TECH

Heat pumps will soon be able to store and distribute heat as needed

Researchers have developed a heat storage unit that takes up less space than a regular hot water tank. It charges when electricity is cheap and releases heat when needed.

Heat pumps are becoming increasingly common in private homes. But storing the heat they produce has not been possible—until now. SINTEF and Swiss company COWA Thermal Solutions researchers are collaborating on the solution.

"Think of it as a thermal battery, which stores the heat from the heat pump and can be used later. In practice, this means that people get more energy out of the stored heat. It becomes easier and more comfortable to use, and the energy is also used in a smarter way," says Galina Simonsen, a senior research scientist at SINTEF.

Simonsen is a member of the team that has developed the new thermal batteries.

"The batteries have high efficiency, and they charge and deliver heat quickly, making it easier to meet the need. Like when several people are taking showers one after the other, for example, or you need hot water early on a cold morning," says Simonsen.

The solution will also benefit your wallet because it makes it possible to store excess heat when electricity is cheap or produced in an environmentally friendly way, and can be used when the need for more heat arises.

Properties lie in salt hydrates...Heat pumps extract energy from the environment—air, soil or water—and transport the heat into the home.

However, in households and other buildings, the heat demand varies, depending on usage patterns, time of day, outdoor temperature and weather conditions. The researchers on this project have worked to meet these fluctuations in a smarter way.

"A heat pump that runs constantly is expensive, energy-consuming and can lead to overloading the power grid. With the new batteries, heat pumps combine storage and smart distribution of heat," says Simonsen.

Research colleagues Martin Fossen and Galina Simonsen in front of the system that can store excess heat from heat pumps. Credit: Silje Grytli Tveten

First out with a solution for private individuals..."The research team at SINTEF has collaborated closely with the Swiss company COWA Thermal Solutions to develop their solution. Although thermal energy storage already exists, the team is among the first to have managed to create a solution that is so effective that it is attractive for private homes.

The secret lies in a combination of technical solutions and materials called salt hydrates.

"Unlike the salt we sprinkle on food, salt hydrates lock water into their structure and behave in a unique way when exposed to heat," says Simonsen.

Substances that can undergo this physical transformation, from melting to solidification, belong to a broader group of materials known as "phase change materials."

Here you can read about the company Cartesian, which has created a similar solution for both heating and cooling large buildings based on solar or wind power:

"Think of thermal batteries as sponges: When they're heated to a certain temperature, they undergo a change from solid to liquid and can store heat. When they are cooled, they return to solid form and release heat again," says Simonsen.

"They can store much more thermal energy than water, for example, and they retain heat longer, even if the temperature does not change that much."

In other words: more heat and more stable temperatures.

You may have this very common substance in your kitchen cupboard. Now it plays the main role in a new system for heat storage. Researcher Galina Simonsen believes the solution could also be very useful in private homes. Credit: SINTEF

Space-saving solution...Salt hydrates thus open up completely new possibilities for smart and more balanced heating systems because heating can be moved to times with low energy demand.

"Salt hydrates aren't toxic, they're not flammable and they are also relatively inexpensive. This makes them a safe and good choice for use in private homes. Heat storage with salt hydrates also takes up less space than a traditional hot water tank, often up to four times less," says Simonsen.

About the Sure2Coat project...The work is being carried out as part of the project Sure2Coat and in close collaboration with the Swiss company COWA Thermal Solutions and research partners. COWA has worked to develop and improve the salt hydrates with new additives, so that the materials are stable and can function for decades without losing their special properties. SINTEF has worked to improve the efficiency of the batteries themselves.

Traditional systems often have low efficiency and can take a long time to charge and provide heat to the house. By using thin cooling fins, the researchers have managed to increase the efficiency of the new batteries from 65 to 85%. At the same time, charging time has been reduced by over 70% and the time it takes to release the heat has been cut by more than 80%.

The Sure2Coat project is a collaboration between 14 partners in industry and research in seven European countries. The project involves developing and implementing new or improved methods for surface treatment and coating of surfaces for different types of metals. The methods are demonstrated through three specific application areas: the gearbox, gas-water heater and latent heat storage.

Through the project, end users will effectively reduce their energy use, material consumption, CO2 emissions and pollution from production. The goal is to contribute positively to European industry and the EU's growth strategy by integrating surface treatment methods into the production line.

Recycled aluminum used...SINTEF's task in the project has been to improve the efficiency itself. That is, how the heat is stored and released in the batteries.

"Specifically, we have designed and tested a type of heat sink that improves heat transfer in the thermal batteries," says Simonsen.

The cooling fins are thin metal structures made of recycled aluminum that are effective heat conductors. This means that the heat is distributed quickly and evenly through the salt hydrate.

"Aluminum is a light material, has good thermal conductivity and is easy to form. The use of recycled aluminum also reduces the environmental footprint and costs, and helps to promote a more circular use of materials.

At the same time, recycled aluminum poses a challenge: it can contain impurities that make it more vulnerable to corrosion.

"Corrosion is particularly critical because salt hydrates are tough on aluminum, especially when impurities are present. Without protection, the cooling fins can degrade over time, reducing performance and shortening the lifespan of the entire system," Simonsen explains.

To solve this problem, the researchers have employed a type of coating called plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO), which forms a thin, ceramic layer on the surface of the aluminum.

"This coating is similar to what is used on non-stick pans and provides a very durable and corrosion-resistant barrier," says the researcher.

Provided by Norwegian University of Science and Technology

DIGITAL LIFE

Big tech companies may seek to influence Brazil’s 2026 elections, political scientist warns

Brazil’s 2026 electoral process is likely to face strong interference from major technology corporations, commonly referred to as big tech. The warning comes from political scientist Rudá Ricci, who argues that global tech giants will place strategic focus on Brazil, as well as Colombia, which begins its presidential election cycle in May for a term running through 2030.

“These are the largest and most politically significant elections in Latin America this year,” Ricci said in an interview with Radio BdF, on Wednesday (7). “There is already a clear decision: big tech will go all in, flooding voters with millions of messages, all customized, each one telling a different story to a different niche.”

According to Ricci, advances in algorithmic targeting have made these audience segments increasingly precise, a trend that will be aggressively exploited as campaigns intensify in the coming months. “If you’re a Corinthians fan, they’ll say Lula is a Corinthians supporter who never did anything for the club. If you’re a Palmeiras fan, they’ll also say Lula is a Corinthians supporter,” he explained. “And so on.”

Ricci also points to a deeper structural risk in Brazilian society. He notes that recent research shows growing political inertia and individualism among the population, a dynamic that could make large-scale manipulation easier. He cites the public response to the January 8, 2023 coup attempt as an example: while opinion polls show widespread rejection of the attacks, public mobilization in the streets has been limited.

“For us in sociology, this is striking. We have never seen Brazilian society this inert,” Ricci said. “Research across the country shows people increasingly focused on solving their lives individually. That’s extremely worrying, and it will make it much easier for the kind of manipulation we are likely to see starting in August in Brazil.”

A YouTube video claims that 'elections are being manipulated by organized crime' in Brazil... A YouTube video alleges that organized crime is interfering with the results of Brazilian elections by altering electronic voting machines and buying votes in "strategic regions." This is #FAKE.

The narrator also says that the manipulation was "systematic and technologically sophisticated," involving "intentional vulnerabilities in electoral systems" and "altering the software of the voting machines to favor specific candidates," characterized as "democratic hacking on an industrial scale." Furthermore, it would be possible to install modified versions of the software in strategic regions and systems that erased the traces of the manipulation.

The fake news mentions that 5 million votes were manipulated in national elections, of which 2 million would have been due to the alteration of voting machines and 3 million would have been due to acts of intimidation of voters, poll workers, and party representatives.

The plot would ultimately allow for obtaining details about campaign financing and candidates — which, in reality, is open for public consultation.

According to the TRE (Regional Electoral Court) of São Paulo, the video repeats a fake news story already debunked about the security of electronic voting machines and inserts it into a false context of a criminal operation...by g1.globo.com editorial staff

Elon Musk's Twitter (X) and the far-right AfD campaign in 2025...Billionaire Elon Musk gave his support to the far-right AfD party via video conference at a rally in Germany this Saturday (January 25, 2025), amid controversy following his controversial gesture during Donald Trump's inauguration, which was compared to a Nazi salute.

"It's good to be proud to be German. Fight for a bright future for Germany," declared the world's richest man to, according to AfD data, about 4,500 supporters gathered at the Halle Fair (east). He also reiterated his support for the party that embodies, according to him, "the best hope for Germany."

Accusations of Nazi gesture...A gesture by Elon Musk drew attention during the inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump. In his speech, while thanking those present, the billionaire beat his chest and quickly raised his right hand, with his arm extended forward and his palm facing down(image above Photo: ANGELA WEISS/AFP), a gesture similar to that given to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany...by AFP

Facebook and its collusion with Donald Trump's 2016 campaign...Cambridge Analytica, the British consultancy that worked for the election campaign of US President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Wednesday (09/01/2019 ) to refusing to disclose personal data it had extracted from Facebook. The company was fined £15,000 (US$19,100 or €16,700) by a London court and will also have to pay court costs of £6,000.

Facebook had already admitted that Cambridge Analytica – a political consultancy that managed Trump's digital campaign in 2016 – used an app to collect private information from 87 million users without their knowledge. The company then used this data to send users specially tailored political advertising and to create detailed reports to help Trump win the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

TikTok promoted a pro-Putin candidate in the 2024 Romanian presidential elections...The Romanian Supreme Defense Council (CSAT) accused the video platform TikTok on Thursday (November 28, 2024) of helping to promote the far-right, pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu by not labeling the content of his presidential campaign as political propaganda.

In parallel, Romanian authorities denounced an attempt to manipulate the electoral process, and the country's telecommunications regulatory agency requested the complete suspension of the platform in the country.

Georgescu, a member of the far-right and Orthodox Christian fundamentalist, an admirer of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and former Romanian fascists, was practically ignored by the political establishment and the mainstream media.

However, he won the first round of elections without the polls noticing his advance during the electoral campaign. According to the surveys, the far-right candidate had only 5% of the voting intentions before the election.

The CSAT – a security council led by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, which also includes the heads of the intelligence services, the military, and several ministers – urged police and electoral authorities to investigate the case.

The Romanian electoral commission instructed TikTok to ensure that candidates clearly identified themselves using codes that reveal their funding sources. The platform's failure would have increased Georgescu's visibility and given him an unfair advantage...by Deutsche Welle

Big tech companies may seek to influence Brazil’s 2026 elections, mundophone responds: Yes, there are significant concerns and warnings from political scientists and analysts that big tech companies may seek to influence Brazil's 2026 elections. This potential influence, particularly through large-scale digital manipulation and the spread of disinformation and AI-generated content, is a major point of discussion in Brazil's current political and legal landscape.

Key areas of concern:

-Disinformation and AI: Social media platforms are seen as fertile ground for disinformation, with algorithms that prioritize engaging (often sensational or false) content, which spreads faster than factual news. The unregulated use of artificial intelligence (AI) is considered a direct risk to information integrity and the electoral process, as it can be used to create deepfakes and manipulate public opinion on a massive scale.

-Algorithmic Manipulation: Analysts warn that sophisticated algorithmic targeting can be used to create political "information bubbles," tailoring messages to individual users' biases and making large-scale manipulation easier, especially given research suggesting growing public political disengagement.

-Geopolitical and Economic Interests: There are concerns that U.S.-based big tech companies might act to favor candidates aligned with U.S. interests, within a perceived neocolonial project. This is linked to ongoing tensions over proposed Brazilian legislation that aims to curb the economic power and regulate the activities of these tech giants.

-Regulatory Challenges: The current legislative environment is complex. The Lula government has proposed bills to regulate big tech, but these have stalled in Congress due to political disagreements. In the absence of a comprehensive national law, Brazil's Supreme Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE) have taken steps to increase platform accountability, including making platforms civilly liable for failing to proactively remove certain types of illegal content. However, authorities acknowledge that these resolutions may be insufficient to cover all risks.

Overall, the 2026 elections are anticipated to be a challenging period in terms of handling digital content, with a potential conflict between platforms' anti-regulation narratives and the requests of Brazilian electoral authorities.

mundophone responds: k77c49@gmail.com

--mundophone--

CES 2026

'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells

The promise of artificial intelligence was front and center at this year's CES gadget show. But spicing up a simple machine like a refrigerator with unnecessary AI was also a surefire way to win the "Worst in Show."

The annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday. Among those getting the notorious "anti-awards" for invasive, wasteful or fragile products were an eye-tracking AI "soulmate" companion for combating loneliness, a musical lollipop and new AI features for Amazon's widely used doorbell cameras.

Shouting at a 'bespoke AI' fridge that also hawks grocery products...Samsung's "Bespoke AI Family Hub" refrigerator received the overall "Worst in Show" recognition from the group of consumer and privacy advocates who judged the contest.

Samsung invites users to speak to the refrigerator and command it to open or close the door, but a demonstration at the sprawling Las Vegas technology expo showed it didn't always detect what people were saying if there was too much ambient noise. That was just part of the complications and reliability concerns Samsung added to an appliance that's supposed to have one important job: keeping food cold, said Gay Gordon-Byrne of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition in a recorded video ceremony announcing the anti-awards.

People look at a display of the Bosch eBike Flow app at the Bosch booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Las Vegas. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

"Everything is an order of magnitude more difficult," she said of the fridge that also tracks when food items are running low and can advertise replacements.

Samsung said in response that "a trade show floor is naturally very different from a consumer's home environment. Our Bespoke AI experiences are designed to simplify decisions around the home, making life more convenient and enjoyable."

The South Korean tech giant also said "security and privacy are foundational" to the AI experiences in the fridge..

Who decides what's 'Worst in Show'...The judges have no affiliation with CES or the trade group that runs the show. They say they make the choices based on how uniquely bad a product is, what impact it could have if widely adopted and if it was significantly worse than previous versions of similar technology. The judges represent groups including Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and right-to-repair advocates iFixit.

"We definitely intend some shame," said iFixit's director of sustainability, Elizabeth Chamberlain, in an interview. "We do hope that manufacturers see this as a poke, as an impetus to do better next time. But our goal isn't to really shame any particular manufacturer as such. We're hoping that they'll make changes as a result of it. We're pointing to trends that we see in the industry as a whole. And a lot of the things that we're calling out, we picked an individual product, but we could have picked a whole category."

Amazon's doorbells once again ring privacy alarms...An array of new features for Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system won the "Worst in Show" for privacy for "doubling down on privacy invasion and supporting the misconception that more surveillance always makes us safer," said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Among the new Ring features is an "AI Unusual Event Alert" that is supposed to detect unexpected people or happenings like the arrival of a "pack of coyotes."

Ring doorbells are seen on display at the Amazon booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Las Vegas. Credit: AP Photo/Abbie Par

"That includes facial recognition," Cohn said of the new Ring features. "It includes mobile surveillance towers that can be deployed at parking lots and other places, and it includes an app store that's going to let people develop even sketchier apps for the doorbell than the ones that Amazon already provides."

Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Deskbound AI 'soulmate' companion is always watching your eyes...Winning the "People's Choice" of worst products was an AI companion called Ami, made by Chinese company Lepro, which mostly sells lamps and lighting technology. Ami appears as a female avatar on a curved screen that is marketed as "your always-on 3D soulmate," designed for remote workers looking for private and "empathetic" interactions during long days at the home office. It tracks eye movements and other emotional signals, like tone of voice.

The group says it is calling out Lepro "for having the audacity to suggest that an AI video surveillance device on a desk could be anyone's soulmate." Advocates acknowledged the device comes with a physical camera shutter but said they were unsettled by its "always-on" marketing.

Lepro didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tech lollipop gets dinged for environmental waste...Lollipop Star attracted attention early at CES as a candy that plays music while you eat it. Its creators say it uses bone induction technology to enable people to hear songs—like tracks from Ice Spice and Akon—through the lollipop as they bite it using their back teeth. But the sticks can't be recharged or reused after the candy is gone, leaving consumer advocate Nathan Proctor to give it a "Worst in Show" for the environment.

"We need to stop making so many disposable electronics, which are full of toxic chemicals, require critical minerals to produce and can burn down waste facilities," said Proctor, who directs the Public Interest Research Group's right-to-repair campaign.

A spokesperson for Lollipop Star maker Lava Brand didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

A treadmill powered by an AI chatbot fitness coach raises security concerns..."Worst in Show" for security went to Merach's internet-connected treadmill that boasts of having the industry's first AI coach powered by a large language model that can converse with the user but also proactively adjust the speed and incline based on heart rate changes.

All that collection of biometric data and behavioral inferences raised concerns for security advocates, but so did the fine print of a privacy policy that stated: "We cannot guarantee the security of your personal information."

China-based Merach didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Talking coffee makers and making e-bikes hard to fix...German tech company Bosch received two "Worst in Show" awards, one for adding voice assistants and subscriptions to coffee-making with a "Personal AI Barista" machine and another for a purported anti-theft feature on an e-bike app.

Cory Doctorow, author of the book "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" and himself a "Worst in Show" judge, criticized Bosch's "parts pairing" to digitally connect an e-bike with its parts, like motors and batteries, in a way that flags a part if it appeared on a database of stolen products.

Even if Bosch doesn't seek to prosecute its own customers for routine repairs, it could always change its deal with them later, in line with Doctorow's theory of the decay of online platforms as companies exploit the customers they earlier won over.

Bosch said in a statement Thursday "that earning and keeping trust with our consumers, especially in the areas of privacy and cybersecurity, is at the core of our company's values. Both Bosch Home Appliances and Bosch eBike Systems protect their consumers against unauthorized tampering or control through a comprehensive security concept, using encryption and authentication."

© 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

DIGITAL LIFE

Iran's dictatorial regime and its usual tactic: completely shutting down the internet during widespread protests

People in Iran's capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the streets on Thursday night after a call by the country's exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said.

Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.

CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference.

Attempts to dial landlines and mobile phones from Dubai to Iran could not be connected. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.

It represents a new escalation in the protest movement, initially against Iran's ailing economy, that has spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic.

The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Pahlavi had called for demonstrations at 8 pm local on Thursday and Friday. When the clock struck, neighbourhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said.

The chants included "Death to the dictator!" and "Death to the Islamic Republic!" Others praised the shah, shouting: "This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!" Thousands could be seen on the streets.

"Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands," Pahlavi said in a statement.

"I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the (Revolutionary Guard) that the world and (President Donald Trump) are closely watching you. Suppression of the people will not go unanswered."

Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fuelling the protests.

Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters.

So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 39 people while more than 2,260 others have been detained, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said.

The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

by mundophone

TECH

How chameleon materials adjust to climate extremes in real time

Every summer, our cities burn energy to keep us cool. The same happens in winter with the increasing demand for heating.

But what if we don't just treat our comfort as an issue that can only be solved through hammering the air conditioning or heating? What if our buildings, clothes and infrastructure could have chameleon-like properties and adapt with the seasons?

This is exactly the kind of thinking we are doing at the University of Melbourne when we develop and engineer new materials as we navigate towards net zero.

The great energy challenge isn't just about clean energy generation but also energy preservation.

The energy challenge isn't so simple...Heating and cooling consume nearly half of all energy used in buildings worldwide. And as our weather becomes more extreme, it demands more climate control, heating and cooling. This increases the reliance on energy sources, driving up both emissions and the cost of climate control.

We could keep using more and more air conditioning, adding heaters and very thick insulation, but that's not a solution.

We already spend over half of our energy consumption dollars on climate control—and conventional insulation doesn't adjust with changing conditions. It stays static, unchanging.

A key part of solving this complex problem is smart materials.

We already spend over half of our energy consumption dollars on climate control. Credit: tu nguyen from Pexels

Chameleon-inspired materials...At their core, chameleon materials are phase-change materials engineered to sense their environment and respond in real time, without needing to consume extra power.

One of the stars of this innovation is vanadium oxide, particularly vanadium dioxide (VO₂), which transforms when the temperature changes by just a few degrees. Depending on the temperature, vanadium dioxide's atomic structure changes.

In its cool state (insulating), it transmits infrared radiation, allowing heat through. In its hot state (metallic), it reflects infrared radiation, blocking heat.

So, in summer, VO₂ becomes metallic and reflects solar heat, keeping interiors cool without air conditioning. In winter, it remains insulating and transmits solar warmth into the building.

This remarkable process happens in fractions of a second and repeats millions of times without degrading. No batteries. No electronics. No external controls. Just physics.

How it all works...To understand how these materials "sense," we need to look at them at the atomic level.

Vanadium dioxide exists in many crystal structures and shapes. Let's focus on two: monoclinic (at low temperatures) and tetragonal (at high temperatures).

Each structure has a fundamentally different shape—optical (what it lets through and what it reflects) and electronic (how good of a conductor it is).

Below the transition temperature, vanadium dioxide is an insulator.

Electrons are locked in place, unable to move freely. The material's crystal structure keeps them trapped. This insulating state also means the material strongly transmits infrared radiation—that's the wavelength we experience as heat.

Cross the transition temperature and something dramatic happens. The crystal structure rearranges.

Vanadium atoms shift position by just a fraction of an angstrom, infinitesimal distances, but still enough to unlock electron movement. The material becomes metallic and conductive.

Simultaneously, its optical properties flip: now it reflects what we experience as heat (infrared radiation). This is a chameleon-like transformation that happens almost instantaneously once the threshold is crossed.

The material literally "senses" temperature through its atomic structure, triggering adaptation without any external device or additional power.

Engineering for scale and durability...When phase-change coatings are applied to windows, roofs or building facades, the energy impact is substantial. On hot days, the material becomes metallic and reflects infrared heat, reducing cooling loads.

As evening temperatures drop, it returns to its insulating state, which transmits infrared radiation, allowing the building to cool naturally by radiating heat to its surroundings. But moving from laboratory to the real-world requires solving some practical challenges.

We are developing scalable manufacturing methods. Durability is also critical: materials must withstand UV exposure, pollution, thermal cycling and weathering without losing responsiveness.

We need to engineer materials that are not only smart but sustainable from production to end-of-life.

A tool for climate action...Chameleon materials are a fundamental shift in how we approach energy and climate. Instead of engineering larger, more powerful systems to adjust to extreme changes, we're engineering materials that respond in real time, continuously optimizing their interaction with their surroundings.

As nations commit to net-zero carbon targets, adaptive materials can play a central role. They're not a complete solution, but they're a crucial tool. Chameleons have perfected adaptation over millions of years of evolution.

By learning from nature and engineering smart materials that respond to their environment, research groups worldwide, including at the University of Melbourne, are advancing these materials from concept to application.

The path from lab to large-scale deployment is underway, driven by urgent climate challenges and growing demand for smarter infrastructure.

We're fundamentally changing how buildings and infrastructure interact with the world around them, one degree at a time.

Provided by University of Melbourne

 

TECH

Takeover by Big Tech

In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the US Army quietly signed away a critical piece of its sovereignty. A $10bn contract with Palantir Technologies – one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history – consolidated 75 separate procurement agreements into a single package. What looked like bureaucratic streamlining was in reality a strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has openly declared that freedom and democracy are no longer compatible

This handover means that targeting decisions, troop movements and intelligence analysis increasingly flow through algorithms governed not by military command but by a corporate board answerable to shareholders. The army wasn’t just buying software, it was ceding operational sovereignty to a platform it can no longer function without.

Beyond Palantir, under the banner of ‘patriotic tech’, a coalition of firms, funders and ideologues is engineering a planetary infrastructure for techno-political control. It’s a stacked system – cloud platforms, AI models, financial rails, drone networks, orbital systems – forming what I call the ‘Authoritarian Stack’. Where traditional authoritarianism relies on mass mobilisation and state violence, this system operates through technological infrastructure and financial coordination, making classic resistance appear not just difficult but obsolete. At its helm stand Silicon Valley’s most rightwing figures – Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Palmer Luckey and Alexander Karp – whose investments align with a political project: the remaking of sovereignty as a private asset class.

The critical infrastructures of the state are being replaced and reinstalled across five strategic domains: personal information, money supply, defence, orbital communication and energy – the very foundations of democratic control.

It starts with control of the operating system. The $10bn US army consolidation confirmed what insiders already knew: Palantir – in which Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, reportedly holds up to $250,000 of stock – has become the de facto operating system of the US government. It’s the universal data platform underpinning battlefield management, supply chain logistics, personnel systems and intelligence analysis. The Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employs Palantir’s Foundry platform – originally developed for counterinsurgency in Iraq – to automate federal budgeting, welfare eligibility, healthcare reimbursements and veterans’ benefits using algorithmic processes that encode political choices deeply. Another of Palantir’s tools, ImmigrationOS, helps ICE (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) to locate undocumented foreigners and manage the flow of arrests and deportations.

Palantir is the data backbone of the authoritarian state, and Anduril is its autonomous warfare command system, turning information dominance into automated military power. Co-founded by Palmer Luckey (creator of Oculus) and Trae Stephens (a partner at Founders Fund and former Palantir executive), it holds more than $22bn in defence contracts. Its $30.5bn valuation reflects not only commercial success but also growing control over core military infrastructure.

Its Lattice platform connects satellite feeds, radar data and battlefield imagery into a single operational network, allowing military missions to be planned and executed at lightning speed. The company claims its systems can function at ‘level 5 autonomy’: launching, identifying targets, striking and returning without human intervention. ‘Autonomy’ is also the keyword of the Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance initiative announced by defence secretary Pete Hegseth this July; this aims for full integration of autonomous weapons systems by 2027.

Starshield, SpaceX’s classified military constellation, represents the privatisation of low orbit communication, once an exclusively state domain. Though promoted as ‘sovereign infrastructure’, it is in fact owned and controlled by Elon Musk’s private company. When NATO’s battlefield communications depend on infrastructure controlled by one man who openly endorses European far-right parties, defence autonomy becomes theatrical fiction. Pentagon officials are exploring the possibility of using the reusable mega-rocket Starship as a logistics platform for moving troops and material anywhere on Earth in under an hour.

Other solutions such as GovCloud, from Amazon Web Services, or Azure Government, provided by Microsoft – in partnership with OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic – are now embedded in classified military and intelligence operations. The ‘sovereignty’ these platforms promise actually means being insulated from public scrutiny and increasingly binding governments to private corporate infrastructures.

Powering the server farms that support these tools requires a stable and plentiful supply of electricity, which only advanced nuclear technology can provide. General Matter’s uranium enrichment facility – the first privately owned in the US since 2013 – is partly backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and led by former SpaceX engineers. The convergence is deliberate: energy secretary Chris Wright frames advanced nuclear not as energy independence but as computational dominance. ‘AI is an energy-intensive manufacturing industry,’ he states. ‘The more energy invested, the more intelligence produced’.

To understand why this capture is happening so rapidly, follow the personnel. The revolving door no longer spins between government and industry – it locks them together in a new architecture of power.

JD Vance, now vice-president, rose to power after Peter Thiel poured $15m into his 2022 campaign for election as US senator for Ohio – the largest single donation to an individual Senate race in American history. Michael Kratsios, Thiel’s former chief of staff, now heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Michael Obadal, an Anduril executive, still held up to $1m in Anduril stock when he was confirmed by the Senate as army under-secretary (the second-highest civilian position at the Pentagon) in September.

Gregory Barbaccia, after a decade at Palantir’s intelligence division, now serves as the federal government’s chief information officer, overseeing data integration programs that directly enrich his former employer. And Clark Minor, newly appointed as chief information officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, previously held an executive role at Palantir – the same company that received nearly $300m in HHS contracts between 2021 and 2024.

Most striking is the Pentagon’s Detachment 201, created in June 2025 to encourage ‘innovation’, which includes four former tech executives from Palantir, Meta and OpenAI, elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel (6). The distinction between contractor and commander, between profit-seeking and national defence, has been deliberately blurred.

Follow the money, and the pattern emerges. Founders Fund, Thiel’s $17bn flagship, reveals the architecture. In June 2025 it led Anduril’s funding round with a $1bn investment. As the first institutional investor in both Palantir and SpaceX, Founders Fund positioned itself early in the intelligence and orbital domains. But unlike traditional venture capital, it operates through direct strategic control. Trae Stephens serves simultaneously as fund partner and Anduril’s chairman. Delian Asparouhov divides his time between the fund and the presidency of Varda Space Industries, focused on orbital manufacturing and future space infrastructure. Scott Nolan runs General Matter while retaining his role at the fund. This is not passive capital allocation but active governance over firms reshaping state capacity.

1789 Capital epitomises how venture capital becomes dynasty. Founded by confidants of both Thiel and Vance, the fund transformed when Donald Trump Jr joined as a partner in November 2024. Growing from $150m to over $1bn, it brands itself as ‘patriotic investing’, and has already channelled over $50m into Musk’s empire (SpaceX for orbital dominance, xAI for military AI).

The Andreessen Horowitz fund – with assets of $600m – backs defence tech and what it calls ‘builders of the American state’. Founder Marc Andreessen himself rallied Silicon Valley’s billionaire class to support Trump’s 2024 campaign, fusing venture capital, ideology and state power in unprecedented ways. The returns validated the strategy. Palantir became the S&P 500’s best performer in 2025, with quarterly revenue exceeding $1bn – driven by 53% growth in government contracts.

When your customer cannot leave because you have become their operating system, you’ve transcended profit, you’ve achieved power. This is where the stakes become existential – not just for American democracy, but for European sovereignty too.

In Italy, defence chiefs plan to entrust the management of their encrypted satellite communications to Musk’s Starlink. In Germany, the use of Palantir’s surveillance tools by police in a number of Länder triggered strong protests (and a complaint to the constitutional court), but the federal authorities are looking at the possibility of extending their use to the whole country).

The Bundeswehr has been tied to Anduril’s autonomous systems since June, when Rheinmetall, Germany’s leading defence contractor, announced a partnership with the US firm that promises ‘European variants’ of Barracuda missiles and Fury autonomous aircraft which could be deployed across NATO. Yet the underlying dependencies remain American: European systems run on Lattice, receive continuous updates from servers in California and operate within parameters defined in Silicon Valley.

The UK faces an even deeper trap. The National Health Service (NHS) processes tens of millions of patient records on Palantir’s £330m Federated Data Platform. In May the government had to pay KPMG £8m to promote adoption among resistant hospital trusts. The £1.5bn defence partnership signed in September, making Britain a hub for Palantir’s military AI systems, compounds the dependency. 

These decisions have not triggered parliamentary debates worthy of the name. Few have made the front page. Yet they reveal the eagerness with which European governments, delighted at the idea of strategic autonomy, are entrusting their powers to US platforms whose bosses are gleefully trampling on European democracy.

Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable to government operations, once Anduril’s drones become the NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power the AI systems running everything else, the transformation becomes irreversible.

What emerges is not traditional corporate capture but a fundamental transformation of sovereignty, from political authority exercised through relatively democratic institutions to technical capacity controlled through private ownership. While Brussels debates ‘digital sovereignty’, European ministries sign contracts that compromise future policy autonomy while embedding anti-democratic logic in governance infrastructure.

Silicon Valley’s political transformation in the Trump 2.0 era marks the maturation of what Evgeny Morozov calls ‘oligarch-intellectuals’, ‘new legislators’ using technological infrastructure to spread their gospel and engineer post-democratic governance. What began as a libertarian exit has evolved into authoritarian capture. The same network that once championed seasteading (the creation of autonomous nations in international waters) to escape state authority now places its members at the highest levels of government. Having failed to build parallel institutions, they have found it more effective to become the infrastructure of the state itself.

Their success has perhaps been most obvious in finance. Under Trump’s GENIUS Act, stable cryptocurrencies – ‘stablecoins’ – are reclassified as ‘national security infrastructure’, handing private issuers quasi-central bank powers. In June treasury secretary Bessent claimed they could create up to $2tn in new demand for US Treasury Bonds.

The techno-authoritarians know that to exercise power, one doesn’t need to win elections – only contracts. Each procurement cycle narrows democratic choice until choice itself becomes technically constrained by infrastructure built to serve investors, not citizens. Democracy persists only as a form of legacy interface, maintained for stability.

Reporter: Francesca Bria...Francesca Bria is an economist and founder of authoritarian-stack.info, an information platform on the inner workings of authoritarian tech firms in the US.

 

DIGITAL LIFE

Maldita.es: "Brigitte Macron is a man," this narrative has been circulating for years and is amplified by disinformation accounts and pro-Russian websites

On May 26, 2025, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron landed in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the first stop on their Southeast Asian tour. The couple's arrival was documented by the Associated Press (AP), which published a video showing Brigitte Macron turning her face away from the French president. News outlets around the world reported that she had slapped him, although Macron himself stated hours later that it was just a joke between the couple.

These images brought to light a conspiracy theory used against other first ladies: that Brigitte Macron was born a man named Jean Michel Trogneux (which is actually her brother's name). Now, social media users, disinformation accounts, and Kremlin-linked websites have seized the moment to revive a narrative that has been circulating since 2017.

Two people were convicted in 2024 and another ten in January 2026 for spreading this narrative against the French first lady. Even so, a year later, it continues to go viral. In fact, on that day, the number of tweets (now X) with her name skyrocketed: it went from zero results between 4 am and 5 am on the 26th to 173 tweets between 2 pm and 3 pm. At the time of publication, they are still available and most have thousands of views.

This disinformation theory uses montages, images manipulated with artificial intelligence, and photographs of when her brother was little.

"She is a trans woman." This is the claim of the narrative that the wife of the current president of France was born a man. According to this content, the name she received at birth was Jean-Michel Trogneux, but she later changed it (without specifying when) to Brigitte. The only "proof" presented in this narrative consists of current photographs of the First Lady of France compared with supposed images from her adolescence and childhood, whose authenticity is unknown. Now, after the images of the Macron couple arriving in Vietnam, several of these posts have gone viral again.

In some cases, these are forgeries. For example, in 2024, we at Maldita.es warned that a 2011 publication from Mediafax, a Romanian website, had been used as if it were a "before" photo of Brigitte Macron. A reverse image search revealed that her face had been altered, but the body position and background coincided. The authentic image of Macron (with which this forgery is compared) is real: it was cropped from a photograph taken at the Louvre Museum in Paris on June 7, 2023.

Another image used to claim that the First Lady of France is a man shows signs of having been manipulated with artificial intelligence (AI). It has been circulating on social media for over a year. The image depicts a man, supposedly the wife of the French president before her gender transition. However, it contains details that suggest it may have been altered with an AI tool.

The mouth, teeth, nose, and wrinkles around the eyes are exactly the same as in the real image of Brigitte Macron, but there are distorted elements in the neck area. The right ear is also not clearly visible, and the background is blurred, making it impossible to identify any real features. In addition, the image depicts an elderly man. This contradicts the theory that she underwent sex reassignment surgery some years ago.

The real photograph of the First Lady of France was published on the Alamy image service and, according to them, was taken on June 4, 2019, during her visit to the training center of the French national football team in Clairefontaine, therefore, it appears to be a montage.

On other occasions, real photographs of Brigitte Macron's brother as a child have been used to claim that it was her "before her gender transition." Several manipulated images circulated on social media and websites, comparing photos of Jean-Claude Trogneux as a child with current photographs of the French president's wife. Fact-checkers from the Full Fact website (United Kingdom) explained that the image of the child had been cropped from an old photograph of the Trogneux family. She also appears in this image, in the center, sitting on her mother's lap.

This is not the only image of Brigitte Macron as a child. The Irish newspaper Daily Mail published an article in 2022 about this narrative, titled "Proof that the First Lady of France was not born a man," which included a photograph of her making her First Communion as a child and another from when she was even younger. Insider also compiled other photographs of Emmanuel Macron's wife when she was a little older: at her wedding to her first husband, André-Louis Auzière, and another with Auzière years later.

Eight years with the same narrative: it emerged in 2017 and is revisited from time to time...The origin of this narrative dates back to 2017, when Emmanuel Macron was running for president of France for the first time. At that time, content began circulating claiming that the then-presidential candidate was gay and that his marriage to Brigitte Macron was a sham. Macron's team denounced that his campaign was being targeted by "fake news" and cyberattacks originating from Russia. They accused Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, two media outlets funded or controlled by the Kremlin, of spreading "fake news" against Macron.

In fact, in February 2012, the Russian state news agency Sputnik published a text insinuating that Macron led a double life: the "official" one with Brigitte Macron and the "true reality" which, according to them, consisted of "an affair with the president of Radio France, Matthieu Gallet."

In 2021, a few months before the French presidential elections, self-proclaimed journalist Natacha Rey claimed, in a YouTube interview with Amandine Roy, who identifies as a medium, to have conducted a three-year investigation into the identity of Brigitte Macron. She claimed that Macron was born a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux. Her claim was based on alleged inconsistencies in official documents and the absence of certain public records. Rey published a series of articles supporting this theory on Faits & Documents, a website founded by Emmanuel Ratier, a "far-right journalist and essayist who died in 2015 and devoted particular attention to Jewish and Masonic organizations," according to the French newspaper Libération.

That same year, the narrative accusing Emmanuel Macron's wife of "being a man" gained traction thanks to the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux, created on November 7th by the anti-Emmanuel Macron account Journal de la macronie (currently suspended), as reported by Libération. In this context, Brigitte Macron filed a lawsuit in the French courts, which ended up being judged in her favor in 2024, condemning Rey & Roy to pay Brigitte Macron and her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, €8,000 and €5,000, respectively, for defamation.

Since then, the subject has resurfaced occasionally on social media. In those four years, Faits & Documents published up to seven additional articles related to this narrative about Brigitte Macron, the last one in 2024. In February 2025, Candace Owens (an ultraconservative and pro-Donald Trump influencer, according to the French newspaper Le Monde) published the first video in a series called "Becoming Brigitte" on YouTube, where she has over 4 million subscribers. The series consists of eight videos in which she presents the "proof" that, according to her, proves that Brigitte Macron was born a man.

In the BBC podcast "Fame Under Fire," Tom Clare, Macron's lawyer in the US lawsuit against Candace Owens, promised in September 2025 to present "photographic and scientific evidence" to an American court proving that Owens is a woman. This evidence included "expert testimony with scientific backing" to demonstrate that Owens was not born a man.

In May of the same year, this narrative resurfaced on social media after the publication of AP images showing the French First Lady turning her face away from her husband on an airplane. Indeed, on the day the images were published (May 26) and in the following days, there was a significant increase in the number of posts circulating on X containing the words "Jean Michel Trogneux," according to a content monitoring tool on Elon Musk's platform.

On January 5, 2026, ten more people (eight men and two women) were found guilty of "spreading or relaying insults and rumors related to the gender" of the French First Lady and "the age difference with her husband." The Paris Correctional Court sentenced them to prison terms of four and eight months (which will only be served in case of recidivism) and ordered the payment of €10,000 in compensation for moral damages.

Several pro-Russian websites continue to disseminate this narrative...This misinformation has been present on Russian websites since their creation in 2017 and was subsequently amplified by Pravda, a Russian propaganda and disinformation network that, according to NewsGuard, deliberately introduced false information into the training data of Western AI chatbots to influence their responses. In the last year, Pravda published at least three pieces of content that mention or insinuate that Brigitte Macron "was born a man." The first, published in the French version in March 2024, includes a YouTube video from a website called Géopolitique Profonde. It is almost half an hour long and has over 123,000 views at the time of publication of this article. The second, published in Czech in February 2025, claims that a Google search for Jean-Michel Trogneux returns photos of Brigitte Macron. In this case, the "source" is a Telegram channel with Czech content that currently has almost 13,000 followers.

The third is an alleged conversation between Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, in which the latter asks to "talk man to man" and the Russian president replies: "Put Brigitte on the line." This time too, a Telegram channel with over 32,000 followers is mentioned as the source of the misinformation.

There are other Russian websites that have also disseminated this theory. One of them, found by Maldita.es, published an article in January 2025 entitled "American journalist promises to publish proof that Macron's wife is transgender," which references Candace Owens' podcast. This publication includes several of the images mentioned in the article, comparing real photographs of Brigitte Macron with photos of her brother as a child and even manipulated images.

The information also circulated on a Russian social network called Pikabu, where false information about the blackout of April 28, 2025 in Spain and Portugal was disseminated.

There are also reports of misinformation that frequently revive the narrative...María Pilar Baselga Calvo, whose Telegram channel, with more than 16,000 followers, debunks rumors and false information about COVID-19, also shared this theory, claiming that Begoña Gómez, the prime minister's wife, is a man. For these messages, she had to appear in court in 2023, accused of defamation and slander, although she refused to testify.

He also published this same narrative about Brigitte Macron. He did so on May 27, a day after the release of images of Emmanuel Macron on the plane, after his arrival in Vietnam. He posted several messages that said: “Macron gets slapped by his partner, who is neither a woman nor his wife. Her name is Jean Michel Trogneux.”

However, this is not the only time Baselga has referenced this theory. Among the content still available on his Telegram channel, there are at least four other posts suggesting that Brigitte Macron “was born a man.” The first, found by Maldita.es, dates back more than two years, when he published a message about the alleged investigation of Natacha Rey. On the same day, he published another message stating that the French judicial system had “dismissed” the transgender identity case. The next traceable post dates from March 2024, in which Baselga claims that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson would publish “the truth” about Emmanuel Macron’s wife. As a “source,” he cites a tweet with over 760,000 views, which, at the time of this publication, is still available and has no community notes. To this day, more than a year after these posts, Carlson has not published anything related to Brigitte Macron and her alleged transgender status. In July 2024, he posted another message in this Telegram group, redirecting to a video from a platform called Oysee, a small social network with little moderation where misinformation and conspiracy theories have been shared in the past.

Rafael Palacios, better known as Rafapal for his Telegram channel with over 126,000 followers, where he has also shared false information on several occasions, also echoed this theory. In March 2023, he posted a message with a Daily Mail article that debunked the narrative that Brigitte Macron had "been born a man." On other occasions, he posted messages that encouraged interpretations about the alleged transgender status of the French First Lady.

Brigitte Macron is not the only woman victim of disinformation campaigns accusing her of being transgender. In fact, the website Maldita.es identified a borderless conspiracy theory that accuses the wives of heads of state or government of having "been born men." Some of those affected include Britta Ernst, wife of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; Michelle Obama, partner of former US President Barack Obama; and Kamala Harris, US Vice President and Democratic Party candidate for the US presidency in 2024.

In Spain, several fake images have also circulated claiming that the Prime Minister's wife, Begoña Gómez, is a transgender woman. Since 2021, at least two manipulated images have circulated online comparing a current photograph of Gómez with an alleged image of her "before her gender transition." In both cases, the images are fake. One was generated using the FaceApp application and the other was manipulated.

Women in politics are not the only ones accused of being transgender. We have also seen content with this same narrative and approach related to American singer Taylor Swift; Clara Chía, current partner of soccer player Gerard Piqué; Algerian boxer Imane Khelif; and pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva.

Author: Maldita.es