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LANL: Los Alamos To Play Key Role In Renewed Quantum Science Center

PRESS RELEASE — The Department of Energy has renewed funding for the Quantum Science Center, with Los Alamos National Laboratory continuing to play a vital role along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the center’s mission to advance quantum science and technology. The center will be funded for $125 million over five years to focus on quantum-accelerated high-performance computing.

“The Quantum Science Center is establishing the scientific and technical foundation for quantum computing,” said Mark Chadwick, associate Laboratory director for Simulation, Computing and Theory. “In this new, critical evolution for the center, the integration of quantum and high-performance computing stands to accelerate advancements in crucial scientific areas related to technological progress and even national security applications.”

The Quantum Science Center combines the efforts of three national laboratories, with ORNL hosting the center and Los Alamos a principal partner alongside various universities, industry partners and other laboratories. Created as one of five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers supported by the DOE’s Office of Science, the Quantum Science Center seeks to create a scientific ecosystem for the advancement of fault-tolerant, quantum-accelerated high-performance computing.

Trump’s Reprieve for Nvidia’s H200 Spurred by Huawei’s AI Gains

President Donald Trump decided to let Nvidia Corp. sell its H200 artificial intelligence chips to China after concluding the move carried a lower security risk because the company’s Chinese archrival, Huawei Technologies Co., already offers AI systems with comparable performance, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

Administration officials who weighed whether to clear Nvidia’s H200 had considered multiple possible scenarios, factoring in the views of national security hawks in Washington, said the person. Options ranged from exporting zero AI chips to China to allowing exports of everything to flood the Chinese market and overwhelm Huawei. Ultimately the policy backed by Trump called for clearing H200s to China while holding back the latest Nvidia chips for American customers, the person said.

The 2026 Timeline: AGI Arrival, Safety Concerns, Robotaxi Fleets & Hyperscaler Timelines | 221

The 2026 Timeline: AGI Arrival, Safety Concerns, Robotaxi Fleets & Hyperscaler Timelines ## The rapid advancement of AI and related technologies is expected to bring about a transformative turning point in human history by 2026, making traditional measures of economic growth, such as GDP, obsolete and requiring new metrics to track progress ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Measuring and Defining AGI

🤖 Q: How should we rigorously define and measure AGI capabilities? A: Use benchmarks to quantify specific capabilities rather than debating terminology, enabling clear communication about what AGI can actually do across multiple domains like marine biology, accounting, and art simultaneously.

🧠 Q: What makes AGI fundamentally different from human intelligence? A: AGI represents a complementary, orthogonal form of intelligence to human intelligence, not replicative, with potential to find cross-domain insights by combining expertise across fields humans typically can’t master simultaneously.

📊 Q: How can we measure AI self-awareness and moral status? A: Apply personhood benchmarks that quantify AI models’ self-awareness and requirements for moral treatment, with Opus 4.5 currently being state-of-the-art on these metrics for rigorous comparison across models.

AI Capabilities and Risks.

Continue reading “The 2026 Timeline: AGI Arrival, Safety Concerns, Robotaxi Fleets & Hyperscaler Timelines | 221” | >

SpaceX IPO: Tesla Shareholder Warrants, SPARC, and Elon’s Liquidity Event

SpaceX’s potential Initial Public Offering (IPO) could not only reward long-term Tesla shareholders but also has significant implications for Elon Musk’s companies, with a possible valuation of $1.2–1.5 trillion, driven by ventures like Starlink and Starship # ## Questions to inspire discussion.

IPO Timing and Valuation Strategy.

🚀 Q: When could SpaceX realistically go public and at what valuation? A: SpaceX IPO timing targets mid-2026 with potential valuation of $1.2–1.5 trillion, dependent on Starship production readiness, successful orbital launches with Starlink payloads by mid-2024, and prevailing volatile public market conditions at listing time.

💰 Q: How much capital would SpaceX raise in the IPO? A: SpaceX would likely issue new shares to raise approximately $80 billion at the $1.2–1.5 trillion valuation target, rather than conducting a buyback of existing shares, with potential share prices ranging $50–150 per share.

📈 Q: What drives SpaceX’s trillion-dollar valuation thesis? A: Valuation hinges on Starlink satellite network (10M subscribers, 10K satellites), rapid and complete reusability of Starship launch vehicles, planned Moon and Mars bases by 2030–2040, and the Musk premium factor where investors pay extra for his involvement.

Starship as IPO Catalyst.

Continue reading “SpaceX IPO: Tesla Shareholder Warrants, SPARC, and Elon’s Liquidity Event” | >

Direct 3D printing of nanolasers can boost optical computing and quantum security

In future high-tech industries, such as high-speed optical computing for massive AI, quantum cryptographic communication, and ultra-high-resolution augmented reality (AR) displays, nanolasers—which process information using light—are gaining significant attention as core components for next-generation semiconductors.

A research team has proposed a new manufacturing technology capable of high-density placement of nanolasers on semiconductor chips, which process information in spaces thinner than a human hair.

A joint research team led by Professor Ji Tae Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Professor Junsuk Rho from POSTECH, has developed an ultra-fine 3D printing technology capable of creating “vertical nanolasers,” a key component for ultra-high-density optical integrated circuits.

The ROI Problem in Attack Surface Management

Attack Surface Management (ASM) tools promise reduced risk. What they usually deliver is more information.

Security teams deploy ASM, asset inventories grow, alerts start flowing, and dashboards fill up. There is visible activity and measurable output. But when leadership asks a simple question, “Is this reducing incidents?” the answer is often unclear.

This gap between effort and outcome is the core ROI problem in attack surface management, especially when ROI is measured primarily through asset counts instead of risk reduction.

Over 10K Fortinet firewalls exposed to actively exploited 2FA bypass

Over 10,000 Fortinet firewalls are still exposed online and vulnerable to ongoing attacks exploiting a five-year-old critical two-factor authentication (2FA) bypass vulnerability.

Fortinet released FortiOS versions 6.4.1, 6.2.4, and 6.0.10 in July 2020 to address this flaw (tracked as CVE-2020–12812) and advised admins who couldn’t immediately patch to turn off username-case-sensitivity to block 2FA bypass attempts targeting their devices.

This improper authentication security flaw (rated 9.8÷10 in severity) was found in FortiGate SSL VPN and allows attackers to log in to unpatched firewalls without being prompted for the second factor of authentication (FortiToken) when the username’s case is changed.

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