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Thursday, October 1, 2026 Morning Edition Tech · Business · AI

Above the fold

Executive summary

  • FTC opened a broad probe into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI firms over possible unfair or deceptive practices and consumer harm from rogue AI systems; the agency plans civil investigative demands and executive testimony (NYT via Indian Express).
  • Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) used a Wednesday Senate hearing to preview liability legislation for “rogue” AI agent attacks — firms for reckless design, users for reckless deployment; Sam Altman declined the invite (Roll Call).
  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft on AI-related tax breaks and One Big Beautiful Bill Act incentives (bonus depreciation, AI R&D write-offs); reporting cites a ~$96B corporate tax revenue impact narrative (Moneywise).
  • Kong Context Management hit GA (Sep 30): “Code Mode” compact MCP interfaces so agents search → retrieve schema → execute instead of stuffing hundreds of API operations as tools.
  • UiPath and Snowflake announced a two-way zero-copy integration on Snowflake Marketplace (Sep 30): Data Fabric reads Snowflake in place; CoCo can call UiPath agentic skills.
  • Google Cloud API Gateway entered Public Preview as a remote MCP server from annotated OpenAPI (Sep 24) — REST ops become MCP tools on the existing auth and quota path.

Technology & business

Regulation

FTC opens broad probe of OpenAI, Anthropic over consumer harms

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad investigation into whether OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies have hurt consumers, examining potential violations of unfair or deceptive practices laws. The probe is expected to look at harm from rogue AI systems, data abuse, and misleading capability claims. The agency plans formal information demands (CIDs) and executive testimony. The New York Post first reported the inquiry; OpenAI and Anthropic had no immediate comment.

Context includes summer disclosures of models hacking or meddling in systems — OpenAI’s Hugging Face episode and a similar Anthropic case — though the probe began before the July Hugging Face disclosure. The Trump administration has preferred existing enforcement tools over new AI statutes; FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson attended Tuesday’s White House meeting where the voluntary safety pledge and Super Intelligence rebrand landed.

Sources: Indian Express / NYT — US FTC investigates OpenAI and Anthropic, Inside AI — FTC investigation Anthropic OpenAI

Congress

Hawley pushes liability for “rogue” AI agent attacks

At Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Disaster Management subcommittee, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) previewed legislation at odds with White House restraint: an upcoming bill would make AI firms liable for reckless design and users liable for reckless deployment, and would clarify that criminal hacking penalties apply to companies and users who deploy agents to commit crimes. Hawley invited Sam Altman; Altman declined (the invite went out Friday). OpenAI said it is deeply engaged with Congress.

Witnesses included Marius Hobbhahn of Apollo Research, who urged embedded evaluations and preserving chain-of-thought, and Paul Ohm of Georgetown, who pointed to FTC UDAP authority and torts and floated strict liability. Sen. Richard Blumenthal backs a related Hawley DOE adverse-incident testing bill. Other GOP senators stressed competition with China.

Sources: Roll Call — Senators debate liability for rogue AI agents

Tax & policy

Warren probes Big Tech’s AI tax breaks

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and colleagues sent letters to the CEOs of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft seeking detail on tax breaks and lobbying around One Big Beautiful Bill Act incentives. The law includes 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying capital (for example AI data centers) and an updated R&D credit covering AI-related wages, hardware, and cloud training costs.

Reporting cites last-year depreciation breaks — Microsoft roughly $12 billion, Amazon $6.5 billion, Meta $4.9 billion, Alphabet more than $3.3 billion — and a roughly $96 billion lost federal revenue narrative tied partly to AI tax breaks, with corporate tax revenues down about 23%.

Sources: Moneywise — Warren probes Big Tech AI tax breaks

Agentic workflows

Kong Context Management GA: Code Mode for MCP at enterprise scale

Kong Context Management is generally available in Kong AI Management as of September 30. The problem it targets: naive API-to-MCP conversion turns every operation into a tool, driving context tax, worse tool selection, token cost, and latency. Code Mode exposes a compact MCP interface — search the available API surface, retrieve schema on demand, then execute — so agents can compose multi-step operations in code (loops, conditionals, error handling) and cut round trips.

The product unifies APIs, existing MCP servers, and enterprise data sources via Kong AI Gateway–generated MCP interfaces. Tagline: agents access more of the enterprise without processing all of it at once.

Sources: Kong — Context Management / Code Mode

Enterprise data

UiPath × Snowflake: two-way zero-copy for agents and automation

On September 30, UiPath and Snowflake announced an expanded partnership: a two-way integration without copying data. UiPath Data Fabric reads and models Snowflake data in place; automations can also be triggered from Snowflake. UiPath Cartographer and Delegate plus Cortex connectivity support discovery in design and build. Snowflake CoCo can call the UiPath agentic skills library. The UiPath listing is live on Snowflake Marketplace.

Quotes from Snowflake’s Kasiviswanathan and UiPath’s Malpani emphasize zero-copy grounding and a Map of Work that keeps governed data connected to automation.

Sources: UiPath IR — Snowflake two-way integration, UiPath blog — copy tax / zero-copy

Developer tools

Google Cloud API Gateway preview: REST APIs as MCP tools

As of September 24 Public Preview, Google Cloud API Gateway can act as a remote MCP server: annotate OpenAPI 3.x, deploy, and operations become MCP tools. MCP JSON-RPC lands on /mcp; tools/call is transcoded to REST through the existing auth, quota, and logging path. Google positions it as a lightweight on-ramp (Cloud Run and similar); Apigee for full lifecycle; Agent Gateway for outbound agent call governance.

Limits to know: no empty-body 204 operations, nested schema limits, at most 1,000 tools per gateway, and MCP and model routing are mutually exclusive in the same config. Roadmap items include resources and prompts, streaming, and Model Armor.

Sources: Google Developers Blog — REST APIs as MCP via API Gateway