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Chelsea Manning: Censorship still a dominant threat

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.

Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.

Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.

“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.

“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.

“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”

Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.

“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.

‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’

Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.

She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”

She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”

Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.

“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.

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Microsoft hit with SharePoint attack — one version still vulnerable

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Microsoft hit with SharePoint attack — one version still vulnerable

A Microsoft store in New York, US, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. 

Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft has warned of “active attacks” targeting its SharePoint collaboration software, with security researchers noting that organizations worldwide stand to be affected by the breach.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Sunday in a release that the vulnerability provides unauthenticated access to systems and full access to SharePoint content, enabling bad actors to execute code over the network.

CISA said that while the scope and impact of the attack continue to be assessed, the agency warned that it “poses a risk to organizations.”

Microsoft late Sunday issued fixes for customers to apply to two versions of the SharePoint software. Another 2016 version remains vulnerable and the company said it is working to develop a patch.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks said the hack likely reached thousands of organizations globally.

“The exploits are real, in-the-wild and pose a serious threat,” they added.

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CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for additional comment and information.

In an alert on Saturday, Microsoft said the attack applies only to on-premises SharePoint servers, not those in the cloud like Microsoft 365. SharePoint software is commonly used by global businesses and organizations to store and collaborate on documents.

The vulnerability is especially concerning because it allows hackers to impersonate users or services even after the SharePoint server is patched, according to researchers at European cybersecurity firm Eye Security, which said it first identified the flaw.

SharePoint servers often connect to other Microsoft services such as Outlook and Teams, meaning such a breach can “quickly” lead to data theft and password harvesting, Eye Security researchers said.

Separately, Alaska Airlines briefly halted its ground operations for about three hours on Sunday due to an IT outage. It lifted the ground stop at roughly 2 a.m. EST, the carrier said in a statement.

It was unclear whether the outage was related to the SharePoint attack.

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CoreWeave stock climbs after company announces $1.5 billion bond sale

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CoreWeave stock climbs after company announces .5 billion bond sale

Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, reacts during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. 

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

CoreWeave stock rose more than 7% after the renter of artificial intelligence data centers said it plans to sell $1.5 billion worth of bonds.

The company said in a release that the notes, due in 2031, will use the capital for general purposes, such as paying off debt.

In May, the company announced a $2 billion debt offering plan that sent shares soaring 19%. At the time, CNBC confirmed that the debt was five times oversubscribed. Last week, Coreweave shares rallied after the company announced a $6 billion AI data center project in Pennsylvania.

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CoreWeave, whose biggest clients include Nvidia and Microsoft, has more than tripled in share price since its March debut on the Nasdaq.

In its IPO prospectus filing, CoreWeave said that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”

Some investors have raised concerns about the company’s debt and the sustainability of demand for its products. In May, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans and said it is meeting major client “demand signals.”

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CoreWeave CEO Intrator: $6 billion AI data center investment shows depth of demand for our services

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This crypto treasury firm is vying to be the MicroStrategy of ether–but with a focus on generating yield

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This crypto treasury firm is vying to be the MicroStrategy of ether–but with a focus on generating yield

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The latest crypto treasury company is set to hit the public market with an ambitious plan to build the largest public vehicle for institutional exposure to ether.

The Ether Machine will begin trading on the Nasdaq Monday through a merger with blank check company Dynamix Corporation. Andrew Keys, the co-founder and chairman of the new company, has committed about $645 million in an anchor investment. The entity is backed by crypto investors 10T Holdings, Electric Capital, Pantera Capital and more. Once the merger is complete, it will trade under the ticker ETHM.

The company is the latest in an emerging cohort of new entities vying to become the MicroStrategy of Ethereum by replicating the bitcoin proxy’s successful accumulation strategy, but around ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rather than bitcoin.

Keys’ company plans to differentiate with a focus on yield generation through “staking” rather than simply buying and holding the ether. Staking is a mechanism for generating yield by contributing to network operations around security and transaction processing.

By purchasing ether from a crypto exchange or buying shares of an ether ETF, investors would get exposure to the coin’s price, “but without access to the dividend,” Keys explained.

“Ether produces yield if it’s properly managed,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday. “The ETFs right now don’t generate yield because they don’t enable staking … we’re able to enable staking and we’re able to do other additional risk management on top of that.”

The largest beneficiary of the GENIUS Act is ethereum: The Ether Machine Chairman Andrew Keys

On Thursday, BlackRock filed with the SEC to include staking to its popular ETHA ether ETF, which just logged a record week of inflows.

The ability to stake makes ether a “more productive” asset than bitcoin, according to Keys.

The Bitcoin network “has one asset on it, bitcoin, that can be moved from peer to peer, but Ethereum can tokenize any asset,” Keys said. It’s “able to embed any type of digital asset – a bar of gold, a barrel of oil, a stock, a bond, a derivative – into digital legal agreements, and in doing so, you’re able to expedite the velocity of money. You can have employment contracts that get paid by the minute, as an example.”

Shares of Dynamix jumped 30% in premarket trading.

The Ether Machine follows Bitmine Immersion Technologies – the company newly chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and more recently backed by Peter Thiel – in its ether treasury ambitions. Pantera was also a backer of Bitmine.

Also this year, SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, also initiated an ETH treasury strategy; and Bit Digital recently exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans.

Ether has taken the spotlight in crypto from bitcoin in recent months as investors anticipated the stablecoin bill known as the GENIUS Act would be signed into the first major U.S. crypto law, which President Trump did Friday. The regulatory clarity should benefit institutions and brands becoming more interested in tokenization, which includes stablecoins, most of which are issued on the Ethereum network.

Ether has doubled in the last three months and last week, ether ETFs posted a record $2.18 billion in weekly inflows.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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