Jonathan Gould will return to the OCC as Comptroller of the Currency to serve a five-year term following his nomination by US President Donald Trump.
Nicholas Truglia was initially sentenced to 18 months behind bars for carrying out SIM-swapping attacks against crypto investors.
Ether price rallied to $3,000, but the key components needed to hold the level are still missing.
This raises real questions around how “maximally truth-seeking” Grok is designed to be, versus how much it’s designed to just agree with Musk, the world’s richest man.
Read more Tesla has applied for a permit to test and deploy autonomous vehicles in Arizona. It’s also eyeing expansion in Austin, Texas, and California.
Read more Amazon Web Services is launching an AI agent marketplace and Anthropic is one of its partners.
Read more TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is the epicenter where 10,000+ startup and VC leaders gather to explore the future of innovation — and this year, two AI Stages bring the intersection of design and machine learning into sharp focus. We’re thrilled to welcome Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, co-founder and chief design officer at Runway, to one of the […]
Read more This isn’t your typical venture panel. Expect sharp insights on how to cut through the noise, structure your raise, and build relationships that last beyond a term sheet. Whether you’re gearing up for your first round or advising a founder who is, this is the TC Disrupt session you don’t want to miss.
Read more This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
This tool strips away anti-AI protections from digital art
The news: A new technique called LightShed will make it harder for artists to use existing protective tools to stop their work from being ingested for AI training. It’s the next step in a cat-and-mouse game—across technology, law, and culture—that has been going on between artists and AI proponents for years.
How it works: Protective tools like Glaze and Nightshade change enough pixels to affect an image, so if it’s scraped up by AI models, they see it as something it’s not. LightShed essentially works by spotting just the “poison” on poisoned images. To be clear, the researchers behind it aren’t trying to steal artists’ work. They just don’t want people to get a false sense of security. Read the full story.
—Peter Hall
Why the AI moratorium’s defeat may signal a new political era
The “Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 was chock full of controversial policies. But one highly contested provision was missing. Just days earlier, during a late-night voting session, the Senate had killed the bill’s 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation.
The bipartisan vote was seen as a victory by many, and may signal a bigger political shift, with a broader and more diverse coalition in favor of AI regulation starting to form. After years of relative inaction, politicians are getting concerned about the risks of unregulated artificial intelligence. Read the full story.
—Grace Huckins
China’s energy dominance in three charts
China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today. It’s pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into putting renewable sources like wind and solar, manufacturing millions of electric vehicles, and building out capacity for energy storage, nuclear power, and more. This investment has been transformational for the country’s economy and has contributed to establishing China as a major player in global politics.
So while we all try to get our heads around what’s next for climate tech in the US and beyond, let’s look at just how dominant China is when it comes to clean energy, as documented in three charts. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X
She managed to last almost exactly two years reporting to owner Elon Musk. (Axios)
+ She was planning to leave before Grok’s anti-Semitic rants, apparently. (NYT $)
+ Turkey has banned Grok after it insulted President Erdoğan. (Politico)
2 OpenAI is planning to release its own web browser
If it works out, it’ll give it the same advantage as Google: direct ownership over users’ data. (Reuters $)
+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)
3 McDonald’s hiring chatbot exposed millions of applicants’ data to hackers
Adding the insult of carelessness to an already pretty dystopian process! (Wired $)
4 AI-generated images of child sexual abuse are proliferating online
This is going to make an already very hard job for law enforcement even harder. (NYT $)
5 Autonomous fighter jets are on the horizon
European defense start-up Helsing just completed two successful test flights. (FT $)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)
6 What happened to all the human bird flu cases?
Since February, the CDC has not recorded a single new case in the US. (Undark)
7 An interstellar object is cruising through the solar system
And it’s giving astronomers a chance to test out early theories of interstellar-object-ology (yes, that’s what it’s called!) (The Economist $)
+ Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Apple is planning its first upgrade to its Vision Pro headset
But no matter what upgrades it’s got, it’s going to be a real struggle to revive its flagging fortunes. (Bloomberg $)
9 Where have all the mundane social media posts gone?
Normies used to be what made social media good. We miss them and their photos of their breakfasts. (New Yorker $)
+ It’s heartening to see that ‘missed connection’ posts are making a comeback, though. (The Guardian)
10 A global shortage is turning MatchaTok sour
But it’s pretty easy to explain why it’s in short supply: the whole world’s started going mad for it. (WSJ $)
“You’ll be hard pressed to find someone that really believes in our AI mission. To most, it’s not even clear what our mission is.”
—Tijmen Blankevoort, an AI researcher at Meta, explains why he thinks expensive hires alone might not cure the company’s woes, The Information reports.
One more thing
MIKE MCQUADE
The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age
There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands grabbing at the cool grass. It was taken on a digital camera in 2013, when she was almost one, but now lives on Google Photos.
But what if, one day, Google ceased to function? What if I lost my treasured photos forever? For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.
The endeavor raises complex questions. What is important to us? How and why do we decide what to keep—and what do we let go? And how will future generations make sense of what we’re able to save? Read the full story.
—Niall Firth
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Why Hollywood is so hell-bent on making sequels.
+ I love this sweet little town building program.
+ What makes Severance’s opening credits so darn good?
+ This ranking of HBO’s finest shows is fun.
China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today. It’s pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into putting renewable sources like wind and solar on its grid, manufacturing millions of electric vehicles, and building out capacity for energy storage, nuclear power, and more. This investment has been transformational for the country’s economy and has contributed to establishing China as a major player in global politics.
Meanwhile, in the US, a massive new tax and spending bill just cut hundreds of billions in credits, grants, and loans for clean energy technologies. It’s a stark reversal from previous policies, and it could have massive effects at a time when it feels as if everyone is chasing China on energy.
So while we all try to get our heads around what’s next for climate tech in the US and beyond, let’s look at just how dominant China is when it comes to clean energy, as documented in three charts.
China is on an absolute tear installing wind and solar power. The country reached nearly 900 gigawatts of installed capacity for solar at the end of 2024, and the rapid pace of building has continued into this year. An additional 198 GW was installed between January and May, with 93 GW coming in May alone.
For context, those additions over the first five months of the year account for more than double the capacity of the grid in California. Not the renewables capacity of that state—the entire grid.
Meanwhile, the policy shift in the US is projected to slow down new solar and wind additions. With tax credits and other support stripped away, much of the new capacity that was expected to come online by the end of the decade will now face delays or cancellations.
That’s significant because of all the new electricity generation capacity that’s come online in the US recently, renewables make up the vast majority. Solar and battery storage alone are expected to make up over 80% of capacity additions in 2025. So slowing down wind and solar basically means slowing down adding new electricity capacity, at a time when demand is very much set to rise. (Hello, AI?)
China’s EV market is also booming—the country is currently flirting with a big symbolic milestone, nearing the point where over half of all new vehicles sold in the country are electric. (It already passed that mark for a single month and could do so on a yearly basis in the next couple of years.)
It’s not just selling those vehicles within China, either: the country exports them globally, with customers including established markets like Europe and growing ones like India and Brazil. As of 2024, more than 70% of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on roads around the world were built in ChinaSome leaders in legacy automakers are taking notice. Ford CEO Jim Farley shared some striking comments at the Aspen Ideas Festival last month about how far ahead China is on vehicle technology and price. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology,” Farley said. “We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future Ford.”
Looking ahead, China is still pouring money into renewables, storage, grids, and energy efficiency technologies. It’s also outspending the rest of the world on nuclear power. The country tripled its investment in renewable power from 2015 to 2025.
The situation isn’t set in stone, though: The US actually very briefly overtook China on battery investments over the past year, as Cat Clifford at Cipher reported last week. But changes resulting from the new bill could very quickly reverse that progress, cementing China as the place for battery manufacturing and innovation.
In a story earlier this week, the MIT economist David Autor laid out the high stakes for this race. Advanced manufacturing and technology are beneficial for US prosperity, and putting public support and trade protections in place for key industries could be crucial to keeping them going, he says.
I’d add that this whole discussion shouldn’t be about a zero-sum competition between the US and China. But many experts argue that the US, where I and many readers live, is surrendering its leadership and ability to develop key energy technologies of the future.
Ultimately, the numbers don’t lie: By a lot of measures, China is the world’s leader in energy. The question is, will that change anytime soon?
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.