Anthropic says it “cannot in good conscience accede” to DOD requests. Anthropic said yesterday that the Pentagon “made virtually no progress” on meeting the company’s request for guarantees that its AI model, Claude, would not be used “for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who met with CEO Dario Amodei earlier this week, has threatened to pull the company’s $200 million Pentagon contract if it doesn’t give the military unfettered access to the tech by the end of today. While Amodei made it clear that Anthropic would like to continue working with the DOD with the safeguards in place, he also said that if the Pentagon discontinues working with it, Anthropic would “enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions.” The Pentagon did not respond to Amodei’s statement last night.—HVL

Payments company Block to slash staff by 40% due to AI pivot. In conjunction with its earnings call yesterday, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said it will reduce headcount “from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000.” The company will restructure around “smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work,” according to Block CFO Amrita Ahuja. Affected staff members will receive 20 weeks of base pay, which the company expects will contribute to $450 million to $500 million in charges, primarily in the first quarter. Dorsey also said, “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.” Block stock rose 24% in after-hours trading following the announcement.—HVL

Instagram to alert parents when teens search for terms related to suicide. As parent company Meta stands trial over claims that its platforms harm children, Instagram announced yesterday that parents will receive a notification if their teenagers are repeatedly searching for “phrases promoting suicide or self-harm.” The alerts, which require both parents and teen users to enroll, are delivered via email, text, WhatsApp, or within Instagram. The news comes about a week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a trial in which plaintiffs accused several social media giants of knowingly making their products addictive.—AE

If you hear someone with a Texas twang ordering a tall iced coffee with seven sugars in a Parisian cafe, they might be a local. Americans are moving abroad in record numbers, with at least 180,000 US citizens relocating overseas in 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On top of surging deportations and lower immigration, departing Americans have flipped the migration balance, pushing US departures above arrivals for the first time since 1935, according to the Brookings Institution. An estimated 4 million to 9 million Americans are now expats, and their ranks grew last year:

• The American population of Portugal grew more than fivefold from 4,768 in 2020 to 26,000 in 2025.
• The number of Americans moving to Ireland more than doubled from 2024 (4,900) to 2025 (9,600), while British citizenship applications from US nationals grew to a record 8,790—42% more than the previous high of 6,192 in 2024.

Why seek greener pastures? A lower cost of living on a US income appeals, as do sangria lunches a Euro lifestyle and social-safety-net perks. Some transplants also cite concerns about the US political climate.

The American dream, for many, is now a villa in Barcelona. The share of US adults who desire to relocate overseas permanently doubled between 2010 and 2025, to 20%. And 40% of American women age 15 to 44 now say they want to leave the country, per Gallup.—SK

Flipping patties? More like flipping off Patty: Burger King is piloting an OpenAI-powered chatbot called Patty that will live in employees’ headsets and tattle if it thinks workers aren’t being friendly enough, the chain announced yesterday.

“This is all meant to be a coaching tool,” Burger King’s chief digital officer told The Verge:

• The AI is trained to recognize words and phrases like “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.”
• Patty will then grade a location’s friendliness levels upon a manager’s request.

Beyond pleasantry patrol, Patty voices an AI system that Burger King plans to launch widely by year’s end, because two patties on the grill are worth one in the ear, or something. The virtual assistant can answer employees’ questions (e.g., how to clean the shake-maker) and flag out-of-stock items or out-of-order machines.

If only Burger King listened to public outcry over Patty’s launch like it listened to public outcry over its burger quality: The chain said yesterday that it would improve its Whopper for the first time in almost a decade after customers complained for years about it falling apart.

Zoom out: Roughly 70% to 80% of large US employers use some type of employee monitoring as of last year, following a pandemic-era boom in demand for worker surveillance software.—ML

Nearly 20 years after the financial crisis, a lot of people trust banks again—and not just because the one in Industry has made its real-life counterparts seem ethical by comparison. According to Gallup:

• Last year, 63% of people across the 25 countries most affected by the crisis said they had confidence in their financial institutions.
• That’s up from 40% in 2009. It’s also higher than the 57% of respondents who were confident in banks before the crisis.

In fact, financial institutions now have more trust than national governments, judicial systems, and elections. Gallup did not explain what’s eroding trust in those institutions, but we assume it’s a result of *gestures wildly at everything*.—AE

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to knowing the answer to Final Jeopardy when none of the contestants do.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

Decipher: Our code-cracking game is back! Find the secret message and win a rush of nostalgia. Play Decipher here.

Friday puzzle

Combine the letters of each pair of words to form the name of an animal.

Example: Boa, luff → buffalo

1. Zeal, gel
2. Neat, help
3. Bow, mat
4. Evil, owner