RFK Jr. defends $500M cut for mRNA vaccines with pseudoscience gobbledygook

He clearly has no idea what antigenic shift means.

If anyone needed a reminder that US health secretary and fervent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has no background in science or medicine, look no further than the video he posted on social media Tuesday evening.

In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, Kennedy announced that he is canceling nearly $500 million in funding for the development of mRNA-based vaccines against diseases that pose pandemic threats. The funding will be clawed back from 22 now-defunct contracts awarded through the federal agency tasked with developing medical countermeasures to public health threats. The agency is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

Kennedy is generally opposed to vaccines, but he is particularly hostile to mRNA-based vaccines. Since the remarkably successful debut of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic—which were developed and mass-produced with unprecedented speed—Kennedy has continually disparaged and spread misinformation about them.

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Here’s how deepfake vishing attacks work, and why they can be hard to detect

Why AI-based voice cloning is the next frontier social-engineering attacks.

By now, you’ve likely heard of fraudulent calls that use AI to clone the voice of people the call recipient knows. Often, the result is what sounds like a grandchild, CEO, or work colleague you’ve known for years reporting an urgent matter requiring immediate action, saying wiring money, divulging login credentials, or visiting a malicious website.

Researchers and government officials have been warning of the threat for years, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency saying in 2023 that threats from deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media have increased “exponentially.” Last year, Google’s Mandiant security division reported that such attacks are being executed with “uncanny precision, creating for more realistic phishing schemes.”

Anatomy of a deepfake scam call

On Wednesday, security firm Group-IB outlined the basic steps involved in executing these sorts of attacks. The takeaway is that they’re easy to reproduce at scale and can be challenging to detect or repel.

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64er-Magazin: Das Tor zur Computerwelt für eine ganze Generation

Zickt der Computer heute rum, bietet irgendein Youtube-Video eine Lösung. Mitte der 1980er Jahre gab es zwar kein Internet, aber das 64er-Magazin. Ein Erfahrungsbericht von Lars Lubienetzki (C64, Basic)

Zickt der Computer heute rum, bietet irgendein Youtube-Video eine Lösung. Mitte der 1980er Jahre gab es zwar kein Internet, aber das 64er-Magazin. Ein Erfahrungsbericht von Lars Lubienetzki (C64, Basic)

Sean Duffy: US-Atomkraftwerk als neuer Wettlauf zum Mond

Der US-Verkehrsminister bestätigt die Pläne, Kernkraftwerke auf dem Mond zu bauen. Zudem verdeutlicht er, dass es sich um ein Wettrennen mit China handelt. (Mond, Nasa)

Der US-Verkehrsminister bestätigt die Pläne, Kernkraftwerke auf dem Mond zu bauen. Zudem verdeutlicht er, dass es sich um ein Wettrennen mit China handelt. (Mond, Nasa)