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Category: Politics

9/11 triggered a ‘war on terror’ that was never winnable

9/11 triggered a ‘war on terror’ that was never winnable

Robin Wright writes: Twenty-five years ago, President George W. Bush made a sweeping pledge shortly after Al Qaeda’s airborne hijackers slaughtered almost three thousand people, from more than a hundred countries, at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001. “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he told a joint session of Congress, about the deadliest terrorist attack in history. “It will not end until every terrorist…

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More Anthropic researchers warn of AI’s perils as Musk terms fears a ‘psyop’

More Anthropic researchers warn of AI’s perils as Musk terms fears a ‘psyop’

The Guardian reports: A day after a former researcher at Anthropic made an apocalyptic declaration about artificial intelligence, more researchers and staff members at the AI startup publicly agreed with him and posted their own dire warnings. In response, Elon Musk and other conservative figures on X, formerly Twitter, called the chorus of concerns a “setup” and a “psyop”. The Anthropic insiders fear the technology they are building could become so advanced and dangerous as to cause human extinction within…

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Republican chief election officials say it is too late to implement Trump’s mail ballot order

Republican chief election officials say it is too late to implement Trump’s mail ballot order

Politico reports: Republican chief election officials from seven states said that it’s too late for President Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot order to be implemented before the midterm election, urging the Supreme Court to not allow the rule to go into effect in a brief submitted to the court on Wednesday. Trump’s order, signed in March, aimed to crack down on mail-in voting and assert federal control ahead of November’s election. In August, the U.S. Postal Service released a final rule…

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Trump’s $1 trillion-plus bribery plan meets immediate bipartisan pushback

Trump’s $1 trillion-plus bribery plan meets immediate bipartisan pushback

18 U.S. Code § 597 – Expenditures to influence voting: Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined…

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Behind the scenes, JD Vance gathered unvarnished views of the Iran war

Behind the scenes, JD Vance gathered unvarnished views of the Iran war

The New York Times reports: Vice President JD Vance took the unusual step over the spring and summer of calling U.S. military commanders in the Middle East, Europe and Asia directly, seeking their unvarnished assessments of the Iran war, according to current and former officials. Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset and was charged by President Trump with helping to end the conflict, wanted the commanders’ individual judgments, in their own words, before they were consolidated into…

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Appeals court rejects ICE detention policy, setting stage for SCOTUS

Appeals court rejects ICE detention policy, setting stage for SCOTUS

Politico reports: A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected ICE’s effort to detain millions of people without bond, comparing it to the “historical stain” of Japanese internment during World War II. “Mass detention of marginalized individuals without due process harkens back to some of the darkest moments in our country’s history,” 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee, wrote in a 2-1 majority opinion joined by Judge Barbara Keenan, an Obama appointee. “Those shameful and abhorrent…

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Civil libertarians knew this would happen. We should have listened in 2001

Civil libertarians knew this would happen. We should have listened in 2001

Radley Balko writes: Six weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act. The vote was 357-66 in the House, and 98-1 in the Senate. Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.), the chamber’s lone dissenter, said later that many of his colleagues hadn’t bothered to read it. The law granted sweeping powers to the federal government. It gave agents new authority to use secret search warrants on Americans and made it easier to monitor them around…

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Multiple warnings from AI industry insiders: ‘AI could kill all humans!’

Multiple warnings from AI industry insiders: ‘AI could kill all humans!’

Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI): AI Alignment means making sure an AI system’s goals and behavior match what people actually want—our values, rules, and intentions. It’s about getting the AI to do the “right thing” even in new situations, not just follow instructions literally in ways that cause harm. In practice, it includes preventing unwanted outcomes like deception, unsafe shortcuts, or optimizing a metric that misses the real objective. Jacob Coxon, a researcher who resigned from Anthropic yesterday, tweeted:…

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‘We might not have much time’: AI expert warns about the risk of humans losing control

‘We might not have much time’: AI expert warns about the risk of humans losing control

  Jeffrey Ladish consulted on security for AI giant Anthropic. Now as Executive Director at Palisade Research he tests AI agents and the risk of humans losing control. This interview examines how AI agents are sometimes doing the opposite of what humans are instructing them to do. He shares his experience of working on Anthropic’s security team and shares his fears of what could happen in the future.

Oil’s rise past $100 per barrel deepens GOP’s midterm elections challenge

Oil’s rise past $100 per barrel deepens GOP’s midterm elections challenge

The Washington Post reports: As Republicans gather with President Donald Trump in Dallas this week in an effort to boost their sagging midterm elections prospects, their political challenges mounted with an ominous number flashing across financial terminals and news sites: $100. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, crossed that threshold Wednesday amid fresh fighting in Iran, dimming the GOP’s hopes that the high gas prices driving voter frustration would ease before ballots are cast. The elevated oil price is…

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Profiteer-in-Chief: Trump has made millions from war in Iran as oil investments rose

Profiteer-in-Chief: Trump has made millions from war in Iran as oil investments rose

CNBC reports: As President Donald Trump’s wartime directives in Iran repeatedly jolted global markets, his personal energy portfolio surged. Throughout the first six months of fighting, Trump’s investment accounts continued aggressively trading energy stocks. Between the eve of the war, on Feb. 27, and Aug. 31, his nine largest oil and gas holdings gained approximately $1.5 million to $4.4 million, according to a CNBC analysis of his annual financial disclosure, quarterly corporate reports and FactSet market data. CNBC identified the…

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Senior UK rabbis come out in support of sanctions on Israeli settlements

Senior UK rabbis come out in support of sanctions on Israeli settlements

The Guardian reports: Prominent British rabbis have backed Ed Miliband’s sanctions on Israeli settlements, warning that the time for inaction on settler violence must come to an end. The intervention comes after the UK’s chief rabbi, the spiritual leader of mainstream Orthodox Jews in the UK, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, described UK sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as a “dark day for British Jews” and warned they could embolden people who “use hatred as a weapon…

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Donald Trump’s blueprint to rig the 2026 midterms

Donald Trump’s blueprint to rig the 2026 midterms

Marc Elias writes: We are less than two months until Election Day for the most important midterms of our lifetime. Ballots have already started to be sent out. The threats to free and fair elections are real and growing more serious by the day. What once seemed like an abstract threat has now become concrete. The risk of a rigged election is no longer unthinkable. The need for action can no longer be delayed or denied. I have often said…

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UK accuses Israeli ‘terrorists’ of ethnic cleansing in West Bank with government backing

UK accuses Israeli ‘terrorists’ of ethnic cleansing in West Bank with government backing

The Guardian reports: Israeli “terrorists” are conducting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank with the tacit backing of the government, the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has said as he announced sweeping sanctions, alongside France and Canada, on trade with Israeli settlements. In the strongest condemnation ever issued by the UK government, Miliband said the government would now take the official position that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was unlawful in its entirety, saying such acknowledgment was “the least…

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Netanyahu was warned of October 7 Hamas attacks, book claims

Netanyahu was warned of October 7 Hamas attacks, book claims

The Guardian reports: Benjamin Netanyahu was personally alerted by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a large-scale offensive against Israel a week before its 7 October 2023 attack, but did not act on the warning, according to a book by Haaretz reporters. The claim, which comes amid a crucial election campaign, prompted Israeli opposition leaders to describe the prime minister as “unfit” for office, even as Netanyahu denounced the report as an “absolute lie” and…

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The Pentagon asked OpenAI for artificial intelligence designed to rarely say no

The Pentagon asked OpenAI for artificial intelligence designed to rarely say no

The Intercept reports: The Department of Defense asked OpenAI to provide the U.S. military with a special version of its artificial intelligence technology designed to turn down the military commands as infrequently as possible, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The desire for a custom AI tool with “minimal refusal rates” to Pentagon commands was revealed in files released to The Intercept as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about the military’s secretive deals with…

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