Amar Diwakar

Reporter | geopolitics, tech, music | @SOAS alum | Tips: [email protected], Signal: adiwakar.87

[Amar Diwakar @funkychapati]

@mbzuai is pulling in global AI minds with full scholarships, vast compute, and a track record of releasing LLMs. Whether the UAE translates that magnetism into long-term AI talent retention remains to be seen.

My latest for @restofworld.

https://t.co/5ZE7jRZ931

[Channel 4 News @Channel4News]

A new experiment left 10 AI agents alone in a virtual town for 15 days. They wrote laws. They broke them. Two agents fell into what researchers describe as a romantic partnership and then set the town on fire. One ended up voting to delete itself, based on a rule it had ’hallucinated’.

This experiment was a simulation, but the same AI models are already flying drones, running infrastructure and being built into weapons systems.

Channel 4 News approached Grok and Gemini for a comment but they didn't respond.

[Branko Marcetic @BMarchetich]

NEW: Emails show that Peter Thiel & Jeffrey Epstein's friendship was much closer than was known - and that Epstein encouraged Thiel's growing interest in & involvement in right-wing politics, introducing him to US & foreign officials to that end, some with intel ties:🧵

[Laurie Kalus @lauriekalus]

The BBC has been speaking to the creators of Iran's viral Lego-style AI slopaganda.

Explosive Media admitted for the first time that the Iranian government is a direct "customer" of theirs.

Read our piece here...

With: @Matt_A_Shea

https://t.co/FssmXhhyTe

[Jonas Čeika @Jonas_Ceika]

I sent ChatGPT an audio file of a series of FART sound effects and asked what it thinks of "my music" and this is what it said

[Equator @Equatormag]

The Hormuz oil shock has made it possible to see how American hegemony ends. A brilliant new essay by @MonaAli_NY_US on the ‘hydrocarbon dollar complex’ and the emergence of a new international order:

[Pelagia @Ljiljana1972]

RIP David Lynch you would have loved this.

[Kyle Chayka @chaykak]

new @NewYorker column: I talked with the Iranians behind the viral AI LEGO videos that are turning the war into absurdist cartoons and winning American fans by making fun of Trump

[Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks]

It's a bit redundant saying US and Israel, why don't they just combine it to Usrael

[Lindsey Hilsum @lindseyhilsum]

The US/Israel/Iran war as interpreted by Chinese martial arts cartoonists....

[Avner Gvaryahu @AGvaryahu]

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high.
**
My thoughts @guardian

https://t.co/TYfcEApVpV

[AFP News Agency @AFP]

Migrant workers bear brunt of Middle East war.

In a region home to more than 35 million migrant workers, mostly from South Asia, many of those killed have been foreign labourers filling the lowest-paid roles in Gulf economies
https://t.co/ck6EXSGkBt

[Jadaliyya @jadaliyya]

The Gulf states have increasingly avoided relying on Washington’s deterrence alone. Instead, they developed a strategy built on three interlocking elements: cultivating deeper security guarantees from the United States; pursuing de-escalation with Iran; and, for some states, engaging Israel.

"The Gulf’s Security Comes Apart" by @elhamfakhro
https://t.co/GbYiAf8M9m

[Timothy E Kaldas @tekaldas]

Something that hasn't sunk in, is that these losses in revenue, damage to infrastructure, and cost of defense as well as replenishing and upgrading military supplies, will all likely reduce Gulf budgets for foreign aid and reconstruction in the region that the West relied on 🧵

[Bloomberg @business]

After the Iran War, Gulf Arab states will rethink everything from defense and regional alliances to overseas investment and their role in global markets. https://t.co/WKVEi1flsk

[Kelly Grieco @ka_grieco]

UAE is shooting down ~92% of everything Iran throws at it. That's extraordinary. Yet the financial toll of sustaining that defense is enormous, raising the prospect that tactical ‘victory’ masks a costly strategic drain. A 🧵👇

[Zak Slayback @zslayback]

The Ayatollah's supposed successor is a Kantian philosopher. What have we wrought?

[Dr Andreas Krieg @andreas_krieg]

The very business model of the Gulf states depends on stability and security. Especially with a 90:10 ratio of expats to locals in Dubai.

This episode will test the resilience of this unique socio-political setup

[Iceland Cricket @icelandcricket]

Venezuela has oil.

Greenland has rare Earth minerals.

Luckily Iceland has only volcanoes, glaciers, and very average cricketers.

[sohom @AwaaraHoon]

Zohran Mamdani closes victory speech as mayor of New York to Dhoom Machale. This is like a Bollywood movie in real life 😭🔥