syndication

Rare win for renewable energy: Trump admin funds geothermal network expansion

geothermal, geothermal energy, geothermal power, Science, syndication / Mike M. / December 3, 2025

Progress on the project is a further indicator that, despite opposition to wind and solar, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress appear to back geothermal energy.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office declaring an energy emergency that expressed support for a limited mix of energy resources, including fossil fuels, nuclear power, biofuels, hydropower, and geothermal energy.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Republicans and signed by Trump in July, quickly phases out tax credits for wind, solar, and electric vehicles. However, the bill left geothermal heating and cooling tax credits approved under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 largely intact.

A reorganization of the US Department of Energy announced last month eliminated the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy but kept the office for geothermal energy as part of the newly created Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office.

“The fact that geothermal is on this administration’s agenda is pretty impactful,” said Nikki Bruno, vice president for thermal solutions and operational services at Eversource Energy. “It means they believe in it. It’s a bipartisan technology.”

Plans for the expansion project call for roughly doubling Framingham’s geothermal network capacity at approximately half the cost of the initial buildout. Part of the estimated cost savings will come from using existing equipment rather than duplicating it.

“You’ve already got all the pumping and control infrastructure installed, so you don’t need to build a new pump house,” said Eric Bosworth, a geothermal expert who runs the consultancy Thermal Energy Insights. Bosworth oversaw the construction of the initial geothermal network in Framingham while working for Eversource.

The network’s efficiency is anticipated to increase as it grows, requiring fewer boreholes to expand. That improvement is due to the different heating and cooling needs of individual buildings, which increasingly balance each other out as the network grows, Magavi said.

The project still awaits approval from state regulators, with Eversource aiming to start construction by the end of 2026, Bruno said.

“What we’re witnessing is the birth of a new utility,” Magavi said. Geothermal networks “can help us address energy security, affordability, and so many other challenges.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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In Myanmar, illicit rare-earth mining is taking a heavy toll

Myanmar, rare earth elements, rare earth metals, Science, syndication / Mike M. / December 1, 2025

Uncontrolled mining in areas of Myanmar ruled by powerful ethnic armies has boomed.

This photo taken on May 2, 2025 shows a general view of a China-backed battery metal mine in Pekon township in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images

In early 2025, Sian traveled deep into the mountains of Shan State, on Myanmar’s eastern border with China, in search of work. He had heard from a friend that Chinese companies were recruiting at new rare-earth mining sites in territory administered by the United Wa State Army, Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed group, and that workers could earn upwards of $1,400 a month.

It was an opportunity too good to pass up in a country where the formal economy has collapsed since the 2021 military coup, and nearly half of the population lives on less than $2 a day. So Sian set off by car for the town of Mong Pawk, then rode a motorbike for hours through the thick forest.

Hired for daily wages of approximately $21, he now digs boreholes and installs pipes. It is the first step in a process called in situ leaching, which involves injecting acidic solutions into mountainsides, then collecting the drained solution in plastic-lined pools where solids, like dysprosium and terbium, two of the world’s most sought-after heavy rare-earth metals, settle out. The resulting sediment sludge is then transported to furnaces and burned, producing dry rare earth oxides.

As geopolitics scrambles supply chains and global demand for rare earths has mushroomed, mining for these materials is on the rise in Myanmar, where thousands of laborers like Sian are flocking to mine sites on the country’s eastern border with China. But the extraction and processing of rare earths is taking an increasing toll on the mine workers, nearby communities, and the environment. “The toxic effects of rare-earth mining are devastating, with poisoned rivers, contaminated soil, sickness, and displacement,” said Jasnea Sarma, an ethnographer and political geographer at the University of Zurich.

China holds most of the world’s rare-earth processing facilities, but since the early 2010s it has tightened restrictions on domestic extraction as its impacts have become apparent. Rare-earth mining has since expanded just over China’s southwestern border in Myanmar, where labor is cheap and environmental regulations are weak.

The industry is highly secretive. But this September, a journalist from Myanmar, who prefers not to be named for security reasons, visited rare-earth mining sites in Wa territory near Mong Pawk for this article. This reporting confirmed that rare-earth mining overseen by Chinese companies is rapidly expanding in Wa territory, and it provides firsthand details of the many ways this activity contaminates water sources and contributes to deforestation, damage to human health, and loss of livelihoods.

The 17 elements known as rare earths are distributed widely across the Earth’s crust, but they are extracted in relatively few places due to ecological, geopolitical, and economic constraints. Used in electric vehicles and wind turbines, rare earths are also needed for the production of military hardware and other advanced technologies.

Rare earths are designated as “critical minerals” by many of the world’s superpowers — vital to economies and national security but vulnerable to supply chain disruption. They are also a key commodity in the trade war between the United States and China, which has tightened rare-earth export restrictions over the past year in response to escalating tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

China still processes most of the world’s rare earths, but its import data shows that a significant portion of the raw material is mined in Myanmar. This makes Myanmar one of the global rare-earth mining boom’s largest sacrifice zones—defined by researchers and environmental justice advocates as places that disproportionately endure the harmful effects of extraction so that others may benefit.

No publicly accessible corporate databases show the licensing of active rare-earth mining operations in Myanmar. But Chinese customs data indicates that approximately two-thirds of its rare-earth imports came from Myanmar between 2017 and 2024, according to research conducted by the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, a think tank based in Thailand.

Satellite image analysis conducted by the nonprofit Myanmar Witness, in partnership with the Myanmar media outlet Mizzima, also reveals hundreds of rare-earth mining sites on the country’s eastern border. The area is home to Indigenous communities who have been at odds with central military authorities since the country’s independence from Britain in 1948. For decades, the military has negotiated ceasefires with ethnic armies while allowing them to engage in a range of cross-border enterprises, sometimes while taking a cut of the profits.

“This borderland has seen one extractive wave after another: teak, opium, jade, amber, bananas, and now these so-called green minerals,” said Sarma. “Ethnic armies have to do business with China to survive. China needs the resources, and local communities, after decades of conflict, depend on this to live.”

As the rule of law deteriorated following Myanmar’s 2021 coup, the pillaging of its natural resources accelerated. In October 2024, an ethnic army fighting the military seized the rare-earth mining hub of Pangwa, in Kachin State, from a military-aligned warlord, and China, which arms and supports the Myanmar military, closed its gate into the town. More than a year later, rare-earth mining in Kachin has yet to fully resume, while areas of Shan State—controlled by the United Wa State Army and another ethnic army with close ties to China—appear poised to emerge as new rare-earth mining frontiers.

“What began as discovery has moved into full extraction […] pulled by proximity to China,” said Xu Peng, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Illicit Economies, Violence, and Development at SOAS University of London.

Earlier this year, the Shan Human Rights Foundation, a local civil society organization, used satellite images to expose rare-earth mining in Shan State for the first time. This research, alongside further satellite analysis conducted by the Stimson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank, revealed 63 rare-earth mining sites near the Chinese border and two sites bordering Thailand. Some of these sites were established as early as 2015 and may no longer be operational, but most emerged after the coup.

The news of these Shan State mines sparked public outcry in Thailand, where chemicals associated with rare-earth mining have heavily contaminated rivers relied upon for drinking water, agriculture, and fishing. But no such response has emerged in Shan State, where mining companies and armed authorities keep a tight lid on information, including the names of the Chinese companies operating there.

Businesses involved in Myanmar’s rare-earth mining industry have reason to be secretive: Their operations put people and the environment at risk. “This year, there was an accident during excavation and a worker was buried,” said Sian. “Only later, after the soil was washed away by heavy rain and landslides, was his body recovered.” In 2023 and 2024, local media outlets documented the death or disappearance of dozens of workers in three landslides in Kachin State.

Research published in March by scholars at the University of Warwick and the Kachinland Research Center, based in Kachin State, attributed these landslides to “large-scale deforestation,” undertaken to both clear land for mines and supply firewood for the furnaces used to convert sediment sludge to dry rare-earth oxides—a process that can take 48 to 72 hours. Another factor contributing to landslides, the researchers found, was the injection of water and leaching agents into the hillsides.

Workers in Shan State described fragile landscapes. “The environment near the site faces constant problems like landslides, mountain collapses, and stream flooding, especially during the rainy season,” said an on-site cook, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Large trucks often fall into sinkholes. The ground is soft, which sometimes leads to fatal accidents.”

Chemical exposure and the inhalation of toxic particles are also major concerns. “Many workers suffer from lung issues,” said Sian. “Because of contact with acid, some workers also develop rashes, redness, itching, or chemical burns on their skin and eyes.”

Nearby communities also feel the impacts. “Many households reported more frequent respiratory illnesses, skin conditions, and headaches, which they believe are linked to pollution from nearby mining activities and dust from deforestation,” said the journalist who visited Wa for this article. “In some villages, families said children and elderly people are especially affected. They worry that contaminated water sources from mining operations are harming both their health and their livelihoods.”

Research conducted by Myanmar Resource Watch, a civil society organization, found that companies mining rare earths in Myanmar rely on a wide range of chemicals classified as hazardous—including sulfuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acids—and that these companies routinely violate regulations on the chemicals’ import, transport, storage, use, and disposal. Not only can hydrochloric acid kill aquatic life, it also dissolves heavy metals, like cadmium, lead, arsenic, and mercury, and radioactive materials, like thorium and uranium, from soil and rocks.

While no quantitative studies have been published on the environmental impacts of rare-earth mining in Shan State, research from Kachin State offers some indication of the potential risks. In April, Tanapon Phenrat of Thailand’s Naresuan University published a study based on analysis of surface water and topsoil samples taken at or downstream from rare-earth mining sites in Kachin. He identified “severe contamination” of the water, “extremely acidic pH levels,” and “alarmingly high concentrations” of ammonia, chloride, radioactive elements, and toxic heavy metals.

He also found that metals and metalloids present in water samples posed “substantial risk” to aquatic ecosystems and that the water at some of the testing sites was “entirely unsuitable for human consumption, irrigation, or fish culture without extensive treatment.”

Rare-earth elements themselves can also adversely impact human health, according to secondary research published in 2024 in the journal Toxics. This review found that exposure to rare-earth elements through inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact can destroy organ structure and function, affecting the respiratory, nervous, cardiovascular, reproductive, and immune systems.

“Right now, the way these minerals are governed often overlooks a major problem,” said Thaw Htoo, a PhD candidate of geography and sustainability at the University of Lausanne who conducts her research using a pseudonym due to safety concerns. “They are essential for the global green transition, yet their extraction is happening with almost no rules. The case of Myanmar shows why we need to rethink what ‘critical minerals’ means and make sure we consider not only supply security, but also the safety and well-being of communities and the environment.”

Emily Fishbein is a freelance journalist currently serving as a Pulitzer Center Rainforest Investigations Network fellow. Jauman Naw is a freelance investigative journalist from Kachin State, Myanmar, who focuses on environmental issues. He writes under a pseudonym for his safety. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Achieving lasting remission for HIV

health, HIV, remission, Science, syndication / Kris Guyer / November 29, 2025

Promising trials using engineered antibodies suggest that “functional cures” may be in reach.

A digital illustration of an HIV-infected T cell. Once infected, the immune cell is hijacked by the virus to produce and release many new viral particles before dying. As more T-cells are destroyed, the immune system is progressively weakened. Credit: Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Around the world, some 40 million people are living with HIV. And though progress in treatment means the infection isn’t the death sentence it once was, researchers have never been able to bring about a cure. Instead, HIV-positive people must take a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs for the rest of their lives.

But in 2025, researchers reported a breakthrough that suggests that a “functional” cure for HIV—a way to keep HIV under control long-term without constant treatment—may indeed be possible. In two independent trials using infusions of engineered antibodies, some participants remained healthy without taking antiretrovirals, long after the interventions ended.

In one of the trials—the FRESH trial, led by virologist Thumbi Ndung’u of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa—four of 20 participants maintained undetectable levels of HIV for a median of 1.5 years without taking antiretrovirals. In the other, the RIO trial set in the United Kingdom and Denmark and led by Sarah Fidler, a clinical doctor and HIV research expert at Imperial College London, six of 34 HIV-positive participants have maintained viral control for at least two years.

These landmark proof-of-concept trials show that the immune system can be harnessed to fight HIV. Researchers are now looking to conduct larger, more representative trials to see whether antibodies can be optimized to work for more people.

“I do think that this kind of treatment has the opportunity to really shift the dial,” Fidler says, “because they are long-acting drugs”—with effects that can persist even after they’re no longer in the body. “So far, we haven’t seen anything that works like that.”

People with HIV can live long, healthy lives if they take antiretrovirals. But their lifespans are still generally shorter than those of people without the virus. And for many, daily pills or even the newer, bimonthly injections present significant financial, practical, and social challenges, including stigma. “Probably for the last about 15 or 20 years, there’s been this real push to go, ‘How can we do better?’” says Fidler.

The dream, she says, is “what people call curing HIV, or a remission in HIV.” But that has presented a huge challenge because HIV is a master of disguise. The virus evolves so quickly after infection that the body can’t produce new antibodies quickly enough to recognize and neutralize it.

And some HIV hides out in cells in an inactive state, invisible to the immune system. These evasion tactics have outwitted a long succession of cure attempts. Aside from a handful of exceptional stem-cell transplants, interventions have consistently fallen short of a complete cure—one that fully clears HIV from the body.

A functional cure would be the next best thing. And that’s where a rare phenomenon offers hope: Some individuals with long-term HIV do eventually produce antibodies that can neutralize the virus, though too late to fully shake it. These potent antibodies target critical, rarely changing parts of HIV proteins in the outer viral membrane; these proteins are used by the virus to infect cells. The antibodies, able to recognize a broad range of virus strains, are termed broadly neutralizing.

Scientists are now racing to find the most potent broadly neutralizing antibodies and engineer them into a functional cure. FRESH and RIO are arguably the most promising attempts yet.

In the FRESH trial, scientists chose two antibodies that, combined, were likely to be effective against HIV strains known as HIV-1 clade C, which is dominant in sub-Saharan Africa. The trial enrolled young women from a high-prevalence community as part of a broader social empowerment program. The program had started the women on HIV treatment within three days of their infection several years earlier.

The RIO trial, meanwhile, chose two well-studied antibodies shown to be broadly effective. Its participants were predominantly white men around age 40 who also had gone on antiretroviral drugs soon after infection. Most had HIV-1 clade B, which is more prevalent in Europe.

By pairing antibodies, the researchers aimed to decrease the likelihood that HIV would develop resistance—a common challenge in antibody treatments—since the virus would need multiple mutations to evade both.

Participants in both trials were given an injection of the antibodies, which were modified to last around six months in the body. Then their treatment with antiviral medications was paused. The hope was that the antibodies would work with the immune system to kill active HIV particles, keeping the virus in check. If the effect didn’t last, HIV levels would rise after the antibodies had been broken down, and the participants would resume antiretroviral treatment.

Excitingly, however, findings in both trials suggested that, in some people, the interventions prompted an ongoing, independent immune response, which researchers likened to the effect of a vaccine.

In the RIO trial, 22 of the 34 people receiving broadly neutralizing antibodies had not experienced a viral rebound by 20 weeks. At this point, they were given another antibody shot. Beyond 96 weeks—long after the antibodies had disappeared — six still had viral levels low enough to remain off antiviral medications.

An additional 34 participants included in the study as controls received only a saline infusion and mostly had to resume treatment in four to six weeks; all but three were back on treatment within 20 weeks.

A similar pattern was observed in FRESH (although, because it was mostly a safety study, this trial did not include control participants). Six of the 20 participants retained viral suppression for 48 weeks after the antibody infusion, and of those, four remained off treatment for more than a year. Two and a half years after the intervention, one remains off antiretroviral medication. Two others also maintained viral control but eventually chose to go back on treatment for personal and logistical reasons.

It’s unknown when the virus might rebound, so the researchers are cautious about calling participants in remission functionally cured. However, the antibodies clearly seem to coax the immune system to fight the virus. Attached to infected cells, they signal to immune cells to come in and kill.

And importantly, researchers believe that this immune response to the antibodies may also stimulate immune cells called CD8+ T cells, which then hunt down HIV-infected cells. This could create an “immune memory” that helps the body control HIV even after the antibodies are gone.

The response resembles the immune control seen in a tiny group (fewer than 1 percent) of individuals with HIV, known as elite controllers. These individuals suppress HIV without the help of antiretrovirals, confining it mostly to small reservoirs. That the trials helped some participants do something similar is exciting, says Joel Blankson, an infectious diseases expert at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who coauthored an article about natural HIV controllers in the 2024 Annual Review of Immunology. “It might teach us how to be able to do this much more effectively, and we might be able to get a higher percentage of people in remission.”

One thing scientists do know is that the likelihood of achieving sustained control is higher if people start antiretroviral treatment soon after infection, when their immune systems are still intact and their viral reservoirs are small.

But post-treatment control can occur even in people who started taking antiretrovirals a long time after they were initially infected: a group known as chronically infected patients. “It just happens less often,” Blankson says. “So it’s possible the strategies that are involved in these studies will also apply to patients who are chronically infected.”

A particularly promising finding of the RIO trial was that the antibodies also affected dormant HIV hiding out in some cells. These reservoirs are how the virus rebounds when people stop treatment, and antibodies aren’t thought to touch them. Researchers speculate that the T cells boosted by the antibodies can recognize and kill latently infected cells that display even trace amounts of HIV on their surface.

The FRESH intervention, meanwhile, targeted the stubborn HIV reservoirs more directly through incorporating another drug, called vesatolimod. It’s designed to stimulate immune cells to respond to the HIV threat, and hopefully to “shock” dormant HIV particles out of hiding. Once that happens, the immune system, with the help of the antibodies, can recognize and kill them.

The results of FRESH are exciting, Ndung’u says, “because it might indicate that this regimen worked, to an extent. Because this was a small study, it’s difficult to, obviously, make very hard conclusions.” His team is still investigating the data.

Once he secures funding, Ndung’u aims to run a larger South Africa-based trial including chronically infected individuals. Fidler’s team, meanwhile, is recruiting for a third arm of RIO to try to determine whether pausing antiretroviral treatment for longer before administering the antibodies prompts a stronger immune response.

A related UK-based trial, called AbVax, will add a T-cell-stimulating drug to the mix to see whether it enhances the long-lasting, vaccine-like effect of the antibodies. “It could be that combining different approaches enhances different bits of the immune system, and that’s the way forward,” says Fidler, who is a co-principal investigator on that study.

For now, Fidler and Ndung’u will continue to track the virally suppressed participants — who, for the first time since they received their HIV diagnoses, are living free from the demands of daily treatment.

This story originally appeared at Knowable Magazine.

Knowable Magazine explores the real-world significance of scholarly work through a journalistic lens.

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Reintroduced carnivores’ impacts on ecosystems are still coming into focus

Science, syndication, wolves, yellowstone national park / Kris Guyer / November 28, 2025

He said he was surprised by how few studies show evidence of wolves, bears, and cougars having an effect on elk, moose, and deer populations. Instead, the biggest driver of changing elk population numbers across the West is humanity.

“In most mainland systems, it’s only when you combine wolves with grizzly bears and you take away human hunting as a substantial component that you see them suppressing prey numbers,” Wilmers said. “Outside of that, they’re mostly background noise against how humans are managing their prey populations.”

In some studies, ungulate populations actually increased slightly in the presence of wolves and grizzlies, Wilmers said, likely because human wildlife managers overestimated the effects of predators as they reduced hunting quotas.

“This is a much-needed review, as it is well executed, and highlights areas where more research is needed,” said Rae Wynn-Grant, a wildlife ecologist and cohost of the television show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, in an email to Inside Climate News. Wynn-Grant was not involved in the paper, and her work was not part of its survey.

In her view, the paper showed that an increase in predators on the landscape doesn’t automatically balance plant communities. “Our world would be much simpler if it did,” she said, “but the evidence suggests that so many variables factor into if and how ecosystems respond to increases in carnivore population in North America.”

Yellowstone, with its expansive valleys, relatively easy access, and status as an iconic, protected landscape, has become a hotspot for scientists trying to answer an existential question: Is it possible for an ecosystem that’s lost keystone large carnivores to be restored to a pre-extinction state upon their reintroduction?

Wilmers doesn’t think scientists have answered that question yet, except to show that it can take decades to untangle the web of factors driving ecological shifts in a place like Yellowstone. Any changes that do occur when a predator is driven to extinction may be impossible to reverse quickly, he said.

Yellowstone’s alternative stable state was a point echoed by researchers in both camps of the trophic cascade debate, and it is one Wilmers believes is vital to understand when evaluating the tradeoffs of large-carnivore reintroduction.

“You’d be better off avoiding the loss of beavers and wolves in the first place than you would be accepting that loss and trying to restore them later,” he said.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Crypto hoarders dump tokens as shares tumble

Bitcoin, Biz & IT, crypto, ether, syndication / Paul Patrick / November 26, 2025

“It was inevitable,” said Jake Ostrovskis, head of OTC trading at Wintermute, referring to the sell-off in digital asset treasury stocks. “It got to the point where there’s too many of them.”

Several companies have begun selling their crypto stockpiles in an effort to fund share buybacks and shore up their stock prices, in effect putting the crypto treasury model into reverse.

North Carolina-based ether holder FG Nexus sold about $41.5 million of its tokens recently to fund its share buyback program. Its market cap is $104 million, while the crypto it holds is worth $116 million. Florida-based life sciences company turned ether buyer ETHZilla recently sold about $40 million worth of its tokens, also to fund its share buyback program.

Sequans Communications, a French semiconductor company, sold about $100 million of its bitcoin this month in order to service its debt, in a sign of how some companies that borrowed to fund crypto purchases are now struggling. Sequans’ market capitalization is $87 million, while the bitcoin it holds is worth $198 million.

Georges Karam, chief executive of Sequans, said the sale was a “tactical decision aimed at unlocking shareholder value given current market conditions.”

While bitcoin and ether sellers can find buyers, companies with more niche tokens will find it more difficult to raise money from their holdings, according to Morgan McCarthy. “When you’ve got a medical device company buying some long-tail asset in crypto, a niche in a niche market, it is not going to end well,” he said, adding that 95 percent of digital asset treasuries “will go to zero.”

Strategy, meanwhile, has doubled down and bought even more bitcoin as the price of the token has fallen to $87,000, from $115,000 a month ago. The firm also faces the looming possibility of being cut from some major equity indices, which could heap even more selling pressure on the stock.

But Saylor has brushed off any concerns. “Volatility is Satoshi’s gift to the faithful,” he said this week, referring to the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin.

Crypto hoarders dump tokens as shares tumble Read More »

Mushroom foragers collect 160 species for food, medicine, art, and science

morel mushrooms, mushrooms, Science, syndication / Rejus Almole / November 25, 2025

Like many mushroom harvesters, I got interested in foraging for fungi during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I had been preparing for a summer of field work studying foraged desert plants in a remote part of Australia when the pandemic hit, and my travel plans were abruptly frozen. It was March, right before morel mushrooms emerge in central Pennsylvania.

I wasn’t doing a lot other than going on long hikes and taking classes remotely at Penn State for my doctoral degree in ecology and anthropology. One of the classes was an agroforestry class with Eric Burkhart. We studied how agriculture and forests benefit people and the environment.

These two things eventually led to a yearslong project on mushroom harvesting in our region.

Why people forage

Foragers have been harvesting wild mushrooms in what is now Pennsylvania and the rest of the US mid-Atlantic region for generations, but the extent and specifics of the practice in the region had not been formally studied.

In 2021, Burkhart and I decided that we wanted to better understand the variety of wild mushroom species that Pennsylvania harvesters collect and what they use them for.

We conducted a series of surveys in 2022 and 2023 that revealed a wide variety of fungi are foraged in the region—though morels, chicken of the woods, and chanterelles are most common. We also learned that harvesters use the mushrooms primarily for food and medicinal purposes, and that foragers create communities that share knowledge. These community-based projects often use social media tools as a way for mushroom harvesters to share pictures, notes, and even the results of DNA sequences.

Our findings were published in the journal Economic Botany in October 2025.

160 species

Having spent a year building connections with local mushroom harvesters, starting in central Pennsylvania, including members of mushroom clubs and mycological associations, we recruited a diverse group of harvesters from around the mid-Atlantic. We also used mushroom festivals, social media, and word of mouth to get the word out.

We asked harvesters about their favorite mushrooms, common harvesting practices, resources they used while harvesting, and any sustainability practices.

Over 800 harvesters responded to the survey and reported that, collectively, they foraged 160 species of wild mushrooms. Morels and chicken of the woods were the two most popular, as each were reported by 13 percent of respondents. About 10 percent of respondents reported collecting chanterelles. Other popular species were hen of the woods, oysters, lion’s mane, black trumpet, honey mushroom, turkey tail, bolete, reishi, puffball, chaga, shrimp of the woods, and Dryad’s saddle, which is also known as the pheasant’s back mushroom.

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UK government will buy tech to boost AI sector in $130M growth push

AI, Biz & IT, Financial Times, syndication / Rejus Almole / November 24, 2025

“Our particular strengths as a country lie in areas like life sciences, financial services, the defense sector, and the creative sector. And where we will really lead the world is where we can use the power of AI in those sectors,” Kendall told the Financial Times.

The plans came as part of a wider AI package designed to upgrade Britain’s tech infrastructure and convince entrepreneurs and investors that Labour is backing the sector ahead of next week’s Budget, which is expected to raise taxes on the wealthy.

The UK has sought to attract investment from US AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

The government has signed several “strategic partnerships” with American groups in a bid to attract foreign investment in UK AI infrastructure and talent, in exchange for adopting their technology in the public sector.

Sue Daley, of lobby group TechUK, said the plan showed “real ambition” but warned: “Advanced market commitments of this kind must be designed carefully to avoid unintentionally distorting competition.”

The government also announced that James Wise, a venture capitalist at Balderton, would chair the government’s 500 million pound sovereign AI unit, which has been set up to back AI startups alongside the British Business Bank.

Additional reporting by Ivan Levingston.

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This hacker conference installed a literal antivirus monitoring system

Science, Security, syndication / Tim Belzer / November 22, 2025

Organizers had a way for attendees to track CO₂ levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived.

Hacker conferences—like all conventions—are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat “con crud,” New Zealand’s premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system for attendees.

To get the system up and running, event organizers installed DIY CO₂ monitors throughout the Michael Fowler Centre venue before conference doors opened on November 6. Attendees were able to check a public online dashboard for clean air readings for session rooms, kids’ areas, the front desk, and more, all before even showing up. “It’s ALMOST like we are all nerds in a risk-based industry,” the organizers wrote on the convention’s website.

“What they did is fantastic,” Jeff Moss, founder of the Defcon and Black Hat security conferences, told WIRED. “CO₂ is being used as an approximation for so many things, but there are no easy, inexpensive network monitoring solutions available. Kawaiicon building something to do this is the true spirit of hacking.”

Elevated levels of CO₂ lead to reduced cognitive ability and facilitate transmission of airborne viruses, which can linger in poorly ventilated spaces for hours. The more CO₂ in the air, the more virus-friendly the air becomes, making CO₂ data a handy proxy for tracing pathogens. In fact, the Australian Academy of Science described the pollution in indoor air as “someone else’s breath backwash.” Kawaiicon organizers faced running a large infosec event during a measles outbreak, as well as constantly rolling waves of COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. It’s a familiar pain point for conference organizers frustrated by massive gaps in public health—and lack of control over their venue’s clean air standards.

“In general, the Michael Fowler venue has a single HVAC system, and uses Farr 30/30 filters with a rating of MERV-8,” Kawaiicon organizers explained, referencing the filtration choices in the space where the convention was held. MERV-8 is a budget-friendly choice–standard practice for homes. “The hardest part of the whole process is being limited by what the venue offers,” they explained. “The venue is older, which means less tech to control air flow, and an older HVAC system.”

Kawaiicon’s work began one month before the conference. In early October, organizers deployed a small fleet of 13 RGB Matrix Portal Room CO₂ Monitors, an ambient carbon dioxide monitor DIY project adapted from US electronics and kit company Adafruit Industries. The monitors were connected to an Internet-accessible dashboard with live readings, daily highs and lows, and data history that showed attendees in-room CO₂ trends. Kawaiicon tested its CO₂ monitors in collaboration with researchers from the University of Otago’s public health department.

“That’s awesome,” says Adafruit founder and engineer Limor “Ladyada” Fried about the conference’s adaptation of the Matrix Portal project. “The best part is seeing folks pick up new skills and really understand how we measure and monitor air quality in the real world (like at a con during a measles flare-up)! Hackers and makers are able to be self-reliant when it comes to their public-health information needs.” (For the full specs of the Kawaiicon build, you can check out the GitHub repository here.)

The Michael Fowler Centre is a spectacular blend of Scandinavian brutalism and interior woodwork designed to enhance sound and air, including two grand pou—carved Māori totems—next to the main entrance that rise through to the upper foyers. Its cathedral-like acoustics posed a challenge to Kawaiicon’s air-hacking crew, which they solved by placing the RGB monitors in stereo. There were two on each level of the Main Auditorium (four total), two in the Renouf session space on level 1, plus monitors in the daycare and Kuracon (kids’ hacker conference) areas. To top it off, monitors were placed in the Quiet Room, at the Registration Desk, and in the Green Room.

“The things we had to consider were typical health and safety, and effective placement (breathing height, multiple monitors for multiple spaces, not near windows/doors),” a Kawaiicon spokesperson who goes by Sput online told WIRED over email.

“To be honest, it is no different than having to consider other accessibility options (e.g., access to venue, access to talks, access to private space for personal needs),” Sput wrote. “Being a tech-leaning community it is easier for us to get this set up ourselves, or with volunteer help, but definitely not out of reach given how accessible the CO₂ monitor tech is.”

Kawaiicon’s attendees could quickly check the conditions before they arrived and decide how to protect themselves accordingly. At the event, WIRED observed attendees checking CO₂ levels on their phones, masking and unmasking in different conference areas, and watching a display of all room readings on a dashboard at the registration desk.

In each conference session room, small wall-mounted monitors displayed stoplight colors showing immediate conditions: green for safe, orange for risky, and red to show the room had high CO₂ levels, the top level for risk.

“Everyone who occupies the con space we operate have a different risk and threat model, and we want everyone to feel they can experience the con in a way that fits their model,” the organizers wrote on their website. “Considering Covid-19 is still in the community, we wanted to make sure that everyone had all the information they needed to make their own risk assessment on ‘if’ and ‘how’ they attended the con. So this is our threat model and all the controls and zones we have in place.”

Colorful custom-made Kawaiicon posters by New Zealand artist Pepper Raccoon placed throughout the Michael Fowler Centre displayed a QR code, making the CO₂ dashboard a tap away, no matter where they were at the conference.

“We think this is important so folks don’t put themselves at risk having to go directly up to a monitor to see a reading,” Kawaiicon spokesperson Sput told WIRED, “It also helps folks find a space that they can move to if the reading in their space gets too high.”

It’s a DIY solution any conference can put in place: resources, parts lists, and assembly guides are here.

Kawaiicon’s organizers aren’t keen to pretend there were no risks to gathering in groups during ongoing outbreaks. “Masks are encouraged, but not required,” Kawaiicon’s Health and Safety page stated. “Free masks will be available at the con if you need one.” They encouraged attendees to test before coming in, and for complete accessibility for all hackers who wanted to attend, of any ability, they offered a full virtual con stream with no ticket required.

Trying to find out if a venue will have clean or gross recycled air before attending a hacker conference has been a pain point for researchers who can’t afford to get sick at, or after, the next B-Sides, Defcon, or Black Hat. Kawaiicon addresses this headache. But they’re not here for debates about beliefs or anti-science trolling. “We each have our different risk tolerance,” the organizers wrote. “Just leave others to make the call that is best for them. No one needs your snarky commentary.”

This story originally appeared at WIRED.com.

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Pornhub is urging tech giants to enact device-based age verification

age verification, age verification law, Policy, pornhub, syndication / Mike M. / November 22, 2025

The company is pushing for an alternative way to keep minors from viewing porn.

In letters sent to Apple, Google, and Microsoft this week, Pornhub’s parent company urged the tech giants to support device-based age verification in their app stores and across their operating systems, WIRED has learned.

“Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,” reads the letter sent by Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo, which owns Pornhub, Brazzers, Redtube, and YouPorn. “However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”

The letter adds that site-based age verification methods have “failed to achieve their primary objective: protecting minors from accessing age-inappropriate material online.” Aylo says device-based authentication is a better solution for this issue because once a viewer’s age is determined via phone or tablet, their age signal can be shared over its application programming interface (API) with adult sites.

The letters were sent following the continued adoption of age verification laws in the US and UK, which require users to upload an ID or other personal documentation to verify that they are not a minor before viewing sexually explicit content; often this requires using third-party services. Currently, 25 US states have passed some form of ID verification, each with different provisions.

Pornhub has experienced an enormous dip in traffic as a result of its decision to pull out of most states that have enacted these laws. The platform was one of the few sites to comply with the new law in Louisiana but doing so caused traffic to drop by 80 percent. Similarly, since implementation of the Online Safety Act, Pornhub has lost nearly 80 percent of its UK viewership.

The company argues that it’s a privacy risk to leave age verification up to third-party sites and that people will simply seek adult content on platforms that don’t comply with the laws.

“We have seen an exponential surge in searches for alternate adult sites without age restrictions or safety standards at all,” says Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub.

She says she hopes the tech companies and Aylo are able to find common ground on the matter, especially given the recent passage of the Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) in California. “This is a law that’s interesting because it gets it almost exactly right,” she says. Signed into law in October, it requires app store operators to authenticate user ages before download.

According to Google spokesperson Karl Ryan, “Google is committed to protecting kids online, including by developing and deploying new age assurance tools like our Credential Manager API that can be used by websites. We don’t allow adult entertainment apps on Google Play and would emphasize that certain high-risk services like Aylo will always need to invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and responsibility obligations.”

Microsoft declined to comment, but pointed WIRED to a recent policy recommendation post that said “age assurance should be applied at the service level, target specific design features that pose heightened risks, and enable tailored experiences for children.”

Apple likewise declined to comment and instead pointed WIRED to its child online safety report and noted that web content filters are turned on by default for every user under 18. A software update from June specified that Apple requires kids who are under 13 to have a kid account, which also includes “app restrictions enabled from the beginning.” Apple currently has no way of requiring every single website to integrate an API.

According to Pornhub, age verification laws have led to ineffective enforcement. “The sheer volume of adult content platforms has proven to be too challenging for governments worldwide to regulate at the individual site or platform level,” says Kekesi. Aylo claims device-based age verification that happens once, on a phone or computer, will preserve user privacy while prioritizing safety.

Recent Studies by New York University and public policy nonprofit the Phoenix Center suggest that current age verification laws don’t work because people find ways to circumvent them, including by using VPNs and turning to sites that don’t regulate their content.

“Platform-based verification has been like Prohibition,” says Mike Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition. “We’re seeing consumer behavior reroute away from legal, compliant sites to foreign sites that don’t comply with any regulations or laws. Age verification laws have effectively rerouted a massive river of consumers to sites with pirated content, revenge porn, and child sex abuse material.” He claims that these laws “have been great for criminals, terrible for the legal adult industry.”

With age verification and the overall deanonymizing of the internet, these are issues that will now face nearly everyone, but especially those who are politically disfavored. Sex workers have been dealing with issues like censorship and surveillance online for a long time. One objective of Project 2025, MAGA’s playbook for President Trump’s second term, has been to “back door” a national ban on porn through state laws.

The current surge of child protection laws around the world is driving a significant change in how people engage with the internet, and is also impacting industries beyond porn, including gaming and social media. Starting December 10 in Australia, in accordance with the government’s social media ban, kids under 16 will be kicked off Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Ultimately, Stabile says that may be the point. In the US, “the advocates for these bills have largely fallen into two groups: faith-based organizations that don’t believe adult content should be legal, and age verification providers who stand to profit from a restricted internet.” The goal of faith-based organizations, he says, is to destabilize the adult industry and dissuade adults from using it, while the latter works to expand their market as much as possible, “even if that means getting in bed with right-wing censors.”

But the problem is that “even well-meaning legislators advancing these bills have little understanding of the internet,” Stabile adds. “It’s much easier to go after a political punching bag like Pornhub than it is Apple or Google. But if you’re not addressing the reality of the internet, if your legislation flies in the face of consumer behavior, you’re only going to end up creating systems that fail.”

Adult industry insiders I spoke to in August explained that the biggest misconception about the industry is that it is against self-regulation when that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Keeping minors off adult sites is a shared responsibility that requires a global solution,” Kekesi says. “Every phone, tablet, or computer should start as a kid-safe device. Only verified adults should unlock access to things like dating apps, gambling, or adult content.” In 2022, Pornhub created a chatbot that urges people searching for child sexual abuse content to seek counseling; the tool was introduced following a 2020 New York Times investigation that alleged the platform had monetized videos showing child abuse. Pornhub has since started releasing annual transparency reports and tightened its verification process of performers and for video uploads.

According to Politico, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, and Pinterest all supported the California bill. Right now that law is limited to California, but Kekesi believes it can work as a template for other states.

“We obviously see that there’s kind of a path forward here,” she says.

This story originally appeared at WIRED.com

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Flying with whales: Drones are remaking marine mammal research

Drones, marine life, marine mammals, marine research, Science, syndication, Tech, whales / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2025

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath of the disaster, whale scientist Iain Kerr traveled to the area to study how the spill had affected sperm whales, aiming specialized darts at the animals to collect pencil eraser-sized tissue samples.

It wasn’t going well. Each time his boat approached a whale surfacing for air, the animal vanished beneath the waves before he could reach it. “I felt like I was playing Whac-A-Mole,” he says.

As darkness fell, a whale dove in front of Kerr and covered him in whale snot. That unpleasant experience gave Kerr, who works at the conservation group Ocean Alliance, an idea: What if he could collect that same snot by somehow flying over the whale? Researchers can glean much information from whale snot, including the animal’s DNA sequence, its sex, whether it is pregnant, and the makeup of its microbiome.

After many experiments, Kerr’s idea turned into what is today known as the SnotBot: a drone fitted with six petri dishes that collect a whale’s snot by flying over the animal as it surfaces and exhales through its blowhole. Today, drones like this are deployed to gather snot all over the world, and not just from sperm whales: They’re also collecting this scientifically valuable mucus from other species, such as blue whales and dolphins. “I would say drones have changed my life,” says Kerr.

S’not just mucus

Gathering snot is one of many ways that drones are being used to study whales. In the past 10 to 15 years, drone technology has made great strides, becoming affordable and easy to use. This has been a boon for researchers. Scientists “are finding applications for drones in virtually every aspect of marine mammal research,” says Joshua Stewart, an ecologist at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.

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How Louvre thieves exploited human psychology to avoid suspicion—and what it reveals about AI

AI, heist, Louvre, Science, syndication / Mike M. / November 19, 2025

On a sunny morning on October 19 2025, four men allegedly walked into the world’s most-visited museum and left, minutes later, with crown jewels worth 88 million euros ($101 million). The theft from Paris’ Louvre Museum—one of the world’s most surveilled cultural institutions—took just under eight minutes.

Visitors kept browsing. Security didn’t react (until alarms were triggered). The men disappeared into the city’s traffic before anyone realized what had happened.

Investigators later revealed that the thieves wore hi-vis vests, disguising themselves as construction workers. They arrived with a furniture lift, a common sight in Paris’s narrow streets, and used it to reach a balcony overlooking the Seine. Dressed as workers, they looked as if they belonged.

This strategy worked because we don’t see the world objectively. We see it through categories—through what we expect to see. The thieves understood the social categories that we perceive as “normal” and exploited them to avoid suspicion. Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems work in the same way and are vulnerable to the same kinds of mistakes as a result.

The sociologist Erving Goffman would describe what happened at the Louvre using his concept of the presentation of self: people “perform” social roles by adopting the cues others expect. Here, the performance of normality became the perfect camouflage.

The sociology of sight

Humans carry out mental categorization all the time to make sense of people and places. When something fits the category of “ordinary,” it slips from notice.

AI systems used for tasks such as facial recognition and detecting suspicious activity in a public area operate in a similar way. For humans, categorization is cultural. For AI, it is mathematical.

But both systems rely on learned patterns rather than objective reality. Because AI learns from data about who looks “normal” and who looks “suspicious,” it absorbs the categories embedded in its training data. And this makes it susceptible to bias.

The Louvre robbers weren’t seen as dangerous because they fit a trusted category. In AI, the same process can have the opposite effect: people who don’t fit the statistical norm become more visible and over-scrutinized.

It can mean a facial recognition system disproportionately flags certain racial or gendered groups as potential threats while letting others pass unnoticed.

A sociological lens helps us see that these aren’t separate issues. AI doesn’t invent its categories; it learns ours. When a computer vision system is trained on security footage where “normal” is defined by particular bodies, clothing, or behavior, it reproduces those assumptions.

Just as the museum’s guards looked past the thieves because they appeared to belong, AI can look past certain patterns while overreacting to others.

Categorization, whether human or algorithmic, is a double-edged sword. It helps us process information quickly, but it also encodes our cultural assumptions. Both people and machines rely on pattern recognition, which is an efficient but imperfect strategy.

A sociological view of AI treats algorithms as mirrors: They reflect back our social categories and hierarchies. In the Louvre case, the mirror is turned toward us. The robbers succeeded not because they were invisible, but because they were seen through the lens of normality. In AI terms, they passed the classification test.

From museum halls to machine learning

This link between perception and categorization reveals something important about our increasingly algorithmic world. Whether it’s a guard deciding who looks suspicious or an AI deciding who looks like a “shoplifter,” the underlying process is the same: assigning people to categories based on cues that feel objective but are culturally learned.

When an AI system is described as “biased,” this often means that it reflects those social categories too faithfully. The Louvre heist reminds us that these categories don’t just shape our attitudes, they shape what gets noticed at all.

After the theft, France’s culture minister promised new cameras and tighter security. But no matter how advanced those systems become, they will still rely on categorization. Someone, or something, must decide what counts as “suspicious behavior.” If that decision rests on assumptions, the same blind spots will persist.

The Louvre robbery will be remembered as one of Europe’s most spectacular museum thefts. The thieves succeeded because they mastered the sociology of appearance: They understood the categories of normality and used them as tools.

And in doing so, they showed how both people and machines can mistake conformity for safety. Their success in broad daylight wasn’t only a triumph of planning. It was a triumph of categorical thinking, the same logic that underlies both human perception and artificial intelligence.

The lesson is clear: Before we teach machines to see better, we must first learn to question how we see.

Vincent Charles, Reader in AI for Business and Management Science, Queen’s University Belfast, and Tatiana Gherman, Associate Professor of AI for Business and Strategy, University of Northampton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonkers Bitcoin heist: 5-star hotels, cash-filled envelopes, vanishing funds

Biz & IT, Security, syndication / Paul Patrick / November 18, 2025

Bitcoin mining hardware exec falls for sophisticated crypto scam to tune of $200k

As Kent Halliburton stood in a bathroom at the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, thousands of miles from home, running his fingers through an envelope filled with 10,000 euros in crisp banknotes, he started to wonder what he had gotten himself into.

Halliburton is the cofounder and CEO of Sazmining, a company that operates bitcoin mining hardware on behalf of clients—a model known as “mining-as-a-service.” Halliburton is based in Peru, but Sazmining runs mining hardware out of third-party data centers across Norway, Paraguay, Ethiopia, and the United States.

As Halliburton tells it, he had flown to Amsterdam the previous day, August 5, to meet Even and Maxim, two representatives of a wealthy Monaco-based family. The family office had offered to purchase hundreds of bitcoin mining rigs from Sazmining—around $4 million worth—which the company would install at a facility currently under construction in Ethiopia. Before finalizing the deal, the family office had asked to meet Halliburton in person.

When Halliburton arrived at the Rosewood Hotel, he found Even and Maxim perched in a booth. They struck him as playboy, high-roller types—particularly Maxim, who wore a tan three-piece suit and had a highly manicured look, his long dark hair parted down the middle. A Rolex protruded from the cuff of his sleeve.

Over a three-course lunch—ceviche with a roe garnish, Chilean sea bass, and cherry cake—they discussed the contours of the deal and traded details about their respective backgrounds. Even was talkative and jocular, telling stories about blowout parties in Marrakech. Maxim was aloof; he mostly stared at Halliburton, holding his gaze for long periods at a time as though sizing him up.

As a relationship-building exercise, Even proposed that Halliburton sell the family office around $3,000 in bitcoin. Halliburton was initially hesitant, but chalked it up as a peculiar dating ritual. One of the guys slid Halliburton the cash-filled envelope and told him to go to the bathroom, where he could count out the amount in private. “It felt like something out of a James Bond movie,” says Halliburton. “It was all very exotic to me.”

Halliburton left in a taxi, somewhat bemused by the encounter, but otherwise hopeful of closing the deal with the family office. For Sazmining, a small company with around 15 employees, it promised to be transformative.

Less than two weeks later, Halliburton had lost more than $200,000 worth of bitcoin to Even and Maxim. He didn’t know whether Sazmining could survive the blow, nor how the scammers had ensnared him.

Directly after his lunch with Even and Maxim, Halliburton flew to Latvia for a Bitcoin conference. From there, he traveled to Ethiopia to check on construction work at the data center facility.

While Halliburton was in Ethiopia, he received a WhatsApp message from Even, who wanted to go ahead with the deal on one condition: that Sazmining sell the family office a larger amount of bitcoin as part of the transaction, after the small initial purchase at the Rosewood Hotel. They landed on $400,000 worth—a tenth of the overall deal value.

Even asked Halliburton to return to Amsterdam to sign the contracts necessary to finalize the deal. Having been away from his family for weeks, Halliburton protested. But Even drew a line in the sand: “Remotely doesn’t work for me that’s not how I do business at the moment,” he wrote in a text message reviewed by WIRED.

Halliburton arrived back in Amsterdam in the early afternoon on August 16. That evening, he was due to meet Maxim at a teppanyaki restaurant at the five-star Okura Hotel. The interior is elaborately decorated in traditional Japanese style; it has wooden paneling, paper walls, a zen garden, and a flock of origami cranes that hang from string down a spiral staircase in the lobby.

Halliburton found Maxim sitting on a couch in the waiting area outside the restaurant, dressed in a gaudy silver suit. As they waited for a table, Maxim asked Halliburton whether he could demonstrate that Sazmining held enough bitcoin to go through with the side transaction that Even had proposed. He wanted Halliburton to move roughly half of the agreed amount—worth $220,000—into a bitcoin wallet app trusted by the family office. The funds would remain under Halliburton’s control, but the family office would be able to verify their existence using public transaction data.

Halliburton thumbed open his iPhone. The app, Atomic Wallet, had thousands of positive reviews and had been listed on the Apple App Store for several years. With Maxim at his side, Halliburton downloaded the app and created a new wallet. “I was trying to earn this guy’s trust,” says Halliburton. “Again, a $4 million contract. I’m still looking at that carrot.”

The dinner passed largely without incident. Maxim was less guarded this time; he talked about his fondness for watches and his work sourcing deals for the family office. Feeling under the weather from all the travel, Halliburton angled to wrap things up.

They left with the understanding that Maxim would take the signed contracts to the family office to be executed, while Halliburton would send the $220,000 in bitcoin to his new wallet address as agreed.

Back in his hotel room, Halliburton triggered a small test transaction using his new Atomic Wallet address. Then he wiped and reinstated the wallet using the private credentials—the seed phrase—generated when he first downloaded the app, to make sure that it functioned as expected. “Had to take some security measures but almost ready. Thanks for your patience,” wrote Halliburton in a WhatsApp message to Even. “No worries take your time,” Even responded.

At 10: 45 pm, satisfied with his tests, Halliburton signaled to a colleague to release $220,000 worth of bitcoin to the Atomic Wallet address. When it arrived, he sent a screenshot of the updated balance to Even. One minute later, Even wrote back, “Thank yiu [sic].”

Halliburton sent another message to Even, asking about the contracts. Though previously quick to answer, Even didn’t respond. Halliburton checked the Atomic Wallet app, sensing that something was wrong. The bitcoin had vanished.

Halliburton’s stomach dropped. As he sat on the bed, he tried to stop himself from vomiting. “It was like being punched in the gut,” says Halliburton. “It was just shock and disbelief.”

Halliburton racked his brain trying to figure out how he had been swindled. At 11: 30 pm, he sent another message to Even: “That was the most sophisticated scam I’ve ever experienced. I know you probably don’t give a shit but my business may not survive this. I’ve worked four years of my life to build it.”

Even responded, denying that he had done anything wrong, but that was the last Halliburton heard from him. Halliburton provided WIRED with the Telegram account Even had used; it was last active on the day the funds were drained. Even did not respond to a request for comment.

Within hours, the funds drained from Halliburton’s wallet began to be divided up, shuffled through a web of different addresses, and deposited with third-party platforms for converting crypto into regular currency, analysis by blockchain analytics companies Chainalysis and CertiK shows.

A portion of the bitcoin was split between different instant exchangers, which allow people to swap one type of cryptocurrency for another almost instantaneously. The bulk was funneled into a single address, where it was blended with funds tagged by Chainalysis as the likely proceeds of rip deals, a scam whereby somebody impersonates an investor to steal crypto from a startup.

“There’s nothing illegal about the services the scammer leveraged,” says Margaux Eckle, senior investigator at Chainalysis. “However, the fact that they leveraged consolidation addresses that appear very tightly connected to labeled scam activity is potentially indicative of a fraud operation.”

Some of the bitcoin that passed through the consolidation address was deposited with a crypto exchange, where it was likely swapped for regular currency. The remainder was converted into stablecoin and moved across so-called bridges to the Tron blockchain, which hosts several over-the-counter trading services that can be readily used to cash out large quantities of crypto, researchers claim.

The effect of the many hops, shuffles, conversions, and divisions is to make it more difficult to trace the origin of funds, so that they can be cashed out without arousing suspicion. “The scammer is quite sophisticated,” says Eckle. “Though we can trace through a bridge, it’s a way to slow the tracing of funds from investigators that could be on your tail.”

Eventually, the trail of public transaction data stops. To identify the perpetrators, law enforcement would have to subpoena the services that appear to have been used to cash out, which are widely required to collect information about users.

From the transaction data, it’s not possible to tell precisely how the scammers were able to access and drain Halliburton’s wallet without his permission. But aspects of his interactions with the scammers provide some clue.

Initially, Halliburton wondered whether the incident might be connected to a 2023 hack perpetrated by threat actors affiliated with the North Korean government, which led to $100 million worth of funds being drained from the accounts of Atomic Wallet users. (Atomic Wallet did not respond to a request for comment.)

But instead, the security researchers that spoke to WIRED believe that Halliburton fell victim to a targeted surveillance-style attack. “Executives who are publicly known to custody large crypto balances make attractive targets,” says Guanxing Wen, head of security research at CertiK.

The in-person dinners, expensive clothing, reams of cash, and other displays of wealth were gambits meant to put Halliburton at ease, researchers theorize. “This is a well-known rapport-building tactic in high-value confidence schemes,” says Wen. “The longer a victim spends with the attacker in a relaxed setting, the harder it becomes to challenge a later technical request.”

In order to complete the theft, the scammers likely had to steal the seed phrase for Halliburton’s newly created Atomic Wallet address. Equipped with a wallet’s seed phrase, anyone can gain unfettered access to the bitcoin kept inside.

One possibility is that the scammers, who dictated the locations for both meetings in Amsterdam, hijacked or mimicked the hotel Wi-Fi networks, allowing them to harvest information from Halliburton’s phone. “That equipment you can buy online, no problem. It would all fit inside a couple of suitcases,” says Adrian Cheek, lead researcher at cybersecurity company Coeus. But Halliburton insists that his phone never left his possession, and he used mobile data to download the Atomic Wallet app, not public Wi-Fi.

The most plausible explanation, claims Wen, is that the scammers—perhaps with the help of a nearby accomplice or a camera equipped with long-range zoom—were able to record the seed phrase when it appeared on Halliburton’s phone at the point he first downloaded the app, on the couch at the Okura Hotel.

Long before Halliburton delivered the $220,000 in bitcoin to his Atomic Wallet address, the scammers had probably set up a “sweeper script,” claims Wen, a type of automated bot coded to drain a wallet when it detects a large balance change.

The people the victim meets in-person in cases like this—like Even and Maxim—are rarely the ultimate beneficiaries, but rather mercenaries hired by a network of scam artists, who could be based on the other side of the globe.

“They’re normally recruited through underground forums, and secure chat groups,” says Cheek. “If you know where you’re looking, you can see this ongoing recruitment.”

For a few days, it remained unclear whether Sazmining would be able to weather the financial blow. The stolen funds equated to about six weeks’ worth of revenue. “I’m trying to keep the business afloat and survive this situation where suddenly we’ve got a cash crunch,” says Halliburton. By delaying payment to a vendor and extending the duration of an outstanding loan, the company was ultimately able to remain solvent.

That week, one of the Sazmining board members filed reports with law enforcement bodies in the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. They received acknowledgements from only UK-based Action Fraud, which said it would take no immediate action, and the Cyber Fraud Task Force, a division of the US Secret Service. (The CFTF did not respond to a request for comment.)

The incredible volume of crypto-related scam activity makes it all but impossible for law enforcement to investigate each theft individually. “It’s a type of threat and criminal activity that is reaching a scale that’s completely unprecedented,” says Eckle.

The best chance of a scam victim recovering their funds is for law enforcement to bust an entire scam ring, says Eckle. In that scenario, any funds recovered are typically dispersed to those who have reported themselves victims.

Until such a time, Halliburton has to make his peace with the loss. “It’s still painful,” he says. But “it wasn’t a death blow.”

This story originally appeared on Wired.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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