the contract are not yet settled, but should be wrapped up next month, Kendall said at the Royal International Air Tattoo air show. The completion of this deal would resolve months of complicated negotiations between the Air Force and Boeing stemming from the service’s special requirements for its version of the E-7.

The Air Force in 2022 chose the E-7 to replace its aging E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, fleet. The service plans to buy 26 E-7s from Boeing by 2032, and awarded Boeing a $1.2 billion contract in February 2023 to start working on them.

Ultimately, Kendall said, the Air Force wants to have a combination of E-7s and space-based satellites monitoring battlefields and the airspace above, providing command and control, and targeting enemy forces. Until the E-7 fleet is ready, he said, the service plans to hold on to some AWACS to bridge the gap.

Australia already flies the E-7, which it calls the Wedgetail, and Boeing has deals in the works with the U.K. and other nations.

But the Air Force said it needs a modified design for its E-7 to meet U.S. satellite communication, military GPS and cybersecurity as well as program protection requirements.

Andrew Hunter, the service’s acquisition chief, said in February that the Air Force originally thought it was buying an E-7 that was not far off from the U.K’s version. However, Hunter said, the Air Force’s requirements turned out to require a far greater level of one-time engineering than originally anticipated.

This drove up the potential price and made negotiations tricky for months, Kendall told Defense News in an exclusive June interview at the Pentagon.

They’ve been hard, Kendall said of the negotiations. There are some reasons for the price to go up, but the degree to which it was going to go up originally was unacceptable.

Kendall said in June that while the Air Force is increasingly moving to space-based capabilities for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting, it still wants to have the E-7 as an airborne component for the near future.

Having some redundancy and getting to a place where we have more confidence in the space layer is going to take some time, Kendall said in June. There’s some good technical reasons to have a mix of capabilities here. … I think we’re going to need [the E-7]. I’d like to keep it funded.

Kendall said Saturday that the Air Force brought in Shay Assad, the Pentagon’s former director of defense pricing, to negotiate with Boeing and bring the deal home. He said the Air Force and Boeing have arrived at a reasonable price point on the plane.

Hunter thanked Assad for his assistance in landing the deal, but also credited Boeing and its suppliers.

They did really buckle down and get their pencils out and sharpen them and do a good job to bring the cost of the rapid prototyping program down, Hunter said. That’s what we asked, and that’s what they did.

These improvements will ultimately pay off for Boeing, Hunter said, as there is a considerable market among NATO nations and other partners for the E-7 in the future.

The business case was there for them, Hunter said. There are some critical design updates … [on] the overall structure of the mission systems, that are going to lay the foundation for the capability going forward. That’s a big market for industry.

The Australian government launched a new campaign to combat elder abuse, allocating funds for a nationwide initiative aimed at raising awareness and preventing mistreatment of older adults. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus emphasized the urgent need to address this issue, highlighting the prevalence of abuse among older Australians. The campaign will focus on educating the public about various forms of elder abuse, including psychological, financial, and neglect, to encourage open conversations and support for victims. With the country’s aging population, the call to action to end elder abuse has never been more critical.

Britain’s new government is less than three weeks old, but Westminster’s vast lobbying industry is already circling.

While hundreds of Labour’s new MPs are still without staff or even their own desk in parliament, their inboxes are rapidly filling up with welcome messages from lobbyists alongside invites to glitzy receptions.

It’s all part of a furious scramble among public affairs professionals desperate to rebuild their contact books and gather intelligence on potential parliamentary allies after a historic reshaping of the U.K.’s political landscape.

Speaking to POLITICO, one new Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak freely about their experience, said they started receiving WhatsApp and LinkedIn messages before they’d had a chance to sleep following their election victory announcement in the early hours of July 5.

They even faced complaints from two shameless lobbyists frustrated their attempts to email the new MP, who themselves worked in a public affairs role before being elected, had not been successful.

I didn’t even have access to my emails at that point, the MP said. That’s definitely not best practice, and it did wind me up a bit.

The schmooze offensive is a clear sign of the importance with which Labour’s new generation is being viewed. The party’s 200 plus new MPs have become VIP guests for agencies and businesses hoping the annual warm wine circuit of summer receptions will provide a vital networking opportunity before legislators return to their constituencies during the summer recess.

The usual copy and paste invite list of recent years has been tossed out as trade groups, public affairs agencies and big businesses put a premium on Labour attendees. Google even offered up its swanky London HQ as a venue for Labour’s own post-election reception held for MPs and party staff after their first full day in parliament.

And veteran party figures are also in high demand, as lobbying agencies compete for high-profile hires to demonstrate to clients they have an inside track on Labour’s thinking.

In the first few days of the new government, public affairs agency Shearwater Global announced they’d hired former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Ex-Labour MP Holly Lynch was snapped up by Arden Strategies, the agency run by former Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy. Swathes of former political advisers and party comms staff have also found plum roles within the industry.

At other agencies, the revolving door has swung in the opposite direction, with a number of former lobbyists from agency and in-house teams now sitting on the green benches.

Among them is Chris Ward, a former adviser to now-Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who subsequently joined influential lobbying firm Hanbury in early 2022 to lead its Labour Unit.

Within days of Ward’s election victory, he was handed an influential role as Starmer’s parliamentary private secretary — acting as a key conduit between the prime minister and his backbench MPs.

But while the wooing continues, an army of lobbyists is already gearing up for the first pitched battles of the new government over the glut of new legislation announced in last week’s king’s speech.

A revised football governance bill looks set to reignite hostilities — which had largely been on pause during the election campaign — between the Premier League, the Football Association and their respective lobbying agencies.

Big tech firms are steeling themselves for a fight over measures promised in new AI and online safety laws, while radical planning reforms lit a fire under house builders, infrastructure groups and environmental campaigners.

The big question among public affairs leaders is whether Labour is ready for the lobbying blitz.

Within days of taking up the role of business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds hopped on a call with more than 170 business and trade body leaders in which he promised to be the most accessible ever business secretary, and announced plans for a Tell Jonathan email account for them to update him directly on problems they were encountering.

Industry leaders saw that as a positive — if slightly gimmicky — example of Labour’s broader commitment to keep lines of communication open in an effort to reverse the patchy engagement efforts seen under the previous Conservative government.

But with lobbyists already planning an unprecedented influencing blitz at Labour’s annual conference in September, and thoughts already turning to the contents of an Autumn budget, the industry is becoming increasingly vocal in its message to the new government’s top team.

The moment to move beyond listening mode is rapidly approaching.