☕️ SpaceX competes in Pentagon AI drone swarm contest

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In today's Techpresso:

🤖 SpaceX competes in Pentagon AI drone swarm contest

🎬 Apple takes on YouTube and Spotify with new video podcasting push

📱 Apple begins testing encrypted RCS messaging on iPhone

🎮 Valve confirms memory shortage is causing Steam Deck stock issues

🔒 OpenAI adds Lockdown mode to ChatGPT

💾 Micron invests $200B to break the AI memory bottleneck

Plus: 🎁 14 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 2 papers.

🤖 SpaceX competes in Pentagon AI drone swarm contest LINK

SpaceX and its subsidiary xAI are competing in a secretive $100 million Pentagon contest to build voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology, marking a new move into AI-enabled weapons development for Elon Musk.

The six-month competition, launched by the Defense Innovation Unit and the new Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, will progress in five phases from software development to real-life testing of drones for offensive purposes.

OpenAI is also involved through a partner company called Applied Intuition but limited to voice-command translation, while SpaceX and xAI are expected to work on the entire project together, raising concerns among defense officials.

🎬 Apple takes on YouTube and Spotify with new video podcasting push LINK

Apple announced it will launch a new integrated video podcast experience in Apple Podcasts this spring, directly competing with YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix in the growing video podcasting market.

The update lets users switch between watching and listening from the same feed, with picture-in-picture mode, offline downloads, and support for HLS, Apple's streaming protocol enabling adaptive playback.

Apple will not charge creators or hosting providers to distribute content, but it will charge ad networks an impression-based fee for delivering dynamic video ads through the new HLS format.

📱 Apple begins testing encrypted RCS messaging on iPhone LINK

Apple has started testing end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging on iPhone in the iOS 26.4 beta, though the feature won't ship in this release and will arrive later.

During this beta, RCS encryption only works between Apple devices and is not yet testable with Android, even though RCS is primarily used for iPhone-to-Android communication.

Apple previously cited the lack of encryption as a reason for delaying RCS adoption, and the GSMA added end-to-end encryption to the RCS standard about a year ago.

🎮 Valve confirms memory shortage is causing Steam Deck stock issues LINK

Valve has confirmed that ongoing memory and storage shortages are the reason the Steam Deck OLED keeps going out of stock intermittently in some regions, including the US.

Both the 512GB and 1TB OLED models are affected, and since the LCD model was already discontinued, buyers in hit regions currently have no available option.

The same memory crisis could also threaten Valve's upcoming Steam Machine launch, potentially forcing a delay, low availability, or a price point around $1,000 or higher.

🔒 OpenAI adds Lockdown mode to ChatGPT LINK

OpenAI has added a new Lockdown Mode and an "Elevated Risk" warning label to ChatGPT, both designed to protect users from prompt injection attacks that can trick AI into leaking sensitive data.

Lockdown Mode is optional and deterministically limits or fully disables high-risk features like web browsing, while the "Elevated Risk" label warns users before actions like opening unverified external links.

Business plan users on ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu, Healthcare, and Teachers already have the protection, but OpenAI said it will roll out to other users in the coming months across unknown payment tiers.

💾 Micron invests $200B to break the AI memory bottleneck LINK

Micron Technology is spending $200 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing, including two new fabs in Boise and a $100 billion complex near Syracuse, to address the AI memory chip shortage.

Demand for high-bandwidth memory chips has far outpaced supply as AI data centers have grown, with DRAM contract prices rising over 170% and DDR5 prices jumping nearly 500% since September.

Micron's gross margins have climbed from 18.5% in early 2024 to 56% recently as it shifted toward data-center HBM chips, and its share price has risen more than sixfold since last April.

Other news you might like

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• Cohere launches a family of open multilingual modelsLINK

• Adani pledges $100B to build AI data centers as India seeks bigger role in the global AI raceLINK

• Europe probes Shein's addictive app design and illegal product salesLINK

• Steak 'n Shake sales jump after accepting bitcoin paymentsLINK

• As AI jitters rattle IT stocks, Infosys partners with Anthropic to build ‘enterprise-grade’ AI agentsLINK

• Meta-owned Manus launches AI agents on TelegramLINK

• Cryptocurrency use explodes in human trafficking networks, online scams: reportLINK

• Bitcoin on Pace for Longest Losing Streak Since 2018 Bear MarketLINK

• Japanese toilet maker 'the most undervalued and overlooked AI memory beneficiary,' investors claim — shares up nearly 40% in first two months of 2026LINK

• Meta secures patent to let deceased users' accounts remain active: ReportLINK

• Google’s design guide for AI glasses reveals how Android XR will workLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Figr AI: analyzes your live app and design files to map user flows, identify edge cases, and generate UX improvements backed by 200K+ proven patterns.LINK

Boost.space v5: unifies fragmented business data into a single source of truth, enriching and transforming it for AI agents to execute workflows.LINK

Mozart for iOS: a music creation app that converts voice inputs and text prompts into studio-quality tracks and music videos without requiring musical expertise.LINK

Layers: autonomous marketing agents that analyze your codebase to generate and execute growth plans including content creation, social posts, and ads for developer tools.LINK

Qwen3.5: a multi-modal AI assistant that handles text chat, image/video analysis, document processing, and web search with integrated tool usage capabilities.LINK

Forestry Diary: a digitized and transcribed collection of a US Forest Ranger's daily work diary entries from 1927-1945 in Northern California.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

SkillsBench: Testing Reusable AI Agent Abilities: researchers measure whether abilities learned in one context, like navigation or object manipulation, actually transfer when agents face new environments and goals.LINK

Virtual Width Networks: neural networks can simulate being wider than they are by reusing the same neurons multiple times per layer, maintaining accuracy while reducing memory costs.LINK

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