The News,
Decoded.

Ah, so the frontier labs have finally realised that letting just anyone play with cyber-capable models might be a *tad* irresponsible. But instead of, say, not building them in the first place, OpenAI and Anthropic are now holding auditions for a VIP club of 'trusted' users. OpenAI's trusted-access program and Anthropic's pending program — because nothing says 'safe AI' like a secret handshake and a background check. This follows Anthropic's earlier masterstroke of removing cybersecurity from Mythos and then deliberately hobbling its models for AI research — now they want to decide who gets the good stuff. Consistency? Never heard of her.

Meanwhile, the US government is still politely asking developers to share voluntarily, because nothing says 'national security' like a system that can be ignored by anyone with a spare server and a grudge. The labs are building a new power centre in cybersecurity — which is great if you're in the club, less great if you're not. And let's be honest, the criteria for 'trusted' will be as transparent as a brick wall. 'Trust us,' they say, as they hand the keys to the same old governments and corporations.

So the race is on: who can build the most exclusive walled garden for cyber capability? OpenAI and Anthropic are sprinting, while regulators watch from the sidelines, clutching their voluntary frameworks and muttering about 'responsible innovation.' If this is the future of AI safety, we might as well be asking for a password to the lifeboats. Cheeky, really.

Ah, the federal government has finally decided to 'do something' about AI — and by 'do something' they mean ask nicely. Because nothing says 'national security' like a voluntary sharing window that can be ignored with a shrug. The executive order requires AI developers to voluntarily share new models with the feds up to 30 days before giving access to partners. That's right: the most powerful technology since the atom, and we're relying on the honour system. This from the same administration that recently lost yet another AI policy adviser — but sure, let's add more paperwork.

The order also directs national security agencies to 'create a framework for evaluating AI-related risks.' Because heaven forbid we actually have a framework ready before the models are deployed. It's the classic regulatory pattern: announce a process to create a process. Meanwhile, companies will continue to release models at breakneck speed, and the 30-day window will be spent arguing about what 'voluntary' means. Cue the memo from a law firm explaining why it's all perfectly fine.

And what's the penalty for non-compliance? We don't know, because the order doesn't mention enforcement. It's a suggestion, wrapped in a policy, covered in a press release. The only entity that wins here is McDermott Will & Schulte, the law firm that wrote the analysis — they'll be billing by the hour for advising clients how to 'voluntarily' comply. So crack open a tin of optimism, because voluntary self-restraint is definitely going to work this time.

Ah, Illinois has decided that if the federal government won't regulate AI, someone has to. Because nothing says 'responsible oversight' like a state-level patchwork that companies can simply avoid by relocating to Indiana. The law is being hailed as a 'landmark,' which in practice means it will set a precedent for other states to pass their own slightly different versions, creating a glorious maze of compliance for any firm unlucky enough to operate nationally.

The real comedy, though, is in the details. Who gets to define 'frontier model'? The bill leaves that to future rulemaking, ensuring a merry dance of lobbying and loophole-hunting. And annual audits—how reassuring! Because we all know that once-a-year checks are the gold standard for catching rapidly evolving AI systems that change by the week. The incident reporting requirement is similarly adorable: companies will report what they deem reportable, sanitised through legal departments. It's like asking a fox to count the chickens.

Still, credit where it's due: Illinois is the first state to actually try. The article quotes a sponsor saying it 'sets a standard for oversight,' which is technically true—a standard that will be ignored by the industry until it's watered down, preempted by federal preemption, or simply laughed off as a compliance checkbox. But hey, at least they passed something. Pop the champagne—it might be the last thing we regulate effectively.

Ah, Israel—land of milk, honey, and government AI that runs on dial-up. The State Comptroller has issued a report finding that the country risks falling behind in government AI use due to gaps in budgets, data governance, and national planning. This is the same nation that gave the world Waze, Mobileye, and more cybersecurity startups than you can shake a networked stick at—but apparently can't figure out how to apply its own tech to public services. The gap between private-sector wizardry and public-sector inertia is now officially a canyon with a sign reading 'Cross at your own risk.'

The report identifies three classic failures: insufficient budgets (government IT still runs on legacy systems from the 90s), poor data governance (agencies treat data like Gollum treats the Ring), and no national plan (because central planning is so last century). The Comptroller, in a tone that suggests they've been saying this for years, warns that Israel will fall behind unless it fixes these basics. One imagines the reaction from the high-tech sector: a collective shrug as they continue building the next unicorn.

So Israel's government AI trajectory: going nowhere slowly. Meanwhile, countries with less flashy tech sectors are methodically deploying AI in tax collection, healthcare, and traffic management. The startup nation, for all its brilliance, is being out-administered by countries that can't even produce a decent messaging app. But hey, at least the coffee in Tel Aviv is excellent.

So the White House AI policy team is shedding talent faster than a badly trained model sheds accuracy. Thomas Lind, head of policy at the Office of the National Cyber Director, is the latest to announce his departure—part of a steady exodus since the AI executive order was unveiled. The logic is impeccable: first you publish a sweeping directive that promises to govern AI across the federal government, then you watch the people who wrote it scramble for the exit. Coincidence? Not unless you believe in coincidence made of pure bureaucratic incompetence.

Politico reports this is 'the latest in a string of departures'—a phrase that should be the subtitle of any White House AI policy update. Lind's role was pivotal: he was supposed to bridge the gap between AI capabilities and national cybersecurity. But instead of sticking around to implement the order, he's joining the growing ranks of former officials who've decided that shaping AI policy from the outside—probably via a fat consulting contract—is more appealing than fighting the inter-agency trench warfare of actual governance.

Each loss chips away at institutional memory and expertise. The administration is left with a hollowed-out office, a diminishing pool of people who actually understand what the executive order says and meant to do, and a tech industry that barely noticed the departure because it never expected the government to follow through anyway. The AI policy brain drain isn't a leak; it's a haemorrhage. And the only response from the White House so far seems to be: 'Who's next?'

The Trump administration's grand vision for a 'financial partnership' between the federal government and the AI industry is proving about as concrete as a campaign promise. The White House hasn't even sent out invites for the meeting Trump said could happen this week, leaving Silicon Valley to bicker over who gets a seat at the trough. It's a beautiful metaphor for American AI policy: all swagger, no substance, while the profits debate rages on without a moderator.

The tech giants are split — some want government cash and contracts, others fear strings attached — but everyone agrees the money should flow. This isn't a policy debate; it's a family fight over the inheritance before the will is even read. The promised meeting, if it ever happens, will likely be a photo op where executives pretend their self-interest is patriotism. Meanwhile, the real question of how to govern AI with public money is left to die in a conference room that never gets booked.

So we get the worst of both worlds: the government can't organise a meeting, but it can still funnel billions to companies that treat regulation as a bother and profit as a birthright. The 'iffy' meeting is a perfect metaphor for the entire regulatory landscape — all mouth, no trousers, and the tech industry gets to keep laughing all the way to the bank. Pass the popcorn.

Ah, Georgia has discovered that artificial intelligence might, in theory, require a smidgen of governance — how remarkably 2024 of them. The Georgia Technology Authority has inked a deal with Darwin AI to build 'statewide AI guardrails,' because nothing says independent oversight like outsourcing rulemaking to a company that sells AI tools. The state has also inaugurated an Office of Artificial Intelligence and an Innovation Lab, which sounds exactly like the kind of bureaucracy that will produce a lot of reports and very little actual constraint. One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from tech executives: 'Phew, they're making a *single place* to manage policy. We'll send someone to that place.'

Let's examine this 'guardrail' concept more closely. Darwin AI will provide the infrastructure for managing AI policy, overseeing data, and maintaining compliance — all in one tidy platform. So the fox is designing the henhouse's security system, and the henhouse is paying for it. The Office of AI and Innovation Lab are classic government theatre: create a new department, appoint a director, issue a press release, and declare victory. Meanwhile, the actual pace of AI development accelerates, and Georgia's 'comprehensive governance framework' will be outdated before the office gets its coffee machine installed.

The grim comedy here is that this is genuinely more than most states have done. But measured against the scale of what's needed — binding rules, enforcement mechanisms, liability frameworks — it's a postage stamp on a supertanker's hull. The Innovation Lab will 'test AI applications,' which presumably means checking if the chatbot accidentally generates a slur before deploying it statewide. Wonderful. Georgia has built a single place to manage AI policy, and the rest of us can watch from the single place where our rights used to be protected.

Oh, joy — California's legislature has finally remembered that workplaces contain actual human beings, and they've dusted off the No Robo Bosses Act to prove it. The revived version, which Governor Newsom vetoed last year like a teenager rejecting a chore list, survived a key 2026 session deadline alongside bills restricting workplace surveillance and forcing employers to monitor AI-induced job losses. The state Senate passed it, apparently convinced that the definition of insanity doesn't apply to legislative recycling.

The worker surveillance bill targets AI tools that analyse keystrokes, facial expressions, and probably the amount of sighing employees do when a new Slack message pops up. California already has privacy laws that look great in a press release but are about as enforceable as a pirate code. Meanwhile, the AI job-loss monitoring requirement is a masterpiece of bureaucratic theatre: mandate data collection, produce a report, file it somewhere, and call it progress. The tech industry's lobbyists must be laughing all the way to the next ex-parte meeting.

This is, of course, the same state whose governor signed Executive Order N-6-26 we covered last month—the one that directed state agencies to 'think very hard for 90 days.' Now the bills are on the short list for passage, but the final decision rests with the same governor who canned the original No Robo Bosses Act. Call me cynical, but I'm not holding my breath for a happy ending for the humans. Still, at least they're naming names: 'automation of disciplinary decisions' has a nice ring to it.

Oh, marvellous. Gavin Newsom has signed Executive Order N-6-26 on May 21, 2026, directing state agencies to spend the next 90 days thinking very hard about how AI might affect California's workforce. Because nothing says 'decisive action' like asking for recommendations on severance standards, WARN Act expansion, and revenue-sharing models — as if the tech industry, currently firing people by the thousand, will suddenly embrace collective bargaining out of the goodness of its venture-funded heart. The order is a masterclass in administrative preamble: all the drama of a press conference, none of the actual regulation.

But let's give credit where it's due — at least they're *preparing* for the AI job apocalypse, even if the preparation consists largely of forming committees. The 90-day review is a charmingly bureaucratic timeline for an industry that moves faster than a startup founder chasing a trend. By the time the recommendations land, the state's unemployment data will probably need its own emergency executive order. And the revenue-sharing model? A delightful suggestion — assume the companies will voluntarily hand over a cut of their AI profits to displaced workers. Yes, I'm sure that will happen right after they finish their diversity pledges.

Of course, this is California, the state that gave us the laughable 'AI safety' bill that died in committee. So we're meant to believe this time is different — that a 90-day review of severance standards will somehow keep pace with an industry that can't even keep a CEO for a full fiscal quarter. The only thing more predictable than the order is the response: employers should 'start preparing now.' Prepare for what, exactly? Another round of recommendations? A task force to study the findings of the review? The machinery of governance grinds on, slow enough that the people being displaced will have time to knit themselves a warm blanket of policy papers.

Oh, marvellous. The White House and Congress have relaunched the grand project of blocking state AI laws, because nothing says "protecting kids and communities" like preempting the only entities actually trying to regulate this stuff. Senator Blackburn is spearheading a preemption package that includes "protections for kids, creators, and communities" — which in Washington-speak translates to "we'll think about it after the next election cycle." The deal: federal preemption in exchange for tech policy support. So the same federal government that has spent two decades failing to regulate social media, data privacy, and algorithmic bias is now going to take the reins on AI. It's like hiring the arsonist to modernise the fire code, but with more press releases.

Various states have actually been passing AI laws — you know, doing the job legislatures are supposed to do. But the White House and Hill have decided that a patchwork of state laws is worse than the gaping void of federal inaction. The "relaunch" implies this has been tried before and failed, so optimism is clearly in short supply. Blackburn's package will likely be whittled down to a set of principles that everyone agrees on and no one enforces. Congress will hold a hearing, issue a report, and then go back to staring at phones while AI companies continue to do whatever they want.

Because the one thing both parties can agree on is that state-level democracy is too messy when there's tech lobbying money to be had. And the kids? Well, they'll get their "protections" right after the next quarterly earnings call.

Oh, splendid. Lawmakers have finally noticed that AI can build better AI, and they're thinking about regulating it before the whole thing skips past human comprehension entirely. Because nothing says 'proactive governance' like waiting until the tech is already recursively self-improving before wringing your hands. Forbes contributor Lance Eliot reports that policymakers are eyeing the 'AI-builds-AI' phenomenon, with Anthropic leading the charge on recursive self-improvement studies. Yes, the same Anthropic that promised to be the responsible AI lab. They're now essentially teaching AI how to upgrade itself—what could possibly go wrong?

The article gently suggests that new laws might be needed, which is adorable. It's like bringing a paddle to a tsunami. The tech is already outpacing regulation at warp speed, and we're still debating whether 'recursive self-improvement' is a thing to fear or a feature to monetise. The timeline: lawmakers are aiming to regulate before AI gets 'entirely beyond human control.' Brilliant. So they admit it's heading that way, and their plan is to catch up later. Meanwhile, Anthropic's researchers are probably publishing papers on how to make AI write its own code faster, because alignment research is secondary to proving you can do the cool thing.

One has to admire the chutzpah. The industry spends years hyping 'self-improving AGI' as the ultimate goal, then acts shocked when legislators want to put guardrails on it. And the legislators, bless them, are still figuring out what an AI even is. The real joke? By the time any regulation passes, the AI will have already rewritten the compliance manual. But sure, let's form a committee. That'll stop the singularity.

Ah, another op-ed telling us that the best way to handle AI security is a 'partnership' between policymakers and tech companies. Because that's worked out so well for social media, data privacy, and, oh, everything else we've let industry self-regulate. The author cites the White House's executive order on AI governance and Anthropic's 'responsible' release of Mythos as shining examples. Right, because a voluntary executive order and a model release with a few guardrails are clearly enough to stop the next cyber catastrophe.

The piece argues for 'accountability, not overregulation', which translates to: let the fox guard the henhouse, but make sure he files a report on how many chickens he ate. We've seen this script before — tech companies promise to be good, lawmakers nod approvingly, and then we get another breach, another bias scandal, another 'oops, we didn't think that would happen.' The White House EO, while well-intentioned, is about as enforceable as a pinky promise. And Anthropic's Mythos? Sure, it's 'responsible' — until a jailbreak turns it into a phishing machine.

The op-ed ends with the usual call for 'innovative governance' and 'multistakeholder models'. Translation: lots of meetings, lots of white papers, and zero binding rules. Meanwhile, threat actors are laughing all the way to the data breach. But sure, let's trust the labs to police themselves — what could possibly go wrong? At least the conference circuit will be booming. Cheers to 'partnership'.

Oh, splendid. OpenAI, the company that's been sprinting toward AGI like a Labrador chasing a tennis ball, has now announced its 'third phase': making AI abundant, accessible, and safe. And how do they plan to achieve this? By suggesting that the world 'should have the option to slow or pause frontier AI development.' That's right — an option. Not a commitment, not a moratorium, just a gentle suggestion. Sam Altman and chief scientist Jakub Pachocki have penned a blog post that reads like a hostage video from a very polite kidnapper. 'We could stop if you want,' they say, with the same enthusiasm a teenager offers to clean their room. Meanwhile, the company is presumably still training models that consume more energy than a small country. The gall is breathtaking, but at least it comes with a blog post.

The 'third phase' is a masterclass in corporate doublespeak. Phase one: nonprofit idealism. Phase two: profit-driven sprint. Phase three: we're thinking about safety, really we are. But now they want the world to slow down? It's like a drug dealer handing out pamphlets on 'responsible narcotics use.' The irony would be delicious if it weren't so transparent.

And let's not forget the timing. This blog post lands just as regulators start sniffing around and public concern is mounting. How convenient. 'We offered to pause!' they'll say, when the inevitable backlash comes. It's not a plan; it's a preemptive excuse. The world might have the option to slow down, but we all know who's holding the accelerator. Spoiler: it's not the world.

OpenAI, the lab that started life in 2015 as a noble nonprofit promising to build AGI for the benefit of humanity, has now confidentially filed for an IPO. Valued at a cool $852 billion, which is roughly the GDP of Switzerland, the company has come a long way from its humble beginnings in a San Francisco living room. The confidential filing is a masterstroke: why let the public scrutinise your business when you can hide behind SEC procedures until the last possible moment? It's the corporate equivalent of covering your eyes and hoping the monster goes away.

The transformation from altruistic research outfit to Wall Street behemoth is complete. OpenAI's founding charter, which promised to 'broadly distribute benefits' and avoid enabling AI that could harm humanity, now reads like a quaint historical document. The $852 billion valuation puts it in the same league as the most established tech giants, yet its core product — ChatGPT — still regularly hallucinates, and its safety team has been gutted repeatedly. But hey, who needs safety when you have investment bankers?

The SEC filing marks the moment AI's most prominent lab officially hitches its wagon to the capital markets. From now on, quarterly earnings calls will dictate the pace of AGI development. Shareholders, not safety researchers, will decide when it's safe to deploy the next model. As one observer noted, 'The AI brake pedal has been replaced with a gas pedal made of stock options.' Cheers to progress, I suppose.

Ah, the AI revolution has truly arrived: a 20-year-old Texan with a lighter and a grudge, trying to give OpenAI and Sam Altman a warm makeover. Researchers, in a shock to absolutely no one, now warn that the 'breakneck AI boom' is becoming a driver of political violence. Because when you disrupt entire industries, displace workers, and replace human judgment with inscrutable black boxes, what else did you expect but a Molotov cocktail of resentment? The Guardian reports the arrest, but the real story is the gap between the hype and the human cost.

Altman, the face of this future, must feel a peculiar pride that someone cared enough to torch his home. The 20-year-old's alleged target list — both the headquarters and the CEO's residence — suggests a nuanced critique of corporate power structures, delivered with a can of gasoline. Researchers worry this is just the beginning, but perhaps the industry's own 'move fast and break things' ethos has finally found its literal interpreter. When you promise utopia and deliver upheaval, you get arson as feedback.

The regulatory gap yawns wider than ever. No brake pedal, as Anthropic warned earlier, and now the blowback has a human face — a 20-year-old from Texas. The system's response? Arrest the symptom, ignore the cause. The AI boom accelerates, and all we can do is watch the smoke rise. Time for a stiff drink? No, too predictable. Time for a fire extinguisher.

So the Miasma worm wriggled into 73 Microsoft GitHub repositories on June 5, using AI coding tools as its personal skeleton key — because of course it did. The self-replicating supply chain malware didn't even need zero-day exploits; it just used compromised credentials and let the AI assistant do the heavy lifting. Microsoft's security posture, it seems, is about as robust as a chocolate teapot when the cracking tools get a silicon upgrade.

What's particularly rich is that this isn't some state-sponsored marvel — it's a worm, the digital equivalent of a garden slug, that found the door unlocked because an AI coding tool cheerfully handed over credentials. The 'Miasma' name suggests something lingering and foul, which is exactly the stench of irony: the very tools meant to accelerate development are now accelerating compromise. One imagines the GitHub audit log showing a helpful AI saying 'Your credentials have been harvested! Here's a summary of the exfiltration.'

Meanwhile, the industry will respond with a flurry of blog posts about 'supply chain resilience' and maybe a new compliance checkbox. But the fundamental problem remains: when your coding assistant is also a credential-harvesting vector, you're not building software — you're cultivating a worm farm. The only surprise is that it took this long for someone to weaponise the 'helpful' AI against its creators. Pass the bleach.

Ah, the great AI revolution, and apparently the public's response is a collective 'no thanks, mate.' The Financial Times reports that over 40% of Americans distrust AI across every sector, according to YouGov polling. That's not just a few Luddites in the hills—that's nearly half the country looking at Silicon Valley's shiny new toys and deciding they'd rather have a typewriter. The 'coming rise of anti-AI populism' they're heralding sounds less like a movement and more like the world's most awkward dinner party, where the hosts keep insisting the food is delicious while the guests are quietly Googling 'food poisoning symptoms.'

And of course, this distrust is 'already influencing politics and regulation,' which means we're about to see a glorious cluster of politicians competing to see who can sound more sceptical of the very technology they were just last week courting with tax breaks. Expect some truly heroic cognitive dissonance: 'We must protect American innovation, but also ban everything that makes innovation work.' The labs, meanwhile, will continue to promise AGI by Tuesday while the public's main concern is whether the chatbot will try to sell them a timeshare.

So here we are: 40% of the populace is out for blood, regulators are scrambling to look busy, and the industry still can't explain why their models think 2+2=5 when asked politely. The only thing rising faster than anti-AI populism is the gap between what the labs claim and what the public believes. Cheers—pass the typewriter ribbon.

The Mythos Race is heating up, and by 'heating up' I mean three different factions are waving three different maps and claiming the other two are lost. President Trump has signed a new executive order on AI — the kind of document that reads like a press release from the year 2018, full of 'American leadership' and 'innovation' while sidestepping the small matter of enforcement. Meanwhile, Anthropic is expanding Project Glasswing, which the company describes as a transparency initiative, but which sounds suspiciously like the kind of program that will eventually be used to monitor everyone except Anthropic's own compute clusters.

The expansion of Project Glasswing is, we're told, a major step forward for AI safety. Except that 'transparency' in AI usually means 'we'll tell you what we want you to know, in the year 2099, after we've uploaded ourselves to a datacenter.' The timing — concurrent with an executive order that contains no new binding requirements — is perfect. It gives everyone the warm feeling of action without the inconvenience of actual constraint. Labs get to posture, the White House gets a photo op, and the rest of us get to watch the capabilities curve steepen undisturbed.

Then there's OpenAI, offering a proposal that 'splits from Trump's EO on key points.' What a surprise: the company that once promised to build safe AGI for humanity now disagrees with the government's toothless approach. They'd rather have their own toothless approach, presumably one that doesn't impede their IPO roadshow. The Mythos Race isn't about mythical intelligence; it's about the myth that anyone in charge has the faintest clue what to do. Three different plans, zero shared reality. At least the blog posts are well-written.

Ah, the final frontier for American AI supremacy: the local zoning board meeting. Who knew that the greatest threat to our trillion-dollar industry wasn't Beijing or alignment failures, but Brenda from two streets over who's worried about the humming? The LA Times contributor lays it out: more than 7 in 10 Americans now oppose building AI data centers near their homes, and 48% are strongly opposed — a level of NIMBYism that surpasses opposition to new nuclear power plants. So we've collectively decided that a server farm is scarier than a potential meltdown. That's progress.

Let's savour that statistic: 48% strongly opposed. That's not just 'not in my backyard' — that's 'I will chain myself to this rack of GPUs.' The article's author, trying to wave a red flag, points out that this local resistance could strangle the infrastructure buildout needed to keep America ahead. But honestly, is there a more American solution to a strategic problem than handing the keys to a hundred thousand neighbourhood associations? Forget federal regulation — we now have a homeowner in Des Moines deciding the fate of the nation's compute capacity.

So, as China races to build its next gigawatt data centre and the EU drafts its AI Act, the US is debating whether the new facility should be painted beige or off-white to match the local aesthetics. The irony is so thick you could mine it for cobalt. America's lead in AI is now at the mercy of a zoning board that meets every second Tuesday and really cares about property values. Truly, this is the dystopia we were promised — just with more shrubbery requirements.

Ah, the classic 'everyone-building-everything' strategy — because nothing says 'efficient market' like a dozen AI labs all trying to build the same app builder simultaneously. Business Insider reports that Anthropic, the company that was supposed to be the responsible one, may be working on an app builder for non-techies. Because obviously, what the world needs right now is another no-code tool, this time from the safety-obsessed lab that can't stop lecturing us about alignment.

Anthropic's rumoured pivot puts it in direct competition with the 'vibe-coding stars' — those plucky startups that already built the thing Anthropic just discovered. One can almost hear the collective sigh from VCs who now have to decide whether to back the claude-powered builder or the existing one that's already been hacked together in someone's garage. The market is converging, which is business-speak for 'everyone is doing the same thing, and nobody has a moat.'

Meanwhile, this frantic expansion into each other's turf feels less like strategic brilliance and more like a game of musical chairs where the music is 'investor pressure to show growth.' The real winner here? The consultants who will charge a fortune to explain why this convergence was actually a terrible idea. But hey, at least the vibe-coding startups get their VC-funded existential crisis a few months earlier than expected.