Good morning, AI enthusiast.

The threat of AI-powered deception just became a stark reality for the highest levels of government. An unknown actor weaponized AI voice and text messages to impersonate U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a targeted phishing campaign.

This incident highlights a dangerous new trend of targeting political figures. How will organizations adapt their security protocols when familiar voices and writing styles can no longer be trusted?

In today’s AI recap:

• AI deepfake impersonates US Secretary of State

• GlobalFoundries to acquire MIPS for AI chips

• Cloudflare to block AI crawlers by default

• Microsoft and Replit partner for enterprise AI coding

AI's new weapon

The Recap: An unknown actor used AI-generated voice and text messages to impersonate U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a startling phishing campaign targeting high-level foreign and domestic officials.

Unpacked:

• The attacker used the Signal messaging app to contact at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a member of Congress with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts.

• This incident is not isolated, following a similar campaign in May impersonating President Donald Trump's chief of staff, indicating a growing trend of targeting political figures.

• In response, the FBI and international partners have issued public warnings about malicious actors using AI for text and voice-based impersonation schemes.

Bottom line: AI-powered deception has officially crossed the threshold from a theoretical concept to a tangible national security challenge. Professionals and organizations must now urgently develop new verification protocols that don't rely solely on familiar voices or writing styles.

The new chip wars

The Recap: Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries has announced a definitive agreement to acquire MIPS, a leader in processor IP. This move significantly strengthens GlobalFoundries' capabilities in the hardware layer essential for AI and high-performance computing.

Unpacked:

• MIPS brings its portfolio of RISC-V-based processor IP, giving GlobalFoundries' customers more flexible and open platform solutions for their products.

• The acquisition strategically targets high-growth markets including autonomous mobility, industrial automation, and datacenter infrastructure.

• MIPS will continue to operate as a standalone business within GlobalFoundries, ensuring it keeps serving its customers across various technologies.

Bottom line: This acquisition shows the intense competition to own the foundational hardware layer that powers the AI boom. As AI models become more demanding, the companies that control the underlying chip technology will hold a significant advantage.

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Cloudflare draws a line

The Recap: Cloudflare is taking a stand against free data harvesting, now blocking AI crawlers by default after it declared 'Content Independence Day'. The company is pushing for a new model where AI companies must pay for the web content that fuels their models.

Unpacked:

• This move directly challenges the new AI-powered web, where models consume vast amounts of information but send little to no traffic back to the original creators, effectively breaking the web's longstanding value exchange.

• Cloudflare is launching a "pay-per-crawl" system to act as a broker between content creators and AI firms, creating a marketplace where data is a commodity to be purchased, not just scraped.

• CEO Matthew Prince is also publicly confident he can force Google's hand on a related issue. He wrote on X that Cloudflare will get Google to allow publishers to block AI Overviews without being penalized in classic search results.

Bottom line: The era of AI companies consuming the internet's data for free is officially being challenged. This move could establish a new economic foundation for the web, where the value of content is tied to its usefulness in training AI.

Vibe coding goes corporate

The Recap: Replit and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership to bring the AI-powered "Vibe Coding" environment to enterprise customers. The collaboration lets businesses build applications on Replit and deploy them seamlessly to Microsoft Azure.

Unpacked:

• The platform empowers all team members, not just engineers, to turn ideas into software with Replit Agent, no code required.

• Companies can purchase Replit directly through the Azure Marketplace, simplifying procurement and accelerating adoption across the organization.

• To address enterprise security needs, Replit is SOC 2 Type II compliant, providing the controls and trust required for corporate use.

Bottom line: This partnership significantly lowers the barrier for non-technical employees to build and deploy applications, fostering innovation within large companies. It marks a key step in embedding AI-native development tools directly into standard corporate IT workflows.

The Shortlist

The American Federation of Teachers partnered with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction, a $23M initiative to train 400,000 educators in AI over the next five years.

Cerebras launched support for Alibaba's flagship Qwen3-235B reasoning model, claiming it can run the model at 1,500 tokens per second and reduce reasoning time from 60 seconds on GPUs to just 0.6 seconds.

LM Studio announced that its popular desktop application for running local LLMs is now completely free for commercial and workplace use, removing the need for a separate license.

Signing off,

David, Lucas, Mitchell — The Recap editorial team