Podcast
The four-part SRF podcast Alpha Boys explores how young men become embroiled in the manosphere, a digital community where influential figures such as Andrew Tate amass millions of followers. The series takes an in-depth look at digital communities where the pursuit of self-improvement and strength can lead to misogyny and incitement to violence.
Book
A book by Shoshana Zuboff that provides a good view under a societal perspective to understand the how the passive collection of our behavioral data defines the privacy battle of our time. If you are short on time, jump straight into Chapter 8 ("Rendition: From Experience to Data") to see exactly how our physical, lived experiences are quietly appropriated and turned into digital power.
YouTube Video
A great TED talk by MIT Professor Dina Katabi explaining the physics and the healthcare potential to a general audience.
Study
The World Happiness Report is the world’s foremost publication on global wellbeing and how to improve it. It combine wellbeing data from over 140 countries with high-quality analysis by world-leading researchers from a range of academic disciplines. The report Shows that life satisfaction is highest at low rates of social media use and lower at higher rates of use, according to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) covering seven internet activities for 15-year-old students in 47 countries.
Article
In his article published in Nature Health, Sander van der Linden argues that online harms constitute an urgent societal challenge. He also states that governments must prepare teenagers to use digital technology responsibly.
Article
A must read article in the MIT Technology Review and an overview on how this technology leaped from laboratories into consumer devices.
Article
Ransomware attacks are a professional extortion business, not just a technical cyber threat. Drawing on real incidents and current research, this article reveals how attackers organize, negotiate, and pressure victims into paying ransoms. It is an accessible, eye-opening read for anyone who wants to understand what is really driving today’s ransomware wave.
Article
The authors of this article follow the money and show how ransomware attacks really pay off. Based on thousands of real transactions, it reveals two distinct approaches: low-end, off-the-shelf attacks and highly professional ransomware-as-a-service operations, who both have their own business logic and incentives. By tracing how crypto payments move through intermediaries, this article gives readers a clear, accessible picture of the ransomware economy.
Book
An absolute must-read on this topic. International bestseller with a tried-and-tested approach to negotiations. Particularly worth reading because: practical techniques, psychological approach, exciting stories, diverse applicability.
Podcast
Interesting insights into negotiating with cybercriminals, including insights from one of our absolute top experts.
YouTube Video
Using real-life examples, the documentary impressively shows how ransomware attacks work today and why they pose an existential threat to many companies.
The Lobito Corridor shows how digitization is shaping critical minerals competition Expert comment thilton.drupal 17 July 2026 The railway from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia is a global focal point of the race for critical minerals. But the digitization of mineral supply chains will be crucial to achieving genuine economic transformation in the region. Two recent major investment announcements have refocused attention on the Lobito Corridor, a Western-backed infrastructure initiative centred on a railway linking Lobito on Angola’s Atlantic coast to the inland resource-rich areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia.On 3 July, the US International Development Finance Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa secured a $753-million package to rehabilitate and upgrade the 1,300-km single-track railway from Lobito to the DRC border, known as the Lobito Atlantic Railway. On 10 July, the DRC government approved a partnership with Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil for a complete rehabilitation of the railway line from Angola’s border to the copper and cobalt producing regions in the DRC. These moves are part of wider geopolitical competition between the US (and its European partners) and China – the dominant international presence in the region – over infrastructure, mineral production and development opportunities. In this context, the railway has become the centrepiece of a potential regional mining ecosystem that could economically transform Africa’s strategic Copperbelt. — Railway lines are approximate and based on a combination of maps from the Lobito Corridor Investment Promotion Authority and the European Commission, accessed online. Base map made with Natural Earth and World Bank data. But for this regional mining ecosystem to become integrated across borders and achieve genuine economic transformation, it will need to be digitized. Digitization has increasingly become a vital and under-appreciated feature of the mining sector. Data systems – such as online geological databases, traceability tools and transparency portals – and mining cadastre systems (online land records of mining rights) are fundamental to achieving regional mining ambitions. However, they present a new and distinct set of governance challenges that span the life of a mine: in particular, what data is needed and how is it collected? Who owns it, where is it stored, and who has access to it? Digitized records and their challengesThe digitized geological records of the DRC are a source of value, causing competition over owning and accessing them. This can be seen in the recent disagreement between the Belgian government and KoBold, a US company backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, over who should digitize the colonial-era geological records on the DRC that are being kept in a Belgian museum. Belgium has refused KoBold access to the museum’s archives. The case demonstrates how geo-economic competition and ensuing public-private tensions are catalysing ongoing debates on data ownership and management. Angola, the DRC and Zambia are implementing online cadastre systems that list land records of mining rights. In principle, these systems should reduce overlaps and simplify the allocation of rights, while being more transparent to help prevent corruption and give investors confidence. However, several challenges have emerged. Bad inputs result in misleading information flows. Firstly, digitized systems are still corruptible. Whether containing geological data or information on licenses and rights, digital systems can be corrupted. In some instances, digitization makes this easier than when information is stored in hard copy. This has led some mining companies to lose confidence in digitized systems in the region, due to changes allegedly being made overnight to concession ownership, opaque back end controls and limited audit trails. Secondly, these systems often depend on human capacity that does not yet fully exist. At the DRC Mining Week at Lubumbashi in June, Chatham House heard how digital cadastres had often been operated by staff with limited experience working with computers. The effectiveness of a data system relies on a simple principle – what comes out is only as good as what goes in. Bad inputs result in misleading information flows. Digitization without capacity and safeguards therefore risks simply re encoding existing power imbalances into a new format.Tracing requires trust and interoperabilityThe DRC and its neighbours have been the focus of several international legal and regulatory requirements to report on minerals provenance, or tracing minerals back to their origin. This is due to the link between conflict and minerals, especially in the east of the country. The DRC’s state-owned certification agency (CEEC) has launched an E-trace digital platform to track and certify minerals across the value chain, ostensibly to ensure responsible sourcing.However, there are notable differences between what international markets are asking for, what is actually feasible, and what is in the best interests of mining-dependent communities and producing states. The World Today Related work Angola’s critical mineral express Consumers and regulators increasingly want mechanisms that can trace a material all the way back to where it came out of the ground to provide assurance on provenance and responsible production. For the DRC, traceability is often understood primarily as verification of mineral deposits and exports: ensuring that reported volumes and qualities match what is actually being taken out of the country and transported along the Corridor. The DRC’s emphasis reflects genuine concerns about misreporting, leakage and illicit flows. However, it stops short of a fuller, mine to manufacturer conception of traceability that would follow material all the way through the supply chain. Similarly, transparency systems are often limited by what companies can easily measure and are willing to disclose. Reporting formats also differ across firms and jurisdictions, making it difficult to assemble a coherent picture of corridor wide performance. Trustworthy, interoperable data systems are essential. How these systems talk to each other, what they measure, and who controls them will heavily influence whether the Lobito Corridor becomes a coherent, credible space for investment and accountable development.More unified data management requires interoperable systems and standards, agreed protocols for data ownership and access, and shared understandings of what traceability and transparency should encompass. Trustworthy, interoperable data systems are essential. Entry points for development partnersDigital infrastructure should in theory constitute the backbone of effective data governance along the Lobito Corridor, turning physical infrastructure into an integrated ecosystem. Given Africa’s over-reliance on undersea cables, reinforcing inland connectivity should be a priority. However, the Corridor’s digital component has so far lagged behind. While it does feature in the long-term strategic vision for the Corridor, it has not been the focus of the recent wave of investment announcements or ongoing development partnerships. Meanwhile, the DRC recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Beijing for the construction of a 2100km fibre optic network along the Congo River.
Chatham House
Globalisation has changed economic research profoundly, making it more comparable, more competitive, and thoroughly quantitative. This column argues that AI may unsettle this new order as thoroughly as globalisation unsettled the old one and discusses the technical and geopolitical mechanisms at work. One prediction can be made with high confidence: someone who wakes up thirty years from now is likely to recognise economics as little as someone who fell asleep thirty years ago and just woke up today.
Center for Economic Policy Research
Through research and entrepreneurship, Professor Devavrat Shah is helping to design methods that can handle constant decision-making using limited computational resources.
MIT
Computational Linguistics, International Security, and The Review of Economics and Statistics lead their disciplines with 2026 Clarivate impact factors.
MIT
Die KI-Euphorie treibt die Börsen auf neue Höhen. Anleger wetten auf die grosse Zukunft der künstlichen Intelligenz.
SRF Wirtschaft
