Tech

The United States Department of Defense just did something it has never done before: it officially designated an American company a “supply chain risk to national security.” The company? Anthropic — maker of Claude, one of the most capable AI systems on the planet. This label was designed for foreign adversaries. Companies with backdoors in their hardware. Firms controlled by hostile intelligence services. It’s been used publicly exactly once before, against a Swiss cybersecurity firm with reported Russian ties. ...

There’s a war happening in Iran. There’s also a completely different war happening on your timeline — and that one is mostly fake. Since US and Israeli strikes on Iran began February 28, social media has been hammered with AI-generated videos claiming to show missile strikes on Tel Aviv, burning skyscrapers in Dubai, and devastated military bases. These clips have collectively racked up hundreds of millions of views. The part that should make your stomach turn: the people creating them are getting paid to do it. ...

There’s a delicious irony in Ben Affleck — the guy who once told Joe Rogan that AI couldn’t “write anything meaningful” — quietly building an AI company for three years and then selling it to the biggest streamer on Earth. Netflix announced this week that it acquired InterPositive, a 16-person AI filmmaking tools startup Affleck founded in stealth back in 2022. Deal terms undisclosed. Affleck joins as senior adviser. And every filmmaker working with Netflix now gets access to tools that could fundamentally rewire post-production. ...

The AI chip wars just got a lot more interesting. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan dropped a number so staggering it made Wall Street’s collective jaw hit the floor: AI chip revenue exceeding $100 billion in 2027. Not total revenue — just the AI chip slice. Last quarter, that number was $8.4 billion. This isn’t just a big number. It’s a signal that the way we build AI infrastructure is fundamentally changing — and Nvidia might not be the only kingmaker anymore. ...

There’s a moment in every technology cycle where something shifts from “impressive demo” to “wait, this actually works.” OpenAI’s GPT-5.4, launched this week, might be that moment for agentic AI. For the first time, OpenAI’s flagship model can natively control a computer — clicking buttons, navigating apps, writing and executing code — and it does it better than most humans on standardized benchmarks. On OSWorld-Verified, which measures an AI’s ability to operate a desktop via screenshots and keyboard/mouse input, GPT-5.4 scored 75%. The human baseline? 72.4%. ...

An American AI company just got the treatment usually reserved for Chinese tech firms tied to foreign adversaries. The Pentagon officially designated Anthropic — maker of Claude, darling of the AI safety movement — a “supply chain risk to America’s national security.” The crime? Refusing to let the military use its AI without restrictions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Welcome to the new era of AI politics, where building safety guardrails gets you blacklisted by your own government. ...

Seven words on X brought one of the world’s most important AI teams to its knees. “Me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.” That was Lin Junyang — the technical architect behind Alibaba’s Qwen model family — on March 3, 2026. No corporate farewell letter. No diplomatic transition plan. Just a gut-punch goodbye that knocked Alibaba’s stock down 4.5% in Hong Kong and left the future of open-source AI’s most prolific Chinese project hanging by a thread. ...

The United States has its executive orders. The EU has its AI Act. But on March 5, 2026, China unveiled something far more sweeping: a 141-page national blueprint that essentially bets the country’s economic future on artificial intelligence. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, released at the opening of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, mentions AI more than 50 times and includes what officials are calling an “AI+ action plan” — a comprehensive strategy to embed artificial intelligence into virtually every sector of the world’s second-largest economy. From manufacturing floors to hospital wards, from logistics networks to classrooms, Beijing is telling the world: AI isn’t a side project. It’s the project. ...

Imagine you’re one of the most successful AI companies in the world. Developers love your model, enterprise revenue is soaring, and your technology is running inside classified military networks. Then the government tells you to drop your ethical red lines — and when you refuse, they blacklist you entirely. That’s not a thought experiment. That’s what just happened to Anthropic. In the most dramatic week in AI policy since the technology entered public consciousness, the Trump administration effectively declared war on one of America’s most prominent AI companies — while its chief rival rushed to fill the void. The fallout is reshaping the relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon in real time. ...

Seven of the most powerful tech companies on Earth walked into the White House on March 4th and signed a piece of paper promising your electricity bill won’t go up because of AI. If that sounds too neat, you’re paying attention. What They Actually Signed Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI committed to “build, bring, or buy” all the power their data centers consume. They’ll cover grid infrastructure upgrades, negotiate separate rate structures with utilities, and pay for electricity whether they use it or not. ...