US policymakers appear open to reversing some China technology bans as part of a broader reassessment of export controls, even as other officials demand a “great wall” to keep advanced chipmaking gear out of China and warn allies that failing to align on restrictions could trigger US component curbs. Concerns over foreign cyber operations remain prominent, with Google reporting that China’s APT31 used Gemini to plan cyberattacks against US organizations, while Singapore disclosed that it spent 11 months booting China-linked snoops out of telco networks in an effort involving 100-plus staff across government and industry. Regional internet bodies including APNIC and AFRINIC highlight how multistakeholder governance and new protections for registries are evolving amid these tensions.
Artificial Intelligence adoption is accelerating across sectors, prompting both optimism and alarm. OpenAI hired OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger to build personal agents that are expected to be “core to OpenAI product offerings,” while ServiceNow acquired a small Artificial Intelligence analytics company as a “tuck in” deal despite earlier vows to avoid “large scale” M&A. Multiple stories described how Artificial Intelligence is being woven into operations, from T-Mobile’s network-wide real-time translation, to British Army plans under Project ASGARD, to corporate experiments where Artificial Intelligence helped vastly reduce stress during IPv6 migrations. At the same time, Gartner warned that misconfigured Artificial Intelligence could trigger the next national infrastructure meltdown, and a study found Artificial Intelligence spurs employees to work harder, faster, and with fewer breaks, turning what starts as a fun tool into an unrelenting taskmaster.
Infrastructure and energy systems are straining under the Artificial Intelligence boom. Only one in five Euro datacenters is judged Artificial Intelligence-ready as builders wrestle with land, labor, skills shortages, and grid bottlenecks, even as Frankfurt is forecast to dethrone London as colocation king by 2031 when Artificial Intelligence and sovereignty considerations shift capacity. US initiatives are pushing colocated nuclear reactors and datacenters, and Amazon-backed X-Energy received a green light for mini reactor fuel production as it expects to complete construction of its first fuel plant later this year. Investors continued to bankroll frontier-model vendors, with one Anthropic funding round seeing investors shove another $30B into the Anthropic money furnace at a $380B valuation for a company that is yet to turn a profit, while memory price explosions, liquid cooling demand, and telecom hardware cost spikes underscored how Artificial Intelligence infrastructure is reverberating through broadband rollouts and datacenter economics.
Security incidents and privacy concerns reflect the same convergence of networks, software, and Artificial Intelligence agents. US authorities alleged an infosec executive sold eight zero-day exploit kits to Russia, while attackers finally began exploiting a critical Microsoft bug from 2024 and Microsoft’s Valentine’s Day patch drop fixed 6 exploited zero-days. Researchers warned that 30+ Chrome extensions disguised as Artificial Intelligence chatbots were stealing users’ API keys and emails, another 287 Chrome extensions were flogging browser history to data brokers with 37M installs leaking visited URLs to 30+ recipients, and Artificial Intelligence agents could spill secrets simply by previewing malicious links in messaging apps through zero-click prompt injection. Supply chain attacks were described as fueling a “self-reinforcing” cybercrime economy, payroll pirates conned help desks to redirect paychecks, and a breach at a supplier left nearly 17,000 Volvo staff exposed via compromised benefits records.
Consumer platforms and regulators are reacting unevenly to this environment. Apple patched a decade-old iOS zero-day possibly exploited by commercial spyware targeting specific individuals, while also rolling out a Creator Studio subscription where free apps once lived, provoking backlash. UK regulators extracted commitments from Apple and Google to loosen their grip on app stores, and the UK government revealed it is not spending much taxpayer cash on X, with the Department for Education dropping £27,118 while other departments spent little to nothing. In telecoms, Cisco hiked prices to offset memory cost rises while insisting customers would not care, telco gear shortages from an Artificial Intelligence memory frenzy pushed router and set-top box prices up nearly sevenfold, and the UK unveiled a telecoms charter to curb mid-contract bill shocks, albeit without strong legal teeth to enforce it.
Across the public sector, Artificial Intelligence and data strategies are becoming central political issues. Trump’s Genesis Mission set out 26 objectives as the Department of Energy bets Artificial Intelligence can speed fusion research, unlock decades of nuclear data, and probe fundamental physics, while another policy speech from Trump framed a stance that hyperscalers must fund their own datacenter power bills instead of shifting costs onto local communities. In the UK, lawmakers grilled ministers over an Afghan data breach tied to legacy systems as officials promised no repeat, a union representing 200,000 doctors urged clinicians to shun Palantir’s NHS data platform due to trust concerns over the firm’s ICE work, and the Ministry of Defence advertised for a £300K digital leader to manage £4.6B in IT and Artificial Intelligence strategy spend. Local officials in Edinburgh blocked a “green” Artificial Intelligence datacenter over emissions fears despite planning support, signaling growing resistance to Artificial Intelligence infrastructure when climate and public trust considerations are at stake.
