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FCA goes "agentic" with automated supervision and no new AI rules. * The FCA plans to automate much of its supervision and enforcement with AI, becoming an "agentic regulator." * The FCA is declining to write new AI-specific rules and leaning on the existing Consumer Duty. * UK banks, insurers and fintechs can now expect faster, data-driven scrutiny of filings and conduct. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) plans to automate much of its supervision and enforcement using AI. The FCA plans to become what it calls an "agentic regulator," and it is doing so without writing any AI-specific rules for the firms it oversees. How will the FCA become an agentic regulator? MPs on the Treasury Committee were told at an evidence session on October 13 that Britain's Financial Conduct Authority will automate much of its supervision and enforcement. Jessica Rusu, the FCA's chief data, information and intelligence officer, said the automation of the regulator's operations is expected to catch harms at the authorization gateway. Rusu told the committee that AI is already helping case officers read unstructured text and work through intelligence faster across authorization, supervision and enforcement. However, she clarified that a human is still signing off on every decision "for now." Committee member John Glen reportedly asked the FCA whether it would adopt the agentic supervision model recommended by the Mills Review, and Rusu replied that the regulator was working towards becoming an "agentic regulator." The Mills Review was published in July 2026 and led by the former FCA executive director, Sheldon Mills. The review recommends that the FCA build an AI-enabled agentic supervisory model, arguing that the regulator needs greater powers. It also asked authorities to consider if large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini should abide by financial rules. Chief executive Nikhil Rathi stated that one of the first jobs handed to the FCA's agentic tool was tidying regulatory returns, with the software going back to firms to flag numbers that do not add up. Rathi said the point is to free up human supervisors' time to spend on higher-risk cases. However Rathi also told MPs he cannot agree that the FCA needs more powers until it has used its existing authority fully. He pointed out a change in the Financial Services and Markets Bill 2026 which shifts a Financial Ombudsman Service obligation from "may refer" to "must refer," which he said "could generate between 1,000 and 3,000 referrals." Rusu stated frontier-model developers have been cooperating with the regulator, sharing details of model vulnerabilities and cyber risks that the FCA then passes to financial firms. Will the FCA implement rules for AI? The FCA intends to rely on the AI frameworks already in place, especially the Consumer Duty, which is a set of standards requiring firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers. In evidence to the Treasury Committee's January report on AI in financial services, Rusu said with both the Senior Managers and Certification Regime and the Consumer Duty the FCA does not "need to write new rules for AI." The UK has no AI-specific legislation, and some 75% of UK financial services firms already use the technology. The Mills Review points out that only 9% of consumers use traditional financial advice, around 900,000 UK adults are unbanked, and roughly £300 billion sits in low-interest accounts. One in five UK adults are open to letting AI make financial decisions for them, while about 26% already trust general-purpose chatbots for financial advice. Rathi told MPs that it is actively being debated if chatbots which only give general information, rather than advice for a specific person, should be regulated, adding that it's up to Parliament to decide. Separately, the FCA's Palantir contract for financial crime work has ended. Rusu is due to publish the FCA's response to frontier AI models the week of October 19, alongside findings from its AI Live Testing program which was announced in April. The second group to go through live trials with technical partner Advai included Barclays, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group's Scottish Widows and UBS. Testing concludes by year end, with an evaluation report due in the first quarter of 2027. FAQs. What does the FCA mean by an "agentic regulator"? It means using AI tools to automate parts of supervision and enforcement, such as reading unstructured filings and flagging data that does not reconcile, while, for now, keeping a human responsible for every final decision. Is the FCA writing new rules for firms using AI? Will AI chatbots that give financial advice be regulated? Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. Cryptopolitan strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions. Hannah is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of blog writing and event reporting experience in the crypto space. At Cryptopolitan, Hannah contributes to the news page, reporting and analyzing the latest developments in DeFi, RWA, crypto regulation, AI and frontier tech industries. She graduated from Arcadia university with a degree in Business Administration. TABLE OF CONTENT

Why data centers have become military targets. Richard Hall Thu, October 15, 2026 at 11:17 AM PDT When the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran earlier this year, Tehran responded by striking energy infrastructure across the Gulf. The result was a severe shock to global energy markets that continues to this day. Less publicized at the time were its strikes on another kind of infrastructure: data centers. Similar attacks have since taken place in Russia and Ukraine, where both sides have been trading tit-for-tat strikes on data centers. Experts say these attacks represent a new front in warfare, in which facilities powering the technology behind many critical industries have become military targets. The AI boom has led to a surge in demand for computing power, data storage and cloud services, making the data centers that provide them a crucial part of modern infrastructure. A mass of data center construction is currently underway in the U.S., and tech companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to meet AI demand. Telecommunications companies, banks, hospitals and energy suppliers all rely on them. "Data centers are now on the critical path for modern digital infrastructure," Kirk Cameron, founding director of the Institute for Advanced Computing at Virginia Tech, tells TIME. "The loss of key data centers could collapse economies, disrupt public and private transportation with loss of GPS, and affect government essential services for health, emergency dispatch, and power grids." Military use of AI for targeting and information processing has made data centers crucial to fighting a war. Ukraine uses AI for an array of battlefield functions such as drone targeting, battle planning, and missile analyzing Russian missile attacks. U.S. tech companies such as Palantir now work closely with Ukraine's military to develop new AI-powered weaponry, taking advantage of the ability to immediately test their technology on the battlefield. The U.S. military also uses Palantir's Maven system to help identify targets for strikes. "Data centers are competitive advantages in warfare," Cameron says. "Knocking out capabilities means potentially crippling combat operations for an adversary. It's also a form of economic warfare and could lead to longer-term competitive challenges for the target." Where have data centers been attacked? The first wave of attacks on data centers was carried out in March this year by Iran, when it launched strikes on two Amazon facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and another in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike. Those facilities have been mostly offline ever since; Amazon said on Sept. 15 that it had been "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in those two regions. Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers in late September disrupted television broadcasts and internet access. Russia's Defense Ministry said it was striking data centers because they "process and transmit intelligence data for the Ukrainian Armed Forces." Ukraine's response began on Oct. 8, and it has since carried out drone strikes on three data centers belonging to tech giant Yandex, often called Russia's version of Google. The first site hit, in Sasovo, houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to develop its AI models, Meduza reported, and the outage disrupted several companies relying on Yandex's cloud services, including Russian Railways, MegaFon, T-Bank, and several media outlets. Following the first strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defended the retaliation: "We always respond in kind. You all know that they are hitting and hitting our data centers; we responded to them." How have tech companies responded? The spate of attacks over the last year has already caused tech companies to rethink how and where they build data centers. The United Arab Emirates is reportedly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data center project following the Iranian strikes. The original plan envisioned a 10-square-mile campus in Abu Dhabi, to be built in partnership with American tech companies like Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco. Now the data centers will likely be spread out across the UAE, according to officials who spoke to Reuters. Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes that data centers have become a new frontline in warfare - and that may require new strategies. "If you're Russia and you attack a Microsoft data center, is that an attack on Ukraine? Is that an attack on Microsoft? Is that an attack on a U.S. company and, by extension, the U.S.?" she asks. The U.S. has largely followed a policy that attacks on American companies do not constitute an attack on the United States, but Harding says the government may need to decide on a new approach "that creates deterrence not just to protect life and health, but also data." And while the threat to data centers in the U.S. may be relatively low compared to the Gulf and Ukraine or Russia, tech companies will also have to think more about the security of their facilities when building, while trying to keep pace with massive demand. "The knock-on effect is that the companies that own the data centers are realizing they can't protect them, and that kind of calls into question the cloud model in general," Harding says. "They're having to make big adjustments. You could see a time in the future where Amazon starts losing business to Microsoft because Microsoft does a better job of hiding where their data centers are."

A Motley Fool article suggests five stocks for investors with $1,000 to spend: Palantir Technologies, AGNC, Eli Lilly, SoFi Technologies, and Berkshire Hathaway. Splitting the money five ways means $200 each, so fractional shares are needed for pricier names. Palantir is the growth pick. Its second-quarter revenue rose 93% year over year, though it trades at 178 times trailing-12-month earnings. AGNC, a mortgage real estate investment trust, is the income pick, with a dividend yield of 16.6%. Eli Lilly, the only healthcare company worth $1 trillion, saw second-quarter sales climb 48%. SoFi is the fintech pick, with adjusted net revenue up 40%. Berkshire Hathaway, now led by Greg Abel, is the stability pick.