Digital CxO

Germany is preparing to develop a national cyberdome to defend against digital attacks in tandem with the deployment of mobile counter-drone teams and increased AI-enabled surveillance. The plan also would allow private companies to shoot down hostile drones to defend themselves. The broad “blueprint” for digital and drone defense comes in the wake of an unsuccessful Aug. 4 drone sabotage attempt at Leipzig Airport. German authorities have named Russia as the culprit.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to subpoena Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison and CEO Mike Sicilia over massive cost overruns and delays plaguing the Department of Veterans Affairs’ electronic health records overhaul. The decision comes after Oracle officials pulled out of a scheduled oversight hearing, citing time constraints and structural disagreements over the panel setup.

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 states sued Amazon on Monday, accusing the company of secretly manipulating its advertising auctions to impose undisclosed surcharges that made businesses pay more than competing bids would otherwise have required. The lawsuit alleges the practices cost Amazon’s roughly 1.2 million U.S. advertising customers more than $20 billion, according to an FTC release. Those customers include more than 500,000 small and midsize businesses.

It’s all about speed now. The race is on to develop a new breed of fast interceptors to counter jet-powered drones that have been impossible to catch. Jet-powered drones are wreaking havoc in Ukrainian skies. More than 2,500 jet-powered drones were launched by Russia against Ukraine in the month of August, according to the Ukrainian government, with the last four days of August seeing a concentration of 800 attacks. That number is up from the 1,500 launched in July.

These days, practically everything in a business is a touchpoint. If it isn’t, it might need to be. This demand drives businesses to look for ways to increase engagement, but not every approach fits the bill. When customers feel like an interactive display isn’t relevant for their needs and preferences, they may stop engaging entirely. The push to introduce greater technology and maintain a high-quality customer experience is a delicate balance calling for the use of the right tools.

So, yeah, a Chinese robot humanoid smashed the 100-meter race record set by the human Usain Bolt in the recently concluded World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. But unlike Usain Bolt, the Tiangong Ultra humanoid didn’t know when to stop. The robot finished the race by crashing into a barrier and had to be stretchered off. This and other robot mishaps produced a highlight reel of chuckles mixed in with images of robot hordes marching straight out of a Star Wars sequel.

Signal65’s PINNACLE benchmark gives technology leaders a new way to apply the production gates in Digital CxO’s No Maintenance Window report: measure completed work, test it against the data the enterprise actually has and price the result that comes out right. Technology leaders have spent the last several years being told that choosing an AI model begins with a leaderboard.

Technology leaders are being asked to introduce a new class of software that can act, not merely answer, while keeping every existing service available, secure and compliant. The winners will not be the companies that deploy the most agents. They will be the ones that turn more experiments into durable production. Every technology leader knows the metaphor: rebuilding the engine while the plane is still flying. Agentic AI makes it literal.

When Marc Andreessen declared in 2011 that “software is eating the world,” he gave the technology industry more than a memorable line. He provided the defining investment thesis for the next decade and a half. Software moved into practically every industry. Retailers became software-powered logistics operations. Banks became software companies with banking licenses. Entertainment, communications, transportation and advertising were reorganized around applications and digital platforms.

Music publishing titans Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a multibillion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence (AI) developer Anthropic, escalating a nationwide legal battle over how AI systems source their training data.