Political Wire

Mike Johnson Hopes AI Guardrails Are ‘Voluntary’

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“House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) who is joining a meeting of artificial intelligence officials in Washington later Tuesday, said that he favors ‘striking the right balance’ with the technology and hopes guardrails will be ‘voluntary,'” CNBC reports.

Said Johnson: “I hope it’s voluntary. We’ll find out what comes out of the meeting today. I think that that’s where they’re headed. I think they see the handwriting on the wall, and I think they want to ensure investors, you know, consumers, the American public, that they’re going to do this in a very safe way, and and that will, I think, put us in the right place.”

Financial Times: Trump to meet AI chiefs over safety outcry.

Trump Dined with the Anthropic CEO

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“President Donald Trump had a late dinner Sunday night with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, after Trump spent weeks dismissing Amodei’s calls for the industry to slow down AI development,” the Washington Post reports.

“The dinner was the first one-on-one meeting between the president and the head of Anthropic, one of the country’s leading AI firms, after months of tensions between the company and the administration. Trump has pursued policies to accelerate AI development, while Anthropic has called for greater caution and guardrails.”

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Anthropic’s CEO to Have Dinner with Trump

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“President Trump plans to host Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a private White House dinner on Sunday evening, sources familiar told Axios,” Axios reports.

“The dinner —the first one-on-one meeting between the two— is an indication of thawing relations between Anthropic and the administration, whose officials and allies have had longstanding tensions.”

Bonus Quote of the Day

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“Don’t develop your oil and gas, just buy it from us, well, that’s great for them and terrible for us. The same is true on data centers. If they can convince Americans, ‘You don’t want data centers here, you want to just rely on the Chinese for AI,’ that’s great for China, and it’s terrible for America.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), quoted by Fox News.

Hackers Say They Have Data On All FBI Employees

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“A high profile hacking group claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data ‘on all FBI employees and applicants,'” 404 Media reports.

“The data breach could be massively significant and may have all sorts of national security and counterintelligence implications. Criminals from the same ecosystem as ShinyHunters have previously used hacked data like phone records to track, intimidate, and harass the FBI agents investigating them.”

“The highly sensitive data could also be a boon to foreign intelligence agencies who want to better understand how one of the most important law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.S. operates. And if the data fell into the hands of more criminals, FBI agents and their spouses could face serious threats to their safety.”

NSA Paying Billions to Test AI Models

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“The National Security Agency told lawmakers that it is spending billions of dollars in taxpayer funds this year evaluating and testing advanced artificial intelligence models,” the Washington Sun reports.

“The price tag — which is significantly greater than previously known — has led lawmakers to believe that a more comprehensive AI regulatory system could cost the government tens of billions of dollars per year.”

The First Prediction-Market Election

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CNN: “All this wagering is scrambling nearly every aspect of the midterms — from campaigns to election officials, voters, donors and traders — according to interviews with 20 people involved in elections and prediction sites. Many have dubbed it the ‘first prediction-market election.'”

“Multiple election officials told CNN prediction platforms are fostering a new wave of disinformation and creating risks for possible insider trading within their own offices.”

The Biggest Economic Bet in U.S. History

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“The AI build-out is on track to become the biggest economic bet in U.S. history, dwarfing the investments made to fund other huge U.S. infrastructure projects such as the railroads, the highway system and the plumbing for the internet,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Total investment in data centers and related artificial-intelligence infrastructure is projected to total $10.3 trillion from 2025 to 2032, according to new estimates by economist Stijn van Nieuwerburgh published by the Brookings Institution. That is a staggering 3.6% of gross domestic product a year, on average. Never before has the U.S. economy been so dependent on the build-out of a single industry.”

“The investment is transforming every corner of the economy, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and minting new billionaires.”

Two Democrats Will Try to Force a Vote On AI Safety

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“Two Democratic senators are attempting to force a vote Thursday on a bill requiring artificial intelligence firms to submit their new models for government approval,” the Washington Sun reports.

“Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Brian Schatz of Hawaii will introduce a bill mandating that frontier companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI have the National Security Agency assess their models prior to release. Currently, the Trump administration has set up only an optional regime for testing the models.”

Trump Seeks to Rename Artificial Intelligence

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“President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that artificial intelligence will be renamed ‘super intelligence’ in all U.S. documents,” NewsNation reports.

Said Trump: “The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globality scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter called super intelligence. Changing the name.”

He added: “The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. It is not fake. It’s actually amazing. But we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports.”

Washington Sun: Trump says he’s ordering the government to call AI “super intelligence.”

An Army of Paid Creators Carpets the Web

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New York Times: “The accounts posting these messages aren’t run by celebrity influencers with massive engagement, legions of fans and lucrative product endorsement deals. Most have only a smattering of followers and, often, the people behind them aren’t even based in the United States.”

“Functioning more like birdshot than a single bullet, these high-volume social media campaigns represent the new vanguard of modern political influence, saturating the internet with a topic until it is all but unavoidable. That can help game social media network algorithms so that they treat coordinated content as organic, spreading the message even wider. Built from dozens or hundreds of posts from accounts you’ve never heard of, they amount to an echo chamber on a budget.”

Fake and Divisive Ads Proliferate in Israel’s First AI Election

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“In a recent video widely circulated online, Israel’s top justices and its attorney general are seen being dragged by security guards from a chaotic anti-government protest that never took place,” Bloomberg reports.

“The 33 seconds of emotionally-charged footage was originally posted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a fierce opponent of the judiciary, and triggered an immediate backlash. Critics said it incited violence, while supporters said it was justified because they accuse the leaders of Israel’s legal system of a left-wing plot to stymie the government’s policies.”

“But the depicted scenes are fake — no such protest took place and the video carries a tell-tale watermark to identify content made using artificial intelligence. Smotrich’s post was just the latest example of a deluge of AI-crafted distortions that are saturating the Israeli information environment just weeks before the country’s most consequential elections in decades.”

How Potential 2028 Candidates Are Talking About AI

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“The debate over artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping the early jockeying for the 2028 presidential race,” the New York Times reports.

“Recently, prospective Democratic candidates have engaged in a flurry of activity to promote more A.I. safeguards as concerns quickly rise about the risks associated with the pace of the technology.”

“Many Republicans have been more aligned with President Trump, who has urged against a slowdown and has vehemently rejected calls for new regulations, arguing that they could give China the upper hand, though at least one potential candidate has called for some guardrails.”

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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