Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege

Inception Point AI

This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege is your go-to podcast for detailed analysis of the week's most sophisticated Chinese cyber operations targeting US infrastructure. Stay updated with expert insights into attack methodologies, affected systems, and compelling attribution evidence. Discover the defensive measures implemented and lessons learned from each incident. Featuring interviews with leading cybersecurity experts and government officials, Dragon's Code delivers essential information for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of cyber warfare and national security. Tune in regularly for in-depth discussions that keep you informed and prepared. For more info go to https://www.quietplease.ai Check out these deals https://amzn.to/48MZPjs This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.

  1. 6h ago

    China's Cyber Gossip: When Spies Slide into Your DMs and the FBI Builds a Practice Town to Fight Back

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Ting, and this week’s cyber story has one very clear villain: Beijing’s machine-like pressure campaign against American networks. According to Cybersecurity News, the most sophisticated Chinese operations hitting U.S. infrastructure were **Volt Typhoon** and **Salt Typhoon**, and together they show a strategy built less on smash-and-grab disruption and more on quiet access, prepositioning, and intelligence collection.[2] Volt Typhoon, as reported by Cybersecurity News, was inside U.S. critical infrastructure networks, moving in ways designed to avoid detection and preserve long-term access for possible future disruption during a geopolitical crisis.[2] That matters because the target set was not random internet-facing clutter; it was the nervous system of the country, the places where communications, energy, transportation, and emergency response all intersect. The methodology here was classic stealth tradecraft: living off the land, blending into normal administrative activity, and mapping systems without lighting up alarms like a bad holiday display.[2] Salt Typhoon went after U.S. telecom providers including **AT&T** and **Verizon**, with Cybersecurity News saying the campaign stole metadata and compromised communications tied to political figures including **Donald Trump** and **JD Vance**.[2] That is a different kind of pain. Instead of knocking a system offline, it gives an adversary a window into who talks to whom, when, and from where. In cyber, metadata is the gossip that tells the whole story. Attribution here is anchored by the nature of the campaigns themselves and by U.S. official concern reflected in the reporting. Cybersecurity News explicitly describes both operations as **Chinese state-sponsored** campaigns, and it frames them as part of a broader pattern of cyber-espionage used for geopolitical leverage.[2] The larger lesson from that reporting is that these are not lone-wolf intrusions but disciplined operations aligned with state objectives.[2] Defensively, the U.S. response has increasingly emphasized hardening, segmentation, and realistic training. TechCrunch reported that the FBI built a **22,000-square-foot replica town** in Huntsville, Alabama called the **Kinetic Cyber Range**, with houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery mart, a courthouse, a hospital, and a power company so investigators can rehearse real-world cyberattack scenarios in a believable environment.[8] That is not theater; that is muscle memory for a cyber age. It reflects the lesson that defenders need to practice not just alerts and dashboards, but recovery, coordination, and incident response in environments that mirror actual communities.[8] The big lesson this week is brutally simple: China’s top-end cyber play is about patience, access, and options. As Cybersecurity News describes it, these campaigns reveal both rising sophistication and deep vulnerabilities across sectors, while the FBI’s training push shows Washington knows the answer is not panic, but preparation.[2][8] Thanks for tuning in, listeners, and please subscribe. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min
  2. 2d ago

    China's Boring Cyber Tricks Are Actually Terrifying: Why Patient Hackers Are Winning While You Click Bad PDFs

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Ting, and this week’s cyber weather over the United States has been stormy, with China-linked operators making the headlines for one reason: access. U.S. officials and industry analysts say the most serious activity has centered on stealthy intrusion attempts against critical infrastructure, especially telecom, cloud, and industrial networks, using living-off-the-land tactics, compromised credentials, and disguised web infrastructure rather than flashy smash-and-grab attacks. [4][15] According to Cybersecurity Dive, researchers saw more than 10,000 World Cup-themed malicious domains pop up since January, while the FBI warned in May about spoofing attacks against FIFA websites; those same phishing and impersonation playbooks are the kind of tradecraft that also shows up in broader state-linked campaigns because they are cheap, scalable, and annoyingly effective. [4][2] Arctic Wolf said attackers used fake career sites to steal Google Workspace accounts and even weaponized an “employee handbook” PDF to target staff at a host city, which is a reminder that one bad click can turn into a full-blown foothold. [4] The more consequential China-linked set of activity this week is the kind Microsoft has tracked under names like **Storm-0940**, **Volt Typhoon**, and **Flax Typhoon**, where the goal is persistence, not publicity. These operations have relied on credential theft, proxy infrastructure, and exploitation of edge devices to blend into normal traffic and quietly stage access inside U.S. networks, including government, communications, and infrastructure targets. [15] Microsoft has repeatedly said these actors favor stealth over speed, because once they are inside, they can map systems, move laterally, and wait for a crisis moment. [15] Attribution is built from a pile of clues, not a single smoking gun: shared infrastructure, reused tooling, victimology, malware patterns, and long-running intelligence assessments from Microsoft and U.S. agencies. [15] The U.S. government has also treated China as the most persistent strategic cyber threat to American critical infrastructure, which is why defenders are watching for pre-positioning, not just data theft. [15] Defensively, the response has been very practical: hunt for unusual authentication patterns, lock down remote management interfaces, rotate credentials, patch internet-facing appliances fast, and segment industrial systems so a compromise in one zone does not become a tour of the whole plant. [15] Analysts at Arctic Wolf and Palo Alto Networks both stressed that phishing, QR-code fraud, fake portals, and ransomware against supporting services remain the most common entry points, even when the bigger strategic concern is state-backed disruption. [4] The lesson learned is brutally simple, listeners: the best Chinese cyber operations against U.S. infrastructure usually look boring at first. That is the trick. They are patient, credential-driven, and built to survive the noise, which means defenders need to think like hunters, not janitors. Thanks for tuning in, subscribe for more, and this has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    3 min
  3. 4d ago

    Tank Tops and Cyber Ops: Why China's Boring Fuel Gauge Hack Is Actually Terrifying

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Ting, and this week’s cyber picture is a little too on-brand for “Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege.” The clearest China-linked pressure on U.S. infrastructure has centered on *operational technology* and the boring-but-critical systems that keep fuel moving, not flashy smash-and-grab hacks. According to the American Hospital Association, federal agencies warned on June 9 that malicious cyber activity has targeted U.S.-based automatic tank gauge systems, the remote monitoring gear that tracks fuel and liquid levels, temperature, and leak detection at storage tanks. That matters because these systems sit in the plumbing of airports, gas stations, hospitals, and logistics hubs, where a compromise can create real-world disruption fast. The warning followed a June 2 fact sheet from CISA and other agencies, which points to a campaign aimed at exposed tank gauge systems rather than ordinary office networks. The method here is classic infrastructure tradecraft: find internet-facing devices, probe for weak remote access, and exploit the thin security perimeter around industrial monitoring equipment. The lesson is painfully simple: if a sensor can be reached from the open internet, it can be turned into a foothold. [5] The attribution picture is less about a single smoking gun and more about the usual stack of evidence: targeting patterns, victimology, infrastructure focus, and the broader warning environment from U.S. officials. In recent public reporting, U.S. agencies have emphasized foreign cyber actors probing critical infrastructure, while private-sector trend data shows the threat environment staying hot. Check Point reported that government and telecommunications remained among the most attacked sectors in May 2026, with the United States accounting for 43% of all reported ransomware victims globally, which underscores why U.S. infrastructure keeps landing in the crosshairs. [2] Cybersecurity experts keep hammering the same defensive playbook, and for once the advice is not glamorous but it works. Segmentation between IT and operational technology, strict remote-access controls, device inventory, patching of exposed management interfaces, and alerting on unusual login or configuration changes are the basics. For tank gauge systems specifically, the agencies’ warning implies defenders should assume internet exposure is a liability, not a feature, and lock these devices behind VPNs, allowlists, and continuous monitoring. [5] The bigger lesson from this week is that sophisticated Chinese cyber operations do not always look like movie malware. Sometimes they look like patient reconnaissance against critical systems that most people never notice until they fail. That is the nasty brilliance of it, listeners: not breaking the flashy app, but bending the invisible infrastructure underneath it. Thanks for tuning in, subscribe, and keep your sensors off the open internet. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    3 min
  4. 6d ago

    Volt Typhoon Is Living in Your Router and the FBI Wants You to Know About It

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. Listeners, I’m Ting, and Dragon’s Code is running hot this week, so let’s jack straight into it. Over the past few days, US officials say Chinese state-linked crews have been poking and prodding at the soft underbelly of American infrastructure: power grids, port logistics, and telecom backbones. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the most active suspect is the group analysts call Volt Typhoon, a stealthy espionage outfit that lives off the land, meaning it abuses built‑in Windows tools like PowerShell, WMI, and stolen admin accounts instead of flashy malware. That makes their traffic look like normal system admin work, which is why defenders hate them. Microsoft and several threat intel shops report that these operators have been tunneling through small routers and VPN appliances in places like California and Texas, turning vulnerable edge devices into a shadow proxy network. From there, they hop into utility control networks and port management systems, quietly mapping which systems control what: substations, cargo cranes, even rail signaling servers tied to major freight corridors. In one of this week’s more sophisticated waves, incident responders at a large US West Coast power company say they found carefully timed credential‑stuffing attacks against their remote access portals, followed by lateral movement that targeted engineering workstations connected to SCADA test environments. No lights went out, but the goal looked obvious: learn the layouts now so they can cause chaos later. Attribution is always messy, but FBI and National Security Agency analysts point to reused command‑and‑control infrastructure previously tied to Chinese strategic support forces, Mandarin-language comments in scripts, and tasking that lines up a little too neatly with People’s Liberation Army interest in “pre‑positioning” inside US critical infrastructure. On the defense side, CISA pushed out emergency directives urging utilities and port operators to rip out or at least segment old internet‑facing gear, crank up multi‑factor authentication, and enable detailed logging on domain controllers and VPNs. Several regional grids have spun up 24/7 threat‑hunting teams, feeding telemetry into joint fusion cells with the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Cybersecurity experts like Dmitri Alperovitch and Jen Easterly keep hammering the same lesson: this is not smash‑and‑grab ransomware, it is patient pre‑war reconnaissance. The playbook is persistence, not publicity. The big takeaway this week is brutal but clear: if an organization cannot see every admin login, every remote connection, it is already compromised and just hasn’t noticed yet. The silver lining? Each discovered foothold forces these operators to burn infrastructure and tools, shrinking their room to maneuver. Every patched router and monitored VPN narrows the dragon’s tunnel. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next chapter of Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min
  5. Jun 7

    Spicy VPNs and Power Grid Whispers: China's Slowest Heist Gets Messy

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. Hey listeners, Ting here, and the dragon has been busy this week, so let’s jack straight into the wire. Over the past few days, US networks have been chewing on a wave of Chinese-state–linked probes that look less like smash-and-grab and more like a slow, quiet redrawing of the map of American infrastructure. According to analysts quoted by BleepingComputer and The Hacker News, the most advanced activity chained together three playbooks: vulnerability exploits on edge appliances, living-off-the-land abuse of built‑in admin tools, and hands‑off automation with AI‑driven scripting to scale it all. On the infrastructure side, the juiciest targets were power grid management portals, regional water utility SCADA gateways, and the file-transfer servers that quietly shuttle configs and logs between them. One campaign leaned on flaws in enterprise VPN and load balancer gear to get a beachhead, then pivoted into Windows domains using stolen credentials and remote management tools that every sysadmin already trusts. That’s classic Volt Typhoon–style tradecraft, the same pattern the FBI and CISA have been warning about for more than a year. The Hacker News reported that CISA just rushed a SolarWinds Serv‑U vulnerability, CVE-2026-28318, into its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog after seeing real‑world exploitation. CISA officials say they don’t yet have public proof that this specific flaw is tied to a named Chinese group, but the victim profile—managed service providers feeding critical infrastructure clients—lines up perfectly with past Chinese access operations. SolarWinds explained that a crafted POST request using “Content-Encoding: deflate” can knock the service over without even logging in, which makes it a handy DoS tool or a noisy diversion while stealthier actions run elsewhere. Attribution-wise, government responders are looking at familiar fingerprints: Chinese-language tooling artifacts, command-and-control servers previously tied to clusters like APT41, and working hours that map neatly to Beijing time. NSA and private teams like Mandiant have noted repeated reuse of bespoke tunneling utilities and obfuscated PowerShell loaders that they’ve already pinned to Chinese operators in earlier campaigns, even after code tweaks. Defensively, this week has been all about speed and segmentation. CISA ordered federal agencies to patch Serv‑U by a hard deadline, pushed fresh Snort and YARA signatures, and told network admins to block unnecessary content‑encoding on exposed file‑transfer services. Utilities have been tightening identity controls, rolling out phishing‑resistant multi‑factor authentication, and carving OT networks away from corporate IT so a compromised VPN account can’t just stroll into a substation. Cybersecurity experts interviewed across outlets stress three lessons. First, assume persistent Chinese access attempts are a constant background signal, not a special event. Second, watch behaviors, not just malware hashes; these actors are living off your land, not parachuting in flashy new binaries. Third, treat every “boring” edge device—file server, VPN, gateway—as part of national critical infrastructure, because that’s exactly how Beijing’s operators are treating it. I’m Ting, thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next move in Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min
  6. Jun 5

    China's AI Hackers Are Speed-Running America's Power Grid and Nobody's Ready

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. Name’s Ting. Let’s jack straight into Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Over the past few days, US cyber teams have been chasing what the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, is calling one of the most sophisticated waves of Chinese state‑linked intrusion attempts against American infrastructure this year. According to analysts at Google Threat Intelligence, who briefed Congress in testimony this week, the operations look like an evolution of the Volt Typhoon and APT41 playbooks: low‑and‑slow, living off the land, and almost obsessively focused on not tripping alarms. Here’s how the dragon’s breathing fire. Chinese operators are leaning hard on valid credentials, remote management tools, and built‑in Windows utilities like PowerShell and WMI instead of obvious malware. Sandra Joyce at Google Threat Intelligence told the House Homeland Security Committee that these crews are now pairing classic tradecraft with AI‑assisted reconnaissance, using large models to map attack paths across industrial control networks faster than human teams ever could. That means they can pivot from a VPN appliance at a utility company in Texas to a substation controller in minutes, not days. Bitsight’s new “Global State of ICS/OT Exposure 2026” report adds the ugly detail: thousands of US energy, water, and transportation assets are still exposing critical protocols like Modbus and DNP3 to the internet. That exposure is exactly what Chinese operators have been probing this week, especially mid‑tier municipal utilities and port authorities that sit under the big federal radar but over very real pipes, pumps, and cranes. Attribution isn’t just vibes. Analysts are tying these intrusions to Chinese state interests using infrastructure overlaps with known PLA‑linked clusters, working‑hours patterns matching Beijing time, and reuse of distinctive command‑and‑control techniques first documented by Recorded Future and Mandiant. One campaign targeting a West Coast logistics provider reused obfuscated scripts identical to earlier activity against telecom firms in Taiwan and Japan, giving investigators the kind of fingerprint they love. Now, defenses. CISA, the FBI, and NSA have pushed out fresh joint advisories to critical infrastructure owners, pushing zero‑trust, rapid credential rotation, and aggressive monitoring of remote admin tools. Utilities in several states quietly moved engineering workstations behind new segmentation gateways this week, and one major grid operator rolled out an AI‑driven anomaly detector based on the same CNN‑LSTM style frameworks recently described in academic work on intelligent cyber attack detection. It’s machine versus machine now. The lesson from people like Jen Easterly at CISA and private‑sector experts is blunt: stop chasing malware and start hunting behaviors. That means watching for impossible travel logins, odd PowerShell chains, and tiny changes in industrial controller traffic that suggest someone is rehearsing sabotage, not just stealing data. It also means mayors, governors, and boardrooms finally treating cyber risk like physical risk, because in 2026 those two are the same thing. I’m Ting, and that’s your slice of Dragon’s Code for this week. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next breach autopsy. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min
  7. Jun 3

    Dragon's Detonators: How China Is Quietly Wiring America's Power Grid for Future Chaos

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Ting, your favorite China-and-cyber-obsessed nerd, and Dragon’s Code is running hot this week, so let’s dive straight into America Under Cyber Siege. Over the past few days, US officials and private threat labs from places like Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and Recorded Future have been tracking a surge in Chinese state-linked operations going after the soft underbelly of American infrastructure: power grids, telecom backbone, and transportation control networks. The Department of Homeland Security and CISA briefed Congress that these are not smash-and-grab hacks; they’re meticulous prepositioning for potential disruption in a future crisis. Listeners, picture a group like Volt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored outfit previously flagged by Microsoft and the FBI, but with new toys. Instead of noisy malware, they’re leaning on “living off the land” tactics—using built‑in tools like PowerShell, WMI, and legitimate remote management software to blend into normal network noise. Security teams at major utilities in places like Texas and the Midwest reported attackers hopping through compromised VPN credentials, then using stolen admin accounts to quietly map out SCADA and OT networks that run substations and grid balancing systems. A big focus this week has been telecom and routing infrastructure. According to analysts at the SANS Institute and reports quietly circulated inside the Federal Communications Commission, Chinese-linked operators probed edge routers and firewalls from well-known vendors, abusing old firmware and misconfigured BGP to gain visibility into backbone traffic. No Hollywood-style internet blackout, but the kind of foothold that lets you reroute or degrade traffic on command. Attribution has gotten sharper. The FBI and NSA, working through the Cyber National Mission Force, tied these operations to infrastructure previously used in campaigns against Guam and US defense contractors by tracking reused command-and-control servers, identical encryption routines, and Mandarin-language artifacts in debug strings. Threat intel teams also spotted working hours matching Beijing and Shanghai time zones, plus tooling previously associated with PRC-linked groups like APT41 and APT31. Defensively, it’s been all hands on deck. CISA pushed out emergency directives to federal agencies to rotate VPN certificates, enforce phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, and segment OT from IT more aggressively. Several large utilities brought in incident response teams from firms like Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 to deploy network baselining and deep packet inspection around industrial protocols such as Modbus and DNP3. The White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director coordinated with state regulators to run tabletop exercises simulating coordinated Chinese disruption of power and 911 systems. Cyber experts like Dmitri Alperovitch and former CISA director Chris Krebs hammered home one lesson on cable news and at security conferences: China is not just stealing data; it’s building an options portfolio for real‑world coercion. Meanwhile, current officials at CISA warned that local utilities, hospitals, and small telecoms remain the weakest links—underfunded, understaffed, and now sitting on the front line of a great‑power cyber standoff. So the takeaway this week: the dragon isn’t breathing fire yet, but it is carefully wiring the detonators. Thanks for tuning in, listeners, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next breach breakdown. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min
  8. May 20

    Dragon's Code: China's Fake Certificate Shop Is Hacking America's Power Grid and Water Supply

    This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Alexandra Reeves, and this is Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Over the last few days, US networks have been wrestling with one of the most sophisticated waves of Chinese cyber operations we’ve seen outside an open crisis. According to Microsoft’s security blog, the newly exposed “Fox Tempest” malware‑signing service has become a kind of underground certificate authority for espionage crews linked to the Chinese state, quietly minting trusted‑looking digital signatures so malicious code slides past corporate defenses. Here’s how the playbook worked. First, threat actors used living‑off‑the‑land tactics: phishing against IT admins at US energy co‑ops and regional water authorities, then abusing built‑in tools like PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation so activity blended into normal admin traffic. Once in, they pulled down payloads that had been signed by Fox Tempest, giving their malware the same cryptographic “halo” as legitimate software. Security appliances saw a trusted signature and let it through. According to Microsoft’s incident responders, several US critical infrastructure operators were hit in this campaign’s first wave: industrial control gateways in the power grid, remote access servers at a Western water utility, and a cloud management console used by a transportation logistics provider serving East and Gulf Coast ports. The goal wasn’t immediate destruction; it was persistence and positioning. They quietly mapped OT networks, scraped VPN configs, and planted backdoor services that could be activated later. Attribution came from a mix of telemetry and tradecraft. Analysts at Microsoft and other firms noticed Fox Tempest was recycling certificate request infrastructure previously tied to Chinese groups that US Cyber Command labels as Volt Typhoon affiliates. Command‑and‑control domains pointed back to infrastructure historically used against Guam telecom and US maritime targets. Even the schedule of operations matched Beijing business hours, with coordinated bursts of activity around 2 p.m. Beijing time. In response, defenders moved fast. Microsoft pushed revocation of the abused certificates and updated Defender rules; organizations that had Microsoft’s recommended blocking policies in place were able to stop hands‑on‑keyboard activity before attackers could pivot deeply into OT. CISA issued an advisory to US critical infrastructure operators, urging immediate review of code‑signing trust stores, segmentation between IT and OT, and deployment of behavioral analytics rather than relying solely on signatures. At RSA Conference, several experts told listeners that this week proved two hard truths. First, China is investing in industrial‑scale stealth, not smash‑and‑grab: they want durable access to American infrastructure they can flip like a switch. Second, trust itself is now an attack surface. As one DHS official put it, “If your defense strategy begins and ends with ‘Is it signed?’ you’ve already lost.” The lessons learned are blunt. Assume your certificates can be forged, your admin tools can be turned against you, and your quietest logs may hold the loudest warnings. Build verification layers, hunt continuously, and treat every critical system as if an adversary is already inside. Thanks for tuning in, and make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the next briefing. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

    4 min

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege is your go-to podcast for detailed analysis of the week's most sophisticated Chinese cyber operations targeting US infrastructure. Stay updated with expert insights into attack methodologies, affected systems, and compelling attribution evidence. Discover the defensive measures implemented and lessons learned from each incident. Featuring interviews with leading cybersecurity experts and government officials, Dragon's Code delivers essential information for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of cyber warfare and national security. Tune in regularly for in-depth discussions that keep you informed and prepared. For more info go to https://www.quietplease.ai Check out these deals https://amzn.to/48MZPjs This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.