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Despite an ultimatum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Anthropic said that it can't "in good conscience" comply with a Pentagon edict to remove guardrails on its AI, CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post. The Department of Defense had threatened to cancel a $200 million contract and label Anthropic a "supply chain risk" if it didn't agree to remove safeguards over mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
"Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters — with our two requested safeguards in place," Amodei said. "We remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States."
In response, US Under Secretary of Defense Emil Michael accused Amodei in a post on X of wanting "nothing more than to try to personally control the US military and is OK putting our nation's safety at risk."
The standoff began when the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic its Claude AI product available for "all lawful purposes" — including mass surveillance and the development of fully autonomous weapons that can kill without human supervision. Anthropic refused to offer its tech for those things, even with a "safety stack" built into that model.
Yesterday, Axios reported that Hegseth gave Anthropic a deadline of 5:01 PM on Friday to agree to the Pentagon's terms. At the same time, the DoD requested an assessment of its reliance on Claude, an initial step toward potentially labelling Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" — a designation usually reserved for firms from adversaries like China and "never before applied to an American company," Anthropic wrote.
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F1 fans can get revved up for the approaching season with a tech boost from Apple Maps.
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Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said the company could not permit its technology to be applied to domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
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No assembly required.
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For anyone who has been following the soap opera unfolding between Netflix and Paramount Skydance over the past few months in their financial brinksmanship to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the saga may be nearing its end. Today, WBD said its board of directors have determined that the latest offer from Paramount Skydance amounted to the better proposal. The media outfit gave Netflix four business days to match Paramount's terms, but the streamer didn't waste any time in declining to raise its own bid.
"We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.' iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the US," the statement from Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said. "But this transaction was always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price."
In addition to the purchase price of $31 per WBD share, Paramount's latest offer also included a provision that it would cover the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would owe to Netflix for dissolving the existing merger agreement between the businesses. So rather than paying $82.7 billion to acquire the Warner Bros. part of the operation, it appears Netflix may walk away with no new cont
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 One of the new products that we could see next week is a refreshed version of the low-cost iPad. As with the iPad Air, we're not expecting major changes, but it is expected to get some meaningful internal upgrades.
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Anthropic retired Claude Opus 3, but is keeping it available for paid claude.ai subscribers and offering API access by request as it formalizes a model retirement process.
The post Claude Opus 3 Is Being "Retired" — Here's What That Actually Means appeared first on eWEEK.
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 Apple Maps has been updated with a new guide called "2026 Formula 1 Tracks Around the World," ahead of the new season which is being streamed exclusively on Apple TV in the United States.
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The change applies to accounts using parental supervision tools.
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 Razer today introduced a new 16-inch laptop sleeve that has an integrated wireless charging feature for smartphones and other small devices like earbuds. Priced at $130, the sleeve includes two MagSafe-compatible wireless charging zones, so it can charge an iPhone and AirPods at the same time.
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Block is the latest business to announce layoffs, with the operator of payment platforms Square and Cash App opting to cut jobs in favor of using more AI tools. The financial tech company, helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is slashing its current staff of 10,000 to "just under 6,000." CNBC highlighted a letter Block sent to shareholders announcing the decision to nearly halve its workforce. According to the message from Dorsey:
"The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool
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 Global memory scarcity will cause a 13 percent drop in smartphone sales in 2026, according to IDC (via Bloomberg). DRAM is in short supply because AI companies are buying huge quantities of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for servers in data centers, and manufacturers are prioritizing HBM instead of the memory used in consumer devices.
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Review aggregator Metacritic has removed a review of Resident Evil Requiem because it was AI-generated, Kotaku reports. The review was published by UK gaming site VideoGamer, but appears to be "written" by a fake AI journalist rather than a real person.
While it's unfortunately difficult to confirm with 100 percent accuracy whether a piece of text is AI-generated, you don't have to read VideoGamer's review for long to notice all the ways it feels off. The biggest giveaway, beyond heavy use of contrived metaphors, is a striking lack of detail beyond what you could glean from a trailer for the game. Embargoes covering what parts of a video game can come up in a pre-release review can be strict, but a good critic usually finds a way to describe their experience without being vague. VideoGamer's review, written by one "Brian Merrygold," really doesn't.
Mind you, this review made its way to Metacritic. https://t.co/4STN8DjAwe pic.twitter.com/awk26P9wSA
— Andrés (@Andrew_east) February 26, 2026
As
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We've known Apple would follow up its blockbuster film F1: The Movie with live coverage of F1 races in 2026. Now that we're approaching the first grand prix weekend of the year, the company has provided details on what fans can expect to see inside the Apple TV app and beyond.
There's already a dedicated F1 channel in the Apple TV app, which is where you'll stream races live when the time comes. You can also watch practice sessions, sprint races and both pre- and post-race coverage. Apple offers a number of additional F1 videos there (I'd recommend watching the one on the new rules) and you'll be able to stream the latest season of Drive To Survive on Apple TV as well.
Apple will offer the F1 TV feed as the main broadcast alongside the Sky Sports feed for all races. If you'll recall, ESPN used to show the Sky Sports feed with Sky's commentary team for its coverage of F1. Apple says it'll broadcast every grand prix in 4K (Dolby Vision) with 5.1 audio (no mention of Dolby Atmos).
As part of Apple's deal with F1, Apple TV subscribers get F1 TV Premium for the 2026 season. This gives you access to things like onboard cameras, team radios and live telemetry in
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Meta has sued the people and groups behind three scam operations that used images and deepfakes of celebrities to lure users to scam websites. According to the company, the three entities were based in China and Brazil and targeted people in the US, Japan and other countries. The ads promoted fraudulent investment schemes and fake health products.
Meta said that it had filed lawsuits against several people in Brazil who promoted fake or unapproved healthcare products and online courses promoting them. The company also sued a China-based entity it says used ads featuring celebrities "as part of a larger fraud scheme that lured people into joining so-called investment groups." The company didn't provide details on how many ads these groups had run on Facebook, how many social media users had seen or interacted with the ads or how long the scammers had been operating on the platform.
So-called "celeb bait" ads have been a long-running issue for the company. Engadget has previously documented celeb bait scams on Facebook, including ones that frequently use Elon Musk and Fox News personalities to hawk fake cures for diabetes. The Oversight Board has also criticized the company for not doing enough to combat such scams. In its upda
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 Apple's imminent series of announcements will focus on chip updates, rather than redesigned devices, according to a known leaker.
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 Apple is in talks with major Indian banks as it prepares to introduce Apple Pay in the country sometime in the middle of 2026, reports Bloomberg.
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 In October 2025, Apple notified the European Commission that it would be acquiring invrs.io LLC's sole employee, and certain assets from the company. Following a four-month waiting period, the European Commission published this information this week.
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 Anthropic today updated its Sonnet model to version 4.6, and the company says it is the most capable Sonnet model to date with upgrades across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design.
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