A Tesla Cybertruck with the word “Trump” sits in traffic in Washington, DC (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Government efficiency

Tesla found a way to move more Cybertrucks: Sell them to the Trump administration

There’s more than one way to offload a giant stainless steel truck.

2/13/25 9:09AM

The Trump administration is set to buy $400 million worth of “Armored Tesla” vehicles — later amended to “armored electric vehicles” — this year, according to State Department documents. That’s good news for Tesla, which has struggled to sell as many cars as it would have liked.

Last year the company had more than a million reservations for the Cybertruck, which came out in the beginning of 2024, but few of those turned into sales. CEO Elon Musk hopes to sell up to 500,000 a year; last year Tesla sold fewer than 40,000 Cybertrucks in the US. That was enough to make it the bestselling electric pickup in America, but that’s a low bar considering relatively few people buy electric pickups (regular pickup sales were in the millions). Additionally, Q4 Cybertruck sales were down 22% from Q3, suggesting sales momentum didn’t pick up later in the year.

Enter the US government, where CEO Elon Musk has cozied up to President Trump. The billionaire is in charge of cutting costs in the US government, but apparently not when it comes to paying himself and his companies.

Let’s do some rough math: let’s assume that $400 million would buy 4,000 $100,000 Cybertrucks. (The base model is around $80,000, and we’ll assume the armoring and add-ons would take it up $20,000.) We’re also assuming the money goes to Tesla as was initially stated, and to Cybertrucks, which are much more apt for armor than, say, a Model 3.

That’s 10% of last year’s total Cybertruck sales in one fell swoop! That’s also more Cybertrucks than the company sold in the US in all of January — the month it became eligible for the $7,500 federal credit — according to data from Wards Auto. Tesla sales, which the company had said would “return to growth” after falling last year, aren’t looking great so far in 2025, as they’ve been dropping around the world.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5