The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has hired around 2,000 air traffic controllers this year, but the majority of them are video gamers. This sounds stupid at first, but FAA leadership has said they hired these video gamers because what they do while playing video games is exactly the same as what an air traffic controller does: managing multiple objects on the screen and staying calm under pressure. Not sure, honestly, how good this idea is, because playing a video game where there’s no real life at stake is a lot different than working out how to take a jumbo jet full of hundreds of people out of a storm and make sure it lands safely and doesn’t collide with the planes.
📊 Number of the Day
5.3 seconds
A bullet train in China has broken a record by reaching 800 km/h speed within 5.3 seconds. This is actually the third time within six months that this record has been broken: first, it was 600, and then it was 700. Before any of us gets excited, this is not something that is available commercially at the moment, and the current bullet train operating within China and Japan reaches roughly 320 km/h.
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🇬🇧 Royal Navy's Cameras Are Talking To China
What It Is: The Ministry of Defense (MoD) has suffered an embarrassing cybersecurity incident because the cameras fitted to the Royal Navy drone boats have Chinese components within them. They were found to be pinging a server based in China. This was found in an unrelated cybersecurity review. The boat's manufacturer, a British company, and the MoD did not even know it existed.
Why It Matters: Since the report came out, MoD has consistently maintained that no data was compromised or anything was stolen. The issue has been dealt with by cutting off these cameras from the internet altogether. But the bigger question is how this was allowed to happen in the first place. When these devices are deployed and are in active service, they go through hundreds of test cases. And testing if a device is communicating with an unknown outbound network device is basically testing 101. Clearly, in this case, this was never identified during any of those tests, and this vulnerability was not picked up.
Big Picture: It would be basic due diligence to check over every component before it gets on active military equipment that it’s not doing anything dodgy. This incident raises doubts about the entire MoD procurement supply chain. There must be other things out there that we don’t know about yet that might have similar vulnerabilities, and the response of the MoD to this incident doesn’t instill confidence in the public that our military equipment is safe from foreign interference.
🇮🇱 Netanyahu calls the UK the “Islamic Republic of Britain”
What It Is: Benjamin Netanyahu has joked about Britain, saying that the UK is the Islamic Republic of Britain, and repeating the same rhetoric that JD Vance used back in 2024. He further added that it must be the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons (which is factually wrong, Pakistan being the only Muslim country with nukes) and said that he is making sure that Iran doesn’t become the next bit.
Why It Matters: Overall, it’s an odd insult to an ally who has spent a lot of effort to defend Israel on quite a few international stages, especially when the ICC was about to issue an arrest warrant for Bibi. The UK government personally lobbied, and then Foreign Secretary David Cameron threatened to leave the ICC and cut funding for the ICC if they went ahead and issued an arrest warrant for Bibi Netanyahu. Also, for the UK government, the support of Israel has cost them dearly at home in the UK. They are still basically collaborating with Israel, with the Royal Air Force conducting surveillance flights over Gaza, as well as declaring Palestine Action a terrorist group and arresting hundreds and hundreds of old people over their sport, holding a placard saying that I support Palestine Action. That’s the country that Netanyahu is calling Islamic.
The Big Picture: This is a common theme among the people on the right of the political spectrum to paint a picture of the UK as something that is being overrun by Muslims and Islamists, and that Sharia law is being operated within the UK. None of this is true. According to the census data of 2021, the Muslim population within Britain sits around 6.5%, and that’s not the demographic you would see if a country were being overrun by Muslims. In reality, the UK has been doing fairly well in recent years. London has become one of the safest cities among the world's major cities, and the UK economy is doing well, but that doesn’t fit the narrative. It would be interesting to see what the current UK government, under the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, does, or whether it would be business as usual. Whatever Israel says, they will have immunity, and nothing will happen.
🇺🇦 Vance intervenes to halt Ukrainian strikes on oil tankers
What It Is: The US Vice President, J.D. Vance, has asked Ukraine to stop attacking the oil tankers based in the Russian Black Sea port. US was alarmed that Ukraine was further destabilizing oil markets and harming US companies by targeting tankers carrying crude piped from Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
Why It Matters: This episode brings back memories of last year, 2025, when JD Vance, sitting in the Oval Office, was asking Zelensky if he had thanked US for its support. It was a bizarre episode to witness, but now the tables have turned, and the U.S. is asking Ukraine for a favor. Ukraine wants to keep striking energy infrastructure linked to Russia to find a way to stop the Russian oil and gas industry from funding the war. Ukraine has agreed to the US request, but it’s not out of goodness of heart. Ukraine is hoping that by doing so, it will be able to acquire the license to develop and produce U.S. Patriot defense interceptor missiles locally.
The Big Picture: All of this is happening because of the major strategic blunder that the US made earlier this year by attacking Iran. As a result, the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes, has been closed, causing a lot of volatility within the oil markets. This has led to rising energy prices worldwide. With mid-term elections coming up in the US, one thing that the US administration does not want is higher gas prices at their pumps. With Ukraine hitting oil tankers now in the Black Sea, it would also have a knock-on effect on the markets, which would again raise the prices.
🌐 Around the Globe
South Korea: South Korea has recorded its hottest temperature ever at 42.5°C since it began keeping records in 1904. In some places, potatoes came out of the field “soft and collapsing, like boiled potatoes.”
UK: Courts in England and Wales have banned Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses from all criminal, civil, and family court buildings, joining a growing list of pubs, restaurants, and music venues that got there first.
Germany/China: Deutsche Bank has become the first non-Chinese bank allowed to clear yuan transactions in Europe, a symbolic win for Beijing’s push to internationalize the renminbi.
China: A 67-year-old sesame farmer in Chuzhou lost 25 acres of crop after following an AI app’s herbicide advice.
France: France’s Constitutional Council has struck down the country’s ban on social media for under-15s, ruling it disproportionately restricts freedom of expression.
DR Congo: The World Health Organization says the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has killed 2,325 people, already the deadliest in the country’s history, with a case fatality rate near 46%.
Lebanon: Parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty, making Lebanon the first country in the Middle East to do so. Hezbollah’s bloc was the only one to vote against it.
Sweden: Parliament has voted 281 to 66 to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14.
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💉 Good News of the Week
England has treated more than 100,000 people for hepatitis C since 2015 and cured more than 95% of them with an 8 to 12 week course of antiviral tablets. That puts England ahead of the World Health Organization’s target of treating 80% of known cases and on track to be one of the first countries in the world to eliminate the disease entirely. This is one of the major success stories of the NHS, and as Professor Frankie Swords put it, England is now leading the world in eliminating hepatitis C, years ahead of the WHO’s 2030 target.
🧠 Brain Food
✨ Quote of the Day
“Trust, but verify.” — Ronald Reagan
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