In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for the contract. The project follows the LaGuardia crash that exposed controller overwork and aging systems, and sits within a $32.5 billion modernisation programme as the agency replaces 612 outdated radar systems and recruits 1,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026.

The Federal Aviation Administration is building an AI system called SMART that would allow air traffic controllers to predict and resolve flight conflicts up to two hours before they happen, replacing a planning window that currently extends just 15 minutes. Three companies are competing for the contract: Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the project and the three bidders on 17 April, with a press event scheduled for 21 April to provide further details.

SMART, which stands for Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, uses high-fidelity 4D modelling to anticipate bottlenecks and schedule conflicts before aircraft leave the ground. The system would shift air traffic management from reactive to predictive, addressing the fundamental problem that the current infrastructure was designed for a lower volume of flights and relies on controllers making real-time decisions with limited forward visibility. The FAA has said the system could be operational in some form later this year.

The three bidders

Palantir Technologies brings the deepest government relationship of the three. The company’s revenue guidance for 2026 is approximately $7.2 billion, representing 61% growth, driven by a $10 billion ceiling-value Army contract signed in July 2025 and expanding partnerships with GE Aerospace and Airbus. Its government revenue grew 70% year over year in Q4 2025. Palantir’s pitch for aviation AI is an extension of its core business: ingesting vast quantities of operational data and presenting it in decision-support interfaces that government users can act on without needing to understand the underlying models.

Thales, the European aerospace and defence firm, has more than 85 years of supplying air traffic management systems to the FAA and the Department of Defense. More than 99% of instrument landing systems at US airports use Thales equipment. The company’s TopSky platform is already embedded in the aviation infrastructure that SMART would need to integrate with, giving it an incumbent advantage that the other two bidders lack.

Air Space Intelligence, a Boston-based startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, is the smallest competitor but arguably the most relevant. Its Flyways AI platform already manages over 40% of all US air traffic through partnerships with major airlines, using the same kind of 4D modelling and optimisation that SMART requires. ASI recently announced a partnership with Joby Aviation to integrate electric air taxis into the national airspace, positioning the company at the intersection of current air traffic management and the next generation of aviation.

Why this matters now

The urgency behind SMART is not abstract. On 22 March, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck on the runway at LaGuardia Airport. The investigation found that the air traffic controller involved was simultaneously serving as tower controller and clearance delivery controller, and that the automated runway safety system failed to alert because it could not create a confident track when vehicles merged near the runway. The incident crystallised a problem that the aviation industry has been warning about for years: controllers are overworked, the technology they rely on is outdated, and the margin for error is shrinking as traffic volumes increase.

The FAA has received $12.5 billion from Congress for air traffic control modernisation and estimates it needs an additional $20 billion to complete the overhaul. The agency is replacing 612 outdated radar systems, migrating its NOTAM system to a cloud-based platform, and recruiting controllers at an accelerated pace, having hired nearly 1,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026 so far, roughly half its annual target. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, who was confirmed by Congress and sworn in last July, has made SMART a central pillar of the modernisation programme.

DOGE, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, has also inserted itself into FAA operations. DOGE personnel have visited air traffic control facilities to evaluate operations, and Musk has said the initiative will make “rapid safety upgrades” to air traffic control systems. A separate initiative called Project Lift is directing FAA funds toward upgrading network communications. DOGE is scheduled to end operations on 4 July, though a successor entity will continue.

The contract dynamics

The competition between Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence reflects three distinct approaches to government AI procurement. Palantir offers a platform that can be configured for any government use case, backed by extensive security clearances and institutional relationships. Thales offers domain expertise and an installed base that no competitor can match. ASI offers a purpose-built aviation AI platform that is already handling a significant portion of the traffic the FAA is trying to manage.

The FAA’s history with technology modernisation is not encouraging. The agency’s last major technology overhaul, the NextGen programme, took more than a decade and cost billions more than originally projected. The air traffic control workforce has been resistant to automation that threatens to change established workflows, and procurement timelines in government aviation are measured in years, not months. SMART’s promise that it could be operational later this year suggests either a genuinely compressed timeline or a demonstration version that falls short of full deployment.

For Palantir, the FAA contract would extend its government portfolio into a critical civilian agency and support the revenue growth trajectory that has made it the most expensive stock in the S&P 500 at roughly 120 times sales. For Thales, it would modernise a relationship that has sustained its US aviation business for decades. For Air Space Intelligence, it would validate an approach that has already proven itself in the commercial aviation sector and position the company as a central piece of national airspace infrastructure.

The stakes are higher than any individual contract. The US air traffic control system manages roughly 45,000 flights per day across the most complex airspace in the world. The controllers who run it are stretched thin, the technology they use predates the smartphone, and the safety margins that have made commercial aviation extraordinarily safe are being tested by volume growth, staffing shortages, and the kind of cascading failures that the LaGuardia incident exposed. SMART is a bet that AI can close the gap between what the system was designed to handle and what it is being asked to do. The question is whether any of the three companies competing for it can deliver on that promise at the speed the FAA now requires.

Ring is rolling out a new feature designed to make its doorbell alerts a lot more useful. It also makes them a bit more personal.

Called Familiar Faces, it replaces generic notifications like “Person detected” with named alerts such as “Mum at Front Door.” As a result, you know exactly who’s outside without opening the app.

The feature is launching for 2K, 4K and select HD Ring devices in the UK, and it’s entirely opt-in. Once enabled, your camera starts detecting faces. It lets you build a personal directory of up to 50 people, from family members to frequent visitors like dog walkers or babysitters. From there, notifications become more tailored including the option to mute alerts for people you see all the time.

As this product isn’t available, consider this a hands-on, as between now and its release, some of the issues I’ll talk about might well be fixed.

Punkt. is a Swiss company that manufactures in Germany, and the MC03, as the name suggests, is the third iteration of its secure, minimalist phone design.

In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of finding thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities. The meeting signals a thaw in the standoff that began when the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to drop safety restrictions, though any deal would likely exclude the Defence Department and route Mythos access through civilian agencies.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei walked into the West Wing on Friday for a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The White House described the conversation as “introductory, productive, and constructive,” saying the three discussed “opportunities for collaboration, as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology.” President Trump later told reporters he had “no idea” the meeting had taken place.

The meeting is the most significant step toward resolving a standoff that has left one of the most important AI companies in the world blacklisted by its own government while that same government scrambles to gain access to its most powerful model. If the two sides reach a deal, it will likely exclude the Pentagon entirely, routing Mythos access through civilian agencies that are not party to the original dispute.

How we got here

The conflict began in late February when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that Anthropic grant the Pentagon unfettered access to its AI models for “all lawful purposes,” including autonomous weapons systems and domestic surveillance. Amodei refused. He has said publicly that Anthropic wants to work with the military, but that AI models are not yet reliable enough for autonomous weapons and that US law has not caught up to protect Americans around AI’s use in mass surveillance. Hegseth’s response was to designate Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk, a classification previously reserved for companies associated with foreign adversaries, effectively blacklisting it from all government contracts.

Anthropic sued the Trump administration in early March, filing two federal lawsuits alleging illegal retaliation. A federal judge initially blocked the blacklisting, but an appeals court reversed that decision on 8 April. Anthropic is now excluded from Department of Defense contracts but can still work with other government agencies. After the court ruling went against it, Anthropic hired Trumpworld consultants to facilitate a political resolution, and Axios reported that Friday’s meeting was designed to pave the way toward a deal.

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The paradox that brought Amodei to the White House is that Anthropic announced Mythos on 7 April, ten days after losing its appeal, and the model turned out to be something the government could not ignore.

What Mythos can do

Mythos is a general-purpose AI model that, during testing, proved capable of identifying and exploiting thousands of previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser. It found flaws that had survived decades of human security review. When directed to develop working exploits, it succeeded on the first attempt in more than 83% of cases. It is the first AI model to complete a 32-step corporate network attack simulation from start to finish. The UK’s AI Security Institute evaluated it as “substantially more capable at cyber offence than any model previously assessed.” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said publicly that it “reveals a lot more vulnerabilities” for cyberattacks. The Council on Foreign Relations called it “an inflection point for AI and global security.”

Anthropic chose not to release Mythos publicly. Instead, it created Project Glasswing, a controlled access programme providing the model to roughly 40 vetted organisations, including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and JPMorgan Chase, to find and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. The company committed up to $100 million in Mythos usage credits and $4 million to open-source security organisations. The decision to restrict rather than release is a direct application of the safety principles that put Anthropic in conflict with the Pentagon in the first place.

What each side wants

The Treasury Department is seeking Mythos to hunt for vulnerabilities in its own systems. Parts of the intelligence community and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are already testing it. The White House Office of Management and Budget is setting up protections to allow federal agencies to use a controlled version. Bessent’s presence at Friday’s meeting signals that the economic and financial security arguments for Mythos access have reached the most senior levels of the administration.

Anthropic needs the blacklisting resolved. Not because it needs Pentagon revenue; the company’s annualised revenue has reached $30 billion, it has attracted investor offers at an $800 billion valuation, and it is exploring an IPO. But the supply-chain risk designation damages its enterprise credibility and creates uncertainty for every government-adjacent customer. What Amodei wants is a resolution that restores his company’s standing without surrendering the safety commitments that provoked the dispute.

The outlines of a compromise are visible. Anthropic would provide Mythos access for defensive cybersecurity purposes through civilian agencies. The administration would withdraw or narrow the supply-chain risk designation. The Pentagon would remain excluded unless a separate process for reviewing specific military use cases can be agreed. Both sides have incentives: Anthropic because the blacklisting is commercially damaging, and the White House because the technology is too valuable to forgo.

The pressure from abroad

The diplomatic dimension adds urgency. Anthropic is planning to provide Mythos to select British banks within days and is quadrupling its London office to 800 staff. The Bank of England’s Governor Andrew Bailey named Mythos as a cybersecurity risk in a speech at Columbia University on 15 April, and the Bank’s Cross Market Operational Resilience Group is convening an emergency briefing with the CEOs of the UK’s eight largest banks and representatives from the Treasury, the FCA, and the National Cyber Security Centre. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne described Mythos as an “unknown unknown” at IMF meetings.

The result is a situation in which America’s closest allies may have access to a critical national security tool before the US government does. That geopolitical reality gives the White House an incentive to resolve the dispute that transcends the original disagreement over safety guardrails. Bessent, whose Treasury Department is one of the agencies most eager for Mythos access, presumably made this point in Friday’s meeting.

What Friday means

The word “introductory” in the White House readout is carefully chosen. It signals that Wiles and Bessent are opening a channel, not closing a deal. The litigation is still active. The appeals court ruling still stands. Hegseth has not withdrawn his position. But the fact that the White House Chief of Staff and the Treasury Secretary sat down with the CEO of a company the Pentagon has blacklisted, and described the conversation as productive, represents a shift in the administration’s posture that would have been difficult to imagine six weeks ago.

Amodei built the most capable cybersecurity tool in existence as a byproduct of building a general-purpose AI model, then restricted its release on safety grounds, then was punished by the government for maintaining those same safety principles, and is now being courted by that government because the tool cannot be replicated or replaced. That sequence is playing out not in a congressional hearing or a regulatory proceeding but in a room in the West Wing where the most powerful chief of staff in a generation, the Treasury Secretary, and the CEO of an AI company are trying to find a formula that satisfies national security, commercial reality, and the safety principles that started the whole fight. Friday did not produce that formula. But it established that everyone in the room wants one.