FT Tech Tonic

US President Donald Trump has pledged to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars”, China could send its first crewed mission to Mars within a decade, and Elon Musk wants people to actually settle on Mars, transforming the human race into an interplanetary species. 

In a new series of Tech Tonic, the FT’s Peggy Hollinger asks if we’re really about to land, and even live, on the red planet. 

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AI models have learned to create their own music by harvesting millions of songs from the internet. But critics say they’re using musicians’ work without permission, and three major record labels are suing them for ‘copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale’. 

In the second episode of this two part series, the FT’s pop critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney speaks to campaigners and lawyers about the legal battle over AI...

Generative AI models trained on vast swaths of popular music can create songs almost indistinguishable from human-made work. For some, they represent the future of pop music. For others, they threaten to flood the world with ‘AI slop’, drowning out the work of human artists, stealing musicians' jobs, and ending the process of music-making as we know it. Is this just a case of technophobia? Or could AI music generators replace human...

AI music generators - platforms that use artificial intelligence to create new, original music from scratch - can make songs that are almost indistinguishable from human creations. For some musicians, they’re the next frontier in music-making technology. But for others, they represent a grave threat, flooding the world with low-grade AI music, stealing the jobs of working musicians, and even spelling the end of the creative process...

Peter Thiel is unlike any other Trump tech bro. As well as a wildly successful investor, he’s seen as a thinker - the philosopher king of Silicon Valley. Thiel’s acolytes in the tech world and Washington include vice-president JD Vance but his relationship with the Trump camp is complicated. And there are still questions about what, if anything, he wants with the president.

In the final episode of this season of Tech Tonic, Mura...

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has undergone a transformation, both physical and political. The skinny teenager who founded Facebook in his dorm room is now a muscular jiu-jitsu enthusiast who’s called US President Donald Trump a “badass” and wants to see more “masculine energy” in the workplace. 

Is this all an act? Is Zuckerberg doing whatever it takes to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration and ensure t...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was once a vocal critic of Donald Trump. But that changed during last year’s election campaign. Now, he has instructed the newspaper he owns, The Washington Post, to shift its editorial line to be more in line with the president. So what provoked Bezos’s political change of heart?

Murad Ahmed and the FT’s US media editor Anna Nicolau speak to Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Po...

When Donald Trump re-entered the White House, Elon Musk came with him as his ‘tech bro-in-chief’, tasked with rebooting the government machine. But five months on, Musk’s ambitious plan to cut $2tn from the annual government budget has failed, and his relationship with the president has ended in a bitter break-up. Could the world’s richest man come to regret his time in politics?

Murad Ahmed speaks to Joe Miller, the FT’s Washin...

During the US president’s first term in office, Tim Cook appeared to be the ultimate Trump whisperer, winning tariff exemptions despite Apple’s heavy reliance on Chinese manufacturing. Now, the iPhone-maker-in-chief has found himself under the toughest pressure yet from Trump, who has threatened smartphone tariffs as high as 25%. Does Tim Cook still have a way out, or is Apple out of options? And what does Cook's relationship with ...

Can Tim Cook save Apple from the trade war? Has Mark Zuckerberg really been a fan of Donald Trump all along? And is the bromance between Elon Musk and the president really over? 

In a new season of Tech Tonic, Murad Ahmed explores the relationships between Trump and some of the titans of the tech world. What is really driving those relationships, and what might they mean for the future of technology in the US and beyond?

How is defence tech reshaping geopolitics? And what does the battlefield of the future look like? In the final episode of our series on the technological weapons of war, the FT’s innovation editor John Thornhill sits down with the FT’s industry correspondent Sylvia Pfeifer, deputy Beijing bureau chief Ryan McMorrow and US-China correspondent Demetri Sevastopulo. Clips: MCA/Universal Pictures, CCTV, NBC

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For European leaders, the war in Ukraine has strained relations with the US and prompted major questions about how the continent will defend itself in the future. Governments are boosting defence spending and defence tech companies' valuations have risen, particularly after the emergence of drone warfare in Ukraine. So what should a European strategy for security look like? John Thornhill sits down with Gundbert Scherf, co-fou...

Israel has long been a leader in hi-tech warfare. In this episode, the Financial Times innovation editor John Thornhill explores the Israel Defense Forces’ use of artificial intelligence targeting aids as part of its arsenal in the war against Hamas. Can AI reduce civilian casualties and prevent breaches of international humanitarian law or has the technology served only to accelerate the loss of life? And what can Israel's defence...

Defence tech is booming in the US. Start-ups building drones, missiles and AI systems are competing with established companies for a piece of the US defence budget. Are these new participants the future of the defence industry? John Thornhill hears from investors and founders, and we visit the neighbourhood of El Segundo in Los Angeles, dubbed the Silicon Valley of defence tech.

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The age of drone warfare is dis...

The conflict in Ukraine has turned into the world’s first fully fledged drone war. The remote-controlled flying machines are now used by both sides for transporting supplies, surveilling the enemy and carrying out attacks. John Thornhill visits Kyiv to learn more about how the war has sparked a boom in Ukrainian defence tech that has changed the battlefield. He sees first-hand how these drones are made, and unpacks what the rest of...

New technologies such as drones, robots and AI systems are finding their way into conflict zones around the world. 

In this season of Tech Tonic, John Thornhill looks at how this new type of warfare is transforming conflicts in places such as Ukraine and Gaza. He also explores how start-ups in the US and Europe are challenging the established defence industry with their cutting-edge weaponry. 

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The biggest companies in tech are fighting to be the leader in generative AI - even as the path to profitability for the technology remains unclear. So what’s the long game for companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta? And what does the rise of Chinese start-up DeepSeek mean for AI companies with massive valuations?

In the second episode in our series on the business of AI, the FT’s AI editor Madhumita Murgia speaks with FT te...

Is generative AI over-valued? At the heart of the generative AI boom has been the premise that a ‘killer app’ for AI will make investors a return on their capital. But it’s unclear how those use cases will actually make money for businesses that deploy them. Plus - is the problem a lack of AI take-up among employees? We hear from Joe Richardson, head of operations at Octopus Energy, Jim Covello, head of global equity research at Go...