Plus: Cisco discloses a zero-day with no available patch, Venezuela accuses the US of a cyberattack, and more. Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED this week show that United States Customs and Border Protection is transitioning from testing small drones to using them as standard surveillance tools, a move that will further expand CBP's already extensive dragnet that in some cases extends far beyond US land borders. Meanwhile, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to incorporate a broad cybersecurity contract that will include expanding employee surveillance and monitoring . The move comes as the US government is escalating leak investigations and condemning internal dissent. The Chinese-language artificial intelligence app Haotian can be used to create "nearly perfect" face swaps during live video chats, and it is a favorite tool of Southeast Asian scammers.

The names of two partial owners of firms linked to the Salt Typhoon hacker group also appeared in records for a Cisco training program--years before the group targeted Cisco's devices in a spy campaign. Cisco's Networking Academy, a global training program designed to educate IT students in the basics of IT networks and cybersecurity, proudly touts its accessibility to participants around the world: "We believe education can be the ultimate equalizer, enabling anyone, regardless of background, to develop expertise and shape their destiny in a digital era," reads the first line on its website. That laudable statement, however, reads a bit differently when the "destiny" of those students appears to be owning a majority stake in companies linked to one of the most successful Chinese state-sponsored hacking operations ever to target the West--and many of Cisco's own products . That's the surprising conclusion of Dakota Cary, a researcher at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne and the Atlantic Council, who, like many security analysts, has closely tracked the Chinese state-sponsored hacker group known as Salt Typhoon . That cyberespionage group gained notoriety last year when it was revealed that the hackers had penetrated at least nine telecom companies and gained the ability to spy on Americans' real-time calls and texts, specifically targeting then-presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance, among many others.

Generative AI is making it even easier for attackers to exploit old and often forgotten network equipment. Replacing it takes investment, but Cisco is making the case that it's worth it. Aging digital infrastructure equipment like routers, network switches, and network-attached storage--has long posed a silent risk to organizations. In the short term, it's cheaper and easier to just leave those boxes running in a forgotten closet. But this infrastructure may have old, insecure configurations, and legacy tech is often no longer supported by vendors for software patches and other protections.

A swath of US technology firms announced deals in the Middle East as Donald Trump trumpeted 600bn in commitments from Saudi Arabia to American artificial intelligence companies during a tour of Gulf states. Among the biggest deals was a set signed by Nvidia. The company will sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia, with a first tranche of 18,000 of its newest "Blackwell" chips going to Humain, Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth-fund-owned AI startup, Reuters reported. Cisco on Tuesday said it had signed a deal with G42, the AI firm based in the United Arab Emirates, to help the company develop that country's AI sector. Trump plans to visit the UAE on Thursday.

"It might be the best time for any kind of business in any industry to raise money for all of history, like since the time of the ancient Egyptians," an excitable Stuart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, told Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times in 2015. While interest rates remained close to zero, venture capital funds raised more money than ever and exited their investments at some of the highest valuations ever witnessed. The glory days of VC are over, and if history is any guide, the tech bust should last through 2024 and beyond. In other words, the venture capital bust has only just started. Ultralow interest rates benefited venture capital in a number of ways.

Speech recognition company Voiceitt has announced it's integrating its technology into Webex Meetings. Building on Webex's existing live translations, Voiceitt's AI establishes and transcribes what people with non-standard speech are saying on calls. Its machine learning technology works by familiarizing itself with a person's speech patterns to better understand what they want to communicate, predicting phrases and elaborating on user-chosen shortcuts. Voiceitt is available as a standalone app, but the new partnership means Webex Meetings will have a chat bar pop up with live transcriptions. "The integration with Webex is game-changing because it creates more independence for users with disabilities, while increasing the potential for more collaborative, inclusive work environments," Sara Smolley, co-founder and vice president of strategic partnerships at Voiceitt, said in a statement.

Cisco is introducing a suite of generative artificial intelligence-driven features in its Webex video conferencing platform, from meeting summaries to visual enhancements. These features are aimed at both customer communications and hybrid working end users. The company joins enterprises like Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Google in adding generative AI capabilities to its service. The new upgrades to Webex include AI-powered audio, video, natural language understanding and analytics enhancements. According to customer relationship management data company Datanyze, Zoom is the market leader in video conferencing, with 72.61% market share and more than 176,757 companies using it.

Consumers support artificial intelligence but worry about how businesses use the technology, according to a new survey, with well over half of respondents reporting they have lost trust in organisations due to their use of AI. The data was revealed in Cisco's 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey, an annual global review of consumers' perceptions and behaviours on data privacy. This year's survey highlights the need for further transparency as consumers say their top priority is for organisations to be more transparent on how they use their personal data. Cisco's survey also showed that while consumers are supportive of AI (with 54% willing to share their anonymised data to improve AI products), 65% have lost trust in organisations due to their use of AI. "Organisations need to explain their data practices in simple terms and make them readily available so that customers and users can understand what is going on with their data. It is not just legally required; trust depends on it," says Harvey Jang, Cisco Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer.

Wish your network could predict its own problems and fix them automatically? Cisco believes it has the technology you need. The networking tech giant announced today what it said is the culmination of two years of work: an analytics engine that can predict network issues before they happen, and with enough integration and training even fix problems itself, Cisco said. Citing data from an in-house study, Cisco said that 45 percent of IT leaders it surveyed cited responding to disruptions as their biggest networking challenge of 2021. Predictive analytics technology, coupled with "enormous amounts of historical [networking] data," is a potential solution, Cisco said.

There is no doubt that connected devices and technologies are transforming how humans and machines work together in places like operating rooms, factories, and roadways/intersections. Increasingly, AVs (autonomous vehicles) paired with smarter infrastructure is paving the way for safer roadways, which leads to fewer transportation-related fatalities. According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous vehicle market will reach $2,161.79 billion by 2030, up from $76.13 billion in 2020 and representing a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 40.1% between 2021 and 2030. Part of this market growth will be thanks to advancements in cellular technologies. Last week, Cisco and Verizon announced a successful POC (proof-of-concept) demo in Las Vegas that will help bring applications like robotaxis and autonomous delivery bots to more people and more places in the near future.