Solid-state batteries are safer and more capable--but harder to mass-produce. They also represent an opportunity for non-Chinese companies to get back in the game. The field of lithium batteries is currently dominated by Chinese companies like BYD and CATL. Not only do they sell the majority of batteries that go into electric vehicles and energy storage projects worldwide, they're also opening up new factories in your backyard . When companies outside China try to compete, like Europe's Northvolt, they quickly realize how hard it is .

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It's a stretch to think that the continent can build a top-tier model, but it has an advantage: Donald Trump. Emmanuel Macron, president of France, discussed AI's risks at the G7 Summit. Earlier this month I attended Vivatech, a huge tech conference in Paris. One fear dominated the discussions: the prospect of ending up stuck using American AI, trained on American values. While the US and China are locked in an AI arms race, France and Germany, which consider their engineering talent second to none, feel boxed out.

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Plus: Gay bars in San Francisco using face scanners, France quits Palantir, Apple plans to change its private email, and more. Meta is testing face-recognition software built by the United States military and regional police department supplier Rank One, WIRED found in an investigation this week. Meta has been exploring the possibility of adding face recognition tech into its smart glasses, and WIRED previously reported that the app for the glasses contained code --now deleted--that would have enabled the company to activate face-recognition features on the devices. Anthropic is still negotiating with the Trump administration, after apparent White House concerns about the safety of new public model Claude Fable 5 resulted in Anthropic pulling the product off the market entirely. But security experts point out that AI models with advanced capabilities for discovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities--in other words, creating potentially dangerous hacking tools-- will be ubiquitous soon around the world .

Could Israel sabotage the deal? Leaders of the G7 have pledged at a summit in France to strengthen Ukraine's air defences and increase pressure on Moscow's war economy, including by tightening sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sectors. "We, the Leaders of the G7, stand united in our unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity," a statement released on Wednesday said. They added that the bloc, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, was "ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licenses to allow for an increase in Ukraine's military production". President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who joined the summit on Tuesday and also held bilateral talks with US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has been pressing allies for more than a year to allow Ukraine to produce its own interceptors because of a shortage of US anti-ballistic systems and interceptors.

The French decision to use its own AI models comes amid growing concern among European governments about US-controlled technology. The French decision to use its own AI models comes amid growing concern among European governments about US-controlled technology. Move to ChapsVision is to avoid'strategic dependencies', says PM amid concern about reliance on US-controlled tools Tue 16 Jun 2026 13.08 EDTLast modified on Tue 16 Jun 2026 15.39 EDT France's domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data tools from the US tech company Palantir in favour of a domestic provider in an effort to avoid "strategic dependency", the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said. "We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere," Lecornu posted on social media. "We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools."

On Friday, the U.S. ordered Anthropic to deny foreign nationals access to the company's newest artificial intelligence models. With the recent crackdown on Anthropic, the White House has given global leaders another reason to panic about their place in the technology race. On Friday, the U.S. ordered Anthropic to deny foreign nationals access to the company's newest artificial intelligence models. The export ban asserted a broad, unprecedented authority over the technology. Until then, conversations in Europe about losing access to U.S. tech -- sometimes posed as a presidential "kill switch" -- were theoretical. To many on the continent, Friday's move underscored the dire need to find alternatives to American AI, and fast.

A French woman and her partner will remain in custody after allegedly abandoning her two young boys on a roadside in the south of Portugal, a court has ruled. The boys were found on Tuesday evening crying beside a road near Alcacer do Sal, about 100km (60 miles) south of Lisbon. The woman and her partner, identified by authorities as Marine R and Marc B, were arrested in Fatima on Thursday. As they were being led into court on Saturday morning, the man shouted I love you in French and the boys' mother sang. A judge subsequently ordered the pair be placed in pre-trial detention, French and Portuguese media report.