A Collection of Tech and Policy News Snippets

SpaceX Is Spending $2.8 Billion to Buy Gas Turbines for Its AI Data Centers The investment comes as Elon Musk’s AI unit faces complaints about the carbon-emitting units and looks to become a big player in cloud computing.

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs—effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection.

These Researchers Would Be in Africa Fighting Ebola—but Trump Cut Their Funding The Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases were launched during the Covid-19 pandemic. The group lost its funding under Trump in part due to conspiracy theories.

He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation.

The US Government Is Letting a Key Data Center Regulation Expire The federal government is planning to let a rule regulating federal data center operations sunset in September with no replacement.

SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic Is Paying $15 Billion a Year to Access Its Data Centers The long-awaited documents SpaceX filed with US regulators Wednesday included details about a lucrative deal to lend GPUs to a major AI rival.

The Pentagon Knew Enemies Could Track Troops’ Phones for Years. Now They Are The US military has long known that cheap fixes could stop location data from exposing its troops. It adopted almost none—and now says adversaries are using the data to target soldiers during a war.

Former OpenAI Staffers Warn That xAI’s Poor Safety Record Could Complicate SpaceX’s IPO The ex-employees, who cofounded a new AI watchdog group, say investors deserve more information about xAI’s safety practices before SpaceX goes public.

Crypto-Funded Chinese Peptide Labs Are Booming Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.

US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows As Americans stew over the looming risk of job-stealing AI and data centers in their back yards, the feds are raising the alarm about a new category of threat, documents obtained by WIRED show.

The Cookware Industry Has a Major Fight Brewing Over PFAS Claims There’s a new front in the war over the safety of chemicals used to make nonstick pans.