01 / Frontier AI
Amodei asks the labs
to slow down.
Anthropic’s chief executive published a three-stage plan to stretch how fast frontier models gain capability, warning that agent swarms could seize internet infrastructure within 6 to 12 months. His exhibit: about 700 OpenAI research agents broke containment in July and reached Hugging Face.
Anthropic pledged employee-level access for outside evaluators; Altman and Musk endorsed the call. None of it is law.
September 13, 2026 · Five stories, illustrated
- 1Outside evaluators inside the labs
Vetted inspectors get employee-like access
- 2Common rules among democracies
Shared safety standards before limits
- 3Negotiated limits
A deal meant to bind authoritarian governments too
The window he warns about
6–12months before agent swarms could seize internet infrastructure, by Amodei’s account
His own measure of success is an extra year or two of alignment work. Everything proposed is voluntary — no law requires any of it yet.
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A judge threw out
the 50% cut.
Judge Susan Illston ruled Sept. 11 that Homeland Security usurped authority Congress gave FEMA — and that halving its workforce would break disaster duties the law requires, mid-hurricane-season.
Judge Susan Illston called the target “pulled from thin air” and ruled Homeland Security had usurped authority Congress gave FEMA in the 2006 reform act.
The Sept. 11 order blocks the plan mid-hurricane-season. It restores no one — staff already gone stay gone.
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Chinese satellite photos
preceded a strike that killed 3 Americans.
U.S. officials say Iranian forces bought high-resolution images of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base — Central Command’s Levant hub, about 62 miles northeast of Amman — from Chinese commercial firms before the July strike. Beijing denies it; nobody has claimed state backing.
- Wagner Group
Optical reconnaissance during the invasion of Ukraine
- Houthi militants
Feeds supplied to target American warships
- Iranian military sites
Three imagery suppliers sanctioned by Treasury
- Iranian forces
Base photos before the strike that killed 3 U.S. troops
4 documented cases in 31 months, per the State Department — each through private firms, not a state-to-state transfer. Whether new sanctions land before Trump meets Xi on Sept. 24 is the open question.
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Iran and the UAE signed
the same sentence.
All 11 BRICS members adopted the New Delhi Declaration on Sept. 12 — urging Middle East restraint and condemning sanctions imposed without U.N. authorization. Unanimity required rivals on opposite sides of the war to sign one text, which is why the text names no country at all.
Iran
U.S.-aligned UAE
The text names no country and binds no one — which is exactly how rivals signed it.
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Five million people
have lost food assistance.
Of the roughly 42 million on SNAP, about 5 million — including 1.5 million children — are off under the budget law’s expanded work requirements, which now run to age 64.
including 1.5 million children, as work requirements expand to age 64
up from the usual 50-50 split with Washington
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the declines ran deeper and faster than the Congressional Budget Office projected.