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global service outage Archives

Tahawul Tech19 hours ago

The outage began around 1:50 p.m. ET on 12/6/2025 and there were 14,729 reports of Google Cloud being down in the U.S.

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From moonshots to diplomacy: India makes its presence felt
From moonshots to diplomacy: India makes its presence felt

Khaleej Times

time15 hours ago

  • Khaleej Times

From moonshots to diplomacy: India makes its presence felt

As Chandrayaan-3 gently descended onto the uncharted lunar south pole on August 23, 2023, mission control at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) erupted in celebration. But far from the jubilant engineers and the blinking consoles in Bengaluru, the ripples were felt in foreign ministries across the globe — from Washington to Paris, and beyond. India had just become the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon's south pole, joining an elite club of spacefaring nations. The triumph was scientific, but the implications were profoundly strategic. It signalled, unmistakably, that India's space programme is no longer just about rockets and research; it is now a central pillar of its foreign policy. This is space diplomacy, Indian style: pragmatic, purposeful, and increasingly pivotal to New Delhi's global engagement. For long has India's space programme operated in relative isolation, nurtured by strategic autonomy and limited budgets. But in today's multipolar, tech-driven world, space is no longer the final frontier. It is a geopolitical arena. And India is stepping in with intent. India's evolution from a regional space actor to a global scientific and strategic partner is neither accidental nor cosmetic. It reflects a deliberate recalibration of its foreign policy priorities in the 21st century - one where soft power, science, and strategic technology converge. Take, for instance, the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with the United States. During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2023 state visit to Washington, space was a dominant theme. The two countries signed agreements enabling ISRO and NASA to collaborate on joint missions, including the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite in 2024, designed to monitor climate change through high-resolution imagery. This mission, the world's most expensive Earth observation satellite to date at nearly $1.5 billion and weighing close to 3,000 kilos, epitomizes how space cooperation is shaping broader conversations around climate, security, and sustainability. With France, too, India has built one of its most enduring space alliances. For over six decades, the Indo-French space collaboration has ranged from satellite launches to scientific exchange. Today, it extends to joint ventures in Earth observation, maritime surveillance, and even space situational awareness, a reflection of the countries' shared interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The India-Bhutan satellite, jointly developed to enhance remote sensing capabilities in the Himalayan kingdom, is again not just a goodwill gesture but a strategic investment in regional stability, resilience, and trust. What makes India's space diplomacy uniquely effective is its blend of accessibility, credibility, and ambition. Add to it India's affordable launch services and it makes it a win-win for all. The numbers underscore this: Since 1999 until July 2023, ISRO had launched 431 foreign satellites for 34 countries. India's burgeoning private space ecosystem adds another dimension to its diplomatic toolkit. With the liberalisation of the space sector in 2020 and the establishment of Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) to facilitate private participation, several startups are redefining the possibilities of Indian space innovation. As of December 2024, around 330 industries, startups, and MSMEs are associated with IN-SPACe for activities ranging from authorization and data dissemination to technology transfer and access to ISRO facilities. Their agility and cost-efficiency make India an attractive partner not just for state actors but also for global commercial ventures. India's space diplomacy is not merely about prestige. It is about building coalitions of capability, creating a framework for shared technological futures, and asserting strategic autonomy in an interdependent world. By turning space into a conduit for cooperation rather than competition, India is not just launching satellites; it is launching a new era of international engagement.

Will you love your AI twin?
Will you love your AI twin?

Tahawul Tech

time17 hours ago

  • Tahawul Tech

Will you love your AI twin?

Imagine discovering that somewhere in the expanded universe, a version of you solves problems faster, thinks clearer, and never needs coffee. In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, alternate versions of one character collide in unexpected, often uncomfortable ways. As AI becomes more sophisticated, we may soon be working alongside digital twins of ourselves—replicas that mirror our skills and, sometimes, outshine them. In our workplaces, AI is rapidly evolving from a supportive assistant to an autonomous agent—and just over the horizon is the emerging concept of a digital AI twin. With today's agentic AI, systems can independently execute an entire workstream, such as project management, with little need for a human in the loop once the training phase is complete. Tomorrow, it is highly probable that an AI digital twin—an AI-powered replica of your human expertise—will work alongside you. What challenges and opportunities could we face as we are twinned with AI? What relationship will you have with your new work twin—love, hate, envy? What risks and opportunities lie ahead in this never-say-never moment? Drawing on human twin psychology, having a twin can be both a blessing and a burden. Just like a human twin can offer emotional support, your AI twin could act as a reliable workmate, reducing stress and enhancing capabilities such as super-fast logical thinking. On the darker side, it could start to feel like it's taking over—performing better, getting more recognition, even overshadowing you. But is this really possible? Let's dig into the tech side. Where are we now? Autonomous AI agents are already in use across the business world and in our personal lives. Think self-driving cars, advanced fraud detection, drug discovery, and customer service chatbots that actually help. Here's how an agentic AI Help Desk Assistant might work: it could personalize support based on what your company knows about your setup. Say your Teams app crashes every time you try to join a meeting. You submit a help desk ticket before a crucial early morning call. An AI agent receives it, reviews your computer's hardware and software update status, researches recent Microsoft bug fixes, identifies the issue from the IT-approved list, and installs the update. Voila! You no longer have to wait for an IT agent to become available—and the AI could fix the problem faster than a human could. Where could we go in the future? In the next 5–10 years, we're likely to see more sophisticated and general-purpose agentic AI systems that can: · Manage more long-term goals, such as planning and executing projects over weeks or months · Integrate deeply with healthcare providers · Oversee smart home systems with advanced control · Support the broader adoption of self-driving cars. Back to Twinning AI agents will also become more capable collaborators, especially in complex fields such as research, healthcare, and engineering. For instance, scientists could soon rely on agentic AI to autonomously explore datasets, generate hypotheses, and suggest experiments. Google is already experimenting with this via AI co-scientist, a virtual collaborator built with Gemini 2.0. So the question remains—will you love your AI twin? As human twins grow up, they learn values, guardrails, and decision-making frameworks from their families. Who will teach your AI twin what matters to you? Will you consent to share the personal information needed to learn from you? Will our privacy standards expand again? And when you leave your job, will your AI twin come with you, or stay behind? As agentic AI becomes more autonomous, it raises serious questions about accountability, transparency, and ethics. We'll need robust ethical frameworks, explainable AI models, and governance systems to match the technology's growing capability. Agentic AI represents a leap forward—unlocking systems that can operate with greater autonomy, adaptability, and judgment. While today's systems are still relatively narrow in scope, the next decade is likely to bring broader, more general-purpose agents that redefine how we think about and interact with machines and how machines can behave on their own. The time to grapple with these questions is now, so we can balance innovation with ethics and ensure that agentic AI aligns with our values and delivers real benefits to humanity. Authored by Tim Walmsley, Head of Transformation and Change Management, APCO MENA, and Kristy Lapidus, Senior Director AI & Digital Transformation, APCO Gagen MacDonald.

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