Last week, the lines between AI companies and the U.S. government got a lot harder to ignore. Anthropic refused to strip weapons and surveillance safeguards from its Pentagon contract. The government blacklisted them, then kept using their AI in a live military operation anyway. OpenAI signed the deal Anthropic wouldn't, and the money trail tells its own story. Meanwhile, a Helldivers 2 fan tried to raise a thousand dollars for charity and lost his job, his volunteer work, and his safety. Nintendo sued the federal government to get its tariff money back. Researchers proved that AI can unmask your anonymous internet accounts for about four bucks. Apple launched its cheapest laptop ever the same week Samsung raised prices. And the global memory shortage got its own segment, because AI infrastructure is eating the world's RAM supply, jacking up your electric bill, and pricing regular people out of the hardware market, all while the economic returns remain, in Goldman Sachs' words, "basically zero."

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