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Artificial intelligence could end humanity within a few years, three Anthropic researchers said this week.

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• Jacob Coxon resigned from the company on Tuesday and posted on X, “No other human activity poses this level of danger.” His post drew more than 115 million views in a day.
• Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment-science lead, wrote that he personally estimates greater than 10 percent odds of AI-caused extinction within the next decade.
• Samuel Marks, who leads the company’s scalable-oversight work, said the more senior an employee is inside these companies, the more concerned they tend to be.

These are insiders, the people building the technology, who see much more than the rest of us. Coxon said executives soften their language for the press while privately admitting fear.

Still, the race accelerates. OpenAI released gpt-6 Astra last week, calling it a generational leap toward artificial general intelligence.

• Jakub Pachocki, its own chief scientist, wrote this week that, essentially, once you truly absorb what’s at stake, continuing to race at full speed makes no sense—then explained why OpenAI is doing it anyway.
• Companies that see the risk keep building because their rivals won’t stop. The people closest to the technology are warning the loudest—while still collecting paychecks to build it faster.
• Federal officials insist that losing ground to China is the greater danger, whatever the risk from AI itself. Every side agrees the danger is real—and no one will stop.

There is a name for this madness. Speaking at a conference in June, Jonathan Pageau called it the “Moloch Trap,” a type of game-theory escalation: a competition in which every rational actor, to avoid losing, is forced toward collectively catastrophic choices, even though nobody involved wants the catastrophe.

• Moloch was the Canaanite god that demanded people sacrifice their children in exchange for power. “The Moloch Trap is when escalation to maintain power through competition causes us to sacrifice what is most precious even when it is ultimately against our interests,” Pageau said. “So out of fear of China beating us at implementing AI, we sacrifice the millions of jobs, our water, our energy, our children’s minds.”
• The game theorists don’t believe Moloch is real, but they “can see that Moloch is moving—that it wants something. And as we compete with each other, we become its legs. We become its hands. And despite ourselves, we march this beast to our possible destruction. As finally everyone is finally regretting giving their children tablets and phones—making them dumb, depressed and addicted—we turn around and we rush to integrate AI into absolutely everything. So whether we believe in the Canaanite God or not, we find ourselves sacrificing our children to it.”

It’s a powerful point. Behind that false Canaanite god stood a real devil. He knows what he is doing. And we underestimate him at our peril. He is surely cheering and prodding the inexorable development of this mysterious technology that is reshaping our very minds and careening toward an unknowable future.

Jesus Christ warned of a day when, unless He intervened, mankind would annihilate itself (Matthew 24:22). The nuclear arms race made that verse credible last century—and many prophecies show that those weapons will be used.

• AI is giving us a second and not completely unrelated path toward this disastrous outcome.

Thankfully, Christ will cut that disastrous outcome short and return to save us from ourselves. Under His rule, men won’t face impossible choices and pursue “progress” that has destructive side effects. That is the sure hope of the Bible.

Trump Tries to Buy Votes While Drowning in Debt

Can democracy survive once people realize they can vote themselves free money? Each American adult has already received $3,200, plus extra for dependents, in stimulus money through three covid stimulus checks. Now Donald Trump is promising $5,000 for every adult if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate after midterm elections in November.

• It would cost America over a trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, America’s debt is spiraling out of control. In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped up his intervention in the bond market to try to keep U.S. interest rates under control.

• Bessent bought back long-term bonds, in effect paying those debts off early.
• But where does an indebted country get the money to pay off its loans? By incurring more debt, this time in the form of short-term loans.
• It helps lower the long-term interest rate America pays—but at the expense of the nation constantly having to go cap-in-hand to investors.

Bessent also had to bail out the Japanese yen to stop a currency crisis that would have forced Japan to sell some of its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds and spread that crisis to America.

These major interventions have accomplished little. Yields on U.S. treasuries are almost back to the 5.3 percent level they reached before Bessent bought the long-term bonds. And just days after Bessent’s “yentervention,” the value of the yen is sliding.

• Bessent was reduced to impotently threatening markets yesterday, declaring: “I am the house now. You can bet against me if you want.”

While Bessent risks his credibility, and perhaps his sanity, trying to keep the interest America pays on its debt down, Donald Trump is promising massive new spending: handing out free money as an election bribe.

• America suffers from high inflation; handing out cash to all will make the problem worse.

Perhaps the only silver lining is that President Trump has promised free money before, including a $2,000 “tariff dividend” last year, and hasn’t followed through.

• His new “Trump Dividend” requires approval from the House and Senate, which is unlikely even if Republicans retain or increase their majority at the midterms. He knows this—and is perhaps counting on it.

This has a “last days of Rome” feel to it. In fact, as the Roman Empire went through one of its greatest times of crisis in A.D. 193, the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the job of emperor, promising it to whoever gave them the most money. Already, the presidency often goes to the party that promises to borrow the most and hand out the most benefits for voters. Now this has degenerated to simple cash bribes ahead of elections.

“Empires fail when people sacrifice character for free stuff,” we wrote in our special Trumpet issue on the modern Romans. In U.S. politics, has there ever been a more naked example of this?

With America’s Trust, First German F-35 Takes Flight

Germany’s first F-35A Lightning ii fighter jet flew for the first time in Texas near its manufacturing site on Tuesday.

• It is the first of 35 F-35As Germany ordered in 2022. The German Air Force expects them to enter service in 2030.
• German pilots and crews will be trained on the first eight jets in the U.S. before they are transferred to Germany.

This gives Germany technological insight into and operational control over the top mainline U.S. fighter model. Within four years, German pilots will fly stealth U.S.-made warplanes capable of striking with U.S.-made nuclear weapons stationed at Büchel Air Base on German soil.

• F-35s are essentially computers with wings and therefore possess not only advanced capabilities but also cybervulnerabilities. Exporting nearly three dozen to Germany shows the U.S. trusts its own precautions and the goodwill of German engineers will keep these vulnerabilities from being exploited against American-operated F-35s.

But Germany is not America’s friend. Even setting aside the fact that last century, Germany twice waged war worldwide to destroy the United States and its allies, the nation’s present leadership is openly hostile to the United States. It could use these jets to launch stealthy, nuclear attacks against the unsuspecting U.S.

• Welt reported yesterday that German Col. Thomas Kullrich, commissioner of the Inspector of the Air Force, stated that Germany’s F-35s cannot be disabled by an American “killswitch.”

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “America’s Naive Trust in Germany”:

America trusts Germany, but history screams that it shouldn’t! The trust America is placing in Germany is absolutely condemned by the Bible. Why? Because it is trusting other nations rather than trusting God.

Prophecy warns that Germany will reward America’s trust with a nuclear strike—unless America trusts God more than its technologies, its precautions and its allies.

IN OTHER NEWS

India-Russia deepen trade and military ties: Russian-Indian trade has more than quadrupled since 2021, making India one of Russia’s top trade partners, Interfax reported yesterday. Trade between the two Asian giants has soared since Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, reaching $58.6 billion last year. The two nations are also deepening cooperation on Russia’s Northern Sea Route and expanding joint development and production of military hardware. As India and Russia continue to strengthen cooperation, the groundwork is being laid for India to join a biblically prophesied, Russia-led Asian military alliance.

UN nuclear watchdog warns about Iran: The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Wednesday to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council. The UN’s nuclear watchdog claims Iran has declined to provide information about its enriched uranium stockpiles or to provide access to its nuclear facilities. The iaea last referred Iran to the Security Council in 2006, which led to international sanctions against the Islamist regime. That is unlikely to happen this time, but the fact that the agency that has tolerated Iranian nuclear activity for decades is finally reporting it to the Security Council demonstrates how dangerous its nuclear program remains, even after being attacked by the United States.

Trump OK with sanctions on Israel: United States President Donald Trump acquiesced to the United Kingdom sanctioning Israel, Axios reported yesterday. According to “U.S. officials and Western diplomats,” British Prime Minister Andy Burnham informed President Trump that his government would sanction Israeli entities in the West Bank, and the president didn’t attempt to dissuade him. When asked about this, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see an uptick in violence or tensions in the West Bank in a tenuous time in the region.” Isaiah 9:21 prophesies that Manasseh and Ephraim—the American and British peoples today—would “together be against Judah,” or the State of Israel. This prophecy is being fulfilled today.