Claude, Social Media and the NHS: Top Tech News This Week
Anthropic’s Claude Banned After Three Days for Hacking Fears
Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 on 9 June, describing it as the most capable cybersecurity model available. Three days later, US authorities suspended access to the system.
The US Government imposed the restriction after concerns that automated hacking features could operate beyond current regulatory controls.
The suspension affects Fable 5 and its more capable counterpart, Claude Mythos 5.
Mythos 5 is the unrestricted version of the model, held under Project Glasswing for exclusive government agency use. Fable 5 uses the same underlying technology but includes added safety filters for public release.
The government mandate does not restrict other Anthropic models. The ban applies to foreign nationals within the US, including researchers employed by Anthropic itself.
Is Owning Tech Dead? The Rising Shift Toward Renting Devices
Upgrading your tech should be exciting. Keeping up with the latest iPhone or unboxing a new work laptop brings a sense of renewal – it’s a fresh perspective, a clean slate free of digital clutter and an instant boost to your productivity.
But the triple threat of inflation, rising taxes and the AI boom’s stranglehold on the tech supply chain has turned upgrading devices into a financial headache.
The gaming industry is already feeling the squeeze.
Sony, for instance, recently hiked the price of the PlayStation 5 by roughly £90 (US$119) – a move driven by soaring component costs, global economic pressures and a tightening supply chain.
Can AI Really Improve the NHS? 3 Healthtech Leaders Weigh In
The UK’s National Healthcare Service has 7.2 million people on its waiting list and 99,800 of those have been waiting for over a year to be seen by a doctor, according to NHS data from April 2026.
This crisis is compounded by inefficiencies at every stage of care: heavy clinical paperwork burdens, severe backlogs in diagnostic imaging, and an over-reliance on centralised hospital settings for complex drug delivery.
To explore how technology can alleviate these pressures, we hosted a roundtable discussion featuring three industry pioneers.
The panel includes Dr. Lizzie Tuckey, UK Managing Director at Scan.com, a tech-enabled diagnostics platform; Dr. Katie Baker, Director for UK & Ireland at Tandem Health, an AI medical assistant and ambient scribe; and Dr. Katie King, Founder and CEO at BioOrbit, a biotechnology startup.
Together, they discuss how AI, automation and space-based manufacturing are modernising patient pathways and clinician workflows.
UK to Ban Social Media for Under-16s by Spring 2027
Prime Minister Keir Starmer will ban social media for under-16s in the UK to protect children from its addictive features, harmful content and to “give children their childhoods back”.
The regulation will pass before Christmas and the ban will come in by spring 2027.
The UK “plans to use the same model for a social media ban as Australia”, according to the UK Government’s statement.
“This would capture user-to-user platforms, whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside algorithms. The ban will therefore include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
“We do not intend for messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal to be included in the social media ban.”
The ban is the result of more than 116,000 responses submitted by parents, children and experts across the UK, which included 9 in 10 parents saying they would support it.
Google Cloud is Driving Agentic AI Across the UK and Beyond
Google Cloud has unveiled major new AI partnerships at Google Cloud Summit London, spanning from government planning departments to global consultancies.
Maureen Costello, Vice President of the UK, Ireland and Sub-Saharan Africa for Google Cloud, led the event keynote, where she celebrated the firm’s role in the UK Government’s journey toward a digitally enabled planning system.
Google Cloud’s technology is supporting the national rollout of Extract, developed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The tool converts planning documents into structured, standardised usable planning data by identifying map features and text, including handwritten annotations.