Enrique Abeyta:

Banks Are Now Trying To Offload the AI Data Center Debt They Just Underwrote

Just six months ago, major banks were eager to lend billions of dollars to companies building AI data centers. Now, those same banks are scrambling to sell off some of that debt because they're worried they've taken on too much risk.

JPMorgan and other banks have spent more than six months struggling to sell $38 billion in loans tied to Oracle data centers. Some are even willing to take a loss just to get rid of the debt.

Meanwhile, Oracle keeps borrowing billions to fund its AI expansion, even as its credit rating weakens and investors grow more concerned about its ability to repay its debts.

The problem is spreading across the AI industry. Investors are becoming less willing to lend money, interest rates are rising, and smaller AI companies are finding it especially expensive to borrow.

The bottom line: The AI boom depends on companies borrowing enormous amounts of money to build data centers. But banks are starting to worry that they've lent too much, and investors are becoming more cautious. If borrowing becomes too expensive or lenders pull back, the massive AI building boom could slow down.

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Ray Blanco:

Elon Musk Says It Was the Pentagon That Shut Down Starlink for the Ukrainian Military

As the war in Ukraine rages, SpaceX's terminals are once again making headlines. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused the space company of restricting access to its Starshield service, a military version of the service specifically developed for the Pentagon.

Yet neither CEO Elon Musk nor the White House are willing to take any blame for the disruption, with both sides pointing fingers at each other. In fact, Musk has now thrown President Trump under the bus as the scandal deepens.

"Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government," he tweeted on Wednesday. "Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS."

The timing was suspicious, to say the least. Zelensky made his announcement just days after Trump announced a deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin to buy millions of tons of diesel to lower prices in the U.S. ahead of the rapidly approaching midterm elections.

By Thursday, the situation changed once more, with Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries resuming as Starlink and Starshield services had been restored to full capacity, according to an unnamed Ukrainian official.

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Davis Wilson:

Meta's Smart Glasses Were Recording Conversations Without the Wake Phrase, Company Admits

A redditor recently wrote that they'd noticed something concerning with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses: they were capturing conversations when they were talking to other people despite the "Hey Meta" wake phrase not being used.

The conversations appeared in the Meta AI app as saved audio recordings and text transcripts. It's also noted that the "Respond without Hey Meta" setting was turned off, and that the white notification light was sometimes activated when the person was speaking normally.

This could have been a problem with a single pair of Meta's glasses, but the same behavior was present on three different pairs, including 2nd- and 3rd-generation models. Most tellingly, it appeared after a firmware update was rolled out to the devices.

Several responses to the post confirm that other Meta Ray-Ban users experienced the same issue. Meta has since responded to the Reddit post, though it never gave any information on exactly what happened and why.

This isn't the first privacy nightmare involving Meta's smart glasses. In March, contractors in Nairobi said they'd been paid to study hours of raw footage captured through Meta's "live AI" feature, analyzing everything from simple interactions to some very intimate moments.

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