AFP

Ukraine has been a very effective proving ground for the use of contemporary information technology in war, from satellite dishes to smartphone apps, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, said Monday.

Schmidt, now a US government consultant on artificial intelligence, told reporters after a 36-hour visit to the country that the civilian tech sector has been crucial to Kyiv’s defense.

The proof came the day after Russian troops invaded on February 24. 

After a long stall, Ukraine’s legislature came together to agree on a crucial step to protect all the government’s data from Russian hackers and strikes.

“In one day, they had a meeting of the parliament and changed that law… they moved all their data from government servers in Kyiv to the cloud,” Schmidt said. 

“The war gave everybody a political excuse to do the right thing,” he said. 

The second crucial move came with US tech billionaire Elon Musk’s donation of access to his Starlink satellite-based broadband system, effectively insulating both the public and Ukrainian military from a Russian assault on telecommunications.

Musk and donors sent in some 20,000 ground terminals with small dish antennas that allowed everyday transmissions as well as helping fighters with targeting data. That stymied a key goal of the Russian attackers.

“Elon Musk is genuinely a hero here,” said Schmidt. “This allowed the strategy of shutting down the internet by the opposition to fail.”

– Field intelligence from citizen apps –

Two apps meanwhile got citizens directly involved, Schmidt said.

A function called “E-Enemy” was added to the popular Diia app used for government services that permitted people to report things such as damage from shelling, or Russian troop sightings.

And an encrypted Swiss chat service called Threema allowed users to send such data to the military without exposing their identities.

The military would get thousands of such reports every day, said Schmidt, and filter them with artificial intelligence programs.

“They would whittle them down to targets using computer intelligence and human intelligence and eventually go after them,” he said.

“So if you think about that, here’s what they had: they had an internet that stayed up, they had their government data protected,” and a way for citizens to give them intelligence information, he said.

Ukraine, long an incubator for programming as well as illegal hacking skills, has a deep IT workforce that has been able to launch cyberattacks against the Russia, breaking into their communications.

The country has also skillfully used biometric and facial recognition techniques to identify Russian troops involved in atrocities, such as the massacre in Bucha early in the war.

In addition, Ukrainian programmers have been skilled in making drones useful in the war.

“I can just report that based on my small amount of data, the Ukrainian tech industry really did make a contribution to the front,” said Schmidt.

President Joe Biden on Monday invoked the national effort to land a man on the Moon 60 years ago in a speech touting his Cancer Moonshot initiative, which aims to slash cancer death rates across the United States by half.

The Democrat was in Boston for an address deliberately echoing John F. Kennedy’s famous 1962 “Moonshot speech” in which he called for landing an American on the lunar surface — something achieved in 1969, after his assassination.

This time, Biden is pushing government-backed efforts to coordinate and fund treatment of cancer, search for cures and generally to prevent the disease through better public health.

Cancer remains the number two cause of death after heart disease and Biden said his Cancer Moonshot can halve death rates over the next 25 years.

“I know we can do this together, because I know this: there’s nothing, nothing, nothing beyond our capacity or ability if we work together as the United States of America,” he said.

Biden said that as in 1962, when the country was in the thick of the Cold War and domestic tensions were high over civil rights, the United States today is at an “inflection point.”

And like Kennedy with his Moon program, Biden said he wanted to set “a national purpose that could rally the American people in a common cause.”

– Backing from JFK’s daughter –

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the assassinated JFK and now US ambassador to Australia, said her father had defied the doubters in the 1960s, when “scientists weren’t sure even that a Moon landing on the surface of the Moon was possible.”

Kennedy, however, “understood the power of the idea” and saw the project as a way to unite the country. “No one embodies that spirit more than President Joe Biden,” she said. “As president, he has restored the soul of America.”

The battle against cancer is personal for Biden: his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 when Biden was vice president to Barack Obama.

Biden noted that cancer “does not discriminate…, it doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat.”

“I give you my word as a Biden: this Cancer Moonshot is one of the reasons why I ran for president.”

The linkage to the Moon program also sought to add to Democratic momentum ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections where the Democrats face the possibility of a Republican sweep in Congress, severely complicating the last two years of Biden’s first term.

– Change the trajectory –

Biden said his plan will push for cures and ways to manage cancer, turning “more cancers from death sentences into chronic diseases that people can live with.”

“We know we can change the trajectory,” he said.

The president said he was harnessing funding but also government expertise in high-tech research similar to the defense industry, where public-private partnerships drive innovations in weaponry and other military needs.

A new agency named Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and the White House’s new “cancer cabinet” will “increase funding to break log jams and to speed breakthroughs,” while getting entrepreneurs support from cutting edge scientists with NASA, the Pentagon and the energy department.

The goal is to “use all the assets we have,” Biden said, and this “may require unusual partnerships.”

– Biotech boost –

Earlier, Biden signed an executive order meant to bolster the trailblazing US biotech sector’s efforts to take on growing commercial rivals in China.

The order brings federal support for “areas that will define US biotechnology leadership and our economic competitiveness in the coming decades,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters.

The official said that while US biotech research leads the world, the industrial applications are increasingly in the hands of other countries.

“Unless we translate biotechnology innovation into economic and societal benefits for all Americans, other countries, including and especially China, are aggressively investing in this sector,” posing a “risk,” the official said.

The White House says the US biotech industry is on the cutting edge of medical advances — recently seen in the rapid development of vaccines, tests and therapeutics to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic — but that the potential scope goes much further.

The official speaking to reporters cited studies suggesting that “before the end of the decade, engineering biology holds the potential to be used in manufacturing industry that accounts for more than one third of global output. That’s equivalent to almost $30 trillion in terms of value.”

Growing areas for biotech industry include new plastics and rubbers, jet fuel, and environmentally friendly fertilizers.

Stock markets rallied Monday, building on last week’s momentum as investors priced in the expectation of further interest rate hikes aimed at taming decades-high inflation.

The euro surged against main rivals, a day after German central bank chief Joachim Nagel signaled that the European Central Bank (ECB) would probably continue raising its key interest rate, an echo of a similar statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday.

Investors worldwide are awaiting key US consumer price data for August, due Tuesday, with the annual inflation pace expected to ease to eight percent — still well above the Fed’s target of two percent.

That will be welcome relief, but is unlikely to be enough to sway the Fed from an expected three-quarter percentage point interest rate hike next week, the third consecutive increase of that size.

The ECB raised its key rate by a historic 75 basis points last week, and markets expect a similar-sized move at the October policy meeting.

Wall Street stocks ended with solid gains Monday — the broad-based S&P 500 advanced 1.1 percent — continuing the upswing last week that snapped a three-week losing streak.

Equities have been volatile of late as speculation about whether the Fed might ease up on its aggressive rate hikes in the near future sparks alternating hopes and fears. 

Fed officials have more or less ended the debate, saying while the increases may become smaller, the benchmark lending rate will not be coming down any time soon.

– Dollar loses ground –

The European single currency rocketed more than 1.4 percent against the dollar and 1.6 percent versus the yen before trimming gains.

The US dollar also fell sharply against the pound sterling and the Swiss franc.

In equities, Frankfurt led the way, closing more than two percent higher, followed by Paris and London not far behind after data showed the British economy rebounded slightly in July.

Tokyo closed with a gain of more than one percent thanks to a weaker yen. Markets in Hong Kong, mainland China and South Korea were closed for a public holiday.

Oil prices gained Monday but remain pressured by the possibility of global demand weakening as growth slows and China’s harsh zero-Covid policy continues to sap economic activity.

– Key figures at around 2100 GMT –

New York – Dow: UP 0.7 percent at 32,381.34 (close)

New York – S&P 500: UP 1.1 percent at 4,110.41 (close)

New York – Nasdaq: UP 1.3 percent at 12,266.41 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 1.7 percent at 7,473.03 points (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: UP 2.4 percent at 13,402.27 points (close)  

Paris – CAC 40: UP 1.95 percent at 6,333.59 points (close)  

EURO STOXX 50: UP 2.1 percent at 3,646.51 points

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.2 percent at 28,542.11 (close) 

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: closed for public holiday

Shanghai – Composite: closed for public holiday

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0120 from $1.0046 

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.1680 from $1.1587 

Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.64 pence from 86.84 pence

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 142.82 yen from 142.56 yen 

Brent North Sea crude: UP 1.24 percent at $94.00 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.14 percent at $87.78. per barrel

An uncrewed Blue Origin rocket carrying research payloads crashed shortly after liftoff from Texas on Monday, but the capsule carrying experiments escaped and floated safely back to Earth.

The incident marked a setback for Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos’ company as well as the space tourism sector, though observers were encouraged by the fact that had people been aboard, they would have likely survived.

Blue Origin tweeted a short video clip showing the moment when the capsule fired emergency thrusters to separate itself from its booster rocket early, around a minute after launching from the company’s base in west Texas.

“Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed,” Blue said on its website, noting the rocket “impacted the ground” instead of landing upright as it normally does. 

The New Shepard suborbital rockets have been grounded pending an investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said, which is standard procedure.

“The capsule landed safely and the booster impacted within the designated hazard area. No injuries or public property damage have been reported,” the FAA added.

It was the 23rd mission for the New Shepard rocket program, named after the first American in space, and the first to end in failure. 

NS-23, which had 36 experiments on board, was first set to launch in late August, but was delayed due to inclement weather.

The anomaly occurred as the rocket was climbing at 700 miles per hour (1,126 kilometers per hour) at an altitude of about 28,000 feet (8,500 meters).  The rocket appeared to stall as it experienced the technical issue.

The capsule then initiated its escape sequence and outsped the booster, which it engulfed in bright yellow flames.

The incident marks a setback for both Blue Origin and the nascent space tourism industry.

– ‘Escape system worked well’ –

But billionaire entrepreneur Jareed Isaacman, who chartered a private space mission with SpaceX last year, tweeted “looks like the launch escape system worked well.”

“With so many launches, so many vehicles, engines and boosters in development across the industry, it should not be that surprising to see events like this,” Isaacman added.

Blue Origin began flying humans to space on 10-minute there and back rides last year for an unspecified ticket price. 

In all it has flown 32 people — some as paying customers and others as guests. Notable passengers include founder Bezos and Star Trek icon William Shatner.

Passengers experience a few minutes’ weightlessness and observe the curve of the Earth before the capsule re-enters the atmosphere and floats down for a gentle desert landing.

Other companies offering tourism experiences include Virgin Galactic, which hasn’t flown since carrying its founder Richard Branson to the edge of space in July 2021.

While Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin offer short jaunts to the cosmos, Elon Musk’s SpaceX works with another company called Axiom Space to offer longer missions to the International Space Station.