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The United Kingdom has quietly signed on to use SpaceX's Starshield satellite network for military operations, according to sources cited by Reuters. Starshield is the defense-focused sibling of Starlink, and this deal marks a significant deepening of British reliance on a private American company for sovereign military communications — a trade-off that's already drawing scrutiny.
That tension between public interest and private tech is also playing out in London's Parliament, where lawmakers are calling on the government to sever its contract with Palantir over the National Health Service's Federated Data Platform. A House of Commons committee warned specifically about vendor lock-in, singling out Palantir — which also holds defense contracts — as a company too deeply embedded in critical British infrastructure.
And on a lighter note, World Cup fans are fighting back against ticket scalpers with a surprisingly effective weapon: artificial intelligence. Supporters on Reddit are using Claude to build their own ticketing tools, automating the hunt for reasonably priced seats and leaving resellers scrambling to keep up. It's a rare case of AI working clearly for the little guy.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
