September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Allies disrupt a Russian submarine cable rehearsal near Svalbard
According to a Reuters report carried by Euronews, Norway, Britain and the United States tracked and drove away Russian submarines testing a device near Svalbard that could disable undersea cables without leaving a trace. The account, based on two Western officials, said no cable was damaged. Russia's defence ministry did not respond, while the Kremlin has denied sabotage allegations.
Altman takes Daybreak to four US utilities at the Edison meeting
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman described Daybreak on Wednesday to executives from NextEra Energy, Southern Company, Exelon and Duke Energy at the Edison Electric Institute yearly gathering in Colorado Springs. POLITICO first reported the talks, which began in July. Daybreak is OpenAI's 1 billion dollar cybersecurity programme for patching holes in critical systems. The company's energy-policy chief said electric rates do not let a utility fold that kind of invoice into its books the way a bank can.
Anthropic's new distillation tally: more than 186 million Claude exchanges across 3 labs
Anthropic says it detected more than 186 million Claude exchanges in distillation campaigns attributed to Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek. Its largest attribution is an Alibaba-linked campaign of 151 million exchanges across more than 3,500 accounts from May through July 2026. The figures reported by Reuters and The Clarity come from Anthropic's own threat intelligence; the reports include no response from the named companies.
Bank of Russia leaves the key rate at 14 per cent as underlying prices speed up
The Bank of Russia board left the key rate at 14 per cent on 11 September. It said current price pressures have increased significantly in recent months, with underlying price growth at 5 per cent to 6 per cent in annualised terms. Annual inflation stood at 6.3 per cent on 7 September. The baseline scenario keeps 2026 inflation at 6.0 per cent to 7.0 per cent and 2027 at 4.0 per cent.
California puts child-safety audits on companion chatbots
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills on children's online safety. SB 1119 requires companion chatbots to operate crisis protocols for suicidal ideation, offer parental controls, undergo independent child-safety audits and conduct annual risk assessments. The wider package also bars algorithmic feeds and autoplay for users under 16.
Canada and Ukraine sign a 100-year partnership centred on defence production in Calgary
Mark Carney and Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed 100-year partnership and defence declarations in Calgary. The documents cover joint production of uncrewed systems, counter-drone equipment and ammunition. Canada plans to expand its own drone fleet tenfold under new contracts and send Ukraine one third of the drones manufactured in the country over the next two years.
Children's liver samples carried 2,200 mutations after platinum treatment
In hepatoblastoma, the most common childhood liver cancer, each liver sample from patients who received cisplatin or carboplatin ahead of surgery held about 2,200 mutations, the scale usual in adult liver. NanoSeq read healthy tissue, tumour and blood separately. The authors discuss a longer watch, not dropping the drug. A DNA damage signature confined to the liver does not appear in the other tissues.
Clean hydrogen commitments top 130 billion dollars as operating capacity grows 70 per cent
Committed investment in clean-hydrogen projects has exceeded 130 billion dollars across more than 570 projects representing 6.9 million tonnes of annual capacity. Operating capacity grew 70 per cent this year to 1.7 million tonnes; plants under construction are expected to join next year's increase. Regionally, roughly 60 per cent of commitments sit in the two leading markets, while energy security has become a more prominent investment consideration.
Cobalt-manganese catalyst reached 78.9 per cent C8-16 in pilot-scale liquid product
A cobalt-manganese catalyst on etched Beta zeolite delivered 82.8 per cent CO conversion and 67.5 per cent C8-16 selectivity from syngas. In a pilot-scale test with shaped pellets, C8-16 hydrocarbons made up 78.9 per cent of the liquid product. The figures come from the team's own apparatus, with no published independent reproduction.
d-Matrix is connecting its Raptor inference chip to Nvidia's MGX rack architecture
d-Matrix announced a multi-year collaboration that will place its next-generation Raptor XPU in Nvidia's MGX rack architecture through NVLink Fusion. The company targets tape-out before the end of 2026, while StorageReview reports that the first rack systems are targeted for the fourth quarter of 2027. The partnership puts the custom inference chip in one architecture with established networking, CPU and rack components.