Meta has announced a deal with startup Overview Energy to buy solar power collected by satellite and beamed back to Earth, an experimental approach that could help power data centers at night. Unlike traditional solar, which depends on daylight or stored battery power, space-based solar would collect energy from satellites more than 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator and transmit it as infrared energy to ground-based panels. Overview Energy plans a first test in 2028, with a commercial rollout targeted for 2030. Meta is seeking up to 1 gigawatt of power from the project, reflecting the growing energy demands of AI and data centers. In 2024, Meta’s data centers consumed 18,000 times more electricity than this deal would deliver in a single hour. The concept dates back to 1941 and was formally proposed by engineer Peter Glaser in 1968, but cost and complexity have kept it mostly theoretical until now.
Image Credit: Overview Energy
True Spies
The Strike On Saddam
Could one strike stop a war before it began?
In March 2003, the US stood on the edge of war with Iraq. President George W. Bush had given Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave the country or face military action. Inside the CIA, Luis Rueda, head of the Agency’s Iraq Operations Group, was helping manage the intelligence effort behind the looming invasion.
Then a source inside Iraq delivered a possible opening. Saddam was expected to visit Dora Farms, a family compound in southern Baghdad, between midnight and the early hours of the morning. Overhead imagery appeared to support the report, showing unusual vehicle activity at the site. If the intelligence was right, a strike could hit Saddam before the wider invasion began.
The timing made the decision difficult. The US deadline expired after Saddam was expected to leave, and officials worried that women and children might also be on the compound. A report of a possible bunker changed the plan again, shifting attention from Tomahawk missiles to F-117 aircraft carrying heavier bombs.
In the White House, senior officials weighed speed, risk, and uncertainty. The aircraft launched, and Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Join Luis Rueda in this week’s podcast selection, ‘The Strike On Saddam’, for a decision made on the edge of war.
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Ford Motor Company helped reshape modern work 100 years ago by adopting the five-day, 40-hour workweek for factory employees. Saturday was removed from the standard schedule at a time when six-day workweeks remained common across American industry.
Some hourly workers initially worried that a shorter week would mean less pay. Henry Ford’s wages, set at roughly $5 to $6 a day and about double the industry average, helped ease those concerns. Ford also redirected Saturday wages toward hiring more workers for Monday through Friday shifts, expanding employment while keeping production moving.
The change also brought practical benefits for the company. Ford saw higher productivity, lower turnover, and stronger morale, while employees gained more time outside the factory. Some of that new leisure time fed back into the growing car culture Ford had helped create, with workers using weekends to travel and spend. The idea later became national labor policy. In 1940, the US formally codified the 40-hour workweek, requiring overtime pay for hourly employees who worked beyond it.
Articles
You Are Being Watched
When did being watched become normal?
Private communication once meant a sealed letter and a trusted messenger. Today, surveillance sits in the background of everyday life, from street cameras to smartphones, apps, devices, and social platforms that track how people move, connect, and behave.
The physical scale alone is striking. More than 1 billion CCTV cameras operate worldwide, including an estimated 21 million in the UK and 50 million in the United States. Many modern systems no longer just record footage. With AI-powered analytics, they can support facial recognition, behavioral analysis, and crowd-flow prediction.
Digital surveillance goes even further. Smartphones travel everywhere with us, logging our locations, movements, and social connections. Around half of mobile apps share user data with third parties, while connected devices such as smart speakers and doorbells continue to expand the network within homes.
What makes this feel especially familiar to the intelligence world is the method. Social graph analysis, behavioral profiling, and data mapping all echo classic spycraft, only now they operate at a commercial scale. Discover more about how surveillance became the air we breathe in this SPYSCAPE article.
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Scientists at Harvard have created the first map of smell receptors in the nose, revealing an unexpected order behind one of the body’s most complex senses. The study could help researchers explore future treatments for smell loss, including stem cell therapies or brain-computer interfaces.
The team studied mice to map the locations of different smell receptors in the nose. These receptors bind odor molecules and send signals to the brain for interpretation. For more than 30 years, scientists assumed the nose’s 1,000-plus smell receptor types were randomly arranged, partly because there were too many to track in detail. But instead of being scattered at random, the receptors were arranged in clear horizontal bands, grouped by type.
That pattern matters because it mirrors the layout of the brain region that processes smell (olfactory bulb), offering new clues about how scent information travels from the nose to the brain. The map was made possible by genetic techniques that enabled researchers to analyze around 5.5 million neurons across more than 300 mice.
Image Credit: Datta Lab/Mouse Nose
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