Military Dogs Set for Genetic Edits as Startup Raises $200 Million

If you send dogs into a war zone, you might soon be sending animals engineered for the job. A startup called Warhound, founded by Palmer Luckey, says it will genetically enhance dogs so they can spot explosives and help shield troops. The company reports it has pulled in $200 million from investors, a group that includes Sequoia. Colossal Biosciences is involved in the cloning and gene-editing work, according to reports published 23 October 2026.

The money and the partnership put Warhound in a position to start building these animals. The company has not said how many dogs it plans to produce or when the first engineered animals would be ready. Sequoia is one of the investors in the round. Colossal Biosciences, which works on cloning and gene editing, is handling that part of the effort.

Elsewhere in the same reporting cycle, Moderna and Merck said their mRNA cancer vaccine cut deaths by 42 percent and lowered the chance of recurrence in melanoma patients. Researchers also reported that a gene-editing technique called prime editing, which rewrites DNA in liver cells, reached its first human patient.

On the security side, flaws disclosed in PHP have not produced successful attacks so far. Experts quoted in coverage said the vulnerabilities are harder to exploit than first feared. Officials had asked website operators to apply patches after the flaws knocked sites offline around the world. Software developer Ian Landsman wrote on X that volunteer Ondřej Surý's work patching PHP makes him an unsung hero of the internet, adding, "If anything happens to this guy, that's just it. Everyone is screwed."

Donald Trump said Elon Musk had restored Ukraine's access to Starlink. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said speeds there remained capped. The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had asked Musk to lift those limits.

Google plans to pay customers who shift energy use so power frees up for its data centers through a virtual power plant. A separate report said the company cut down 250,000 trees in Finland for a data center.