Plus: China-linked hackers have hit Taiwan in an "unprecedented" AI attack How we picked 35 of the world's top young scientists and engineers On September 8, will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems. By finding the top young innovators globally and learning what they're focused on in their work, we aim to give readers a sense of what advances to expect in the years to come. As a newsroom, we also use this exercise to help us spot rising talent and get to know some of the best early-career researchers in the fields that we cover. This year, we received 550 nominations. Find out how we whittled them down to 35 of the young innovators shaping the future of technology, and check out last year's list. How the "censorship-industrial complex" is changing the internet and US policy I first heard the term "censorship-industrial complex" on April 15, 2025.

NASA's new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids At the end of August, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its quest is to help us better understand how the universe works, from the glue-like dark matter that keeps galaxies together to the elusive dark energy that drives the expansion of the cosmos. But Roman could also serve another purpose: defending Earth from killer asteroids. In September, a multi-institutional team of planetary scientists and astronomers will outline how it's uniquely placed to scan asteroids, and provide information about their trajectories, sizes and compositions. Read our story about how this new space telescope might boost planetary defense. There are plenty of useful things a metric can reveal.

Plus: France has become the first EU country to ban social media for under-15s. Shape-shifting mirrors on NASA's new space telescope could unveil Jupiters like our own When NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, as early as the end of next month, it will attempt one of astronomy's most precise disappearing acts to date. It will carry the first space-bound "active" coronagraph, an instrument that effectively erases most of the light from a star during photography. The technology will allow astronomers to take the first pictures of planets orbiting other stars that are similar to those in our solar system. Ultimately, it could pave the way for a future mission that could snap the first photos of Earth-like worlds. "I hope it's remembered for it being that critical stepping stone for finding Earth 2.0," says Brandon Creager, the instrument's lead mechanical engineer.

The Download: Anthropic launches Claude Science, and California's carbon manure math Plus: The US has lifted restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models. Claude Science is Anthropic's newest flagship product At an event for pharmaceutical executives, biotech founders, and researchers yesterday, Anthropic announced Claude Science, a major new product intended to support scientific research like Claude Code supports software engineering. Like Claude Code, Claude Science can autonomously carry out meaningful work from concise, high-level instructions, with tools for computational biology and drug development. The launch signals that Anthropic is doubling down on AI for science, and the company will also use the product in its own research into drugs for rare, neglected diseases. Discover why Anthropic is betting big on AI for scientific research . Why California's carbon manure math doesn't add up Years ago, the state set up a system that pays cattle farmers to turn the methane emitted from cattle manure into natural gas.

Plus: SpaceX is now valued higher than Amazon. Solar geoengineering, the controversial idea that we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming, is moving beyond computer simulations and into the practical engineering challenges required to make it real. Researchers are now working on aircraft, materials, and other systems for solar geoengineering. But as they delve into these details, they're finding that even early deployment would require significant new infrastructure, time, and investment. Find out what happens when solar geoengineering encounters the realities of trying to cool the planet . Scientists have a word for how we sense ourselves from the inside: interoception.

Plus: Anthropic has released a safe version of Mythos. The "steroid olympics" were a circus--and a window into our culture A couple of weeks ago, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in Las Vegas, I witnessed a libertarian thought experiment come to life. The inaugural Enhanced Games were the first sporting competition where participants were encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. For supporters of the event, the Enhanced Games offered a glimpse of a future in which medical advances push the human race to new heights--and they never have to get old. As I watched the games unfold, two questions bounced around my head: were they right? And what does that mean for the rest of us?

Plus: NASA unveiled plans for three uncrewed missions to the Moon this year. Here at we understand exactly how relentless the pace of news from the world of artificial intelligence feels New models and capabilities crop up as fast as we can cover them, and the ripple effects they send through tech and wider society are never far behind. Our unique strength lies in cutting through the day-to-day noise to help you understand what's really happening, and what lies around the corner. That's why we created our list of 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now, unveiled at our flagship AI event EmTech AI a few weeks back ( check the list out if you haven't already!) And it's why we publish so many stories dedicated to explaining how AI works, and what's coming next . We also regularly run live subscriber-only Roundtables events--you can still catch up on last week's session, where we explored how AI might enter the physical realm via world models.

Plus: Sam Altman claims Elon Musk tried to seize control of OpenAI. A startup called Varda Space Industries is betting that the future of pharmaceuticals lies in orbit. The company has signed a deal with United Therapeutics to test whether drugs crystallize differently in microgravity, potentially creating improved versions with new properties. The idea sounds futuristic, but falling launch costs and reusable rockets are making space-based manufacturing seem increasingly plausible. Varda says the partnership could mark an important step toward building products in orbit for use back on Earth. Discover how space could become the next frontier for drug development .

Plus: An unauthorized group has reportedly accessed Anthropic's Mythos. What actually matters in AI right now? It's getting harder to tell amid the constant launches, hype, and warnings. To cut through the noise, reporters and editors have distilled years of analysis into a new essential guide: the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now . The list builds on our annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies, but takes a wider view of the ideas, topics, and research shaping AI, spotlighting the trends and breakthroughs shaping the world. We'll be unpacking one item from the list each day here in The Download, explaining what it means and why it matters.

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen, an Australian man in his mid-30s, with a rural Catholic upbringing, is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap one cryptocurrency for another and earn fees from making those swaps. THORChain is permissionless, so anyone can use it without getting prior approval from a centralized authority. As a decentralized network, the blockchain is built and run by operators located across the globe. During its early days, Thorbjornsen himself hid behind the pseudonym "leena" and used an AI-generated female image as his avatar. But around March 2024, he revealed his true identity as the mind behind the blockchain. If there is a central question around THORChain, it is this: Exactly who is responsible for its operations?