In October cryptologist/CS professor Daniel J. Bernstein alleged that America's National Security Agency (and its UK counterpart GCHQ) were attempting to influence NIST to adopt weaker post-quantum cryptography standards without a "hybrid" approach that would've also included pre-quantum ECC. Bernstein is of the opinion that "Given how many post-quantum proposals have been broken and the continuing flood of side-channel attacks, any competent engineering evaluation will conclude that the best way to deploy post-quantum [PQ] encryption for TLS, and for the Internet more broadly, is as double encryption: post-quantum cryptography on top of ECC." But he says he's seen it playing out differently: By 2013, NSA had a quarter-billion-dollar-a-year budget to "covertly influence and/or overtly leverage" systems to "make the systems in question exploitable"; in particular, to "influence policies, standards and specification for commercial public key technologies". NSA is quietly using stronger cryptography for the data it cares about, but meanwhile is spending money to promote a market for weakened cryptography, the same way that it successfully created decades of security failures by building up the market for, e.g., 40-bit RC4 and 512-bit RSA and Dual EC. I looked concretely at what was happening in IETF's TLS working group, compared to the consensus requirements for standards-development organizations. I reviewed how a call for "adoption" of an NSA-driven specification produced a variety of objections that weren't handled properly. ("Adoption" is a preliminary step before IETF standardization....) On 5 November 2025, the chairs issued "last call" for objections to publication of the document. The deadline for input is "2025-11-26", this coming Wednesday. Bernstein also shares concerns about how the Internet Engineering Task Force is handling the discussion, and argues that the document is even "out of scope" for the IETF TLS working group This document doesn't serve any of the official goals in the TLS working group charter. Most importantly, this document is directly contrary to the "improve security" goal, so it would violate the charter even if it contributed to another goal... Half of the PQ proposals submitted to NIST in 2017 have been broken already... often with attacks having sufficiently low cost to demonstrate on readily available computer equipment. Further PQ software has been broken by implementation issues such as side-channel attacks. He's also concerned about how that discussion is being handled: On 17 October 2025, they posted a "Notice of Moderation for Postings by D. J. Bernstein" saying that they would "moderate the postings of D. J. Bernstein for 30 days due to disruptive behavior effective immediately" and specifically that my postings "will be held for moderation and after confirmation by the TLS Chairs of being on topic and not disruptive, will be released to the list"... I didn't send anything to the IETF TLS mailing list for 30 days after that. Yesterday [November 22nd] I finished writing up my new objection and sent that in. And, gee, after more than 24 hours it still hasn't appeared... Presumably the chairs "forgot" to flip the censorship button off after 30 days. Thanks to alanw (Slashdot reader #1,822) for spotting the blog posts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s long been known that X (and Twitter before it) is a major venue for foreign influence campaigns to meddle in American politics. Much of the focus has been on Russian troll farms, which the US government has targeted on several occasions. But the launch of X’s About This Account feature may have revealed the scope and geographical breadth of its foreign troll problem.

Almost immediately after the feature launched, people started noticing that many rage-bait accounts focused on US politics appeared to be based outside of the US. Profiles with names like ULTRAMAGA🇺🇸TRUMP🇺🇸2028 were revealed to be based in Nigeria. A verified account posing as border czar Tom Homan was traced to Eastern Europe. And America_First0? Apparently from Bangladesh. An entire network of “Trump-supporting independent women” claiming to be from America was really located in Thailand. 

Threads quickly started growing, collecting all the pro-MAGA trolls that claimed to be American, but were really foreign actors from every corner of the globe. Some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be. In no time at all, X was flooded with people calling out the seemingly endless list of fake and troll accounts focused on stoking political anger. 

Shortly after the feature launched, X removed information about where accounts were created. And disclaimers were placed on locations for where accounts were based, noting that travel, VPNs, and proxies could lead to inaccurate data. This is certainly true for some accounts, however, it’s extremely unlikely to be true for even a majority of those being called out.

Some of these troll accounts are likely state-sponsored influence campaigns. Foreign entities like Russia and China have a vested interest in sowing chaos in the American political system. But it’s also likely that many are driven by monetary gain. While earnings from monetization on X can be paltry by Western standards, it can be life-changing in developing nations.

Yesterday X started rolling out a new About This Account feature, which included what country the account was created from and what country the account is “based” in (which is different from “connected via”). Head of product at X, Nikita Bier, was quick to say that there were “a few rough edges,” but promised they’d be resolved by Tuesday. 

There have definitely been complaints about inaccuracies. The company even ended up removing information about where an account was created, saying the data “was not 100 percent,” especially for older accounts. 

The reaction from users on X was, of course, totally level-headed. They immediately recognized that the data was flawed and definitely didn’t spend the last 24 hours trying to score political points.

Just kidding. 

People on X have done almost nothing but shout that accounts they disagree with are actually foreign operatives. Even users who have publicly complained that the information on their own profile was inaccurate continued on to make bad-faith posts about how their political opponents were running a foreign psyop. 

The inaccurate data could have several causes. People who travel, or outlets with staff scattered around the globe, might appear to be “based” somewhere other than where they actually are, at least temporarily. If someone uses a VPN, it could affect where X shows their location. Some of it could just be old IP addresses. At the time of this writing, Hank Green’s account is listed as being based in Japan, MusicTech (a sister publication to the UK’s NME) is showing as based in the US, and AVID (Massachusetts-based maker of ProTools) is listed as being in Spain.

Of course, there is also a kernel of truth to some of this. Many political rage-bait accounts are not based in the US. We’ve long known that troll farms have been waging a foreign influence campaign on American politics. But some of it is also a financial scheme. Monetization on X is largely driven by engagement, and nothing gets people engaged like riling them up about politics.

If you’ve been watching to the announcements coming out of Microsoft Ignite 2025, there was a pretty big announcement made during the opening keynote for customers that have licensed Microsoft 365 E5:

• Security Copilot capacity is available at NO ADDITIONAL COST for Microsoft 365 E5 licensed customers
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/11/18/agents-built-into-your-workflow-get-security-copilot-with-microsoft-365-e5/?msockid=06377db5fd83631014c06baefce96218

What is Security Copilot?
Security Copilot s a generative AI-powered security solution that helps increase the efficiency and capabilities of defenders to improve security outcomes at machine speed and scale.

Security Copilot provides a natural language, assistive copilot experience. Security Copilot helps support security professionals in various end-to-end scenarios such as incident response, threat hunting, intelligence gathering, posture management, and more. For more information, see Security Copilot primary use cases.

Here’s an explanation of how Security Copilot works:

• User prompts from security products are sent to Security Copilot.
• Security Copilot then preprocesses the input prompt through an approach called grounding, which improves the specificity of the prompt to help you get answers that are relevant and actionable to your prompt. Security Copilot accesses plugins for preprocessing, then sends the modified prompt to the language model.
• Security Copilot takes the response from the language model and post-processes it. This post-processing includes accessing plugins to gain contextualized information.
• Security Copilot returns the response, where the user can review and assess the response.

Security Copilot iteratively processes and orchestrates these sophisticated services to help produce results that are relevant to your organization because they’re contextually based on your organizational data.

Details on the new Security Copilot inclusion in Microsoft 365 E5
For more information on the NEW benefit available from Microsoft 365 E5:

• Microsoft 365 Message Center post:
  MC1187672 – Get ready for security agents: Microsoft Security Copilot will be included in Microsoft 365 E5 | Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive
• Frequently Asked Questions:
  FAQ: Security Copilot inclusion in Microsoft 365 E5 subscription
  It answers:
  • What capacity is included?
  • Is there an example of SCU consumption under current provisioned vs inclusion models?
  • What happens if a customer exceeds the included SCUs?
  • Where can customers track their usage?
  • What capabilities are included?
  • What isn’t covered as part of this inclusion?
  • …
• Tools
  • “Security Compute Unit Calculator” for Security Architects
    The SCU calculator helps estimate your organization’s SCU capacity needs:  Microsoft Security Copilot Security Compute Unit Calculator
  • “Security Copilot Adoption Site” for IT Professionals
    The Adoption site provides scenarios of usage for Security Copilot:  Microsoft Security Copilot – Microsoft Adoption
• Training (FREE)
  • Course SC-5006-A: Enhance security operations by using Microsoft Security Copilot
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/courses/sc-5006
  • How to Become a Microsoft Security Copilot Ninja: The Complete Level 400 Training
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/securitycopilotblog/how-to-become-a-microsoft-security-copilot-ninja-the-complete-level-400-training/4106928

Video Explanation of the Security Copilot for Microsoft 365 E5 offer
As you can imagine, this got a lot of gasps and applause/cheers during the Ignite keynote.  Here’s a 3^rd party video on the new offer from Rio, a Microsoft MVP for Cloud Security:

• RioCloudSync – “Security Copilot Now Included with Microsoft 365 E5″
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdMmxEG9SQ

What about GCC/Microsoft 365 G5 customers?
We are committed to making this available to our G5 licensees as well however an exact timeframe has not been announced.

Introduction C# 14 brings an interesting upgrade to operator overloading: custom types can now define...

Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Nov. 16, 2025.

Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.

Most popular stories on GeekWire

Washington state cities turn off license plate reader cameras amid ruling on data access

The debate stems from the use of cameras made by Flock Safety, and whether the images and data collected are subject to release under Washington’s Public Records Act. … Read More

Jeff Bezos takes co-CEO role at secretive AI startup Project Prometheus

The move represents Bezos’ return to an operational executive role for the first time since stepping down as CEO of Amazon in 2021. … Read More

University of Washington lands $10M from billionaire Charles Simonyi to tackle AI in the classroom

The University of Washington received $10 million from billionaires Charles and Lisa Simonyi to launch an initiative supporting responsible AI in the classroom. … Read More

Amazon meets Goodwill: E-commerce giant tests package returns at thrift stores in Seattle area

It’s the latest step in Amazon’s push to expand its return network beyond the Seattle tech giant’s own brick-and-mortar locations. … Read More

‘We are not going anywhere’: Key Amazon exec reaffirms tech giant’s commitment to Seattle region

The comments by David Zapolsky, Amazon chief global affairs and legal officer, follow years of political disputes in Seattle over taxes and other policies that contributed to Amazon shifting more of its workforce to Bellevue, Wash., and Northern Virginia. … Read More

Zap Energy exceeds Mariana Trench-level pressures in pursuit of limitless clean power

Zap Energy has generated pressure that’s 10 times stronger than the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a new milestone in its race for fusion power. … Read More

PowerLattice, a new semiconductor startup backed by former Intel CEO, raises $25M

PowerLattice says its “power delivery chiplet” can more than halve energy needs while enabling higher chip performance by delivering power directly inside the processor package. … Read More

Amazon’s surprise indie hit: Kiro launches broadly in bid to reshape AI-powered software development

Amazon’s Kiro development tool is launching broadly with new features and a unique branding strategy, as the company pushes deeper into the booming market for AI-assisted software development. … Read More

Startup Radar: Meet 5 new early stage tech companies in Seattle

Seattle founders are hard at work trying to improve space communication, hiring, restaurant marketing, jewelry sustainability, and finding a great bottle of wine. … Read More

New UW President Robert Jones aims to dispel ‘job apocalypse’ fears and prep every grad for an AI future

UW President Robert Jones wants to expand computer science access for undergraduates and build new public-private partnerships to tackle society’s grand challenges. … Read More