Tech giants used the affordability of their services as a shield against scrutiny. In the AI era, that shield is breaking down, Issie Lapowsky reports.

Tech Policy Press fellow James Ball asks, how should we interact with a technology designed to ‘speak’ with us on what appear to be human terms?

New research suggests tech behind AI platforms such as ChatGPT makes it easier to perform sophisticated privacy attacks.

AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.

In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.

The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a “fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online”.

An article from the Advanced Communications Law and Policy (ACLP) Institute at the New York Law School claims that over 1 million locations were missed by the BEAD grants. They identified these as locations that are still shown as unserved and underserved on the FCC broadband maps, but which did not make it into the BEAD program.

ACLP also identified two other sources of locations that will likely not get broadband. They predict some BEAD defaults since a number of small and untested ISPs won sizable BEAD grants. They also believe there will continue to be defaults in other grant programs.

ACLP recommends that up to half of the $20 billion+ that will not be spent on BEAD grant be deposited into a BEAD Reserve Fund to be used to cover the shortfalls.

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2026 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration responded to a report that claimed to spot a major structural flaw in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program — a flaw that could cost billions. 

A report published by the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School said under rules set in June by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, 24 small internet service providers were chosen to receive a combined $2.5 billion to provide broadband to consumers. 

In response, the NTIA said it has reviewed the ISPs as part of BEAD, reduced permitting obstacles and made it clear that relying on future subsidies for broadband buildout was not allowed. 

Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

By 18 March ministers must deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation about the legal overhaul, against a backdrop of anger among creative professionals about how their work is being used by AI firms.

Nvidia is planning to launch an open-source platform for AI agents, people familiar with the company’s plans tell WIRED.

The chipmaker has been pitching the product, referred to as NemoClaw, to enterprise software companies. The platform will allow these companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their own workforces. Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their products run on Nvidia’s chips, sources say.

Starlink at this week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026 event touted sky-high plans to expand the capabilities of its satellite-based “Mobile” service, but U.S.-based telecom executives that might be on the other end of that competitive expansion told audiences at a Morgan Stanley investor conference that such satellite ambitions could be limited.

Michael Nicolls, SVP of SpaceX’s Starlink operations, told MWC attendees that the company’s Mobile service, which launched in 2024, recently surpassed 10 million subscribers. More significantly, the executive said the company was planning a second-generation constellation that would move service beyond simple text messaging and video calls to deliver “broadband capabilities to unmodified cell phones, reaching hundreds of millions, potentially more devices as we scale the constellation.”

Nicolls added that the company plans to begin launching the higher-performing second-generation Starlink satellites beginning next year, aiming to provide “terrestrial-like connectivity,” which he likened to looking and feeling like users are connected to a high-performing 5G terrestrial network.

Faster downloads. Lower latency. More bandwidth.

That framing made sense when demand was driven primarily by streaming, video conferencing, and cloud access. But today, speed alone no longer explains why fiber continues to attract capital, command long-term contracts, and outperform other infrastructure classes.

Something more fundamental is happening.

Fiber is quietly transitioning from a bandwidth product into a strategic platform.

Chris Winfrey told an investors conference the deal has FCC and Department of Justice clearances. Now Golden State regulators need to sign off on the $34.5 billion acquisition ahead of a key deadline.

The Claude chatbot developer says the Trump administration overstepped by escalating a contract dispute into a federal ban on the company’s technology.

Artificial intelligence is supercharging surveillance, and the law has not caught up with it. 

ACLP said small ISPs set to expand their markets drastically because of BEAD money may not have 'the bona fides' to meet their deployment commitments.

BEAD: Is NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth handing out BEAD program billions to a bunch of 99-pound ISP weaklings? That just might be the case. A new report Thursday could be the first yet to identify a major structural flaw in the $42.45 billion BEAD program, perhaps resulting in defaults that fleece taxpayers and deny thousands of consumers the robust broadband service they have been promised.

The report, prepared by Alex Karras and Michael Santorelli at the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School, identified 24 small ISPs that combined are set to receive $2.5 billion from BEAD under new rules established by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last June.

Today's guest has spent thirty years on the front lines of one of the defining battles at the intersection of technology and democracy: privacy and the fight for who controls your digital life.

Cindy Cohn is the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and she has been in the room for some of the most consequential fights over digital rights since the internet became part of everyday life—from fighting for encryption in the 90s, to the NSA mass surveillance revelations, to battling FBI gag orders that kept Americans in the dark about government data requests, and now for the fight against the grave civil rights and privacy abuses of the Trump administration.

Now, as she’s preparing to step down from her role at EFF, she's telling her story, and trying to recruit a new generation to the fight. Her new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, out March 10 from MIT Press, weaves her personal journey with the legal battles she's fought on behalf of whistleblowers, researchers, innovators, and everyday people.

Apple is now manufacturing 25% of its iPhones in India — hitting a milestone JPMorgan predicted back in 2022 — as part of its long-term plan to reduce its reliance on China, Bloomberg reported.

Last year, India accounted for 55 million iPhones of the roughly 220 million to 230 million produced worldwide, Bloomberg’s report said. Apple has also moved quickly to deepen that commitment: it began making the entire iPhone 17 lineup in India ahead of last September’s launch, and Apple CEO Tim Cook said the majority of U.S. demand is now fulfilled by India-made iPhones.

Last Wednesday, leading US tech companies gathered at the White House to sign a nonbinding, unenforceable pledge to offset the costs of their increasingly power-hungry data centers. Executives from Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and xAI made the trip to Washington D.C. as their companies’ gargantuan infrastructure projects face bipartisan backlash from coast to coast.

The pledge marks a significant shift in the political headwinds surrounding the tech industry’s AI hype-fueled race to build hyperscale data centers – and the energy infrastructure needed to power them. Last month, President Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, denied any connection between data center energy demand and higher utility bills. Just six months ago, the Trump administration was trumpeting its executive order to speed up data center construction and permitting.

Since Trump announced the “ratepayer protection pledge” during his State of the Union address, experts have been quick to point out the technical, logistical, and legal hurdles to the plan – which was already thin on details.

The United States and Israel launched a war in Iran last week that has already killed more than 1,200 Iranians and spilled out across the Middle East. There are many unknowns about US president Donald Trump’s goals as the conflict enters its second week and the situation seems poised to trigger an energy crisis with reverberations around the world.

Iran is in a nationwide internet shutdown with only the country’s regime-built intranet available, plunging Iranians into digital darkness and making it difficult for humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and others to disseminate information both inside and outside the country. As strikes on Tehran began last weekend, an apparently hacked prayer app sent messages saying “surrender” and “help is on the way” to Iranians around the country.

Meanwhile, GPS attacks like jamming—not to mention physical threats—are on the rise in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening shipping vessels. Security camera hacking has emerged as part of the playbook of war. And missile-intercept systems across the Middle East are under strain—and in some cases being destroyed in strikes.

In the rush to cash in on the generative artificial intelligence gold rush, one possible outcome of AI’s future rarely gets discussed: what if the technology never works well enough to replace your co-workers, companies fail to use AI well or most AI startups simply fail?

Current estimates suggest big AI firms face a US$800 billion dollar revenue shortfall.

So far, genAI’s productivity gains are minimal and mostly for programmers and copywriters. GenAI does some neat, helpful things, but it’s not yet the engine of a new economy.

It’s not a bad future, but it’s different from the one currently driving news headlines. And it’s a future that doesn’t fit the narrative AI firms want to tell. Hype fuels new rounds of investment promising massive future profits.

Maybe genAI will turn out to be worthless, and maybe that’s fine.

The Trump-linked spy firm could be paid millions to help the Department of Agriculture. Palantir, the Trump-connected spy-tech and AI firm, just scored a no-bid government contract potentially worth millions to help the Agriculture Department implement the White House’s divisive return-to-office directive.

Under the guise of national security, the highly “sensitive” tasks to be handled by the billion-dollar tech behemoth will include “employee seat assignments” and “space utilization.”

📺 The Streaming Mirage: Why Cord-Cutters Are Quietly Re-Corded Subtitle: Bundled streaming isn’t saving you money anymore—and the à la carte dream is costing Americans more than cable ever did. Introduction Remember when cutting the cord was supposed to set you free? No more bloated cable bills.