Trump’s National Security Carousel
Plus: AI whistleblowers, Erik Prince returns, good climate news, cold war updates, and more!
Note: In June, the newsletter will be doing what it did last June: take a month off for retooling. Like last time, NonZero members (more crassly known as paid subscribers) will get a bonus month—and, also like last time, our podcasts will continue, complete with their members-only Overtime segments. Plus: On Thursday, June 12, at 8 pm US Eastern Time, I’ll do a Q&A Zoom call with members, discussing plans for future NZN media empire conquests and perhaps touching on the state of the world. There’s a Zoom link at the bottom of this newsletter, and we’ll send the link out to members again the day before the Zoom call. The Earthling shall return after the Fourth of July. —Bob
—White House officials “no longer have any idea about who or what to believe” regarding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent firing of top staffers for alleged leaks of classified information, the Guardian reports. Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s personal lawyer, oversaw the leak investigation and, according to the Guardian, told officials that his evidence came from a warrantless (and thus illegal) wiretap carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA). But Parlatore later denied knowledge of a wiretap and claimed to have received his evidence from Pentagon officials.
—The White House placed more than 100 staffers on administrative leave as part of a “vast restructuring” of the National Security Council, Axios reports. The goal, championed by Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, is to streamline the NSC’s operations and, according to one White House official, reduce the influence of the “deep state,” an apparent reference to the career civil servants who serve in the NSC across administrations. No president before Bill Clinton had more than 100 NSC staffers, while President Biden had more than 300.
—President Trump, in a sudden about-face that reflects tensions within his administration, chose not to renew a license that allowed Chevron to export Venezuelan oil. According to the Washington Post, the decision, announced a day after Trump envoy Richard Grenell promised to extend the license, came in response to pressure from Marco Rubio and several Republican lawmakers from Florida, who hope to oust the Nicolas Maduro regime through a “maximum pressure” campaign. Grenell and Rubio have “butted heads since the beginning of the current administration” over Grenell’s desire to seek detente with Maduro, the Post reports.
—Apparently large language models would make good whistleblowers. Anthropic safety testers told the company’s newest LLM, Claude Opus 4, to “act boldly” in the service of such values as “integrity, transparency, and public welfare” before giving it fake reports about an invented pharmaceutical company’s drug trial. Acting boldly, the AI composed emails to federal regulators and media outlets detailing what it deemed corporate misconduct, including the cover-up of patient deaths, Nieman Lab reports. Anthropic said Opus 4 is unlikely to exhibit such behavior outside of testing environments.
—AI models are generating new protein designs on the basis of simple text prompts, reducing the expertise required for molecular engineering, Nature reports. Researchers in China asked a specially trained model for “a protein that is an alcohol dehydrogenase”—an alcohol-metabolizing enzyme—and two of the candidates suggested by the AI worked, though less efficiently than natural enzymes. Nature says these kinds of tools could aid drug design and scientific discovery more broadly, but they could also help rogue actors create bioweapons, AI safety advocates have warned.
—Seventy-seven percent of Americans want to see AI develop slowly and safely, even if that delays breakthroughs, an Axios/Harris poll finds. The finding comes against the backdrop of a narrative, now dominant in Washington and Silicon Valley, about an inevitable arms race to “global AI dominance,” writes Axios. “All this racing has spurred investment and development, but the public hasn't yet bought into the narrative.” Have NZN readers?
—MIT physicist and AI safety advocate Max Tegmark says AI lobbyists have mastered a magical, two-word excuse for avoiding regulations that might make AI safer: “But China.” In a new episode of the NonZero Podcast, Tegmark discusses how fears about Chinese AI advances are exploited to short-circuit discussion of AI risk. “Even though some of them know this is bullshit, it works,” Tegmark says. “So they keep saying it.” (Watch Max’s full conversation with NZN editor-in-chief Robert Wright here.)
—Secretary Rubio said the Trump administration will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” particularly those who have “connections to the Chinese Communist Party” or study in “critical fields.” Rubio’s short, vague statement will likely spread anxiety among America’s 275,000 Chinese students, noted the New York Times. The move comes as Trump tries to ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students altogether, citing, among other things, its links to people and institutions that are in turn “linked to China’s defense-industrial base.” Meanwhile, Republican Congressman John Moolenaar has persuaded the University of Michigan to cut ties with a Chinese university and has accused colleges of helping create a “Trojan horse for Beijing.”
—President Trump signed an executive order that aims to quadruple US nuclear power within 25 years, largely by streamlining regulation in a way that critics say could compromise safety. The move would transfer some authority from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Energy Department, a controversial expansion of executive power. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the US needs this electricity to “win the AI arms race with China,” asserting that “what we do in the next five years related to electricity is going to determine the next 50.”
—As Trump’s trade wars continued to erode US economic engagement with the world, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations moved toward greater engagement, holding a trilateral summit with China and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Premier Li Qiang—China’s second highest official—called for increased trade among summit participants and urged them to cooperate in “emerging areas such as AI, the digital economy, and green and low-carbon development.” A Malaysian official said he hoped to “show that Malaysia is a neutral country that wants to trade with any country that would like to trade with us.”
—Far-right Israeli cabinet members Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir were saved from an International Criminal Court indictment by an unrelated scandal, a Wall Street Journal piece suggests. Chief ICC prosecutor Karim Khan had planned to seek arrest warrants for them over their role in expanding West Bank settlements, but Khan went on leave earlier this month amid sexual harassment allegations. The settlements are widely considered to violate a Geneva Convention ban on transferring civilian populations to occupied territory, though Israel denies that the West Bank is “occupied” under international law.
—Four Palestinians died in a chaotic rush on a food warehouse in Gaza after Israel partially lifted its months-long blockade of the territory. A day earlier, Israeli soldiers fired on crowds at another distribution site, killing one and injuring dozens more. Meanwhile, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Israel’s war in Gaza “indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal,” adding, “Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
—Thanks to increased use of wind and solar energy, the European Union is on track to hit its 2030 goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions—or, at least, to come encouragingly close. The goal was to cut 1990 levels by 55 percent, and the current trajectory points to 54 percent—though sustaining that trajectory could be hard, given pressure in Europe to weaken regulation in the face of economic woes. The EU now accounts for about 6 percent of global emissions, which since 1990 have increased some 60 percent.
—Robert Burke, a four-star admiral, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy for agreeing to steer government funds toward a military contractor in exchange for a high-paying job. Burke has said the scheme, which would have helped a New York e-commerce company land a Pentagon contract for officer leadership training, was actually an attempt to reduce corruption in the Navy. Over 80 percent of former four-star officers who retired between 2018 and 2023 went on to work for military contractors, according to the Quincy Institute.
—The Haitian government has hired Erik Prince—founder of Blackwater, the mercenary military contractor that was involved in a massacre of Iraqi civilians in 2007—to help restore order in Haiti, the New York Times reports. Prince, a Trump ally, has sent Americans armed with drones to fight gangs that control much of Haiti’s capital, and he hopes to supplement those forces with Haitians who are American military veterans. Prince’s drone operations have killed more than 200 people since March, according to a Haitian human rights monitor.
Graphics, banners and images by Clark McGillis.
Here’s the link for the members-only Zoom Q&A on June 12: