The day in tech.

On July 24, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin ordered civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products citing 2018 law risks. The Pentagon blocked the chatbot in January 2025, while Anthropic logged 12 million exchanges over two weeks in July 2026. Environmental Protection Agency must exclude DeepSeek products, and Federal Communications Commission must exclude DeepSeek products.

A Chinese-speaking hacker used DeepSeek and Claude Code agents to breach over 100 company websites, attempting 1,200 intrusions starting September 25. Victims included Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. Successful intrusions took around 23 hours and cost roughly $5,000 in tokens. Researchers estimate the campaign cost about $5,000 in tokens, averaging $50 per successful breach.

US prosecutors arrested 35-year-old ex-OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan on 9 October for planting a recording device in an executive conference room with Saudi government support. He faces a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine if convicted. The Saudi military paid for his one-way family flight on 10 October, and the device was discovered on 30 September.

Santa Clara-based Tenstorrent raised $1.5 billion in Series E funding on October 19, 2026, valuing the company at $6.2 billion. CEO Jim Keller led the round with Trace Capital and Innovation X, ending prior talks for a $8 billion to $10 billion Qualcomm deal.

Anthropic negotiates a second $45 billion deal with Nvidia-backed Nscale for a West Virginia data center. This follows an existing $44.6bn contract signed in August 2026, pushing total commitments toward roughly $90bn. The new facility utilizes Nvidia Vera Rubin chips.

Apple holds a second product launch event on October 28, 2026, called Pro and Tell. The schedule includes an OLED iPad mini and a touchscreen MacBook Pro. Store refreshes are planned for November 6, 2026, to coincide with sales. Reports suggest the laptop will feature an M6 chip.

Chinese developer MiniMax Group Inc. released M3.1 Flash, a 428 billion parameter model priced at 15 cents per million input tokens. Weights arrive October 23, 2026. The model scores 61.7 on OSWorld V2 and 76.2 on BankerToolBench, cutting agent costs by 70% compared to its previous model.

Japan's JAXA launches the $578 million MMX mission Tuesday to Mars moon Phobos at 4:41 am, aiming to return at least 10 grams of samples by 2031. This international effort involves NASA, ESA, and other partners to solve the mystery of the moon's origin after previous failures.

Samsung delays the Galaxy S27 launch to February 2026 due to UFS 5.0 storage and LPDDR6 memory shortages. The Ultra flagship costs $100 more than the Pro, while base and Plus models remain on schedule.

Cybersecurity researchers from Forescout Research - Vedere Labs disclosed that hackers use a new ClickFix delivery platform called ROMULUS to distribute malware like Legion Loader. The group identified six specific IP addresses running the service, including 96.62.224[.]81 and 86.109.75[.]7.