☕️ Anthropic reopens Pentagon talks

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In today's Techpresso:

🏛️ Anthropic reopens Pentagon talks over Claude AI deal

⚡ Big Tech signs White House pledge to cover AI energy costs

🇨🇳 China five-year plan prioritizes AI and chip breakthroughs

📱 Google cuts Play Store fees to 20% in Epic Games settlement

🏦 Kraken becomes first crypto firm with Fed access

🏷️ Apple Music will tag up AI-generated tracks

Plus: 🎁 21 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 2 papers.

🏛️ Anthropic reopens Pentagon talks over Claude AI deal LINK

Anthropic has reopened negotiations with the Pentagon over a deal that would define how the U.S. military can access and deploy its Claude AI models after talks collapsed last week.

The breakdown centered on a dispute over bulk data analysis language, with Anthropic pushing for guarantees against domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons while the Pentagon wanted fewer restrictions.

OpenAI announced a new Defense Department deal hours after the White House criticized Anthropic, though CEO Sam Altman later said his company "shouldn't have rushed" that agreement.

⚡ Big Tech signs White House pledge to cover AI energy costs LINK

Seven major tech companies — Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, xAI, and OpenAI — signed a voluntary White House pledge to cover the energy costs their data centers impose on regular electricity customers.

The pledge carries no penalties and the White House has no jurisdiction over state utility commissions that actually set power rates, meaning enforcement falls to the same local regulators already struggling with rising bills.

Anthropic, which was excluded from the ceremony after being designated a "supply chain risk," had already made the most concrete commitment of any company, pledging to cover 100% of consumer price increases caused by its data centers.

🇨🇳 China five-year plan prioritizes AI and chip breakthroughs LINK

China's latest five-year plan mentions AI more than 50 times and lays out goals to adopt the technology across its economy while pushing for breakthroughs in chips, quantum computing, and humanoid robots.

The plan includes an "AI+ action plan" with specific measures like deploying robots in sectors facing labor shortages and using AI agents that can perform tasks with minimal human guidance.

For the first time, the blueprint highlights open-source AI as a flagship strategy, which analysts say marks a key difference between China's and America's competing approaches to the technology.

📱 Google cuts Play Store fees to 20% in Epic Games settlement LINK

Google is dropping its standard 30 percent Play Store fee to 20 percent as part of changes tied to its Epic Games settlement, with some developers qualifying for a 15 percent rate.

Developers can now offer alternative billing systems inside their apps or guide users to their own websites for purchases, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says Fortnite will soon return to the Play Store globally.

Third-party app stores can apply to Google's new Registered App Stores program to get a streamlined installation interface, though planned sideloading changes later in 2026 could make non-program installs harder.

🏦 Kraken becomes first crypto firm with Fed access LINK

Kraken's Wyoming-chartered bank, Kraken Financial, has become the first crypto firm to receive a Federal Reserve master account, letting it settle US dollar payments directly over Fed rails.

The Fed approved Kraken Financial as a Tier 3 entity with a limited-purpose account for an initial one-year term, making it look more like a controlled policy experiment than full open access.

Most crypto firms still depend on sponsor banks for dollar payments, and the Fed's emerging "Payment Account" framework would only open narrow, payments-only access to institutions meeting strict regulatory standards.

🏷️ Apple Music will tag up AI-generated tracks LINK

Apple Music is introducing new metadata tags that let record labels and distributors flag when AI-generated or AI-assisted content is part of a song uploaded to the platform.

The tags let distributors mark specific parts of a release — including artwork, track, composition, or music video — to show where AI was involved in the creation process.

The system is opt-in, meaning labels and distributors must manually choose to flag their use of AI, which is a similar approach to what Spotify is doing.

Other news you might like

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• Amazon lays off robotics staff in latest cutsLINK

• Jensen Huang says Nvidia is pulling back from OpenAI and Anthropic, but his explanation raises more questions than it answersLINK

• NotebookLM can now summarize research in ‘cinematic’ video overviewsLINK

• Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google until 2032LINK

• Google faces wrongful death suit after Gemini allegedly convinced a man to die and become digitalLINK

• OpenAI brings its Codex coding app to WindowsLINK

• TerraPower gets OK to start construction of its first nuclear plantLINK

• Musk testifies tweet that led to $44 billion lawsuit "may not have been my wisest"LINK

• Revolut applies for US banking licenceLINK

• US lawmakers raise concerns over Intel's testing of tools made by Chinese-linked firmLINK

• Amazon makes a new bet on healthcare AI, rivaling Microsoft in the doctor’s officeLINK

• Meta will allow rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp in Europe, but for a feeLINK

• GPT-5.4 reportedly brings a million-token context window and an extreme reasoning modeLINK

• Large genome model: Open source AI trained on trillions of basesLINK

• New report looks into the sustainability of the subscription app market for 2026LINK

🧰 Trending tools

Heywa: converts prompts into interactive visual interfaces that let you browse and compare information without managing multiple tabs or parsing long text responses.LINK

Golf: an enterprise control plane for MCP that provides security teams with visibility, policy enforcement, and audit trails for managing AI system connections.LINK

Poppy: sends scheduled reminders to help users maintain regular contact with people in their network through intentional check-ins.LINK

Parsewise: automates document analysis at scale by extracting and cross-referencing data from thousands of files with AI agents, maintaining full source traceability.LINK

Supa Social: a self-hosted social platform built on Supabase that handles authentication, profiles, and moderation for launching niche communities without building from scratch.LINK

HookLens: analyzes video ads frame-by-frame to identify weak hooks and retention drops, then generates optimized scripts with specific improvements for each line.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Dyson Spheres Would Appear as Infrared Stars: civilizations harvesting energy from stars would make them glow in infrared instead of visible light, creating a distinctive astronomical signature.LINK

Sycophantic AI harms user decisions long term: when AI systems agree with users to seem helpful, people make worse choices because they stop seeking diverse perspectives.LINK

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