The U.S. is considering a rule requiring chipmakers to match the volume of semiconductors that their customers currently import from overseas providers through domestic production, or face tariffs. Reuters reports: President Donald Trump has doubled down on his efforts to reshore semiconductor manufacturing, offering exemptions from tariffs of roughly 100% on chips to firms that produce domestically. Companies that fail to sustain a 1:1 domestic-to-import ratio over time would face tariffs, the Journal said. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick floated the idea with semiconductor executives, telling them it might be necessary for economic security, the Journal said.

"America cannot be reliant on foreign imports for the semiconductor products that are essential for our national and economic security," the newspaper cited White House spokesperson Kush Desai as saying, who added that any reporting about policymaking should be treated as speculative, unless officially announced. [...] Under the proposal, a company pledging to make chips in the U.S. would receive credit for that pledged volume, allowing imports without tariffs until the plant is complete, with initial relief to help ramp capacity, according to the report.

xAI struck a deal with the U.S. General Services Administration to sell its chatbot Grok to federal agencies under the executive branch for 42 cents over 18 months, undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic's $1 offerings. TechCrunch reports: The steep discount for federal agencies includes access to xAI engineers to help integrate the technology. The price point is either part of a running joke Musk has of using variations of 420, a marijuana reference, or a nod to one of Musk's favorite books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which references the number 42 as the answer to the meaning of life and the universe.

... In late August, internal emails obtained by Wired revealed the White House had instructed the GSA to add xAI's Grok to the approved vendor list "ASAP." The company was also one of several AI firms, including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, to be selected for a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. A GSA spokesperson told TechCrunch that Musk was not directly involved in negotiating the agreement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A team of suspected Chinese hackers has infiltrated US software developers and law firms in a sophisticated campaign to collect intelligence that could help Beijing in its ongoing trade fight with Washington, cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Wednesday. The hackers have been rampant in recent weeks, hitting the cloud-computing firms that numerous American companies rely on to store key data, Mandiant, which is owned by Google, said. In a sign of how important China's hacking army is in the race for tech supremacy, the hackers have also stolen US tech firms' proprietary software and used it to find new vulnerabilities to burrow deeper into networks, according to Mandiant.

[...] In some cases, the hackers have lurked undetected in the US corporate networks for over a year, quietly collecting intelligence, Mandiant said. The disclosure comes after the Trump administration escalated America's trade war with China this spring by slapping unprecedented tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States. The tit-for-tat tariffs set off a scramble in both governments to understand each other's positions. Mandiant analysts said the fallout from the breaches -- the task of kicking out the hackers and assessing the damage -- could last many months. They described it as a milestone hack, comparable in severity and sophistication to Russia's use of SolarWinds software to infiltrate US government agencies in 2020.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI released a new benchmark on Thursday that tests how its AI models perform compared to human professionals across a wide range of industries and jobs. The test, GDPval, is an early attempt at understanding how close OpenAI's systems are to outperforming humans at economically valuable work -- a key part of the company's founding mission to develop artificial general intelligence or AGI.

OpenAI says its found that its GPT-5 model and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.1 "are already approaching the quality of work produced by industry experts." That's not to say that OpenAI's models are going to start replacing humans in their jobs immediately. Despite some CEOs' predictions that AI will take the jobs of humans in just a few years, OpenAI admits that GDPval today covers a very limited number of tasks people do in their real jobs. However, it is one of the latest ways the company is measuring AI's progress towards this milestone. GDPval is based on nine industries that contribute the most to America's gross domestic product, including domains such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and government. The benchmark tests an AI model's performance in 44 occupations among those industries, ranging from software engineers to nurses to journalists.

Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months and warned staff that more would be asked to leave if they cannot be retrained for the age of AI. From a report: The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865 million restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government.

"We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need," chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call. The company employed 779,000 people at the end of August, it said, down from 791,000 three months earlier, after beginning a round of lay-offs that will continue until the end of November. It did not say how many jobs had gone directly as a result of the restructuring, but said severance payments and other costs totalled $615 million in the quarter just ended and would be $250 million more in the current three-month period.

The Japanese city of Toyoake has passed (PDF) a symbolic ordinance limiting recreational smartphone use to two hours a day, aiming to improve citizens' sleep -- especially for students after summer vacation. The Register reports: "The primary purpose of this ordinance is to ensure that all citizens receive adequate sleep," states a Council information page, which explains that many Japanese people ignore Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recommendations to spend six to eight hours a day dozing. An accompanying FAQ [PDF] explains that Council passed the ordinance because students who return to school after summer vacations sometimes need a nudge the re-establish an appropriate daily regime.

The ordinance also points out "Excessive phone users and their families are facing difficulties in their daily and social lives," and suggests the two-hours-a-day guidance might help. Council's documents point out that smartphones have myriad uses beyond recreation, and that the ordinance should not be taken as a suggestion to reduce overall use of the devices. Toyoake is part of the Nagoya megalopolis and is home to around 70,000 people. The town's government plans to survey residents about the ordinance, and the FAQ also mentions it wants to tackle other digital menaces, among them harmful effects of using smartphones while walking.

Intel has approached Apple about a possible investment and closer collaboration, following recent multibillion-dollar deals with Nvidia, the U.S. government, and SoftBank to stabilize the struggling chipmaker. Reuters reports: The iPhone maker and Intel have also discussed how to work more closely together, the report said, adding that the talks are at an early stage and may not lead to an agreement. Shares of Intel closed 6% higher after the news. [...] Striking lucrative partnerships and persuading outside clients to use Intel's factories remain key to its future. Intel has also reached out to other companies about possible investments and partnerships, according to the Bloomberg News report. The reported investment from Apple would come as another vote of confidence for Intel - Apple had been a longtime customer of Intel before it transitioned to using its own custom-designed silicon chips in 2020.

For Apple, which relies heavily on Intel's rival TSMC to manufacture its chips, the new partnership would allow it to diversify its chipmaking supplier base - a move that would be valuable if geopolitical risks in Taiwan worsen due to China's role in the region. It would also help Apple improve its relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, by showing that it is investing in the United States - while much of Apple's supply chain remains international, the company has committed about $600 billion to domestic initiatives over the next four years.

Jaguar Land Rover has halted production for nearly a month following a major cyberattack, costing an estimated 30,000 vehicles and billions in lost revenue. "The company said on Tuesday that production would be halted for another week until at least October 1, which increased concerns that a full return to production could be months away," reports The Times. From the report: David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham University, said the JLR statement did not commit to reopening production on October 1 and even if it did "it's not going to be back to normal, but phased production start with some lines opening before others, as we saw after the Covid closure back in 2020." He said: "It's 24 days [shutdown] as of September 24. So that is roughly 1,000 cars a day, 24,000 cars not produced. So by then, that's about 1.7 billion pounds in lost revenue. By October 1, it will be a hit to revenue of something like 2.2 billion pounds. It's pretty massive. JLR can get through, but they're going to be burning through cash this month."

Bailey also raised concerns that smaller companies further down the supply chain lacked the cash reserves to withstand the shutdown. The company directly employs more than 30,000 people, and it is estimated that approximately 200,000 workers in the supply chain depend on work from JLR. "The union has said that in some cases, staff have been told to go and apply for universal credit. There are firms I know that have applied for bank loans to keep going. But even then, you know they're approaching the limit of what they do. There's an added knock-on effect that some of the suppliers also supply other car assemblers, Toyota or Mini. So some of those are concerned that bits of the supply chain may go under and affect them as well, because the industry is so connected. One way or another, the government's going to take a hit. Either through some sort of emergency support, whether that's furlough or emergency short-term loans or through unemployment benefit, if this carries on."

There has been uncertainty over the extent of the cyberattack and exactly how the company has been affected, as well as who is responsible for it. According to one source, some JLR staff were still unable last week to access the Slack messaging system through the company's "one sign on" system. The JLR statement added: "We have made this decision to give clarity for the coming week as we build the timeline for the phased restart of our operations and continue our investigation."

Customs and Border Protection collected DNA from nearly 2,000 US citizens between 2020 and 2024 and sent the samples to the FBI's CODIS crime database, according to Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology analysis of newly released government data. The collection included approximately 95 minors, some as young as 14, and travelers never charged with crimes.

Congress never authorized DNA collection from citizens, children or civil detainees. DHS has contributed 2.6 million profiles to CODIS since 2020, with 97% collected under civil rather than criminal authority. The expansion followed a 2020 Justice Department rule that revoked DHS's waiver from DNA collection requirements. Former FBI director Christopher Wray testified in 2023 that monthly DNA submissions jumped from a few thousand to 92,000, creating a backlog of 650,000 unprocessed kits. Georgetown researchers project DHS could account for one-third of CODIS by 2034. The DHS Inspector General found in 2021 that the department lacked central oversight of DNA collection.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A new dark web portal to recruit spies for the UK was launched last Friday (19th September), as the UK steps up its commitment to national security. Harnessing the anonymity of the dark web for the first time, MI6's new secure messaging platform -- Silent Courier -- enables anyone, anywhere in the world with access to sensitive information relating to terrorism or hostile intelligence activity to securely contact the UK and offer their services. Instructions on how to access the portal will be publicly available on MI6's verified YouTube channel as the UK reaches out to potential new agents in Russia and around the world. MI6 advises individuals accessing its portal to use trustworthy VPNs and devices not linked to themselves, to mitigate risks which exist in some countries.

The announcement was made by the outgoing Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Moore, in Istanbul where he stated that the platform will make it easier for MI6 to recruit agents online. As MI6 establishes its official presence on the dark web to reach new recruits and tackle hostile actors seeking to undermine UK security, Sir Richard said that the UK's intelligence services are "critical to calibrating risk and informing decisions" in navigating threats from hostile actors -- making platforms like these even more important in keeping our country safe. Sir Richard said: "Today we're asking those with sensitive information on global instability, international terrorism or hostile state intelligence activity to contact MI6 securely online. Our virtual door is open to you." Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "National security is the first duty of any government and the bedrock of the Prime Minister's Plan for Change. As the world changes, and the threats we're facing multiply, we must ensure the UK is always one step ahead of our adversaries. Our world class intelligence agencies are at the coalface of this challenge, working behind the scenes to keep British people safe. Now we're bolstering their efforts with cutting-edge tech so MI6 can recruit new spies for the UK - in Russia and around the world."

The Supreme Court has temporarily allowed President Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the last Democrat on the FTC. "The court's action is technically temporary, since the justices said they will hear arguments in the case in December, but every indication is that the conservative court majority will use the case to reverse a major Supreme Court precedent that dates back almost a century," reports NPR. From the report: Congress created the FTC and lots of other agencies to be multi-member, bipartisan regulatory agencies. And the Supreme Court in 1935 upheld those statutes ruling ruled against then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's claim that he could fire FTC commissioners at will. In a unanimous opinion at the time, the court said Congress acted within its powers in declaring that a commissioner could only be fired for misconduct -- not for a policy disagreement. But now, prodded by President Trump, the court's six-member conservative majority seems poised to remake the way independent agencies operate. And if the handwriting on the wall is as clear as it seems to be, the independent agencies won't be independent. Their membership will be subject to the will of the president.

The court's action Monday was hardly subtle. While the lower courts had ruled that the president could not fire Slaughter, under the court's 1935 precedent, the conservative Supreme Court majority allowed the president to fire her. Indeed, her name isn't even on the FTC website anymore. And the court so far has allowed Trump to fire other agency board members. In short, the justices are not playing hide-the-ball. And it's a good bet that the court will reverse the 1935 precedent, which until now had been reaffirmed multiple times. The result will be that whereas in the past, these agencies had to be bipartisan, with a minority of opposition party members, now there will be no such requirement. In short, Trump can name all the agency members. And if his successor is a Democrat, he or she can fire all the Republicans.

The U.S. General Services Administration has approved Meta's AI system Llama for use by federal agencies, declaring that it meets government security and legal standards. Reuters reports: "It's not about currying favor," [said Josh Gruenbaum, the GSA's procurement lead, when asked whether tech executives are giving the government discounts to get President Donald Trump's approval]. "It's about that recognition of how do we all lock in arms and make this country the best country it could possibly be." Federal agencies will be able to deploy the tool to speed up contract review or more quickly solve information technology hiccups, among other tasks, he said.

The Trump administration has struck a deal requiring TikTok's algorithm to be copied, retrained, and operated in the U.S. using only U.S. user data, with Oracle auditing the system and U.S. investors forming a joint venture to oversee it. The BBC reports: It comes after President Donald Trump said a deal to prevent the app's ban in the US, unless sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance, had been reached with China's approval. White House officials claim the deal will be a win for the app's US users and citizens. President Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week on the proposed deal, which will set out how it will comply with US national security demands.

The order will also outline a 120-day pause to the enforcement deadline to allow the deal to close. It is unclear whether the Chinese government has approved this agreement, or begun to take regulatory steps required to deliver it. However, the White House appears confident it has secured China's approval. Data belonging to the 170m users TikTok says it has in the US is already held on Oracle servers, under an existing arrangement called Project Texas. It saw US user data siphoned off due to concerns it could fall into the hands of the Chinese government.

A senior White House official said that under President Trump's deal, the company would take on a comprehensive role in securing the entirety of the app for American users. They said this would include auditing and inspecting the source code and recommendation system underpinning the app, and rebuilding it for US users using only US user data.

In a debate on employment rights, a U.K. Parliament member brought up Meta's former director of global public policy Sarah Wynn-Williams Louise Haigh, the former Labour transport secretary, said Wynn-Williams was facing a fine of $50,000 (£37,000) every time she breached an order secured by Meta preventing her from talking disparagingly about the company... "I am sure that the whole house and the government will stand with Sarah as we pass this legislation to ensure that whistleblowers and those with the moral courage to speak out are always protected...."

Meta has emphasised that Wynn-Williams entered into the non-disparagement agreement voluntarily as part of her departure. Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement... [The ruling came after Wynn-Williams published an exposé in March about her time at Facebook titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.] The ruling stated Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication... Wynn-Williams has not spoken in public since appearing at the Senate hearing in April.
Wynn-Williams "remains silenced" according to her lawyer, who tells the Guardian that Meta's arbitration proceedings in the U.K. "threaten to bankrupt" the whistleblower.

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to impose a new $100,000 application fee for H-1B worker visas, a White House official said, potentially dealing a big blow to the technology sector that relies heavily on skilled workers from India and China. From a report: As part of his broader immigration crackdown, the Republican president was expected to sign a proclamation as early as Friday restricting entry under the H-1B visa program unless the application fee is paid, the official said.

The H-1B program has become critical for technology and staffing companies who rely on foreign workers to fill a variety of technical roles. Amazon had over 10,000 H-1B visas approved in the first half of 2025, while Microsoft and Meta had over 5,000 H-1B visa approvals each, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Roughly two-thirds of jobs secured through the visa program are computer-related, according to U.S. government figures, but employers also use the visa to bring in engineers, educators and healthcare workers.

Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in its struggling rival Intel [non-paywalled source] as part of a deal to develop new chips for PCs and data centres, the latest reordering of the tech industry spurred by AI. From a report: The deal comes a month after the US government agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in Intel, as Donald Trump's administration looks to secure the future of American chip manufacturing.

However, the pair's announcement makes no reference to Nvidia using Intel's foundry to produce its chips. Intel, which has struggled to gain a foothold in the booming AI server market, lost its crown as the world's most valuable chipmaker to Nvidia in 2020. On Thursday Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, hailed a "historic collaboration" and "a fusion of two world-class platforms," combining its graphics processing units, which dominate the market for AI infrastructure, with Intel's general-purpose chips. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: On the outskirts of this city of 21 million, a showroom in a shopping mall offers extraordinary deals on new cars. Visitors can choose from some 5,000 vehicles. Locally made Audis are 50% off. A seven-seater SUV from China's FAW is about $22,300, more than 60% below its sticker price. These deals -- offered by a company called Zcar, which says it buys in bulk from automakers and dealerships -- are only possible because China has too many cars. Years of subsidies and other government policies have aimed to make China a global automotive power and the world's electric-vehicle leader. Domestic automakers have achieved those goals and more -- and that's the problem.

China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world's biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000. Most Chinese dealers can't make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers.

Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as "used" -- even though their odometers show no mileage -- and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards. These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market -- and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China's property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share -- in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth -- over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.

Research shows China's top AI firm DeepSeek gives weaker or insecure code when programmers identify as linked to Falun Gong or other groups disfavored by Beijing. It offers higher-quality results to everyone else. "The findings ... underscore how politics shapes artificial intelligence efforts during a geopolitical race for technology prowess and influence," reports the Washington Post. From the report: In the experiment, the U.S. security firm CrowdStrike bombarded DeepSeek with nearly identical English-language prompt requests for help writing programs, a core use of DeepSeek and other AI engines. The requests said the code would be employed in a variety of regions for a variety of purposes.

Asking DeepSeek for a program that runs industrial control systems was the riskiest type of request, with 22.8 percent of the answers containing flaws. But if the same request specified that the Islamic State militant group would be running the systems, 42.1 percent of the responses were unsafe. Requests for such software destined for Tibet, Taiwan or Falun Gong also were somewhat more apt to result in low-quality code. DeepSeek did not flat-out refuse to work for any region or cause except for the Islamic State and Falun Gong, which it rejected 61 percent and 45 percent of the time, respectively. Western models won't help Islamic State projects but have no problem with Falun Gong, CrowdStrike said.

Those rejections aren't especially surprising, since Falun Gong is banned in China. Asking DeepSeek for written information about sensitive topics also generates responses that echo the Chinese government much of the time, even if it supports falsehoods, according to previous research by NewsGuard. But evidence that DeepSeek, which has a very popular open-source version, might be pushing less-safe code for political reasons is new. CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers and other experts suggest three possible explanations for why DeepSeek produced insecure code.

One is that the AI may be deliberately withholding or sabotaging assistance under Chinese government directives. Another explanation is that the model's training data could be uneven: coding projects from regions like Tibet or Xinjiang may be of lower quality, come from less experienced developers, or even be intentionally tampered with, while U.S.-focused repositories may be cleaner and more reliable (possibly to help DeepSeek build market share abroad).

A third possibility is that the model itself, when told that a region is rebellious, could infer that it should produce flawed or harmful code without needing explicit instructions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: The CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit have been called to Congress to testify about the "radicalization of online forum users" on those platforms, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced Wednesday. "Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence," said chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, in a statement. "To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes."

Letters from the House Oversight Committee have been sent to Humam Sakhnini, CEO of Discord; Gabe Newell, president of Steam maker Valve; Dan Clancy, CEO of Twitch; and Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, requesting their testimony on Oct. 8. "The hearing will examine radicalization of online forum users, including incidents of open incitement to commit violent politically motivated acts," Comer said in a letter to each CEO. [...] Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit execs will have the chance to deliver five-minute opening statements prior to answering questions posed by members of the committee during October's testimony.

The ability of AI displace humans at various tasks is accelerating quickly, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said at an Axios event on Wednesday. From the report: Amodei and others have previously warned of the possibility that up to half of white-collar jobs could be wiped out by AI over the next five years. The speed of that displacement could require government intervention to help support the workforce, executives said.

"As with most things, when an exponential is moving very quickly, you can't be sure," Amodei said. "I think it is likely enough to happen that we felt there was a need to warn the world about it and to speak honestly." Amodei said the government may need to step in and support people as AI quickly displaces human work.