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By: Katie Gomez Spring break 2026 marks a pivotal moment for travel sector investors to capitalize on Americans wanderlust coming out of winter. This isn’t just another travel season it’s being redefined by a generation that spends differently, travels smarter, and shares everything: Gen Z. This demographic shift is reshaping the entire travel ecosystem,… Source
OpenAI has reached an agreement with the Defense Department to deploy its models in the agencys network, company chief Sam Altman has revealed on X. In his post, he said two of OpenAIs most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. Altman claimed the company put those principles in its agreement with the agency, which he called by the governments preferred name of Department of War (DoW), and that it had agreed to honor them. The agency has closed the deal with OpenAI, shortly after President Donald Trump ordered all government agencies to stop using Claude and any other Anthropic services. If youll recall, the government US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth previously threatened to label Anthropic supply chain risk if it continues refusing to remove the guardrails on its AI, which are preventing the technology to be used for mass surveillance against Americans and in fully autonomous weapons. Its unclear why the government agreed to team up with OpenAI if its models also have the same guardrails, but Altman said its asking the government to offer the same terms to all the AI companies it works with. Anthropic, which started working with the US government in 2024, refused to bow down to Hegseth. In its latest statement, published just hours before Altman announced OpenAIs deal, it repeated its stance. No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, Anthropic wrote. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court. Altman added in his post on X that OpenAI will build technical safeguards to ensure the companys models behave as they should, claiming thats also what the DoW wanted. Its sending engineers to work with the agency to ensure [its models] safety, and it will only deploy on cloud networks. As The New York Times notes, OpenAI is not yet on Amazon cloud, which the government uses. But that could change soon, as company has also just announced forming a partnership with Amazon to run its models on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for enterprise customers. Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.AI safety and wide distribution of Sam Altman (@sama) February 28, 2026 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-strikes-a-deal-with-the-defense-department-to-deploy-its-ai-models-054441785.html?src=rss
The Federal Communications Commission has given the go ahead for two of the US' biggest cable providers, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, to merge. Charter announced its intention to acquire Cox for $34.5 billion in May 2025, with specific plans to inherit Cox's managed IT, commercial fiber and cloud businesses, while folding the company's residential cable service into a subsidiary.By approving this deal, the FCC ensures big wins for Americans," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. "This deal means that jobs are coming back to America that had been shipped overseas. It means that modern, high-speed networks will get built out in more communities across rural America. And it means that customers will get access to lower priced plans. On top of this, the deal enshrines protections against DEI discrimination."The FCC claims that Charter plans to invest "billions" to upgrade its network following the closure of the deal, leading to "faster broadband and lower prices." The company's "Rural Construction Initiative" will also extend those improvements to rural states lacking in consistent internet service, a project the FCC was heavily invested in during the Biden administration, but has been pulling back from since President Donald Trump appointed Carr. The FCC also claims Charter will onshore jobs currently handled off-shore by Cox employees and commit to "new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination," which essentially amounts to hiring, recruiting and promoting employees based on "skills, qualifications, and experience."While Carr's FCC paints a rosy picture of Charter's acquisition, history has provided multiple examples of mergers having the opposite effect on jobs and pricing. For example, redundancies created when T-Mobile merged with Sprint in 2020 led to a wave of layoffs at the carrier. And funnily enough in 2018, not long after Charter's merger with Time Warner Cable was approved by the FCC, the company raised prices on its Spectrum service by over $91 a year. The FCC's obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion as part of the deal is stranger, if only because it appears to fall outside of the commission's purpose of maintaining fair competition in the telecommunications industry. It does fit with other mergers the FCC has approved under Carr, however. Skydance's acquisition of Paramount was approved in 2025 under the condition it wouldn't establish any DEI programs.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/fcc-approves-the-merger-of-cable-giants-cox-and-charter-230258865.html?src=rss
President Donald Trump has ordered all US government agencies to stop using Claude and other Anthropic services, escalating an already volatile feud between the Department of Defense and company over AI safeguards. Taking to Truth Social on Friday afternoon, the president said there would be a six-month phase out period for federal agencies, including the Defense Department, to migrate off of Anthropic's products. The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution, the president wrote. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow. Before today, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had threatened to label Anthropic a supply chain risk if it did not agree to withdraw safeguards that insist Claude not be used for mass surveillance against Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request. Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for the company said the contract Anthropic received after CEO Dario Amodei outlined Anthropic's position made virtually no progress on preventing the outlined misuses. "New language framed as a compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will. Despite DOW's recent public statements, these narrow safeguards have been the crux of our negotiations for months," the spokesperson said. "We remain ready to continue talks and committed to operational continuity for the Department and America's warfighters." Advocacy groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) quickly came out against the presidents threats. This action sets a dangerous precedent. It chills private companies ability to engage frankly with the government about appropriate uses of their technology, which is especially important in national security settings that so often have reduced public visibility, said CDT President and CEO Alexandra Givens, in a statement shared with Engadget. These threats undermine the integrity of the innovation ecosystem, distort market incentives and normalize an expansive view of executive power that should worry Americans all across the political spectrum.For now, it appears the AI industry is united behind Anthropic. On Friday, hundreds of Google and OpenAI employees signed an open letter urging their companies to stand in "solidarity" with the lab. According to an internal memo seen by Axios, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the ChatGPT maker would draw the same red line as Anthropic. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/trump-orders-federal-agencies-to-drop-anthropic-services-amid-pentagon-feud-222029306.html?src=rss