selectiveecho

Writer, Editor (Selective Echo TBA), Critic, Arts/Culture Journalist. Contributor (The Utah Review), Immigration Reform Advocate. #BlackLivesMatter #BearsEars

[Michigan Football on UMGoBlue @UMGoBlog]

Football is essentially a simple game - block, tackle, run, throw. When you're 1 yd from the endzone it's really simple. Get the yard, score. Run twice up the middle, impose your will. You don't run the other way. Jason Beck can't help himself. He makes things way too hard #GoBlue 〽️

[Sina Toossi @SinaToossi]

This is wild: The Iran war has driven the cost of chartering an oil tanker from the US to China upwards of $79.6 million. This voyage averaged under $8 million before the war.

For comparison's sake, launching a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit costs $74 million!

[Sigal Samuel @SigalSamuel]

I'm seeing the Overton window shift this month. More & more of my sources are starting to say out loud: Hey Anthropic/OpenAI, you could just stop unilaterally! That'd be good! You're not playing 11-dimensional chess or a classic prisoner's dilemma, you're playing Russian Roulette

[Geoffrey Irving @geoffreyirving]

I think we should stop AI progress now, first unilaterally by key AI companies and then scaling up to more US companies and then China via international agreements. The reason for now is not that current AI models are the ones that could kill everyone, but because the coordinate steps take time. Immediate action means we have more time for the second steps.

When I tell this story to AI company folk, the typical response is "Yes pausing is good, but we should wait until the last minute when the very next model will be dangerous, and stop then."

What I realized recently is that this is being implicitly way more optimistic about government speed than I am (and I joined the UK government and was happy there for 2.5 years). They are imagining a world where, the moment the danger is imminent, a bunch of international coordination can happen on a dime.

Which is entirely inconsistent with their actual views about government! I'm the one that is more optimistic about government; why am I the one advocating for more time cushion to let the government story play out?

[Jason Kint @jason_kint]

This is exactly why we have a free and independent press: to question the most powerful role in the free world. Retaliatory attacks on journalists don’t project strength. They belittle the office.

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran announces it will now attack US bases in the region if any more commercial vessels continue to transit the US-backed southern Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz.

"This is a serious warning," the statement adds.

[devin @devinjzander]

Whole lotta bullshit below

[Jack Miller @politicalmiller]

The law breaking will continue until there are actual consequences. I cannot emphasize this enough — people need to go to jail.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

This is an insanely important development: Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are preparing to restructure the company so that Zuckerberg can pay the 5% one-time wealth tax he would owe if the billionaire tax passes in November.

He has said he would leave the state. He obviously was bluffing. That's $10 billion to California's education and health system. Just from him. Jensen Huang has also said he'd stay, that's another roughly $10 billion.

To be sure, some small number of billionaires will leave California, but most won't. What this also shows if that it is done on a national level, billionaires will fight it, but will ultimately fall in line.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Explosive story many years in the making, now out in Vanity Fair by Matthew Cole (who will be on Breaking Points next week, and publishing soon in @DropSiteNews):

Saudi Arabia and the UAE set up multi-billion slush funds for Jared Kushner to use.

Iran-Contra 2 here (except with Iran-Contra, at least the US got some hostages released. Not clear what we got out of this one.)

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

“This is Netanyahu’s last chance to do so. And he’s not going to leave until he turns every stone to be able to achieve it. Particularly knowing that either his career is going to end or the United States is going to go in a direction in which this no longer will be an option,” said Trita Parsi, a leading Iran expert and the executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute. “Trump, I suspect, has already made a decision that he’s going to go to war,” he added. “The Israelis have been very successful playing to his psychology, which is that he’s willing to take massive risks as long as he has the belief that it can get him a victory so that he avoids accepting defeat, which is so crucial for him. But it is a massive miscalculation that will make the situation 100 times worse.”

https://t.co/hmR9zCGzwX

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

If AI targets our banking systems, society breaks down WAY faster than most people expect.

[Sam Haselby @samhaselby]

From Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried to Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, there seem to be no lessons learned.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

It is hard to overstate the significance of this development. Historically, AIPAC sustained an aura of invincibility that ensured it won most battles by walkover - if you are perceived as invincible, the other side doesn't even bother to fight you.

Rather than invincibility, AIPAC's name now carries such toxicity that the group doesn't want its own name on its political donations.

[Luiza Jarovsky, PhD @LuizaJarovsky]

🚨 Many have not realized it yet, but there is a new 'cybersecurity game' going on, and it's AI vs. AI.

Meanwhile, we humans, and our imperfect institutions, systems, platforms, and governance frameworks, remain exposed in the middle of the AI crossfire, trying to catch up with the speed of the AI cyber fight.

Today, malicious actors can already rely on AI to find and exploit online vulnerabilities at scale, which would enable them to hack into, access, and control protected databases, documents, personal data, networks, grids, and more.

Unless cyber defense capabilities improve at scale and at a pace similar to that of cyberattack capabilities, there could soon be a situation in which users, website owners, governments, and institutions, including schools, hospitals, power grids, and other systems relying on internet connectivity, will be left scrambling to find solutions while people suffer the direct consequences of the hacks and unauthorized access.

As I write this edition of the newsletter, another cyber incident has been reported, as @MadisonMills22 reported below: U.S. banks have discovered unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts. Some are attempting actions that appear independent of user instructions.

This situation was, of course, predictable.

Every report on AI risk has warned that we might reach a point where AI fuels cyberattacks and makes them much harder to control.

We have no choice but to address it and plan for the future.

The most important lessons from the PHP incident, and from cyber incidents we will likely experience in the coming weeks, go far beyond cybersecurity, and professionals across fields and industries should be aware of them: (...CONTINUES...)

👉 CONTINUE reading my article (and join my newsletter's 102,700+ subscribers) below.

[Julia Black @mjnblack]

Things are moving so fast that everyone seems to have completely missed how insane it is that AI companies have been allowed to unleash agentic AI products with no regulatory guidelines.

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

The deep genius of Iran’s new strategy is that the Administration’s best response is to embrace the harebrained Israeli scheme to bomb Tehran. We may be looking at a really big escalation here. Both sides are desperate for a strategic decision. All the off-ramps are now gone.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

A lot of news in this new piece https://t.co/gY8tlDo3ho

[Jason Kint @jason_kint]

I’m a fool. I didn’t realize $25 billion wasn’t a lot of money to a company like Meta. It’s not even a quarter of capex…

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

JD Vance doubling down on the claim that Amy Acton and her brother are lying about being abused as children.

If he is so sure, then why did the state strip custody? Truly despicable given JD’s own upbringing.

What if his mom was still an addict and did an ad calling JD a liar for his book? Would he be ok with that? Soulless behavior.