Tech & AI News Roundup — October 14, 2026, 10:01 AM UTC

Quick links to what's actually happening in AI, tech, and IT right now — curated from real reporting, not rewritten, so you can go read the full story wherever it's genuinely worth your time.

I Ranked 28 Energy Drinks, From Celsius to Black Rifle (2026)

The future is here, and it is jacked up on B vitamins, red dye, and taurine. These are the best energy drinks to get from tired to wired. — Wired

Men Can’t Stop Faking How Much They Know About AI

More than half of the men surveyed in a new Harvard study claimed to recognize AI leaders who were, in fact, totally fictional. — Wired

The Next Wave: The unfinished business of a startup’s collapse

Copia and Koko expose distinct weaknesses in businesses built to solve costly problems, from Copia's need for sufficient margins and working capital to Koko's dependence on carbon-credit revenue and regulatory approval. — TechCabal

The US military’s race to make fake blood

Its call sign was Morphine 1-2. In February 2007, the hulking dual-­rotor casualty evacuation helicopter had just flown three wounded soldiers to a field hospital in Balad, north of Baghdad, when another call came: an emergency mission to fly through an insurgent-controlled area in broad daylight. Typically, helicopters would be in a spot like… — MIT Technology Review

AI-Found Linux Kernel Flaw Gives Local Users Root, and Can Break a Guest Out to the Host

A flaw in Linux's vhost subsystem lets a local user read and write kernel memory at will and become root across nearly a decade of kernel versions. In one virtualization setup, it lets an untrusted virtual machine write to the host's memory and hijack the program that runs the virtual machine. The bug is tracked as CVE-2026-74580 and named Vghost. Tencent Zhuque Lab, which found the — The Hacker News

Airtel’s virtual card will test Safaricom’s grip on Kenya’s online payments

Airtel Mobile Commerce plans to launch a virtual payment card in Kenya, setting up a new contest with Safaricom over international online spending. — TechCabal

Cambridge Heavy Industries has been quietly building a desktop fusion device

Fusion power startup Cambridge Heavy Industries is building a small, laser-powered fusion device to fuel the coming wave of fusion power plants. — TechCrunch

Licube wants to be the fuel provider to the fusion power industry — see how at TechCrunch Disrupt

Fusion power plants will need a lot of lithium, and Licube is preparing to be a key supplier. — TechCrunch