The ongoing public feud between the Department of Defense and the AI company Anthropic has raised a deep and still unanswered question: Does the law actually allow the US government to conduct mass surveillance on Americans? Surprisingly, the answer is not straightforward. More than a decade after Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s collection of bulk…

6 March 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. Coming soon: our 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now For years, MIT Technology Review’s newsroom has been ahead of the curve, tracking the developments in AI that matter and…

6 March 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. Online harassment is entering its AI era Scott Shambaugh didn’t think twice when he denied an AI agent’s request to contribute to matplotlib, a software library he helps manage. Then things…

5 March 2026

The race to prevent the worst wildfires has been an increasingly high-tech one. Companies are proposing AI fire detection systems and drones that can stamp out early blazes. And now, one Canadian startup says it’s going after lightning. Lightning-sparked fires can be a big deal: The Canadian wildfires of 2023 generated nearly 500 million metric…

5 March 2026

Scott Shambaugh didn’t think twice when he denied an AI agent’s request to contribute to matplotlib, a software library that he helps manage. Like many open-source projects, matplotlib has been overwhelmed by a glut of AI code contributions, and so Shambaugh and his fellow maintainers have instituted a policy that all AI-written code must be…

5 March 2026

The transformational potential of AI is already well established. Enterprise use cases are building momentum and organizations are transitioning from pilot projects to AI in production. Companies are no longer just talking about AI; they are redirecting budgets and resources to make it happen. Many are already experimenting with agentic AI, which promises new levels…

4 March 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. Listen to Earth’s rumbling, secret soundtrack The boom of a calving glacier. The crackling rumble of a wildfire. The roar of a surging storm front. They’re the noises of the living…

4 March 2026

3 March 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. This startup claims it can stop lightning and prevent catastrophic wildfires Startup Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent catastrophic fires by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. So far, it hasn’t publicly…

3 March 2026

On June 1, 2023, as a sweltering heat wave baked Quebec, thousands of lightning strikes flashed across the province, setting off more than 120 wildfires. The blazes ripped through parched forests and withered grasslands, burned for weeks, and compounded what was rapidly turning into Canada’s worst fire year on record. In the end, nearly 7,000…

3 March 2026