From banks to hyperscalers, everyone's worried the AI bubble's fixin' to pop

From banks to hyperscalers, everyone's worried the AI bubble's fixin' to pop

From international banking worries to the market state of canary-in-the-coal-mine Oracle, the AI bubble is sure looking taut. The Bank for International Settlements, often referred to as "the central bank for central banks" said in a report [https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/29/how-the-ai-bubble-could-pop-and-take-down-the-global-economy-according-to-the-bis/5263793] at the end of June that it was worried the AI bubble was nigh on to popping and taking the global economy with it. Oracle, the hyperscaler with arguably the largest exposure to the AI bubble, has lost more than 40 percent of its share volume in the past month and recently outlined [https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/01/oracle-outlines-all-the-ways-it-could-lose-the-farm-it-bet-on-ai/5265438] all the ways it might suffer if this whole AI thing doesn't pan out. If you ask our systems editor Tobias Mann [https://www.theregister.com/author/tobias-mann] and senior reporter Tom Claburn [https://www.theregister.com/author/thomas-claburn], those factors and more sure make it seem like the AI industry could be on the verge of a massive contraction, and that's the very thing they chat about with Kettle host Brandon Vigliarolo [https://www.theregister.com/author/brandon-vigliarolo] on this week's episode.

AI cybersecurity risks? Humans'll always be #1

AI commands all the headlines nowadays, but the biggest security story of the week is all about human laziness and poor password habits - just like the good old days.  This week on the Kettle, host Brandon Vigliarolo is joined by US editor Avram Piltch [https://www.theregister.com/author/avram-piltch] and security editor Jessica Lyons [https://www.theregister.com/author/jessica-lyons] to talk about the Klue breach [https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/06/22/security-shops-among-the-hundreds-of-klue-hack-victims/5259743], which was blamed on a "compromised legacy credential" that ought to probably have been deleted a while ago, which allowed cybercriminals to pivot to the SalesForce environments of hundreds of companies. The incident has caused trouble [https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/06/25/ex-huntress-analyst-claims-company-insider-fed-info-to-a-ransomware-crim-social-media-drama-ensues/5262538] for security firm Huntress, who admitted to the breach early on, and the situation over there wasn't caused by AI either.  That said, AI is playing a role in what's being described as "the summer from hell" by one security professional, but while top-tier AI models are spotting troublesome vulnerabilities, the amount of damage they've managed to cause pales in comparison to what one lazy sysadmin can cause by poorly managing passwords.

Anthropic's Mythos mess just keeps getting more complicated

It's been a week since the Trump administration established a de facto ban [https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/06/15/feds-freaked-over-fable-5-after-simple-fix-this-code-prompt-not-jailbreak-says-researcher/5255827] on Anthropic's Mythos derivative, Fable 5, and the more that comes out about the move the more it seems like Anthropic employees talking amongst themselves were on to something: Is the government just picking on the company? This week on the Kettle, host Brandon Vigliarolo [https://www.theregister.com/author/brandon-vigliarolo] and Reg cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons [https://www.theregister.com/author/jessica-lyons] chat about what's going on with Mythos and Fable, what role Amazon may have played in justifying the government's move, how a prominent cybersecurity expert is calling the government's foul, and what this whole thing might mean for the next wave of models. After all, even if Mythos and Fable are as advanced as Anthropic claims, it's not going to take long for some open-weight model to make the same leaps, and good luck trying to stop one of those from getting in the hands of anyone who wants them.

Hide your snacks: AI is eating everyone's chips

El Reg's systems editor Tobias Mann [https://www.theregister.com/author/tobias-mann] has been in Taipei for the past week getting the skinny on the hottest new chips, and what he's heard has been less about actual hardware announcements and more about how chipmakers are rushing to meet the demands of AI, other customers be damned.  Tobias joins host Brandon Vigliarolo to discuss what he's noticed at Computex 2026 [https://www.theregister.com/special_features/computex], how AI has taken over yet another industry event, and whether the world is going to have to adjust to new, more expensive hardware that only the biggest datacenter operators and wealthiest consumers are going to be able to afford.  Will things stabilize? Will prices return to normal? We're not so sure, to be honest.

May went out with a tech boom: Both prices and rockets exploded this week

It was explosive news week – if you're the price of a popular-but-aging piece of consumer gaming hardware or a Jeff Bezos rocket.  This week on The Kettle, Brandon Vigliarolo is joined by Reg reporters Richard Speed [https://www.theregister.com/author/richard-speed] and Dan Robinson [https://www.theregister.com/author/dan-robinson] to talk about the Steam Deck's 40+ percent price hike [https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/05/28/steam-deck-prices-go-through-the-roof-as-valve-blames-component-shortages/5247830] and what it means for the ongoing memory-and-storage shortage [https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/03/30/us-pc-shipments-to-fall-13-as-memory-costs-surge/5220533]. Sure, it's just consumer hardware, but it's the latest in a line of price hikes justified in the name of AI and geopolitics – and it could spell the beginning of a new normal for hardware prices.  We couldn't ignore the standout story of late last week, though, as a Blue Origin rocket blew up spectacularly [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O90WZJALYc] in what may be the largest space industry explosion in more than 50 years. The Blue Origin blowup is likely to delay the Artemis mission for months, if not a year or more.