TECH

Strategy CEO Phong Le says Bitcoin made a $12 Chipotle Burrito four times cheaper

Strategy CEO Phong Le has used the rising price of a Chipotle burrito to illustrate the difference between holding U.S. dollars and holding Bitcoin (BTC), arguing that the cryptocurrency has dramatically increased purchasing power when measured against everyday goods.

During a September 8 interview with Wolf Financial, Le used the price of a Chipotle burrito to illustrate how inflation can erode purchasing power. He noted that a burrito now costs around $12 and argued that many workers have not seen their compensation rise at the same rate over the past several years.

Le presented a hypothetical example in which a worker’s income increases by 10% while the price of the burrito doubles. In that scenario, argued, the worker would be significantly worse off in real purchasing-power terms despite receiving a pay increase.

He further linked the decline in purchasing power to monetary inflation and the expansion of the U.S. dollar supply, arguing that a growing money supply can reduce the value of each dollar over time.

Le then compared the same change through a Bitcoin-denominated lens. Using a period in which Bitcoin rose from roughly $10,000 to $80,000, he argued that the burrito had effectively become much cheaper for someone holding Bitcoin rather than U.S. dollars.

In his comparison, the burrito's dollar price had doubled, while its cost measured against Bitcoin had fallen by roughly four times. Le used the example to argue that Bitcoin can preserve purchasing power more effectively than the dollar over longer periods.

The example reflects a central argument behind Strategy's Bitcoin treasury strategy: measuring wealth solely in fiat currency can obscure changes in purchasing power. An asset that appreciates substantially faster than the price of consumer goods can, in theory, require fewer units of that asset to purchase the same product.

Strategy continues to maintain one of the largest corporate Bitcoin treasuries in the world. As of September 7, the company reportedly held 845,050 BTC alongside $6.5 billion in U.S. dollar assets.

The company has also expanded its financial maneuvering room. Strategy increased its authorization for repurchasing its STRC preferred securities from $1 billion to $2 billion after completing $176 million in repurchases.

The program concerns the company's preferred securities rather than directly purchasing Bitcoin, but it gives Strategy additional flexibility in managing its capital structure.

Bitcoin needs to clear $86,000 as weak spot demand threatens its rally...Bitcoin (BTC) briefly recovered toward the $80,000 level before losing momentum, with the cryptocurrency trading around $77,700 after a 1.4% decline over 24 hours. Glassnode analysts now identify the $83,000 to $86,000 region as a major hurdle for Bitcoin, while weak spot-market demand could make the recovery harder to sustain.

Long-term holders have accumulated around 1.07 million BTC in the 'resistance zone', with much of the buying concentrated near $85,000. The amount of Bitcoin held by these investors at those price levels has changed little over the past month.

A move back toward their acquisition prices could therefore create additional selling pressure as some holders regain the opportunity to exit without a loss. The same area also corresponds closely with the estimated breakeven level for US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which Glassnode places near $86,000.

The ETF position has improved considerably from earlier this year. Unrealized losses across US spot Bitcoin ETFs have fallen from roughly $18 billion in February to about $3.9 billion. However, the sector has yet to completely recover its paper losses.

That does not automatically mean long-term holders or ETF investors will sell once Bitcoin reaches the zone. Glassnode(https://x.com/glassnode) data shows that long-term investors have become less aggressive in realizing profits. Their share of total realized profits has dropped from 88% at the August peak to 47%.

There is also a potential source of buying pressure above the current price. Glassnode estimates that forced short liquidations are concentrated between $82,000 and $86,000, with the potential liquidation volume increasing 21% since August 19. If Bitcoin moves into that area, short sellers could be forced to repurchase BTC, potentially adding momentum to the move.

The bigger issue is whether the spot market can provide enough demand to support such a breakout. CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost says sustained buying pressure has not yet appeared in the spot market. The 90-day moving average of cumulative volume delta remains neutral, even as futures activity shows stronger participation.

Stablecoin liquidity also points to a market that is still rebuilding. Binance's stablecoin reserves previously exceeded $50 billion before falling by almost $7 billion. Reserves have since recovered by around $1.6 billion over the past month, but the 90-day change remains negative at 1.6%.

Bitcoin's US spot ETFs have also recorded recent outflows. Investors withdrew $46.6 million on September 8 and another $120.2 million on September 9, producing combined outflows of $166.8 million across the two sessions.

The technical picture is less negative. Darkfost notes that Bitcoin's daily RSI has reached 67, while its seven-day and 21-day exponential moving averages have moved above the 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at around $76,882.80, down 3.35% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. BTC had moved between a 24-hour low of $76,670.90 and a high of $79,655.08, leaving it below the $80,000 level that analysts are watching for signs of stronger market liquidity.

mundophone

 

TECH

Why won't the next financial crisis originate in the stock markets?

In 2008, a combination of misunderstood risks swept through the banking system and triggered a crisis that affected virtually the entire globe. Nearly two decades later, a completely different threat is beginning to worry some top financial authorities. It does not hinge on subprime mortgages, nor does it necessarily start on Wall Street. It could emerge silently from within the technological infrastructure that keeps banks and markets running every day.

Artificial intelligence promises to make the financial system more efficient. Banks already use algorithms to detect fraud, assess risk, analyze vast amounts of data, and automate various processes.

But this transformation can also create vulnerabilities.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the Financial Stability Board, sent a letter to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors warning of risks associated with the most advanced artificial intelligence models.

One major concern centers on cybersecurity.

Frontier AI systems could drastically alter the scale and cost of digital attacks. Tools capable of performing complex tasks with greater autonomy could facilitate sophisticated cyber operations and accelerate attacks on critical infrastructure.

In the financial system, a breach doesn't necessarily have to result in the direct theft of billions to cause massive consequences.

Sometimes, simply preventing institutions from functioning is enough.

If customers cannot access their accounts, banks stop processing payments, or markets begin to doubt certain institutions' ability to continue operating, a particularly dangerous element for any financial system emerges: a loss of confidence.

And there is a feature of current banking infrastructure that could rapidly amplify this problem.

Many banks rely on the same companies—and that changes everything. A bank may appear to be an independent institution to its customers, but much of the technology infrastructure used by the financial sector depends on third-party providers.

Cloud services, data processing, and various digital systems may be shared across multiple institutions.

This creates efficiency, but also concentration. A successful attack on a major technology provider could simultaneously affect multiple organizations that rely on its infrastructure.

In other words, a criminal wouldn't need to attack banks one by one.

This is one of the scenarios that worry Bailey. Artificial intelligence could make attacks faster and more sophisticated precisely at a time when key parts of the financial system are concentrated among a relatively small group of providers.

The risk doesn't stop there.

The IMF has also been drawing attention to another phenomenon: as algorithms take over functions related to credit, investments, and risk analysis, different institutions may end up reacting similarly to the same signals.

Imagine dozens of systems detecting a threat and deciding to sell assets at virtually the same time.

A decision that might take human traders minutes or hours to make could happen in a fraction of a second.

The financial market has seen similar episodes even before the current generation of artificial intelligence.

The problem isn't just a hacker using artificial intelligence... In May 2010, US markets experienced the so-called "flash crash." Within minutes, major indices plummeted and then recovered much of their losses.

The episode demonstrated how automated systems can trigger extremely rapid market movements before humans have enough time to fully grasp what is happening.

With more sophisticated AI models, the challenge takes on a new dimension.

Algorithms can interpret information, modify strategies, and react to market changes at ever-increasing speeds. If different systems reach similar conclusions, their decisions can reinforce one another.

This is where the comparison to 2008 begins to make more sense.

The global financial crisis showed how extremely complex products, interdependence, and a lack of transparency can mask vulnerabilities for a long time.

AI introduces a digital version of this problem.

Some models function as true "black boxes": they deliver results, but it isn't always easy to explain in detail how they arrived at them.

Under normal conditions, this might go unnoticed. During a crisis, however, quickly discovering why dozens of systems are making certain decisions can be crucial.

And waiting until that happens does not appear to be the strategy advocated by the authorities.

There is a surprisingly simple solution to such a high-tech problem...Among the measures mentioned by Bailey is something that seems almost contradictory in the age of cloud computing: keeping recovery systems completely isolated from the internet.

These structures—known as "bare metal"—could allow financial institutions to rebuild their operations following a severe attack.

The logic is simple.

If attackers compromise connected systems, backups that are also connected could be affected as well. A truly isolated copy offers a final line of defense.

But technology alone does not solve the problem.

Bailey advocates for more robust international protocols regarding the development and secure deployment of advanced AI models. This is particularly important because the financial system is global, whereas regulations on artificial intelligence vary significantly from country to country.

The IMF also calls for greater transparency, algorithmic auditing, and clear accountability within institutions.

The goal is not to stop banks from using artificial intelligence.

It is to prevent the pursuit of efficiency from creating vulnerabilities that are only discovered when it is already too late.

AI can also avert the very crisis it might otherwise amplify...There is a significant paradox in this entire scenario.

The artificial intelligence that worries regulators could also become one of the most powerful tools for protecting the financial system.

It can detect fraud more quickly, identify abnormal behavior, analyze risks that would go unnoticed by humans, and enable more efficient oversight.

Therefore, there is no inevitable link between AI and a new financial crisis.

The real risk arises when increasingly powerful systems are combined with a lack of transparency, overly concentrated infrastructure, and inadequate recovery mechanisms.

In 2008, much of the world discovered too late that seemingly dispersed risks were deeply interconnected.

The current warning aims to prevent history from repeating itself in a different form.

This time, however, a potential crisis would not necessarily take months to unfold. In a financial system operating at the speed of algorithms, the interval between the initial problem and its consequences can be much shorter than we are accustomed to imagining.

Major financial crises do not typically start when stock market prices fall; they originate where leverage, hidden debt, and liquidity mismatches accumulate

The shift away from public eWhere the Real Risks Liequities:

-Debt over equities: History shows that panics happen when over-leveraged borrowers and institutions cannot service their obligations (such as the 2007–2008 subprime mortgage collapse). Stock market drops are usually a symptom or reflection of underlying economic pain, not the root structural trigger

-Transparency of public markets: Stock prices are visible, highly regulated, and continuously traded. While high valuations or corrections can hurt investor sentiment, public companies and equity portfolios generally lack the cascading, opaque credit chains that freeze the broader financial system

Where the real risks lie:

-Private credit vulnerabilities: The multi-trillion-dollar private credit and direct lending market—increasingly intertwined with financing massive capital expenditures like the AI and data center boom—features opaque valuations, illiquid assets, and deepening links to institutional portfolios

-The interconnection problem: If economic friction, high interest rates, or project underperformance trigger widespread defaults in private debt, the losses propagate quietly through leveraged finance, insurers, and connected counterparties before anyone notices a public stock ticker crashing

mundophone

TECH

AI comes to toothbrushes

Brushing one's teeth seems like a task too simple to require a technological revolution. Yet, a recently unveiled innovation shows that even this habit can change radically. A small device can now monitor the inside of the mouth while in use, interpret images in real-time, and make decisions without interrupting the brushing process. The concept sounds like something out of a futuristic laboratory, but it has already hit the market.

It is the result of six years of research, development, and engineering, challenging every aspect of conventional oral hygiene. While others fail to locate the spaces between teeth, the Dyson CameraJet™ succeeds. While the bristles of conventional sonic toothbrushes can snag on the tooth surface, Dyson’s variable sonic oscillation is designed to keep the bristles in motion. While traditional needle-like jets may simply pierce the plaque, Dyson’s conical jet is designed to remove more plaque while remaining gentler on gums and enamel.

"Flossing is a tedious and time-consuming chore. Few of us do it, even though we know we should. Dyson engineers and scientists spent over a decade studying oral hygiene habits and how debris accumulates in the mouth. Our research showed that people often neglect the very areas where plaque builds up: the spaces between the teeth."

Our goal was to solve three fundamental problems: how to visualize these gaps, how to remove plaque, and how to improve brushing performance.

By combining a camera, machine learning, precision fluid dynamics, advanced brushing technologies, connectivity, and Wi-Fi, the Dyson CameraJet™ introduces a whole new way to keep your mouth healthy,” said James Dyson, Founder and Chief Engineer.

The company behind this innovation is Dyson, a British firm known for vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, and other household appliances. Its latest venture takes the brand into new territory: oral care.

Dubbed the CameraJet, the device combines three functions that are usually separate. It performs conventional electric brushing, monitors the teeth via a camera, and uses irrigation to reach specific areas between them.

The most intriguing feature lies in the brush head itself. A 100,000-pixel macro camera has been installed there, capable of capturing 28 images per second as the user moves the device around their mouth.

However, the goal isn't simply to produce images of the teeth. A machine learning system called Gap Optical Targeting analyzes the captured footage and attempts to identify interdental spaces.

The technology must accomplish this while everything is in motion. The algorithm tracks the position of these gaps and calculates where they will be moments later, allowing another part of the device to activate at the precise moment.

According to the manufacturer, approximately 470,000 dental images were used to train the machine learning system. The software powering the product comprises roughly 16 million lines of code.

The artificial intelligence doesn't just observe; it also reacts...This is where the CameraJet stops looking like just an electric toothbrush with an attached camera.

When the algorithm identifies a gap between the teeth, the system can automatically trigger a small jet of liquid aimed at that area. The response occurs in approximately 100 milliseconds, without requiring the user to stop brushing to use a separate device. In practice, the idea is to combine brushing and irrigation into a single routine.

The liquid is stored in a 12.5-milliliter reservoir integrated into the device. After use, the base can refill it in about three seconds. An internal mechanism also aims to maintain pressure even when the user changes the position of the brush.

Incorporating the camera even created a curious problem for the engineers: too much foam obscures the system's view.

To address this, the company developed a low-foaming toothpaste, as well as a rinse designed to work with the irrigation mechanism. It is an example of how adding computer vision to an everyday object can necessitate changes to the very products used alongside it.

The camera has another feature that will likely attract as much attention as the artificial intelligence.

The CameraJet connects to a smartphone via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and works with the MyDyson app. This allows the user to view images captured by the device during cleaning and see areas of the mouth that would normally be difficult to view on their own.

The system can also provide information on brushing coverage, helping to identify areas that received less attention.

The presence of a camera inside a personal care product naturally raises privacy concerns. According to information released by the company and reported in the press, images are neither stored on the brush itself nor sent to cloud storage; the camera is used for live viewing or the automatic process of detecting interdental spaces.

The manufacturer also claims to have achieved superior plaque removal results in laboratory tests using simulated plaque. According to Dyson, the device removed nearly 70% more plaque in hard-to-reach areas compared to premium electric toothbrushes. However, this result was released by the company itself.

All this technology comes with a price tag to match...Transforming brushing into an experience driven by cameras, algorithms, and automatic irrigation does not come cheap. The CameraJet launched at $499. The package includes the base unit—which handles both charging and reservoir refilling—two heads, a power cable, and a carrying case. The heads are designed to last approximately three months, and the device itself tracks usage to notify you when it is time for a replacement.

The device is available in Ceramic Ultra Blue and Ceramic Pink versions.

More than simply adding artificial intelligence to another product, the news shows an interesting trend. Computer vision technologies, previously associated with smartphones, cars, robots and industrial systems, are beginning to migrate to extremely common objects.

After cameras learned to recognize faces, obstacles and environments, there is now one capable of looking for spaces between teeth and deciding, in a fraction of a second, exactly where to direct cleaning.

And perhaps this is the most curious part: the next great application of artificial intelligence could be hidden precisely in the objects we use every day.

 

mundophone

TECH

OM Pen launches for $999 with OLED viewfinder and high-res mode

The Olympus Pen opens a new chapter. The OM System Pen is marketed as an exceptionally compact, weather-sealed mirrorless camera with a Micro Four Thirds mount, monochrome mode, a high-resolution OLED viewfinder, and exciting features.

The OM System Pen is official. The camera draws on the design of the Olympus Pen E-P7 but promises several upgrades. At its core, the OM System Pen remains an exceptionally compact mirrorless camera, measuring just 12.6 x 7.5 x 4.3 centimeters and weighing 393 grams.

Quite a lot as it happens. This list highlights key upgrades:

First model with phase-detection autofocus, using 121 all-cross-type points

AI subject detection for people, dogs and cats

TruePic IX processor

5-axis stabilisation rated up to 5.5 stops in the centre of the frame

2.36-million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder

A Vari-angle touchscreen

Dedicated Computational Photography controls

Live ND16, Focus Stacking and Handheld High Res Shot among the expanded computational tools

Up to 30fps continuous shooting

Electronic shutter up to 1/32000 sec, increased from 1/16000 sec

C4K recording, alongside 4K/30p

Vertical video and dedicated Still/Video/S&Q control

OM-Log400 and OM-Cinema1/2 video profiles

3.5mm microphone input

USB-C connectivity and UVC/UAC webcam support

IPX1 splash resistance (when paired with a compatible OM System lens)

New BLS-7 battery, rated for around 410 shots

That's a shopping list of new and upgraded features, but of course some haven't changed.

The sensor resolution, art filters, 4K/30p video and mechanical shutter are all similar to the previous version, which we explore in more detail next.

With such a lightweight, pocketable size and so many content modes, it is especially well suited to general purpose everyday content creation. You can bring it just about everywhere and capture stabilised 4K video as well as lots of photography styles.

Stills content includes:

Snapshots with your friends, family and pets.

Travel and city exploration, where a proper interchangeable-lens setup fits in a small bag.

Street photography, using the EVF, discreet size and custom looks to create your own unmistakable style.

Portraits, with human detection, primes lenses and profiles that let you shape exactly how skin tones and moods come out.

Food and details, the kind that stop people mid-scroll, especially with a close-focusing or macro lens, or Focus Stacking when you want everything tack sharp.

Landscapes and night shots, where stabilisation, High Res Shot, Live ND and Live Composite let you get results handheld.

Experimental stuff like intentional camera movement, long exposures, multiple exposures, Art Filters and custom colour or black-and-white looks.

For video there’s:

Reels and vertical content, which are properly vertical, with no cropping or black bars

Everyday scenes and travel with stabilised 4K

Vlogs and talking-to-camera, where the vari-angle screen helps you see yourself, plus a mic input for clean audio

Slow-mo and speed-ramped footage using S&Q modes

Advanced filmmaking with C4K/24p, OM-Log400 and Flat profiles to grade exactly how you want

Footage with a style baked in, straight out of camera, courtesy of OM-Cinema1 and OM-Cinema2 profiles

One thing Gareth particularly liked is how easy the built-in features are to access. Rather than becoming functions you discover once and then forget about, he found himself using them frequently while shooting.

Despite its compact body, OM System has managed to incorporate both a 3.2-inch flip-out touchscreen with 1.04 million pixels and an electronic OLED viewfinder with 2.36 million pixels. The camera uses a 20.4-megapixel Live MOS sensor in the Four Thirds format, which is image-stabilized and is thus designed to allow for up to 5.5 f-stops longer exposure times without a tripod. OM System highlights an improved autofocus system with eye and face detection. The camera is IPX1-certified and therefore weather-sealed, provided a weather-sealed lens is used.

 A dial on the front allows you to switch directly between color and black-and-white, with up to four profiles that can be saved for each mode. These can be customized like Fujifilm’s film simulations and then shared via the smartphone app. The OM System Pen can combine multiple photos to capture, for example, a higher-resolution photo, an HDR image, a multi exposure, or a photo with a simulated ND filter. Focus stacking for macro shots is also possible directly in the camera.

This version of the PEN really does live up to the hype. Although subjective, the design is unashamedly retro, and you can swap lenses even though it's really quite small. It has modern phase-detection autofocus, an EVF and weather resistance for real-world shooting every day.

You get computational tools and controls that place more tools to experiment with at your fingertips.

Three kit options mean you can start your creative journey where you want, with a zoom, everyday prime or portrait prime, with the huge Micro Four Thirds ecosystem ready when you want it.

The real win is better than specs. It's super small and light in use, easy to bring along and unusually good at encouraging you to use the built-in features. It rides the line between a fixed-lens compact and an interchangeable-lens camera very well.

Pricing and availability...The OM System Pen is now available for pre-order, with shipping expected to begin late October. The camera costs $999, a kit with the new M.Zuiko Digital 14–42 mm f/3.5–5.6 III lens is available for $1,099. More information about the camera can be found on the official product page.

mundophone

TECH

The Chinese tactic of AI model distillation

The United States has accused six Chinese artificial intelligence companies of using large-scale AI model distillation to extract capabilities from systems developed by U.S. companies. The accusation appears in a joint advisory published by the National Security Agency (NSA), the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The agencies identify DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI, stating that these companies utilized U.S. models to accelerate the development of their own systems. According to U.S. authorities, these operations have been ongoing since at least late 2024 and involved large volumes of requests sent to frontier models.

The accusation marks a new development in a dispute that had already reached the diplomatic level. In April, the U.S. State Department warned allied governments about alleged distillation campaigns conducted by Chinese companies. The new document now adds a joint assessment from three federal agencies involved in intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement.

According to the advisory released by the NSA, the Chinese companies reportedly distributed their activity across various accounts, providers, and infrastructure in an attempt to bypass usage limits and mechanisms designed to detect anomalous access patterns.

Authorities describe the use of APIs, intermediary services, and other mechanisms intended to mask the origin of requests. This approach allowed for the distribution of large volumes of queries across multiple accounts and services, making it difficult for model providers to detect the operations.

The NSA, FBI, and CISA classify these practices as "adversarial distillation," stating that they enable Chinese companies to acquire the capabilities of U.S. frontier models without bearing the full costs associated with the original training.

The agencies add that these operations took place "likely with the knowledge of the Chinese government." This phrasing reflects an assessment by U.S. authorities rather than an independently proven fact.

Beijing has rejected the accusations. According to Reuters, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that the country's progress in artificial intelligence stems from its own scientific and technological capabilities and accused Washington of making baseless claims.

Model distillation is a legitimate AI technique...AI model distillation is not, in itself, an illicit practice. It is a machine learning technique that allows knowledge to be transferred from a more capable model to another system—usually one that is smaller or more efficient.

The "student" model learns from the responses or distributions produced by the "teacher" model, which can reduce the resources needed to achieve specific capabilities. TecheNet has previously explained how AI model distillation works and what its main applications are.

The NSA itself distinguishes between legitimate use of the technique and operations it classifies as "adversarial distillation." The accusation, therefore, focuses not on the existence of distillation itself, but on the manner in which US models were allegedly queried on a large scale—using methods designed to bypass access restrictions and protection mechanisms.

OpenAI presented a similar distinction in a document submitted to the US Congress. The company stated it had identified accounts linked to DeepSeek that sought to bypass access restrictions, use intermediaries to mask the origin of requests, and programmatically gather responses from its models.

Some of the allegations now compiled by US authorities had already been made public by companies in the sector.

In February, Anthropic accused DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax of conducting distillation campaigns against Claude. According to the company, the three labs generated over 16 million interactions using approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

These were Anthropic's accusations against DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax—marking one of the first instances where a major US lab presented figures regarding the scale of the alleged operations. According to data published by Anthropic, MiniMax was reportedly responsible for over 13 million interactions, Moonshot for approximately 3.4 million, and DeepSeek for more than 150,000.

Anthropic stated that it linked the campaigns to the respective laboratories using IP addresses, request metadata, infrastructure indicators, and information obtained from other industry players. However, these findings come from the company itself—an entity that is simultaneously one of the alleged targets and a competitor to the Chinese laboratories.

OpenAI also pointed to activity by DeepSeek...OpenAI had previously made similar allegations. In a report submitted to a U.S. House of Representatives committee, the company stated it had observed activity associated with DeepSeek consistent with what it classified as adversarial distillation.

According to OpenAI, they detected accounts linked to employees of the Chinese company, access via intermediaries masking the origin of requests, and tools designed to automatically gather responses from U.S. models.

These earlier allegations are significant because they show that the new federal advisory is not the first time these suspicions have been raised. The new element lies primarily in the formal, joint nature of the accusations made by the NSA, FBI, and CISA, the identification of six specific companies, and the characterization of the activity as part of a larger-scale campaign.

The joint advisory from the three agencies places model distillation within a broader national security context. U.S. authorities argue that accessing the capabilities of frontier models could reduce some of the computational, financial, and energy costs required to develop competing systems.

Washington also links the development of advanced models in China to potential military and cybersecurity applications. This connection is part of the U.S. strategic assessment and does not, in itself, prove that the described distillation operations directly resulted in such capabilities.

The release also comes at a time of dialogue between Washington and Beijing regarding artificial intelligence. According to Reuters, the United States and China were preparing for bilateral talks on AI safety for mid-September.

The difference compared to previous accusations lies, therefore, less in the existence of distillation itself and more in the institutional status and scope of the accusation. What began with allegations from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI—and progressed to a U.S. diplomatic warning in April—has now culminated in a joint advisory from the NSA, FBI, and CISA that identifies six Chinese companies and describes the activity as a systematic, industrial-scale campaign.

mundophone

DOSSIER

TECH

Google Ads: Two lawsuits, one pattern—Monopoly without structural punishment

After years of litigation and two antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Google has managed to keep its digital advertising empire intact. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, of the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled this week that the company does not need to sell off its ad operations. Instead, it will be required to adjust its business practices to foster competition.

The outcome might look like a victory for the tech giant—and that is exactly how the company is publicly framing it. However, the ruling carries deeper implications for the online advertising ecosystem and the future of tech regulation in the United States.

The U.S. government filed two separate lawsuits against Google. The first, in 2020, focused on the company's dominance in search. The second, in 2023, specifically targeted its ad-tech business. In both cases, courts concluded that Google had illegally exercised monopoly power.

In 2024, a court ruled that the search operation and its associated ads constituted an illegal monopoly. The Department of Justice had even suggested that Google sell off the Chrome browser and the Android operating system. Judge Amit Mehta rejected that proposal in September 2025, allowing the company to retain both products. He did, however, order Google to terminate exclusivity agreements for default placements on devices and to share search data with competitors.

Now, the second case has followed the same script. Judge Brinkema acknowledged the illegal conduct but opted for operational remedies rather than structural ones. In practical terms, Google keeps all its pieces on the board; it simply needs to move some of them differently.

The ruling does not yet provide specific details on the changes Google will have to implement. The full text of the decision will remain under seal for 14 days, a period during which the parties can make necessary redactions. This means the market is still operating in the dark regarding the true scope of the new rules.

The online advertising ecosystem is notoriously opaque. Google dominates virtually the entire chain: from the tools publishers use to sell ad space to the systems advertisers use to buy it, as well as the platform connecting both sides. This vertical integration was precisely the focus of the government's accusations.

To put the scale in perspective: Google’s advertising revenue exceeded $237 billion in 2024, according to Alphabet’s data. This business accounts for more than 75% of the company's total revenue. Any adjustment to the rules of the game—even without a breakup—has the potential to redistribute billions within the ad market. As we have analyzed in articles regarding the regulatory impact on Big Tech, such decisions tend to reverberate throughout the entire sector.

Why US courts avoid breakups...The pattern emerging from these two cases is revealing. Courts are willing to declare monopolies illegal but shy away from dismantling the companies. This happens for both practical and political reasons.

On the practical side, separating integrated operations like Google’s would create immense technical challenges and could harm small advertisers who rely on the simplicity of the unified ecosystem. Google’s own defense team leveraged this argument: Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, stated that the decision protects "tools that help small businesses reach new customers."

On the political side, the Trump administration has historically signaled ambiguous stances regarding Big Tech regulation. Although the lawsuits were initiated under previous administrations, the appetite for enforcing aggressive remedies—such as breakups—appears limited. The prevailing trend is toward imposing behavioral changes rather than structural ones, a pattern we have already observed in other cases involving major technology companies.

For those following the technology sector, the message is clear: the risk of a Google breakup is off the table, at least in the short term. Alphabet shares are likely to respond positively to this reduction in regulatory uncertainty.

However, the situation is not entirely comfortable for the company. Once detailed, operational changes could open the door for competitors like The Trade Desk, Microsoft, and Amazon to gain market share in advertising. Smaller ad-tech companies could also benefit if Google is forced to open up parts of its infrastructure.

For the Brazilian market—where Google accounts for over 90% of searches, according to StatCounter data—the impact could be indirect yet significant. Changes to data and exclusivity policies in the US tend to be replicated globally. As we have previously explored in analyses regarding the impact of international regulations on emerging markets, decisions made in US courts often reshape the competitive landscape worldwide.

In short: Google has retained its structure but lost the narrative that there is no problem. Two separate courts have ruled that the company acted illegally. What remains to be seen is whether the imposed remedies will have enough teeth to alter the dynamics of a $600 billion annual market.

A money-printing machine that controls the game...According to the Department of Justice(EUA), websites display more than 13 billion online ads every day. Google holds the top spot in this sector—which reached $676.9 billion, according to 2024 projections by research firm eMarketer.

Of Alphabet’s nearly $260 billion in revenue in 2023, approximately $31.3 billion came from online advertising, according to the company's latest annual report.

U.S. government antitrust lawyers argue that Google—leveraging its position as an intermediary controlling the market from end to end—drives up ad prices while paying less to the websites that display them. According to the lawsuit, Google’s dominance across the technology stack gives it the power to force publishers and advertisers to use its suite of products, thereby generating monopoly profits: Google retains about $36 of every $100 spent on advertising through its tools.

“Website creators earn less, and advertisers pay more, than they would in a market where unfettered competitive pressure could discipline prices and lead to more innovative ad-tech tools—ultimately resulting in higher-quality, lower-cost transactions for market participants.” 

The American giant has imposed its increasingly closed-off tools on the global digital advertising market. It derives the bulk of its profits from its dominant position...and a glaring lack of regulation.

While the name Google remains associated with its search engine, most users know its empire extends far beyond it: Gmail (a dominant messaging service), the video platform YouTube, Android (the operating system powering more than two out of every three smartphones), Maps, the world’s most widely used browser (Chrome), the payment service Google Pay, the Waze app, and so on.

This list of consumer-facing products is expanded by offerings aimed at businesses: Google Cloud, Wing (a drone delivery company), the autonomous driving firm Waymo (formerly Google Car), cybersecurity solutions, etc.

The range of services developed by Alphabet (the parent company encompassing all these entities) reflects a highly diversified digital enterprise built on numerous business lines. However, an examination of the company’s revenue streams reveals it to be, above all, an advertising giant; advertising accounts for 80% of its revenue and thus funds nearly all of Google’s services, including those offered for free.

The online advertising market is worth around $600 billion annually—a far from negligible sum. Google captures more than a third of this total—$220 billion. That figure is four times the value of Renault’s car sales (€52 billion) or nearly eight times the combined sales of Danone’s dairy products (€28 billion).

The global online advertising market operates as a duopoly—or even a triopoly, given the rise of Amazon. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, dominates social media advertising, while Google dominates across other media.

The “walled garden” strategy... A veritable industry has thus developed to implement all these technical solutions. It is estimated that 40% of advertiser spending is captured by these intermediaries.

“Google’s distinctive feature is that, in this market, it offers solutions across the entire value chain—serving both publishers and advertisers,” explains economist Rémi Deveaux. This strong position on third-party sites is coupled with a total monopoly over its own proprietary services.

“For programmatic advertising on third-party sites, Google can leverage tools from other providers, whereas it is much harder for others to leverage Google’s tools,” explains Théophile Megali, a research fellow in management at Paris Dauphine University. “If you want to advertise on YouTube or via Google Search, you must use the company’s own automation tools.”

This strategy—known as the “walled garden” and also seen with Facebook—allows Alphabet to offer “an end-to-end controlled automated purchasing process, enabling it to manage bidding, technical delivery, and audience segmentation, and ultimately to measure audience reach and campaign effectiveness. [...] In doing so, these platforms create a technical environment where data is generated and monetized in an integrated manner, driven by a logic of accumulation,” explains Théophile Megali in an article on the subject.

This results in a form of conflict of interest within the structure of the digital advertising market, as Google serves both the advertiser and the publisher—parties with divergent interests—while orchestrating the timing and space of the sale. All of this takes place amidst significant technical opacity.

“Regarding audience and performance measurement, exchanges between advertisers and platforms rely exclusively on tracking and impact data generated by the platforms themselves—data that cannot be verified by the buyers of the ad space. By ‘policing themselves,’ the platforms effectively act as both judge and jury,” note the authors of the IGF report.

Google was spared a breakup of its advertising business, but the judge ordered changes...The judge's full written decision will remain under seal for 14 days, allowing the parties involved to make necessary redactions. Her conclusion that Google acted illegally in maintaining its ad-tech business dates back to April of last year; this week's ruling addressed only the remedies.

It comes as no surprise that Google interpreted the outcome as a victory. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, told TechCrunch: “We are very pleased that the court rejected the Department of Justice’s proposal for tools to break up [the business], which help small businesses reach new customers and grow.”

The online advertising ecosystem is known for its complexity and opacity, making it difficult for those unfamiliar with its mechanisms to understand. The government's main accusation against Google in the ad-tech case involved the tactics the company used to ensure its search engine was the default on devices worldwide, further strengthening its leadership in the advertising sector.

To achieve this, Google utilized exclusive agreements with device manufacturers, making it the default search engine across a large portion of the mobile market. The government also highlighted that the company entered into revenue-sharing agreements with mobile carriers—deals in which carriers received a share of advertising revenue in exchange for keeping Google as the default, thereby cementing its position as the dominant search engine in the mobile market.

mundophone 

TECH

Europol targets underground banking network linked to drug trafficking

Some of the world's leading underground bankers were targeted in an international law enforcement operation against a sophisticated financial network suspected of financing drug trafficking and laundering money derived from criminal activities worldwide.

At the heart of the investigation lies a structure known as the "Dubai Bank." Despite the name, it is not a conventional banking institution but rather a clandestine network that, according to Europol, provided financial services to criminal organizations.

The network is suspected of having provided the means to finance large drug shipments and subsequently move the proceeds generated from their sale.

This type of underground banking enables the transfer of value between countries via operators who receive and deliver funds in different jurisdictions, bypassing the need for every transaction to go through conventional banking channels. Balances between intermediaries can be settled later through other financial or commercial flows.

For criminal organizations, these operators function as financial service providers: they facilitate payments to suppliers, the movement of money across borders, and the concealment of the origin or destination of proceeds.

The case originated with the seizure of 1.8 tons of cocaine off the Spanish coast. The subsequent financial investigation allowed authorities to look beyond the drug transport chain and identify the operators suspected of moving the money linked to these criminal activities.

According to Europol, the investigation ultimately exposed a network capable of moving illicit funds on an international scale. The European agency describes some of the suspects as being among the major underground bankers identified by authorities—a classification that should be understood as Europol’s own assessment.

The operation also demonstrates a strategy that goes beyond merely arresting those directly responsible for the crimes. Authorities aim to target the services, assets, and infrastructure that allow criminal organizations to continue operating. This same logic was applied in Operation Endgame, where authorities targeted cybercrime infrastructure and identified or froze over €41 million in digital assets.

The investigation, led by the Spanish National Police (*Policía Nacional*) and supported by Europol, resulted in the arrest of 21 suspects for crimes including participation in a criminal organization, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

An operation carried out in Spain on July 22, 2026, resulted in the arrest of 15 suspects. Spanish authorities also issued 19 international arrest warrants for suspects located outside the country. Six of these warrants have already been executed, resulting in four arrests in the United Arab Emirates, one in Egypt, and one in the Netherlands.

Among those detained is a key figure from a major underground banking network known as the "Dubai Bank." Identified by Europol as a high-value target, the suspect is believed to have played a pivotal role in providing financial services to large-scale drug trafficking operations worldwide.

Authorities identified, seized, or froze assets worth approximately €20 million. These included 48 properties valued at over €14 million, luxury vehicles worth more than €1.6 million, and 121 bank accounts with a combined balance of €2.3 million.

Cocaine investigation leads to the money...Operation DRAKKAR stemmed from an investigation into a large cocaine shipment intercepted by the Spanish National Police in February 2021. Officers boarded a vessel in Spanish coastal waters and discovered 1,835 kilograms of cocaine. All nine crew members were arrested. After the crew and the drugs were removed, the vessel was towed to the port of Gijón, Spain. The ship subsequently sank after taking on water due to a leak allegedly caused by the captain.

Investigators later discovered the reason: another 1,650 kilograms of cocaine had been hidden on board. It is suspected that members of the criminal network later entered the sunken ship and retrieved the hidden cargo. It was determined that both cocaine shipments had been loaded in South America in January 2021. The plan was to transfer the drugs on the high seas to speedboats, which would then transport the cocaine to shore in Spain.

The investigation into those responsible for the shipment gradually led investigators to higher levels of the criminal chain. Links were established to other suspected drug trafficking operations worldwide, while financial tracing exposed individuals suspected of financing the shipments and laundering the proceeds of the trafficking.

This eventually led investigators to a sophisticated international financial infrastructure used to provide underground banking services to organized crime.

The “Dubai Bank”... At the heart of the investigation was an underground money transfer network known as the "Dubai Bank." The network is suspected of making large sums of money available to criminal organizations in different countries on very short notice, providing the financial infrastructure needed to fund large drug shipments and move the resulting illicit profits.

Instead of physically transferring cash across borders for each transaction, underground banking networks can move value between jurisdictions through networks of brokers. Payments can be settled via internal accounting and clearing mechanisms, including commercial transactions, companies and their bank accounts, centralized cash management, or transfers of other assets.

The network operated on a commission basis, with fees varying depending on the transaction and other factors.

Investigators also identified the use of tokens to authenticate cash transactions. A unique identifier—often the serial number of a banknote—could be passed along the chain of transfer. Presenting the corresponding identifier upon receipt of the cash allowed the parties involved to verify that the money was being handed over to the intended recipient.

The financial investigation also identified assets suspected of having been acquired with illicit funds, including a luxury property in Ibiza.

Europol support...Europol supported the investigation by facilitating the international exchange of information and providing operational and financial analysis that helped identify key financial intermediaries within the network. Since October 2024, the investigation has also been supported by an Operational Task Force established at Europol.

Europol provided expertise in underground banking systems and asset tracing and recovery. Specialists were deployed to Spain for the day of the operation, where a money laundering expert supported investigators on the ground using a mobile office.

Given the network's global reach, international cooperation was crucial to the investigation. Authorities from the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States—including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—contributed to the investigation.

 

mundophone