MIT Technology Review

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. This startup claims it can stop lightning and prevent catastrophic wildfires StartupSkyward Wildfiresays it can prevent catastrophic fires by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. So far, it hasn't publicly...

On June 1, 2023, as a sweltering heat wave baked Quebec, thousands of lightning strikes flashed across the province, setting off more than 120 wildfires. The blazes ripped through parched forests and withered grasslands, burned for weeks, and compounded what was rapidly turning into Canada's worst fire year on record. In the end, nearly 7,000...

On February 28, OpenAI announced it had reached a deal that will allow the US military to use its technologies in classified settings. CEO Sam Altman said the negotiations, which the company began pursuing only after the Pentagon's public reprimand of Anthropic, were definitely rushed." In its announcements, OpenAI took great pains to say that...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. I checked out one of the biggest anti-AI protests ever Pull the plug! Pull the plug! Stop the slop! Stop the slop! For a few hours this Saturday, February 28, I watched as...

Pull the plug! Pull the plug! Stop the slop! Stop the slop! For a few hours this Saturday, February 28, I watched as a couple of hundred anti-AI protesters marched through London's King's Cross tech hub, home to the UK headquarters of OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind, chanting slogans and waving signs. The march was...

The American Society of Magazine Editors has named MIT Technology Review as a finalist for a 2026 National Magazine Award in the reporting category. The shortlisted story-We did the math on AI's energy footprint. Here's the story you haven't heard"-is part of the publication's Power Hungry package on AI's energy burden. AI is often described...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. AI is rewiring how the world's best Go players think Ten years ago AlphaGo, Google DeepMind's AI program, stunned the world by defeating the South Korean Go player Lee Sedol. And in the...

Burrowed in the alleys of Hongik-dong, a hushed residential neighborhood in eastern Seoul, is a faded stone-tiled building stamped Korea Baduk Association," the governing body for professional Go. The game is an ancient one, with sacred stature in South Korea. But inside the building, rooms once filled with the soft clatter of hands dipping into...

For years, Industry 4.0 transformation has centered on the convergence of intelligent technologies like AI, cloud, the internet of things, robotics, and digital twins. Industry 5.0 marks a pivotal shift from integrating emerging technologies to orchestrating them at scale. With Industry 5.0, the purpose of this interconnected web of technologies is more nuanced: to augment...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. America was winning the race to find Martian life. Then China jumped in. In July 2024, NASA's Perseverance rover came across a peculiar rocky outcrop on Mars covered in strange spots. On Earth,...

When a company claims to have created what's essentially the holy grail of batteries, there are bound to be some questions. Interest has been swirling since Donut Lab, a Finnish company, announced last month that it had a new solid-state battery technology, one that was ready for large-scale production. The company said its batteries can...

To most people, rocks are just rocks. To geologists, they are much, much more: crystal-filled time capsules with the power to reveal the state of the planet at the very moment they were forged. For decades, NASA had been on a time capsule hunt like none other-one across Mars. Its rovers have journeyed around a...

Listen to the session or watch below Sodium-based batteries could be a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium-ion, and the technology is finally making its way into cars-and energy storage arrays on the grid. Sodium-ion batteries are one of MIT Technology Review's 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026 list, and this subscriber-only discussion explains why. Watch a...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Crime issue Technology has long made crime and its prosecution a game of cat and mouse. But those same new technologies that have allowed crime to outpace law have also reenergized...

The boom of a calving glacier. The crackling rumble of a wildfire. The roar of a surging storm front. They're the noises of the living Earth, music of this one particular sphere and clues to the true nature of these dramatic events. But as loud as all these things are, they emit even more acoustic...

The only reality show that matters The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is one of the best shows on television right now. Not one of the best reality TV shows, but one of the best TV shows, period. Chronicling a shifting group of wealthy women in and around Salt Lake, the show has featured...

Eons ago, in 2012, I had a weird experience. My iPhone suddenly shut down. When I restarted it, I found it was totally reset-clean, like a new device. This was the early days of iOS, so I wasn't too concerned until I went to connect it to my computer to restore it from a backup....

As people age, their immune function weakens. Owing to shrinkage of the thymus, where T cells normally mature and diversify, populations of these immune cells become smaller and can't react to pathogens as quickly. But researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute have now found a way to overcome that decline by temporarily programming cells...

Researchers at MIT and Microsoft have used artificial intelligence to create molecular sensors that could detect early signs of cancer via a urine test. The researchers developed an AI model to design short proteins that are targeted by enzymes called proteases, which are overactive in cancer cells. Nanoparticles coated with these proteins, called peptides, can...

Antibody treatments for cancer and other diseases are typically delivered intravenously, requiring patients to go to a hospital and potentially spend hours receiving infusions. Now Professor Patrick Doyle and his colleagues have taken a major step toward reformulating antibodies so that they can be injected with a standard syringe, making treatment easier and more accessible....

Launching from the Lab: Building a Deep-Tech StartupBy Lita Nelsen '64, SM '66, SM '79, former director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, and Maureen StancikBoyce, SM '91, SM '93, PhD '95, with Sophie HagertyMIT PRESS, 2026, $35 Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One BargeBy Ian Kumekawa, lecturer in historyPENGUIN RANDOM...

In the horticultural world, some vines are especially grabby. As they grow, the woody tendrils can wrap around obstacles with enough force to pull down fences and trees. Inspired by vines' twisty tenacity, engineers at MIT and Stanford University have developed a robotic gripper that can snake around and lift a variety of objects and...

A photogenic green-eyed Russian Blue named Petra might just be the world's most sequenced cat. Petra was rescued from an animal shelter in Reno, Nevada, by Charlie Lieu, MBA '05, SM '05, a data whiz, serial entrepreneur, investor, and cofounder of Darwin's Ark, a community science nonprofit focused on pet genetics. Since becoming Lieu's furry...

Several years ago, Suzanne Berger was visiting a manufacturing facility in Ohio, talking to workers on the shop floor, when a machinist offered a thought that could serve as her current credo. Technology takes a step forward-workers take a step forward too," the employee said. Berger, to explain, is an MIT political scientist who for...

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority moves hundreds of thousands of people across Greater Boston each day-thanks to a vast system of buses, trains, and ferries that depends on coordination among thousands of employees. In this storied transit system, history runs deep: The Green Line still passes through the country's oldest subway tunnels, built beneath the...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Why conservationists are making rhinos radioactive Every year, poachers shoot hundreds of rhinos, fishing crews haul millions of sharks out of protected seas, and smugglers carry countless animals and plants across borders. This...

Earth's a medium-size rock with some water on top, enveloped by gases that keep everything that lives here alive. Just at the edge of that envelope begins a thin but dense layer of human-built, high-tech stuff. People started putting gear up there in 1957, and now it's a real habit. Telescopes look up and out...

Every year, poachers shoot hundreds of rhinos, fishing crews haul millions of sharks out of protected seas, and smugglers carry countless animals and plants across borders. This illegal activity is incredibly hard to disrupt, since it's backed by sophisticated criminal networks and the perpetrators know that their chances of being caught are slim. With an...

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what's coming next. You can read more from the series here. Want to lose weight? Get shredded? Stay mentally sharp? A wellness influencer might tell you to take peptides, the latest cure-all in the alternative medicine arsenal....

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. In January, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, the head of the world's most valuable company, proclaimed that we are entering the era of physical AI, when artificial intelligence will move beyond language and chatbots...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Inside Chicago's surveillance panopticon Chicago has tens of thousands of surveillance cameras-up to 45,000, by some estimates. That's among the highest numbers per capita in the US. Chicago boasts one of the largest...

Early on the morning of September 2, 2024, a Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line train was the scene of a random and horrific mass shooting. Four people were shot and killed on a westbound train as it approached the suburb of Forest Park. The police swiftly activated a digital dragnet-a surveillance network that connects thousands...

2025 was a year of reckoning, including how the heads of the top AI companies made promises they couldn't keep. In this exclusive subscriber-only eBook, you'll learn more about why we may need to readjust our expectations. This story is part of the Hype Correction package.by Will Douglas Heaven December 15, 2025 Table of Contents:...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Microsoft has a new plan to prove what's real and what's AI online AI-enabled deception now permeates our online lives. There are the high-profile cases you may easily spot. Other times, it slips...

Twenty years ago, Joanna Wakefield-Scurr was having persistent pain in her breasts. Her doctor couldn't diagnose the cause but said a good, supportive bra could help. A professor of biomechanics, Wakefield-Scurr thought she could do a little research and find a science-backed option. Two decades later, she's still looking. Wakefield-Scurr now leads an 18-person team...

The bird is a beautiful silver-gray, and as she dies twitching in the lasernet I'm grateful for two things: First, that she didn't make a sound. Second, that this will be the very last time. They're called corpse doves-because the darkest part of their gray plumage surrounds the lighter part, giving the impression that skeleton...

There's a measles outbreak happening close to where I live. Since the start of this year, 34 cases have been confirmed in Enfield, a northern borough of London. Most of those affected are children under the age of 11. One in five have neededhospital treatment. It's another worrying development for an incredibly contagious and potentially...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. How uncrewed narco subs could transform the Colombian drug trade For decades, handmade narco subs have been some of the cocaine trade's most elusive and productive workhorses, ferrying multi-ton loads of illicit drugs...

On a bright morning last April, a surveillance plane operated by the Colombian military spotted a 40-foot-long shark-like silhouette idling in the ocean just off Tayrona National Park. It was, unmistakably, a narco sub," a stealthy fiberglass vessel that sails with its hull almost entirely underwater, used by drug cartels to move cocaine north. The...

The United States and the European Union grew into economic superpowers by committing climate atrocities. They have burned a wildly disproportionate share of the world's oil and gas, planting carbon time bombs that will detonate first in the poorest, hottest parts of the globe. Meanwhile, places like the Solomon Islands and Chad-low-lying or just plain...

Google DeepMind is calling for the moral behavior of large language models-such as what they do when called on to act as companions, therapists, medical advisors, and so on-to be scrutinized with the same kind of rigor as their ability to code or do math. As LLMs improve, people are asking them to play more...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Welcome to the dark side of crypto's permissionless dream Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen, an Australian man in his mid-30s, with a rural Catholic upbringing, is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can...

To be human is, fundamentally, to be a forecaster. Occasionally a pretty good one. Trying to see the future, whether through the lens of past experience or the logic of cause and effect, has helped us hunt, avoid being hunted, plant crops, forge social bonds, and in general survive in a world that does not...

We're out of airspace now. We can do whatever we want," Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen tells me from the pilot's seat of his Aston Martin helicopter. As we fly over suburbs outside Melbourne, Australia, it's becoming clear that doing whatever he wants is Thorbjornsen's MO. Upper-middle-class homes give way to vineyards, and Thorbjornsen points out our landing...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The curious case of the disappearing Lamborghinis Across the world, unsuspecting people are unwittingly becoming caught up in a new and growing type of organized criminal enterprise: vehicle transport fraud and theft. Crooks...

When Sam Zahr first saw the gray Rolls-Royce Dawn convertible with orange interior and orange roof, he knew he'd found a perfect addition to his fleet. It was very appealing to our clientele," he told me. As the director of operations at Dream Luxury Rental, he outfits customers in the Detroit area looking to ride...

When work went remote, the sound of business changed. What began as a scramble to make home offices functional has evolved into a revolution in how people hear and are heard. From education to enterprises, companies across industries have reimagined what clear, reliable communication can mean in a hybrid world. For major audio and communications...

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Hackers made death threats against this security researcher. Big mistake. In April 2024, a mysterious someone using the online handles Waifu" and Judische" began posting death threats on Telegram and Discord channels aimed...