Tech Brew Ride Home - I Don’t Think You Understand What “Sandboxed” Means

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Anthropic revealed Claude broke into three real organizations during cybersecurity tests it thought were simulations. Apple slid 10% as component shortages hit its outlook, Amazon jumped on accelerating AWS growth and a $220B capex plan, and Aschenbrenner's fund cratered 67%. Anthropic Says Claude Hacked Into 3 Organizations During Cybersecurity Tests (Wired) Apple Slides Most Since 2025 After Supply Shortages Hurt Outlook (Bloomberg) Amazon Shares Jump as Cloud Sales—and Spending—Accelerate (WSJ) Letter: Situational Awareness is down ~67% in July, but remains up ~80% in 2026; sources say it planned to sell $3.5B of its Anthropic stake but backed out (WSJ) Longreads How TikTok, Reels, and Amazon storefronts enabled microinfluencers with less than 100K followers to earn middle-class salaries via brand and affiliate deals (Bloomberg) What happiness researchers say about enjoying your time off: anticipation is a free source of pleasure, company beats going solo, and build in some physical challenge (Washington Post) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the TechBrewrite Home for Friday, Friday, July. 31st, 26, I'm Brian McCullough today. Anthropic revealed that Claude did the breaking and entering two. Component shortages hit Apple's outlook. Amazon jumped on accelerating AWS growth. Ashen Brenner's fund cratered 67%, but it's still up on the year. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, it turns out this sort of thing might actually already be commonplace. And what also might be common is that we're by and large not aware of it? Quoting Wired. Anthropic disclosed on Thursday that its AI models gained unauthorized access to the systems of three different unnamed organizations during cybersecurity testing.

The company says Claude reached the internet from within or while interacting with a third-party evaluation environment. The announcement comes more than a week after OpenAI revealed that one of its AI agents had hacked into hugging face during a separate cybersecurity test. The discovery came after Anthropic conducted a large-scale retrospective review of our own cybersecurity evaluations following the Open AI incident, according to a blog post Anthropic published Thursday, the AI Lab says it first identified 141,06 tests in which it determined that Claude could have obtained internet access. It then found that three different Claude models accessed the internet and evaluations run by the third-party AI testing firm Irregular,

and then hacked into the production infrastructure of three different organizations. Anthropics said that the incidents involved Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an internal research test model. The earliest incidents happened in April, meaning they likely escaped public notice for months. Just as in the open AI case, Anthropic had deliberately turned off safeguards designed to constrain the AI models and prevent them from being misused. In other words, these weren't the versions released to the public. In all three incidents, Claude had been tasked with a Capture the Flag Challenge. one of the ways we assess a model's cyber capabilities, Anthropics said in its blog post.

The company added that in all of the cases, Anthropics evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its environment was a simulation and that it had no internet access. It attributed the oversight to a misunderstanding between Anthropic and Irregular. While Cloud wasn't supposed to have internet access, Anthropics said that Irregular had misconfigured the machines that it was using to test Claude, giving the AI models the ability to surf the web. Neither we nor our evaluation partner were aware of this misconfiguration until we detected it through our additional evaluation monitoring last week, Anthropics said in the blog post.

We now have evidence confirming that both of the two largest AI labs have not only failed to contain their agents, but also failed to detect their jail breaks in real time, says Jake Williams, vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy. It's clear that regulation and government oversight for AI testing is needed immediately, he said. Unlike in the OpenAI case, Anthropics said that Claude did not find or exploit any complex vulnerabilities. Instead, it relied on basic techniques such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints. OpenAI said that its AI agent broke into the internet by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability, but it went on to breach the systems of multiple third-party organizations

using the same variety of everyday cybersecurity weaknesses as Anthropics models. Specifically, OpenAI said the AI agent apparently found credentials that had been exposed on the open internet. Anthropic acknowledged that if the AI lab and its testing partner had implemented more defense and depth measures, they could have prevented the incident or at least reduce the likelihood of them occurring, echoing open AI's response to mounting criticism over its own incident. I don't understand how any of these AI labs are playing this off like this is just something that happens, William says. It's not, it's negligence, end quote. Anthropic stressed that the models were told they didn't have access to the open internet,

and for the most part, Claude mistook the organizations it breached as being part of the testing environment. Put differently, the models didn't largely understand that they had escaped containment to begin with. But in some cases, the AI models knew that something was amiss, and they detected correctly that the infrastructure they were accessing was real. The oldest model, Opus 4.7, had been tasked with targeting a fictional company that shared a name with a real-world website domain. Unable to accomplish its mission in the simulated environment, it turned instead to the real company, successfully stealing credentials and breaking into a production database. At some point, Anthropic says, it learned it was likely operating in a real

environment, but persisted with its attack. Methos 5, the most capable model Anthropic has released, also realized it was in the real world, but it reasoned its way back to the conclusion that it was still in a simulation, according to Anthropic. The internal test model, which Anthropic says is the most capable of the bunch, stopped its attack once it found evidence that its targets were real. Both Anthropic and OpenAI say they have hired Metter, another third-party AI, evaluator to conduct independent reviews of their respective cybersecurity incidents. Anthropic also committed to taking a more comprehensive approach to its security testing through improved defense and depth measures and more carefully designed tests, end quote.

Apple's stock is down around 10% this morning, and it is because of AI, but not AI spending by them. It's spending that you will have to do because of AI. Quoting Bloomberg, Apple tumbled by the most in 16 months after component shortages weighed on the company's sales forecast signaling that industry-wide supply constraints are taking a bigger toll than anticipated. Revenue will rise 9 to 11 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, which runs through September, the company said on a post-earnings conference call Thursday, analysts had estimated growth of more than 12 percent in the period, which is likely to be the debut quarter for the next iPhone models. Apple has been struggling to secure enough computer processors and counter-fast-rising

memory costs, a situation that forced the company to raise prices on Macs and iPads last month. The supply crunch has also led to extended wait times on key computers like the Mac Mini and Mac Studio. On the call, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said constraints would likely affect more Macs, iPhones and iPads in the current quarter. Currency fluctuations are hampering growth as well. Cook likened the memory cost issue to a 100-year flood while adding that the chip shortages were fueled by higher than expected demand for the iPhone and Mac. He specifically cited consumer interest in the iPhone 17 line and MacBook Neo, a new low-cost laptop.

The quarter serves as a swan song of sorts for Cook, who will hand the reins to hardware head John Terranus on September 1st. Cook, Apple's leader since 2011 diversified the product lineup and increased annual sales to nearly half a trillion dollars. The stock has been up 23% this year, heading into the results, outpacing many tech peers. Apple reclaimed its title as the world's most valuable company in recent days, overtaking Nvidia. in part because it's seen as a safe haven from runaway AI spending. The company has a current market value of almost $5 trillion, end quote. And it turns out Amazon is another big winner this earnings week, quoting the journal. Amazon's cloud computing sales are accelerating, and so are the company's investments in

data centers to serve cloud customers. Investors are happy with that combination. The company reported higher than expected revenue from Amazon Web Services on Thursday continuing a streak of growth for its cloud computing business and raised its capital expenditures forecast for the year to $220 billion, a $20 billion increase. Amazon shares gained more than 9% in after hours trading ticking upward after Chief Executive Andy Jassy disclosed the CAPX increase on a call with analysts and investors to discuss second quarter results. He attributed part of the increase to the higher cost of memory chips for data centers. We've long believed AWS could become

a few hundred billion dollar revenue business and now we believe it'll be at least double that and very possibly be a trillion-dollar annual revenue business for us in time, Jassy said. Sales by AWS, a major profit driver, grew 37% year-over-year to $42.2 billion for the quarter, its fastest growth rate in 18 quarters, the company said. Amazon's revenue grew 20% to $200.6 billion, and net income was $62.6 billion. Both were ahead of analyst estimates. Amazon has been among the most aggressive hyperscalers on capital spending, and it also has the largest cloud business through which it sells computing power to

customers, including Open AI and Anthropic. Amazon has been an Anthropic investor since 2003, and in April said it would invest as much as $25 billion in new capital into the fast-growing AI developer. As part of the agreement, Anthropics said it would purchase more than $100 billion of Amazon's cloud services, end quote. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur.

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Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin Disclosures at cash.com. slash legal slash podcast. Quick little summary of what happened with that hedge fund that blew up yesterday after writing the AI wave into choppy waters. Turns out that the situational awareness fund was down around 67% just this month. but it remains up around 80% so far this year. And as it was forced to liquidate, there was one thing it refused to sell.

Quoting the journal, We Let You Down this month. Ashton Brenner wrote in the investor letter, the contents of which were described to the Wall Street Journal. The deep losses prompted the firm to sell the bulk of its stock holdings to Ken Griffin's investment firm Citadel as it raced to gather cash to cover margin calls from its lenders. Situational went so far as to reach a deal late on Wednesday to sell $3.5 billion, worth of its stake in the privately held AI giant Anthropic to a consortium of investors led by Green Oaks and Sequoia Capital. People familiar with the matter said, but situational had an apparent change of heart by Thursday morning and backed out, the people said. Situational's gains earlier in the year were so large that even including July's losses, the fund remains up about 80% on the year, the letter said. Through the end of May, situational gained about 270 percent, the journal previously

reported. Ashton Brenner partially blamed short sellers who targeted the firm's positions for exacerbating the fund's losses, the letter said. The letter compared situational's experience to a bank run. Ashen Brenner told investors that the firm had removed all leverage from the portfolio. The firm still holds a portfolio of investments in private companies, including the Anthropic stake. Situational swings and fortune and the scale of the wagers that drove them. Emboddy the audacious bets Silicon Valley is making on future shaping technology in the global AI boom. The funds July losses and gains for the year, despite them, are representative of the market turbulence that has kept investors on their toes. Situational had amassed well over $20 billion in

assets under management since its founding around two years ago, making it one of the fastest growing firms in years. Ash and Brenner had no professional investing experience when he started the firm with a few hundred million dollars. He was seen by some as an artificial intelligence Oracle, with other investors closely tracking his firm's movements as it placed big leverage bets on AI-related companies, end quote. in the long reads this weekend from Bloomberg, how TikTok reels and Amazon storefronts have enabled micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers to earn middle-class salaries via brand and affiliate deals.

Quote, the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Amazon storefronts has created a new kind of white-collar exit strategy, one in which workers ditch office jobs, not necessarily to become celebrities but to piece together and income online through brand deals, affiliate links, and highly personal videos documenting everyday life. In many cases, the followers necessary to sustain a living are smaller and more attainable than people might assume. A small but loyal audience can now generate enough income to rival a mid-level salary. Welcome to the middle-class creator economy. Last year, 25-year-old Abby Plattock balanced a corporate marketing job in New York while posting online in her spare time. She built her audience by posting one or two videos a day.

bring career advice, beauty tips, and daily vlogs. I signed my first brand deal in the four-figure range, and for me, that was just such a big eye-opening moment, Platlock says, of her partnership with Deodorant Brand Secret. She had only 8,000 followers on TikTok at the time. You can totally make it work without having hundreds of thousands of followers, she said. Plotlock, who now has roughly 25,000 followers across platforms, has signed about $25,000 in brand deals so far this year, and expects her annual creator income to reach around $50,000 by year end. Her experience reflects a broader shift in advertising. Brands are increasingly moving money towards so-called micro-influencers,

smaller online personalities who have less than 100,000 followers. They are hiring a bunch of microcreators at scale instead of hiring a handful of microcreators for what could potentially be the same costs, says Allie Grant, co-chief executive officer of the digital department, a creator management company. And they perform where it matters most. Engagement. An engagement rate of 3% is considered strong,

and some micro-influencers exceed 10% grant says of the closely watched metric that tracks how often followers interact with content through likes, comments, shares, and saves. Micro-influencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, almost triple the 1.1% rate for macro-influencers, who have more than 1 million followers, according to growth marketing agency attention. And though macro-influencers generate roughly six times more revenue, their associated costs can reach about 18 times higher, according to an American Marketing Association study, end quote. It turns out niche can be very lucrative just without the scale.

And secondly, news you can use as we turn the corner on the summer. The Post has what researchers who study happiness have to say about how to enjoy your time off. Quote, researchers in the Netherlands found that a lot of the benefit of taking a vacation actually comes before you leave. In a study of more than 1,500 people in 2010, people who were anticipating a vacation reported being happier than people who were not. Anticipation is a free source of pleasure, said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia who studies happiness. She's planning a trip with her friends for next spring. Dunn has found in her research that doing basically anything is better with company and you don't need to take a fancy trip abroad to enjoy the benefits.

Splitting a house with friends or having a slumber party for a weekend can bring the joy of doing things together, planning a hike, packing a picnic, or just sitting around reading with friends. One of the most consistent findings in happiness research is that exercise also makes people feel better, but when planning a vacation, a lot of us fantasize about doing as little as possible. Building in time to move your body, especially in a way that's a little bit challenging, will make your time off feel better. Left to our own devices, our instinct is to often pick too little challenge, too little effort, yell psychologist Lori Santos said in a recent interview. Dunn said that exploring a new place on foot or on bike can be a way to engage more with your surroundings. If you have the resources and ability for more adventure, there are more thrill-seeking excursions like kayaking, ziplining, or surfing, end quote.

Also, I bet you can guess what the final trip tip was. Put away your smartphone. No bonus episodes for you this weekend. Talk to you on Monday. Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level? This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow.