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CYBERSECURITY

Credit: Morning Brew Inc, Photos: MGM

Aside from the rotary phones, 8-inch floppy disks, and characters chugging Tab, the 1983 movie WarGames feels modern—at least in its exploration of autonomous systems.

The movie follows teenage hacker David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) as he unknowingly prompts a World War III simulator to launch a successful attack on the US. The simulation gets real, however, when the military receives news of incoming missiles, and sets its DEFCON levels accordingly.

Senior DOD advisers like General John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) and programmer Dr. Stephen Falken (John Wood) use now-familiar AI lingo as they debate placing humans “out of the loop” or explain that a machine made a “computer-enhanced hallucination.”

Matthew Broderick predicts the future!—BH

Sponsored By PwC

Sussing out Silicon Valley’s claim

Episode 2 of The Intelligence Shift, our podcast with PwC, is hot off the presses.

Campbell Brown, a veteran journalist turned tech executive turned AI entrepreneur (and founder of Forum AI) joins Dan Priest to discuss the central trust gap in AI. They also chat about the cultural divide between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world on whether AI is a threat or an opportunity.

They dig into how Forum AI uses senior domain experts to build benchmarks and train AI "judgment agents" to evaluate models at scale, pushing back against the industry norm of crowdsourced evaluation that measures preference rather than accuracy.

What’s the most realistic path to building the trust AI needs to actually get adopted at scale? Tune in to find out.

CYBERSECURITY

Quantum mechanic

Morning Brew, Inc., Photos: Jewel Samad/Getty Images, Adobe Stock

Is Quantumania becoming more than a Marvel movie?

As the US government and private companies pour resources into quantum computing, cryptographers say that organizations’ ability to encrypt their data is potentially at more risk than ever before.

This month, President Trump signed an executive order to leverage quantum computing to “drive American innovation, power economic growth, generate high-paying jobs, and bolster national security.” While the EO focuses mainly on quantum innovation and bolstering the ability for the federal government to harness this technology, it also highlights growing public–private partnerships.

In a sister EO, the Trump administration moved up the timeline for post-quantum cryptography and other defensive measures, including digital signatures.

In addition to the administration’s directive, the Commerce Department plans to distribute $2 billion in grants for companies developing quantum technology.

Get ready to quantum leap.—CN

IT STRATEGY

Tokenmaxx vs. peoplemaxx

Getty Images

For IT leaders, a new conundrum is emerging: Do you hire specialized professionals, or burn through the IT budget on AI tokens? While some companies are replacing workers with AI, other leaders are deciding they need humans in seats to meet their IT goals.

According to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI is the most cited reason for the recent burst of tech layoffs, which hit 97,000 in May. One example is crypto exchange Coinbase, which laid off 14% of its staff at the beginning of May, reportedly in response to market conditions and the rise of AI. In an X post, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong described how the company is embracing “reduced pod sizes, including ‘one person teams’ with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.”

Meta also cited AI in its decision to reduce its workforce by approximately 10% in May, along with roughly 8,000 employees expected to see their roles eliminated as a result of the technology, NPR reported.

To hire or not to hire?—CN

☕ Would you like to play a (war)game?