Category: Semafor

Iran and Oman were in the “final stages” of an agreement to establish a commercial route in the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran’s state media said Wednesday, though analysts cautioned the deal was unlikely to resolve the wider disputes fueling the conflict. Tehran has threatened to strike Gulf nations if Washington ...

The Scoop Quintessential San Francisco AI startup Polsia employs nobody and operates swarms of AI agents to help run other businesses. Its projected annual revenue skyrocketed almost overnight this year from $100,000 to $10 million, but so did its token spending, reaching a debilitating $1.2 million a month on Anthropic. ...

David’s view I doubt that anybody who bundled up for “Menorah in the D,” the 2023 kickoff of Hanukkah in Detroit, knew how much it would end up shaping the 2026 Senate primary. The event took place two months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel — in hindsight, a ...

Surveillance technology without accountability is a recipe for authoritarianism, but with strong guardrails and transparency, it can help stop crime, including crimes committed by law enforcement. An article in the Washington Post chronicled how police officers were caught abusing surveillance technology to stalk ex-wives and, in at least one case, ...

Reed’s view The White House says it discussed a framework for evaluating the cybersecurity risks of frontier AI models with OpenAI and Anthropic, but it doesn’t plan to release details publicly. The secrecy (frontier labs are being asked to submit the most powerful models for assessment 30 days before releasing ...

The head of Google DeepMind is stepping down from his role and moving into a chairman position, in a major shakeup at the AI research lab. Demis Hassabis, who founded DeepMind in 2010 before it was acquired in 2014, will also become chief scientist at Google parent company Alphabet. Other ...

The News The US has made permanent a pilot program requiring citizens of 50 countries — 30 of them African — to post bonds to obtain US tourist and business visas. Launched 12 months ago, the program instructed consular officers to set a bond of $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000, “based ...

President Donald Trump is spending his second day out west on Wednesday, with a planned speech in Las Vegas highlighting his administration’s efforts to address the cost of living. The trip, which began with an Republican National Committee fundraiser in California on Tuesday, comes at a dire time for the ...

The Trump administration told a handful of tech firms Tuesday that it will not publicly release its new framework for voluntary government reviews of advanced AI models, people familiar with the meeting told Semafor. The decision, reported first by Axios, is fueling industry concerns that firms not briefed on the ...

The News With the brutal Michigan primary behind them and Abdul El-Sayed looking likely to be their nominee, Senate Democrats are immediately refocusing on Republican nominee Mike Rogers, according to new details shared first with Semafor. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is out with a six-figure ad buy starting Wednesday ...