Transcript
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The world moves fast. Your workday even faster Pitching products, Drafting reports, analyzing data Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365Copilot here's your afternoon TNB.
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Tech Minute for Thursday, February 12th. I'm Danny Lewis for the Wall Street Journal. We exclusively report that the Trump administration covertly sent thousands of Elon Musk's Starlink terminals into Iran after the regime's brutal crackdown on demonstrations last month. U.S. officials say about 6,000 of the satellite Internet kits were smuggled into the country in an effort to keep dissidents online after Iranian authorities stifled Internet access. It's the first time the US has directly sent Starlink into Iran, where owning one of the terminals is illegal. The US has denied any connection to the uprising and the White House declined to comment. The Russian government is accelerating its campaign to shift Russians away from Western based messaging platforms outside of its control, starting with blocking access to WhatsApp. The Kremlin confirmed that it is restricting access to Meta's messaging app and is also throttling Telegram. It is said that companies that own platforms operating inside Russia are violating Russian law by refusing to comply with a range of restrictions. Tech experts say Moscow is hoping to push users to a state controlled messenger app that offers no encryption. WhatsApp said it would do whatever it can to keep 100 million users inside Russia connected. Telegram's founder said Russia was forcing its citizens to switch to an app, quote, built for surveillance and political censorship. And SoftBank says it took on $27 billion in new debt at the end of 2025 in order to pay for its investment in OpenAI. The Japanese investment firm says it also sold billions of dollars in T Mobile shares in order to pay for the $22.5 billion check it wrote to the ChatGPT maker in December. The disclosures came as SoftBank reported $1.6 billion in profit for the last three months of the year, largely thanks to the growing value of its earlier investment in OpenAI. SoftBank now owns 11% of the company, making it the second largest private shareholder after Microsoft. And that's a wrap on your TNB Tech Minutes For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out our Tech News Briefing podcast tomorrow morning.
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