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Trust has become the world’s most vulnerable infrastructure, yet most people don't realize we're already at war to defend it.

Every online interaction, phone call, password reset, remote job interview, and even a pickup or delivery now raises the same basic question: is the person on the other side really who they say they are?

Global businesses and governments in the AI era face a war where identity is the weapon, the attackers are invisible, and the battlefield is the infrastructure we rely on for daily connected life. AI has accelerated fraud and made sophisticated deception accessible to any bad actor.

Criminal rings, nation-state adversaries, and even ordinary people can now make fraud attempts against people and businesses at massive scale. Often, the money they take funds other criminal activities, or even military programs for rogue states.

Socure’s own network saw an 8,000% increase in AI-accelerated fraud over the past year, a number that firmly demonstrates that fraud has evolved from back-office risk to strategic business threat.

Unsafe identities

Most people would be shocked by how unsafe their identity actually is. Major data breaches have exposed private and sensitive information like names, addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, emails, and more. And fraudsters aren’t starting from zero anymore. AI can be used on top of real data to create hyper-realistic deepfakes and synthetic identities that can’t be caught through traditional fraud signals.

I spent more than a decade in the U.S. Army, with much of that time in Special Operations. There, I learned what asymmetric threats look like up close. AI-accelerated fraud has the same hallmarks: low-cost attacks, fast adaptation, distributed networks, and targets that don’t even realize they’re under attack until the damage is already done.

Our fraud fighting research team at Socure discovered one fraud operation that purchased 340 domain names, created more than 24,000 fake identities, and launched more than 35,000 identity attacks on a single company in a matter of weeks. The ring avoided traditional linkages: no repeated emails, phone numbers, addresses, or other notable identifiers tied the attacks together. The pattern only became visible by connecting the infrastructure behind the attacks.

This is just one example. With AI as a partner, the enemy is evolving quickly, from identity theft farms with hundreds or thousands of phones running scams around the clock, to people coerced into becoming fraud mules for North Korea-linked laptop schemes.

An unseen war

This is a war that most people don’t see, but they are feeling the impacts every day. Fraud breaks trust and the burden of proof is on the consumer. Businesses are suspicious of trustworthy customers, while customers can’t trust most of the messages they receive.

This paradigm forces the entire digital economy to spend more time proving what used to be assumed: that the person on the other side is real.

I know because it has happened to me.

Someone once used my personal information to open a business account at a major bank. I work in this industry. I had frozen my credit and it still happened. I spent weeks calling, disputing, waiting, and wondering what else they might try to do in my name. Even after the matter was investigated and closed, the unsettling feeling always stayed with me.

Beyond the money, the human toll is real. Victims lose time, peace of mind, and trust. In the worst cases, identity crime can lead to a national security crisis, no matter the country. It’s clear why this is a war we have to win.

But the fight is bigger than any one company, or any one country. The lesson I learned in Army Special Operations applies here: it takes a network to defeat a network. You can be the best bank, the best fintech, the best government agency, but if you’re fighting a networked enemy with only your own data, you’re still fighting in a silo.

That is exactly what fraudsters want: each company sees just one piece of the attack, so no one has the ability to connect the dots.

Organized fraudsters

The fraudsters are already organized. The defenders have to be one step ahead and band together. That means lawful, privacy-preserving shared intelligence across global businesses, governments, financial institutions, technology providers, and infrastructure companies.

When one defender sees a fake face, a fake document, a mule pattern, or a fraud ring’s infrastructure, that insight should help protect everyone else.

The urgency is not only about today’s attacks. Quantum computing is on the horizon and it is bound to accelerate fraud even further than AI has. The window to build stronger defenses is closing.

World War Fraud is here. If we fight it together, we win. If we can't come together around a shared understanding of AI-accelerated fraud and its true scale, we risk seeing trust between organizations and people fractured forever.

We've tested, reviewed, and ranked the best identity theft protection.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

Nebraska's Medicaid director, in an exclusive interview with nonprofit news organization Tradeoffs, said roughly 200 people will lose health coverage on Aug. 1.

(Image credit: Rebecca S. Gratz for The Washington Post)

LinkedIn, one of the most notorious bastions of AI slop online today, is finally cracking down on the deluge being seen across its site.

The social network is introducing a range of controls as it looks to turn off the tap of the torrent of AI slop increasingly dominating its website. You can try it now - just click on the three dots at the top-right of any LinkedIn post, and among the usual options to save, share or embed, you'll see a new option - "Seems like AI slop".

My only question is - what took you so long?

"We really care about this"

In a LinkedIn post of his own, Hari Srinivasan, CPO at the company, explained the reasoning behind the roll-out in words which should be music to the ears of most LinkedIn users.

"AI slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this," he declared. "People come to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas and expertise."

Now, I try and keep my LinkedIn feed fairly professional - like many of us, I do try and use it for work purposes, after all. But the odd slop does slip in every now and then - usually 3rd-level connections trying to shill some crypto scam, or religious-themed pep talk.

I have to say, it's incredibly satisfying to click the "Seems like AI slop' and relegate such posts to the dustbin of history - much more so than LinkedIn's previous system of reporting posts which may have sounded like scams or spam, but often just disappeared into silence.

As Srinivasan explained on the new reporting tools, "Slop is hard to define and the definition changes; this lets us tune our models and make better feeds."

"We asked ourselves why do people post with AI anyway? The answer is LinkedIn isn’t a one-word kind of place and they feel more confident running their posts through AI. We’re taking this learning, removing the ‘enhance your post’ feature you see when you write a post or message & replacing with a feature that proofreads your words, but does not change your voice."

Hopefully they more we use the tool, the smarter it will get - and cut down on the stuff we don't want to see. The action goes two ways though - and LinkedIn will also be testing a way for admins and members to see in their analytics dashboard when your own content has been flagged as potential slop.

Let's hope this is a bit more regulated - we don't want online vigilantes carrying out campaigns against a company or person they may have a vendetta against.

Srinivasan says the approach is based on two learnings - "First, AI and slop are not the same thing; many people refine thoughts with AI, and we believe they want to know when they sound inauthentic. Second, we want members to get feedback from real humans on what sounds authentic - not just have an AI detector review it and get it wrong."

Srinivasan also noted that LinkedIn (which let us remember is owned by Microsoft) will "continue to improve and invest in our automation defences..on comments alone, everyday we are now catching hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts, and have blocked billions of other automation attempts (posting at scale, slop) in the last couple months alone."

This is a very welcome first step by LinkedIn, and lets just hope it's the start of an ongoing crusade against AI slop - because no one wants to see any of that anymore.

I got a rare peek into Samsung’s Gumi manufacturing facility, where phones like the Z Fold 8 Ultra are in production.

Are you keen to spend less time staring at a screen, but don't want to sacrifice the practical benefits of owning a smartphone? The “balance” of the Balance Phone is that it’s about halfway between the dumbphones of yesteryear and the attention-grabbing overload of today’s best phones.

Crucially, it is still a smartphone (a basic Samsung one, to be specific), so it solves all the usual dumbphone issues of lacking WhatsApp, maps, and music, but runs a limited operating system called Balance OS that’s designed to help curtail your scrolling habits.

I just spent a week using the Balance Phone as my main device to get a feel for how effective its digital detox features are. Would it help me reclaim my time, be more present, or be more productive? Or would this glimpse into a post-social-media-ban future for kids leave me bored and left out? The answer is complicated.

What is the Balance Phone, and what does it block?

(Image credit: Future)

The Balance Phone is essentially a Samsung Galaxy A37 running Balance's locked-down Balance OS. Balance also offers the lower-spec Balance Phone Kids (a Galaxy A17) and higher-spec Balance Phone Pro (a Galaxy S25), and all three phones cost a touch more than their non-restricted Samsung counterparts. The model I tested for this article was a previous version of the Balance Phone based on the Galaxy A16.

Much like the UK's impending under-16 social media ban, the Balance Phone blocks social media platforms (including X, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook) while exempting messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal.

It puts pretty aggressive limits on your browsing behavior, too, by not only blocking access to adult content, but also stopping adult image searches altogether and even blocking various news websites and blogs (you can’t even use browsers that aren’t Chrome — imagine!).

(Image credit: Future)Does it help with your screen time?

Yes, I’d actually say that the Balance Phone is one of the most effective solutions for getting you off your phone that I’ve experienced so far.

You can’t remove or alter the OS even if you wanted to, so I reckon it’d be a great phone for getting kids off social media, too. It would make an ideal first phone for younger users, and is super simple and intuitive to use.

In many ways, it’s a phone that’s made not to be used. In the past, I’ve felt Nothing’s handsets were designed to be used less, with their minimalist designs and purpose-driven OS, but the Balance Phone takes the latter to another level.

If you pick the Balance home screen during setup, it’s just a customizable black screen with the names of eight apps (of your choosing) on display. You can get to an app library view with a couple of swipes, but it’s limited by default.

(Image credit: Future)

I compared the amount of time I spent on the phone to the previous week on my iPhone 17 Pro — and the difference was huge. My screen time dropped from around 5 to 6 hours a day to under an hour (about 30 to 45 minutes of use). While I’ve been mainly working at home and not using the Balance Phone for navigation, I’ve mainly found myself on emails or reading on the device, as I can still load up apps like Instapaper and Kindle. I’ve not been able to retreat to my usual distractions of TikTok, Instagram or Reddit.

Did it make me more present or productive, though? I think that’s much more debatable. The Balance Phone can force you to change your habits, but that doesn’t mean you automatically change or become more efficient; I found myself still picking up the phone to try to scroll or just do something, even if there was nothing to do on it. And, yes, I found I got a bit more bored during one week of using it. If you’ve been using smartphones for a long time, you’ll find the habits are pretty ingrained.

What I missed in my week with the Balance Phone

(Image credit: Future)

While I used the Balance Phone, I felt I kept up with reading articles I’d saved in Instapaper or cracking on with the book I’m reading in the Kindle app. But the lack of Reddit and relatively poor browsing experience meant I didn’t read quite as much news, and I did notice all the extra friction for social media apps in both positive and negative ways.

A self-imposed social media ban is great at stopping you from scrolling away your days, but I also found I missed out on some of the more fun aspects of social media. I was out of the loop on some entertaining memes, and my wife ended up gathering a long list of TikToks and Instagram Reels that she wanted to send me during the week. I got these in one big batch at the end of the experiment!

Of course, it’s all just random House of the Dragon commentary and silly cat videos, so arguably nothing serious or important, but it feels like I missed out by not being able to share these things in the moment.

It makes me wonder: we can all agree social media is addictive, but a blanket ban ignores that it’s something enjoyable in moderation, too. I expect that if I actually used the Balance Phone full-time, I’d still want to use a normal tablet or laptop where I can reply to messages on Instagram and watch YouTube videos, to be honest.

Who is this phone actually for?

(Image credit: Future)

If you want your phone to be restricted to the apps you need to communicate, listen, read, plan and navigate, the Balance Phone does the job well. You can load up your calendar, books, messaging apps, music, email and maps, but no video apps, social media or anything with infinite scroll.

And, because the Balance Phone is ultimately a phone that’s not meant to be used, it really is best for digital minimalists. If you’re already trying to give up social media and are comfortable with the extra restrictions, you’ll get on with the enforced digital detox. I think it also could function well as a work phone. You can put Slack, Gmail, Outlook, and the like on it, and then just stick to using it in the office.

We can all agree social media is addictive, but a blanket ban ignores that it’s something enjoyable in moderation, too.

Overall, I found it highly effective at limiting my screen time. And that’s why I’d also recommend it for kids. As a first phone, the Balance Phone is ideal and mirrors the coming social media ban and adult content restrictions for children. So, it works for kids and serious detoxers (for more child-friendly phone recommendations, check out our guide to the best phones for kids).

However, the lack of adjustability to its limits makes the Balance Phone harder to recommend for everyone else. It would be interesting if it had a little more nuance for app time limits or focus modes at particular times of day, for instance.

(Image credit: Future)

And a quick word on the phone's hardware: while the fingerprint scanner, underlying OneUI base software and simple Balance OS are all solid, the weak performance of the lower-end models makes the Balance Phone a little harder to recommend. The Samsung Galaxy A16 phone I tried was seriously slow and laggy, even when simply opening and switching between apps, and while the newer Galaxy A37 version will almost certainly offer better performance, I'd keep your expectations low.

Still, even for kids, I’d recommend the Galaxy A37 option over the cheaper Galaxy A17, as it’s just that bit more likely to keep you going for longer. Adults should consider the Balance Phone Pro, too, even if just because the cameras on the Galaxy S25 are leagues ahead of those on the other two models (it also has a slightly smaller 6.2-inch screen size).

Would you consider using a distraction-free phone like the Balance Phone? Let us know in the poll or comments below.

Air stylers are very much the hot hair tool of the moment. When Dyson's first Airwrap hit the shelves in 2018, it felt like we were immediately hooked. We watched, entranced, as this wand-shaped styler grabbed a limp piece of hair, span it around, and left a perfect curl in its wake. And all without any extreme heat? It felt too good to be true.

The more watched women use this device on social, the more I saw women being very, very upset that they spent $600 on a device that created a curl for maybe a minute.

Dr Julie Chung, T3

And maybe it was. When I spoke to Dr Julie Chung, co-founder of major haircare brand T3, she advised that we take a much more cautious approach to the air styler phenomenon than we're used to hearing.

"This device is not for all hair types," she tells me. "And for any company to say, 'Oh, this is for all hair kind', 'this is for every single woman', it's simply not true."

She talks about how cool air-styler tools look on social media, but how, after the initial curl-creation magic has been captured, many women will find the styles just don't last on their hair.

T3 hair an air styler, but Dr Chung is clear it's not suitable for everyone (Image credit: Future)

"The more that I would watch women use this device on social, the more I saw women being very, very upset that they spent $600 on a device that created a curl for maybe a minute. They'd be in the mirror, it looks great, then they turn away for two seconds, look back and the curls have fallen," she recalls of the early days of air stylers.

One size does not fit all

Dr Chung is clear that even T3's own air styler — the Aire 360 — isn't for everyone. "Curls in general… it depends on the woman's hair type," she explains. "Some women can use a Dyson Airwrap with no product and be able to curl their hair and it'll stay. But that's because these are women whose hair tends to hold a curl really, really well.

"A woman with fine hair, for example, will dm me and say, the Shark didn't work. The Dyson didn't work. Should I get the Aire 360? And I would tell her, no. Just like Brandy Melvilles [a fashion brand that's been criticized for only offering clothing in one, small size] one size does not fit all. I can't even get the shorts over one leg."

A woman with fine hair, for example, will DM me and say, the Shark didn't work. The Dyson didn't work. Should I get the Air360? And I would tell her, no.

Dr Julie Chung, T3

So you might have hair that will naturally hold an air styler curl with no further effort required. Or you might need to add product, and take time to cool and set the air-styler curl.

Alternatively, a curling iron might give you much better and longer-lasting results (Dr Chung is also of the belief that 'heat has been demonized incorrectly — but that's a different subject), or you might need to use a curling iron to create ribbon curls. Dr Chung mentions T3's CEO, whose hair won't even hold a curling iron curl, and who needs a hot-roller set.

Your needs will be shaped not just by your hair texture, Dr Chung explains, but all manner of other aspects, from your lifestyle to the kind of climate you're living in, to your hair cut, and whether it's been colored, and the products you're using on it. There's a full spectrum of needs, and a full spectrum of tools.

She adds: "I've always said this to both consumers and editors alike: I can help you find the tool that will work for you, but that one tool that you're looking at, that some companies say it's for everybody. It's not for you. "I'm not going to sell you something that you'll come back and say it didn't work because I knew it wasn't going to work. I don't think that's some mind-blowing concept."

• Disney+ subscribers in some European countries have lost 4K and HDR support, including basic HDR10 as well as Dolby Vision
• This is highly likely to be the result of a patent dispute, which was the cause of Disney+ losing Dolby Vision previously, but Disney hasn't confirmed this yet
• Premium customers are paying more for very little advantage now, but there's no word on a refund or compensation as yet

A few months ago Disney+ removed Dolby Vision in parts of Europe after a patent court ruled against the entertainment company, although it brought Dolby back the following month. But now there's a much more serious removal: 4K and HDR10 are gone for many European customers as well as Dolby Vision, and these are pretty core things you pay for if you have Disney+ Premium.

It appears to be another patent issue. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, The Walt Disney Company Nordic & Baltic said: "Following a recent court ruling affecting the technology we use to deliver 4K UHD and HDR, we have temporarily removed support for 4K UHD and HDR on Disney+. We are disappointed and share our customers' frustration. We are working hard to restore support as quickly as possible."

We're not sure exactly which countries are affected yet, but it doesn't include the UK (or US) — we'll update with a full list when we can, but it's likely to be the same countries affected by the Dolby Vision removal. The reported list of countries in that case was: Austria; Belgium; Germany; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Netherlands; Portugal; Romania; Sweden.

That isn't just frustrating. It's taken away a key reason for subscribing to the most expensive Premium plan (though you will still get Dolby Atmos and the ability to stream to four devices).

But still, if you're paying the extra price specifically to upgrade from 1080p to 4K HDR, right now you're paying extra for nothing, there's no sign of any compensation for customers so far.

Maybe we should all go back to Blu-ray

It's no wonder that many movie fans are moving back to Blu-ray. Between price rises, digital deletion of paid-for titles and external issues such as patent disputes taking away picture quality you had access to until two days ago, it's not a great time to be solely reliant on streaming.

This current issue isn't Disney's fault. The major streaming services have all been targeted by patent owners claiming breach of their intellectual property, and this appears to be another one of those cases; if so, it'll probably be resolved relatively quickly.

But it does make me wonder about the bigger picture here, because I think streaming is in danger of losing what made it so popular as we pay ever increasing prices for what we used to get as standard.

In this particular case the loss of 4K and HDR has been imposed by an external issue. But the highest quality options have been moving upwards into the most expensive tiers for a couple of years now, so unless you pay for the premium subscriptions you don't get the best quality.

That means what used to be a one-size-fits-all offer is now much more complicated and more expensive every year. For example, I'm in the UK, where Disney+ has three plans, only one of which gives you Atmos and 4K. Netflix has three plans too, once again limiting 4K to the most expensive tier.

My previously ad-free Prime Video subscription is so stuffed with ads now it's a hilariously miserable experience with me and the kids swearing at the screen, and Dolby Vision and Atmos became paid-for upgrades two years ago.

I'd bet that if you're reading this you probably subscribe to, or use the ad-funded version of, a music streaming service; they're so convenient that looking for pirated songs is more trouble than it's worth. But can you say the same for the movie streamers?

I don't condone piracy at all. But as someone who's been reporting on digital piracy since the days when Metallica didn't know what a Napster was, I've seen piracy ebb and flow in music and in movies, and it's very clear that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much money and how many lawyers you throw at it, you cannot stop digital piracy. What you can do — what Netflix, the OG streamer, did — is offer a better alternative that makes it unappealing.

In a world where perfect digital copies of movies and TV shows are only a few clicks away, the only way to prevent people pirating is to make your product better in ways that persuade people to pay for it, or to accept the advertising that pays for it.

And to me it looks like only one of the major streamers is doing that: Apple TV+. What I'd love to see is the other streamers doing what it does. What I fear, and which is more likely, is that Apple TV is going to end up doing what they do.

President Trump says a deal has been reached for Hamas to completely disarm and Israeli forces to withdraw from Gaza. And, the U.S. economy slowed some, but Americans continued to spend.

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik)

With AI tools and services now increasingly common in workplaces across the country, finding the right use cases where the technology can really have an effect is becoming more and more important.

Accounting and finance seems an obvious use case for AI, where an automated system can quickly go through reams of data to find the solution, or ensure everything is properly sorted.

I spoke to Akankshu Dhawan, Xero SVP, Product & Tech, at the recent Xerocon 2026 event in London, to find out more.

"The best way to build products"

“It's a very fortunate place to be in, when customers want more of what you have,” Dhawan tells me following the Xerocon 2026 keynote, where the company announced a whole host of new tools, products and services.

Xero seems fairly unique to me in that it really seems to take care to listen to users and customers when developing new offerings - transformation and customization seems to be the key watchwords.

“I think that's the best way to build products,” Dhawan says, “sometimes you do need to push the envelope sometimes - as the world is changing so fast, technology is changing so fast, not everybody is going to be comfortable with it, but that's also an opportunity to listen.”

As mentioned, accounting and bookkeeping are clear and obvious use cases where AI should be able to have an impact, taking complex procedures and tedious manual processes and streamlining them, freeing up workers for other tasks.

But for this reason, it may require extra time and care to ensure tools are intuitive for accountants and bookkeepers, some of whom may have started out working with pen and paper, then moved to computers, and now to the age of AI. This is especially true for those with small businesses or start-ups as customers, where any filing mistake or accounting error could have major consequences.

“Our job is to help bring as much calm to this,” Dhawan says, “as long as (accountants) feel they are in control, and we can give them the right set of controls, that can help them navigate this with as little anxiety as possible.”

(Image credit: Xero)

This includes JAX, Xero’s AI platform, which the company says looks to offer “accountable intelligence” (pun probably intended), as part of its philosophy to infuse AI into every part of the product, built on top of its Xero operating system.

“It was very obvious to me any industry where there is a source of truth, and you can build a full loop...where customers can validate the input and give you the data...as long as you can do that well, you will have the ability to disrupt,” Dhawan says.

Xero had announced JAX will be able to create full end of year accounts, a significant escalation in capabilities, and an area where any mistake could be extremely costly in every sense of the word, so I ask Dhawan about the concerns some businesses may have on relying too heavily on AI tools.

“I think it's a risk if not done properly,” he says, “we keep coming back to the sense of control, and making sure the right controls are in place - we don't our AI to just send you a notification one day saying ‘I've sent your taxes to HMRC’ without you having even looked at it…you need to strike the right balance.”

He notes that the company’s AI is trained on 20 years’ worth of data from over five million customers, so it should be able to avoid troublesome variants.

“Because we have this…we can give you an idea of ‘it’s either this, or this’ - now check,” he says, “it’s much more productive, and you still save time, and you still keep the human in the loop.”

"Always in control"

All of this seems to result in what Xero had pledged about offering extra oversight when it comes to what can be the most critical part of running a business.

Dhawan had mentioned in his keynote the theme that users were “always in control - that's our promise to you”, and I ask him how realistic an aim that can be in a rapidly-changing and evolving market.

“Honestly, that's table stakes in our industry - I'm often blown away by promises that companies sometimes make,” he says.

“We are here because of this group of accountants and bookkeepers, and when they're sitting in the room with their small business clients, there's that trust, which kind of doesn't matter whether it's AI or not - they want to know, can I trust the advice.”

“It can be a win-win situation…it’s a no-brainer that that is our way of creating value for the ecosystem that we serve.”

“If we can really rise to the occasion, meet our customers and capture this AI tailwind, that's front and center - it's very real, it's happening, we've got to just keep our eye on the ball.”

• Existing ban on drones and routers extended to "advanced" robots
• FCC has confirmed that robot vacuums are included
• No effect on products already authorized by the FCC for US sales

The US's latest ban on foreign hardware is coming for an unlikely target: robot vacuum cleaners and likely robot lawn mowers too.

The ban comes via the White House, which has extended its previous ban on foreign-made drones and Wi-Fi routers. The ban now includes foreign-made power inverters and "advanced robots" on the grounds that they pose a national security risk to the US.

If you're finding it hard to imagine Russia rigging your vacuum cleaner, or Iran invading the US via an army of lawnbots... yeah. Us too.

These are the kind of robots we're worried about. (Image credit: US Army)How will the ban on robot vacuum cleaners work?

The ban doesn't outlaw the use of robots that you already own, so you're not going to have to hand over your robo-vac to the authorities. However, it bans the sale of "advanced robotic devices".

The definition of advanced robotic devices refers specifically to "autonomous mobile robots, humanoid robots, and quadrupeds" that can move around, avoid obstacles and weigh 4.4lbs or more including any ground station or docking station. Many robot vacuums and lawn mowers meet those criteria, and the FCC has confirmed to PC Mag that the ban does indeed apply to cleaning robots.

This is bad news for the big robot brands such as Ecovacs, Roborock and Dreame; the top five US robot vacuum brands are all Chinese, and therefore fall under this ban, so we contacted them for comment.

"We are aware of the FCC’s recent update," Eric Villines, Chief Communications Officer at Anker Innovations (the parent company of Eufy), told TechRadar. "Based on our current understanding, the new rule does not affect the continued availability, use or support of products we currently sell in the United States. Those products remain available and will continue to receive updates and customer support,

"Like others across the industry, we are seeking further clarity on how the rule will be applied to future products, and we will keep our customers informed. We remain committed to complying with all regulatory requirements in every market where we operate."

Several other smart home brands declined to comment at this early stage, but we get the general impression that this news might have come as something of a surprise.

Can you keep using your robovac?

There is one bit of sunshine in this cloud, however: the ban is not retrospective, so if a robot already has FCC authorization to be sold in the US that's fine. The ban does not prevent retailers "from continuing to sell, import, or market relevant models approved previously."

That said, PC Mag identifies a separate FCC order that says existing robot vacuums and similar products "may continue to receive software and firmware updates that mitigate harm to US consumers at least until January 1, 2029." If the FCC decides not to extend that then it's just put a countdown clock on any new Chinese-made robot vacuums sold in the US.

For the affected manufacturers, the next step will be to lobby the FCC in the hope of gaining an exemption for some or all of their products: after all, there's a big difference between a self-driving, self-cleaning mop and a robot dog capable of carrying an AR-15. However, so far there haven't been any exemptions for major Chinese drone or router manufacturers so the future is not looking very bright for the affected companies.

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The Nintendo Switch was nothing short of a phenomenon. It won the hearts of millions, possesses one of the greatest games libraries in console history, and became one of the highest selling systems of all time. It brought the best parts of its failing predecessor, the Wii U, forward, assuming an ultra-convenient hybrid form, and during the COVID 19 pandemic, it felt like everyone and their dog were building their perfect island on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or racing to the finish line in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

All of that is to say, that whatever came next would have huge shoes to fill. And so, in came the Nintendo Switch 2 — a system that appeared to be less of a revolution, and more of an evolution. It took what made the Switch great and ran with it, offering higher resolution and refresh rates, a larger screen for handheld mode, and even a mouse mode.

And in some respects, the Switch 2 has hit the ground running. It’s the second-fastest selling games console in recorded US history, and at just over a year old it's already seen multiple exclusives (such as Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokémon Pokopia) release to critical acclaim. But at the same time, some have been disappointed over the lack of a 3D Mario or truly new Zelda title on the horizon, while issues around battery life and pricing have also proved to be a turn off for others.

So, this got me thinking. Would gamers consider the Switch 2 to be more of a hit, or a flop? Sure, its sales figures have been impressive, but are users satisfied with the hardware upgrades? What are their thoughts on its game catalogue?

I spoke with industry experts, fellow journalists — and most importantly, you, our wonderful readers, and it proved to be a fascinating experience. I heard a lot of varying viewpoints, and now I’m here to report back.

Hit or miss: the expert take

(Image credit: Future / Nintendo)

To begin with, I spoke with Mat Piscatella, Executive Director of Games at the Market Research firm Circana, who had some excellent insight into the commercial performance of the Nintendo Switch 2.

“Well, over its first 12 months in the market, Nintendo Switch 2 hit 5.9M units sold in the US,” Piscatella told me.

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This, he noted, ensured it became the second fastest-selling video game hardware in the US since Circana’s records began in 1995 — finishing behind the Game Boy Advance only. “If that's not considered a hit, I'm not sure what would be,” he remarked.

“For the 2026 year-to-date period ending May, US hardware spending in total was up 37% compared to the same period a year ago,” Piscatella said. He stated that this was “entirely driven by Nintendo Switch 2 as double-digit percentage sales declines were experienced across the other in market platforms”.

He also highlighted high sales of software, such as Donkey Kong Bananza, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Pokémon: Pokopia, and Mario Kart World, a game which was largely obtained via a bundle with the system.

With one year in the books, it would be hard to ask for much more when it comes to the sales performance of the Nintendo Switch 2

Mat Piscatella, Executive Director of Games at Circana

So far so good, then, for Piscatella, who also highlighted the benefit of the Switch 2’s backwards compatibility — giving users access to thousands of unique titles from the original system.

He did flag that June date may indicate “tough year-on-year comp for the system,” largely due to sales being compared to the launch month. “After that we should see Switch 2 continue to perform well into its announced September price increase. Then we'll have to see what happens."

What does the TechRadar team think?

(Image credit: Future / Nintendo)

The early signs have been promising, commercially speaking, but our Managing Editor of Social & Engagement (and Nintendo enthusiast), Josephine Watson, says that “the Switch 2 needed more than sales to break Nintendo’s generational curse of yo-yo-ing console success. It needed sticking power”. So, one year on, has it stuck the landing?

She argued that the Switch 2’s weaker holiday sales and subsequent production cuts suggest that “the console has yet to prove its mettle in the same way the first-generation [Switch] did, even with such high sales figures in its first year.” Despite this, she did acknowledge the mid-lifecycle boom that the OG Switch experienced, largely due to the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic.

In terms of games, Watson had a somewhat mixed take, arguing that the Switch 2 had “a concerningly hollow launch title line-up carried mostly by Mario Kart World,” though she did suggest that the system gained momentum moving into the new year, especially with titles like Pokémon Pokopia and strong third-party additions like Resident Evil Requiem.

Is the Switch 2 a success one year on for Watson? “No — but yes, kinda,” she said. She lamented the lackluster battery life and pointed to how Nintendo could’ve done more to eradicate stick drift from the Joy-Con 2 controllers, but did express satisfaction with the improved processing power and refined eShop. And even though her views on the game library haven’t been entirely positive, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, scheduled for release in 2026, “is the game-changer,” she said.

TechRadar Senior Writer, Hamish Hector, admitted that he was “a little skeptical” of the Nintendo Switch 2 — both a little before and a little after its launch. But since grabbing one in the latter stages of 2025, those worries seem to have largely dissipated.

“It has cemented itself as my go-to gaming handheld,” Hector told me. “While it doesn’t have the raw power or library breadth of my Asus ROG Xbox Ally X — a handheld gaming PC with access to Steam’s vast suite of games — the Switch 2 does still boast a solid selection of AAA ports, incredible first-party hits and superb indie darlings”.

He noted how some AAA third-party ports have varied in quality, although hit the mark more often than they miss, and most issues manifest themselves as simple “graphical performance hitches” rather than “anything majorly frustrating”. He even hailed the Switch 2’s value for money, emphasizing that “At $449.99 / £395.99 it’s much more affordable than any worthwhile PC handheld, and even after its upcoming price hike to $499.99 it’ll still be a solid pickup”.

Here’s what our audience has to say

(Image credit: Future)

We’ve heard a range of views so far, albeit generally positive ones. It feels as if the general consensus is that the Nintendo Switch 2 has been an overall success, with a strong start in terms of sales and a commendable library to match. But I was most excited to hear from were you, our audience. So, I asked, and you answered: here’s whether you considered the Switch 2 to be a hit or a flop.

I asked our audience about their feelings on the Switch 2 across multiple platforms. With our poll here on the TechRadar website and over on WhatsApp, users were given four choices: 'It’s a hit'; 'it’s pretty good'; 'it’s a little disappointing'; and 'it’s a flop'. We got 892 votes, and the breakdown was as follows.

Is the Nintendo Switch 2 a hit or a flop? Main poll results

Response

Votes (raw numbers)

Votes (as % of total)

It’s a hit

224

25.1%

It’s pretty good

197

22.1%

It’s a little disappointing

378

42.4%

It’s a flop

93

10.4%

Over on YouTube, we wanted to try a more direct approach and gave our audience only two options: hit or flop. We received 446 votes (at the time of writing), with 61% selecting ‘hit’, and 39% going with ‘flop’.

But what do these results actually tell us? At a glance, the picture seems pretty divided. Across all of our polls on our website, WhatsApp, and YouTube, we received 1,338 responses. Of those, 693 (51.8%) were generally positive on the Switch 2 (respondents called it ‘a hit’ or ‘pretty good’), whereas 645 (48.2%) were generally more negative (respondents either selected ‘it’s a little disappointing’ or ‘it’s a flop’).

Over on our Facebook page, the reasons for such division became clear, with a wide range of differing opinions floating around.

Posted by TechRadar on 

Of course, the very meaning of ‘hit or flop’ in itself can be interpreted in a number of ways. One commenter, Andreas Carmblad, stated that “hit or flop is reflected in the sales figures,” suggesting that Nintendo’s new console has been a success so far.

Others were more focused on the quality of the system’s software lineup, with most talking up the first-party line-up — though one commenter described the current set of exclusives as “woeful,” adding “hopefully a few big releases can turn it around [like] OoT and a new 3D Mario game”.

Elsewhere, commenters expressed disappointment over the console’s battery life in handheld mode — understandable given that it can run flat in around 2 hours with more demanding games.

However, many considered the new hardware changes to be a hit, with Tim McDougall saying “It's an improvement in almost every way [over the original Switch] and it's now much closer in performance to the current gen home consoles. It's 99% backwards compatible with the first Switch, with many performance benefits. I'd say it's a success”.

I was slightly surprised to see so many members of our poll select ‘slightly’ disappointed in our poll, and I expect that this comes down to a sentiment that the console is still a few games short of being a true must-have for all gamers. However, with Zelda and Pokémon games releasing soon, a lot of opinions could be swayed — and I suspect a blockbuster Mario title would only seal the deal.

What I was pleased to see, however, is that very few members of our audience (10.4% in our main poll) consider the Switch 2 to be an outright flop. After all, the sales speak for themselves, and there have been a lot of very well received exclusives early in the system’s lifecycle.

Some personal thoughts

(Image credit: Future)

This brings me onto my personal thoughts. I pre-ordered the Nintendo Switch 2, and my expectations were high for the new system. Although I loved the original Switch’s library and appreciated its flexibility, the truth is, I actually didn’t love it all that much. For me, quality often felt overly compromised in handheld mode, with a lot of intensive titles struggling to reach up to 60fps. But the Switch 2 changed everything.

Now, I can enjoy titles in full HD at 60fps (and sometimes up to 120fps) in handheld mode, and I feel like the gap in quality when playing on the go — rather than in front of the TV — has shortened. What’s more, the Switch 2’s Handheld Mode Boost means that I can enjoy my original Switch games as if I was playing them with my system docked — a truly fantastic feature.

Then there’s the games. Controversially, I consider Mario Kart World to be the series’ best entry since the Wii generation, with a return to the true chaos and zaniness that made the games great in the first place — with knockout mode and the bizarre cast of characters being highlights for me. I’ve also had a blast with DK and Pokémon Pokopia, have spent countless hours racing in Kirby Air Riders, and exploring in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

The Switch 2 has also managed to do what the original model never could for me, in that I now often choose Nintendo for third party experiences. The brilliant combination of portability and higher fidelity visuals has made grinding in Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake or playing detective in Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army feel free of compromise.

Pair that with impressive sales performance, more convenient magnetic Joy-Cons, and even some pretty impressive virtual surround sound processing, and the Switch 2, in my eyes, is a sure-fire hit.

Yes, I share many users’ battery life gripes, and I personally believe that some of the first party games are far too pricey — I mean, $79.99 / £74.99 / AU$119.95 for a physical copy of Mario Kart World? Really? But even with incoming price hikes, I’d consider Nintendo’s latest hardware to offer plenty of bang for your buck, and although I’d love to get Super Mario Odyssey 2 within the next year or so, I’m perfectly satisfied with the current, and upcoming crop of titles at this stage.

During the first wave of AI adoption, much of that cost was effectively hidden from customers. AI came wrapped in subsidized pricing, generous allowances and a relentless focus on driving usage. The message was simple: use more AI.

In some organizations, usage itself has become the goal. The rise of concepts like "tokenmaxxing" took this to an extreme, celebrating volume over value and falsely equating outputs with outcomes.

But while tokenmaxxing may be a questionable habit that’s been widely exposed, it is not the biggest problem facing enterprise AI.

The bigger issue is the hidden token tax that comes with their use of gen AI and agentic AI capabilities in everyday operations.

The token tax is kicking in

Enterprises are already beginning to see the impact. Uber reportedly exhausted its planned 2026 AI budget by April, just four months into the year, after rapid adoption of AI coding tools across its engineering organization.

Amazon reportedly shut down an internal AI-usage leaderboard after concerns that it encouraged “tokenmaxxing,” with executives urging employees not to use AI merely to increase usage metrics.

As AI moves from experimentation to production, organizations are discovering that the economics of scale can look very different from the economics of experimentation.

Tokenmaxxing may encourage organizations to consume more AI, but the token tax is the bill that eventually arrives. And for many enterprises, that bill is proving far larger than expected.

Why is this happening?

On the surface, it seems counterintuitive. Per-token pricing continues to fall, and model providers regularly announce cheaper rates. Yet with enterprise AI bills continuing to rise, the reason lies in how modern agentic systems actually work.

The visible output you receive is only a small part of what is happening behind the scenes. Before generating an answer, an AI agent may interpret the request, decide which tools to use, retrieve data, evaluate results, and loop, calling tools repeatedly until the task is completed or the agent determines it is stuck.

Think of it as an agent having an inner monologue: interpreting the request, planning, calling tools, checking results, and deciding what to do next. Each step may trigger additional model calls and may carry forward more context, so the visible answer can represent only a fraction of the total tokens consumed.

So, while the cost per token is dropping, the number of tokens required to complete a task is often increasing dramatically.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates a 24-fold increase in token consumption by 2030, reaching around 120 quadrillion tokens per month as consumers and enterprises adopt agentic technology.

With this, organizations may believe they are benefiting from lower pricing while their overall costs continue to rise. And the issue is not just cost; it is also predictability, and the lack of a clear link between token usage and outcomes.

This is becoming one of the biggest economic challenges facing enterprise AI, and it is only beginning to be discussed. The economics of agentic AI are making it increasingly expensive to run agents at scale.

What is the token tax?

We position the token tax as the hidden cost organizations incur when AI systems repeatedly consume expensive run-time agentic resources to perform work that could have been designed once and reused many times.

Unlike traditional business software, where the cost of execution is largely fixed, many agentic AI systems effectively rethink the same process every time they run. The more complex the workflow, the higher the tax. Many repeatable enterprise tasks do not require, or even allow for open-ended run-time reasoning.

This creates a disconnect between activity and value. Organizations may be consuming millions of tokens, but that does not necessarily translate into better outcomes. In many cases, it simply means paying repeatedly for the same agentic planning process.

Are we using agents in the right place?

Run-time agents are valuable when solving new, unique and underspecified problems, designing workflows, or exploring options. But using expensive reasoning to repeatedly execute the same business process introduces not just cost but also unpredictability. If you ask an agent to re-reason the same question 100 times, you may get 100 different answers.

To compare this to something in the real world, it's a bit like paying a five-star gourmet chef to invent a recipe every time a new order for a meal comes in. The smarter approach is to use agentic AI once to design the optimal workflow, and then use a lighter-weight AI to select the right workflow that executes consistently.

In other words, use the five-star chef's creativity and expensive brain once a season to come up with a new menu and recipes. Then use skillful but much cheaper chefs to prepare the meal following the recipe that has already been designed.

Shift agentic AI left from run-time to design time

This is where the distinction between design-time and run-time becomes critical. Agents can be very useful at design time, where creativity, exploration, and problem-solving create lasting value.

Run-time execution is different. Here, predictability, consistency, governance and cost efficiency matter most. Run-time agents should only be used selectively, workflows should be used for deterministic, repeatable and governed processes.

By using agentic AI to design processes up front, organizations can dramatically reduce the token tax associated with run-time execution while improving reliability.

Sustainable AI is not about eliminating agents, but about being deliberate about where agents deliver value.

The next phase of enterprise AI

This next chapter will be defined less by impressive demos and more by economic discipline. Organizations will need predictable outcomes, predictable costs and a strategy for reducing the token tax embedded within agentic systems. The winners will not necessarily be the organizations that use the most AI. They will be the ones that generate the most business value from every token consumed.

The companies that address this challenge early by optimizing token consumption and architecting for design-time intelligence and run-time efficiency will not just save money, but will build AI systems that are easier to trust, easier to govern, and easier to scale.

As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise reality, the organizations that minimize their token tax while maximizing business outcomes will have a significant competitive advantage.

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The conversation about AI and shopping is happening in the wrong place.

Everyone wants to know whether agents will browse for us, compare prices for us and, eventually, buy for us without asking. It's a fair question. But it’s not the one that matters right now.

The more consequential shift is happening somewhere far less visible: inside payment networks, authorization protocols and the systems that decide whether software is allowed to spend money on our behalf.

The technical capability for an AI agent to complete a purchase has existed for some time. What has been missing is the infrastructure that allows businesses and consumers to trust those transactions: confirming an agent had permission to act, ensuring it stayed within agreed boundaries, and creating a verifiable record if something goes wrong.

Over the past few months, that infrastructure has started to emerge. The biggest moves in this space haven't come from AI labs building increasingly showy assistants. They've come from the companies that move money.

At its annual conference, for example, Stripe used the opportunity to introduce wallets that agents can spend from, alongside a partnership letting businesses sell directly inside AI search and chat environments.

Visa introduced an early protocol to help merchants tell a legitimate AI agent apart from a bot. Mastercard announced its own framework for registering and authenticating agents before a transaction is allowed to proceed. Agents are already showing up at volume. What's been missing is the infrastructure to handle what happens next.

The limitation was never autonomy. It was authorization.

Adobe research from early this year shows that AI traffic to US retail sites grew 393% YoY in the first quarter, with AI-referred visitors converting 42% better than non-AI traffic. Just a year before, that same traffic was converting 38% below standard channels.

That’s why the language from the payments industry has shifted so noticeably toward authorization, intent and trust. Mastercard's own leadership has made things explicit: how do you distinguish a legitimate agent from a malicious one? How do you confirm the consumer really authorized the purchase? How do you verify that the agent did what it was told?

Those aren't AI questions. They're identity and trust questions that just happen to involve AI.

Whoever defines the boundary captures the value

What's notable about the recent announcements is how consistent the underlying logic is across companies that otherwise compete directly. Visa's protocol and Mastercard's framework work the same way in principle: register the agent, verify intent and pass credentials only once trust is established.

Stripe's approach, issuing single-use payment credentials per task rather than exposing a customer's card details to an agent, solves the same problem from a different angle.

The protocols may look like back-office plumbing. Functionally, they're architecture for autonomous commerce. Every time a payments provider decides what counts as a verified agent, what data has to be passed to prove intent or how disputes get resolved, it's writing rules that shape who gets to participate and on what terms.

A consumer can be persuaded by an AI assistant to want something, but if the transaction can only execute through a specific track, with specific verification steps, then influence over the purchase decision and control over the purchase itself become two separate things. The company that captures the second captures the economics, regardless of who captured the first.

For merchants, this creates a concrete operational problem. If a transaction gets disputed, can the business prove what was authorized, by whom and under what constraints? These are the exact questions Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are quickly trying to answer; whoever answers them first effectively writes the rulebook everyone else follows.

The race that's already started

Autonomous shopping is imminent, and in some categories it’ll come faster than in others. Routine reordering and B2B procurement are likely to happen first. Other more considered, emotionally fueled purchases will take longer; trust has to be earned. Payment readiness is only part of it, however.

The commerce stack underneath, covering product data, pricing, inventory and checkout, needs to be structured and accessible enough for agents to actually operate it. Businesses that haven't addressed that layer will find the payments question is the least of their problems.

The infrastructure being built right now by payment providers won't just process agent-driven transactions. It will determine which businesses are visible to agents in the first place, which transactions are trusted by default and which get pushed into friction and manual review. The real battle isn’t over autonomy. It’s over who owns the infrastructure of trust.

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At TechRadar, we test dozens of gadgets each month. We've reviewed them all; TVs and tablets, smartwatches and speakers, home hubs and hair stylers, monitors and mice, cameras and coffee machines. Why? So we know exactly what's worth buying and what you should skip. We want to be able to recommend exactly the right tech to exactly the right person, no matter their budget.

When we're testing so many products, it can be tricky to find ways to help the standouts really shine. So every month, we round up just the very best gadgets from each month for you to browse. To qualify for the Reviews Recap, a product needs to score 4.5 or 5 stars in our fiendish tests. This showcase is just for the best of the best.

To keep things simple, we've also narrowed the remit to just physical products. Although we also test tons of games and plenty of software, you won't find those reviews included. This is strictly gadgets and gizmos.

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The UK’s newly announced £2 billion quantum investment package signals something more consequential than the years-long research race that I’ve patiently been following.

Quantum is increasingly being treated as a key part of the future of national infrastructure.

While the size is important, the clearest sign of that shift is the structure behind it.

Through the newly announced “ProQure: Scaling UK Quantum Computing” initiative, the UK has become the first country to commit to an advanced procurement program for large-scale quantum computers by the early 2030s.

That matters because governments do not produce technologies at scale unless they believe those technologies are strategically important to operational capability, economic resilience and long-term competitiveness.

In many ways, this marks quantum computing’s transition from the research era into the infrastructure era.

Why procurement matters more than funding totals

So why does a procurement program matter more than the headline funding figure? The significance extends beyond public investment totals. Procurement creates market confidence. It helps establish deployment pathways, support supply chains, attracts private capital and gives emerging technologies a route from laboratory experimentation into practical use. In deep technology markets, the challenge is often building the ecosystem required to scale and operationalize it.

The challenge is becoming increasingly important as the broader quantum market matures. QuEra’s recent Quantum Readiness Report found that organizations are becoming far more disciplined in how they approach quantum investment. While 44% of respondents still expect their quantum budgets to increase in 2026, nearly half expect spending to remain flat, signaling a shift away from hype-driven expansion toward proof-driven decision-making.

More advanced adopters of quantum technology are increasingly motivated by what the industry refers to as the “classical wall”. This is the point at which conventional computing approaches struggle to solve increasingly complex computational problems. That shift from speculative experimentation toward problem-driven investment is an important sign of market maturation.

Sovereignty reshapes the quantum market

The changing investment landscape also helps explain why procurement and national strategy are becoming more central to the conversation.

One of the most striking findings in our research was that 62% of organizations now actively factor sovereignty into procurement decisions, while only 5% say sovereignty is not a consideration at all.

However, the highly globalized sourcing model that characterized the industry’s early years is giving way to a more regionally strategic one, shaped by concerns around resilience, supply chains, infrastructure control and long-term access to advanced computing capability. This makes the UK’s strategy particularly timely.

The government’s emphasis on sovereign capability, domestic ecosystem development, and long-term infrastructure investment reflects broader shifts already underway across the market.

Quantum computing is increasingly being viewed not only as a commercial technology opportunity, but also as a strategic national capability alongside AI, semiconductors, and advanced communications infrastructure.

Scaling quantum requires more than hardware

Scaling quantum computing requires much more than building processors. It requires coordinated investment across software, networking, manufacturing, talent, infrastructure, and integration with classical systems.

The UK’s decision to support not only computing, but also sensing, networking, software labs, infrastructure, and skills programs reflects an understanding that leadership in quantum will be determined by ecosystem depth as much as scientific breakthroughs.

The talent challenge illustrates this clearly. Our report identified specialist workforce shortages as one of the most significant barriers to adoption, particularly in highly technical areas such as quantum error correction.

Developing scalable quantum systems requires expertise that remains globally scarce, making long-term investment in education, research institutions, and industry collaboration essential.

The UK’s opportunity to lead

The UK enters this next phase from a position of genuine strength. Over the past decade, the National Quantum Technologies Programme has helped establish one of the world’s most advanced quantum ecosystems, supporting research hubs, startups, national infrastructure, and industry partnerships.

QuEra’s own presence at Harwell reflects the depth of scientific expertise and collaborative capability that already exists across the UK quantum landscape.

This investment builds on that foundation while accelerating the UK’s ability to translate quantum promise into economic opportunity. QuEra is one of several companies building next-generation quantum computers at Harwell, drawing on the country’s world-class talent and research base.

The next challenge is translating scientific leadership into scalable deployment.

From scientific leadership to commercial scale

Quantum computing remains a technically demanding, pre-commercial industry in many respects, but the direction of travel is becoming clearer. To be clear, quantum computers still cannot deliver broad commercial advantage on their own in most industries; that case is still being proven sector by sector.

But the procurement and infrastructure being built now is what will let that advantage arrive faster once it does. Governments, enterprises and investors are increasingly focusing less on theoretical promise and more on deployment readiness, operational capability, and long-term strategic value.

Public sector leadership will continue to play an essential role in that process. Our research found that government funding remains the leading driver of quantum investment globally, cited by 28% of respondents as the primary catalyst for budget increases. At the same time, government and defense organizations are expected to lead near-term commercialization efforts, highlighting the central role public investment continues to play in scaling the industry.

The countries that lead the next phase of quantum computing are likely to be the ones that successfully combine research excellence with procurement, infrastructure, talent development, industrial coordination, and commercial scale.

For enterprises and other governments watching from the sidelines, the practical lesson is straightforward. Building procurement pipelines, workforce training, and proof-of-concept programs now, even at modest scale, is what prepares an organization to scale up once quantum systems clear the classical wall in a given domain. Those that engage early will be better positioned than those that wait for certainty that may not arrive on a convenient schedule.

The UK’s latest announcement suggests it understands that distinction and that may ultimately matter more than the £2 billion headline itself.

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Not long ago, data centers were something the average person on the street rarely thought about. They powered the digital services we used every day, but sat largely out of sight.

That has changed. Look at almost any national news site and you will see another data center scheme being proposed, from a £9.5bn data center next to the proposed Universal theme park in Bedfordshire to a £2bn data center in the Borders hills, west of Duns.

This is no longer just a story about Slough, London or a handful of established technology corridors. Data centers are appearing in former industrial sites, rural areas and regional communities, becoming a visible part of the UK’s infrastructure debate.

Part of this is being driven by the Government’s AI ambitions. Through AI Growth Zones, ministers want to accelerate the build-out of AI-enabled data centers by improving access to power and planning support.

But if the UK wants to compete in AI, there is a practical question sitting beneath all this ambition: who is actually going to build these data centers?

AI demand is moving faster than the workforce

AI has changed the scale of the data center conversation. The sector is being asked to provide the physical backbone for a new industrial wave, creating pressure not only on land, power and planning, but also on people.

The energy behind AI is outstripping the skilled labor resources available. The UK may have the policy momentum and investor appetite, but the workforce is not expanding at the same pace.

Data centers do not build themselves. They need engineers, electricians, commissioning specialists, project managers, safety teams, quality experts, construction partners and operational leaders. They also need people who understand these are critical environments where mistakes can be costly.

The industry is still too reliant on traditional routes into work, leaning on training patterns that may have worked 20 or 30 years ago, rather than asking what is needed for the next five.

The sector is missing people who are hiding in plain sight

Women remain underrepresented in data centers. So do career returners, flexible workers, people from adjacent industries and those who may not have followed a conventional technical route

If data centers keep looking in the same places, they will keep running into the same shortages. The sector needs to widen the front door and think more creatively about how people work once they are in.

Why shouldn’t a major site have crèche facilities? Why can’t more roles be structured around hybrid or flexible models where the work allows it? These changes could help experienced people return, stay and progress, while giving employers a stronger, more engaged workforce.

That starts with explaining the range of roles more clearly. Not every data center job is a narrow engineering role. Program management, safety, quality, finance, legal, facilities, operations, construction and customer delivery skills can all transfer into the sector.

The industry also needs to tell a better story about itself. Too often, public debate focuses on power, water and planning friction. Those issues matter, but data centers are also part of the infrastructure behind AI, digital services, healthcare, finance, scientific research and economic growth.

Training needs to become more flexible and joined up

The answer is not simply to hire faster. It is to build clearer, more flexible routes into the sector.

Ireland’s pharmaceutical industry offers a useful blueprint. Its growth was supported by government, education providers and major employers working together to build the skills the sector needed.

Data centers need the same mindset: better visibility of future demand, stronger regional skills pipelines, more apprenticeships and clearer routes for people with transferable experience.

Someone managing safety on a large infrastructure project may be much closer to a data center career than they realize. The industry’s job is to make that route visible, credible and accessible.

Common standards matter too. As delivery accelerates, every company trying to solve training, quality and safety alone will create duplication and inconsistency. Shared frameworks would give employers, subcontractors and new entrants a clearer view of what good looks like.

The infrastructure strategy needs a workforce strategy

The UK does not lack ambition. It has data center plans coming forward, government policy designed to support AI infrastructure, and investors looking for places to build.

But ambition will not be enough. AI may be digital, but the infrastructure behind it is physical. It depends on people with the right skills, in the right places, at the right time.

If the UK wants to lead in AI, it cannot treat the workforce as an afterthought. It needs to bring more women into the sector, make better use of transferable skills, create flexible routes into work, and give regions the tools to prepare before demand arrives.

The country can approve the sites and attract the investment. The bigger test is whether it can build the workforce to match.

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The telecoms industry is all a flutter.

Satellite connectivity was once seen as useful but peripheral. Starlink is changing that.

With scale, money and ambition behind it, the company is starting to look less like a niche rural broadband provider and more like a serious question for the wider connectivity market.

Kester Mann, Director, Consumer and Connectivity at FDM CCS Insight, said this is one of the more interesting developments of 2026.

“The industry is nervous. Operators are currently working to shore up their defenses against potential offerings from a company like Starlink, but the long-term plan is not obvious yet. Starlink has the financial muscle to be disruptive if it wants to be.”

Starlink is clearly a very ambitious business. The recent IPO of its parent company, SpaceX, shattered global financial records, raising $85.7 billion in total capital and valuing the company at $1.77 trillion at listing.

Just weeks after its IPO, the company completed a $25 billion bond sale. One thing it is not short of is money.

The connectivity mix

Clearcut data is somewhat difficult to come across, but the Department of Agriculture puts the total U.S. population in nonmetro counties stood at 46.2 million, accounting for 14% of the total population spread across 72% of the landmass.

This demonstrates why closing not spots in the U.S. has become such a significant challenge.

“It’s very difficult to make connectivity economical in the U.S. outside urban areas,” Mann added. “I understand why we have this situation, and partnerships between telecoms operators and satellite companies make a huge amount of sense.”

The telecoms industry has often envisioned a patchwork landscape for connectivity, with each technology serving the purpose to which it best suits. This works today, mobile, Wi-Fi and broadband interlink nicely, and satellite could fill the spaces left behind by traditional telecoms. Namely, the rural locations.

Could satellite solve the telecoms problem the telecoms industry couldn’t solve?

The economics of telecoms infrastructure have always created a headache for the industry, especially in countries like the U.S.

Simply put, there aren’t enough people living in an area to justify the vast expense of network rollout. If the telecoms operators could have made money, you can bet there wouldn’t be not spots.

This is where a ‘non-telecoms’ solution fits nicely, and there is precedent of new market entrants completely disrupted highly established markets.

Netflix turned entertainment on its head. AirBnB reshaped the hotel industry without ever building a hotel. Uber led to an entirely different way of moving from A to B, and not just taxis anymore.

In the rural states, there are consumer mobile and broadband services to potentially serve, IOT networks to be connected, agriculture and other primary industries to power, not to mention public services just as there are in the cities.

There is a market, just not a financially attractive one. Telecoms operators would have to spend eye-watering amount to cover vast and challenging terrains. It simply doesn’t add up.

Traditional approaches won’t work, so something new has to be considered.

But how much momentum could this give Starlink?

Ambitious businesses set ambitious targets

Starlink boss Elon Musk said in a recent interview he had no intention of putting the telecoms operators out of business, but that has not put all the questions to bed.

Mann continued, “Is rural enough for Starlink? It is a niche service, and Musk has big ambitions. Some analysts are talking about a takeover of a telecoms operators, which is a long shot, but a MVNO proposition could certainly be realistic.”

This is the precarious position telecoms operator find themselves in. Partnerships with satellite companies are attractive, but then it comes with risk.

In the UK, Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile are partnering to bring direct-to-device (D2D) space-based mobile broadband to standard 4G/5G smartphones. This looks attractive to the telecoms operator.

Then you have the middling risk. When Rocket Labs announced plans to acquire Iridium, the deal also included the company’s globally harmonized L-band spectrum and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network. This makes Rocket Labs a direct competitor in the rural regions.

Starlink is in a similar position to Rocket Labs, just a couple of factors greater. It has the same operational capabilities and spectrum to deliver consumer services at scale, but it also has cash. Whereas Rocket Labs could be a niche competitor few would worry about, Starlink could be a major disruption.

What is Musk thinking?

Everyone is focused on the disruption to the telecoms industry, but ultimately this might be a by-product of the bigger plan. What if all this routes back to Telsa?

The obvious answer is telecoms. Starlink wants to sell connectivity, operators sell connectivity, so the threat is easy to understand.

But that might also be too narrow.

Musk’s businesses rarely sit neatly inside one industry. SpaceX launches rockets. Starlink sells broadband. Tesla sells vehicles. xAI builds artificial intelligence. X provides the distribution layer. On paper, these are separate businesses. In practice, they increasingly point towards the same idea.

Controlled infrastructure, controlled data, controlled customer relationships.

That is where Tesla becomes interesting.

Where interest matters

A company trying to make autonomous vehicles work at scale does not just need batteries, sensors and software. It needs reliable connectivity in as many places as possible. Robotaxis, logistics, remote monitoring, over-the-air updates, live mapping and future machine-to-machine services all become more valuable if the connectivity layer is controlled rather than rented.

This does not mean Starlink is simply a Tesla project in disguise, that would be too neat, and probably too generous. But it does show why telecoms operators should be careful about judging Starlink by traditional telecoms logic.

They are asking whether Starlink can steal enough broadband or mobile customers to matter.

Musk may be asking a different question entirely. What becomes possible when connectivity, devices, data, AI and mobility sit inside the same orbit?

That is the uncomfortable bit for operators. They still see connectivity as the product. Starlink may increasingly see it as the operating layer.

Or perhaps there is no grand plan at all. This is still the man who bought Twitter for $44 billion. But telecoms operators cannot afford to treat that as reassurance. Sometimes the chaos is the strategy.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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Security is always a moving target. But AI has made it move faster than many organizations can manage, presenting a gargantuan challenge for SOC teams. The near constant stream of announcements of new models or providers has resulted in a massively expanded attack surface.

While security teams work hard to review and approve as many tools as possible, the volume is still crushingly high. Today, only 22% of workers rely exclusively on the AI tools their employer provides, while more than a third (35%) of Gen Z employees say they prefer using personal AI applications over company-approved ones. For every sanctioned tool a business governs, most of its workforce is quietly working around it.

If almost 80% of employees use unapproved AI tools, then it isn’t an aberration - it’s the default. Shadow AI is normal across organizations, but the scale of the challenge is badly underestimated by the people responsible for managing it.

Why the crackdown backfires

Faced with unsanctioned use, the instinct is to clamp down. Blacklist as many tools as possible and pull usage back inside the lines. The problem is that, while this feels like control, in reality it just leaves security blind.

Blocking doesn’t stop an employee using a tool, it just drives the risk out of sight. If their tool of choice is blocked on their laptop, they’ll access it on their phone. Or with their personal email address instead of their work one.

This is true of many IT tools, but especially so with AI because people can become extremely attached to specific chatbot personalities. Consequently, AI use is driven deeper into the shadows, leaving zero visibility or record for security teams about potential data leakages or other risks.

This is the trap at the center of most shadow AI strategies. The harder an organization tries to eliminate the problem, the less it can see. And the less it can see, the more dangerous the problem becomes. Governance that looks airtight on paper can bear little resemblance to what’s actually happening across the business.

The consequences are not abstract. When confidential information flows into unmanaged third-party platforms, the fallout can add as much as $670,000 to the cost of a data breach, and most of the employees responsible have no idea they’ve created a risk at all.

Policy isn’t enforcement

The reason for these problems comes back to the speed at which AI development is moving. ChatGPT is barely five years old and the difference in performance over that time is immense. One result of this is that pretty much any AI security and best practice training employees have done has not been adequate.

The idea was not to overload employees with too much information. By keeping it ultra-straightforward and focusing on only one or two tools that were security-approved with examples looking at low-risk, early-adoption scenarios, companies could make compliance as easy possible.

For a normal technology, it would be a sensible strategy. However, the level of self-driven AI adoption we’ve seen has been far higher than companies expected. Shadow AI use is rampant and so security cannot afford to continue blindly enforcing rules that aren’t working.

Rather, to govern employee behavior, you need to be able to understand and analyze it. When it comes to AI that means gaining visibility into what tools and models employees are using, how, and where it’s actually delivering value.

An experience-based approach

That shift requires visibility into how AI is used across the workforce. A DEX (Digital Employee Experience) approach delivers exactly that, automatically detecting both approved and shadow AI through traffic patterns and endpoint activity, without relying on employees to self-report.

Usage and experience data sit in a single view, broken down by team and workflow, so leaders can see where people are working around the rules and act on it.

From there, the response stops being a blunt ban and becomes far more useful. In-app guidance can steer employees towards sanctioned tools in the flow of work, reinforcing the right behavior without killing the productivity they were chasing in the first place.

Policies can be built around real usage instead of guesswork. And because 96% of leaders now say digital adoption support is critical to AI readiness, that same visibility shows exactly where training will close a gap rather than tick a box.

It’s time to manage shadow AI

Shadow AI isn't going anywhere, and pretending otherwise is how organizations end up exposed. The companies that handle it well will be the ones that stop trying to ban it and start paying attention to it. Everyone else is just hoping their policy is being followed, with no real way of knowing whether it is.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

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• Post-quantum encryption is now live on Norton VPN's Mimic and WireGuard
• Rebuilt iOS and Android apps have slashed connect times by more than 50%
• Norton has added 12 new countries across Asia and Africa

Competition for the title of best VPN is fiercer than ever, and Norton is making a strong case for the crown. The cybersecurity veteran has just unveiled the final releases from its first-half 2026 roadmap, delivering a robust mix of future-proofed privacy tools, significantly faster mobile applications, and an expanded global footprint.

The standout feature of this latest rollout is the introduction of post-quantum encryption. This comes alongside improved Software Development Kits (SDKs) for its mobile apps and an expanded server network across Asia and Africa.

At first glance, these releases may appear to be separate features. But for the provider, they all address the same need — customers must count on Norton VPN, wherever they are.

As Himmat Bains, Product Lead at Norton VPN, told TechRadar, post-quantum encryption is crucial to protect users' data from future threats. Faster, more reliable mobile connections mean VPN protection is there exactly when they need it. And coverage in 12 new countries means that more people can connect locally.

"Different problems, same answer — we want this to be the VPN you can simply trust and forget about," said Bains.

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The cybersecurity company's latest upgrades mean it's now challenging some of the best VPNs on the market. It offers great speeds, strong unblocking and straightforward apps, but some of its features are still quite basic. Subscriptions start from the equivalent of $3.33 per month and are all protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee.View Deal

Post-quantum ecryption lands on Norton's Mimic and WireGuard

As quantum computing advances, cybersecurity experts have increasingly warned of "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks. This is a tactic where cybercriminals or state actors steal encrypted data today, hoarding it with the intention of cracking it when quantum computers become powerful enough to break traditional encryption standards.

To combat this long-term risk, Norton VPN has upgraded its proprietary Mimic protocol to utilize the ML-KEM-1024 encryption algorithm by default across all platforms.

The company is also rolling out the exact same post-quantum protection to the popular WireGuard protocol on both desktop and mobile devices, ensuring that user traffic remains fully secure against tomorrow's technological threats.

Turbocharging mobile performance

(Image credit: Norton)

While future-proofing encryption is crucial for long-term privacy, everyday users will immediately feel the benefits of Norton’s revamped mobile experience. The provider has entirely rebuilt its iOS and Android SDKs, the underlying code architecture that powers its mobile applications, from the ground up.

The performance gains are impressive. According to Norton's release notes, the new mobile architecture reduces connection times by more than 50% and connection errors by over 60%. For mobile users who constantly hop between home Wi-Fi, public hotspots, and cellular networks, this means a much smoother, almost instantaneous protective shield.

Just as importantly, this rebuilt framework will allow Norton to ship bug fixes and new features much faster going forward. The overhaul has already paid immediate dividends, leading directly to a rebuilt mobile widget that patches previous usability issues users had been facing.

"

A broader network and a busy 2026

Beyond the apps themselves, Norton is continuing to scale up its physical infrastructure. The provider has added 12 more countries to its network, specifically targeting underserved regions across Asia and Africa.

This expansion brings Norton's total reach to an impressive 102 countries and more than 140 global locations, seamlessly building on the momentum of previous network upgrades earlier this year.

This latest announcement caps off a remarkably busy start to the year for the Norton VPN team.

The provider brought a native Amazon Fire TV app (Fire OS 8 and newer) in March and introduced the industry's first AI-native VPN for Agents in April. It also successfully added Split Tunnelling on Mac in June, joining its Android and Windows counterparts.

Furthermore, WireGuard is now live across Mac, iOS, and tvOS, with a new Pause VPN feature on iOS closing the platform's last functional gap. The company also rolled out 25 Gbps servers across busy cities and added Manual IP Rotation.

"Our goal is simple: deliver a VPN for the masses," Bains told TechRadar, arguing that these releases weren't about shipping a longer list; "it was about closing the gaps customers actually feel."

Looking ahead, Bains confirmed that Norton's second-half roadmap pushes even further, noting that "we'll have third-party audits for the third year launching later in the summer, along with meaningful updates coming to our streaming and performance.