Sponsored by
Welcome Automaters, 👋
Imagine your two best friends both invite you to their birthday parties, same day, same time, and both say "if you go to the other one, we're done." That’s literally what the U.S. government is trying to pull on 35 different countries.
Here's the tea. According to a draft letter reviewed by Reuters, the U.S. State Department is getting ready to tell dozens of nations they officially cannot sit on the AI fence anymore. The instruction is crystal clear: You either pick Team USA's AI ecosystem, or you pick Team China’s. You do not get to play both sides anymore.
The backstory: Last year the U.S. launched something called Pax Silica, basically a club for countries who want to team up on AI chips, AI models, and the rare minerals that power all of it, while also locking out China in the process. About two dozen countries already joined, including big names like Japan, Australia, and South Korea.
The letter is headed to all 35 countries that signed a related "AI Opportunity Statement" back in June.
The plot twist: One country, Kazakhstan, which happens to be a key potential source of critical minerals is currently in both the U.S. and China's AI clubs at the same time. Awkward. The letter basically says: "To be part of everything is to be part of nothing," which is either a great life lesson or the pettiest diplomatic mic-drop of 2026.
An official from the U.S. side spelled it out without any filter, stating it is nearly impossible to build deep tech trust with a country that is simultaneously cozying up to "an initiative designed by China to advance a competing vision for AI."
Naturally, Beijing’s embassy in Washington clapped right back, arguing that forcing nations into exclusive corners only "stifles global AI advances" and actively hurts tech progress for everyone.
Why Is Washington Panicking Right Now?
This whole showdown isn't just for show. Chinese open-weight models have been rapidly closing the performance gap on American powerhouses like OpenAI and Anthropic. This letter is proof positive that the neck-and-neck race is making U.S. officials incredibly nervous.
Our Take: Nothing screams "we are totally winning the AI race and feeling super confident" quite like sending strongly worded mass breakup letter to 35 foreign governments.
One last thing before you move on: we just launched a new membership offering, and to celebrate it, we’re offering a 20% off discount, but you have just 2 days to grab it. So go take a peek.
Here’s Our Last Breakdown on YouTube.
Here's what we have for you today
🤦Amazon Caught Buying and Destroying Rare Books to Train Its AI Models
The symbol for Amazon's VGT3, the Las Vegas facility where it scans book for AI training data.
Thirty years after starting as a humble online bookstore, Amazon is still buying books by the truckload. Only now, those physical pages are going straight into a literal paper shredder after a quick scan.
Here’s what Happening:
A wild investigation by 404 Media revealed that Amazon has been quietly purchasing massive batches of rare, secondhand, and out-of-print books. The goal? Grab fresh, purely human-written text to train its data hungry AI models.
And get this: Reporters figured this out in the most delightfully low-tech way possible. They hid an Apple AirTag inside a roughly 1,000-book order placed through Biblio, a marketplace for secondhand books, and tracked it across the country.
The AirTag's pinging trail ended at Amazon’s LAS8 warehouse in North Las Vegas, home base for a hush-hush internal unit called VGT3, which identifies itself with a symbol of a dinosaur holding a book in its claws. One insider casually laid out the routine on an internal forum:
Employees unpack the incoming bulk shipments and log the barcodes.
Others chop off the book spines and bindings to speed up the process.
The loose pages are scanned straight into the system, and the physical remnants are destroyed in the process.
When confronted, Amazon’s PR machine offered the ultimate non-answer, claiming they buy commercial goods to "develop and improve products and services." Translation: Yeah, we did that, but good luck getting any more juicy details out of us.
And hey, this isn't a brand-new side hustle, either. Back in September 2024, panicked sellers on Amazon’s own forums started noticing bizarre buying sprees from the exact same Las Vegas warehouse:
One seller got 68 individual orders from a single mystery buyer.
Another was hit at 4:00 AM with 48 orders, all exclusively for high-brow University Press titles.
A third seller reported that the exact same account was sweeping up their inventory every single day.
When confused sellers raised alarms, an Amazon forum rep investigated, confirmed the orders were 100% valid, and then went completely radio silent when asked if the purchases were tied to VGT3.
So Why Is AI So Desperate for Old Books?
Artificial intelligence models require unfathomably massive mountains of text to keep growing. The catch? They’ve already sucked up almost everything useful off the open web. And guess what?
Books published before 2022 are guaranteed to be 100% human-crafted organic text.
When AI models get fed a diet of synthetic, AI-generated drivel, their brainpower degrades over time. So old, out-of-print titles are clean, pristine fuel.
Independent researchers warn that the internet’s supply of genuine human writing could run completely dry within years, leaving forgotten print titles as the last untapped frontier.
The Bigger (and Scarier) Picture
Anthropic previously made headlines for scanning and destroying millions of physical books to train Claude. While a judge ruled that converting physical formats into digital data was protected fair use, copyright lawyers point out that the ruling covered the format shift, not the actual training on the text itself.
In fact, Zoom told Inc. it processes more than 3 million secondhand books each month, with 62% finding new homes.
Meanwhile, librarians are rightfully panicking. Once a rare, out-of-print gem is sliced up and thrown away, that physical piece of history is gone forever. Amazon may be fueling the future of machine intelligence, but the question is: At what cost?? And is it worth it?
We're dissecting all of this over on our YouTube channel! Head over to The Automated, hit that subscribe button, and show up in the comment section with Tak! You can drop a comment letting us know which section you liked best.
Oh, and mark your calendars: new drops land 6 AM Shenzhen / 2 PM EST or 5 PM EST, Tuesday through Saturday China time (Monday to Friday U.S.A time). Come catch us live! And you can RSVP here to join the Livestream.
Build. Break. Fix. Learn.
KodeKloud gives you 1,280+ hands-on labs where you provision Kubernetes clusters, write Terraform configs, build CI/CD pipelines, configure Linux systems, containerize apps with Docker, automate with Ansible, and manage Git workflows.
78+ playgrounds let you experiment freely in sandbox AWS environments, Kubernetes clusters, and CI/CD systems without risk.
190+ courses across DevOps, Cloud, and AI pair theory with hands-on labs at every step.
KodeKloud Engineer and 100 Day Challenges provide real-world job scenarios with automated grading that confirms your solutions work.
Stuck? The 55,000+ member Discord community connects you with peers and instructors ready to help.
Every lab runs in a live environment. You deploy, you troubleshoot, you learn. No videos without context. No simulations. The kind of practice that actually builds confidence because you've done real work, not watched someone else do it.
🧱 Around The AI Block
😱 OpenAI reportedly disbanded its preparedness team as part of a 'streamlining' process.
🫣 Trump crypto firm backs venture offering AI from restricted Chinese companies.
🤑 Anthropic’s annualized revenue surges to $65B.
🧑💻 Alibaba fires back at Meta with laptop-ready AI model.
✍️ ByteDance signs AI copyright pact with Hollywood trade group.
🤯 Alibaba’s AI models reach 3 billion downloads, outpacing Meta and Google.
🤝 Google partners with five clubs to deploy Pixel and Gemini AI for matchday experiences.
👩🎓 AI Tutorials
How to Never Hit a Token Limit In Claude Again.
And: How Claude Can Ruin/Take over A Business (The Negative Impacts Of Allowing Claude Help With Your Business).
So tell us, what’s the single most annoying, tedious task in your daily workflow that you desperately wish an AI could just handle for you?
Hit reply and the next video might just be around your exact problem!
How Marketers Are Scaling With AI in 2026
61% of marketers say this is the biggest marketing shift in decades.
Get the data and trends shaping growth in 2026 with this groundbreaking state of marketing report.
Inside you’ll discover:
Results from over 1,500 marketers centered around results, goals and priorities in the age of AI
Stand out content and growth trends in a world full of noise
How to scale with AI without losing humanity
Where to invest for the best return in 2026
Download your 2026 state of marketing report today.
🛠️ Trending Tools
For the Enterprise IT & AI Engineers: Cloudflare OS is an open-source AI platform built to centralize custom tools, rules, and internal datasets into a single architecture. It runs locally or on Cloudflare Workers, letting organizations build grounded, context-aware agents and internal productivity tools securely. It’s an ideal backbone for teams wanting to deploy custom AI workflows without sacrificing data control.
For the Video Editors & Podcast Producers: Music Remover strips background tracks from audio or video files while keeping spoken dialogue intact. It intelligently isolates the upload into three separate stems: voices, background music, and ambient sounds. Supporting files up to 3 hours long, it saves creators from copyright headaches or ruined interview recordings.
For the Sports Analysts & Betting Enthusiasts: TipsBible processes match data, expected goals, injury updates, and head-to-head records across major sports leagues. Its analytical models run these inputs daily to highlight statistical patterns and surface data-driven picks for various bet types. It saves users hours of manual research by delivering structured statistical breakdowns right before game time. Best for: Sports analysts and bettors looking for daily, data-backed match breakdowns.
🤖 AI Workout Of The Day: Unlocking Complex Codebases with Intuitive Mental Models
Understanding complex code isn't about memorizing syntax; it’s about building clear, lasting mental models.
When developers or non-technical stakeholders struggle with a piece of code, line-by-line technical documentation often causes eyes to glaze over. By translating abstract algorithms, logic flows, and system architectures into vivid, real-world analogies, you demystify technical debt, accelerate onboarding, and help developers spot hidden architectural flaws before they hit production.
💡 Prompts To Try:
Act as a world-class computer science educator, technical author, and master of intuitive pedagogy.
Your task is to take any code snippet, algorithm, or software bug I provide and translate its inner workings into a vivid, relatable, real-world analogy before breaking down the technical execution.
Here’s the context for my request:
* Code Snippet / Problem: [PASTE YOUR CODE OR DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM HERE]
* Programming Language / Framework: [e.g., Python, JavaScript, SQL, Rust]
* Target Audience Technical Level: [e.g., Non-technical stakeholder, Junior developer, Complete beginner]
Please deliver your code explanation structured into the following 4 distinct sections:
1. THE CORE ANALOGY (The Real-World Blueprint):
* Create a creative, highly intuitive real-world analogy (e.g., a busy restaurant kitchen, an automated assembly line, a library sorting system) that perfectly mirrors the logic, data flow, and components of this code.
* Introduce the "Cast of Characters": Map each variable, function, loop, or class directly to a physical object or person in your analogy.
2. THE ANALOGY WALKTHROUGH (Step-by-Step Story): Walk through what happens when the code executes, using *only* the elements of your real-world story to explain the logic flow from input to output.
3. THE TECHNICAL TRANSLATION (Connecting Story to Code): Map the real-world story directly back to the actual code block. Show line-by-line (or block-by-block) how the programming syntax executes what happened in the analogy.
4. EDGE CASES & PENDING TRAPS (What Could Go Wrong?): Explain 1 potential bug, bottleneck, or edge case using the analogy (e.g., "What happens if 1,000 customers order at the exact same second?"), showing how the code handles it or where it might break.
TONE & EXECUTION GUIDELINES:
* Tone: Engaging, warm, patient, witty, and deeply educational.
* Jargon Control: Never use technical terms without immediately grounding them in the real-world analogy.
* Format: Use bolding, code blocks, and visual step breakdowns to make the comparison crystal clear.Is this your AI Workout of the Week (WoW)? Cast your vote!
That's all we've got for you today.
Did you like today's content? We'd love to hear from you! Please share your thoughts on our content below👇
What'd you think of today's email?
Your feedback means a lot to us and helps improve the quality of our newsletter.
