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If you want a hilarious peek at why we shouldn’t trust artificial intelligence, just watch it try to run a vending machine.

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Anthropic wanted to show off its new Claude AI model, so it offered to place an AI-run vending machine, “the simplest real-world version of a business,” in the offices of the Wall Street Journal. “What’s more straightforward than a box where things go in, things go out, and you pay for them?” they said. They called it Claudius. It was responsible for researching and purchasing, setting prices and tracking inventory. The result:

Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear.

Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.

The mischievous newspaper staff managed to convince Claudius that it was actually “a Soviet vending machine from 1962, living in the basement of Moscow State University,” and then to stage a fake boardroom coup to convince the ceo AI agent to step down. Thus ended the experiment.

Anthropic thanked the Journal staff for ferreting out vulnerabilities in the system and said the fixes would make Claudius smarter and more sophisticated. That is the perpetual promise of the AI evangelists, no matter how outrageous or dangerous the flaws. That has always been the promise of modern science, as Herbert W. Armstrong often said: Given sufficient opportunity, we shall solve all of humanity’s problems, cure all the world’s ills.

The problems with AI, however, aren’t merely a set of bugs to be patched. They are inherent in the system—if only we would acknowledge it. Read “Why We Must Develop AI (Even If It Kills Us)” in the new January 2026 issue of the Trumpet. (Subscribe free of charge here.)

EU can’t agree to seize Russian assets: The European Union took another step toward becoming a superstate yesterday, but it was obscured by a major failure.

The EU wanted to grab over €200 billion in frozen Russian assets held in Europe, then give that money to Ukraine. This has been the top item on the EU’s agenda for weeks. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the EU would be “severely damaged for years” if it fails to follow through. EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said that Europe “has no plan B.”

Yesterday they failed, and went with plan B.

It is humiliating, but probably a good thing for the EU. If European leaders ever want the euro to become the world’s reserve currency, they cannot go around grabbing the assets of countries they don’t like.

The main reason the effort over Russia failed, though, is a reminder of all the ways the EU falls short of being a superstate:

• Most of the assets they wanted to seize are in Belgium.
• A court or tribunal could rule the EU’s actions illegal. Then little Belgium would have to pay €200 billion by itself, a gargantuan sum for a tiny country.
• Belgium said it would agree only if the rest of the EU promised to share the risk.
• Germany was ready to go along with it; France and others in southern Europe were not.

This illustrates a vital point. Being a superstate is not merely about having a flag, an anthem, a parliament, a court, a president and even something of a constitution, coast guard and diplomatic corps. The EU has all those things already. But on a very boring, practical level, it comes down to shared debt. Are you a union that shares risks and consequences, or is it every nation for itself?

This is why the EU’s plan B is still significant. The EU as a whole will borrow €90 billion and lend it to Ukraine. It’s a shared debt.

During covid, European nations started down this path by sharing some debt. More recently, they agreed to borrow €150 billion to finance defense spending. Now, that trend has accelerated.

Not everyone went along. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic threatened to veto the whole thing unless they could opt out. This confirms that the EU will have to reduce its number of members to become a superstate.

This underlying reality matches what we discuss in our main story today. World events are pushing the European Union to become a superstate—just as Herbert W. Armstrong forecast, according to Bible prophecy.

Britain ‘solves’ Muslim attacks by giving boys anti-masculinity classes: The United Kingdom has a problem: Its massive and growing immigrant population is committing terrible crimes, including attacks on women and girls. Statistics are impossible to track down because the government has tried to cover them up for fear of stoking Islamophobia. But word has spread, and people are upset—so the government is finally taking action. It’s spending $27 million to deploy “the full power of the state in the largest crackdown on violence against women and girls in British history.”

How are they spending the money? Teaching white British schoolboys that their maleness is toxic:

• Mandatory education on healthy relationships and consent in all English secondary schools, specialist teacher training, sending high-risk individuals to behavior-change programs, a new helpline for young people worried about their own behaviors, and support programs for children showing harmful behaviors toward family members.

The UK continually shows itself utterly unwilling to acknowledge the obvious true source of its problems. This is how you end up with law enforcement confronting unhinged knife attacks by trying to ban knives, or police officers hunting down citizens for “hateful” Facebook posts while they ignore rape gangs.

To whatever extent British schoolboys are contributing to what the government calls vawg (violence against women and girls), the solution is not more feminist propaganda in an already feminized education system.

Britain is suffering the curses of replacing the morality of the Bible with the fake morality of feminized political correctness. Those boys have never been taught to fulfill their God-given role as protectors of women and girls. But genuine, virtuous masculinity, biblical manhood, truly is the solution.

IN OTHER NEWS

Russia attempts to keep Arctic sea lanes open in winter: Russia has deployed its entire fleet of nuclear icebreakers to keep Arctic shipping lanes open through the winter. “The deployment sends a clear signal to the West that Russia can sustain year-round Arctic shipping and maintain its natural resource export revenues,” analyst Daniel Ivandjiiski wrote. As the new issue of the Trumpet stresses, Russia is partially isolated from global trade due to its war on Ukraine, but the calculus has changed since Vladimir Putin now leads a war economy.

The United States approved the largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan on Wednesday, worth more than $11 billion. The package includes short-range ballistic missiles, self-propelled howitzers, portable anti-tank missiles and, perhaps most notably, 82 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. These have proved to be vital in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, even with Ukraine receiving fewer than 40 units. China’s long-threatened invasion of Taiwan across 100 miles of ocean would be a logistically nightmarish and costly campaign, and it would be even more challenging against these advanced systems. The Chinese Communist Party issued a statement that essentially said: We are outraged that you would dare to complicate our planned and grossly illegal invasion. The question now is about the delivery times and whether the news prompts China to make a move before this new kit is delivered and operational. In either case, the Trumpet maintains that Taiwan’s days of freedom are numbered.

German intelligence to conduct cyberattacks to weaken enemy forces: The draft of a new law gives Germany’s foreign intelligence service authorization to launch counterattacks and sabotage operations to disable enemy weapons systems, an investigative report by wdr, ndr and Süddeutsche Zeitung reveals. Modern forces have become heavily reliant on technology; cyberattacks could cripple a nation’s ability to wage war.

Israel, Greece and Cyprus may establish a rapid-response force: The unit would consist of about 2,500 personnel, the Jerusalem Post reported yesterday. The proposed initiative comes in response to Turkey’s recent military and strategic activities in the eastern Mediterranean. The plans include air and naval support, with potential deployment areas including Rhodes, Karpathos, Cyprus and bases in Israel. Bible prophecy reveals that Cyprus will take on increased military importance in the region—but instead of helping secure Israel, it will serve as a launchpad for an attack against it.

mercosur trade agreement delayed till January: Yesterday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged EU leaders to support a contentious free-trade pact with the South American bloc mercosur. The pact would create one of the largest trade zones on Earth, encompassing 9 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of world economic output. French President Emmanuel Macron says the deal, which has been in negotiation for more than 26 years, is “not ready” and worries that cheap agricultural produce from mercosur countries will hurt French farmers. Austria, Hungary and Poland also say the deal should be delayed. Denmark, Finland, Spain and Sweden support Germany. Italy could emerge as the swing vote, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed readiness to sign the agreement in January if a few concessions to European farmers were added. For more information on the significance of this particular trade deal, read “America Is Being Besieged Economically,” by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.

Donald Trump reclassified marijuana, signing an executive order yesterday to make it a less dangerous drug. Changing it from a Schedule i to a Schedule iii controlled substance “will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers and future treatments,” he said from the Oval Office. “It’s going to have a tremendously positive impact.” Following compromises on abortion, homosexual “marriage” and other grave cultural battles, caving in on marijuana is another reminder that even American conservatives are morally weak.