THE DAILY PRAETORIAN: Cybersecurity Trends – 01/09/26

Securing Tomorrow: Your Daily Dose of Cyber Safety, Tech Trends, National Security News, and Inspiration.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

– Aristotle

Italy to be site of first F-35 pilot training school outside US
Italy will host the first F‑35 Lightning II pilot training school outside the United States at a joint military‑civilian airport near Trapani, Sicily, a $130 million project funded by the Italian government and overseen by the F‑35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin; the center responds to rising NATO demand as more European nations field the fifth‑generation fighter, with Italy planning to add 25 jets and Denmark 16, while the facility will feature two full‑mission simulators and begin ground instruction by December 2028, aiming for full completion in July 2029. click here to read more.

Google: Don’t make “bite-sized” content for LLMs if you care about search rank
Google warns that breaking articles into tiny “bite‑sized” chunks to appease large language models harms long‑term SEO, explaining that the search engine still prioritizes content written for humans rather than for AI parsing; while some publishers claim short‑term traffic gains from content chunking, Google’s engineers say the practice exploits current quirks and may backfire as ranking algorithms evolve to favor coherent, reader‑friendly material, making the tactic a risky, potentially fleeting shortcut. click here to read more.

Grandfather Goes Viral for Recording the Entire Bible in His Own Voice for Grandchildren
A devoted grandfather spent months recording every verse of the Bible in his own voice, creating 578 MP3 files that he placed on a flash drive as a Christmas gift for his grandchildren; the heartfelt video of the family’s reaction went viral, prompting worldwide requests for copies and leading the family to distribute the recordings by donation, highlighting how a personal, labor‑intensive project—requiring roughly 75‑80 continuous hours of reading—can touch countless listeners. click here to read more.

In Other News: 8,000 Ransomware Attacks, China Hacked US Gov Emails, IDHS Breach Impacts 700k
SecurityWeek’s weekly roundup highlights a surge in cyber threats and notable incidents: Netskope reports organizations face an average of 223 generative‑AI data‑policy violations each month, while Jaguar Land Rover’s sales tumble after a disruptive hack; spyware founder Bryan Fleming pleads guilty, and Illinois’s Department of Human Services exposes data on 700 000 individuals due to a misconfigured mapping site; Spanish police arrest a suspect linked to the 2019 Desjardins breach, Taiwan documents a 6 % rise in Chinese intrusion attempts targeting critical infrastructure, and a Chinese group infiltrates U.S. House committee email systems; OwnCloud warns of credential theft, and Emsisoft records over 8 000 ransomware attacks in 2025, marking a 30 % increase in active groups. click here to read more.

When Caracas cracked: How the US broke through Venezuela’s Iranian, Russian, and Chinese defenses
The United States executed Operation Absolute Resolve, a coordinated night‑time raid that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by inserting special‑operations helicopters into Caracas, striking air‑defense sites, and disabling power and communications with cyber and electronic‑warfare attacks, thereby exposing the shortcomings of Venezuela’s foreign‑supplied arsenal from Russia, China, and Iran; Russian Buk‑M2E and S‑300VM missiles, Chinese radars, and Iranian Mohajer‑6 drones proved vulnerable to precision standoff missiles, jamming, and power cuts, while U.S. forces leveraged superior intelligence, rehearsed mission planning, and spectrum dominance to neutralize the layered defenses and extract Maduro without major ground combat, illustrating that advanced integration and readiness outweigh sheer hardware quantity in modern conflicts. click here to read more.