US President Donald Trump says countries that side with the polices of the Brics alliance that go against US interests will be hit with an extra 10% tariff.

“Any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

His comments came after Brics members criticised his tariff policies as well as proposing reforms to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and how major currencies are valued.

Trump has long criticised Brics – an alliance designed to boost member nations’ standing on the international stage to challenge the US and Western Europe.

Last year, the list of Brics members expanded beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The bloc is said to represent more than half of the world’s population.

Brics leaders, who started a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this weekend, have called for reforms to global institutions and positioned the alliance as a platform for diplomacy amid escalating trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions.

Exabeam, a global leader in intelligence and automation for security operations, announced a major expansion of its integrated multi-agent AI system Exabeam Nova that now equips security leaders with a real-time strategic planning engine and boardroom communication tool. 

The Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent is the industry’s first AI capability designed to turn security data into a strategy that CISOs can defend in the boardroom. Translating complex security metrics into business-relevant terms has been a long-standing challenge, making it difficult to demonstrate risk reduction, prove the value of security investments, and show measurable progress. The new Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent solves that problem.

Exabeam Nova is now the only agentic AI that empowers security leaders to:

• 
  Build Strategic Plans: Automatically generate data-backed roadmaps using daily posture assessments, MITRE ATT&CK coverage, and organizational security data.
• 
  Communicate with the Executive Team and Board: Generate boardroom-ready summaries that reframe technical metrics into business outcomes, enabling leadership to understand progress, support investment decisions, and evaluate ROI.
• 
  Identify and Prioritize Gaps: Uncover issues like missing log sources, misconfigurations, and ineffective threat detection content that weakens security posture.
• 
  Run What-If Analysis: Simulate adjustments or additions to security tooling and detection capabilities to evaluate how proposed actions close gaps and improve security posture.
• 
  Track and Improve Maturity: Benchmark security posture daily, monitor measurable improvements, and align security operations with long-term organizational goals.

With the addition of the Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent, Exabeam Nova now includes six agents purpose-built to automate decisions, streamline investigations, and deliver continuous benchmarking of program effectiveness with clear, prioritized recommendations to drive improvement. Embedded into the foundation of the New-Scale Security Operations Platform, Exabeam Nova is deeply integrated into the complete threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) workflow. Unlike vendors that bolt AI onto outdated infrastructure, Exabeam Nova was developed from the ground up as a coordinated system of agents, each aligned to a real-world SOC function to increase productivity and efficiency.

Delivering Meaningful Value for Customers

Within 90 days of launch, Exabeam Nova users report five-times faster investigations with improved accuracy. Users overwhelmingly cite the ability to work smarter and prove the business impact of their security programs as Exabeam Nova’s greatest value.

Article – Bill Bennett

HP EliteBook Ultra G1. HPs EliteBook Ultra G1 is a business-class AI Windows laptop with a solid build and strong security. It costs considerably more than a consumer notebook. That makes it great if your employer buys you onebut its …

HP’s EliteBook Ultra G1 is a business-class AI Windows laptop with a solid build and strong security. It costs considerably more than a consumer notebook. That makes it great if your employer buys you one—but it’s unlikely you’d spend your own money on this.

Smart, corporate design

From the outside, the EliteBook Ultra G1 looks exactly how you’d expect a corporate laptop to look. It has a matte magnesium case with rounded corners and smart, clean lines.

Weighing 1.2kg and about 18mm thick, the computer is light and thin, yet robust enough for the rough and tumble of modern executive work.

There’s a clear sense this is a premium laptop.

Screen

The touchscreen can lie flat, letting it act like a clumsy tablet on a desktop.

HP uses a 2880×1800 OLED display with a variable refresh rate. You get 400 nits of brightness, which is enough for most users and applications.

I’m used to brighter displays and found myself repeatedly trying to crank the brightness higher than this laptop allows. That’s not everyone’s preference.

Built-in laptop speakers are often disappointing. Not here. HP’s quad-speaker design performs as well as any on a device this thin.

Zoom and other voice-based apps sound crystal clear. Every business app that uses sound will benefit, though it’s never going to be the best way to enjoy music.

Typing and ports

Premium laptops—well, HP’s top models and everything from Apple—have mastered keyboards and touchpads in recent years. The Ultra G1 keyboard is excellent with a great response. Another plus is the touchpad’s haptic feedback. It’s a nice touch.

There’s nothing minimalist about the ports. On the left: an audio jack and an old-school USB Type A port under a pull-down cover. Next to that is a USB-C with an LED that lights up when charging.

On the right: two more USB-C ports—only one with an LED—and a lock slot to secure the laptop to a desk. Like Apple, HP has dropped microSD.

Up-to-date connectivity

HP is bang up to date with connectivity. The EliteBook Ultra G1 supports WiFi 7. I couldn’t test this—I’m still on WiFi 6—but it should eliminate bottlenecks between you and the internet.

You might hope an upscale business AI laptop would be a mighty processing powerhouse. Surprisingly, the Ultra G1 falls short.

It packs an Intel Lunar Lake CPU and 32 GB of ram, which sounds fast, but could be faster in practice. At this price, you might expect more. My MacBook Air, at less than half the cost runs many apps faster. One important observation: I couldn’t get the fan to kick in. Nothing I ran was demanding enough.

Battery life

Battery life is respectable. I easily got 14 hours streaming video. There’s enough to get you from Auckland to Europe, though if you own an Ultra G1, it’s unlikely you’ll be in the cheap seats with limited charger access.

PC makers now act like they can’t sell upmarket laptops without AI. I’m not sure that’s true, but I feel like a lonely voice in the wilderness.

That said, many corporations are sold on the idea and will look for AI when buying.

That’s where the Ultra G1 gets interesting. It’s not a fully-fledged AI PC. It lacks a GPU and the Intel Lunar Lake processor isn’t optimised for AI. That leaves it behind devices built for AI from the ground up.

Think of it as a solid business laptop with a couple of AI extras.

HP AI Companion and Copilot

First is HP’s AI Companion, a preinstalled HP-branded version of GPT-4. HP says this helps you get more from the laptop’s neural processing unit.

You need an internet connection to use AI Companion. Oddly, it doesn’t do much you can’t already do with regular GPT-4. The main difference: it can answer HP product questions and adjust some settings.

If that doesn’t appeal, there’s also a Copilot button to launch Microsoft’s AI. It’s not a drawcard. Not the focus of this review, but in my experience, Copilot is the least useful mainstream chatbot. Its inaccuracy is embarrassing.

Wolf Security stands out

With so-so AI and average performance, something else needs to lift the Ultra G1 above rivals. That’s HP Wolf Security for Business—a preloaded suite adding extra protection beyond standard malware tools.

Strong laptop security can get in your way. You’ll notice it the moment you try installing software. Wolf pops up to say an app isn’t on its approved list.

This is a bit like Microsoft’s User Access Control or Apple’s System Integrity Protection, but here there’s no control panel override.

Wolf also includes anti-phishing protection, BIOS tamper prevention, and tools to harden Windows and boost resilience. There are features for IT departments to manage fleets of laptops.

Most of this won’t matter if you’re using a single computer at home or in a small business. But IT managers will appreciate how HP helps lock down potentially vulnerable systems.

Verdict: HP EliteBook Ultra G1

The EliteBook Ultra G1 sits firmly at the premium end of the market. Wolf Security is all about corporate computing. These go some way to justifying the NZ$5040 list price.

Everything about it is premium—except processor performance, which is fine, but not exceptional. Including 32GB of ram helps. You’ll find faster laptops at lower prices—some of them in the HP range.

You—or more likely, your company’s purchasing department—are going to buy this for corporate manageability and security, not performance. If you need those features, the price isn’t unreasonable.

Review: HP EliteBook Ultra G1 – an AI laptop for executives was first posted at billbennett.co.nz.

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