Anthropic accused Alibaba of “brazenly” racing to make a copycat Claude, seemingly unfazed by Trump’s threats to crack down on foreign efforts to copy US frontier models despite depending on US investors.

“Alibaba is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, maintains business operations in the United States, and is accountable to US investors and regulators,” Anthropic’s letter noted, “yet this activity unfolded in the weeks after” Trump’s memo warned that cloning attempts were “unacceptable.”

Ars could not immediately reach Alibaba for comment.

Anthropic wants firms like Alibaba punished

Alibaba is already preparing to clash with Trump, though. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Alibaba accused the Trump administration of blacklisting the company after falsely linking the company to the Chinese military, Reuters reported. Alibaba is seeking to remove the Trump designation, which they claimed has “no basis in fact or law.”

“Alibaba is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation,” Alibaba said. “Its products and services are built for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology—not weapons, defense, or intelligence.”

Anthropic appears unconvinced, however, that Alibaba isn’t working with the Chinese government. In the letter, Anthropic warned that without stronger interventions, these distillation attacks will “help China reach Mythos Preview-level capabilities sooner.”

To keep the US ahead of China, Anthropic recommended that Congress pass legislation with three objectives. First, antitrust laws must be updated to allow AI firms to share information about evolving Chinese tactics to deter more threats.

Second, the US needs more export controls on chips to hamstring Chinese access to advanced compute so that they simply can’t train on US model outputs. That could make conducting distillation attacks pointless, Anthropic suggested.

Finally, Congress should pass laws penalizing Chinese labs’ “bad behavior” so that it’s “more difficult and costly” to rely on distillation attacks to advance Chinese models. Penalties could include limiting Chinese firms from accessing US models or advanced US chips or from relying on data centers outside of China, Anthropic suggested.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/anthropic-claims-alibaba-defied-trump-to-attack-claude-and-steal-capabilities/

The White House is drastically shortening the deadline for government agencies and organizations to adopt new quantum-resistant encryption systems that will withstand attacks that use quantum computers, as the federal government seeks to protect decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and most individuals on Earth.

The executive order, titled Securing the Nation against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks, requires computing systems for “high-value assets” and “high-impact systems” to transition to post-quantum cryptographic key establishment schemes by December 31, 2030, and to quantum-safe digital signature schemes by December 31, 2031.

Heading off a significant threat

The new deadline, which for many organizations is about five years sooner than the previous one, comes on the heels of recent research showing that the resources and cost for building a cryptographically relevant quantum computer are far less than previous consensus estimates. In response, Google, Cloudflare, and other companies recently tightened their timelines for moving off vulnerable systems to 2029.

“The advent of large-scale quantum computers, particularly in the hands of adversaries, will pose a significant threat to widely used cryptographic security systems,” Monday’s executive order stated. “Ongoing cyber activity against our Nation also presents the risk of adversaries collecting United States information now, and decrypting it later once large-scale quantum computers are operational.”

Under a timeline the National Security Agency published in 2022, “National Security Systems”—a class including only defense and intelligence systems under the authority of the agency—were under orders to be quantum-ready between 2030 and 2033. Most other organizations had until 2035 to complete the transition. Now, many of them will be required to transition much sooner.

“So, for any system that falls into this new bucket of high-value assets and high-impact systems, their transition timelines just got shortened by 4-5 years (from 2035 to 2030/2031),” Brian LaMacchia, a cryptography engineer who oversaw Microsoft’s post-quantum transition from 2015 to 2022 and now works at Farcaster Consulting Group, told Ars. “That is a significant shortening of the transition timeline for these systems, and it follows similar timeline revisions from Google and Cloudflare that we saw announced back in late March/early April.”

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/executive-order-bumps-up-deadline-to-move-off-quantum-vulnerable-crypto/

Carr also opened an unusual review of ABC owner Disney’s TV station licenses. The eight broadcast TV stations owned by the company protested the review, accusing the FCC of trying to suppress speech as part of “an unprecedented attack on a single company’s entire portfolio of broadcast licenses.”

The station license review is ostensibly based on allegations that Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices violate anti-discrimination rules. But Carr previously threatened the licenses of ABC stations for airing Jimmy Kimmel, and ABC said the FCC is “using the license process renewal to punish a broadcaster for its editorial choices.”

The FCC slammed Disney in a statement provided to news outlets yesterday. “Disney wants the FCC to classify ‘The View’ as a ‘bona fide news program.’ And it has chosen to run a campaign of misinformation to make its case—misleading viewers about the law. That is a choice,” the FCC statement said.

We asked the FCC public relations office to explain which part of ABC’s ad is “misinformation” and will update this article if we get a response.

Carr responds

Carr responded to ABC’s ad in an X post. “Disney wants the FCC to classify The View as a ‘bona fide news program’ under federal law,” Carr wrote. “Doing so would exempt The View from the political equal time requirements that Congress passed decades ago. What do you think? Is The View bona fide news?”

Carr’s post did not mention that The View already received an exemption from the rule 24 years ago.

“Until now, it has never been disputed that The View qualifies as a bona fide news interview program,” ABC said in a May 7 filing. “In 2002, ABC requested and obtained a Declaratory Ruling from the Mass Media Bureau confirming that status. That Declaratory Ruling remains in full force and effect. The Commission has taken no action over the last two decades to modify or overturn the Declaratory Ruling and there is no basis for doing so now.”

Carr’s threats to broadcasters like ABC have drawn bipartisan opposition. US Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) recently proposed a law on “jawboning” to stop federal officials from trying to coerce broadcasters or tech platforms into restricting speech.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/abc-asks-viewers-to-protest-fcc-attempt-to-control-who-is-allowed-on-the-view/

The result is that no one outside of the dominant companies, not even the US government, knows which economically crucial crops, most of which are grown from patented seeds, might be vulnerable to emerging pests and pathogens. For years, plant breeders have been calling for genetic assessments of these seeds and the crops they grow; to date, no such studies have been conducted.

A shift in direction

But the May 2026 Justice Department court filing saying seed patents are blocking agricultural competition and research indicates the tide may be turning.

In 2023, multinational agrochemical company Corteva sued a genetic engineering startup, Inari, for infringing its patents by, among other things, obtaining samples of Corteva’s patented seeds from a public repository and analyzing their genetic makeup.

Though the Justice Department didn’t weigh in favor of either company, its court filing said companies should not be able to restrict the public from sequencing genetic material that was deposited as part of the process of securing patent protection.

Notably, the department’s court filing came from the Antitrust Division rather than the Civil Division, which usually handles intellectual property issues. That difference suggests that the government sees this extension of patent rights as an illegitimate way for a company to exclude other companies from competing.

The case is still winding its way through the legal process. But if the judge agrees, his decision could be consequential. For starters, competitors could begin to understand the strengths and weaknesses in seed varieties on the market and find ways to build on that innovation, which is precisely the type of activity the patent system was designed to encourage.

More competition in the market could provide an important check on seed prices, reducing the burden on American farmers and, thereby, taxpayers. Finally, researchers could conduct the studies that are needed to begin rebuilding the kind of genetic knowledge that was, for most of human history, held in common—an insurance policy in the best interest of us all.

Julie Dawson is Professor of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kiki Hubbard is a Researcher at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Paulina Jenney is Research Coordinator, Urban and Regional Food System Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/everyone-pays-the-price-as-patent-holders-on-seeds-stifle-innovation/

Polymarket is seeking the CFTC’s permission to bring its main exchange back to the US, but also offers a more limited, US-regulated version of its trading service through a mobile app. Polymarket launched the app last year after acquiring QCX, a firm that is licensed by the CFTC and now operates under the name Polymarket US.

The Journal said it reviewed 1,105 videos made by 10 creators and identified fake bets totaling $1.9 million. While most of the videos were of fake bets being placed, there were 118 videos of “creators reacting to outdated footage or fake headlines suggesting they’d won.”

Those 118 videos showed creators winning almost $900,000, but the bets in reality would have lost over $166,000, the report said. The Polymarket “campaign racked up more than 140 million views on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram,” the report said, citing data from analytics provider Tubular.

Polymarket “hired and worked closely with” a marketing firm that enlisted a “social-media army to repost content made by 10 Polymarket creators in particular, Makihara among them,” the article said. The Journal said it reviewed “nearly 20,000 messages from a chat group for Polymarket’s online content-creating contractors, and instructional documents and videos prepared for them.”

Videos used fake “poiymarket” site

Video creators were reportedly told to make their posts seem “personal and organic,” to ensure that the word “Polymarket” did not appear in their account names, and to not disclose that they were paid. Creators were reportedly paid $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

“These creators didn’t initially identify themselves as paid by Polymarket, although one offered a $20 bonus code in his social-media bio. The creators started adding ‘@polymarket partner’ to their bios after the Journal started asking the company about its marketing operation,” the article said.

The Journal said it identified various discrepancies between the real Polymarket site and the fake ones used by creators. “One password-protected website has the creatively misspelled URL poiymarket.com, which is indistinguishable from polymarket.com when the ‘i’ is capitalized,” the report said.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/polymarkets-viral-videos-showed-people-winning-big-but-the-bets-were-fake/

Trump’s NHTSA more aligned with Musk

In 2023, Tesla recalled more than 2 million vehicles—every car with Autopilot—after regulators found the carmaker had not deployed the feature in a way that required drivers to remain attentive. That recall followed a 2021 NHTSA investigation into crashes and fatalities involving the technology.

Since then, Tesla CEO Elon Musk spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency efforts that gutted NHTSA of staff with expertise in evaluating AV safety. Then, shortly after that team shrank, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system (FSD) got worse. Alarming reports of Tesla FSD failing sparked a new NHTSA probe last October, which Tesla delayed responding to.

It’s unclear if the Texas crash will get Tesla into more hot water. NHTSA did not respond to Ars’ request for comment, but the agency appears more aligned with Musk on deregulating AVs.

In January, NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison confirmed in a speech that the agency considers 2026 a “big” year for AV rulemaking. He said that NHTSA was moving fast to change the rules to pave the way for the future Tesla envisions, coming soon, where he expects human intervention won’t be needed “when they see things go weird.”

“I’m talking about vehicles that would never require human intervention—vehicles you can take a nap in,” Morrison said.

Morrison suggested the technology “is one of, if not the, most challenging engineering problems humanity has ever attempted” and acknowledged that it was “safety critical.” But he criticized the Biden administration for focusing too much on “enforcement against AV developers and safety research” and said that under the Trump administration, advancing American AVs would be a top priority.

“We’re not going to be shy when we see something that we believe presents a risk to the public,” Morrison said. “But the promise of this technology to society is far too great to ignore, or worse, discourage, or prohibit.”

According to Morrison, the “pathway” to this future requires prioritizing safety, while “moving with a sense of urgency” to remove “unnecessary regulatory barriers” and “enable the commercial deployment of AVs to enhance safety and mobility for the American public.”

“To be clear, this includes the commercial deployment of purpose-built AVs without traditional controls such as steering wheels or brake pedals,” Morrison said.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/woman-killed-when-tesla-driver-using-autopilot-crashed-into-her-home/

There was no mention of that history in the authority’s announcement that it would take the Energy Department grant and spend $48 million more on upgrades. Oklahoma Watch reported that the cash infusion would give the plant several more years of operation.

“Extending the life of Unit 2 represents the most cost-effective solution for GRDA, as compared to new-build generation alternatives,” Dan Sullivan, the authority’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “This grant allows us to leverage existing infrastructure to continue to deliver affordable and reliable power to GRDA customers in the future.”

Duke Energy, meanwhile, proposed in a December 2025 filing to retire Roxboro’s coal units by 2034. Norton said that has not changed and the grant will maintain reliability while keeping costs down as the utility invests in future projects.

When TVA outlined its plans to phase out the 50-year-old Cumberland plant, it noted “environmental, economic, and reliability risks” across its coal facilities. Keeping Cumberland running, the utility said, would “continue to produce relatively large quantities of air pollutants.”

The utility, which is federally owned, reversed course after Trump replaced four TVA board members in 2025. TVA’s chief financial officer, Tom Rice, praised “beautiful, clean coal” in a February board meeting, echoing Trump’s trademark energy slogan.

Shober, with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, criticized the decision as “a tit-for-tat payback” that will do “serious damage and harm to TVA’s customers, the people that live in the Tennessee Valley.”

Fiedler, the TVA spokesman, said the Trump administration’s coal push aligns with TVA’s reliability goals.

In January, TVA estimated that maintaining the plant to current regulatory standards would require a $738 million investment, according to internal documents obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center through a public records request and reviewed by Inside Climate News. That’s more than six times the project listed on the federal grant announcement. Still, the board asserted that the move would ultimately save money.

King, with the Southern Environmental Law Center, doubts that. She said TVA’s plan for Cumberland means its customers will have to “foot the bill for projects that many of them didn’t want.”

Sellers, the environmental history professor, said the Trump administration’s willingness to invest in the plants is “making pollution great again.”

“We’re going to pay the price for that,” he said. “Certainly, the people living next door to those plants, they’re going to pay the price for that first and most severely.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/trump-admins-coal-investments-assist-plants-with-repeated-violations/

A spokesperson for Cognitec says they could not comment on their work with the Home Office; however, they point out that “demographic differences” in performance apply to all face scanning algorithms. “The reasons for bias are extremely complex and often related to image quality issues,” the spokesperson says.

“The bias of Cognitec algorithms is low compared to other algorithms of similar overall accuracy, and be assured that we are diligently and continuously working on reducing bias by developing specific testing methodologies, designing loss functions in our network training, and by diversifying the training and testing data,” the spokesperson says.

Stress test

Even if accuracy can be improved, technology is rarely operated exactly how its creators intend. Bugs, technical flaws, and user error mean systems frequently produce errors. When coupled with sensitive decisions that may change people’s lives, those risks can be exacerbated.

For years, according to previous reports from the UK’s Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, the Home Office’s human-led age estimations have included problems. There have been instances of “poor” recording keeping, “perfunctory” visual assessments, and at times a lack of explanation from border staff about existing processes. Staff conducting age assessments were not provided with any specific training for the task until 2023, according to the last inspection report.

“Making initial age decisions is a difficult and complex job, with immigration officers working in challenging circumstances, often under pressure to quickly process lots of new arrivals,” the Home Office says in recently published guidance about the potential use of face age estimation AI. “It allows immigration officers to test their judgment against the technology’s estimate.”

Yet in the leaked report from last year, the Home Office said how the face scanning technology would be used in an “operational context” was still being explored. The report, which the government previously declined to release in records requests, also highlights the testing found that “temporary aging” relating to trauma and the “stress of travel” appeared to impact the accuracy of face age estimation systems, raising further questions about the use of the technology in the asylum process.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/the-uk-will-scan-asylum-seekers-faces-for-age-checks-despite-knowing-the-tech-is-flawed/

Bernie Sanders has unveiled an aggressive plan to transfer trillions from leading AI firms to the public, and, to the likely horror of AI firms, it goes even further than expected to give Americans more control over the AI industry.

Sanders shared a summary of his legislation with AP News. If passed, the law would create a sovereign wealth fund “financed through a one-time 50 percent tax on the stock of the largest AI companies,” AP News reported. Any AI firm that does $200 million in annual AI sales would be subject to the tax, as would any new firm once it reaches that revenue level.

In total, Sanders estimated the fund could be worth $7 trillion, generating “hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct payments to Americans and programs such as health care, education and housing,” AP News reported. Each American would likely receive more than $1,000 annually in 5 percent annual dividends, Sanders estimated.

“The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations,” Sanders said. “They will be shared by the American people.”

Beyond the payouts and support for critical US programs, the legislation would also ensure that Americans have “direct influence over corporate decision-making,” Sanders said. Seven members of a newly created, bipartisan Independent Commission for Democratic AI—nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate—would oversee the fund. Using voting shares, the commission could block any decisions companies may move to make that could harm the public, The Hill reported.

“The public has got to have a significant seat at the table to make sure that terrible things do not happen to ordinary people, and that in fact, AI benefits ordinary people, not hurts them,” Sanders told AP News.

AI industry unlikely to embrace Sanders’ plan

Although some CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have shown support for some public benefits from AI, their ideas are not as bold as Sanders’.

In a meeting with Sanders, Altman remained “far apart” from the senator on how much stake in OpenAI the American public should have, sources in the room told AP News. However, Sanders insists that his legislation transfers a fair amount of wealth while critically ensuring that AI benefits humanity. He confirmed that he intends to campaign on creating the fund, and during the meeting, he cast AI firms that expect to transfer significantly less than 50 percent as greedy.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/bernie-sanders-unveils-7-trillion-plan-to-give-americans-control-of-ai-industry/

The Trump administration is trying to help Elon Musk’s xAI Corp. beat a Clean Air Act lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The US said the NAACP lawsuit threatens an xAI data center that powers Grok systems needed by the military.

The NAACP sued xAI and subsidiary MZX Tech in April, alleging that they violated the Clean Air Act by operating 27 gas turbines without an air permit in Southaven, Mississippi. The number of unpermitted turbines rose to 57 by mid-May and there were plans to install two more, the NAACP said in a June 12 filing.

“Defendants’ Colossus Gas Plant powers xAI’s nearby Colossus 2 data center, which in turn powers the chatbot ‘Grok,’” the lawsuit said. The gas turbines have fueled both health concerns and noise complaints.

US Department of Justice lawyers urged a federal judge to dismiss the case in a filing yesterday. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality determined that the turbines don’t require permits, the US filing said.

The lawsuit “threaten[s] artificial-intelligence innovation, plus the energy needed to power it,” the US filing said. “The NAACP’s attempt to cut off the power that supports Grok also threatens national security because… Grok provides critical support for the Department of War’s military operations.” The US court filing said xAI’s Grok Gov Model aided targeted strikes in Iran during Operation Epic Fury.

Grok was used with Maven Smart System to help US forces “deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury, a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model,” according to a declaration by Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the Department of War. The Grok Gov Model has unique features not found in any other AI model, he wrote.

US helping xAI break the law, group says

The US is arguing “that xAI should be allowed to break the law solely because the Trump administration says so,” said the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which represents the NAACP in the case.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/trump-admin-helps-xai-fight-pollution-lawsuit-says-military-needs-grok-for-war/