Bytes: Week in Review — Prediction markets reel amid Iran conflict, defense contractors to drop Anthropic, and Meta's AI deal with News Corp

Meta and News Corp reached a licensing deal this week. Plus, defense contractors untangle Claude from their workflows.

But first, the online prediction marketplace Kalshi lets users bet on the outcome of many things that can happen in the future. One bet that saw a lot of action was whether Ali Khamenei would be ousted as the supreme leader in Iran. Khamenei was killed over the weekend during a U.S. military strike.

Kalshi didn’t pay out the bets that were placed after Khamenei’s death. Instead, it reimbursed those traders. And this outraged some users on the site. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, about all these headlines from the week in tech.

Everything we talked about

“Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei’s Death Sparks Revolt Among Kalshi Customers” from Wired

“Polymarket shelves nuclear detonation markets after outcry” from CoinDesk

“Defense tech companies are dropping Claude after Pentagon’s Anthropic blacklist” from CNBC

“Anthropic Hits Back After US Military Labels It a ‘Supply Chain Risk’” from Wired

“News Corp, Meta in AI Content Licensing Deal Worth Up to $50 Million a Year” from The Wall Street Journal