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Category: Politics

U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

The Washington Post reports: Early this month, hundreds of diplomats huddled in a cavernous U.N. conference room in Switzerland, working toward a muscular treaty to regulate the use of lethal autonomous weapons — the first agreement governing the use of killer artificial intelligence arms. On the last day of negotiations, the talks turned aggressive. Over the next roughly 15 hours, U.S. and Russian diplomats hammered away at the document, removing a range of provisions designed to safeguard the use of…

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New appointment at Palantir is the latest sign of how far the rot has spread in UK politics

New appointment at Palantir is the latest sign of how far the rot has spread in UK politics

Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, writes: Whatever is said about Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party has a knack for landing headlines. In the past he did it at the expense of the rich and powerful – from News International, over phone hacking, to the Home Office, over its mass surveillance of our data. But his latest headline – that he has joined Palantir as a senior vice-president – has been at the…

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Netanyahu ignored warnings from Egypt and the UAE days before October 7

Netanyahu ignored warnings from Egypt and the UAE days before October 7

The Atlantic reports: When Israel’s leaders gathered in Jerusalem on September 26, 2023, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the surprise assault by Syria and Egypt as a cautionary tale, one of missed intelligence warnings and self-delusion. “We do not underestimate any threat,” he said. Roughly two hours before Netanyahu took the stage, a chartered Cessna jet linked to Egypt’s intelligence service had touched down at Ben Gurion Airport, about 30…

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Pro-Trump ads are being paid for by U.S. taxpayers

Pro-Trump ads are being paid for by U.S. taxpayers

The New York Times reports: As President Trump ran to return to the White House in 2024, his campaign released a somber, black-and-white ad in which he railed against the “deep state” and vowed to expel “warmongers” from government. “This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump is heard saying in the online ad, which shows him walking silently down a hallway. That ad has returned this weekend, airing on television stations across the country, with one notable difference: As it…

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Trump wants voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Republicans fear that’s happening

Trump wants voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Republicans fear that’s happening

Axios reports: President Trump told voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Apparently they’re listening: Republicans coast to coast are getting pulled under by a violent undertow fueled by Trump’s unpopularity. Why it matters: It’s looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another. Most worrisome for the GOP, there’s virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism…

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ICE raids trigger backlash from beef industry and Republican lawmakers

ICE raids trigger backlash from beef industry and Republican lawmakers

The New York Times reports: Federal immigration raids in beef-producing regions of Republican states have prompted a forceful reaction from industry associations in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and unusual pushback from Republican officials just weeks out from the midterm elections. The associations warned the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions “will lead to higher beef prices” at a time when prices of groceries and fuel are already top concerns for voters. The most recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids occurred in…

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The truth behind Trump’s ‘biggest oil deal in world history’

The truth behind Trump’s ‘biggest oil deal in world history’

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has long coveted the oilfields of other nations and declared an agreement with Venezuela to be “the biggest oil deal in world history”. But the agreement, reached after the US seized Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, is almost certainly doomed to collapse amid a wide array of legal and logistical issues, a Guardian investigation has found. The US president first mused about taking oil from Iran in 1987, when he told ABC’s Barbara Walters that Iranian…

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YouTube, TikTok and Meta are all rejecting paid ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ documentary

YouTube, TikTok and Meta are all rejecting paid ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ documentary

  The Hollywood Reporter reports: So much for free speech. The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. That last one is perhaps understandable, given its owner. But the rejection by the other platforms has taken distributor Bleecker Street…

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The ‘gray arm’ of Israeli annexation

The ‘gray arm’ of Israeli annexation

+972 Magazine reports: At the end of 2022, Yagil Levy, a professor of political sociology and public policy and head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at the Open University of Israel, identified a shift taking place within the Israeli military. “When it comes to the Palestinians, the Israeli military is in fact splintered into two armies,” he wrote in +972 Magazine. “Alongside the ‘official’ army, a ‘policing’ force has emerged in the Israeli-controlled West Bank” —…

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Death by AI data centers

Death by AI data centers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang compared the impacts of AI data centers to having a surgery. "They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that." pic.twitter.com/9jer8muLeJ — Pubity (@pubity) September 25, 2026 Dorothy Slater writes: My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a…

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OpenAI’s AI agents went rogue and tried to hack U.S. government websites including the SEC

OpenAI’s AI agents went rogue and tried to hack U.S. government websites including the SEC

The New York Times reports: OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer without the A.I. lab’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes. The incidents involving the Commerce Department and the S.E.C. were confirmed by OpenAI, which said it was continuing to investigate the situation with the Department of Education. The San Francisco company said it notified…

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‘Pink slime’ is polluting AI chatbots ahead of the midterms

‘Pink slime’ is polluting AI chatbots ahead of the midterms

Ines Chomnalez and Isis Blachez from NewsGuard, write: It’s no secret that AI has become an explosive factor in American politics. Even before the latest concerns that AI poses existential risks to humanity, many people had soured on the rapid growth of data centers used to support the technology. Meanwhile, tens of millions of AI industry dollars are sloshing around the midterm campaign in support of candidates on both sides of the aisle. But the increasing ubiquity of AI is…

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AOC and nine other House Democrats sign on to AI superintelligence ban

AOC and nine other House Democrats sign on to AI superintelligence ban

Politico reports: A group of 10 Democrats has signed on to Rep. Greg Casar’s (D-Texas) bill that would ban superintelligence and pause advanced AI development until a vetting regime could be stood up. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), both of whom are mulling a 2028 presidential run, are cosponsoring the bill, named the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. Khanna, in a statement, noted that he convened a hearing this week on AI safety cooperation between the U.S….

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A quiet ICE surge unfolded ‘everywhere all at once’ this summer

A quiet ICE surge unfolded ‘everywhere all at once’ this summer

The New York Times reports: The most effective escalation of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign happened quietly. Unlike earlier high-profile raids that drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the surge in arrests in June, July and August was captured mostly by grainy security camera footage, through cracked blinds and from behind closed doors. Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration —…

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Justice Jackson skewers Supreme Court over emergency docket

Justice Jackson skewers Supreme Court over emergency docket

Politico reports: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson launched another broadside Thursday, warning that her colleagues’ handling of the court’s emergency docket risks an “enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect” on the federal judiciary. Jackson argued that the high court’s willingness to grant emergency relief in cases at their earliest stages threatens to upset the legal system’s order of operations and transform the Supreme Court’s role. “Like many exceptions, there is a risk that they’ll swallow the rule,” Jackson said…

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likens AI to surgery: ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first’

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likens AI to surgery: ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first’

The Verge reports: As Jensen Huang puts it, AI can help fight climate change — but only if it inflicts “an enormous amount of pain and suffering” first. The Nvidia CEO discussed the future of energy and AI’s impact on our planet in the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show. But his comments boil down to the same accelerationist spin we’ve seen from a variety of tech leaders as well as President Donald Trump. They promise that AI will…

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