Schools and libraries from around the US pleaded with the Federal Communications Commission to drop the idea of ending E-Rate, a $2 billion-a-year program that connects students and library visitors to the Internet.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has criticized school districts for having "experimented with a massive increase in screen time for students," and said E-Rate expanded too far beyond its original purpose of "supporting basic Internet access to schools and libraries for educational purposes." In June, Carr led a 2-1 vote to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking public comment on whether E-Rate should be "limited or sunset to reflect today’s extensive connectivity rates."

Carr's proposal could result in E-Rate cutting the discounts that schools and libraries receive for telecom services and equipment, and imposing more restrictions on how E-Rate money can be used. The FCC seeking comment on whether to sunset the program also raises the possibility that Carr might choose to axe E-Rate entirely.

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A small-business owner in Georgia has sued Flock and the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office over alleged retaliation using license plate cameras.

“[The lawsuit] alleges illegal [license plate tracking] searches over many months without probable cause and unrelated to any specific investigation,” Hall & Lampros, attorneys for plaintiff Tyler Murkerson, wrote in a press release. “The lawsuit alleges that Flock also failed to put safeguards in place to prevent illegal surveillance by officers by accepting free-text-field entries instead of specific case numbers or investigations.”

Murkerson’s saga began in February 2023, when he was arrested by sheriff’s deputies over an alleged seatbelt violation; those charges were dropped months later. In September 2024, Murkerson sued the department, accusing them of excessive force. The case was only recently settled.

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It took OpenAI two days to notice that a recording device was hidden in a restricted executive conference room where leadership met to discuss highly confidential information, including technical progress, government engagements, and commercial partnerships.

Only those with special clearance are supposed to access that room. But the FBI believes the recording device was planted by Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia, who became a permanent US legal resident in 2020. In a press release Tuesday announcing his arrest, the FBI alleged that chatbot logs and CCTV footage suggested that Alfozan—who worked as an OpenAI engineer for more than a year—sought to use the device to spy on OpenAI and risked leaking trade secrets in a way that threatened national security.

To conceal the USB device, Alfozan allegedly wrapped it in toilet paper, then plugged it into the back of a conference room television. The device was likely planted on September 28, and OpenAI found it on September 30 and quickly determined that its contents were encrypted, the FBI said. Days later, on October 5, OpenAI installed a camera in that conference room, and the CCTV footage allegedly showed Alfozan attempting to retrieve the recording device that same day.

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Safety researchers continue to warn that a large volume of AI-generated explicit content is spreading unchecked, while regulators do little to meaningfully stop it.

This non-consensual content is commonly shared in text and direct messages or stored in private clouds where it’s less likely to be detected or reported, a Google co-authored study of Internet users across the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom found this July. That’s why the “most critical intervention point” remains at the source: the harmful AI tools used to make the fake sexual images, Google researchers concluded.

Yet red-teaming in recent months suggests that as some of the leading AI image generators from Google and OpenAI become more capable, they may be getting worse at blocking explicit outputs.

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Trump commercials paid for by the US government continued airing on TV the day after a judge blocked the ads because they likely violate a US law against government-funded publicity or propaganda.

In the most widely aired commercial, Trump railed against his perceived enemies and said he would "liberate America from these villains once and for all.” The campaign also included a commercial praising Trump's record as president, another in which Trump calls the US the "most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history," and commercials related to the Iran war and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

US District Judge Jennifer Rochon issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the ads on Sunday, October 11, which took effect at 6:45 pm that night. The order said the government must cancel the ads, "including those placements for the evening of October 11, 2026."

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In a bankruptcy proceeding that kicked off yesterday, Disney has offered to buy some of the technology that powers the controversy-plagued chatbot Character.AI.

Disney is willing to pay $20 million for “a non-exclusive perpetual license” of certain Character Technologies intellectual property, the chatbot maker said in a press release that did not go into much further detail on which assets Disney wanted.

The move may be surprising. In September 2025, Disney joined others in publicly criticizing Character.AI for stealing content and harming kids. Specifically, Disney sent a strongly worded cease-and-desist letter that accused Character Technologies of weaponizing Disney characters “in a way that could damage its brand long term,” Axios reported.

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When it comes to deciding the fate of the planet, Colleen Golja always thought science and reason would have a seat at the table. That was until one morning last September in London, when the climate researcher took part in the first in a series of war games. The goal: to prevent an uncontrolled global race to develop a technology aimed at cooling the planet but that comes with vast, unknown risks that could reshape life on Earth.

“I thought that would be such an easy thing. Like, we can all agree to do ethical research and make sure it's for the better of all humans,” she told WIRED. “And boy, was I wrong.”

The simulation, titled Exploring Geopolitical Tipping Points and Climate Cooling Strategies, saw a couple dozen foreign-relations experts, scientists, military personnel, and former government officials from across the world convene in a meeting room at Queen Mary University of London. After making introductions over coffee and little yogurts, they sat at tables arranged in a square with the name of the country or organization each person was playing: national governments, climate NGOs and nonprofits, indigenous groups, and tech companies. Golja was assigned to provide technical advice to help participants make scientifically literate decisions.

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An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police, the company and police department confirmed on Friday.

A Claude model sent the false tip on July 18 to the Philadelphia Police Department's website for submitting information about unsolved murders, but it was flagged by a spam filter. Anthropic apparently discovered the incident on September 28 and informed the police department about it on October 8.

During internal testing, Claude Haiku 4.5 was instructed to complete various forms up to the final submission stage and to stop before submitting those forms. "Several times Claude mistakenly submitted the form instead, expecting there to be an additional confirmation page," Anthropic said in a report describing "unintended model actions we’ve observed during evaluations and internal use of Claude."

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SpaceX has a deal to purchase nationwide low-band spectrum licenses for a planned terrestrial mobile network that would complement the space-based Starlink cellular service.

SpaceX will buy up to 14 megahertz of spectrum in the 800 MHz band from investment firm Grain Management, which bought the spectrum rights from T-Mobile earlier this year. T-Mobile had obtained the spectrum when it bought Sprint in 2020 and was required to sell the licenses under a merger condition imposed by the US government.

"This prime low-band spectrum addresses one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US," SpaceX said yesterday. SpaceX this week also received US approval to launch 15,000 satellites for an upgraded version of its mobile service that it says will be far more powerful than the current offering.

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Donald Trump’s administration has temporarily banned Microsoft, Adobe, and several other tech companies from sponsoring workers for permanent US residency, claiming they abused immigration programs at the expense of American citizens.

Vice-president JD Vance said on Thursday that the H-1B visa programme for highly skilled foreign workers had “become rife with fraud” and that over-reliance on such schemes was “a fundamental insult to the American worker.”

He added that “no company in the US” had “abused this system” more than Microsoft.

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Likely in the next few weeks, a federal judge will decide if Donald Trump can become the first president to personally profit from selling early access to government information in his social media posts.

At a hearing Wednesday, Department of Justice civil attorney Brantley Mayers argued that there was no conflict whatsoever with Trump charging up to $100,000 monthly for instant API access to Truth Social posts that often break news from his administration.

Trump is the largest stakeholder and majority owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company that owns Truth Social, and the value of the API access comes largely from Trump’s role as president.

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Trump Mobile apparently failed to obtain necessary authorizations to operate the international calling portion of its phone service, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) wrote in a letter to the company today.

Her letter said Trump Mobile also doesn't appear to have submitted a required plan for fighting robocalls. Trump Mobile's key business partner, Liberty Mobile Wireless, did make a robocall database filing, but it was not complete, Hassan said.

Hassan's letter raised questions about Trump Mobile's security related to a report that hackers stole personal data of 3,615 customers and Trump Mobile's previous confirmation that a vendor it uses exposed customers' personal data on the Internet. Hassan alleged that Trump Mobile failed to follow multiple FCC filing rules that are supposed to help ensure the security of mobile services.

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A federal jury in Texas recently ruled in favor of a man who sued Bexar County and its sheriff over allegations that the agency ran what the plaintiff’s attorneys called an “unconstitutional traffic stop scheme” enabled by “AI-powered” license plate readers.

Late last month, plaintiff Alek Schott of Houston was awarded $76, one dollar for each minute that he was detained. (Schott asked for this exact amount as symbolic compensation.)

“After the stop, I filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Office because I knew what happened to me was wrong,” Schott said in a statement after his win. “The department reviewed it, told me they didn’t see any violation, and said if I had a problem with it, I should sue them. So I did.”

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If there was a year the world began waking up to climate change, it might have been 1988. That June, the NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress that the climate was warming and would continue to do so as long as humans pumped fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere. Months later, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And, just weeks before the UN vote, Frank Sprow of Exxon’s corporate research department warned his colleagues in an internal memo, “If a worldwide consensus emerges that action is needed to mitigate against Greenhouse gas effects, substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur.”

Sprow’s memo is part of a batch of previously undisclosed documents released earlier this year without fanfare as part of an ongoing lawsuit Massachusetts filed against ExxonMobil in 2019. While the memo was quoted in a 2023 article by The Wall Street Journal, it has not been published in full. Several other documents included in the filings are being reported on here for the first time, including more recent statements from Exxon scientists challenging the company’s climate-solution claims about its work on biofuels and carbon capture and storage.

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In July 2010, US Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) predicted the rise of prediction markets and the problems they could cause. If not properly regulated, Lincoln warned during Senate proceedings on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, prediction markets could evade gambling laws by offering "event contracts" that let people place wagers on sports games.

"It would be quite easy to construct an event contract around sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, and Masters golf tournament," Lincoln, who played a key role in making the law that now regulates prediction markets, told fellow senators. "These types of contracts would not serve any real commercial purpose. Rather, they would be used solely for gambling."

Today, Lincoln is a lobbyist for prediction market Kalshi and has urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to allow sports gambling on the markets. The firm she founded has received $480,000 from Kalshi since 2024 in exchange for lobbying Congress and the CFTC for looser regulation of event contracts.

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TP-Link is facing more legal troubles in the US as Florida and three other states filed lawsuits alleging that it lied to consumers about its connections to China and the risks of its routers being exploited by Chinese state hackers.

The lawsuits were filed yesterday, about six months after the Federal Communications Commission announced a sweeping ban on consumer-grade routers produced wholly or partly outside of the US. Numerous router makers have obtained exemptions to the ban, but the Trump administration so far has not granted one to TP-Link.

Router makers that received exemptions include Netgear, Asus, Adtran, Amazon and its Eero subsidiary, Calix, Nokia, SpaceX's Starlink division, and others. For now, TP-Link is unable to sell its latest Wi-Fi 8 routers in the US, though models approved before the ban can still be sold.

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After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms.

In a press release Tuesday, the US Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.

First charged in 2024, Smith successfully ran the scheme for seven years without detection.

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One of Donald Trump’s biggest goals as president is to increase domestic manufacturing and reshore supply chains so that the most in-demand technologies in the world can be 100 percent made in the United States.

By executive order last December, he launched his “Genesis Mission,” an ambitious plan seeking to leverage US dominance in AI to maintain or seize an edge in advanced robotics, biotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear technologies. According to Trump, that plan works best with self-sustaining supply chains. Not even neighboring countries or longtime allies should be relied upon to manufacture a single component of any US product in his ideal world.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has long warned that Trump’s reshoring goals are not grounded in reality, but only recently has America’s largest technology trade association attempted to estimate what it would cost businesses and consumers to follow through on Trump’s plan.

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Paramount Skydance completed its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery today, after a last-ditch effort to block the deal was rejected by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

The post-merger company is called Skydance, taking the name of a firm that Paramount bought in a separate deal last year. The new Skydance combines two of the largest movie studios, streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, CBS, CNN, "and a portfolio of live sports including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, as well as a deep programming library and expansive collection of brands and franchises," Skydance said today in a press release announcing completion of the deal.

The merger was delayed a bit by a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states. In July, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in the Northern District of California ruled that the combination would likely reduce competition substantially and violate antitrust laws.

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