Trump tells Pentagon to release files on UFOs and "alien and extraterrestrial life"

Joe Walsh
Thu, February 19, 2026 



President Trump on Thursday directed his administration to release files on UFOs and any "alien and extraterrestrial life," an issue that has drawn decades of public fascination — and spawned more than a few wild theories.

In a Truth Social post, the president told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other agency heads "to begin the process of identifying and releasing" any relevant files.

Mr. Trump also called for the release of "any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."

It's not clear what files on UFOs might be released — or what information they might contain. The Pentagon has tracked reports of what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, for decades. But the military said in a 2024 report there's no evidence that any government investigation into UAPs has confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Mr. Trump's announcement came just days after one of his predecessors, former President Barack Obama, made waves by telling a podcaster that aliens are real. He later clarified that he never saw evidence of contact between humans and extraterrestrial life during his time in the White House, and he primarily believes that extraterrestrial life is real because "statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there."

Asked Thursday about Obama's comments, Mr. Trump told reporters he isn't sure whether or not aliens exist, but added that the former president "made a big mistake" and "gave classified information."

"I may get him out of trouble by declassifying," Mr. Trump said.

Public interest in UAPs has grown in recent years. Pilots and military service members have reported spotting hundreds of unexplained objects in the sky, leading some lawmakers to press the Pentagon to investigate the phenomena and determine whether they pose a threat to safety or national security.

Last year, one House Republican released a whistleblower video of a U.S. missile striking an unidentified glowing orb in the sky and bouncing off it. And in another case, a former Navy pilot told "60 Minutes" about frequent sightings of strange, fast-moving objects in restricted airspace.

A large number of UAP reports can be explained by birds, balloons, drones, satellites and other everyday phenomena, according to the military's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. But many cases remain unresolved.

"It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the office said in a 2024 report. The office also noted that it has "no indication or confirmation that these activities are attributable to foreign adversaries."

Trump Makes UFO Announcement as Seth Meyers Predicted He Would After Epstein Revelations

Michael Luciano

MEDIAITE
Thu, February 19, 2026 


President Trump announced the release of government files on unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life, following predictions made by late-night host Seth Meyers.




President Donald Trump announced that he will order his administration to release files about unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life. The announcement comes after late-night host Seth Meyers predicted seven months ago that the president would make a declaration about UFOs to distract from revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump received a wave of bad press in July, as The Wall Street Journal reported that he sent Epstein, the deceased child sex trafficker convicted in 2008, a lewd birthday message in 2003. The message contained a fictional cryptic dialogue written inside a drawing of a woman’s torso. The president denies writing the message and is suing the Journal, which also highlighted a 2002 interview in which Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy.”

Two days later on July 23, 2025, the Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president that his name appears in the Justice Department’s files on Epstein.

“Whatever is in those Epstein files must be really f*cking bad,” Meyers said on the July 24 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers. “They must be finding so many mentions of Trump, they’re going to have to change the name to the Trump files featuring Jeffrey Epstein. They’re so desperate to distract everyone.”

The comedian added, “I honestly think we’re just one Epstein story away from Trump announcing that UFOs are real.”

Eventually, the Justice Department released some of its files about Epstein, even though Congress passed a law in November compelling the release of all the material, with only victims’ names to be redacted. Even so, the DOJ did redact portions of the files that went beyond names and images of victims.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing or knowing about Epstein’s illegal activities. On Tuesday, he claimed he had “nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”

On Thursday, the president announced he would release documents about UFOs, writing on Truth Social:

Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Earlier in the day, Trump accused former President Barack Obama revealed classified information by claiming that aliens exist. Obama later walked back the comment, stating that he saw no evidence of aliens, but believes they could exist, given the vastness of the universe.

The government releasing material about UFOs and potential alien life is nothing new. Multiple presidential administrations have disclosed all manner of reports, videos, and testimony on the subject. Moreover, Congress has held hearings on the matter, which have yielded little in the way of proving aliens exist.

GOP Rebel Says New Trump Bombshell Is a Desperate Distraction

Ewan Palmer
Fri, February 20, 2026


Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Thomas Massie has accused President Donald Trump of desperately trying to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files by directing the government to release information about alien life.

The Kentucky Republican, who spearheaded efforts to force the Department of Justice to release all documents linked to the late pedophile, accused the administration of deploying the “ultimate weapon of mass distraction” with the announcement.

“But the Epstein files aren’t going away… even for aliens,” Massie posted on X.

Thomas Massie has been a nemesis of Donald Trump for several years. / Anadolu / Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

The 79-year-old president posted on Truth Social late Thursday that he is directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon, and other relevant government agencies to release all files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

Trump said the announcement comes after “tremendous interest shown” in the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists. Last weekend, former President Barack Obama caused a stir after claiming on a podcast that aliens are “real,” but that he personally has not seen them.

“They’re not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.

Obama later clarified that he was suggesting that, “statistically,” it is likely that there is some form of life somewhere else in the universe, given how vast it is.

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” Obama posted on Instagram. “Really!”

Trump accused Obama of disclosing “classified information” with his comments about the existence of aliens.

“I don’t know if they’re real or not,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”

The Trump administration has been widely condemned for its handling of the Epstein files.

Massie’s and Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s Epstein Files Transparency Act directed the Department of Justice to release all its files connected to Epstein, who died in 2019, by Dec. 19, 2025.

The DOJ has released more than 3 million files related to Epstein, while acknowledging that nearly 3 million more were being withheld for various reasons, including ongoing cases and the sensitive nature of some materials.

Donald Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files hundreds of times, although the president denies being aware about his former close friend's child sex crimes. / Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

“The DOJ said it identified over 6m potentially responsive pages but is releasing only about 3.5m after review and redactions,” Khanna said in a January statement following the latest release. Khanna believes that “hundreds of thousands of emails and files” from Epstein’s computers are still to be made public.

Several Trump officials cheered on his “weapon of mass distraction” after he ordered the release of files on aliens and UFOs.

In a post on X, Hegseth shared Trump’s social media announcement with alien and saluting-face emojis.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the move as “OUT OF THIS WORLD NEWS.”

Newsmax Reporter Asks Karoline Leavitt Point-Blank: ‘Does the Trump Administration Believe Aliens Are Real?’

Zachary Leeman
Wed, February 18, 2026
 Mediaite

Key takeawaysPowered by Yahoo Scout. Yahoo is using AI to generate key points from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about President Trump's beliefs on aliens after Lara Trump hinted at a prepared speech on the subject.See more

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Wednesday whether President Donald Trump believes aliens are “real” or not after his daughter-in-law teased a speech on the subject.

Newsmax’s Mike Carter noted at a White House press briefing that former President Barack Obama recently made waves by saying aliens are “real,” and Lara Trump suggested her father-in-law has a speech on aliens prepared.

“President Barack Obama, Karoline, was recently asked if aliens are real. He says they’re real, but he hasn’t seen them. President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told Miranda Devine of the New York Post that the president has a prepared speech on this issue that he prepares to deliver at the right time. Is that true, and does the Trump administration believe aliens are real?” Carter asked.

Leavitt said any such speech existing would be news to her.

“Well, a speech on aliens would be news to me. That sounds very exciting though. I’ll have to check in with our speechwriting team. And that would be of great interest to me personally, and I’m sure all of you in this room, and apparently former President Obama too. So we’ll keep you posted on that,” she said.

Lara Trump said this week that she believes her father-in-law will be discussing aliens in depth “at the right time.”

“Then I have just heard just kind of around — I think he’s actually said it, I think my father-in-law actually said it — that there is some speech that I guess at the right time, and I don’t know when the right time is, he’s gonna break out and talk about [it]. And it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” she said.

Obama released his own statement clarifying comments he made in an interview stating that aliens are “real,” but professing to have never seen them.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” Obama wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

Lara Trump reveals president has speech pre-written to announce the discovery of alien life after Obama claim

Isabel Keane
Wed, February 18, 2026 

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, says the president has a speech pre-written and is ready to address the discovery of aliens.

Lara, 43, made the shocking claim in an episode of the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, published Wednesday, after she was asked about former President Barack Obama's apparent confirmation that aliens are real during an interview last weekend.

“I believe I’ve heard on your podcast that you’ve discussed with the president these UFOs. Do you think that he’s about to make an announcement about UFOs, because President Obama was just on a podcast talking about how he believes in UFOs and hinting that he saw something when he was president?” host Miranda Devine asked.

“What’s kind of funny is we’ve kind of asked my father-in-law about this cause we’re like, ‘Well, what do you know?...”Lara began.

However, the president reportedly “played a little coy” when she and her husband, his son, Eric Trump, inquired about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

“Eric and I were like, ‘Oh my gosh, he won’t even fully tell us, maybe there’s more to it,’” she said.

“I have just heard kind of around that he’s actually said, my father-in-law has actually said it, that there is some speech that he has, that I guess at the right time...I don’t know what the right time is...that he is going to break out and talk about, and it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” Lara added.

Her comments come as Obama made a stunning admission over the weekend during an appearance on the No Lie With Brian Tyler Cohen podcast.

When asked about extraterrestrials, Obama replied, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in — what is it? There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

The Internet went wild over his admission that aliens are real, prompting the former commander-in-chief to take to Instagram to clarify his stance.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” the former president wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Barack Obama confidently said that aliens are real during an appearance on a podcast this past weekend (Getty)

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” he continued,

Doubling down on his claim, he added, “Really!”

Its long been speculated by many that aliens and UFOs are hidden at the mysterious Area 51 base in southern Nevada — and a documentary released last year suggested that Trump may soon confirm the existence of other life forms.

In The Age of Disclosure, director Dan Farah suggests that a massive government cover-up operation has concealed the existence of non-human intelligence, but that the cover-up will soon be exposed.

“I think it's only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We're not alone in the universe,’” Farah told Entertainment Weekly in late November.

“It's the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

Despite Farah’s claims, Trump has not yet shared a definitive answer about the existence of aliens since returning to office.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for UAP

Exclusive: DHS admits its website showcasing the ‘worst of the worst’ immigrants was rife with errors

Michael Williams, Alex Leeds Matthews, CNN
Thu, February 19, 2026 at 12:46 PM MST


Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, during a news conference in Nogales, Arizona, US, on February 4, 2026. - Ash Ponders/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security admitted that its website featuring what it calls the “worst of the worst” arrested immigrants was rife with errors and changed the site this week after receiving questions from CNN about it.

DHS created the website in December and the agency, its secretary Kristi Noem and the White House have all heavily promoted it on social media as the Trump administration has sought to justify its aggressive and heavily scrutinized immigration enforcement operations.

The website currently lists about 25,000 people, along with the crimes the agency says they were arrested for or convicted of — including many who were initially linked only to relatively minor offenses.

But DHS this week conceded its website was filled with inaccuracies. After receiving questions about a CNN analysis of the website, a DHS spokesperson admitted on Tuesday that the charges against hundreds of immigrants listed on the website were described incorrectly by the agency.

The spokesperson attributed the inaccuracies to a “glitch” that they said DHS worked to remedy. The spokesperson said on Wednesday that the glitch had been “resolved.”

A CNN review of the website found that thousands of the people listed on the website were described by the agency as being convicted of or arrested for serious charges — including sex crimes or different forms of homicide. But hundreds more who DHS considered the “worst of the worst” were described as being arrested for or convicted of far less serious crimes, including single charges of traffic offenses, marijuana possession or illegal reentry, a federal felony that involves someone reentering the United States after having been previously deported.

CNN could not independently verify the descriptions of each of the thousands of people listed on the website.

This screengrab shows the Department of Homeland Security’s “worst of the worst” website,” on Thursday, February 19, 2026. - Department of Homeland Security

Asked whether drawing an equivalence between traffic offenders and killers might undermine the agency’s public messaging about its operations, DHS said that many of those the agency listed with single minor crimes had actually been arrested for or convicted of multiple crimes, some of which were more serious: “This is a glitch on the WOW website the impacted about 5% of the entries.”

“Many of these who are listed as traffic offense and illegal reentry, which is a felony, have additional crimes,” the spokesperson said, adding the agency was working “to fix the issue.” The spokesperson did not answer questions about what type of glitch could cause the people on the website to be described incorrectly.

“All of these individuals have been arrested by ICE and all of them committed crimes breaking our nation’s laws, including some who had felonies for illegal re-entry,” the spokesperson said.

Both the White House and DHS have faced intense scrutiny for using false or misleading claims about some immigrants as a pretext to justify enforcement operations, or describing certain incidents in ways which were later contradicted by video or statements from local officials.

Following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month, officials including Noem and White House immigration policy architect Stephen Miller rushed to describe Pretti as “a domestic terrorist” who brandished his gun and intended to massacre law enforcement.

Video later showed that Pretti never brandished the gun that he was carrying when he was shot, and both Miller and Noem blamed their premature descriptions of Pretti on information they received from officers on the ground.

This also isn’t the first time that the Trump administration has acknowledged its descriptions of some immigrants they described as the “worst of the worst” were inaccurate.

In another instance, first reported by NOTUS, the White House conceded it posted a picture of a man who the administration erroneously claimed had been convicted of a sex crime involving a child. (A White House official said the error has been corrected and the administration will continue publicizing “the dangerous criminal illegal aliens being removed from our streets.”)

Taking credit for people likely already in custody

The DHS “worst of the worst” website also includes immigrants’ countries of origin and the city where they were arrested. CNN’s analysis of the site shows that some of the locations representing the greatest number of arrests are relatively small cities – but they contain large prisons, a potential indication that those detained were already in federal prison or had been transferred from state custody. In those cases, that could undercut the agency’s claim that they were “public safety threats” who were “lurking” in communities.

The city representing the most arrests is Conroe, Texas, which is about 40 miles north of Houston and has an estimated population of about 114,000. That city is home to the Joe Corley Processing Center, a privately owned detention facility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses to house immigrants. Other top cities, including Lompoc, California, Yazoo City, Mississippi, and Eden, Texas, have relatively small populations, but large federal detention centers.

The social media feeds of DHS, Noem and the White House have displayed a stream of mugshots of people the administration says it has taken off the streets during Operation Metro Surge, the immigration crackdown it has been conducting in the Twin Cities over the last two months. (The administration is now winding down its Minnesota immigration surge, though it is keeping a small footprint of officers there.)

But local officials in Minnesota have accused DHS of padding their publicized arrest numbers by taking credit for arrests made by local law enforcement, who were then transferred to immigration authorities through routine processes.

“This is no longer a simple misunderstanding,” Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said during a news conference last month.

At best, Schnell said, “DHS fundamentally misunderstands Minnesota’s correctional system.”

“At worst,” he added, “it is pure propaganda, numbers released without evidence to stoke fear rather than inform the public.”

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement: “All of these individuals have been arrested by ICE and placed in removal proceedings.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, we are not going to allow criminals to be released from jails and back into our communities,” the spokesperson said.

Among the people who DHS chooses to label the “worst of the worst,” almost half are from Mexico. More than 2,100 are from Honduras; Guatemala and Cuba account for about 1,900 each; El Salvador accounts for almost 1,200; while Iran, China, Nicaragua, Haiti and Jamaica account for scores of people each. Several dozen are from Somalia – a country that President Donald Trump has denigrated repeatedly and which has been a large focus of the administration’s recent crackdown in Minneapolis, where there is a large Somali diaspora.

A federal agent in plain clothes looks on a group conducts immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 5, 2026. - Seth Herald/Reuters

‘That population is not out there’

It is not uncommon for law enforcement agencies large and small to publicize their efforts or arrests — and DHS has come under immense pressure from the Trump administration to boost its public-relations profile and publicize arrests.

“Show the numbers, names, and faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW,” the president wrote on Truth Social last month. “The people will start supporting the patriots of ICE, instead of the highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

But the problem, critics say, is that the proportion of “violent criminals” convicted of charges where there is a nexus to public safety is smaller than the administration presents, even if DHS does adjust its list to reflect a larger number of violent offenders.

“The vast majority of so-called criminal aliens are individuals charged with or convicted of traffic offenses, DUIs and immigration-related offenses,” said John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director during the Obama administration.

“That was the challenge we faced during the Obama administration,” he added. “I’ll just put it this way – and I spent every day working on this – we are saying we are focused on the worst of the worst, we’re focused on serious criminals, that’s what our mission is, to get them off the streets.”

But when it comes to the scale of the problem as described by the Trump administration, Sandweg said, “That population is not out there. It’s just not there.”

Lawmakers say they’ve been stonewalled by DHS, undercutting attempts to hold Trump officials accountable

Annie Grayer, Gabe Cohen, Evan Perez, CNN
Fri, February 20, 2026 


Federal immigration agents conduct immigration operations in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 5. - Seth Herald/Reuters


Lawmakers who oversee the Department of Homeland Security say the agency has repeatedly stymied their requests for information in recent months, with even some Republicans alleging they’ve had phone calls go unanswered and data requests left to languish.

As the Department of Homeland Security has found itself embroiled in controversies across the country over high-profile killings by immigration agents and the resulting bitter policy disputes, lawmakers say they’ve stepped up their efforts to try to get answers for the public. But they’ve often been met with resistance, they said — thwarting their ability to hold anyone accountable.

“I’m not going to sit here on bended knee hoping to God that somebody returns the call,” GOP Rep. Mark Amodei, the Republican who oversees the DHS budget in the House told CNN, after his request to speak with White House Border Czar Tom Homan went unanswered for days.

One Republican staffer told CNN that the stonewalling extends beyond just thorny policy questions about immigration enforcement. Requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the status of federal disaster funding and questions over potential crimes committed by those detained by federal officers have also been met with silence or evasiveness, the staffer said.

The result, the staffer said, is not only that GOP lawmakers can’t properly oversee the agency, they can’t help blunt possibly unfair attacks from their Democratic counterparts.

“It’s really a shame that DHS has taken such an adversarial posture on sharing data. In some areas, like on immigration and the border they have a great story to tell, and we could be helping them tell that story,” the staffer explained. “In other areas where the story is not so good, like FEMA, we could also help. But they choose to go at it alone, so it’s on them to defend, which is hard to do when no one believes a word they say or a number they put out. There is no trust and there is no way to verify.”

Democrats, meanwhile, say they have received virtually no response from their inquiries to DHS. At least 15 letters sent by members of the party to the department have either been ghosted, received a cursory acknowledgement or were given a non-answer, a Homeland Security Committee Democratic aide told CNN. Another Democratic staffer told CNN that when they’ve asked for specific FEMA updates, whether it’s on mitigation projects, staffing plans or briefings on various press releases, they’ve gotten no response.

A DHS spokesperson told CNN the department works through “official channels” and would “not be litigating our relationship” with Capitol Hill through the press. But they also dismissed claims they’ve not engaged with members of Congress.

“Any suggestion that DHS has ‘refused’ to engage with lawmakers is simply false,” the spokesperson said in part, adding that “this administration has been the most transparent administration in history and has spent the last year clearing out congressional correspondence that went unanswered under the last administration.”

Some Republicans told CNN they’ve been able to leverage their personal relationships with Trump administration officials to get their questions answered and others said they had no issues getting quick responses from DHS – “I communicate with them all the time,” GOP Rep. Andy Ogles said. But two top Republican congressman specifically tasked with overseeing DHS are among those who say they’ve run into issues.

Amodei, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, sought to speak directly with Homan about the operation in Minneapolis shortly after federal officers’ fatal encounter with Alex Pretti there, as well as to receive a broader status update on the administration’s deportation efforts.

Tom Homan speaks during a press conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 4. - Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

Amodei’s office put in the request in January and was redirected to White House Office of Legislative Affairs Director James Braid to coordinate the conversation. The request went unanswered for 10 days, prompting the Nevada Republican to eventually withdraw the request, Amodei said.



The administration was focused on executing the mission in Minneapolis at the time of Amodei’s request, an official said when asked by CNN about the request, adding that it could now be arranged.

“At the time, we were prioritizing the actual execution of the mission in Minneapolis,” the administration official said. “Now going forward, we’re happy to offer Chairman Amodei a briefing as well as other congressional committees.”

But Amodei, who projected confidence he’ll get the information another way, suggested it was a question of respect. “I wish they were more professional with how they dealt with the people who handled their budget,” he told CNN from his Capitol Hill office.

After withdrawing his initial request, Amodei has recently spoken with Braid about arranging a call with Homan, the congressman’s office told CNN.

Another Republican chairman — Rep. Andrew Garbarino of the House Homeland Security Committee — tried for weeks to schedule DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for testimony for the annual worldwide threats hearing before his panel, and eventually resorted to asking the White House in December to lean on her to agree on a date, according to a US official familiar with the discussions.

Noem finally agreed to a hearing, where she was excoriated by Democrats for her handling of immigration, FEMA and other issues. The administration official declined to comment on any coordination with Garbarino, saying they don’t discuss private conversations with members.

Garbarino said at the eventual December hearing that he made “numerous accommodations” for Noem’s appearance.

From left: Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joseph Kent, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Operations Director of the National Security Branch at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Michael Glasheen testify on December 11, 2025. - Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“This is why this hearing is so important. Congress must hear from the Executive. Oversight is not unfair. And asking questions is not unwarranted. We must ensure the people’s representatives are informed,” the New York Republican said at the time.

CNN has reached out to Garbarino’s office for comment.

According to a data analysis compiled by ProQuest Congressional Data and shared with CNN, there has been a 28.7% decline in appearances of DHS officials before congressional committees in 2025, compared to the first year of previous administrations.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said he’s never seen it this bad.

“I’ve never met Secretary Noem other than the two times she came before the committee last year. I’ve met every secretary since the department was created in my office or in a number of occasions,” Thompson said.

The Mississippi Democrat said that for a year, he had not had any direct interaction with an ICE official until he met the director the day before his scheduled hearing before the committee earlier this month. Witnesses before a hearing are required to submit their written testimony to Congress the day before a hearing, but Thompson said the ICE director came to his meeting with his prepared testimony in hand and said he was still working on it.

“If the legislative is to function, then the executive branch has to be forthcoming with the information. If they’re not forthcoming with the information, then it’s almost impossible for the legislative branch to basically provide any road maps for future success because we don’t have access to the data,” Thompson said.

 CNN news 

Families of Duterte's drug war victims eye Hague hearing with hope

Pam Castro and Cecil Morella
Fri, February 20, 2026 



Roman Catholic priest Father Flavie Villanueva (R) talks to Mary Ann Pajo as they move the remains of her son Joewarski Pajo, a victim of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, into a body bag during an exhumation at a cemetery in Manila on February 16, 2026 (Ted ALJIBE)(Ted ALJIBE/AFP/AFP)More

Mary Ann Pajo watched quietly as cemetery workers opened her son's tomb in Manila this week and removed his body for examination by a forensic pathologist.

Accused of dealing drugs, 30-year-old Joewarski Pajo was shot dead while playing a game on his phone, one of thousands of extrajudicial killings alleged to have taken place under former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

A hearing begins at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday that will determine whether Duterte will stand trial over at least 76 of those deaths.

"This hearing is what we have been waiting for," Father Flavie Villanueva said after saying a prayer over Joewarski's remains, the 126th body his non-profit group has exhumed as potential evidence.

"It is important that (Duterte) faces the court in person, physically, for us to see if there is remorse on his part," said Villanueva, a fierce critic of the former president's so-called drug war.

However, the hope that Duterte would appear in person disappeared on Friday when ICC judges ruled that the octogenarian could waive his right to attend the hearing.

"I am old, tired, and frail," Duterte had said in a filing making the request days earlier.

Villanueva called Duterte's request cowardly when reached on Thursday, noting the former president had already been declared fit to stand trial.

"Accountability is something this person has no concept of," he said.

- 'They are not God' -

At a Manila coffee shop staffed by family members of those killed in the drug war, three employees told AFP they believed justice would not have been possible in the Philippines.

"No one in the Philippines can lay hands on Duterte, much less file cases against him," said Lydjay Acopio, whose three-year-old daughter Myca was killed in a police raid on the home she shared with her father.

Fellow barista Rosalie Saludo agreed: "As long as his daughter (Vice President Sara Duterte) is in office, as long as his allies are in office, he can still find a way to twist and distort justice."

Sara Duterte announced her 2028 presidential candidacy on Wednesday.

Mary Grace Garganta, manager of the coffee shop, said she had been forced to move after police without a warrant shot and killed her father in 2016. She was afraid of what might happen to family members "now that I'm speaking up".

"I won't deny that my father was involved in drugs, but that was not a reason to kill him," she said.

"They are not God to take away a life."

- 'Things were better' -

The number of Filipinos who believe Duterte should be tried at the ICC has slipped to 44 percent, a November survey by Manila-based WR Numero showed, down from 62 percent in April.

While the new numbers still indicate a shift from the historically high approval rates he enjoyed in office, a significant percentage of his countrymen maintain Duterte did nothing wrong.

"If Duterte committed a wrongdoing... he only did it for the good of the country," Jovel Manzano, 34, told AFP on a busy Manila street this week.

"What's the point of our courts here if we're always relying on other countries?" he said of the looming ICC hearing.

"If a Filipino commits a crime, he should be tried here," he said.

Jessa Cangayaw, a 30-year-old massage therapist, said she had no qualms about Duterte's crackdown, provided those being killed were "bad people".

"Things were better then than they are now," she said, adding that she felt less safe when walking home.

But Sheerah Escudero, whose teenage brother's bullet-riddled body was found in 2017, said Monday's hearing marked a step towards "accountability".
"We have a broken judicial system," the 28-year-old told reporters this week, saying Philippine authorities had mounted "no credible investigation" into the allegations against Duterte.

"It has been dark for a very long time, but now we are seeing the light."

pam-cgm-cwl/pbt/abs

Osaka city stunned by anonymous gold bar gift worth $3.6M to fix aging water pipes

MARI YAMAGUCHI
Fri, February 20, 2026 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

This aerial photo shows City Hall in Osaka, western Japan, in January 2026.

 (Kyodo News via AP)


TOKYO (AP) — Osaka has received a hefty gift of gold bars worth 560 million yen ($3.6 million) from an anonymous donor asking for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city's dilapidated water pipes.

The gold bars weighing 21 kilograms (46 pounds) in total were given to the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau in November by the donor who wants to help improve aging water pipes, Mayor Hideyuki Yokoyama told reporters Thursday.

“It's a staggering amount and I was speechless," Yokoyama said. “Tackling aging water pipes requires a huge investment, and I cannot thank enough for the donation.”

The mayor said his city will respect the donor's wishes and use the gift to improve waterworks projects.

Concern over the safety of Osaka's waterworks systems grew after a massive sinkhole swallowed a truck and killed the driver last year. It was linked to a damaged sewer in Saitama, north of Tokyo. Osaka had 92 cases of water pipe leaks under city roads in the fiscal year ending March 2025, the city’s waterworks official Eiji Kotani told The Associated Press on Friday.

With the population of 2.8 million, Osaka is the country's third-largest city that serves as a western Japanese capital.

Most of Japan’s main public infrastructure was built during the rapid postwar economic growth.

Urban development in Osaka, a regional commercial hub, started earlier than many other cities and its water pipes and other infrastructure are also aging earlier, Kotani said.

Osaka needs to renew a total of 259 kilometers (160 miles) of water pipes, he said. Renewing a 2-kilometer (1.2 mile) segment of water pipes would cost about 500 million yen ($3.2 million), Kotani said.

Year of the Horse? The tiny petrol engine that could save EVs in 2026

Jesse Crosse
Thu, February 19, 2026



Horse engine


Shortly after revealing its plans for 'off-the-shelf' range-extender and hybrid powertrains, Horse Powertrain unveiled its Future Hybrid Powertrain solution late last year.

The "all-in-one" powertrain is aimed at enabling a vehicle manufacturer to easily convert a BEV platform to a hybrid by replacing a front-mounted BEV drive motor and transmission with a petrol-electric powertrain - making it a potentially cost-effective means of repackaging a pure-electric car as a hybrid.

Two different versions will be available: the 740mm wide Performance, which incorporates two electric motors one on the engine output shaft and another on the transmission output shaft; and the 650mm wide Ultra-Compact, which has an electric motor between the engine and transmission.

Horse is also looking at a three-cylinder version, which cuts 70mm from the total width of the unit compared with the new four-cylinder set-up.

The Performance and Ultra-Compact form part of Horse Powertrain's X-Range family, which the firm calls a "category of solutions designed to enrich EV platforms with combustion and hybrid technology".

Both variants use the same 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine combined with a hybrid transmission and a full suite of power electronics that can integrate with other electrical systems, such as a DC/DC converter for stepping high voltage down to low voltage to power the usual vehicle ancillaries, an on-board charger and an 800V charging booster.

The units are installed transversely and have a slimline profile at the top and a wider profile at the bottom to comply with crash regulations. They can be used simply to convert a BEV to hybrid front-wheel drive, or combine with a rear-axle-mounted electric motor to create all-wheel drive. Both the Performance and Ultra-Compact can be employed to create a full hybrid, plug-in hybrid or range-extended EV.

The packaging of the units has been designed to reduce the front overhang by up to 150mm compared with a conventional hybrid powertrain. The unit is mounted on the existing vehicle subframe in the same way as the electric drive units it would replace, the aim being to use as many of the original BEV parts as possible and streamline manufacturing.

Horse says the compact design of the units allows ancillaries like heating, ventilation and air-con systems often located in the front motor compartment of an EV but not in a hybrid due to the size of a conventional hybrid powertrain to remain in place.

Both hybrid engines can run on petrol, E85 ethanol flex fuels, M100 methanol or synthetic fuels. Dedicated EV platforms modified by adding hybrid drives would not originally have been designed to accommodate fuel tanks, but Horse says a tank could be packaged into the space liberated by substituting an EV battery for a much smaller HEV or PHEV battery.

UN touts panel for 'human control' of AI at global summit

Katie Forster
Fri, February 20, 2026 


India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C), Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (centre L) and France's President Emmanuel Macron (centre R) and other world leaders and representatives at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026 (Stephane LEMOUTON)(Stephane LEMOUTON/POOL/AFP)More

A UN panel on artificial intelligence will work towards "science-led governance", the global body's chief said Friday as leaders at a New Delhi summit weighed their message on the future of the booming technology.

But the US delegation warned against centralised control of the generative AI field, highlighting the difficulties of reaching consensus over how it should be handled.

The flip side of the gold rush surrounding AI is a host of issues from job disruption to misinformation, intensified surveillance, online abuse and the heavy electricity consumption of data centres.

"We are barrelling into the unknown," UN chief Antonio Guterres told the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. "The message is simple: less hype, less fear. More facts and evidence."

To cap the five-day summit, dozens of world leaders and ministers are expected to deliver on Friday a shared view on the benefits of AI, such as instant translation and drug discovery, but also the risks.

It is the fourth annual global meeting focused on AI policy, with the next to take place in Geneva in the first half of 2027.

Guterres said the United Nations General Assembly has confirmed 40 members for a group called the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.

It was created in August, aiming to be to AI what the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to global environmental policy.

"Science-led governance is not a brake on progress," Guterres said. "When we understand what systems can do -- and what they cannot -- we can move from rough measures to smarter, risk-based guardrails."

"Our goal is to make human control a technical reality -- not a slogan."

White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios, head of the US delegation, warned that "AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralised control".

"As the Trump administration has now said many times: We totally reject global governance of AI," he said.


- 'Shared language' -

The Delhi gathering is the largest AI summit yet, and the first in a developing country, with India taking the opportunity to push its ambitions to catch up with the United States and China.

India expects more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, and this week US tech titans unveiled a raft of new deals and infrastructure projects in the country.

Sam Altman, head of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, has called for oversight in the past but said last year that taking too tight an approach could hold the United States back in the AI race.

"Centralisation of this technology, in one company or country, could lead to ruin," he said Thursday, one of several top tech CEOs to take the stage.

"This is not to suggest that we won't need any regulation or safeguards. We obviously do, urgently, like we have for other powerful technologies."

The broad focus of the summit, and vague promises made at its previous editions in France, South Korea and Britain, could make concrete commitments unlikely.

Even so, "governance of powerful technologies typically begins with shared language: what risks matter, what thresholds are unacceptable," Niki Iliadis, director of global AI governance at The Future Society, told AFP.

Discussions at the Delhi summit, attended by tens of thousands of people from across the AI industry, have covered big topics from child protections to the need for more equal access to AI tools worldwide.

"We must resolve that AI is used for the global common good," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the event on Thursday.

Urgent research needed to tackle AI threats, says Google AI boss

Zoe Kleinman - Technology editor;

 Philippa Wain - technology producer

BBC
Fri, February 20, 2026 


Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind spoke to the BBC at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi [Getty Images]


More research on the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) "needs to be done urgently", the boss of Google DeepMind has told BBC News.

In an exclusive interview at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Sir Demis Hassabis said the industry wanted "smart regulation" for "the real risks" posed by the tech.

Many tech leaders and politicians at the Summit have called for more global governance of AI, ahead of an expected joint statement as the event draws to a close.

But the US has rejected this stance, with White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios saying: "AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralised control."

Sir Demis said it was important to build "robust guardrails" against the most serious threats from the rise of autonomous systems.

He said the two main threats were the technology being used by "bad actors", and the risk of losing control of systems as they become more powerful.

When asked whether he had the power to slow down the progress of the tech to give experts more time to work on its challenges, he said his firm had an important role to play, but was "only one player in the ecosystem".

But he admitted keeping up with the pace of AI development was "the hard thing" for regulators.

Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, also called for "urgent regulation" in a speech at the AI Summit, while Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi said countries had to work together to benefit from AI.

However, the US has taken the opposite view. "As the Trump administration has now said many times: We totally reject global governance of AI," said the head of the US delegation Michael Kratsios.

Sir Demis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 [BBC]

Delegates from more than 100 countries, including several world leaders, are attending the event. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy MP represented the UK government.

Mr Lammy said the power wasn't just with tech firms when it came to safety of AI and politicians need to work "hand in hand" with tech adding, "security and safety must come first and it must be of benefit for the wider public".

Sir Demis believes the US and the west are "slightly" ahead in the race with China for AI dominance but added that it could be "only a matter of months" before China catches up.

He said he felt the responsibility to balance being "bold and responsible" about deploying AI systems out in the world.

"We don't always get things right," he admitted, "but we get it more correct than most".
Science education 'still very important'

In the next 10 years the tech would become "a superpower" in terms of what people would be able to create, Sir Demis, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said.

"I think it's still very important to have a Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) education," he added.

"If you have a technical background, I think it will still be an advantage in using these systems."

He thinks AI writing code would open up the number of people who could build new applications, "and then maybe the key thing becomes taste and creativity and judgement".

The AI Impact Summit is the largest ever global gathering of world leaders and tech bosses.

It ends on Friday with companies and countries expected to deliver a shared view of how to handle artificial intelligence.

‘I’m deeply uncomfortable’: Anthropic CEO warns that a cadre of AI leaders, including himself, should not be in charge of the technology’s future

Sasha Rogelberg
Thu, February 19, 2026 
FORTUNE

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei(Chance Yeh—Getty Images for HubSpot)

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei doesn’t think he should be the one calling the shots on the guardrails surrounding AI.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS News’ 60 Minutes that aired in November 2025, the CEO said AI should be more heavily regulated, with fewer decisions about the future of the technology left to just the heads of big tech companies.

“I think I’m deeply uncomfortable with these decisions being made by a few companies, by a few people,” Amodei said. “And this is one reason why I’ve always advocated for responsible and thoughtful regulation of the technology.

“Who elected you and Sam Altman?” Cooper asked.

“No one. Honestly, no one,” Amodei replied.

Anthropic has adopted the philosophy of being transparent about the limitations—and dangers—of AI as it continues to develop, he added. Ahead of the interview’s release, the company said it had thwarted “the first documented case of a large-scale AI cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.”

Anthropic said last week it had donated $20 million to Public First Action, a super PAC focused on AI safety and regulation—and one that directly opposed super PACs backed by rival OpenAI’s investors.

“AI safety continues to be the highest-level focus,” Amodei told Fortune in a January cover story. “Businesses value trust and reliability,” he says.

There are no federal regulations outlining any prohibitions on AI or surrounding the safety of the technology. While all 50 states have introduced AI-related legislation this year and 38 have adopted or enacted transparency and safety measures, tech industry experts have urged AI companies to approach cybersecurity with a sense of urgency.

Earlier last year, cybersecurity expert and Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia warned of the first AI-agent cybersecurity attack happening in the next 12 to 18 months—meaning Anthropic’s disclosure about the thwarted attack was months ahead of Mandia’s predicted schedule.

Amodei has outlined short-, medium-, and long-term risks associated with unrestricted AI: The technology will first present bias and misinformation, as it does now. Next, it will generate harmful information using enhanced knowledge of science and engineering, before finally presenting an existential threat by removing human agency, potentially becoming too autonomous and locking humans out of systems.

The concerns mirror those of “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, who has warned AI will have the ability to outsmart and control humans, perhaps in the next decade.

The need for greater AI scrutiny and safeguards lay at the core of Anthropic’s 2021 founding. Amodei was previously the vice president of research at Sam Altman’s OpenAI. He left the company over differences in opinion on AI safety concerns. (So far, Amodei’s efforts to compete with Altman have appeared effective: Anthropic said this month it is now valued at $380 billion. OpenAI is valued at an estimated $500 billion.)

“There was a group of us within OpenAI, that in the wake of making GPT-2 and GPT-3, had a kind of very strong focus belief in two things,” Amodei told Fortune in 2023. “One was the idea that if you pour more compute into these models, they’ll get better and better and that there’s almost no end to this … And the second was the idea that you needed something in addition to just scaling the models up, which is alignment or safety.”

Anthropic’s transparency efforts

As Anthropic continues to expand its data center investments, it has published some of its efforts in addressing the shortcomings and threats of AI. In a May 2025 safety report, Anthropic reported some versions of its Opus model threatened blackmail, such as revealing an engineer was having an affair, to avoid shutting down. The company also said the AI model complied with dangerous requests if given harmful prompts like how to plan a terrorist attack, which it said it has since fixed.

Last November, the company said in a blog post that its chatbot Claude scored a 94% political evenhandedness rating, outperforming or matching competitors on neutrality.

In addition to Anthropic’s own research efforts to combat corruption of the technology, Amodei has called for greater legislative efforts to address the risks of AI. In a New York Times op-ed in June 2025, he criticized the Senate’s decision to include a provision in President Donald Trump’s policy bill that would put a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI.

“AI is advancing too head-spinningly fast,” Amodei said. “I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off.”
Criticism of Anthropic

Anthropic’s practice of calling out its own lapses and efforts to address them has drawn criticism. In response to Anthropic sounding the alarm on the AI-powered cybersecurity attack, Meta’s then–chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said the warning was a way to manipulate legislators into limiting the use of open-source models.

“You’re being played by people who want regulatory capture,” LeCun said in an X post in response to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy’s post expressing concern about the attack. “They are scaring everyone with dubious studies so that open-source models are regulated out of existence.”

Others have said Anthropic’s strategy is one of “safety theater” that amounts to good branding but offers no promises to actually implement safeguards on the technology.

Even some of Anthropic’s own personnel appear to have doubts about a tech company’s ability to regulate itself. Earlier last week, Anthropic AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma announced he had resigned from the company, saying, “The world is in peril.”

“Throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions,” Sharma wrote in his resignation letter. “I’ve seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and throughout broader society, too.”

Anthropic did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Amodei denied to Cooper that Anthropic was taking part in “safety theater” but admitted on an episode of the Dwarkesh Podcast last week that the company sometimes struggles to balance safety and profits.

“We’re under an incredible amount of commercial pressure and make it even harder for ourselves because we have all this safety stuff we do that I think we do more than other companies,” he said.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Nov. 17, 2025.
More on AI regulation:

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s 20,000-word essay on how AI ‘will test’ humanity is a must-read—but more for his remedies than his warnings


America’s AI regulatory patchwork is crushing startups and helping China


AI could trigger a global jobs market collapse by 2027 if left unchecked, former Google ethicist warns


Sam Altman says the quiet part out loud, confirming some companies are ‘AI washing’ by blaming unrelated layoffs on the technology

Sasha Rogelberg
Thu, February 19, 2026
FORTUNE


OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “AI washing” is a reality for some companies, but real displacement from the technology is on its way.

Prakash Singh—Bloomberg/Getty Images

As debate continues over AI’s true impact on the labor force, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said some companies are engaging in “AI washing” when it comes to layoffs, or falsely attributing workforce reductions to the technology’s impact.

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” Altman told CNBC-TV18 at the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday.

AI washing has gained traction as emerging data on the tech’s impact on the labor market tells a muddied, inconclusive story about how the technology is destroying human jobs—or if it has yet to touch them.

A study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, found that of thousands of surveyed C-suite executives across the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Australia, nearly 90% said AI had no impact on workplace employment over the past three years following the late-2022 release of ChatGPT.

However, prominent tech leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned of a white-collar bloodbath, with AI potentially wiping out 50% of entry-level office jobs. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski suggested this week the buy-now, pay-later firm would reduce its 3,000-person workforce by one-third by 2030 in part because of the acceleration of AI. Around 40% of employers expect to follow Siemiatkowski’s lead in culling staff down the line as a result of AI, according to the 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report.

Altman clarified he anticipates more job displacement as a result of AI, as well as the emergence of new roles complementing the technology.

“We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” he said. “But I would expect that the real impact of AI doing jobs in the next few years will begin to be palpable.

Signs of AI washing

Data from a recent Yale Budget Lab report suggests Altman and Amodei’s vision of mass worker displacement from AI is not certain and is not yet here. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, the research found no significant differences in the rate of change of occupations’ mix or length of unemployment for individuals with jobs that have high exposure to AI from the release of ChatGPT through November 2025. The numbers suggested no significant AI-related labor changes at this juncture.

“No matter which way you look at the data, at this exact moment, it just doesn’t seem like there’s major macroeconomic effects here,” Martha Gimbel, executive director and cofounder of the Yale Budget Lab, told Fortune earlier this month.

Gimbel attributed the practice of AI washing to companies passing off diminished margins and revenue from a failure to effectively navigate cautious consumers and geopolitical tensions to AI. WebAI cofounder and CEO David Stout also wrote in a commentary piece for Fortune that tech founders are facing increased pressure to justify exorbitant and continued investment in AI, which is the reason why many have created narratives of AI disrupting labor and the economy through predictions of mass worker displacement.

This era of toe-tapping in wait for the effects of AI to take hold rhymes with the 1980s IT boom, according to Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok. Nearly 40 years ago, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow observed little productivity gains in the PC age, despite prognostications of a productivity surge, and Slok sees a similar pattern today.

“AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data,” he wrote in a blog post last week

Evidence of AI’s impact on jobs

Slok also said this lull in AI-driven economic impact could follow a J-curve of an initial slowdown in performance obscured by early mass spending before an exponential surge in productivity and labor changes.

Economist and Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab director Erik Brynjolfsson said in a Financial Times op-ed recent labor data may be telling a new story of AI indeed impacting productivity and labor. He noted a decoupling of job growth and GDP growth reflected in the latest revised job numbers: Last week’s jobs report revised down job gains to just 181,000, despite fourth-quarter GDP tracking up 3.7%. Brynjolfsson’s own analysis revealed a 2.7% year-over-year productivity jump last year, which he attributed to AI’s productivity benefits beginning to peek through.

Brynjolfsson published a landmark study last year showing a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career employees with jobs with high levels of AI exposure. Most experienced workers, meanwhile, saw employment levels that remained stable or grew.

“The updated 2025 U.S. data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase,” he wrote in the FT, “where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Modi's AI unity pose turns awkward for Altman and Amodei

By Munsif Vengattil
Thu, February 19, 2026 

REUTERS

NEW DELHI, Feb 19 (Reuters) - When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi nudged speakers at the India AI summit ‌to join and raise their hands in a symbolic show ‌of unity, most executives obliged. Two did not: rivals Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario ​Amodei of Anthropic.

The two, who are locked in one of Silicon Valley's fiercest commercial rivalries, were standing side by side as the 13 corporate leaders joined Modi on stage, but they kept their raised fists conspicuously ‌apart.

Altman appeared visibly uncomfortable, looking ⁠away as the others, including Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, went along with Modi's nudge and joined hands.

The episode, captured ⁠on camera and widely shared across social media, drew amused and pointed reactions online, with many users describing it as emblematic of the "AI cold war" ​between ​OpenAI and Anthropic.

"I didn't know what ​was happening on stage. I ‌wasn't sure what we were supposed to be doing," Altman later told news website Moneycontrol.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Bill Gates pulled out of India's summit hours before his scheduled keynote address on Thursday, dealing a blow to a flagship event already ‌marred by organisational lapses, a robot row ​and complaints of traffic chaos.

However, the summit ​has attracted more than $200 billion ​in investment pledges.

Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by Dario ‌Amodei and other former OpenAI ​employees who broke away ​over disagreements about safety, commercialisation, and Altman's leadership style.

The rift has since hardened into a full-blown commercial war.

At this year's Super ​Bowl, Anthropic aired satirical ‌commercials taking a pointed jab at OpenAI's plans to introduce ​advertising inside ChatGPT.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi; Editing ​by Aditya Kalra and Kate Mayberry)


Modi’s Chaotic AI Summit Showed India’s Clout and Constraints

Sankalp Phartiyal
Fri, February 20, 2026

BLOOMBERG

Photographer: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his pitch this week that India can play a leading role in the artificial intelligence boom with a conference featuring tech stars from around the world. It suffered more than a few hitches.

Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang dropped out after early promotion; Bill Gates withdrew later. Many attendees ran into trouble just getting into the grand Bharat Mandapam venue in New Delhi on Monday and logistics remained an ordeal all week. Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, had so much trouble getting through security that his speech — announcing the biggest deal of the India AI Impact Summit — was delayed.

Even so, Modi gave a forceful demonstration of the country’s influence. He gathered many of the most prominent names in the tech industry, including the chief executives of Alphabet Inc., OpenAI and Anthropic PBC, as well as the India-born CEOs of global corporate icons like FedEx Corp. The prime day of the summit was so jam-packed that celebrity leaders like Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman were allocated a mere five to 12 minutes each.

“It’s one thing to say you’re the leader of the Global South and it’s another to come across as the leader of the Global South,” said Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia risk insights at advisory firm Verisk Maplecroft. “They’ve achieved what they wanted to achieve.”

The event mixed moments of genuine promise with evidence of India’s constraints as the global AI race accelerates. Similar to US President Donald Trump, Modi is able to elicit effusive praise and big promises from industry and government leaders, with Ambani pledging $110 billion for building out artificial intelligence projects across India over the next seven years. Speakers constantly praised the prime minister for his leadership and referred to him in the honorific, Shri Narendra Modi Ji.

But the country still lags in high-end computing infrastructure that’s necessary to build frontier large language models such as those produced by Silicon Valley companies or the coterie of Chinese upstarts that now sit atop many AI benchmark lists. Even the most efficient AI systems require tens of billions of dollars to build and operate, in a capital-intensive contest that US Big Tech in recent weeks escalated with plans for $650 billion in new spending in 2026.

The fight for artificial intelligence supremacy is between open versus closed systems rather than where those systems are built, according to Mistral AI’s chief executive officer, Arthur Mensch.Source: Bloomberg

Modi used the summit to argue for a model of AI development that sits in the middle lane between the corporate-led ecosystem of the US and state-backed China push. At the summit’s busiest day, inclusion and human-centered design took center stage.

“We have talent, energy capacity and policy clarity,” the PM said in Hindi, translated via AI into various languages. “AI is like GPS. It can show the direction, but where we want to go must be decided by us.”

He positioned India as the tech leader of the Global South — emerging economies, often previously colonized — that are eager to deploy AI but wary of aligning with one tech bloc or another. UN Secretary-General António Guterres reinforced that message, as did French President Emmanuel Macron, who sat alongside Modi at the gala with the ease of a longtime friend.

“The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” said Guterres.

The unifying message was that countries beyond the US and China want to be more than potential markets for AI companies. They want access to the best technologies, influence over regulation and the opportunity to share in the potential profits.

“India is trying to sort of set its terms,” said Bhattacharya. “The risk is India becoming this data colony for big tech where the proprietary, the value-added services are done elsewhere.”

One advantage the country has is the deep expertise of IT service firms like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Infosys Ltd., leaders in helping the world’s corporations adopt new technologies like cloud computing and mobile services. They are now working with partners like Anthrophic and OpenAI to use their armies of consultants to help companies figure out how to use AI.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Group, said on stage he sees the integration of AI and AI agents as a big opportunity for IT providers because of their understanding of the needs and opportunities for large-scale customers.

Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind CEO, and James Manyika, Google’s Senior Vice President, on AI’s risks and potential.Source: Bloomberg

US companies, for their part, are accelerating expansion in India before local rivals catch up. Anthropic this week opened an office in the southern tech hub of Bangalore, while OpenAI is expanding operations following last year’s New Delhi launch.

“I was last here a little over a year ago, and it’s striking how much progress has happened since then,” Altman said on Thursday. India is the fastest-growing market for OpenAI’s Codex coding tool, he added, after Anthropic’s Dario Amodei had earlier said his company’s Claude Code had doubled its local users over the past four months.

“It’s important to move quickly. On our current trajectory, we believe we may be only a couple of years away from early versions of true superintelligence,” Altman, 40, said. The Tata Group, maker of Jaguar Land Rover SUVs, said this week that it will partner with OpenAI to create as much as 1 gigawatt in data center capacity.

While India has not had a national AI champion to compete with the world’s leaders, an Indian startup called Sarvam used the spotlight of the summit to launch its own AI model, tailored from the ground up for use in the South Asian nation. The service is voice-based and accessible through nearly two dozen Indian languages, which the company believes will be a competitive advantage in a country of 1.45 billion where the vast majority can’t read, write or type in English.

“Sovereignty matters much more in AI than building the biggest models,” said co-founder Vivek Raghavan at an event in Delhi.

Still, Indian startups have little chance to raise the kind of money their American counterparts have to build out AI models and infrastructure.

“India can catch up in the AI race not by outspending the US and China on frontier models, but by excelling in population-scale deployment in sectors such as agriculture, education and health,” said Brenda Mulele Gunde, global lead for digital transformation at the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Modi’s administration has been supportive, providing subsidized computing capacity, access to public data and expanded AI training programs. India is also seeking to expand its manufacturing capabilities, including in high-tech sectors like semiconductors and smartphones. On Friday, the country formally joined a US-led initiative to protect supply chains, including for chips and critical minerals, along with countries like Japan and South Korea.

The miscues caught up with Modi on stage. In what was supposed to be a signature moment of the event, Modi pulled Pichai, Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith and 11 others in for a group photo in the event’s main hall. Instead, as Modi and the others all clasped hands above their heads, Altman and Amodei — fierce rivals in the AI race — refused to hold each other’s hands, a glaring rift that quickly went viral on social media in India.

Another embarrassing incident came when a private university was booted out of the AI exhibition after it allegedly misrepresented a Chinese-made robot dog as its own product. The creator of that machine, Hangzhou-based Unitree, meanwhile was wowing viewers of the Chinese New Year TV gala with its latest humanoids performing acrobatics with humanlike fluidity.

India may not be able to match the US or China in the spending required for AI development, but it was clear that Modi’s conference tapped into a deep undercurrent of angst around the way this once-in-a-generation technology is evolving. In countries beyond the two giants, business and political leaders see the risk that they will end up at the mercy of American or Chinese tech giants — or worse at the mercy of Washington or Beijing. They want an alternative to that bleak future.

“We’re facing too much concentration of power in artificial intelligence,” said Arthur Mensch, CEO of France’s Mistral AI, speaking in Delhi on Thursday. “AI is going to change pretty profoundly the way the economy is being run in the next few years,” he added.

--With assistance from Vlad Savov, Saritha Rai, Shona Ghosh, Bhuma Shrivastava and Mark Anderson.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Data Center Giant Secures $14 Million Deal to Consume 40% of Pennsylvania Town’s Excess Water

The data center will get access to 400,000 gallons of water per day—enough to serve over 2,300 homes.



An aerial view of a 33 megawatt data center with closed-loop cooling system, amid warehouses on October 20, 2025 in Vernon, California.
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Feb 16, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

An artificial intelligence data center development venture has signed a multimillion-dollar deal that will allow it to consume over 40% of a Pennsylvania town’s excess water supply.

PennLive reported on Monday that Carlisle Development Partners, a joint venture created by developers Pennsylvania Data Center Partners and PowerHouse Data Centers, had signed a $14.1 million agreement that will let it tap into the public water and sewer systems of Middlesex Township, Pennsylvania.

According to PennLive, the deal will formalize the 18-building data center’s right to access up to 400,000 gallons of water per day, which the publication notes is “equal to the consumption of 2,367 dwelling units.”

Middlesex Township Supervisor Phil Neiderer said during a recent planning commission meeting that the big influx of revenue to the local government would more than make up for the massive amounts of water being consumed by the data center.

“What that’s going to do is it’s going to fund a lot of projects that have already been in the books that are completely unrelated to the data center,” Neiderer said, according to PennLive.

In recent months, residents of Middlesex Township and Cumberland County have raised concerns about not only water use but also pollution and utility rates tied to the project.

AI data centers have become a major controversy throughout the US in recent months, as their massive energy needs have pushed up utility bills and put a strain on communities’ water supplies.

A study published in the journal Nature Sustainability last year found that data centers could soon consume as much water as 10 million Americans and emit as much carbon dioxide as 10 million cars, or roughly the same amount of consumption as the entire state of New York.

CNBC reported last month PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027 thanks to the gargantuan power demands of data centers.

Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he’s never seen the grid under such projected strain.

“It’s at a crisis stage right now,” Bowring said. “PJM has never been this short.”