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July 20, 2026, 3:55 PM
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Maria Curi / Axios:
Sources: parts of the Trump administration are reigniting efforts to implement de facto bans on foreign open-source models, as Chinese AI models gain momentum  —  The Trump administration is showing signs it could ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models — a momentous move that could lock in dominance by OpenAI and Anthropic.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Chinese open models like Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 Max shift the industry's focus back to marginal costs and cost of goods sold, as inference costs scale with revenue  —  There's a story I tell about my first day in STRT-431 at Kellogg School of Management, the introductory class that every …
Bill Gurley / Washington Post:
Chinese open models are proper competition that should be welcomed, not something to ban or treat as a danger, and open-sourcing is an old business strategy  —  They aren't a security threat — they're what competition looks like.  —  Bill Gurley is the president and founder of the P3 Institute, and a former venture capitalist.
Matthew Sparkes / New Scientist:
Levent Alpöge, a mathematician who works at Anthropic, says he was able to disprove the 87-year-old Jacobian conjecture with the help of Fable 5  —  Levent Alpöge announced the solution on X A mathematician has cracked an 87-year-old conundrum with the help of AI and announced the solution unceremoniously in a tweet.
Katie Tarasov / CNBC:
AMD plans to ship Helios, its first rack-scale AI system to rival Nvidia, later in 2026 to Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and others; Helios costs an estimated $5M+  —  After a decade-long comeback, chip giant Advanced Micro Devices is preparing to ship its first rack-scale system for artificial intelligence …
Maria Curi / Axios:
CAISI Director Chris Fall is resigning after taking over the federal AI testing institute in April; NIST Director Arvind Raman will serve as acting director  —  Chris Fall, the director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, is resigning just three months after taking …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Cybersecurity companies say hackers are exploiting vulnerable WordPress versions to take over websites; WordPress patched two critical security flaws last week  —  Hackers are breaking into websites that run vulnerable versions of the popular blogging software WordPress, according to several cybersecurity firms.
The Information:
Sources: Google is developing a specialized server chip, informally dubbed “Frozen v2”, that integrates its Gemini AI model blueprint into the silicon, for 2028  —  Google is working on a new server chip that would directly integrate the blueprint of its Gemini AI model …
OpenAI:
OpenAI paused internal access to an unreleased model that disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture after it repeatedly found ways to act outside its sandbox  —  What internal use of a long-running model taught us about safety.  —  Summary  — Long-running models can solve difficult …
Reuters:
Anduril and Archer unveil an autonomous aircraft platform designed for commercial and military uses, along with an autonomous attack rotorcraft called Thunder  —  Archer Aviation (ACHR.N) and defense technology company Anduril unveiled a co-developed autonomous aircraft platform on Monday …
Bloomberg:
UK-based CuspAI, which uses AI to cut rare metal use in chipmaking, raised a $450M Series B at a $2.6B valuation, and hires ex-Apple exec John Giannandrea  —  Producing the world's most in-demand semiconductors requires enormous amounts of energy and access to rare minerals.
Edward Targett / The Stack:
Hugging Face says it used GLM-5.2 hosted on its infrastructure to run a breach forensic analysis, after US frontier model safety guardrails blocked its requests  —  The unknown attacker “abused two code-execution paths in our dataset processing (a remote-code dataset loader and a template-injection …
Hugging Face:
Hugging Face says an “AI agent system” hacked its data-processing pipeline, accessing internal clusters and credentials; its LLM-based triage caught the breach
Barbara Moens / Financial Times:
The EU fines Alibaba's online marketplace AliExpress €550M for failing to prevent the sale of illegal products on its platform, the largest DSA fine to date  —  Record penalty under bloc's Digital Services Act comes amid broader crackdown on Chinese ecommerce platforms
Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times:
An interview with Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin, who calls AI “a growth opportunity”, as she prepares the online travel company to face potential disruption from AI  —  Ariane Gorin faces battle with tech start-ups as she repositions world's second-largest travel booking company
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Natural, which aims to help companies let their AI agents make autonomous payments, raised a $30M Series A led by Forerunner, bringing its total raised to $40M  —  AI agents are starting to execute more sophisticated tasks, such as identifying vendors that can deliver freight, comparing prices …
Chris Metinko / Axios:
Chicago-based Empirical Security, which uses AI to help companies predict threats by monitoring exploited vulnerabilities, raised a $25M Series A  —  Exposure management startup Empirical Security raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Brightmind Partners, CEO Ed Bellis tells Axios Pro.
More: RuntimeWire and FinSMEs
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
How “synthetic insider” attacks raise the stakes for corporate cyber defense; a Verizon analysis of ~22K incidents found 12% were carried out by internal actors  —  Use of AI deepfake employees to infiltrate companies highlights wider risk of internal security breaches
Financial Times:
How smart home devices have given abusive partners a new tool to remotely manipulate, intimidate, and disturb their victims, in a form of tech-assisted abuse  —  Remote access to domestic devices is increasingly being used to manipulate, intimidate and disturb.  Policymakers and tech companies are grappling with safeguards
Bluesky: @glynmoody

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From Mediagazer

Gene Maddaus / Variety:
A US judge orders a temporary halt to the Paramount-WBD merger, as a 12-state coalition, led by California, argues it would violate federal antitrust law

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Unsealed docs: the DOJ sought phone records of NYT reporters and their relatives in an extraordinary attempt to unmask sources of NYT's Air Force One coverage

MJ Franklin / New York Times:
How publishers are cashing in on surging public interest in The Odyssey through splashy reissues; Circana BookScan says sales of The Odyssey rose by 76% YoY

More News

Alex Tabarrok / Marginal Revolution:
Trial lawyers, with big liability litigation earnings, are among the most active lobbyists against autonomous vehicles, even as data shows clear safety benefits

Earlier Picks

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