Opinion - $6 million a day: Trump’s disclosures show he is the swamp’s biggest monster

Svante Myrick, opinion contributor

Mon, July 13, 2026 


President Trump told his followers he would "drain the swamp." Instead, he became the biggest swamp monster ever. He has obliterated the line between public service and personal enrichment.

Trump's recent financial disclosures revealed that he made $2.2 billion in the year since he returned to office. That is a breathtaking figure. It is more than 20 times the annual budget of the city of Ithaca, N.Y., where I served as mayor for 10 years.

In other words, Trump raked in, on average, more than $6 million a day, seven days a week. The presidency is more than a full-time job, but Trump's side hustles were pulling down 15 times the president's yearly salary of $400,000 — every single day!

Even the conservative Free Press recognized this, writing, "There is no modern parallel for the scale and shamelessness with which the president is enriching himself in office."

"Earned" would be too generous a term for the way Trump promoted scams like his meme coin, structured so that he would make money no matter what happened to other investors. As Forbes has reported, Trump "asked his political supporters to become his business partners. Those who trusted him got hurt the worst."

Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander looked at similar ventures by other members of the Trump family and told CNN's Erin Burnett that "it's a consistent pattern." If you add them up, he said, the Trump family has cashed out about $1.9 billion and had its net worth lifted by about $3.1 billion. "Meanwhile, their supporters collectively are down, we estimate $7 billion," he said.

Crooked crypto deals are just part of the Trump grift. We now know that Trump made 327 stock purchases on April 8, 2025. The next day, he posted "GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" before causing the market to jump by rolling back some of the tariffs he had just imposed.

Then there are billions of dollars in federal financing for mining deals that are profiting Trump's sons and the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

And consider how Trump insiders diverted tens of millions of dollars from the bipartisan organization Congress had created to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and funneled it into Freedom 250, a newly created company run by Trump insiders.

The sparsely attended "Great American State Fair" was a bust by just about any traditional measure — one commentator called it "a crime against fun" — but as journalist Liz Dye noted, it was a "rousing success" as a grift.

"Trump was able to snatch congressionally allocated funds, commingle them with cash from corporations seeking favor from his administration, enrich his buddies, and throw himself two spectacular birthday parties," she wrote.

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee recently documented how the anniversary was hijacked and turned into a "hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment." They have called for an investigation of possible criminal fraud over the diversion of funds that donors intended for the bipartisan America 250 into the Trump-controlled Freedom 250.

Unfortunately, there's been no effort by the Justice Department to rein in Trump's corruption. In fact, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, has advanced the corruption. He cut a deal to give Trump, his family members and their massive network of business operations immunity from IRS investigations or prosecutions. And he backed the creation of a massive slush fund Trump could use to funnel still more tax dollars to his supporters.

I am not a historian, but it is hard to imagine that there has ever been a more corrupt deal made by a U.S. attorney general. That is why the coming confirmation hearings for Blanche are so important. Senators must not reward Blanche's brazen corruption of the Justice Department by confirming him as attorney general.

More than 1,200 former Department of Justice attorneys and officials have urged senators to reject Blanche's nomination.

A letter sent last week references "the corruption and abuses that have defined the Justice Department under Todd Blanche's leadership," including "the vindictive prosecutions and investigations of the president's foes; the deals designed to reward lawbreakers with taxpayer dollars; the erasure of accountability for January 6; the mishandling of the Epstein files; and the denigration of judges and repeated violations of their orders."

The letter also slams Blanche's "degradation" of the department's career workforce through the firing of people for "declining to initiate vindictive prosecutions" or "refusing to lie in court."

Trump has claimed that nobody cares about his corruption and conflicts of interest. That is not true, and saying so encourages more destructive cynicism about politics.

The upcoming confirmation hearings for Blanche will be an opportunity for Republican senators to put country over party. And the upcoming elections will be an opportunity for voters to elect representatives who are more willing to do their duty.

Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Trump Loaded Up on Abbott Laboratories Stock Before His DOJ Dropped Criminal Probe

Abbott, which donated $500,000 to the president’s inaugural fund, faced an investigation stemming from alleged deadly contamination at one of its baby formula plants in Michigan.


President Donald Trump signs a presidential memo in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on June 29, 2026.
(Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jul 02, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

US President Donald Trump last year purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of Abbott Laboratories stock before his Justice Department dropped a years-long criminal investigation into the company, which was accused of misconduct after infant hospitalizations and deaths were linked to one of its baby formula factories.

The stock purchases were revealed in the president’s annual financial disclosure report, which spans 927 pages and shows thousands of trades valued at over $1 billion. Trump’s first purchase of Abbott stock last year was made in late September, and the president bought around $500,000 worth of shares in total in 2025, according to the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that “top decision makers” at the Department of Justice shut down the criminal investigation into Abbott—which donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund—even though “some prosecutors believed they had evidence to criminally charge the company under a law they have used to pursue other businesses for allegedly selling contaminated foods.”

“Prosecutors had been considering a misdemeanor charge against Abbott for violating the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and a separate count for misleading the government,” the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. “Investigators in early 2022 had found traces of a potentially deadly bacteria at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, including on equipment very close to infant formula containers—as well as a long list of other problems.”

The Food and Drug Administration received reports of at least nine infant deaths linked to baby formula produced at Abbott’s Sturgis plant, which the company temporarily shut down amid fears of dangerous contamination. The Justice Department launched its investigation into Abbott, the largest infant formula manufacturer in the US, in 2023, under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Trump’s DOJ has taken a far more lax approach to corporate enforcement, reaching sweetheart settlement deals with companies accused of price-fixing, stifling competition, and other illegal activities.

The Journal reported that the Justice Department and Abbott “reached a settlement to resolve” a separate but related civil lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly “failed to follow manufacturing standards to protect against the risk of contamination.”

“That suit, which was joined by 31 states, alleged that Abbott had a ‘culture of concealment’ at Sturgis and ‘withheld information from FDA related to the presence of microorganisms in the Sturgis facility,’” the Journal observed.



Last April, the investigative outlet ProPublica reported that workers at Abbott’s Sturgis plant—which resumed production in June 2022—said the company was still “engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down.”

“Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing equipment and testing for microbes,” the outlet reported. “The employees said leaks in the factory are sometimes not fixed, a dangerous problem that can promote bacterial growth. They also said workers at the facility do not always take required swabs to check for pathogens while performing maintenance during production. Supervisors have urged workers to increase production and have retaliated against workers who complained about problems, the employees said.

Abbott, whose stock is down significantly year-to-date but up over the past month, called the ProPublica story “misleading” and impugned the motives of workers who spoke to the outlet.

Trump’s purchase of Abbott stock wasn’t the only buy that preceded significant action by his administration.

“On April 8, 2025, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, the disclosure shows 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million, one of the largest single-day stock buying sprees disclosed in the filing,” Sludge reported on Wednesday. “The purchases included Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, each valued as much as $250,000, along with scores of other companies. The S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% the following day when Trump announced the pause, one of the largest single-day gains in the index’s history.”

Fox host warns Trump will pay for his 'breathtaking' corruption

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One en route from Scotland, Britain, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein

Nick Hilden

July 03, 2026

ALTERNET

On Friday, Fox News host and political analyst Brit Hume offered a prediction that President Donald Trump is unlikely to appreciate. If the Democrats come out ahead in the midterms, the chief executive could find himself paying big for his "breathtaking" crypto corruption.

Hume's forecast comes in the wake of the president's 2025 financial disclosures earlier in the week, which revealed that his family raked in a shocking $1 billion from its cryptocurrency ventures while Daddy Trump regulated the market. As Mediate explains, "The filing reported roughly $500 million in income from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded with his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, along with approximately $635 million from sales of the $TRUMP meme coin through CIC Digital LLC. The disclosure also detailed hundreds of millions of dollars in income from Trump’s real estate holdings and millions more from licensing deals and other business ventures. The president made more than $2 billion overall."

Another Fox News host, John Roberts, called the numbers "eye-popping," prompting Hume to respond, "It is, John, and I think the right word for this is unseemly, for a president to profit while in office.”


He continued, "Now, it’s not fair to say that he profited from the office, although, you know, that’s surely gonna be subject to investigation — particularly if the Democrats get control of one or both branches of Congress. But, if you wanted seemliness in the White House, Donald Trump was not your man, and if you wanted a guy that wasn’t very rich in the White House, he wasn’t your man for that either. The fact is that he’s a very rich guy, and when you hold the kind of holdings he has, you do get richer. This amount from crypto seems breathtaking, but as the point was made by you and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, not illegal. So, the people that don’t like Trump won’t like this. The people that do like Trump won’t care very much, in my judgement."

Hume is only partly true in regards to that last assertion. While much of MAGA has remained loyal to the president regardless of his financial improprieties, he's had pushback from some high-profile supporters. The New York Post, for example, which is typically complimentary toward Trump, declared that a recent story involving his sons' profiting off a Kazakhstan mining deal their father struck "stinks to high heaven." According to the Post, "The Lutnick [sons of Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick] and Trump boys have been sloshing around in the muck since their dads came to power 18 months ago. They’ve profited handsomely from cryptocurrency deals while the government their fathers control were setting crypto policy.”

‘Not Even Trying to Hide Their Brazen Corruption’: Trump Sons Set to Profit From Tungsten Mining Deal

“This is the most corrupt administration in American history,” said one House Democrat. “It is not close.”


Jake Johnson
Jun 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A bombshell New York Times report detailing how President Donald Trump’s eldest sons stand to profit from a tungsten mining deal negotiated by their billionaire father sparked outraged calls for accountability on Monday, with Democratic lawmakers characterizing the taxpayer-funded project as yet another example of the administration’s unchecked and unprecedented corruption.

“You will not believe it until you see it laid out,” US Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) wrote in response to the Times story published over the weekend. According to the newspaper, Trump and his team—including billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—“won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips, and other critical goods.”

Ahead of the deal’s completion last September, according to the Times, the Trump administration “approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.”

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., along with Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, are poised to benefit from the project. “Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons... joined with other partners to take a 20% stake in a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project,” the Times reported.

“We’ve seen 300,000 Georgians lose health coverage in the last six months because they couldn’t find room in the budget for health insurance. But they’ve got room in the budget for a tungsten mine overseas, controlled in part by Prince Don and Prince Eric,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said in an MS NOW appearance late Monday.

Lutnick’s sons, meanwhile, “helped one of the lead investors... on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity,” potentially resulting in a multimillion-dollar boon for Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm overseen by Brandon and Kyle Lutnick.

“They’re not even trying to hide their brazen corruption anymore,” wrote US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “President Trump and Secretary Lutnick used your tax dollars to further enrich their families from a major mining deal with Kazakhstan.”

Beyer stressed that “this isn’t an isolated incident.” The Times found that at least “14 companies working on critical mining deals with the US government that have ties to Cantor Fitzgerald or the Trump family,” including Kaz Resources, Perpetua Resources, and USA Rare Earth.

Trump’s family has profited massively from his return to the White House, thanks in a large part to a crypto scheme spearheaded by the president’s eldest sons. A “Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker” maintained by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee estimates that crypto projects have netted the president and his family over $2.4 billion in profits so far.

“This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close,” Levin said Monday, accusing Trump’s Republican allies—including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—of enabling the president as he loots federal coffers to further enrich himself and his family.

“We must keep digging, and keep asking the questions they do not want asked,” Levin added. “Republicans in Congress are unwilling to lift a finger. Mike Johnson is running a protection racket.”

Fuming Trump ex-lawyer warns White House 'grift is on and it’s stunning'

Matthew Rozsa

June 30, 2026

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump’s former lawyer told CNN on Tuesday that the Republican leader is grifting the American people — and it’s stunning.

Ty Cobb, who worked for Trump during his first term, described Trump in this way to CNN host Erin Burnett after she described how the president has earned anywhere from $1 billion to more than $2 billion in his cryptocurrency ventures since resuming office last year.

“This isn't a cumulative number — it's in one year,” Cobb told Burnett. “This is an industry he has actively promoted and supported, and — on policy, executive orders related to it — is it legal? I don't believe so, and certainly I don't think it was contemplated by the Founders when they created the Emoluments Clause.”

After criticizing Trump for making several hundred million dollars off of commemorative coins that include his likeness, Cobb described the cryptocurrency market as “a slimy industry,” adding that “where he creates policies that can only enrich himself and his family, is something that I think the average American should be staggered by.” He similarly denounced the $1.8 billion slush fund that Trump created with acting attorney general Todd Blanche, describing the overall profiteering by the Trump family as “the greatest onslaught of corruption in the history of mankind in the last 18 months” and concluding that “the grift is on. It's stunning.”

Burnett then asked Cobb about reports that the Trump sons used their government connections to close a $1.6 billion deal for tungsten in Kazakhstan.

“It is the shame of the nation, and people should be paying attention,” Cobb said. “Look back at the Iran war — it shouldn't have been started, but once it was started, what did we learn? We learned that the Trump sons have a drone company and have become a huge government contractor. Then you hear this Kazakhstan deal announced — it was announced in November of 2025, when the $1.6 billion in financing was disclosed. What we didn't know was that the Trump sons, just a few weeks earlier — actually just days before the deal was announced — had acquired an interest in a company that has a substantial portion of that deal. And they've only gotten closer, corporately, with the people involved in that deal.”

He concluded, “So we see the 14 companies you were talking about that the Trump sons or the Lutnick sons have an interest in. The amount of guaranteed financing from the United States government for those 14 companies pursuing those deals: $9 billion. So yes, people should pay attention. It is staggering.”

Despite initially working for Trump, Cobb has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, even describing him as a “madman” who imperils democracy and urging for the 25th Amendment to be invoked so he can removed from power on the grounds of lack of mental fitness.

Trump’s fans got 'trash' while Trump got rich: WSJ report

A person attends the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) USA 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, U.S., March 27, 2026. REUTERS Daniel Cole

Adam Lynch

July 01, 2026

ALTERNET

The Wall Street Journal reports that not only did President Donald Trump make a cool $1 billion off his connections to the White House, he managed to do it in a way that made his MAGA fans and supporters catch the short end of the grifting stick.

Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. But the WSJ reports the value of those tokens instead tanked.

“While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week.

“In crypto, people say a game is a game,” said Christensen, a digital-asset entrepreneur. “He played a better game than I did.”

Others were much less generous over their losses.

“My investment is trash now,” one user said of their WLF tokens.

"People backed Trump because they believed he would fight for them and were hoodwinked into thinking he cared about the working classes who brought him into power,” said a longtime Republican activist familiar with grassroots sentiment among Trump's MAGA base. “Seeing billions tied to crypto makes some loyal supporters uncomfortable and most of them have no idea what crypto is, let alone have the resources to invest in it. They feel this isn't public service anymore."

“The president raked in cash by issuing new assets — World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto,” reports WSJ. “Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.”

All told, roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch. Many fans spent thousands of dollars on Trump coins while the biggest spenders shelled out millions for the token.

Nansen’s analysis of 26,663 wallets shows a whopping 85 percent of World Liberty’s $WLFI token buyers in the secondary market are underwater.

This, said WSJ, was a big step away for a president who in 2021 described bitcoin as a “scam” that threatened the U.S. dollar. Now, however, Trump leads a White House that has pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the world.”

“As his administration lightened regulation of the notoriously boom-and-bust sector, the Trump family’s sprawling crypto business reached into nearly every corner of the industry, drawing conflict-of-interest concerns from ethics watchdogs,” reports WSJ. “Bitcoin prices also plunged.”

The White House, meanwhile, has sworn to unleash "an unrelenting, full-scale assault on the fraudsters, scammers, and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers," with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud moving "at unprecedented speed and ferocity to root out the waste, abuse, and criminal exploitation ... "that have drained billions from hardworking taxpayers."

MAGA lays into Trump’s big money schemes: report

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks during the signing ceremony for an executive order on mail ballots, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 31, 2026. REUTERS Evan Vucci

Matthew Rozsa

July 01, 2026

 ALTERNET

Sources close to the White House told RADAR Online in a Wednesday story that members of President Donald Trump’s stalwart followers are finally getting furious at all the money he keeps generating off the White House.

"People backed Trump because they believed he would fight for them and were hoodwinked into thinking he cared about the working classes who brought him into power,” said a longtime Republican activist familiar with grassroots sentiment among Trump's MAGA base. “Seeing billions tied to crypto makes some loyal supporters uncomfortable and most of them have no idea what crypto is, let alone have the resources to invest in it. They feel this isn't public service anymore."

RADAR reports Trump triggered fresh criticism after financial disclosures showed he earned more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures during his first year back in the White House, on top of other profits Trump has managed to grab for himself and his family in the last few months. First Lady Melania Trump herself also earned at least $10.7 million due to her controversial and critically-maligned documentary, "Melania."

Another MAGA source speaking with RADAR Online added: "Many voters won't begrudge Trump's success, but these numbers are staggering. Critics inside the MAGA movement are calling it shameful and asking whether the presidency is becoming Trump's personal cash machine."

Trump has also earned $290 million from his businesses including $77 million from Mar-a-Lago and additional profits from Trump National Doral, Bedminster and Trump National Washington DC. He additionally pocketed $86 million from settlements with media and social media companies like ABC, CBS, Meta, YouTube and X.

“This isn't a cumulative number — it's in one year,” former Trump attorney Ty Cobb, who worked for Trump during his first term, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday. Cobb was referring to Trump earning between $1 billion and $2 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures since assuming office for his second term in early 2025. “This is an industry he has actively promoted and supported, and — on policy, executive orders related to it — is it legal? I don't believe so, and certainly I don't think it was contemplated by the Founders when they created the Emoluments Clause.”

In April MS NOW News reporter Alex Tabet pointed out that people are investing in Trump’s cryptocurrency coin not because of its intrinsic value but because it grants them access to the president.

“Let me break down how this Mar-a-Lago crypto conference works,” Tabet wrote. “So, the top 297 holders of this Trump Coin — which buying, by the way, enriches the Trump family — gets you invited to the conference. The top 29 buyers of the coin get a special VIP reception with President Trump, complete with champagne.”

He added, “And if I were one of those 29 people, I'd be hoping it's a bottomless brunch because the value of the Trump Coin has been absolutely decimated. The coin is down more than 84 percent in the last year, down 96 percent from its peak. So, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those attendees today were using those champagne flutes to catch their tears.”

'It's incredible': CNN analysts stunned by 'enormous implications' of Trump crypto profits

Bennito L. Kelty
June 30, 2026 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks next to Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, CEO of Cleveland Clinic Tom Mihaljevic and CEO of G42 Peng Xiao as he attends a business forum at Qasr Al Watan during the final stop of his Gulf visit, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, May 16, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo


CNN analysts stressed the gravity of revelations of Trump's major profits from cryptocurrency.

According to a New York Times report, the Trump family profited to the tune of $1.4 billion through their cryptocurrency business. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper described the revelations as "incredible" and "stunning" as he spoke with other analysts. According to the Times report, Trump reeled in more than $2.2 billion in total revenue in 2025.

"It really is hard to overstate just how unusual and how historic this is," New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton told Cooper.

According to Lipton, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar bought half of the Trump family's crypto business. Lipton pointed out that the sons of Steve Witkoff, who was involved in negotiations with Iran, were also invested.

"We're talking about billions of dollars of financial ties between the UAE and the Trump family, at the same time as he is negotiating, sharing some of the most advanced technologies humans have ever created, and these AI chips with the UAE," Lipton explained. "There are enormous implications in foreign policy that are mixed up with the personal financial interests of the president."

Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher said the Trump administration is "a coin-operated presidency, really. You just put money in to give to him, and then he gives you other things, and this is exactly what's happening with the crypto stuff."

She described the news of Trump's crypto profits as "astonishing," and mentioned that Trump's family is also profiting from a recent mining deal with Kazakhstan.

"It's a vig," Swisher said, using a loansharking term. "They go around from country to country shaking people down."

'Off the Richter scale': Presidential historian raises red flags about Trump mining deal

Bennito L. Kelty
June 30, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside Howard Lutnick in the Oval Office of the White House on the day Lutnick is sworn in as U.S. Commerce Secretary by Vice President JD Vance, in Washington, DC, U.S., February 21, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howar


A presidential historian is sounding the alarm about a recent mining deal that's expected to enrich the Trump family.

"The audacity is so off the Richter scale," Douglas Brinkley said about a deal between the Trump administration and Kazakhstan to access one of the world's largest untapped reserves of tungsten.

The New York Times reported on the $1.6 billion tungsten mining deal with the Central Asian country. The Times noted that the sons of both Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stand to benefit. Tungsten is used in "missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips, and other critical goods," the Times noted.

Brinkley reacted to details of the deal as reported by the NY Times during an appearance on The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday.

"People aren't sure what's even going on," Brinkley said. "You have to hope the law will eventually hold President Trump accountable if he did some things that are illegal and illicit, but the law moves slowly."

Brinkley agreed with host Jim Acosta's assessment that Trump's self-enrichment during his second term is unprecedented.

"Just think, not that long ago, there was a scandal because Jimmy Carter's brother Billy had a beer, or you know, Neil Bush got involved with a bit of a hedge fund banking thing run a little bit amok," Brinkley said. "They're so small, and then this is such a huge wake-up call, people."

The way Brinkley sees it, "you're having a president of the United States using the White House for personal self-enrichment of a kind of mind-boggling audacity," adding that "it's a crisis, but we've got to get through it."

 

EU Commences Mediterranean Dark Fleet Stop and Search Operations

EU forces have begun inspections of tankers in the Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR Irini)

Published Jun 9, 2026 3:25 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The European Union has launched a coordinated campaign to crack down on vessels that are false-flagged, fraudulently certified, or are in breach of maritime safety and labor laws.

The move, announced after an agreement between EU defense ministers at a meeting in Nicosia on June 8, utilizes the pre-existing mandate for Operation Irini, which was originally established in 2020 under a UN mandate to enforce an arms embargo on Libya in the Mediterranean.  It is not clear how or whether the refreshed operation announced by EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas has also inherited the same UN mandate, but it has explicitly been relaunched with the aim of supporting Ukraine by cracking down on Russian dark fleet activities. It nonetheless gives member nations the authority of an EU mandate to board suspicious ships.

Operation Irini suffered initially in 2020 from a weak mandate. Tasked with monitoring and interdicting arms supplies to the different warring factions in Libya, whenever it sought to board and inspect a ship, it was initially required to secure the permission of the ship’s flag nation in accordance with UNCLOS. When the ship was Turkish, with arms destined for the faction it was supporting, permission was invariably refused. Operation Irini nonetheless has continued.

 

Irini reports stopping three tankers since the effort began in May (Irini)

 

Currently, the naval forces committed to Operation Irini are headquartered in Rome and under the command of Italian RAdm RADM (UH) Marco Casapieri. The force consists of the Italian Thaon di Revel Class offshore patrol vessel ITS Francesco Morosini (P431), the Greek Elli Class frigate HS Kanaris (F-464). The force is supported by a Beechcraft B300 King Air 350 maritime surveillance aircraft provided by Luxembourg, which is forward-based in Malta, and a PZL M28B Bryza maritime surveillance aircraft provided by Poland.

The new, expanded anti-dark fleet mandate does not appear to have gotten off to a good start, suffering as others have done from the limited justifications in UNCLOS for intercepting ships at sea, even if they are sanctioned, and there are registration irregularities.  

 

(Irini)

 

Since the launch of the expanded mission, Irini reports it has stopped three vessels. It conducted a flag verification boarding of EU and UK-sanctioned Sandhya (37,159 dwt), an Indian-owned, Cameroon-flagged product tanker, on June 7. According to its AIS signal, the vessel was coming from Brazil bound for Turkey.

On June 1, an inspection team boarded the Cameroon-flagged and EU-sanctioned Aframax Oneiroi (105,585 dwt) in international waters in the Mediterranean. The 244-meter (800-foot) Oneiroi has a capacity of about 100,000 barrels of oil. It had loaded at Primorsk on May 11. Notwithstanding the stop and search, the Oneiroi still managed to reach Port Said on June 5 and is expected to unload at Vadinar in Gujarat on June 16.  

A second Cameroon-flagged Suezmax, Nelsa (156,760 dwt), reportedly owned by a company in Azerbaijan and sanctioned by the EU and UK, was the first vessel stopped by Irini on May 11. The 274-meter (899-foot) Nelsa loaded at Novorossiysk, came through the Bosporus on June 2. Notwithstanding its interception, it is also now through the Suez Canal and heading for India.

It is not clear what the Irini inspections found or why the vessels were allowed to proceed.

Ukraine Expands Campaign Including Targeting Mariupol and Shadow Tanker

Ukraine heavily damaged the occupied port of Mariupol as it seeks to disrupt Russia's logistics operations (Mariupol City Council file photo)

Published Jun 10, 2026 2:24 PM by The Maritime Executive

Ukraine is accelerating its campaigns, focusing on Russia’s logistical operations in response to a series of heavy attacks launched by Russian forces. The occupied port of Mariupol was one of the key focuses, while other attacks continued to target the energy infrastructure and another shadow fleet tanker in the Black Sea.

These attacks came as Ukraine also celebrated its Unmanned Systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky declared June 11 an annual day of celebration for the unique unit that is greatly contributing to the war. According to media reports, the unit was formed in 2022 by a former grain trader and has become an elite drone unit responsible for the long-range attacks.

The unit was a key participant along with other units of the military in the overnight attacks on Mariupol, which has been occupied by the Russians since the first weeks of the war in 2022. Located on the Azov Sea, Ukraine contends Russia is using the port to support military operations as well as to export grain, coal, and metals from the occupied region.

The drones were used to strike the energy infrastructure, repair, and administrative structures in the port. According to the reports, the port was left without power and suffered significant damage, which is significantly limiting its operations. Russia is reported to have used the port to move personnel and resources across southern Ukraine. The reports indicate that transport routes through the city have also been restricted.

The port’s control tower, radar equipment, and electrical substations were all heavily damaged. The sanctioned cargo vessel Lady Augusta (6,830 dwt) that docked in the port was also damaged. The vessel is listed as laid up since August 2023 and registered in the Marshall Islands.

The strikes on Mariupol came after the General Staff reported other attacks carried out on June 5 that destroyed eight fuel storage tanks and damaged nine others in the same port area. It also struck a key bridge linking the port to the occupied regions of Crimea.

Other strikes in the campaign included the VNIR-Progress plan in the city of Cheboksary, which was reported to be a key manufacturer of navigation equipment, including satellite receivers for precision-guided weapons. The Kuibyshevsk oil refinery at Samara was also struck. Drones from the SBU destroyed warehouses with ammunition and engineering equipment in the Donetsk region.

The General Staff also said that it had struck a shadow fleet product tanker without providing details on the timing or location. The tanker West Horizon (50,548 dwt) was in the Black Sea when it was struck, with the General Staff saying the propeller and rudder were damaged. The vessel is listed as being managed from Turkey and is registered in Guinea-Bissau.

Ukraine's Ports Authority, however, was also reporting that two commercial vessels heading for its ports were damaged. In a posting on social media, the authority reported the vessels were a cargo ship under the flag of Panama and another registered in Barbados. One was inbound to load metals, and the other was outbound from the Desa area with a cargo of wheat. A fire broke out on board one of the vessels, which was quickly extinguished by the crew. There were no injuries and both ships were continuing their voyages.

Dutch Arrest Captain and Stop Containers Violating Russian Sanctions

Dutch Customs launched an investigation in the Port of Rotterdam (Douane)

Published Jun 9, 2026 4:40 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Dutch Customs reports it has started a crackdown, intercepting sanctioned goods bound for Russia through the Port of Rotterdam. Over the past few days, they reported that the captain of a containership was arrested, and multiple containers have been intercepted as part of a criminal investigation into organized sanction violations.

The captain of the unnamed vessel was arrested on June 5 on suspicion of involvement in criminal offenses related to the possible sanctions violations. The magistrate in the Rotterdam District Court ordered the captain’s detention on June 8 for two weeks as the investigation into the sanction violations continues.

Dutch Customs said it is working with Europol, the Rotterdam Port Police, and others, in the operation. They said that research indicated that 92 percent of sanctioned goods traveling via liner services are originating from other EU member states and being transshipped into Russia.

The targeted vessel was reported to be operating a regular service between Rotterdam and Saint Petersburg. The authorities said there were “strong indications” that this route was being misused to circumvent sanctions.

 

The unnamed vessel was searched and the captain has been arrested (Douane)

 

Several containers have been inspected, and an investigation was launched on board the ship and two unnamed companies, located in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The containers were flagged for inspections because of their documentation, which included some goods under a transit ban and other irregularities.

Several containers were moved to a control warehouse, where customs officers opened the containers and unpacked the cargo. According to the authorities, “It quickly became clear that something was not right with the shipment.” They said labels had been removed and pieces of cardboard had been glued to the tops of the boxes. “That’s not right,” said Dutch Customs. “Then you know that the contents have been tampered with.”

 

Boxes had been tampered with, and they found motor oil among other blocked goods (Douane)

 

The operation was specifically aimed at goods that are not permitted to be transported through Russia to other countries. The authorities said there is a risk that the goods could remain in Russia and be used to support military operations. They cited as examples aircraft parts, advanced technology, and machinery that could be used in military applications. 

In one of the containers, Customs reports they found windshields, car doors, motor oil, and an entire vehicle air filter system.

“This could be used for passenger cars,” explained a customs officer. They noted, however, “It could be used for trucks headed to the battlefield.”

Dozens of containers were stopped during the inspections. Customs reports it encountered several shipments that were subject to the transit ban.

 

EU Calls for Sanctions on Bunker and Support Vessels in New Russian Package

EU plans to sanction bunkering and other vessels supporting the shadow tanker fleet (file photo)

Published Jun 9, 2026 1:20 PM by The Maritime Executive

Saying that the goal is to maintain the pressure from the West on Russia, the European Commission outlined its plans for the 21st sanction package since the start of the war in Ukraine. The European Union highlights the impact of its economic sanctions while saying, “Consistency with the sanctions packages is paying off.”

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, however, also highlighted the increased Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine as well as the wayward attacks that have entered European airspace and hit Romania and others, supporting the effort to further deepen the economic sanctions. She asserted that Russia is cut off from the global capital markets, is experiencing high inflation and interest rates, and has lost two-thirds of the liquid assets of its sovereign wealth fund. Energy revenues, the EU reports, fell by around 40 percent in early 2026, while saying actions are needed to address the benefits Russia has gained with the interruption of energy supplies from the Middle East.

“Today, we are putting forward the 21st sanctions package. We focus on the sectors with the highest impact: energy, financial services and crypto, trade – including fisheries, for the first time – and we are banning the entry of former Russian combatants into the European Union,” reported von der Leyen.

To maintain the pressure on the shadow fleet and the energy revenues, the EU, for the first time, is targeting vessels that assist the tankers, including those providing bunkering and other services. They are also calling for listing another 30 tankers on top of the 632 that the EU has already sanctioned. They also want to extend the restrictions on the sale of oil tankers to Russia to include LNG tankers. Another element would be a ban on Russian fisheries as well as ports and other infrastructure. 

To give the oil markets time to stabilize, the EU is proposing freezing the current built-in adjustment mechanism on the oil price cap. It would maintain the $44 price until January 2027 to continue the pressure on Russia while also taking into consideration the impact of the Middle East on the oil market.

Beyond the energy market, the EU is also calling for new export restrictions on items and technology that can be used by the Russian military. This would include more metals and alloys used in aerospace and defense sectors, as well as ground support equipment and jamming and launch systems for drones. 

The European Commission is also planning more direct financial sanctions targeting 31 more Russian banks with transaction bans. They also want to add 20 banks and crypto platforms, as well as oil traders in third countries, to the sanctions.

Financial aid to Ukraine also continues with the EU delivering almost €3 billion in a new loan facility to Ukraine yesterday, June 8, and expects to release the first disbursement under the previously announced €90 billion loan. By the end of the month, the EU will have provided Ukraine with €6 billion for drones and more than €3 billion of macro-financial assistance.

AI Hacking Is Not the Scariest Part About Anthropic’s Claude Mythos

Allowing AI to build the next generation of AI is like taking our hands off the steering wheel at the same time as we’re slamming the accelerator. If this isn’t a recipe for disaster, what is?

Signage of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is seen during the World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit in Mumbai, India, on May 2, 2025.
(Photo: Indranil Aditya/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

David Krueger
Jun 03, 2026

Common Dreams

Weeks have passed since Anthropic launched Claude Mythos Preview—artificial intelligence deemed too dangerous for public use. The alarm bells ring even louder today.

US banks are currently rushing to plug holes in their cybersecurity, and for good reason. Mythos Preview can autonomously find and exploit software vulnerabilities that would take human experts weeks or months to discover, leaving no security system safe. The new AI system even found a vulnerability in OpenBSD, which aims to be “the most secure operating system” in the world. This vulnerability went unnoticed by human experts for 27 years.

To quote JPMorganChase’s Jamie Dimon, Mythos Preview represents “very heightened risk”—risk that could affect billions of global consumers. Like most AI “breakthroughs,” this is just the latest and greatest in a series of rapid advances. CrowdStrike already noted an 89 percent increase in attacks by AI-enabled adversaries in 2025. AI is predictably bringing earth-shaking capabilities faster than society can adapt.

That is now. What happens in a few years time, when individual hackers and criminal entities have access to AI more powerful than Mythos Preview?

But AI hacking isn’t the scariest thing about Mythos Preview. Much more significant, and dangerous, is what Anthropic plans to do next: Use Mythos Preview to build the next iteration of AI, and the next, and the next. Anthropic and other frontier AI companies are increasingly using AI to automate research and development of new AI models.

AI may offer tremendous benefits, but how can it possibly be worth the one-in-six chance of doom the average researcher assigns?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calls it the “feedback loop,” whereby “the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next.” Another name for it is recursive self-improvement (RSI). Back in the 1960s, English mathematician I. J. Good predicted that an “ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines.”

Already in 2025, Sam Altman was bragging about having “a larval version of recursive self-improvement” at OpenAI and declared “the takeoff has started.” This January, Jan Leike, former Head of Alignment at OpenAI announced “the recursive self-improvement process has begun” at Anthropic (his current employer), while cautioning, that “alignment is not solved.”

As crazy as it sounds, major developers really are handing over AI coding tasks to AI itself, and are serious about taking humans out of the loop entirely. Meanwhile, brand-new start-ups focused on RSI are reaching multi-billion dollar valuations.

We should of course treat industry claims with some degree of skepticism. But even OpenAI whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo is expecting self-improvement by the middle of 2027. And academics at top AI conferences are organizing workshops on RSI, a topic that would’ve gotten you laughed out of the room a few years ago.

What comes next? According to Kokotajlo and other experts, RSI could take AI from human-level to vastly super-human within a few months. If you think AI that competes with top government hackers is scary, what about AI that can invent new deadly diseases, or even completely new fields of science?

Self-improvement could also lead to completely new paradigms in AI that render today’s (already limited) guardrails and safety tests obsolete. Remember: All of this would happen without humans in the loop. This is like taking our hands off the steering wheel at the same time as we’re slamming the accelerator. If this isn’t a recipe for disaster, what is?

Earlier this year, I co-authored a study where we interviewed some of the world’s top AI researchers from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI as well as nonprofits and academic institutions like Stanford University. Out of the 25 researchers we interviewed, 20 cited the automation of AI R&D (in other words, RSI) as one of the most severe and urgent risks from AI. And this is all set to unfold outside the public eye: 17 of the 25 said they expect AIs with such capabilities to be reserved for internal use. This was all before the launch of Mythos Preview.

Humanity must be able to control the pace and direction of AI.

AI accelerationists like to call people like me “doomers” for pointing out basic, publicly verifiable facts about the expectations and aspirations of the AI industry. But they are often the ones openly hoping for humanity’s demise. No, really. Last year, xAI fired an employee who called a commenter on social media “selfish” for saying “I would prefer my child to live” rather than be wiped out by AI.

It can be hard to believe that such deranged plans and ideologies are being openly pursued, while governments stand idly by. Behind closed doors, many policymakers and researchers hope for a “warning shot”: A catastrophe big enough to snap us out of this moment of temporary insanity.

Developments like Mythos Preview, and the statements of AI experts provide ample warning, if we give them the attention they deserve. AI may offer tremendous benefits, but how can it possibly be worth the one-in-six chance of doom the average researcher assigns?

The obvious solution is an indefinite, global pause on the creation of more powerful AI systems. This is possible, with national will and international cooperation. Governments could coordinate to systematically “get rid of the compute.” During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union worked together to avoid nuclear disaster. Today, the US and China should cooperate to avoid AI disaster.

Humanity must be able to control the pace and direction of AI. Instead of taking our hands off the wheel and accelerating, let’s push the brakes, steer over to the side of the road, and take the time to figure out where we want to go and how to get there.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


David Krueger is an assistant professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal. He is also the founder of Evitable, a non-profit that educates the public about the risks of artificial intelligence.
Full Bio >

New York Times chief slams AI companies

for 'theft' of intellectual property

The head of The New York Times newspaper launched a scathing attack on artificial intelligence companies, accusing them of "shameless theft of intellectual property" and of threatening journalism. He was speaking at a global media congress on Monday in the southern French city of Marseille.


Issued on: 02/06/2026 - RFI

The publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, during his speech at the World Media Congress in Marseille, 1 June 2026 © MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP


According to Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, president and publisher of the prestigious The New York Times newspaper, "tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation."

He was addressing newspaper and news site executives from around the world gathered on the first of a three-day World News Media Congress.

Sulzberger accused artificial intelligence companies' "hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products – a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale."

"They reclaim this stolen content as if they were its authors, thus diverting the audience and revenue" of news sites," he declared in a speech that was met with enthusiastic applause.

He added that the news sector "has been too quiet, too passive and too fragmented in the face of abuses by the companies leading the AI revolution."
Fragile business model

While The New York Times a strong presence in the American press with more than 13 million subscribers to its print and digital products, thanks in particular to strong diversification (podcasts, cooking recipes), the United States has lost up to 3,000 newspapers in the last two decades, Sulzberger recalled.

"I fear we are careening toward a future with fewer and fewer journalists to do the expensive, difficult work of original reporting," he said.

Already facing competition from social media, traditional media outlets are seeing their fragile business model put under pressure by chatbots like ChatGPT (OpenAI).

French press take on digital databases to defend journalist copyright against AI

These chatbots respond directly to user requests, thanks to AI models that feed on the internet, particularly press content, consequently reducing traffic to news sites.

Sulzberger, whose company is suing OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and Microsoft over the use of copyrighted work, said AI companies are "consolidating their outsize control over our data and our attention" but are "failing to embrace a core responsibility that comes with this power – to ensure the public has access to trustworthy news and information."

The legal battle that has lasted two and a half years and has already cost the thriving American newspaper "more than $20 million" (€17 million) in legal fees.

"AI companies know this: most media outlets don't have the resources to go to court to enforce their rights," he added.
Crucial moment in media history

After the arrival of the internet and social media, "we are once again at a crucial moment in the history of media," Ladina Heimgartner, president of WAN-IFRA and CEO of the Swiss media group Ringier Media, told French news agency AFP.

"We are experiencing an unacceptable loss of value," but we can only "move forward by engaging in dialogue with tech companies," she added.

The tech giant Google, one of the first to reach agreements to pay news publishers for their content, is a partner of the conference, co-organised by CMA Media, the media arm of the French shipping company CMA-CGM.

AI assistants 'not reliable' when it comes to news, major European study finds

Representatives from OpenAI have also been invited. For Jean-Christophe Tortora, CEO of CMA Media, a "new deal between publishers, tech platforms, and the government" is needed to address the threat to the "sustainability" of the press.

"Those who think we can get away with it by each making deals on our own with one or two platforms, that's a short-term bet," he warned, while media outlets and AI players have already concluded compensation agreements.

In France, Apig, a collective body representing nearly 300 French daily newspapers, announced on Monday that it is suing the Californian company Brave, which operates an internet browser and search engine, accusing it of plundering its members' content using artificial intelligence.

(with AFP)

Trump signs order seeking govt access to new AI releases

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to enable AI developers to voluntarily ​submit their new models for government cybersecurity tests before public release. The order was triggered by concerns over Anthropic's Mythos model, which the company refused to release due to its ability to expose vulnerabilities in computer systems.


Issued on:  03/06/2026 - 
By: FRANCE 24

File photo of US President Donald Trump taken at the White House on May 6, 2026. © Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order creating a voluntary framework under which AI developers will share advanced models with the US government before public release.

The central provision allows companies such as OpenAI, Google or Anthropic to give the government access to their most powerful models for up to 30 days before planned release.

The order was triggered by concerns over Anthropic's Mythos model, which the AI start-up has held back from the public due to its ability to expose vulnerabilities in computer systems, including those of banks, governments and hospitals.

The 30-day window represents a compromise. The original draft called for up to 90 days of pre-release government access, while tech companies had pushed to cut that figure to just 14 days.

For OpenAI chief Sam Altman, the executive order "gets the balance right."

"The US should lead on AI by continuing to develop the very best models, making sure they're safe, and getting cyber tools into the hands of trusted defenders," Altman said.

Kent Walker, Google's head of public affairs, called the order an "important step forward" that will ensure "defenders have the AI tools they need to keep America secure."

And Anthropic, which has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration, called the order "an important step in strengthening America's leadership in AI."

© France 24
01:34

'Unnecessary'

The signing comes after a turbulent few weeks in which the White House appeared close to unveiling the measure, only to pull back abruptly.

According to Politico and other media, David Sacks, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who served as Trump's AI and crypto czar, called the president to warn that the measure would slow innovation and hurt the United States in its AI race with China – blindsiding White House staff who believed Sacks supported the order.

Sacks wrote on X last week that "unnecessary regulation is the biggest threat to innovation in America," adding that winning the AI race required clearing "bureaucratic hurdles" from state legislatures and "woke" Washington politicians.

The order also instructs the Treasury, the National Security Agency and the CISA cybersecurity agency to form an "AI cybersecurity clearinghouse" in voluntary collaboration with industry and critical infrastructure operators to identify software vulnerabilities and find ways to fix them.

Trump scrapped an AI oversight order from his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden on his first day back in the White House.

Biden's 2023 order required AI companies to share safety test results with the government and leaned heavily on voluntary commitments – already a light-touch approach that fell short of what many experts had called for.

By contrast, the European Union's AI Act – which entered into force in 2024 – sets binding rules for high-risk AI systems, including mandatory transparency requirements and, for the most powerful models, obligations around safety testing and incident reporting.

"This is an important step in the right direction," said Anthony Aguirre, CEO of the Future of Life Institute, which advocates for AI safety.

"Voluntary frameworks are not enough, however" and the government must be empowered "to block the release of systems that pose an unacceptable national security risk," he added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

I wrote that, right? People forget using AI for help, research shows

03.06.2026, 12:53 Uhr

Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth/dpa

People cannot reliably recall whether or not they used artificial intelligence to create a text after as little as one week, according to a new study.

The research, carried out at Germany's University of Bayreuth and Finland's Aalto University in Helsinki, raises the concern that students, employees and authors are likely to unwittingly pass off AI-generated text as their own original writing and ideas.

The study found that asking people to recall AI involvement in content creation after the fact is unlikely to produce accurate results, with the probability of correct recall dropping sharply within seven days.

“Workflows in which human and artificial intelligence were combined were particularly prone to errors — that is, when the idea came from AI but the formulation was done by the human, and vice versa,” said Daniel Buschek, a professor in the field of mobile user interfaces at the University of Bayreuth.

When a person had written up an idea that was originally generated by AI, the probability of correctly remembering how the content came about dropped to 37.7% after seven days.

Conversely, when a person had their own idea written up by an AI, there was a 64% chance of correctly identifying the idea as their own after one week.

Two risks from memory gaps around AI use

Based on these findings, the researchers identified two risks arising from memory gaps in the use of AI:

1. People may claim AI-generated ideas and writing as their own.
2. Conversely, people may underestimate their own contribution, incorrectly remembering their own idea as AI-generated.

The researchers say it is therefore unrealistic to rely on a person to recall their use of AI based on memory alone and propose that a more practical approach would be to document the creation of content from the outset.

The study, published in April, involved 184 participants who took part in an experiment in which they were asked to produce texts with or without AI assistance. One week later, they were questioned about the origin of the ideas and the writing of the texts.

• Study
• Press release

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

GoPro's future at stake after AI boom drives up price of memory chips

03.06.2026, dpa

Photo: Patrick Seeger/dpa

GoPro has warned investors that its survival is in doubt, citing a sharp rise in memory chip prices that has pushed the action camera pioneer to the brink of insolvency.

The California-based firm said at the start of June that it may seek additional financing and agreements with creditors to avoid insolvency. Such a precautionary notice is a mandatory warning to investors in cases of financial difficulty.

Consumers have also felt the cost of AI's rapid expansion, as various countries race to build massive data centres which require RAM and other hardware. The supply shortages have been acutely felt by consumers, with some RAM products doubling in price, while some have even hit four or five times their previous cost.

GoPro had already announced after the first quarter that memory chip prices had more than doubled for the company in some cases.

The rapid build-out of vast data centres for artificial intelligence is driving up prices for semiconductor products such as memory chips sharply across the industry. Other electronics companies are also feeling the pressure.

For GoPro, however, the additional burden comes on top of an already weakening business. In the last quarter, revenue fell by just over a quarter year on year, and the company recorded a net loss of just under $81 million.

GoPro is a pioneer in the action camera market, making devices popular with athletes and adventurers — including snowboarders, surfers and cyclists. In recent years, however, the company has faced increasing competition from brands like DJI and Insta360.

• Announcement from GoPro

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

Microsoft launches its own AI models to take on OpenAI and Anthropic

Copyright AP Photo

By Una Hajdari

Published on 03/06/2026 - EURONEWS

Seven in-house models unveiled at Build 2026 signal Microsoft's push to cut costs and compete directly on the AI frontier as its biggest investees plan to launch record-breaking IPOs.

Microsoft has unveiled a family of seven in-house AI models at its annual Build developer conference in San Francisco, in the clearest sign yet that the tech giant is moving to reduce its dependence on the AI companies it has poured billions into.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI chief executive, said that after tuning its models for consulting firm McKinsey, the company outperformed OpenAI's GPT-5.5 on quality — with what it projects as ten times better cost efficiency, based on public pricing data scaled across model sizes.

"We believe the time has come for every company to move from consuming a frontier model to fully participating at the frontier," said chief executive Satya Nadella at the conference.

The headline release is MAI-Thinking-1, Microsoft's first reasoning model, trained from scratch on clean, commercially licensed data without distillation from third-party systems.

A mid-sized model with 35 billion active parameters and a 256,000-token context window, it is designed for complex multi-step instructions, long-context reasoning and code generation.

Alongside it, the company launched MAI-Code-1-Flash, a coding model that converts text descriptions into source code for applications and websites, now rolling out across GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code.

By running its own models on Azure infrastructure, Microsoft can sidestep the fees it currently pays to third-party providers — and pass the savings to developers.

According to Microsoft, in blind evaluations run by Surge, its independent human rating partner, MAI-Thinking-1 was preferred over Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6, and the company says it matches Claude Opus 4.6 on coding benchmarks.

Relate

Quantum leap

Also at Build, Microsoft announced that its Majorana 2 quantum chip is 1,000 times more reliable than its predecessor — a milestone the company said brings it within striking distance of a commercially useful quantum computer.

Qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, are notoriously fragile: even minor temperature shifts or vibrations can knock them off course. The Majorana 2 chip addresses this directly.

Qubits on the new chip survive for an average of 20 seconds, compared to milliseconds on the original, an improvement the company likened to upgrading from a phone that needs daily charging to one that lasts several years.

"We will have a quantum machine in 2029 that can solve commercially viable, reasonable problems," said Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president of Microsoft Quantum. The chip currently has just 12 qubits, while a useful machine would require millions.

Microsoft's approach centres on so-called topological qubits, based on the properties of a quasi-particle first theorised in the 1930s by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.

The path has not been smooth — the company was forced to retract a 2018 paper in the journal Nature claiming evidence for the particle — but it has pressed on, and the second-generation chip improves on the first partly by replacing aluminium with lead as a superconductor.

The chip and its supporting research have not yet been peer reviewed, and some physicists have called for more information.

IPO race heats up

Microsoft's push for model independence comes as the companies it has committed billions to prepare for blockbuster stock market debuts.

Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, filed confidentially for an initial public offering on 1 June, just days after raising $65 billion (€59bn) in a Series H funding round that pushed its valuation to $965 billion (€877bn). OpenAI is also readying its own confidential filing.

Microsoft has committed $13 billion (€11.8bn) to OpenAI and invested up to $5 billion (€4.5bn) in Anthropic, while making both companies' models available through Azure.

How Stone Tools, Fire, And Language Paved The Highway To Artificial Intelligence – Analysis

June 3, 2026 

By Deborah Barsky

Each leap in human communication—from vocal anatomy to writing to digital networks—followed the same pattern: faster, more complex, less individual.

Many people are overwhelmed by the fast-paced evolution of mass communication in a world increasingly shaped by the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet ideas have not always circulated across the globe at lightning speed.

Looking into deep time allows us to view our current mode of existence from a broader perspective and to discern patterns of change that may offer insights into our species’ possible trajectories in the future. We can begin by trying to identify the conditions under which humans developed complex symbolic communication, which is considered unique in the animal kingdom. Today, we have succeeded in transposing incredibly complex digital languages, beyond the grasp of the human mind, into computerized systems capable of processing, storing, and sharing all kinds of information with the push of a button or a click of a mouse.

Human language is at the root of this system. While hardly perceptible in the archeological record, hominin physiognomy assessed from the fossil record allows us to observe that the capacity to vocalize across a significant range dates back to a very early time period. Physical features linked to resonance complexity and articular precision, like the low positioning of the larynx, an enlarged pharyngeal cavity, and a flexible tongue housed in an ample palate, were already part of the human anatomy by the time Homo erectus emerged in Africa nearly 2 million years ago.


Somatic harmonization, necessary for speech production, is ensured by the tiny and crucial hyoid bone, a floating anchor for the muscles controlling the tongue, throat, and voice box as they work together to regulate sounds emitted during speech. Paleoanthropologists studying the position, geometry, and internal structure of Neanderthal hyoids discovered in archeological sites found them to be nearly identical to those of anatomically modern humans, suggesting that they were already capable of emitting a similarly sophisticated range of sounds. Evidence from Spain also reveals that modern hyoid morphology was present by at least 530,000 years ago, indicating that it could be a derived characteristic shared by modern humans and pre-Neandertals, which they inherited from their last common ancestor.

The ability to emit a wide range of vocalizations characteristic of modern human language did not appear abruptly, but rather, was favored over millennia by interrelated adaptive elections taking place under the evolutionary orchestration of both natural selection and techno selection. As early as around 7 million years ago, some early primates displayed several craniofacial modifications believed to have evolved, at least in part, to accommodate bipedal locomotion. These included features such as reduced prognathism, more gracile jawbones with smaller teeth, and a restructured skull base, all of which subsequently facilitated the anatomical tweaks necessary to increase the human capacity to pronounce a wide range of sounds.

By the time hominins began systematically making stone tools some 2.6 million years ago, a series of changes in the archeological record reflected the significance of this adaptive strategy. Around 1.75 million years ago in Africa, these (Oldowan) assemblages were progressively replaced by Acheulian industries comprising tools with wider technological and morphological variability, including skillfully manufactured and (esthetically pleasing) premeditated forms, like spheres and symmetrical pointed tools called handaxes, which required high degrees of dexterity to make.

Observing synapses activated during experimental tool replication has shown that the cognitive processes involved in passing on the skills necessary to make such tools are linked to those activated by language. Furthermore, evidence from ancient DNA analysis suggests that regulatory genetic variants favoring language-producing abilities underwent long-term evolutionary selection in hominin populations, with some of these features predating the divergence of modern humans and Neanderthals.

Fully embracing the advantages offered by their newfound technological proficiency, Acheulian hominins benefited from access to the choicest morsels of meat and viscera to feed their developing brains. They experienced unprecedented demographic expansion and assembled into more complex group settings sheltering numerous individuals. Eventually wielding fire, Acheulian populations spread into new lands within and beyond Africa, utilizing their rapidly developing technologies to confront diverse environmental and social challenges.


Some archeologists have described this process as a biocultural feedback loop, in which unprecedented cerebral growth (supported by higher protein intake) was linked to toolmaking. This process was catalyzed by increasing social complexity, reinforced by the development of culture, and favored the selection of symbolic communication. Language—the preponderant expression of symbolic transmission—initially developed as a survival-related response to effectively transmit technological competence, and ultimately became a means to express multifaceted cultural norms developed to promote social proficiency.

There is no doubt that culture evolves; that it was/is transmitted socially through learning processes that have been intricately developed over time and now extend well past adolescence and, in some cases, beyond the optimal reproductive age for women. Culture is inherently cumulative: it is an aggregate of past human experiences, errors, discoveries, adaptations, and rectifications to deduce scientific and philosophical insights about the universe—and our place in it. Symbolic communication, expressed as language and writing, and later also as art and music, reinforces cumulative culture by allowing us to express, preserve, and share knowledge beyond time constraints.

The story of technological evolution following the emergence of the Acheulian reveals two major forces that still operate today: acceleration and complexification. By the end of the Acheulian and into the Middle Paleolithic period and beyond, technological and (linked) social achievements accumulated exponentially, widening the baseline upon which hugely transformative accomplishments emerged. At the same time, populations multiplied, creating interrelational networks that favored reproductive, material, and cultural exchanges.


I have proposed defining this phenomenon as a fractalization process, insofar as each branch replicates the underlying evolutionary patterns, overcoming the constraints of its ancestral source while retaining the full spectrum of human cognitive expression. In this model (that is comparable to biological natural selection), small variations or adjustments can lead to exponentially magnified outcomes through recursive and effectively infinite cycles of reproduction.

By the time our own species came on the scene more than 200,000 years ago, culture had flourished into symbolic material expressions, inexorably linked to the technological and social realities of past human lives. Fire, for example, provided ample fodder for experimenting with the power of transforming existing materials, enabling new capacities during the Neolithic and Metal Ages, with successive discoveries, such as pottery and, eventually, glass and metallurgy, transmuting and enabling new societal paradigms.

Following the shift from hunter-gatherer to production-based lifeways, technological complexity split individual role-playing into distinct occupations, sharpening perceptions about (imagined) interpersonal “value” within social settings. As populations swelled and collective living arrangements expanded, these systems became structured around complex symbolic interactions, material cultures, territorial identities, and hierarchies constructed to sustain group cohesion. Importantly, social organization came to rely upon artificially constructed (symbolic) notions that led regionally assembled groups to contrast their ideas of communal belonging (identity) with those existing in neighboring territories. As competition for land and resources increased, these contrasting symbolic realities became a justification for (sometimes violent) interpopulation conflicts.


Communication networks grew increasingly complex alongside expanding production and territorial markets, accelerating the spread of cultural and material exchanges. Protohistoric societies developed early writing systems based on symbolic signs used as mnemonic strategies to represent ideas and objects. Emerging independently in regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Central America, and China, these systems gradually evolved from pictorial symbols into stylized phonetic and logographic writing largely detached from their original visual meanings.

Throughout human experience, learning has been central to survival, with scientific and behavioral complexification acting as a driving force to develop sophisticated new ways to educate, demonstrate, and train each successive generation to become effective agents of our seemingly unstoppable technological proficiency. Presently, ideas move instantaneously across space and time through global communication networks. Digital platforms make information accessible worldwide, shrinking distances and connecting populations, while promoting mass media and consumer culture. Often shaped by corporate interests that influence production, consumption, and resource distribution in a world driven by digital images and symbolic messaging, global connectivity has become the force shaping human thought and social organization.

Uniformity is increasingly becoming a defining characteristic of human life shaped by digital communication. Despite the technological sophistication of the systems that mediate and transmit human thought, we are adopting simpler forms of communication, homogenizing language, and gradually adapting our patterns of thinking to fit the digital platforms used to express them. The next stage of human evolution involving the merging of human intelligence with AI may already be here. As we become increasingly dependent on computerized tools to function within contemporary social environments, the ability to communicate effectively through digital means is emerging as a fundamental requirement.

At the end of the 1980s, screenwriter Maurice Hurley and the creators of Star Trek showed remarkable foresight in creating the Borg: fictional cybernetic organisms linked through a single collective consciousness in which thoughts and actions are shared and controlled by a powerful centralized computer system. In this dystopian vision of the future, the Borg’s main purpose is to assimilate other species in pursuit of greater knowledge, efficiency, and power. Once assimilated, subjects lose their individuality and become linked to the Collective (or hive mind).

As humanity moves toward a predicted state of post-humanism (human-machine hybridization) and the boundaries between human cognition and machine intelligence become increasingly blurred, it is worth asking whether this vision already mirrors some aspects of our own interconnected and technology-mediated world.

Author Bio:

 Deborah Barsky is a writing fellow for the Human Bridges, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, and an associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is the author of Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future(Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Disarm Artificial Intelligence

Evaggelos Vallianatos

June 3, 2026

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Prometheus was the Titan god who gave the fire of knowledge, intelligence, technology and civilization to the Greeks. Painting courtesy of Evi Sarantea. The painting is depicting the head of Prometheus, shining fire and light. Zeus sent an eagle to eat the liver of the deathless god to punish him for helping his Greek grandchildren. Right eye from statue and left representing the eye of a living man, thus showing the intimate connection of Prometheus with the Greeks. The falling drops represent the ceaseless influence of Prometheus, including perhaps the invention of Artificial Intelligence among the ancient Greeks.

Prologue

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an extremely interesting, if dangerous, technological, economic and political issue. The Greeks of Homer’s age, some 3,500 years ago, had imagined and probably employed some form of very advanced AI. Homer reports that Zeus informed Hermes that Odysseus would return home to Ithaca. And indeed he did. The Phaiakians of the island of Phaiakia / Kerkyra, Homer says, were like gods. They had extremely advanced technologies. Their ships, for example, sailed without pilots or necessarily the energy of the wind. Yet the ship that ferried Odysseus had crew and oars, too. Such a dream boat carried Odysseus and the bronze and gold gifts, including bread and red wine, the Phaiakians gave him and sent him to his beloved home, the island of Ithaca. Once on board, “Odysseus, who had a mind like the gods and, besides, had endured wars and the bitter sea, fell into deep sleep…. The swift ship run fast through the waves that even a falcon, lord of the skies, could have matched its speed” (Odyssey 5.37-44; 13.57-92).

Stephanos Paipetis, who was professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Patras, Greece, examined the technology in Homer and concluded that the god of metallurgy, Hephaistos, was a perfect scientist and engineer and metallurgist. He built the Shield of Achilles with advanced knowledge and technology of metals and materials. In other words, Hephaistos “possessed deep knowledge of the dynamic mechanical properties of laminated composite structures.” The ship of the Phaiakians that carried Odysseus from Phaiakia (Kerkyra) to Ithaca, Paipetis says, was powered by artificial intelligence.

As I said, the technology of AI is about 3,500 years old. Most of that time, AI has been dormant, only to resurface during the 20th century.

AI in Greece

A Greek scientist and engineer, Ioannes Kontos, retired professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Athens, published (in English, in 2015, and in Greek, in 2017) a comprehensive guide of the scientific and logical thought that helped humans invent and create AI, especially in Greece. His book, Artificial Intelligence and its Applications in Greece, is outstanding. It reads well and narrates how trained engineers bring AI systems into being. It’s a step-by-step construction of AI systems. The book mirrors deep knowledge of advanced technology, moderation (σωφροσύνη) and practical wisdom (φρόνησης). It is a global overview of the rise of this polemical technology funded by militaries and plutocrats that privatize it for profit and protection. But the AI vision of the Greek professor Kontos is far from the hegemonic ambition and policies of the US plutocrats. He would like to see Greece start inventing, producing and employing advanced technologies, some of which materialize AI products that potentially and in fact benefit the public good. He admits, however, only modest success for AI products manufactured by Greek companies in the last 50 years. But he explains an AI system of questions and answers he and his colleagues invented. He calls it AMYNTAS (Automatic Meta gnostic Ypologistikon [calculating[ Trainable Answering System).

Kontos, with little doubt, the preeminent Greek expert on AI, taught AI for about 40 years. He is both an engineer, an inventor, and a scholar. He investigated Greek history from the beginnings of this technology. He studied the science of vision and its application on the Parthenon. Then he turned to Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of all time, who invented the sciences of zoology, meteorology, and logic. There would have been no AI without understanding the science of logic. Next, Kontos examined the toothed-geared technology of the genius of the Antikythera Mechanism. That astronomical computer or Meteoroskopeion was designed and built in the island of Rhodes in the second century BCE. It was about 2,000 years ahead of its time. The Antikythera astronomical computer led him to Hero of Alexandria, a polymath philosopher and engineer who flourished in the late first century BCE and the beginning of the first century of our era. Hero built automated machines, including a model of the first steam engine. Kontos hopes his book will inspire Greeks that a better future is possible. He wants his book to be read widely by students, executives of Greek companies, and Greek citizens. His message is that it is possible to build advanced technologies in Greece, where scientists and engineers will be paid high salaries. He does not want Greece to become a low-salaried workforce for rich investors. He is definitely against data centers in Greece. He is right. The country cannot afford the vast amounts of electricity and millions of gallons of water to keep data centers operating.

Kontos is also correct on Greek students. Greek university students receive a remarkably excellent education, especially in math and engineering. In addition, Greek students have grasped the idea of the good and the beautiful, ethical virtues ingrained in their knowledge and behavior. This prepares them to face and resolve difficult technological and moral problems. It is this asset of skills and virtues that gives substance to the hopes of Kontos, that, in fact, Greeks can disarm AI: making new and useful AI products rather than products of war and technologies of unemployment, hazardous farming practices, deception, propaganda and danger. This challenge is immense.

Kontos is right saying that nothing can be done if the emigration of well-educated Greek students continues. Not only that practice must cease by offering those students a satisfying alternative in their country. But the Greek government must soon discover it should serve Greece rather than foreign powers. It should fund/create opportunities for the development and growth of AI industries for the public good in Greece. The need for “moral” AI serving the good and the beautiful is exponential.

The hazardous nature of AI

Yet I find it difficult to point to an AI product which serves the public good. Certainly this may reflect simply my limited knowledge of AI. But my hopes are merely hopes that perhaps a moral engineer might design one or more AI applications that serve the public good. The project of Kontos, AMYNTAS, question and answering system, may just do that. He is also proposing to use AI for checking the credibility of election results.

Kontos doubts that engineers can give machines consciousness. He said that computer programmers often underestimate the gigantic complexity of AI, thus writing programs that threaten energy grids, air traffic control, satellites, nuclear power plants and automobile and train safety.

I live in the US, which, along with the European Union and possibly China, Russia, India, and several other countries, is flooded with problematic, hazardous, and unnecessary AI products. For example, robots are becoming fashionable for making coffee to doing housework. If coffee shops and restaurants buy coffee robots, what happens to the waiters/workers who make coffee? AI companies are now employing human trainers / AI pilots of “an army of humanoid robots.” Meanwhile, AI companies are planning to produce “a swarm of American-built robots” for the local and international market.

Coffee-serving humanoid robots would repel me. I prefer seeing and possibly talking to beautiful waitresses. I definitely would not visit coffee shops with robots. But these coffee humanoid robots highlight the vision of their makers. They don’t like our world, especially workers who they keep firing; they want to dominate our beautiful Earth, the only star in the universe, which is alive with millions of forms of life, circling the Sun god Helios, which the Greeks worshipped for the light and life the Sun made possible. The AI plutocrats want to eliminate most of the human nature of the world we know. They want to replace it with machines and humanoid robots – hence the AI danger. I don’t want to be forced into their iron dark age.

The AI danger is so widespread that Pope Leo XIV intervened to remind Christian Americans, and “men and women of good will” the world over, they ought to rethink and resist AI. On May 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued his Encyclical Letter, Magnifica Humanitas / Magnificent Humanity. This was a warning on the existential threats of Artificial Intelligence.

Pope Leo said we don’t want AI to recreate the “Babel syndrome, namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise”

“Today,” the Pope continues, “the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology [AI] that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations…. In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human…. I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty…. [However, efficiency] has spread rapidly in recent years, fueled in part by the expansion of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics and biotechnology.”

Then the Platonic prose of the Pope turned to the plutocrats in charge of AI. “When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few,” he warned, “it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.”

Pope Leo is right. These inequalities are extremely unsettling. They undermine and almost erase democracy.

Philanthropy or misanthropy?

The plutocrats understand they are adding French Revolutionary fervor in America, especially among the thousands upon thousands of workers they have been firing. But instead of spreading their immense wealth to ameliorate poverty, they are repeating the gimmicks of the plutocrats of the past. They embrace “foundations” in order to bribe professors and journalists to sing their AI song. Foundations dish out small or large amounts of cash, buying tenuous legitimacy for hazardous AI. In 2026, the AI plutocrats are suggesting they are ready to distribute large sums.

“Philanthropy,” says David Walacce-Wells, opinion writer for the New York Times, “used to be one way that plutocrats persuaded the public of the virtue of wealth and the value of business. These days [in 2026], it seems just as likely to inspire backlash — seen by an increasingly skeptical public as an end run around not just taxation but civil society and public oversight, too.”

True, seeing members of the “overclass of philanthropists… parachuting” in the midst of hard-working and increasingly unemployed Americans and Europeans may be more than problematic, nay, unacceptable. People will have trouble identifying the new philanthropists holding the flag “of the A.I. boom, about which Americans are already — and increasingly — anxious and resentful.” No doubt about that. Most Americans understand AI is harming their children, including college students. They resent all those mega “data centers” sucking their precious fresh water, while raising the prices they pay for electricity. They also hear about the militarization of the technology killing people faster and more “efficiently.” With these thoughts in mind, why should they take seriously AI “non-profits” dolling out money? Certainly, that money could not be destined for the public good. Would you trust mafia funding a school, public library, philanthropy? Who would believe that AI funding was possibly designed to thank society for licensing it to harm society?

Human intelligence

No wonder Pope Leo XIV promised himself to remember a few virtues that safeguard “the primacy of the human person, in order to ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with its conscience and freedom, that guides technical innovations and responsibly determines their use and limits.”

The Pope’s Platonic moral vision helped him to define AI technologies as mechanical: immune to human intelligence shaped by the virtues of feelings, love, anger, beauty, justice and the idea of the good, Plato’s highest virtue, which brings to life moderation (σωφροσύνη) and practical wisdom (φρόνησης). No wonder the Pope defined AI the way it really is: a soulless mechanical monster bereft of morality and intelligence, constantly fed data. Its “speech” and computing may sound logical, but they are not. They are thoughtless if often coherent and statistical machine speech and calculations that may or may not follow the human information, stories, math and human programming. The automatic voice you hear reading an article on the computer resembles human voice, but it is not. It’s a metallic voice without feelings.

Pope Leo wrote:

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.”

Existential threats

On June 2, 2026, I listened to a CNN report that confirmed and summarized the Pope’s AI message. The messenger of bad news was Tristan Harris, a former Google AI executive who quit his job because he discovered that the Google executives did not have the public good in mind. In 2019, he warned that AI systems were harmful. “No one wants to contribute to a system,” he said, “in which children have poor mental health. No one wants to contribute to a system where you destabilize democracies or cause genocides across the world.” On June 2, 2026, Harris was equally certain that AI posed existential threats and dangers. In his CNN interview, he warned that AI was against democracy and humanity. Tech executives compare human lives and the energy costs required to keep those humans alive. He castigated the undemocratic politics of less than a dozen unelected businessmen gambling with the Earth and civilization, funding an arms race that affects more than eight billion humans. They feed social media, which use algorithms that disturb the mental health of millions. AI, Harris warned, speeds up these serious harmful effects. The dream or nightmare of having AI cure diseases blinds both tech executives and politicians.

 

Epilogue

A Greek professor, Ioannes Kontos, described the Greek origins of AI, especially from the foundation of science and logic by the fourth century BCE philosopher Aristotle. Kontos is Aristotelean. That’s why he feels so comfortable with the awesome complexities of AI. He mastered the science, logic and organization of that system. He knows it backwards and forwards. Reading his book is entering logic and advanced technology: doing things carefully, logically and methodically. The machine obeys straightforward instructions.

Kontos also investigated AI in modern Greece. The results were disappointing primarily because the Greek government serves American and other foreign interests. It did not invest in the technology, and neither did it have a prominent vision of Greece in advanced technologies. Kontos expressed concern for the misuse of AI, but he, too, advocates its war applications. The explanation is Turkey, a genocidal neighbor of Greece that still threatens it.

By 2026, AI has become a global, though extremely controversial and dangerous technology. It has become a weapon of war primarily. It guides drones, missiles and other weapons of war in their lethal trajectories. Moreover, AI may be used in the management of nuclear weapons, an extremely dangerous and existential operation. But AI also claims human skills and knowledge (talking, translation, medical diagnosis, text reading and extraction of facts from the text, and doing rapid research) that may or may not be accurate. There are other uses of AI in face recognition and recreation of human voice and behavior that are employed not for the public good but for spying and the psychological exploitation of human beings. AI in iPhones and computers may also have deceptive, delusional, sycophantic and other adverse effects on the users of those devices. The plutocrat owners of AI are trying to create a mechanical human being, which would largely replace more than workers. This has existential, political, moral and other monstrous effects on civilization and the planet. This is why Pope Leo XIV rightly denounced AI and its billionaire owners.

In contrast to this corrupt factory of AI, Greece has a history, ancient virtues, and civilization to reawaken the very advanced version of AI, which was entirely devoted to public good. To bring the Phaiakian and Homeric version of AI to life, Greece has to also return to the virtues of the Homeric Age: freedom, intelligence, moderation, practical wisdom, justice and the Platonic idea of the good and the beautiful.

Both Alexander the Great and the first president of modern Greece, Ioannes Kapodistrias, dreamed of a Sacred Hellas, an independent, neutral Greece devoted entirely to the virtues of justice, freedom, science and the good and the beautiful, a school of civilization for America, Europe and all humanity. Today’s great powers, US, the European Union, Russia, China and India, should guarantee a Sacred Hellas. For their own benefit, that of civilization and that of our Mother Earth. Sacred Hellas can come into being. It should.

Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., is a historian and ecological-political theorist. He studied zoology and history, Greek and European, at the University of Illinois and Wisconsin. He did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard. He worked on Capitol Hill and the US Environmental Protection Agency; taught at several universities, and authored hundreds of articles and several books, including Poison Spring (2014), The Antikythera Mechanism (2021), Freedom (2025) and Earth on Fire: Brewing Plagues and Climate Chaos in Our Backyards (World Scientific, 2026).