---
date: 2026-06-16
subject: "Anthropic talks stall | Cyber vets protest ban | DOJ calls xAI vital | Data center investors probed"
---

**Anthropic and Trump administration officials wrapped Monday's talks** without lifting the Fable 5 export order, with Commerce open to restoring access only if jailbreak concerns are resolved. **Seventy-six cybersecurity practitioners signed an open letter** asking the White House to reverse the order, warning defenders have lost access while adversaries have not. **Justice Department lawyers asked a federal court** to toss an NAACP suit over xAI's Mississippi gas turbines, citing the company's role in U.S. military operations. **Sen. Warren probes data center investors** on ensuring American ratepayers are not exploited.

# 1. AI Policy Today

- **Anthropic-White House talks end Monday without lifting Fable 5 export controls** — Trump administration officials concluded talks with Anthropic Monday without lifting the Fable 5 / Mythos 5 export order, Wired reported. The two sides remain split on whether the model presents a national security risk. Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown and head of external affairs Sarah Heck led the company's delegation at Commerce, joined by frontier red-teaming head Logan Graham and senior security researcher Nicholas Carlini. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dialed in by conference call from the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France. Commerce indicated it would consider restoring consumer access only if Anthropic resolves the jailbreak concerns underlying the Friday order. Lutnick's letter said the order was issued under 2018 Export Control Reform Act authority, per Reuters. [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-is-still-at-odds-with-the-white-house-over-claude-fable-5/) [Investing.com](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/anthropic-and-us-officials-meeting-monday-to-resolve-dispute-over-export-curbs--administration-official-says-4742693)

- **Cybersecurity veterans urge White House to lift Anthropic export order in open letter from 76 signatories** — An open letter signed by 76 named cybersecurity experts asks the White House to lift the Fable 5 / Mythos 5 export order, TechCrunch reported. Signatories include former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, Luta Security CEO Katie Moussouris, SocialProof's Rachel Tobac, Bugcrowd founder Casey Ellis, Jon Callas, Dino Dai Zovi and Paul Vixie. The letter says the export action has taken the best models away from cybersecurity defenders while adversaries continue to advance. [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/cybersecurity-vets-protest-dangerous-us-government-ban-on-anthropics-most-powerful-models/)

- **DOJ tells federal court xAI is "vital" to national security in NAACP environmental suit** — Justice Department lawyers told a federal court Monday that Elon Musk's xAI is integral to national security and asked the court to dismiss an NAACP environmental lawsuit over the company's natural gas turbines at its Southaven, Mississippi supercomputer site, Wired reported. The brief cited xAI's role in U.S. military operations including the Iran war as grounds for dismissal. The NAACP suit targets pollution from the turbines powering xAI's Colossus 2 supercomputer at the site. [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/doj-lawyers-argue-xai-vital-national-security-naacp-lawsuit/)

- **[Congress] Sen. Warren probes KKR, BlackRock, Brookfield and Blackstone on data center buildout tied to ratepayer costs** — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member on Senate Banking, sent letters Monday to KKR, BlackRock, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and Blackstone requesting information on their data center investments and how each firm ensures American ratepayers are not exploited, per the committee minority release. The letters say private equity investment in data centers rose to $45.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $350 billion of data center financing by 2028. Warren cited a 2026 study finding U.S. electricity use attributed to data centers rose from 1.9% to 4.4% between 2018 and 2023, with national average electricity costs rising 6% to 29% by 2030 and Virginia spiking up to 57%. The firms have until June 27 to respond. [Senate Banking](http://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-probes-major-private-equity-firms-on-investments-in-data-centers-as-utility-costs-rise)

- **California government discloses six high risk AI systems after reporting none last year** — California's Department of Technology released its 2026 automated decision system inventory Friday under the state's 2023 ADS disclosure law, which requires agencies to identify high risk uses, KPBS reported. The six disclosed systems include predicting recidivism, evaluating unemployment claim fraud, remotely administering California State University exams and detecting generative AI use in student work. The prior year's report said no high risk systems were in use across state government. [KPBS](https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2026/06/15/california-admits-using-high-risk-ai-including-systems-it-failed-to-report-last-year)

# 2. China Watch

- **Alipay launches an AI assistant inside one of China's biggest super apps, shifting users from menus to conversation** — Ant Group's Alipay began invitation-only testing of Abao, an AI assistant that lets users swipe right into a chat-based interface for tasks like checking housing fund balances, locating EV charging stations and paying bills, per TechNode. Alipay called it the biggest redesign in the platform's history, shifting from a service discovery model to delivering services directly through conversation. Alipay said any transaction involving fund transfers still requires explicit user confirmation, and the assistant only operates within scopes the user has authorized. [TechNode](https://technode.com/2026/06/16/alipay-introduces-ai-powered-abao-taking-an-early-lead-in-chinas-super-app-ai-race/)

- **Alibaba releases a full embodied AI model lineup as Beijing pushes humanoid robot rollouts** — Alibaba launched the Qwen-Robot series of embodied intelligence models, QbitAI reported. The lineup includes a vision language action manipulation model, a vision language navigation model and a world model designed to run independently or in combination on different robot platforms. The navigation model builds on the Qwen team's earlier Qwen-VL model, and the series was trained entirely on open source data, giving Chinese robot developers an open foundation. QbitAI said two versions of the manipulation model placed first and second on the independent RoboChallenge real robot benchmark. Alibaba is positioning the models as a "universal base" usable across robot bodies. The launch lands less than two weeks after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission jointly ordered central state-owned enterprises and provinces to identify high value humanoid robot deployment scenarios by year-end. [QbitAI](https://www.qbitai.com/2026/06/435873.html)

- **China's military newspaper warns of a low Earth orbit arms race, citing SpaceX's growing Pentagon role** — PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People's Liberation Army, ran a full page series Monday warning that "the era of the militarised application of low-orbit constellations is arriving at an accelerated pace," citing SpaceX's latest U.S. Space Force contract, the South China Morning Post reported. The authors, all from the Space Security Research Centre at China's Space Engineering University, published three days after SpaceX's $75 billion public listing. The series identified satellite networks, orbital competition and spectrum capture as new arenas of "strategic value." [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3357184/chinas-military-mouthpiece-pla-daily-cites-spacex-role-warning-satellite-arms-race?utm_source=rss_feed) [PLA Daily](http://www.81.cn/szb_223187/szblb/index.html?paperNumber=01&paperName=jfjb&paperDate=2026-06-15)

- **China announces mass production of silicon-28, plugging a quantum computing supply chain gap** — Researchers at the Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Engineering of Nuclear Industry, a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation, said they achieved industrial scale production of silicon-28 isotopes at purity above 99.99% for the first time, Pandaily reported. Silicon-28, whose atomic nucleus has zero spin, sharply cuts environmental noise inside silicon-based qubits and is treated as an irreplaceable raw input for silicon quantum chips. Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Yu Dapeng said the result clears a longstanding raw material bottleneck the field had described as an "urgent shortage." Until now, production capacity for the isotope was concentrated among a small group of suppliers in Russia, Europe and U.S.-linked supply chains. The breakthrough is timed to the final year of Beijing's "Three-Year Action Plan for High-Quality Development of Nuclear Technology Application Industry." [Pandaily](https://pandaily.com/china-silicon-28-quantum-chip-breakthrough-jun2026)

# 3. Federal Policy Tracker

- **AWS wins $2.6B DHS-wide cloud contract as opening Cumulus tranche** — Contract documents published Friday show DHS awarded Amazon Web Services a nearly $2.6 billion contract for its Cumulus cloud project, structured as a single-award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity vehicle with a one-year base and four option years, FedScoop reported. Cumulus consolidates DHS purchasing into agency-wide deals with hyperscale cloud providers rather than separate buys by each component. Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure awards are expected next quarter. DHS projects at least $142 million in first-year savings under the centralized strategy. Vendors had to meet minimums of 1,000 firewall rules, 100,000 virtual machines and hundreds of petabytes of storage. [FedScoop](https://fedscoop.com/dhs-cumulus-cloud-project-aws-contract/)


- **[State] Florida AG sues TikTok for violating state's under-14 social media ban over addictive features** — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) filed a civil suit Monday in St. Lucie County alleging TikTok violated state law banning under-14s from social media and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, The Guardian reported. The complaint cites TikTok's unlimited scrolling and push notifications as addictive features. It accuses the company of falsely telling parents that mature content on the platform is infrequent, arguing the platform should carry an age rating of 16 or 18 rather than 13. Uthmeier said many children spend six, seven, eight or more hours a day on TikTok. TikTok said it is evaluating the complaint and updating its Florida platform in response to state law. [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/15/florida-sues-tiktok-teen-social-media-access-law) [Reuters](https://wtvbam.com/2026/06/15/florida-sues-tiktok-claiming-it-violates-state-child-safety-law/)

- **[State] A $10 billion AI data center near Ross, Texas exposes a municipal law mismatch as host town has no taxing authority** — Infrakey purchased a 520-acre tract of unincorporated farmland next to Ross, Texas, for a proposed $10 billion AI data center campus with power capacity of nearly 1 gigawatt, Fortune reported. Ross has a population of 200 and no taxing authority, while Lacy Lakeview seven miles south is moving to annex the parcel and could collect up to $50 million a year in tax revenue. Infrakey acquired the parcel last summer. [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/06/16/ai-data-center-texas-lacy-lakeview-ross/)

# 6. Global & Geopolitics

- **France's domestic intelligence agency DGSI will replace Palantir tools with French Chapsvision software** — France's domestic intelligence service DGSI will replace data tools from Palantir Technologies with a local alternative made by French firm Chapsvision, the French prime minister's office said Tuesday, Reuters reported. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Chapsvision had "been retained by the DGSI ... to substitute the American giant Palantir," though the changeover is likely to take several years. After Palantir said its DGSI contract, renewed in late 2025, "remains fully in force," Lecornu's office clarified that Palantir's tools would stay in use until Chapsvision's could be integrated to avoid a capability gap. The shift is part of a broader European push to reduce reliance on U.S. technology firms: Germany's military has dropped Palantir, and Britain is reviewing the National Health Service's £330 million data contract with the company. Lecornu also said France would invest €655 million in AI and build a shared chatbot for all state services. [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-invest-655-mln-ai-set-up-common-chatbot-all-state-services-2026-06-16/) [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/french-security-service-to-replace-palantir-with-local-software) 
- **UK ministers lobby Trump administration to head off retaliation over under-16 social media ban** — UK ministers have spent weeks lobbying senior Trump officials and the president directly to reassure them that the under-16 social media ban announced Monday is not aimed at U.S. technology companies, The Guardian reported. Officials described a three-part approach: engaging the companies, briefing the administration in advance and mythbusting in the media. Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to Trump on Saturday and was due to meet him at the G7 in Évian-les-Bains this week. Elon Musk called the ban "a wolf in sheep's clothing" in a post on X Monday; Trump himself had not commented by Monday evening. [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/15/uk-ministers-lobby-trump-backlash-social-media-ban)

- **Trump threatens 100% tariff on French wines over France's digital services tax on U.S. tech firms** — President Donald Trump threatened a 100% tariff on French wine and champagne unless Paris removes its digital services tax on technology firms, the South China Morning Post reported, citing the New York Post. France's 2019 digital services tax imposes a 3% levy on revenues earned in France by technology companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google parent Alphabet. Trump warned that without the tax repeal, "I have no choice but to charge a 100 per cent tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France." The U.S. accounted for 21% of France's wine and spirits export market last year. [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3357182/trump-threatens-100-tariff-french-wines-over-digital-tax-tech-firms?utm_source=rss_feed)

- **Upstage CEO cites Anthropic export order as proof Korea needs sovereign AI** — Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hoon said Washington's move to cut foreign access to top U.S.-made AI models shows the risk of depending on others and urged Seoul to raise its sovereign AI support more than tenfold, the Korea Herald reported. The Korea Internet & Security Agency, SK Telecom, and Samsung Electronics had gained access to Anthropic's Mythos model through Project Glasswing earlier this month, only for the U.S. export directive to block it, the Korea Times reported. A Ministry of Science and ICT official said the government is weighing its response under the coordination of the Office of National Security.[Korea Herald](https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10773059) [Korea Times](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260614/ban-on-foreign-access-to-anthropic-models-highlights-need-for-ai-sovereignty) 

- **Australian shadow industry minister Andrew Hastie likens AI to cold war arms race, calls for AI ambassador** — Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, the Australian shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, said Australia should sharply scale up AI investment to avoid becoming dependent on the U.S. for sovereign capability, The Guardian reported. He delivered the annual Tom Hughes Oration in Sydney Monday night. Hastie likened AI development to the nuclear arms race of the cold war era, proposed Australia position itself as a southern hemisphere technology hub and called for a new AI ambassador and an education overhaul. He warned that a U.S.-China hot war over AI dominance and chip production in Taiwan would be worse than a hot war in the Middle East and that Australia would not be able to escape it. [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/15/andrew-hastie-ai-artificial-intelligence-power-cold-war-nuclear-arms-race-comparison-australia)