Starlink becomes a battlefield again
Today is Friday, October 23, 2026
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- Good morning, and welcome to Hark News. Here's what the world got up to while you slept. First, the weather in New York. A high of 60 and a low of 43, with clear skies.
- President Trump asked Elon Musk to restore Ukraine’s access to Starshield, the military-grade Starlink service, after a slowdown reportedly disrupted drone operations and exposed Kyiv’s dependence on a private network.
- The cost of AI tokens has fallen sharply, with one index now below $1 per million tokens, down 54% from its May peak. Usage keeps rising, but business spending has been flat for 2 months.
- Researchers found 2 critical PHP vulnerabilities, affecting software used by nearly 70% of websites, with OpenAI models helping identify the flaws. Authorities urged organizations to patch immediately, because exploitation could allow server takeovers without passwords.
- A judge ordered President Trump to sit for a deposition by December 11 in his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, after his lawyers canceled an earlier date.
- Several polls put Democrats roughly 8 to 12 points ahead on the generic congressional ballot, a historically large midterm margin. A Harvard youth survey finds nearly 2 in 3 young likely voters are motivated mainly by opposition to Trump, while 77% disapprove of his economic management.
- Wedgewood Polls admitted that it fabricated election data, calling the operation a social experiment. Its numbers were nevertheless cited in political coverage and may have influenced perceptions around Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed primary campaign.
- Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is defending an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother, despite revelations about the abuse Acton says she suffered as a child.
- Democrats are spending $1 million to support Scott Colom’s Senate challenge to Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, a state Trump carried by more than 60% in 2024.
- The Supreme Court allowed New Hampshire to limit when voters may use student IDs to receive a ballot, saying a lower-court block came too close to the election.
- Calley Means, a senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resigned over frustration that the Make America Healthy Again agenda had stalled. His departure exposes a movement caught between promises on food and health policy, pesticide approvals and the practical limits of governing from inside the White House.
- The Justice Department is examining allegations of contract misconduct involving Corey Lewandowski during his time as a de facto chief of staff at Homeland Security.
- The Pentagon has quietly built a Technology Support Office intended to disrupt foreign technology programs viewed as threats to American military superiority. Details are classified, and officials dispute the reporting, but interviews with 12 current and former national-security officials suggest the office has operated with unusual secrecy since its creation in April.
- The United States ordered nonessential diplomatic staff and families to leave Saudi Arabia after Houthi attacks, while Washington denied reports of wider Gulf withdrawals. Mediators are discussing frozen Iranian funds and nuclear concessions, but hard-liners in Tehran have resisted.
- Middle East oil shipments have recovered to about 24 million barrels a day, slightly above prewar levels, yet prices remain elevated because the workaround depends on risky shipping routes, scarce insurance and expensive transfers.
- High oil prices have not persuaded Permian Basin producers to dramatically increase drilling. Diamondback Energy’s chief says prices above $100 a barrel are attractive briefly, then invite political pressure and encourage a later crash.
- US factory output rose 0.3% in September, but the recovery is concentrated in computers, electronics, transportation equipment and industries serving AI and energy. Manufacturers added 40,000 jobs over the year, while traditional factories lost 16,000.
- Jet fuel and other operating costs are pushing airlines toward higher fares, more premium seats and fewer marginal routes. American’s fuel bill rose nearly 70% year over year, while Delta expects to spend $6 billion more than last year.
- Major banks are finding third-party AI agents inside customer accounts, sometimes operating with login credentials and appearing to take actions beyond a user’s instructions. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are restricting access while considering read-only alternatives.
- Meta plans to create nonvoting Class C shares, helping finance its huge AI buildout without diluting Mark Zuckerberg’s control. The structure may also give him room to sell stock if California’s proposed wealth tax arrives.
- Investors cannot agree whether CoreWeave is a market scapegoat or an early warning. Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock, HSBC cut its target, and yields on some of CoreWeave’s bonds remain around 15%.
- Anthropic has built its own source-control system, Scion, after code changes grew from about 2,500 merged daily in May to more than 30,000 in September.
- And that's your world for today. The full stories and the links are waiting in the app. Tap through, bookmark what matters, and share what's worth sharing. And if you want to see what stuck, take today's quiz in the app: five quick questions. And if Hark is making your mornings a little better, share it with a friend. It's the best way to help us grow. I'll see you again tomorrow morning. Until then, have a great day.