AI Briefing: The Anthropic Ban and the New Cold War for Code

Stories covered on 2026-06-16

1. Trump’s DoJ intervenes to back Elon Musk in datacenter pollution lawsuit

   The Guardian AI · 2026-06-16

   Justice department urges judge to throw out suit brought by NAACP over xAI’s methane-gas turbines in Mississippi The Trump administration is coming to the defense of Elon Musk in a

2. Brookfield-Backed Data Center Firm Csquare Files for US IPO

   Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

   Csquare Inc., a data center company backed by Brookfield Corp., filed publicly for a US initial public offering

3. Hands Free, AIs Forward: NVIDIA XR AI Brings Agents to AR Glasses

   NVIDIA AI Blog · 2026-06-16

   NVIDIA XR AI is now available in public beta, giving developers a framework for building multimodal AI agents for AR glasses and XR devices.

4. Anthropic’s latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests

   TechCrunch · 2026-06-16

   Anthropic's popularity with business users is growing so well that the latest beef with the government might actually boost it, data from Ramp suggests.

5. Coherent Breaks Ground on Expanded Texas Facility, Scaling AI’s Optical Backbone

   NVIDIA AI Blog · 2026-06-16

   AI runs at the speed of light. More and more, that light is made in Texas. Coherent broke ground today on an expanded manufacturing building in Sherman, Texas.

6. Gemma 4 12B: Near GPT 4.1 Performance, Free, private and on My Laptop

   Towards AI · 2026-06-16

   I have been waiting for a 12B model that can replace what I am paying OpenAI for, and Gemma 4 12B is the first one this year that actually…

7. AI Can Play 'Significant' Role in Tech for Managing Diabetes, Says David Roman

   Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

   David Roman, US medtech and healthcare IT research analyst for Goldman Sachs, said that AI play a 'significant' role in helping patients stay on top of their diabetes

8. Evan Spiegel doesn't want you to call Snap Specs AI glasses

   Engadget · 2026-06-16

   Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sat with us to discuss the Snap Specs, privacy, parental controls and more. Spoiler: He says "computing" a lot.

9. Unlocking UK house-building with AI-accelerated planning

   DeepMind Blog · 2026-06-16

   UK government partners with Google DeepMind to build a new AI-powered prototype aimed at faster housing decisions.

10. If You Understand These 21 Terms, You’ll Understand Almost Any AI Concept

    Towards AI · 2026-06-16

    The gap between people who follow AI and people who don’t isn’t intelligence. It’s 21 words.

11. Anthropic "pauses" token-based billing for its Claude Agent SDK

    Ars Technica · 2026-06-16

    Move originally planned for Monday would have heavily increased power users' costs.

12. Exclusive eBook: How AI is becoming the next military advisor

    MIT Technology Review · 2026-06-16

    A collection of stories about how militaries are using AI models to make decisions.

13. Around a fifth of Steam Next Fest demos have a generative AI disclosure

    Engadget · 2026-06-16

    Roughly 20% of the game demos featured during Steam Next Fest included a disclosure about the use of generative AI in their development.

14. How Kalshi’s Lopes Lara Turned Kylie Jenner Gossip Into Billions

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    Bloomberg's Emily Nicolle joins Scarlet Fu and Tim Stenovec on "Bloomberg Crypto." Kalshi has developed its own AI agent to help deal with a number of internal processes

15. SpaceX Investor Powerlaw Debuts Amid IPO Race

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    Powerlaw, a closed-end fund that owns stakes in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, traded well above the value of its underlying investments in its debut

16. Microsoft's Copilot Cowork moves to usage-based billing and may tap DeepSeek

    The Decoder · 2026-06-16

    Microsoft is weighing a fine-tuned version of Deepseek V4 as a cheaper model option for Copilot Cowork.

17. Read the Lutnick Letter That Led Anthropic to Disable Mythos

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei in a letter Friday that the company would need government permission before exporting

18. Lutnick’s Letter to Anthropic Warned of Curbs on Top AI Models

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned Anthropic PBC in a letter last week that it would need government permission to grant foreign nationals access to its most advanced AI

19. SpaceX Soars On Third Trading Day, Seals Cursor Takeover | Bloomberg Tech 6/16/2026

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow tracks SpaceX's value eclipsing Amazon's, this as it lands its $60 billion takeover of Cursor.

20. Berlin court rules Google's AI Overviews are just a new search format, not original content

    The Decoder · 2026-06-16

    A Berlin court has ruled that Google's AI-generated summaries are just a "new search result format" and that Google has no "decisive influence" over the content.

21. Android 17 is out now, with a fresh Pixel Drop for June - here's what's new

    ZDNet · 2026-06-16

    You're getting productivity tricks, bubbles, new AI models, upgraded security, and more.

22. Android 17 launches with new multitasking tools as Google expands Gemini features

    TechCrunch · 2026-06-16

    Google has released Android 17 and Wear OS 7, introducing new multitasking features, parental controls, security tools, and smartwatch upgrades.

23. Google Rolls Out Android 17; Major AI Features to Follow This Summer

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google has begun rolling out Android 17, the latest major update to its popular mobile operating system

24. Wear OS 7 arrives to Pixel watches with Gemini AI and live updates

    Engadget · 2026-06-16

    Wear OS 7 is now live for Pixel watches, with a new interface, notifications and Gemini features.

25. Pentagon boasts of using AI to write reports mandated by Congress

    Ars Technica · 2026-06-16

    Pentagon also claims 1.5 million personnel are using generative AI tools.

26. ‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

    WIRED · 2026-06-16

    The US government crackdown on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 hides a glaring truth: AI models with advanced hacking capabilities will soon be the norm.

27. France to ditch Palantir’s AI data tools in favour of domestic provider

    The Guardian AI · 2026-06-16

    Move to ChapsVision is to avoid ‘strategic dependencies’, says PM amid concern about reliance on US-controlled tools France’s domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data

28. How I Continually Improve My Claude Code

    Towards AI · 2026-06-16

    I’ve written a lot of previous articles on techniques I apply when using Claude Code to get the most out of it.

29. HPE Boosts Networking Gear for AI Clients, Adds Siemens Energy

    Bloomberg · 2026-06-16

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. introduced new networking gear for artificial intelligence data centers, building on the products it acquired from Juniper Networks and striving to

30. Meet Qwen-RobotSuite: Three Embodied AI Models for VLA Manipulation, Video World Modeling, and Navigation

    MarkTechPost · 2026-06-16

    We break down Qwen-RobotSuite, the Qwen team's three new embodied AI models. We cover RobotManip, a Vision-Language-Action model built on Qwen3.5-4B for manipulation.