China's Working Mechanism Office for the Security Review of Foreign Investment, under the National Development and Reform Commission, barred Meta Platforms' $2 billion acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus and ordered the parties to unwind the transaction, TechNode reported. The acquisition target was Butterfly Effect, the Singapore-based parent of Manus. Bloomberg said the deal had drawn fire over alleged leakage of technology to the U.S. The regulator unwound the transaction in accordance with China's foreign investment security review framework, per TechNode.
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Cybersecurity executives at firms with access to Anthropic's Mythos model told the Financial Times the rollout will require close coordination between governments and businesses. Anthropic has released Mythos to about 40 mostly U.S.-based organizations, including Amazon, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase, the FT reported. Central bankers, financial institutions and regulators have demanded expedited access in recent days, but Anthropic has declined to provide a timeline. The Senate Armed Services Committee holds its SOCOM and CYBERCOM posture hearing on Tuesday. Sources named in the FT include Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel, Fifth Third CFO Bryan Preston, and Palo Alto Networks EMEA chief security officer Haider Pasha.
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The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case examining whether geofence warrants comply with the Fourth Amendment, NPR reported. The technique allows police to obtain a warrant requiring a tech firm to identify any device its database recorded inside a virtual perimeter at the time of a crime. The case turns on Google's "location history" feature, which logged users' positions roughly every two minutes; about 500 million Google users (one-third of the total) had opted into the service when the case began in 2019. Stanford law professor Orin Kerr told NPR the technique was "a little bit of an investigative lottery ticket" when investigators had no other leads.
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The Department of Energy launched a microreactor test bed facility called DOME at Idaho National Laboratory, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced a forthcoming proposed rule to streamline microreactor licensing, Forbes reported. The actions are aimed at speeding microreactor development to meet electricity demand from AI data centers. The NRC and industry estimate the proposed rule could save $3.76–$11.84 billion and accelerate construction permit timelines by 6–12 months, per Forbes. Forbes identifies the program goal as supporting microreactor deployment for data center, military and remote-grid applications.
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A Taiwanese court sentenced a former Tokyo Electron employee to 10 years in prison for stealing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s proprietary data, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg said the case highlights alarm over industrial espionage in Taiwan's strategic chip sector. The Financial Times separately reported Tokyo Electron cut ties with executive Jay Chen after links to Chinese chip startups surfaced. The defendant, ex-Tokyo Electron engineer Chen Li-ming, did not leak trade secrets outside Tokyo Electron and its Taiwan unit, per the court ruling cited by Bloomberg. The court also fined Tokyo Electron's Taiwan unit NT$150 million ($4.8 million).
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Jury selection in Elon Musk's lawsuit alleging Sam Altman broke OpenAI's founding agreement begins today in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, CNBC reported. Musk's claims target OpenAI's nonprofit-to-public-benefit transition and Altman's stewardship of the original mission, the Guardian reported. Musk's xAI is a competitor to OpenAI's commercial AI offerings. Court filings name Musk, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella among the witnesses, per CNBC.
Read at Guardian ↗ • Read at CNBC ↗