Friday afternoon, just as this interview was getting underway, a news alert flashed across my computer screen: the Trump administration was severing ties with Anthropic, the San Francisco AI company founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had invoked a national security law to blacklist the company from doing business with the Pentagon after Amodei refused to allow Anthropic’s tech to be used for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or for autonomous armed drones that could select and kill targets without human input.

It was a jaw-dropping sequence. Anthropic stands to lose a contract worth up to $200 million and will be barred from working with other defense contractors after President Trump posted on Truth Social directing every federal agency to “immediately cease all use of Anthropic technology.” (Anthropic has since said it will challenge the Pentagon in court.)

Max Tegmark has spent the better part of a decade warning that the race to build ever-more-powerful AI systems is outpacing the world’s ability to govern them. The MIT physicist founded the Future of Life Institute in 2014 and helped organize an open letter — ultimately signed by more than 33,000 people, including Elon Musk — calling for a pause in advanced AI development.

His view of the Anthropic crisis is unsparing: the company, like its rivals, has sown the seeds of its own predicament. Tegmark’s argument doesn’t begin with the Pentagon but with a decision made years earlier — a choice, shared across the industry, to resist binding regulation. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and others have long promised to govern themselves responsibly. Anthropic this week even dropped the central tenet of its own safety pledge — its promise not to release increasingly powerful AI systems until the company was confident they wouldn’t cause harm.

Now, in the absence of rules, there’s not a lot to protect these players, says Tegmark. Here’s more from that interview, edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full conversation this coming week on TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Download podcast.

When you saw this news just now about Anthropic, what was your first reaction?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s so interesting to think back a decade ago, when people were so excited about how we were going to make artificial intelligence to cure cancer, to grow the prosperity in America and make America strong. And here we are now where the U.S. government is pissed off at this company for not wanting AI to be used for domestic mass surveillance of Americans, and also not wanting to have killer robots that can autonomously — without any human input at all — decide who gets killed.

Anthropic has staked its entire identity on being a safety-first AI company, and yet it was collaborating with defense and intelligence agencies [dating back to at least 2024]. Do you think that’s at all contradictory?

It is contradictory. If I can give a little cynical take on this — yes, Anthropic has been very good at marketing themselves as all about safety. But if you actually look at the facts rather than the claims, what you see is that Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and xAI have all talked a lot about how they care about safety. None of them has come out supporting binding safety regulation the way we have in other industries. And all four of these companies have now broken their own promises. First we had Google — this big slogan, ‘Don’t be evil.’ Then they dropped that. Then they dropped another longer commitment that basically said they promised not to do harm with AI. They dropped that so they could sell AI for surveillance and weapons. OpenAI just dropped the word safety from their mission statement. xAI shut down their whole safety team. And now Anthropic, earlier in the week, dropped their most important safety commitment — the promise not to release powerful AI systems until they were sure they weren’t going to cause harm.

How did companies that made such prominent safety commitments end up in this position?

All of these companies, especially OpenAI and Google DeepMind but to some extent also Anthropic, have persistently lobbied against regulation of AI, saying, ‘Just trust us, we’re going to regulate ourselves.’ And they’ve successfully lobbied. So we right now have less regulation on AI systems in America than on sandwiches. You know, if you want to open a sandwich shop and the health inspector finds 15 rats in the kitchen, he won’t let you sell any sandwiches until you fix it. But if you say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to sell sandwiches, I’m going to sell AI girlfriends for 11-year-olds, and they’ve been linked to suicides in the past, and then I’m going to release something called superintelligence which might overthrow the U.S. government, but I have a good feeling about mine’ — the inspector has to say, ‘Fine, go ahead, just don’t sell sandwiches.’

There’s food safety regulation and no AI regulation.

And this, I feel, all of these companies really share the blame for. Because if they had taken all these promises that they made back in the day for how they were going to be so safe and goody-goody, and gotten together, and then gone to the government and said, ‘Please take our voluntary commitments and turn them into U.S. law that binds even our most sloppy competitors’ — this would have happened instead. We’re in a complete regulatory vacuum. And we know what happens when there’s a complete corporate amnesty: you get thalidomide, you get tobacco companies pushing cigarettes on kids, you get asbestos causing lung cancer. So it’s sort of ironic that their own resistance to having laws saying what’s okay and not okay to do with AI is now coming back and biting them.

There is no law right now against building AI to kill Americans, so the government can just suddenly ask for it. If the companies themselves had earlier come out and said, ‘We want this law,’ they wouldn’t be in this pickle. They really shot themselves in the foot.

The companies’ counter-argument is always the race with China — if American companies don’t do this, Beijing will. Does that argument hold?

Let’s analyze that. The most common talking point from the lobbyists for the AI companies — they’re now better funded and more numerous than the lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry, the pharma industry and the military-industrial complex combined — is that whenever anyone proposes any kind of regulation, they say, ‘But China.’ So let’s look at that. China is in the process of banning AI girlfriends outright. Not just age limits — they’re looking at banning all anthropomorphic AI. Why? Not because they want to please America but because they feel this is screwing up Chinese youth and making China weak. Obviously, it’s making American youth weak, too.

And when people say we have to race to build superintelligence so we can win against China — when we don’t actually know how to control superintelligence, so that the default outcome is that humanity loses control of Earth to alien machines — guess what? The Chinese Communist Party really likes control. Who in their right mind thinks that Xi Jinping is going to tolerate some Chinese AI company building something that overthrows the Chinese government? No way. It’s clearly really bad for the American government too if it gets overthrown in a coup by the first American company to build superintelligence. This is a national security threat.

That’s compelling framing — superintelligence as a national security threat, not an asset. Do you see that view gaining traction in Washington?

I think if people in the national security community listen to Dario Amodei describe his vision — he’s given a famous speech where he says we’ll soon have a country of geniuses in a data center — they might start thinking: wait, did Dario just use the word ‘country’? Maybe I should put that country of geniuses in a data center on the same threat list I’m keeping tabs on, because that sounds threatening to the U.S. government. And I think fairly soon, enough people in the U.S. national security community are going to realize that uncontrollable superintelligence is a threat, not a tool. This is totally analogous to the Cold War. There was a race for dominance — economic and military — against the Soviet Union. We Americans won that one without ever engaging in the second race, which was to see who could put the most nuclear craters in the other superpower. People realized that was just suicide. No one wins. The same logic applies here.

What does all of this mean for the pace of AI development more broadly? How close do you think we are to the systems you’re describing?

Six years ago, almost every expert in AI I knew predicted we were decades away from having AI that could master language and knowledge at human level — maybe 2040, maybe 2050. They were all wrong, because we already have that now. We’ve seen AI progress quite rapidly from high school level to college level to PhD level to university professor level in some areas. Last year, AI won the gold medal at the International Mathematics Olympiad, which is about as difficult as human tasks get. I wrote a paper together with Yoshua Bengio, Dan Hendrycks, and other top AI researchers just a few months ago giving a rigorous definition of AGI. According to this, GPT-4 was 27% of the way there. GPT-5 was 57% of the way there. So we’re not there yet, but going from 27% to 57% that quickly suggests it might not be that long.

When I lectured to my students yesterday at MIT, I told them that even if it takes four years, that means when they graduate, they might not be able to get any jobs anymore. It’s certainly not too soon to start preparing for it.

Anthropic is now blacklisted. I’m curious to see what happens next — will the other AI giants stand with them and say, we won’t do this either? Or does someone like xAI raise their hand and say, Anthropic didn’t want that contract, we’ll take it? [Editor’s note: Hours after the interview, OpenAI announced its own deal with the Pentagon.]

Last night, Sam Altman came out and said he stands with Anthropic and has the same red lines. I admire him for the courage of saying that. Google, as of when we started this interview, had said nothing. If they just stay quiet, I think that’s incredibly embarrassing for them as a company, and a lot of their staff will feel the same. We haven’t heard anything from xAI yet either. So it’ll be interesting to see. Basically, there’s this moment where everybody has to show their true colors.

Is there a version of this where the outcome is actually good?

Yes, and this is why I’m actually optimistic in a strange way. There’s such an obvious alternative here. If we just start treating AI companies like any other companies — drop the corporate amnesty — they would clearly have to do something like a clinical trial before they released something this powerful, and demonstrate to independent experts that they know how to control it. Then we get a golden age with all the good stuff from AI, without the existential angst. That’s not the path we’re on right now. But it could be.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Yesterday’s NYT Strands puzzle was themed “Dressing Up,” and included fancy clothing items. Today’s is “Dressing Down” — but it doesn’t mean to dress sloppily; there’s a different meaning today. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Dressing down.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Don’t yell at me!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• DRIED, CAST, RITE, RITES, PORE, TANS, RIOT, GATE, RATE, RATED, BRAID

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• SCOLD, UPBRAID, ADMONISH, CASTIGATE, REPRIMAND

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is THERIOTACT (THE RIOT ACT). To find it, start with the T that is the first letter on the top row, and wind down.

Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X.

WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.

X did not respond to a request for comment. Under Musk’s stewardship, X has become a haven for disinformation, especially during major global breaking news events. At the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, and more recently during anti-immigration enforcement protests in LA, the platform has drowned in inaccurate and faulty posts.

Almost all of the most viral posts reviewed by WIRED on Saturday came from accounts with blue check marks, meaning they pay X for its premium service and could be eligible to earn money based on how much engagement their posts generate, even if the content is false. While some posts with disinformation have a community note appended beneath them to correct the record, they remain up on the site, and it’s unclear how many people viewed them before the notes appeared.

One video posted by a blue check mark account claimed to show ballistic missiles over Dubai; the clip actually showed Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv in October 2024. The post has been viewed over 4.4 million times.

One of the most viral clips shared on X in the hours after the attack claims to show an Israeli fighter jet being shot down by Iranian air defense systems. The video has been shared by dozens of accounts, including one post which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. The provenance of the video is unclear, but there have been no credible reports of any Israeli jets being shot down over Iran on Saturday.

Another account that claims to be an expert in open source intelligence posted a video showing explosions, alongside the caption: “6 Iranian Hypersonic Missiles hit the Indian-invested Israeli Haifa port. Massive damages reported.” The video has been viewed 64,000 times, but the footage was actually captured last July and shows an Israeli attack on the defense ministry in Damascus, Syria.

In a number of cases, pro-Iranian accounts have been using images and footage from Saturday’s attacks to falsely claim successful strikes against Israel. “IRANIAN MISSILE IMPACT IN TEL AVIV RIGHT NOW,” the Iran Observer account wrote in a post featuring an image of Dubai. The post had been viewed over 200,000 times before it was deleted, but dozens of other posts sharing the same image and making the same claims remain on X.

Tehran Times, a news outlet aligned with the Iranian government, posted what appears to be an AI-generated image on X which claims to show that “an American radar in Qatar was completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike.” The use of AI generated images was flagged on X by Tal Hagin, a senior analyst with open source intelligence company Golden Owl. While there are reports that drone and missile attacks targeted the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, there are no reports yet of similar successful attacks in Qatar.

A pro-Trump account, which also features a blue check mark, posted images claiming to show the before and after pictures of the palace of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which was targeted during Saturday’s missile attacks. (In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed Khamenei was killed in an attack.) While the after picture appears to accurately show the palace after the attack, the before picture shows the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, which is located on the other side of Tehran. The post has been viewed 365,000 times.

• Apple will manufacture the Mac mini in the United States starting later this year
• Production will shift from Vietnam and China to a Houston Foxconn facility
• The Houston warehouse conversion provides 220,000 square feet of Mac mini assembly space

Apple has announced it will begin manufacturing the Mac mini, its compact mini PC, in the United States later this year, shifting part of its production from Vietnam and China.

The company plans to use a Foxconn facility in north Houston, converting a 220,000-square-foot warehouse into manufacturing space.

There are now so many good new games to play, as well as plenty of titles sitting in my backlog, that I didn’t expect to find myself thinking about 2021’s Kid A Mnesia Exhibition on the PS5.

But I recently sat down with a strong drink or two to play it through, while stellar titles like Hollow Knight Silksong sit half-ignored on my Steam Deck.

And it’s a game, or really a virtual experience, that I recommend you also take for a spin. Of course, that’s with the caveat that you’ll probably need to be a Radiohead fan first to get the most out of it.

Let’s dig into some context before I go any further. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Radiohead were one of the biggest bands, offering somewhat angst-ridden lyrics wrapped up in punchy guitar-forward music that contrasted against the swaggering rock-and-roll of the likes of Oasis. But after their first three albums, Radiohead moved away from the alt-rock sound perhaps best captured in the seminal OK Computer, to a more electronic, textured sound with a bigger focus on abstract lyrics.

Xiaomi announced its flagship smartphone series at MWC, made up of the premium Xiaomi 17 Ultra and the more affordable Xiaomi 17.

With that in mind, how does the Xiaomi 17 compare to Google’s current affordable option, the Pixel 10a? If you’re an Android user on a tighter budget, which handset offers more bang for your buck?

To help you decide, we’ve compared the specs of the Xiaomi 17 to the Pixel 10a and noted the key differences below. Otherwise, if you’re considering splurging on the top-end model, make sure you visit Xiaomi 17 vs 17 Ultra instead.

If you want more of a selection to choose from, we’ve also rounded up the best smartphones and best mid-range phones of the year so far.

Specs comparison table

	Xiaomi 17	Pixel 10a
Battery	6300mAh	5100mAh
Chipset	Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5	Google Tensor G4
Front Camera	50MP	13MP
Operating System	Android 16	Android 16
Rear Camera	50MP + 50MP + 50MP	48MP + 13MP
Screen Size	6.3-inches	6.3-inches
Wired Charging	100W	45W
Wireless Charging	50W	10W
Manufacturer	Xiaomi	Google

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Price and Availability

The Pixel 10a is currently available for pre-order ahead of its official launch on March 5th. With a starting price of £499/$599, it’s the cheapest of the Pixel 10 series and comes in a choice between four colours including Lavender, Berry, Fog and Obsidian.

SQUIRREL_PLAYLIST_10208265

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Google Tensor G4

The Pixel 10a’s announcement was met with controversy, as Google has decided to kit the affordable smartphone with the 2025 Tensor G4 chip, rather than the newer Tensor G5 model. While this may not sound that surprising, as many manufacturers tend to use older chips on their cheaper smartphones, Google usually equipped its entire flagship series with the same chip. 

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Despite this disappointing choice, we should state that we found Tensor G4 to be a solid chip that offers speedy everyday performance. Although it didn’t receive very high benchmarking scores, this shouldn’t be surprising as the focus of all Google’s Tensor chips is AI performance over sheer power.

In comparison, the Xiaomi 17 runs on Qualcomm’s premium Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. Powering many of the best Android phones, in our experience with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 we’ve found the chip runs through everything from everyday scrolling to console gaming and even video editing with barely any stutter. Plus, and unsurprisingly, it achieves seriously high benchmark scores – especially when compared to Tensor G4. 

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Having said that, for everyday uses you really are unlikely to notice that much of a difference between the Xiaomi 17 and Pixel 10a. We’ll be sure to update this versus once we review both phones.

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Xiaomi 17 has a telephoto lens

With a main, ultrawide and 5x optical-zoom telephoto lenses – all 50MP – the Xiaomi 17’s Leica camera set-up promises to capture “true-to-life images even under the most challenging lighting conditions.” The specs undoubtedly sound promising, however if photography is important to you, then perhaps the Xiaomi 17 Ultra might be a better fit. 

Otherwise, the Pixel 10a sports a dual-camera set-up which is equipped with a 48MP main and a 13MP ultrawide. Although we’re yet to review the Pixel 10a, it’s the same hardware found in the Pixel 9a which we concluded was able to take detailed and vibrant images across most lighting conditions. In fact, we’ve often hailed the Pixel range as being some of the best camera phones as they deliver accurate results, thanks to Google’s excellent image processing.

While we would have preferred the Pixel 10a to see some hardware tweaks, it does benefit from a few new AI-powered photography tools including Camera Coach which offers guidance on how to take the perfect shot, based on your current shooting environment. 

Xiaomi 17 supports 100W charging

Although the Pixel 10a supports 45W charging, which Google promises should take the handset from 0-50% in about 30 minutes, the Xiaomi 17 is a clear winner thanks to its 100W support. 

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That’s not all, as although both support wireless charging, the Xiaomi 17 boasts 50W support. However, you will need to invest in a compatible wireless charger to actually see those speeds. In comparison, the Pixel 10a supports Qi charging up to just 10W.

Pixel 10a has more of Google’s AI features

One of the key selling points of the entire Pixel range is its plethora of AI features, many of which can be found on the Pixel 10a. These features include Gemini, Circle to Search and Live Translation, plus photo and video editing tools within the Photos app. 

However, that’s not to say the Xiaomi 17 is lacking in AI capabilities. In fact, you could argue that the Xiaomi 17 has found the sweet spot of AI features, with enough to be genuinely useful in everyday life, but not enough that it’s the only reason to opt for the handset. For example, like the Pixel 10a, the Xiaomi 17 has Circle to Search and access to Gemini too. 

Xiaomi 17 has a 1-120Hz refresh rate

The Xiaomi 17’s 6.3-inch OLED display boasts many premium screen technologies, including a 1-120Hz LTPO refresh rate, a peak brightness of 3500 nits and Xiaomi Shield Glass for scratch resistance. While the Pixel 10a also sports a 6.3-inch display, it’s instead fitted with a 60-120Hz refresh rate. This means it isn’t quite as energy efficient as the Xiaomi 17, which can drop down to just 1Hz when needed.

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Otherwise, the Pixel 10a promises a peak brightness of 3000 nits and is fitted with Corning’s 2024 Gorilla Glass 7i for screen protection.

Early Verdict

We’ll be sure to update this versus with more of a conclusive verdict once we review both handsets. However, at this early stage, if you want plenty of power, faster charging and a more varied camera set-up, then the Xiaomi 17 is certainly an appealing choice. 

On the other hand, if you’d prefer a stock-Android experience and want to play around with Google’s AI features, then the Pixel 10a remains a solid choice. Having said that, considering there aren’t many differences between the Pixel 10a and Pixel 9a, we’d argue that you could opt for the latter to save a bit of money.

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Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a diverse range of categories. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Put money on one option.

Green group hint: Happenings on an NFL field.

Blue group hint: Think Billie Jean King.

Purple group hint: Not a meadow, but …

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Bet.

Green group: Pre-snap football motions.

Blue group: Tennis racket brands.

Purple group: ____ field.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is bet. The four answers are gamble, risk, stake and wager.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is pre-snap football motions. The four answers are audible, hard count, motion and shift.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is tennis racket brands. The four answers are Babolat, Head, Prince and Wilson.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ field. The four answers are Progressive, right, Soldier and Wrigley.

Both IDC and Gartner are warning of declines of more than 10pc in smartphone and budget PC shipments in 2026 due to memory chip shortages.

Global smartphone shipments could decline by nearly 13pc year-on-year in 2026 to 1.1bn units, IDC warns in its quarterly mobile phone tracker, representing the biggest decline in more than 10 years.

Meanwhile, Gartner is warning that “soaring memory costs” could see a decline of 10.4pc in PC shipments worldwide, and it estimates smartphone shipments could fall by 8.4pc year-on-year.

Gartner is forecasting a 130pc surge in combined DRAM and solid-state drive (SSD) prices by the end of 2026, which it says could raise PC prices by 17pc and smartphone prices by 13pc compared to 2025.

“This is the steepest contraction in device shipments witnessed in over a decade,” said Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Higher prices will narrow the range of devices available, prompting buyers to hold on to devices for longer, fundamentally altering upgrade cycles.”

Indeed, Gartner expects PC lifetime to increase by 15pc for business buyers and 20pc for consumers by the end of 2026, and warns that the challenge of managing older devices could increase security vulnerabilities. It also warns that any projected surge in AI PCs will now be delayed.

IDC points out that its current forecast sees a sharp decline from its November forecast amid the “intensifying memory shortage crisis”.

“What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,” Francisco Jeronimo, VP for worldwide client devices at IDC, warned. “The global smartphone market, particularly Android manufacturers, faces a significant threat.”

Jeronimo goes on to say that it is the vendors at the lower end of the market that will suffer most, particularly in the Android space, while higher end makers like Apple and Samsung are better positioned to navigate the crisis. In fact, it could even allow them to expand their market share while others struggle, he said.

“We expect consolidation as smaller players exit, and low-end vendors face sharp shipment declines amid supply constraints and lower demand at higher price points,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

“Ultimately, we expect the sub-$500 entry-level PC segment will disappear by 2028,” said Gartner’s Atwal. “In addition, rising AI PC prices will delay the projected 50pc market penetration of AI PCs until 2028.”

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