Business

The China Issue

Machine Readable

COBOL Is the Asbestos of Programming Languages

The most widely adopted computer language in history, COBOL is now causing a host of problems. It's also dangerously difficult to remove.

Feeling Bullish

Wall Street Is Already Betting on Prediction Markets

Backchannel

The Iran War Is Throwing Global Shipping Into Chaos

Backchannel

When AI Companies Go to War, Safety Gets Left Behind

We were promised AI regulation and a race to the top. Now, we’re arguing about killer robots.

Wall Street Has AI Psychosis

A “thought experiment” about the impacts of AI sent stocks tumbling earlier this week. It’s probably going to keep happening.

AI Safety Meets the War Machine

Anthropic doesn’t want its AI used in autonomous weapons or government surveillance. Those carve-outs could cost it a major military contract.

Zillow Has Gone Wild—for AI

As the housing market stalls, Zillow’s CEO sees AI as “an ingredient rather than a threat” that can both help the company protect its turf and reinvent how people search for homes.

AI Lab

Nvidia Will Spend $26 Billion to Build Open-Weight AI Models, Filings Show

The move could position the AI infrastructure powerhouse to quickly compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek.

What AI Models for War Actually Look Like

While companies like Anthropic debate limits on military uses of AI, Smack Technologies is training models to plan battlefield operations.

OpenClaw Users Are Allegedly Bypassing Anti-Bot Systems

An open source project called Scrapling is gaining traction with AI agent users who want their bots to scrape sites without permission.

This Defense Company Made AI Agents That Blow Things Up

Scout AI is using technology borrowed from the AI industry to power lethal weapons—and recently demonstrated its explosive potential.

Model Behavior

Google Is Not Ruling Out Ads in Gemini

WIRED spoke with Nick Fox, Google’s SVP of knowledge and information, about how AI is changing the company’s advertising business.

OpenAI Had Banned Military Use. The Pentagon Tested Its Models Through Microsoft Anyway

Sources allege the Defense Department experimented with Microsoft’s version of OpenAI technology before the ChatGPT-maker lifted its prohibition on military applications.

Are You ‘Agentic’ Enough for the AI Era?

Silicon Valley built AI coding agents that can handle most of the grunt work. Now, the most valuable skill in tech is deciding what they should do.

Perplexity’s Retreat From Ads Signals a Bigger Strategic Shift

The AI search startup once predicted advertising would be a massive business. Now it's betting on a smaller, more valuable audience.

Made in China

China’s OpenClaw Boom Is a Gold Rush for AI Companies

Hype around the open source agent is driving people to rent cloud servers and buy AI subscriptions just to try it, creating a windfall for tech companies.

ByteDance’s AI Ambitions Are Being Hampered by Compute Restraints and Copyright Concerns

ByteDance’s new Seedance 2.0 AI video model seemed unstoppable—until heavy demand strained the company’s compute capacity and copyright complaints began piling up.

How Chinese AI Chatbots Censor Themselves

Researchers from Stanford and Princeton found that Chinese AI models are more likely than their Western counterparts to dodge political questions or deliver inaccurate answers.

‘Pew Pew’: The Chinese Companies Marketing Anti-Drone Weapons on TikTok

On TikTok, Chinese manufacturers are advertising signal-blocking weapons with the breezy cadence of consumer lifestyle advertising.

Artificial Intelligence

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans

Software demos and Pentagon records detail how chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude could help the Pentagon analyze intelligence and suggest next steps.

Uncanny Valley: Anthropic’s DOD Lawsuit, War Memes, and AI Coming for VC Jobs

In today’s episode, we discuss how the saga between Anthropic and the Department of Defense is far from over.

Nick Clegg Doesn’t Want to Talk About Superintelligence

After leaving Meta last year, the former deputy prime minister of the UK is charting a new path in the AI industry that has nothing to do with AGI.

Inside OpenAI’s Race to Catch Up to Claude Code

Why is the biggest name in AI late to the AI coding revolution?

Big Tech

Iran Warns US Tech Firms Could Become Targets as War Expands

Companies including Google, Microsoft, and Palantir were listed as targets by Iranian media as the conflict with Israel and the US spills into digital infrastructure.

Meta Is Developing 4 New Chips to Power Its AI and Recommendation Systems

The MTIA processors are the tech giant’s latest attempt to build its own AI hardware, even as it continues spending billions on gear from industry leaders like Nvidia.

Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible

History was unmade last year, as engineers began the massive project of ripping the first-ever transoceanic fiber-optic cable from the ocean floor. Just don’t mention sharks.