Threat actors are leveraging the file-sharing service for payload delivery in AitM phishing and BEC attacks.
The post Phishers Abuse SharePoint in New Campaign Targeting Energy Sector appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Less than a year after layoffs and a public plea by its CEO for new investments, General Fusion on Thursday announced a $1 billion SPAC agreement to take the fusion energy company public.
Vancouver, B.C.-based General Fusion plans to merge with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III in a transaction that could close by the middle of this year, making it one of the first fusion companies to go public. It expects to be listed on the Nasdaq and trade under the ticker GFUZ.
“We are completely focused on the future,” Megan Wilson, chief strategy officer for General Fusion, told GeekWire. “The path of any innovative company is not always linear.”
General Fusion is part of the race to produce abundant, clean energy by smashing together light atoms — replicating the reactions that power the sun and stars. The pursuit has become increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence and increased electrification of the economy drives up demand for climate friendly power.
Wilson said they explored various funding options, including a traditional IPO, but appreciated Spring Valley’s experience and track record in helping create 17 publicly traded companies to date. Spring Valley previously used a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) to bring NuScale Power, a fission startup, public in 2021.
The deal with General Fusion includes $230 million from the SPAC’s trust, presuming no redemptions, as well as a $100 million private investment in public equity, or PIPE.
The 115-person company previously raised a total of $400 million from investors, industry partners and government grants.
General Fusion’s merger news comes a month after fusion rival TAE Technologies announced its own agreement to go public.
“It’s really great to have competition in the market, and we think that that transaction is just another signal that the public markets are ready for fusion,” Wilson said.
California-based TAE has a $6 billion planned merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded parent company of the social media platform Truth Social. With the merger and new funding, TAE said that it’s aiming to site and begin building a utility-scale fusion plant this year.
Despite the massive investments flowing into the sector, none of the companies have demonstrated the ability to produce excess energy from fusion reactions. But they’re all reporting progress toward that goal, with TAE and Washington’s Helion Energy working on commercial facilities.
General Fusion, which launched in 2002, is currently operating its Lawson Machine 26, a magnetized targeted fusion demonstration device that’s about half the size of its planned commercial‑scale machine.
The new financial support will fund initiatives to hit essential scientific milestones with the device by the middle of 2028. That includes reaching 100 million degrees Celsius — a target it had earlier set for last year — and achieving the conditions needed to create fusion reactions that produce excess energy.
General Fusion hopes to be able to deploy a commercial fusion machine by around 2035.
“This transaction with Spring Valley positions us with the capital we need to be able to continue operating the Lawson Machine 26 as we pursue really transformative technical milestones that will ultimately put us on a path to the first-of-a-kind plant,” Wilson said.
In 2026, I’m going to be closely watching the price of lithium.
If you’re not in the habit of obsessively tracking commodity markets, I certainly don’t blame you. (Though the news lately definitely makes the case that minerals can have major implications for global politics and the economy.)
But lithium is worthy of a close look right now.
The metal is crucial for lithium-ion batteries used in phones and laptops, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage arrays on the grid. Prices have been on quite the roller coaster over the last few years, and they’re ticking up again after a low period. What happens next could have big implications for mining and battery technology.
Before we look ahead, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. In 2020, global EV sales started to really take off, driving up demand for the lithium used in their batteries. Because of that growing demand and a limited supply, prices shot up dramatically, with lithium carbonate going from under $10 per kilogram to a high of roughly $70 per kilogram in just two years.
And the tech world took notice. During those high points, there was a ton of interest in developing alternative batteries that didn’t rely on lithium. I was writing about sodium-based batteries, iron-air batteries, and even experimental ones that were made with plastic.
Researchers and startups were also hunting for alternative ways to get lithium, including battery recycling and processing methods like direct lithium extraction (more on this in a moment).
But soon, prices crashed back down to earth. We saw lower-than-expected demand for EVs in the US, and developers ramped up mining and processing to meet demand. Through late 2024 and 2025, lithium carbonate was back around $10 a kilogram again. Avoiding lithium or finding new ways to get it suddenly looked a lot less crucial.
That brings us to today: lithium prices are ticking up again. So far, it’s nowhere close to the dramatic rise we saw a few years ago, but analysts are watching closely. Strong EV growth in China is playing a major role—EVs still make up about 75% of battery demand today. But growth in stationary storage, batteries for the grid, is also contributing to rising demand for lithium in both China and the US.
Higher prices could create new opportunities. The possibilities include alternative battery chemistries, specifically sodium-ion batteries, says Evelina Stoikou, head of battery technologies and supply chains at BloombergNEF. (I’ll note here that we recently named sodium-ion batteries to our 2026 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.)
It’s not just batteries, though. Another industry that could see big changes from a lithium price swing: extraction.
Today, most lithium is mined from rocks, largely in Australia, before being shipped to China for processing. There’s a growing effort to process the mineral in other places, though, as countries try to create their own lithium supply chains. Tesla recently confirmed that it’s started production at its lithium refinery in Texas, which broke ground in 2023. We could see more investment in processing plants outside China if prices continue to climb.
This could also be a key year for direct lithium extraction, as Katie Brigham wrote in a recent story for Heatmap. That technology uses chemical or electrochemical processes to extract lithium from brine (salty water that’s usually sourced from salt lakes or underground reservoirs), quickly and cheaply. Companies including Lilac Solutions, Standard Lithium, and Rio Tinto are all making plans or starting construction on commercial facilities this year in the US and Argentina.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about following batteries and minerals over the past few years, it’s that predicting the future is impossible. But if you’re looking for tea leaves to read, lithium prices deserve a look.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Happy New Year! I know it’s a bit late to say, but it never quite feels like the year has started until the new edition of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies list comes out.
For 25 years, MIT Technology Review has put together this package, which highlights the technologies that we think are going to matter in the future. This year’s version has some stars, including gene resurrection (remember all the dire wolf hype last year?) and commercial space stations.
And of course, the world of climate and energy is represented with sodium-ion batteries, next-generation nuclear, and hyperscale AI data centers. Let’s take a look at what ended up on the list, and what it says about this moment for climate tech.
I’ve been covering sodium-ion batteries for years, but this moment feels like a breakout one for the technology.
Today, lithium-ion cells power everything from EVs, phones, and computers to huge stationary storage arrays that help support the grid. But researchers and battery companies have been racing to develop an alternative, driven by the relative scarcity of lithium and the metal’s volatile price in recent years.
Sodium-ion batteries could be that alternative. Sodium is much more abundant than lithium, and it could unlock cheaper batteries that hold a lower fire risk.
There are limitations here: Sodium-ion batteries won’t be able to pack as much energy into cells as their lithium counterparts. But it might not matter, especially for grid storage and smaller EVs.
In recent years, we’ve seen a ton of interest in sodium-based batteries, particularly from major companies in China. Now the new technology is starting to make its way into the world—CATL says it started manufacturing these batteries at scale in 2025.
Nuclear reactors are an important part of grids around the world today—massive workhorse reactors generate reliable, consistent electricity. But the countries with the oldest and most built-out fleets have struggled to add to them in recent years, since reactors are massive and cost billions. Recent high-profile projects have gone way over budget and faced serious delays.
Next-generation reactor designs could help the industry break out of the old blueprint and get more nuclear power online more quickly, and they’re starting to get closer to becoming reality.
There’s a huge variety of proposals when it comes to what’s next for nuclear. Some companies are building smaller reactors, which they say could make it easier to finance new projects, and get them done on time.
Other companies are focusing on tweaking key technical bits of reactors, using alternative fuels or coolants that help ferry heat out of the reactor core. These changes could help reactors generate electricity more efficiently and safely.
Kairos Power was the first US company to receive approval to begin construction on a next-generation reactor to produce electricity. China is emerging as a major center of nuclear development, with the country’s national nuclear company reportedly working on several next-gen reactors.
This one isn’t quite what I would call a climate technology, but I spent most of last year reporting on the climate and environmental impacts of AI, and the AI boom is deeply intertwined with climate and energy.
Data centers aren’t new, but we’re seeing a wave of larger centers being proposed and built to support the rise of AI. Some of these facilities require a gigawatt or more of power—that’s like the output of an entire conventional nuclear power plant, just for one data center.
(This feels like a good time to mention that our Breakthrough Technologies list doesn’t just highlight tech that we think will have a straightforwardly positive influence on the world. I think back to our 2023 list, which included mass-market military drones.)
There’s no denying that new, supersize data centers are an important force driving electricity demand, sparking major public pushback, and emerging as a key bit of our new global infrastructure.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
The Trump administration violated the Fifth Amendment when canceling billions of dollars in environmental grants for projects in "blue states" that didn't vote for him in the last election, a judge ruled Monday.
Trump's blatant discrimination came on the same day as the government shut down last fall. In total, 315 grants were terminated in October, ending support for 223 projects worth approximately $7.5 billion, the Department of Energy confirmed. All the awardees, except for one, were based in states where Donald Trump lost the majority vote to Kamala Harris in 2024.
Only seven awardees sued, defending projects that helped states with "electric vehicle development, updating building energy codes, and addressing methane emissions." They accused Trump officials of clearly discriminating against Democratic voters by pointing to their social media posts boasting about punishing blue states.
© SAUL LOEB / Contributor | AFP
Emissions from air freight have increased by 25% since 2019, according to a 2024 analysis by environmental advocacy organization Stand.Earth.
The researchers found that the expansion of cargo-only fleets to transport goods during the pandemic — as air travel halted, slower freight modes faced disruption, but demand for rapid delivery soared — has led to a yearly increase of almost 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, making up 93.8m tonnes from air freight overall.
And though fleet modernization and operational improvements by freight operators have contributed to ongoing decarbonization efforts, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) looks set to be instrumental in helping the sector achieve its ambitions to reduce environmental footprint in the long-term.
When used neat, or pure and unblended, SAF can help reduce the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions from aviation by as much as 80% relative to conventional fuel. It’s why the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates that SAF could account for as much as 65% of total reduction of emissions.
For Christoph Wolff, CEO of the Smart Freight Centre, “SAF is the main pathway” to decarbonization across both freight and the wider aviation ecosystem.
“The great thing about SAF is it’s chemically identical to Jet A fuel,” he says. “You can blend it [which means] you have a pathway to ramp it up. You can start small and you can scale it. By scaling it there is the promise or the hope that the price comes down.”
At at least twice the price of conventional jet fuel, cost is a significant barrier hindering broader adoption.
And it isn’t the only one standing between SAF and wider penetration.
Bridging the gap between a concentrated supply of SAF and global demand also remains a major hurdle.
Though the number of verified SAF outlets has increased from fewer than 20 locations in 2021 to 114 as of April 2025, according to sustainability solutions framework 4Air, that accounts for only 92 airports worldwide out of more than 40,000.
“SAF is central to the decarbonization of the aviation sector,” believes Raman Ojha, president of Shell Aviation. “Having said that, adoption and penetration of SAF hasn’t really picked up massively. It’s not due to lack of production capacity, but there are lots of things that are at play. And book and claim in that context helps to bridge that gap.”
Book and claim is a chain of custody model, where the flow of administrative records is not necessarily connected to the physical product through the supply chain (source: ISO 22095:2020).
Book and claim potentially enables airlines and corporations to access the life cycle GHG emissions reduction benefits of SAF relative to conventional jet fuel even when SAF is not physically available at their location; this model helps bridge the gap between that concentrated supply and global demand, until SAF’s availability improves.
“To be bold, without book and claim, no short-term science-based target will be achieved,” says Bettina Paschke, vice president of ESG accounting, reporting and controlling at DHL Express. “Book and claim is essential to achieving science-based targets.”
“SAF production facilities are not everywhere,” she reiterates. “They’re very focused on one location, and if a customer wants to fulfil a mass balance obligation, SAF would need to be shipped around the world just to be at that airport for that customer. That would be very complicated, and very unrealistic.” It would also, counterintuitively, increase total emissions. By using book and claim instead, air freight operators can unlock the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions reduction benefits of SAF relative to conventional jet fuel now, without waiting for supply to broaden. “It might no longer be needed when we have SAF product facilities at each airport in the future,” she points out. “But at the moment, that’s not the case.”
At DHL itself, the mechanism has become central to achieving its own three interconnected sustainability pillars, which focus on decarbonizing logistics supply chains, supporting customers toward their decarbonization goals, and ensuring credible emission claims can be shared along the value chain.
Demonstrating the importance of a credible and viable framework for book and claim systems is also what inspired the 2022 launch of Shell’s Avelia, one of the first blockchain-powered digital SAF book and claim solutions for aviation, which expanded in 2024 to encompass air freight in addition to business travel. Depending on the offering, Avelia offers freight forwarders the opportunity to share the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions reduction benefits of SAF relative to conventional jet fuel across the value chain with shippers using their services.
“It’s also backed by a physical supply chain, which gives our customers — whether those be corporates or freight forwarders or even airlines — a peace of mind that the SAF has been injected at a certain airport, it’s been used and environmental attributes, with the help of blockchain, have been tracked to where they’re getting retired,” says Ojha.
He adds: “The most important or critical part is the transparency that it’s providing to our customers to be sure that they’re not saying something which they can’t confidently stand behind.”
To scale up SAF via book and claim and help make it a more commercially viable lower-carbon solution, its adoption will need to be a coordinated “ecosystem play,” says Wolff. That includes early adopters, such as DHL, inspiring action from peers, solution providers such as Shell, working with various stakeholders to drive joint advocacy, and industry associations, like the Smart Freight Centre creating the required frameworks, educational resources, and industry alignment.
An active book and claim community made up of many forward-thinking advocates is already driving much of this work forward with a common goal to develop greater standardization and consensus, Wolff points out. “It helps to make sure all definitions on the system are compatible and they can talk to one another, provide educational support, and [also that] there’s a repository of transactions so that it can be documented in a way that people can see and think, ‘oh this is how we do it.’ There are some early adopters that are very experienced, but it needs a lot more people for it to get comfortable.”
In early 2024, discussions were held with a diverse group of expert book and claim stakeholders to develop and refine 11 key principles and best practices book and claim models. These represent an aligned set of principles informed by practical successes and challenges faced by practitioners working to decarbonize the heavy transport sector.
Adherence to such a framework is crucial given that book and claim is not yet accepted by the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol nor the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) as a recognized model for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — though there are hopes that might change.
“The industrialization of book and claim delivery systems is key to credibility and recognition,” says Wolff. “The Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science Based Targets Initiative are making steps in recognizing that. There’s a pathway that the Smart Freight Centre is very closely involved in the technical working groups for [looking]to build such a system where, in addition to physical inventory, you also pursue market-based inventories.”
Paschke urges companies not to sit back and wait for policy to change before taking action, though. “The solution is there,” she says. “There are companies like DHL that are making huge upfront investments, and every single contribution helps to scale the industry and give a strong signal to the eco-space.”
As pressure to accelerate decarbonization gains pace, it’s critical that air freight operators consider this now, agrees Ojha. “Don’t wait for perfection in guidelines, regulations, or platforms — act now,” he says. “That’s very, very critical. Second, learn by doing and join hands with others. Don’t try to do everything independently or in-house.
“Third, make use of registries and platforms, such as Avelia, that can give credibility. Join them, utilize them, and leverage them so that you won’t have to establish auditability from scratch.
“And fourth, don’t look at scope book and claim as a means for acquiring a certificate for environmental attributes. Think in terms of your decarbonisation commitment and think of this as a tool for exposure management. Think in terms of the bigger picture.”
That bigger picture being a significant sector-wide push toward faster decarbonization — and turning the tide on emissions’ steep upward ascent.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.
This content is produced by MIT Technology Review Insights in association with Avelia. Avelia is a Shell owned solution and brand that was developed with support from Amex GBT, Accenture and Energy Web Foundation. The views from individuals not affiliated with Shell are their own and not those of Shell PLC or its affiliates. Cautionary note | Shell Global
Commercial nuclear reactors all work pretty much the same way. Atoms of a radioactive material split, emitting neutrons. Those bump into other atoms, splitting them and causing them to emit more neutrons, which bump into other atoms, continuing the chain reaction.
That reaction gives off heat, which can be used directly or help turn water into steam, which spins a turbine and produces electricity. Today, such reactors typically use the same fuel (uranium) and coolant (water), and all are roughly the same size (massive). For decades, these giants have streamed electrons into power grids around the world. Their popularity surged in recent years as worries about climate change and energy independence drowned out concerns about meltdowns and radioactive waste. The problem is, building nuclear power plants is expensive and slow.
A new generation of nuclear power technology could reinvent what a reactor looks like—and how it works. Advocates hope that new tech can refresh the industry and help replace fossil fuels without emitting greenhouse gases.
Demand for electricity is swelling around the world. Rising temperatures and growing economies are bringing more air conditioners online. Efforts to modernize manufacturing and cut climate pollution are changing heavy industry. The AI boom is bringing more power-hungry data centers online.
Nuclear could help, but only if new plants are safe, reliable, cheap, and able to come online quickly. Here’s what that new generation might look like.
Every nuclear power plant built today is basically bespoke, designed and built for a specific site. But small modular reactors (SMRs) could bring the assembly line to nuclear reactor development. By making projects smaller, companies could build more of them, and costs could come down as the process is standardized.
If it works, SMRs could also mean new uses for nuclear. Military bases, isolated sites like mines, or remote communities that need power after a disaster could use mobile reactors, like one under development from US-based BWXT in partnership with the Department of Defense. Or industrial facilities that need heat for things like chemical manufacturing could install a small reactor, as one chemical plant plans to do in cooperation with the nuclear startup X-energy.
Two plants with SMRs are operational in China and Russia today, and other early units will likely follow their example and provide electricity to the grid. In China, the Linglong One demonstration project is under construction at a site where two large reactors are already operating. The SMR should come online by the end of the year. In the US, Kairos Power recently got regulatory approval to build Hermes 2, a small demonstration reactor. It should be operating by 2030.
One major question for smaller reactor designs is just how much an assembly-line approach will actually help cut costs. While SMRs might not themselves be bespoke, they’ll still be installed in different sites—and planning for the possibility of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, or other site-specific conditions will still require some costly customization.
When it comes to uranium, the number that really matters is the concentration of uranium-235, the type that can sustain a chain reaction (most uranium is a heavier isotope, U-238, which can’t). Naturally occurring uranium contains about 0.7% uranium-235, so to be useful it needs to be enriched, concentrating that isotope.
Material used for nuclear weapons is highly enriched, to U-235 concentrations over 90%. Today’s commercial nuclear reactors use a much less concentrated material for fuel, generally between 3% and 5% U-235. But new reactors could bump that concentration up, using a class of material called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which ranges from 5% to 20% U-235 (still well below weapons-level enrichment).
That higher concentration means HALEU can sustain a chain reaction for much longer before the reactor needs refueling. (How much longer varies with concentration: higher enrichment, longer time between refuels.) Those higher percentages also allow for alternative fuel architectures.
Typical nuclear power plants today use fuel that’s pressed into small pellets, which in turn are stacked inside large rods encased in zirconium cladding. But higher-concentration uranium can be made into tri-structural isotropic fuel, or TRISO.
TRISO uses tiny kernels of uranium, less than a millimeter across, coated in layers of carbon and ceramic that contain the radioactive material and any products from the fission reactions. Manufacturers embed these particles in cylindrical or spherical pellets of graphite. (The actual fuel makes up a relatively small proportion of these pellets’ volume, which is why using higher-enriched material is important.)
The pellets are a built-in safety mechanism, a containment system that can resist corrosion and survive neutron irradiation and temperatures over 3,200 °F (1,800 °C). Fission reactions happen safely inside all these protective layers, which are designed to let heat seep out to be ferried away by the coolant and used.
The coolant in a reactor controls temperature and ferries heat from the core to wherever it’s used to make steam, which can then generate electricity. Most reactors use water for this job, keeping it under super-high pressures so it remains liquid as it circulates. But new companies are reinventing that process with other materials—gas, liquid metal, or molten salt.
These reactors can run their coolant loops much hotter than is possible with water—upwards of 500 °C as opposed to a maximum of around 300 °C. That’s helpful because it’s easier to move heat around at high temperatures, and hotter stuff produces steam more efficiently.
Alternative coolants can also help with safety. A water coolant loop runs at over 100 times standard atmospheric pressure. Maintaining containment is complicated but vital: A leak that allows coolant to escape could cause the reactor to melt down.
Metal and salt coolants, on the other hand, remain liquid at high temperatures but more manageable pressures, closer to one atmosphere. So those next-generation designs don’t need reinforced, high-pressure containment equipment.
These new coolants certainly introduce their own complications, though. Molten salt can be corrosive in the presence of oxygen, for example, so builders have to carefully choose the materials used to build the cooling system. And since sodium metal can explode when it contacts water, containment is key with designs that rely on it.
Ultimately, reactors that use alternative coolants or new fuels will need to show not only that they can generate power but also that they’re robust enough to operate safely and economically for decades.
For decades, lithium-ion batteries have powered our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But lithium’s limited supply and volatile price have led the industry to seek more resilient alternatives.
A sodium-ion battery works much like a lithium-ion one: It stores and releases energy by shuttling ions between two electrodes. But unlike lithium, a somewhat rare element that is currently mined in only a handful of countries, sodium is cheap and found everywhere. And while today’s sodium-ion cells are not meaningfully cheaper, costs are expected to drop as production scales.
China, with its powerful EV industry, has led the early push. Battery giants CATL and BYD have invested heavily in the technology. CATL, which announced its first-generation sodium-ion battery in 2021, launched a sodium-ion product line called Naxtra in 2025 and claims to have already started manufacturing it at scale. BYD is also building a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries in China.
And the technology is already making it into cars. In 2024, JMEV began offering the option of buying its EV3 vehicle with a sodium-ion battery pack. HiNa Battery is putting sodium-ion batteries into low-speed EVs.
The most significant impact of sodium-ion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage.
Sodium-ion cells’ energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year—and it’s already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles.
The new batteries are also being tested in smaller electric vehicles. In China, the scooter maker Yadea launched four models of two-wheelers powered by the technology in 2025, as cities including Shenzhen started piloting swapping stations for sodium-ion batteries to support commuters and delivery drivers.
— Amazon’s Uwem Ukpong has a new title, moving from vice president of Global Services to VP of AWS Industries.
Ukpong has been with the tech giant for more than four years, joining from energy technology company Baker Hughes.
Ukpong’s resume is dominated by a 22-year stretch at Schlumberger, a Houston-based software and internet company that has offices internationally.
— Alicia Teel is now acting director of the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development. She was previously deputy director of the department, which supports small businesses and economic growth.
Teel began her career at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce where she worked for more than 15 years.
At the Office of Economic Development, “[o]ur talented team is dedicated to leading projects and making investments that open up access to economic opportunities across our city, reduce the racial wealth gap, and encourage innovation and growth,” Teel said in a statement.
In announcing the appointment, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson thanked former director Markham McIntyre “for his leadership supporting small business recovery after the pandemic.”
McIntyre was in the role for four years. He also previously held leadership positions with the Chamber of Commerce, leaving the title of executive VP.
— Manik Gupta is leaving his role as corporate VP of Microsoft Teams.
“With Teams, I had the opportunity to combine my consumer DNA with learning the scale and complexity of the enterprise. The lessons, playbooks, and friendships I’ve gained will stay with me always,” Gupta said on LinkedIn.
Gupta, who is based in California, joined Microsoft in 2021. He said he’s exploring career options in AI, adding that “I’m convinced that the hardest and most interesting work in AI now lies in turning powerful models into products people can rely on every day.”
— ESS appointed Drew Buckley as CEO of the Oregon-based, long-duration energy storage company. Buckley joined the battery company in August as leader of its investor relations and capital market strategy. He previously spent 17 years as a technology-focused partner at the financial services firm William Blair.
“Drew brings an incredible track record of success, with the experience and industry relationships necessary to lead ESS to its next stage, manufacturing and delivery of our first Energy Base projects, and broader commercialization expected to commence this year,” said Harry Quarls, ESS board chairman.
ESS also named Kate Suhadolnik as chief financial officer from her current role as interim CFO. Suhadolnik has been with the publicly-traded company for more than four years.
Eric Dresselhuys resigned as ESS CEO in February and Kelly Goodman, who had been vice president of legal, became the interim chief executive. Goodman is now chief strategy officer and general counsel.
— Savanna Thompson is chief business operations officer role at fusion company Helion Energy after serving as VP of people & workplace Operations. She has been with the Everett, Wash., business for more than three years.
“As we move from building fusion machines to deploying fusion power plants, this role reflects the importance of scaling our teams, systems, and infrastructure that support our ambitious goals,” said Helion CEO David Kirtley in announcing the promotion.
Thompson joined Helion from 98point6, a Seattle telehealth company.
— Jackie Ostlie has returned to Microsoft, taking the role of director of AI initiatives in Microsoft Learning.
“I am incredibly grateful to Rachel Richardson for the opportunity and am excited to be back with some of the world’s smartest, kindest, most supportive humans in tech,” Ostlie said on LinkedIn.
Ostlie rejoins the company after a leadership role at Google Cloud Learning. Her career has included positions with multiple Seattle-area organizations including Veeam Software, Expedia and the nonprofit World Vision.
— After recently landing a $40 million investment, Seattle AI roleplay startup Yoodli appointed two new leaders.
— Seattle cryptocurrency company Coinme named Hazen Baron as its general counsel. Baron is based in Arkansas and past employers include Walmart, fintech company Stronghold, and others.
Late last month Coinme announced an agreement with Washington state regulators to pause a temporary cease-and-desist order, clearing the way for the company to resume operations in the state.
— Jason Cavness, a Seattle-based U.S. market development partner for TechBank, is now a fellow with Earth Venture Capital, a Vietnam-based firm investing in climate tech internationally.
— The Microsoft Alumni Network, which represents more than 290,000 former Microsoft employees, has expanded its board of trustees, appointing eight new members:
In addition, Larry Hryb, a longtime Xbox leader, was named vice chair of the Microsoft Alumni Network board.
For offshore wind power in the US, the new year is bringing new legal battles.
On December 22, the Trump administration announced it would pause the leases of five wind farms currently under construction off the US East Coast. Developers were ordered to stop work immediately.
The cited reason? National security, specifically concerns that turbines can cause radar interference. But that’s a known issue, and developers have worked with the government to deal with it for years.
Companies have been quick to file lawsuits, and the court battles could begin as soon as this week. Here’s what the latest kerfuffle might mean for the struggling offshore wind industry in the US.
This pause affects $25 billion in investment in five wind farms: Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts, Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind off New York, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia. Together, those projects had been expected to create 10,000 jobs and power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.
In a statement announcing the move, the Department of the Interior said that “recently completed classified reports” revealed national security risks, and that the pause would give the government time to work through concerns with developers. The statement specifically says that turbines can create radar interference (more on the technical details here in a moment).
Three of the companies involved have already filed lawsuits, and they’re seeking preliminary injunctions that would allow construction to continue. Orsted and Equinor (the developers for Revolution Wind and Empire Wind, respectively) told the New York Times that their projects went through lengthy federal reviews, which did address concerns about national security.
This is just the latest salvo from the Trump administration against offshore wind. On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order stopping all new lease approvals for offshore wind farms. (That order was struck down by a judge in December.)
The administration previously ordered Revolution Wind to stop work last year, also citing national security concerns. A federal judge lifted the stop-work order weeks later, after the developer showed that the financial stakes were high, and that government agencies had previously found no national security issues with the project.
There are real challenges that wind farms introduce for radar systems, which are used in everything from air traffic control to weather forecasting to national defense operations. A wind turbine’s spinning can create complex signatures on radar, resulting in so-called clutter.
Previous government reports, including one 2024 report from the Department of Energy and a 2025 report from the Government Accountability Office (an independent government watchdog), have pointed out this issue in the past.
“To date, no mitigation technology has been able to fully restore the technical performance of impacted radars,” as the DOE report puts it. However, there are techniques that can help, including software that acts to remove the signatures of wind turbines. (Think of this as similar to how noise-canceling headphones work, but more complicated, as one expert told TechCrunch.)
But the most widespread and helpful tactic, according to the DOE report, is collaboration between developers and the government. By working together to site and design wind farms strategically, the groups can ensure that the projects don’t interfere with government or military operations. The 2025 GAO report found that government officials, researchers, and offshore wind companies were collaborating effectively, and any concerns could be raised and addressed in the permitting process.
This and other challenges threaten an industry that could be a major boon for the grid. On the East Coast where these projects are located, and in New England specifically, winter can bring tight supplies of fossil fuels and spiking prices because of high demand. It just so happens that offshore winds blow strongest in the winter, so new projects, including the five wrapped up in this fight, could be a major help during the grid’s greatest time of need.
One 2025 study found that if 3.5 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind had been operational during the 2024-2025 winter, it would have lowered energy prices by 11%. (That’s the combined capacity of Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind, two of the paused projects, plus two future projects in the pipeline.) Ratepayers would have saved $400 million.
Before Donald Trump was elected, the energy consultancy BloombergNEF projected that the US would build 39 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. Today, that expectation has dropped to just 6 gigawatts. These legal battles could push it lower still.
What’s hardest to wrap my head around is that some of the projects being challenged are nearly finished. The developers of Revolution Wind have installed all the foundations and 58 of 65 turbines, and they say the project is over 87% complete. Empire Wind is over 60% done and is slated to deliver electricity to the grid next year.
To hit the pause button so close to the finish line is chilling, not just for current projects but for future offshore wind efforts in the US. Even if these legal battles clear up and more developers can technically enter the queue, why would they want to? Billions of dollars are at stake, and if there’s one word to describe the current state of the offshore wind industry in the US, it’s “unpredictable.”
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Seattle startup Avalanche Energy is raising new funding to develop its compact fusion energy devices. A new SEC filing reveals a fresh $14.9 million round.
A company spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by GeekWire.
Avalanche and dozens of companies around the world are vying for scientific breakthroughs that would allow them to generate electricity from fusion reactions on a commercially viable scale. The sun and stars are the masters of fusion, smashing together light atoms under high-pressure, super hot conditions to produce energy.
Avalanche is pursuing a different strategy than many of its competitors, building desktop-sized energy devices and working multiple angles for revenue generation. That includes:
Avalanche had previously raised $50 million from investors that include Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital, Founders Fund, Toyota Ventures, Azolla Ventures and others.
The fusion industry produced surprising headlines shortly before Christmas with the announcement of a $6 billion planned merger between Trump Media & Technology Group and California fusion company TAE Technologies.
The partnership aims to site and begin building what it calls the world’s first utility-scale fusion plant this year, with Trump Media committing $300 million in near-term funding. President Trump is the largest shareholder of Trump Media, the publicly-traded parent company of the social media platform Truth Social.
Avalanche is part of a fusion hub in the Pacific Northwest that includes two additional Seattle-area companies working to harness fusion power.
CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT INTERVIEW – While the U.S. operation to detain Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro took just hours to execute, a full assessment of its global impact will take weeks or months to fully understand in part, because of the complicated dynamic connecting the country’s assets, allies and oil.
“Venezuela is what I would call one of those hyphenated accounts,” says Norm Roule, a global energy expert who also served as former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI. “Venezuela in and of itself is important, but it's also Venezuela/oil, Venezuela/Russia, Venezuela/China, Venezuela/Cuba. There are a lot of different accounts and issues that must be taken into consideration.”
Venezuela’s partners depend on it for various strategic reasons: Cuba for economic support, Iran for political alignment in Latin America, and China for a notable share of its oil imports. The United States, meanwhile, is signaling a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Cipher Brief Executive Editor Brad Christian talked with Roule, a leading global consultant on Middle East and Energy issues, about what is likely to happen next as the U.S. signals a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I)\n at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
THE INTERVIEW
The Cipher Brief: The Trump administration recently released an updated national security strategy that weighed heavily on the Western hemisphere. Are we seeing perhaps the first kind of inclination that this is going to actually be something to pay close attention to?
Roule: Absolutely. And I think the national security strategy is something that every one of the Cipher Brief's readers and listeners should pull out today. Look at it again, because I can assure you that policymakers around the world - in both our partner and adversary countries - are certainly doing so. If you look at events in Venezuela and read that national security strategy, a number of themes come forward.
The U.S. will be the dominant power in the Western hemisphere. In Venezuela, we saw a display of massive U.S. power and skill in the form of our military intelligence and technology. This is very similar to the display that the world witnessed in Iran last June. So, this is coming very, very close to two sets of actions. And I think this is meant to be seen also, as the president alluded to in his press conference, as a visible reset of what he described as a previous erosion of U.S. military power in his predecessor's administration.
This is also showing that the U.S. is now capable of executing what was described by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an extraordinarily large and complicated military and intelligence operation, without being leaked. This did not require foreign partners. And it also did not require the disruption of regional commercial air operations. If you listen to what the chairman talked about, this involved 150 aircraft from multiple locations descending upon another country. And other than closing the airspace for a short period of time, commercial air traffic was not disrupted. But you're seeing some other things that are also notable. The U.S. will undertake regime change when it perceives that the existing regime threatens core U.S. national security interests.
This also represents another U.S. blow against a Chinese partner in the Western hemisphere following the Trump administration's actions in Panama. The operation also took place on the anniversary of the killing of Iranian Quds Force leader General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 as well as the surrender of Manuel Noriega in 1990.
These are both examples of the long arm of the U.S. government. And certainly, the United States may have thought that the selection of this date would dampen any commemorations by the Iranian government for Soleimani's death in Tehran. Which would have been difficult enough given the ongoing demonstrations in Tehran. But the ripples from this Venezuela operation will be global. And I think the national security strategy puts some meat on the bone with this operation.
The Cipher Brief: Just looking at the intelligence that was needed to pull off an operations like this for a moment, what do you think this says about U.S. intelligence and what would have gone into that for this particular operation?
Roule: Well, it tells you a couple of things. It tells you that first, the intelligence was exquisite and up to date. But it also tells you that the intelligence was integrated into the military operation with an intimacy, with care, so that our military personnel were able to move with extraordinary speed to get to the location as quickly as humanly possible. We've seen this in the past with the operation against Osama bin Laden. This is just another example of the close integration between the U.S. intelligence communication and our amazing and extraordinary special forces personnel. I can't speak highly enough of those extraordinary and humble operators.
This also shows you the breadth of that intelligence community. The intelligence agencies that were cited included, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). So, you're getting a sense of some very broad intelligence capabilities which were brought to bear and then integrated.
The president, I believe, also mentioned that a house had been built in advance. I mean, you're just watching some incredible intelligence capability that was brought to bear by people on the ground over many months. It shows courage, it shows tenacity, it shows you the resources that were pulled together. And it also shows an ability to compartment this information and to prevent a leak. The U.S. government is doing what it's supposed to do. And in a world where we're often complaining about government, the American people and our partners should be gratified that our tax dollars are being well spent. And that the U.S. intelligence community and the military are performing superbly.
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The Cipher Brief: There's a lot of connective tissue between Venezuela and the rest of the world when you consider the oil industry, including China. As an energy expert, can you share what’s top of mind for you on the broader impact on the oil and energy markets?
Roule: Maybe the best way to answer that is to just explain a little bit about the Venezuelan oil system. First, the operation did not occur near Venezuelan oil production. Upstream oil operations are not located near Caracas, although exports and storage are highly sensitive to obviously, as you correctly put it, a U.S. maritime enforcement of a U.S. embargo.
Most of Venezuela's oil production, about two thirds, is derived from what is known as the Orinoco belt. And oil production from this Orinoco belt had fallen to about 498,000 barrels by the end of December, which is about a 25% drop from just a couple of weeks earlier. And it's been shutting down because they're running out of storage space because Venezuela can't export oil because of the blockade. So, they're trying to put the oil anywhere they can. They've put it in their own storage, they've put it in ships that are docked. They're putting it in almost in teacups at this point because they are running out of space to store the oil that they're producing.
Let's talk about the oil that is produced in Venezuela. They produce it from tar sands. It's extra heavy. It's a heavy type of crude oil and there are relatively few refineries that can process this grade of oil. It's difficult to extract. It's expensive to extract. Chinese refineries in 2025 tended to get a majority of Venezuelan exports. That amount ranged from 75 to 90% depending upon the amount. But even here, the Chinese tended to put much of that oil in their own storage. And China and Russia tend to be the two big players in Venezuela. For China, it is transactional. Chinese buyers look at it as a way to purchase cheap oil that they again put in storage. It's about 4% of China's exports and China again, has used a shadow fleet of intermediaries to purchase this oil. If China were to lose access to this, it's a problem. But because much of this has gone into storage and there are other suppliers out there in Saudi Arabia and other places, they could make this up.
Russia's a different story. Russia is an enabler of the Venezuelan oil industry. Because Venezuela's oil is so tar heavy, in essence, they need to import naphtha from Russia and this dilutes the ore and eco output and makes it blendable and then shippable. So, Russia sends in naphtha, it blends the stuff down and then stuff can then be exported. What would happen if suddenly Venezuela is opened up? Well, a couple of things.
First, because the oil market is relatively well supplied, people would look at it and ask, ‘where are the investment opportunities?’ If you look at the places where the world has changed suddenly and investment opportunities occurred, production didn't dramatically change. Let's take Iraq and Libya for example.
In Iraq, it took about a dozen years to get back to the level of pre-Saddam. And at that point, China was a major player. The U.S. is now returning to Iraq. In Libya, we're now a number of years after the fall of Gaddafi, and they are still about 25% below production levels under Gaddafi.
And again, the U.S. is returning. Much of it does depend upon the security of the country and the stability of the country. So, the president's comments about running Venezuela the right way really does strike at the heart of what happens in the oil industry.
The Cipher Brief: Devil’s Advocate here: how does it compete with Texas’ output? What does the U.S. do with that oil? Is it going to be sold to China?
Roule: The president and the Secretary of State have talked about stolen oil. What does this refer to? Is there a U.S. case there? I'll leave it to others to talk about the amounts and so forth but when this is talked about, this refers to a 2007 Venezuela expropriation of what I believe was then Conoco Phillips or ExxonMobil investments. That Venezuela did indeed expropriate. So, there is indeed a legal case of Venezuela nationalization of U.S. assets for which the U.S. was not compensated. If Venezuela's government did change and if U.S. oil companies were to go in, could the oil industry be dramatically changed? Yes, but it would depend upon security.
Maybe my final comment would be that Chevron has been heavily invested there, and they have maintained a very mature and stable outlook for the country. If you hear Chevron’s CEO speak about Chevron's investments, they've been very levelheaded and unflappable about national security events. So, I think you're going to see them stay there as well. And I think when you listen to the president's comments about how the U.S. would run Venezuela, he seemed fairly confident that the U.S. oil industry would play a role there. Which makes one think that there have been some sort of discussions in this regard playing out in some way in the background.
The Cipher Brief: At the most recent Cipher Brief Threat Conference, there was a lot of discussion around the idea of global conflict and some people believe that we are at the precipice of World War III. Certainly everyone agrees that global disruption is at fairly unprecedented levels. What is your thinking on this?
Roule: We are in a different world, but we're in a world of permanent gray zone conflict. But gray zone is defined and very, very differently. Gray zone was once defined by Iranian militias and it was defined by drone attacks or cyberattacks that were non-attributed. But we now have drone attacks or drone flights in Europe that come from God knows where, but they're Russian. We have Chinese routine harassment for more than a decade in the South China Sea. We have routine theft of intellectual property by China and North Korea, which in and of itself is a type of attack against our economy. But it's not necessarily a traditional gray zone attack. Because the people who are often involved in gray zone operations only see a certain number of colors on the palate. But the theft of intellectual property is just another form of attack.
We're in that kind of a world and the people who are running the countries, they don't need to launch a war per se. They need to launch a series of short, sharp conflicts. Or short, sharp attacks. Now they said these could lead to a war if people believe we don't care about certain areas. And I do think there is the issue of what could happen in Taiwan in 2026. That should be a worry for everyone.
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Pollution from textile production—dyes, chemicals, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium—is common in the waters of the Buriganga River as it runs through Dhaka, Bangladesh. It’s among many harms posed by a garment sector that was once synonymous with tragedy: In 2013, the eight-story Rana Plaza factory building collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring some 2,500 others.
But things are starting to change. In recent years the country has quietly become an unlikely leader in “frugal” factories that use a combination of resource-efficient technologies to cut waste, conserve water, and build resilience against climate impacts and global supply disruptions. Bangladesh now boasts 268 LEED-certified garment factories—more than any other country. Dye plants are using safer chemicals, tanneries are adopting cleaner tanning methods and treating wastewater, workshops are switching to more efficient LED lighting, and solar panels glint from rooftops. The hundreds of factories along the Buriganga’s banks and elsewhere in Bangladesh are starting to stitch together a new story, woven from greener threads.
In Fakir Eco Knitwears’ LEED Gold–certified factory in Narayanganj, a city near Dhaka, skylights reduce energy consumption from electric lighting by 40%, and AI-driven cutters allow workers to recycle 95% of fabric scraps into new yarns. “We save energy by using daylight, solar power, and rainwater instead of heavy AC and boilers,” says Md. Anisuzzaman, an engineer at the company. “It shows how local resources can make production greener and more sustainable.”
The shift to green factories in Bangladesh is financed through a combination of factory investments, loans from Bangladesh Bank’s Green Transformation Fund, and pressure from international buyers who reward compliance with ongoing orders. One prominent program is the Partnership for Cleaner Textile (PaCT), an initiative run by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. Launched in 2013, PaCT has worked with more than 450 factories on cleaner production methods. By its count, the effort now saves 35 billion liters of fresh water annually, enough to meet the needs of 1.9 million people.
It’s a good start, but Bangladesh’s $40 billion garment industry still has a long way to go. The shift to environmentalism at the factory level hasn’t translated to improved outcomes for the sector’s 4.4 million workers.
Wage theft and delayed payments are widespread. The minimum wage, some 12,500 taka per month (about $113), is far below the $200 proposed by unions—which has meant frequent strikes and protests over pay, overtime, and job security. “Since Rana Plaza, building safety and factory conditions have improved, but the mindset remains unchanged,” says A.K.M. Ashraf Uddin, executive director of the Bangladesh Labour Foundation, a nonprofit labor rights group. “Profit still comes first, and workers’ freedom of speech is yet to be realized.”
In the worst case, greener industry practices could actually exacerbate inequality. Smaller factories dominate the sector, and they struggle to afford upgrades. But without those upgrades, businesses could find themselves excluded from certain markets. One of those is the European Union, which plans to require companies to address human rights and environmental problems in supply chains starting in 2027. A cleaner Buriganga River mends just a small corner of a vast tapestry of need.
Zakir Hossain Chowdhury is a visual journalist based in Bangladesh.
It’s getting harder to beat the heat. During the summer of 2025, heat waves knocked out power grids in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Global warming means more people need air-conditioning, which requires more power and strains grids. But a millennia-old idea (plus 21st-century tech) might offer an answer: radiative cooling. Paints, coatings, and textiles can scatter sunlight and dissipate heat—no additional energy required.
“Radiative cooling is universal—it exists everywhere in our daily life,” says Qiaoqiang Gan, a professor of materials science and applied physics at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. Pretty much any object will absorb heat from the sun during the day and radiate some of it back at night. It’s why cars parked outside overnight are often covered with condensation, Gan says—their metal roofs dissipate heat into the sky, cooling the surfaces below the ambient air temperature. That’s how you get dew.
Humans have harnessed this basic natural process for thousands of years. Desert peoples in Iran, North Africa, and India manufactured ice by leaving pools of water exposed to clear desert skies overnight, when radiative cooling happens naturally; other cultures constructed “cool roofs” capped with reflective materials that scattered sunlight and lowered interior temperatures. “People have taken advantage of this effect, either knowingly or unknowingly, for a very long time,” says Aaswath Raman, a materials scientist at UCLA and cofounder of the radiativecooling startup SkyCool Systems.
Modern approaches, as demonstrated everywhere from California supermarket rooftops to Japan’s Expo 2025 pavilion, go even further. Normally, if the sun is up and pumping in heat, surfaces can’t get cooler than the ambient temperature. But back in 2014, Raman and his colleagues achieved radiative cooling in the daytime. They customized photonic films to absorb and then radiate heat at infrared wavelengths between eight and 13 micrometers—a range of electromagnetic wavelengths called an “atmospheric window,” because that radiation escapes to space rather than getting absorbed. Those films could dissipate heat even under full sun, cooling the inside of a building to 9 °F below ambient temperatures, with no AC or energy source required.
That was proof of concept; today, Raman says, the industry has mostly shifted away from advanced photonics that use the atmospheric-window effect to simpler sunlight-scattering materials. Ceramic cool roofs, nanostructure coatings, and reflective polymers all offer the possibility of diverting more sunlight across all wavelengths, and they’re more durable and scalable.
Now the race is on. Startups such as SkyCool, Planck Energies, Spacecool, and i2Cool are competing to commercially manufacture and sell coatings that reflect at least 94% of sunlight in most climates, and above 97% in humid tropical ones. Pilot projects have already provided significant cooling to residential buildings, reducing AC energy needs by 15% to 20% in some cases.
This idea could go way beyond reflective rooftops and roads. Researchers are developing reflective textiles that can be worn by people most at risk of heat exposure. “This is personal thermal management,” says Gan. “We can realize passive cooling in T-shirts, sportswear, and garments.”
Of course, these technologies and materials have limits. Like solar power grids, they’re vulnerable to weather. Clouds prevent reflected sunlight from bouncing into space. Dust and air pollution dim materials’ bright surfaces. Lots of coatings lose their reflectivity after a few years. And the cheapest and toughest materials used in radiative cooling tend to rely on Teflon and other fluoropolymers, “forever chemicals” that don’t biodegrade, posing an environmental risk. “They are the best class of products that tend to survive outdoors,” says Raman. “So for long-term scale-up, can you do it without materials like those fluoropolymers and still maintain the durability and hit this low cost point?”
As with any other solution to the problems of climate change, one size won’t fit all. “We cannot be overoptimistic and say that radiative cooling can address all our future needs,” Gan says. “We still need more efficient active air-conditioning.” A shiny roof isn’t a panacea, but it’s still pretty cool.
Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in upstate New York and author of First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens.
For decades, the federal government has relied on sector-specific regulations to safeguard critical infrastructure. As an example, organizations including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) set standards for the energy sector, while the Transportation Security Administration issues pipeline directives and the Environmental Protection Agency makes water utility rules.
While these frameworks were designed to protect individual sectors, the digital transformation of operational technology and information technology has made such compartmentalization increasingly risky.
Today, the boundaries between sectors are blurring – and the gaps between their governance frameworks are becoming attackers’ entry points.
The problem is the lack of harmony.
Agencies are enforcing strong but disconnected standards, and compliance often becomes an end in and of itself, rather than a pathway to resilience.
With the rollout of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) and the release of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, the United States has an opportunity to modernize oversight, making it more adaptive, consistent and outcome based.
Doing so will require a cultural shift within federal governance: from measuring compliance to ensuring capability.
Overlapping mandates, uneven protection
Every critical infrastructure sector has its own set of cybersecurity expectations, but those rules vary widely in scope, maturity and enforcement. The Energy Department may enforce rigorous incident response requirements for electric utilities, while TSA might focus its directives on pipeline resilience. Meanwhile, small water utilities, overseen by the EPA, often lack the resources to fully comply with evolving standards.
This uneven terrain creates what I call “regulatory dissonance.” One facility may be hardened according to its regulator’s rulebook, while another connected through shared vendors or data exchanges operates under entirely different assumptions. The gaps between these systems can create cascading risk.
The 2021 Colonial Pipeline incident illustrated how oversight boundaries can become national vulnerabilities. While the energy sector had long operated under NERC CIP standards, pipelines fell under less mature guidance until TSA introduced emergency directives after the fact. CIRCIA was conceived to close such gaps by requiring consistent incident reporting across sectors. Yet compliance alone won’t suffice if agencies continue to interpret and implement these mandates in isolation.
Governance as the common language
Modernizing oversight requires more than new rules; it requires shared governance principles that transcend sectors. NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 introduces a crucial element in this direction: the new “Govern” function, which emphasizes defining roles, responsibilities and decision-making authority within organizations. This framework encourages agencies and their partners to move from reactive enforcement toward continuous, risk-informed governance.
For federal regulators, this presents an opportunity to align oversight frameworks through a “federated accountability” model. In practice, that means developing consistent taxonomies for cyber risk, harmonized maturity scoring systems and interoperable reporting protocols.
Agencies could begin by mapping common controls across frameworks, aligning TSA directives, EPA requirements and DOE mandates to a shared baseline that mirrors NIST Cybersecurity Framework principles. This kind of crosswalk not only streamlines oversight, but also strengthens public-private collaboration by giving industry partners a clear, consistent compliance roadmap.
Equally important is data transparency. If the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , DOE and EPA share a common reporting structure, insights from one sector can rapidly inform others. A pipeline incident revealing supply chain vulnerabilities could immediately prompt water or energy operators to review similar controls. Oversight becomes a feedback loop rather than a series of disconnected audits.
Engineering resilience into policy
One of the most promising lessons from the technology world comes from the “secure-by-design” movement: Resilience cannot be retrofitted. Security must be built into the design of both systems and the policies that govern them.
In recent years, agencies have encouraged vendors to adopt secure development lifecycles and prioritize vulnerability management. But that same thinking can, and should, be applied to regulation itself. “Secure-by-design oversight” means engineering resilience into the way standards are created, applied and measured.
That could include:
Such modernization would not only enhance accountability but also reduce the compliance burden on operators who currently navigate multiple, sometimes conflicting, reporting channels.
Making oversight measurable
As CIRCIA implementation begins in earnest, agencies must ensure that reporting requirements generate actionable insights. That means designing systems that enable real-time analysis and trend detection across sectors, not just retrospective compliance reviews.
The federal government can further strengthen resilience by integrating incident reporting into national situational awareness frameworks, allowing agencies like CISA and DOE to correlate threat intelligence and issue rapid, unified advisories.
Crucially, oversight modernization must also address the human dimension of compliance. Federal contractors, third-party service providers and local operators often sit at the outer edge of regulatory reach but remain central to national resilience. Embedding training, resource-sharing and technical assistance into federal mandates can elevate the entire ecosystem, rather than penalizing those least equipped to comply.
The next step in federal cyber strategy
Effective harmonization hinges on trust and reciprocity between government and industry. The Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) has demonstrated how voluntary partnerships can accelerate threat information sharing, but most collaboration remains one-directional.
To achieve true synchronization, agencies must move toward reciprocal intelligence exchange, aggregating anonymized, cross-sector data into federal analysis centers and pushing synthesized insights back to operators. This not only democratizes access to threat intelligence, but also creates a feedback-driven regulatory ecosystem.
In the AI era, where both defenders and attackers are leveraging machine learning, shared visibility becomes the foundation of collective defense. Federal frameworks should incorporate AI governance principles, ensuring transparency in data usage, algorithmic accountability and protection against model exploitation, while enabling safe, responsible innovation across critical infrastructure.
A unified future for resilience governance
CIRCIA and NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 have laid the groundwork for a new era of harmonized oversight — one that treats resilience as a measurable capability rather than a compliance checkbox.
Achieving that vision will require a mindset shift at every level of governance. Federal regulators must coordinate across agencies, industry partners must participate in shaping standards, and both must view oversight as a dynamic, adaptive process.
When frameworks align, insights flow freely, and regulations evolve as quickly as the threats they are designed to mitigate, compliance transforms from a bureaucratic exercise into a national security asset. Oversight modernization is the blueprint for a more resilient nation.
Dr. Jerome Farquharson is managing director and senior executive advisor at MorganFranklin Cyber.
The post Harmonizing compliance: How oversight modernization can strengthen America’s cyber resilience first appeared on Federal News Network.
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