Major US technology companies have been named as potential targets as the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States begins to spill into the digital infrastructure that powers modern economies.Iranian state-linked media this week published a list of offices and infrastructure run by US companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications. According to Al Jazeera, the companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle.Many of these companies operate regional offices, cloud infrastructure, or data-center operations across the Gulf, including in the United Arab Emirates. None have released public statements on this development.The list…
Mick Mulvaney wants to be clear: He really likes gambling. “You’re talking to the only former member of Congress who’s won a poker tournament in Las Vegas,” he tells WIRED. When he was representing South Carolina in the US House of Representatives, he pushed for the state to allow sports…
“Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others—will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025,” the archived webpage reads.As…
Uber’s delivery service, which is not operational in the region but reflects common payment schemes, pays for every pickup and drop-off as well as a per-mile rate, along with any tips given by customers. In some cities, drivers also get a per-minute rate. This means that refusing to take an…
On the bank of the river that runs through the Swedish town of Borlänge, construction is underway on a sprawling new data center. The site previously housed a paper mill. When the developer, EcoDataCenter, broke ground in September, its CEO Peter Michelson declared, “The facility once produced paper, the raw…
Move over Sora 2, there’s a hot new AI video model in town.In early February, ByteDance unveiled Seedance 2.0, a major upgrade to its flagship video model, which had previously remained fairly obscure. Its powerful capabilities immediately shocked the AI ecosystem in China, even among audiences who had once been…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is still in the hot seat this week after his company signed a deal with the US military. OpenAI employees have criticized the move, which came after Anthropic’s roughly $200 million contract with the Pentagon imploded, and asked Altman to release more information about the agreement.…
Anthropic might have misgivings about giving the US military unfettered access to its AI models, but some startups are building advanced AI specifically for military applications.Smack Technologies, which announced a $32 million funding round this week, is developing models that it says will soon surpass Claude’s capabilities when it comes…
Before last week the name Alap Shah didn’t ring a bell for many people. The 45-year-old financial analyst and tech entrepreneur had spent the past two decades working in relative obscurity. Then last weekend he coauthored a blog with the research firm Citrini titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis.” It…
President Trump is adding a new 10 percent tariff on nearly all imports to the United States, following a Supreme Court ruling that overturned most of the levies imposed by the US government last year.In an executive order signed Friday evening, Trump outlined a few exceptions, including imports of critical…
Supercomputers can be measured in several ways, but the vital statistic is their ability to perform floating-point operations per second, or flops. Flopping as fast as possible is what makes you successful. At her peak, Sierra could hit 94.64 petaflops—94.64 quadrillion floating-point operations—per second. El Capitan, at 1.809 exaflops, is…
A former candidate in the 2026 race for governor of California and a popular YouTuber have been kicked off Kalshi’s platform for alleged violations related to insider trading, the popular prediction market revealed Wednesday.In a blog post detailing the cases, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, Robert DeNault, noted that the company’s…
When Anthropic last year became the first major AI company cleared by the US government for classified use—including military applications—the news didn’t make a major splash. But this week a second development hit like a cannonball: The Pentagon is reconsidering its relationship with the company, including a $200 million contract,…
Sharks are innocent. Or at least they’re not eating the internet. As a family of cartilaginous fish, sharks are collectively not guilty of most, if not all, charges of biting, chomping, chewing, or otherwise attacking the underwater network of fiber-optic cables. The people who build and maintain the nearly 600 subsea…
The recent collision between Silicon Valley’s ethical ambitions and the Pentagon’s national security imperatives has sent shockwaves through the tech industry. When OpenAI secured a contract with the Pentagon just as Anthropic faced federal ousting for refusing to loosen its “constitutional” guardrails, it signaled the necessity of a specialized industrial…
Spotlight
The largest western AI labs are taking a break from sniping at…
Leah Feiger: Talking about him. Yeah. Absolutely.Brian Barrett: Yeah. It’s just this…
After a prolonged slump, Apple’s business is suddenly thriving again in China.…
Since the middle of last year, there have been at least three…
