The Philippines has taken several measures in order to bring down energy use, including a four-day workweek for government staff and orders to cut the use of electricity and fuel costs in government agencies.
Government offices were told in early March to implement flexible working arrangements where practical, turn off lights and computers during lunch breaks, and adjust air conditioning unit thermostats to no lower than 75 degrees.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a video message that the four-day workweek would be temporary and does not include emergency services.
“With the expected global oil price increase, the government is preparing measures to reduce its impact on Filipino families,” the Facebook caption for the video said.
The Philippines is vulnerable to disruptions caused by the conflict, as it “relies on the Middle East for almost 90% of its oil supply,” according to ING Think.
On March 18, Marcos said that the country is seeking alternative sources of petroleum products and asked the public not to worry.
“We are trying to find different methods to provide subsidies to give assistance,” said Marcos in a press address. “The problem is that oil prices are very volatile. We can’t anticipate them. So we are still adjusting right now.”
Anthropic’s lawyer said the US government is “pressuring” the startup’s customers to go to rival AI providers amid an escalating fight between the Claude developer and the Department of Defense.
During a status conference on Tuesday, Michael Mongan, an attorney for Anthropic, said the Defense Department’s decision to effectively blacklist the startup from working with the US military is bringing “real and irreparable harm” to the company each day.
Mongan said customers have begun “expressing doubt” about working with Anthropic and that the government has been on a pressure campaign to get Anthropic’s customers to drop the provider and go to competing AI companies.
“We’ve had university systems and business-to-business companies that have switched to competing AI companies,” Mongan said. “And this is all the predictable result of the defendant’s actions and the uncertainty they’ve created, as well as the fact that defendants have been affirmatively reaching out to our customers and pressuring them to stop working with Anthropic and switch to other AI companies.”
Last month, after contract negotiations with the AI startup fell apart, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Anthropic was a “supply chain risk” and framed the move as extending beyond direct military work.
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“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth said in an X post on February 27.
The scope of the supply chain risk label is in dispute. Microsoft previously told Business Insider that its lawyers concluded the company can still use Anthropic for non-military-related work. The company also filed an amicus brief, urging the federal court to temporarily block the government’s supply chain risk designation.
The issue centers on Anthropic’s stance that its frontier model, Claude, cannot be deployed for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of US citizens. Defense officials have said in response that a private company cannot dictate what the military can and cannot do.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a blog post on February 26 that the company could not accede to the government’s demand for unrestricted, lawful use of its model. A day later, Hegseth formally designated Anthropic a supply chain risk.
Anthropic sued the government on Monday, seeking a temporary restraining order to continue doing business with the government as the case proceeds. The company said in the suit that the Defense Department did not provide adequate grounds to label it a national security risk.
In addition, the company said the designation has never been applied to an American company and that the move was retaliatory, violating the company’s First Amendment rights to express its views on AI safety and limitations.
The fallout from Anthropic’s blacklisting has been swift, according to legal filings.
Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, said in a declaration filed on Mondaythat the DoD had contacted several “portfolio companies about their use of Claude” and that those clients have “grown worried and uncertain” about their ability to use the model.
The CFO said the government’s action could reduce Anthropic’s 2026 revenue by “multiple billions of dollars.”
Spokespeople for Anthropic and the Pentagon, as well as Anthropic’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.
New US Army warfighting software is speeding up and simplifying the command job, a commander said recently, sharing that it lets him scrap the “hourlong staff meetings” to make decisions.
The Army, like other services, believes that future wars will be determined by the speed of decision-making. That’s where the new Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, program is expected to make a substantial impact and modernize how the service fights.
At Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army’s 4th Infantry Division has been testing NGC2 in a series of exercises. The most recent one, Ivy Sting 4, added more components to the system, with different types of sensors and weapons on the battlefield feeding into one system that everyone can access.
“So it’s all in one place, and it’s there very, very quickly, so that the staff can see it across their functional systems,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commander of the 4th ID, at a recent media roundtable, explaining that “the fires person can see what the logistician sees, can see what the intel person sees.”
“I don’t have to have the hourlong staff meeting anymore,” the general said.
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The Army’s new NGC2 system is predicting supply needs and simulating enemy actions.
US Army photo by Pfc. Thomas Nguyen
“If we’re actually using the technology as the tool that we’re prepping on and that we’re also fighting on,” he said, “I could sit there, I can look at it, I can make decisions, I can say, ‘Hey, here are my priorities for this or that.’ We all agree on it, we click save, and that’s done.”
The Army has facilitatedthe development of NGC2 with both the 4th ID and 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and industry teams, including Anduril and Lockheed Martin, pursuing a Silicon Valley-style approach aimed at moving faster and rapidly integrating soldier feedback, delivering fixes immediately rather than months or years later.
On the heels of Ivy Sting 4, more than two weeks of field testing that involved live-fire exercises and an electronic warfare jamming scenario, Ellis and others said that NGC2 was making planning and executing battlefield missions more effective.
“We are no longer fighting with the network; we are now fighting using the network,” Ellis said.
During the Ivy Sting 4 testing event, 20 different types of sensors, such as drones, electronic warfare systems, artillery, and Stryker vehicles, were linked together.
The latest live-fire exercise included a variety of systems, weapons, drones, and capabilities.
US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Dane Howard
Data and artificial intelligence capabilities provide real-time information on the sensors. Soldiers can see how much ammunition they’ve got left or whether a Stryker will need maintenance or fuel soon. Simulations can predict what resources will be needed for certain tactics or actions, including different ways an enemy might attack.
As different platforms are brought onto NGC2, broadening what the platform can do, Army command and soldiers can see and communicate using the same data. The system is breaking down the silos that have previously hindered information flow.
“I’m feeling empowered as a commander to make more, better, and faster decisions because I’ve got access to all that data,” Ellis explained.
Many NGC2 components are being built with off-the-shelf technology and standard commercial software practices, and the vendor teams involved are working on the ground with soldiers. The closer working relationship means soldier feedback is being incorporated more quickly.
“We work through these obstacles, and we learn how to do something, and once we run into a roadblock, we figure out a way to solve that problem, and then that problem is now solved for the Army,” he said. “We’re not relearning these lessons over and over again.”
