The latest edition of the Download newsletter opens with a profile of Ronald Deibert, a security researcher who takes extreme precautions to avoid digital surveillance when he travels. In April 2025, Ronald Deibert left all electronic devices at home in Toronto and boarded a plane, and when he landed in Illinois, he bought a new laptop and iPhone to minimize the chances that border agents could seize or tamper with his personal hardware. Deibert directs the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a research center he founded in 2001 as “counterintelligence for civil society,” which has become one of the few institutions that investigate cyberthreats solely in the public interest and has helped expose serious digital abuses over the past two decades. The piece notes that while Deibert and his colleagues long treated the US as a benchmark for liberal democracy, their view is changing as they document the expanding reach of state and commercial surveillance.
The newsletter then turns to climate and energy, spotlighting entries from the new 10 Breakthrough Technologies list that signal where climate technology is heading in 2026. For 25 years, MIT Technology Review has assembled this annual package to highlight technologies it expects will matter in the future, and this year’s list includes sodium-ion batteries, next-generation nuclear, and hyperscale artificial intelligence data centers as key climate and energy picks. The climate newsletter the Spark frames these choices as evidence of a moment when infrastructure for cleaner grids and more efficient storage is converging with the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence, and it promotes an upcoming subscriber-only roundtable on why artificial intelligence companies are betting heavily on advanced nuclear power.
A curated set of “must-reads” rounds up broader technology stories, with a strong focus on artificial intelligence and governance. One item notes that artificial intelligence companies are becoming deeply intertwined with the US military, with expectations that the relationship will tighten, while another flags open questions about the Pentagon’s push for generative artificial intelligence. Other links highlight Grok’s promise to comply with local laws after outrage over nonconsensual “undressing” images, and a Brookings Institution study arguing that the risks of using artificial intelligence in schools currently outweigh the benefits. The list also covers new US tariffs on high-end chips, a UK police force blaming Microsoft Copilot for an intelligence mistake after earlier denying any artificial intelligence use, and Bandcamp’s decision to ban purely artificial intelligence generated music. Additional stories touch on the search for a device behind Havana Syndrome, research that failed to prove social media time directly harms teens’ mental health, and the UK’s record wind farm plans for 2030. A quote from law professor Clare McGlynn underscores concerns that artificial intelligence is increasingly used to target women and girls, while a final feature examines how the Science Based Targets initiative has quietly become a central arbiter of corporate climate action, drawing both praise and scrutiny as its influence grows.
