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CYBER
✈️ FBI WARNS: HACKERS ARE TARGETING AIRLINES: Two airlines hit. More at risk. A new wave of cyberattacks is taking aim at the skies.
—> WHO’S BEHIND IT: A group called Scattered Spider is at the center. They’re mostly young, English-speaking hackers known for phishing, impersonation, and extortion — even threatening company employees to gain access. Their past hits include casinos, hotel chains, and tech giants.
—> WHAT’S HAPPENING: The FBI, Google’s Mandiant, and Palo Alto Networks say this group is now hitting the aviation and transportation sector. Hawaiian Airlines and WestJet both reported cyberattacks this month. WestJet’s systems are still compromised.
—> WHY IT MATTERS: The threat isn’t just to airlines. The FBI says anyone in the ecosystem — vendors, contractors, third-party IT firms — could be a target. These hackers don’t need to breach the cockpit. They hit the help desk, then move laterally until they own the network.
Sources: TechCrunch
hello, future. it’s me, kev.
…and this is a dispatch from the digital frontier. It’s time to meet the future NOW — with the latest on markets, tech, and freedom. The day is 181. The year is 2025. The planet is Earth.
The planet has complete 49.6 percent of its orbit around the Sun. My name is Kevin Cirilli —> LinkedIn. Spotify. Sign-up to receive the future in your inbox here.
Back to the future...
SPACE
🚀 CERES: THE FIRST OFF-WORLD TRUCK STOP: Scientists want to drill into a frozen dwarf planet, build a 18,640 miles space elevator — and turn it into a launchpad for the entire solar system.
—> WHY THIS MATTERS: Ceres is 25% water — and in space, water = fuel, oxygen, power, life. A new study lays out a plan to mine that ice, haul it into orbit, and sling it toward Earth, Mars, or the moons beyond. No rockets. Just leverage, spin, and engineering. It’s the clearest blueprint yet for turning this frozen rock into the gas station of deep space.
🔹 Yes, Ceres is about 25% water by mass — way more than Earth’s moon.
🔹 But that water is frozen, locked in as ice beneath the surface.
🔹 It’s not liquid now, but scientists think Ceres once had a subsurface ocean, and some of that briny liquid might still exist today, deep underground.
—> MEET CERES — QUEEN OF THE ASTEROID BELT: It’s not just an asteroid. It’s a Texas-sized dwarf planet in the middle of the asteroid belt — icy, quiet, rich. If our Moon is a baseball, Ceres is a golf ball. With low gravity and no atmosphere, it’s ideal for off-world mining, automation, and cargo ops. Scientists say it may have once had an ocean... and might still hold the fingerprints of alien life.
—> WHAT THE SPACE ELEVATOR WOULD DO: This 18,640 miles carbon-nanotube tether would carry 14.33K lbs. of ice per trip — then fling it into space using Ceres’ own spin. That ice becomes rocket fuel, water, life support, or cargo mass. No launch pads. No boosters. Just a giant tether, spinning like a slingshot in the void.
—> WHO THIS IS FOR: Not just astronauts. Engineers, welders, rig operators, refinery techs. The same people who built Earth’s oil economy could build the next one — in orbit. This is Armageddon in reverse: not saving Earth from an asteroid, but saving space by building on one.
Sources: Universe Today | Big Think
^ Kev’s favorite story of the day.
TIME TRAVEL
🕒 TIME MIGHT BE WAY WEIRDER THAN WE THOUGHT: A professor in Alaska says time has three dimensions — and space might just be along for the ride.
—> WHAT THIS MEANS: We usually think of time as one straight line: past → present → future. But a new theory from the University of Alaska Fairbanks says time could actually move in three different directions, just like space.
—> COULD THIS MEAN TIME TRAVEL? Maybe. If time has depth, width, and height — like space — then it might be possible to move through time in different directions. The theory doesn’t give us a time machine yet, but it does make time travel sound a lot less like science fiction.
—> WHY IT MATTERS: This could help solve some of the biggest mysteries in science — like why gravity works the way it does, why particles have mass, and how to connect quantum physics with Einstein’s ideas.
—> WHAT’S NEXT: Scientists are testing the theory now. If it holds up, it could totally rewrite how we understand reality — and show that space is just a side effect of time’s deeper structure.
Sources: Earth.com | Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences
Meanwhile… in Communist China…
COMMUNIST CHINA
🕶️ COMMUNIST CHINA’S NEW INTERNET ID: BUILT TO ERASE YOU: Next month, the Communist Party of China will begin assigning every citizen a centralized internet ID — one login that links every app, every comment, every click, to your real identity. Anonymity in China is dead. What’s rising in its place is something colder.
—> THE ERA OF TOTAL TRACEABILITY: The new system gives the state real-time control over every user’s presence online. If you post something the regime doesn’t like? You don’t get flagged. You disappear — from every platform at once. No warning. No appeal. No trace.
—> BUILT BY THE PARTY, FOR THE PARTY: Developed by the Communist Party of China’s cyber police and framed as a “security upgrade,” the internet ID will let the Communist Party track every citizen’s digital life “from point zero.” Experts say it’s more than surveillance — it’s infrastructure for digital totalitarianism.
—> DISSENT ALREADY SILENCED: When legal scholars protested last year, their posts were deleted. Now, as rollout begins, criticism has vanished — not because it stopped, but because it was systematically erased. This is state-engineered erasure. If successful, the Communist Party of China won’t just censor ideas. It will delete people — algorithmically, silently, and without warning.
Source: CNN
ONE MORE THING
🎭 WRINKLE IN TIME LEVELS UP: The world-premiere musical at Arena Stage in Washington DC doesn’t just adapt Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time — it evolves it. This isn’t a kid’s show. It’s YA sci-fi with emotional guts and interdimensional teeth.
—> 📖 A CLASSIC REPOSITIONED: The 1962 novel sold 10 million copies — and always read more Hunger Games than Dr. Seuss. The movie tried to Disney-fy it. The musical gets it right. This is about trauma, tessering, and the fight for your soul. It’s emotional physics, and it lands.
—> 🧙♀️ THE WITCHES GET THEIR DUE: No more celebrities overshadowing the best characters. Mrs. Whatsit (Amber Gray), Mrs. Who (Stacey Sargeant), and Mrs. Which (Vicki Lewis) reclaim their roles as cosmic guides. Think Dumbledore x Hagrid x McGonagall — but speaking in riddles to guide you into a new dimension. Their harmonies during the Aunt Beast scene? Devastating. Moving. A standout. It reminded me of He Lives in You from The Lion King.
—> 👁 THE VILLAIN ISN’T A MONSTER — IT’S CONTROL: The Man with the Red Eyes (Michael Di Liberto) is slick, AI-coded evil. A masterclass in quiet manipulation — and uncomfortably familiar in today’s era.
—> 💡 THE CAST IS STACKED: Meg (Taylor Iman Jones) is fierce and vulnerable. Calvin (Nicholas Barrón) glows with emotional IQ. Charles Wallace (Mateo Lizcano) is haunting — his youth hits hard. Director Lee Sunday Evans and composer Heather Christian build a world that feels like stepping through a portal — but grounded in real science.
—> 🗣️ REAL TALK: As I left the theater, I held the door for a woman. “That was amazing,” I said. She rolled her eyes. “Too long,” she snapped. She told me she’d been reviewing theater for 30 years. I asked if she read the book. “Nope.” Well, it showed.
For the rest of us — for the fans who grew up on this story — this musical isn’t too long. It’s right on time. I couldn’t help but imagine what a full Broadway staging could do with it. What a gift to see the world premiere in D.C. Even the Supreme Court showed up. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson were in the audience.
Now playing at Arena Stage in D.C. through July 20. Tickets.
With gratitude,
Kev
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