The Morning Risk Report: Meta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement Over Child-Safety Claims

Good morning. Meta Platforms agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 state attorneys general, bringing an end to a massive federal trial over social media’s harm to teenagers and ushering in a new era of tech companies having legal responsibility for their platforms.

As part of the settlement agreement, Meta will also make sweeping changes to its services, Facebook and Instagram, including implementing a default two-hour time limit on its apps for users under 18.

Special edition: The Trump administration’s new sanctions regime against Iran reaches far beyond its borders. We explore what this new phase of economic warfare means for global companies.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the use of automated license-plate readers has gotten “out of control,” as debates continue across the country over Flock Safety’s AI-enabled cameras.

The readers, used in communities across the U.S., photograph the back of passing vehicles and collect license-plate data and other identifying information. Flock, the largest supplier of the technology, has 120,000 cameras in 49 states and captures 20 billion license plates a month. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Supporters of the technology say it helps police catch criminals. But critics say the cameras violate privacy rights and have been used by officers to stalk innocent people.

The Trump administration launched “Operation Economic Outcast” to squeeze Iran financially and try to force the regime into concessions to end the conflict in the Middle East.

Washington is warning world leaders to stop doing business with Iran and threatening to cut companies from the U.S. financial system should they do so. The U.S. is simultaneously blockading Iranian ports, choking off the regime’s primary financial lifeline.

Iran, however, has spent years setting up a complex system of oil sales and clandestine shadow banking that it hopes will sustain its economy and military long enough to outlast the economic assault.

The length, in words, of Bill Gates’s essay warning about AI’s risks to employment and the human condition.

U.S. officials say they have disrupted a China-linked hacking operation that broke into U.S. government networks and critical infrastructure, while hiding its tracks on a global network of hacked devices, cloud-computing infrastructure and even clandestine networks.

The goal was to blend in with legitimate networking traffic, making the hacking activity hard to trace. The operation targeted networks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy and the Senate, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a court filing.

The group exploited software vulnerabilities to launch cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, power companies and hospital systems, and operated a worldwide network of hacked devices—known as a botnet—to conduct its hacking campaigns, according to Brett Leatherman, the FBI’s top cyber official.

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