NEW: Over the last few days I watched 350+ campaign ads going back to 2018. What I found: Dems' rhetoric about the political establishment and their own party has taken a drastically negative turn this year. Candidates and operatives told @axios why: axios.com/2026/09/25/democra…

DC circuit unsurprisingly rules in favor of the Pentagon's argument that Anthropic is a supply chain risk. It's an early procedural loss that doesn't impact status quo for company after it was denied interim relief in April. Next likely step: Anthropic requests an "en banc review" or full DC circuit review. If company loses this one it would be a bigger deal that could trigger an appeal to supreme court.

Scoop: Trump, Johnson and tech CEOs will meet on Sept. 29 as pressure on Washington to regulate AI industry mounts

The creation of AI billionaire super PAC Leading the Future helped mobilize a rival network of wealthy donors pushing for AI safeguards. On the rise of a new donor class, including over $10 million in hard-dollar donations and over $85 million raised: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Scoop: The National Security Agency is spending billions this year on testing AI models - far more than previously known Per a classified NSA estimate described by sources Compute costs for AI have exploded - including for taxpayers washingtonsun.com/technology…

We have a new acronym for you: SAFA. The Google, OpenAI and Anthropic AI safety body is starting to take shape, with a tentative name of the Standards Authority for Frontier AI and hopes to launch by the end of the year or early next. W/ @steph_palazzolo Lots of details here including: - Former White House AI adviser Sriram Krishnan was approached for CEO, and David Friedberg and Condoleezza Rice considered for chair - There's an active debate over whether the body should conduct testing itself, amid concerns about lack of resources for CAISI - After the effort for a FINRA-like body lost steam in the White House, SAFA would proceed independently at first, with optimism for a public-private partnership in the future - SAFA could work together with a previous industry consortium, the Frontier Model Forum - There's widespread industry skepticism about the project from outside the three AI labs You can read all about it here: theinformation.com/articles/…

EXCLUSIVE: Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Trump is "not really dug in" against guardrails for AI, despite the president's defiance axios.com/2026/09/23/trump-t…

Scoop: A memo circulating the White House places Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the center of effective altruism as the movement is increasingly politicized ahead of midterms. Reminder: The EA movement includes many participants and players, and AI safety concerns are one of many areas of focus. w/@MarcACaputo axios.com/2026/09/24/trump-a…

A new memo started circulating in the White House & among Trump allies this week that targets Anthopic’s leader Dario Amodei & some of the off-the-wall beliefs of the effective altruism philosophy linked to him @m_ccuri & I axios.com/2026/09/24/trump-a…

AI can't be scaled safely in the current full-speed ahead, multi trillion-dollar race, @DKokotajlo tells me. Included in the story: Daniel, who left OpenAI over safety concerns, has since been invited back to speak with employees about AI safety. axios.com/2026/09/22/ai-safe…

Re "notification mechanism, I can't stop thinking about this point @mattsheehan88 made recently: maybe it should be via fax. Sounds crazy, but read his argument - > Matt: We have had a lot of these crisis communication lines on military issues, and the U.S. complaint is always: Oh, the Chinese side doesn’t pick up the phone when we call them. And that’s a real issue. I think one mitigation to that is — somewhat ironic — not to use a phone but to use a fax machine. >Ezra: Literal faxes? > Matt: Literal faxes. It has a logic to it, too. Because the political system there is not a system of empowered individuals. It’s a system of committees and a system of documents. So when our treasury secretary — someone who feels very empowered on the U.S. side — picks up the phone and is like: Give me some answers, He Lifeng — or other Chinese counterpart — they’re kind of like: Eh, not really ready to give you answers on the fly. Much better to send a document over to their system that they can review, they can bring it to their committee, they can come up with their understanding and response and send something back. So something in that vein, that at least puts a little bit of a safety net on these incidents that — I think something like that is pretty likely to happen in the next year. (from nytimes.com/2026/09/15/opini… )

Nvidia facing signs of resistance on Capitol Hill as AI politics take a turn. One Senate aide said Jensen Huang’s recent visits have “repeatedly been seen as tone deaf, as he’s openly dismissed or downplayed the risks of AI." @kelseybrugger @_arihawkins politico.com/news/2026/09/21…

Trump's call for "AI Force" sets off weekend scramble axios.com/2026/09/21/trump-a…

I'm writing about people who've changed their minds about the impact of AI. If this is you, DM me here or on Signal at madymills.21

Full story here with cover art by @laurenbulbin @chase_sutton99 politico.com/news/magazine/2…

On a potential AI slowdown, Treasury Sec. Bessent said that the U.S. and China discussed a mechanism called the U.S.-China AI dialogue and have agreed to meet again. The U.S. proposed a notification mechanism between the two countries and “we want a shared vision of common goals and threats.” The notification system for incidents would be whether something rises up to the national security level from AI. “We think that just like any cross-border activity, moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and number two AI powers in the world is very important.” U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer said that U.S. chip export controls were not on the agenda.

NEW: The US military was prepared to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this spring -- during war with Iran -- after an intel report concluded it was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. But just before the planned operation, officials discovered the report had been generated w/ help of AI & chatbot used by the analyst inaccurately identified what the ship was carrying, sources tell @KatieBoLillis & me.

NEW: The White House responded to industry confusion about its voluntary AI framework, saying "these people are not 12 years olds" and noting companies have the most expertise. Why it matters: Amid calls to regulate AI in a trustworthy manner, the White House favors a solution where the industry polices itself. The White House also weighed in on Elon Musk's U.S.-China peer review approach to test advanced AI, saying "it has always been supportive of the industry collaborating with each other" and "we do not need to consider, sign off on, or approve of such activity." axios.com/2026/09/18/ai-safe…

@ the house

NEWS on potential U.S.-China AI safety collaboration -- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells Axios: "we are open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of our two systems. We expect our discussions to cover both open and closed weight models." The bottom line: While a major breakthrough in U.S.-China safety cooperation remains a tall order, Bessent's involvement signals room for engagement on AI between the competing countries. w/@MarcACaputo axios.com/2026/09/16/us-open…