An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration is eliminating a preference for fiber Internet in a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, a change that is expected to reduce spending on the most advanced wired networks while directing more money to Starlink and other non-fiber Internet service providers. One report suggests Starlink could obtain $10 billion to $20 billion under the new rules. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration's handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that "because of the prior Administration's woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment."

The BEAD program was authorized by Congress in November 2021, and the US was finalizing plans to distribute funding before Trump's inauguration. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Commerce Department, developed rules for the program in the Biden era and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory. The program has been on hold since the change in administration, with Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republicans seeking rule changes. In addition to demanding an end to the fiber preference, Cruz wants to kill a requirement that ISPs receiving network-construction subsidies provide cheap broadband to people with low incomes. Cruz also criticized "unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates."

Lutnick's statement yesterday confirmed that the Trump administration will end the fiber preference and replace it with a "tech-neutral" set of rules, and explore additional changes. He said: "Under my leadership, the Commerce Department has launched a rigorous review of the BEAD program. The Department is ripping out the Biden Administration's pointless requirements. It is revamping the BEAD program to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide Internet access for the lowest cost. Additionally, the Department is exploring ways to cut government red tape that slows down infrastructure construction. We will work with states and territories to quickly get rid of the delays and the waste. Thereafter we will move quickly to implementation in order to get households connected." Lutnick said the department's goal is to "deliver high-speed Internet access... efficiently and effectively at the lowest cost to taxpayers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Chipmaker TSMC said that it aims to invest "at least" $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next four years as part of an effort to expand the company's network of semiconductor factories. President Donald Trump announced the news during a press conference Monday. TSMC's cash infusion will fund the construction of several new facilities in Arizona, C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said during the briefing. "We are going to produce many AI chips to support AI progress," Wei said.

TSMC previously pledged to pour $65 billion into U.S.-based fabrication plants and has received up to $6.6 billion in grants from the CHIPS Act, a major Biden administration-era law that sought to boost domestic semiconductor production. The new investment brings TSMC's total investments in the U.S. chip industry to around $165 billion, Trump said in prepared remarks. [...] TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, already has several facilities in the U.S., including a factory in Arizona that began mass production late last year. But the company currently reserves its most sophisticated facilities for its home country of Taiwan.

A malicious PyPi package effectively turned its users' systems "into an illicit network for facilitating bulk music downloads," writes The Hacker News.

Though the package has been removed from PyPI, researchers at security platform Socket.dev say it enabled "coordinated, unauthorized music downloads from Deezer — a popular streaming service founded in France in 2007." Although automslc, which has been downloaded over 100,000 times, purports to offer music automation and metadata retrieval, it covertly bypasses Deezer's access restrictions... The package is designed to log into Deezer, harvest track metadata, request full-length streaming URLs, and download complete audio files in clear violation of Deezer's API terms... [I]t orchestrates a distributed piracy operation by leveraging both user-supplied and hardcoded Deezer credentials to create sessions with Deezer's API. This approach enables full access to track metadata and the decryption tokens required to generate full-length track URLs.

Additionally, the package routinely communicates with a remote server... to update download statuses and submit metadata, thereby centralizing control and allowing the threat actor to monitor and coordinate the distributed downloading operation. In doing so, automslc exposes critical track details — including Deezer IDs, International Standard Recording Codes, track titles, and internal tokens like MD5_ORIGIN (a hash used in generating decryption URLs) — which, when collected en masse, can be used to reassemble full track URLs and facilitate unauthorized downloads...

Even if a user pays for access to the service, the content is licensed, not owned. The automslc package circumvents licensing restrictions by enabling downloads and potential redistribution, which is outside the bounds of fair use...
"The malicious package was initially published in 2019, and its popularity (over 100,000 downloads) indicates wide distribution..."

NBC News reports that Utah could make history as America's first state to ban fluoride in public water systems — even though major medical associations supporting water fluoridation: If signed into law [by the governor], HB0081 would prevent any individual or political subdivision from adding fluoride "to water in or intended for public water systems..." A report published recently in JAMA Pediatrics found a statistically significant association between higher fluoride exposure and lower children's IQ scores — but the researchers did not suggest that fluoride should be removed from drinking water. According to the report's authors, most of the 74 studies they reviewed were low-quality and done in countries other than the United States, such as China, where fluoride levels tend to be much higher, the researchers noted.

An Australian study published last year found no link between early childhood exposure to fluoride and negative cognitive neurodevelopment. Researchers actually found a slightly higher IQ in kids who consistently drank fluoridated water. The levels in Australia are consistent with U.S. recommendations.

Major public health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Dental Association and the CDC — which says drinking fluoridated water keeps teeth strong and reduces cavities — support adding fluoride to water.
The article notes that since 2010 over 150 U.S. towns or counties have voted to keep fluoride out of public water systems or to stop adding it to their water (according to the anti-fluoride group "Fluoride Action Network"). But this week the American Dental Association (representing 159,000 members) urged Utah's governor not to become " the only state to end this preventive health practice that has been in place for over three quarters of a century."

Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

Active since 1995, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (or CPAN) hosts 221,742 Perl modules written by 14,548 authors. This week they announced that the CPAN Security Group "was authorized by the CVE Program as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA)" to assign and manage CVE vulnerability identifications for Perl and CPAN Modules.

"This is great news!" posted Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman on social media, saying the announcement came "Just in time for my talk about this very topic in a few weeks about how all open source projects should be doing this" at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in Napa, California. And Curl creator Daniel Stenberg posted "I'm with Greg Kroah-Hartman on this: all Open Source projects should become CNAs. Or team up with others to do it." (Also posting "Agreed" to the suggestion was Seth Larson, the Python Software Foundation's security developer-in-residence involved in their successful effort to become a CNA in 2023.)

444 CNAs have now partnered with the CVE Program, according to their official web site. The announcement from PerlMonks.org: Years ago, a few people decided during the Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS) that it would be a good idea to join forces, ideas and knowledge and start a group to monitor vulnerabilities in the complete Perl ecosystem from core to the smallest CPAN release. The goal was to follow legislation and CVE reports, and help authors in taking actions on not being vulnerable anymore. That group has grown stable over the past years and is now known as CPANSec.

The group has several focus areas, and one of them is channeling CVE vulnerability issues. In that specific goal, a milestone has been reached: CPANSec has just been authorized as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) for Perl and modules on CPAN

Researchers at George Mason University discovered a vulnerability in Apple's Find My network that allows hackers to silently track any Bluetooth device as if it were an AirTag, without the owner's knowledge. 9to5Mac reports: Although AirTag was designed to change its Bluetooth address based on a cryptographic key, the attackers developed a system that could quickly find keys for Bluetooth addresses. This was made possible by using "hundreds" of GPUs to find a key match. The exploit called "nRootTag" has a frightening success rate of 90% and doesn't require "sophisticated administrator privilege escalation."

In one of the experiments, the researchers were able to track the location of a computer with an accuracy of 10 feet, which allowed them to trace a bicycle moving through the city. In another experiment, they reconstructed a person's flight path by tracking their game console. "While it is scary if your smart lock is hacked, it becomes far more horrifying if the attacker also knows its location. With the attack method we introduced, the attacker can achieve this," said one of the researchers. Apple has acknowledged the George Mason researchers for discovering a Bluetooth exploit in its Find My network but has yet to issue a fix. "For now, they advise users to never allow unnecessary access to the device's Bluetooth when requested by apps, and of course, always keep their device's software updated," reports 9to5Mac.

AT&T and Verizon have successfully completed their first cellphone-to-satellite video calls using AST SpaceMobile's satellites, marking a significant step toward commercial satellite networks. The Verge reports: Verizon has completed its first cellphone-to-satellite video call, while AT&T has completed its first using satellites that will be used as part of a commercial network. [...] Verizon pulled off "a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and the other connected via Verizon's terrestrial network connection," according to a company press release.

In AT&T's case, "AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have successfully completed another video call by satellite to an everyday smartphone over AT&T spectrum," per AT&T's press release. Both phone companies relied on AST's constellation of five BlueBird satellites that were launched last September for the tests. AT&T's initial video call test happened in June 2023.

OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.

"This network consisted of ChatGPT accounts that operated in a time pattern consistent with mainland Chinese business hours, prompted our models in Chinese, and used our tools with a volume and variety consistent with manual prompting, rather than automation," said OpenAI. "The operators used our models to proofread claims that their insights had been sent to Chinese embassies abroad, and to intelligence agents monitoring protests in countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom."

According to Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator with OpenAI, this was the first time the company had uncovered an AI tool of this kind. "Threat actors sometimes give us a glimpse of what they are doing in other parts of the internet because of the way they use our AI models," Nimmo told The New York Times. Much of the code for the surveillance tool appears to have been based on an open-source version of one of Meta's Llama models. The group also appears to have used ChatGPT to generate an end-of-year performance review where it claims to have written phishing emails on behalf of clients in China.

The General Services Administration (GSA) is shutting down its nationwide electric vehicle (EV) chargers, deeming them "not mission critical." The U.S. government agency also plans to offload newly purchased EVs, reversing initiatives from the Biden administration aimed at transitioning the federal vehicle fleet to electric. The Verge reports: The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees' personally owned vehicles.

The official guidance instructing federal workers to begin the process of shutting down the chargers will be announced internally next week, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. Some regional offices have been told to start taking their chargers offline, according to an email viewed by The Verge. "As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical," the email reads.

The GSA is working on the timing of canceling current network contracts that keep the EV chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, the stations will be taken out of service and "turned off at the breaker," the email reads. Other chargers will be turned off starting next week. "Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they're out of service," it concludes.

The Canadian government has launched a six-year, $3.9 billion design phase for a high-speed rail project connecting Toronto and Quebec City, with electric trains reaching up to 300 km/h. Construction is expected to begin after the design phase, potentially in four to five years, but future governments could modify or cancel the project. CBC News reports: "Today I'm announcing the launch of Alto, the largest infrastructure project in Canadian history," Trudeau said from Montreal. "A reliable, efficient, high-speed rail network will be a game-changer for Canadians." Trudeau said the new rail network will run all-electric trains along 1,000 kilometers of track, reaching speeds of up to 300 km/hour, with stops in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec City. A government statement said the project will stimulate the economy, "boosting GDP by up to $35 billion annually, creating over 51,000 good-paying jobs during construction."

Trudeau said that once built, the new high-speed rail network will take passengers from Montreal to Toronto in three hours -- about half the time it takes to drive and at double the speed of Via Rail's current trains. [...] Trudeau said the consortium Cadence -- made up of CDPQ Infra, Atkins Realis, Keolis, SYSTRA, SNCF Voyageurs and Air Canada -- was selected to build the line. The group was only informed in the last 24 hours that their bid was the best of the three submitted, according to sources that spoke to Radio-Canada. Transport Minister Anita Anand said that Alto, the Crown corporation created to oversee the project, and Cadence will be signing a contract "in the coming weeks" that will outline the first-phase design work, such as where track will be laid and where stations will be built.

A recently patched Palo Alto Networks vulnerability (CVE-2025-0108) is being actively exploited alongside two older flaws (CVE-2024-9474 and CVE-2025-0111), allowing attackers to gain root access to unpatched firewalls. The Register reports: This story starts with CVE-2024-9474, a 6.9-rated privilege escalation vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software that allowed an OS administrator with access to the management web interface to perform actions on the firewall with root privileges. The company patched it in November 2024. Dark web intelligence services vendor Searchlight Cyber's Assetnote team investigated the patch for CVE-2024-9474 and found another authentication bypass.

Palo Alto (PAN) last week fixed that problem, CVE-2025-0108, and rated it a highest urgency patch as the 8.8/10 flaw addressed an access control issue in PAN-OS's web management interface that allowed an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the management web interface to bypass authentication "and invoke certain PHP scripts." Those scripts could "negatively impact integrity and confidentiality of PAN-OS."

The third flaw is CVE-2025-0111 a 7.1-rated mess also patched last week to stop authenticated attackers with network access to PAN-OS machines using their web interface to read files accessible to the "nobody" user. On Tuesday, US time, Palo A lot updated its advisory for CVE-2025-0108 with news that it's observed exploit attempts chaining CVE-2024-9474 and CVE-2025-0111 on unpatched and unsecured PAN-OS web management interfaces. The vendor's not explained how the three flaws are chained but we understand doing so allows an attacker to gain more powerful privileges and gain full root access to the firewall. PAN is urging users to upgrade their PAN-OS operating systems to versions 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, 11.1, and 11.2. A general hotfix is expected by Thursday or sooner, notes the Register.

Meta's WhatsApp messaging service has surpassed 45 million users, earning the designation of a "Very Large Online Platform" under the EU's Digital Services Act. Bloomberg reports: WhatsApp's open channels, which are feeds affiliated with news outlets or public figures that under the DSA are comparable to a social network, averaged about 46.8 million monthly average users in the second half of 2024, Meta said in a filing on Feb. 14 that hasn't previously been reported. [...] The DSA content moderation rulebook imposes stricter requirements on very large online platforms, defined as those whose EU-based monthly active users exceed 45 million. Users of WhatsApp's core messaging feature do not count toward the designation under the DSA.

The commission would still need to rule that WhatsApp should be included in the more regulated tier. Under the DSA, very large online platforms must carry out risk assessments on the spread of illegal or harmful content, and put in place a mitigation strategy. Fines under the DSA can reach as much as 6% of a company's annual global sales. The DSA requires platforms to disclose user numbers every six months. Messaging service Telegram also published an update this week, saying that monthly EU users of its public channels are "significantly fewer than 45 million."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice, and to put a communications satellite on lunar orbit. But the mission will also bring something that's never been installed on the moon or anywhere else in space before -- a fully functional 4G cellular network.

Point-to-point radio communications, which need a clear line of sight between transmitting and receiving antennas, have always been a backbone of both surface communications and the link back to Earth, starting with the Apollo program. Using point-to-point radio in space wasn't much of an issue in the past because there never have been that many points to connect. Usually, it was just a single spacecraft, a lander, or a rover talking to Earth. And they didn't need to send much data either. "They were based on [ultra high frequency] or [very high frequency] technologies connecting a small number of devices with relatively low data throughput," says Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, which was contracted by NASA to design a cellular network for the moon back in 2020.

An anonymous reader shares a report: JPMorgan Chase Bank (Chase) will soon start blocking Zelle payments to social media contacts to combat a significant rise in online scams utilizing the service for fraud.

Zelle is a highly popular digital payments network that allows users to transfer money quickly and securely between bank accounts. It is also integrated into the mobile apps of many banks in the United States, allowing for almost instant transfers without requiring cash or checks but lacking one crucial feature: purchase protection.

"Meta is involved in a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, a claim the company disputes..." writes the tech news site Hot Hardware.

But the site adds that newly unsealed court documents "reveal that Meta allegedly used a minimum of 81.7TB of illegally torrented data sourced from shadow libraries to train its AI models." Internal emails further show that Meta employees expressed concerns about this practice. Some employees voiced strong ethical objections, with one noting that using content from sites like LibGen, known for distributing copyrighted material, would be unethical. A research engineer with Meta, Nikolay Bashlykov, also noted that "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right," highlighting his discomfort surrounding the practice.

Additionally, the documents suggest that these concerns, including discussions about using data from LibGen, reached CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who may have ultimately approved the activity. Furthermore, the documents showed that despite these misgivings, employees discussed using VPNs to mask Meta's IP address to create anonymity, enabling them to download and share torrented data without it being easily traced back to the company's network.

Leveraging AI tools like RFDiffusion and PLACER, researchers were able to design a novel enzyme capable of breaking down plastic by targeting ester bonds, a key component in polyester. Ars Technica reports: The researchers started out by using the standard tools they developed to handle protein design, including an AI tool named RFDiffusion, which uses a random seed to generate a variety of protein backgrounds. In this case, the researchers asked RFDiffusion to match the average positions of the amino acids in a family of ester-breaking enzymes. The results were fed to another neural network, which chose the amino acids such that they'd form a pocket that would hold an ester that breaks down into a fluorescent molecule so they could follow the enzyme's activity using its glow.

Of the 129 proteins designed by this software, only two of them resulted in any fluorescence. So the team decided they needed yet another AI. Called PLACER, the software was trained by taking all the known structures of proteins latched on to small molecules and randomizing some of their structure, forcing the AI to learn how to shift things back into a functional state (making it a generative AI). The hope was that PLACER would be trained to capture some of the structural details that allow enzymes to adopt more than one specific configuration over the course of the reaction they were catalyzing. And it worked. Repeating the same process with an added PLACER screening step boosted the number of enzymes with catalytic activity by over three-fold.

Unfortunately, all of these enzymes stalled after a single reaction. It turns out they were much better at cleaving the ester, but they left one part of it chemically bonded to the enzyme. In other words, the enzymes acted like part of the reaction, not a catalyst. So the researchers started using PLACER to screen for structures that could adopt a key intermediate state of the reaction. This produced a much higher rate of reactive enzymes (18 percent of them cleaved the ester bond), and two -- named "super" and "win" -- could actually cycle through multiple rounds of reactions. The team had finally made an enzyme.

By adding additional rounds alternating between structure suggestions using RFDiffusion and screening using PLACER, the team saw the frequency of functional enzymes increase and eventually designed one that had an activity similar to some produced by actual living things. They also showed they could use the same process to design an esterase capable of digesting the bonds in PET, a common plastic. The research has been published in the journal Science.

Meta unveiled on Friday Project Waterworth, a 50,000-kilometer subsea cable network that will be the world's longest such system. The multi-billion dollar project will connect the U.S., Brazil, India, South Africa, and other key regions. The system utilizes 24 fiber pairs and introduces what Meta describes as "first-of-its-kind routing" that maximizes cable placement in deep water at depths up to 7,000 meters.

The company developed new burial techniques for high-risk areas near coasts to protect against ship anchors and other hazards. A joint statement from President Trump and Prime Minister Modi confirmed India's role in maintaining and financing portions of the undersea cables in the Indian Ocean using "trusted vendors." According to telecom analysts Telegeography, Meta currently has ownership stakes in 16 subsea networks, including the 2Africa cable system that encircles the African continent. This new project would be Meta's first wholly owned global cable system.

Most corporate tech leaders are hesitant to deploy AI agents despite vendors' push for rapid adoption, according to a Wall Street Journal CIO Network Summit poll on Tuesday. While 61% of attendees at the Menlo Park summit said they are experimenting with AI agents, which perform automated tasks, 21% reported no usage at all.

Reliability concerns and cybersecurity risks remain key barriers, with 29% citing data privacy as their primary concern. OpenAI, Microsoft and Sierra are urging businesses not to wait for the technology to be perfected. "Accept that it is imperfect," said Bret Taylor, Sierra CEO and OpenAI chairman. "Rather than say, 'Will AI do something wrong', say, 'When it does something wrong, what are the operational mitigations that we've put in place?'" Three-quarters of the polled executives said AI currently delivers minimal value for their investments. Some companies are "having hammers looking for nails," said Jim Siders, Palantir's chief information officer, describing firms that purchase AI solutions before identifying clear use cases.

The US, UK, and Australia (AUKUS) have sanctioned Russian bulletproof hosting provider Zservers, accusing it of supporting LockBit ransomware operations by providing secure infrastructure for cybercriminals. The sanctions target Zservers, its UK front company XHOST Internet Solutions, and six individuals linked to its operations. The Register reports: Headquartered in Barnaul, Russia, Zservers provided BPH services to a number of LockBit affiliates, the three nations said today. On numerous occasions, affiliates purchased servers from the company to support ransomware attacks. The trio said the link between Zservers and LockBit was established as early as 2022, when Canadian law enforcement searched a known LockBit affiliate and found evidence they had purchased infrastructure tooling almost certainly used to host chatrooms with ransomware victims.

"Ransomware actors and other cybercriminals rely on third-party network service providers like Zservers to enable their attacks on US and international critical infrastructure," said Bradley T Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. "Today's trilateral action with Australia and the United Kingdom underscores our collective resolve to disrupt all aspects of this criminal ecosystem, wherever located, to protect our national security." The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said additionally that the UK front company for Zservers, XHOST Internet Solutions, was also included in its sanctions list. According to Companies House, the UK arm was incorporated on January 31, 2022, although the original service was established in 2011 and operated in both Russia and the Netherlands. Anyone found to have business dealings with either entity can face criminal and civil charges under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018.

The UK led the way with sanctions, placing six individuals and the two entities on its list, while the US only placed two of the individuals -- both alleged Zservers admins -- on its equivalent. Alexander Igorevich Mishin and Aleksandr Sergeyevich Bolshakov, both 30 years old, were named by the US as the operation's heads. Mishin was said to have marketed Zservers to LockBit and other ransomware groups, managing the associated cryptocurrency transactions. Both he and Bolshakov responded to a complaint from a Lebanese company in 2023 and shut down an IP address used in a LockBit attack. The US said, however, it was possible that the pair set up a replacement IP address that LockBit could carry on using, while telling the Lebanese company that they complied with its request. The UK further sanctioned Ilya Vladimirovich Sidorov, Dmitry Konstantinovich Bolshakov (no mention of whether he is any relation to Aleksandr), Igor Vladimirovich Odintsov, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Ananev. Other than that they were Zservers employees and thus were directly or indirectly involved in attempting to inflict economic loss to the country, not much was said about either of their roles.

The US company v-Fluence secretly compiled profiles on over 500 food and environmental health advocates, scientists, and politicians in a private web portal to discredit critics of pesticides and GM crops. Following public backlash and corporate cancellations after its actions were revealed by the Guardian, the company announced it was shutting down the profiling service. The Guardian reports: The profiles -- part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars -- often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children. They were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world's largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others.

The profiling was one element of a push to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. Lighthouse collaborated with the Guardian, the New Lede, Le Monde, Africa Uncensored, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other international media partners on the September 2024 publication of the investigation. News of the profiling and the private web portal sparked outrage and threats of litigation by some of the people and organizations profiled. [...]

v-Fluence says it not only has eliminated the profiling, but also has made "significant staff cuts" after the public exposure, according to Jay Byrne, the former Monsanto public relations executive who founded and heads the company. Byrne blamed the company's struggles on "rising costs from continued litigator and activist harassment of our staff, partners, and clients with threats and misrepresentations." He said the articles published about the company's profiling and private web portal were part of a "smear campaign" which was based on "false and misleading misrepresentations" that were "not supported by any facts or evidence." Adding to the company's troubles, several corporate backers and industry organizations have cancelled contracts with v-Fluence, according a post in a publication for agriculture professionals.