China’s military is advancing the development of high-technology arms, including sound weapons to wage so-called cognitive warfare — the use of unconventional tools and capabilities to alter enemy thinking and decision-making, according to a new open-source intelligence report.

The People’s Liberation Army is building sound weapons and other nonlethal arms that can incapacitate enemy forces by disrupting the neurological functions of human targets without causing visible injury, warns the report by the CCP BioThreats Initiative, a think tank of former intelligence and military experts.

The report, “The Evolution of Cognitive Warfare: NeuroStrike Capabilities and the Strategic Role of Infrasound Weapons,” is the third study by the initiative covering what are being called Chinese “neurostrike” weapons.

U.S. tech titans are increasingly turning to nuclear power to support the energy-thirsty data centers that are fueling the artificial intelligence overhaul of their services. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are leading the charge.

Google says it has inked the “world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) to be developed by Kairos Power.” Kairos claims its Master Plant Development Agreement with Google would yield a “U.S. fleet of advanced nuclear power projects totaling 500 [megawatts] by 2035.”

Amazon says it has signed new agreements to support the construction of small modular reactors, working specifically with Dominion Energy to explore a reactor in Virginia and Energy Northwest in Washington state to develop four reactors. And Microsoft is partnering with Constellation Energy Corp. to restore a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The restarting reactor is next to one that partially melted down in 1979.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, meanwhile, is chairman of the board of directors at the nuclear startup Oklo, which reportedly plans to build its first small modular nuclear reactors by 2027. Oklo said this week that the Department of Energy approved a conceptual design safety report for its fuel fabrication facility in Idaho.

Russian meddling in U.S. politics since 2016 has angered the CIA to a degree comparable to the outrage that coursed through the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to retired senior case officer Patrick Weninger. In a recent appearance on the Team House podcast, Mr. Weninger shared new details of his work overseeing the CIA’s Russia operations starting in 2017 and just how “pissed off” America’s premier spy agency really was.

“We viewed 2016 as a — and I want to show respect to 9/11 because of the lost souls, and I do — not to the level of 9/11 but a version of 9/11 where that’s how deep it struck a chord what the Russians did,” Mr. Weninger told the weekly livestream/podcast, which is hosted by Jack Murphy (former Ranger/Special Forces) and Dave Parke (former Ranger/Paramilitary contractor).

Mr. Weninger said Moscow is laughing at the divisions between Americans about the political investigations into Russian influence operations aimed at the United States. Questions about whether the intelligence community missed warning signs about Russian active measures have swirled for years. U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times in 2017 that top intelligence professionals were looking under the wrong rocks to track Russian wrongdoing. Mr. Weninger told the Team House podcast that the CIA made changes to start looking under the right ones.

Langley Air Force Base is in the market for special anti-drone “netting” to protect tactical aircraft such as F-22 Raptor stealth fighters at the base from prying eyes. The move comes about a year after waves of still-unexplained uncrewed aerial vehicles buzzed the base.

Officials at the base near Norfolk, Virginia, have put out an announcement seeking information from potential contract vendors about supplying enough drone netting to cover up to 42 aircraft shelters on the flight line. “The intention of the netting is to deter and ultimately prevent the intrusion of [drones] near airmen and aircraft,” the Air Force says in the bid.

For more than two weeks in December 2023, a dozen or more drones flew over the airfield at the base. The incident was first reported earlier this year by The War Zone, a website that covers military issues.

Writer Ken Klippenstein claimed this week that the FBI visited his home after he published an allegedly hacked trove of data on GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. The data is reported to be included among materials ascertained in a hack-and-leak operation that the U.S. intelligence community has pinned on Iran, which denies any wrongdoing.

The material has prompted skepticism in mainstream media, with Politico and The New York Times having reported in August that they had both received the trove of data from an anonymous tipster, but chose not to publish it.

Mr. Klippenstein claims the FBI paid him a visit after he published the unredacted material on his independent website, which is hosted by Substack. “No subpoena, no search warrant, no prior announcement, no claim of illegality. America’s most powerful law enforcement agency wants me to know that it was displeased,” Mr. Klippenstein wrote on his website this week. “It is delivering what many would consider a chilling message: ‘We know where you live, we know what you’ve done, we are watching.’” 

The FBI has not responded to a query from Threat Status about Mr. Klippenstein’s account. The bureau has, however, warned of increasingly aggressive Iranian hacking activity. U.S. agencies and international partners this week published new technical details of the Islamic republic’s malicious cyber operations.

• Oct. 17 — Strengthening the Allied Industrial Base, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 8-10 — IISS Prague Defense Summit 2024, International Institute for Strategic Studies

• Nov. 21 — Competition Policy 2024: Urgent Questions Emerging within Digital Markets, Chatham House

• Dec. 7 — 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute