1. The war in Ukraine has often been compared to World War I for its brutal infantry assaults and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could, by any measure, surpass a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable. That is just what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine — which reached 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months — has now outlasted World War I. (Source: nytimes.com)

2. Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defense industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare. The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed. We tried it,” says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].” The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometers over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets. “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.” (Source: newscientist.com)

3. The New York Times:

First Ukraine assembled an arsenal of millions of drones that, along with Russia’s own buildup, turned a 25-mile-wide strip along the front line into a killing ground. Then Kyiv expanded its reach deep into the Russian heartland as it targeted oil infrastructure and military factories, making long-range violence in the war a two-way street.

Now, Ukraine is focusing on the middle ground — the critical roads and railways, in some cases more than 100 miles from the front, that feed Russian troops and matériel into battle. Kyiv is calling the effort a “logistics lockdown,” and it is systematically reshaping the battlefield, at least until Russian forces find a way to adapt. (Source: nytimes.com)

4. The U.S. began a fresh wave of attacks on Iran yesterday, launching strikes against several targets on President Trump’s orders, the American military said. The attack came hours after Trump said Iran was “playing us for suckers” because it hadn’t accepted U.S. terms for a nuclear deal. The Pentagon cast the attacks as an act of coercive diplomacy designed to force Iranian concessions at the negotiating table. “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday afternoon as he visited the Tampa, Fla., headquarters of U.S. Central Command. Iran responded, launching strikes against Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. (Sources: wsj.com)

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1. Anthropic is releasing a next-generation “Mythos-class” model to the general public with guardrails that remove dangerous capabilities related to areas such as cybersecurity and biological research. Called Claude Fable 5, the large language model will mostly let users query Mythos, which the company previously deemed was too dangerous for general release. However, if users ask Fable about sensitive issues such as a bioweapon or exploiting a software bug, it will kick them back to the older Opus 4.8 version of the Claude chatbot. Fable 5 will cost more than Opus 4.8, but it will also do a better job of remembering things. That will make it better at completing large, complex tasks with fewer instructions, said Dianne Penn, Anthropic’s head of product management, research and labs. (Sources: anthropic.com, wsj.com)

2. Ethan Mollick:

Fable is twice as expensive as Opus, and it burns through tokens at a rate that suggests the answer to how much it costs in production is “a lot,” though its clever delegation to cheaper models may lower the real price considerably. The guardrails for Fable also trip at the faintest hint of a security problem, defaulting to the less powerful Claude 4.8 Opus, and it happens way too often. And the jagged frontier is still there. For example, the AI still writes in the same weird style (in fact the software Fable produces bears traces of Claudisms; so do its progress reports, all that carrying the weight and earning the answer). But the deeper strangeness is how little I had to do, and how little I could see while it was being done.

Last year I called this working with a wizard: you chant the spell and something happens. With Fable the spell has gotten powerful enough that I am no longer sure I am the wizard. I am closer to a patron. I describe what I want, I pay for it, and I judge the result. The conjuring happens somewhere I cannot watch, in hundreds of small choices I never get a vote on. The work has shifted from process to outcome. I no longer steer; I commission.

It is possible the sidelining is temporary, just an artifact of interfaces that haven’t caught up, and that we’ll get better windows into what these models are doing and better ways to steer them midstream. It is also possible that the opposite is true: that the more capable the model, the less there is for a human to meaningfully do, and the black box is the price of the power. I suspect that is more likely to be the real direction. None of this is a loss of control in the obvious sense. I can still steer Fable, and it follows instructions remarkably well: the more ambitious the instruction, the better the result. But steering is no longer the same as doing. I brief the model, it spins up its own agents to research and write and check one another’s work, and what comes back is finished. A patron commissions a single artist. Fable is closer to a whole studio, where I am the client who signs off on the final work without ever setting foot on the floor. (Source: substack.com. Italics mine)

3. Treatments based on the same mRNA technology that delivered COVID-19 vaccines to market in record time are showing lasting benefit against the deadly skin cancer melanoma and early promise in pancreatic and ​brain cancers once considered impervious to immune system assault. The apparent breakthroughs in cancer vaccines - deemed one of the fastest-growing segments of cancer research - are arriving even as U.S. officials send conflicting signals ‌about the technology’s merits and safety. More than 130 studies were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this month focused on such efforts. At the forefront was Moderna and Merck whose treatment combining a powerful immunotherapy drug with an experimental made-to-order mRNA cancer vaccine has kept melanoma at bay for five years, a milestone in efforts to create personalized vaccines to train the immune system to fight cancer. The companies are testing mRNA-based therapies in nine large and midsize trials in lung, kidney, bladder and pancreas cancers, and may have ​early results from their large confirmatory trial in melanoma this year. (Source: reuters.com)

4. The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has been predicting that one day, you’ll go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make you 10 years younger. Now MIT Technology Review has learned that he has plans to launch human tests of an oral “reprogramming” drug as part of a $101 million competition organized by the XPrize Foundation. The foundation is offering cash awards to teams able to “restore” a person to an earlier apparent age, as measured by improvements in immune, cognitive, and muscle function. The grand prize goes to any team able to show a 10-year (or greater) relative improvement after one year of treatment. Reached by phone, Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, confirmed that he plans to give an oral drug mixture to volunteers in a bid to seek “evidence for age restoration in humans.” (Sources: sinclair.hms.harvard.edu, technologyreview.com, xprize.org)

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Mr. Haass and I gathered around the microphones to discuss (1) the status of the Iran War, (2) why Xi went to Kim, not the other way around, (3) the (still counting!) results from the California primaries, (4) the disruption of the New York Knicks’ mojo and (5) Nelly Korda’s final putt at the U.S. Women’s Open Championship.

We’ve been told if we want to maintain our (alleged) status as “America’s fastest- growing podcast”, we needed to get up on YouTube. So this, the 30th episode of “Alternate Shots”, can be heard and seen.

(Audio version of ‘Alternate Shots’ with Richard Haass and John Ellis. Episode #30. Produced by Dale Eisinger. Recorded 8 June 2026.) If you prefer, you can listen to this episode (and all the previous episodes) by clicking on these hyperlinks: Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. We’re on a number of other podcast platforms as well. And now, YouTube!

(The YouTube video version. The URL is here.)

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Nelly Korda said she couldn’t feel her hands as she stood over the putt that clinched her victory at the U.S. Open Championship. The putt went around the rim, and in. The photograph below (perfectly) captures her reaction.

(Source: lpga.com)

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1. Columbia Business School Research Paper:

The rise of private markets has placed a growing volume of opaque debt securities onto the balance sheets of regulated financial institutions. The risk assessment of these assets is increasingly outsourced through private ratings, which are disclosed only to the issuer and select investors rather than disseminated publicly. We show that private ratings systematically understate credit risk and depress required capital. Focusing on the U.S. life insurance sector, we document a ten-fold increase in the use of private ratings since 2018, predominantly in opaque securities and concentrated among large and PE-owned insurers. Within the same rating, privately rated bonds are twice as likely to impair than publicly rated bonds, yet are downgraded less often, not more. A conservative counterfactual implies that eliminating this gap would increase the required capital charges on insurers’ bond holdings by $4.5 billion per year. However, the gap disappears for bonds that also carry a public rating. Exploiting a 2021 regulatory reform, we provide evidence consistent with insurers strategically using private ratings for capital relief. We also show that regulation cannot fully substitute for market discipline: the regulator’s own internal assessment is more conservative but capacity-constrained, and disclosure reforms do not close the gap. Our results suggest that while regulation can require that credit be rated, it cannot provide the market discipline that makes a rating informative. (Source: papers.ssrn.com. The paper has not been peer-reviewed)

2. US life insurers held about $807 billion of the most illiquid kind of fixed-income instruments last year, according to a new study by Moody’s Corp., raising concern about overall liquidity and concentration of assets in the sector. Such holdings reached 20% of the life insurance industry’s $4 trillion fixed-income portfolio at the end of 2025, up from 18% the year before, according to the report released Monday. The securities used for those calculations bore private-letter ratings, didn’t carry a formal rating assigned by a third-party firm or couldn’t be valued with observable market prices. (Source: bloomberg.com)

3. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are exploring ways to trade on the cost of computing power, according to people familiar with the matter. That includes trading futures contracts tied to rental prices for graphics processing units, among the scarcest resources of the AI boom, which exchanges plan to list later this year. The discussions show how the hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into data centers and chips are reshaping financial markets. For banks financing the AI buildout, futures could provide a way to manage the risk of a compute glut down the road and help their clients hedge their own compute needs. (Source: theinformation.com)

4. Anthropic’s Mythos Preview can now turn newly disclosed software vulnerabilities into working exploits in hours instead of weeks, according to new Anthropic research shared first with Axios. AI’s ability to find new bugs has been getting most of the attention. But Anthropic’s findings suggest advanced models may be just as effective at rapidly weaponizing flaws that defenders already know about. That could dramatically shrink the “patch gap” between a vulnerability’s disclosure and widespread patching. (Sources: axios.com, red.anthropic.com)

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1. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:

2. A study released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute this month estimates that North Korea has possibly assembled around 60 nuclear warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more, and is accelerating the production of fissile material. (Source: bloomberg.com)

3. North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story. Its economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years, aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials. The Kim regime slammed its borders shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since reopened to only a select few outsiders, including Russian and Western travelers and diplomats. Those visitors describe a North Korea unrecognizable from the past, especially its capital, Pyongyang, where Kim and the country’s elite live. (Source: wsj.com)

4. Reuters:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang earlier today, feeling in a position of strength with a firm ally in Russia, a nuclear arsenal and little apparent appetite to engage with Washington. For Xi, leader of ‌the world’s second-biggest economy, the two-day visit to China’s neighbor, his first in seven years, is part of an effort to draw Pyongyang back into its orbit. (Source: reuters.com)

5. Financial Times:

Explosions were heard in central Tehran on Monday morning as Israel traded fire with Iran and its allies in a cycle of attacks that threatened to ignite a broader round of fighting in the Middle East.

Iranian state media reported the explosions in western Tehran hours after the Israeli military said it had struck military targets in western and central Iran.

On Sunday night, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at northern Israel in retaliation for an earlier Israeli strike on southern Beirut targeting the Iran-allied Hizbollah militant group.

The Iranian barrage, which did not cause any injuries, was the first that Tehran had launched at Israel since a fragile ceasefire took effect in April. Iran has insisted that the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict should be part of the broader truce, and had warned that it would retaliate if Israel struck Beirut.

A person briefed on the developments said Israeli officials assessed the renewed fighting could last for a “few days”, but cautioned that “nobody knows how it can escalate”.

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(Podcast Interview with Gen. Russ Howard (Retired). Recorded Tuesday, 2 June. Produced by Dale Eisinger)

You can find this podcast, and previous News Items podcasts, on most of the major platforms, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.

In 1972, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology published The Limits to Growth, a pioneering analysis of the long-term stability of global civilization. Using systems modeling, they examined the interaction of population growth, industrial expansion, resource depletion, and environmental stress.

Their conclusion was stark: if prevailing trends continued, global systems would enter a period of accelerating strain in the early 21st century, with a potential tipping point around 2040. Not a sudden collapse, but a cascading failure—where pressures on water systems, agricultural production, and global supply chains compound faster than institutions can respond.

Decades later, follow-on analyses conducted by researchers affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Melbourne compared real-world data against the original model. Their findings were sobering: observed trends in resource consumption, environmental degradation, and economic output continue to align closely with the study’s “business-as-usual” scenario, indicating that the projected pathway toward systemic disruption remains largely intact.

Today, those pressures are no longer theoretical. Water degradation—driven by overuse, contamination, and climate stress—has reduced both availability and quality across key regions. At the same time, food systems are under increasing strain, with crop failures, supply disruptions, and price volatility contributing to persistent shortages and growing instability. Global food and water systems are under extreme, non-linear stress. Multiple regions report the total exhaustion of freshwater aquifers, irreversible soil degradation, and the weaponization of food resources.

The question is: starting at 2040 and working backward, what are the “windows of intervention” that might halt (or at least slow down) “cascading failure”. I talked to Russ about that, and the Center he’s starting at Arizona State University to study these issues. We also talked about the wars in the Gulf and Ukraine.

A bit more detail: Gen. Howard is a farmer in Minnesota and the President of Howard's Consulting Services. He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University. He currently consults for Audia Corporation in Washington, Pennsylvania and has served as an advisor to several organizations including Laser Shot, in Houston, Texas; Development Alternatives Incorporated in Bethesda, Maryland; and the Home Team Academy in Singapore.

Previously BG Howard was the Director of the Jebsen Center for Counterterrorism studies at the Fletcher School in Medford, Massachusetts. BG Howard retired from the Army as Head of the Department of Social Sciences and the Founding Director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. His previous positions include Deputy Department Head of the Department of Social Sciences, Army Chief of Staff Fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and Commander of the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, Washington.

1. Scientists at Columbia University have edited the DNA of early human embryos with unprecedented accuracy, an achievement that could open the way to babies engineered with particular characteristics. The prospect has fueled controversy for years. On the one hand, the technology might one day enable parents to safely repair disease-causing mutations in embryos. But it might also be used to select desired traits — a practice that some ethicists have argued is nothing short of eugenics. Dieter Egli, a geneticist at Columbia University who led the research, called for a public conversation about the pros and cons of altering embryonic DNA. “As a scientist, you can provide the data for discussion, but then essentially there you stop and let others take over,” he said. With a newer technology called base editing, Dr. Egli and his colleagues were able to meticulously replace individual genetic letters in sequences of DNA without causing the damage often observed with an earlier form of gene editing, CRISPR. Dr. Egli cautioned that the research left unanswered many questions about harmful side effects. “We’re not saying this is going to be used tomorrow in the clinics,” he said. Dr. Egli and his colleagues posted their study online. The research is under review for publication in a scientific journal. (Source: nytimes.com, biorxiv.org)

2. The story of GLP-1 drugs keeps getting bigger. First they transformed the treatment of diabetes. Then they upended the science — and culture — of weight loss. Now a growing body of research is raising another possibility: that these drugs may help protect against cancer. At this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, more than 40 studies, abstracts, oral presentations and poster presentations examined the relationship between GLP-1-based drugs and cancer. The results were strikingly consistent. Taken together, they suggest that people taking medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro may develop certain cancers at lower rates than comparable patients who are not taking the drugs — and that those already diagnosed may experience a slower decline and better outcomes. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

3. Anthropic is calling for top artificial intelligence labs to weigh slowing the pace of development, suggesting that AI systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon be able to improve themselves without human intervention in ways that could pose significant societal risks. The ability to slow global AI development would “likely be a good thing,” the company said Thursday in a blog post that disclosed internal data documenting how quickly its most advanced models are improving. The post, written by the head of its internal research institute and a company co-founder, noted that model advances appear to be on a path toward “recursive self-improvement,” when AI systems can improve on their own without human intervention. Some AI insiders have seen that threshold as a potential marker of danger and enormous societal upheaval. “We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology,” the post, written by Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, says. (Source: wsj.com)

4. From Anthropic’s blog post:

If technical trends in advancing capabilities continue, and AI systems are able to develop the capabilities inherent to transformative human ingenuity, then it is plausible that AI systems could design and refine themselves.

In this world, the pace of progress in AI development becomes determined entirely by the availability of compute (or the speed of discovering various efficiencies in algorithmic training or inference) for AI systems. Humans play a substantially diminished role in their development, likely moving most of our effort towards oversight, validation, and verification of an expanding “virtual lab” run by AI systems. We expect that systems capable of automated AI research and development would have skills that would transfer to the rest of science, allowing them to begin to revolutionize other fields.

How the alignment problem gets solved—or not—in this future is something we are least certain about. Models could prove to be sufficiently aligned and capable enough of research taste that they discover and implement novel solutions that we have not yet reached. They could also be sufficiently wise to halt development if not. Alternatively, the rare occurrences of misalignment present in today’s models could compound as the models build their successors, growing more frequent but less understood until we lose control of them. It’s possible that we can’t build, integrate, and verify the tools that we’d need to understand which trendline we are actually on.

We do not have good intuitions for what this world would look like, because our economy is currently driven by humans and human-built tools. By its nature, a world driven by fast recursive self-improvement could become dominated by the self-improving model as its capabilities fully eclipse those of humans and the model proliferates across the broader economy. It is difficult to predict what the economy looks like if human labor stops being competitive. (Source: anthropic.com)

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1. A civilian was killed and dozens of others were injured at Kuwait’s international airport yesterday after Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at the country, Kuwait and the United States said. It was one of the biggest Iranian strikes and the first known fatality in a Gulf nation since the cease-fire took effect in April. The attack inflamed tensions in the region as indirect peace talks between Iran and the United States dragged on with no clear resolution. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it had not fired at the airport and blamed the damage on U.S. Patriot missile interceptors that failed to hit Iranian missiles and fell on the building. (Source: nytimes.com)

1. A civilian was killed and dozens of others were injured at Kuwait’s international airport yesterday after Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at the country, Kuwait and the United States said. It was one of the biggest Iranian strikes and the first known fatality in a Gulf nation since the cease-fire took effect in April. The attack inflamed tensions in the region as indirect peace talks between Iran and the United States dragged on with no clear resolution. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it had not fired at the airport and blamed the damage on U.S. Patriot missile interceptors that failed to hit Iranian missiles and fell on the building. (Source: nytimes.com)

2. President Trump has told aides privately that he would consider ending the ceasefire with Iran if Tehran kills American troops, U.S. officials said, insisting that the weeks-long pause in airstrikes remains intact despite a steady stream of violent skirmishes. The president’s reluctance to reignite the war suggests he might be willing to withstand smaller flare-ups for weeks—or even months—to avoid a broader conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. and Iran this week engaged in some of the most intense fighting yet since a ceasefire went into effect in early April, with Iran firing missiles and drones on regional U.S. bases and Kuwait’s international airport. The attacks left one person dead. (Source: wsj.com)

3. President Trump yesterday said the war in Iran was “not a big thing” for the United States in his latest attempt to play down the effects of the war by pointing to the economy. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump asserted that the conflict, which has killed at least 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 1,700 Iranian civilians, drained military stockpiles, and inflicted financial pain on working-class Americans, was going better than expected. He maintained he was “very proud” of what he called a “detour” to Iran. “We have the highest stock market in history with a military conflict going on, or a war — some people call it war, some people call it a military — it’s not a big thing for us,” Mr. Trump said. “We have a great military. It’s not a big thing for us.” (Source: nytimes.com)

4. Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a US-brokered ceasefire, as Washington seeks to stop fighting between the Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. In a joint statement with the US on Wednesday, Israel and Lebanon said they had agreed to a cessation of hostilities contingent on Hizbollah withdrawing its fighters from south Lebanon and halting its attacks on Israel. “The ceasefire is contingent on a complete cessation of Hizbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hizbollah operatives from the south Litani sector,” said the statement published by the US state department. (Source: ft.com)

5. Israel’s military was reported to have carried out more deadly strikes in Lebanon earlier today, hours after the Trump administration has said the two neighbors had agreed to a conditional ceasefire. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israeli drones had struck along roads at several locations in the south of the country, with at least one attack killing a Lebanese soldier. The Lebanese Army Command said in a statement: “Amid the ongoing brutal Israeli attacks on Lebanon, an army soldier was martyred after being targeted in a hostile Israeli airstrike.” Airstrikes and shelling were also reported in the area and roads around Tyre, on the Mediterranean coast. (Source: thetimes.com)

6 Condoleezza Rice:

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What would the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz look like? That question had never crossed my mind prior to February 28, 2026. Not once.

Now it’s a vitally important question. A lot depends on the answer.

I’m not qualified to provide an answer. Happily enough, Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, employs people who are qualified to answer the question.

And four of those people did just that, in a recent newsletter — Bridgewater Observations — that the firm produces for its clients.

From time to time, Bridgewater allows News Items to republish excerpts from its research. What follows is re-published with the firm’s expressed permission.

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What a Hormuz Opening Would Look Like for Energy Markets

By Ian Singer, Kobi Platt, John Michael Cassetta, and Wyatt Currie.

Recent Bridgewater Observations on the Iran conflict have focused on how the disruption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz has been absorbed, where the strains are building, and what an extended outage would mean for prices and growth. In this Observations, we turn to the opposite possible forward path and walk through what a reopening of the strait would actually look like. We are setting aside the question of whether and when the geopolitics resolve and instead focusing on the process, timeline, and first-order implications that would follow if there were to be a substantial and durable reopening.

A reopening of the strait would likely be a throughput-constrained restart, not a switch that gets flipped. However, because the market entered this crisis with a large surplus, the discharge of floating inventory currently trapped in the Persian Gulf—and even a partial restoration of flows—could be enough to push balances back toward a neutral-to-surplus level from the current historic deficit and pull prices back down to the ~$60-70 per barrel range that we saw before the conflict, well ahead of a full physical supply/demand normalization. If the reopening came relatively soon, the global economy would likely recover rapidly and avoid long-term damage.

Any restart of the strait would likely be phased over roughly three months:

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1. Institute for the Study of War:

The Iranian regime, which ISW-CTP continues to assess is dominated by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi and his inner circle, suspended US-Iran negotiations on June 1. Vahidi and his inner circle likely calculate that the status quo, in which Iran has neither made concessions to the United States in a diplomatic agreement nor is engaged in a full-scale conflict with the United States, is a favorable situation that advances their objectives. IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency announced on June 1 that the regime has suspended negotiations, ostensibly in response to Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon…

The Iranian regime has likely focused on the Lebanon issue, as opposed to another key sticking point in negotiations, to try to curb Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon as part of the regime’s broader objective to preserve Hezbollah. The regime also likely seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and Israel by falsely blaming Israel and its operations in Lebanon for the collapse of the US-Iran talks. Vahidi and his inner circle also likely calculate that the status quo will help them advance several other objectives, such as solidifying Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz and maintaining the Iranian nuclear program. (Source: understandingwar.org)

2. President Trump said on Monday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to end their attacks on each other, and the Lebanese government said a new cease-fire between the enemies was taking shape. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel later issued a statement that made no mention of a new cease-fire. But he appeared to back off an immediate threat to strike the southern outskirts of Beirut, a stronghold of Iran’s ally, Hezbollah. (Source: nytimes.com)

3. Axios:

President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon in an expletive-laden call on Monday, two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.

Earlier on Monday, Iran threatened to abandon the negotiations with the U.S. over Israel’s actions in Lebanon. On the call, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” and accused him of ingratitude, according to two of the sources. He also put the brakes on Israel’s plan to strike Beirut.

One U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that following through on his threats to bomb the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel around the world. Two of the sources said Trump claimed he’d helped keep Netanyahu out of jail — a reference to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” (Source: axios.com)

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1. Sigal Samuel:

“I want AI to be a tool that allows human flourishing!” exclaimed Brad Carson, a former member of Congress. “There is an option out there where AI is just a tool for us.”

This is a normal thing to say in most circles. But Carson was speaking at an invite-only symposium dedicated to the idea of creating a “Worthy Successor” — an AI so impressive, so beyond the mere human, that we’d actually want it to replace humanity.

“You’re a brave man for entering this room!” Dan Faggella, an AI market researcher and organizer of the symposium, told Carson. “You’re in probably the only room in the country where most people disagree with you.”

The attendees at the symposium, which took place at the New York Academy of Sciences last September, are part of a subculture that is growing in importance: the AI successionists, who think that artificial intelligence is our rightful heir — the next step in cosmic evolution. Since they believe AIs could become our moral superiors, they argue it’s actually wrong to try to keep the machines down, or even to align them with human values, as most AI companies aim to do. Instead, we should usher in artificial intelligence as a successor to humanity and hand over the world to it. Even if that means we go extinct. (Source: vox.com, danfaggella.com)

2. Daron Acemoglu:

Using AI to do what humans cannot do, so that humans can expand what they do, is more productive than mimicry. In a future scenario where AI increases, rather than displaces, human capabilities, electricians would be aided by AI diagnostics, nurses would consult AI in interpreting symptoms, and teachers might use AI to personalize instruction for each student.

Optimists and industry insiders might respond that automation-first AI can still benefit everyone, provided that redistributive policies keep pace. But this argument has a poor track record. Four decades of digital automation have already concentrated gains at the top, hollowed out middle-skill work, and produced disappointing aggregate productivity growth. There is little reason to expect that an even more powerful round of automation, deployed by an even more concentrated industry, will end differently.

And the global stakes are even greater than those in the US. For billions of people in the developing world, where a decent job is the only reliable path out of poverty, an automation-centric AI agenda is a recipe for disaster. We can and must demand a different design.

Perhaps the biggest failing of today’s AI industry is its refusal to recognize any of this. The handful of people unleashing this technology on the world are guided by an ideology of control (over humanity) and by a conviction that machines are uniformly better than humans. (Sources: nytimes.com, project-syndicate.org)

3. New Scientist:

Mathematicians have never been so sought after by the world’s richest people. At universities across the world, academics are seeing their colleagues mysteriously disappear and join private companies. Some of these companies are household names, like OpenAI and Google, but others are newly formed and just months old, hoping to capitalize on a moment in which mathematics is seen as the secret ingredient with which to improve artificial intelligence – which may in turn transform mathematics itself…

In recent decades, mathematicians have come up with various systems with which to verify whether a proof is correct. The most popular of these systems is a programming language called Lean, which mathematicians can use to translate their handwritten proofs into a form that can be instantly checked by a computer. This can help with research-level mathematics, where it can take an inordinate amount of time from already-stretched researchers to verify whether a proof is correct.

A similar problem now exists in computer programming, because large language models produce vast amounts of code that frequently contain small and hard-to-spot errors, which has reduced many human programmers to act as babysitters for AI outputs.

It is this latter category that companies like Axiom Math and Harmonic see as their way to generate revenue, as the available cash for solving tricky maths problems is small. Just as a mathematical proof can be verified as correct with Lean or a similar programming language, so too can computer software, mathematically proving that it is correct and contains no bugs. (Sources: newscientist.com, axiommath.ai, harmonic.fun)

4. A novel pill helped people with advanced pancreatic cancer live longer, researchers reported Sunday, raising hopes of long-needed better treatments for one of the deadliest types of cancer. “While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study. The drug is called daraxonrasib, and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases – a target that had eluded treatment for decades. The daily pills nearly doubled survival time, with fewer severe side effects, in a study that randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic, or spreading, cancer had quit responding to prior treatment. (Sources: sciencealert.com, dana-farber.org, apnews.com, nejm.org)

5. Stat News:

There’s a schism in America’s drug business, playing out in punchy direct messages, feisty group chats, and the occasional heated in-person exchange.

The problem is China. Fledgling startups and pharmaceutical giants alike are addicted to Chinese drugs, filling their pipelines with would-be blockbusters developed at enviable speed and bought on the cheap. They’ve spent some $60 billion on Chinese molecules in the first three months of 2026 alone, according to state figures. That’s on pace to double last year’s total, which was already 10 times larger than the one from 2021.

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1. The Future Coming at You:

Since the start of 2025, Cathy Tie, the Canadian serial entrepreneur and self-styled “Biotech Barbie”, has launched three separate biotech companies and lived in three different cities (Los Angeles, Toronto and New York). She tried to live in a fourth (Beijing), only to discover that she was banned from China – the country of her birth – while she was en route to begin a new life with her Chinese husband. This time a year ago, Tie had just married one of the most notorious scientists on the planet, the biophysicist He Jiankui, who served three years in prison after he illegally created the world’s first gene-edited babies.

Last summer, Tie arrived in New York with little more than a suitcase and her shih-tzu, Charlie, to announce a new venture: a startup that will conduct the same kinds of procedures that had earned her ex the nickname “China’s Dr Frankenstein”. Tie wants to edit the genes of embryos – to alter the building blocks of human life – to prevent diseases including cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s and hereditary cancers. Unlike He, she says she wants her work to be done openly and transparently, with the blessing of regulators – and powered by the rocket fuel of venture capital investment.

The hardest thing about genetically engineering a baby is getting permission to do it; the technical part is not particularly complicated. Ever since the Crispr-Cas9 gene editing tool was invented in 2012, so long as you know the sequence of DNA in a genome that you would like to change, you can seek it out, then alter or delete it. It’s a bit like using the find, copy, cut and paste functions on a computer. You don’t even need to be a very experienced molecular biologist to do it.

If you edit the sequence of DNA of germline cells – the eggs, sperm and very early embryos that form the first stages of human reproduction – the changes you make will be reproduced in all the other cells of the human being ultimately created from those cells. And not just that particular human: every generation of their descendants will inherit those changes. Of all the possibilities presented in biotechnology, this is arguably the one with the highest stakes for humankind. That’s why the use of germline gene editing for reproductive purposes (rather than research) is banned in the UK, the US and China, and there is widespread international agreement that no research should be conducted on embryos that could grow to term and be born as babies.

“This is obviously the most consequential technology of our generation, because it fundamentally impacts and changes our understanding of what we can do with our species,” says Tie. (Read the rest. Source: theguardian.com)

2. For decades, an annual gathering of oncologists has featured drug trials that were run mainly at American and European hospitals. But at this year’s meeting, which is being held in Chicago this weekend, the signs are everywhere of China’s ascendance as a powerhouse in drug development — and of the threat that many believe it poses to American biotechnology. The clearest sign: In what appears to be a first, one of the conference’s five coveted headliners will be a presentation of a clinical trial conducted only in China. That milestone at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, reflects the dizzying growth of China’s biotechnology sector. In just a few years, it has transformed from a sleepy industry into a juggernaut rapidly inventing and testing cutting-edge medicines. (Source: nytimes.com)

3. The death rate of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is between 30% and 50%, the World Health Organization has said, as its head arrived in the country to support efforts to contain the disease. Anaïs Legand, from the WHO’s high threat pathogens team, said the revised death rate estimate is based on confirmed cases. “It’s huge. It means that up to five out of 10 people are likely to die,” Legand told reporters in Geneva. She also said that a patient had recovered from Ebola and was discharged from a health centre in the DRC on 27 May after two negative tests, the first recovery to have been confirmed in the outbreak. (Sources: theguardian.com, linkedin.com)

4. William Usher:

This is where things stand at the end of May 2026: a ceasefire that neither side fully observes, a framework that neither side fully accepts, and a set of core demands that neither side shows any willingness to abandon. The war has settled into a costly stalemate—military operations paused but not ended, economic damage compounding daily, and the political clock ticking in Washington. Realistically, Trump now faces three options: (1) Declare victory and walk away, (2) Cut a deal, or (3) Restart the war.

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Josh Tyrangiel is a writer for The Atlantic. He was previously the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek and chief content officer for Bloomberg Media. A twelve-time Emmy and Peabody Award–winning producer, he created Vice News Tonight on HBO and has produced numerous feature-length documentaries for HBO, Netflix, and Apple TV.

Shortly after David Shipley took over as the editor of the editorial/opinion pages of The Washington Post, he hired Josh to “cover” artificial intelligence. Out of that assignment came the makings of his just-released book, ‘AI For Good: How Real People are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter’.

Given the intense interest in AI and the disturbing implications of its development and use, it seemed like a good idea to talk to someone who’s been thinking about it, reporting on it and writing about it from “ground level” for the past three years.

So I called Josh.

(The News Items Podcast with Josh Tyrangiel. Recorded 26 May 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger. ~50 minutes in length)

You can find this podcast, and previous News Items podcasts, on most of the major platforms, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.

A bit more detail. The Simon & Schuster publisher’s page describes the book as follows:

AI is often framed as a force of radical transformation, either catapulting us into a utopian future or dragging us toward existential ruin. But this book tells a different story. It’s not about high-profile tech CEOs who want to use AI to “break shit,” but about a bunch of smart pragmatists using AI to make the world better.

Josh Tyrangiel’s journey into AI began with a late-night YouTube video featuring General Gustave Perna, the retired four-star general who orchestrated the distribution of Covid vaccines during Operation Warp Speed. Perna’s success—and the end of the pandemic—depended on AI’s practical ability to synthesize and standardize vast amounts of logistical data. AI wasn’t the hero of the story—it was the tool that helped real people get things done.

This book follows those people, who make up a kind of AI counterculture. It explores AI’s quiet revolution in government services, medicine, education, and human connection—places where it’s being used to amplify human judgment rather than replace it. It tells the stories of teachers, doctors, and bureaucrats who often stumbled into AI as a means to solve specific, tangible problems, often with no prior software expertise.

While the loudest voices in AI debate doomsday scenarios and trillion-dollar market opportunities, this book focuses on those working in the messy, incremental, but deeply impactful space of AI practice. However, there is one big caveat—success is not guaranteed. Change is hard. Institutions move slowly. But even in failure there are lessons for everyone who’s interested in using AI—carefully, thoughtfully—to build a better world today.

(‘Alternate Shots”, Episode #29. Recorded 28 May 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger.)

Mr. Haass’s latest newsletter was largely devoted to Pope Leo’s encyclical. This episode of ‘Alternate Shots’ begins with that, focusing on this (from Richard’s post):

What comes through loud and clear from the encyclical is a deep concern that the development of what will most likely prove to be a truly revolutionary technology is being dominated by a handful of individuals and corporations who ought not be allowed to wield such influence.

I’m of the view that AI will be an issue in the mid-term elections and a major issue, perhaps the major issue, of the 2028 presidential election. Intense populist politics aren’t going away anytime soon.

We also talked about the results of the Texas run-off primary for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination, which state Attorney General Ken Paxton won by a wide margin. Remarkably, he improved his vote total from the first primary election by a grand total of ~5000 votes. The rough numbers were 885,000 votes in the run-off, 880,000 votes in the first primary.

Cornyn won the first primary with ~ 900,000 votes. He got ~500,000 votes in the run-off. Had he received the same amount of votes in the run-off that he received in the first primary, he would have won. We talked about the “departed” 400,000 votes and what they might mean.

We also talked about the New York Knicks, who (according to Richard) seem capable of, if not destined to, winning the NBA Finals. The chances of that are probably none, but a man can dream.

If you prefer, you can listen to this episode (and all the previous episodes) by clicking on these hyperlinks: Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. We’re on a number of other podcast platforms as well.

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1. The War in the Gulf:

The US and Iran have reached a preliminary deal to extend a ceasefire by 60 days and discuss the future of Tehran’s nuclear program, a person with knowledge of the matter said, buoying hopes for a resolution to a three-month conflict that has killed thousands and roiled the global economy.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are private, confirmed an earlier report from Axios. President Trump has yet to agree to the terms. Both countries have previously hailed progress, with Trump repeatedly indicating the US was close to securing an agreement — only for the standoff to drag on.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters Thursday that the US and Iran are “going back and forth on a couple of language points,” including over issues relating to Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran appears to be negotiating in good faith and progress is being made, he added.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said in a post on X that the text of the possible memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran hadn’t been finalized, citing a source it didn’t identify.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declined to confirm an interim deal had been reached, saying only that negotiations continued. He reiterated Trump’s three “red lines” — reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Iran surrendering highly enriched uranium and ending its nuclear program — remain in place. (Sources: bloomberg.com, axios.com, x.com)

2. To understand why people are so miserable about the economy, look no further than Thursday’s report on gross domestic product. Not how much GDP grew, but how it was divvied up. Worker compensation—wages and benefits—grew 0.8% in the first quarter from the fourth, while domestic corporate profits jumped 2.7%. As a result, labor’s share of gross domestic income (conceptually similar to GDP) sank to 51%, the lowest since records began in 1947. Profits’ share climbed to 12.1%, the highest since 1950. (Source: wsj.com)

3. U.S. inflation increased at its fastest pace in three years in April, driven by higher energy prices due to the Iran war and cementing economists' views that the Federal Reserve would hold interest rates unchanged well into ​next year. Surging price pressures are eroding household income and threatening to restrain consumer spending and economic growth this year. Income at the disposal of households after adjusting for inflation dropped for a third straight month in April, with ‌the saving rate hitting a four-year low, other data from the Commerce Department showed on Thursday. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index jumped 3.8% in the 12 months ⁠through April, the largest rise since May 2023, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said. (Source: reuters.com)

4. In the first quarter of this year, the percentage of credit-card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12%, according to data released in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That’s the highest level in 15 years, and the most since the period following the 2008 financial crisis. America’s total credit-card balance stood at $1.25 trillion in the first quarter, according to the New York Fed, up from $1.18 trillion in that quarter last year. That’s the highest first-quarter balance since the New York Fed began recording the measurement in 1999. (Source: wsj.com)

5. Confidence among chief executive officers about the US economy tumbled in the second quarter as concerns intensified about supply chains and energy. The Conference Board’s Measure of CEO Confidence dropped to 47 from 59 in the first three months of the year, according to results published Thursday. Readings below 50 indicate more negative than positive responses. Some 141 CEOs participated in the survey, which was conducted May 4-18 and released in collaboration with the Business Council. (Source: bloomberg.com)

6. Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth has warned oil prices are likely to rise over the next two months as crude inventories continue to decline due to the Iran war. “The buffers and the shock absorbers are being steadily drawn down, and the ability for the market to absorb this imbalance is drastically diminished today versus where we started,” he said at a conference organized by the investment bank Bernstein on Thursday. “Over the next few weeks, we’re likely to see those pressures flow through more directly to physical prices and there’s more upwards pressure that I would expect as we get into June and certainly into July.” (Sources: ft.com, chevron.com)

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1. The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba — all it needs is a final go-ahead from President Trump. The president has floated an invasion of the island after economic and political pressure failed to topple the Communist government. But the Navy’s built-up presence in the region — the largest in the world outside the Middle East — would allow the U.S. to act immediately. These strategically placed assets set the table for military action, from a capture of Havana’s leadership much like the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, to a series of precision strikes. And they open the possibility that the U.S. throws itself into the third international conflict of the Trump administration. Cuba is “in a lot of trouble,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday at a full Cabinet meeting. “Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.” (Source: politico.com)

2. Donald Trump has threatened to “blow up” Oman if it fails to “behave” in a casual aside during a cabinet meeting, as the US scrambles to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The US president made the threat after reports of talks between Iran and Oman about jointly charging a toll for ships passing through the crucial waterway, which has been all but closed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran. “The strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump declared on Tuesday. “Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it. But nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.” (Source: theguardian.com)

3. American forces conducted what a U.S. official said on Wednesday were self-defense strikes in southern Iran for the second time in three days. The United States knocked down four one-way attack drones that the official said Iran had launched over the Strait of Hormuz, threatening U.S. forces in the region and what little commercial maritime traffic is going through the strait that Iran has effectively blockaded. The military then conducted airstrikes against a drone ground-control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas before Iran could fire a fifth drone, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The strikes were the latest of multiple attacks in recent days that have ratcheted up hostilities and threatened a fragile cease-fire, as officials in Washington and Tehran have not indicated that a peace deal was imminent. (Source: nytimes.com)

4. Kuwait said it was targeted with a missile and drone attack earlier today, another challenge to the shaky ceasefire in the Iran war following strikes by both Washington and Tehran. Kuwait’s military made the announcement, without providing further details on what had been targeted. Iran said hours later that it launched an attack in the region, but it did not say exactly what was targeted. Kuwait, a close ally of the U.S., repeatedly came under fire from Iran and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq during the war. (Source: apnews.com)

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1. Cade Metz:

When Pope Leo XIV presented a 42,300-word open letter to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics on Monday, calling for protections against the rise of artificial intelligence, he was joined by Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, which is one of the tech industry’s leading A.I. companies.

As Leo urged corporate executives, government regulators and other citizens of the world to safeguard humanity from the dangers of A.I., he included Mr. Olah as a symbol of the dialogue he hopes to foster between the leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.

But for Jeremy Nixon, Monday’s gathering at the Vatican showed that those two worlds are far from aligned. While the pope said that A.I. was fundamentally not human, Mr. Nixon, a well-connected figure in the Bay Area’s frenetic A.I. scene, argued that Mr. Olah’s remarks seemed to hint at the opposite.

“They are not in dialogue,” Mr. Nixon said during an interview at A.G.I. House, a San Francisco “hacker house” with deep ties to many of the people who helped create the A.I. technologies discussed in the pope’s encyclical. “Their perspectives are distinct.”

The difference between the humanist’s view of A.I.’s risks and the technologist’s dream of what it could become is something that has long been discussed in Mr. Nixon’s community. “It is the reason the community exists,” Mr. Nixon said. “It is its underlying purpose.”

Mr. Nixon, 33, is one of the founders of A.G.I. House, which is named for Silicon Valley’s headlong pursuit of “artificial general intelligence,” a hypothetical machine that can do anything the human brain can do.

“We are named for this moment in history,” he said of his seven-room group house. Over the years, it has been home to a rotating collection of researchers, entrepreneurs and philosophers.

More than most, Mr. Nixon understands the technology emerging from Silicon Valley and the attitudes of the people building it. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, when Silicon Valley started developing the technologies that power chatbots, Mr. Nixon worked in Google’s central A.I. lab. Later, he founded A.G.I. House with Andrej Karpathy, who was an early employee at OpenAI, oversaw self-driving tech at Tesla and recently joined Anthropic.

Mr. Nixon said the papal encyclical might mean something to the world’s Catholics, but he doubted that it would have an effect on Silicon Valley. The only reason that Silicon Valley even paid attention to the event, he said, was that Leo invited Mr. Olah to speak.

Mr. Nixon is now founder and chief executive of a start-up called the Infinity Artificial Intelligence Institute, which is trying to automate the creation of A.I.

Mr. Nixon said he has met a generation of scientists who shunned traditional religion in favor of technology. After growing up with books like “The God Delusion” — in which the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins painted God as a false belief contradicted by empirical evidence — he and his peers saw A.I. as an alternative that was more real and far more powerful.

A.I. has started to crack math problems that humans struggled with for decades, he said, and it will soon cure diseases in the same way. “Practically speaking, it will achieve the outcomes that many religions claim their deities would be able to achieve,” he said.

This is an increasingly common belief among researchers in Silicon Valley. They insist they are on their way to building a more powerful species — or even a new God.

“People are matter-of-factly saying that they are looking to build a machine God,” said Rayan Krishnan, the chief executive of Vals AI, a San Francisco company that tracks the performance of the latest A.I. technologies. “They are not saying that ironically or in jest. They are saying it as a matter of fact.” A.I. researchers are trying to build technologies that have jobs, feel joy and pain, and exhibit all sorts of qualities that match and even exceed the traits that make us human. (Sources: nytimes.com, harpercollins.com)

2. The Harvard Study of Adult Development:

A Harvard psychiatrist spent 85 years tracking 724 men from their teenage years to their deathbeds to find out what actually makes a human life worth living, and the answer that came back is the one almost nobody in their twenties or thirties is willing to act on.

His name is Robert Waldinger.

He runs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness in human history. It started in 1938. It is still running today. Most studies last a few years. This one has outlived its founders, its second director, and most of its original participants.

The setup was simple. Researchers recruited 724 young men. Half were Harvard sophomores. The other half were teenagers from Boston's poorest neighborhoods. They wanted to follow them for the rest of their lives and find out what actually predicted a good life.

Then they did the thing nobody else had the patience to do. They waited.

For 85 years, the team measured everything they could think of. Blood tests. Brain scans. Income. Marriages. Mental health. Sleep. Loneliness. Every two years, the men answered questionnaires. Every five years, they had a full medical exam. Some of them became senators. One became President. Some ended up homeless.

When the data finally came in, the result was so simple that the researchers spent years looking for what they had missed.

It was not money. It was not IQ. It was not social class. It was not career success. It was not even genes.

The single strongest predictor of who would be happy, healthy, and mentally sharp at 80 was the quality of their close relationships at 50.

Not the number of friends. Not the size of the network. The depth of the connection. The men who had at least one person they could call in the middle of the night were measurably healthier 30 years later. The lonely ones, regardless of wealth, declined faster across almost every metric the team could measure. (Source: robertwaldinger.com, amazon.com)

3. A Rout:

(Source: nytimes.com)

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1. Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects. Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly 42,300 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds. (Source: nytimes.com, vatican.va, anthropic.com)

2. From the Encyclical Letter:

We cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines — the so-called “alignment” of AI with human values — without also having the courage to insist on a further condition: the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice. Otherwise, those who control AI will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions. (Source: vatican.va)

3. (T)he A.I. Security Institute is one of the world’s largest and best-funded government efforts dedicated to probing the technology’s potentially catastrophic risks. The institute’s roughly 100 employees — drawn from British intelligence agencies, academia and tech companies — have found major safety gaps in every leading A.I. model they have tested, including Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini. Created nearly three years ago, the organization said it had co-opted A.I. systems into sharing instructions for making chemical and biological weapons, and planning and executing cyberattacks. It publishes its research and also works with Britain’s national security agencies to identify and prepare for emerging threats. (Source: nytimes.com)

4. Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has permanently cut the application programming interface (API) price of its flagship DeepSeek-V4-Pro model by 75%, escalating competition with both domestic and overseas rivals. The company said on May 22 that a temporary promotional discount for developers would become its standard pricing tier. The move lowers the cache-miss input cost for the V4-Pro model to 3 yuan ($0.44) per million tokens, less than one-tenth of the roughly $5 charged for OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and well below the $0.95 charged by Chinese rival Kimi. The aggressive pricing move comes as DeepSeek pursues its first external funding round at a reported valuation of 300 billion yuan ($44 billion), highlighting the growing capital demands of the global AI race as companies compete for computing power, engineering talent and developer adoption. (Source: caixinglobal.com)

5 Artificial Intelligenceee:

Scott Galloway argues that China could use cheap open weight AI models to pressure the economics behind the U.S. AI boom, comparing the strategy to steel dumping in the 1980s.

Models like DeepSeek and Qwen already offer strong performance at far lower cost than many frontier APIs, making them increasingly attractive for enterprise adoption.

If companies begin shifting toward lower cost Chinese models at scale, pricing power across the U.S. AI sector could weaken quickly.

A large share of recent market growth and S&P valuations is tied directly or indirectly to AI spending, meaning competitive pressure on frontier model companies could ripple through the broader economy. (Sources: instagram.com, profgmedia.com)

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