British forces based in Iraq shot down two Iranian drones overnight, Defence Secretary John Healey has said. But some drones in the attack hit the coalition base in the Iraqi city of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, and injured a number of US troops. There were no British casualties. Brigadier Guy Foden said the base and another in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad were struck a number of times on Wednesday night and British personnel are currently in Erbil helping to defend that base. Since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, US bases in Iraq have been targeted in retaliation.

In today's episode, we discuss how the saga between Anthropic and the Department of Defense is far from over. This week on, our hosts look at what's at stake for Anthropic after the company sued the Department of Defense. They also take a look at the strategy behind the Trump administration sharing action-filled war memes on social media, and share a scoop about how a controversial company is taking in millions in government contracts by helping organize America250 celebrations. Plus: Could AI come for the jobs of venture capitalists? Can AI Kill the Venture Capitalist? Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . Zoë, Leah and I have really enjoyed being your new hosts these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people, and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com . This week, we're diving into Anthropic's lawsuit against the Department of Defense after the company was labeled as a supply chain risk. We're also discussing why on earth the Trump administration is sharing action film memes about the war in Iran and how a little known events company formed by some of the organizers of the January 6th rally is making bank in Trump's second term in office . Also, we'll talk about whether venture capitalists should be worried about AI taking their jobs .

WIRED spoke with Nick Fox, Google's SVP of knowledge and information, about how AI is changing the company's advertising business. Google executives have insisted for months that the company has no immediate plans to put ads in Gemini. But in an interview with WIRED, Google's senior vice president of knowledge and information, Nick Fox, says the tech giant is "not ruling them out." "I would expect that the learnings that we get from ads in AI Mode would likely carry over to what we might want to do in the Gemini app down the road," says Fox. "It's an odd thing to say, but our research shows that users actually like ads within the context of Search. Over time, we'll figure out what makes sense in the Gemini app." Google has spent the past year racing to catch up with OpenAI in the AI chatbot market.

Yellowstone's ravens may memorize wolf hunting hotspots--to feast The birds will fly over 90 miles to dine where wolves have drawn blood. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. When wolves are on the hunt, a kill rarely goes unnoticed for long. In the elk-and deer-rich areas of northern Yellowstone National Park, ravens are often among the first scavengers to arrive on the scene, swooping down to feast on scraps left behind by the howling canines. Field biologists have long assumed that the birds simply follow wolves as they track and take down their prey.

US Lawmakers Move to Kill the FBI's Warrantless Wiretap Access A bipartisan bill would force the FBI to get a warrant to read Americans' messages and ban the federal purchase of commercial data on US residents ahead of a critical April deadline. A bipartisan privacy coalition in the United States Congress introduced legislation on Thursday that would impose a strict warrant requirement on the FBI's backdoor searches of Americans' communications, aligning federal law with a 2025 federal court ruling that found the warrantless practice unconstitutional. The bill, the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2026, repeals controversial expansions of the government's warrantless wiretapping authority while overhauling key aspects of federal surveillance law--setting up a showdown with the US intelligence community and its congressional allies weeks before a sweeping global spy program sunsets on April 20. Senators Ron Wyden and Mike Lee are leading the legislative push alongside Representatives Warren Davidson and Zoe Lofgren. The measure carries endorsements from civil liberties organizations across the political spectrum.

Writing tool Grammarly has disabled an AI feature which mimicked personas of prominent writers, including Stephen King and scientist Carl Sagan, following a backlash from people impersonated. The Expert Review function, which offered writing feedback inspired by the styles of famous authors and academics, was taken down this week by Superhuman, the tech firm which runs Grammarly. The feature was met with resistance, including a multi-million dollar lawsuit, from writers who found their names and reputations used as AI personas without their consent. Shishir Mehrotra, the firm's chief executive, apologised on LinkedIn, acknowledging the tool had misrepresented the voices of experts. Investigative journalist Julia Angwin, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against Superhuman and Grammarly in the Southern District of New York.

This year's Bafta Games Awards nominations have been released, and the unstoppable Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the front-runner once again. The role-playing adventure, made by French developer Sandfall Interactive, received 12 nominations in total, including best game, best music and best narrative. Having already swept the board at several video game award ceremonies, Expedition 33 was widely expected to feature heavily in this year's Bafta list. But, in a ceremony which aims to celebrate multimillion-dollar productions and independent games made by tiny teams, there are also some surprising inclusions and omissions. Expedition 33's 12 nominations is not a record for Bafta. In 2023, God of War Ragnarok was up for 14 awards - although it lost out on best game to independent game Vampire Survivors.

Technology Robots Brothers build a robot to solve Rubik's cubes in record-setting time The robot completed the puzzle in just 45.3 seconds, breaking its own record of 55 seconds made just moments earlier. The Revenger set a world record. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. A pair of brothers in the U.K. have officially broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest time solving a four-by-four Rubik's Cube with a robot. Their DIY machine, which the brothers call The Revenger, completed the puzzle in only 45.3 seconds.

Chemistry may not be the'killer app' for quantum computers after all Quantum chemistry calculations that could advance drug development or agriculture have recently emerged as a promising "killer application" of quantum computers, but a new analysis suggests this is unlikely to be the case. Progress in building quantum computers has greatly accelerated in recent years, but it remains an open question what uses are most likely to justify the ongoing investment in this technology. One popular contender is solving problems in quantum chemistry, such as calculating the energy levels of molecules relevant for biomedicine or industry. This requires accounting for the behavior of many quantum particles - electrons in the molecule - simultaneously, so it seems like a good match for computers made from many quantum parts. Quantum computers have finally arrived, but will they ever be useful? However, Xavier Waintal at CEA Grenoble in France and his colleagues have now shown that two leading quantum computing algorithms for this task may actually have, at best, limited use.

In modern warfare, we must defeat Russia in every technological cycle, the country's defense minister said. Ukraine's four-year war with Russia has made it the world leader in battlefield drone technology. One byproduct of that is that the data it collects has become one of the country's most valuable assets. On Thursday, Ukraine played that card, saying it will begin sharing its battlefield data with allies to train drone AI software. In modern warfare, we must defeat Russia in every technological cycle, Ukraine Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Telegram (translated from Ukrainian).