A US military helicopter was shot down in Iraq in February 2007 while flying blood to a field hospital, and all seven people on board died. Close to 20 years on, the Pentagon has committed $73 million to an effort meant to keep blood from ever needing that kind of rushed delivery again.
Under the DARPA program, researchers are working to create plasma, platelets and red blood cells that stay stable on the shelf. The idea is to have dried blood products that can be stored for long periods and sent quickly to the battlefield when needed. Blood doesn’t keep for long and is frequently scarce, and the 2007 crash showed the price that moving it can carry.
DARPA’s timeline is aggressive: it wants bags of dried blood products in the field by 2029. I’d treat that date with caution. Big questions remain over whether synthetic alternatives are safe and whether they actually work, and pulling the whole thing off will be hard.
A battery that splits the difference
WeLion New Energy doesn’t think batteries need to go fully solid-state to make the next leap. Its bet is on a halfway point. The Chinese firm makes liquid-solid hybrid cells designed to fit more power into electric cars, boats and drones.
There’s a track record behind the claim. Back in 2023, WeLion and EV-maker Nio launched a battery pack with a range of over 1,000 kilometers. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, the hybrid approach could potentially be safer and offer greater energy density.
The company is now working on cells with even higher energy density. In batteries, though, the lab result is seldom the difficult part. Scaling up production and competing on cost are, and the company still faces major challenges on both.
Your weight-loss drug might be slowing your clock
According to Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, patients taking their GLP-1 drugs age more slowly. That conclusion rests on molecular “aging clocks,” which follow changes in DNA or in the levels of key proteins.
The findings have prompted speculation that GLP-1 drugs may be acting on the underlying causes of aging and could be genuine longevity treatments. Don’t rework your retirement plan just yet. The claims come from the drugmakers, and how much the results really reveal is still an open question.
The same drug class is also being adapted for brain disorders. Fresh GLP-1 trials are going after addiction and depression, while scientists are still figuring out the side effects.
An OpenAI engineer, a $13.99 gadget and the FBI
An OpenAI engineer accused of snooping has been arrested by the FBI. The suspect, a Saudi national, allegedly planted a covert recording device: a camera-and-microphone gadget sold online for $13.99, which was reportedly discovered plugged into a TV’s USB port.
A couple of details are worth noting. He is reported to have used chatbots to plan the covert recording, and OpenAI says its own AI models helped identify the employee. Draw your own conclusions about that loop.
Drones, data centers and China-free supply chains
Russia’s largest data center has been struck by Ukrainian drones, though Sberbank says its systems and services weren’t disrupted. Ukraine’s attacks on data centers have thrown Russia into turmoil, but Russian bot farms have kept on trolling.
Meanwhile, US defense startups are looking to Taiwan to build drones without Chinese parts, with at least 13 joint agreements signed since 2025. The deals come amid growing questions over whether Taiwan’s “silicon shield” is weakening.
In a separate exercise, a war game illustrated how chaotic a solar geoengineering arms race could become. Participants clashed over the rules for dimming the sun, and beyond the politics, the concept faces practical hurdles too.
Tesla, Character.ai and Apple’s Siri bet
Claims that Tesla robotaxis sped through school zones are under review by US regulators. In another story, Tesla’s security features reportedly foiled a federal tracking attempt.
Character.ai has filed for bankruptcy after facing accusations of stealing content and harming kids. Disney has put $20 million on the table for its chatbot tech, and the filings lay bare problems common to AI business models.
Apple is rolling out a new smart-home lineup centered on a revamped Siri. HomeView combines a 7-inch screen with face recognition, while the Home Collection brings cameras, locks and thermostats. Everything runs on Siri AI, which has yet to show it’s smart enough to anchor a product line, something Apple’s assistant has historically struggled with.
The surveillance question nobody has settled
The public dispute between the Department of Defense and Anthropic has surfaced a question that ought to be simple to answer but isn’t: Is the US government legally allowed to carry out mass surveillance on Americans?
More than ten years after Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone metadata, what ordinary people assume and what the law actually permits still don’t line up. AI is now supercharging surveillance while the legal framework lags behind, and the Pentagon’s use of AI has shown just how gray those areas are.
Heading into the midterms, misinformation is the other concern. University of Virginia law professor Danielle Citron said Elon Musk’s ability to amplify conspiracy theories on X could give misinformation unprecedented influence.
Odds and ends
A century-old fossil has turned out to hold a new dinosaur. Invictibellatrix amberina may be Europe’s first megaraptoran. SpaceX’s latest launch created a “space jellyfish” as rocket exhaust fanned out into tentacles high in the atmosphere.
In other news, 22 nations are calling for a new global body to oversee AI. OpenAI has paused some model work over safety concerns, and it has also published 377 new math findings that have further rattled the field. Meta will pay up to $18 billion to settle a landmark child-safety case.
If you need a breather from all of that, pygmy raccoons have taught one another to turn paper and sand into toys. And a tool called Stowaway drops you into the window seat of whichever plane is flying overhead right now. I tried to think of a more productive way to spend your afternoon and came up empty.