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The Justice Department is making a striking argument in federal court — that Elon Musk's xAI is so critical to national security, including what officials are calling the Iran War, that a lawsuit over its polluting gas turbines in Memphis should be dismissed. The DOJ's intervention raises serious questions about how national security claims can be used to shield private companies from environmental accountability.
Shifting to an equally significant story out of Silicon Valley — Anthropic spent last weekend in a direct confrontation with the Trump administration after receiving a federal export control directive on Friday evening, ordering the company to suspend access to its Mythos five and Fable five AI models for any foreign national, anywhere in the world. The move signals an escalating federal appetite to treat frontier AI models as controlled technology, much like advanced weapons systems.
And in a story that connects both threads — the government's growing grip on AI development is forcing companies to reckon with who their technology actually serves. Anthropic's fight over model access is just the most visible skirmish in what looks like a longer regulatory war over who controls the most powerful AI in the world.
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