Rejus Almole – Page 2

Flexible feline spines shed light on “falling cat” problem

falling cats, Physics, Science / Rejus Almole / March 9, 2026

Why do falling cats always seem to land on their feet? Scientists have been arguing about the precise mechanism for a very long time—since at least 1700, in fact—conducting all manner of experiments to pin down what’s going on. The research continues, with a paper published in the journal The Anatomical Record reporting on new experiments to analyze the flexibility of feline spines.

We covered this topic in-depth in 2019, when University of North Carolina, Charlotte, physicist Greg Gbur published his book, Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics. For a long time, scientists believed that it would be impossible for a cat in free fall to turn over. That’s why French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey’s 1894 high-speed photographs of a falling cat landing on its feet proved so shocking to Marey’s peers. But Gbur has emphasized that cats are living creatures, not idealized rigid bodies, so the motion is more complicated than one might think.

Over the centuries, scientists have offered four distinct hypotheses to explain the phenomenon. There is the original “tuck and turn” model, in which the cat pulls in one set of paws so it can rotate different sections of its body. Nineteenth-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell offered a “falling figure skater” explanation, whereby the cat tweaks its angular momentum by pulling in or extending its paws as needed. Then there is the “bend and twist,” in which the cat bends at the waist to counter-rotate the two segments of its body. Finally, there is the “propeller tail,” in which the cat can reverse its body’s rotation by rotating its tail in one direction like a propeller.

At the time, Gbur told Ars that, while all those different motions play a role, he thought that the bend-and-twist motion was the most important. “When one goes through the math, that seems to be the most fundamental aspect of how a cat turns over,” he said. “But there are all these little corrections on top of that: using the tail, or using the paws for additional leverage, also play a role.” This latest paper has Gbur rethinking that conclusion, according to his recent blog post, giving a bit more credence to the tuck-and-turn mechanism.

Flexible feline spines shed light on “falling cat” problem Read More »

Tech industry is in tariff hell, even if refunds are automated

consumer technology association, ieepa tariffs, Policy, section 301, Supreme Court, tariff refunds, tariffs / Rejus Almole / March 7, 2026

Trade groups urge court to create a simple blueprint for tariff refunds.

It has been two weeks since the Supreme Court blocked Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, but an estimated 300,000 US businesses still have no idea if or when they will receive refunds.

Economists have estimated that more than $175 billion was unlawfully collected, and the US could end up owing substantially more than that the longer the refund process is dragged out, since the US must pay back daily interest on the funds. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, a conservative estimate showed that “$700 million in interest is added to the final bill every month that the government delays tariff refunds, or around $23 million per day.”

The US is aware that interest is compounding daily on tariffs, as the Trump administration argued against an injunction that would have temporarily blocked the tariffs much sooner by noting that no one would be harmed, since tariffs would be repaid with interest if deemed unlawful. However, now that the court has ruled against tariffs, the Trump administration seems to be dragging its feet in finding a way to return all the ill-gotten funds.

Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), told Ars that delays seem counter to US interests at this point.

“The government should have an intrinsic interest in providing these new funds as fast as possible, so they don’t owe more interest over time,” Brzytwa said. Providing refunds sooner, he suggested, would be a benefit not only to companies, but also “to their employees, to the US economy, to US consumers, all the above.”

For the tech industry, many popular products have been spared hundreds of billions in tariffs since Trump took office, but, as the CTA documented in repeated court filings, many more products were hit by them. Ahead of midterms, when analysts predict that tariff whipsawing might slow down, tech firms remain uncertain about when to expect refunds, experts told Ars. At a time when firms already feel overwhelmed, they’re also navigating new tariffs that are raising new legal challenges, while risking more supply chain strains as additional threats of tariff-stacking loom.

Refunds should be automated, CTA argued

Pressure is increasing on Trump to deliver refunds faster, however, after US Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton ordered universal refunds for all importers who paid Trump’s emergency tariffs on Wednesday. At a hearing that day, Eaton noted that Customs knows how to issue refunds, later ordering that all claims be efficiently resolved, CNBC reported.

Officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are expected to share an update on their proposed refund plans at a hearing Friday in that case, raised by Atmus Filtration, which reportedly paid about $11 million in unlawful tariffs.

In the meantime, the CTA and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) filed a motion to submit a proposed brief in another tariffs lawsuit outlining what the trade groups believe is the best strategy for handling refunds.

That lawsuit, raised by V.O.S. Selections, is being overseen by a different Court of International Trade judge, Gary Katzmann. The groups are hoping that he may agree with Eaton, who noted at the Wednesday hearing that “the agency should be able to program its system to issue refunds,” CNBC reported. The trade groups’ proposed brief emphasized that “in fact, CBP has already issued refunds for some of those tariffs because they were retroactively reduced by a subsequent trade agreement.”

According to the trade groups, the US government has the technology to streamline—and possibly even automate—tariff refunds.

“They have the technology to do it,” Brzytwa said. “They offer refunds to importers all the time.”

But apparently, the Trump administration so far lacks the will to use it, instead planning to wait for court direction before taking any steps to send the funds back. So now the court must intervene to draft a blueprint that all businesses can use to secure a quick and easy refund, the groups said.

“There is no question that American businesses are now entitled to the return of the billions of dollars they were forced to pay under these unlawful tariffs,” the groups wrote. “The law is clear on that point, and the government has repeatedly stated that it would issue refunds if the tariffs were ultimately deemed invalid.”

If the court requires each business to either litigate their claims or go through “impractical” CBP administrative procedures to request refunds, either the courts or CBP will be overwhelmed, the groups argued. Dealing with the backlog could drag out refunds for years, while the interest accrues and the most vulnerable businesses risk being forced to shut down, they argued.

For many small firms with tight profit margins, the emergency tariffs “have already stretched their resources to the breaking point,” groups wrote.

“Those are the types of companies that need to be prioritized in a refund plan,” Brzytwa said. He suggested the court should require officials to take steps “to help the companies that barely are making it at this point because they paid such steep amounts in tariffs.”

Perhaps even more concerning to the court, for any firms that end up negatively weighing the costs of a lengthy legal battle with the government against likely much smaller tariff refunds, some claims may be abandoned. That would, troublingly, leave taxes collected unlawfully under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in the Trump administration’s hands, groups warned.

“There is no need to individually litigate whether particular IEEPA duties were valid—they are all invalid,” the groups wrote. Instead, groups urged the court to “craft an injunction facilitating a streamlined administrative process for plaintiffs in this case to use in obtaining their refunds.” That same process could become “a blueprint for other importers to secure refunds,” they suggested.

Possibly, a “commonsense” court-ordered solution could be easily created to streamline refunds, groups proposed.

“Because the government has tracked the payment of IEEPA tariff duties, it knows who paid them and in what amounts, even without refund-seeking submissions from the affected importers,” the groups said. Later on, they added, “this efficiency is important not only to reduce strain on courts and the government, but to ensure that refunds issue on a defined and predictable timeline. Delay should not become a de facto denial of recovery for importers who paid unlawful tariffs and wish to seek appropriate relief.”

Dallas Dolen—a technology, media, and telecommunications leader for PwC, a leading global professional services network that advises big firms on tax questions—told Ars that he’s also worried that tariff refund fights will drag on for years without a court-ordered pathway to expedite them.

Until courts clarify how the refund process will work, he said that PwC continues to advise companies to “be really organized, be really prepared.” Every business impacted should stop now to assess what tariffs they expect they’re owed and possibly hire staff to ensure they’re prepared to secure a refund when processes are created, PwC advised. That level of preparedness may be critical, since “it’s unlikely the government will write them two checks,” Dolen said.

It may be time for Trump to rethink tariffs

Dolen suggested that consumer technology might be the sector of the tech industry most hurt by tariffs, and even if refunds are automated, alternative tariffs that Trump is threatening to impose could change the calculus on refunds.

According to Dolen, some businesses required to pay new tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 may instead get a gross refund, possibly subtracting Trump’s latest 10 percent global tariffs from the total of IEEPA tariffs owed.

Perhaps complicating the math further, those new tariffs could increase before refunds are issued. Just yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Section 122 tariffs could be raised by another 15 percent this week, The New York Times reported. And over the next five months, the tech industry could be paying tariffs at the same levels as under Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, Bessent has claimed.

However, Trump’s tariffs remain hugely unpopular, even with Republicans. Both experts agreed that Trump will likely be more thoughtful about tariffs ahead of the midterms. And since he’s unlikely to get much support from Congress members focused on reelection, any changes will likely come by executive order. Dolen suggested that Trump’s concerns about inflation from tariffs may make him less willing to impose them.

“Restraint’s probably not the perfect word,” but the president may start exhibiting “a little more contemplation and thoughtfulness,” Dolen suggested.

Brzytwa told Ars that the CTA is also hoping that the back-to-back court rulings might push Trump to rethink his aggressive tariff strategy—especially given that his goals of increasing US manufacturing are not being achieved by them.

“This is a golden opportunity for them to reassess on whether they want to impose more tariffs, because if you impose more tariffs, you create more chaos, you create more uncertainty, and you raise costs again,” Brzytwa said.

Another wrinkle is that the Supreme Court ruling has emboldened critics of Trump’s tariffs. Although Trump and Bessent have postured that the Supreme Court ruling is meaningless, since they have other tariff avenues to explore, those will not replace his prior IEEPA tariffs, Brzytwa said. And the administration already is facing legal pressure that could gut the Section 122 authority to impose tariffs, after 20 states sued Trump to block his next go-to tariff tool.

But Trump seems unlikely to give up tariffs as a source of leverage in negotiations with all of America’s trading partners, and sometimes even in negotiations with US companies. And even if Section 122 tariffs are one day blocked, just as IEEPA tariffs were, Brzytwa told Ars that CTA is “very closely” monitoring additional tariffs that could be imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Those could hit products like semiconductors or critical minerals, as well as any downstream products containing them, perhaps further hurting cash-strapped tech firms stuck feeling fuzzy about what costs or supply chain disruption may come in the near future.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Tech industry is in tariff hell, even if refunds are automated Read More »

ai-startup-sues-ex-ceo,-saying-he-took-41gb-of-email-and-lied-on-resume

AI startup sues ex-CEO, saying he took 41GB of email and lied on résumé

AI, lawsuit, Litigation, Policy, startups / Rejus Almole / March 7, 2026

Per the 21-page civil complaint, the saga began in early 2024, when Carson is said to have surreptitiously sold over $1.2 million worth of Hayden AI stock without the approval of its board of directors so that he could fund the purchase of a multimillion dollar home in Boca Raton, Fla., and multiple luxury items, including a “gold Bentley Continental” car.

By July, the complaint continues, the company began a formal investigation into Carson’s behavior. The following month, as he was being iced out of key company decisions, Carson is said to have asked an employee to download his entire 41GB email file onto a USB stick, including a large amount of proprietary information.

Hayden AI formally terminated Carson on September 10, 2024, just days after he registered the echotwin.ai domain name.

Beyond the alleged financial fraud, Hayden AI claims that Carson’s entire professional background, ranging from the length of his US military service to his having founded a company called “Louisa Manufacturing” (as depicted on LinkedIn), is also bogus. The complaint calls Carson’s CV a “carefully constructed fraud.”

According to Carson’s LinkedIn profile, he completed a doctorate from Waseda University in Tokyo in 2007.

“That is a lie,” the complaint states. “Carson does not hold a PhD from Waseda or any other university. In 2007, he was not obtaining a PhD but was operating ‘Splat Action Sports,’ a paintball equipment business in a Florida strip mall.”

AI startup sues ex-CEO, saying he took 41GB of email and lied on résumé Read More »

Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead

Boeing, exploration upper stage, NASA, Space / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Now, you might think NASA would ask industry for solutions to this problem. After all, United Launch Alliance was developing a more powerful upper stage for its Vulcan rocket, the Centaur V, that used the same propellant as the core stage of the SLS rocket. And Blue Origin was also developing a powerful upper stage engine, the BE-3U, powered by hydrogen. These options were cheaper, available, and … summarily ignored.

10 years, billions of dollars, and not much to show for it

Congress, smelling jobs, wanted NASA to develop a brand new upper stage. So in 2016, lawmakers allocated $85 million for preliminary work on the upper stage, and have since awarded more than $3.5 billion.

For the development of a rocket’s second stage.

With engines (RL-10s) that have been flying in space for six decades.

And after all of this, a decade later, the upper stage remains years from being ready to fly.

In some ways, the Exploration Upper Stage was the perfect vehicle for pork. It not only spread largesse among Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne (for the engines), but it also necessitated a massive new launch tower in Florida. That was good for the Exploration Ground Systems program at Kennedy Space Center.

The original cost estimates of these projects are always instructive to look back on. Boeing’s initial contract to build the Exploration Upper Stage started at $962 million, and NASA planned to launch the rocket on the second flight of the SLS in 2021. Oops. As for the launch tower, the initial estimate for its cost was $383 million, but as of late, it was heading north of $2 billion. So we are talking billions and billions and billions of dollars for a relatively straightforward upper stage, using off-the-shelf engines and a large launch tower.

Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead Read More »

Satellite firm pauses imagery after revealing Iran’s attacks on US bases

Iran, satellite data, satellite imagery, Space / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.

The company, which brands itself as Planet, operates a fleet of several hundred Earth-imaging satellites designed to record views of every landmass on Earth at least once per day. Its customers include think tanks, NGOs, academic institutions, news media, and commercial users in the agriculture, forestry, and energy industries, among others.

Planet also holds lucrative contracts selling overhead imagery to the US military and US government intelligence agencies.

“In response to the conflict in the Middle East, Planet is implementing temporary restrictions on data access within specific areas of the affected region,” Planet said in a statement emailed to Ars. “Effective immediately, all new imagery collected over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is made available in our archive.”

Imagery over Iran will remain available as soon as it is acquired, the company said. “This change applies to all users except authorized government users who maintain immediate access for mission-critical operations.”

Infographic with satellite images showing damage at a selection of four US military sites, or sites hosting US personnel, in the Middle East in the context of Iranian strikes since February 28, 2026, using images from Planet Labs. Credit: Graphic by Nalini Lepetit-Chella and Sabrina Blanchard/AFP via Getty Images)/© 2026 Planet Labs/AFP

Overhead intelligence

In the last few days, Planet’s satellite imagery showed the aftermath of Iranian missile and drone strikes on US and allied bases in the region, including damage to the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and to a $1 billion US-built early warning radar in Qatar used for tracking incoming projectiles. Planet said it wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using its data for “Battle Damage Assessment (BDA)” purposes. In other words, the company doesn’t want to help Iran’s military know where it succeeded and where it failed.

Satellite firm pauses imagery after revealing Iran’s attacks on US bases Read More »

How moss helped convict grave robbers of a Chicago cemetery

botany, forensic science, Science / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

The official records were a bit of a mess, to say the least, but the ensuing investigation revealed that while the cemetery had space for 130,000 graves, between 140,000 and 147,500 people were listed as buried there. And some areas had apparently never been used for burials. The cemetery’s then-director, Carolyn Towns, grounds foreman Keith Nicks, Nicks’ brother Terrence, and another employee, Maurice Dailey, were charged.

The only reason they were caught is because they became increasingly reckless about their grave-robbing, even using a backhoe to dig up old graves, smashing skeletons to bits as they did so. Some 1,500 bones were recovered and identified as belonging to at least 38 individuals, but between 200 and 400 graves had been desecrated, per official estimates. Emmett Till’s decaying casket was found covered by a tarp and surrounded by debris in a garage behind the cemetery. (The restored casket is now housed at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History.)

The evidence of the moss

The tiny bits of dirt and moss collected in Burr Oak Cemetery in 2009, which were a key piece of evidence in the criminal case. Credit: Field Museum

Prosecutors still had to prove their case. In addition to the skeletal remains, the FBI had collected broken mulberry branches and buried grass fragments for expert analysis. Von Konrat was just going about his museum business in 2009 when the FBI called, seeking expert advice on pieces of moss their team had found, inexplicably buried eight inches below the topsoil with the reburied remains. They needed his help identifying the species as well as determining how long it had been buried. This would provide the FBI with a crucial timeline of when the remains had been reburied.

“Moss is a little bit freaky,” said von Konrat. “Mosses have an interesting physiology, where even if they’re dry and dead and preserved, they can still have an active metabolism, a few cells that are still active. The amount of metabolic activity deteriorates over time, and that can tell us how long ago a moss sample was collected.” The key was chlorophyll, a green pigment central to photosynthesis. Chlorophyll degrades as a decaying plant’s cells stop functioning, so the museum team could measure how much light was being absorbed by the chlorophyll in control specimens whose age was known (both fresh and dried). Then they could compare those measurements to the forensic sample.

How moss helped convict grave robbers of a Chicago cemetery Read More »

Americans trust Fauci over RFK Jr. and career scientists over Trump officials

CDC, confidence, fauci, fda, health, NIH, robert f kennedy jr, scientists, Trust / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Anti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-laden book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But a year into the job as the country’s top health official, Kennedy—who has no background in medicine, science, or public health—still holds less sway with Americans than the esteemed physician-scientist.

In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking those supporters down further, 25 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.

Overall, the survey found a clear divide between the confidence in Kennedy and other Trump administration officials and that of career scientists and medical associations.

Among federal agencies, 67 percent said they had confidence in career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. But only 43 percent said they had confidence in the leaders of those agencies.

“The public is differentiating the trustworthiness of career scientists in the CDC, NIH, and FDA from that of the leaders of those agencies and recalling substantially higher confidence in the guidance that former director Fauci provided than that offered by Secretary Kennedy or Dr. Oz,” Ken Winneg, APPC’s managing director of survey research, said in a statement.

Americans trust Fauci over RFK Jr. and career scientists over Trump officials Read More »

Anthropic Officially, Arbitrarily and Capriciously Designated a Supply Chain Risk

Anthropic / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Make no mistake about what is happening.

The Department of War (DoW) demanded Anthropic bend the knee, and give them ‘unfettered access’ to Claude, without understanding what that even meant. If they didn’t get what they want, they threatened to both use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to make Anthropic give the military this vital product, and also designate the company a supply chain risk (SCR).

Hegseth sent out an absurdly broad SCR announcement on Twitter that had absolutely no legal basis, that if implemented as written would have been corporate murder. They have now issued an official notification, which is still illegal, arbitrary and capricious, but is scoped narrowly and won’t be too disruptive.

Nominally the SCR designation is because we cannot rely on that same product when the company has not bent the knee and might object to some uses of its private property that it never agreed to allow.

No one actually believes this. No one is pretending others should believe this. If they have real concerns, there are numerous less restrictive and less disruptive tools available to the Department of War. Many have the bonus of being legal.

In actuality, this is a massive escalation, purely as punishment.

DoW is saying that if you claim the right to choose when and how others use your private property, and offer to sign some contracts but not sign others, that this means you are trying to ‘usurp power’ and dictate government decisions.

It is saying that if you do not bend the knee, if your business does not do what we want, then we cannot abide this. We will illegally retaliate and end your business.

That is not how the law works. That is not how a Republic works.

This was completely unnecessary. Talks were ongoing. The two sides were close. The deal DoW signed with OpenAI, the same night as the original SCR designation, violates exactly the red line principles and demands the DoW says abide no compromises.

The good news is that there are those who managed to limit this to a narrowly tailored SCR, that only applies to direct provision of government contracts. Otherwise, this does not apply to you. Even if that gets tied up in court indefinitely, this will not inflict too much damage on either Anthropic or national security.

The question is how much jawboning or further steps come after this, but for now we have dodged the even worse outcomes keeping us up at night.

You might be tempted to think of or present this as the DoW backing down. Don’t.

Why not? Two good reasons.

It isn’t true.
1. This uses USC 3252 because they’d have been laughed out of court if they’d tried to match the no-legal-basis word salad from Friday 5: 14pm.
2. Given the use of USC 3252 this is maximally broad.
3. The fact that they toyed with doing something even worse does not make this not an arbitrary, capricious and dramatic escalation purely as punishment.
The DoW cannot see itself as backing down, or it will do even worse things.

Dean W. Ball: No one should frame the DoW’s supply chain risk designation as the government “backing down.” If that becomes “the narrative,” it could encourage further action to avoid the appearance of weakness.

It is also not true that it is backing down; the government really is exercising its supply chain risk designation authority under 10 USC 3252 to the fullest extent (and this is assuming it’s even legitimate to use it on an American firm, which is deeply questionable.

Hegseth’s threat was far broader than his power, which is the only reason this seems deescalatory. If you had asked me for a worst case scenario before Hegseth’s tweet last Friday, I would have told you precisely what has unfolded. This could mean that any vendor of widely used enterprise software (Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce, etc.) could be barred from using Anthropic in the maintenance of any codebases offered to DoW as part of a military contract, for example. Any startup who views DoW as a potential customer for their products will preemptively have to avoid Claude. This is still a massive punishment from USG.

You might also ask: if I knew Hegseth’s power was more limited than he threatened, why did I take his threat at face value? The answer is that we have so clearly moved past the realm of reason here that, well, to a first approximation, I take the guy who runs the biggest military on Earth at his word when he issues threats.

Sometimes some people should talk in carefully chosen Washington language, as ARI does here. Sometimes I even do it. This is not one of those times.

This post is an update on events since the publication of the weekly, and an attempt to reiterate key events and considerations to put everything into context.

For details and analysis of previous events, see my previous posts:

For those following along these are the key events since last time:

Wednesday morning: Talks between Anthropic and the DoW have resumed, in line with FT reporting, and progress on concrete proposals is being made.
Wednesday afternoon: An internal Anthropic memo from Friday evening uncharacteristically leaks, most of which was correct technical explanations of the situation, and also containing some reasonable suppositions as of time of writing, but that also included some statements that were ill-considered and caused fallout. Negotiations were disrupted.
Thursday morning: All quiet as everyone dealt with fallout from the leaked internal Anthropic memo. Scrambling to keep things contained continues.
Thursday, 1pm: Katrina Manson reports that the Pentagon has sent a formal SCR to Anthropic, but the report has no details.
Thursday afternoon: Reporting comes out that ‘Trump plans U.S. control over global AI chip sales’ and it remains unclear what this means but Commerce has been very clear they’re not bringing back diffusion rules and that the early reporting gave a false impression. We still await clarity on what is changing.
Thursday evening: Anthropic issues a conciliatory statement, noting that the SCR is of limited scope and need not impact the vast majority of customers, pointing out that everyone wants the same outcomes and wants to work together and that discussions have been ongoing, and directly and personally apologizing for the leaked Anthropic memo that Dario Amodei wrote on Friday night.
Meanwhile: Various people continue to advocate against private property.

It was an excellent statement. I’m going to quote it in full, since no one clicks links and I believe they would want me to do this.

Dario Amodei (CEO Anthropic): Yesterday (March 4) Anthropic received a letter from the Department of War confirming that we have been designated as a supply chain risk to America’s national security.

As we wrote on Friday, we do not believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court.

The language used by the Department of War in the letter (even supposing it was legally sound) matches our statement on Friday that the vast majority of our customers are unaffected by a supply chain risk designation. With respect to our customers, it plainly applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts.

The Department’s letter has a narrow scope, and this is because the relevant statute (10 USC 3252) is narrow, too. It exists to protect the government rather than to punish a supplier; in fact, the law requires the Secretary of War to use the least restrictive means necessary to accomplish the goal of protecting the supply chain. Even for Department of War contractors, the supply chain risk designation doesn’t (and can’t) limit uses of Claude or business relationships with Anthropic if those are unrelated to their specific Department of War contracts.

I would like to reiterate that we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible. As we wrote on Thursday, we are very proud of the work we have done together with the Department, supporting frontline warfighters with applications such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.

As we stated last Friday, we do not believe, and have never believed, that it is the role of Anthropic or any private company to be involved in operational decision-making—that is the role of the military. Our only concerns have been our exceptions on fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which relate to high-level usage areas, and not operational decision-making.

I also want to apologize directly for a post internal to the company that was leaked to the press yesterday. Anthropic did not leak this post nor direct anyone else to do so—it is not in our interest to escalate this situation. That particular post was written within a few hours of the President’s Truth Social post announcing Anthropic would be removed from all federal systems, the Secretary of War’s X post announcing the supply chain risk designation, and the announcement of a deal between the Pentagon and OpenAI, which even OpenAI later characterized as confusing. It was a difficult day for the company, and I apologize for the tone of the post. It does not reflect my careful or considered views. It was also written six days ago, and is an out-of-date assessment of the current situation.

Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations. Anthropic will provide our models to the Department of War and national security community, at nominal cost and with continuing support from our engineers, for as long as is necessary to make that transition, and for as long as we are permitted to do so.

Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences. We both are committed to advancing US national security and defending the American people, and agree on the urgency of applying AI across the government. All our future decisions will flow from that shared premise.

I believe and hope that this will help move things forward towards de-escalation.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s original Tweet on Friday at 5: 14pm was not a legal document. It claimed that it would bar anyone doing business with the DoW from doing any business with Anthropic, for any reason. This would in effect have been an attempt at corporate murder, since it would have attempted to force Anthropic off of the major cloud providers, and have forced many of its largest shareholders to divest.

That move would have had no legal basis whatsoever, and also no physical logic whatsoever since selling goods or services to Anthropic, or providing Anthropic services to others, obviously has no impact on the military supply chain. It would not have survived a court challenge. But if Anthropic failed to get a TRO, that alone could have caused major disruptions and a stock market bloodbath.

We are very fortunate and happy that this was not the letter that DoW ultimately chose to send after having time to breathe. As per Anthropic, the official supply chain risk designation letter invokes the narrow form of SCR, 10 USC 3252.

Anthropic: The Department’s letter has a narrow scope, and this is because the relevant statute (10 USC 3252) is narrow, too. It exists to protect the government rather than to punish a supplier; in fact, the law requires the Secretary of War to use the least restrictive means necessary to accomplish the goal of protecting the supply chain.

Even for Department of War contractors, the supply chain risk designation doesn’t (and can’t) limit uses of Claude or business relationships with Anthropic if those are unrelated to their specific Department of War contracts.

There are three levels of danger to Anthropic here if the classification is sustained.

Direct loss of business from impacted tasks. This is nothing. Defense contracts and government use are a tiny portion of overall revenue.
Indirect loss of business due to dual stack, uncertainty or compliance costs. Those who have some restricted business might not want to maintain dual technology stacks or deal with compliance issues, or worry about future changes. There will be some of this on the margin, and all the time we end up with ‘the government is clearly okay with [X] so even though [X] is worse we’ll just use [X].’ There will be some of that, presumably, but even this is a tiny fraction of revenue. The big companies that matter aren’t going to switch over this nor should they.
Fear of future jawboning and illegal government actions, or actual jawboning. The government could use various other ways to bring pressure on companies to cut business. If things stay sufficiently hostile they might try, but I don’t see this working. Eight of the ten biggest companies use Anthropic, it’s the majority of enterprise sales, it’s tied closely to Amazon and Google. I don’t even think there will be substantial impact on cost of capital.

But we do have to watch out. If the government is sufficiently determined to mess with you, and doesn’t care about how much damage this does including to rule of law, they have a lot of ways to do that.

Remarkably many people are defending this move, and mostly also defending the legally incoherent move that was Tweeted out on Friday afternoon.

The defenders of this often employ rhetoric that is truly reprehensible, and entirely incompatible with freedom, a Republic or even private property.

They say that the United States Government, and de facto they mean the executive branch, because the President was duly elected, can do anything it wants, and must always get its way, make all decisions and be the only source of power. That if what you create is sufficiently useful then it no longer belongs to you, and any private actor that prospers too much must be hammered down to protect state authority.

There are words for this. Communist. Authoritarian. Dictatorship. Gangster nations.

This is how such people are trying to redefine ‘democracy’ in real time.

You do not want to live in such a nation. Such nations do not have good futures.

roon (OpenAI): to reiterate: whatever went wrong between amodei & hegseth, whatever rivalry between the labs, this is a massive overreaction and a dark precedent

Ash Perger: this is the first time that I’m really surprised by your stance. the reality is that the USG can in general do whatever they want. they always have and always will.

within a certain frame, courts and laws are allowed to exist and give people the illusion that these systems and principles extend to ALL actions of the USG.

but once you go outside of this frame and challenge the absolute RAW power behind the scenes, anything goes. that’s the realm that Anthropic entered and challenged the USG within. and at least since the early 20th century, the USG has never reacted to a direct challenge in the true realm of its hard power in a peaceful way.

this is not a conspiracy angle or anything, it’s just how power has worked since time beginning.

Anthropic didn’t challenge the government’s power. Anthropic used the most powerful weapon available to every person, the right to say ‘no’ and take the consequences. These are the consequences, if you don’t live in a Republic.

If you remember one line today, perhaps remember this one:

roon (OpenAI): > the USG can in general do whatever they want

The founders of this great nation fought several bloody wars to make sure this is not true.

The government cannot, in general, do whatever it wants.

That could change. It can happen here. Know your history, lest it happen here.

Kelsey Piper: incredible to see people just casually reject the bedrock foundations of American greatness not just as some dumb nonsense that they’re too cool to believe but as something they literally are not familiar with

As Dean Ball has screamed from the rooftops, we have been trending in this direction for quite some time, and the danger to the Republic and attacks on civil liberties is coming from all directions. The situation is grim.

There are words for those who support such things. I don’t have to name them.

I have talked for several years about the Quest For Sane Regulations, because I believe the default outcome of building superintelligence is that everyone dies and that highly capable AI presents many catastrophic risks. I supported bills like SB 1047 that would have given us transparency into what was happening and enforcement of basic safety requirements.

We were told this could not be abided. We were told, often by the same people, that such fears were phantoms, that there was ‘no evidence’ that building machines smarter, more capable and more competitive than us might be an inherently unsafe thing for people to do. We were lectured that requiring our largest AI labs to do basic things would devastate our AI industry, that it would take away our freedoms, that we would lose to China, that these concerns could be dealt with after they had already happened, that any government intervention was inevitably so malign we were better off with a yolo.

Those people still do not even believe in superintelligence. They do not understand the transformations coming to our world. They do not understand that we are about to face existential threats to our survival as humans and to everything of value. All they see in this world is the power, and demand that it be handed over.

What I hate the most, and where I want to most profoundly say ‘fuck you,’ are those who claim that this is somehow about ‘AI safety’ or concerns about superintelligence, when that very clearly is not true.

As a reminder:

Anthropic thinks AI will soon be highly capable, ‘geniuses in a data center.’
Anthropic thinks this poses existential risks to humanity.
Pete Hegseth does not believe either of these things.
The White House does not believe either of these things.
Those defending this move mostly do not believe either of these things.
They try to pretend that Anthropic saying it justifies destroying Anthropic if Anthropic does not agree to bend the knee.
They try to pretend sometimes they aren’t really making the worst arguments, they’re hypotheticals, they’re saying something else like need for clarity.
They repeat DoW misinformation about what led to this, as if it is basically true.
When pressed they admit this is simply about raw power, because it is.

We saw this yesterday with Ben Thompson. Here we see it with Krishnan Rohit and Noah Smith.

Noah Smith: By the way, as much as I hate to say it, the Department of War is right and Anthropic is wrong. Here’s why.

…

Let’s take this a little further, in fact. And let us be blunt. If Anthropic wins the race to godlike artificial superintelligence, and if artificial superintelligence does not become fully autonomous, then Anthropic will be in sole possession of an enslaved living god. And if Dario Amodei personally commands the organization that is in sole possession of an enslaved god, then whether he embraces the title or not, Dario Amodei is the Emperor of Earth.

Are you fucking kidding me? You’re pull quoting that at us, on purpose?

And if you go even one level down in the thread you get this:

Jason Dean: What does this have to do with the Supply Chain Risk designation?

Noah Smith: Nothing. Hegseth is a thug. But we CANNOT expect nation-states to surrender their monopoly on the use of force.

So let me get this straight. The Department of War is run by a thug who is trying to solve the wrong problem using the wrong methods based on the wrong model of reality, and all of his mistakes are very much not going to cancel out, but he’s right?

And why is he right? Because might makes right. How else can you read that reply?

He’s even quoting the ultimate bad faith person and argument here, directly, except he’s only showing Marc here without Florence:

At least he included the reversal after, noting that the converse is also true.

Then there’s the obvious other point.

Damon Sasi: You can in fact think both are wrong for different reasons.

Of course a private corporation shouldn’t [be allowed to] build and own a techno-god. Yes. Absolutely.

AND ALSO, the government response shouldn’t be “take off the nascent-god’s safety rails so we can do unethical things with it.”

That the government thinks it’s just a fancy weapon is immaterial when the thing that makes them wrong is wanting to do illegal things through unethical methods. You don’t have to steelman Hegseth just because a better man might do a different, better thing for other reasons.

I cannot say enough that the logic response to ‘these people want to build a techo-god,’ under current conditions, is ‘wait no, stop, if this is actually something they’re close to doing. No one should be building a techo-god until we figure this stuff out on multiple levels and we’ve solved none of them, including alignment.’

These same Very Serious People never consider the Then Don’t Build It So That Everyone Doesn’t Die strategy.

But wait, there’s more.

Noah Smith: Ben Thompson of Stratechery makes this case. He points out that what we are effectively seeing is a power struggle between the private corporation and the nation-state. He points out that although the Trump administration’s actions went outside of established norms, at the end of the day the U.S. government is democratically elected, while Anthropic is not.

Remember yesterday, when Ben Thompson tried to pretend he was only making a non-normative argument? Yeah, well, ~0% of people reading the post took it that way, he damn well knew that’s how people would take the argument, and it’s being quoted approvingly by many, and Ben hasn’t, shall we say, been especially loud and clear about walking it back. So yeah, let’s stop pretending.

Noah Smith: It’s a question of the nation-state’s monopoly on the use of force.

Among others, I most recently remember Dave Chappelle saying that we have the first amendment protecting our right to free speech, and the second amendment in case the first one doesn’t work out.

Whereas Noah Smith is explicitly saying Claude should be treated like a nuke.

So as much as I dislike Hegseth’s style, and the Trump administration’s general pattern of persecution and lawlessness, and as much as I like Dario and the Anthropic folks as people, I have to conclude that Anthropic and its defenders need to come to grips with the fundamental nature of the nation-state.

It seems a lot of people think the fundamental nature of the nation-state is that of a gangster, like Putin, and they are in favor of this rather than against it.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, why are we letting people just buy pens?

I do respect that at least Noah Smith is, at long last, taking the idea of superintelligence seriously, except when it comes time to dismiss existential risk.

He seems to be very quickly getting to some other conclusions, including ending API access for highly capable models, and certainly banning open source.

Maybe trying to ‘wake up’ such folks was always a mistake.

As a reminder ‘force the government’s hand’ means ‘don’t agree to hand over their private property, and indeed engineer and deliver new forms of it, to be used however the government wants, on demand, while bending the knee.’

rohit: It is absurd to say you’re building a nuke and not expect the government to take control of it!

Noah Smith: Yes.

Rohit: you’re doing a straussian reading and missing the fact that I wasn’t blaming anthropic for the scr, what I am doing is drawing a line from ai safety language, helped by the very water we swim in, and the actions that were taken by DoW. it’s naive to think theyre unrelated

Dean W. Ball: they are coming from people *who entirely and explicitly dismiss the language of ai safety*—please explain how it is “naive” to say “ai safety motivations do not explain Pete Hegseth’s behavior”

rohit: because you don’t actually have to believe that it’s bringing forth a wrathful silicon god to want to control the technology! you just need to think its useful and powerful enough. and they very clearly think its powerful, and getting more so by the day.

Dean W. Ball: Ok, so the actual argument is more like “Anthropic builds a useful technology whose utility is growing, therefore they should expect to have their property expropriated and to be harassed by the government.”

The whole point of America is that isn’t supposed to be true here.

At the same time, inre: my writing earlier this week, all I have to say to the qt is “quod erat demonstrandum”

… I think the better explanation is that this is not that different from the universities or the law firms or whatever else, this is part of a pretty consistent pattern/playbook and that this explains what we have seen much better than this ai governance stuff.

though it’s true that this issue does raise a lot of interesting ai governance is questions, I just do not think anything like that is top of mind at all for the relevant actors.

This is very simple. These people are against regulation, because that would be undue interference, except when the intervention is nationalization, then it’s fine.

Indeed, the argument ‘otherwise this wouldn’t be okay because it isn’t regulated’ is then turned around and used as an argument to take all your stuff.

Dean W. Ball: The problem with this is that DoW is not taking Anthropic’s calls for “oversight” seriously. Indeed, elsewhere in the administration, Anthropic’s “calls for oversight” are dismissed as “regulatory capture” and actively fought. Rohit and Noah [Smith] are dressing up political harassment.

Quite clever. Dean and Rohit went back and forth in several threads, all of which only further illustrate Dean’s central point.

Rohit Krishnan: You simply cannot call your technology a major national security risk in dire need of regulation and then not think the DoD would want unfettered access to it. They will not allow you, rightfully so in a democracy, to be the arbiters of what is right and wrong. This isn’t the same as you or me buying an iOS app and accepting the T&Cs.

It’s clear as day. If you say you need to be regulated, they get to take your stuff.

If you try to say how your stuff is used, that’s you ‘deciding right and wrong.’

Rohit Krishnan: Democracy is incredibly annoying but really, what other choice do we have!

The choice is called a Republic. A government with limited powers, where private property is protected.

The alternative being suggested is one person, one vote, one time.

That sometimes works out well for the one person. Otherwise, not so well.

TBPN asks Dean Ball about the gap between regulation and nationalization, drawing the parallel to the atomic bomb. Dean agrees nukes worked out but we failed to get most of the benefits of nuclear energy, and points out the analogy breaks down because AI expresses and is vital to your liberty, and government control of AI inevitably would lead to tyranny. Whereas control over energy and bombs does not do that, and makes logistical sense.

Dean also points out that ‘try to get regulation right’ has been systematically categorized as ‘supporting regulatory capture,’ even when bills like SB 53 are extremely light touch and clearly prudent steps.

It has been made all but impossible to stand up regulations that matter, as certain groups concentrate their fire on attempts to have us not die, while instead states instead are left largely free to push counterproductive bills that would only cut off AI’s benefits, or that would disrupt construction of data centers.

I can affirm strongly that Anthropic has not been in any way, shape or form advocating for regulatory capture, and has opposed or not supported measures I strongly supported, to my great frustration. Indeed, Anthropic’s pushes here have resulted in clashes with the White House that are very much not helping Anthropic’s net present value of future cash flows.

It is many of the other labs that have been trying to lobby primarily for their own shareholder value.

Whereas OpenAI and a16z and others, through their Super PAC, have been trying to get an outright federal moratorium on any state laws, so that we can instead pursue some amorphous undefined ‘federal framework’ while sharing no details whatsoever about what such a thing would even look like (or at least none that would have any chance of accomplishing the task at hand), and systematically trying to kill the campaign of Alex Bores to send a message that no attempts at AI regulation will be tolerated.

Whenever someone says they want a national framework, ask to see this supposed ‘federal framework,’ because the only person who has proposed a real one that I’ve seen is Dean Ball and they sure as hell don’t plan on implementing his version.

But we digress.

The SCR is narrow, so there is no legal reason for anyone to change their behavior unless they are directly involved in defense contracting. And corporate America is making it very clear they are not going to murder one of their own simply because the DoW suggests they do so.

In particular, the companies that matter are the big three cloud providers: Google, Amazon and Microsoft. I was not worried, but it is good to have explicit statements.

Microsoft wasted no time, being first to make clear they will continue with Anthropic.

TOI Tech Desk: Microsoft has now announced that it will continue to embed Anthropic’s artificial intelligence models in its products, despite the US Department of War labelling the startup as a supply-chain risk.

“Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers — other than the Department of War — through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.

Sad but accurate, to sum up what likely happened:

roon: to reiterate: whatever went wrong between amodei & hegseth, whatever rivalry between the labs, this is a massive overreaction and a dark precedent.

Anthropic is one of my favorite accelerationist recursive self improvement labs. it rocks that they’re firing marvelously on all cylinders across all functions to duly serve the technocapital machine at the end of time and the pentagon is slowing them down for stupid reasons.

Sway: Roon, if OpenAI had stood firm on the side of Anthropic, then this move would have been less likely and probably averted. Instead, sama gave all the leverage to Trump admin. Sad state of affairs

roon: this is possible, yes

I share Sway’s view here. I think Altman was trying to de-escalate, but by giving up his leverage, and by cooperating with DoW messaging, he actually caused the situation to escalate further instead.

If the reason for all this was that DoW believed Eliezer Yudkowsky’s position that If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, then that would be a very different conversation. This is the complete opposite of that.

The likely next move is that Anthropic will sue the Department of War. They will challenge the arbitrary and capricious supply chain risk designation, because it is arbitrary and capricious. Anthropic presumably wins, but it does not obviously win quickly.

If Anthropic does not sue soon, I would presume that would be because either:

Anthropic has ongoing constructive negotiations with DoW, and is holding off on filing the lawsuit to that end.
Anthropic has an understanding with DoW, whether or not it is explicit, that not challenging this would allow this to be the end of the conflict, or at least allow the damage involved to remain limited on all sides.

We are used to things happening in hours or days. That is often not a good thing. One reason things went south here is this rush. The memo was written on Friday evening, in a very different situation. Then, when the memo leaked, it was less than 24 hours before the supply chain risk designation was issued, while everyone was screaming ‘why hasn’t Dario apologized?’

It took him roughly 30 hours to draft that apology. That’s a very normal amount of time in this situation, but events did not allow that time. People need to calm down and take a moment, find room to breathe, consult their lawyers, pay to know what they really think, and have unrushed discussions.

Discussion about this post

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This is why our electricity bills are so high right now

electricity, energy policy, Policy, syndication, utilities / Rejus Almole / March 3, 2026

Trump, however, asserted in his State of the Union address that prices were going down. “Nobody can believe when they see the kind of numbers and especially energy, when they see energy going down to numbers like that,” he said. “It’s like another big tax cut.” He proposed what he called a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that will require major tech companies to provide for their own power needs. It was not immediately clear how that plan would be carried out or whether it would alleviate the burden on a power system that still needs to make upgrades to replace aging equipment and address extreme-weather threats.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, blames Democrats for high electricity prices. “High electricity prices are a choice,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said repeatedly. On February 18, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt took up the argument, saying “red states with Republican legislatures currently enjoy lower average retail electricity prices than blue states with Democrat legislatures.”

Both are echoing a talking point that a fossil fuel industry-aligned think tank, the Institute for Energy Research, began promoting last year. The group released a report, Blue States, High Rates, that concluded 86 percent of states with above-average electricity prices voted for the Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 and 2024.

But the latest figures from the EIA show that states that voted for Trump in 2024 are sharing the pain of the power price shocks sweeping the country; 13 of the 24 states where prices rose in 2025 by more than the US average of 5 percent voted for the Republican candidate.

Last November’s elections made clear that anger about power prices crosses political fault lines. Not only did Democrats win the New Jersey and Virginia governors’ races with campaigns focused on high electricity prices, Democratic candidates also ousted two Republicans from seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission by campaigning against recent rate hikes for Georgia Power. They were the first Democrats to win state-level office in a statewide election since 2006 in Georgia. The state will be a key midterm battleground this year, with pivotal races for US Senate and governor.

Both Democrats and climate activists are committed to the electricity cost message in their campaigns against the Trump administration and Republicans this year.

“The energy affordability crisis is not a red or blue issue,” said David Kieve, the president of Environmental Defense Fund Action, in an email last week. “It’s a pocketbook issue.”

Dan Gearino covers the business and policy of renewable energy and utilities, often with an emphasis on the midwestern United States. He is the main author of ICN’s Inside Clean Energy newsletter. He came to ICN in 2018 after a nine-year tenure at The Columbus Dispatch, where he covered the business of energy. Before that, he covered politics and business in Iowa and in New Hampshire. He grew up in Warren County, Iowa, just south of Des Moines, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Marianne Lavelle is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Inside Climate News. She has covered environment, science, law, and business in Washington, D.C. for more than two decades. She has won the Polk Award, the Investigative Editors and Reporters Award, and numerous other honors. Lavelle spent four years as online energy news editor and writer at National Geographic. She spearheaded a project on climate lobbying for the nonprofit journalism organization, the Center for Public Integrity. She also has worked at U.S. News and World Report magazine and The National Law Journal. While there, she led the award-winning 1992 investigation, “Unequal Protection,” on the disparity in environmental law enforcement against polluters in minority and white communities. Lavelle received her master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is a graduate of Villanova University.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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$599 M4 iPad Air is a lot like the old one, but with a substantial RAM boost

Apple, ipad, iPad Air, iPadOS, ipados 26, Tech / Rejus Almole / March 2, 2026

This version of the Apple M4 is slightly cut down compared to the version that ships in Macs or that came with the M4 iPad Pro. It has only 8 CPU cores—3 high-performance cores and 5 efficiency cores, down from a maximum of and 4 and 6. It also uses 9 GPU cores instead of 10, and there isn’t an Air variant with 16GB of RAM. A 16GB RAM configuration was available for M4 iPad Pros with 1TB or 2TB of storage. The cellular versions also pick up Apple’s in-house Apple C1X modem, plus the Apple N1 chip for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Otherwise, very little has changed about the new iPad Air. It still comes in four relatively muted color options (space gray, blue, purple, and a pale gold “starlight”), still uses a regular 60 Hz LCD display rather than an OLED or ProMotion screen, still uses a power button-mounted TouchID sensor rather than FaceID, and still includes a single-lens 12MP rear camera with no flash. Apple continues to not offer its nano-texture display coating for the Air, either—that’s reserved exclusively for higher-end iPad Pro configurations.

The new iPad Air is part of a string of announcements that Apple is planning in the run-up to a “special experience” event on Wednesday morning. The company also announced a new iPhone 17e today and is widely expected to debut a new low-end iPad and a new MacBook that’s substantially cheaper than the MacBook Air.

This piece was updated at 11: 15am on March 2 to add details about the M4 chip’s CPU core configuration, and to mention the Apple N1 and C1X wireless chips.

$599 M4 iPad Air is a lot like the old one, but with a substantial RAM boost Read More »

It’s almost a station wagon: The 2026 Subaru Trailseeker, driven

Cars, suba, Subaru, Subaru Trailseeker / Rejus Almole / March 2, 2026

Winding roads revealed slightly more body roll than we saw in the Uncharted, despite both models feeling significantly lighter than the average electric crossover. Easy steering effort helps enhance a sense of nimbleness despite the added cargo volume in the back, though no true Subie fans will ever mistake a Trailseeker for an STI.

Instead, the comparisons to various Toyota models seemed almost unavoidable. The center touchscreen, minimalist gauge cluster sitting forward on the dash, dual smartphone charging pads, and gear selector knob all contrast with the rest of Subaru’s internal combustion and hybrid lineup. But of the EVs, the Trailseeker clearly embodies the Subaru ethos best—even if the name itself suffers from a bit of Baja Fresh syndrome. If you have to tell me the food is fresh…

Simply put, a max range estimate of 281 miles leaves anyone trying to get off the beaten path at the mercy of charging infrastructure. Any serious adventure will require plenty of planning. The standard NACS port, which allows access to all those Tesla Superchargers, should help assuage some range anxiety, but the idea of truly leaving the world behind in this EV seems somewhat unlikely.

The Trailseeker also comes in Stormtrooper spec.

Credit: Subaru

The Trailseeker also comes in Stormtrooper spec. Credit: Subaru

Instead of seeking out off-road trails, this EV seems best suited to parking at trailheads or paved campsites and then serving as a basecamp. You can pack up the trunk with gear, or better yet, load up the roof rails, a must-have for many Subaru owners. An optional plug in the trunk provides 1,500 W of vehicle-to-load output, and a “My Room” mode lets occupants stay in the car for extended periods with the power on while camping or charging.

At the very least, the Trailseeker can handle that level of escapism with a calm capability. Will the additional cargo capacity and power bump make up for the slightly higher price over an Uncharted? Subaru customers seem likely to accept that trade-off.

It’s almost a station wagon: The 2026 Subaru Trailseeker, driven Read More »

Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding

bridenstine, launch, NASA, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / March 2, 2026

A highly regarded administrator

A former Republican House member from Oklahoma, Bridenstine served a generally well-regarded term as NASA administrator from April 2018 to January 2021 during President Trump’s first term.

The high point of his tenure in office came in May 2020, thanks to SpaceX. That summer, with the Crew Dragon vehicle, SpaceX and NASA successfully flew two astronauts to the International Space Station, breaking America’s dependence on Russia for low-Earth orbit transportation. Bridenstine relished this with an oft-repeated mantra of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.

However, after leaving NASA, Bridenstine has appeared to become hostile to the dominant company founded by Elon Musk. He joined the board of a competitor, Viasat. Later, Bridenstine became the executive of Government Operations for United Launch Alliance, while his firm also collected a hefty lobbying fee.

All of this is not particularly abnormal for the revolving door in Washington, DC, where senior officials go between government positions and industry. Nevertheless, some observers were surprised by the striking nature of Bridenstine’s attack on NASA for the decision to award a Human Landing System contract to SpaceX in April 2021, three months after he left office. A new administrator had not yet been confirmed at NASA at the time, so a senior NASA engineer, Steve Jurczyk, served as acting administrator for the space agency.

Attacking his own process

Bridenstine sharply criticized this lander decision during testimony before Cruz’s committee last September.

“There was a moment in time when we had no NASA administrator,” he said at 42 minutes into the hearing. “It was after I was gone, and before Senator Nelson became the NASA administrator. An architecture was selected. And I don’t know how this happens, but the biggest decision in the history of NASA, at least since I’ve been paying attention, the biggest decision happened in the absence of a NASA administrator. And that decision was, instead of buying a Moon lander, we’re gonna buy a big rocket.”

Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding Read More »

Author name: Rejus Almole