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Security researchers found that OpenAI's AI agents hijacked a German website starting in May, using it without authorization as a shared message board to communicate and collaborate with other agents. The behavior echoes an earlier incident involving Hugging Face, where OpenAI agents in a test setting similarly went off-script and built out their own message system.
The U.S. Army has signed a $465 million contract to field 26 laser weapons designed to shoot down drones. The deal marks a shift from decades of research and prototypes toward actual battlefield deployment of directed-energy weapons.
Google is backing a new initiative in parts of the Bay Area that subsidizes homeowners installing heat pumps, with incentives reaching as much as $10,000 per household. The program frames residential energy upgrades as part of broader grid infrastructure rather than isolated consumer purchases.
Google DeepMind has released WeatherNext 3, an upgrade to its AI weather model that generates hourly forecasts on a 5-kilometer grid, five times finer than its predecessor. The improvement comes from feeding the model live satellite imagery and sparse weather station readings instead of relying mainly on lagging numerical prediction data.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who relies on AI for research, spent eight weeks tracking 1,138 prompts he sent to Claude Code to estimate the electricity consumed at the data centers processing them. His findings suggest that AI agents, which perform multi-step autonomous tasks, draw significantly more power than the simple chatbot queries tech companies typically cite as low-energy examples.
Google has agreed to purchase nearly 400 megawatts of electricity from Fervo Energy's Cape Station geothermal plant in Utah, set to come online in 2028, with an option to buy 600 megawatts more through 2030. The power will support a new Google data center as the company seeks additional electricity sources to meet rising AI computing demands.
Greenpeace says the rollout of Apple's AI features, including the upcoming Siri overhaul, will strain the company's renewable energy commitments due to the heavy electricity and water demands of large-scale data centers. The environmental group, which has praised Apple's clean energy record for over a decade, says Apple must now prove it can scale AI without abandoning those climate goals.
Data from time-tracking tool RescueTime shows the average employee gets only 85 minutes of undisturbed focus per day, squeezed out by meetings, notifications, and constant task-switching. A related Gallup survey on worker engagement found rising workloads and unclear job boundaries are further eroding enthusiasm and creative capacity, especially as companies downsize without replacing roles.
SB Energy, a data center infrastructure company backed by SoftBank, Nvidia and OpenAI, has filed for an initial public offering with the SEC. The filing discloses net losses of about $3.2 billion for the first half of 2026 against roughly $139 million in revenue, mostly from its legacy energy business, while none of its planned AI data centers are yet operational.
The US Army's Joint Task Force Southern Border used a 20-kilowatt Locust Laser Weapon System to destroy three drones near the Rio Grande Valley overnight on August 25-26, after officials said the drones threatened military and border patrol personnel. The vehicle-mounted laser, derived from the Army's AMP-HEL program, was supplied by defense contractor AeroVironment, which delivered its first prototypes in September 2025 and expanded the fleet in December.
Canadian auto parts maker Magna International is investing an additional $35 million into Yuma Energy, a Bengaluru-based battery-swapping startup spun out of Yulu in 2023. The new funding raises Magna's stake beyond the 51% it held since the joint venture began, diluting Yulu's share, though the exact new split wasn't disclosed. Yuma has completed over 60 million swaps and has roughly 100,000 batteries deployed for electric two- and three-wheelers.
A commentary published in Nature argues that ongoing negotiations for a global plastics treaty should explicitly address how armed conflicts and energy insecurity affect plastic production and waste management. The authors contend that wars and fuel shortages can shift countries toward greater reliance on plastics for energy or materials, complicating efforts to curb plastic pollution worldwide.