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 fired the director of the CDC
But Susan Monarez is refusing to go quietly. (WP $)
+ Monarez is said to have clashed with RFK Jr over vaccine policy. (NYT $)
+ She was confirmed by the Senate to the position just last month. (The Guardian)
+ Vaccine consensus is splintering across the US. (Vox)
2 A Chinese hacking campaign hit at least 200 US organizations
Intelligence agencies say the breaches are among the most significant ever. (WP $)
+ AI-generated ransomware is on the rise. (Wired $)
3 Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile took just months to build
Russia’s air defenses are weakening. Can this missile exploit the gaps? (Economist $)
+ 14 people were killed in an overnight bombardment of Kyiv. (BBC)
+ On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop. (MIT Technology Review)
4 AI infrastructure spending is boosting the US economy
Companies are throwing so much money at AI hardware it’s lifting the real economy, not just the stock market. (NYT $)
+ How to fine-tune AI for prosperity. (MIT Technology Review)
5 OpenAI and Anthropic safety-tested each other’s AI
They found Claude is a lot more cautious than OpenAI’s mini models. (Engadget)
+ Sycophancy was a repeated issue among OpenAI’s models. (TechCrunch)
+ This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Climate change exacerbated Europe’s deadly wildfires
And fires across the Mediterranean are likely to become more frequent and severe. (BBC)
+ What the collapse of a glacier can teach us. (New Yorker $)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)
7 911 centers are using AI to answer calls
It’s helping to triage anything that isn’t urgent. (TechCrunch)