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    Ukrainian drone strike halts Yandex data centre in Vladimir, third attack on its sites in days

    Ukrainian drones hit a Yandex data centre in Vladimir, east of Moscow, on Sunday, and the company suspended operations there. No one was injured, but several of its services became unavailable. AP counted it as the third strike on its facilities in four days; Al Jazeera put it at the third in a week. Kyiv says it targets sites that generate revenue for Moscow's war effort. Zelenskyy said Ukraine always responds 'in mirror-like fashion' to Russian strikes on its data centres. Trump said Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed an 'energy ceasefire' without details, but Kyiv reported Russian attacks on energy sites afterward, and Moscow did not immediately comment.

    Key facts

    • Outages hit taxi and banking services across dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, Astra reported.
    • Yandex said it was 'very difficult to predict' when its data centres would be back online.
    • Thursday's strike hit a Yandex data hub housing two of three supercomputers for its AI model, Al Jazeera reported.
    • AP placed Thursday's strike in the Ryazan region, while the BBC and Al Jazeera named Sasovo.

    Commentary

    The shift is that Kyiv is now hitting the consumer and AI platforms Russians use daily, not only refineries, so the cost falls on ordinary users rather than the military. A truce framed around energy infrastructure would not obviously cover data centres, leaving that exposure in place whatever happens on the energy front.

    Sources: BBC, Al Jazeera, Audacy, News4JAX, KSAT

  2. 2

    Trump orders US government to cut ties with Anthropic; Hegseth declares it a supply-chain risk

    President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a national security "supply-chain risk" after a Friday 5 p.m. deadline to accept Pentagon terms. Hegseth said Anthropic will keep providing services for up to six months. The dispute centers on Anthropic's refusal to drop two demands: no fully autonomous weapons and no mass domestic surveillance. Anthropic called the designation "legally unsound" and will challenge it in court. The Pentagon says it does not intend such uses but that Anthropic's guardrails could jeopardize military operations. OpenAI announced a Pentagon deal to deploy its models on the classified network, and Senate leaders urged both sides to extend negotiations.

    Key facts

    • A Pentagon official said Hegseth threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act if Anthropic did not comply.
    • Trump threatened "major civil and criminal consequences" if Anthropic does not help during the phase-out.
    • The Pentagon has used Anthropic's technology in a $200 million pilot program.
    • Anthropic says it has received no "direct communication" from the Pentagon or White House on negotiations.
    • The Wall Street Journal reported Claude was used in the U.S. military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.

    Commentary

    The designation, not the ban, is what escalates the fight, since a penalty normally aimed at foreign adversaries is now applied to a US firm. The real contest is over whether a shared aversion to these uses can be written into binding contract terms, which is what any court challenge would test.

    Sources: ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

  3. 3

    Super Micro contractor pleads guilty to diverting Nvidia-chip AI servers to China

    Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun, a contractor linked to Super Micro Computer, pleaded guilty on Thursday in US District Court in Manhattan to four counts, including conspiracy to violate US export controls, smuggling goods from the US, defrauding the country and obstructing justice, a federal court filing showed Friday. The scheme involved exporting servers with Nvidia AI chips to China without licenses, from a US manufacturer widely believed to be Super Micro. Washington restricts advanced AI chip sales to China over national security concerns. Co-founder Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw is also a defendant. Super Micro pointed to earlier statements that it was not named as a defendant in the indictment and that the case had no impact on business operations.

    Key facts

    • Ting-Wei Sun and two others charged in March with conspiring to divert about $2.5 billion of AI technology to China.
    • The scheme allegedly began around October 2023, according to the indictment.
    • Ting-Wei Sun allegedly staged "dummy" servers in December 2025 and made false statements to a Commerce Department officer.
    • Super Micro terminated Sun and cut ties with the other defendants earlier this year.
    • The indictment says Nvidia's B200, H100 and H200 GPUs and servers containing them are subject to US restrictions.

    Commentary

    What moved here is less the export than the concealment: the indictment casts Sun as a broker and 'fixer' who worked to hide the scheme. That makes the plea a pressure point for the other defendants, and it tests whether the case reaches beyond a contractor.

    Sources: The Indian Express

  4. 4

    Palantir CTO defends military AI, says human error likely caused Iran school bombing

    Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar defended military AI, saying on CBS's "Face the Nation" that the likely cause of the bombing of a girls' school in Iran was human error. The Sunday Guardian reported he expects the final military report to exonerate the algorithmic systems; Sankar said he does not know when it will be released. Margaret Brennan said at least 123 schoolchildren were killed in the strike on Minab. Bloomberg reported some personnel relied too much on AI in Palantir's Maven system, a claim Sankar called inaccurate; he said Palantir then built additional AI agents to double-check more work. Brennan also said 120 House Democrats wrote to Secretary Hegseth about the strike.

    Key facts

    • Sankar said AI is not picking targets; he described targeting as a process of checks, including no-strike lists.
    • Sankar said planning 1,000 strikes in a day once took 50 people two weeks; one person now needs four hours.
    • Brennan said a Pentagon decision by Secretary Hegseth eliminated some staff who mitigated civilian impact from strikes.
    • Sankar said the Pentagon's cessation of Anthropic products had no operational impact; it has already been replaced.
    • Sankar said Palantir was not asked to join the president's AI accords, which he said are for model makers.

    Commentary

    The real dispute is not whether a strike happened but who gets to define its cause, and Sankar has already named a likely cause before the report that would settle it. That leaves Palantir's defense resting on findings it does not control, so its credibility depends on the military's conclusions.

    Sources: The Sunday Guardian, CBS News

  5. 5

    American Airlines resumes flights after brief IT outage prompts nationwide ground stop

    American Airlines flights are departing again after a brief IT outage led to a nationwide ground stop, according to the airline and federal officials. The outage affected the carrier's operations across the country, and departures resumed once the problem was resolved. The airline apologized to customers for the inconvenience and thanked its team for bringing systems back online so quickly. The apology was directed at travelers affected by the disruption, which federal officials and the airline both linked to the outage.

    Key facts

    • The nationwide ground stop lasted about 45 minutes overall.
    • The FAA advisory said flights not in the air were being held.
    • The airline said a "technology issue briefly impacted connectivity" for some systems.
    • American Airlines said connectivity has been fully restored.

    Commentary

    The unpredictable part is that a fault in only some American systems was enough to hold flights nationwide, so the airline's own connectivity, not the size of the fault, set the stop's reach. For travelers, a short outage can still ground service broadly, which makes recovery speed the key measure.

    Sources: ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos