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Tuesdays news that Google would acquire the Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion was remarkable on several fronts. The deal, assuming it closes, will be the largest acquisition in Googles history. And its the biggest exit in Israeli history. Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in a blog post. [I]t will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a stand-alone company.” It also marks the close of a fast-paced, five-year chapter for the company. Founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik, and Ami Luttwak, Wiz grew quickly, as the pandemic forced companies and workers online and cloud servers exploded in popularity. And as hybrid work has continued, so has the companys expansion. An IPO on ice In just 16 months, Wiz became a unicorn, with a $1.7 billion valuation. By October 2021, its valuation had ballooned to $6 billion and by February 2023, that figure had jumped to $10 billion. Last May, the company raised $1 billion in funding, giving it a $12 billion valuation. As Wizs fortunes rose, so too did its reputation. The companys researchers have alerted the public to a number of cloud vulnerabilities in everything from Microsofts Azure cloud system to the cloud systems of Oracle and IBM. In January, it raised a red flag about DeepSeek, finding that the Chinese AI system had inadvertently exposed a significant amount of sensitive data. The company has been on Googles radar for some time. Last year, Alphabet offered $23 billion to acquire Wiz but was rejected. Instead, Wizs founders planned to pursue an IPO. Saying no to such humbling offers is tough, Rappaport wrote at the time in a memo seen by CNBC. The move was a calculated gamble. Wiz officials were worried whether a takeover by Google would be approved by regulators, given the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)s fixation on Big Tech at the time and Googles own antitrust court battles then. But the IPO market has hardly been welcoming to most tech companies for the past several years. Wiz aimed to hit $1 billion in annual recurring revenue before it filed for a public listing, which gave it some breathing room, but market conditions havent improvedin fact, have worsened in the past two months. Between that stock market volatility and the change in White House administrations, which shifted regulatory sentiment, Wizs leadership began to reconsider its options. Why regulators might let this one through While Google is still facing a possible breakup following a verdict that found the company to be an illegal monopoly last August, Justice Department officials dropped the push for the company to sell off its AI investments. That could signal improved odds that Tuesdays deal will not face the same level of antitrust scrutiny it would have in 2024. Part of the secret to Wizs success is exactly why antitrust regulators might be amenable to the Google buyout. The company is a native multi-cloud platform. It works equally well on offerings from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and more. That makes this both a security play for Google as well as an AI infrastructure one, as it can secure workloads across multiple platforms and doesnt force customers to use Google Cloud. Wiz and Google Cloud are both fueled by the belief that cloud security needs to be easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and democratized so more organizations can adopt and use cloud and AI securely, Wiz CEO Rappaport wrote in a blog post. We both also believe Wiz needs to remain a multi-cloud platform, so that across any cloud, we will continue to be a leading platform. We will still work closely with our great partners at AWS, Azure, Oracle, and across the entire industry. The deal is expected to close in 2026, pending regulatory approval.
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Malynndra Tome was helping to map livestock ponds in the Navajo Nation when she saw something that inspired her to act. An elderly woman was filling milk jugs with water at the back of a gas station in the Native American reservation, where about 30% of people live without running water. How can we be living in the United States of America one of the most powerful countries in the world, and people are living like this here? asked Tome, a citizen who grew up in the community of Ganado, Arizona, in the nation’s largest Native American reservation at 27,000 square miles (69,930 square kilometers) in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. A report published Tuesday identifies ways historically neglected communities most vulnerable to climate change, like Tomes, can create resilient water and wastewater systems. Its highlights include nature-based solutions, tailoring approaches to each community and using technology all the while recognizing barriers to implementing them. What we hope to do with this report, what I hope, is that it actually gives people hope, said Shannon McNeeley, a report author and senior researcher with the Pacific Institute, which published the report with DigDeep and the Center for Water Security and Cooperation. In spite of some of the major federal funding sources becoming uncertain and possibly not available, I think people will find other ways. Climate impacts and the Trump administration Weather extremes made worse by climate change have disrupted peoples access to water. In September, more than 100,000 residents in western North Carolina were under boil-water notices for nearly two months after Hurricane Helene destroyed much of a local water system. In January, several water providers declared their drinking water unsafe after wildfires roared through Los Angeles. One utility in Pasadena, California, sent out its first notice since it began serving water more than a century ago. Aging water systems leak trillions of gallons, leaving residents in some of the countrys poorest communities with a substantial financial burden to fix them. An estimated 30% of the population in the Navajo Nation lives in homes that dont have running water, and many residents drive long distances to get water from public spigots, according to the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report also notes that some federal resources and funding have become unavailable since Donald Trump returned to the White House. The Trump administration has cut or paused funding for critical water infrastructure projects, touted a reversal of diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and eliminated environmental justice policies meant to protect the communities the report centers on. Greg Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the report comes at a very depressing moment where we’re not going to see federal action in this space, it doesn’t seem, for the next four years. Solutions come with challenges The report synthesizes existing literature about water, climate change and solutions. Its authors reviewed academic studies, government and private reports and interviewed experts to identify ways low-income and communities of color can build water and wastewater systems to withstand extreme weather. The report highlights technology like rainwater harvesting and gray water reuse systems that can decrease water demand and increase resilience to drought. But it adds that implementing and maintaining technology like it can be too expensive for poorer communities. The report also advocates nature-based solutions such as wetlands, which studies find can reduce the length and severity of droughts, provide flood control, reduce or remove pollutants in water and protect water supplies. Communities across the country are increasingly recognizing the benefits of wetlands. In Floridas Everglades, for example, officials have spent billions of dollars to build engineered wetlands that clean and protect a vital drinking water source. The report argues for government-funded water assistance programs to help poorer households pay water and sewer bills, like the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. But some are benefiting communities Gregory Moller, a professor in the soil and water systems department at the University of Idaho, notes that some approaches are too complex and expensive for smaller or poorer communities. Our innovations also have to be on a scale and stage that is adaptable to small systems, he said. And thats where I think some of the most serious challenges are. Some solutions the report highlights are benefiting communities. In the Navajo Nation, hundreds of solar-powered home water systems have brought running water to more than 2,000 people. Kimberly Lemme, an executive director at DigDeep, which is installing the systems, said it can be a complex and lengthy process. But it shows that solutions do exist. Water is a basic human right, said Tome, whose encounter with the elderly woman inspired her to pursue a doctorate in water resources. And in order for people to live productively, to have healthy lives, I think water is a big part of that. Dorany Pineda, Associated Press The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
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A gust of wind sweeps over bare soil, kicking up enough dirt and dust to cut visibility to nearly zero, and for drivers, the dust storm seems to come out of nowhere. Such conditions resulted in a pileup on Interstate 70 last week in western Kansas involving dozens of cars and trucks that left eight people dead. Blinding dust also prompted New Mexico’s transportation department to close Interstate 25 from the Colorado border southwest to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Hazy or dust-darkened skies have recalled the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when millions of tons of blowing soil buried farms and coated towns across the Great Plains. Lesser storms occur every year, particularly in the western U.S., particularly when farmland hasn’t been planted yet in the spring. Some scientists worry that many motorists don’t take them seriously enough. We have a very low level of public awareness of a dust storm and what damage it can cause, said Daniel Tong, an associate professor of atmospheric chemistry at George Mason University who is among the authors of a 2023 paper on dust storm deaths. Dust storms have a history of causing fatalities The High Plains Museum in Goodland displays a photo of a tractor buried in blown soil in the 1930s, a reminder of the consequences of a severe drought across the Great Plains that came after farming had destroyed native grasses. The fatalities Friday near Goodland were the first in the area in a dust storm since 2014, said Jeremy Martin, the Weather Service meteorologist in charge there. But they came less than a month after an 11-car pileup on I-25 left three people dead, with heavy dust cited as a factor, according to Albuquerque TV’s KRQE. Similarly, a dust storm on I-55 between St. Louis and Springfield, Illinois, in 2023 led to a fatal pileup involving dozens of vehicles. In 1991, 17 people died in an accident involving more than 100 vehicles on I-5 in California’s San Joaquin Valley, blamed on blowing dust. Tong and four co-authors concluded in their paper published in 2023 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that there were 232 deaths from windblown dust events from 2007 through 2017, far higher than the number recorded by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association data. In January, he and four colleagues concluded that the economic damaged caused by wind erosion and dust is four times higher than previously calculated and more than $154 billion a year. A cold front carries dust through western Kansas Martin said a cold front moved through the area of the pileup after it had been warm and dry for six hours. Winds that reached 70 miles per hour (113 kph) kicked up dust that then became trapped in the cold front. That’s when you get that classic wall of dust,” he said. As blowing dust cut visibility on the road to almost zero, drivers slowed down, causing collisions, authorities said. A preliminary investigation found that 71 vehicles were involved, said Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson April McCollum. Aerial photos showed at least 10 were semis. It was hard to even keep your eyes open outside because there was so much dust in the air, said Jeremy Martin, the National Weather Service meteorologist in charge in Goodland. It kind of stung to even breathe out in it. Similar conditions in eastern Colorado prompted the Colorado State Patrol to warn drivers: Zero visibility due to high winds and blowing dirt. You couldnt see, said Jerry Burkhart, the fire and emergency services chief in Lamar, Colorado. The best thing to do is get way off the road in a parking lot or something like that. A lack of visibility is not the only problem Martin said it’s hard to tell how thick dust is from a distance, so motorists often don’t know they won’t able to see until they’re in it. Weather Service forecasters also said some of the advice for motorists in a dust storm is counter-intuitive. Michael Anand, a NWS meteorologist in Albuquerque, said motorists should pull off the road as safely as possible, turn off all lights and never use their high beams. You dont want people behind you to think youre going in the road, Martin said. That light from your tail light might be the only thing they can see. Theyre thinking the road suddenly curves. High winds make cars harder to control, and a dust storm coats the road with fine particles that slow breaking, and drivers panic, Tong said. He said dust storms are frequent and widespread enough across the U.S. that states should test prospective drivers on what to do in a dust storm on license exams. That could be, actually, a very easy way to educate drivers, he said. John Hanna, Associated Press Associated Press writer Janie Far contributed.
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