Field Notes · 17 Jun 2026
Best explained
Anthropic explains why the government jailbreak standard used against Fable is industry-ending if generalized: applying it broadly would halt all new model deployments across every frontier AI provider.
By the numbers
Cloudflare reported that agent and bot browsing now accounts for more web use than human browsing.
New today — Evidence added
Approximately 40,000 new games launched in the App Store in one year, with zero reaching top-10 and zero sustaining top-25 or top-50 rankings.
Mark PincusNew today — Sharp calls
FPV drones now account for 70-80% of front-line casualties and are a software-defined platform that can be upgraded overnight via software.
Maxim Bar KoganGeneric AI utility apps with massive view counts can fail to monetize, while smaller niche passion apps convert viewers to paying users at dramatically higher rates.
Greg IsenbergNew today — Useful context
Ada Palmer on Renaissance conceptions of progress: backwards is forwards.
Ada PalmerTool watch
Fable: a frontier AI company shut down by US government export control directive, now a central test case for how capability-based national security restrictions could apply across the AI industry.
Worth quoting
“Trump is like sell you know he's our top salesperson for a defense ETF in Europe.”Jan Van Eck
“We no longer have enterprise plans dated by humans. We've launched enterprise self-service.”Anthropic Head of Industries
“Our partnership is not up to 25,000. It is over 25,000, or in other words, a minimum of 25,000.”Alex Kendall
“If you live in a state where there is an arbitrary power who can have you put to death, you are a slave.”Ada Palmer
“The moon's gravity on Earth is the same no matter what the phase of the moon is.”Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Took 30 days. That would've taken years before.”Bobby Healy