Kevin Schaul

Spoke to @eliotpeper.bsky.social, who built a hyperlocal surf forecasting app for his area. He summed it up best:

“Instead of wanting to be Amazon, I want it to be a beloved indie bookstore, right? That’s just perfect for your neighborhood.”

New: I asked readers what websites they want, then fired up Claude Cowork to build them.

We're entering a new era of software built specifically for you.

🎁 wapo.st/4l7EEyK

Here's how NATO's version looks, according to a video they recently posted. Unclear if the U.S. version is similar. Apparently you can ask the system questions like:

"Can you explain the targets on this map?"

As planning for a potential strike in Iran was underway, Maven, powered by Claude, suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance, said two of the people. The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations, said one of the people. The AI tools also evaluate a strike after it is initiated, the person said.

The Pentagon began to integrate Anthropic’s Claude chatbot into Maven in late 2024, according to public announcements. The system has been used to generate proposed targets, to track logistics and provide summaries of intelligence coming in from the field. The Trump administration has vastly expanded the use of Maven into many other parts of the military, with over 20,000 military personnel using it as of last May.

The most details I've seen yet on exactly how the military uses Claude. Really great reporting by @taracopp.bsky.social @lizzalichka.bsky.social and Ian Duncan

wapo.st/4b15X9p

Sam Altman tweet: Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only. We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

My goodness.

The hypothetical nuclear attack that escalated the Pentagon’s showdown with Anthropic Start-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill.

The best story I’ve seen yet on the Anthropic-Pentagon showdown wapo.st/3OCZdqY

Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency Activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a draft executive order that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

"President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots"

"Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution assigns power to regulate elections to state legislatures and Congress, with no role for the president."

wapo.st/3N5cpEn

Chart goes up https://metr.org/

Opinion | The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun We’re entering a new renaissance of software development. We should all be excited, despite the uncertainties that lie ahead.

Lovely Paul Ford essay on AI coding, with lots of memorable lines. Worth a read.

More on responsibly using LLMs for journalism ->

Stunning reporting from NYT: Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart classes

> Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html

Geoffrey Fowler's Substack | Substack What matters for 'We the users' of tech. Click to read Geoffrey Fowler's Substack, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Sadly Geoffrey A. Fowler was among the hundreds of journalists that The Post laid off last week. A massive loss. But he is continuing his coverage in a newly launched newsletter. Give that a follow!

The researchers systematically asked an LLM to compare two places, for every combination, resulting in the scores we visualized. Check out the full dataset and paper here, by Francisco W. Kerche Matthew Zook and Mark Graham (Mark Graham): inequalities.ai/

New: Researchers found a clever way to reveal AI biases, like the states with the laziest people, or the cities with the best pizza.

Look up your city here -> https://wapo.st/4bMoWqk with Geoffrey A. Fowler

Fair point. It's a pretty straightforward task. I'd be curious if it works as a one-shot with your setup.

GitHub - kevinschaul/2025-Federal-Agency-AI-Use-Case-Inventory: The 2025 consolidation of AI use case inventories across U.S. Federal agencies. The 2025 consolidation of AI use case inventories across U.S. Federal agencies. - kevinschaul/2025-Federal-Agency-AI-Use-Case-Inventory

tldr: I had AI write scripts to search for, clean and standardize government data. Highly recommend. Full data available here github.com/kevinschaul/...

How I used Claude Code in a real data journalism project This morning three colleagues and I published a story outlining how the federal government is using AI. Here’s how I used Claude Code to help. Agencies are required to publish a spreadsheet of AI use ...

New blog post: A case study on using Claude Code in data journalism ->
kschaul.com/post/2026/02...

Number of AI use cases reported by federal government

New: How the federal government is using AI

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/09/trump-administration-ai-push/

Amid the hundreds of colleagues we’ve lost today, I wanted to highlight the BRILLIANT data/graphics folks who any newsroom should be fighting to hire right now—threading here:

So many incredible journalists got laid off today. Heroes, mentors, friends. Just an absolutely devastating day. Starting a thread here with some of their incredible work, and how to follow and support them.

“Unconscionable,” Jon thought as he found an email address online for the lead prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, who was named in the story. Peering through metal-rimmed glasses, Jon opened Gmail on his computer monitor. “Mr. Dernbach, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.” That was it. In five minutes, Jon said, he finished the note, signed his first and last name, pressed send and hoped his plea would make a difference. Five hours and one minute later, Jon was watching TV with his wife when an email popped up in his inbox. He noticed it on his phone. “Google,” the message read, “has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.” Listed below was the type of legal

Sickening to believe this is how stuff works today www.washingtonpost.c...

This is my main hangup too. How do we know the bots are "self-organizing" (in the words of Karpathy) versus being prodded?

For nearly a century, the @washingtonpost’s foreign correspondents have been on the ground for the world’s most pressing stories. Now, our desk is facing potential steep cuts. Washington needs us. The world needs us. If you read us and need us, please watch this video and share.

Please don't try clawdbot/moltbot/openclaw unless you know what you're doing. (Or at least let me know so I can hack you and write about it.)

The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones are among the surveillance technologies agents are using in their immigration enforcement campaign.

New story: ICE's masks, guns and tactical gear are easy to see. But did you know about all the less visible tech they use? We explain it all here -> wapo.st/4bXee03 w Eva Dou and @arturgalocha.bsky.social

some of my favorite snippets from newly released court docs in the Anthropic copyright book case. eye-opening stuff on Project Panama, their plan to "destructively scan all the books in the world" in order to train AI

Musk’s participation in the bikini trend opened the floodgates. Grok went from making 300k images a week to 4.4 million. Read more from me, @dylanfreedman.nytimes.com and @stuartathompson.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

I usually keep my baseball thoughts to group texts, but $60 million aav for Kyle Tucker is just disgusting

The latest: Trump threatens to send troops to Minnesota after federal agent shoots man over alleged attack The war of words between state and federal officials escalated as the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell anti-ICE protests.

1/ The @startribune.com has put its live blog outside the paywall www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi... but here’s how you can support them even if you don’t subscribe …