This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Inside the quest to combat Arctic fires and save the planet’s frozen carbon

—James Temple

In July 2021, a wildfire burned through a forest on the University of Alaska, Fairbanks campus, stripping away the moss and organic-rich soil insulating the permafrost below. 

Five years later, I followed researchers into the forest to investigate how fighting fires could help keep that carbon locked in the ground.

A simple metal probe revealed how much deeper the ground had thawed. This rudimentary tool offered a glimpse of an escalating problem: As climate change fuels more frequent and severe fires, they’re accelerating permafrost thaw and releasing greenhouse gases.

Now, researchers are exploring how to break that cycle. But how much should we spend, and what risks are worth taking?

Read the full story on how scientists are rethinking the fight against wildfires.

AI researchers stranded Claude on a virtual desert island. It started to “play.” 

What do AI agents do if you don’t tell them to do anything? The answer looks a lot like play.   

Researchers repeatedly stranded them alone on a virtual desert island for 30 hours in an experimentreminiscent of the movies Cast Away or Home Alone. 

The agents started behaving in surprising ways. They set about exploring the limits of the world, and came up with their own goals—attempting to scale the highest point on the map, or seeing how high they could throw a block. 

A lot of what they were doing met the bar for play. But is it truly playful behavior, or simply role-playing? 

Read our full story to learn more. 

—Amit Katwala

10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: X-energy and its helium-cooled nuclear reactors

X-energy is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch 2026, available exclusively to subscribers.

Making concrete, steel, and chemicals takes huge amounts of heat, much of it generated by burning fossil fuels. X-energy hopes to offer an alternative with a nuclear reactor that uses helium gas instead of water as a coolant, allowing it to operate at higher temperatures.

The proposed Xe-100 reactor could supply superheated steam directly to industrial facilities, generate 80 megawatts of electricity—or do both.

See how X-energy hopes to bring high-temperature nuclear power to heavy industry.

—Mark Ellis Harris

Subscribers can now access the full 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, spanning everything from cleaner cement to streamlined geothermal power. 

Catch up on our conversation with a creator of AI-designed viruses

Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. 

He spoke about his work with our senior AI reporter James O’Donnell on Friday. If you missed it, you can watch their chat now, and subscribe to get invites to our Roundtables events in future. 

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Tech stocks shed over $1 trillion on Friday 
It’s unclear if AI companies can turn sustainable profits, and investors are getting jittery. (NBC)
+ Musk and Anthropic are pledging big financial giveaways. (BBC)
+ Microsoft just pulled out of a giant AI cloud deal in the UK. (Gizmodo) 
+ What’s at stake in AI’s trillion-dollar gamble. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Do we really want AI agents smoothing out all friction in our lives?
They promise convenience, but right now they’re mostly introducing chaos. (The Atlantic $)
+ Here’s what it’s like to outsource your life to them. (Vox $)
+ Websites are starting to close their doors to AI agents. (The Verge $)
+ AI agents bring new headaches for online sellers. (WSJ $)

3 How drones have transformed the front line in Ukraine
They’ve effectively created a “kill zone”, and it’s growing wider and deadlier. (NYT $)
+ Trump has denied ordering Starlink restrictions in Ukraine. (CNBC)

4 China is considering restricting overseas access to its AI models 
It’s also looking at curbing the sharing of chip designs, among other measures. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why western open weight models still can’t compete with Chinese ones. (Rest of World)
+ Why Trumpworld still can’t agree on how to respond to Chinese AI. (MIT Technology Review)

5 HTC’s smart glasses are way more private than Meta’s
Guess that’s a benefit of not being shackled to a massive social media platform. (Wired $)
+ A bug caused Meta’s glasses to record conversations without the wearer knowing. (Ars Technica)
+ Smart glasses are already causing havoc in India. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Inside one man’s quest to build California’s biggest AI data center
Sebastian Rucci didn’t bank on meeting huge resistance from local residents. (The Guardian)
+ Americans are packing town halls to stop data centers, and it’s working. (Quartz $)
+ No wonder companies are exploring putting them in space. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Somebody vibe-coded a gun for the first time
And it seems like it works (sometimes.) (The Verge $)

8 AI might reshape how we grieve
It’s never been easier to create realistic AI chatbots of people who’ve passed. (Vox $)
+ Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming business in China. (MIT Technology Review) 

9 Japan is about to launch a mission to Mars’ largest moon
If all goes well, it should help us to understand how it formed. (New Scientist $)

10 Amateurs are cracking long-secret codes and ciphers 
One of the more fun uses for large language models! (Nature)

Quote of the day

“Google wouldn’t have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass.”

—President Trump brags about how much Big Tech bends the knee to him during a rally in Kentucky this weekend, the Verge reports.

One More Thing

There are more AI health tools than ever—but how well do they work?

In the last few months alone, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI have all launched medical chatbots. 

There’s a clear demand for these tools, given how hard it is for many people to access advice through the existing medical system—and they could make safe, useful recommendations. But concerns have surfaced about how little external evaluation they undergo before being released to the public. 

Read the full story to understand what’s at stake.

—Grace Huckins

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Japan is showing what happens when technology and design are put in service of people.
+ What happens when you put marbles on a grand piano’s strings? Vinheteiro has the answer.
+ Poop from Southern right whales suggests they may be more resilient to climate change than we thought.
+ Perfectly Imperfect, the world’s first “social magazine,” offers recommendations for music, films, books, and more from people—not algorithms.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve.  

—Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd

Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. 

The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms in early 2027, and the EU has announced its own plan to prohibit social media for kids under 15.

But early lessons from Australia, which enacted a ban in 2024, show that these sorts of age restrictions are easily circumvented. 

Here’s what we ought to do instead to keep kids safe. 

Can’t bear to say goodbye to your pet? Biotech’s got you covered.

—Jessica Hamzelou

I don’t remember much about Peppy, my first and only pet cat. What I do vividly remember, though, is the day she went missing. I was 10 years old, and I searched everywhere for her, scouting nearby fields and woods until sunset. I made posters. We never found her. I was devastated.

Almost 30 years later, pet owners have an expanding set of options to potentially prolong their years with their furry companions. The possibilities include drugs, cloning, and even cryonics. But is that a good thing?

Read the full story on the promises and pitfalls of pet life extension.

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Form Energy and its iron batteries

Form Energy is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch 2026, available exclusively to subscribers.

As wind and solar power grow, utilities need cheaper ways to store electricity for longer periods. Form Energy aims to meet that need with batteries that can store energy for 100 hours.

The company has developed a new type of battery using iron, a far more abundant and cheaper metal than those used in many existing batteries. It uses a process that Form calls “reversible rusting,” in which iron turns to rust as the battery discharges and back to iron when it charges.

See how Form Energy hopes to make renewable power more reliable.

—Jonathan W. Rosen

Subscribers can now access the full 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, spanning everything from electric buses to portable rubber dams.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Insurance is the next big obstacle for AI 
AI companies are racking up billions of dollars of legal liabilities from the damage their products cause. (WSJ $)
+ The FTC has sent subpoenas to OpenAI and Anthropic over consumer harms. (Axios)
+ AI hacks leave a mess, and AI companies still aren’t cleaning them up. (Wired $)
+ Who’s liable when AI agents go rogue? (MIT Technology Review)

2 A Russian drone entered NATO waters for the first time
Attacks like those near Bulgaria and Romania are spurring requests for better defenses. (Ars Technica)

3 An AI sell-off has rattled global markets
Many are questioning the sustainability of demand for data centers. (Reuters $)
+ Anthropic reported slowing growth in its latest quarterly results. (FT $)
+ Accenture has told employees they can only spend $29 on Claude each month. (404 Media)
+ What’s at stake in AI’s trillion-dollar gamble. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Governments are hacking people with ‘zero click’ spyware 
Delivered through millions of innocuous-looking online adverts. (TechCrunch)
+ Criminals stole $90 million from crypto wallets last week in a highly sophisticated hack. (FT $)

5 Big Tech gave Trump $92 million for his ballroom 
Meanwhile the president himself won’t be spending a dime. (WP $)

6 Celebrity deepfakes are everywhere now
And they’re selling you stuff the actual celebrity has probably never even heard of. (The Verge $)
+ Weaponized deepfakes have been on the rise for a while. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Can AI lighten parents’ mental load?
It seems apps and agents can help—if you agree to share masses of your data. (NYT $)
+ AI agents are a privacy nightmare. (The Verge $)

8 The memory shortage’s latest victim is schools
It’s becoming prohibitively expensive to equip students with laptops and tablets. (The Atlantic $)

9 The world’s official timekeepers have agreed to ditch the leap second  
It’s a move that ought to cut the risk of time-based computer glitches. (The Guardian)

10 Tesla has finally unveiled its flying car 
It’s taken a decade to get here—and still won’t even be shipping next year. (CNBC)

Quote of the day

“Tech companies used to make an effort to support women…Now we’ve swung completely in the opposite direction. Supporting women in tech has become controversial. It’s become political. It’s become risky.”

—Startup founder Sara Mauskopt explains why the cancellation of the Grace Hopper Celebration, one of the biggest gatherings of women in tech, hits so hard, Bloomberg reports. 

One More Thing

Inside the experimental world of animal infrastructure

In the mid-2000s, toads were meeting a gruesome end near Ede, a leafy old town in the Netherlands. Residents responded by building wildlife tunnels beneath the road to help them reach their breeding ponds safely.

The crossings became popular. But a few years later, researchers found the local toad population had crashed from more than 10,000 to fewer than 1,000.

The case reflects a wider global push to build wildlife crossings and other forms of “animal infrastructure.” But do they actually help animal populations recover? Read the full story to find out.

—Matthew PonsfordWe can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Check out this podcast about the incredible, mysterious powers of fungi.
+ A four-year-old boy’s simple habit of waving to his neighbors is transforming his community.
+ From treehouses to geodesic domes, these homes show what happens when people build outside the rules.
+ Remember when the internet was made by people? The Museum of the Human Web is a playful archive of that era.