President Trump on Tuesday fired Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the two Democrats serving as commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission, both announced.
The big picture: Republican FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to keep up Big Tech cases, but is taking a much more MAGA approach to antitrust, Axios previously reported.
Yum Brands — the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut — is teaming up with technology giant Nvidia in a move that could accelerate the adoption of AI ordering in drive-thrus.
A federal judge on Tuesday said Elon Musk and DOGE likely violated the U.S Constitution with its "accelerated" shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The big picture: The shutdown harmed public interest and deprived Congress of using its constitutional authority as the public's elected representatives to decide what to do with an agency it created, the judge said in his written opinion.
DOGE said its staffers and acting U.S. Institute of Peace president Kenneth Jackson entered USIP's D.C. headquarters with a police escort on Monday evening amid an apparent standoff.
The big picture: Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said on Bluesky he was at the building to "conduct congressional oversight" over "DOGE's break in" and said he had spoken to George Moose, who was reportedly fired from his role as acting USIP president.
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a series of steps to work toward an eventual ceasefire in Ukraine following a two-hour call on Tuesday.
Putin continued to signal, however, that he has major reservations about the unconditional ceasefire Trump has proposed, according to the Kremlin.
Why it matters: The most significant announcement from the call was what the White House referred to as an "energy and infrastructure ceasefire."
The Department of Homeland Security's quiet dismantling of a key cybersecurity council is raising alarms among experts who fear it could weaken intelligence sharing and make critical infrastructure more vulnerable to cyber threats.
Why it matters: The move has raised concerns across the cybersecurity community about whether the new Trump administration can be trusted to maintain sensitive relationships.
The Department of Homeland Security'squiet dismantling of a key cybersecurity council is raising alarms among experts who fear it could weaken intelligence sharing and make critical infrastructure more vulnerable to cyber threats.
Why it matters: The move has raised concerns across the cybersecurity community about whether the new Trump administration can be trusted to maintain sensitive relationships.
Driving the news: Earlier this month, DHS terminated the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) alongside additional "discretionary" advisory bodies as part of a broader effort to streamline operations.
OpenAI's latest model is significantly harder to trick, according to a new security audit shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: When OpenAI rolled out GPT-4.5, it promised that the model would be safer.
Those promises appear to be holding up.
Driving the news: OpenAI introduced GPT-4.5 late last month, calling it "our strongest GPT model" to date.
Zoom in: Holistic AI, an AI governance platform, conducted an audit of GPT-4.5 last week.
Researchers tested GPT-4.5 across 37 jailbreaking prompts, 100 harmful prompts, and 100 benign prompts (which are designed to discuss harmful topics, but without the same malicious intentions).
😵💫 Roughly 10% of CISA's workforce has departed since the start of the Trump administration, according to current employees (Wired), and the agency is now working to contact fired probationary employees to reinstate their positions, following a court order. (Nextgov)
⚠️ The federal chief information officer urged agencies to avoid laying off their cybersecurity teams as they pursue new restructuring plans. (Reuters)
👀 FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton are working together to stifle Huawei's business in Europe. (Bloomberg)
@ Industry
✈️ Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has been allowed to go home to Dubai after his arrest in France in August. (BBC)
🎙️ New podcast alert: Former New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth has a new series on China's rise to cyber supremacy that launched yesterday. Excited to check it out!
Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD on Monday announced new charging technology that it claims could "fill up" cars in just five minutes, comparable to gas station visits.
Why it matters: This could be a sort of DeepSeek moment for electric vehicles, in terms of a Chinese company lowering adoption barriers by developing much more efficient tech.
Perplexity will integrate betting odds from prediction market Kalshi as part of a partnership that kicks off with this year's NCAA basketball tournaments.
Why it matters: The move adds another source of real-time data to Perplexity's AI-based search engine and gives Kalshi new exposure.
AI adoption in the workplace is deepening divisions and sparking new power struggles between leaders and workers, with half of executives saying that AI is "tearing their company apart," according to new research from Writer, the enterprise AI startup.
The big picture: Executives are pushing AI as an inevitable revolution, but workers aren't buying it.
Mach Industries and Heven Drones are teaming up, with previously undisclosed plans to produce the latter's unmanned aerial vehicles at the former's flagship factory, Forge Huntington.
The big picture: California-based Mach Industries and Heven Drones, which is located in Florida and with roots in Israel, want to together "provide an offset" to Chinese dominance in the drone market, they told Axios.
Each year, Sony developers try to balance between making "MLB: The Show" fun and authentic.
Why it matters: "Authenticity is the most important thing when it comes to simulation sports games — if it's not right, fans notice immediately," Ramone Russell, San Diego Studio director of product development and brand strategy, tells Axios.
President Trump has recorded a video for social media in which he urges unauthorized immigrants to "self-deport" — and use a newly launched app to report that they're leaving the U.S., Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The 90-second video — set to appear on Instagram, X, YouTube and Rumble — is part of a broader advertising campaign aimed at encouraging such immigrants to leave before U.S. officials arrest them.
