IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER:- Ex-OpenAI engineer charged with planting recording device had one-way flight booked to Saudi Arabia, DOJ says- Anthropic warns self-replicating AI could spread across household devices within months- One state is ground zero as Trump's multibillion-dollar tech ambitions face a midterm testINSIDE JOB: The former OpenAI engineer charged with planting a recording device inside a conference room at the AI giant's San Francisco office had a one-way flight booked to Saudi Arabia days before he was taken into federal custody, the Justice Department said.FRIDGE TAKEOVER: Artificial intelligence models could soon be capable of copying themselves across everyday household devices, potentially creating networks that are difficult to shut down, according to new research from AI company Anthropic.THE TOKEN TEST: Ohio has emerged as ground zero in the growing political fight over the massive data centers powering America's AI boom, with voters across the state set to weigh in on the industry's rapid expansion this November.Racks of GPUs with a closed-loop liquid cooling system are seen inside an operational Microsoft data center on Feb.4, 2026.
(Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images)OPINION: The lesson of social media is not that transformative technologies should be feared.It is that when children are involved, safeguards must come before harm — not after.HIT THE BRAKES: Microsoft President Brad Smith highlighted the need for global regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in a new interview, saying that AI currently faces lighter safety requirements than milk.A finger taps the Claude app icon on a smartphone screen in this illustrative photo taken on September 17, 2026.
(Matteo Della Torre/NurPhoto via Getty Images)DON'T BE 'CRUEL': Anthropic updates its usage policy to ban sustained, needless abuse toward Claude AI models.Dagen McDowell, Taylor Riggs, and Brian Brenberg debate if chatbots are treated like moral beings and why users exhibit weird...