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The Korean Telecom Giant At the Center of Anthropic's Mythos Controversy

Jun 19th 2026, 16:00 by BeauHD

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Trump administration's move to impose export controls on Anthropic's most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom's ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities to the White House it identified in Fable 5, a highly safeguarded version of Mythos that Anthropic released to the public on June 9. The Amazon researchers claimed that it was possible to circumvent some of Fable 5's guardrails and access Mythos' formidable cybercapabilities, though Anthropic and outside cybersecurity experts have argued these risks are not unique to Claude. The confluence of events is what ultimately led the White House to determine that it could not trust Anthropic to safeguard its most advanced AI technology, according to a person close to the administration. On Friday, the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to revoke access to Mythos and Fable 5 for all foreign nationals, including immigrants inside the US. Rather than gate access to its technology based on nationality, a process that would be difficult to implement while also preserving privacy, Anthropic decided it was better to disable access to the models entirely. The White House and Anthropic still remain at odds after days of negotiations about bringing Claude Mythos and Fable 5 back online. SK Telecom was one of roughly 150 organizations granted early access to Anthropic's vulnerability-detection model Claude Mythos through Project Glasswing, notes Wired. The White House later asked Anthropic to revoke the company's access, reportedly amid concerns about alleged China ties, and Anthropic immediately complied. There was, however, no mention of the telecom in the government's formal demand to restrict Mythos and Fable 5 to U.S. nationals. SK Telecom told a Korean newspaper that the "anonymous insider's remarks in foreign media lack verified facts, and our company has no ties to China."

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Meta Lobbies Congress For Protection From Child-Harm Lawsuits

Jun 19th 2026, 15:00 by BeauHD

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Meta has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as Instagram, as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters. If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to children. Meta and Google's YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages after they lost the first case at trial early this year. While legislators have given no indication of adopting the language, the lobbying effort shows the kind of legal protections Meta is seeking amid the biggest attempt to regulate online platforms in the U.S. since the 1990s. Meta has reportedly proposed the language in exchange for dropping its opposition to KOSA. Under the law, platforms would be required to mitigate harms to minors tied to features such as infinite scrolling, notifications, and appearance-altering filters.

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NASA Picks Eric Schmidt's Rocket Company For Mars Mission

Jun 19th 2026, 11:00 by BeauHD

NASA has selected Relativity Space to build and launch Aeolus, a 2028 Mars orbiter that would provide daily global measurements of dust, winds, and atmospheric temperatures to support future robotic and human missions. TechCrunch reports: The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-cost infrastructure. Aeolus, as the mission is dubbed, will contain four instruments to measure and image Mars from orbit, providing what NASA expects to be the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in its atmosphere. The agency said that data will make it safer for landers and, someday, astronauts, to visit the surface of the Red Planet. By pairing NASA's world-class instruments with commercial innovation and investment, we can deliver more science, more often, and reduce the time it takes to get essential data into the hands of researchers preparing for future human missions to Mars," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in statement. The mission is set to launch in 2028 -- a rapid pace that will require Relativity to design and build the spacecraft to carry the Aeolus instruments, and finish building the rocket that will carry it to space, all on a tight timeline. NASA did not disclose how much it is paying Relativity for the mission, and Relativity did not respond to questions from TechCrunch. Relativity was founded in 2015 by two former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers, with the idea of using 3D printing to its maximum potential as a path to building a cheaper rocket. The company's first design, Terran-1, launched in March 2023 and failed mid-flight. Relativity doubled down by moving on to a larger design, dubbed the Terran R. Before Relativity could get it to the launch pad, the company ran into fundraising challenges, and Schmidt took a majority stake in the company in it last year, installing himself as CEO. He's been tight-lipped about the investment but has expressed interest in orbital data centers, and is thought to be using Relativity to launch a space telescope, Lazuili, financed by his family philanthropy, Schmidt Sciences.

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Rolls-Royce Secures Deal To Build Small Nuclear Reactors For Sweden

Jun 19th 2026, 07:00 by BeauHD

Rolls-Royce SMR has secured a multibillion-pound agreement to build three small modular reactors on Sweden's west coast, "marking a major step in the British engineering group's ambition to become a leading supplier of the technology in Europe," reports Euronews. From the report: Following a rigorous selection process that started in 2022, UK engineering giant Rolls-Royce's nuclear division, Rolls-Royce SMR, won the contract to build nuclear reactors for Sweden. As part of the deal, the group, selected by Videberg Kraft as its partner, will deliver three Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to Sweden's west coast, at the Varo Peninsula. "The Videberg Project will build Sweden's first new nuclear power plant in more than forty years, supporting industries and households in southern Sweden," a press statement from Rolls-Royce said. The partnership with utility Vattenfall and developer Karnfull Next is seen as one of the most advanced opportunities for deployment outside of the UK. [...] The European Commission considers small modular reactors (SMRs) to be a promising low-carbon technology that could help support the bloc's clean energy and energy security goals. In order to remove regulatory barriers, the EU's SMR strategy was adopted in March 2026 to accelerate the development and deployment of the technology across Europe. SMRs are smaller than conventional nuclear power plants, typically generating between 20 and 300 megawatts of electricity. At the upper end of that range, a reactor could produce around 7.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day -- enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that more than 1,000 small modular reactors could be deployed worldwide by 2050 under a supportive policy scenario, requiring cumulative investment of around $670 billion.

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