Technology & Science

BeyondTrust disclosed on October 15 that a critical flaw in its Remote Support appliances had been exploited as a zero-day since late August. Google Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant attribute the campaign to a suspected China-linked espionage group they call Armory Castle, previously tracked as UNC5221. The flaw, CVE-2026-102764, scores 9.3 on the CVSS scale. It stems from a component that failed to verify where messages came from, and it allows file operations on the appliance. Mandiant says the attackers gained root access, tried to harvest stored credentials, deployed custom backdoors and deleted logs. BeyondTrust says it has confirmed only two affected customers, but Google warns that others may have been compromised. SaaS customers were patched by October 9. Self-hosted customers on versions up to 26.2.3 must apply patch BT26-05, and older releases must be upgraded first. CISA has urged immediate patching.

TAIPEI — Taiwan plans to add AI servers and cutting-edge semiconductors to its list of controlled items, Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg. Once the measures take effect, shipping restricted AI hardware to China would become a crime under the Foreign Trade Act. Kung said the move follows commitments in Taiwan's trade agreement with the United States. He gave no start date. Taiwan indicted nine people in August, including an Nvidia manager, over the alleged smuggling of 130 AI servers, according to regional reports. Separately, on Friday China's commerce and science ministries published a draft that would restrict or ban exports of 40 technologies, including AI, chips and solar. The draft covers some chip-design and memory-chip know-how, and the ministry cited national security. A temporary export registration rule took effect on October 16. Public comment on the Chinese draft closes November 15.

CUPERTINO — Apple opened pre-orders for the iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone, on Friday, and estimated delivery dates slipped within minutes. Launch-day delivery on October 23 disappeared almost at once. Some orders were quoted December dates, and others were quoted January 25, 2027. The phone starts at $1,999. 9to5Mac pointed to a combination of strong demand and tight supply, and noted a Nikkei Asia report from last month that Apple was producing only a few hundred units a day. PhoneArena reported eBay listings asking roughly $2,800 to $5,200. Apple has not published unit figures for pre-orders or production, so the sell-out does not show total demand. Pre-orders continue online, and the phone is due in stores October 23. The Seoul Economic Daily reported the same pattern in Korea, with delivery pushed to January.

Attorneys general in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia each sued OpenAI in their own state courts on Wednesday. They allege the company marketed ChatGPT as safe for minors while it gave dangerous medical advice and encouraged self-harm or violence. The suits rely mainly on state consumer-protection statutes. Arkansas adds negligence, strict-liability and public-nuisance claims. It also seeks an injunction against developing models capable of recursive self-improvement until safeguards exist. Iowa seeks up to $40,000 per violation. Nebraska seeks $50,000 per violation of its age-appropriate design law. West Virginia asks for age checks, default nighttime limits and an independent monitor. Arkansas's office also listed Utah as a filer, a ninth state that other offices did not name. OpenAI says no system is perfect and points to its teen protections. The allegations are unproven, and OpenAI must answer each complaint separately.

PHILADELPHIA — On September 29 the Third Circuit affirmed that Ross Intelligence infringed Thomson Reuters' copyrights. Ross used Westlaw headnotes to train a competing legal-research tool, and the court held that this was not fair use. The panel called the case an ordinary copyright dispute. It found Ross's use only minimally transformative and harmful to Westlaw's market, including a developing market for licensing training data. It is the first federal appellate decision on fair use in AI training. A footnote stresses that Ross's system generated no new text, setting it apart from the OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta cases. Law firms read the ruling as neither a ban on AI training nor a safe harbor. Ross says it will seek Supreme Court review. Cases involving generative models are still at trial level. A summary-judgment hearing in Concord Music Group v. Anthropic, over song lyrics, is set for October 21.

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30. It said the model scored top-tier benchmark results and set a record on a long-horizon software-engineering test. Access began with cybersecurity partners. Release trackers report that Google widened access to paying API and subscriber customers on October 13. Independent testing of the vendor's claims is still thin. Analysts told CNBC that its real test comes in broad production use. CNBC also reported that OpenAI abandoned an upcoming model after concluding it fell short of the company's safety standards. OpenAI instead released cheaper GPT-6 Sol and Luna on September 22, with API prices cut 50% from the earlier GPT-5.6 promotional rates. OpenAI says Sol at maximum effort beats Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 on AutomationBench at 9% of the cost per task. That is the company's own comparison, not an independent result.

WASHINGTON — President Trump's Executive Order 14434, signed September 29, directs agencies to say 'Super Intelligence' instead of 'Artificial Intelligence' in official communications. Wiley's client alert notes it does not expressly address preemption of state AI laws. It adds that preemption could come in a legislative package being prepared for the President. The state-law fight rests on the December 2025 order, which created a Justice Department AI Litigation Task Force. The task force was announced January 9. Law firms stress that an executive order cannot itself override state statutes, and that agency or funding routes may be challenged in court. Congress has not passed preemption. The December order exempts state child-safety rules from its preemption push, the area of this week's eight-state suits against OpenAI. Until courts or Congress act, state laws and state consumer-protection enforcement remain in force.

Science devoted its Oct. 15 cover to the argument that the Inca empire lasted longer than long believed. The accepted timeline rests on a Spanish colonial chronicle. That chronicle held that the empire ran only 94 years, from its founding to the Spanish conquest that began in 1532, and met little opposition. The magazine reports that radiocarbon dates from sites along the Qhapaq Ñan road system now contradict this. One example is the outpost of Chamical in Argentina. Archaeologist Dennis Ogburn dated seed, wood and charcoal from its earliest layers to between 1432 and 1451, decades before the traditional date. Archaeologists in Argentina had also reported dates more than 50 years early. Their findings were long met with skepticism. The article presents the earlier dates as evidence of local resistance to Inca expansion in the 15th century. Ogburn first urged building a chronology from radiocarbon dates alone in a 2012 paper in Radiocarbon.

The Lancet published results on Sept. 30 from ACHIEVE-4, a phase 3 trial of Eli Lilly's oral drug orforglipron, sold as Foundayo. The trial randomly assigned 2,749 adults with type 2 diabetes, overweight or obesity, and established heart or kidney disease to the pill or to insulin glargine. The primary goal was non-inferiority on major adverse cardiovascular events, and the drug met it. Lilly reports a 16 percent lower risk on the four-part measure, though the trial was built to rule out excess harm, not to show protection. The company says its pill also reduced blood sugar and weight more than insulin. In the published paper, the average difference in body weight was 8.9 percent. At week 52, 65.7 percent of pill users and 46.0 percent of insulin users had HbA1c below 7 percent. Lilly reports that 10.6 percent of pill users stopped treatment because of side effects. Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea were the most common.

STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX has not announced a date for Starship's 15th flight. A provisional Oct. 19 target has slipped, and Space.com now reports mid-to-late November, with no firm date confirmed. Flight 14 on Sept. 28 was the first time Starship reached orbit. It was also the first mission to carry Starlink V3 satellites on the giant rocket. Space.com says the once-every-26-months Mars launch window opens in late October, but SpaceX has not yet demonstrated propellant transfer, so a 2026 Mars run is ruled out. SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman said on Oct. 1 that at least one more Starship test will fly from Texas before the first launch from Florida's Pad 39A. She said that pad's new tower is nearly complete. The ship is due to fly in the 2027 Artemis III docking test.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin said Friday it will add two New Glenn launch pads on Florida's Space Coast. They would join the two at Launch Complex 36, where LC-36A is being rebuilt after a catastrophic May test-fire explosion and LC-36B is under construction. The company is spending $330 million to expand its Rocket Park factory, due for completion in summer 2027. The expansion is meant to allow production of up to 150 upper stages a year. Executive Ian Richardson said the infrastructure is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade. The FAA is taking public comment on a request to raise LC-36A's permitted launches from 12 to 50 a year. Jeff Bezos has said he still wants New Glenn flying again before year's end. The company has not given a firm return-to-flight date.