June 1, 2026

The Download: China’s brain implant ambitions

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. China has approved the world’s first invasive brain-computer chip—here’s what’s next Sitting in the courtyard of his house in China’s Henan province last October, Dong Hui decided to try holding a…

Technology

Supercharged scams

April 21, 2026
When ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, it opened people’s eyes to how easily generative AI could churn out vast amounts of human-seeming text from simple prompts. This quickly caught the attention of criminals, who soon began using large language models to produce malicious emails—both the untargeted spam kind and more sophisticated,…

World models

April 21, 2026
AI systems have already gained impressive mastery over the digital world, but the physical world is still humanity’s domain. As it turns out, building an AI system that can compose a novel or code an app is far easier than developing one that can fold laundry or navigate a city street. To get there, many…

Weaponized deepfakes

April 21, 2026
For years, experts have warned that deepfakes—AI-generated videos, images, or audio recordings of people doing or saying things they haven’t actually done in real life—could be deployed in malicious ways.  These dangers are now here. Improvements in deepfake technology, and the widespread availability of easy-to-use and cheap (or free) generative models, have made it easier…

Building agent-first governance and security

April 21, 2026
As AI agents increasingly work alongside humans across organizations, companies could be inadvertently opening a new attack surface. Insecure agents can be manipulated to access sensitive systems and proprietary data, increasing enterprise risk. In some modern enterprises, non-human identities (NHI) are outpacing human identities, and that trend will explode with agentic AI. Solid governance and…

The Download: turning down human noise, and LA’s stunning subway upgrade

April 21, 2026
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. The noise we make is hurting animals. Can we learn to shut up? As human society has expanded, animals have started struggling to hear one another. For many birds, the noise…

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

April 21, 2026
In the past, even with an icebreaker and during peak melt season, getting to the North Pole wasn’t a sure bet. It took favorable winds to crack the frozen ocean surface, and ships had to fight through ice that had grown many meters thick over several winters. In the summer of 2025, though, Jochen Knies…

The Download: murderous ‘mirror’ bacteria, and Chinese workers fighting AI doubles

April 20, 2026
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. No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all In February 2019, a group of scientists proposed a high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting idea that the National Science Foundation should…