Senator asks US government watchdog to review how feds use hacking tools

Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the U.S. federal watchdog requesting a comprehensive review of how the FBI, DEA, ICE’s HSI, and the Secret Service use hacking tools and spyware against Americans.

Broadcom seeks more than $60bn in debt to fund AI chips for Anthropic
Broadcom seeks more than $60bn in debt to fund AI chips for Anthropic

Broadcom is in talks with lenders to raise more than $60bn in debt, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The money would finance AI chips for Anthropic and other companies. Bloomberg cited people with knowledge of the matter. The figures under discussion co…

Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff
Nvidia pays Poolside $6bn to license its model factory and hire 109 staff

Nvidia has agreed to pay Poolside $6bn to license the software the startup used to build AI models, and to offer jobs to 109 of its staff. It is also investing $1bn in what remains, at a $12bn pre-money valuation. The terms come from a letter Poolside …

Castelion raises $1bn at $13bn to scale hypersonic weapon production
Castelion raises $1bn at $13bn to scale hypersonic weapon production

Castelion has raised $1bn at a $13bn valuation. Three SpaceX executives founded the company in 2022 to build missiles. Its first product is Blackbeard, a hypersonic strike weapon designed for quantity rather than craft. The structure repays a close rea…

Trump signs a memo to clear the regulatory path to three launches a day
Trump signs a memo to clear the regulatory path to three launches a day

The United States conducted 178 orbital launches and re-entries last year, but the White House now wants at least a thousand a year by 2030. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday directing federal agencies to clear the path to that num…

Cinemas, schools and ICE are all banning Meta smart glasses
Cinemas, schools and ICE are all banning Meta smart glasses

Cinemas became the latest institution to move against Meta smart glasses on Thursday. The UK Cinema Association said many operators are introducing policies to restrict camera-enabled eyewear. It gave two reasons: film piracy, and customer privacy. Tak…

Tesla’s Austin robotaxis are now fully driverless, tracking shows
Tesla’s Austin robotaxis are now fully driverless, tracking shows

Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin appears to have gone fully driverless. Over the past fortnight, every one of the 170 rides logged by an independent monitoring project ran with no human safety monitor on board, across 54 different cars. Two days earl…

Two senators give TikTok until 1 September to explain its safety test
Two senators give TikTok until 1 September to explain its safety test

Two US senators have written to TikTok about an experiment that switched off a safety feature for roughly 15 million American users. Their letter runs to four pages and sets out 13 questions. It gives the company until 1 September to reply. The senator…

White House tech strategy leaves open-weight AI off its critical list
White House tech strategy leaves open-weight AI off its critical list

The White House has published a new National Security Science and Technology strategy. It names 15 critical technology areas the United States intends to lead. Artificial intelligence and autonomy is one of them, with 12 subfields listed underneath. Op…

OpenAI previews Private Safety Processing to keep zero data retention
OpenAI previews Private Safety Processing to keep zero data retention

OpenAI has told enterprise customers that its promise not to keep their data will survive the next generation of models. The company set out the position on Wednesday in a post titled “Offering Zero Data Retention for frontier models”. In it, it previe…