Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about the argy-bargy between the Pentagon and AI company Anthropic. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is demanding that all safeguards are lifted from Claude, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is insisting on protections against mass surveillance of Americans and use in lethal autonomous weapons.

They also discuss the return of Volt Typhoon, the Chinese hacker group prepositioning in critical infrastructure for sabotage in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. The group is still around, even though the US government declared victory against it last July.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Russia launches a criminal probe into Telegram’s founder, two teenagers arrested for a South Korean bike share hack, Anthropic accuses Chinese AI firms of distillation attacks, and the US Treasury sanctions a Russian exploit broker.

• Risky Bulletin: Russia starts criminal probe of Telegram founder Pavel Durov

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how ‘professional’ Five Eyes cyber espionage agencies like NSA will use AI. These agencies place a premium on stealth and won’t yolo AI.

This episode is available on Youtube.

• How AI-powered espionage will favour China
• Google's AI threat tracker, February 2026