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April 28 Evening Brief
In Washington
The Supreme Court is weighing whether U.S. tech firms can be held liable for allegedly helping Chinese authorities torture a spiritual minority abroad. It is a test of how far legal responsibility can stretch when companies are accused of enabling abuses outside the U.S.
The Justice Department has also charged a former aide to Anthony Fauci with allegedly hiding emails tied to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. And House Republicans are pushing ahead with a vote to renew Section 702 surveillance powers, even as some members of their own party say they will vote no. Congress, as ever, has found a way to make deadline drama feel routine.
Separately, House Republicans advanced three major bills out of the Rules Committee after a long round of infighting, but their fate on the floor is still uncertain.
In tech and cybersecurity
OpenAI is moving its models to Amazon Web Services after Microsoft dropped Azure exclusivity in their partnership, while keeping a revenue share through 2030. At the same time, OpenAI and Anthropic are both drawing in more big-money cloud backing, with Google reportedly planning an investment of up to $40 billion in Anthropic as demand for AI compute keeps climbing.
Elon Musk also testified in the trial against Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, a feud that could still shape the AI industry’s future, which is impressive for a dispute that already sounds like it was generated by AI.
Beyond the money and the ego, there are growing security concerns. Operational technology firms were left out of special access to powerful new models meant to find vulnerabilities before hackers do, and a Conference Board survey says CIOs are now under more pressure to turn AI governance from theory into actual controls, reporting, and risk management.
On the cyber side, Germany says government accounts were targeted in a suspected Russian Signal phishing campaign, another reminder that encrypted apps are only as secure as the person tapping the link.
In international security
Thinktank estimates in the UK say an Iran war could cost the economy £35 billion and raise recession risk this year. The same warning says growth would still be weaker in the next two years even in a best-case scenario.
In the UK as well, convicted terrorist Zahid Iqbal has been recalled to prison over renewed concerns about his release, including a secret phone, deleted call history, a Kubotan weapon, and a 9/11 book. A fresh review is now underway.
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