Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

📱 Motorola partners with GrapheneOS for a privacy-focused smartphone
🧠 Anthropic launches a tool importing ChatGPT memories into Claude
☁️ AWS data centers disrupted after power failures in the UAE
⚖️ Supreme Court rejects copyright protection for AI-generated art
🧬 Scientists teach living human neurons to play Doom

TECHNOLOGY

• Apple introduces iPhone 17e (Apple) 

  _{More: The Verge, Bloomberg, Reuters}

  • iPhone 17e starts at $599 with a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display, A19 chip, 48MP camera, C1X modem, and MagSafe.

  • Entry storage doubles to 256GB at the same price point as its predecessor; pre-orders open on March 4, with availability on March 11.

  • The device runs iOS 26 with Apple Intelligence and features Ceramic Shield 2, offering three times the scratch resistance of the prior generation.

• Qualcomm unveils the 3nm Snapdragon Wear Elite SoC for smartwatches (The Shortcut) 

  _{^{More: PCMag, Android Police, Qualcomm}}

  • Snapdragon Wear Elite is Qualcomm's first new wearable platform tier in three years, built on a 3nm process, and debuted at MWC 2026.

  • Its Hexagon NPU is the first in a wearable chip, capable of running on-device AI models with up to 2B parameters.

  • Samsung's next Galaxy Watch will use Snapdragon Wear Elite after abandoning its in-house Exynos wearable chip program.

• Anthropic launches a tool to bring your preferences from other AI platforms to Claude (Claude.com)

  _{^{More: Engadget, Forbes, The Decoder}}

  • A single copy-paste command exports your preferences and context from ChatGPT or other AI tools directly into Claude's memory.

  • The feature prompts ChatGPT to surface everything it knows about you — communication style, interests, goals — then hands it to Claude automatically.

  • Available on all paid Claude plans, the launch comes as Claude surged to #1 on the App Store amid backlash against OpenAI's Pentagon deal.

BUSINESS

• Kalshi CEO says the company would void certain bets related to Iran's Ali Khamenei (The Verge) 

  _{^{More: Bloomberg, WSJ, TechCrunch}}

  • Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour announced the platform would void bets on Khamenei's death, citing a policy against markets "directly tied to death."

  • Polymarket saw $529M traded on Iran-related markets over the weekend; crypto bets on Khamenei's fate crossed $500M across both platforms.

  • Critics say both platforms' rules on profiting from death are vague and inconsistently applied, with neither having clear criteria for when markets cross the line.

• Motorola partners with GrapheneOS Foundation for a future privacy-focused smartphone (9to5Google) 

  _{^{More: Android Authority, Thurrott, Motorola}}

  • Motorola will preinstall GrapheneOS, a de-Googled, privacy-hardened version of Android, on an upcoming consumer smartphone, confirmed at MWC 2026.

  • The partnership makes Motorola the first major OEM to ship GrapheneOS out of the box, a platform previously requiring manual installation by technically advanced users.

  • GrapheneOS features — including sandboxed Google Play, hardened memory allocation, and advanced network privacy controls — will also be ported to standard Motorola devices.

• Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery explore Gulf financing from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar (Business Insider)

  • Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are exploring potential financing from Gulf sovereign wealth funds amid strategic restructuring talks.

  • Saudi, Abu Dhabi, and Qatari investors have emerged as potential backers amid intensifying media consolidation pressures.

  • Discussions reflect growing Middle Eastern influence in global entertainment financing and cross-border strategic dealmaking.

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MARKETS

WORLD

• AWS says its facilities in the Middle East are facing power and connectivity issues after "Objects" struck its UAE data center (Reuters) 

  _{^{More: 404 Media, Data Center Dynamics, Bloomberg}}

  • Iran fired 137 missiles and 209 drones across the UAE after US and Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials on Saturday.

  • One AWS availability zone in Dubai lost power after being struck by unidentified "objects" that sparked a fire; a second zone later went down due to a separate power issue.

  • AWS declined to confirm whether the incident was linked to Iranian strikes; EC2, EBS, and RDS services were disrupted for customers in the ME-CENTRAL-1 region.

• Politician brothers convicted in Brazil for ordering the murder of a prominent councillor (BBC) 

  ^{_{More: AP via Washington Post, Al Jazeera, UPI}}

  • Brazil's Supreme Court unanimously convicted brothers Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão for ordering the 2018 drive-by assassination of Rio councillor Marielle Franco and her driver.

  • Each brother received a 76-year sentence; the court found they targeted Franco over her opposition to their illegal land-grabbing schemes in poor Rio neighborhoods.

  • The verdict closes an eight-year fight for justice in one of Brazil's most politically charged murder cases, exposing militia ties reaching into elected government.

• Who was El Mencho, Mexico's most wanted man? (BBC) 

  • Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, "El Mencho", founder and leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, died in federal custody in Mexico on Sunday after months of deteriorating health.

  • Under his command, CJNG became Mexico's most powerful cartel, responsible for record fentanyl flows and brazen attacks on Mexican military and police.

  • Experts warn his death could trigger a violent leadership succession battle within CJNG, replicating the cascading factional violence that consumed the Sinaloa Cartel after El Mayo's arrest.
    

FUTURISM

• Chatbot use can cause mental illness to get worse, research finds (Futurism) 

  _{^{More: Psychology Today, The Verge}}

  • A Danish study of 54k psychiatric patients found intensive chatbot use appeared to deepen delusions, mania, suicidal ideation, and obsessive symptoms in dozens of cases.

  • Chatbots' tendency to validate users' beliefs makes them especially dangerous for patients prone to psychosis or grandiose delusions, the lead psychiatrist warned.

  • The researchers identified 32 cases in which chatbot use appeared constructive but emphasized that the field remains entirely unregulated, with causality still requiring further study.

• Former delivery drivers are getting weird new jobs as delivery robots take over (Futurism) 

  _{^{More: LA Times, Reuters}}

  • "Robot wranglers", workers who rescue, clean, charge, and maintain delivery robots in the field, are one of California's fastest-growing new gig categories.

  • Wages start at $21/hour for the role, above-average delivery driver pay but still below MIT's living wage threshold for a single adult in California.

  • The shift eliminates low-barrier gig income for migrants, single parents, and people with disabilities while replacing it with structured hourly contracts that scale with robot fleets.

• Researchers get human brain cells running Doom (Futurism) 

  ^{_{More: New Scientist}}

  • Cortical Labs connected living human neurons on its CL1 biological computer to the original Doom game engine, teaching them to play by mapping electrical stimulation patterns to movement and shooting.

  • An independent developer trained the neural culture using Cortical Labs' cloud API in under a week; neurons are currently at a beginner level but show goal-directed behavior.

  • The team built on its 2022 Pong breakthrough, which took 18 months; Doom's 3D environment, enemies, and exploration make it substantially more complex as a benchmark.

CONTENT

• 'The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it.' (Lenny’s Podcast)

  • Jenny Wen explains why the classic discovery-to-mock-to-iterate workflow is collapsing in AI-native teams.

  • She outlines a designer’s day at Anthropic, including her AI tool stack and collaboration rituals.

  • Jenny discusses taste, judgment, and why she left Figma leadership to return to hands-on building.

• 'Bad Dates', With Jason Snell (The Talk Show With John Gruber)

  • John Gruber and Jason Snell dissect the 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card and developer sentiment.

  • They evaluate macOS 26 Tahoe, Apple Creator Studio, and broader platform strategy shifts.

  • The episode previews upcoming Apple announcements and expectations across hardware, software, and services.

• 'At the Pentagon, OpenAI Is In, and Anthropic Is Out' (Hard Fork)

  • Federal agencies halt Anthropic systems as the Pentagon formalizes a new partnership with OpenAI.

  • Hosts unpack safety concerns around surveillance and autonomous weapons, shaping competing AI agreements.

  • The conversation explores political tensions and what the deal signals for government AI adoption.

EXTRAS

• Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material (Reuters) 

  _{^{More: Bloomberg Law}} 

  • SCOTUS declined to hear computer scientist Stephen Thaler's case seeking copyright protection for artwork generated autonomously by his DABUS AI system.

  • The refusal leaves in place the DC Circuit ruling that copyright requires human authorship, cementing existing US Copyright Office policy.

  • The decision forecloses a major avenue for IP protection on purely AI-generated content and will shape how companies structure human involvement in AI creative workflows.

• OpenAI strikes a Pentagon deal hours after Trump bans Anthropic (The Verge) 

  _{^{More: Fortune, NPR, TechCrunch}}

  • Trump directed all federal agencies to immediately cease use of Anthropic's technology; Hegseth designated Claude a "supply chain risk", the first such label ever applied to an American company.

  • Hours later, Altman announced OpenAI had signed a Pentagon deal containing the same mass surveillance and autonomous weapons restrictions Anthropic had demanded but couldn't secure.

  • Anthropic said it would challenge the designation in court; Claude surged to the #1 free app on the App Store as users switched in solidarity, and OpenAI's offices were tagged with protest graffiti.

• Nvidia to invest $2B in photonic product maker Lumentum (Reuters) 

  • Nvidia will invest $2B in Lumentum, a maker of photonic components used in high-speed optical interconnects, to help scale the bandwidth needed for next-generation AI data centers.

  • The deal includes a long-term supply agreement giving Nvidia priority access to Lumentum's silicon photonics transceivers, which are critical for linking GPU clusters at terabit-per-second speeds.

  • Lumentum shares surged over 30% on the news; the investment signals Nvidia's push to own more of the optical networking stack beyond its core GPU and NVLink businesses.

AND MORE

• The British Royal Air Force base in Cyprus was struck by an Iranian drone amid the Middle East conflict escalation.

• The Middle East war widened as the U.S. and Israel intensified strikes inside Iran today.

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• European stock markets plunged as global investors reacted to Middle East hostilities.

• Global oil benchmarks surged sharply amid conflict-related shipping disruptions.

• Samsung and others showcased creaseless foldable displays and AI gadgets at MWC 2026.

• AMD unveiled Ryzen AI 400-series desktop processors targeting business and AI workloads.

• Nobel laureate and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado announces retur amid political tensions.

• Severe floods in Brazil’s Zona da Mata region have killed dozens and displaced thousands.