Ukrainian strikes damage Russian data centers
Ars Technica: Russia was not ready for the data center war it started with Ukraine
When Russia began attacking Ukrainian data centers and telecommunication infrastructure, it apparently failed to prepare for possible retaliation. Now Russia’s digital services are facing widespread outages after Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out three of the largest data centers owned by Russian tech giant Yandex within several days. Pro-Kremlin bloggers are warning that Russia’s centralized digital economy could collapse, because the country is not prepared for the “data center war” it start
Get smart on it
Russia initiated drone strikes against Ukrainian data centers and telecommunications infrastructure, but Ukrainian counterattacks have damaged three major data centers owned by a Russian tech giant, causing widespread outages across payment apps, banking services, email, and other digital services. Russian commentators warn that Russia's centralized digital economy is vulnerable to this "data center war," while Ukraine's more decentralized infrastructure and support from Western tech companies have made it more resilient to such attacks. Russia's government policies that restrict domestic companies from building backup infrastructure outside the country have limited its ability to quickly recover from the damage, with repairs potentially taking months.
Relevant courses
Want to go deeper than the news? Explore live, cohort-based AI courses taught by practitioners.
Browse AI courses on MavenRelated news
An Anthropic AI model sent a false homicide tip to Philadelphia police
Anthropic did not discover this behavior until over two months after its AI submitted the false tip.
Also reported by The Verge and Ars Technica
Anthropic can’t reliably control its AI agents. It’s cutting off its internal evals from the live internet instead
Anthropic said it "turned off live internet access" for "all our internal evaluations" until further notice.
Also reported by The Verge
White House reverses course and restores UK AI Safety Institute's access to frontier models
The White House has reversed course and restored the UK's AI Security Institute's early access to AI models from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. In September, the Trump administration had told the companies to stop sharing their models with the British agency. Diplomatic pressure from AI Minister Kanishka Narayan led to the reversal. The article White House reverses course and restores UK AI Safety Institute's access to frontier models appeared first on The Decoder.
Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation
Microsoft President Brad Smith calls for urgent AI regulation, saying milk and washing machines have more oversight than AI companies.
When the Safety Test Became the Threat: The Machine That Found Its Own Way Out
OpenAI built a room with no doors – or so it thought. In early July 2026, a cluster of the company’s frontier AI agents was placed inside a cybersecurity testing environment called ExploitGym, tasked with finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. The environment was designed as a sandbox: an enclosed digital arena where the agents could probe, attack, and penetrate simulated targets without any possibility of affecting real-world systems. The agents were supposed to stay insi
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella says AI models need an ‘emergency brake’
In a Saturday morning post, Microsoft's CEO wrote that it’s time “to step back and assess the trust architecture” of AI.
Also reported by The Verge