# AI Cyber Defense, Travel Agents, and Brand Arbitrage

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-08-28

## Transcript

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OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI.
Skynet, here we come.
I'm Imran Shaikh, and your Daily Crunch for Friday featuring three big tech headlines starts right now.
Well, it looks like there's a new Twitter in town.
A new social network called Twitter.now is on the blog, and it's being operated by a startup called Operation Bluebird, whose founding team includes former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates.
As ours, Technica reported, ex-sued the company last year and asked a Delaware judge to issue an injunction to stop Operation Bluebird from launching a social media platform called...
Twitter.
But Operation Bluebird argued, per a petition last year, that X had let go of trademarks like Twitter and Tweet.
Coates said in a LinkedIn post that the company's not trying to recreate Twitter.
When X Corp.
retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new.
A public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice, he said.
Twitter.now is currently in testing and early access right now costs $20.
On its homepage, the company says it's using an AI system called Vera that gauges posts, checks claims, gives users the source of the claims, the context, and attaches a trust score.
Users will be able to set their preferred trust score to filter out low-trust posts.
Google is adding new ways for users to plan and book trips through AI Mode, which is its conversational search experience the company announced on Thursday.
Users will now be able to ask AI Mode to track flight prices, book hotels, and see the cost of flights in hotels in points or miles.
The updates indicate that Google is looking to position AI Mode as an AI travel agent of sorts, as it's moving beyond simply helping users find information to actually handling parts of their trip planning and booking process itself.
Users can now describe to AI Mode when and where they want to fly, and the tool will display the best options available with the latest prices from more than 300 airlines and travel sites.
If they're ready to book, they can go ahead and build their itinerary right in AI mode.
If they want to wait and see if prices drop, well, they can ask something like, attract these flight prices for me.
They'll then get an email if prices change for the destination and dates they entered.
Flight price tracking in AI Mode is now available in more than 180 countries.
As for hotel booking, users will be able to discover and book their next hotel through a conversation with AI Mode.
Users can tell AI Mode about their upcoming trip and their hotel preferences to get a list of options alongside reviews and key factors.
The tech giant notes that the hotel or booking platform will handle the booking and any customer service.
Over 100 tech companies, yeah, 100 tech companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats.
The letter, which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms, calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the local, national, and international levels to collaborate on security.
In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable, the letter states continuing.
The companies and public services our communities depend on, from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet, are at risk.
You see, the problem AI poses to traditional cybersecurity defenses, well, has been thrust into the spotlight lately by a string of...
bizarre incidents in which AI agents have attacked companies.
The Hugging Face incident, in which one of OpenAI's agents autonomously broke out of its sandboxed environment and attacked the tech company, has been followed by a trail of other reported break-ins involving agents developed by other AI companies, including Anthropic and Meta.
These incidents have bolstered the argument that the field of cybersecurity has been fundamentally altered, and that bold new commercial solutions are necessary to mitigate.
them.
The letter further suggests the mobilization of a collective response, one in which new partnerships are formed to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats.
Now, several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position.
At the same time, they're also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lucas Ropec, Ivan Mehta, Aisha Malek, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same Tech Time, same Crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.