Powderhorn

More than a year before his recent standoff with the Pentagon, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, published a 15,000-word manifesto describing a glorious AI future. Its title, “Machines of Loving Grace,” is borrowed from a Richard Brautigan poem, but as Amodei acknowledged, with some embarrassment, its utopian vision bears some resemblance to science fiction. According to Amodei, we will soon create the first polymath AIs with abilities that surpass those of Nobel Prize winners in “most relevant fields,” and we’ll have millions of them, a “country of geniuses,” all packed into the glowing server racks of a data center, working together. With access to tools that operate directly on our physical world, these AIs would be able to get up to a great deal of dangerous mischief, but according to Amodei, if they’re developed—or “grown,” as staffers at Anthropic are fond of saying—in the correct way, they will decide to greatly improve our lives.

Amodei does not explain precisely how the AIs will accomplish this. In most cases, he expects them to do what the smartest humans do, but much more rapidly, compressing decades of scientific progress. He says that by 2035, we could have the theories, cures, and technologies of the early 22nd century. Our infectious diseases and cancers could be cured, and we could live twice as long, and slow the decay of our brains. Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, has similarly conceived of superintelligent AI as the ultimate tool to accelerate scientific discovery, and Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has said that advanced AI may even solve physics.

Amodei does not say that this utopian AI future is inevitable. To the contrary, among the chief executives at the top AI labs, he may be the one who worries most about the technology’s dangers. “Machines of Loving Grace” is an optimistic outlier in his larger oeuvre of published writing, much of which concerns the risks that will accompany the creation of a greater-than-human intelligence. Amodei seems to think of today’s AI researchers as comparable to Manhattan Project scientists, and has been known to recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb. In his telling, superhuman AI could be even more dangerous than nuclear weapons, which is why AI needs to be developed the right way, by the right people, so that it doesn’t overpower humanity or tip the global balance of power toward autocracies.

A Swiss canton has suspended its pilot of electronic voting after failing to count 2,048 votes cast in national referendums held on March 8.

Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many.

By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts.

"Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked," spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo service.

The canton has since commissioned an external analysis of the incident, adding that it deeply regrets the violation of affected voters' political rights.

Huh. A functioning government apologizing for disenfranchisement.

When you think about magic mushrooms, you are likely thinking of Psilocybe cubensis, perhaps the most popular species. Where these fungi came from and how they evolved their psychoactive properties is somewhat of a mystery. But a newly discovered sister species could provide a clue.

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers describe Psilocybe ochraceocentrata, a magic mushroom found in Africa that is similar to P. cubensis but a unique species. The new species has been misidentified as P. cubensis or other mushrooms for years, but the new study suggests that the two species likely shared a common ancestor some 1.5 million years ago.

Interestingly, both P. cubensis and P. ochraceocentrata rely on dung—whether from cattle, bison, goats, horses, or other animals—to spread their spores. The researchers used “museomics,” or genetic analyses of mushroom species already held in museums or other collections, to determine that the two species likely diverged some 1.5 million years ago.

That timing aligns with other “major ecological and faunal transitions,” including herbivore migrations from Africa to Europe and Asia, the researchers note in the study, suggesting that changes in the dung landscape may be related to the species’ split.

As a writer, I'm jealous he got to write "changes in the dung landscape."

Over the decades, technological devices have been gradually integrated into language learning, as is recently the case with generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Does the sophistication of these tools eventually render pencils and pens obsolete? Or can digital uses be combined with manual writing? How does writing keep its value for the human being?

Handwriting has long been associated with memory and learning. It was in 1829 that the keystroke first appeared. It, thereafter, became common in 1867 thanks to the first manual typewriter. While students of the past learned to write exclusively by hand, today’s students alternate between screens and paper. However, research shows that these modalities do not have the same effects on memorisation and retention, and essentially, the acquisition of knowledge.

In a 2014 study, students were better able to answer analytical questions if they took their notes by hand. A 2017 study found that 20-25-year-old students retained the information they wrote by hand longer than the information that they typed on a keyboard.

I don't generally point out qualifications for writers, but it's relevant in this case.

Ankush Khardori is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice. His column, Rules of Law, offers an unvarnished look at national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

The release of the Epstein files was supposed to quell the controversy over whether the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein committed child sex crimes with a host of wealthy, prominent men. But more than a month after the release, something like the opposite has happened.

A variety of public figures in the U.S. have incurred professional and reputational consequences as a result of socializing with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution with a minor. So far, however, none of these people have been credibly accused of any criminal wrongdoing or being aware of Epstein’s subsequent child sex trafficking.

In Europe, things are only slightly different. Law enforcement authorities across the continent have opened investigations into prominent political figures concerning their dealings with Epstein, but thus far, those investigations appear to concern alleged political misconduct — like sharing confidential government information with Epstein or receiving gifts from him — not sex crimes.

Meanwhile, as entirely new conspiracy theories have begun to flourish, pretty much no one in America is happy — not the victims who were insulted by Attorney General Pam Bondi during her latest daylong series of outbursts on Capitol Hill; not President Donald Trump, who effectively created this mess by fueling Epstein conspiracies as a presidential candidate and who remains the subject of intense scrutiny based on unverified allegations against him in the documents that he has strenuously denied; not the American public, most of whom believe that the government is still hiding information; and not the lawmakers who drafted and ultimately passed the law requiring disclosures with the near-unanimous consent of their colleagues in both houses of Congress. In a remarkable bipartisan rebuke, the House Oversight Committee voted last week to subpoena Bondi to testify with five Republicans joining the Democrats on the committee over the objection of Chair James Comer (R-Ky.).

Where there is smoke, there is often fire. But in this case, Americans should brace themselves for the very real prospect that there will be no more credible criminal prosecutions in the U.S. in the wake of the Epstein files release.

Cracks in the solid wall of Republican lawmaker support for Trump’s plans to derail future elections are appearing more and more these days. Evidence of that is seen in a standoff now between the president and a split Senate Republican majority that could well may doom the so-called “SAVE Act,” the GOP’s monstrous voter repression bill.

That, of course, is good news to workers, the poor, people of color, and women, all of whom would have their voting rights severely restricted under the bill, officially called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

The problem for Trump and the Republicans supporting the voter suppression is that they need 60 Senate votes to break a Democratic filibuster threat, and the Senate has only 53 Republicans. Further, not all of them agree on schemes to junk the filibuster and pass the bill.

The SAVE Act sharply curbs use of mail-in voting and drop boxes and sets earlier deadlines for ballots to get to elections offices. Furthermore, it requires voters to prove their citizenship by bringing expensive and sometimes unattainable papers, such as birth certificates, or passports.

The proposed measure would virtually repeal prior voting rights laws by establishing a Jim Crow-like regime where voters, especially voters of color, would have to go through multiple and expensive steps to prove they’re citizens with the right to vote.

There's possibly a light at the end of the tunnel?

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has told Trump “the votes aren’t there” to break a filibuster threat by at least 44 Democrats and both independents. The position of contrarian Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is unknown.

“The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster, and the votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster. It’s just a reality,” Thune told reporters on March 10.

“I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.”

Last week, progressives received more good news in their quest to retake the Senate. Former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and insurgent Texas state Senator James Talarico soared through their respective primaries. To the extent that betting markets’ predictions mean anything, they now place the odds of Democrats flipping the upper chamber closer than ever to even money.

But these elections aren’t the only stories offering hope in these times. In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has hit the ground running—advancing a path for universal childcare, introducing a fairer budget and a plan to balance it, and continuing to civically engage the public with his magnetic social-media presence and charismatic interviews.

Underpinning it all has been a quiet, methodical effort: building out his administration.

Three recent appointments demonstrate Mamdani’s commitment to that long-cited political adage that personnel is policy. He and his team are drawing qualified, visionary, sometimes unconventional talent from the best of previous administrations—all deployed to pull on as many levers as possible to make New York a more just and affordable city.

My god! Competence porn!

The Israeli state’s genocidal assault against the people of Gaza now appears to be the first installment in an ongoing series. The next episode is what the United States and Israel are doing to Lebanon and Iran. It’s not just the relentless bombings and missile launches with little regard for civilian life that’s so reminiscent of the war on Gaza. It’s not just the slaughtering of children followed by easily debunked denials. (The casual mendacity of both governments is jaw-dropping.) It’s not the assassinations of governmental and religious leaders. It’s the attempt to kill hope.

A source of hope and joy in Iran—as in Palestine—has always been organized sports. In Iran, soccer, wrestling (where Iran has achieved global acclaim), and volleyball are three of the main sporting ventures in which Iran competes internationally. Yet it’s difficult to play—and by extension impossible for a child to have dreams of athletic glory—when the sports infrastructure is destroyed. As I’ve pointed out for over a decade, Israel has long targeted sport facilities and athletes in Gaza. The logic is that if you kill the joy that comes with leisure pursuits and extracurricular activities, you kill the will to resist.

In yet another echo of Gaza, on March 5, one of the first bombing targets in Iran was the historic Azadi Sports Complex in Tehran. Perhaps the most iconic sports facility in the Middle East, Azadi has played host to many of the most storied moments in Iranian athletic history, including a 1998 World Cup qualifier match against Australia played in front of 128,000 people. The Azadi indoor facility, which holds 12,000 and is a central locale for basketball, martial arts, and volleyball, is now a smoldering husk.

Fucking disgusting. Can you imagine the apocalypse if Iran bombed the Rose Bowl?

When Donald Trump, our mad king, declared that “we are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” because “ownership” is “psychologically important for me,” the reaction was immediate and predictable.

The foreign-policy establishment—what the former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes dubbed “the Blob”—erupted in fury. Trump was trampling the so-called rules-based international order. “Territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law,” lectured Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Trump was endangering what Iraq War champion Bill Kristol called our “relatively benign order,” one that, neoconservative nabob Robert Kagan sermonized, was held together in part by “America’s reputation for morality and respect for international norms.”

There’s no question that Trump’s erratic, even demented, global policies— “Liberation Day tariffs,” dubbing NATO allies the “enemy within,” whining about a Nobel Peace Prize snub while bombing seven countries as well as fishing boats in the Caribbean, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, pulling out of international organizations, and more—have stripped the mask off of American predation.

The president’s popularity is floundering, Americans’ paychecks are under perpetual strain, and the United States is waging a pointless, unpopular war in the Middle East. Republicans are betting that some virulent Islamophobia can revive the enthusiasm of a weary base. The 2000s never ended, they just got way more online.

Capitol Hill was roiled this week by a series of anti-Muslim statements from Rep. Andy Ogles . The Tennessee Republican has a well-established reputation as a MAGA hard-liner less focused on legislating than on throwing culture-war grenades into the news cycle to generate coverage for himself. He hurled another big one on Monday: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie,” Ogles wrote on social media.

The post was the latest in a long series of Islamophobic posts authored by the congressman. His pinned post on X was recently a poll asking users if they agreed that “Islamic immigration is a threat to the United States?” Earlier this month, he wrote that “America and Islam are incompatible,” and that it was “time for a muslim ban.” A graphic he shared Monday described Islam as a religion of “rape,” “pedophilia,” “beheadings,” “female genital mutilations,” and “jihad.” Ogles has also shared plenty of comments from fellow conservatives defending his bigotry.

As always, every accusation is showing the guilt of our leader.

America has already won the war it isn’t fighting, which is why it must continue bombing Iran until the Islamic Republic accepts “unconditional surrender,” defined by the White House as a set of conditions that it will decide without Tehran’s input.

President Donald Trump sees victory in making Iran “cry uncle,” and seems to believe the regime is already doing so. His senior military leaders have identified success in meeting narrow military objectives that they have largely achieved, while also saying they must continue to ramp up strikes — to achieve these objectives even more.

All of this is intended to serve a broader goal of reshaping the Middle East into a kinder, gentler region by beating a hostile regime into submission, until it becomes friendly to the United States and Israel.

But also it isn’t, because undertaking such an ambitious and complex enterprise is expensive and destabilizing, and favorable outcomes cannot be assured. America doesn’t do “endless nation-building” or “quagmires” any more. Those kinds of wars are unpopular.

If America were fighting an unpopular war with Iran, the conflict might deserve the moniker the “Third Gulf War,” as it now involves at least a dozen countries in and around the Persian Gulf.

It's darkly funny that if Trump hadn't insisted on raping underage girls, gas prices would be stable.

Before dawn on February 28, the United States and Israel launched what Donald Trump hailed as “major combat operations in Iran” but was, in fact, an undeclared, unauthorized, and unconstitutional regime-change war. As the bombs rained down on at least 14 cities, the death toll included Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and at least 165 people—most of them young girls—at a primary school. The president said the mission was “eliminating imminent threats.” In reality, it killed children, provoked counterstrikes across the Middle East, and threatened the region with another of the “forever wars” that Trump once campaigned against.

The attack on Iran represents the latest manifestation of an increasingly belligerent foreign policy that has seen US military interventions topple two government leaders in two months. The president who in 2024 declared, “I’m not going to start wars,” is now starting wars of aggression, threatening invasions, abandoning treaties, and creating chaos with such abandon that, in the words of former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes, “Trump’s second term has been the worst-case scenario.”

The Nation opposes Trump’s latest war, as do most Americans. But we are concerned that the response of many commentators to the Trump catastrophe is to hope for a return to a failed old order—a system of “rules” and strategies so unpopular that voters have already rejected them. That naïve longing ignores the need for this country to take a new look at its place in the world.

This issue of The Nation takes that new look from a perspective rooted in our values, experience, and history. If there is a through line in The Nation’s 160 years, it is that building a healthy and secure democracy is incompatible with an endless quest for global dominance. We know that Trump is reckless and wrong, but there’s more to our crisis than the mad ranting of an aging autocrat.