It’s Thursday, April 16. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: what it means that Anthropic’s new AI can break into almost any computer system on Earth. How Sudan became a killing field. The ancient wisdom that helped build a $5 billion company. Eli Lake on the prospect of fresh peace talks with Iran. Peter Savodnik on the Democrats’ Hasan Piker problem. And much more.
But first: a conversation with the man accused of trying to kill Sam Altman.
This week, 19-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama, a part-time community college student from Texas, was charged with attempting to kill Open AI CEO Sam Altman. In the early hours of Friday morning, authorities say, he threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home in San Francisco. He allegedly then traveled to OpenAI’s headquarters and threatened to burn down the building. When he was arrested, police say, he was carrying with him an anti-AI manifesto, and a list of the names and addresses of other AI CEOs.
Months before all of this, in late January, reporter and podcast producer Andy Mills had a conversation with Moreno-Gama. He and his colleagues were making a podcast about debates around AI, and had found the teenager in a Discord server called Stop AI, where he was posting in support of violence to stop the technology from triggering the extinction of mankind. As Moreno-Gama put it, he was interested in “Luigi-ing some tech CEOs”—an apparent reference to Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Andy asked if Moreno-Gama would speak to him, and Moreno-Gama agreed.
“As Moreno-Gama told me his backstory,” Mills writes today, “I realized that he was, in a way, an embodiment of our society’s fears about the social experiment we’ve been running on Gen Z.”
Read Andy’s piece on what he learnt when he spoke to the man now accused of attempting to kill Sam Altman—and listen to the conversation yourself.
—The Editors
The AI Cyber Threat Is Here
Fears about the existential risks posed by the rapid pace of AI development are not confined to the radical fringe. Indeed, some of those at the helm of top AI firms are themselves concerned about the harm their creations might cause. Last week, Anthropic announced Mythos, a new model so powerful the company said it wouldn’t release it to the public. The model, it claimed, could find and exploit vulnerabilities in almost any software system on Earth—a capacity that could wreck havoc instantly. We wanted to know more about why Anthropic is so worried about Mythos, so Sean Fischer spoke to the company’s chief science officer, Jared Kaplan.
And what does the new threat of AI cyberattacks mean for everyday people? Ryan Fedasiuk is a China and technology expert who once survived a state-sponsored cyberattack. In his piece today, he explains what you can do to protect yourself in this new tech landscape—and why “we are already living through the early stages of a much less secure world.”
U.S.-Iran peace talks collapsed over the weekend, but there is now chatter that negotiations could resume again soon. The focus is on Iran’s nuclear program, but according to Eli Lake, Trump should go further. Read his assessment of what the White House can—and should—force Iran to agree to.
For more from Eli on the war, don’t miss his debate with NonZero podcast host Robert Wright. Listen to their conversation here.
Democrats have a Hasan Piker problem. In recent days, the left-wing internet personality has doubled down on his claim that Israel is worse than Hamas, and declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. Last month, he took part in a propaganda mission to Cuba. “One would think,” writes Peter Savodnik, that “Democrats would have no trouble dispensing with” his radicalism. So why is Piker being defended by some of the most prominent voices on the American left?
On Sunday, President Donald Trump ignited a firestorm by posting an AI image of himself as Jesus. Christians—including some of his supporters—called it blasphemy. But Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey sees it differently. Given Trump’s general inattention to religion, she writes, “it’s not difficult to believe he posted a meme without recognizing the Christ imagery that would be obvious to many believers.” And when we refuse to make these distinctions, “our criticism loses credibility.”
When Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky lost his father, a Holocaust survivor and his closest friend, in 2003, his rabbi referred him to a 2,000-year-old Jewish text: “Pirkei Avot.” Lubetzky credits its teachings with helping him build his company into a $5 billion brand, before later joining the cast of “Shark Tank.” This week on Old School, he tells Shilo Brooks how ancient Jewish insights on ego, humility, and leadership shaped one of America’s most iconic healthy-snack companies.
Last Chance to VOTE: Two Free Press Podcasts Are up for Webby Awards
Conversations with Coleman and Spiral have been nominated for Webby awards—and the people will decide the winners. Coleman is neck-and-neck with Oprah’s podcast in the Talk Show category, while Spiral has a narrow lead in the Crime and Justice category. Voting closes today—and you can vote for either or both of our shows below.
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Piker and Mamdani are the new democrat/communist party. They will very soon be the mainstream.
One small observation (and this isn’t criticism, just a question): Mrs Kirk was warned about the security risk if she attended the TPUSA event, and I thoroughly understand her choice not to attend. But didn’t the Vice-President of the United States attend and doesn’t he have world class security? I would think the TPUSA event would have been locked down tight for the main attendees.