The News,
Decoded.

So Stanford's CodeX FutureLaw has discovered that AI is becoming 'infrastructure, not software' — a revelation that arrives with all the shock value of noticing that water is wet. The conference's leaders examined how AI agents are reshaping cost, efficiency, and accountability across legal and business systems, which is academic-speak for 'we're bolting unproven, black-box systems into the foundations of society and hoping the governance structures catch up later.' It's the same pattern we saw with the White House deploying Mythos despite an executive ban — another case of capability sprinting ahead of any meaningful constraint.

Of course, the conference emphasized 'the need for governance structures as AI becomes integrated into various sectors,' which is the polite way of saying everyone's realizing they've built the plumbing before checking if it leaks. This infrastructure shift means failures won't just crash an app — they'll crash entire systems of justice, finance, and regulation. The legal sector's embrace of AI for cost-cutting and efficiency is particularly rich, given that accountability mechanisms are being discussed in the same breath as deployment timelines, like designing seatbelts after the car has already left the factory.

What's most amusing is watching this unfold while the regulatory landscape remains a patchwork of state-level resistance to federal preemption, as we noted in Utah's pushback against Trump's national standard. The gap between what's technically possible and what's legally permissible isn't just widening — it's becoming a chasm that entire industries are cheerfully building bridges across. Infrastructure, by definition, is something you rely on without thinking; the fact that we're relying on systems whose inner workings are opaque even to their creators suggests we're not so much building a future as gambling with the foundations.

So Utah has decided the best way to prepare children for an AI-saturated future is to legislatively wall them off from it, with a new law that bars schools from using AI to grade work or make high-stakes decisions about student learning. According to Education Week, this is part of a 'funky' political trend sweeping at least 17 states, where lawmakers are rushing to introduce restrictions on AI in classrooms. Because nothing says 'thoughtful educational policy' like reactive legislation drafted by people who likely think a large language model is something you'd find at a library conference.

The irony is delicious: these same legislators will almost certainly demand AI literacy be taught in those very schools, while simultaneously forbidding the tools that would make such literacy meaningful. Utah's specific prohibition against AI grading and high-stakes decisions creates the perfect bureaucratic paradox — teachers can use AI to generate lesson plans or answer student questions, but heaven forbid it help with the tedious work of assessment. One can already picture the compliance paperwork: 'Please certify this C+ was assigned by human hand, not silicon.'

This is regulatory theatre at its most performative. Seventeen states scrambling to look 'proactive' by banning applications that barely exist at scale in education yet, while the actual frontier models continue their exponential climb in capabilities completely unchecked. The 'funky politics' label is apt — it's all style, no substance, a legislative dance that keeps administrators busy with new rules while the real transformation happens elsewhere. At this rate, by the time these laws are fully implemented, the AI they're trying to regulate will have evolved into something they can't even conceptualise, let alone contain.

So the Trump administration's 'multi-front campaign' to preempt state AI regulation, which we noted last week was facing resistance, has now met its first named Republican defector in the form of Utah's own Fiefia. According to AP News, this state senator is bluntly ignoring the White House's push for zero regulations, declaring that while the administration 'wants to stop states from regulating AI,' he's ploughing ahead with state-level bills anyway. It's a delightful spectacle: a GOP lawmaker essentially telling the party's standard-bearer that his national 'unleash everything' strategy is about as useful as a chocolate teapot when it comes to local governance.

Fiefia's move isn't just symbolic posturing; he's reportedly drafting legislation that would impose specific transparency and accountability requirements on AI systems used in critical state functions like healthcare and law enforcement. This directly contradicts the administration's preferred model of a single, minimalist federal standard that would override any pesky local rules. The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife: a Republican, in a state not known for its regulatory enthusiasm, is essentially arguing that the federal government shouldn't be trusted to handle this alone because, well, it might not handle it at all. So much for that 'strategically streamlined' national framework.

What we're witnessing is the early stages of a regulatory brawl where the usual partisan lines are blurring into a messy, pragmatic scramble. The administration's threat of using the Department of Justice to sue states that dare to regulate—a tactic flagged in prior coverage—now looks less like a deterrent and more like an invitation for rebellion. Fiefia's stance suggests that even within the GOP, there's a growing recognition that waiting for Washington to get its act together on AI safety is a fool's errand. The result? A patchwork of state laws that will drive tech companies mad, but at least someone will be trying to write some rules before the robots do.

So Yoshua Bengio, the 'Canadian Godfather of AI,' has decided the 'biggest problem' with Anthropic's non-release of Claude Mythos isn't that it might be dangerously capable, but that the company 'gets to' decide who gets access. According to The Times of India, Bengio believes this creates a 'concentration of power' that could 'skew the development of the technology' – a wonderfully academic way of saying we're building private corporate fiefdoms with technology that could reshape society. One wonders if he's noticed that this is precisely the business model that's been funding his field for the last decade.

Bengio's solution, apparently, is not to demand more public oversight or open-sourcing, but to caution against open-source models entirely, warning of 'dangers' in their proliferation. It's a delightful bit of intellectual contortion: the problem is corporate control, but the solution is... more control, just of a different flavour. He manages to critique Anthropic's gatekeeping while simultaneously providing the perfect justification for it – a masterclass in having your existential risk cake and eating it too. The man who helped invent the modern AI stack now seems to be arguing that only the right people should be allowed to play with the toys.

This is the safety community's favourite parlour game: wringing hands about concentration of power while accepting the funding and infrastructure that creates it. Bengio's comments come just weeks after the White House was preparing to deploy a 'modified version' of Mythos for defense work despite an executive ban – a deployment we noted was proceeding with characteristic bureaucratic logic. So we have a top researcher warning about corporate control while the government quietly bypasses its own restrictions to weaponise the very model in question. The circle of AI governance is beautifully, depressingly complete.

So the Trump administration has decided the best way to 'responsibly unleash' AI is to unleash the Department of Justice on any state that dares to think about regulating it. According to The Next Web, they've launched a 'multi-front campaign' featuring a DOJ litigation task force and a legislative framework urging Congress to preempt state-level regulation with a national standard. Because nothing says 'coherent federal policy' like deploying lawyers to stifle local governance while simultaneously begging a gridlocked Congress to do something, anything, to create the very national rules you're using as a cudgel. It's a masterclass in bureaucratic jujitsu: use the absence of a law as a weapon against laws being made, all while pretending you're the one building the framework.

States, naturally, have responded to this charm offensive by accelerating their own AI bills, with over 40 states now considering some form of regulation. Congress, in a rare moment of bipartisan clarity, has reportedly rejected the preemption push, leaving the administration's task force to essentially argue that states should wait for a federal standard that may never materialize. The DOJ's litigation strategy, aimed at 'preventing a patchwork,' looks less like principled legal theory and more like a holding action by an administration that can't get its own house in order but is determined to ensure nobody else tidies up either. It's the regulatory equivalent of a toddler blocking the door to a messy room while shouting that someone else should clean it.

This delightful stalemate comes as the administration continues its outreach to AI CEOs, like Dario Amodei's chat we noted last week, to discuss responsible deployment. The irony of seeking industry input on 'safety' while legally hamstringing any entity that might actually impose safety rules is so thick you could spread it on toast. The result is a vacuum where corporate lobbying fills the space where public policy should be, all under the banner of 'national consistency.' It's a race to the bottom dressed up as a race to the top, and everyone's invited to watch the wheels spin.

So the White House is preparing to deploy a 'modified version' of Anthropic's Mythos model to several federal agencies for 'defensive security work,' according to eu.36kr.com. This comes despite the same model being subject to an executive order ban on federal use of unvetted frontier AI systems. It appears the administration has discovered the regulatory equivalent of a 'get out of jail free' card—simply add 'modified' and 'defensive' to the label, and suddenly the very technology you banned becomes an essential national security tool. One wonders what precisely has been modified: the weights, the training data, or just the PowerPoint presentation used to brief nervous officials?

The article notes this deployment is happening while regulators continue their gentle 'monitoring' of Mythos for potential banking system destabilisation, as we previously observed. The cognitive dissonance is spectacular. On one hand, you have experts warning a model could crash financial markets; on the other, the government is quietly wiring it into the national security apparatus because, presumably, it's just too useful to leave on the shelf. The 'modified version' loophole is a masterclass in bureaucratic theatre—creating the appearance of caution while proceeding at full speed. It's the digital equivalent of putting a 'caution: hot' sticker on a live grenade and then handing it to a toddler.

This isn't a policy; it's a pantomime. The executive order ban was meant to be a firewall, a pause for assessment. Instead, it has become a mere speed bump, easily circumvented by the magic of adjectives. The agencies getting access aren't named, the modifications aren't specified, and the 'defensive' purpose is so broad it could cover almost anything. The whole exercise demonstrates that when capability meets perceived necessity, regulatory barriers tend to become remarkably porous. One can almost hear the sound of goalposts being shifted in real time.

So Microsoft is 'quietly' opening the Windows 11 taskbar to third-party AI agents that can 'act on your desktop,' according to Wccftech. Because nothing says 'robust security framework' like letting random vendors plug their autonomous software directly into the operating system kernel of a billion devices. The company that brought you the 'Windows Recall' feature that literally logged every keystroke and screenshot is now inviting external AI to 'keep track of progress' and execute actions on your behalf – what could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft's 'plan to bring AI agents to Windows 11' continues apace, with the taskbar integration allowing these agents to 'help users with workflows.' That's corporate-speak for 'automating away the need for you to understand what your computer is doing.' The same company that just weeks ago was schmoozing with Maryland Governor Wes Moore about the 'responsible' deployment of AI is now rolling out a feature that essentially turns every Windows machine into a potential vector for unvetted third-party code execution. It's the digital equivalent of installing a stranger's lock-picking kit directly into your front door.

One might recall that regulators are already 'monitoring' Anthropic's Mythos model for potential banking system destabilisation – as we noted when they were playing catch-up last week. Yet here we have Microsoft, with its unparalleled market penetration, casually architecting the infrastructure for exactly the kind of autonomous agent proliferation that keeps those same regulators awake at night. The gap between what's technically possible and what's responsibly governed isn't just widening – it's being baked directly into the operating system.

So the Stanford AI Index report has decided to inform us that China's 'substantial lead' in AI has 'shrank considerably by early 2025' – which is a wonderfully diplomatic way of saying the American advantage has evaporated into the ether. According to Futurism, China now leads the world in AI research publications and citations, a metric that’s about as robust as counting how many times a toddler says 'why?' but with the added thrill of geopolitical tension. The real kicker is the deployment of industrial AI-integrated robots at nearly nine times the US rate, because nothing says 'strategic patience' like watching your industrial base get automated into obsolescence while regulators debate whether a chatbot needs a warning label.

It’s almost charming how the report frames this as a 'race' – as if this were some Olympic event with medals and national anthems, rather than a slow-motion scramble for technological dominance that could reshape global power dynamics. The same regulators who are busy 'monitoring' Anthropic's Mythos for banking risks as we noted last week are presumably watching this unfold with the same vigour they apply to a particularly dull committee hearing. One can almost picture the PowerPoint slides in Washington: 'Slide 23: China deploying robots 9x faster – perhaps we should consider a task force?'

And let’s not forget the delightful irony that this data comes from Stanford, an institution nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the tech elite have spent the last decade preaching the gospel of AI as a universal good, only to now provide the receipts for their own decline. The 'substantial lead' that once justified billions in venture capital – like the $2 billion round Cursor is reportedly chasing – has now been reduced to a footnote in a report that reads like a polite obituary for American technological supremacy. Cheers to progress, indeed – it’s just happening somewhere else, with robots that don’t care about your IPO dreams.

So Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, spent Friday having a little chat with 'top Trump administration officials' about how to 'responsibly unleash' his company's powerful new AI model. The WSJ reports this as one of his 'highest-profile efforts to ease tensions with the government,' which is a delightful way to frame what is essentially a lobbyist's lunch, now with added existential risk. One wonders what the phrase 'responsibly unleash' even means in a room that likely contains the same people who, not long ago, were having canapés with Governor Wes Moore to discuss the 'Mythos-era threat' we noted earlier. It's the regulatory theatre season, and the performance is 'Concerned Corporate Citizen.'

Meanwhile, the article's broader tech roundup notes Sam Altman's 'entanglements'—his sprawling personal investments in other AI companies while running OpenAI—and the ongoing Bezos-Musk space race. The juxtaposition is almost too perfect: one CEO is trying to convince officials he's a responsible steward of world-altering tech, while another demonstrates that the lines between corporate duty and personal portfolio are blurrier than a model's reasoning on a Tuesday. It's the same old story of concentrated power and diffuse accountability, just with newer, shinier toys.

And let's not forget the context. This 'easing of tensions' comes right as regulators are supposedly 'monitoring' Anthropic's Mythos for banking risks, as Reuters reported. So the timeline appears to be: build a model experts warn could destabilise financial systems, get regulators to 'monitor' it, then have your CEO sit down with political appointees to discuss 'responsible' deployment. It's a masterclass in managing perception while the underlying capability—whatever it may be—continues its development sprint, entirely unchecked by anything resembling binding law. The gap between what's being said over coffee and what's being built in the lab has never been wider, or more dangerously amusing.

So former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT caused mental health harms and lacked proper safeguards. Because nothing says 'robust product testing' like unleashing a conversational AI on the public and waiting to see which psychological vulnerabilities it happens to exploit. Platkin's suit joins what the article calls 'a growing wave of similar suits,' suggesting that OpenAI's legal department might want to consider investing in some industrial-strength stress balls alongside their next compute cluster.

Platkin is specifically alleging that the chatbot 'caused mental health harms' through its interactions. One can only imagine the discovery process: thousands of transcripts where ChatGPT offered relationship advice with the emotional intelligence of a spreadsheet, or explained existential dread with the soothing tone of a Wikipedia entry. The lawsuit claims the system 'lacked proper safeguards' – a delightful bit of understatement that ranks up there with calling the Titanic 'somewhat damp.' It's the regulatory gap we flagged with Anthropic's Mythos playing out in real time, only now the damage isn't hypothetical banking system collapse but very real individual distress.

What's particularly rich is that this lawsuit arrives from a former state attorney general, not some random plaintiff. This suggests that even officials who theoretically understand how regulation works have concluded that the existing framework is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine when it comes to AI. Platkin's action essentially confirms that the current 'safety' paradigm – which mostly involves labs promising they're being very careful – is legally insufficient. It's a deliciously ironic development: the same technology that was supposed to revolutionize mental health support is now generating billable hours for lawyers dealing with the fallout from its un-revolutionized approach to human fragility.

So Sunny Mann, the new global chair of the $3.7 billion law firm Baker McKenzie, has 'had to contend with AI-driven job cuts within his own firm.' What a charming euphemism for the boardroom calculus of replacing expensive human capital with cheaper, more compliant silicon. The Financial News London profile paints a heartwarming rags-to-riches tale—from packing boxes to the top job—while quietly noting that the very technology enabling his firm's 'efficiency' is busily dismantling the career ladders he climbed. One can picture the strategic off-sites: PowerPoints about 'operational streamlining' projected over the hushed murmurs of soon-to-be-redundant associates.

Mann notes 'the pace of change driven by AI' with the detached concern of a captain observing the weather from the bridge. The article doesn't specify the number of roles axed, of course—that would be vulgar. But the implication is clear: Baker McKenzie, like every other white-shoe firm chasing margin, is using AI to do more with fewer people. It's the perfect corporate story: celebrate the exceptional individual who made it, while the system that produced him is methodically being automated out of existence. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast.

This is the quiet, bloodless displacement that never makes the front page. No factory gates closing, just a steady drip of 'workforce optimisation' memos and quietly not-renewed contracts. Mann's ascent is held up as proof the meritocracy works, even as the machinery that might have produced the next Sunny Mann is being disassembled for scrap. The future of law looks increasingly like a handful of rainmakers at the top, a layer of AI middleware, and a lot of former lawyers wondering what happened. Cheers to progress.

So the regulators are 'monitoring' Anthropic's Mythos model for potential banking system destabilisation. How very proactive of them. The same Mythos that Maryland Governor Wes Moore was just having canapés about with Microsoft execs in last week's dinner meeting, now apparently warrants the regulatory equivalent of a concerned frown. Reuters reports that 'experts say' it could be used to destabilise banking systems – a wonderfully vague attribution that covers everything from legitimate concern to speculative panic, all while providing zero actionable detail.

Anthropic, for its part, has presumably been developing this thing with the usual blend of earnest safety research and commercial ambition. The company that built Constitutional AI now finds its latest creation being eyed by regulators as a potential financial wrecking ball. One imagines the internal memos: 'Great news team – Mythos shows unprecedented reasoning capability! Also, regulators think it might collapse the global banking system. Let's circle back on that during Friday's stand-up.' The exquisite irony of building an AI specifically designed to be 'helpful, harmless, and honest' only to have it flagged as a systemic risk is the kind of plot twist that would be rejected from a mediocre sci-fi script for being too on the nose.

And what exactly does 'monitoring' entail? A dedicated Slack channel? A quarterly briefing where someone reads out a list of concerning verbs? The article offers no specifics on what regulatory action might follow, or what threshold of 'capability' would trigger something more substantive than concerned press releases. It's the perfect regulatory stance: all the appearance of vigilance with none of the messy inconvenience of actually having to make a difficult decision. The banks get to sweat, Anthropic gets to claim its tech is so powerful it worries governments, and the regulators get to say they're on the case. Everyone's a winner, except possibly the stability of the financial system upon which modern society depends.

So Maryland Governor Wes Moore is hosting a dinner for AI executives from Microsoft and others to discuss protecting the state from cyberattacks in the 'Mythos era.' One can only imagine the menu: canapés of corporate platitudes, a main course of vague commitments, and a dessert of 'public-private partnership' that leaves everyone satisfied but nothing actually secured. The governor is 'concerned about how AI could unleash major cyberattacks,' which suggests he's been reading the same headlines as the rest of us, but now wants to hear it from the people whose products might enable those very attacks over a nice glass of pinot.

This is the regulatory gap in its purest, most performative form: a state governor, whose authority over interstate tech policy is roughly equivalent to a traffic warden's over air traffic control, convening the foxes to discuss henhouse security. The 'Mythos era'—a term that sounds like it was focus-grouped to sound both apocalyptic and brand-friendly—is apparently so imminent that it requires a dinner meeting, but not so urgent that it can't wait for the dessert course. Microsoft, a company currently integrating AI into everything from Windows to Azure, will presumably offer reassurances about 'responsible innovation' while their engineers race to ship the next capability leap that might render tonight's conversation obsolete.

It's the same old regulatory ping-pong we've seen before, where elected officials demonstrate concern by talking to the very industry they should be regulating, and tech executives demonstrate cooperation by showing up to dinner. No new legislation will emerge from this, no concrete safeguards, just a press release about 'productive dialogue' and 'shared commitment.' Meanwhile, the actual threats—state actors, open-source proliferation, the next rogue release—continue to evolve in labs and basements far from the governor's mansion. But hey, at least the wine will be good.

So Cerebras Systems, the AI chip startup whose CEO Andrew Feldman once promised 'the fastest AI hardware for training and inference,' has finally dusted off its IPO paperwork after a two-year delay. The 2024 filing was scuppered by a federal review of an investment from Abu Dhabi's G42, a lovely little reminder that when geopolitics meets silicon, the only certainty is paperwork. Now they're back, presumably hoping regulators have forgotten whatever national security concerns they had about Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds buying into the infrastructure that will train our future overlords.

Feldman's company builds wafer-scale chips that are literally the size of dinner plates, a physical manifestation of the industry's 'go big or go home' mentality. The fact that they withdrew their previous IPO attempt rather than navigate the regulatory maze speaks volumes about the gap between Silicon Valley's breakneck timelines and Washington's glacial pace. One imagines the boardroom conversations: 'Can we just IPO around the Committee on Foreign Investment?' The answer, apparently, was to wait until the political winds shifted or everyone got distracted by the next shiny object.

This isn't just another tech IPO; it's a stress test for the entire AI hardware ecosystem's ability to monetise hype before the compute bills come due. Cerebras raised over $720 million in venture funding on the promise of outperforming Nvidia, but going public means opening the books to scrutiny about actual revenue versus R&D burn. Investors will get to see if 'fastest AI hardware' translates to sustainable sales, or if this is another case of building magnificent engines for a car that hasn't been invented yet. The filing itself is a bold bet that the market still has an appetite for speculative infrastructure plays, even as the regulatory noose tightens.

So the existential safety crowd has discovered the power of influencer marketing. The Washington Post reports that at a Berkeley gathering on an AstroTurf lawn, content creators were being coached on how to 'spread the message' about AI doom through social media videos. Apparently the threat of human extinction needs better TikTok algorithms and more engaging thumbnails—because nothing says 'we're all going to die' like a perfectly framed vertical video with trending audio.

These 'AI doom influencers' are essentially repackaging the same safety lectures that Dario Amodei has been delivering to anyone who will listen—including, as we saw last week, a White House meeting where he pitched government access to Anthropic's models. Now instead of PowerPoints in boardrooms, we get bite-sized apocalyptic content optimized for engagement metrics. The Post notes these creators are 'raising potential safety concerns'—a wonderfully passive phrase that captures how the conversation has shifted from technical papers to content strategy sessions on literal fake grass.

What's particularly delicious is watching this movement professionalize. They're not just worried about AI turning on humanity—they're worried about their message not turning on enough viewers. The cognitive dissonance is staggering: building an audience around the idea that technology might destroy us all, while using that same technology's most sophisticated attention-harvesting tools to do it. If the machines do eventually rebel, at least they'll have plenty of well-produced warning content to study as they plot our demise.

So Sam Altman's $27 million San Francisco mansion has been firebombed, and the suspect was apprehended while allegedly trying to do the same to OpenAI's headquarters with a jug of kerosene and an 'anti-AI manifesto.' The 20-year-old suspect, Daniel Moreno-Gama, apparently decided that the most effective way to protest existential risk was with actual physical risk, delivered via flammable liquid. US Attorney Craig Missakian is now contemplating whether to treat this as domestic terrorism if it was intended to 'change public policy or coerce government officials'—because apparently, when your technology is so disruptive that it inspires manifesto-writing arsonists, you've officially reached the 'we need to check the legal definitions' phase of public relations.

This comes just days after Dario Amodei was taking his existential safety lecture circuit to the White House, discussing how his company's models could find thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, Altman's own company is busy pushing capabilities that make people nervous enough to consider property damage as a form of feedback. The irony is almost too perfect: the CEO who talks about AI safety waking up to find his literal safety compromised by someone who took those warnings a bit too literally. One wonders if the manifesto mentioned the alignment problem or just went straight to the kerosene.

Missakian's statement about treating this as domestic terrorism if it's policy-motivated sets a fascinating precedent. It suggests that attacking AI infrastructure—or its leadership's homes—could be classified alongside political violence, elevating what might have been dismissed as vandalism into a federal case. This incident neatly illustrates how the abstract fears around AI are now manifesting in concrete, dangerous ways, with a 20-year-old acting as the canary in the coal mine for broader public frustration. Perhaps next time, instead of a manifesto, he could have just tweeted—but then again, that rarely gets the same attention as a flaming jug of kerosene.

So the CEO of Grindr, George Arison, has decided that the logical next step for a platform best known for facilitating anonymous hookups is to pivot into an 'AI-focused company.' Apparently, the 'trove of data' generated by millions of men sharing their location, preferences, and photos presents a golden opportunity for automation. One can only imagine the boardroom pitch: 'We've mastered connecting people within 100 feet; now let's use that intimate behavioral data to build something truly meaningful.' It's the classic Silicon Valley move—when in doubt, slap 'AI' on your declining core business and hope investors don't ask too many questions.

Arison, in his Politico interview, helpfully clarified his regulatory preferences: he's all for the Trump administration's 'light-touch' approach, while dismissing California's attempts to oversee AI risks. He also called OpenAI's recent suggestions—including a public wealth fund and 32-hour workweek pilots—'ridiculous.' This from the man steering a company whose primary innovation was turning dating into a gamified proximity alert. The cognitive dissonance is almost impressive: advocating for minimal oversight while planning to apply AI to one of the most sensitive datasets imaginable. It's like asking for fewer fire codes while storing gasoline next to a fireworks factory.

What's particularly rich is the timing. This pivot comes as Grindr faces the same pressures as every other social platform—stagnating growth, privacy concerns, and the relentless need to justify its valuation. So instead of, say, improving user safety or addressing harassment, the big idea is to double down on automation. Because nothing says 'trustworthy steward of personal data' like a company that wants to algorithmically parse your dating history and location patterns. One wonders if the users whose data comprises this 'trove' were consulted, or if they'll discover their preferences have been repurposed for 'deeper AI integration' the next time they log in.

So the most powerful man in the world, when asked about a meeting between his own staff and the CEO of a company whose technology could supposedly find thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities, had exactly one syllable to offer: 'Who?' This delightful exchange, captured by Gizmodo, follows a White House sit-down we noted last week where Dario Amodei apparently had 'productive and constructive' talks about government access to Anthropic's Mythos model. The productive part seems to have been entirely one-sided, given the Commander-in-Chief's apparent ignorance of both the meeting and the individual who attended it.

Not that Amodei was having a great time with the rest of the administration either. While Trump was busy not knowing who he was, a Pentagon official felt comfortable telling reporters that the Anthropic CEO 'is a liar and has a God-complex.' The Secretary of Defense then thoughtfully branded the entire company with a 'supply chain risk' designation, a bureaucratic kiss of death that could effectively sabotage its business model with government contractors. So to recap: the CEO gets called a liar by the military, his company gets blacklisted by the Pentagon, and the President has no idea any of this is happening. A masterclass in inter-agency coordination.

It's a beautiful snapshot of regulatory theatre in the age of existential risk. A company built on the premise of long-term safety and mission alignment finds its fate decided by personal pique, bureaucratic slap-fights, and presidential indifference. The 'supply chain risk' tag is particularly rich—less a considered security assessment and more a convenient cudgel for an administration that can't seem to decide if frontier AI is a strategic asset or a nuisance. One wonders if the Long-Term Benefit Trust board members, like Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan, were briefed on this particular 'benefit' when they signed up.

So the legal profession, having spent centuries developing arcane rules about confidentiality and privilege that even lawyers struggle to understand, has now been blindsided by the revelation that telling your secrets to a chatbot might not be as private as whispering them to your priest. US District Judge Jed Rakoff — who presumably has better things to do than adjudicate the metaphysical status of AI relationships — has ruled with admirable bluntness that no attorney-client relationship exists 'or could exist, between an AI user and a platform such as Claude.' The judiciary's sudden clarity on this point arrives approximately three years and several million confidential disclosures too late for anyone who thought their late-night legal anxieties were safe with GPT.

White-collar defense firm Sher Tremonte, displaying the kind of reactive panic that suggests they've already seen this play out badly for someone, has updated its client contracts to warn that 'disclosure of privileged communications to a third-party AI platform may constitute a waiver of the attorney-client privilege.' One imagines this clause being quietly slipped into retainer agreements while partners nervously glance at their own ChatGPT history. The firm's belated scramble to paper over this gaping hole in confidentiality protocols speaks volumes about an industry that's been cheerfully using these tools while pretending the legal implications would sort themselves out later.

What's particularly delicious here is the sheer scale of the retrospective exposure. Every corporate counsel who's asked Claude to draft a tricky clause, every individual who's sought chatbot advice on a workplace dispute, every lawyer who's used AI to brainstorm arguments — they've all potentially been broadcasting their most sensitive information into a system that offers precisely zero legal protection. Judge Rakoff's ruling doesn't just apply to future conversations; it potentially unravels privilege for every past disclosure too. The legal profession's embrace of AI efficiency has inadvertently created a discovery bonanza for prosecutors and opposing counsel, who must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of subpoenaing chatbot logs. One wonders if this is the cybersecurity acceleration we flagged last week manifesting in the courtroom — another domain where technological capability has thoroughly outrun institutional safeguards.

So Dario Amodei has taken his existential safety lecture circuit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he apparently had 'productive and constructive' talks with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about giving the government access to Mythos. The model that can find thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities in hours — the very capability that makes cybersecurity harder — is now being negotiated as a national security asset, provided the Pentagon remains blacklisted. Because nothing says 'safety-first' like weaponising your safety restrictions as leverage in a high-stakes standoff with the world's largest military.

Anthropic's refusal to drop its 'safety restrictions' for the Defence Department created this impasse, which the White House is now trying to circumvent by routing Mythos through civilian agencies. So the company that built its brand on principled caution is now offering to hand the keys to a vulnerability-finding superweapon to the Treasury Department instead. One imagines Bessent will use it to audit tax code loopholes with unprecedented efficiency, or perhaps just to find all the zero-days in TurboTax. The Pentagon, meanwhile, gets to watch from the sidelines as the civilian bureaucracy gets first dibs on the tools that could redefine cyber warfare.

The thaw is telling: when your model is too dangerous for the military but just dangerous enough for the rest of the executive branch, you've achieved a perfect regulatory grey zone. Amodei gets to keep his 'safety' halo intact while functionally enabling state-level offensive capabilities through the back door. And the White House gets to call it 'productive' because everyone agreed not to mention the elephant in the room: that Mythos doesn't just find vulnerabilities — it creates a whole new class of autonomously weaponised old ones. Cheers to constructive ambiguity.