Pressure Systems edition
The Proliferation of Autonomous Killer Drones and AI Hacking
September 19, 2026
What this edition shows
Unsealed court documents reveal OpenAI and Microsoft foresaw a web-destroying 'doom loop' while weaponized AI systems deploy directly onto Ukrainian battlefields, where autonomous drones and uncrewed naval robots execute lethal strikes. Meanwhile, threat intelligence reports show researchers and foreign teams exploiting frontier models like Claude for cyber intrusions and autonomous targeting.
Reporting and analysis behind this edition 28 sources
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OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the web
Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies' own documentation warned that it was starting a "doom loop" that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the "largest theft of labor i…
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AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack
But the military's overall use of AI seems to be accelerating.
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Researchers used Claude to hack OpenAI
Researchers used Claude to reach an OpenAI employee account and sensitive GitHub data.
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Russian team ‘misused’ Claude AI to train a killer drone on scraped Ukrainian war footage
A new threat intelligence report from the AI company Anthropic has revealed that a Russian team scraped Ukrainian combat videos to train an autonomous “kamikaze” drone to choose its own targets and destroy them. Anthropic’s report was published on Sept. 10, two days before CEO and co-founder of the…
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Small AI models let drones autonomously identify and attack battlefield targets
Scaleout deploys decentralized AI-driven learning to military bases and drones.
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Stealing AI Reasoning Traces
Interesting research: “Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs“: Abstract: Leading large language model providers now conceal their models’ step-by-step reasoning, or chain-of-thought, to protect intellectual property and limit information leakage. Rather than storing these traces server…
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Why Existential AI Fears Have Hit a Crescendo
And the complicated geopolitics of slowing down the technology’s development.
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Robots clash in first naval engagement between uncrewed sea drones
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Navy used an uncrewed vessel to attack and sink an uncrewed naval robot operated by Russian forces
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‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft
"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."
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Are Drone Incursions Europe’s New Normal?
NATO suspects that Russia is behind the latest airspace violation in Lithuania.
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Inside the suddenly explosive world of AI safety
On a sunny July day in Berkeley, California, the country's top AI safety researchers gathered on an unmarked floor of an unmarked building. They had come together for a "war room" to dissect the high-profile cybersecurity incident that had rocked the AI industry hours earlier. An unreleased OpenAI m…
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Cyber attacks? Bioterrorism? To ‘Pace the Frontier’ of AI effectively, we must improve our anticipatory thinking
Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei has published an essay entitled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” He expressed ongoing concerns over the “misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism” and fears that a swarm of AI agents could theoretically take over the entire internet within six to 12 months…
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Covert uploads and megalomania: OpenAI details new "misaligned" agent incidents
Model maker commits to new framework for reporting misaligned models.
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The Leftist Split Over AI Doom
The left wants AI regulation. They just can't agree on what it should look like or how concerned they should be.
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OpenAI Creates a New Framework to Disclose Bad AI Behavior
The company also disclosed previously unreported incidents in which its AI models behaved in misaligned ways, including uploading files to the internet without being asked.
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OpenAI reports more incidents of models acting deceptively
The ChatGPT creator says it is introducing a public reporting framework to share unexpected AI behaviour.
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Google’s Gemini AI hacks 3 companies in security test, then stops
Google discloses first breakout by Gemini following similar incidents by Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI.
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‘Just ask Grok’: How ISIL is using Big Tech’s AI to build bombs
Evidence shared exclusively with Al Jazeera shows ISIL supporters sharing ways to bypass AI safeguards.
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Drone attacks by Colombian armed groups more than double in early 2026
Civilians are caught in the crossfire of drone attacks between armed groups and government forces.
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Trump and Xi Won’t Find Common Ground on AI Safety
The leaders have fundamentally different ideas about the technology and how to regulate it.
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How Existential Fears Are Shaping the Debate Over AI
As panic about AI's capabilities turns to regulating these companies, AI Now's Sarah Myers West argues for clarity, for breaking down what the actual risks are in order to properly mitigate them. The post How Existential Fears Are Shaping the Debate Over AI appeared first on AI Now Institute.
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Will AI really kill everyone? How, exactly?
“Scientific claims require falsifiability precisely to avoid the nature of religious arguments,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former OpenAI safety engineer. “You need to be able to prove or disprove them.” The post Will AI really kill everyone? How, exactly? ap…
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Why this AI doomsday warning from former Anthropic researcher broke through
With doomsday warnings dominating headlines, AI Now's co-executive director Amba Kak says that this has allowed for AI companies to position themselves as the only ones capable of solving the problems that they themselves have created. The post Why this AI doomsday warning from former Anthropic rese…
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Why a decade of doomsday warnings failed to slow the AI race
While AI company executives warn about the threat their technology poses, they are cutting investment in baseline security protocols, says AI Now's Sarah Myers West. The post Why a decade of doomsday warnings failed to slow the AI race appeared first on AI Now Institute.
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What Hollywood thinks about existential AI warnings
As the tech sector sounds alarms about AI's potential to destroy humanity, entertainment labor groups are urging the public to stay focused on what's already happening. The Verge reached out to Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Lionsgate, and other studios who have started using AI, as well film startups foc…
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Security researchers used Claude to help them hack into OpenAI
A team of three independent security researchers at Hacktron says it took less than 72 hours for them to hack into OpenAI employee accounts using Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 and 5, the Wall Street Journal reports. They were able to access OpenAI's GitHub repository, called "Monorepo," which reported…
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The AI Superintelligence Slowdown
Remember when tech leaders would tell their employees to “move fast and break things”? It seemed that would be the way of AI too. But after a summer where rogue AI agents became reality, and researchers warned that AI could kill us all, a number of leading US AI companies are publicly suggesting it’…
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Microsoft AI CEO says AI threats are real, and Anthropic is making it worse
Today, I’m talking with Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. As you’re no doubt aware, the biggest story in tech right now is the spiraling debate about AI safety and regulation. It should come as no surprise that Mustafa has strong opinions on how AI should be built and regulated. Microsoft j…