Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 3, and we're covering Pentagon’s AI contract reversal, Claude’s widespread outage, and more.

New here? Keep up with the future of tech, sign up here. Have feedback? Send us a note: [email protected]. If you liked this email, share it with a friend.

🔌 Claude Hit by Widespread Outage
Anthropic’s Claude suffered widespread disruptions Monday morning, blocking thousands from logging into Claude.ai and Claude Code, while its API remained functional. The company said it identified the issue and is rolling out a fix but hasn’t disclosed the cause. The outage followed a user surge after Claude topped the App Store, overtaking ChatGPT, amid Pentagon tensions.

💰 NVIDIA Invests $4B In Photonics Partners
NVIDIA will invest $2 billion each in Lumentum and Coherent to strengthen photonic technologies for faster AI data center chips. The deals include multibillion-dollar purchase commitments and access to advanced optical networking products. Shares of Lumentum rose 5% and Coherent 9%. The move comes amid rising AI demand and growing competition from AMD.

✊ Tech Workers Push Back on Anthropic Blacklist
Hundreds of tech workers signed an open letter urging the Defense Department to withdraw its “supply chain risk” label on Anthropic after the AI firm refused unrestricted military access. President Trump directed agencies to stop using Anthropic’s tools, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to blacklist the firm. The designation requires formal review and notice to Congress.

🖥️ Alibaba Unveils Qwen 3.5 Small Model Series
Alibaba’s AI unit introduced four lightweight additions to its Qwen 3.5 lineup—0.8B, 2B, 4B, and 9B parameter models—designed to deliver stronger performance with lower compute demands. The new releases from Alibaba Cloud target developers building for edge devices and cost-sensitive environments, signaling a push to make advanced AI more practical beyond large-scale cloud infrastructure.

Lindy just launched a full AI assistant that eliminates the expensive infrastructure most AI agents require. No $600 Mac Mini running 24/7. No hundreds in monthly token costs. It integrates with 100+ apps—iMessage, Gmail, Slack, Notion, Calendar—and learns your workflow to handle communications, scheduling, and repetitive tasks.

For those running complex workflows, it's an always-on assistant that actually works across your entire digital ecosystem.

Get started with Lindy and eliminate busy work.

The Recap: The U.S. Department of Defense scrapped a nearly finalized $200 million artificial intelligence contract with Anthropic and instead reached an agreement with OpenAI, after disputes over surveillance and military use of AI. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” at 5:14 p.m., cutting it off from government work minutes after a negotiation deadline expired. The breakdown—reported by Sheera Frenkel, Cade Metz, and Julian E. Barnes of The New York Times—stemmed from clashing views on AI guardrails, personal animosity among executives, and OpenAI’s parallel negotiations with the Pentagon.

Highlights:

Forward Future Takeaways:
This episode underscores a widening divide between AI companies that seek enforceable limits on government use and those willing to rely on internal safeguards while granting broad contractual access. It also highlights how personality conflicts and political alignment—Altman has courted the Trump administration—can shape billion-dollar defense decisions as much as technical capability. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)

A growing number of people are embracing “friction-maxxing” — intentionally adding inconvenience to daily life — to counter shrinking attention spans in the digital era. The idea, highlighted by artist Stuart Semple and backed by researchers including psychologist Gloria Mark, involves swapping frictionless tech habits for slower, effortful activities like reading print, handwriting notes, or navigating without GPS.

Mark’s research shows average on-screen attention spans dropped from about 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2016. Experts say effortful tasks can strengthen focus and deepen well-being, though evidence on digital detoxes remains mixed. The broader question: does convenience erode cognitive muscle? → Read the full article here.

🤥 BBC Debunks AI War Fakes: BBC Verify exposes AI-generated images and doctored videos tied to the US-Israel conflict with Iran, deploying open-source tools to counter viral disinformation.

📈 Cursor Revenue Hits $2 Billion: The AI coding startup’s annualized recurring revenue hit $2 billion in March 2026, up from $1 billion in December. The surge underscores demand for developer-focused artificial intelligence tools.

📶 6G Hype Cycle Begins: At MWC 2026, telecoms tout 6G’s satellite links, AI-native networks, and sensing tech, targeting 2030 rollout. Experts warn promises may outpace reality—again.

🤔 AI Job Doom Overblown, For Now: After Block cut 40% of staff citing AI, viral essays predicted mass layoffs, but US unemployment remains 4.3% and history shows tech often boosts growth.

🧑‍🔧 Delivery Robots Spawn ‘Wrangler’ Gigs: As Coco and Serve expand in California, former drivers take $21–$23/hour jobs maintaining and rescuing bots, roles that grow with robot fleets.

🧩 AI Decodes Roman Board Game: Using 3D scans and an AI trained on 100 ancient games, researchers inferred rules for a Roman stone game, though exact play remains uncertain.

📱 Rork: Build cross-platform mobile apps fast with AI and React Native tools.
🎙️ Sona: Record, transcribe, and summarize conversations across devices.
🧊 Hunyuan3D 2.0: Generate high-resolution textured 3D assets with AI.

❤️ Love Forward Future? Share your referral link with friends and colleagues to unlock exclusive perks! 👉 Get your link here.
📢 Want to advertise with us? Reach 1M+ AI enthusiasts, tech leaders, and decision-makers. Just reply to this email.

Thanks for reading today’s newsletter. See you next time!
Matthew Berman & The Forward Future Team

🧑‍🚀 🧑‍🚀 🧑‍🚀 🧑‍🚀 🧑‍🚀