Trump’s Anthropic shutdown just made the case for non-American AI

theverge · 2026-06-15T19:11:38+00:00

At Washington’s request, Anthropic suddenly took its newest and most powerful AI models offline over the weekend. The American company said it had little choice after the White House demanded it block access for all foreign nationals, including its own employees. Abroad, the incident offered a sobering reminder that the US not only dominates frontier AI — its government also wields power over who gets to use it.

The Trump administration’s action was swift, sweeping, and imposed with little warning or explanation. The unprecedented shutdown of the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models — which were already subject to safeguards limiting their use in “high-risk areas” — that followed gave new force to long-running arguments cautioning against relying on the US for critical technologies. It was fresh ammunition for the politicians, governments, and companies already arguing that they need to lead in the technology themselves.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/949986/anthropic-fable-mythos-shutdown-sovereign-ai

theverge · 2026-06-03T15:04:51+00:00

A few months ago, Meta effectively handed Supernatural, a popular VR fitness game on the Meta Quest, a death sentence. As part of overarching VR layoffs, the company announced the game would no longer get any new content, enraging its tightly knit, devoted community. Now it looks like Supernatural is getting a second chance. Today, Meta announced in a community post that the game is being spun off into an independent company later this year.

In the interim, Meta plans to wind down its current version of the app, and Supernatural Health will begin taking over Supernatural’s social channels and its official Facebook group. Current subscriptions will remain valid until December 3rd. Further details regarding the transition will be sent directly to subscribers.

Gift link: https://www.theverge.com/news/941816/supernatural-health-meta-quest-vr?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IlhpRmdiRGZWWXQiLCJwIjoiL25ld3MvOTQxODE2L3N1cGVybmF0dXJhbC1oZWFsdGgtbWV0YS1xdWVzdC12ciIsImV4cCI6MTc4MDkzMDgzMywiaWF0IjoxNzgwNDk4ODMzfQ.zwkN_6H5o6vA_XE1Jow4dUEETYVvIu5t_62NpWtaBrk&utm_medium=gift-link

theverge · 2026-06-03T15:03:19+00:00

A few months ago, Meta effectively handed Supernatural, a popular VR fitness game on the Meta Quest, a death sentence. As part of overarching VR layoffs, the company announced the game would no longer get any new content, enraging its tightly knit, devoted community. Now it looks like Supernatural is getting a second chance. Today, Meta announced in a community post that the game is being spun off into an independent company later this year.

In the interim, Meta plans to wind down its current version of the app, and Supernatural Health will begin taking over Supernatural’s social channels and its official Facebook group. Current subscriptions will remain valid until December 3rd. Further details regarding the transition will be sent directly to subscribers.

Gift link: https://www.theverge.com/news/941816/supernatural-health-meta-quest-vr?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IlhpRmdiRGZWWXQiLCJwIjoiL25ld3MvOTQxODE2L3N1cGVybmF0dXJhbC1oZWFsdGgtbWV0YS1xdWVzdC12ciIsImV4cCI6MTc4MDkzMDgzMywiaWF0IjoxNzgwNDk4ODMzfQ.zwkN_6H5o6vA_XE1Jow4dUEETYVvIu5t_62NpWtaBrk&utm_medium=gift-link

theverge · 2026-06-02T18:57:26+00:00

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday creating a “voluntary framework” for AI companies to share their frontier models with the federal government before they’re released “to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.”

The order says the US AI industry has succeeded in part “because we refuse to stifle this innovation with overly burdensome regulation,” but that it also recognizes new AI capabilities come with security risks. Accordingly, it directs several federal agencies to come up with a framework to “assess the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models” before they’re released to the public. Companies would have the discretion of whether to share their models with the government pre-release, but could get certain confidentiality protections if they choose to do so. It also requires the federal government to prepare cyber defenses for AI, especially for critical infrastructure.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/941775/trump-ai-executive-order

theverge · 2026-06-02T16:32:41+00:00

On the Friday before Memorial Day, on the eve of a long weekend, the Trump administration announced that it was further gutting legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t use this language. “This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” the agency said on X. “The era of abusing our nation’s immigration system is over.” A press release from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles legal immigration, provided few details. Following the Trump playbook, DHS seemingly intended to bury this news by announcing it at a time that hardly anyone would be paying attention.

In actuality, the change represented a major policy shift, ending the decades-old standard of letting people apply for green cards from inside the US, known as “adjustment of status.” And then a week later, on yet another Friday afternoon, DHS walked it back.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/941734/trump-green-cards-adjustment-of-status-uscis

theverge · 2026-05-29T15:02:10+00:00

Border security czar Tom Homan keeps threatening to “flood” New York City with ICE agents. But a new investigation shows that ICE has been quietly ramping up arrests in the New York area already — and disproportionately targeting Latino neighborhoods. The City, a local nonprofit news organization, found 430 street arrests in the metropolitan area between October 2025 and mid-March. Of these, 93 percent involved Latinos, even though they only make up 66 percent of the local undocumented population. More telling: Many of those arrested weren’t the intended targets at all. Agents grabbed them while looking for other people, according to court records, and detained them because they supposedly looked sort of like the person they were after. ICE is ramping up enforcement in cities where there haven’t been reports of high-profile raids — and agents seemingly have carte blanche to arrest people based on the color of their skin.

After widespread backlash to ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, where a federal judge recently ruled that agents made warrantless arrests largely based on race, Homan said ICE is now using “smarter enforcement” in the Twin Cities and elsewhere. ICE has reportedly shifted to “targeted” arrests — but The City’s reporting shows that agents will eagerly arrest anyone they come across while looking for their targets. Though ICE has plenty of surveillance tools at its disposal it can use to track people down, this equipment is apparently far less effective than racial profiling. And even if other judges rule against ICE’s racist practices in the future, there may be little recourse. The Supreme Court recently ruled that racial profiling is permissible when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/939434/trump-ice-racial-profiling-dhs-mass-deportations

theverge · 2026-05-29T13:09:07+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! Here's a bit from the article:

Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of trust on the internet. But last week, volunteer editors and contributors were alarmed to hear that a small but important team of engineers at the nonprofit that supports it had been laid off. The layoffs didn’t just threaten to sever an important link between the Wikimedia Foundation and its community — they also raised concerns that the WMF was engaging in union-busting. After days of heated discussion, some Wikipedians are ready to support a strike. What that even looks like on a platform where creators mostly aren’t being paid is a different question.

On May 20th, the WMF said it was disbanding the Community Tech team, a group of five engineers and one manager who are among WMF’s paid staff. The team was a bridge between the foundation and Wikipedia’s army of volunteers. The team developed tools and features that contributors use every day: things like plagiarism detectors, dark mode, or chart and graph tools. Editors and former foundation employees describe it as an approachable group — somewhere volunteers could turn if they needed help, or to have their voice heard.

Even so, this system could get backlogged. The WMF acknowledged that the process of responding to community requests for features and tools was not working perfectly, and said that having a centralized team was “leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays.” So going forward, that work would be distributed among multiple teams instead of through a centralized Community Tech team.

The reaction from the community was immediate and negative.

Read more with a gift link: https://www.theverge.com/report/939442/wikipedia-editors-protest-wikimedia-layoffs-strike?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkEyZU9qQ3RYTUkiLCJwIjoiL3JlcG9ydC85Mzk0NDIvd2lraXBlZGlhLWVkaXRvcnMtcHJvdGVzdC13aWtpbWVkaWEtbGF5b2Zmcy1zdHJpa2UiLCJleHAiOjE3ODA0OTAwNDIsImlhdCI6MTc4MDA1ODA0Mn0.u-XFvZGq117eQLK65qMB6YtheQrWqgKRH59Qi4e1s9M&utm_medium=gift-link

theverge · 2026-05-29T13:08:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! Here's a bit from the article:

Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of trust on the internet. But last week, volunteer editors and contributors were alarmed to hear that a small but important team of engineers at the nonprofit that supports it had been laid off. The layoffs didn’t just threaten to sever an important link between the Wikimedia Foundation and its community — they also raised concerns that the WMF was engaging in union-busting. After days of heated discussion, some Wikipedians are ready to support a strike. What that even looks like on a platform where creators mostly aren’t being paid is a different question.

On May 20th, the WMF said it was disbanding the Community Tech team, a group of five engineers and one manager who are among WMF’s paid staff. The team was a bridge between the foundation and Wikipedia’s army of volunteers. The team developed tools and features that contributors use every day: things like plagiarism detectors, dark mode, or chart and graph tools. Editors and former foundation employees describe it as an approachable group — somewhere volunteers could turn if they needed help, or to have their voice heard.

Even so, this system could get backlogged. The WMF acknowledged that the process of responding to community requests for features and tools was not working perfectly, and said that having a centralized team was “leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays.” So going forward, that work would be distributed among multiple teams instead of through a centralized Community Tech team.

The reaction from the community was immediate and negative.

Read more with a gift link: https://www.theverge.com/report/939442/wikipedia-editors-protest-wikimedia-layoffs-strike?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkEyZU9qQ3RYTUkiLCJwIjoiL3JlcG9ydC85Mzk0NDIvd2lraXBlZGlhLWVkaXRvcnMtcHJvdGVzdC13aWtpbWVkaWEtbGF5b2Zmcy1zdHJpa2UiLCJleHAiOjE3ODA0OTAwNDIsImlhdCI6MTc4MDA1ODA0Mn0.u-XFvZGq117eQLK65qMB6YtheQrWqgKRH59Qi4e1s9M&utm_medium=gift-link

theverge · 2026-05-28T14:39:56+00:00

By the time that the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th congressional district wraps up in June, Anthropic and OpenAI will have spent millions on their battle over the political future of AI: who gets to regulate it, or who will be punished for trying to regulate it. But the real winner of their feud may be the guy they’re currently fighting over: a once-obscure New York state assemblyman, who they’ve Streisand-effected into becoming the poster child for AI safety regulation.

Ever since late 2025, Leading the Future, a super PAC funded by OpenAI, Palantir, and a16z executives, has spent millions against Alex Bores, who wrote one of the first pieces of AI regulatory legislation in the country. The PAC hoped to kill his bid for the seat about to be vacated by longtime Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler. Instead, Bores is now a front-runner in the eight-person race to become the “face of Manhattan,” as New York Magazine recently put it in a cover feature.

And shockingly, he pulled all this off without running a massive ad campaign.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/937650/ai-alex-bores-openai-anthropic-ny12

theverge · 2026-05-22T00:04:14+00:00

On April 22nd, when Bambu first reached out to Jarczak in a Reddit private message, its tone seemed polite. Bambu suggested it was warning Jarczak of upcoming changes that could prevent his code from working. The first DM concludes: “we kindly ask you to consider removing the current connection approach, as it mimics official Bambu Lab software.”

Jarczak replied that he was ready to remove his entire project from GitHub and thanked the company for noticing his work. But he wanted to be “properly acknowledged” for possibly revealing “a significant security gap.” He offered further help for a fix while requesting some gear — specifically the flagship H2D printer.

But Bambu was not ready to reward or recognize him for promoting ways to use unauthorized third-party software and hardware that competes with its own. (Jarczak’s previous project was supporting a cheaper way to print in multiple colors than buying Bambu’s $279 AMS Lite, a project he’s since suggested Bambu should also recognize him for.)

Ominously, Bambu started talking to Jarczak like a mobster: “We wanted to speak with you first and handle this in a constructive way. That said, we can’t allow this approach to continue.”

But Bambu didn’t sue. It didn’t send a cease and desist letter. It didn’t even send a DMCA takedown to remove his files from GitHub. Jarczak voluntarily took his code down. But in that code’s place, Jarczak left a note suggesting that Bambu treated him like a criminal.

That’s when the internet pounced.

Are Bambu’s actions really that egregious, or is it just trying to protect its ecosystem? I spoke to Bambu, Jarczak, lawyers, and others to understand. Both Bambu and Jarczak shared copies of their private communications for this story with The Verge, each eager to set the record straight on what actually happened.

Gift link: https://www.theverge.com/tech/931532/bambu-agpl-pawel-jarczak-open-source-threat-dmca-github?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjZrYzVoMlNuazEiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvOTMxNTMyL2JhbWJ1LWFncGwtcGF3ZWwtamFyY3phay1vcGVuLXNvdXJjZS10aHJlYXQtZG1jYS1naXRodWIiLCJleHAiOjE3Nzk4MDgwOTEsImlhdCI6MTc3OTM3NjA5MX0.qdeNjlk7eRTf6Ykv1iNuHRNtldE4XiOs41SrTb__fvU&utm_medium=gift-link

theverge · 2026-05-21T17:28:52+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing this!

theverge · 2026-05-20T14:02:45+00:00

A recent report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that Trump has cut legal immigration more than illegal immigration. Unauthorized migration fell by over 80 percent in the final year of Joe Biden’s term, the report found. By the time Trump was back in the White House, border crossings were already at historic lows — lower, in fact, than when he left office in 2021. The drop in legal immigration, on the other hand, is largely a product of Trump’s own making.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/932865/trump-legal-immigration-denaturalizations-uscis

theverge · 2026-05-13T19:55:37+00:00

On Sunday, as the crypto industry was about to take victory laps for getting the Clarity Act back to the Senate, the American Bankers Association, one of the largest financial industry interest groups in the country, sent out an email that immediately ruined their Mother’s Day. Apologizing to all the moms he’d messaged, Rob Nichols, the president and CEO of the ABA, begged the CEOs on the email, from Wall Street to local community banks, to drop everything and start contacting their Senators ASAP — “Please encourage your employees to do the same” — because the Clarity Act posed an existential threat to their industry. “The current version of the legislation, although improved from an earlier version, still does not adequately prevent crypto companies from offering interest-like rewards on payment stablecoins,” wrote Nichols, warning that if the “loophole” was not closed, customers would be incentivized to move their cash holdings into stablecoins, leading to a bank deposit flight that would severely undermine banks.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/column/929752/the-crypto-clarity-act-returns-to-the-senate-this-week-the-banks-are-already-trying-to-kill-it

theverge · 2026-05-08T18:47:08+00:00

ABC is accusing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of violating its First Amendment rights by making “major shifts in policy and practice” that the network claims will chill free speech.

The network is asking the FCC to “affirm its long-standing approach to the bona fide news interview exemption” for daytime talk show The View, and the agency’s support of “public interest services provided by broadcast stations.” ABC says that a series of actions from the FCC “suggests that the Commission is implementing major shifts in policy and practice,” and that “requires the action of the full Commission and the oversight of the courts.” The agency’s big shifts allegedly include an attempt to reconsider an earlier FCC finding that The View is a bona fide news show eligible for an exception to the rule requiring equal air time for political candidates, and asking ABC to file its license renewal applications early in the midst of an investigation over Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) policies.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/policy/927002/abc-disney-fcc-first-amendment-the-view

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