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Protesters led by children march in London, United Kingdom, on June 1, 2025, demanding the release of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia and an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Russia reportedly indoctrinating kidnapped Ukrainian children, Fed to discuss rate cuts amid political firestorm, Argentina’s Milei presents budget, & More
210: The Kremlin is holding Ukrainian children at 210 different sites across Russia, according to a Yale University report, and forcing them to have re-education sessions and military training. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has regularly cited the abductions as evidence that Moscow is committing genocide in Ukraine. Kyiv estimates that 20,000 children have been taken since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
€1 billion: Poland increased its cybersecurity budget from €600 million ($708m) to €1 billion ($1.18b) after Russian hackers targeted its hospitals and Warsaw’s water supply. The Polish foreign minister said the country faces 20-50 cyber threats to critical infrastructure each day, most of which it thwarts.
3: The US military hit a Venezuela drug boat on Monday, killing three people. The attack marks the second time this month that the US has hit a boat suspected of drug smuggling off the coast of Venezuela.
7: A political storm is clouding the US Federal Reserve as its seven governors meet over the next couple of days to decide whether to cut interest rates – the target range is currently 4.25%-4.5%. Among the seven decision-makers are Lisa Cook, whom President Donald Trump has tried to fire but remains in situ after a court win yesterday, and Stephen Miran, a Trump ally whom the Senate confirmed only yesterday.
1.5%: Argentine President Javier Milei presented his 2026 budget proposal Tuesday to the National Congress, with the aim of having a fiscal surplus of 1.5% next year. The budgets for each of the last two years have been rejected, so the government has instead extended and continued to use the one implemented in 2023. With the midterm election only six weeks away, the budget could have political ramifications for Milei.
Brad Smith: Russia's war in Ukraine started on Feb 23 in cyberspace
Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Microsoft was already helping the Ukrainians defend their cyberspace against Russian hackers, for instance by moving the government's physical servers into the cloud to avoid destruction by Russian missiles.
In the virtual world, like on the battlefield, "you've gotta disperse your defensive assets so they're not vulnerable to a single attack," Microsoft President Brad Smith says in a Global Stage livestream discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, "Crisis in a digital world," hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Then came defending Ukraine against Russian cyberattacks.
In cyberspace, Smith says the war really started on February 23, a day before Russia's land invasion, when Microsoft noticed some 300 coordinated attacks trying to take down Ukrainian government websites and banks via Microsoft's own data centers in Seattle.
Still, it worked. Why? Because "so far in this war, defense has proven to be stronger [than] offense, frankly, in almost every category, but especially when it comes to cyberspace."
Watch more of this Global Stage discussion: "Crisis in a digital world"
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- A different Davos amid geopolitical conflicts and security issues - GZERO Media ›
- Microsoft president Brad Smith has a plan to meet the UN's goals - GZERO Media ›
- Russia freezing out Ukrainian civilians because it can't beat military, says Microsoft's Brad Smith - GZERO Media ›
- Tech innovation can outpace cyber threats, says Microsoft's Brad Smith - GZERO Media ›
- The transformative potential of artificial intelligence - GZERO Media ›
- The convergence of geopolitics and cyberspace - GZERO Media ›
Russian hackers' arrests timing likely just coincidence, says Ukraine analyst
Russia recently arrested 14 hackers from REvil, a ransomware gang involved in last year's cyberattack against the Colonial Pipeline in the US.
Some think it was a gesture by Vladimir Putin to deescalate tensions with the US over Ukraine. But analyst Alina Polyakova tells Ian Bremmer she doesn't buy it.
It's more likely, she says, that the hackers did something to irritate the Russians.
“When people see strategy in something that the Kremlin does, I usually see circumstantial reasons and coincidence, and maybe some incompetence here and there," Polyakova explains. "I think these were two separate events.”
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Will Putin invade Ukraine?
- Hard Numbers: Tongan volcano, Ukrainian cyberattack, Zemmour ... ›
- A (global) solution for cybercrime - GZERO Media ›
- Hackers shut down US pipeline - GZERO Media ›
- Hard Numbers: US bounty for Colonial Pipeline hackers, China's ... ›
- Would you pay a cyber ransom? - GZERO Media ›
- Constant Russian attacks on Ukraine in cyberspace - GZERO Media ›
Will there be a decisive US response to Russian cyber attacks?
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
After an attempted hack of a Republican National Committee contractor, is cybersecurity at a breaking point between the US and Russia?
Well, that breaking point has been a long time coming. There was the attempt to manipulate the 2016 elections and now we see a series of ransomware attacks that are escalating. So the question is, what the US can do to decisively change the calculation on the Russian side? Making clear that there will be sanctions and other consequences that hurt should be a start. But it will only be credible if these promises are followed through and enforced.
Why is China launching cybersecurity probes into US listed Chinese tech companies?
Well, there has been an intensification of regulatory measures vis-a-vis tech companies in China itself. So, steps against Didi fit the arm-wrestling pattern between companies and state agencies. Only now, US and international investors have also been caught up. And of course, it brings back memories of the Trump administration, which launched its own probes into Chinese tech firms. So the question is, who stands to lose most from a tit for tat type back and forth?
- Beyond SolarWinds: Securing Cyberspace | Global Stage ›
- SolarWinds hack a wake-up call to the tech sector - GZERO Media ›
- Russia's cyber attack: an act of espionage or war? - GZERO Media ›
- Hackers shut down US pipeline - GZERO Media ›
- Panel: Working together to protect cyberspace - GZERO Media ›
- US & allies unite against China's cyberattacks - GZERO Media ›
- Panel: Working together to protect cyberspace - GZERO Media ›
- Russian hackers target US tech companies with little accountability - GZERO Media ›
- Russian hackers target US tech companies with little accountability - GZERO Media ›
- Watching Russia: cyber threats & disinformation - GZERO Media ›
Russian hackers found targeting US election; robots that write?
Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, helps us make sense of today's stories in technology:
What are the Russians doing to the US election?
Well, they are trying to hack it. They're trying to hack into the accounts of individuals working on campaigns. They're trying to hack into accounts of nonprofit organizations. They're trying to mess it all up again. They're probably trying to help their favorite candidate, too. How did we find out about it? Well, Microsoft, thank you Microsoft, is running an election security operation and they noticed this. Now, have they found everything that the Russian group Fancy Bear is doing? I highly doubt it. We'll probably learn a lot more after the election, unfortunately.
What's this? Robots can write! Should we be afraid?
So OpenAI has used artificial intelligence to build a text generating system called GPT-3. It's way of computers writing sentences that look almost like human sentences. The Guardian ran a story written entirely by GPT-3 about whether robots will take over the world. Am I afraid this indicates robots will take over the world? I'm not. The article is terrible, confusing, incomprehensible. Not really a big concern. I am concerned, though, that systems like this could be used for the purposes of misinformation and for creating chaos on the Internet. But that's a separate matter.