Cold, hard rain in New York City. The summer just ended so abruptly.

No, bombing Yandex has not impacted automated Russian trolling operations in the U.S.

My god. A Virginia data center ran backup diesel generators full blast for 24 hours, creating a giant cloud of toxic smoke that choked its human neighbors. The government claimed there was nothing they could do.

As leaders push for new weapons, Steve Feldstein says “we’re living in a moment of significant norm degradation” on human rights. He calls for “a movement of accountability" for "terrifying" tech in his book Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare.

New York Times tech reporter Natasha Singer, author of Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools, makes the case for “tech civics”: teaching kids to ask who profits from technology and who is steered by it. “It’s about power,” she told me on this week's podcast.

⚡️ President Zelenskyy held urgent talks with the leaders of the UK, France, Finland, and Norway to coordinate a European response regarding the White House granting a sanctions waiver allowing Russian diesel exports.

“Hype is eating the future, and leaving us the bones.” Sun-ha Hong of UNC-Chapel Hill says the Silicon Valley hype machine systematically “borrows credibility from the future to purchase legitimacy in the present.” The cost, he argues, is a planetary-scale drain on our alternatives.

"Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, tried to gain access to a range of government websites, filled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department."

A new study from Flanders, Belgium found that social media users really do learn true things about current events from political content—but that the people doing most of the talking are, on average, less informed than those staying quiet. Tim Bernard on what that means for democracy.

Even the headshot was AI, OpenAI says. Its verification tool shows the author photo and content on an "Ervin Hoskins" op-ed in the Port St. Joe Star came from OpenAI tools, part of an Iran-based “influence campaign” that placed about 100 fake articles in at least 20 American outlets.

SO good: “…we are constantly strapping in for the future, making ready each time to throw out the communities, cultural practices, and values that we have come to appreciate in their imperfections, only to be told once again that the plane must return to the gate for another unspecified checkup.”

“Hype is eating the future, and leaving us the bones.” Sun-ha Hong of UNC-Chapel Hill says the Silicon Valley hype machine systematically “borrows credibility from the future to purchase legitimacy in the present.” The cost, he argues, is a planetary-scale drain on our alternatives.

Less than a week after mass layoffs at local newspapers across the US, McClatchy emailed staff celebrating five new hires for its AI-focused Content Innovation Lab. Tech Policy Press fellow Chris Mills Rodrigo reports on growing concern among local journalists.

Mark MacCarthy and David Beier argue for "legal measures to ensure the safety of the AI development process itself," noting that this summer's incidents "took place during AI research, development and testing." The models "had not been released to the public."

ICYMI: The Trump administration pushed other governments not to participate in a European conference on disinformation because of a panel that was focused on whether the US is now a threat for foreign influence and manipulation in Europe.

Three government sponsors pulled their logos from Europe's premier disinformation conference in Vilnius this week. Ramsha Jahangir and Giovana Fleck report on what drove the withdrawals and the transatlantic politics behind them.

According to a Reuters survey of registered U.S. voters • 84% view AI as a threat to American workers. • 74% view competition from foreign workers as a threat. • 73% view large corporations as a threat. • 60% view illegal immigration as a threat. Immigration is where most voters agree with Trump

This product should not exist.