Outsource AI Risk to the Right People

Christopher David LaRoche | Foreign Policy

In past months, a raft of AI ethics and safety experts have resigned from the top AI companies. They were not the first, and they likely will not be the last. And if the resignations continue, AI’s future will be decided without the people who are most concerned about reducing its risks… Nuclear experts have been here before. And their history offers a lesson: keep dissenting voices in the room or risk a fractured expert class whose incentives may not align with the broader public’s.

Before winding down the war, US and Israel are determined to wipe out Iran’s nuclear expertise

Mostafa Salem and Tal Shalev | CNN

Last week, US President Donald Trump said the US was on track to achieve its objectives in the Iran war – including preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon – and suggested the conflict could last two to three more weeks. But Iran still retains hundreds of kilograms of the core component needed to build a bomb, as well as decades of expertise. As the US and Israel look to wind down the war, they are determined to target that expertise in a bid to cripple the nuclear program.

A New Oil Shock Accelerates a Return to Nuclear Power

River Akira Davis and Meaghan Tobin | The New York Times

The war in the Middle East is expected to cut the world off from millions of tons of liquefied natural gas, a fuel used extensively for power generation across Asia. Even in Europe and other regions with sustained access to gas, the diminishing supply of energy is causing prices to surge. In response, nuclear power, seen by countries as an alternative energy source that is less vulnerable to outside shocks, is finding new backing even in some of the most historically antinuclear places.

Iran accuses UN nuclear watchdog of inaction, warns of risk from attacks

Reuters / Yahoo

Inaction by the UN nuclear watchdog "emboldens aggression" against ​nuclear facilities such as the ‌Bushehr power plant, Iran's atomic energy chief Mohammad Eslami said on ​Monday in a letter addressed ​to the International Atomic Energy ⁠Agency's director. Eslami said Iran's only ​functioning nuclear power plant had ​so far been targeted four times, with the most recent attack in its vicinity ​on April 4 killing a ​security staff member and injuring others.

Trump's $18B Golden Dome request bets almost entirely on reconciliation

Thomas Novelly | Defense One

Almost none of the $17.5 billion the White House is seeking in fiscal 2027 for the Golden Dome missile-defense project would come from the Defense Department budget, an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson confirmed to Defense One. Less than $400 million would come from DOD's budget, with the rest from a proposed reconciliation bill, the second in as many years. Congress uses reconciliation, a special budgetary process that requires a simple majority to pass, to quickly enact mandatory spending legislation.

He Helped Stop Iran from Getting the Bomb

David D. Kirkpatrick | The New Yorker

Not long after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Kevin Chalker set out to become a spy… At the Farm graduation ceremony, envelopes labelled with the first name and last initial of each new officer were placed on a large table... Many were bound for Iraq, which the U.S. had recently invaded. Chalker assumed that, based on his language skills, he would work in East Asia. Instead, the slip inside the envelope for “Kevin C.” said “CP/IRANNUC”—counterproliferation, working against Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.