Category: Semafor

Ben’s view After someone blew a hole in the Nord Stream Pipeline deep under the Baltic Sea in September 2022, the global media debated a geopolitical whodunnit. The American media, bolstered by official statements from unnamed officials, suggested Russia was behind the attack. “US and Europe condemn ‘sabotage’ as suspicion ...

The Scoop When The New York Times announced that columnist Nick Kristof would return following a scuttled 2021 bid for governor of Oregon, the paper made a promise to readers. In a response to questions about Kristof’s return from Rolling Stone in 2022, the Times said that Kristof would refrain ...

The New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs in five games to become NBA champions on Saturday, delivering New York City’s first basketball title in 53 years and ending one of the longest losing streaks in US sports history. In a city where “mass unifying events tend to imply ...

A German arms company is in talks to build Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile, a sign of Kyiv’s growing clout in the defense industry as NATO members seek its expertise. The cruise missile has been used in attacks on Russian industry more than 100 miles from the frontline. The rise of ...

President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that the US and Iran had finalized a deal to extend their ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Pakistan said the agreement would be signed on Friday, and while there was no immediate confirmation from Tehran, Trump struck an optimistic note, saying, “Ships ...

The US government’s move to suspend foreign access to Anthropic’s powerful AI models injected fresh urgency into Europe’s plans for tech sovereignty. Washington’s “use of a ‘kill switch,’ long seen as a hypothetical threat, is a wake-up call,” Politico wrote, exposing Europe’s dependence on the US’ cutting-edge AI models. Several ...

Donald Trump will celebrate his 80th birthday on Sunday with a UFC fight at the White House, as the oldest-ever US president looks to eclipse recent political setbacks with a massive spectacle. The weekend’s pageantry — featuring a motocross competition and “who’s who” of legislators and top executives — reflects ...

, by Tanul Thakur. A critique of the US H-1B visa system authored by a former H-1B recipient and film critic, Thakur’s book follows the lives of three men over several decades, laying out schemes of worker exploitation, corporate tax avoidance, and the middlemen taking advantage of those desperate to ...

The Scoop The White House imposed export controls on Anthropic’s powerful Mythos AI model partly over suspicions that a China-linked group had accessed it, a person familiar with the matter said. The Trump administration on Friday directed Anthropic to limit access to Mythos, and its consumer version, known as Fable ...

The News Since the introduction of ChatGPT to the public, AI safety experts have been calling for a “pause” on the development of the most powerful AI models. Anthropic itself did so in a recent blog post. On Friday evening, that pause may finally have happened. But it came from ...