Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we’ll bring you one story that matters, plus a few that don’t!

Your Brief for August 1, 2024: A breakthrough blood test, wireless-road charging, the Chairman Mao badge and more!

News

Boeing's New CEO

Boeing announced yesterday that industry veteran Kelly Ortberg will be the aerospace company's new CEO starting August 8th, replacing outgoing head Dave Calhoun. The aerospace company focuses on three sectors: commercial airplanes, defense, and international work. The fleet serves customers in over 150 countries, with a market valuation of roughly $115 billion. The leadership shift comes as Boeing reports a 15% decline in overall revenues from last year, with a net loss of more than $1.4 billion in the second quarter of 2024. Ortberg, the former CEO of aeronautic technologies provider Rockwell Collins, may have his hands full as it’s reported he’s inheriting significant production slowdowns and increased regulatory scrutiny following several high-profile incidents with Boeing planes in recent years, such as the door plug blowout in January 2024.

Technology

Wireless Road Charging

What if you didn’t have to stop driving to charge an EV?

Norway is leading the charge, pardon the pun, on EV adoption with plans to ditch internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025! The city of Trondheim has engaged its gears, with groundbreaking EV charging technology already rolling out. AtB, the city's transit authority, began its plan to evolve public transport by testing Electreon, a provider of wireless charging solutions, technology on several routes this summer. The magic? The vehicles don’t have to be stationary to charge! An electric road section is set to operate next to AtB's main bus depot to prove Electreon's toughness and reliability; crucial in Trondheim’s hilly terrain and unpredictable weather. And the vision doesn’t stop there… AtB is dreaming big with plans to create an electric road for all fleets, from buses to trucks and taxis. Owned by the Trøndelag County Authority, the AtB carries an annual budget of about 200 million euros and runs a bus network with 320 buses across 170 routes.

Image Credit: Electreon

True Spies

Codename Tinsel Tyrant

How does a San Francisco-born Silicon Valley entrepreneur, “as American as apple pie”, become a vital intelligence asset for the Soviet Bloc?

In the Spring of 1980, a trimaran sails deep into the Sacramento River delta. The delta is 1,100 square miles of complex inland waterways. Alongside the skipper are lovers James Harper and Ruby Schuler, both residents of Silicon Valley. But this is not a romantic day trip, they are transporting a hoard of cardboard boxes…

They stop near a small island deep into the delta. Harper, grabbing a shovel, disembarks the boat and begins to dig. When he is about three feet into the mud he offloads the cardboard boxes, boxes he knows contain over 2,000 physical documents. What secrets do they hold? Complex plans for the US intercontinental ballistic missile system, plus an array of other military tech intelligence! Were they to fall into the wrong hands, they would represent the biggest breach of US nuclear secrets since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of leaking details of the US nuclear weapon program to the Soviets in 1953. But that's exactly what Harper intends to do with them...

What’s Harper's plan? Join Zach Dorfman, national security reporter and the host of Spy Valley, in this week’s podcast selection ‘Codename Tinsel Tyrant’, to find out!

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Spy Objects

Chairman Mao Badge

Can you ever truly suppress a curious mind? If Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution had just one aim, it was that.  But, during a time in Communist China when pins bearing the face of the great leader were worn on every chest, curious minds still found a way to explore!

In 1966 Mao launched his Cultural Revolution and began a purge of party officials and people he regarded as disloyal. To pull it off he built up his personality cult, quite successfully! The most important aspect of the cult was for everyone to wear a Mao badge. Adorned with an image of his face, several billion badges were produced in China in the years following its conception.

It’s the nature of humankind to wonder what lies on the other side of the looking glass, but not everyone gets to find out... though writer Jung Chang did. Chang is the acclaimed author of several monumental books. Wild Swans, her memoir about growing up in Communist China, is told across three female generations of her own family.  In 1976 Mao Zedong died, and China began emerging from isolation. In 1978, Chang moved to London; one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China and study in the West. In 1982 she received her doctorate in linguistics from the University of York making her the first Chinese to obtain a doctorate from a British University! While studying she started challenging the foundations of her childhood, writing honest assessments of the country she had left behind and exploring the possibility that everything she had been told was a lie. To describe Chang as adventurous would be an understatement, she is nothing short of a groundbreaker.

Join Chang in this podcast selection to revisit a childhood characterized by surveillance and prohibition and discover how the Mao badge, a tool of oppression for many, helped set her free.

Image Credit: The British Museum

Nature

An Unlikely Catch

How rare is this lobster?

A cotton-candy crustacean was recently caught by a local fisherman in New Hampshire and donated to the Seacoast Science Center, a marine science education organization in Rye, New Hampshire’s Odiorne Point State Park. Its wild color is due to a rare genetic mutation, and the odds it occurs are roughly 1 in 100 million! It turns out the color blue is rare in nature, and a true blue pigment doesn't fully exist in the wild. Organisms that appear blue absorb small amounts of energy while reflecting high-energy blue light. Lobster shell pigmentation often comes from astaxanthin, a red/orange carotenoid pigment. When the pigments don't express, or overexpress, it results in greater color variations and rare-colored crustaceans! They can appear in shades of blue (1 in 2 million), red (1 in 10 million), split-colored (1 in 50 million), albino (1 in 100 million), and cotton candy (1 in 100 million).

Image Credit: Seacoast Science Center

Science

A Breakthrough Blood Test

What if diagnosing Alzheimer's could be as simple as a blood test?

In a groundbreaking development, scientists have introduced a new diagnostic blood test that identifies Alzheimer's disease with about 90% accuracy, outshining the assessments made by specialists based on physical and cognitive symptoms. This breakthrough could revolutionize how the disease is diagnosed, catching it much earlier in its progression. Alzheimer's affects nearly 7 million Americans and is notoriously difficult to diagnose. The build-up of amyloid beta plaques and misfolded tau proteins are thought to be key in diagnosis, but detecting and measuring these is no easy feat. Enter PrecivityAD2, the test measures the ratios of these molecules in a patient's blood sample. The results are then plugged into a proprietary algorithm to predict the risk of developing Alzheimer's. The test promises to be a game-changer—simple, affordable, and potentially able to replace the expensive scans and invasive spinal fluid tests that are currently the standard.

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Fashion

The Olympic Runway

Want to judge Olympic style?

Last Friday marked the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games, and it’s not just the athletes audiences were excited for but the fashion show of team outfits. Each participating nation has designed unique kits for its athletes, often inspired by their cultural heritage and history. The Haitian team features traditional Caribbean Guayabera shirts, paired with skirts and trousers with artwork by painter Philippe Dodard. French athletes dressed to impress in sleek blazers made by the renowned Parisian brand Berluti. The Mongolian team dons attire based on traditional dress adorned with intricate embroidery that takes roughly 20 hours to complete and team USA’s kit is a custom 14-piece collection by Ralph Lauren. See these outfits and more, here!

Image Credit: Paris 2024

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