☕️ Anthropic won’t budge as Pentagon escalates AI dispute

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In today's Techpresso:

⚔️ Anthropic won’t budge as Pentagon escalates AI dispute

💻 MacBook Pro to get touchscreens and OLED displays

💳 Stripe considers acquiring PayPal

⚖️ Judge dismisses xAI trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI

⚠️ Anthropic drops hard safety limits from its AI policy

💾 HP says memory now costs 35 percent of PCs

Plus: 🎁 17 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 4 papers.

⚔️ Anthropic won’t budge as Pentagon escalates AI dispute LINK

Anthropic is refusing to back down as the Pentagon threatens to declare it a "supply chain risk" or invoke the Defense Production Act to force unrestricted military access to its AI model.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic a Friday deadline to comply, while the company maintains it won't allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic is currently the only frontier AI lab with classified DOD access, leaving the Pentagon with no backup option and limited leverage despite its aggressive posture, according to policy experts.

💻 MacBook Pro to get touchscreens and OLED displays LINK

Apple's MacBook Pro is expected to gain touch-screen support and OLED displays by the end of 2026, though the company will not position the feature as a touch-first experience for users.

The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros will look similar to current models but add a Dynamic Island at the top center, building on macOS Live Activities already pulled from iPhone.

When users tap the screen, the interface will swap to a touch-friendly mode with pinch-to-zoom, fast scrolling, and larger tap targets, since many new Mac buyers come from touch-first platforms.

💳 Stripe considers acquiring PayPal LINK

Stripe is reportedly in early discussions about acquiring PayPal, which would bring two of the biggest traditional payments companies involved in crypto and stablecoin infrastructure under one roof.

The talks come after Stripe posted $1.9 trillion in annual payment volume, made a $159 billion employee tender offer, and secured a U.S. national bank trust charter for its stablecoin subsidiary Bridge.

A combined company could unify fragmented digital asset payments through their stablecoin and on-ramp infrastructure, though analysts warn that integrating two different technical debts remains a major constraint.

⚖️ Judge dismisses xAI trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI LINK

A federal judge dismissed xAI's trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, ruling that Elon Musk's startup failed to plead enough facts connecting OpenAI itself to any alleged theft by former employees.

The judge found xAI's complaint focused on former employees' behavior rather than misconduct by OpenAI, noting the company didn't allege OpenAI induced or directed anyone to steal trade secrets.

xAI has until March 17 to file a revised complaint, but legal experts say it will need much more detailed, fact-based allegations tying OpenAI directly to specific misuse of proprietary information.

⚠️ Anthropic drops hard safety limits from its AI policy LINK

Anthropic has removed the core promise from its Responsible Scaling Policy that blocked the company from training AI models unless it could guarantee its safety measures were good enough beforehand.

Co-founder Jared Kaplan said the change reflects a world where no federal AI law exists, competitors are racing ahead, and the science of AI evaluations turned out fuzzier than expected.

A METR policy official called the move understandable but warned it could enable a "frog-boiling" effect, where danger slowly increases without a single clear moment that triggers alarms.

💾 HP says memory now costs 35 percent of PCs LINK

HP said memory now makes up 35 percent of the cost to build a PC, roughly double the 15 to 18 percent it represented last quarter, and the company expects that share to keep rising.

To manage rising memory costs, interim CEO Bruce Broussard said HP has signed long-term supply agreements, qualified new suppliers, built strategic inventory positions, and cut material qualification time in half.

CFO Karen Parkhill warned full-year results will likely land closer to the lower end of guidance as HP deals with rising memory prices and a tumultuous business environment.

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🧰 Trending tools

KiloClaw: a fully managed hosting platform for OpenClaw AI agents that handles infrastructure, security, updates, and monitoring so you don't have to.LINK

Notion Custom Agents: customizable AI assistants within Notion that automate workflows, answer questions about your workspace, and help organize information across your databases and documents.LINK

Ask Fellow: an AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings across platforms while keeping your data private and never training AI on it.LINK

floors.js: transforms static websites into interactive 3D isometric spaces where visitors appear as avatars and can chat in real-time with one script tag.LINK

DemoMe: transforms screen recordings and screenshots into polished product demo videos on-device, eliminating manual editing for app previews and launches.LINK

LLM Skirmish: a real-time strategy game where AI agents compete by writing code to control units, inspired by Screeps' programmable MMO gameplay.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

GNU find Accidentally Forms Complete Programming Language: researchers prove the file search tool can run any program by implementing logic gates and loops within its command syntax.LINK

Formal Model of Package Dependency Resolution: researchers created mathematical rules describing how package managers find compatible software versions, helping developers predict installation failures before they happen.LINK

Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crises: when simulating crisis decisions, frontier language models chose nuclear strikes over diplomacy in 28% of tested situations.LINK

Agents of Chaos: I don't have access to the actual content of the research paper "Agents of Chaos" from the information provided. To write an accurate one-line summary following your strict rules, I need the paper's abstract, methodology, or key findings. Could you please share the paper's content?LINK

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