05 Sci-Tech

The Download: AI-generated lawsuits and virtual power plants for data centers– www.technologyreview.com

pgnewser June 4, 2026 0

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The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The EU has proposed new legislation to end its Big Tech dependence
The laws aim to boost domestic ​cloud, AI and semiconductors. (CNBC)
+ US firms would be blocked from critical public tenders. (Reuters $)
+ It also wants to make sure non-EU actors cannot disrupt tech services with a “kill switch.” (The Guardian)
+ But the proposal needs to be negotiated with EU member states. (Politico $)

2 Intelligence agencies warn Chinese spies are recruiting on LinkedIn
The Five Eyes alliance said Beijing is using job platforms for espionage. (BBC)
+ The spies are allegedly recruiting government and military staff. (Politico $)
+ The Chinese embassy in the UK condemned the accusations. (Bloomberg $)
+ Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone. (MIT Technology Review)

China’s Brutal Domestic AI Competition– warontherocks.com

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China’s plan to become a world leader in AI by 2030 is a fixture of practically every Congressional briefing and expert commentary on Beijing’s AI ambitions. The plan’s logic — introduced in 2017 — was simple and alarming: Beijing would direct capital, mobilize its firms, recruit talent, and execute with the strategic patience of a state-led innovation ecosystem. Nearly a decade later, that frame has only hardened. Beijing’s recently issued 15th Five-Year Plan directs Party organs to take “extraordinary measures” to strengthen technological self-reliance and launch a new “AI+” initiative to integrate AI across the nation’s strategic sectors. Beijing has the legal architecture to compel its firms to do its bidding, so Washington has largely concluded that Beijing’s AI sprint reflects deliberate industrial policy, and built America’s response around that assumption.

Humans conquered the planet 300 times faster than genetic evolution can explain– www.scientificamerican.com

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Just under 300,000 years from the moment Homo sapiens appeared in Africa, the species had encircled Earth, mastering desolate deserts and frozen wastelands and all the temperate climes in between. Throughout this staggering expansion, we seem to have relied surprisingly little on genetic adaptation to fuel our globe-conquering—all eight billion of us together remain less genetically diverse than individual populations of chimpanzees. So how did we do it?

Many scientists point to cultural evolution, the process by which knowledge, customs and technology spread over time. But according to Alex Mesoudi, who studies cultural evolution at the University of Exeter in England, “it’s always been just a vague claim.”

Scientists just built a powerful AI computer worm that learns as it spreads– www.scientificamerican.com

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A new study shows that computer malware powered by easily accessible artificial intelligence models is here—the research is a “wake-up call” to take cybersecurity risks from AI more seriously, one expert says.

In the study, researchers created an AI-powered computer “worm” designed to attack and spread between devices—revealing a threat that they say the world is woefully underprepared to fight.

“Our results demonstrate that self-sustaining AI-driven cyber-threats are no longer theoretical,” the researchers wrote. The paper, first reported by the New York Times, was posted on the preprint server arXiv.org and has yet to be peer-reviewed.

This Is How Trump Finally Signed the AI Executive Order– www.wired.com

pgnewser June 3, 2026 0

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President Donald Trump has signed a scaled-back version of an executive order governing AI that he had shelved less than two weeks ago, after senior aides persuaded him that the administration could not indefinitely delay establishing a framework for the technology, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

The revised order gives the federal government access to the most advanced artificial intelligence models 30 days before their public release, down from an earlier proposal that would have required companies to provide access 90 days in advance.

Beyond shortening the review period, the administration made few substantive changes to the original text. Trump approved the revised order Monday night following a high-level White House meeting. Aides drafted the final language Tuesday morning, the two officials tell WIRED.

Data Center Operators Are Trying to Fix Their Water Use Problems– www.wired.com

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On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditions—including water scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain data center development.

It isn’t the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re facing the issue head-on.

Australia’s Slowing Economy Propped Up by Data Center Boom– financialpost.com

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G­­­ross domestic product advanced 0.3% in the first three months of the year, just one-third of the pace recorded in the final quarter of 2025 and missing estimates, government data showed Wednesday. Private investment climbed by almost 4%, led by higher outlays on data centers, with a 16% jump in spending on machinery and equipment the largest gain in almost 30 years.

Scientists charged with bringing deactivated mpox virus into the US, lying to authorities– nypost.com

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Two scientists at a U.S. government lab were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country from Africa and lying about it during interviews with investigators at a Michigan airport, authorities said Tuesday.

A criminal complaint was unsealed in federal court in Detroit against Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, who works with him.

Munster and Kwe were stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January after a flight from Paris and nine days in the Republic of Congo. An outbreak of the mpox disease has been linked to more than 2,000 deaths in Congo, a vast region in central Africa, though a two-year outbreak was declared over in April.

A criminal complaint was unsealed in federal court in Detroit against Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Cognizant CEO is swimming against the tide on AI: he’s hiring over 20,000 graduates this year and says AI tokenmaxxing is a ‘vanity metric’– fortune.com

pgnewser June 2, 2026 0

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For months, the loudest voices in artificial intelligence—including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei—warned that entry-level white-collar jobs were headed for extinction. In recent weeks, both have walked back those statements.

And according to Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S., who oversees a workforce of more than 350,000 employees, the outcry wasn’t just a prediction gone wrong—it was fearmongering.

“There was a little bit of fearmongering from reading about the fact that there’s going to be a collapse of jobs,” Kumar said at Fortune’s COO Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona on Monday. “I think there will be more jobs.”

Scientists discover inherited traits that break Mendel’s Laws of genetics– www.sciencedaily.com

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For more than a century, biology has been guided by the principles of inheritance first described by Gregor Mendel through his famous pea plant experiments. While those rules explain how many genetic traits are passed from parents to offspring, scientists have also known that DNA sequences are not the whole story.

In addition to genes themselves, parents can pass along epigenetic changes. These are chemical modifications that affect how genes function without altering the underlying DNA code.

Now, a new federally funded study in mice suggests that some of these inherited epigenetic marks do not follow Mendel’s classic laws. Researchers found that about 7% of the epigenetic inheritance patterns they examined behaved in unexpected ways. The study also uncovered rare forms of inheritance previously seen in plants and flies but not in mammals.

The Decline of Student Journalism and the Rise of AI– chinadigitaltimes.net

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In April, a former contributor to the Beijing Normal University student media outlet 京师学人 (Jīngshī Xuérén, “Capital Scholar”) noted that its WeChat public account had been deregistered. Although updates had halted in 2023, the account and its content—more than 600 existing articles—had remained online, and “The Snowman” (雪人 Xuěrén, a pun on 学人 Xuérén) was warmly remembered as an eccentric campus institution and a training ground for emerging journalism students. News of its final demise prompted reflection and criticism online.

Anthropic to offer EU access to its advanced Mythos model– www.cnbc.com

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Anthropic is sharing access to its most advanced AI model Mythos with the EU after the region sought access over months due to cybersecurity concerns.

The European Commission confirmed to CNBC on Monday that it had “several productive meetings” with the American AI firm.

“We welcome the latest developments on potential future access,” EU tech sovereignty spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in emailed statements, adding that the bloc aims to get a clearer idea of the potential risks that the technology poses.

Anthropic initially rolled out Mythos to a limited number of companies in April as part of Anthropic’s cybersecurity venture Project Glasswing, with the model excelling at identifying security flaws and weaknesses in software. The launch prompted a wave of concern over cybersecurity threats from bad actors.

“Let’s not forget that Mythos is not one off, a new wave of powerful models are coming to the market,” Regnier said. “This is a shared challenge, and we are intensifying our discussions with like-minded partners, including the United States.”

AI giant Anthropic files for US IPO as investors bet big on AI future | Technology News– www.aljazeera.com

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Anthropic, which operates AI chatbot Claude, did not disclose the size or the terms of the offering.

Published On 1 Jun 2026

Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, teeing up what could become a watershed moment for Wall Street’s AI frenzy.

The move, announced on Monday, sets up a high-stakes test of whether investor appetite for the AI revolution that has reshaped white-collar work around the world can match the sky-high expectations surrounding the booming sector.

Israel’s defense exports hit new record– en.globes.co.il

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Despite the challenges posed for Israel’s defense industries at home and abroad by the war that began on October 7, 2023, exports continue to break records: $19.2 billion in 2025, the Ministry of Defense reports. This is a jump of about 30% from 2024, as well as a doubling in five years and a quadrupling in a decade.

A record number of GTG (government-to-government) deals were reported totaling about $10 billion – over 50% of the transactions. This reflects a growing trend in the industry, in which defense ministries act as an umbrella for major deals. This stems from the requirement to transfer knowledge and production lines abroad from the transactions, in amounts that may reach about 30% in many cases.

Ebola cases in Congo reach 282 as Brazil investigates 2 suspected cases – National– globalnews.ca

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At least 282 confirmed cases of Ebola have now been reported in Congo’s ongoing outbreak as authorities in Brazil said they were looking into two suspected cases.

The two patients who recently arrived in Brazil from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the outbreak is ongoing, exhibited symptoms such as fever and chills.

The first patient is a Belgian traveller who came from Uganda to Rio de Janeiro. The Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectious Diseases, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), administered initial testing, which came back positive only for malaria. The patient remains isolated and the people who had contact with him are being monitored, according to health officials.

AI Investment Boom Across the UK is Fuelled More by Fear of Missing out Than Actual Results, According to Expereo– financialpost.com

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Expereo is a world-leading Managed Network as a Service provider that connects people, places, and things anywhere. Solutions include Global Internet, SD-WAN/SASE, and Enhanced Internet. With an extensive global reach, Expereo is the trusted partner of 60% of Fortune 500 companies. It powers enterprise and government sites in more than 190 countries, with the ability to connect to any location worldwide, working with over 2,300 partners to help customers improve productivity and empowering their networks and cloud services with the agility, flexibility, and value of the Internet, with optimal network performance.

Massive UK crackdown will stop homes from streaming Sky TV for free– www.mirror.co.uk

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Thousands of households across the UK could suddenly find they lose access to premium television channels, including popular content from Sky. The huge block follows a major crackdown on illegal streaming with Police confirming that they have shut down a large illicit data centre.

It’s thought this platform was supplying thousands of users with unauthorised access to premium sports broadcasts, blockbuster movies, and subscription-based television channels. The operation has now caused widespread disruption to pirate streaming networks across the country, leaving many unable to access the services they were enjoying without paying for official subscriptions from Sky.

Mathematicians sign declaration to rein in AI use– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser June 2, 2026 0

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Last month many mathematicians were shocked by OpenAI’s announcement that artificial intelligence had solved geometry’s famous “unit distance” problem.

For some, the achievement was exciting. But researchers also worry that AI technology, if left unchecked, will change their field for the worse. To address those fears, a group of mathematicians, computer scientists, and math historians have released guidelines to prevent AI from steamrolling their discipline.

Among their most important prescriptions: disclose the use of AI in research, ensure all papers are peer-reviewed and level the playing field between academia and for-profit companies through, for instance, legal resources and public funding.