As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives
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Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting in front of Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental Drowning Girl, on view in New York City. Today in tech, we’re discussing the perils of Elon Musk’s one-man global infrastructure, AI-generated music and a Guardian AI conference in Paris.
Use of tools ‘may result in the transfer of sensitive data’ to China, defense department says
The US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, as the countries race for dominance in the fast-moving sector.
A notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek – and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties – saying they must be removed from IT devices.
In his annual speech on threats to the nation, Sir Ken McCallum, the head of the UK’s intelligence service, MI5, warned that AI had the potential to ‘change the stakes’ on existing and even new bioweapons. To find out why, and how, Ian Sample speaks to Dr Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He explains what has governments so worried and what measures could be put in place to reduce the risks
System can estimate a person’s biological age and predict chances of cancer survival from a single photograph
Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.
The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.
Alex Tait on a proposed amendment to the representation of the people bill, and Dr Joseph Mullen on Russian interference in the Brexit referendum
Andy Burnham’s comments about Russian interference in Brexit (Report, 11 October) and the warning by the MI5 chief, Ken McCallum, against exaggerating its impact (Report, 13 October) risk overlooking another serious threat to electoral integrity: disinformation from our own political parties and campaigners.
Foreign interference deserves scrutiny, but misleading factual claims in electoral advertising are unregulated, unlike in commercial advertising. We have four sets of rules to ensure an advert for a packet of sausages is accurate, but none for the most important advertising of all – ads that influence how we vote.
Monitoring tools common in a range of workplaces, including factories, office jobs, delivery work and in retail – often without employees being informed
Employers are increasingly using technology, from CCTV to keystroke monitoring, to track workers’ moves and it is being accelerated by the use of AI, the Human Technology Institute has warned.
Examples provided to Guardian Australia by the institute include a fast-food restaurant using surveillance cameras to stop workers using their phones, and AI tracking leading to a cashier warned over making a mistake once every 533 scans.
The $48bn giveaway comes amid concerns about the tech and as the company prepares for a stock market listing
Anthropic has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a fund for the “public good”, as the AI developer behind the Claude chatbot seeks to bolster its appeal before its stock market listing.
The company announced it would commit the shares, worth around $48bn (£36bn) at its latest valuation in May, subject to shareholder approval. It will add a further 2% of its stock to the fund for every 50% increase in its value above an undisclosed baseline.
Exclusive: Using test accounts acting as 13-year-olds, Tech Transparency Project downloaded 135 apps with features to generate nonconsensual nude imagery
In December 2025, Morgan Dorfman received distressing news: a student at her daughter’s Pennsylvania high school was making AI-generated pornographic material using the daughter’s image.
He was using an artificial intelligence image-editing app called Movely to create sexual videos from pictures of her daughter and five other girls.
AI has already been trained on the works of Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave without compensation, the peak global body for music rights has claimed, as the Australian government has been warned against giving in to “strong-arming” from tech companies seeking to weaken copyright law.
The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) – which represents Sony, Warner and Universal as well as thousands of independent publishers on six continents – has warned that of the dozens of countries approached to water down copyright laws, Australia appears to be the only to consider doing so.
Development by UK firm Nscale heralded by ministers as largest of its kind in country loses anchor tenant
The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies.
The development by the British company Nscale, heralded by ministers as the country’s largest AI datacentre when it was announced in 2025, was planned to open at Loughton in Essex next year.
A modern-day prospector promised rural Imperial thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue – but his plan has set off a firestorm of resistance
Sebastian Rucci zoomed in on a map in late 2024, looking closely at a large block of brown earth. The barren plot sandwiched between sprawling alfalfa fields and sleepy desert suburbs was exactly what he’d been searching for – the perfect place to realize his dream of building the largest artificial intelligence datacenter in California.
The dusty expanse wasn’t an obvious location. It was in the Sonoran desert, just north of the Mexican border, where temperatures regularly rose past 100F (37.8C). Water was scarce in the once-booming agricultural area, which gets its supply from the beleaguered Colorado River. And then, there was the city of Imperial – population 22,000 – to win over. As controversial datacenter projects have sprung up across the US, residents were naturally skeptical of a new, energy-guzzling neighbor.
Tech platforms pillage public-interest journalism for profit. But we have leverage as they sow the seeds of their own downfall
Carine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet Mediapart
Big tech companies pose an immeasurable threat: socially, politically, militarily and ecologically. They are also causing a profound crisis of information. The tools they design now serve as weapons of mass destruction against democracy. There is so much at stake that an urgent and broad mobilisation is required.
From the harvesting of personal data and the weaponisation of public opinion, to the destruction of jobs, the infringement of civil liberties and environmental damage, ordinary citizens are the main victims of this predatory economy – an economy with an agenda that aligns with the interests of the planet’s most authoritarian and reactionary states.
Carine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet Mediapart
Mediapart is hosting Hacking Big Tech, a public event about technology, AI and democracy in partnership with the Guardian, in Paris on Saturday 17 October 2026. The conference will be live-streamed free on Mediapart’s website, app and YouTube channel and can be accessed herefrom 1pm CEST on 17 October
An accelerating sell-off of AI-linked shares has hit global markets, as fears over rising inflation and future interest rate hikes spooked traders already wary of the heavily indebted sector.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi 200index, which is heavily skewed towards the companies that make memory chips, fell more than 8% overnight to a six-month closing low, triggering circuit breakers that brought trading to a halt at various points.
Above the rain-soaked streets of Warsaw, the observation deck of the Varso tower overlooks Joseph Stalin’s gift to Poland that has divided opinion for decades.
For some, the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science is a drunk confectioner’s nightmare; standing as a relic of oppression that should have been demolished. For others, it is an icon on the skyline and a monumental warning from history.
Article in Atlantic claims The Blue Fighter was artificially generated, days after it won Caine prize for African writers
The Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using AI to write a prize-winning short story after an article in the Atlantic said software had flagged it as almost completely AI-generated.
Kundizeza’s story The Blue Fighter was announced as the winner of the prestigious Caine prize for African writers on 6 October. Five days later, The Atlantic published an article by the author and journalist Vauhini Vara titled: “Yet Another Literary prize winner Seems to Be AI.”
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.
He said:
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.
And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.
I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.
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