Is DOGE a cybersecurity threat? A security expert explains the dangers of violating protocols and regulations

cybersecurity
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), President Donald Trump’s special commission tasked with slashing federal spending, continues to disrupt Washington and the federal bureaucracy. According to published reports, its teams are dropping into federal agencies with a practically unlimited mandate to reform the federal government in accordance with recent executive orders.

As a 30-year cybersecurity veteran, I find the activities of DOGE thus far concerning. Its broad mandate across government, seemingly nonexistent oversight, and the apparent lack of operational competence of its employees have demonstrated that DOGE could create conditions that are ideal for cybersecurity or data privacy incidents that affect the entire nation.

Tradition...

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Multinational research project shows how life on Earth can be measured from space

Members of the BioSCape team are pictured with NASA and South African aircraft.
BioSCape was NASA’s first biodiversity-focused campaign. Photo by Jeremey Shelton/Fishwater Films

Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.

An ambitious, multinational research project funded by NASA and co-led by UC Merced civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir demonstrated that Earth’s biodiversity can be monitored and measured from space, leading to a better understanding of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Hestir led the team alongside University of Buffalo geography Professor Adam Wilson and Professor Jasper Slingsby from the University of Cape Town on BioSCape, which collected data over six weeks in late 2024.

Two NASA aircraft and one South African aircraft flew over South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristi...

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Scientists discover brain mechanism that helps overcome fear

Brain slice showing projections in yellow, pink and blue
Coronal brain slice showing projections from different visual areas in the cerebral cortex to the ventrolateral geniculate nucleus (vLGN). These pathways are part of the circuit identified as mediating the suppression of instinctive fear responses.

Researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Center (SWC) at UCL have unveiled the precise brain mechanisms that enable animals to overcome instinctive fears. Published in Science, the study in mice could have implications for developing therapeutics for fear-related disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The research team, led by Dr. Sara Mederos and Professor Sonja Hofer, mapped out how the brain learns to suppress responses to perceived threats that prove harmless over time.

“Humans are born with inst...

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AI-powered method improves reliability of next-generation networks

Network technology focused on signal developed for faster, reliable 5G and 6G networks
mmWave Massive MIMO system with moving UE; The angle-delay reciprocity holds in stationary (quasi-static) but not in non-stationary scenarios. Credit: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2024.3476474

As 5G and 6G networks expand, they promise a future of incredibly fast and reliable wireless connections. A key technology behind this is millimeter-wave (mmWave), which uses very high-frequency radio waves to transmit huge amounts of data. To make the most of mmWave, networks use large groups of antennas working together, called massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO).

However, managing these complex antenna systems is challenging...

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