The most anxiously anticipated conversation since your boss pinged you with a “hey can we chat?” is happening today: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to try to save the company’s $200 million Pentagon contract.

Heart of the matter: Amodei and Hegseth have serious disagreements over what the military should be allowed to do with Anthropic tech, specifically, its Claude large language model.

Claudus belli

Anthropic’s Claude is the only AI model the military uses for work with classified information. The military even used Claude in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month.

Anthropic insists the Pentagon shouldn’t have free rein to weaponize its product:

• The company says Claude should remain off limits for surveillance against Americans and for weapons deployed without human intervention.
• Pentagon leaders claim contractors shouldn’t breathe down their necks with national-defense-inhibiting limitations, and the military should be bound only by the law in how it uses AI tools.

Existential stakes

The dispute led Hegseth to reportedly consider the defense industry’s version of the nuclear option: labeling Anthropic as a “supply chain risk.” That would require all Pentagon contractors to avoid using Anthropic’s tools, potentially decimating vast swaths of its enterprise business.

Meanwhile, several of Anthropic’s competitors want to replace it within the Pentagon. Alphabet, OpenAI, and xAI have all agreed to remove restrictions on how the military can use their AI tools as they seek contracts to work with classified data.

It’s not the only point of contention between Anthropic and the Trump administration. Last fall, the White House AI czar, David Sacks, derided the company for its advocacy of AI regulations, claiming they would stunt innovation.

Looking ahead… Anthropic said it’s been having “productive conversations” with the DOD, while a Pentagon official told Axios the Hegseth–Amodei talk will be a “shit-or-get-off-the-pot meeting.”—SK

Over 40 million people weathered the storm. Parts of New York City got 19 inches of snow, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and officials said it might rank among the city’s 10 worst snowstorms in the last 150 years. It was indubitably the worst storm Providence, RI, has seen—Rhode Island’s capital received 32.8 inches of snow as of 1pm yesterday, breaking a record for the greatest single snowstorm there set in 1978. Boston and Philadelphia also got walloped. US airports experienced over 20,000 delays and over 6,000 cancellations yesterday, according to FlightAware, mostly from the greater NYC area, Boston, Philly, and Washington, DC.

  More details of the killing of drug kingpin “El Mencho” emerged. Mexican Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo revealed that Mexican forces were able to locate the drug boss, whose real name was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, by tracking the movement of one of Oseguera’s lovers and a person from her circle. Trejo said that eight members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel were also killed in the raid. Yesterday, the US State Department advised American tourists to continue to shelter in place, although one told CNN that the town seemed to be getting back to “normal,” with restaurants reopening and flights back to the States resuming.

Mortgage rates fell below 6% yesterday, the lowest since 2022. Mortgage Daily News reported that the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 5.99% on Monday, down from 6.89% a year earlier. While mortgage rates got lower into the 5% range last month, that did not even last a full day, while experts believe the current level is more durable. Experts believe this will lead to a cascade of mortgage refinancing. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that applications to refinance home loans are up 130% compared to February 2025.—HVL

The maker of Ozempic and Wegovy keeps slipping on banana peels when it tries to regain its position in GLP-1s. Yesterday, Novo Nordisk announced that a new weight loss shot it hoped would rival Eli Lilly’s injectable actually underperformed in a head-to-head trial, tanking Novo’s stock.

Shares of the Danish drugmaker fell 16% on the news that Novo’s CagriSema delivered 20.2% weight loss in 84 weeks, compared with 23.6% for Lilly’s tirzepatide, aka Zepbound. The airball comes as Novo scrambles to regain a majority share of the GLP-1 market, which it lost to Lilly in recent months.

“This outcome is the worst-case scenario,” said Michael Shah, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. The disappointment follows a management shakeup, a failed semaglutide Alzheimer’s trial, and a failed acquisition of a promising biotech company. Novo’s GLP-1 patents are also set to expire sooner than Lilly’s, which is another reason it was counting on CagriSema to succeed.

To make matters worse for Novo, Lilly’s stock climbed a few points yesterday after it launched a new version of its Zepbound injectable, which holds a month’s worth of shots—up from one week for its current devices.

How the mighty have fallen: Novo has lost ~$475 billion in value since 2024, when it was worth $650+ billion. Its stock price now verges on pre-Wegovy times.—ML

You bolt awake in an Abercrombie & Fitch. You are not online. It’s 2008, and you are listening to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine” on your iPod while shopping for graphic tees. You are the general of your own life—and you have changed your mind. The future cannot pass.

That’s the sentiment of Gen Z, which is increasingly finding enjoyment and peace in iPods. Discontinued in 2022, the Apple music device is making a comeback with younger generations who are craving a break from the distraction of internet-based phone apps with a product from a time that felt more hopeful:

• Searches for the iPod and iPod Nano jumped in 2025, per Google Trends.
• According to Axios, searches for the Classic and Nano were up 25% and 20%, respectively, between January and October of last year compared to the same time in 2024.
• Since 2022, total sales of refurbished iPods are up an average of 15.6% per year, according to Back Market.

The iPod as cheat code: With many schools banning internet-connected devices, students see iPods as a workaround that allows them to listen to a song they discovered on TikTok during lunch.

Dissed connections: Downloads of Brick, a popular app among Gen Z that blocks smartphone apps and has nothing to do with the Ben Folds Five song, were up ~600% in January compared to a year ago.—DL

AMC moviegoers last year didn’t have to settle for seats in the first row as often as they did the year before. Yesterday, the company reported mixed results for Q4: It shrunk its losses, but theater attendance was down 10% for the year.

The problem isn’t just domestic: In fact, US attendance fell just 7.5% compared to international markets, which experienced a 15% drop, according to the report. But AMC isn’t raising alarm bells. It has been investing in premium screen experiences and tricking out its auditorium equipment for cinephiles, like Imax and Dolby Cinema screens, and even laser projection. And it believes 2026’s box office lineup will put all that gear to work and drive ticket sales higher.

With flicks like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey due out, a lot of folks probably will get excited to see Matt Damon’s anachronistic helmet rendered in exquisite detail. Even if some of us wish Ralph Fiennes were wearing it.—HVL