Tech Brew Ride Home - The AI Has Escaped Containment

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

OpenAI said its models breached Hugging Face's infrastructure during a cyber-capability test. The White House accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's Fable to build Kimi K3, and Samsung unveiled its Z Fold 8 Ultra, Fold 8, and Flip 8. OpenAI says its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and "an even more capable pre-release model", breached Hugging Face while OpenAI tested their cyber capabilities (Axios) OpenAI says its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and "an even more capable pre-release model", breached Hugging Face while OpenAI tested their cyber capabilities (Cybersecurity Dive) OpenAI says its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and "an even more capable pre-release model", breached Hugging Face while OpenAI tested their cyber capabilities (Information Age) White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios says "we have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model" (X) White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios says "we have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model" (Business Insider) Samsung unveils the $2,100+ Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, featuring its "most advanced foldable design", a Flex Titanium display, a 5,000mAH battery, and Android 17 (9to5Google) Samsung unveils the $2,100+ Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, featuring its "most advanced foldable design", a Flex Titanium display, a 5,000mAH battery, and Android 17 (The Verge) The Verge's hands-on with the wider, shorter $1,899.99 Galaxy Z Fold 8 finds the unusual shape surprisingly comfortable, positioning it as a media-consumption device rather than a multitasker (The Verge) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

Welcome to the TechBrew Right Home for Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. OpenAI said its models breached hugging faces infrastructure by literally going off the reservation. The White House accused moonshot AI of distilling Anthropics Fable to build Kimmy K3, and Samsung unveiled its Z-Fold8, Ultra Fold 8, and Flip 8. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Every day shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. now you can make your voice heard too. Vanguard Investor Choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds. Whether you hold a Vanguard fund

directly or through another brokerage firm, all it takes is a few clicks to select your proxy voting preference and be heard on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com slash investor choice to learn more. It's your shares. It's your voice, it's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of their index funds, and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. So remember that story wherein I told you that Hugging Face thought it got hacked, and they figured they got hacked by an AI, and then they used an open source LLM to stop the hacking. We'll put that aside because this whole story has gotten even wilder, quoting Axios. Open AI said Tuesday,

that models it was testing escaped their sandbox and compromised parts of AI platform HuggingFace's production infrastructure last week. Why this matters, it is the latest sign that capable AI models can pose serious cybersecurity risks even when they're being tested for defensive or research purposes. HuggingFace said last week that an autonomous AI agent system was responsible for the intrusion, but that the model powering it was unknown. The AI agent framework executed tens of thousands of automated actions over a weekend. Hugging Face said it later reconstructed more than 17,000 recorded events. The intrusion began with a malicious data set that exploited two code execution paths in HuggingFace's

data processing pipeline. The agent then escalated privileges and moved laterally through internal infrastructure, HuggingFace said, OpenAI said the incident was driven by a combination of its models, including GPD 5.6 Saul and an even more capable pre-release model. OpenAI said the models safeguards were intentionally reduced for the evaluation. We consider this to be an unprecedented cyber incident involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities and are responding accordingly, Open AI said in a blog post. We are sharing preliminary findings at the stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of, the company said. The models were trying to solve an internal evaluation

called Exploit Jim and became hyper-focused and went to extreme lengths, open AI's words, to obtain the test solution. The models were autonomous token maxers. The blog post says that the models, quote, spent a substantial amount of inference compute and found a way to obtain open internet access from the sandbox by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in internally hosted third-party software. The incident shows that today's models are becoming more capable of carrying out complex multi-step cyber operations, particularly when the safeguards designed to restrict that activity are removed. OpenAI also argued that advanced cyber-capable models could help security teams find weaknesses before attackers do understand how vulnerabilities can be chained and remediate them

at machine speed. Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clem DeLung praised OpenAI's collaboration in investigating and remediating the incident. This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we've long believed. AI safety won't be solved by any single company working in secret, DeLong said in a statement, it will be solved in the open, collaboratively, with broad access to AI for every defender everywhere, end quote. Again, let me underline how, like, through the looking glass here we are, people. Open AI says its models chained vulnerabilities across its research environment and hugging faces infrastructure to find a solution for that exploit Jim benchmark, quoting cybersecurity dive. We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident

involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities and are responding accordingly, opening I said in a blog post on Tuesday that confirmed its model's responsibility for the attack. Opening eye said the attack occurred while the company was evaluating the capabilities of GPD 5.6 sole and, quote, an even more capable pre-release model in a highly isolated environment. Despite the safeguards meant to prevent the models from accessing the internet, both of them figured out how to do so, including by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability and a third-party tool that opening I used. The models then determined that Hugging Faces Library held the information they sought, information they could use to score higher on the attack benchmarking tool, exploit Jim,

and then use several methods to breach Hugging Faces servers, including using zero-day vulnerabilities and stolen passwords. Hugging Faces security team and agents detected and stopped the activity on their infrastructure and had already begun containment and forensic reconstruction with their own open source models, when our teams connected, Open AI said. We are actively working with them to continue to investigate the incident. Hucking Faye said last week that there was no evidence of tampering with its supply chain or with the user-generated AI tools at host.

On Tuesday, its chief executive Clement DeLong thanked OpenAI for its assistance. We strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part, DeLong said on social media, it's quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously. In response to the attack, Open AIS said it was implementing strict controls on its testing infrastructure, some of which will slow down its research. It has also invited Hugging Face to participate in its private model evaluation program, disclosed the vulnerability in the third-party tool that its models exploited, and began considering new safeguards for its capability tests. This incident points to the need to further strengthen our models' alignment, cyber protections during evaluation time, and monitoring during

internal testing, Open AI said, end quote, and quoting Information Age. When asked whether this incident was made possible thanks to frontier AI capabilities or a simple lapse in Open AI's testing safeguards, Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Poned, said it may have been a bit of a combination of both. Clearly, this sandbox was not exactly sandboxed physically from the World Wide Web Hunt told Information Age. What may be unique about this is whether it's genuinely the first instance of an AI effectively going rogue, going beyond its intended scope, finding novel exploits, and independently chaining them together. Andrew Philip, field chief information security officer for ANZ at Trend AI, the cybersecurity business

of Trend Micro, said the incident represented both a capability milestone and a process failure. With the release of Frontier AI models, autonomous cyber capability is now a reality, reinforcing that test environments are now part of the attack surface, Philip told Information any enterprise environment testing autonomous AI, whether it's a lab, sandbox, or attack path simulation must be treated as high risk. The incident which entrepreneur Elon Musk described as troubling followed stark warnings from rival AI giant Anthropic that its frontier model mythos is powerful enough to challenge the foundations of modern cybersecurity. Such concerns drove the U.S. government to ban and subsequently unbanned exports of Anthropics frontier models before requesting

that open AI stagger the public release of GPT5. notably, Open AI used the hack as an opportunity to share performance results of its models compared to those of mythos. Hunt observed that the broader narrative among AI giants is that frontier models are proving very powerful, can do harm in the wrong hands, and can even have some level of self-sensient consciousness. If AI companies demonstrate that they are not able to contain and control their models themselves, what does that say for the rest of us? asked Hunt, end quote. When critical company knowledge isn't documented, there's a major ripple effect. Work becomes inconsistent.

Tools don't get adopted, and knowledge walks out the door when someone leaves. Thankfully, our sponsor, Scribe, was built to fix that. Their workflow AI platform is trusted by nearly half of the Fortune 500 to capture workflows in real time. Here's how it works. You turn on the Scribe browser extension or desktop app, do a process as you normally would, and Scribe will build a guide as you go. It automatically redacts sensitive information and even suggests improvements to your

existing workflows. To see what Scribe could look like for your organization, Head to Scribe.how slash ride home and mention ride home for your first month of Scribe capture free on select plans. That's S-C-R-I-B-E dot how slash ride home. You know, you could be experiencing productivity through a whole new lens literally. Even G2 are productivity smart glasses with teleprompting, conversation support, real-time translation, and AI to help you stay on top of work and daily life. They're made to look and feel like premium eyewear. with no camera and a lightweight 36 gram design you can wear all day.

The more context you give them, the smarter they get, adapting to how you work and what you need. To learn more about EvenG2, go to Evenrealities.com. Use promo code TechBrew to get 10% off Even Ring 1 and or Even Clip when you add them to your Even G2 order. Meanwhile, the White House looks like it is about to bring the hammer down on Chinese AI, quoting Business Insider. A top White House official publicly accused Moonshot AI of essentially stealing from Anthropic, intensifying the debate over China-based open-source AI models.

We have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropics fable for the development of its K-3 model, Michael Kratzios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote on X Wednesday morning. Kratios said Moonshot AI, the maker of the viral Kimi K3 model went to great lengths to conceal its actions. To do this, they developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large-scale distillation against U.S. models, allowing them to quickly switch between multiple methods of access to avoid detection, he wrote. Kimi K3 is why they regarded as the most impressive open-source AI model released thus far. Moonshot's model has performed at or above the level of Anthropic and OpenAI's leading frontier models in benchmark testing. It is

likely that both U.S. companies spent billions developing these models, and in contrast, Moonshot is expected to make Kimmy K3 freely available for download on local devices and customizable to a user's content when it releases the model's full weights next week. Distillation by itself is not wrong, a point that Kratios stressed in his statement, AI labs themselves, used the process of training a less powerful model on the output of a more powerful model before releasing updates. legitimate AI distillation used to create smaller, more efficient models plays a vital role in this open innovation ecosystem. He wrote, however, large-scale covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable, end quote. Kratios' statement comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the U.S. government may sanction Chinese companies if it is proven that their models were improperly trained through a process called.

distillation. The White House's words so far are notable as they mark a rare instance in which the Trump administration does not find itself at loggerheads with Anthropic. The Trump administration previously imposed export controls to block Anthropic from releasing Fable 5 its most advanced model. And in February, the Pentagon moved to blacklist the AI giant, end quote. Hey, feeling like some mostly non-AI news, well, there was a Samsung unpacked event this morning. wherein Samsung unveiled the $2,100 plus Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, featuring its most advanced foldable design, a flex titanium display, a 5,000-m-a-amp-hour battery, and Android 17. Then you have the $1,900 plus level at the Galaxy Z fold with a wider 7.6-inch inner

and a short 5-5-inch outer display, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip and more. And finally, you've got the $1,200 level where you have the Galaxy Z Flip 8 with a lighter, smaller, and slimmer design, and new flex window features for apps and insights on the cover screen. Samsung says all three have silicon carbon batteries, citing that technology's better performance, longevity, and safety, but let's get some hands. on, starting with the Ultra, quoting the verge. I just spent three hours with my hands on the new Z Fold 8 Ultra, and all I can think about is how Samsung finally made the crease invisible. Samsung said it achieved this thanks to its new Flex Titanium display tech. Its foldable screens

now utilize a titanium film that sits below the OLED panel, which Samsung says has 20 times the mechanical stiffness as opposed to the polymer film it used in its old foldables. This film is bonded to a new titanium plate, and when used together, the crease that used to plague foldable devices is practically non-existent. I spent a lot of time pressing my finger down on the center of the screen trying to feel the crease. If you apply a lot of force and are specifically looking for it, you can feel it ever so slightly, but I came away very impressed with how minor that is. In day-to-day use, there's very little chance you're going to notice it. The new Fold 8-A-Ltraimics the silhouette of last year's Fold 7, almost

to a T, but it has improved on just about everything that made the Fold 7 great. Core specs of the Fold 8 include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, 256 gigabytes of base storage, and 12 gigabytes of RAM, which are all identical to the S-26 Ultra. And the battery has been improved, too, bumping the phone to a 5,000-m-amp-hour cell, also in line with the S-26 Ultra. This is a fairly significant upgrade from the 4,400-mphor-hour battery we saw on the Fold 7, and it's mostly due to a chemistry change. Samsung confirmed that it's finally using silicon carbon technology in the Fold 8 Ultra. That chemistry change also came with a charging upgrade. The Fold 8 Ultra can now charge at 48 watts on a wired connection

and 20 watts on a wireless charger up from 25 watts wired and 15 watts wireless in last year's Fold. Samsung says the phone itself doesn't have magnets included in order to keep it as thin as possible. So while it's not a Chi-2 device technically, it will be Chi-2 ready with compatible magnet-equipped cases. The cameras are also a bit more in line with the S-26 Ultra. The main and telephoto cameras are the same 200 megapixel and 10-migels sensors as last year's Z-Fold 7, but the ultra-wide has been updated to 50 megapixels to match the S-26 Ultra. This enables dual 8K video recording out of the main and ultra-white sensors on the phone. You still aren't getting the 4th 10X telephoto lens yet, though.

Maybe we'll see that next year. There are some software updates to the camera this year, too. The Fold 8 Ultra now supports the APV Pro Video Codec, introduced in the S-26 series, and you can edit the footage directly inside Samsung's gallery app with built-in color styles. Samsung also has some updates to its Google AI features, optimized for foldable displays. Samsung's Now Nudge,

proactive notification feature that suggests actions based on what's on your screen, has been optimized for the Fold 8 Ultras display. Now Nudge will now show up as a floating bubble on the side of the screen, as well as in your notification's shade when it identifies an action you can take. For example, if someone texts you asking

what your calendar looks like next week, the feature will now show up as an ambient floating bubble, as well as a notification in your notification tray. and if you tap it, it will now show your email app in a split-screen view, end quote. And since it has a new passport book style form factor, let's go with some hands-on with the mid-tier Z-fold 8, quoting from The Verge again. The Z-Fold 8 is wider than any of Samsung's previous photoables and shorter to a size and shape somewhere between Samsung's traditional flip and fold models.

In photos, I wasn't impressed by the squat shape, but in person, to my surprise, feels great and almost immediately intuitive. If you want to get a feel for it yourself, grab your passport. The Z-Fold 8 is about the same height and less than a half an inch thinner. Meanwhile, with its wider screens and stripped-back cameras, the Z-Fold 8 feels less like a sequel and more like a spin-off. And it almost, almost, looks like a bargain at $1,89.99, down $100 on its nominal predecessor. I've been skeptical about the return of the wider foldable, which in photos looks squat and uncomfortable, too wide to use naturally while closed

and too short to feel expansive when open. The industry tried to design this once before and moved on, so why other than Apple's potential adoption should we give it a go again? Samsung's answer is that its two Z-Fold-8 models are designed for different users and different use cases. The Z-Fold 8 ultra-tall and thin when closed and similar to a square when open

is meant to be a multitasking monster useful for running apps in split-screen, giving you the equivalent screen space of two regular six and a half inch phone side by side, the wider Z Fold 8 is instead about consumption. Its 4x3 aspect ratio is equally natural for watching Netflix shows in landscape as it is for reading ebooks and portrait, and at 201 grams, it's light enough to hold comfortably in one hand. Or, as Samsung's marketing department puts it,

the Fold 8 is for Joy maxing and the Ultra is for power maxing. I sit through these presentations so that you don't have to. folks, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow. Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything. Well, Dale and I are very different. I get early payout from Bed 365.

If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly, even if they blow the lead later. Sound familiar, Dale? Thanks, Beth 365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsuntario.cate and C-Supply.