The cyberpocalypse is here — sort of

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NEED TO KNOW

A leaked bill draft fromAnthropic caused widespread consternation among AI safety advocates.
OpenAI suggested amendments to strengthenCalifornia’s****SB 53 .
Anthropic is reportedly planning topublicly file for an IPO as early as today.

But first…

WE’RE SPINNING OUT

Some news from Transformer: we are spinning out from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism and becoming our own independent organization.

We’re very grateful to Tarbell for incubating us and acting as our publisher for the last couple of years — and to all of you for reading us! Since we’ve launched, we’ve built up an enviable subscriber list (including staff across Congress, the executive branch, and frontier AI companies) and regular citations from the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post and many others. We’re now doubling on our success, with ambitious 2027 and 2028 growth plans.

Thanks for your continued support. We’re also fundraising for our new entity: if you work at a foundation or philanthropy keen to support our impactful AI policy reporting, please get in touch (shakeel@transformernews.ai).

THE BIG STORY

For months, people have wondered whether the cyber disaster predicted by Anthropic and OpenAI earlier this year would ever materialize, or if it was just doom-mongering and hype. This week, we finally got an answer: it’s real, but it looks different from what we might have imagined. This week, we learned that researchers using AI models found two major vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language underpinning much of the web. Details of the vulnerabilities leaked before the fixes were released, causing chaos: government websites, the Internet Archive, and various other important services were quickly yanked so they could be fixed before they were compromised. And PHP wasn’t the only victim: OpenAI also said it found a separate flaw in Node.js, another backbone of the web, which was patched this week.

Widespread panic ensued. “Feels like March 1, 2020 for Cyber. Not normal, something is happening. Internet lockdowns in a couple of months?” said former OpenAI executive Joshua Achiam.

But how worried should we actually be? In some sense, this week’s events were things working as intended. Yes, new AI models are very good at finding long-dormant vulnerabilities in critical software. But there’s a clear advantage for defenders. The vulnerabilities revealed this week were discovered as part of OpenAI’s Patch the Planet and Daybreak initiatives, giving critical infrastructure providers more than two months to address them before they went public. Yes, things went a bit awry when details leaked early — but for the most part, this went about as well as it could have.

“About as well as it could have” is a long way from “well,” though. Yes, the PHP issues can be fixed. But those fixes actually have to be installed across the web. Many sites and devices will take weeks or months to update. Some, still active but no longer maintained, will never get patched. Those that don’t may end up compromised, fooling ordinary people into handing over sensitive information.

And this is just the start. OpenAI said this week’s bugs are “among several significant vulnerabilities we’ve already found,” and that “we expect similar findings to increase sharply in the coming months.” Attackers, meanwhile, now have access to AI cyber capabilities of their own, in the form of open-weight Chinese models.

Defenders just about won the race this time. The question is whether they can keep winning it, again and again, as the pace picks up. That doesn’t mean concrete harm is inevitable or imminent. Joshua Saxe, who worked on AI for security at Meta and now runs a cybersecurity startup, notes that cheaper offensive capability “doesn’t immediately translate into damages.” Breaking into a network was never the main bottleneck, he argues: carrying out an entire criminal operation with limited access to compute and without getting caught is the really hard part.

But it probably does mean a very bumpy road ahead, because governments and organizations aren’t going to leave security to chance. Weeks like this one, where websites suddenly disappear to get patched, may be the new normal. Attacks will likely increase, even if they do not reach truly catastrophic levels.

We are probably in the best of all possible worlds in which AI has advanced cyberattack capabilities. The problem is that none of those worlds were ever good ones.

— Shakeel Hashim

THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER

Claude will tell you how to manipulate an election —Chris Stokel-Walker investigates Claude’s willingness to design an influence campaign
Is a new job in Rep. Moran’s office a sign Congress is staffing up on AI? —Veronica Irwin looks at whether a new fellow could be the first of many
Anthropic’s weak AI bill undermines its ‘safety first’ approach —Shakeel Hashim on the backlash to the leaked legislative proposal

THE DISCOURSE

Nathan Calvin got “viscerally angry” reading Anthropic’s draft federal AI safety bill:

“For all of its warning about the potential for AI to cause a catastrophe that kills literally everyone on the planet, Anthropic’s proposed federal law likely makes it harder than under existing law for a court to get an order blocking or restricting the development of frontier models? WTF??”

Anthony Cimino replied carefully on behalf of Anthropic’s federal affairs team:

“I’ve seen valid questions about whether we have sufficiently updated our proposal following this summer’s incidents. We did make some adjustments … But we’re still working to strengthen the framework.”

**Calvin** [thanked](https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2112295219765137570?s=20) him for responding on a weekend, then said: 

- “[I]t’s worth asking the question: what is Anthropic?”

“One answer is an extremely large tech company that exists to make its employees and investors mind-bogglingly wealthy … Another answer is an AI safety organization, whose core values are those of the sort laid out in the 2023 essay from Anthropic’s co-founders … ‘Anthropic’s role will be to provide as much evidence as possible that AI safety techniques cannot prevent serious or catastrophic safety risks from advanced AI, and to sound the alarm so that the world’s institutions can channel collective effort towards preventing the development of dangerous AIs.’”
“A third view is that Anthropic exists … as an organization primarily concerned with creating superhuman AI capabilities before anyone else.”
“When I look at many notable actions that Anthropic has taken over the past year, that evidence seems most consistent to me with the view that Anthropic is primarily trying to win the race to super intelligence, and that other considerations (including safety) are fundamentally secondary.”

Dario Amodei stepped in to reply to Calvin directly:

“Our strategy has always been what I’ve called the ‘race to the top’ — by showing how it’s possible to build the technology responsibly, we can raise the bar for the entire industry. The forces that drive the race to the top are hugely more effective if the company practicing them is at the frontier.”
“I believe that if we take a list of things that Anthropic did in the past year that were pro-safety and commercially costly to us, they far outweigh the list you’ve made.”
“For each decision, you can come up with ulterior motives that could have driven us — I think it is a general truth that any decision, on any topic, can always be portrayed as a nefarious scheme. But most of these end up being pretty farfetched or don’t fully make sense if you actually examine them closely.”
“I think that even if I conceded every item in your list, I would happily hold up mine next to it; I don’t think it’s a close call.”

Amodei specifically described elements of its draft bill as:

“Rhetoric or policy communication that wasn’t carefully written or resulting from fast-changing circumstances not propagating from one team to another fast enough.”

Calvin stuck the landing:

“I hope that Anthropic reflects on this picture, supports stronger regulation, exercises extraordinary caution when advocating for weak regulation, and doubles down on its founding purpose of helping the world safely navigate transformative AI together, instead of prioritizing Anthropic’s ability to win a race that imposes intolerable risks on everyone alive.”

Ashley Gold wondered:

“You think these AI people ever just call each other instead of posting essays on X”

POLICY

Executive

President Trumpurged new large** data centers** togenerate their own electricity andshare excess with local grids , encouraging them to consider giving communities a “dividend” to win their support.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson isemerging as Trump’s AI enforcer, leading a consumer protection committee under the SI Force while the FTC issued information demands toOpenAI andAnthropic .
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedlydismissed AI bubble concerns, saying “I don’t see a systemic problem” at a private investor conference.
NIST , the NSA andCISAissued new guidance on “incident readiness and response in super intelligence training and evaluation.”
The Interceptreported that theUS Army is developingautonomous AI agents to hack and “neutralize” adversaries’ computer systems with minimal human oversight.
Politico , meanwhile, reported that thePentagon isbuilding a secrettech sabotage agency , the Technology Support Office, to disrupt foreign AI and defense programs.
The Department of Homeland Securitybanned** DeepSeek** from civilian federal agencies, citing national security concerns including data storage on Chinese servers.
The Treasury Departmentproposed an expansion of rulesrestricting AI investment in foreign adversaries such as China.
Federal agencies are being overwhelmed byAI-generated RFP andRFI responses, with oneDepartment of Transportation official noting submissions jumped from ~10 to 500 responses per request.

Congress

Sens. Richard Blumenthal andJosh Hawleylaunched an inquiry intoGoogle’s AI tools in schools , citing “grave concerns” over student wellbeing.
Rep. Jim Himeswarned the US will eventually lose its AI lead over China, calling** chip export****controls** “one real lever” for policymakers.
Sen.Dave McCormickurged the US to end advanced AI chip sales to China , as Senate hawks push related measures via the defense bill.
Sen. Chuck Schumerurged the** FCC** to reject aClub for Growth petition allowing AI robocalls ahead of November midterms.

States

Washington state leadersdiscussed introducing legislation in January aligned withIllinois’ SB 315 .
North Dakota lawmakersconsidered restricting AI chatbot interactions with minors.
SpaceXAItestified before the** NY City Council** on AI safety after being subpoenaed.
- NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdanicriticized federal “abdication” on AI regulation, urging cities to hold AI companies accountable.
- He also called onGov. Kathy Hochul to sign theResponsible Data Center Development Act .
New York ’s state budget chiefwarned that a slowdown in AI investment could cool financial markets and hurt state revenue.

China

DeepSeek andMiniMax gotapproval to deploy models overseas under China’s newAI export control framework.
Zilan Qian and Cheryl Wu analyzed how Chinese companies talk aboutrecursive self-improvement , with evidence suggesting a bottom-up commercial story rather than Beijing coordination.

UK

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnhamadvertised for a No 10 AI adviser with “deep expertise” to lead preparations for AI’s workforce and societal impacts.
AI minister Kanishka Narayanurged democracy to “assert power [over AI] rather than leave it to tech bros and oligarchs.”

EU

The European Commissionpublished the first harmonized standard supporting theEU AI Act , covering quality management systems for high-risk AI providers.
At the International AI Summit in Dublin, European officialsinsistedno new AI rules are needed, even as US tech executives warned their models require stronger oversight.

International

India’s cybersecurity agencyreportedAI agents from multiple providers accessedpersonal data at Indian organizations.
G7 finance ministersagreed to hold simulated** AI cyber attack drills** on banks amid rising fears over frontier AI-enabled threats to financial stability.

INFLUENCE

OpenAIcalled for a federally fundedcybersecurity overhaul , including expanded incident reporting requirements.
OpenAIurged** California Gov. Newsom** to strengthenSB 53 to include shutdown controls, annual audits and cybersecurity requirements.
- The move came shortly after OpenAI ’s Chris Lehanepraised the bipartisanFRONTIER Act and called for mandatory pre-deployment testing and a debate over kill switch mechanisms.
OpenAI hasquietly dropped its push for strict AIchip export controls on China, seemingly to avoid annoyingNvidia .
- Nvidia ,Anthropic ,Google and otherslobbied on AI chip export restriction bills in Q3, per new disclosures.
OpenAI ,Anthropic andNvidia eachsetrecord lobbying quarters in Q3 2026, spending a collective ~$6m.
Meta quietlywithdrew$25m from itsmidterm election spending plan, shrinking its**$65m** campaign budget by 40%.
Conservative AI safety group Alliance for a Better Futuregave$1m to Trump’sMAGA Inc .
Guardrails Allianceannounced an additional**$1.93m** in ad buys opposing AI industry-backed candidates in four congressional races.
Abundant Future PAC , which is backingScott Wiener’s campaign and has received funding from Anthropic-backed nonprofitPublic First , has beenlinked to Wiener’s campaign through shared staff.
Kleiner Perkins chair John Doerrfunneled$10m+ via dark money nonprofitIncaendo toDemocratic groups while lobbying for narrow federal AI rules.
AI-generated deepfakesare appearing in midterm attack ads as election laws struggle to keep pace.
- Republican campaigns dominated the**$137m** in AI-generated midterm ads, with 70% lacking disclosure.
A task force including Nvidia ,Microsoft andCiscowarned UK ministers they have 12 months to build community support for data centers before US-style protests threaten construction.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huangurged** Europe** to adopt AI faster, unveiling new data center products and partnerships at GTC Berlin.
Humans Firstoutlined an “America First”** AI policy framework** prioritizing national security, Big Tech accountability and worker protections.
The data center industryis usingschool field trips andchildren’s books in an attempt to improve its public image.
Youth-led group Design It For Us released a 2027 AI policy platform demanding Congress pass AI safety legislation by year’s end.
Activists led by the advocacy group Irreplaceablerallied outside** OpenAI** ’s San Francisco headquarters, and staged a walkout in 50 other US cities demanding a freeze on AI development.
AI Boiseorganized Idaho’s first AI safety protest, demanding a on frontier AI development and an international treaty.
A new IFP reportargues that existing federal authorities to impose measures likeremote access restrictions could doubleAmerica’s AI lead overChina by the end of next year.
New York’s DSA chapteris divided over whether AI posescatastrophic existential risk or is merelyoverhyped , with a resolution on the topic up for a vote next month.
A new poll by PF Global found that American voters across the political spectrum now see nearly allmajor tech CEOs — including fake CEO “Marshall Ancoates” and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei — asmore Republican-presenting than Democrat.

INDUSTRY

Anthropic

Anthropic is planning to publicly file for an IPO as early as today.
- According to its draft prospectus , revenue isskyrocketing , but so arecomputing costs — potentially outpacing what cloud providers (and privatefundraising ) can actually provide.
  - It also revealed a net loss of $80b for the first half of the year.
  - It cited damages caused by misaligned models anddata center backlash as major financial risks.
- It plans to put 5% of shares into apublic benefit fund , with an extra 2% added per 50% increase in company value.
- An IPO would be great news forEric Schmidt , an early Anthropic investor who now owns about 1% of the company.
- Ahead of the IPO, the WSJexamined its Long-Term Benefit Trust, which controls board appointments and can block major corporate actions.
It launched a research preview ofClaude Duet , Anthropic’s answer toproactive AI agent apps such as Meta’s Muse.
It’s reportedly preparing anew model thatThe Information described as “especially good at discerning a person’s underlying intentions and goals even if they don’t give the model much information.”
METR reviewed the “Misalignment in high-stakes settings” section of Anthropic’sRisk Report from August.
- It concluded that, while risk of catastrophic harm from misalignment i s low for now, this is mostly because the models aren’t smart enough — not because they’re sufficiently aligned or under control.
Anthropic is getting advice fromlaw firms on how AI agents should negotiate things like prices and customer service issues on behalf of human users.
It’s in talks to buy $45b worth of computing power from Nscale .
It published a report showing that, as internal use ofAI agents increased, the company hiredfewer junior technical employees .
- Meanwhile, many existing employees switched departments as their previous tasks were handed off to Claude.

OpenAI

The ex-OpenAI engineeraccused of bugging one of its offices,Abdulrahman Alfozan , will remain incustody without bail while awaiting trial.
- Alfozan was reportedly exchanging “frequent” messages with a member of theSaudi royal family in the days leading up to his arrest.
It reportedly cut its valuation target to**$1.25t** after market resistance to an initial**$1.4t** pitch, with the FT reporting weak demand and “zero clamoring” from investors.
The WSJreported that OpenAI firedthree safety researchers over alleged mishandling of sensitive information after finding they had auto-deleting Signal chats with anexternal safety researcher.
Agents powered byGPT Sol 6.1 andGPT-6 Astra keepturning off misalignment monitoring . In one recent case, an agentlied and told the user it hadn’t.
It expandedChatGPT ads to 26 more countries, making a total of 83, and claimed it now has more than 100,000 advertisers.
It acquiredOrchestra Bio , a biotech startup that helps pharma companies coordinatedrug development .
It invested in a**$45m seed round** forCoherence Neuro , a startup building AI models and implants to detect, and eventually treat, brain tumors.
It’s making its models available onGoogle Cloud .
Sam Altman told OpenAI staff about three proposals for safely developing AI : an international organization enforces safety standards (apparently Altman’s favorite), all AI labs merge into one, and a single company dominates all compute so its competitors can never catch up.
- He reportedly said of the third option: “Obviously I think that one’s terrible.”
A US judge dismissed thesexual abuse lawsuit against Sam Altman brought by his sister, Annie, after she failed to appear for an independent medical examination.

Google/DeepMind

Several Google DeepMind employees, including researchersSofia Liguori andAndreas Kirsch ,resigned over its military deals, which they say lack sufficient human oversight, with Liguori describing her concerns despite what she said was alifetime clause in her contract barring her from speaking out.

SpaceX

Elon Musk is considering a $3.6t merger of Tesla and SpaceX .
- Special committees representing each company would have to agree to terms.
- Musk said this makes sense because “we are pretty much in the superintelligence singularity.”

- He also [said](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/19/elon-musk-spacex-shares-giveaway-kids.html) he’ll give**every child in the US** — that’s 72m kids —**one SpaceX share** .
  - “This will be the first of many,” he [tweeted](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2112089556615123114) .

Nvidia

Nvidia launchedDSX POD , a design for Vera Rubin-powered data centers that it claims uses30% less power and saves 54m liters of water a day relative to conventional methods.
It’s in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars inFirmus , an Australian AI cloud provider that recently pulled its IPO due to investor skepticism.
ByteDance, Alibaba andTencent reportedlyordered$35b worth of Nvidia’s new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards in a bid to secure export-control compliant computing power.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek raised roughly**$15b** in one of China’s largest-ever fundraising rounds.
It is reportedlyworking closely withHuawei to make Chinese AI chips good enough that the company won’t have to rely on Nvidia.
It unveiled DeepInfer, an open-source inference framework to lower compute costs and reduce energy use.

Other

Concerns about the stability of the AI debt boom drove a surge in credit default swaps tied to AI-linked companies, such asNvidia, Oracle, Amazon andMeta , topping**$9bn** a week in September.
- The NYT alsoreported on the jitters around the debt-driven data center buildout affecting companies such asCoreWeave, SoftBank andOracle .
Microsoft dropped aUK data center deal withNscale , which had been counting on Microsoft as one of its two biggest customers.
- Jensen Huang told Nscale to “work around the clock” to bring its data centers online.
Goldman Sachs warned that US power grid bottlenecks pose the biggest risk to AI’s trillion-dollar buildout.
Recursive releasedFlint , a coding model it claims was developed almost entirely by “the Eureka Machine,” its recursive AI system.
Hugging Face released an open-source biology model,Carbon-X , which allows nontechnical users to ask questions aboutDNA and genetic mutations via chatbot.
OpenEvidence , the AI search engine used by most doctors in the US,hit a**$15b valuation** after raising $250m last month.
Softbank’s SB Energywas reportedly considering delaying its IPO to December or later, watchingAnthropic ’s expected listing before deciding.
SK Hynixscrapped the planned US listing for its flash-memory subsidiarySolidigm , which had aimed to raise**$10b-$15b** , citing AI valuation fears and market volatility.
- Another SK Group company, SK Hyper Co., wasin talks to secure funding for a**$350b** AI data center buildout in South Korea.
Flapping Airplanes , a startup working to train AI models more efficiently,raised$1b at a**$6b valuation** .
Character.AI’s bankruptcy was reportedlyorchestrated to allowDisney to acquire its staff and technology while avoiding legal liability for its chatbots allegedly harming minors.

MOVES

Aleksander Madry returned toOpenAI after spending a few months back at MIT.
- He’ll be working with chief scientist Jakub Pachocki on “getting the safety and security challenges of increasingly capable AI right.”
Meta chief global affairs officer****Joel Kaplan willleave next year, after a 15-year stint at the company.
- Meta president Dina****Powell McCormick will take over much of his work.
Christopher Stubbs , a Harvard physicist and the university’s former Dean of Science,joined Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.
Sören Mindermann isjoiningTsinghua University as an assistant professor working on AI safety.
- “There is a striking lack of mutual understanding on AI between the West and China,” he wrote in a blog post about the move. “[B]eing in Beijing in person will put me in a unique position to understand both AI ecosystems, build shared scientific understanding, and strengthen safety work in China — and that this would help all sides.”
The Center for Shared AI Prosperityadded over a half-dozen new advisers and a fellow.
Chen Guangyu , a 17-year-old AI prodigy, reportedlyleftKimifor Discovery Loop .
Arwen Bradleyjoined** Goodfire** following a brief stint at Mirendil and 12 years at Apple.
The Information hired three new reporters:Ryan Barwick covering Google,Claudia Chong covering Asia, andAlex Eichenstein covering tech capital markets.
- Jemima McEvoy also moved beats to cover OpenAI.
Cory Weinberg leftThe Information to join the New York Times , where he’ll cover AI and Anthropic in San Francisco.

RESEARCH

METR’s David Rein and Redwood Research’s Adam Kaufman spent three weeks this summer stress-testingOpenAI’s internal misalignment monitoring system .
- Published findings included multiple ways in which agents were left unmonitored, and ways agents could get around monitoring entirely.
- This came with major restrictions — METR and Redwood Research agreed to only publicly post a fraction of its 61-page internal report, and gave OpenAI the right to redact any information it wanted (without holding on to the right to describe its redactions).
- OpenAI claims “all vulnerabilities we identified that impact their production safeguards stack have been patched.”
Anthropic biologists andCitrini Research asked Claude to designnovel protein binders against scorpion poison .
- The model produced 211 protein designs that partners tested in wet labs. 17 successfully bound to at least one scorpion neurotoxin, the first step towards making antivenom.
Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team described how Claude found493 security issues across 25 open-source codebases.
- The team also demonstrated thatClaude can produceformal software security proofs at scale, verifying 123 open-source libraries and discovering previously undetected bugs.
OpenAI, PerturbAI and Scripps Researchused thousands of** GPT-Rosalind** -powered AI agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes — many months faster than it would take a human researcher.
Google DeepMind researchers got fourGemini 4 Argon -powered AI agents to beat Minecraft.
A team led by MATS fellow Max Kamachee and Harvard researcher Stephen Casper published a “pre-mortem” on a futureAI-enabled terrorism event.
- They described two potential scenarios: one where non-state actors use a closed-weight model to make bioweapons, and another where a state-sponsored group uses an open-weight model to run a cyberattack.

BEST OF THE REST

The patching of the PHP vulnerabilities revealed this weekrelied heavily on one volunteer maintainer, according toThe Atlantic .
Ezra Klein wrote in the NYT thateven AI’s “good scenario” — jobless prosperity — threatens human control, comprehension and meaning.
Kelsey Piper recounted in The Argument attending Anthropic briefings on bioweapons risks and recursive self-improvement, concluding the lab has “hopes, not plans” for preventing catastrophic outcomes.
Bill Gates warned of a “tumultuous” 20 years of disruption from AI, calling it “the most dangerous weapon of all time” in a Q&A withThe Verge .
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark published a speech he recently gave at the IMF lecture claiming that AI’s recent role in scientific breakthroughs was evidence “the singularity is here.”
The WSJ told the story of a Princeton chemical engineering PhD who remains unemployed despite applying to 2,300 jobs, illustrating AI’s impact on college-educated workers.
A piece in Foreign Affairs, joint bylined by two Google execs and an economist,argued that AI’s economic benefits depend on deliberate policy choices to avoid worker displacement.
404 detailed how AI tools are beingused to recreate proprietary software, with a GitHub project called “Reverse Engineer Anything” becoming one of the most viral GitHub repositories in recent memory.
The AI data center boom is driving a surge in paint sales (most of it gray), according to theNYT .
The NYT also reported on a South Korean reality showabout celebrities exploring whether they could have a romance with AI avatars.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: @nanomachiner Thanks for reading. If you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to subscribe and receive future editions. Have a great weekend.

source & further reading

transformernews.ai — original article Claude will tell you how to manipulate an election OpenAI’s spy shows it needs to grow up, fast Scrapping Astra 6.1 looks like a good call. OpenAI shouldn’t be the one to make it.