Power
An Anduril Industries Sentry surveillance tower
An Anduril Industries Sentry surveillance tower (Simon Wohlfahrt/Getty Images)

OpenAI strikes deal with Anduril to bring its AI to the battlefield

Jon Keegan

Since the Biden administration gave the all clear for AI to be used in national security and defense, AI companies have been tripping over each other to announce their pivot to military applications.

In November, Palantir partnered with Anthropic to bring its Claude AI models to national-security applications via Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform.

Not to be left out of the rush to embed AI systems into battlefield defense and weapons systems, today OpenAI and defense contractor Anduril Industries announced a partnership that runs counter to a previous public policy about how OpenAI would allow its technology to be used.

In January, OpenAI quietly changed the language of its usage policy, removing a section that disallowed “Activity that has high risk of physical harm, including: Weapons development; Military and warfare.”

“Our partnership with Anduril will help ensure OpenAI technology protects U.S. military personnel, and will help the national security community understand and responsibly use this technology to keep our citizens safe and free,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the press release.

In a press release announcing the new partnership, Anduril said that OpenAI’s GPT-4o and OpenAI o1 models would be used in drone defense systems to identify airborne threats. The press release said:

“The Anduril and OpenAI strategic partnership will focus on improving the nation’s counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) and their ability to detect, assess and respond to potentially lethal aerial threats in real-time.”

Anduril Industries was founded by Palmer Luckey, founder and CEO of virtual-reality headset company Oculus, which was sold to Meta in 2014 for $2 billion.

Meta has also been pursuing national-security and defense contracts for its Llama 3 AI model.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Max Knoblauch

Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.

power
Jon Keegan

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmaker’s most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

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Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

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US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

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