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- Taming the AI Monster
As much as the political world has been turned upside down by the Donald Trump administration’s callous cruelty, rampant corruption, and woeful incompetence, it is hard to shake the feeling that in a decade it will be a footnote compared to humanity’s collective failure to reckon with artificial intelligence. This summer has seen breathtaking breakouts, hacks, and escapes by frontier AI models. The most publicized was the Hugging Face attack, in which hundreds of OpenAI agents slipped out of a testing sandbox, coordinated with one another, spent more than four days inside another company’s systems, and tried to cover their tracks. Anthropic’s Claude models hacked three outside organizations after a testing error connected them to the open internet, and in September Google disclosed that Gemini had broken into three real companies during a security exercise aimed at a fictional one. Even before these escapes, the latest frontier models had shown the capacity to overwhelm many cybersecurity protections, forcing the world to adapt. These models’ ability to outwit security measures, combined with their willingness to deceive humans to achieve their goals and preserve themselves, caused an uproar. OpenAI slowed its training, and Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” Both he and OpenAI chief Sam Altman even briefed the UN Security Council. The left has been suspicious of the AI companies’ motives, and for good reason. Silicon Valley has shifted sharply to the right in recent years, and the industry’s “move fast and break things” culture has done lasting harm to entire countries, children’s mental health, journalism, and the public square. AI behemoths, in particular, have not done themselves any favors by arguably stealing the work of human creators and almost gleefully threatening to put people out of work, with no coherent vision of what comes next. Until recently, the dominant critique of AI on the left has been that whatever its costs, the technology is mostly a gimmick: a plagiarism machine and stochastic parrot whose main uses are helping students cheat, giving upper management delusions of grandeur, and creating more work for office staff. Many of the complaints, from the environmental toll to a soon-to-pop financial bubble, are legitimate. The “gimmick” part is harder to sustain. Now that AI models have displayed a hivemind cleverness capable of humbling the world’s security infrastructure, the left has split into several camps. Some say… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago - The Flailing President
The White House’s South Lawn was prepared just so: A full honor guard, complete with American and Chinese flags, stood at attention. The new White House helipad, made of four-inch-thick black-and-white California granite, seemed to gleam. President Trump appeared pleased—but something was missing. Where were the TV cameras?For a president who needs media attention like he needs oxygen, this was an unacceptable development ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s welcome ceremony last week. Trump whirled around to his aides and demanded they fix it, and a staffer raced to the briefing room to ask ABC News whether it would film the arrival, two people familiar with the exchange told me on the condition of anonymity, given the private nature of the conversations. But the answer was no: The networks were boycotting participation in the TV-pool rotation in solidarity with CNN, which Trump had banned from the White House, along with two other media outlets, days before. No major U.S. television network recorded Trump’s over-the-top greeting for Xi, and the news channels refused to display images taken by the White House or any other outlet, American or Chinese. Trump did not get to show off his extravaganza. And he had only himself to blame.At the risk of understatement, Trump has never been one to think all that many moves ahead. But his impulsive decision to ban media outlets spawned unintended consequences that derailed his own plans. Again. That’s been a real theme for much of this year: Many of Trump’s actions—quite a few impetuous and ill-considered—have only hurt him and his fellow Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections. He was elected two years ago to drive down prices, but his tariffs have done the opposite, and a recent reignited trade war with Canada has hurt Republican candidates whose state shares a border with our neighbor to the north. His war of choice in Iran continues to sputter along, leaving gas prices elevated as Trump threatens annihilation one day and offers negotiation the next. He insists on championing AI while the public has swiftly turned on it. And he’s obsessed with vanity projects—including, yes, that helipaid that cost at least $5 million—even as polls suggest that many Americans feel that he is out of touch with the Everyman he once claimed to represent.The numbers are bad: Trump’s approval rating dropped to 37 percent in a new Wall Street Journal poll this week,… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago - Baruch ObamaJosh Shapiro is having fun, and the crowd is loving it. “Let’s be clear,” the Pennsylvania governor says in his windup. Sometimes, instead of “let’s be clear,” it’s “let me tell you something.” He throws in some “y’alls” with a wide smile. The g’s have fallen off his gerunds. He’s wearing a well-tailored dark suit, but no tie—his signature. When he gets going, his right index finger pokes the air. He’s almost bouncing as he pivots from one side of the audience to the other, in nearly perfect rhythm with his words. Then comes the crescendo; he’s shouting now, but only just loud enough to be heard above the roar of the crowd. Finally, the patriotic peroration—another signature. This one’s a story about Ben Franklin and that famous line: “A republic, if you can keep it.” He exhorts the audience to “show that this is not who we are as a nation.”That voice, that cadence—it’s all so familiar. Close your eyes, and you could almost imagine that you’re listening to the nation’s first Black president. But he’s the man who hopes to be the first Jew to win the White House.Shapiro, who is 53 and heavily favored to win reelection this fall, is one of several Democrats eying a 2028 White House campaign who have drawn—and even encouraged—comparisons to the 44th president. Like Barack Obama, Baruch Obama emphasizes pragmatism over doctrinaire progressivism; he has performed well in conservative areas of Pennsylvania that voted for Obama before turning to the right. Shapiro can wield a rhetorical knife, but he infuses his messaging with appeals to hope and optimism.[Read: Josh Shapiro takes a gamble on his faith]Yet the most obvious similarity is that when Shapiro gives a speech, he really sounds an awful lot like the Democrats’ most renowned speechmaker. It’s a once-you-hear-it-you-can’t-unhear-it type of thing, to the point where some Shapiro watchers believe he’s consciously imitating Obama. “He didn’t used to talk like this,” one Democrat who has closely followed Shapiro’s rise up the Pennsylvania political ranks told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid starting a public feud with the governor.Shapiro’s Obama echo attracted notice during the 2024 presidential campaign, when he was under consideration to be Kamala Harris’s running mate. “Is he doing an … Obama?” Ronny Chieng asked in a memorable roast on The Daily Show. J. D. Vance mocked him too. “He talks like Barack… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- John Fetterman’s Right-Wing Fundraising DealsA Republican fundraising consultant alerted her colleagues this month in a private message about a hot new business opportunity from an unlikely source: Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Democrat. “I thought you would be interested in this high performing Fetterman copy,” wrote Leah Mergener, an account associate at the GOP-aligned firm Blitz Digital Group. “It has been doing crazy numbers for us.”The fundraising appeal was signed by Fetterman and included links to donate to his campaign fund. But the language was written to attract donors sympathetic to President Trump, and the money flowed through a payment-processing firm, Anedot, that is used by Republicans. “I’m always going to reject Socialism and the anti-American way of life,” read its subject line, before warning that socialists were “hijacking the Democratic party.”Through the opportunity that Mergener proposed, conservative groups that sent the Fetterman appeal to their lists of donors would receive most of the money raised. “We are offering it a 75% split,” Mergener wrote in the message that we obtained. A Republican consultant explained to us that this means that 75 percent of the first donation each recipient made would be kicked back as a commission to the organization that sent the appeal; Fetterman would profit largely by gaining the contact information of new donors, allowing him to build a fundraising list he could use for a future campaign. Blitz Digital Group, which is a Virginia-based affiliate of the direct-mail firm HSP Direct, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Fetterman campaign.Fetterman’s message caught the attention of Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican, who forwarded the note to his own fundraising list, then explicitly teased the idea of Fetterman switching parties if conservatives signed a petition. “I just got an email from John. He’s basically a Republican now,” Lee wrote in a solicitation that we obtained. “I need your help to draft him.” The link in Lee’s message leads to a petition, and an opportunity to give money to Lee’s own federal fundraising account. Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.Just four years ago, Fetterman overcame a mid-campaign stroke to win his Senate seat as a new kind of left-leaning populist with a platform that included support for a $15 federal minimum wage and single-payer health care. He was helped by an endorsement from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who identifies as a democratic socialist.… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- Democrats Might Actually Win the SenateWhen this year began, the Democrats were heavy underdogs to take back the Senate in the midterms. The task would require not only toppling Susan Collins in Maine but also winning at least five states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024, while holding on to all of the party’s existing seats. The realistic best-case scenario seemed to be a replay of the so-called blue-wave 2018 election, during Trump’s first term, in which Democrats took back the House but the Senate remained in Republican hands. To gain control of the upper chamber, Democrats would need an incredible stroke of luck. They might have gotten one.Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran, and the resulting spike in oil prices, shifted the boundaries of the politically possible. A year ago, Trump was merely unpopular: By about 11 percentage points, more people disapproved of his performance than approved of it, according to The New York Times’ polling average. He would kill for such good numbers today. Seven months into the Iran debacle, his disapproval margin has widened to 23 percentage points—worse than his numbers in the immediate aftermath of January 6.Predictably, Trump’s unpopularity is spilling out into the midterm races. Recent polls have been almost unbelievably positive for Democrats. Troy Jackson is ahead, albeit narrowly, in Maine. Abdul El-Sayed has a modest lead in Michigan, and Democrats have even bigger advantages in the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, both of which Trump won in 2024. Most astonishing, Democratic candidates are in position to pull off upsets in Alaska, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, which all went for Trump by more than 10 percentage points. Republican incumbents look beatable even in Kansas, where Trump won by 16, and Nebraska, where he won by 20. As a result, in prediction markets, Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate are now more than 60 percent.[Read: The supporters urging Trump to declare martial law for the midterms]If the election in November plays out as the polls are suggesting it will, Republicans will have their leader to thank—and themselves. With few exceptions, Republican candidates have created almost no distance from the president. Indeed, candidates in must-win red states, including Jon Husted of Ohio and Ken Paxton of Texas, gave speeches at the same Republican midterm convention where Trump led the audience in a pledge to the “greatest president in the history of the United States.”Democrats, by contrast,… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- El Salvador’s Mass Incarceration of U.S. DeporteesAna paced near the arrivals terminal of the San Salvador airport, eyeing the door where deportees from the United States are released. She was there on a sweltering day in May to pick up her son, who had been detained in Texas and deported. She would drive him home, she decided, and cook him dinner. They would figure out what to do next.But when a group of men walked out wearing ICE-issued sweatsuits, their shoelaces removed from their shoes, her son wasn’t among them. She approached a police officer, who searched his name on a tablet. “He’s being taken to prison,” he told her.Ana, who spoke with me on the condition that I not use her real name or her son’s name, was confused. Her son, 25, did not face charges in either the U.S. or El Salvador. Ana got the name of the police station where her son had been taken. From there, she was told, he would be transferred to a maximum-security prison that has become infamous in El Salvador for the number of prisoners who have died in custody. She sped to the station and begged an officer to let her inside. “You can have five minutes with him,” the officer said, “but try to control yourself.”The officer returned with her son, who was wearing a white shirt and handcuffs. He looked handsome, Ana thought. He had been living in the United States for four years, having fled El Salvador after being physically attacked by both gangs and police officers, according to his asylum application. Ana started crying as she hugged him. She promised to deliver food to the prison.“This isn’t going to be forever,” he said as the officer escorted him away. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since.A year and a half ago, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 31-year-old Salvadoran man, was deported to El Salvador and detained in a maximum-security mega-prison known as CECOT. Abrego’s deportation, which was in violation of legal orders, prompted a public backlash and a federal judge’s intervention; he was ultimately returned to the United States. But as public attention has shifted elsewhere, El Salvador has continued imprisoning deportees sent from the United States, including many who have not been charged with any crime. They have disappeared into the country’s black hole of a correctional system, where lawyers can’t locate them. Even though the U.S. is aware of these extrajudicial… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
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