Technology

Gas stoves are a source of indoor air pollution. New evidence shows how much they may affect people with respiratory issues.

• Nvidia's Rubin-generation AI servers run coolant that is often hotter than a hot tub as it enters a closed loop at up to 45°C and leaves at around 55°C, with no performance penalty in tow
• The principle leveraged here is that of a temperature gradient with server chips still running hotter than the coolant, allowing heat transfer to occur seamlessly
• The approach allows Nvidia to roughly conserve 2.6 million gallons per megawatt annually to near zero and could save a 50MW site over $4 million a year in cost

Nvidia's Rubin generation is the first of its kind in multiple ways, but the one that sticks out possibly is the fact that it is 100% liquid cooled, implementing it as a core design feature at a platform level with every single chip and networking component covered by a closed loop.

The reference design by Nvidia aims to allow for AI factories that effectively consume zero water by implementing a closed loop circuit that does not leverage evaporative water cooling 99% of the time.

The approach goes a step further by potentially eliminating industrial chiller plants from the equation by using liquid cooling where the temperature is as much as 45 degrees Celsius for coolant entering the system and approximately 55 degrees Celsius while exiting it.

A numbers game for a data center that crunches them at an industrial level

Nvidia's approach is not the first of its kind in terms of thermal design or implementation; however, IBM beat it by 16 years, using 60-degree coolant to cool its prototype supercomputer at ETH Zurich.

The premise was the same: a much lower carbon footprint, significantly lower power consumption, and a loop that is filled once and left alone. What Nvidia adds is scale — its Vera Rubin-based DSX design extends the approach across an entire facility rather than a single machine.

"The NVIDIA DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption — we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage," said Ali Heydari, Nvidia's director of data center cooling and infrastructure.

The coolant is a 3:1 water-to-propylene-glycol mix, and it pulls heat away from chips running far hotter than the coolant itself with ease.

The savings are not only water-based: industrial chiller plants cut their energy costs by roughly 4% for every degree they raise their operating temperature, and Nvidia estimates that a 50-megawatt hyperscale facility could save over $4 million annually in cooling-related energy and water costs by adopting its design.

With cooling historically accounting for as much as 40% of a data center's total power bill, Nvidia's approach is ambitious, but it is one that should pay for itself quickly — eliminating server fans altogether while allowing chillers to run only where necessary, and at considerably lower power than a loop demanding colder coolant.

It must be noted that DSX is a reference design: a set of best practices for building an AI factory, not a census of what the industry has actually built, where many designs still consume very large amounts of water even as AI data centers continue to pop up in drought-affected regions of the US.

Nvidia might seem to be championing a "greener" AI data center for the future, at least in its own designs, but that is only part of the story — and the part it leaves out is a little less flattering. Nvidia did not adopt hot-water cooling because it is elegant, or green, or clever, though it is all three. It adopted it because its accelerators became so power-dense that moving air across them was no longer physically viable, and once you are committed to liquid cooling, running it hot is simply the efficient way to do it.

The sustainability win is real, and it is a consequence of a thermal problem Nvidia created for itself by building the most power-dense chips in the industry. Hot water isn't the trick. It's the bill coming due, paid in the most efficient currency available.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for July 24, No. 669.

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, July 23 (game #1138).

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #1139) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• SPARK
• CANTER
• LLAMA
• JOG
• WALK
• YAK
• SINGLE
• NONE
• RAMBLE
• PROMPT
• FRYER
• DRONE
• REFRESH
• STRIKEOUT
• BABBLE
• HOME RUN

NYT Connections today (game #1139) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Chat for too long
• GREEN: Baseball terms
• BLUE: Reboot the brain
• PURPLE: Sounds divine

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #1139) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: TALK AT LENGTH
• GREEN: OUTCOMES FOR A BATTER
• BLUE: BRING TO MIND, AS A MEMORY
• PURPLE: HOMOPHONES OF RELIGIOUS ROLES

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #1139) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #1139, are…

• YELLOW: TALK AT LENGTH: BABBLE, DRONE, RAMBLE, YAK
• GREEN: OUTCOMES FOR A BATTER: HOME RUN, SINGLE, STRIKEOUT, WALK
• BLUE: BRING TO MIND, AS A MEMORY: JOG, PROMPT, REFRESH, SPARK
• PURPLE: HOMOPHONES OF RELIGIOUS ROLES: CANTER, FRYER, LLAMA, NONE

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 2 mistakes

Yesterday, “baseball” was one of the tiles and today it appeared to be one of the categories. However, I was wary of a trap so decided to steer clear of HOME RUN, WALK and STRIKEOUT until later in the game — not least because I couldn’t see a fourth obvious baseball term.

Instead, I decided to collect WALK, RAMBLE, JOG and CANTER in a group I was thinking signified slow movement. Alas, I was very wrong. Finally, I saw the correct group for RAMBLE and was on my way.

Feeling brave, I added SINGLE to my baseball list and landed the OUTCOMES FOR A BATTER group and then successfully saw the four tiles connected to BRING TO MIND, AS A MEMORY. Close to a STRIKEOUT, but far from a HOME RUN.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Thursday, July 23, 2026, game #1138)

• YELLOW: SPHERICAL THINGS: BASEBALL, GLOBE, MARBLE, ORANGE
• GREEN: IN AN ANXIOUS STATE: EXCITED, FEBRILE, FRENETIC, INTENSE
• BLUE: PARTS OF AN AIRPORT: APRON, HANGAR, RUNWAY, TERMINAL
• PURPLE: ENDING IN GEOMETRY TERMS: APPOINT, DEPLANE, FELINE, JANGLE

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Thursday, July 23 (game #872).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #873) - hint #1 - today's themeWhat is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… There’s more where that came from

NYT Strands today (game #873) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• SOFTEN
• NEXUS
• STORE
• VOTES
• MOTHER
• FONT

NYT Strands today (game #873) - hint #3 - spangram lettersHow many letters are in today's spangram?

• Spangram has 11 letters

NYT Strands today (game #873) - hint #4 - spangram positionWhat are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

• First side: left, 1st row

• Last side: left, 2nd row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #873) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #873, are…

• EXTRA
• SURPLUS
• EXCESS
• LEFTOVER
• SPARE
• UNUSED
• SPANGRAM: ANDTHENSOME

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 2 hints

“There’s more where that came from” can be a threat of further punishment or a promise of more enjoyment, depending on the circumstance.

However, this train of thought got me nowhere and it wasn’t until a hint gave me EXTRA that I understood that we were looking for words that were synonyms of “supplementary” — as in there’s more where that came from, whether you need it or not.

I have a friend who runs a company called EXCESS, so not seeing that was embarrassing, while the spangram also eluded me. Not my finest of games.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, July 23, game #872)

• ADMIRAL
• LIEUTENANT
• COMMANDER
• ENSIGN
• RECRUIT
• SPANGRAM: NAVYRANKS

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

Looking for a different day?

A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Thursday, July 23 (game #1641).

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1642) — hint #1 — VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1642) — hint #2 — repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.

Quordle today (game #1642) — hint #3 — uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1642) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1642) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• D

• E

• L

• P

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1642) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1642, are…

• DOLLY
• EDIFY
• LAGER
• PRANK

This was another game where I felt very attuned with Quordle and got home with a few compromised guesses.

For LAGER I wanted to guess “large” but the position of the letter E ruled that out, while for PRANK my first thought was “crank” but the C had already been used.

Daily Sequence today (game #1642) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1642, are…

• SHRUB
• SCRUB
• MERGE
• GIANT

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE
• Quordle #1639, Tuesday, 21 July: TRUSS, AXIAL, SWINE, THING
• Quordle #1638, Monday, 20 July: ICING, SLICK, GAILY, RISEN
• Quordle #1637, Sunday, 19 July: SPURT, ACRID, THRUM, BLEEP
• Quordle #1636, Saturday, 18 July: KNAVE, TIGHT, BLEAT, CHAOS
• Quordle #1635, Friday, 17 July: CUMIN, PALER, GRASS, INBOX
• Quordle #1634, Thursday, 16 July: IGLOO, PLAIT, YEAST, AROMA
• Quordle #1633, Wednesday, 15 July: PROXY, BRICK, BROTH, SURGE
• Quordle #1632, Tuesday, 14 July: EBONY, AVOID, RODEO, CUTIE
• Quordle #1631, Monday, 13 July: VOICE, BISON, BURNT, BUILT
• Quordle #1630, Sunday, 12 July: STAIN, BINGO, LARVA, DICEY
• Quordle #1629, Saturday, 11 July: WORTH, PRONG, DINGO, DRUID
• Quordle #1628, Friday, 10 July: GREET, STEAK, DUSKY, HAUTE
• Quordle #1627, Thursday, 9 July: CRUMP, PHONE, SHINY, STONY
• Quordle #1626, Wednesday, 8 July: GHOST, TREND, EXALT, ALONG
• Quordle #1625, Tuesday, 7 July: ARRAY, SUITE, KIOSK, BOULE
• Quordle #1624, Monday, 6 July: TRAWL, SPICE, PIANO, SHARK
• Quordle #1623, Sunday, 5 July: PINEY, SWOON, TITLE, PINTO
• Quordle #1622, Saturday, 4 July: ARGUE, MOTEL, OPERA, TRUCE

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for July 23, No. 668.

Listen up, music fans: the best streaming service in the world* just got even better.

I'm talking, of course, about Qobuz — the French streamer that we consider to be the best music streaming service for high-res audio and which has just rolled out a bunch of updates that fix some of its biggest problems.

And, to be clear, it did have a few. While Qobuz is without question the best music streamer if you care more about audio quality than anything else (and are you really a music lover if you don't?), it has traditionally lagged behind the likes of Spotify when it comes to user experience and features.

This update brings a bunch of nice quality-of-life changes that make it a slicker, easier platform to use, as well as adding some sorely missed features that most of us have come to expect these days — for instance, lyrics.

Let's dig in.

* According to me, not TechRadar as a whole

Fixing a hole

There were two big things that jumped out to me when I switched from Spotify to Qobuz in late 2025.

One was the incredible leap in audio quality; oh my word, you have not lived until you've heard Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in glorious 24-bit / 192kHz quality on a decent hi-fi.

The second was how bare bones the app experience was. Spotify is many things, and not all of them good, but its app is generally a joy to use. In contrast, the Qobuz interface felt distinctly lacking, as if so much effort had gone into making the music sound good that they hadn't spent much time making it look good too.

This new update changes that as follows:

1. The Qobuz player has a fresh new look

(Image credit: Qobuz/Future)

The first change is on the face of it a relatively superficial one: the player that displays when you're listening to music has been redesigned. However, I'd actually rate this as pretty consequential.

For instance, the player now changes color to match the artwork of whatever you're listening to. Who cares? Well, me. Immersion is a massive part of the music-listening experience, and opening the app to see that its background is of a similar hue to the album art helps to keep you in the mood. After all, if you're listening to Joy Division or The Cure, you don't want a bright yellow sunny screen to snap you out of your intentional gloom.

There's more to the overhaul than just the colors, though. The fact that the player stays visible during navigation is appreciated, while the split-screen tablet mode — which I haven't tried yet — promises to make multi-tasking easier still.

2. You now get lyrics!

This is a big one. I've been on the Qobuz Beta for several months and so have had access to lyrics on the app for a while — and frankly, I can't imagine (musical) life without them. After all, there's only so many times you can listen to Total Football by Parquet Courts before you really, really need to know whether he's genuinely saying something rude about Tom Brady at the end. (He is.)

It is fairly astonishing that it's taken this long for Qobuz to add lyrics to the service, admittedly, but better late than never eh?

The lyrics also scroll as the song is playing, with the current line highlighted, and there's even translation of foreign-language lyrics via single button press.

One caveat: your experience may differ depending on what you listen to. My tastes are geared more towards the relatively obscure alternative rock side of things, and some of my favorite tunes either don't have lyrics at all or don't have the fancy scrolling-and-highlighting-and-translating options. But hopefully the catalogue will expand over time.

3. There's a new Explore section

(Image credit: Qobuz/Future)

One of the big differences between Spotify and Qobuz is in how rarely the latter service tries to persuade you what to listen to. In many ways this is a plus point; for all of its supposed algorithmic expertise, Spotify never really knew me too well. And I definitely didn't need to be told that I should be listening to some high-energy party playlist just because it was a Friday, thank you very much.

Qobuz's new Explore section shows how it should be done. Simply click the icon when listening to any song and you'll be shown an excellent overview of related content: albums by the artist, playlists that feature them, magazine articles about them (yes, Qobuz has a built-in magazine), more from the same label, similar artists, similar releases, and genre classics.

It's a one-stop-shop for music you might well want to listen to next, and its contextual nature really lifts it above the competition and makes it far more useful than most.

4. You can easily go deeper

Want more than what the Explore section offers? You can go deeper still by clicking the Info icon. This already existed on Qobuz, serving up credits for the musicians on the track and the label behind it. But it's now been expanded to give easy access to an artist bio, label bio, info about the audio quality and the ability to follow artist and label.

5. The queue finally makes (some) sense

Qobuz's queue feature was definitely not its strongest point in the past, although many of the criticisms I've seen aimed at it are based entirely on the fact that it doesn't work exactly like Spotify's; not worse, it's just slightly different.

Anyway, it's another area that's received a freshening up here: it's easier to see what's coming up next, you can easily add or remove tracks from the queue with a swipe, you can reorder by dragging and dropping. Simple things, but things that make it slicker to use and so are welcome all the same.

What's next?

Qobuz probably still has some work to do on the user-experience front if it wants to convert more people from Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. The desktop apps lack some of the enhanced features now found in the mobile versions, for instance, and I still have some major frustrations around playlists in particular — not least the 2,000 track limit that has broken some of my favorite collections.

But that's for the future. For now, I can rejoice in the fact that the gap between Qobuz's audio chops and its user experience has been sharply narrowed. If you love music I recommend you give your ears a gift and try it out.

The new Qobuz features are available now on the service's iOS and Android apps for mobile and tablet.

Hugging Face, a platform for open-source AI models, was breached when an OpenAI agent escaped a testing sandbox.

Samsung’s new Galaxy AI feature is fun because it’s not rewriting reality.

Scott Winters alleges ChatGPT misdiagnosed him with dysautonomia. He later suffered a “massive pulmonary embolism,” according to the lawsuit.

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,861 for Friday, July 24.

The limited test lets players stream select games they already own for up to an hour.

Intel is one of the most ubiquitous companies in the world, let alone the technology industry, with its technologies powering many of the computers most people have used for generations. Central to its success was a philosophy from its former CEO Andy Grove, who was a part of the company from day one and ran it from 1987 to 1998.

Inside Intel

Andy Grove was setting out the foundational theme for his management book 'Only the Paranoid Survive', which he wrote toward the latter years as CEO of Intel.

Quote of the day

This article is part of TechRadar Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today and in years gone by. Read the full series here.

Grove, who is widely recognised as one of the most successful tech executives of the late 20th century, advocated strongly for putting paranoia at the heart of business. Worrying about various risks that can affect your business — from new competitors to macroeconomic shocks — means you can prepare for them.

But what's worse, as he described it, are 'strategic inflection points' that signal a massive shift in fundamentals that could either lead to staggering growth or a grave decline by an order of magnitude. It's fair to say, in the years since he left Intel, that the company has endured its ups and downs, putting it mildly.

Sliding doors

Although Intel enjoyed incredible success in the 20th century and into the early 2000s, the company stuttered in recent years with rival chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD gaining ground and eating into its market share.

Ironically, from the outside, it appears that the company had succumbed to the sort of complacency that its former CEO had been warning against.

That said, the company is in the midst of a remarkable comeback under the leadership of new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who has overseen a dramatic surge in the company's stock price that underlines its improved overall outlook as well as new ventures to support the AI buildout.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1,139 for Thursday, July 24.

• 6G development has received a boost from a new breakthrough
• Using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, researchers found that electromagnetic waves can be manipulated
• The research has been conducted by engineers led from the University of Glasgow

Research engineers have established a potential solution to the one of the main problems faced in the development of 6G: electromagnetic interference, or EMI. Using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (referred to as “RIS”), they have been able to control, divert, magnify, and generally manipulate signals, promoting 6G data and dampening EMI.

Intended to deliver networking speeds up to 100 times faster than 5G, development of 6G has encountered various stumbling blocks, not least the electromagnetic interference presented by almost every connected device in the world.

When it is finally rolled out, 6G is expected to revolutionize connectivity, from standard Wi-Fi connectivity to smart home and Internet of Things, and beyond.

Canceling interference

Previous attempts at handling the EMI problem in 6G research have been made, but researchers found that weakening the EMI also weakened the 6G signal.

The team working with the University of Glasgow have found that their approach to RIS, with programmable elements positioned across the surface, can manipulate electromagnetic waves. These elements can reflect and focus signals, redirect EMI, and boost signal strength, and can be programmed and controlled individually.

The team has established what it has termed an “EMI-aware framework” which “fingerprints” the interference, scans for the strongest signal path, and uses the RIS to direct signals to avoid the EMI.

"Previously, cancelling out this kind of interference meant the base station had to do a huge amount of intensive digital signal processing, and that computation is expensive in energy terms," said Jalil Kazim from The James Watt School of Engineering’s and a co-author of the paper.

"By placing an intelligent surface in the environment, we can shape the signal path in a way that helps handle the interference before it ever reaches the base station. That eases both the computational burden and the energy cost on the network itself."

EMI and privacy

There is more to the challenges of 6G development than managing the basics of successful connectivity, however. EMI could prove to be a security issue, and the RIS solution can ensure that data signals are correctly routed. This has implications for internal privacy, too, as it can deliver the correct data to specific users and devices.

Professor Muhammad Ali Imran, head of the James Watt School of Engineering, who also co-authored the paper, added: “Security, privacy and resilience are no longer optional extras in these networks but essential requirements. Our surface can direct the signal towards the users we trust and deny it to the ones we don’t, bringing us closer to the secure, flexible networks which will define the communications and sensing technologies of tomorrow.”

Commercial 6G is expected to begin rollout in 2030.

Google has 60 days to comply under the EU’s Digital Marketing Act or it could face penalities

Tucked away in Gemini are custom AI experts you’re probably not using.

• Flamingo delivers longer range while costing roughly half as much
• Cheap missiles are forcing expensive defense strategies to evolve rapidly
• Ukraine's defense industry is becoming impossible for competitors to ignore

Ukraine's defense industry increasingly produces weapons that promise comparable battlefield effects at substantially lower costs than their Western counterparts.

Fire Point's Flamingo cruise missile has become one of the clearest examples of this broader shift in production.

A new report from The Atlantic notes it travels roughly twice as far as the US Tomahawk while carrying a larger payload at about half the cost.

Cost-driven innovation is reshaping missile production

Fire Point founder Denys Shtilerman says the company now produces roughly 200 long-range drones every day alongside up to three Flamingo cruise missiles.

The Flamingo reportedly achieves its lower production cost partly by using repurposed jet engines from older Soviet aircraft instead of new propulsion systems.

The missile also relies on carbon fiber construction rather than conventional aluminum alloys, while drone wings contain lightweight foam.

This is because durability beyond operational requirements offers little financial value and “they need to fly for 15 hours. Anything beyond that is a waste of money," Shtilerman explained.

This approach differs sharply from many legacy Western weapons, where long service life frequently outweighs manufacturing economy during development decisions.

The comparison naturally extends beyond cruise missiles because pressure to lower costs is already influencing established American defense companies facing changing battlefield realities.

Lockheed Martin recently introduced the PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or ACE, which is expected to cost less than half the price of the PAC-3 MSE interceptor currently valued at more than $4 million each.

That places the projected ACE price below $2 million while allowing more expensive interceptors to remain available for the most demanding ballistic missile threats.

Such developments suggest legacy manufacturers increasingly recognize that affordable, mass-produced systems may become just as strategically valuable as technically superior but significantly costlier alternatives.

Cheap weapons can create expensive consequences

Flamingo's lower production cost could carry consequences extending beyond the battlefield because successful wartime systems often attract foreign manufacturers seeking industrial partnerships and joint production agreements.

Europe has already begun moving in that direction after nine countries joined Ukraine in announcing an Integrated Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition supported by Ukrainian missile technology and industrial experience.

Those partnerships are unlikely to remain limited to procurement because manufacturing knowledge, production techniques, and engineering expertise often accompany long-term industrial cooperation between defense companies.

Similar developments followed the Iran war, where battlefield success became an effective public relations opportunity for companies pursuing new commercial relationships with foreign governments and manufacturers.

Ukraine could now follow a comparable path because combat-tested systems provide valuable credibility when negotiating production agreements with potential international partners.

Shtilerman welcomed that direction, saying, "It's not America that decides whether Europe can defend itself. Europe is building its own shield."

However, Shtilerman’s background and authenticity remain questionable because he studied and worked in Russia, served two prison terms there, and his company became linked to a major corruption investigation.

• Bloomberg pegs outstanding AI data center debt above $500 billion right now
• CoreWeave isolates each loan inside its own separate special purpose vehicle
• Parent companies report only a fraction of their real total exposure, hiding the rest in shell entities

A growing body of analysts now warns that AI data center debt increasingly resembles the subprime mortgages that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

Much of that debt is issued through special purpose vehicles, structures that keep billions of dollars off corporate balance sheets entirely.

Bloomberg estimates more than $500 billion in outstanding AI data center debt, with roughly $200 billion held by private credit funds.

A debt structure built on theoretical revenue

Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) raise debt to build data centers, then repay creditors only once paying customers begin generating revenue.

That structure is exactly why CoreWeave has raised billions through separate SPVs for individual loans, including an $8.5 billion facility tied to Meta's contract, since each loan stays isolated inside its own entity.

The same logic explains why Nikkei Asia reported that Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle have accrued around $1.65 trillion in debt over five years, much of it spread across similar vehicles rather than sitting on any single balance sheet.

That gap between real exposure and reported debt exists because these vehicles are jointly owned with outside investors, letting the parent company report only a fraction of the risk.

Meta's Hyperion data center shows the pattern clearly: it is owned 80% by Blue Owl and only 20% by Meta itself, so the bulk of the debt lives with Blue Owl on paper even though Meta is the intended tenant.

Google has used the same approach, backstopping debt-funded data centers built by Fluidstack, Cipher Mining and TeraWulf without those obligations ever touching its own balance sheet.

That kind of arrangement is precisely what drew scrutiny from auditor Ernst & Young, which flagged Meta's structure as a critical audit matter, questioning who ultimately bears its economic risk.

The stakes extend well beyond the companies involved, because pension funds and insurers are also directly exposed, with many now relying on data center returns to fund future payouts.

Echoes of the 2008 mortgage collapse

The comparison to 2008 holds up because both bubbles rested on the same flawed premise: that demand would keep growing forever and never needed to be tested.

Subprime mortgages were the proof of that thinking at the time, and by 2006 roughly 20% of all new mortgages issued in the United States were already classified as subprime, according to government data.

Rather than treat that as a warning sign, financial institutions bundled those loans into complex securities, a move that obscured the true underlying risk from investors and rating agencies alike.

Financier Michael Milken captured the mood of the era when he publicly described such securities as a "financial innovation" that would broadly increase national prosperity and jobs.

Reality caught up with that optimism once mortgage defaults began rising sharply in 2005, and the damage cascaded through the entire financial system from there.

Lehman Brothers embodied how unchecked that confidence had become, operating at more than 25 times leverage in 2005 without serious pushback from regulators or rating agencies.

Today's numbers echo that same pattern of unexamined risk: analysts estimate more than $1.4 trillion in bank exposure to private credit, with $300 billion of it held by major banks alone.

Some estimates suggest planned AI data center capacity exceeds actual annual compute demand by a factor of roughly 15 times.

Unlike 2008, this risk is not driven by derivatives but by the sheer scale of individual data center construction costs.

Whether this debt unwinds gradually or all at once likely depends on how quickly major AI customers can pay their bills.

For now, the scale of exposure across banks, pensions and insurers suggests the comparison to 2008 is not merely rhetorical.

Via Ed Zitron