This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How AI is turning the Iran conflict into theater 

Much of the spotlight on AI in the Iran conflict has focused on models like Claude helping the US military decide where to strike. But a wave of “vibe-coded” intelligence dashboards—and the ecosystem surrounding them—reflect a new role that AI is playing in wartime: mediating information, often for the worse. 

These sorts of intelligence tools have much promise. Yet there are real reasons to be suspicious of their data feeds. Read the full story. 

—James O’Donnell 

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday. 

The must-reads 

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 

1 Anthropic has sued the US government  
The AI firm wants to stop the Pentagon from blacklisting it. (Reuters) 
+ The White House is preparing a new executive order to weed out the company’s technology. (Axios) 
+ Defense experts are alarmed. (CNBC) 
+.Google and OpenAI staff have filed a legal brief backing Anthropic against Trump. (Wired $) 
+ The company’s stance won many supporters. (MIT Technology Review) 

2 GPS jamming has become a crucial battleground in the Middle East  
The interference is endangering—and protecting—ships and planes. (BBC) 
+ Signal jamming has made navigating the Strait of Hormuz even more difficult. (Bloomberg) 
+ Quantum navigation offers a potential solution. (MIT Technology Review)  

3 A tech journalist found his AI clone editing for Grammarly 
It’s providing AI-generated feedback “inspired by” real writers without their consent. (Platformer) 
+ Could ChatGPT do the jobs of journalists and copywriters? (MIT Technology Review) 

4 Nvidia plans to launch an open-source platform for AI agents  
It’s already pitching the “NemoClaw” product to enterprise software firms. (Wired $) 
+ But don’t let the AI agents hype get ahead of reality (MIT Technology Review) 
 
5 A startup wants to launch a space mirror that reflects sunlight onto Earth 
Reflect Orbital reckons it could power solar panels at night. Scientists are appalled. (NYT) 

6 Yann LeCun’s AI startup has raised over $1bn in Europe’s largest seed round  
Meta’s former chief AI scientist plans to build systems that “understand the world.” (Bloomberg) 

7 Hinge’s CEO insists the app doesn’t rate users’ attractiveness 
Jackie Jantos’ strategy has helped Hinge defy the decline in dating apps. (FT $) 
+ AI companions are stealing hearts—and it’s getting weird. (New Yorker $) 
+ It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a relationship with a chatbot. (MIT Technology Review) 

8 “AI psychosis” could be afflicting your loved ones  
If so, here’s how you can help them. (404 Media) 
+ One solution: AI should be able to “hang up” on you. (MIT Technology Review) 

9 Nintendo is suing Trump over illegal tariffs 
The gaming giant has joined a lawsuit seeking over $200 billion in refunds. (Ars Technica) 

10 Bio-tech is turning ancient poop into a map of lost civilizations  
Molecular sensors are finding human traces where physical ruins have vanished. (Nature)    

Quote of the day 

“I don’t think any of us, whether it’s me or Dario [Amodei], Sam Altman, or Elon Musk, has any legitimacy to decide for society what is a good or bad use of AI.”

—Yann LeCun gives Wired his take on the Anthropic’s spat the Pentagon. 

One More Thing 

This giant microwave may change the future of war 

armed forces are hunting for a weapon that disables drones en masse—and they want it fast.  

One solution focuses on microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up. 

Defense tech startup Epirus may have the winning formula. The company has developed a cutting-edge, cost-efficient drone zapper that’s sparking the interest of the US military. And drones are just one of its targets. Read the full story. 

—Sam Dean 

We can still have nice things 

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.) 

+ Werner Herzog’s magnificent movie about Africa’s ghost elephants has arrived on Disney+ and Hulu. 
+ A “city killer” asteroid won’t hit Earth after all. Phew.  
+ The Met is publishing high-definition 3D scans of over 100 iconic works. 
+ Marty and Doc from Back to the Future are still BFFs in real life. 

Top image credit: MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW (ILLUSTRATION) | PHOTO OF MISSILE (US NAVY), AI-GENERATED IMAGE OF RUBBLE VIA X, SCREENSHOTS VIA WORLDMONITOR, GLOBALTHREATMAP 

Send asteroids to hi@technologyreview.com.  

You can follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading! 
 
 

—Thomas  

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil Americans with AI?

The ongoing public feud between the Department of Defense and the AI company Anthropic has raised a deep and still unanswered question: Does the law actually allow the US government to conduct mass surveillance on Americans?

Surprisingly, the answer is not straightforward. More than a decade after Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s collection of bulk metadata from the phones of Americans, the US is still navigating a gap between what ordinary people think and what the law allows. 

Today, the legal complexity has a new edge: AI is supercharging surveillance—and our laws haven’t caught up. Read the full story.

—Michelle Kim

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The White House has tightened its AI rules amid the Anthropic spat
New guidelines require companies to allow “any lawful” use of their ‌models. (FT $)
+ London’s mayor has slammed Trump’s treatment of Anthropic and invited the firm to expand in the city. (BBC)

2 A satellite firm has stopped sharing imagery after exposing Iranian strikes
Planet Lab said it wants to stop “adversarial actors” from using the data. (Ars Technica)
+ AI is turbocharging the conflict in Iran. (WSJ $)
+ War is adding a brutal new element to the country’s internet issues. (Wired $)

3 The OpenAI-Anthropic feud is getting messy
The Pentagon contract controversy has intensified a deeply personal animosity between the founders. (NYT $)
+ Sam Altman and Dario Amodei’s rivalry could reshape the future of AI. (WSJ $) 
+ OpenAI’s robotics lead has quit over concerns about surveillance and “lethal autonomy.” (TechCrunch)
+ The company’s DoD “compromise” has brought Anthropic’s fears to life. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Staff at Block are outraged over the company’s “AI layoffs” 
They’re pushing back against Jack Dorsey’s bullishness on AI. (The Guardian)
+ They’ve also cast doubt on the payroll savings. (Gizmodo)
+ It’s not the first case of fears over AI taking everyone’s jobs. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Data center “man camps” are springing up in Texas
Aimed at luring workers to help build the centers, they will offer free steaks and golf simulators. (Bloomberg $)

6 The OpenClaw craze is sparking a rally in Chinese tech stocks
Shares surged after government agencies and tech leaders promoted the AI agent. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why is China falling so hard for it? (SCMP)

7 AI-generated videos are altering our relationship to nature
And could lead to “distorted expectations” of animal behavior. (NYT $)
+ AI slop could form a new kind of pop culture. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A rogue AI agent freed itself to mine crypto in secret
The model escaped its sandbox to start a side hustle in digital currency. (Axios)
+ AI agents are also starting to harass people. (MIT Technology Review)

9 In a first, a spacecraft has changed an asteroid’s orbit around the sun
The feat was a test of Earth’s future defenses. (Engadget)

10 How the Furby brought creepy-cute robotics into playtime   
A new show traces the legacy of the surprisingly high-tech toy. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“I wanted to approach the whole situation with love.”

—Block cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey tells Wired why he wore a hat with the word ‘Love’ on it during a meeting where he laid off 40% of his workforce. 

One more thing

Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build

Geoffrey Hinton is a pioneer of deep learning who helped develop some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern artificial intelligence, but after a decade at Google, he’s stepped down to focus on concerns he now has about AI.

Hinton wants to spend his time on what he describes as “more philosophical work.” And that will focus on the small but—to him—very real danger that AI will turn out to be a disaster. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ De La Soul’s Tiny Desk concert is a masterclass in joy and grief, proving their “Daisy Age” philosophy is timeless.
+ These original Disney concepts of beloved characters are a portal into an alternate childhood.
+ This square phone traverses two decades of nostalgia by rotating into a Game Boy AND a BlackBerry.
+ A newly discovered Rembrandt shows the Old Masters still have new tricks to reveal.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Coming soon: our 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now

For years, MIT Technology Review’s newsroom has been ahead of the curve, tracking the developments in AI that matter and explaining what they mean. Now, our world-leading AI team is creating something definitive: the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now.

Publishing in April to be launched at our flagship AI event, EmTech AI, this special report will reveal what our expert journalists are tracking most closely, what breakthroughs have excited them, and what transformations they see on the horizon. It’s our authoritative snapshot of where AI is heading in the year ahead—a curated expert list of 10 technologies, emerging trends, bold ideas, and powerful movements reshaping our world.

Attendees at EmTech AI will get much more than an exclusive heads-up of what made our 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now list. We’re at a pivotal moment as AI moves from pilot testing into core business infrastructure, and to reflect that we’ve curated a program that will help you navigate what’s going on, and get ahead of what’s coming next. 

We’ll hear from top leaders at OpenAI, Walmart, General Motors, Poolside, MIT, the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and SAG-AFTRA. Topics will include everything from how organizations are preparing for AI agents to how AI will change the future of human expression. As well as networking with speakers, you’ll have the chance to mingle with MIT Technology Review’s editors too. Download readers get 10% off tickets, so what are you waiting for? See you there!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Anthropic says it plans to sue the Pentagon
It believes the DoD’s ban on its software is unlawful. (BBC) 
+ CEO Dario Amodei has nonetheless apologized for a leaked memo criticizing Trump. (Axios)
+ Trump, meanwhile, says he fired Anthropic “like dogs.” (The Guardian)
+ In happier news for Anthropic, its models can remain in Microsoft products.(CNBC)

2 The Pentagon has been secretly testing OpenAI models for years
Which shows exactly how effective OpenAI’s ban on military use of its models has been. (Wired $)

3 A new lawsuit says Trump’s TikTok deal helped firms that ‘personally enriched’ him
The suit aims to reverse the sale of the app’s US operations. (CBS News)
+ It could shed light on the majority American-owned joint venture for TikTok. (Reuters)

4 AI could give smart homes a reboot 
Google and Amazon are betting on smarter assistants—but not everyone’s convinced (NYT)

5 Iran has struck Amazon data centers, rattling the Gulf’s AI ambitions
The first military hit on a US hyperscaler has shaken the region’s tech sector. (FT $)
+ The conflict has thrown a spotlight on AI’s current use in warfare—and what’s next. (Nature)

6 Trump and tech CEOs have promised to protect consumers from AI’s energy costs
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI have all signed the pledge. (Axios)
+ But what is AI’s true energy footprint? We did the math. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Meta’s getting sued over surveillance through smart glasses  
The suit claims Meta misled users over the devices’ privacy features. (TechCrunch)

8 There’s a new field of study: researching ‘AI societies’
Scientists are examining human behavior without even involving humans. (Nature)
+ Hundreds of AI agents built their own society in Minecraft. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Oh great, teenage boys are using ChatGPT to chat up girls
Of all the things to outsource to AI, flirting surely ain’t it. (Vox)

10 The mythical Nintendo PlayStation has a new home 
The US National Video Museum has bought the fabled console’s development kit. (Engadget)

Quote of the day

“It’s sort of bitterly ironic.” 

—Dean Ball, a former Trump administration AI adviser, tells Politico that the Anthropic spat contradicts the president’s pledge to cut bureaucratic red tape for tech.

One more thing

These scientists are working to extend the life span of pet dogs—and their owners

Gavesh’s journey began with a Facebook job advert promising a better life. Instead, he was trafficked into “pig butchering”—a form of fraud where scammers build close relationships with online targets to extract money.

We spoke to Gavesh and five other workers from inside the scam industry, as well as anti-trafficking experts and technology specialists. Their testimony reveals how global tech platforms have industrialized this criminal trade—and why those same companies now hold the key to dismantling it. Read the full story.

—Peter Guest and Emily Fishbein

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) 

+ The Blood Moon of March 3 was sublime.
+ Orysia Zabeida’s imperfect animations, drawn frame-by-frame from memory, are hypnotizing.
+ This stunning snap of a white whale calf scooped the top prize at the World Nature Photography Awards.
+ Two “Lazarus” marsupial species just came back from the dead in a big win for biodiversity.