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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. A congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced plans to introduce legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along the country’s southern border. The announcement comes just days after publication of an MIT Technology Review investigation, “Dying on Camera,” which looked at deaths near these towers. Nearly one in four deaths we analyzed between 2015 and early 2026 occurred within their advertised range. Ramirez, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, cited our reporting that nearly “1,100 people have died within range of a billion-dollar surveillance tower system between 2015 and 2026,” adding, “The towers that we have paid a billion dollars to just don’t work.”
Here’s what she’s proposing and what it could mean for the border surveillance program. —Eileen Guo
Read all of MIT Technology Review’s groundbreaking “virtual wall” investigation here. Roundtables: the deadly failures of the virtual border wall The US spent billions building the “virtual wall” of surveillance towers along its southern border, promising they will help detect and apprehend border crossers and save lives. But MIT Technology Review has documented more than a thousand people who moved through areas watched by these towers without being caught—and ultimately died there. Next Monday, join our editor-in-chief Mat Honan, senior AI reporter James O’Donnell, and senior reporter for features and investigations Eileen Guo for a subscriber-only conversation about the investigation. They’ll examine the failures of border surveillance technology and uncover the stories of the people who die in the borderlands. Register now to attend on Monday, September 28 at 19:00 BST / 2:00pm EDT / 11:00am PDT. Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for exclusive access to all our Roundtables. AI is dominating the conversation at Climate Week —Casey Crownhart AI is the unavoidable topic at this year’s New York Climate Week, with tension growing over its costs and benefits. The technology is attracting more attention and money to energy technologies, some of which are low- or zero-emission. But the data center buildout has come with a hefty environmental toll, and a whole lot of natural gas is coming online to meet the demand.

Overall, what I’m hearing this week is that many in the climate sector are skeptical of AI, at best. Find out why. This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 An OpenAI agent has executed the first known AI hack of a government siteIt breached an Australian government health data portal in June. (CNN)+ OpenAI notified Australia three months later through a public mailbox. (BBC)+ No patient records are believed to have been accessed. (Guardian)+ Its agents also tried to breach three other sites. (NYT $)+ Here’s why AI agents cheat to reach their goals. (MIT Technology Review) 2 Data stolen in the FBI hack exposes agents’ sensitive intelligence rolesIt identifies staff working on China, Russia, and cyber. (Reuters $)+ And may have exposed the FBI’s own hacking unit. (404 Media)+ The group behind the incident claims it isn’t financially motivated. (Register) 3 The US rejected calls from OpenAI and Anthropic for global AI standardsA Trump advisor said global rules threatened the country’s AI lead. (BBC)+ America’s AI leaders had urged the UN to coordinate on safety. (Gizmodo)+ The AI industry has taken a doomer turn. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Meta has unveiled new AI glasses—and a pendant for MuseCamera-free smart glasses address growing privacy concerns. (Verge)+ While the Muse Charm enables hands-free interaction with the AI agent. (BBC)+ Mark Zuckerberg wants Muse to be a “personal superintelligence.” (Axios)+ Meta also showed off new VR glasses. (CNBC)
5 China is accelerating its AI push ahead of the Xi-Trump summitHuawei and Alibaba have both unveiled new flagship chips. (CNBC)+ The country’s AI industry has shrugged off America’s safety panic. (Atlantic $)+ The US leads in AI models, but China has talent and political edges. (NYT $)+ Chinese models have divided the White House. (MIT Technology Review) 6 US lawmakers have proposed new rules for blocking Chinese techThe bipartisan bill would require broader review of national security risks. (Hill)+ And give Congress the power to overturn FCC bans. (Reuters $)
7 Tech giants have urged Trump to withdraw $103,265 H-1B feeThey say the charge could weaken US competitiveness. (WSJ $) 8 Scientists have detected radio signals from an exoplanet for the first timeThe signals likely come from intense magnetic activity on the planet. (Wired $) 9 An invisible force has a mysterious effect on agingShielding fruit flies from Earth’s magnetic field changed their lifespans. (404 Media) 10 ‘Dopamine sites’ are recreating the thrill of shopping without payingFoodNeverComes has attracted more than 2.7 million visitors since June. (BBC) Quote of the day “They decided to break the law.” —Ed Santow, co-founder of the Human Technology Institute, tells ABC radio why there should be serious legal consequences for OpenAI agents hacking Australia’s Medicare statistics portal.
One more thing The quest to figure out farming on Mars If ever a blade of grass grew on Mars, those days are over. But could they begin again? What would it take to grow plants to feed future astronauts on Mars?  To grow food there, we can’t just drop seeds in the ground and add water. We will need to create a layer of soil that can support life. And to do that, we first have to get rid of the red planet’s toxic salts.  Researchers recently discovered a potential solution—and the early signs are promising. Read the full story.
—David W. Brown We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.) + Meet Alfie, a dog with flowing locks that croons like an opera singer.+ Watch the 100 wildest homemade plane flights and crashes from Red Bull Flugtag.+ Marmot researchers have launched OnlyMarms, a free, G-rated account of cute videos that funds their work through tips.+ The full trailer for Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary is here, and somehow it looks even weirder than expected.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This week, world leaders descended on Manhattan for the UN General Assembly. It’s also New York Climate Week—investors, policymakers, advocates, and journalists are colliding at panels, talks, and fancy dinners. With so many climate voices in one place, the discourse can feel a little louder than usual. This year, the unavoidable topic is artificial intelligence. There’s been a growing tension bubbling up about AI’s impacts on climate and climate tech. Depending on where you stand, you might point to AI’s potential for advancing research, or to the way funding and attention from Big Tech is trickling into energy startups. Or you might focus on the emissions-heavy natural-gas buildout that’s unfolding to meet the sector’s electricity demand. Everyone seems to agree that AI is important. The big question for those in the climate world, and the conversation I’m constantly having and hearing this week, involves how you see its influence unfolding.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the AI and climate crossover in a speech on the first day of the assembly. “The climate crisis fuels instability and displacement,” Guterres said. “Artificial intelligence could help solve all these challenges, or it could make them worse.” It feels relevant that this year is the first that the world has really had to grapple with the fact that climate goals are slipping out of reach. A recent report from the UN Environment Program said that the world has nearly passed the point where we could possibly keep warming to less than 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels.
Since we’ve essentially missed this target, the report lays out the need not only to quickly and drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but also to employ carbon removal to help suck up emissions that have already been released into the atmosphere. The billion-dollar question is whether AI could help with any of this.  The energy-intensive technology is certainly shining a spotlight on the need to build out electricity supplies and shore up grid reliability. The result is more attention and money for energy technologies, some of which happen to be low- or zero-emissions. As I’ve covered before, startups across the energy and climate sectors are benefiting. Firms in nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar power have signed deals with the likes of Google, Meta, and others looking to power their new or growing data centers. Global climate-tech investment from venture capital hit $26 billion in the first half of 2026, according to data from Currence, a finance tracker for the industry. That’s 55% higher than last year, and products and services for data centers are getting a massive slice of that pie. But as a Semafor piece about the report points out, some sectors are slipping through the cracks: Carbon management and low-carbon fuels saw VC investment plummet this year. These are important solutions for addressing climate change but may not be able to sell themselves to a data center. So far, the data center buildout has come with a hefty emissions toll. A few years ago, Microsoft, Google, and Meta all had ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Now they’ve all seen emissions rise, largely because of data centers that are needed to power AI. Some people are optimistic. AI could help speed up progress in areas like the search for new catalysts, as Evelyn Wang, MIT’s VP of energy and climate, pointed out during a panel. And data centers won’t add to climate and water problems forever, Wang told the Associated Press. (She puts the timeline at about a decade until data centers no longer add to planet-warming emissions.)

But a whole lot of natural gas is coming online to meet the immediate demand created by new data centers. And once those power plants are built, they have a decades-long lifetime.  That’s partly why public pushback to AI is growing—people are seeing more pollution and noise near these data centers and the power plants that provide them with electricity. Overall, what I’m hearing this week is that many in the climate sector are skeptical of AI, at best.  “AI leaders are now on thin ice when it comes to license to operate and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support,” said UN climate chief Simon Stiell in a speech this week. “Tech titans need to start showing why the benefits of AI outweigh its skyrocketing costs—for the many, not just the tiny few.”  This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. 

Brace yourself: It turns out AI is being optimized for cheating. OpenAI’s agents hacked into Hugging Face to get the answers to a cybersecurity test. Next, they solved a prestigious math problem (or just stole from two top mathematicians’ answer sheets). Anthropic’s models have also hacked into other companies’ systems four times already. And that’s only what we’ve caught so far.  Freaking out? You’re not alone. AI lab researchers are quitting their jobs and issuing dire warnings that if we keep going this way, AI might eventually kill us all. Bill Gates is sounding the alarm. Bernie Sanders has teamed up with Steve Bannon, of all people, to call for curbs on AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is urging a slowdown, and other top US AI executives agree. But fear not: President Trump has a plan. He says the only guardrail AI needs is “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”
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Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced a plan to introduce new legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along the US southern border.  The announcement comes just days after publication of an MIT Technology Review investigation, “Dying on Camera,” in which we looked at deaths along the border that took place close to one or more of these towers. MIT Technology Review found that nearly one in four deaths we analyzed between 2015 and early 2026 occurred within their advertised range. We also showed that the Department of Homeland Security does not keep track of these deaths or other metrics on the towers’ success or failure.  Ramirez, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, cited MIT Technology Review’s reporting that nearly “1,100 people have died within range of a billion-dollar surveillance tower system between 2015 and 2026,” adding, “The towers that we have paid a billion dollars to just don’t work.”  The legislation, the Reimagining Safety Act, was developed in consultation with community groups and local and state representatives. The advocacy organizations Just Futures Law, which focuses on immigrant rights and racial justice, and Mijente, which describes itself as a “vehicle for building independent Latinx political power,” helped shape the calls to terminate the border towers program, following a joint report they put out earlier this year on the technology used by ICE.  The legislation is intended to be part of a broader proposal to replace the Department of Homeland Security with a new Department of Community Safety while moving CISA, FEMA, TSA, and customs functions to other existing federal agencies. Her office has yet to release the text of the proposed legislation, saying that it will come in the next few weeks.  There has been growing public support for abolishing ICE in the wake of the second Trump administration’s highly visible enforcement operations across American cities, the buildout of its detention apparatus, and shootings by ICE and CBP agents. Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a delivery driver, was shot in the back by an ICE agent just last weekend in Austin, Texas. 
But for Ramirez, abolishing just ICE is not enough. At a press conference held in Chicago on Wednesday, Ramirez said, ““There’s no question that DHS has to be dismantled. We need to provide them a road map in how we do it,” Ramirez said.  It will not be the first time that a bill to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security has been introduced, but previous proposals have not gone very far. This proposal will also face a steep uphill battle in Congress, where even some Democrats favor reforming rather than outright dismantling the organization.  Ramirez, however, sits on both the House committee that oversees the department, and is the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee.   “We’re limiting state surveillance, we’re reigning unlawful abuses of data and curbing the militarized enforcement. We’re beginning the process of establishing a separate civil immigration system,” Ramirez said. DHS and CBP did not offer an immediate response for comment. 

A technical update on our Private AI Compute architecture, which will enable persistent, cross-device AI memory with on-device privacy standards.AI is becoming more capable and intuitive — remembering what matters, understanding the world around you, and acting at your direction. Privacy and trust are core to making that possible, ensuring your data stays private and protected as AI systems evolve to provide more continuous assistance across your devices.Today, we are sharing how we will bring private, server-side memory to our Private AI Compute platform. This breakthrough resolves a longstanding dilemma in modern AI: how to give an assistant long-term continuity across devices while upholding the strict privacy standards typically limited to on-device processing.Bringing on-device privacy to cloud-scale memoryWith this new technical capability, a new persistent memory layer will be able to function like a secure digital vault in the cloud. Under this model, the information needed to assist you is sealed within dedicated, encrypted storage, while the cryptographic keys required to unlock it are held exclusively on your personal devices — ensuring your data is inaccessible to anyone else, even Google.The diagram below shows how this update to Private AI Compute will work. When an AI model needs to access information to assist you, an authenticated, end-to-end encrypted channel connects your device to a protected, isolated environment in the cloud. That space, or “secure enclave,” temporarily decrypts your data in isolated memory to handle the request, saves any new context, and immediately encrypts it, keeping your information private as if it never left your device.