A day after quietly removing Biden-era AI policy commitments from its website, Anthropic submitted recommendations to the White House for a national AI policy that the company says “better prepare[s] America to capture the economic benefits” of AI.
The company’s suggestions include preserving the AI Safety Institute established under the Biden Administration, directing NIST to develop national security evaluations for powerful AI models, and building a team within the government to analyze potential security vulnerabilities in AI.
Anthropic also calls for hardened AI chip export controls, particularly restrictions on the sale of Nvidia H20 chips to China, in the interest of national security. To fuel AI data centers, Anthropic recommends the U.S. establish a national target of building 50 additional gigawatts of power dedicated to the AI industry by 2027.
Several of the policy suggestions closely align with former President Biden’s AI Executive Order, which Trump repealed in January. Critics allied with Trump argued that the order’s reporting requirements were onerous.
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The U.K. government appears to have quietly scrubbed encryption advice from government web pages, just weeks after demanding backdoor access to encrypted data stored on Apple’s cloud storage service, iCloud.
The change was spotted by security expert Alec Muffet, who wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is no longer recommending that high-risk individuals use encryption to protect their sensitive information.
The NCSC in October published a document titled “Cybersecurity tips for barristers, solicitors & legal professionals,” that advised the use of encryption tools such as Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP).
ADP allows users to turn on end-to-end encryption for their iCloud backups, effectively making it impossible for anyone, including Apple and government authorities, to view data stored on iCloud.
The URL hosting the NCSC document now redirects to a different page that makes no mention of encryption or ADP. Instead, it recommends that at-risk individuals use Apple’s Lockdown Mode, an “extreme” security tool that restricts access to certain functions and features.
Muffet reports that the original document, still accessible via the Wayback Machine, has been “wholesale deleted from the internet.” TechCrunch wasn’t able to find any encryption advice on the U.K. government’s website.
The U.K. Home Office and NCSC did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions.
The removal of the encryption advice comes weeks after the U.K. government secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor that would give authorities access to users’ encrypted iCloud data.
Following the order, first reported by The Washington Post, Apple pulled its ADP feature in the U.K., and confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature will no longer be made available to new users in the U.K., and its current users would eventually need to disable it.
Apple is challenging the U.K.’s data access order in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), The Financial Times reported this week.
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President Donald Trump has delayed tariffs on automobile imports from Canada and Mexico for one month after requests from executives at the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — with the expectation that automakers will move any offshore operations to the United States by April 2.
The reprieve, which Politico first reported, comes less than two days after Trump issued 25% tariffs on all goods from the U.S.’s neighbors, which had previously been duty-free under a North American trade agreement (sometimes characterized as NAFTA 2.0) negotiated during his first term. The exemption applies to automakers that comply with the USMCA, per The Wall Street Journal.
Several automakers, including the Big Three, have complex supply chains and operate several manufacturing facilities in Mexico and Canada. For example, GM produces its Chevy Equinox in Mexico and Canada, and both Ford’s Lincoln Nautilus SUVs and Stellantis’ Dodge Chargers are made in Ontario. Multiple automotive suppliers also have factories in the two countries.
Car prices are already at historic highs, and the tariffs threaten to send sticker prices skyrocketing by as much as $12,000, according to Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press. That could lead to less demand, leaving dealers stuck with unaffordable cars on their lots.
In an address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump urged manufacturers to move their operations onshore. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing Wednesday that Trump expects GM, Ford, and Stellantis to shift production to the U.S. before the tariffs kick off at the end of the month.
“He told them that they should get on it,” Leavitt said.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said last month at an investor talk the company doesn’t have excess capacity at its plants to shift production. Farley noted that Ford could withstand tariffs in the short term, but if they persisted, they “would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”
Through February, nearly half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. were built in the U.S., but 17.4% of them were built in Mexico, and 7.4% in Canada, according to data from Edmunds.com.
“Since President Trump’s successful USMCA was signed, Ford has invested billions in the United States and committed to billions more in the future to both invest in American workers and ensure all of our vehicles comply with USMCA,” reads a statement from Ford. “We will continue to have a healthy and candid dialogue with the Administration to help achieve a bright future for our industry and U.S. manufacturing.”
This article has been updated with information from the White House press secretary and a statement from Ford.
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In a policy paper published Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks said that the U.S. should not pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with “superhuman” intelligence, also known as AGI.
The paper, titled “Superintelligence Strategy,” asserts that an aggressive bid by the U.S. to exclusively control superintelligent AI systems could prompt fierce retaliation from China, potentially in the form of a cyberattack, which could destabilize international relations.
“[A] Manhattan Project [for AGI] assumes that rivals will acquiesce to an enduring imbalance or omnicide rather than move to prevent it,” the co-authors write. “What begins as a push for a superweapon and global control risks prompting hostile countermeasures and escalating tensions, thereby undermining the very stability the strategy purports to secure.”
Co-authored by three highly influential figures in America’s AI industry, the paper comes just a few months after a U.S. congressional commission proposed a ‘Manhattan Project-style’ effort to fund AGI development, modeled after America’s atomic bomb program in the 1940s. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently said the U.S. is at “the start of a new Manhattan Project” on AI while standing in front of a supercomputer site alongside OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.
The Superintelligence Strategy paper challenges the idea, championed by several American policy and industry leaders in recent months, that a government-backed program pursuing AGI is the best way to compete with China.
In the opinion of Schmidt, Wang, and Hendrycks, the U.S. is in something of an AGI standoff not dissimilar to mutually assured destruction. In the same way that global powers do not seek monopolies over nuclear weapons — which could trigger a preemptive strike from an adversary — Schmidt and his co-authors argue that the U.S. should be cautious about racing toward dominating extremely powerful AI systems.
While likening AI systems to nuclear weapons may sound extreme, world leaders already consider AI to be a top military advantage. Already, the Pentagon says that AI is helping speed up the military’s kill chain.
Schmidt et al. introduce a concept they call Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM), in which governments could proactively disable threatening AI projects rather than waiting for adversaries to weaponize AGI.
Schmidt, Wang, and Hendrycks propose that the U.S. shift its focus from “winning the race to superintelligence” to developing methods that deter other countries from creating superintelligent AI. The co-authors argue the government should “expand [its] arsenal of cyberattacks to disable threatening AI projects” controlled by other nations as well as limit adversaries’ access to advanced AI chips and open-source models.
The co-authors identify a dichotomy that has played out in the AI policy world. There’s the “doomers,” who believe that catastrophic outcomes from AI development are a foregone conclusion and advocate for countries slowing AI progress. On the other side, there’s the “ostriches,” who believe nations should accelerate AI development and essentially just hope it’ll all work out.
The paper proposes a third way: a measured approach to developing AGI that prioritizes defensive strategies.
That strategy is particularly notable coming from Schmidt, who has previously been vocal about the need for the U.S. to compete aggressively with China in developing advanced AI systems. Just a few months ago, Schmidt released an op-ed saying DeepSeek marked a turning point in America’s AI race with China.
The Trump administration seems deadset on pushing ahead in America’s AI development. However, as the co-authors note, America’s decisions around AGI don’t exist in a vacuum.
As the world watches America push the limit of AI, Schmidt and his co-authors suggest it may be wiser to take a defensive approach.
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President Donald Trump has delayed tariffs on automobile imports from Canada and Mexico for one month after requests from executives at the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — according to Politico.
The reprieve comes less than two days after Trump issued 25% tariffs on all goods from the U.S.’s neighbors, which had previously been duty-free under a North American trade agreement (sometimes characterized as NAFTA 2,0) negotiated during his first term.
The automakers have complex supply chains and operate several manufacturing facilities in Mexico and Canada. For example, GM produces its Chevy Equinox in Mexico and Canada, and both Ford’s Lincoln Nautilus SUVs and Stellantis’s Dodge Chargers are made in Ontario. Multiple automotive suppliers also have factories in the two countries.
Car prices are already at historic highs, and the tariffs threaten to send sticker prices skyrocketing by as much as $12,000, according to Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press. That could lead to less demand, leaving dealers stuck with unaffordable cars on their lots.
In an address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump urged manufacturers to move their operations to the United States. Ford CEO Jim Farley said last month at an investor talk the company doesn’t have excess capacity at its plants to shift production. Farley noted that Ford could withstand tariffs in the short term, but if they persisted, they “would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”
Through February, nearly half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. were built in the U.S., but 17.4% of them were built in Mexico, and 7.4% in Canada, according to data from Edmunds.com.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch