📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: US tests nuclear weapon’s capability to survive miss

Scientists have experimented to assess the ability of US nuclear weapons to hit the targets after encountering enemy missile defenses.

The experiment was conducted by scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

The experiment was aimed at advancing nuclear weapons stockpile modernization by demonstrating a new capability to analyze nuclear materials under extreme conditions.

As part of the experiment, weapons-grade plutonium samples were exposed to intense, pulsed thermonuclear neutron radiation in a lab setting at NIF. It aimed to recreate the conditions that a US nuclear weapon would be forced to encounter from enemy missile defense systems.

US stockpile and modernization bid

As per reports, the US nuclear weapon stockpile is estimated to include 5,177 warheads. Of which, 3,700 are in active stockpiles, and about 1,500 weapons are awaiting dismantlement.

Russia has the largest stockpile of 5,449 nuclear warheads in the world. The US is in second place, followed by China, France, the UK, India, and Pakistan, among others.

Although the chances of a nuclear weapon being used in a conflict are quite slim, they remain the most powerful deterrent. However, any explosion – even an experimental one – of a nuclear weapon would likely have dangerous consequences.

Therefore, testing the potency and readiness of the nuclear weapons without an explosion is the best way to keep them modernized and fit for use.  Keeping this in mind, the LLNL experiment was deemed essential to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) ongoing efforts to modernize the US nuclear deterrent.

Putting the nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to the test

A plutonium pit is the core component of a nuclear warhead. To experiment, the LLNL researchers used samples from a legacy W87-0 warhead pit produced in the late 1980s and a newly manufactured W87-1 pit produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The gram-quantity samples were sealed within specialized hardware and then subjected to a high-fluence 14 MeV neutron environment.

The team used cryogenic-compatible x-ray, neutron, and blast snout (CryoXNBS), a diagnostic enclosure that safely positions materials near the igniting capsule.

CryoXNBS has a 48.5-pound (22-kilogram) steel case that protects against x-rays and debris. The diagnostic enclosure allows scientists to expose materials and electronics to the highest thermonuclear fusion neutron fluences available. The containment vessels are used to hold material samples and instruments securely.

The CryoXNBS also integrates real-time diagnostics that provide nearly instant indications of shot performance. After each experiment, the system is retracted for safe disassembly and sample analysis, expanding what researchers learn from every experiment.

Following this, the samples were removed and then studied under strict safety protocols.

The collected data will be used to refine predictive models and inform how nuclear components perform under the combined stresses of heat, shock, and radiation.

“This experiment demonstrates how cutting-edge science drives nuclear weapon design and production,” said LLNL Deputy Director for Strategic Deterrence Brad Wallin.

“By providing first-of-its-kind data on plutonium performance, NIF gives us the insight we need to modernize the stockpile and ensure the nation’s deterrent remains credible for the future.”

Moreover, the recent tests also show the consistency of the ignition platform and demonstrate its use as an intense neutron source for survivability studies.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Agent coordination is the missing piece in AI commer

With necessary infrastructure now being developed for agentic commerce, enterprises must determine how to participate in this new form of buying and selling. But it remains a fragmented Wild West, with competing payment protocols, and it's unclear what enterprises need to do to prepare. 

More cloud providers and AI model companies are beginning to provide the tools enterprises need to begin building agentic commerce-enabled systems.

AWS, which will list Visa’s Intelligence Commerce platform on the AWS Marketplace, says it's making it easier for enterprises to connect to tools that enable agentic payments and accelerate agentic commerce adoption. 

While this doesn’t mean Amazon has formally impleemnted Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP), which would bring the world’s largest e-commerce platform to the agentic shopping space, it does show just how agentic commerce is fast becoming an enterprise focus.   

Scott Mullins, AWS managing director of worldwide financial services, told VentureBeat in an email that listing the platform “makes payment capabilities accessible” in a secure manner that quickly integrates with Visa’s system. 

“We’re giving developers pre-built frameworks and standardized infrastructure to eliminate major development barriers,” Mullins said. 

He noted that AWS is listing Visa’s platform to streamline integration with services like Bedrock and AgentCore. 

In addition, the two companies will publish blueprints to the public Bedrock AgentCore repository. Mullins said this will “significantly reduce development time and complexity that anyone can use to create travel booking agents, retail shopping agents and B2B payment reconciliation agents.”

The Visa Intelligence Commerce platform will be MCP-compatible, allowing enterprises to connect agents running on it to other agents. 

What enterprises need to know

Through the Visa Intelligence Commerce platform, AWS customers can access authentication, agentic tokenization and data personalization tools. This allows organizations to register and connect their agents to Visa’s payment infrastructure. 

The platform helps mask credit card details through tokenized digital credentials and lets companies set guidelines for agent transactions, such as spending limits. 

Rubali Birwadker, SVP and global head of growth at Visa, said in a press release that bringing the platform to AWS lets it scale, “helping to unlock faster innovation for developers and better experiences for consumers and businesses worldwide.”

Mullins said Visa and AWS are helping to provide the foundational infrastructure for developers and businesses to pursue agentic commerce projects; however, for this to work, developers must coordinate several agents and understand the different needs across industries. 

“Real-world commerce often requires multiple agents working together,” Mullins said. “The travel booking agent blueprint, for instance, connects flight, hotel, car rental and train providers to deliver complete travel journeys with integrated payments. Developers need to design coordination patterns for these complex, multi-agent workflows.”

Different use cases also have different needs, so enterprises need to plan carefully around existing infrastructure. 

This is where the MCP connection is vital, as it will enable communication between an organization’s agents to Visa’s platform while maintaining identity and security. 

Blueprints for agentic commerce

Mullins said that the biggest stumbling block for many enterprises experimenting with agentic commerce is the fragmentation of commerce systems, which creates integration challenges. 

“This collaboration will address these challenges by providing reference architecture blueprints that developers can use as starting points, combined with AWS's cloud infrastructure and Visa's trusted payment network to create a standardized, secure foundation for agentic commerce,” he said.

The reference blueprints provide a framework for enterprise developers, solution architects and software vendors to follow when building new workflows. Mullins said the blueprints are being developed in coordination with Expedia Group, Intuit and the Eurostars Hotel company. 

The blueprints will work with the Visa Intelligent Commerce MCP server and APIs and will be managed through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. 

AWS said that its goal is to “enable a foundation for agentic commerce at Scale, where transactions are handled by agents capable of real-time reasoning and coordination.”

These blueprints would eventually become composable, reusable workflows for any organization looking to build travel booking agents or retail shopping agents. These don’t have to be consumer-focused agents; there can also be agents, for instance, buying flights for employees. 

Agentic commerce marches forward

Agentic commerce, where agents do product searching, cart adding and payments, is fast becoming the next frontier for AI players. 

Companies like OpenAI and Google have released AI-powered shopping tools to make it easier to surface products and allow agents to find them. Browsers like OpenAI’s Atlas and Comet from Perplexity also play a role in connecting agents to websites. Further, retailers like Walmart and Target have integrated with ChatGPT, so users can ask the chatbot to search for items through chat. 

One of the biggest problems facing the adoption of agentic commerce revolves around enabling safe, secure transactions. OpenAI and Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) in September, following Google’s announcement of Agent Pay Protocol (AP2) in collaboration with American Express, Mastercard, PayPal, Salesforce and ServiceNow. Visa followed soon after with TAP, which connects to the Visa Intelligent Commerce platform. 

“The foundation is now in place through this collaboration, but successful agentic commerce requires thoughtful design that considers the specific needs of industry, users and existing systems while leveraging the standardized infrastructure and blueprints now available,” Mullins said. 

🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com