The Download: murky AI surveillance laws, and the White House cracks down on defiant labs

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.