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This is Bloomberg Tech. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York and let's go straight to our top story today, the war with Iran. The conflict continues to reverberate across the Middle East. Today. This is President Trump says the bombing campaign against Iran could last for weeks. We are awaiting more updates from the President this hour, but we want to bring you the latest of Bloomberg's Danie Williams, who is in Jerusalem on the ground there in Israel. Dan, what is it like?
Well, as you can see, the sun is set on what has been the third day of this extraordinary war, war that appears to be widening, engulfing not just some at least now, but even lapping up against Southern Europe, with Cyprus saying that a British air base on its
soil was apparently targeted by a Hesbala drone. Hesbola being the Lebanese militia ally of Iran, in fact, an ally of Iran in Lebanon, which opened a front from Lebanon with Israel reopened that front overnight, and now these really are saying they're bombing targets in Lebanon a pace as
they continue their bombing of Iran alongside US forces. So we have several fronts opening up, a number of Gulf Arab countries that also have found themselves in the firing line being struck by Iranian missiles and drones, and not just US bases on their turf, but also hotels and
the like. This is imposing a good deal of economic pain on the region, and it would appear that what the Iranian regime is trying to do, even though it's massively outgunned by its enemies, is to wait out this campaign in the hope that the pain and indeed the patience of the American public that apparently disapproves of this by quite a margin already will wear thin and some members of the Ranian regime might be able to survive.
Talk to us about what remains of the Iranian regime, Dan, it's.
Very hard to know. It's the supreme leader was killed over the weekend in one of those opening salvos, and almost by the minute we've received updates about other members who have been killed, sometimes as successors of those who
were recently killed. However, to judge by the cycle of fire being maintained by Iran, certainly in Israel, what we've been experiencing every half hour a couple hours, sirens and calls to take shelter in the face of missiles or drones coming in, it would appear that there is still a vestigious state functioning, managing to keep up the fight and presumably domestically managing to deter members of the opposition
from trying to take control of the country. That is, of course the vision enunciated both by Israel and the United States at the outset a situation whereby the Iranian regime is sufficiently degraded s officially destroyed to enable the Ranian opposition, which many in the West would see as the bulk of the Iranian population, certainly the young population to take to the streets again as it did only a few weeks ago, but this time not facing the guns of the state and being able to assume control.
Extraordinary day in Jerusalem, as you say, a third day, Dan Williams, we so appreciate you being with us of Bloomberg. Now let's check out what is a human story that is affecting markets right now, andw's that one hundred off by four tenths seven percent. Big tech is seeing some significant moves on individual names. Of course, money moving into the likes of Nvidia, palant here as you're seeing up six percent as a defense related name from the tech
perspective pushes high. These are your big points contributors on the day and in video in fact making a deal putting money into optical companies. We'll dig into that a little bit later, but really we're also seeing significant moves in other parts of the market, different industry groups, different classes.
Brent crude unsurprisingly up more than seven percent, extraordinary moves as we consider the straight ofform moves an issue about supply chains written large for the globe to try and digest. Bitcoin is up by more than five percent, with covering some of its losses as it was one of the main tradable assets over the course of the weekend, and strategy if micro Strategy is currently up six point eight
percent on the back of that Bitcoin buying. Let's talk about the market impact more with epec Oscar Deesco, Swiss quote senior market analyst, and this is a moment of knee jerk reaction of risk of sentiment. But interestingly, we are still seeing big tech managing to see some flows into it.
Exactly what we see right now is that as the spike in oil prices is being retraced, technology companies are also finding some breathing room right now. And we also do see some individual divergences in the technologists phase. The companies that do have exposure greater exposures to energy costs, like the ones that run data centers, are being more heavily than the others that are more or less capital intensive,
like Nvidia for example. The defense related names are also gaining on the back of the Middle East conflict news.
Is that an automatic buying that you think we'll see the likes of Palenteer hold on to gains going forward. Is there something that is sticky about this demand for such defense tech.
Yes, we believe that globally the defense stocks have been in demand due to the rapid shifts and the significant shift in global geopolitics. And we have seen a couple of times since last year that the geopolitical tensions are not ready to ease from the actual levels. So the risks are being quite high, and the technology companies are in technology and defense companies are benefiting grande from it.
It's not only in the US, but we also think that the defense stocks in Europe will also be will also continue to benefit from the rising geopolitical tensions restling across the globe.
I mean, what's notable as benchmarks are actually trying to turn around I'm looking at then that's that more broadly only off by about a tenth of a percent now the SMP and the US currently off by three ten percent, even though we see market falls over in Asia and European trading, epect just the macro picture for someone who is in the audience right now trying to understand where to be navigating if they're exposed to technology names well exactly.
I mean, what the big picture of today was the rapids wise that we saw in energy prices at the beginning of today's session, so the Asian and European stocks were heavily hit. But as we move on towards the US session, we see that these gains have been retraced. So some of the hotys expectations regarding the major central banks that would be lifted.
That would be that that was.
Coming actually from the fact that the energy.
Prices would lift.
Inflation expectations are also being trimmed right now as oil prices are coming back down, and I think that that is the global macroeconomic picture that investors should understand. It is really today about the energy prices, the inflation expectations, and the impact on central bank decisions. As energy prices move lower, we are getting back to the levels of risk that we saw in the beginning of the session.
Now we are still higher in terms of energy prices and the risk of another upside potential move and sustain again in energy prices due persist. But at the moment it's quite interesting to see how fast the early gains are being retraced and the global markets are immediately readjusting to that retracement.
What is bitcoin acting as in this moment.
Well, it's interesting because bitcoin has not necessarily been as risk haven or a safe haven asset over the past few weeks. It was very much in line trend, very much in line with technology companies and was hit along with the cell off that we saw across the technology space.
So what we see to is that the bitcoin is actually acting as a safe haven asset, and we suspect that the regional conflict could eventually bring some capital into bitcoin regarding maybe the detentions or or the fact out the gold has been overly valued and investors may be
looking for other safe haven. But to be perfectly honest with you, the move that we see in bitcoin and the coupling of the correlation with the technologists is quite interesting right now, even more so as the higher energy energy prices should normally also have negative impact on bitcoin impact.
It's great to catch up with you. Thank you very much. Indeed, I thank you ipec's go desh guys with us on Swiss quote. We appreciate it. Mean while coming up, we'll speak with representatives Samncardo, a congressman from Silicon Valley about the conflict in the Middle East and AI policy. Meanwhile, check out shares of Apple. There is other news happening
amid of course the concerns in the Middle East. We're up almost two tens of percent as Apple is unvailing the iPhone seventeen E. It's the latest version of its lower end smartphone, faster version of an iPad Air also coming out with the iPhone seventeen e, including a faster processor,
new in house wireless chips. This is Bloomberg Tech. We are awaiting remarks from President Trump in Washington, who is about to participate in a public event, and we anticipate there might be some commentary regarding the war with Iran. We will be bringing you up to the moment breaking news on that subject, but within the context of Middle East Anthropic it has been saying that there's been an outage that impacted thousands of Claud users, but it has
now been resolved. Reports of the issues with the chatbot came is the AI provider experiences a surge in demand driven by the company's feud with the Pentagon and for the potential use of its technology for mass surveillance in the development of autonomous weaponry. Now, Seth Figman, a Bloomberg News and place to say, joins us to set the context first, because while a feud is erupted between Anthropic, we've actually seen Open Ai complete a contract with the
Pentagon in the use of its own AI technology. Just take us through the weekend, Seth.
Yeah, I think this has to be the most dramatic weekend we've seen AI lands since the ouster Sam Altman a couple of years ago. But to your point, Carolyn, Yes, Openingey swooped in hours after Anthropic was effectively blacklisted by the Defense Department and segaing to deal with the Defense
Department for classified AI work. Now, opening I is not saying if this replaces Anthropics were, but they are signaling that they are comfortable with the contractual safeguards to make sure that their technology is not used for domestic surveillance or for autonomous weaponry, which were the two red lines that Anthropic really centered on and which led to this fierce standoff with the Pentagon.
It's been a standoff that has erupted online, with many people calling to stop using chat GBT to instead shift one's attention to Anthropics consumer apps. Now, it might be said that Claude for Enterprise hasn't been affected by the outages today. It's interesting that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen has been saying that he's following President Trump's direction on Anthropic and in the Treasury Department is terminating all use of
Anthropic products. But there's reporting to show that it's of course still being used at the moment and was over the course of the weekend with Iran.
Yeah, I think to step back, let's just say that what seems clear is that the federal government is moving forward with rethinking its use of CLAUD. What's less clear is what the broader impact than blasphe igus will be unanthropic from the many other businesses and companies that work with the government. To take headsets tweet literally, he's implying that any business that does commercial business with Anthropic must
stop that if they also work with the military. But Dario Miday, at the CEO of Anthropics there over the weekend, he thinks it's much more limited in scope. It'll just be if they do military work with the anthropics. So that remains to be seeing how it's interpreted.
Still a lot of work to be done by the likes of Palenteer, for example, Bloomberg Seth Fiegeman across this story. Thank you very much. Indeed, now look US lawmakers, they're gearing up for a vote on a war powers resolution following the strikes in Iran. This is unfolding as the debate over AI used by the military continues. We're poased to say we're joined by representatives Sam Nacardo his district includes parts of Silicon Valley. There is drama in Washington,
where you've just got the train to us from. There is drama in where you represent as well. Can I just ask you, first and foremost, what do you think the relationship of some of the companies that within your district is evolving with the Pentagon? How do you observe what occurred over the last few days.
I think Silica on Vallet, there's a strong libertarian streak, and so there are many who are cheering to see Anthropics step up as it had. And look, there's a free market here in the Defense Department has many competitors to choose from, and it has a right to choose
whoever it wants. But it seems to me that at the end of the day, when we're talking about AI safeguards, these ought to be decisions that are not confined to back room negotiations between lawyers at the Pentagon and individual companies. These ought to be very public discussions. The administration should
be setting rules, Congress should be setting rules. And the way this all went down now with retribution against Anthropic in the way that Secret Heseth and others have articulated, I think is very damaging to Silicon Valley and frankly to the country.
In many ways, Anthropic and Daria Amide have tried to make it a public discussion, brought it into the light. What's interesting is Dario has also said that the law has not yet caught up with AI's ability. Therein lies your role in Congress. How can Congress keep up at this moment to ensure that there aren't these blurred red lines that everyone's trying to digest from open AI's contract and from Anthropics.
Well, this isn't the first time someone has said Congress is not moving at the pace of technology. We've been waiting thirty years for a data privacy bill, for protections against for protections for children online, etc. But the reality is this is an area where both Congress needs to act and the administration needs to act. There should be clear lines. I don't think a lot of folks argue with the lines that Anthropic articulated. In fact, open Ai
seem to have embraced them. So why not rather than punishing the company, hold these up as examples. This is an opportunity where the industry can inform the government, and we ought to be taking those cues you.
Say, open eyes, embrace the red lines that anthropy put forth. There's reporting to suggest that the cynicism.
Around that, yes, well that is to be determined. I guess I'm simply relying on what I'm hearing publicly.
Now.
Obviously I understand why there might be cynicism. Look, the bottom line is this shouldn't be enforced by one particular CEO at one company. There's a reason why there ought to be a public discussion because this is going to impact all of us, and certainly when we talk about issues like public surveillance.
I mean, realistically, are you able to have the time, the insight, the focus and the moment when we've got an erupting war withether on and indeed, well government shut down? How effective can you be at this moment? Congress?
Well, I'm not going to speak for Congress because frankly, as you know, if you ever made a bet on Congress not getting anything done, you win ninety nine times. Out About Fumber's markets, yeah, they're doing pretty well. But I will say this week I'll be introducing a provision in what's called the Defense Productions Act really to prevent any federal agency from retaliating against companies like Anthropic when they proposed reasonable limits on the deployment of their technology.
Technology is obviously a wonderful thing. We know it has enormous risks. We ought to take the cues from industry. Tree tells us these risks are too great. Let's draw lines.
What do you think will be the support of that bill across both aisles.
We'll be discussing it this week in the House Financial Services Committe where we were having their markup. I'm still having those conversations with my colleagues.
Okay, so maybe we can find some support that it shouldn't be down. There shouldn't be retribution, There shouldn't be sort of unprecedented moves where you deem a company a homegrown domestic champion as a supply risk in some way.
But when you think more broadly about AI regulation in the hands of Congress or in the hands of the executive right now is are you comfortable with the amount of executive orders that have been deemed around AI, the way in which the administration has had to take maybe the steps necessary if the Congress void is still there.
Well, I know this president is not unique and using executive orders where Congress is failing to act. The way in which these executive orders have been deployed a deeply problematic and certainly we've seen in many cases quite unconstitutional.
Congress needs a step up, and that requires the majority party to do its job, that is to defend the progatives under Article one of the Constitution, where Congress has authority, and we've seen a host of areas from tariffs, certainly the AI where Congress has simply not been stepping up and allowing this president to take too much of the turf. There's a reason why we want Congress to be deciding this.
These are issues that have massive impacts in many communities that are diverse communities that are simply not benefiting from AI as much as my communities so Oka Valley might be. That's why you need to have a national conversation.
You were having a national conversation before the conversation became much more of war in the Middle East and war with Iran. You were talking about how we shouldn't see Congress just slam the brakes on AI innovation, and equally they shouldn't accelerate. There should be a way of grabbing the steering wheels. The way you wrote it in an op ed. Can we get some sort of bipartisan approach to grabbing a steering wheel in When you say so many states are affected in different ways.
By AI, I'd like to think we can. Look, there's a lot of fears right now around AI, around lots of jobs, around impacts on utility bills. There are opportunities for us to move together. For example, we know these hyperscalers need speed. Let's give them federal permits enable them to accelerate if they're keeping rate payers whole and protecting them from these utility at the risk of higher prices
on their utility bills. And you know, investing in batteries and the kinds of technology we know that will be sustainable rather than simply pulling more natural gas and colon. You know, for example, on jobs, there are things that we can do that our bipyrason that can incentivize companies to invest in community colleges and local state universities, up skill and reskill. These are not necessarily partisan notions. This is a time for us to be thinking more creatively
across the aisle on these kinds of solutions. We don't have the kind of administration now in office that is particularly bipartisan, and so it's really going to have to come from ground up.
You mentioned social media, and I think in many ways people have felt that there's been a void of lawmaking around social media because there is so much nuance to much of this. Is there sometimes too much nuance when it comes to the likes of impact by the Pentagon's decisions on mass surveillance, on issues of autonomous weaponry, that really laws can't be made that can keep up.
Briefly, it's fair to say that this is incredibly complex, and you can't simply declare amateur hour and start to announce edicts that are going to apply broadly across multiple
industries where the impacts may be very different. What I have been proposing, and we'll be coming out with legislation soon, is how, for example, on AI, we can essentially enable industry experts academic experts to be able to establish what those best practices are in an industry, allow industry to reach those best practices, rather than having some kind of monolithic eedic come from Congress or the administration. Government's not going to get it right. We have to acknowledge that
this is moving too fast. We need to rely on the best thinking in the industry to establish what the best practices are and then mandate that folks can reach those they can have the benefits for example of preemption. If they don't, then they're subjected to the edicts of fifty different states.
We appreciate you stopping by.
It's great to be with you.
You see here in New York Representative Sam Niicado, who represents the heart of Silicon Valley and much more in California. Now coming up Bitcoin, it shakes off invest a caution as Middle East tensions they rattle global markets, will bring you more market impact. Next, this is Blomberg Tech Bitcoin staging and comeback nearing seventy thousand dollars levels after the US and is really a taxed on Iran shook investor confidence over the weekend. Who in the latest is Bloomberg
Cross asset reporter Isabelle Lee. They shape people with thinking of a world of war. That is not something to take lightly. But we think about the assets impacted. How is bitcoin managing to rally through this? Definitely behaving like a risk asset. I feel like, I mean, when you see a big pullback like that, it's eventually going to bounce back. It's now higher by around six percent after dropping as much as sixty three percent sixty three thousand
over the weekend. Other less liquid, smaller coins are also in degree in higher by six percent, like ether. The thing I love about cryptocurrency is that trades twenty four to seven, and you really can see and use it as a risk sentiment when markets are closed, and now that we see US stark open, you see worries about an inflation resurgence. For instance, bonds are slumping, traders are trimming their FED rate cuts, heaven assets are surging dollar gold oil.
Of course, an interestingly higher oil prices will actually weigh on crypto prices because crypto prices are behaving like tech stocks and risk assets, and of course those are sensitive defed erate moves. So everything is just interconnected, and I find that very interesting. In the top of all of this, it's a busy week for US ECO data. We have non farm payrolls. We also have unemployment rate and now
for now we have more questions than answers. We have President Trump saying that the attacks could last a few weeks. So I think investors are just really preparing themselves for the tailors events and preparing for worst case outcomes. But at least for now that cooin is nearing seventy thousand.
You keep us prepared as WELLI we appreciate it on all things of the market's reaction to a story that continues, because coming up we will join by American Enterprise Institute's senior fellow, Corey Shocky on all things defense, tech, geopolitics, so much more.
This is Bloomberg Tech.
Welcome back to bluemmeg Tech. We take a look at these markets, markets that are currently reacting to the news over the course of the weekend war in the Middle East, war with Iran. We're currently down on the Nastak one hundred by some five ts percent, coming back into Low's having tried to bounce into the green on the border indices. Video is actually up more than two percent because deals
are still getting done. From an M and A perspective, or from an investment perspective, this is as we see in video making four billion dollars investment in data center optics companies. That's coherent and momentum. Their stock surge. Palenteer defense Tech. There is buying of this name for obvious reasons. On the day we're up almost six percent, but CrowdStrike
is also interesting. Look are great colleagues at bloemmeg Intelligence like mandat Si seeing putting out really great notes talking about how palenteer of courses going to see buying a mid geopolitical tensions. We'll also see tailwinds for security spending with the larger companies such as CrowdStrike Palo Alto likely to see some focus and mid concerns about cyber attacks.
We'll get into that in a little bit, but let's head back now to DC, where it's notable that the Pentagon is shifting AI providers after reaching a deal with opening I to deploy its models within the department's classified network. Rumat. Senior Tech editor Mike she But joins us on what is an extraordinary story that intertwines with a geopolitical story. How significant is this move that Sam Altman goes where Daria Ama Day won't.
Well, it's not just significant that it happened, it's also caraed that it happened so quickly after the Pentagon decided that it would walk away from its relationship with Anthropic, which had been in place for roughly a year and the Anthropic had really worked itself into the classified space that is crucial for the Pentagon being able to deploy artificial intelligence in some fashion during critical operations, including combat, and Anthropics products have been used bipalent here as part
of this so called maven system that colloquially might be thought of as windows for war where battlefield commanders can have access to information and have it interpreted and processed and analyzed and assessed in a much faster fashion and presented to them. Now, what this means is that within six months, the Pentagon must transition to a new provider, and open AI and arch rival to Anthropic, is stepping in.
And what they are saying also is that they are willing to take the terms that Anthropic thought were unacceptable, terms that open AI says still respects its own guidelines when it comes to two key areas, and that is mass surveillance of Americans and also deployment of fully autonomous weapons. Open AI says that the contract and the relationship with the Pentagon are strong enough that those two requirements by
the firm are respected. Anthropic, from its standpoint, did not see the same in the contract language, and it will be interesting to see how this unfoldes, Carol, because the US government has declared Anthropic a supply chain risk and also ordered it off US government agency networks elsewhere, and Treasure.
Sectory Scott Besson talking this morning saying that the Treasure Department is terminating all use of Anthropic products, is following President Trump's direction on Anthropic, But of course this is as the consumer moves in a different direction. Mike. We've actually seen Anthropic in many ways not offline for consumers because so many people were demanding the product and downloading it, and maybe as some sort of pushback to open AI. There's calls to cancel chat GPT on the internet.
Well, that's right, Kera, we are seeing some of this popular sentiment swell in Anthropics favor. Certainly online there is a lot of applause in favor of Dario Amiday and would have seen as a principal stance by many against depending on against the administration. That you know, look, if you thought that you couldn't do business with and Thropic, why not just cancel the contract? Declaring them a supply chain risk was seen by many as going a step
too far and being vindictive. It's also important to remember that Claude's products are gaining popularity because many see them as quite good.
And we have talked.
In this space about how much Claude is threatening to disrupt other industries such as law, such as financial services, wealth management, you name it. And the tools that Claude offers really have some benefits, and that is yet another reason in addition to perhaps this populist sentiment swing.
Mike Shepard always on the news. We appreciate it so much from DC that let's bring in Corey Shocking, Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. You've been thinking about really the Pentagon's reaction to this. Just talk us through your thinking as to whether the step of banning Anthropic from the supply chain in this way is the right step.
It's a petulant reaction by this Secretary of Defense that's likely to turn out to be advantageous to Anthropic, but it's going to be bad for the Defense Department and bad for the security of the United States. The idea that you could either nationalize or blacklist a leading American company is outrageous and it's going to discourage other leading edge tech firms from being willing to expose their business by participating in the defense ecosystem.
Okay, there's going to be immediate shock, as you say, from those in the space and the reaction function of the Pentagon. But more broadly, how transparent should these sorts of conversations become at this moment? Very difficult ethical questions that seem to be shown a significant public light on by dari Ama Day, the leader of Anthropic himself.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, this is a frontier technology that we are still understanding what its consequences are going to be. And to suggest that we have less transparency or that a firm has no right to set standards on how a cutting edge technology will be utilized by the Defense Department, I think is probably a losing proposition for DoD What should.
Be forced, what could be forced by Congress? We just had a representative of California to start the show talking about wanting to bring law to bed that companies aren't pushed off of any sort of national supply chain in any retribution act. But what move already can be done by Congress at this moment to make clearer the lines.
Well, Congress really runs defense policy and they can legislate in this space and DoD will be required to be compliant with it. It's actually shocking to think that the Defense Department blacklisted an American company. That's the kind of thing we do to Chinese firms, not to patriotic American firms who are already participating in classified DoD activity.
Can you give us some guiding principles on then, how open Ai and sam Altman might be able to find appeasement in a contract. Do you think extra steps had been taken? Is there though really a need at this moment for companies to see the law as it stands as where the line should be, rather than trying to insert their own language into certain contracts.
Well, it's an open question, but I do think that open Ai is saying, yes, we trust the government that they won't use our product in a way they say they won't, and Anthropic is saying, we actually need proof and we need indemnification that our product is being used
as we are advertising our product. I think, given the low level of trust in the Trump Department of Defense, this is likely to be advantageous marketing for Anthropic and very difficult for DoD to be able to say you need to trust that we will abide by the law, when so much of their behavior, including blacklisting an American company, looks to be a bending of the law, or at least an aggressive and predatory use of the law.
Corey, it is interesting open AI defended saying that it built a number of safeguards into the contract with the Pentagon and agrees with said the Pentagon actually agrees with these principles and reflects them in law and policy. When we're thinking about where AI's role now is in defense in war, as we're currently seeing an unfold, can you just educate our audience as to how integral AIS now become.
Yes, what AI is already proving incredibly valuable for in the defense space is serving enormous amounts of data, for example, identifying threat portfolios. You know, the ability to see patterns
in large amounts of data. But what Anthropic is saying is we do not want it to be used for domestic surveillance of the US or for decisions about the use of lethal force before we have higher confidence in the model and those are not unreasonable standards and provide the basis for what Congress perhaps ought to put into law until we have better transparency and better understanding of what these models are capable of in future iterations.
Cry shocking. Great to speak with you of the American Enterprise Institute. We appreciate your time and expertise today. Look as the conflict with Iran intensifies, cybersecurity experts their warning of a rise in Iranian linked cyber threats targeting critical networks and infrastructure joining us to discuss Cynthia Kaiser as senior vice president of Ransomware Research Center at House and former Deputy Director of the FBI Cyber Division, Cynthia, are those threats real?
They are? We're already seeing Iran have real threats and conduct cyberactivity against organizations in the Middle East, and we anticipate that they could follow on with operations here in the United States.
And we said infrastructure in particular, where are the vulnerability is likely to be targeting.
So throughout infrastructure in the Middle East and in the US, we see Iran target what they can get into. So it doesn't really matter the sector, It matters how the specific organization has done with their cybersecurity, has been able to fix those vulnerabilities, because what Iran does. They go on, they try to exploit something, get into something, and then they go out in the media and they say we've
done more. So I've gotten under one machine in an organization, but I'm going to say that we've gotten onto the entire facility, and say a water treatment facility is down. So it's really a mix within critical infrastructure of getting onto something but then moving on and lying and exaggerating to try to stoke fear and chaos.
How sophisticated is their ability to get onto something.
So they are one of the world's most malicious and capable cyber actors in critical infrastructure. Overall, there are many many devices that are connected to the Internet and haven't been hatched for vulnerabilities that Iran is exploiting. Just late last year, FBI put out a warning about Iranian state sponsored actors who are targeting critical infrastructure in the United States through these types of vulnerabilities.
From the perspective that we see the market as always trying to get ahead of any sort of concerns and indeed well move money on the back of it, we've seen cloud strike on the highest side, seeing padow to networks in the green always seeing really a desire to be fop the infrastructure of resistance, to be seeing our companies have the right place, the right sort of restraints on well use cases in place. At the moment.
Absolutely, we've seen a lot of movement tours, being able to practice incident response plans, know what you're going to do if you are hit, including what you're going to do in the media to say if something's being exaggerated, to patch devices that maybe we're on some type of schedule to be patched later, doing that today, and conducting a lot of engagement across industry as well as with the FBI to be able to know the latest on what might be coming down and what threats that they're.
Facing and the threats to all II in many ways, I'm sure Cynthia, they are.
We've seen a lot of AI enabled threats and really where we see the biggest risk with AI enabled threats is in wanna be or very low level actors. But that's who I RAN might use I RAN users proxies to be able to conduct their activity. There's one group our Healthy on Intel team had identified who named Sakari, who is currently telling its members to conduct activity conduct attacks in the Middle East. But they've used AI to make their bad software. They're what they're deploying and it
doesn't work very well. But what it actually means is it destroys networks when it gets on instead of being this kind of ransom you're going to pay to try to get back online.
Oh so like collateral damage when actually just trying to exert financial damage, Cynthia. From the perspective of AI, we just come off the back of a couple of weeks where software names were pummeled, where particularly cyber companies were under pressure because people thought general to AI companies were going to be able to take their business. A plugin from Anthropic would be the answer to our our ransomware
and cyber concerns. How are you seeing that evolve? How are you seeing companies actually wanting to use and build from within or still dependent on external offerings.
So being able to build within is really important in a way to consistently know what's going on your network, be able to fix those vulnerabilities I talked about in real time, and then be able to identify other errors or things that might be going on that are malicious across a network. But it's only going to know what's plugged into it. It's not going to have a lot of these this additional information. What a threat group might be saying in a dark web forum, what's the new
zero day that might be coming down the pike. Figuring out that aspect, being able to plug the really sensitive great information the private sector has into some of these new processes. Organizations just mean the cyber security is going to be better. It doesn't mean there's a replacement on either side.
Can you take us to allies? Can you take us as to how strong their defenses.
Are across the close allies the United States has, there are lots of sharing implement things implemented as well as these sharing mechanisms where we're sitting inside different governments, they're sitting with us to be able to counter cyber threats. Because this has been practiced for years.
Cyber threats just.
Don't have any boundaries. They're going across the entire world. That's especially true with our European allies, with Australian allies, with Israel, and so we have really identified ways to share quickly share in real time these threats that are facing all of us, and we all face the same challenges, but we all can come up with the same solutions and really counter these adversaries together.
And Cynthia, from just an audience perspective, is as likely to be an attack that is focused in the end prize in one's work environment, or could this be something that you're navigating as a consumer.
Right now, it's mostly going to be focused within the enterprise environment, especially within the United States. We have seen Middle Eastern countries organizations in those countries being targeted by Iranian state sponsored groups in the last few days for some of the data they might have on people, whether
that's patients, customers, parts, and employees of that organization. We do see Iran going out trying to identify personal information for people they perceive maybe dissidents or enemies of the Iranian regime, and that's something to watch out for there, but we haven't necessarily seen that come over to the United States or to our European allies.
Cynthia Kaiser of House and former FBI Deputy Director, we appreciate your time