AI Policy

DOJ Investigates Andreessen Horowitz over Competing Board Seats in AI Data Startups

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an antitrust investigation into venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), examining whether the firm violated federal competition laws by placing partners on the boards of direct competitors in the enterprise AI and data infrastructure market. The investigation, reported by Bloomberg, centers on board representation at Databricks and Fivetran. Both companies provide data ingestion, management, and pipeline infrastructure essential

AI and Data Centers Dominate U.S. Campaign Trail in 2026 Elections

Artificial intelligence has become a major campaign issue across the United States, with data centers and their impact on local electricity costs, water use, and land use dominating the conversation. A Washington Post analysis of more than 1,200 websites from active candidates found AI appears in nearly 40 percent of all races for the House, Senate, and governor seats. Democratic candidates bring up AI twice as often as Republicans, focusing on AI risks, regulation, and child safety. Republican

White House to Expand AI Safety Testing to Open Models

The Trump administration plans to extend its classified AI safety-testing framework to open-weight models once they reach frontier-level capabilities, according to a White House official who spoke with WIRED. Current Framework Covers Closed Models Only The existing voluntary framework, developed under a June executive order, applies to closed models from labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Developers can submit new models up to 30 days before public release for government cybersecurity evaluat

Congress is running on chatbots, with little oversight

Lawmakers and staffers use ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok to draft speeches and mail, with thin guardrails.

Inside Pax Silica, the US push to weld AI supply chains to its allies

Anthropic Will Watermark All Claude Output in the EU to Meet AI Act Rules

Anthropic announced Monday it will embed invisible watermarks in text and attach C2PA-signed provenance metadata to files generated by future Claude models released in the European Union. The company framed the move as compliance with the EU AI Act's transparency requirements for general-purpose AI systems. The watermarks will apply worldwide to output from covered models across the Claude Platform (API), Claude chat, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and Claude Tag, as well as third-party providers

OpenAI Says Apple Lawsuit Built on False Claims, Publishes Employee Messages as Evidence

OpenAI published a detailed rebuttal on August 3 to Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, alleging that Apple's legal filing contains false claims, an email sent to the wrong person, and a mischaracterization of routine post-employment interactions between former Apple employees and their old colleagues. The blog post, titled "Apple is getting this wrong," is OpenAI's first substantive response since Apple sued the company and two former Apple employees -- Tang Tan and Chang Liu -- in July. Apple's co

China Draws Up Retaliation Options Over US Restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos

China Draws Up Retaliation Options Over US Restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos China is preparing potential countermeasures against American AI companies in response to US restrictions on access to Anthropic's Claude Mythos model, according to Bloomberg. Chinese officials have questioned the Trump administration's decision to block foreign access to Mythos and Anthropic's Fable model, and are reportedly drawing up response options that include sanctions or outright bans on American AI companies

Three open letters split the AI industry on open weights and development pacing

In the span of one week in late July 2026, three open letters from different factions of the AI industry laid bare a fundamental disagreement about how to govern frontier model development. The letters address open weights, distillation, and whether the pace of AI progress should be deliberately slowed. Letter 1: Microsoft's open weights coalition (July 24) Microsoft organized a letter titled "Open Weights and American AI Leadership" signed by 235 companies including NVIDIA, Amazon, Y Combina

Judge approves 1.5 billion Anthropic settlement over pirated training books

A federal judge has approved a 1.5 billion dollar copyright settlement between Anthropic and thousands of authors whose pirated books were used to train the Claude chatbot. The ruling makes it the largest known copyright recovery in history. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved the class-action settlement on July 21, 2026, finding it provides meaningful relief to affected authors and publishers. The settlement covers more than 482,000 books, with approximately 91 percent claimed by a