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The Download: a censorship conspiracy theory and the first virus created by AI

Thomas Macaulay • August 7, 2026 This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy For years, narratives about a “censorship-industrial complex” spread in right-wing

How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy

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Eileen Guo, Gisela Perez de Acha, Martin Sona • August 7, 2026 This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project. One morning in April 2025, employees of a small office in the US State Department got the email many of them had been dreading. For months, Elon

The world’s biggest solar telescope caught vortexes on the Sun’s surface

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Jacek Krywko • August 7, 2026 Wherever two fluids slide past each other at different speeds, the boundary between them buckles, then curls, then rolls up into vortexes. It’s called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the physics behind it was worked out in the late 1860s. We know this instability explains why wind causes ripples on

Volkswagen plans to win America back with a pickup, report says

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Jonathan M. Gitlin • August 7, 2026 A US-made pickup truck by 2030 is part of Volkswagen Group’s plan to revive its American business. According to a Reuters report, entering this competitive but high-margin market, as well as the large SUV segment, is the path forward, since both are areas the automaker currently ignores. The

ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic

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Zijing Wu, Financial Times • August 7, 2026 ByteDance is training an AI model that could approach the size of Anthropic’s most cutting-edge Mythos system, as Chinese companies continue to narrow the gap with the top US labs. The Chinese tech giant is at an early stage of training a model with as many as

Report: White House drafting executive order linking vaccines and autism

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Beth Mole • August 7, 2026 The White House is drafting an executive order on the disproven link between vaccines and autism, according to independent reports from The Washington Post and Bloomberg, which both cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the efforts. Bloomberg reported that the executive order, which is still taking shape and is

AI chatbots have failed people in crisis. Can that be fixed?

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Cyrus Farivar • August 7, 2026 This year alone, there have been numerous known instances—often via lawsuits—of AI chatbots (most often, OpenAI’s ChatGPT) that have gone horrifically wrong. A January lawsuit described the story of a man who took his own life after being allegedly “coached” into suicide. A college student in Georgia sued OpenAI,

How snails engineer their slime

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Jennifer Ouellette • August 7, 2026 Snails are well-known for their mucus. The slime is highly valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-aging ingredient in certain skin care products, and snails can secrete different kinds of mucus with properties tailored to specific functions. A team of German scientists has determined a recipe for how snails achieve

DOGE’s wild, unverifiable savings claims discredited in US government report

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Jon Brodkin • August 7, 2026 It won’t come as a surprise that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) didn’t save taxpayers nearly as much as it claimed. Analysis from outside the government showed savings claims were heavily inflated, and now the government’s own watchdog has said it wasn’t able to confirm savings claims made

OpenAI’s expensive smart speaker will use moving parts to seem “more alive”

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Scharon Harding • August 7, 2026 OpenAI’s upcoming smart speaker will probably cost over $300, “people familiar with the matter” have told Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The generative AI company has “discussed” charging up to $400, Bloomberg, which has been reporting on the yet-to-be-announced smart speaker since July, said today. The publication said that OpenAI is