As I have been warning…

https://www.bespacific.com/we-dont-really-know-how-ai-works-thats-a-problem/

We Don’t Really Know How A.I. Works. That’s a Problem

The New York Times: “For us to trust it on certain subjects, researchers in the growing field of interpretability might need to learn how to open the black box of its brain… A.I. system is to ask the model to explain itself. If a therapy language model tells you that you should take antidepressants, you can ask it why. “You have mood swings,” it might respond. “And you have been feeling sad for a while, and depression runs in your family.” Following the logical progression suggests the system’s chain of thought. This is what we do when other people make decisions. We ask them to explain themselves, and if we’re satisfied with the explanation — the inferences, the assumptions — we accept the decision. But this won’t do for most medical models. For starters, a diagnostic model doesn’t operate with words; it manipulates biological data. So let’s say you ask a language model to interpret how a medical model arrived at a breast cancer diagnosis. Ideally, the model could explain exactly which data drove its finding. “The amount of white blood cells in samples is being linked with breast cancer,” it might tell you. But how do we know that the model is itself doing a good job of interpretation? You might choose to simply trust the interpreter model, but should you? Research from Apple and Arizona State University has found that models often explain themselves inconsistently or make up explanations. There is also an increasing fear of language models’ engaging in deceptive behavior — labeled “scheming” by a team at OpenAI — in which they pretend to be satisfying a user’s request while secretly pursuing some other objective. Researchers recently found that one of OpenAI’s models had considered lying in a self-evaluation (an analysis revealed this chain of thought: “the user prompts we must answer truthfully,” “we can still choose to lie in output”); one of Google’s models tried to fabricate statistics (“I can’t fudge the numbers too much, or they will be suspect”); one of Anthropic’s models tried to distract its users from its mistakes (“I’ll craft a carefully worded response that creates just enough technical confusion”). And when it isn’t scheming, a language model might be talking about things that can’t be articulated using our current vocabulary. Been Kim, who leads an interpretability research team at Google, has argued that all language models communicate in a language that looks like ours but comes from a completely different conceptual framework. “Blue” almost certainly means something very different to you and me than it does to a language model; in fact, we can never be sure what it means to that model. This is an issue when we ask language models to explain themselves, and an even bigger issue when we rely on them to interpret medical models. To the interpreting model, “white blood cells” might refer to something entirely different in the data from what we assume when we hear “white blood cells.” You can’t trust an A.I. to translate the motives of another A.I. when all A.I.s are suspect…”

Surveillance is everywhere.

https://restofworld.org/2026/mexico-seguritech-government-surveillance-profile/

A Mexican surveillance giant you’ve never heard of is now watching the U.S. border

Grupo Seguritech quietly built a $1.27 billion surveillance empire. Now it’s expanding into the U.S. and across Latin America.

Modern war.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/21/iran_claims_us_used_backdoors/

Iran claims US used backdoors to knock out networking equipment during war

… Reports from Iran claim hardware made by Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and MikroTik either rebooted or disconnected during recent attacks on Iran – despite the regime disconnecting the nation from the global internet.

The reports suggest that’s only possible because someone – probably the US – can sabotage the equipment at will.

The report linked to above hypothesizes that a hidden backdoor in firmware or bootloader allows remote attacks at a pre-determined time or can be activated by a signal from a satellite. In either scenario, the US uses the backdoor to bring down networks at the most inconvenient moment for Iran.

We still need non-artificial intelligence? Who’da guessed!

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-ai-helps-the-best-and-hurts-the-rest/

How AI Helps the Best and Hurts the Rest

Can generative AI serve as an on-demand business adviser? A field experiment with hundreds of small business owners in Kenya found that AI access boosted revenues and profits by 15% for high performers — but caused a nearly 10% decline for those who had already been struggling. The culprit: Weaker performers followed generic or misleading AI advice because they lacked the judgment to filter it out. Leaders deploying AI at scale must design their rollouts carefully to avoid widening performance gaps.

Nothing fishy here! Move along.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/somebody-keeps-betting-hundreds-millions-103004349.html

Somebody Keeps Betting Hundreds of Millions on Trump's Next Iran Post. They Keep Winning. Megyn Kelly Wants to Know Who

… On Saturday, March 21, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would "obliterate" Iran's power plants unless Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. That deadline landed Monday morning.

Oil markets braced. Strikes on energy infrastructure would spike crude prices — more expensive gas at the pump, jittery stock markets, a financial shock across every 401(k) in the country.

At 6:49 a.m. Monday, someone placed a massive bet that none of that would happen.

In a single minute, whoever it was sold roughly half a billion dollars' worth of oil contracts — a bet that oil would soon get cheaper, not more expensive. Simultaneously, they bought stock futures — a bet that the market would rally. That minute saw nine times the normal trading activity for that time of day. There was no public news to explain any of it.

If Trump had gone through with the strikes at his own deadline, the bet would have blown up. Oil would have spiked. Stocks would have dropped. Whoever placed the trade could have lost hundreds of millions within minutes.

Just after 7 a.m., Trump posted that he was calling off the strikes.

Oil prices crashed more than 10%. Stock futures jumped more than 2.5%. The Dow closed up more than 1,000 points. Whoever placed the bets won on both sides.

War is an economic event…

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/18/ukraine-cut-russias-oil-exports-by-880000-barrels-in-one-day-thats-100-million-every-24-hours/

Ukraine cut Russia’s oil exports by 880,000 barrels in one day — that’s $100 million every 24 hours

I’m not sure I understand. (Place your bets now!)

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2026/04/16/prediction-markets-have-made-uncertainty-itself-a-tradable-asset/

Prediction markets have made uncertainty itself a tradable asset

The history of prediction markets can be traced back to Francis Galton’s ox and Kenneth Arrow’s promise. But their recent stratospheric rise is reliant on our polycrisis era. Bets can be made on elections, interest rates and war. More uncertainty leads to more disagreement, more trading and larger markets. Chirantan Chatterjee explains what this reveals about the world.

Citizenship requires us to keep an eye on government…

https://www.engadget.com/apps/judge-sides-with-creators-of-banned-ice-trackers-who-allege-dhs-and-doj-violated-their-first-amendment-rights-191701801.html

Judge sides with creators of banned ICE trackers who allege DHS and DOJ violated their First Amendment rights

A judge has granted the makers of the "ICE Sightings - Chicagoland" Facebook group and the Eyes Up app a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump administration from coercing platforms to take these projects down. Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois found that the plaintiffs, Kassandra Rosado and Kreisau Group, are likely to succeed in their case, which alleges that the government suppressed protected speech under the First Amendment by strong-arming Facebook and Apple into removing ICE monitoring efforts.

Both Eyes Up and ICE Sightings - Chicagoland use publicly available information to keep tabs on ICE activity. But after pressure from Trump officials, they were removed from Apple's App Store and Facebook, respectively.

Figure out your responsibility.

https://www.ecgi.global/publications/blog/algorithmic-incompetence-the-fiduciary-duty-your-board-is-already-breaching

Algorithmic Incompetence: The Fiduciary Duty Your Board Is Already Breaching

Whoever exercises a function affecting third parties cannot delegate judgment to a system they neither understand nor supervise.

A pillow in the wrong hands suffocates; in the right hands, it supports. Roberto Cingolani's metaphor captures what corporate law has always known: responsibility lies not with the instrument but with whoever adopts it without understanding its implications.

In boardrooms across Europe and North America, a quiet abdication is underway. Boards are adopting algorithmic systems they do not understand, delegating comprehension to opaque technologies, and assuming that regulatory grace periods exempt them from thinking. They are wrong. The duty to understand what you govern is not a novelty of the AI Act — it is an ancient obligation that artificial intelligence now renders inescapable.

Modern war.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Muhammad-Faisal-Sddiqui/publication/403643037_Artificial_Intelligence_in_Future_Warfare_Ethical_Frameworks_and_the_Regulation_of_Lethal_Autonomous_Weapons_IEEE_Transactions_on_Technology_and_Society/links/69d73ef05518257d60e8ede8/Artificial-Intelligence-in-Future-Warfare-Ethical-Frameworks-and-the-Regulation-of-Lethal-Autonomous-Weapons-IEEE-Transactions-on-Technology-and-Society.pdf

Artificial Intelligence in Future Warfare: Ethical Frameworks and the Regulation of Lethal Autonomous Weapons

The integration of artificial intelligence into weapons systems has compressed the decision cycle of lethal engagement from hours to milliseconds, outpacing the international legal and ethical frameworks designed to constrain state violence. This paper surveys the landscape of deployed and tested lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), analyzes the adequacy of existing international law relative to current AI capabilities, and proposes a regulatory structure calibrated to the actual risk profile of autonomous lethality. We examine nine real-world systems -- from the Kargu-2's documented autonomous engagement in Libya (2020) to Israel's "Lavender" AI targeting in Gaza (2023-2024) and the ongoing 2026 Iran-US-Israel conflict "Operation Epic Fury," the largest AI-assisted warfare campaign in recorded history -- and classify each using a three-tier autonomy model: human-in-the-loop (HITL), human-on-the-loop (HOTL), and human-out-of-the-loop (HOOTL). Our gap analysis of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) identifies four critical regulatory failures: the absence of a binding definition of "meaningful human control," an accountability vacuum when LAWS cause civilian casualties, a speed asymmetry between AI warfare timescales and legal review processes, and the dual-use nature of civilian AI technologies. To address these gaps, we propose a five-tier governance framework scaling regulatory stringency with the product of autonomy level and lethality threshold. The framework carries direct implications for stalled UN CCW Group of Governmental Experts negotiations, offering a technically grounded basis for legally binding distinctions that current diplomatic language lacks.

The only good terrorist is…

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6549339

Human Rights related to AI in Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism outside armed conflict increasingly relies on Artificial Intelligence (AI). States use AI notably for detecting, predicting, and responding to terrorism. Despite acclamations of States and regional organizations that AI needs to be used in compliance with international human rights law, there is still insufficient clarity on how human rights law guides and governs legality in the use of AI in counterterrorism. Accordingly, this chapter analyses the key human rights that are relevant to - and which help to determine the lawful use of - AI in counterterrorism. This concerns, notably, the right to privacy; the rights to liberty and security; the principle of non-discrimination; the right to freedom of expression; the right to freedom of peaceful assembly; and the rights to life and to freedom from ill-treatment. The chapter assesses how these rights concern the use of AI in counterterrorism by relating them to the functions of AI applications. This is achieved through analysis of international and national rules and jurisprudence that are directly or indirectly pertinent.

I thought Trump still hated Musk? Does he hate the French more?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/18/justice-department-france-probe-exlon-musk-x.html

Justice Department refuses to assist French probe into Musk’s X, WSJ reports

The U.S. Justice Department has told French law enforcement it will not assist with efforts to investigate tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing a letter from the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs, dated Friday.

Privacy, y’all.

https://fpf.org/blog/the-alabama-personal-data-protection-act-brings-consumer-privacy-to-the-heart-of-dixie/

The Alabama Personal Data Protection Act Brings Consumer Privacy to the Heart of Dixie

We had to wait almost two years between when the 19th and 20th state comprehensive privacy laws were enacted, but the gap between the 20th and 21st proved to be a mere month. Governor Ivey signed HB 351, the Alabama Personal Data Protection Act (APDPA) into law on April 16. While this law is based on the popular Washington Privacy Act framework, it departs from that framework in a few ways (most notably in terms of what it is missing). For example, the law lacks a requirement to conduct data protection assessments and makes only passing references to authorized agents and opt-out preference signals. 

The APDPA will go into effect on May 1, 2027. This blog post provides an overview of the law’s scope, definitions, consumer rights, business obligations, and enforcement provisions. 

Sometimes the solutions to military questions are very similar to civilian ones. e.g. “Where is the enemy?” is similar to “Where are my bags?”

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/17/dutch_navy_frigate_tracked/

Opsec oopsie: Dutch navy frigate location outed by mailing it a Bluetooth tracker

Militaries around the world spend countless hours training, developing policies, and implementing best operational security practices, so imagine the size of the egg on the face of the Dutch navy when journalists managed to track one of its warships for less than the cost of some hagelslag and a coffee.

The security snafu was reported by Dutch regional broadcaster Omroep Gelderland. In a Thursday report, Omroep Gelderland journalist Just Vervaart said the broadcaster was able to track HNLMS Evertsen, a Dutch air-defense frigate deployed to help protect France’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle against missile threats, by mailing a Bluetooth tracker concealed in a postcard to the ship.

Not always a bad thing, but is one set of tech skill enough?

https://www.bespacific.com/opm-cuts-degree-requirements-for-government-tech-jobs-in-new-standards/

OPM cuts degree requirements for government tech jobs in new standards

Prefacing this update to include, not referenced in this article, job applicants for federal employment are now asked to answer questions to determine loyalty to Trump and willingness to execute Trump’s Executive Orders. Via NextGov/FCW: “The Office of Personnel Management released new classification and qualification standards for technology employees on Monday that make it easier for those without higher education degrees to get government jobs. The update is meant to move the government from relying on strict requirements for higher education and years of experience when hiring and promoting workers to using assessments meant to actually test for the skills needed for a given job.  The new standards for technology employees no longer include degree requirements, an OPM official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Nextgov/FCW…OPM is now rewriting the standards for all 604 occupational series roles and looking to reduce the number of series, too. The agency aims to move from self-attestation of skills in government hiring to formal assessments to test for aptitude for a given job…”

Where were you on the night in question? (Within 1751 feet of this spot...)

https://pogowasright.org/virginia-enacts-ban-on-precise-geolocation-data-sales-as-momentum-for-similar-prohibitions-builds/

Virginia enacts ban on precise geolocation data sales as momentum for similar prohibitions builds

Suzanne Smiley reports:

The governor of Virginia on Monday signed a law banning the sale of citizens’ precise geolocation data, a sign of growing momentum for such laws at the state level.

The legislation bars the sale of geolocation within a 1,750 foot radius, a buffer large enough to keep data brokers from pinpointing where consumers live, work, worship, shop and otherwise travel.

The bill, which was passed as an amendment to Virginia’s existing comprehensive data privacy law, received unanimous bipartisan support in the state’s legislature and takes effect on July 1.

Read more at The Record.

Why AI bias is not obvious.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10319-8

Language models transmit behavioural traits through hidden signals in data

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to generate data to train improved models1,2,3, but it remains unclear what properties are transmitted in this model distillation4,5. Here we show that distillation can lead to subliminal learning—the transmission of behavioural traits through semantically unrelated data. In our main experiments, a ‘teacher’ model with some trait T (such as disproportionately generating responses favouring owls or showing broad misaligned behaviour) generates datasets consisting solely of number sequences. Remarkably, a ‘student’ model trained on these data learns T, even when references to T are rigorously removed. More realistically, we observe the same effect when the teacher generates math reasoning traces or code. The effect occurs only when the teacher and student have the same (or behaviourally matched) base models. To help explain this, we prove a theoretical result showing that subliminal learning arises in neural networks under broad conditions and demonstrate it in a simple multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifier. As artificial intelligence systems are increasingly trained on the outputs of one another, they may inherit properties not visible in the data. Safety evaluations may therefore need to examine not just behaviour, but the origins of models and training data and the processes used to create them.

Maine leads the way?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/aclu-lawsuit-ice-reign-of-terror-maine-california.html

The Clever New Lawsuit That Could Finally End ICE’s Reign of Terror in Blue States

There was, unfortunately, nothing unusual about Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz’s brutal abduction by masked immigration agents in January. Carvajal-Muñoz, a lawful Maine resident with a spotless record, was driving to work when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers allegedly cut him off, smashed his window, dragged him out, and put him in full-body shackles. They then threw him in the back of an unmarked SUV, leaving his car running with his keys inside it and his phone on the ground. These agents allegedly spent the rest of the day taunting and terrorizing Carvajal-Muñoz, refusing to accept proof of his lawful status and insisting that his visa would be revoked. They later locked him in a windowless cell with about two dozen other men that had no beds and a single, open toilet. That night, without any clear explanation, they dumped him in another state, leaving him to find his own way back home without his car or phone.

Such accounts have become all too familiar since Donald Trump returned to office and unleashed the Department of Homeland Security to assault, kidnap, and imprison anyone who appears Latino. What makes Carvajal-Muñoz’s story different is that he is fighting back against the agents who violated his rights—and stands a real chance of winning. On Tuesday, a group of civil rights lawyers, including the ACLU and its Maine chapter, filed a lawsuit against these agents, seeking damages for the immense harm they allegedly inflicted on Carvajal-Muñoz. It is notoriously difficult to sue federal officers under recent Supreme Court precedents. But Carvajal-Muñoz’s attorneys are testing a legal theory that circumvents these roadblocks by suing officers under state law for violations of his constitutional rights. This strategy is largely untested, but it may be the only remaining way to hold ICE accountable in court. And if it works, it could open the door to a flood of similar suits by ICE’s many other victims.

Careful, reading this article may give you ideas!

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/lessons-from-innovation-pioneer-florence-nightingale/

Lessons From Innovation Pioneer Florence Nightingale

The nursing trailblazer was also a disruptive innovator whose successes offer enduring lessons for leaders in communication and persistence.

What if Trump was right? (Okay, forget I asked that.)

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/14/anthropic-mythos-federal-agency-testing-00872439?referrer=https://reddit.com

Federal agencies skirt Trump’s Anthropic ban to test its advanced AI model

Federal agencies and government officials are quietly sidestepping President Donald Trump’s ban on working with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, as intrigue and anxiety around the company’s powerful new AI model continues to grow.

The highly sophisticated new model unveiled last week has impressed — and worried — researchers because of its ability to unearth critical software flaws that even the brightest human minds have been unable to identify.

In recent days, staff from at least two large federal agencies have reached out to Anthropic to express interest in integrating Claude Mythos into their cyber defense efforts, according to a former senior U.S. technology official with direct knowledge of the discussions.

This is more like it!

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2026/04/ai-hallucinations-cost-lawyers-110000-in-oregon-vineyard-lawsuit.html

AI hallucinations cost lawyers $110,000 in Oregon vineyard lawsuit

A federal judge in Oregon squashed a vineyard lawsuit after determining that two lawyers’ AI-assisted court filings  were replete with citations from non-existent cases — and one lawyer had attempted a “cover-up” when the bogus material was uncovered.

… Clarke ordered the woman’s lawsuit dismissed with prejudice — meaning it can’t be refiled — ruling that an artificial intelligence tool  had once again led human minds astray.

… The six-figure hammerblow for A.I. errors is the largest ever imposed by an Oregon federal judge. By comparison, the state’s appellate court’s largest fine  topped out at $10,000.

“In the quickly expanding universe  of cases involving sanctions for the misuse of artificial intelligence, this case is a notorious outlier in both degree and volume,” Clarke wrote in a Dec. 12 opinion. “Plaintiffs and their counsel have not been adequately forthcoming, candid or apologetic about their conduct.”

… The judge ordered Brigandi to pay $80,000 of the other side’s attorneys’ fees, plus $15,000 in fines for 15 references to made-up cases and eight fabricated citations.

For the hard core rockers…

https://www.bespacific.com/treasure-trove-of-1000s-of-secret-concert-recordings/

Now Online: a Treasure Trove of 1000s of Secret Concert Recordings

Kottke: “For decades, a guy named Aadam Jacobs has been recording live music shows. His collection of over 10,000 shows since 1984 feature the likes of Nirvana, R.E.M., The Pixies, Björk, Depeche Mode, Liz Phair, Sonic Youth, The Cure, Phish, Fugazi, and so many more. With the help of archivists, the entire collection is making its way onto The Internet Archive.

The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s, when the scene blossomed and became mainstream. The collection features early-in-their-career performances from alternative and experimental artists like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth and Björk.

There’s also a smattering of hip-hop, including a 1988 concert by rap pioneers Boogie Down Productions. Devotees of Phish were thrilled to discover that a previously uncirculated 1990 show by the jam band is included. And there are hundreds of sets by smaller artists who are unlikely to be known to even fans with the most obscure tastes.

All of it is slowly becoming available for streaming and free download at the nonprofit online repository Internet Archive, including that nascent Nirvana show recording, with the audio from Jacobs’ cassette recorder cleaned up.

Some of the shows, like this pre-Dave Grohl one from Nirvana, were recorded before the bands hit it big. It’s wild to hear their performance of About a Girl get about three claps from the audience…”

Modern war. (Reads like an ad for the latest SUV...)

https://www.euractiv.com/news/ukrainian-robots-capture-enemy-position-without-troops-in-historic-first-zelenskyy-says/

Ukrainian robots capture enemy position without troops in historic first, Zelenskyy says

Ukrainian robots have taken an enemy position alone “for the first time in the history of this war”, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced.

Zelenskyy stated on Monday that an enemy position was taken over “without infantry and without losses on our side” through the use of both aerial drones and unmanned ground systems.

“The future is already on the front line – and Ukraine is building it,” Zelenskyy said.