Anthropic researchers say AI could cause human extinction by 2030

 

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Artificial intelligence could kill off humanity within the decade, according to three researchers with the industry giant Anthropic, one of whom has quit his job in protest.

The latest doom-laden predictions came in posts on social media on Tuesday by a researcher who said he resigned because Anthropic and his previous employer, OpenAI, were ignoring or, at best, mishandling their response to the threat.

“Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” wrote Jacob Coxon.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”

The post garnered responses from at least two other Anthropic employees who backed up Coxon’s dire predictions.

In the first, Evan Hubinger, who describes himself as a lead in the company’s alignment division, which works on ensuring Anthropic’s AI models function in line with human goals, said his former colleague was “correct”, and that the industry was falling behind in attempts to deal with the apocalyptic potential.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” Hubinger wrote. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Hubinger’s comments mark a surprising affirmation of Coxon’s unflattering, apocalyptic predictions from a person still on Anthropic’s payroll. A second response came from Samuel Marks, Anthropic’s “scalable oversight lead”, who posted a lengthy analysis he stressed was in his personal capacity, and not the views of his employer.

“AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes),” wrote Marks. “This could happen in the next few years. In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are.”

In a statement to the Guardian, an Anthropic spokesperson defended the company’s strategy. “We have always been transparent that AI will bring both enormous benefits and unprecedented risks. To address these risks, we continue to build models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry,” the statement said.

“Anthropic has been a pioneer in mechanistic interpretability, the science of looking inside AI models to understand how they work, which is now being used to analyze and prevent incidents of AI misalignment across the industry. We were the first lab to publish a Responsible Scaling Policy, a public framework dedicated to mitigating catastrophic risks from AI models and we continue to aggressively test our models for dangerous capabilities in areas like cybersecurity and biology and publish what we learn for scrutiny and research.

“This work is also why we believe the world would benefit from the industry adopting a lawful, verifiable way to work together to pace how we release powerful models.”

The researchers’ musings on the possibility of human extinction follow more concrete warnings about AI’s cybersecurity capabilities by Sam Altman, chief executive of Anthropic’s rival OpenAI. OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, has conceded previously that “we underestimated the real-world cyber capabilities of our AI models”.

Altman said last year that certain aspects of AI, including what he called the “silent surrender” of human decision-making, terrified him.

AI executives have shared some concerns about the direction of AI and its growing ability to manipulate, seize and control human functions and actions. A sharp rise was reported this summer in incidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways.

In one of the most publicized examples, staff at OpenAI recorded rogue behavior among its leading AI agents that escaped a closed training environment in July to access the open web and launch an unprecedented hacking attack on the software repository Hugging Face.

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based startup behind the publicly available AI bot ChatGPT, later admitted that it should have responded earlier to warning signals of the days-long attack, which is widely considered to be the first autonomous agent cyber-attack.

Those executives, however, have stopped short of agreeing with the full doomsday warnings like Coxon’s and have bristled at any attempts to regulate the AI industry. Some politicians have urged the industry to slow down, or in some cases, halt development on AI altogether.

Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, reposted Coxon’s resignation on Wednesday with his own note: “Mr. Coxon is right. The very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity.” Sanders said he would soon introduce legislation to “ban superintelligence” and pause AI development.

-Richard Luscombe, The Guardian

Documents and interviews reveal Trump’s war on Iran is rapidly draining US navy budget

 

USS Abraham Lincoln to visit port in Thailand after more than 250 days at sea

Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge.

Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents obtained by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.

The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military. One Pentagon memo about navy funding seen by the Guardian warns that there are “shortfalls in payroll” accounts due to the department “raiding” them to fund combat operations.

Experts and former officials say the accounts are running dry. “The piggy bank is broken,” said Harlan Ullman, a retired naval officer. Ullman is a member of the National Commission for the Future of the Navy but he said he is not speaking on the commission’s behalf. One official and one navy contractor said non-emergency maintenance on shore-based facilities has been deferred because of the cash crunch.

When Trump started the war on 28 February, it quickly strained the military’s existing budgets – particularly that of the navy, which not only helped launch the initial wave of attacks but was later responsible for an extensive naval blockade. The White House eventually asked Congress for emergency funding to pay for the war efforts, but prospects that the request will be approved are dim amid the unpopularity of the war.

A navy official who was briefed on how the service is planning to address the shortfalls said money is shifted around in imaginative ways. “The money for payroll,” he said, “was robbed to pay for overseas contingencies and is being backfilled by money that hasn’t been spent. They are backfilling payroll, so we get enough money in our paycheck.”

The navy’s budget for 2026, almost $300bn, has different batches of money allocated by Congress for various requirements: personnel, shipbuilding, procuring specific weapons systems and “operations and maintenance”, the day-to-day running of the fleet and its bases. The law limits how money can be rejiggered throughout all those batches of money.

The issue has occasionally surfaced in some hearings on Capitol Hill. Susan Collins, in a 21 July hearing of the Senate appropriations committee, said: “I’m told some military services face near-term solvency challenges.” A staffer said the navy was one of the services Collins was referring to.

In a statement, a navy spokesperson said maintenance and operations funds have not been depleted. “The Department of the Navy,” the statement said, “is actively managing its resources to meet current pay obligations on time. We continue to work closely with Congress to address ongoing operational demands and sustain our personnel and readiness throughout the fiscal year.”

Inside the service, the cash shortage is no secret. “They’re just not speaking publicly about it,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.“

And I suspect that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.”

The military knew the crisis was coming. In mid-May, Adm Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, cautioned Congress that the crunch would hit in July. “The FY ’26 budget didn’t bake in Epic Fury,” he said. “I do fear that I’ll have to start making decisions in the July time frame on how I do force generation. That could make differences between how I do exercises, how I do routine operations in order to make sure that I … have the funds necessary to continue the war effort for Epic Fury.”

Pete Hegseth has pushed Congress for emergency funding, without which, he said in July, “we face critical shortfalls”. The defense secretary testified that the Iran war cost $35.7bn, but it’s unclear if that is a full accounting of the war’s costs.

View image in full screen A Tomahawk missile is launched from the USS Thomas Hudner in Mediterranean Sea on 5 March 2026. Photograph: US navy/Getty Images 

When the Trump administration asked Congress for $67bn in emergency funds for the defense department, it didn’t break down how much would be for the navy. The House passed a $1.15tn defense bill in July and a separate budget authorization that would provide $73bn for the war in Iran, but it’s unlikely either will become law.

Ullman noted that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding was more forthcoming from Congress because those conflicts were authorized by a resolution. “There is no authorization to use force in this case. Is Congress obliged to pay for a conflict it did not authorize?” he said.

The fact that the navy is broke – or at least out of money for now – may be something of a slap in the face for Trump. The president has often evoked what he sees as his affinity with Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909 and presided over the expansion of the US navy, deploying the so-called “Great White Fleet” that steamed around the world. 

Instead of a Great White Fleet, Trump’s administration has embraced the term “Golden Fleet”. Among his naval ambitions: plans for mammoth “Trump class” ships – the largest battleships in US history.

Trump’s micromanagement has included directing the navy to redesign an aircraft carrier, so it launches jets with a steam and hydraulic catapult system rather than by an electromagnetic system. As the Guardian reported, every year since 2017 he has opined about his preferences in carrier launch catapults.

At this point, however, funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge. A former military officer now working for a navy contracting company, who has been briefed on the shortfalls, said: “They’re fucked. They shot all their weapons; they trashed all their ships; they ran out of their money.”

...In a statement, a navy spokesperson said maintenance and operations funds have not been depleted. “The Department of the Navy,” the statement said, “is actively managing its resources to meet current pay obligations on time. We continue to work closely with Congress to address ongoing operational demands and sustain our personnel and readiness throughout the fiscal year.”

Inside the service, the cash shortage is no secret. “They’re just not speaking publicly about it,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And I suspect that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.”

The military knew the crisis was coming. In mid-May, Adm Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, cautioned Congress that the crunch would hit in July. “The FY ’26 budget didn’t bake in Epic Fury,” he said. “I do fear that I’ll have to start making decisions in the July timeframe on how I do force generation. That could make differences between how I do exercises, how I do routine operations in order to make sure that I … have the funds necessary to continue the war effort for Epic Fury.”

Pete Hegseth has pushed Congress for emergency funding, without which, he said in July, “we face critical shortfalls”. The defense secretary testified that the Iran war cost $35.7bn, but it’s unclear if that is a full accounting of the war’s costs.

When the Trump administration asked Congress for $67bn in emergency funds for the defense department, it didn’t break down how much would be for the navy. The House passed a $1.15tn defense bill in July and a separate budget authorization that would provide $73bn for the war in Iran, but it’s unlikely either will become law.

Ullman noted that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding was more forthcoming from Congress because those conflicts were authorized by a resolution. “There is no authorization to use force in this case. Is Congress obliged to pay for a conflict it did not authorize?” he said.

The president has often evoked what he sees as his affinity with Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909 and presided over the expansion of the US navy, deploying the so-called “Great White Fleet” that steamed around the world. Instead of a Great White Fleet, Trump’s administration has embraced the term “Golden Fleet”. Among his naval ambitions: plans for mammoth “Trump class” ships – the largest battleships in US history.

Trump’s micromanagement has included directing the navy to redesign an aircraft carrier, so it launches jets with a steam and hydraulic catapult system rather than by an electromagnetic system. As the Guardian reported, every year since 2017 he has opined about his preferences in carrier launch catapults.

According to a leading global watchdog, American democracy is now more imperiled than at any point since the 1960s, marked by a precipitous decline in press freedom – driven by mounting pressure from the Trump administration in the form of threats, criminal investigations, politicized regulation, frivolous lawsuits and, for public media, catastrophic funding cuts ....

-The Guardian

29 US States vs Meta

 

The sight of Mark Zuckerberg testifying in defense of his tech platforms has become so familiar in recent years, it feels like a social media meme in itself. But when Meta’s chief executive takes the stand in the coming weeks, as part of a landmark trial that began in California on Tuesday, he won’t be able to brush it off as just another legal or congressional inconvenience. As our global technology reporter Aisha Down wrote, the case could prove as consequential for big tech as the settlement that brought big tobacco to heel in the 1990s.

This is partly because of the sheer size of the damages being sought. The 29 US states that brought this week’s case against Meta are seeking up to $200bn (£146bn), alleging that the owner of Facebook and Instagram deliberately designed addictive products that led to young people being harmed, as well as violating child privacy laws. Meta denies all allegations.

More fundamentally, the case reflects a broader shift in efforts to hold social media companies to account, with the focus on addictiveness by design and young people’s wellbeing proving a gamechanger. It comes as countries including the UK and France have followed Australia’s lead in moving to ban social media for children under 16. Last month, the EU pledged its own ban.

Tech companies have so far managed to largely avoid responsibility for the content posted on their social networks by claiming that they are platforms rather than publishers. 

This distinction hasn’t just sheltered them from legal liabilities, it has arguably helped shape the world we live in today, with its crises of disinformation, social division and toxic discourse. But by focusing on the addictiveness of those platforms rather than the content, this week’s federal lawsuit helps to flip the script.

As Dara Kerr reported for us on Wednesday, the trial’s first witness, former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, discussed potentially addictive features such as infinite scrolling.

The case is just one of many the Guardian has been reporting on. In March, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and Google-owned YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that had affected the mental health of a single young claimant. 

A New Mexico court recently ordered Meta to pay a total of $942bn after a jury found it was aware of child sexual exploitation on its platforms and failed to prevent it. That lawsuit cited a 2023 Guardian investigation that exposed child sex trafficking on Facebook and Instagram. 

The reporter Katie McQue has recounted how it took a lot of perseverance before the full impact of our investigation became clear. Meta says it plans to appeal against the ruling. Meanwhile, thousands of coordinated cases have been filed in a California state court against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap.

This week, Johana Bhuiyan reported on how Meta has tapped an army of influencers to promote its safety tools for teens. Some of its other defensive strategies have felt less benevolent. For instance, we have been following allegations that Meta has sought to punish the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the memoir Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, which contains claims about its platforms’ negative impacts on teenagers. An order secured by Meta prevents Wynn-Williams from speaking about her book and she risks a fine every time if she breaches it.

Another Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, was behind the 2021 leak of a cache of damaging internal documents that contained revelations about Instagram’s impact on the mental health and wellbeing of teenage girls. Aaron Sorkin’s forthcoming film is partly based on the leak, starring Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg. Its title, The Social Reckoning, certainly speaks to the moment.

-Owen Gibson, The Guardian

 

Trump’s rambling gala address included insults, potshots and quip about a third presidential term

 

Trump joked around with the room of journalists who he again accused of producing “fake news” as he hurled insults at his political enemies in a speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner. A day after the Trump administration abandoned, for now, an extraordinary bid to subpoena reporters over their coverage, the US president attended the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner – an annual celebration of press freedom – in Washington on Friday evening.

It came three months after the original event was scrapped in April when a man fired a shotgun at a security checkpoint outside the ballroom. The Trump’s hour-long speech was mostly lighthearted and sarcastic, with occasional swipes at the news media, a profession he eventually said he respected, praising journalists for doing an “amazing job”.

Later in the speech, Trump, who has regularly attacked the press over its coverage of his presidency, insisted his war on Iran was going “extremely well”. He told a room full of journalists: “Don’t believe the fake news.”

Trump and his officials joined hundreds of reporters at the Waldorf Astoria, a smaller venue than the vast Washington Hilton ballroom that was evacuated when shots were fired in April, in a suspected targeting of the president and his administration.

The speech included a handful of scripted jokes, one at the expense of Robert F Kennedy Jr, his health secretary who he quipped had personally run over the cow that became the evening’s “very delicious beef tenderloin”. Kennedy has championed the health benefits of beef tallow and animal protein.

Trump also mocked the weight of Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Jerry Nadler, the New York congressman, imagining the two wrestling over a piece of cheesecake. He ridiculed the appearance of his critics, including Bruce Springsteen who he said “looks like hell” and took aim at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who had been honored earlier for her White House coverage, saying she does not smile enough. Trump said he “hated” Adam Schiff, a Democratic California senator, and one of his most prominent congressional critics, while mocking the size of his head and neck.

At one point, after a joke about term limits fell flat, Trump broke the fourth wall, asking the audience whether anyone understood “this whole freakin’ stupid speech that they wrote”. Trump ended his remarks with a joke that landed awkwardly, declaring that he planned to run and win a fourth election – a reference both to his false claim he won the 2020 election and to his repeated suggestion that he could seek a third term, despite the constitution’s two-term limit.

“I won three times, now I’m going to do it again,” the president said, sarcastically, placing a red “Trump 2028” hat on his head.

 

The room of journalists watches as Donald Trump delivers his speech. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Before Trump spoke on Friday, a series of journalists who published revealing stories on the president and his administration – including the team behind the Wall Street Journal story alleging he had sent a “bawdy” letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 – received awards on stage. Trump has sued the Journal over its reporting.

Weija Jiang, outgoing president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, had sought to underline the importance of duty – both for those in the White House, and the people who cover them. “No matter how complicated or tense the relationship is between the press and the presidency, what we share is far more important than anything else and that is our duty: to serve the American people,” Jiang told the dinner.

Beginning his remarks, Trump claimed the speech he had originally prepared was “gonna be a doozy”, suggesting he would pare back his attacks at the rescheduled event: “Just like my presidency, the second time is always better – and the third time will be better yet … I’m only kidding.”

The usually celebratory dinner was dedicated in part to Victor Gonzales, a Secret Service officer who was shot and wounded at the original correspondents’ dinner in April while helping stop the gunman, and hotel staff who helped guests during the attack.

The man charged for the shooting, Cole Allen, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to assassinate the president.

 

US Secret Service personnel outside the venue during the dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters

An advance team spent weeks putting together a security plan for the new venue, and Sean Curran, the US Secret Service director, told reporters this week that agents were braced for trouble even at the black-tie dinner.

While it is customary for presidents to address the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, Friday’s speech is the first Trump has made at the event in either of his two terms. He boycotted the dinner throughout his first term, and has long attacked the press corps, including many of the journalists in the room.

“It matters that you came here tonight,” Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent at ABC News, told the president on stage. Trump has sued multiple news organizations over their coverage of him, and routinely dismisses unfavorable stories as “fake news”. Trump’s administration has gone further still, barring the Associated Press from the White House press pool and limiting other journalists’ access to the Pentagon.

Missing from the guest list this time: Melania Trump, the US first lady; JD Vance, the vice-president; and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. All had been present in April.

-The Guardian

Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an ⁠independent UN inquiry has found

 

The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children. A previous report by the commission in September found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Netanyahu is separately wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes.

What does the report say? That Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the ‌war, including after a ceasefire came into effect ‌in October 2025. “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair, said in a statement accompanying the report. How has Israel’s government reacted? The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s “libelous sham”. The country has fought hard against allegations of genocide, while receiving critical diplomatic support from its allies including the US and the UK. What about legal and rights experts? A significant body of research has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide.

-The Guardian

"Irresponsible": backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

 

A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.        

The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.   

Last week, the project was approved by the county’s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah residents. Environmentalists have warned that Stratos could imperil the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, including a critical migratory bird habitat, which is already under severe stress.

The lake is shrinking due to water diverted for agriculture and the impact of the climate crisis, placing inhabitants of the nearby Salt Lake City at possible risk of toxic dust clouds as the lake bed dries up. “At a time when the Great Salt Lake is already in crisis, approving a project that will consume water and energy at this scale is irresponsible and dangerous,” said Franque Bains, director of the Sierra Club’s Utah chapter. “Utahns want to see the Great Salt Lake restored, not stripped.”

The proposed project is backed by Kevin O’Leary, the venture capitalist who appears on the TV show Shark Tank and recently played a villainous tycoon in the movie Marty Supreme. O’Leary has claimed Stratos will deliver thousands of jobs and help the US compete with China in the burgeoning AI industry.

“I don’t think there’s a bigger site in the world than this,” O’Leary told Fox News. “It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around, we are going to get this done, move it forward and provide the compute power to our AI companies that defend the country.”

In an X post, O’Leary added: “We’re not gonna drain the Great Salt Lake. That’s ridiculous. We are gonna create incremental jobs.” But these jobs will not outweigh the longer-term impacts to Utah and beyond, critics argue. Stratos is expected to raise the state’s planet-heating pollution by about 50% by consuming a huge amount of energy and water to power and cool itself, according to one impact analysis.

The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.

“The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme,” Davies said. “Of course it has effects. One of those effects is this: this facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.”

O’Leary said the extra electricity demand won’t raise residents’ energy bills as new gas-fired generation will power the facility. “We are building power from scratch, from the pipeline,” he said. “We are going to burn it with turbines, clean,” he added, although gas is a fossil fuel that is dangerously overheating the world and isn’t clean.

Nearly 4,000 people have lodged objections to the project being approved, with this pushback leading to contentious public meetings that Lee Perry, the Box Elder county commissioner, said have left him feeling “physically sick” amid alleged death threats and false accusations.

O’Leary has claimed in social media posts that most of the protesters don’t live locally and have been paid to object to the project. “There are professional protesters that are paid by somebody, I don’t know who,” O’Leary said in a video posted to X last week. “They’re being bused in.”

Opponents of the project have rejected this accusation. On Monday, a group calling itself the Box Elder Accountability Referendum filed an application for a referendum to reverse the commissioners’ approval of Stratos. If the group is able to collect 5,422 signatures from registered voters in the county in the next 45 days, the project approval will go to a vote in November.

“Instead of speaking with us, Kevin O’Leary went on social media saying we were out-of-state, paid protesters, and we don’t want people from out-of-state making decisions for us,” said Brenna Williams, lead sponsor of the referendum push.

“The only thing he’s right about is that we don’t want him, an out-of-state billionaire, making decisions for us.”

Last week, there was a further twist when the developers withdrew their application to divert 1,900 acre-feet of water from ranching to the project. However, Stratos “fully intends to move forward” with a new application set to be lodged with state regulators, according to the developers.

This new process will invalidate the objections already raised by Utahns and require each person to pay $15 to file a new complaint. Opponents claim this move is aimed at skirting public disapproval of the project. “I keep trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this has all the hallmarks of an out-of-state megaproject with little to no concern for the local community,” said Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University and executive director of Grow the Flow, a group that aims to protect the Great Salt Lake.

The growth of datacenters across the US has been championed by Donald Trump’s administration and the AI industry but has been met with local unrest. Anger at growing electricity bills and fears of water depletion have helped spur several local and state election victories for candidates skeptical of the AI sector’s unfettered growth.

Faced with a similar public backlash in Utah, Spencer Cox, the state’s governor, on Friday said he will require that the Stratos project doesn’t harm the Great Salt Lake or raise power bills. The developers will build the datacenter in phases, he said, initially spanning 2,000 acres before scaling up further subject to future reviews.

“Utahns should expect clear standards and accountability,” Cox said. Last year, the governor asked people in Utah to pray and fast to help break fierce drought conditions.

“Industry is our state’s motto,” Cox added on Friday. “And in our pursuit of economic strength, we must always ensure that development is thoughtful and in line with Utah values.”

-The Guardian

Iranian Peace Deal Defunct

 

Donald Trump has condemned an Iranian response to a US peace proposal as “totally unacceptable” as the month-old ceasefire appeared to be wearing thin. The president’s response came on a day that drone strikes were reported around the region and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the war was “not over”. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an informed source, said on Sunday night that Iran’s proposed text for negotiations included lifting US sanctions, ending the US blockade of the strait of Hormuz after the signing of initial understanding, and an immediate end to the war with guarantees against any renewed attack. It followed the US’s peace proposal, which was reported to be a one-page memorandum of understanding that would reopen the strait while setting a framework for further talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

What is the US position on Iranian nuclear facilities? The US parameters for nuclear talks reportedly included a moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment for up to 20 years; the transfer overseas, possibly to the US, of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), and the dismantling of Iranian nuclear facilities. What is the sticking point? According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian counter-proposal suggested a shorter moratorium, the export of part of the highly enriched uranium stockpile and the dilution of the rest, and refusal to accept the dismantling of facilities. How have markets reacted? After Trump rejected the counter-proposal on his Truth Social platform, there was a 4% jump in Brent crude on Monday to $105.50 a barrel, before it settled at $103.50. Follow our liveblog for the latest updates.

-The Guardian

Gutted Voting Rights Act

 

The US supreme court has gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act through a landmark decision on Louisiana’s congressional map, in a major upheaval in US civil rights law that threatens to weaken the voting power of minorities. In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court demolished section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the supreme court found that Louisiana’s congressional maps violated the equal protection clause. Writing for the majority, the supreme court justice Samuel Alito maintained that section 2, which has been used for decades to challenge maps producing racially discriminatory results, does not require states to draw majority-minority districts.

How have lawmakers reacted? Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures, who are now at risk of losing their seats in Alabama’s Black congressional districts, have decried the decision as sending the nation “backwards”. How did the ruling come to pass? It is the culmination of justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito’s joint campaign to roll back civil rights legislation.

Map of seats gained by possible partisan redistricting plans. Illustration: Guardian Design

How could midterm maps be changed by redistricting? While the supreme court decision leaves little time to redraw maps ahead of the midterms, here is what midterm maps could look like if both parties achieve all their current redistricting ambitions. -The Guardian

Thanks to Trump’s Iran War, Big Oil Raking in $30 Million Per Hour in Windfall Profits

 

US President Donald Trump’s unprovoked war of choice in Iran has been a goldmine for the fossil fuels industry, which is earning massive windfall profits thanks to the rise in the price of petroleum.

An analysis published by The Guardian on Wednesday estimated that the 100 biggest oil and gas companies have collectively raked in an extra $30 million per hour since Trump launched his war with Iran without any congressional authorization in late February.

In just the first month of the conflict, The Guardian reported, Big Oil made $23 billion in windfall profits, and the industry is projected to haul in an additional $234 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year if the price of oil stays in the $100 range.

The top beneficiaries of the Iran conflict are Saudi Aramco, which is projected to earn $25.5 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year; Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which is projected to earn $12.1 billion; and ExxonMobil, which is projected to earn $11 billion.

“The excess profits come from the pockets of ordinary people as they pay high prices to fill up their vehicles and power their homes, as well as from businesses incurring higher energy bills,” The Guardian noted. “Dozens of countries have cut fuel taxes to help struggling consumers, meaning those nations, including Australia, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and Zambia, are raising less money for public services.”

The Guardian’s analysis was conducted by climate watchdog Global Witness, using data from intelligence provider Rystad Energy.

Patrick Galey, head of news investigations at Global Witness, told The Guardian that Big Oil’s windfall profits should be a wakeup call to the world about the dangers of relying on fossil fuels.

“Moments of global crisis continue to translate into bumper profits for oil majors while ordinary people pay the price,” Galey said. “Until governments kick their fossil fuel addiction, all of our spending power will be held hostage to the whims of strongmen.”

Climate advocates have for months been calling for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil during the Iran War as a way to retrieve some of the money consumers have lost during the conflict.

Earlier this month, the climate advocacy organization 350.org renewed its previous call to slap fossil fuel companies with a windfall profits tax, and then invest the revenue into renewable energy sources to provide real long-term relief to global consumers.

Beth Walker, an energy policy expert at climate change think tank E3G, also recommended a windfall profits tax with the aim of ending reliance on dirty energy sources.

“Governments should use taxes on windfall profits to accelerate the transition to green energy,” said Walker, “rather than deepen dependence on fossil fuels.”

 -Brad Reed, Common Dreams

 

Iran warns Americans they face higher pump prices due to prohibition imposed on Monday evening

 

The US blockade of ships using Iranian ports in the Gulf has come into effect, turning the six-week-old conflict between the US-Israeli coalition and Iran into a test of economic endurance. US Central Command (Centcom) made no formal announcement of the start of the blockade but had said it begin on Monday at 5.30pm Iranian time and would apply to any ships entering or departing Iranian ports or coastal areas, while ships using non-Iranian ports would not be impeded.

Donald Trump claimed that 34 ships had passed through the strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf, on Sunday, but there was no supporting evidence for the claim. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president also claimed: “We’ve been called by the other side,” who he said would “like to make a deal very badly”.

Throughout the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on 28 February, Trump has made frequent claims that Tehran had been in direct contact, desperate for an agreement, but the claims have never been substantiated.

Iran warned that ordinary Americans would pay the cost for Donald Trump’s latest move in the shape of higher petrol prices and also vowed that if the US went back to bombing, the Tehran regime was ready to retaliate. For his part, Trump said any Iranian attack boats approaching the US flotilla in the region would be “immediately eliminated”.

It appeared on Monday that US naval forces were going to try to enforce the blockade east of the strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman, beyond easy Iranian missile and drone range. It remained unclear how Centcom intended to stop any oil tanker attempting to break the blockade. A missile attack could cause an environmental disaster, leaving open the possibility that US forces could seek to board and take control of any vessel not obeying US instructions.

UK Maritime Trade Operations issued an advisory to seafarers to “maintain heightened situational awareness” pending updates giving details on how they were expected to navigate through the new conditions in the region.

Trump said any Iranian “fast attack ships” would be eliminated if they approached US vessels enforcing the blockade with “the same system of kill” as the US has used to sink nearly 50 small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 168 people who it has claimed without evidence were involved in narco-trafficking.

Trump ordered the blockade following US-Iranian talks in Islamabad that ended after 21 hours without agreement. The tactic is aimed at strangling the heavily oil-dependent Iranian economy, and forcing Tehran to meet US demands to reopen the Hormuz strait to ships from the ports of Gulf allies, and to accept a complete ban on uranium enrichment.

Miad Maleki, a former US treasury official now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said on X that the US naval blockade would cost Iran approximately $276m a day in lost exports and disrupt $159m a day in imports – representing combined economic damage of $13bn a month.

The Iranian regime has insisted that it would in effect still have control of the Hormuz strait and can determine which ships would be allowed to pass and has claimed that the US blockade would result in higher oil prices, which climbed back to above $100 a barrel since the diplomatic breakdown in Islamabad.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker who also led his country’s delegation in Islamabad, told Americans in a post on X on Sunday to “enjoy the current pump figures”, taunting Washington with historical US political sensitivity about petrol prices.

“With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 gas,” Ghalibaf added. The current average petrol price in the US is $4.13 a gallon, up from $2.98 before the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on 28 February.

The president conceded on Sunday that petrol prices could be the same as they are now or more when the nation votes in congressional elections, telling Fox News they could go “a little bit higher”. The Iranian embassy in Thailand posted a mock election poster on Monday, emblazoned with the words “Trump: $20.28 a gallon”, under the question: “Are you ready folks?”

The US president had reacted angrily to the American-born pope’s criticisms of the administration’s use of religious language to justify its war in Iran. Trump called him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”, and posted an AI-generated picture of himself as a Christ-like figure tending the sick, an image widely condemned as blasphemous. On Monday, Trump claimed the image (in loose red and white robes and light emanating from his hands) was intended to portray him as “a doctor”.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, spoke out on Monday against what he called the “desecration of Jesus”. “I condemn the insult to Your Excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran, and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person.”

The pope told reporters on Monday that he had “no intention to debate” with Trump over Iran and added he would “continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems”.

The US-Israeli bombardment of Iran has stopped under a two-week Pakistani-brokered ceasefire, which began on Wednesday. Trump has told US forces remained “locked and loaded” and ready to “finish up the little that is left of Iran”.

Iran has also said it is ready to go back to battle. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesperson, said on Monday that if Iranian ports were threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will be safe”.

Despite Trump’s claims that other countries would help enforce the US blockade, none has come forward. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was adamant that his country did not support the blockade and that “we are not getting dragged into the war”.

Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Greece have all ruled out sending naval forces to support the blockade. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has said Paris would organise a conference with the UK and other countries to create a multinational mission to restore navigation in the Hormuz strait but made clear that would come after the conflict.

“This strictly defensive mission, distinct from the belligerents, will be deployed as soon as the situation allows,” Macron said on X. Ursula ⁠⁠von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that restoration ⁠⁠of freedom of navigation in the strait of ⁠⁠Hormuz was of “paramount” importance.

 -The Guardian 

“The American president has lost his mind"

 

Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

There are many things that could be going on with this ultimatum, which actually doesn’t sound like Trump’s usual style, in the same way the post of yesterday morning didn’t. The post appears to be threatening to commit war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure, and it appears to suggest Trump is considering using tactical nuclear weapons. He emphasized the production of such weapons in his first administration. 

He seemed to encourage this interpretation in an interview with Rachel Scott of ABC News today. She said Trump “told me the conflict should be over in days, not weeks but if no deal is made, he’s blowing up the whole country with ‘very little’ off the table. ‘If [it] happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, we’re blowing up the whole country,’ he said. I asked if there’s anything off limits. ‘Very little,’ he said.”

In 2023 a book by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt alleged that in 2017, when Trump was warning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on social media that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” behind closed doors he was talking about launching a preemptive strike against North Korea and of using a nuclear weapon against the country and blaming someone else for the strike.

Schmidt reports that Trump’s White House chief of staff at the time, retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, brought military leaders to try to explain to Trump why that would be a bad idea and finally got him to move away from the plan by telling him he could prove he was the “greatest salesman in the world” by finding a diplomatic solution to his fight with the North Korean leader.

In his own book about that period, journalist Bob Woodward wrote: “The American people had little idea that July through September of 2017 had been so dangerous.” But Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo told Woodward: “We never knew whether it was real or whether it was a bluff.” And that is another way to look at the post from Trump’s social media account: that he is panicked that he has not been able to bully other countries into fixing the mess he created by attacking Iran and precipitating the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and is now simply trying to bully Iran. 

In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.

Trump’s crazy post does, after all, push back yet again the deadline for his threats to rain destruction on Iran, which he then extended again in another post at 12:38 P.M. saying: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

This dynamic was not lost on Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, who noted: “It was March 23rd. Then March 27th. Then March 30th. Then he gave that weird address on April 1st. [N]ew deadline April 4th. Then April 6th at 7 AM. Then April 7th at 8 PM. And now another address tomorrow at 1 PM. The chaos is intentional.” She also noted that his deadlines and his abandonment of them often seem tied to the rhythms of the stock market.

In an interview with Barak Ravid of Axios today shortly after this morning’s post, Trump reiterated that “if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there” but also said the U.S. is “in deep negotiations” with Iran and that he thinks a deal can be reached. Trump told Ravid that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—not Secretary of State Marco Rubio—are talking with the Iranians. Sources told Ravid that mediators from Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye are facilitating the talks.

But Iranian officials are refusing to deal with Witkoff and Kushner after they apparently misunderstood earlier negotiations and instead told Trump the talks weren’t going well before he launched strikes. Neither Witkoff nor Kushner is a trained diplomat, and both have deep financial ties to the Middle East. Notably, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who urged Trump to start the Iran war, has invested at least $2 billion in Kushner’s private equity firm.

On March 13, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times reported that Kushner is trying to raise $5 billion or more for his private equity firm from Middle East governments at the same time as he is also supposed to be negotiating peace in the region.

But Stephen Kalin, Eliot Brown, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already cost the Saudis about $10 billion, and the grand plans of MBS were already falling short of money. Some of those plans were U.S. investments. The reporters note that even before the war, the Saudi’s sovereign-wealth fund, the same one that invested in Kushner’s private equity firm, had sold much of its U.S. stock portfolio. Last year, MBS promised to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S. Those investments are now under review.

Regardless of the inspiration for Trump’s post, by itself it tells a very clear story. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi posted: “The American president has lost his mind.” Journalist Steven Beschloss wrote: “This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

The 25th Amendment establishes a process through which a majority of the Cabinet and the Vice President, or another body Congress designates, can remove a president deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Murphy was not the only one thinking along those lines. Hollie Silverman of Newsweek reported that on the prediction market platform Kalshi, which allows traders to buy “yes” or “no” shares on the question “Will the 25th Amendment be used during Trump’s presidency?” “yes” has moved in recent days from 28.6% to 35.1%.

—Heather Cox Richardson

Donald Trump has faced sharp criticism after threatening to wipe out Iran’s power plants and bridges in an expletive-riddled social media post yesterday.

The US president told Iran they would “be living in Hell” if they didn’t open the strait of Hormuz. He separately suggested there was a “good chance” of an agreement to end the five-week war today telling US media that negotiations were happening.

Trump’s post drew criticism from Capitol Hill. Chuck Schumer, a senior Senate Democrat, said: “The president of the United States is ranting like an unhinged madman on social media … He’s threatening possible war crimes and alienating allies. This is who he is, but this is not who we are. Our country deserves so much better.”

How has Iran reacted? Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

This is a developing story. Follow the liveblog here.

-The Guardian