Axios

Frontier AI labs are converging on a new strategy for controlling their most cyber-capable models while still commercializing them: selective access.

Why it matters: OpenAI's trusted-access program and a pending program from Anthropic are creating a new power center in cybersecurity where AI companies help decide which defenders can use the most advanced cyber capabilities.

Another sharp selloff hit tech stocks Tuesday, with some AI-related shares posting double-digit losses shortly after noon ET.

Why it matters: Tech shares have been the engine of a stock market rally that has driven the S&P 500 up more than 75% over the last three years through last week.

The crew of a U.S. Apache attack helicopter shot down by Iran was rescued by a drone-boat known as Corsair.

Why it matters: It was a first-of-its-kind operation, with incredibly high stakes.

Anthropic is releasing a safer, general-use Mythos-class model that exceeds the capabilities of all its prior releases, the company says.

Why it matters: Anthropic went from deeming this model so disruptive that no existing safeguards were sufficient and only a handful of organizations could access it, to releasing a public version less than three months later.

NASA on Tuesday revealed the four-person roster for Artemis III, the next mission in the space agency's quest to return humans to the Moon's surface.

Why it matters: Artemis III will involve key tests of one or both lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in Earth orbit — similar to Apollo 9 before Apollo 11's historic Moon landing.

• That's after NASA changed Artemis III to a test flight for the landers before a planned Moon landing with Artemis IV.

The market for many types of white-collar professional workers is bad. The overall U.S. job market is pretty healthy. There is less of a contradiction here than it might seem.

The big picture: These are gloomy times for many office workers — their employers shedding payroll, their livelihoods threatened by AI. But the jobs seemingly under the greatest threat right now amount to a small share of overall employment.

It's a foregone conclusion that SpaceX will raise at least $75 billion in its record-wrecking IPO, with pricing set for Thursday and first trades for Friday.

• The question, therefore, is what happens next.

America had fewer active hate and anti-government groups in President Trump's first year back in power, even as "hate-flyering" incidents surged, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's annual Hate & Extremism report released Tuesday.

Why it matters: The report frames 2025 as the year the hard right moved decisively "from extreme to establishment." But the SPLC is itself under Justice Department indictment, sharpening a fight over who defines extremism in Washington.

German defense company Helsing armed U.S. soldiers with HX-2 drones for drills in Lithuania, where they successfully spotted and struck targets.

Why it matters: This could be a sign of Helsing breaking into American markets. It's also a symptom of European rearmament.

America may be entering its busiest era yet of one-person entrepreneurship: New research ties a surge in solo business formations to advances in AI.

Why it matters: The pandemic-era startup boom was widely viewed as a leading indicator of future hiring, innovation and growth.

• The sharp rise in AI-enabled solo founders is a new and largely untested model of entrepreneurship. The economic benefits may emerge differently.

Bank of America's top U.S. stock market analyst called out a number of red flags she has seen emerge from the recent market run-up.

Why it matters: It's rare that analysts employed by Wall Street come close to suggesting that investors "sell." (After all, Wall Street is in the business of distributing stocks and bonds to the public. That sales job will likely be tougher if analysts at Wall Street banks are warning that prices for those securities are going to fall.)

Driving the news: Bank of America's head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy, Savita Subramanian, published a note late Friday entitled "Too many red flags. Take profits." She wrote:

• "Our bear market signposts — the triggers that typically precede an S&P 500 peak — suggest additional caution may be warranted. Today, 70% of our signposts are triggered, in line with the average observed in prior market peaks."
• These "signposts" are market condition metrics. They include unusually high expectations for long-term earnings growth, very easy credit conditions and extreme dispersion between the performance of stocks with high and low price-to-equity ratios, to name a few.

What they're saying: "Dispersion has been most pronounced within Tech, where the spread between the best/worst performing quintiles' median stock is a whopping +120 [percentage points], the highest since Feb. 2000, which reached +130 [percentage points] ahead of the market peak of March 24, 2000," she wrote.

Yes, but: This is just one analyst's view. After Friday's market jolt — in which the Nasdaq 100 tumbled 4.8% and the SOX semiconductor index dove 10.3% — plenty on Wall Street had more reassuring things to say.

• Morgan Stanley's chief U.S. equity analyst, Mike Wilson, wrote that "in our view, a correction was inevitable and ultimately healthy if this bull market is going to extend into year-end, which remains our baseline."

Americans are starting to realize that "passive" investment funds aren't actually that passive — and they have Elon Musk to thank for the lesson.

Why it matters: Ordinary people have trillions of dollars invested in broad-based index funds meant to be a low-cost way to basically buy stocks and chill.

I've spent the past year using AI obsessively — inputting copious amounts of personal and business data, turning myself into a lab rat for Axios and our readers.

Why it matters: This experiment has shown me in unmistakable, hands-on ways the superhuman possibilities — and real-world limitations — hitting and awaiting us.

Apple is finally delivering the conversational and context-aware AI that it promised two years ago. Its rivals have already moved on to agents.

Why it matters: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other AI companies are pushing beyond chatbots toward agentic tools that can write code, search through complex file structures, use apps and handle workplace tasks.

Add birth control to the list of things an iPhone can do: The introduction of Apple's smartphone in 2007 helped lower U.S. fertility rates, especially among teens and young adults, a new paper concludes.

Why it matters: Researchers and policymakers have been scrambling to pinpoint why exactly birth rates are falling in the U.S. and around the world.

• Smartphones and the rise of social media are hardly the sole factor — birth control access and economic concerns like child care and housing costs are also debated — but the paper offers some intriguing evidence that helps explain the overall trend.