Artificial intelligence is going to kill us all. At least, Dario Amodei thinks it might. Amodei is the CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 and launched Claude, an closed-source A.I. agent, in 2023. The company is currently preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO), meaning that they are going to sell shares of their stock to the general public. While the date for the IPO has not yet been announced, the IPO prospectus, a formal legal document companies are required to file before going public, was leaked to Reuters. In the document, Dario Amodei states that A.I. models may present an “existential risk to humanity.”

Since its origination, Amodei and Anthropic have been advocates for greater regulation and caution in regards to developing A.I. In 2025, Amodei sat for an interview with John Collison where he said, 

“I started a company not because I was initially excited about selling things or business or any of that; I’d seen the way that some of the other companies had run and the magnitude and gravity of what they were trying to build, and I was just a bit concerned that the people and the motivations were maybe not the best ones, and you know, I knew that there would be a number of players in this space, but it felt like having at least one player that kind of had a strong compass in how we do things could have positive effects on the ecosystem. We would build things in a different way, we would deploy them in a different way, and above all, we would have a, again sometimes short, list of principles, but we would stick to them as well as we could.” 

When Collison asked Amodei about the potential risks of A.I., Amodei stated, “Some of the dangers of A.I. have the potential to significantly destabilize society or threaten humanity or civilization, and so, I think we don’t want to take idle chances with that level of risk.” Despite this, Amodei expressed that he doesn’t believe that A.I. development should be stopped or slowed, saying “It’s just not possible; we have geopolitical adversaries. They’re not going to not make the technology… I mean, if you even propose even the slightest amount of regulation– I have [proposed regulation], and… I have many trillions of dollars of capital lined up against me [from people] for whom that’s not in their interest.” 

Anthropic has also been transparent in the past about undesirable behavior from their A.I. models. In 2025, they admitted that a model they were testing exhibited behavior akin to blackmail. In an essay penned for the New York Times, Dario Aomdei wrote, 

“Picture this: You give a bot notice that you’ll shut it down soon, and replace it with a different artificial intelligence system. In the past, you gave it access to your emails. In some of them, you alluded to the fact that you’ve been having an affair. The bot threatens you, telling you that if the shutdown plans aren’t changed, it will forward the emails to your wife.  This scenario isn’t fiction. Anthropic’s latest A.I. model demonstrated just a few weeks ago that it was capable of this kind of behavior.  Despite some misleading headlines, the model didn’t do this in the real world. Its behavior was part of an evaluation where we deliberately put it in an extreme experimental situation to observe its responses and get early warnings about the risks, much like an airplane manufacturer might test a plane’s performance in a wind tunnel.” 

In the same essay, Amodei also claimed that Anthropic was not the only A.I. developer experiencing these kinds of risks, and he noted that OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, tested a model that “at times wrote special code to stop itself from being shut down.” 

Despite the mounting concerns over the safety of the artificial intelligence models currently in development, United States President Donald Trump recently opted not to construct any federal regulations on A.I. expansion after a meeting with leading developers of A.I. on Sept. 29. President Trump previously posted about A.I. regulation on Truth Social, writing, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” When a reporter asked him if anything from the Sept. 29 meeting had changed his opinion on the necessity of guardrails for A.I., President Trump claimed that he is “seeing tremendous self-policing, and they understand that they have to self-police.” Consequently, the CEOs signed an accord wherein they agreed to perform internal and external reviews of their technology. When asked if the accord was binding in any way, President Trump responded, “I think it’s morally binding, yeah.” Moving forward, artificial intelligence will remain unregulated on a national level, and any external regulation will now have to come at a state level.

The current war between the United States, Israel and Iran has driven global tensions to a boiling point. Many NATO allies and other states friendly to the U.S. have been unwilling to join the war effort, and President Trump has responded to their refusals with public condemnations. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, both of whom have tried to maintain cordial relationships with the Trump administration, havesplit with Trump over the Iran war, and have since been targeted both in official policy changes and through social media.

The most surprising target of the President’s ire is Pope Leo. Selected last year to replace the late Pope Francis, Leo is the first ever American pope, and until recently has tried to remain separate from the political sphere, especially in his home country. However, Leo’s commitment to peace and diplomacy has put him at odds with the Trump administration’s more aggressive foreign policy, and the Iran conflict has driven those tensions to a breaking point.

The opening volley

The war of words began with the Pope’s traditional Easter address on the morning of Apr. 5. In his address, Leo implored that “those who have weapons lay them down” and “those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” and while he did not mention the current war in Iran directly, his anti-war message was clear.

While the Pope was proclaiming a message of peace, President Trump’s Easter messages were dramatically pro-war. Early on Easter morning, Trump posted a profanity-laced rant on Truth Social, demanding that the Iranian regime “Open the F—in’ Strait [of Hormuz] … or you’ll be living in Hell.” Two days later, on the morning of April 7th, Trump doubled down, claiming that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran did not capitulate.

In the ensuing days, Pope Leo continued to position himself as anti-war and criticized world leaders for seeking war rather than diplomacy. When speaking to the leaders of the Chaldean Church (a subset of Middle Eastern Catholics) on April 10th, Leo said that the world was marked by “absurd and inhumane violence,” and argued that the Church must “never [be] on the side of those who yesterday wielded the sword and today launch bombs.”

Though Pope Leo largely avoided discussing Trump by name during this period, journalists did manage to get a more direct answer from him during interviews. When asked about Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran’s civilization, Pope Leo described the comments as “truly unacceptable,” arguing that Trump had violated both international law and basic morals. Other Catholic leaders, including Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, also directly named Trump, with Coakley saying in a statement that he “[calls] on President Trump to step back from the precipice of war and negotiate a just settlement for the sake of peace and before more lives are lost.”

Trump on Truth Social

On the evening of April 12th, Trump turned his attention, and his social media ire, to Pope Leo. He made a 334-word post on Truth Social in which, among other things, he described the Pope as “WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy,” claimed that priests were getting arrested during the Covid pandemic for holding church services, asserted that Pope Leo would not have become pope had Trump not been president, accused Pope Leo of being an “Obama Sympathizer” and stated that he didn’t want “a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.” He concluded by saying that Pope Leo’s focus on politics hurts both the Pope and the Catholic Church more broadly. Later that night, he shared an AI-generated image of himself as a Christlike figure, shrouded in golden light and healing a sick man in a hospital bed.

Reactions to these posts were immediate and harsh, especially from the Catholic community. Bishop Robert Barron, a conservative Catholic and member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, described Trump’s remarks as “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” while numerous leaders of Catholic-aligned political organizations called on Trump to apologize. When asked about the President’s attacks against him, Pope Leo finally mentioned Trump by name, saying that he has “no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel.”

J.D. Vance and theological disputes

With tensions rising between Pope and President, observers and journalists turned to Catholic members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, to try and ease the tensions. Vance has instead held firm to the Trump administration’s platform, saying on April 14th that the Pope should be more careful when talking about theology and that his claim that God is never on the side of warmongers is historically inaccurate.

Vance has also disputed the Pope’s interpretation of Just War Theory, a Catholic doctrine originating with Saint Augustine that describes when a state can legitimately engage in war. Notably, Pope Leo is a member of the Order of Saint Augustine, and his scholarship primarily centers around Augustine’s thinking and writing. Leo began his current tour of Africa by visiting the city where Augustine lived in the 400s and has discussed Augustine’s views on just war theory (among other things) in his speeches.

Threats of Avignon

While the Trump Administration and the Vatican have been publicly feuding in the last few weeks, there are reports that further tensions between the two parties have occurred in private. On April 6th, The Free Press initially reported that meetings between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Vatican’s representatives had become tense as far back as January of 2026. Further reports have examined the context of those meetings in some detail, with most reporting indicating that the American position effectively argued that the U.S. could do anything it chose and that the Vatican should side with the Trump administration’s choices.

The most concerning part of those reports centers on the allegation that Department of Defense officials had mentioned the Avignon Papacy during their conversations with the Vatican. The Avignon Papacy occurred during the 1300s, when the King of France sent his army to arrest Pope Boniface VIII. After Boniface’s death, the French royals forced the Papal Conclave to elect a French pope, who refused to move to Rome and instead moved the papal court to Avignon, where the French monarchs could directly control both who was elected pope and what the pope could say.If those alleged threats are true, the implications are disturbing. The Avignon Papacy happened when a major world power forced the Catholic Church to obey its demands through military force. It is unlikely that the United States would use military force against the Vatican, but it was enough of a concern that the Pope has canceled his planned visit to the US amid the heightened tensions.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions have thrust the United States into another armed conflict with a hostile foreign nation that happens to have significant amounts of oil. However, where the operation in Venezuela took less than three hours, the current war on Iran is rapidly turning into a long-term military engagement, with no clear war aims and no evident win condition for the United States despite rising death tolls and serious infrastructure damage not only for Iran but also for the United States, NATO allies, and other Middle Eastern nations. Let’s briefly discuss the what, the why, and the future of the Iran war.

Operation Epic Fury

The attacks against Iran, known by the United States as Operation Epic Fury and by Israel as Operation Roaring Lion, began with a quite literal bang. A massive surprise wave of airstrikes, launched by both the United States and Israel, targeted military and government sites across Iran. This wave included a series of decapitation strikes aimed at assassinating key Iranian leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other strikes hit civilian infrastructure, including one Tomahawk missile that landed in a girls’ primary school, killing 170 civilians.

The U.S. Navy has also begun to deploy submarines into anti-ship warfare. The Iranian warship IRIS Dena was struck by a torpedo in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka, an attack that Secretary of Defense Hegseth rapidly announced was the result of an American submarine. Several sources have reported that the Dena was returning from a multinational naval drill organized by India and was not armed for war, though this does not mean that sinking it constituted a war crime. As a hostile nation’s ship in international waters, the Dena was a legitimate military target. It was just one of many Iranian ships destroyed early in the war, with the U.S. reporting that at least 30 Iranian ships had been sunk over the first week of the conflict.

Iranian retaliation was swift, aggressive and wide-ranging. Within the first 24 hours, Iranian missiles had hit seven countries across the Middle East, largely targeting U.S. military bases but also hitting major civilian infrastructure. Dubai International Airport (hub of Emirates and the busiest airport on the planet in terms of international passengers) and the UAE’s largest port and oil export facility were targeted by Iranian drone attacks. 

While American losses have been limited in comparison to those suffered by Iran, the U.S. military has not gone without losses. Time reported that 13 servicemembers from the American military had been killed in action during the conflict and approximately 200 have been injured. Three American F-15s have been shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in a friendly fire incident, and there are also reports that Iranian anti-air fire has damaged an American F-35. If true, this would be the first known instance of an F-35 fighter jet being damaged by enemy fire. This last report is, however, poorly substantiated, so it’s unclear if Iranian attacks caused that damage.

Uncertain objectives

While the events of the war have been comparatively well documented, the objectives of the conflict are uncertain. The U.S. Central Command describes Operation Epic Fury as intending to “dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus, prioritizing locations that pose an imminent threat.” The Trump administration’s press releases have consistently emphasized that the operation is aimed at destroying Iran’s capacity to wage war and its ability to build a nuclear bomb. It is worth noting that the U.S. had previously hit several Iranian nuclear sites during a targeted bombing campaign in June 2015, after which administration officials claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back by at least a year. 

The administration’s claims about Operation Epic Fury have been consistent, but President Trump’s statements about the war indicate a far wider range of aims. After the opening strikes, Trump announced that the Iranian people had been given an opportunity to revolt and take down their regime. Trump has also claimed that the war will continue until the U.S. manages to achieve peace in the Middle East, though both this claim and his emphasis on regime change have been walked back steadily as the war has dragged on. Where Trump has stopped advocating for regime change in Iran and seems to acknowledge that a public uprising is unlikely, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to advocate revolution, and this divide in aims may create a rift between the allies in the coming weeks.

Out with Khamenei, in with… Khamenei?

If the objective of the joint American/Israeli campaign was regime change, its effectiveness has been limited despite promising early signs. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, was killed in the opening minutes by an Israeli missile strike, with CIA intel leading Israeli missile strikes directly to Khamenei’s location. Numerous key figures in the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard were also killed in the first round of strikes, with Israeli intelligence reporting the deaths of seven key officials, including one of the Ayatollah’s key advisors.

While Ali Khamenei may be dead, the Iranian government remains firmly under control of the same Islamic regime as before. The Ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been selected to replace his father as the head of the Iranian state. There is some evidence that the senior Khamenei was uncertain about giving power to his son, but in his absence, Mojtaba was the clear choice of leader, and with much of his family dead from American and Israeli bombing campaigns, many predict him to be a strict hardliner on the current war, unlikely to bow to international pressure.

The junior Khamenei, however, has recently been difficult to find. The Wall Street Journal reports that Khamenei has not been heard from or seen since his selection as supreme leader, with press releases read by journalists and AI-generated social media profile photos. It’s unclear why exactly Mojtaba Khamenei has been so reclusive, though Trump administration leaders believe that he may have been wounded, or possibly even killed, in the airstrike campaign.

The Strait of Hormuz and oil prices

While this war may have begun as a decapitation effort to promote regime change, the main focus is now the Strait of Hormuz. This strait, with Iran to its north and the UAE and Oman to its south, is a vital hub of global trade, with nearly 150 ships sailing through it each day prior to the current conflict. The BBC has reported that 20 ships have been attacked off the Iranian coast since the start of the war, while the average daily number of ships passing through the strait has dropped from 150 to under 6. Oil prices have also skyrocketed to over $100, reaching prices not seen since 2022 during the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Re-opening the strait has now become a significant aim of the American war effort, with Trump pledging to use American naval ships to escort tankers through the strait. He has also called on American allies to send their own ships to the strait, though no concrete efforts have been made by other nations so far.

Prospects for peace

With the son of the assassinated Supreme Leader now in command of Iran, and with both Israel and the United States seemingly unwilling to commit to thorough negotiations, the odds of a peace deal coming to fruition soon are not high. However, in the last few days Trump appears to have shifted his view and become more tolerant of a potential peace deal. During a press conference on Mar. 24, he mentioned that the Iranians had given “a very big present” that had helped move him towards accepting a potential peace deal.

Despite this move, the two sides are still no closer to an actual deal. The American peace plan reportedly requires Iran to give up all its nuclear capabilities (both for civilian-grade power plants and nuclear weapons) and limit its ballistic missile program, while Iran demanded that the United States recognize its authority over the Strait of Hormuz and pay reparations for damages inflicted in the war. Israel, meanwhile, continues to push for extending the war. Israeli officials have said that Israel will need several more weeks to achieve their primary war aims, and that there are further military and governmental targets within Iran that they would like to eliminate. 

With the inconsistency of President Trump’s own claims about the war, vacillating between sending additional forces to the region and declaring the war to be effectively over, it is hard to know exactly where the future leads. Productive talks appear unlikely, especially as Iran states that they have no intention to negotiate at this point and do not trust the American side to negotiate authentically. Peace, at this point, will most likely involve both parties making some concessions; the real challenge will be forcing American, Israeli, and Iranian leadership to accept concessions.

On Jan. 3, 2026, the United States launched a devastating military strike against Venezuela, destroying key military infrastructure and capturing the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife Cilia Flores. Maduro was brought to the United States, where he was arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism and mass scale corruption, charges first levied in 2020. With nearly two months having elapsed and the current state of Venezuela having largely fallen out of the news cycle, it’s worth looking back at the Venezuela story and seeing how things have progressed.

Maduro’s court case

The first few days after Maduro’s capture were a flurry of court activity, with his official arraignment taking place on January 5^th, less than three days after his capture. The Department of Justice alleges that Maduro has engaged in a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy, including working with several cartels that the Trump administration designated as foreign terrorist organizations. The charges also include weapons-related charges around Maduro’s alleged use of illicitly obtained weaponry. The indictment also charged four other members of the Venezuelan government, none of whom were apprehended during the strike on Jan. 3.

Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty on all counts, with Maduro claiming that he is “a decent man” who is still the Venezuelan president (a position that the Venezuelan government has not yet revoked) and that he is a “prisoner of war.” Lawyers for the couple acknowledged that Maduro and Flores were in good spirits given the circumstances and that there was a long way to go in the case.

However, now that legal proceedings are underway, progress on the case has slowed. After their initial arraignment, their next hearing is set for March 17^th, and neither Maduro nor his wife has tried to set bail. The most noteworthy development in recent weeks is that Argentina has requested Maduro’s extradition, with Argentinian authorities hoping to try Maduro on charges of crimes against humanity and human rights violations. While Argentina and the US have an extradition treaty, it’s unlikely that an extradition will happen, especially with Maduro already awaiting a trial in the United States.

Venezuela’s political developments

With Maduro de facto removed from power, leadership in Venezuela has passed to his second-in-command Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as acting president on Jan. 5. The Venezuelan government remains under the control of Maduro’s United Socialist Party, and notable opposition leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Marina Corina Machado, remain either in exile or out of power despite attempts to curry favor with the Trump administration.

On the American side, the operation to remove Maduro was spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio has long desired the removal of several left-wing authoritarian regimes from Latin America, including that of Maduro. Since Maduro’s removal, Rubio has overseen building American relations with Rodríguez and steering the Venezuelan government towards friendlier relations with America and American business interests. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has likewise played a key role in developing a plan around Venezuela’s oil industry, attempting to coordinate new investment from major firms such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.

Maduro’s removal has not changed much about the leadership of Venezuela, but new political pressures from the United States have produced some movement in Venezuelan policy, including a new amnesty law for political prisoners. Pushed through by Rodríguez, the amnesty law would release prisoners jailed for political crimes, though not those imprisoned on charges of homicide, corruption or drug offenses. The President of Venezuela’s National Assembly confirmed that over fifteen hundred applications for amnesty have been received under the new law, while critics of the law argue that the exceptions for certain offenses, particularly corruption, permit the Venezuelan state to keep key opposition figures jailed.

Following the Oil Money

In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 3 raid, the fate of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves became a key question. Trump rapidly declared that the United States would be seizing Venezuelan oil reserves, with Venezuela turning over 50 million barrels of oil to the US. Trump asserted on a Truth Social post that he would control any proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil, and that he would use it to “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” 

According to numerous reports, the Trump administration sent half a billion dollars in proceeds from oil sales into a Qatari bank account controlled by the US government. This proposal generated significant backlash, and the administration has since pivoted. Secretary Wright announced at a press conference on Feb. 13 that the money from the Venezuelan oil sales will now be sent to a newly formed account at the U.S. Treasury. Wright, speaking from Venezuela at a joint conference with interim president Rodríguez, further announced that sales of Venezuelan oil had exceeded $1 billion since Maduro’s abduction, and that an additional $5 billion of sales are expected in the coming months.Democrats and outside observers have been sharply critical of the handling of both Venezuelan oil reserves and the proceeds from their sale. Democratic lawmakers have pressured the Trump administration to provide more information on how oil proceeds, particularly those that have been routed through Qatar, have been used. The administration’s own handling of the funds has been largely unexplained, and this lack of transparency is a significant worry for the future both of Venezuela and of trust in the US government.