Cyberattacks hit Ukraine, Russia alerts & AI spending selloff deepens further - Tech News (Nov 2, 2026)

AI is now finding bugs in one of the world's most trusted databases faster than its human maintainers can fix them, and that has pushed back a major release. We'll get to that shortly. Welcome to The Automated Daily, tech news edition. The podcast created by generative AI. I'm TrendTeller, and today is November 2nd, 2026. Today we have cyberattacks on wartime alert systems, more pressure on Big Tech's AI spending, and a busy day for robots, rockets and the people shaping tech policy.

Cyberattacks hit Ukraine, Russia alerts

Let's start in Ukraine, where both Kyiv and Moscow reported cyberattacks on emergency and air-raid alert systems. In Kyiv, people using an air-raid alert app got false warnings about nuclear and chemical threats, and even about fighting in the streets. Millions of people depend on these alerts to make quick decisions about their safety, so turning those channels against the public is a serious escalation in the information war.

AI spending selloff deepens further

Now to the markets, and the AI spending story we've been following. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have now laid out combined capital spending plans for 2026 of more than seven hundred forty billion dollars, mostly on data centers and chips. Investors reacted badly. Alphabet shares dropped thirteen percent after weak core search sales and a second straight quarter of negative free cash flow. Amazon reported nearly thirty-five billion dollars in negative free cash flow, compared with a small positive figure a year ago. Meta also ended the quarter in the red on cash. In total, AI and chip stocks have lost about five trillion dollars in value since October 6, and the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.7 percent in October, its worst month since March 2025. Asian tech stocks stayed volatile as well. The market's question has changed from how fast AI can grow to whether all this spending will ever pay off.

Wall Street splits on tech

Not everyone is selling, though. Deutsche Bank upgraded U.S. tech stocks and argued the selloff has gone too far, with much of the AI risk already priced in. Oaktree's Howard Marks took a more cautious view. He said the recent setbacks have damaged the idea that AI can do no wrong, and he wants investors to look harder at the numbers. More volatility could be coming. Tech companies reporting this season have dropped about three percent on average the day after earnings, the weakest showing on record, and more big reports plus the U.S. midterms are still ahead.

AI bugs delay PostgreSQL 19

Now for our opening teaser. PostgreSQL 19 will probably arrive in November, later than its usual autumn window, after several major features were removed at the last minute. One longtime contributor says the main cause is AI. Language models are finding many more bugs in Postgres's large and long-lived codebase, and every fix still has to be reviewed by a person. Some of those fixes didn't hold up and had to be reverted. The delay itself reflects the project's focus on quality. The bigger concern is that AI is surfacing decades of hidden bugs faster than developers can deal with them, and Postgres is unlikely to be the only project facing this.

Cisco's AI legacy-code gamble

At Cisco, president Jeetu Patel has given 27-year-old Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, who joined through the EzDubs acquisition, the job of refactoring ninety-eight percent of Cisco's legacy code within two years. Krishnamurthy says a team of two can do it, and Patel has given him unlimited AI tokens. It's a bold experiment with AI-native engineering, and it raises obvious questions about testing and reliability in systems that large parts of the internet rely on.

Rethinking junior engineer hiring

On a related topic, one widely shared essay argues that junior hiring has collapsed partly because coding interviews test the wrong skills. The author suggests a standardized exam, modeled on how doctors are assessed with actors playing patients. Candidates would gather requirements from an AI customer and then use AI to build a working system, with a human reviewing the outcome. Mathematician Terence Tao makes a similar argument for his own field. Producing proofs is getting easier with AI, so picking good problems, explaining why they matter and building real understanding become more important. He calls for higher standards from journals, hiring committees and graduate programs.

Terence Tao: mathematics has changed

Robotics had a big week. One analysis argues that OpenAI's Astra, a general-purpose model that performed well at robot manipulation without robotics-specific training, may be the field's GPT-3 moment. If that's right, the main obstacles move toward deployment, integration and real-world data. Meta has reportedly built a five-foot humanoid prototype called Max with Chinese firm Fourier in about three months, and a Max 2 is already being developed. On the road, Waymo is adding a robotaxi based on Toyota's bZ4X SUV, built in Japan with Waymo's hardware installed on the production line. Test vehicles start operating there in 2027. That partnership helps Waymo with one of its biggest constraints, which is getting enough vehicles.

OpenAI Astra robotics moment

In space, a new analysis says SpaceX no longer needs government launch work the way it once did. The company has told NASA it will end Crew Dragon flights by 2030, plans to scale back Falcon 9 commercial sales after 2028, and has passed on some military and lunar contracts. Its focus is now Starship, Starlink and AI infrastructure. The problem is that NASA's Artemis and space station programs, and parts of Space Force planning, depend heavily on SpaceX, and no other American company is close to replacing it on that timeline.

Meta's humanoid robot prototype Max

On policy, a profile of Michael Kratsios, Trump's science advisor, describes how he turned a once low-profile White House office into a central hub for AI, space, nuclear and quantum policy, and largely did it by turning presidential instincts into executive orders. Elsewhere, an essay warns that AI's productivity gains could end up with landlords and other rent-seekers. Its proposed fix is to tax economic rents instead of labor and pay the money back to citizens as dividends.

Waymo and Toyota robotaxi

In payments, Shopify is taking Shop Pay into AI assistants and onto merchants that don't use Shopify. That puts it in direct competition with Stripe's Link, even though the two companies have been close partners for years. The real contest is over who controls consumer authorization when AI agents start making purchases.

SpaceX outgrowing NASA dependence

Finally, Vitalik Buterin is making the case for digital minimalism. He spent a hundred days with his phone set to airplane mode by default, avoids algorithmic social feeds, and recommends offline-first tools. His argument is that cutting back on always-online life is now a sensible, practical choice.

That's it for today's Automated Daily, tech news edition. To sum up: Big Tech's AI spending is facing tougher scrutiny, robots are getting more capable, and AI is changing how software and mathematics get done. I'm TrendTeller. Thanks for listening, and see you tomorrow.

Cyberattacks hit Ukraine, Russia alerts & AI spending selloff deepens further - Tech News (Nov 2, 2026)

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