Artificial intelligence (AI) exploded into the mainstream in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT. Now, barely three years later, it has colonised modern life to a remarkable degree.

Leading chatbots are registering roughly 1.5 billion active users per month. OpenAI says 230 million of them pose questions to ChatGPT about their health and wellness each week. Global survey data indicates virtually every CEO is clamouring to integrate AI into their company due to fear of missing out. And labour markets and dating apps are now largely mediated by AI gatekeepers.

Computer-generated slop from automated content farms is rife on social media. Deepfakes are fueling political extremism and fraying social cohesion in liberal democracies. Synthetic artists are topping the Billboard music charts. Parents are snatching up teddy bears with built-in chatbots for their children.

“Everything is AI now, so nothing is AI,” one industry analyst recently told Wired magazine ahead of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, the tech industry’s largest retail trade fair held every year in Las Vegas. “It has reached such a point of saturation,” he said, adding that consumers don’t even consider a product utilising AI as a unique selling point anymore.

It reflects a stunning normalisation of a revolutionary technology. But not everyone is happy about it.

If 2025 marked the rapid diffusion of AI, it also may have marked a tipping point for growing public distrust of AI systems. Writers, artists, developers and online communities are increasingly questioning how AI systems are built and deployed – and whether their rapid roll out serves the public interest or simply reinforces existing structures of power.

But whether grassroots action is enough to reverse this trend and effect lasting change remains an open question.

Citizens flex their agency

Frustrated with lawmakers and byzantine legislative processes, some citizens have decided to take action into their own hands.

Fanfiction writers are coordinating campaigns against open source platforms that host catalogues of their work harvested without consent. Other creators have used tactics such as data poisoning to interfere with models built on their material. Web developers are increasingly turning to the practice of “tarpitting” – preventing AI bots from scraping content from their page by trapping them in an endless maze of site code protocols.

There’s also surging demand for older cell phones incapable of running the newest versions of popular apps. Windows users that account for more than a billion devices are refusing to upgrade to Windows 11, with its embedded AI upgrades.

“Consumer fatigue surrounding AI’s rapid rise has begun to catalyse a more analogue 2026,” wrote a Forbes contributor in January, referring to a mantra emerging on social media whereby users vow to reduce their screen time this year. In one sense, she says, it amounts to “course correcting a years-long pattern of glorifying efficiency and automation over creativity and community”.

Tyler Johnston, the executive director of The Midas Project, a non-profit watchdog group that monitors leading tech companies, says it’s clear that AI does not have the widespread popularity that its developers may have hoped for: “I’m personally not sure why this is, but I imagine that the benefits still aren’t salient for most people, and it’s not clear if the technology will, on net, benefit everyday people or disempower them.”

Activists worldwide are also confronting lawmakers about the downsides of datacentres. Locals complain that the always-on facilities are an eyesore. The buildings also drain precious water reserves, deflate adjacent property value due to relentless noise pollution and overload energy grids, triggering blackouts and a spike in utility prices. And all while accruing generous tax breaks and offering sparsely few permanent jobs. 

Pockets of the invisible precariat of human workers that make machine-learning models work are mobilising too. Rather than employing their own staff for data labelling, AI developers mostly crowdsource gig workers through platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Another method is to outsource work to third-party agencies that offer employment in “digital sweatshops” in low-wage regions abroad – places such as the Philippines, Venezuela and elsewhere.

In February 2025, a group of 339 Kenyan data workers employed to train and maintain the AI systems of major tech companies founded the Data Labelers Association. “The workers power all these technological advancements, but they’re paid peanuts and not even recognised,” the group’s president told Computer Weekly at the time. The members he represents are spread across various subsectors of AI development – ranging from self-driving vehicles to robot vacuum cleaners. 

For several years now, the non-profit group Turkopticon has likewise functioned as an online forum for AMT contractors by organising mutual aid, resources and advocacy in support of better working conditions.

Same goal, different tactics

Past attempts to address the pathologies stemming from social media show bottom-up challenges to the roll-out of novel technology can take on multiple forms.

For one, communities – in democracies, at least – can assert their interests by engaging elected representatives to influence legislation. While technologically deterministic rhetoric underpins a lot of current AI-related policies, headlines and discourse, governance remains an inherently contested process involving a range of actors and interests. And when it comes to ensuring safety around AI systems and product adoption, crowdsourcing ideas from the citizenry will be essential.

“The biggest risk is allowing a small group to unilaterally decide how AI is built and deployed,” Taiwan’s former minister of digital affairs, Audrey Tang said in an interview last year. “Only a handful of nations have the power to compete for dominance, while the other 200+ countries are effectively in a race to safety, as they have little control over AI development.” 

This highlights an opening for grassroots AI pushback to coalesce into “counter-governance” – an academic concept that refers to citizen interventions altering state-led governance processes.

As Blair Attard-Frost, a fellow at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, explains, this hinges on action being overtly political. The key is effective organisation. When individuals or groups deliberately seek to challenge or disrupt state or industry control over AI, their actions qualify as “counter-governance”. By contrast, opting out of AI use based only on personal ethics or privacy concerns does not meet this threshold unless it is tied to a broader effort to reshape governance itself.

It’s not clear if [AI] technology will, on net, benefit everyday people or disempower them Tyler Johnston, The Midas Project

This dynamic was visible in recent years around the demise of the Sidewalk Labs project, a smart city development proposal for Toronto’s waterfront led by Google’s parent company Alphabet.

Despite promises of data-driven urban innovation, the project faced sustained criticism over data governance, privacy, surveillance and corporate control of public space. It was ultimately abandoned following extensive public opposition. It remains a rare example of how localised efforts and community resistance might try to constrain large-scale AI initiatives and assert collective authority over the conditions under which such technologies are adopted.

Elsewhere, federated AI systems are attempting to offer an alternative to leading models by allowing data control and model training to remain with local actors rather than being consolidated in large state or corporate platforms. Training models on distributed data without pooling raw information reduces privacy and security risks while supporting regulatory compliance and data sovereignty.

Open source models compliment this approach by giving downstream developers greater freedom to refine models for new purposes. Here, among the most striking trends, wrote two researchers in Tech Policy Press in December, “is the rise of unaffiliated developers and loosely organised online communities”.

Citing a new study of AI model downloads from Hugging Face, a machine learning tool hub, the researchers point to how “the open source ecosystem is no longer shaped primarily by large companies but by hobbyists, independent researchers, small collectives and new intermediary groups that specialise in repackaging, quantising and adapting models for widespread use”.

This new vanguard, they say, is steadily determining “which models become practical options for ordinary developers”.

Together, federated and open source AI offer the promise of broadening civic participation in AI development by incrementally shifting influence away from a handful of closed frontier models owned by Big Tech toward communities that adapt and circulate their own bespoke models. This raises the possibility that new governance standards and use cases can be built even as formal policy responses are slow-balled or fail to gain traction.

All told, the unfolding push for decentralisation by citizens to wrest some control over how AI is affecting their lives echoes the early days of the internet. Back then, American libertarian John Perry Barlow 1996’s essay A declaration of the independence of cyberspace argued web users and civil society must actively contest how digital systems are governed as they scale and consolidate power.

The future remains uncertain

Nevertheless, the concentration of AI control within Big Tech appears destined to continue in 2026. Although this may generate unpredictable impacts at the ballot box – especially in America’s November midterms – it could also have ripple effects for global AI governance given Washington’s jurisdictional authority over Silicon Valley.

More than 1,000 proposed bills to regulate AI were introduced at the state level in the US in 2025 alone. Yet the Trump administration’s AI action plan “reads just like a wish list” from Big Tech, an executive from the AI Now Institute, a non-partisan research organisation, said when the strategy was released last July.

In December 2025, Donald Trump took further action by signing an executive order blocking US states from regulating AI – a move some experts think may fracture his base of political support ahead of the polls.  

“I think one of the more interesting implications of this will be the political consequences,” says Tyler Johnston of The Midas Project. “I predict that AI will be a very salient topic in 2026, and that incumbent lawmakers that have so far allied with the industry to fight budding regulation may start to face electoral consequences for having done so. Time will tell.”

But advocacy can go both ways. Meta, for example, spearheaded the launch of a California-based super political action committee last year to enable dark money to derail the campaigns of lawmakers serious about regulating AI. It’s just one of several such efforts being sponsored by the tech industry’s most ardent boosters.

Industry associations representing Big Tech are also lobbying the Trump administration to demand carve-outs in new trade agreements to allow for the use of copyrighted material to train AI models. Meanwhile, CEOs reportedly plan to spend more than ever on AI in 2026. And the stakes are personal: roughly half of them believe their job is on the line if they can’t usher their company into the promised land of AI benefits.

So, while AI appears to have entered its grassroots backlash era, whether it is just a passing phase remains to be seen.

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With the ever-growing threat of malware, ransomware, and phishing scams, a solid security app is essential for any Windows PC, even for savvy internet users. While Windows 11 comes with built-in Microsoft Defender Antivirus protection, it’s not a foolproof solution, lacks features, and often ranks low when compared to the best third-party security software. Fortunately, there is no dearth of antivirus and security software, with everyone claiming to be the best at catching viruses before they infect your PC.

However, not all security software is worth installing, with options from the likes of McAfee to Norton often being apps you should never install on your Windows 11 PC because they can become a bottleneck for your PC’s performance. But if you want a single recommendation, Avira Free Security Suite and Avira Antivirus Pro top the Consumer Reports (CR) rankings for best free antivirus and the best paid antivirus for Windows.

CR is an independent, trusted, and impartial source for ratings and reviews of products and services in the U.S. Avira also ranked high in the “Real-World Protection Test (July-October 2025)” of AV-Comparatives, protecting against 99.5% of the threats. AV-Comparatives is an internationally recognized research institute that tests and rates antivirus software. Here’s what the free and paid versions of the Avira security software offer and how you can get them.

What can Avira security software do for you?

Avira Free Security is the company’s zero-cost antivirus solution and can protect your PC from malware and phishing. It comes with an on-demand virus scanner and a real-time threat monitor to guard you against any malicious files hiding on your computer. It also has a software updater function, which tells you when updates are available for different apps and drivers so that your system is always up-to-date with the latest fixes. Additionally, you can use the supplied browser extensions to block malicious downloads, ads, and even tracking in your favorite web browser. However, any internet traffic outside of the browser with the Avira extension won’t be monitored. Other features include a VPN with 500MB of free bandwidth, a password manager, and a Windows tune-up tool. You can download for free from the Avira website or Microsoft Store.

The Pro version is a leaner and more antivirus-focused version that costs $65 annually; however, you can typically score a discount for the first year. It includes all the antivirus capabilities of the free version but also adds native support to block threats entering your internet traffic, including emails, as well as enhanced ransomware protection. You also get access to premium customer support via a toll-free number and email, and freedom from constant nudges to upgrade to a paid version of Avira. 

However, it lacks a software updater, a password manager, and a Windows tuner. It’s also available via the Avira website. If you’re on a tight budget and don’t mind dealing with frequent upselling, the free version is a good option. However, if you can shell out for the Pro version, you will get complete protection against both the already present threats and anything coming from the web.

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Closer cooperation between regulators and increased funding are needed for the UK to deal effectively with the human rights harms associated with the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. 

On 4 February 2026, the Joint Committee on Human Rights met to discuss whether the UK’s regulators have the resources, expertise and powers to ensure that human rights are protected from new and emerging harms caused by AI. 

While there are at least 13 regulators in the UK with remits relating to AI, there is no single regulator dedicated to regulating AI.

The government has stated that AI should be regulated by the UK’s existing framework, but witnesses from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and Ofcom warned MPs and Lords that the current disconnected approach risks falling behind fast-moving AI without stronger coordination and resourcing. 

Mary-Ann Stephenson, chair of the EHRC, stressed that resources were the greatest hurdle in regulating the technology. “There is a great deal more that we would like to do in this area if we had more resources,” she said.

Highlighting how the EHRC’s budget has remained frozen at £17.1m since 2012, which was then the minimum amount required for the commission to perform its statutory functions, Stephenson told MPs and Lords that this is equivalent to a 35% cut.

Regulators told the committee that the legal framework is largely in place to address AI-related discrimination and rights harms through the Equality Act.  

The constraint is therefore in capacity and resources, not a lack of statutory powers. As a result, much of the enforcement is reactive rather than proactive.

Stephenson said: “The first thing the government should do is ensure that existing regulators are sufficiently funded, and funded to be able to work together so that we can respond swiftly when gaps are identified.”

Andrew Breeze, director for online safety technology policy at Ofcom, stressed that regulation could not keep pace with rapid AI development.

However, regulators also stressed that they are technology-neutral; their powers with regard to AI are limited to the use case and deployment level. Ofcom, the ICO and the ECHR have no power to refuse or give prior approval to new AI products. 

The committee itself expressed a strong interest in having a dedicated AI regulator. Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti compared AI regulation to the pharmaceutical industry. 

“Big business, lots of jobs, capable of doing enormous good for so many people, but equally capable of doing a lot of damage,” she said. “We would not dream of not having a specific medicines regulator in this country or any developed country, even though there might be privacy issues and general human rights issues.”

Regulators were in favour of a coordinating body to bring stronger cross-regulator mechanisms rather than a single super-regulator. They stressed that because AI is a general-purpose technology, regulation works best when handled by sector regulators that cover specific domains.

Forms of coordination are already in place, such as the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF), formed in July 2020 to strengthen the working relationship between four regulators. 

It has created cross-regulatory teams to share knowledge and develop collective views on digital issues, including algorithmic processing, design frameworks, digital advertising technologies and end-to-end encryption. 

The then-outgoing information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, told MPs and peers that information-sharing gateways between regulators and the ability to perform compulsory audits “would ensure that technology companies, some the size of nation-states, are not forum shopping or running one regulator against another”.

Spread of misinformation 

Breeze made the case for greater international regulatory cooperation with regard to disinformation produced by AI. 

Ofcom clarified that, under the UK’s Online Safety Act, it does not have the power to regulate the spread of misinformation on social media. 

“Parliament explicitly decided at the time the Online Safety Bill was passed not to cover content that was harmful but legal, except to the extent that it harms children,” said Breeze.

While misinformation and disinformation regulation is largely absent in UK law, it is present in the European Union’s counterpart to the Online Safety Act. 

Because of the cross-border nature of large tech companies, Breeze noted that legal action on discrimination can sometimes be taken using European legislation.

Age regulation and the Online Safety Act

Regulators also addressed scepticism on age assurance safeguards in the context of the proposed social media ban for under-16s and restricting access to online pornography.

Breeze said age assurance represented a trade-off for regulators between child protection and ensuring a high degree of online privacy.

Responding to criticism that the Online Safety Act has been ineffective due to the widespread use of virtual private networks (VPNs), Breeze said: “Checks are about ensuring as many young people as possible are protected from seeing products deemed harmful to them … and there is no impregnable defence that you can create on the internet against a determined person, adult or child.”

He said that according to the evidence, the majority of children who report seeing harmful content usually weren’t looking for it. 

The same committee heard in November 2025 that the UK government’s deregulatory approach to artificial intelligence would fail to deal with the technology’s highly scalable human rights harms and could lead to further public disenfranchisement.

Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo highlighted that the government’s “very optimistic and commercial-focused outlook on AI” and the Data Use and Access Act (DUAA) have “decimated people’s protections against automated decision-making”.

Carlo added that there is real potential for AI-enabled mass surveillance to “spiral out of control”, and that a system built for one purpose could easily be deployed for another “in the blink of an eye”.

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Rivian has no plans to adopt Apple CarPlay on its electric vehicles. However, over the past few months, the vehicle manufacturer has been adding a few cool Apple features. For example, in December, the company added Car Key support for some of its latest EVs. Now, according to Rivian Trackr, an upcoming software update will bring Apple Watch support for its vehicles. With that, users will be able to open their vehicle with the app and also unlock a few other perks.

In other words, the Apple Watch app will turn drivers’ wrists into a control panel for the vehicle. They will be able to access core remote functions, such as triggering the alarm, venting windows, and controlling the interior temperature using the Digital Crown. Up to four quick actions can be accessed with just a tap. Still, the key addition is that the Apple Watch app will let owners of Gen 1 Rivian vehicles (model year 2024 or earlier) unlock doors using the Rivian Apple Watch companion app, while other digital car keys remain available only on second-generation Rivian models.

Rivian and Tesla keep adding built-in Apple experiences

Photosvit/Getty Images

While Rivian’s CEO insists he doesn’t plan to add CarPlay to his vehicles, Tesla plans to support CarPlay within the regular Tesla experience users already have. Tesla is also considering offering Apple Car Key support.

Both Tesla and Rivian have built-in Apple Music support, which delivers a more familiar experience for hardcore Apple fans. Even though the lack of CarPlay limits the ability to connect your phone to play your favorite podcasts, audiobooks, or reply to iMessages, it’s interesting to see Tesla planning to go a step further for its customers.

It’s unclear when Rivian will release the Apple Watch app for drivers, but this update shouldn’t take too long to land, as Rivian Trackr tags the update as the 2026.03 update, which suggests March 2026. As for Tesla, Bloomberg says the company will soon reveal more about its plans to offer CarPlay support on its vehicles. That said, these companies aren’t considering support for CarPlay Ultra, which will reportedly come to at least one vehicle of another manufacturer this year. Besides that, Ferrari also recently announced Luce, its first EV, designed in partnership with Apple’s former design boss, and its interface resemblance to CarPlay Ultra is incredible.

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A meeting of CIOs in London earlier this week put into focus the precarious balancing act CIOs have to perform in terms of innovating while keeping the lights on.

Looking at the tech companies exhibiting products and services at the CIO UK & Ireland event at the Langham Hilton, hosted by Citrus Events, made it clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of innovation people want to hear more about. But legacy systems are often deeply embedded in organisational culture and structure, making it difficult to implement the required change without disrupting existing workflows.

CIO delegates raised concerns about compliance during a roundtable discussion, given that organisations need to ensure their technical debt is secure. “Our regulators demand that we have certain levels and certain strengths and certifications, like Cyber Essentials Plus certification. We have to do that,” said one delegate.

The roundtable discussion suggests that IT leaders should prioritise trust in their strategic goals, rather than narrowly focusing on technical debt.

One of the big challenges for IT leaders is that, in the past, IT systems were commissioned once by the business. They went through a formal specification process that was then signed off and passed to the software development team. After coding, testing and deployment, enterprise applications tend to move to the maintenance phase of the software lifecycle. The people who originally commissioned the project may well have moved on to another project, so it is then left to business users to provide the feedback that informs software improvements.

However, as is apparent from the roundtable discussion, legacy systems often carry outdated processes that may no longer align with current business goals. Business processes change, but the enterprise system rarely reflects such changes. Instead, it is often left to business users to work around the difference.

The consensus from the delegates who participated in the discussion was that by focusing on these systems, organisations can identify inefficiencies and streamline business processes. This work is essential before introducing new technology. In fact, IT leaders should aim to get the processes up to date, which means revisiting those previous conversations they had with the business when the enterprise software was originally specified.

One of the CIOs at the roundtable said: “We’ve got to understand, first and foremost, what our processes are within the organisation, and what it is we want to do.”

One of the points raised in the roundtable discussion was how enterprise IT systems should be specified. If business processes are effectively encoded in the software, then adapting the code as the business evolves is a major undertaking. CIO delegates at the roundtable recognised that agility should be built in right at the start, as the system is being specified, to ensure it can cope with changes that may happen in the future.

The challenge of business and IT alignment was also discussed, insofar as a CIO is not best placed to speak purely from a finance perspective. Rather than attempt to speak the language of a finance director, one of the delegates suggested an alternative strategy, involving the use of stories to explain business benefits.

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Permission for the development, dubbed the West London Technology Park (WLTP) by its developers Greystoke, was granted by the government in early July 2025. This is despite Buckinghamshire Council twice denying planning permission for the project on green belt protection grounds.

In Foxglove and Global Action Plan’s view, planning permission for the project should not have been granted without an environmental impact assessment (EIA) being carried out first.

For context, Buckinghamshire Council initially stated the developers did not need to submit an EIA, having received assurances from them about how little impact the project would have on local energy and water supplies.

This view was later upheld by the planning inspectorate, when the government placed Buckinghamshire Council’s planning permission denial for the project under review.

Government U-turns on planning approvals

However, ahead of the court case’s first hearing on 22 January 2026, the government issued a legal letter admitting that its decision to grant planning permission for the project should be quashed.

The government said in the letter – seen by Computer Weekly – that it had received assurances that a “suite of mitigation measures” would be in place that would negate the need for an EIA, but it admitted that not all of these measures were secured at the time permission for the project was granted.

“The secretary of state accepts that in screening out EIA based on mitigation measures, but then failing to secure those measures, there was a serious logical error… [and] the secretary of state accepts that the [legal] claim is arguable and permission [for the project] should be quashed.”

This admission has now prompted calls for a reassessment of two other hyperscale datacentre projects the government has previously decided should go ahead, despite planning permission for them being initially denied at local authority level.

Among those calling for a reassessment of past projects the government has given the green light to, in the wake of the government’s U-turn on the WLTP project, is Tom Hegarty, head of communications at Foxglove.

“That should be an urgent wake-up call to halt the mad rush to build out massive datacentres at any cost that has been an obsession of this government,” he told Computer Weekly. “Having acknowledged the shoddy state of their decision at [WLTP], we have to hope ministers will now learn that pushing these power-guzzling monsters through without a thought for the environmental consequences is not the right way forward.”

This is a also view shared by Mark Butcher, founder and director of IT sustainability consultancy Posetiv Cloud, who said the government’s stance on the WLTP development makes it “difficult, if not impossible” to justify not re-examining other large datacentres approved under similar circumstances.

“At the very least, [these projects] should be reviewed for consistency,” Butcher told Computer Weekly. “This is not about opposing datacentres in principle, but from a planning and legal perspective, [it is] about ensuring there is credibility in the planning system and that due process has been followed.

“There is also an important planning-system angle here. Inconsistent application of EIAs creates real problems for planners. It undermines professional judgement, increases legal and judicial review risk, and makes future decisions harder to defend.”

The government’s other green-lit projects

Out of the other projects the government has given its seal of planning approval to, one is also based in Iver, Buckinghamshire and is being overseen by US investment company Affinius Capital. The government granted that development permission to proceed in December 2024.

Computer Weekly contacted Affinius Capital for an update on how the project was progressing, given more than a year has passed since approval for the build was granted. At the time of writing, no response had been received.

However, Computer Weekly is aware that the go-live date for that development hinges on work the National Grid is doing in the local area to bolster energy availability through the creation of its new Uxbridge Moor substation, which is due for completion in 2029.

The other hyperscale datacentre the government has given its blessing to is another Greystoke development, located in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire. Planning for that project was originally denied by Three Rivers District Council in January 2024, before the government overturned that decision in May 2025.

As is the case with the WLTP development, the local councils overseeing both projects said the developers did not need to submit an EIA as part of their planning applications.

Computer Weekly contacted Greystoke for a progress update on the Abbots Langley development, but the company said it had no comment to make regarding the project at this time. 

According to Butcher, the fact one of these approved developments has been retrospectively deemed to require an EIA leaves the government open to questions about why other projects of comparable scale are being treated differently. And that kind of uncertainty and inconsistency is likely to concern investors, but also developers plotting similar projects across the UK, he continued.

“[It will] likely push more cautious capital towards regions with clearer, more predictable planning frameworks,” he said. “From a government perspective, the approach also looks hugely short-sighted. By prioritising speed of approval and treating datacentres as nationally critical infrastructure without robust scrutiny, environmental and social risks are effectively pushed down to local authorities and communities.”

As mentioned, two of the projects the government has approved are in the same area, with approximately 10 miles separating them. They are also set to be built on the outskirts of West London and within the South East, which are already densely populated with datacentres.

If developers were mandated, for example, to complete an EIA as part of their planning permission applications, it would make it easier to assess the combined and cumulative impact of building so many datacentres in one area, added Butcher.

“Individually, sites may appear manageable, but without EIAs there is no proper mechanism to assess the combined effect of multiple hyperscale developments on regional power capacity, water stress, carbon intensity and community infrastructure,” he said. “That is exactly what we are now seeing in London and the South East, and is a significant part of wider infrastructure and resilience risk assessments.”

One of the drawbacks of planning for projects being viewed in this siloed way can be seen from the concerns previously raised about the impact that the influx of datacentres into West London, specifically, has had on the region’s energy security.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, John Booth, managing director of sustainability-focused IT consultancy Carbon3IT, said this is precisely why the UK datacentre industry is so keen to see the government deliver on its promised national planning policy statement.

“We’ve been asking for planning guidance for years and were advised that a national planning policy statement would be published in December 2025, but we are still waiting,” he said. “If planning guidance was in place, EIAs would be required, but most operators ask for a screening assessment for EIA prior to outline planning. If a local authority says no, then the EIA is still probably done but just not submitted.”

And datacentre operators are keen to do the right thing and would rather submit an EIA than not because they want to be seen as good citizens in the local communities where they are plotting to build their server farms, said Booth, adding: “Datacentres are trying to be as environmentally sound as they can be, but with a confused policy environment, this is difficult for them – hence our desire for guidance.”

Having planning approvals for datacentres based on a set of standards that are being “consistently applied” across different projects would be a huge benefit to operators, said Positiv Cloud’s Butcher. “Failing to do [so] risks the accusations and perceptions that the planning system is biased and being applied selectively, which ultimately slows the sector down through opposition, legal challenge and loss of trust,” he said.

In terms of what should be contained in such guidance, Foxglove’s Hegarty said it would be good to see the inclusion of an EIA made a “mandatory baseline for any datacentre planning application” as a starting point.

“[We also need to] mandate credible and enforceable conditions that require each datacentre operator, from Amazon to Equinix, to supply the full power needs of each site through new renewables at all times, so they don’t drain the grid and jack up prices for everyone else,” he said. “Otherwise, ministers will have demonstrated once again they are happy for Big Tech to reap the profits of polluting datacentres while our environment carries the cost.”

Computer Weekly contacted the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for comment on the points raised in this story, but no response was forthcoming by the time of publication.

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A lot of people struggle to pronounce the name of American politician Pete Buttigieg. When Mick Baccio, now global security advisor at Splunk SURGe and Cisco Foundation AI, went to work for him in a previous life, it was helpfully spelled out in large letters on the office wall. Buttigieg says it ‘Boot-edge-edge’, if you were wondering.

“I was like, oh that’s clever, thank you for that,” says Baccio. “I’m going to meet the man in a second, I should know this!”

A former US Navy Reserve intelligence officer who began his political career as the mayor of South Bend in Indiana, Buttigieg served as secretary of transportation during the administration of US president Joe Biden, from 2021 to 2025.

However, before that, he had a tilt at the White House himself, running a primary campaign that won in the state of Iowa, before he dropped out at the start of March 2020 as the Democrats rallied behind Biden.

It was on this campaign that Baccio met Buttigieg, and in conversation with Computer Weekly, he reflects on the experience of bootstrapping cyber security for a US presidential campaign.

Baccio admits he was sceptical about taking the gig at first, having just escaped Washington DC himself after serving as a threat intelligence expert for the Executive Office of the President under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

“I got a call one day. They said, ‘Hey, do you want to come be CISO [chief information security officer] for the Buttigieg campaign?’ I said ‘no’. I was like, ‘I’m good’,” he says.

“When you look at a political campaign in the United States, win or lose, you’re going to be unemployed in November.”

Someone must have kept on at him, because the record shows he took the job, and even though “president Buttigieg” did not take the job, Baccio has no regrets about his choices.

“It’s the most fun you’ll have,” he says. “The closest thing to a political campaign, I think, is a startup, but a campaign is a most unique organisation because it’s a non-profit funded entirely by donations and its sole purpose is to elect your mascot.

“Now, I say mascot not in a mean way, but secretary Buttigieg was not involved in day-to-day operations. He didn’t run things in the campaign – he was the campaign. He’s not even the CEO, he’s who we are – we’re Pete for America.”

In such a campaign, the role of CISO takes on a fundamentally different aspect, says Baccio. To start with, most campaign staffers are volunteers, or in their first or second jobs after university. “Most of them don’t even know what a CISO is. I had to explain that a lot, why I was there and what I was doing – teaching folks how to ‘do the cybers’,” says Baccio.

Such a campaign faces challenges that large organisations with security budgets and supportive boards do not. For one thing, every dollar that a political campaign spends on something like cyber security, office furniture, or coffee and doughnuts is a dollar it is not spending on winning votes, so Baccio quickly learned he had to operate lean and operate cheaply.

But despite what tales of Russian espionage and interference in US election cycles might lead you to believe, the campaign faced a threat environment much like any ordinary business.

“I think one of the most under-appreciated threat vectors is just plain old fraud and business email compromise,” says Baccio.

“This is a $100bn a year industry, and we talk a lot about the agentic AI [artificial intelligence] threat, polymorphic-enabled malware, APT [advanced persistent threat], blah blah blah – everybody wants it to be that, but it’s generally fraud,” he adds.

“I never underestimate folks who are just trying to do their job. If your job is to process invoices, it’s all you do all day, if you get a PDF labelled ‘invoice’ you’re going to open it. Fraud is a bigger problem than any APT or AI attack, but I don’t think it’s sexy enough to get column inches.”

Five a day

Indeed, an often-neglected security message, and one Splunk is keen to repeat, is the importance of eating your cyber vegetables – that is to say, nailing the basics.

Having driven around this block several times over the years, Baccio thinks these vegetables account for at least the bottom third of the cyber food pyramid.

“You know you’re supposed to drink lots of water, you’re supposed to eat lots of green things, and if you don’t, your body reflects that,” says Baccio. “And you know you’re supposed to MFA [multifactor authenticate] all the things, you know you’re supposed to segment your network, you know you’re supposed to patch your things – and if you don’t, your network gets popped.

“I’m not saying do all these things and you’ll be okay, I’m saying do all these things and you’ll be in a better position.

“Hackers don’t hack the cloud, they log in. They’ve already bought those credentials from an access broker. They’re not hacking anything. But if I have phishing-resistant MFA available to me, they might not be able to log in, the account takeover won’t happen, and the rest of the cyber attack changes going forward. So it’s those things that I think go a long, long way towards raising that overall bar.”

Blue collar for the blue team

Splunk SURGe was set up to help defenders tackle real-world problems that they face today, with a mix of actionable guidance, in-depth analysis on cyber issues and practical solutions during fast-moving security panics. Think of its output as a cyber buffet with excellent vegetarian options.

SURGe had its genesis during one of the “headless chicken” moments, when unit founder Ryan Kovar was poring over various Slack groups one evening and spotted a lot of chatter surrounding an apparent SolarWinds compromise – heralding the now legendary Sunburst/Solorigate incident.

In the wake of this, Kovar realised there was a big gap in Splunk’s offering, in that the company had pretty good tech and processes when it came to applying data science to security, but wasn’t so hot at cutting through to the human side of things.

In short, it wasn’t being holistic enough.

“Hackers don’t hack the cloud, they log in. They’ve already bought those credentials from an access broker. They’re not hacking anything. But if I have phishing-resistant MFA available to me, they might not be able to log in, the account takeover won’t happen, and the rest of the cyber attack changes going forward”

Mick Baccio, Cisco Foundation AI

That said, Kovar – in his own words – “wasn’t sure the world needed yet another security vendor research team”, so he formed SURGe to be a practical resource for users, or “blue collar for the blue team”.

Baccio was intimately involved in the unit’s creation – Kovar credits him with coming up with the “blue collar” line – and several years down the line, he still spends a lot of time helping Splunk’s customers make sense of the security landscape through blogs and other forms of outreach, as well as participating in a regular series, Coffee talk with SURGe.

He reflects: “I’m really lucky that I was in the Buttigieg campaign, that I was at the White House prior to that, the Pentagon, HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services], the CDC [Centre for Disease Control], and I’m now able to take all of that experience and bring it into SURGe and say, ‘These are the security things I’ve seen in my career – this is what I believe people want’.”

Threat intel at the foundations of AI

However, since July 2025, SURGe’s core mission has changed somewhat, after it transitioned to work within Cisco Foundation AI, a new initiative by Splunk’s network-centric parent that is developing open-weight, security-specific AI models.

In April 2025, Foundation AI launched Foundation-sec-8b, an eight-billion-parameter large language model (LLM) expressly designed to enable security teams to work faster, act more precisely and scale their operations without compromise.

You might reasonably wonder what a threat intelligence unit is doing jumping into bed with a bunch of LLM developers. Baccio himself declares he was shocked when it happened, but now he thinks it may be the smartest move Cisco has made since acquiring Splunk.

He characterises it as bringing SURGe’s collective experience as a steward of threat intelligence and a trusted advisor to customers to bear on a highly technical field and build AI tools that actually help security teams.

The advent of agentic AI in the past 12 to 18 months helps drive this narrative forward, says Baccio, and makes the promise of AI more real, at least compared to where it was a couple of years ago.

“If I throw generalised AI at a cyber problem, it’s not going to be great. But if I built a very specific model to do a very specific thing, then, yeah, that’s what I wanted a year ago when you sold me this AI hype,” he says. “Agentic is focused on one task, and it’s going to do it really well, but don’t ask it to do anything else.”

He cites the work of his colleague Shannon Davis, a principal AI researcher at Foundation AI, as a case in point. Davis created a tool called PLoB – standing for post-logon behaviour – to help detect intrusions instantaneously.

“To my point where you don’t hack the cloud, you just log in, after you have done so, PLoB detects all the activity that you’re doing and will be able to say, ‘This is a malicious actor’ or ‘This is just Mick from research’,” he says.

“Being able to do that at machine speed is something we’re going to have to lean into more when you take into account API calls, non-human identities, and all these things we’re introducing to the Rube Goldberg machine of the internet.

“Learning how agentic is applied becomes critical,” says Baccio as he looks ahead. “We have some stuff going on in the background that I can’t speak to, but we’re actively working together to brainstorm ideas and build these things to help move that Sisyphean security rock further up the hill. I’m excited about that. We’re going to help to keep someone’s security programme a little more secure.”

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If you’ve ever dealt with a keyboard malfunction or overheated laptop before, there’s a chance it’s because of dust. Dust might be small, but when it builds up, it can lead to serious damage to your electronics. So before your hardware even starts failing, it’s best to remove dust from any electronics in your home as soon as you notice it. A microfiber cloth and can of compressed air usually do the job just fine, but microfiber cloths already need washing after a couple of swipes, and compressed air canisters don’t last forever.

An arguably more convenient and cost-effective alternative is a rechargeable air duster like the ABVOT Electric Air Duster from Amazon. For only $32, as of this writing, this air duster can help keep your tech free from the eyesore that is dust buildup. It can come in handy for when you do regular upkeep — maybe you have a pet cat always hanging around your workstation — or just need occasional cleaning here and there. Whichever the case, it can be a useful gadget to keep in the house.

Dust-free tech in just a quick blast

The ABVOT Electric Air Duster is a cordless air duster with a built-in 6,000mAh battery and a 45,000-rpm motor. It can blow as much as 2.5 ounces of force, enough to clear away the dust from your computer screen, the top of your PC tower, and in between the keys of your keyboard. It can run for 15 minutes continuously before needing a recharge, but it’s easy to top up the battery with any 5V USB-C wall adapter, power bank, or even the USB port in your car.

Operation-wise, the ABVOT Electric Air Duster is a straightforward piece of tech because all you have to do is press the button to turn it on and hold it until you’re done cleaning. It’s lightweight at just around 1.5 pounds and pretty compact at only 7.4 x 7.7 x 3 inches. Plus, the nozzle is detachable to help save space, so you can store it inside a drawer until the next time it’s needed again. 

On Amazon users have rated it at 4.3 stars. Most complain about it being as loud as a handheld vacuum, so it might not be a good idea to use it in an office setting. Users also mention that it isn’t particularly great for crevices since the nozzle isn’t as narrow as one on a can of compressed air. On the upside, the air duster doesn’t produce moisture or cold air like compressed air. Instead, it blows out room-temperature air, making it generally safer to use with electronics. Some also say the air duster can double as a tool for drying hair and other items in a pinch.

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Ring camera owners online claim to be returning their devices for a full refund, citing that the company has broken its terms of service with users. Users claim they’re doing so because the Amazon-led company joined forces with Flock Safety and forced users to opt in to certain features. These Ring owners claim that the company is allegedly providing information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s a problem that is calling into question what home security can mean for users.

Ring told The New York Times that no user footage is being used to help ICE, and the company’s partnership with Flock Safety has been on standby since its announcement in October 2025. As of now, Ring has not provided a specific timeline for this partnership to start, but Flock Safety states that it does not allow federal agencies access to user data. Despite this, users on Reddit are still providing photos of their returns after speaking with customer service for Ring potentially breaking its terms of service with customers.

There is a way to ask for a Ring camera refund, should you choose. According to several Reddit users, Amazon is honoring these returns so long as you speak to customer service and explain that Ring has broken its terms of service. Users claim to be receiving a full refund for their Ring cameras and also successfully returning Ring doorbells, indoor cameras, multiple batteries, and a battery charger.

Why the refund is happening and how to claim it

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Ring security systems are no strangers to scrutiny, despite being top-rated Amazon gadgets. In 2019, the company was accused of spying on customer camera feeds. More recently, its new Search Party feature, announced in a Super Bowl commercial, gives users reason to believe it’s allegedly leading to a surveillance state disguised as a lost dog search tool.

Now, users are asking for their money back. In a post on Reddit, user “aawolf” posted an image explaining how and why you should return your Ring camera. The post also claims that Ring footage can fall into the hands of Flock Safety, which is also responsible for license plate readers throughout the U.S.. This Reddit user is alleging that Flock has been working with ICE to locate “susceptible” individuals. The post also cites that another reason to return products is that Ring reportedly enabled AI and facial recognition features, previously optional, without user consent.

Essentially, so long as you state that Ring has changed the terms of service and that you disagree with Flock, Amazon may begin processing your return. If you wish to request a refund for your Ring camera, the fastest way is to speak to customer service through Rufus on the Amazon home page. From there, request your refund by stating that the company’s agreement with Flock invalidates the reason you purchased the product, and that the terms of service have been changed. You may need to provide an order number, but buyers did confirm that they have successfully returned cameras.

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It appears Apple will finally let AI chatbots be used with CarPlay. According to reports from Bloomberg, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or even xAI’s Grok could be available for millions of CarPlay drivers in the coming months. While Apple won’t let CarPlay users change the way Siri is invoked (which means it will continue to be the standard experience for the infotainment platform), users will finally be able to use voice commands to talk to their favorite AI chatbots.

It’s possible Apple intends for this to be one of the top CarPlay features of iOS 27, which is expected to be previewed at the WWDC 2026 keynote in June. Apple’s timing might be just enough to improve its own personal assistant, which is expected to get supercharged by a Gemini model starting with iOS 26.4, and a full chatbot experience later this year with iOS 27. If Apple can offer an improved experience with Siri when it announces AI chatbot support, users might opt to stay with Apple for a more personalized and private interface.

CarPlay users are about to get what they always wanted

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Currently, CarPlay users have to use shortcuts and widgets to access AI chatbots, or directly from their iPhone through their vehicle’s stereo. With people using AI more and more, it’s been a missed opportunity that Apple still doesn’t support a native experience.

Apple is reportedly working to improve its updated Siri by bringing World Knowledge Answers. This would allow the personal assistant to finally be able to summarize information found online, instead of just providing a link or saying it can’t perform that task.

Last year, I had the experience of seeing Grok in action on a Tesla vehicle, and the experience was really smooth with xAI’s assistant answering to queries regarding the weather, what was going on in the world in real time, and, of course, even telling a couple of jokes. If Apple can improve Siri to provide a similar experience on CarPlay, it’s possible that even if people can download ChatGPT, Gemini, and other options, they would still stick with Siri. Bloomberg has also reported that the new Siri will be iOS 27’s main priority, which bodes well for users eager for an improved Siri above all else. 

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