https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology Technology en-US Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:28:19 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/trump-defends-ai-despite-mounting-safety-concerns Jenna Monnin The president said the U.S. needs to keep up with China on developing the technology “because whoever wins with AI wins.” Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:28:19 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/trump-defends-ai-despite-mounting-safety-concerns President Donald Trump downplayed concerns over the lack of guardrails on the artificial intelligence industry and said the U.S. needs to keep up with China in the race to expand the emerging technology — despite growing fears shared by tech developers last week.

“We're leading China in AI,” Trump told reporters Sunday in Doonbeg, Ireland. “We're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.”

The president, visiting his golf club there as it hosts the Irish Open, brushed off the concerns raised by those in the industry, saying there are “a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up … and they're bringing up things that won't happen.”

Following reports of rogue AI agents hacking companies and strong words of caution from several developers inside some of the leading AI companies, lawmakers and AI executives are now pushing for renewed focus and regulation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday echoed Trump’s fears that hitting pause on AI development would allow China to surpass the U.S.

Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union” that there is an “obvious corporate responsibility” for AI companies to institute their own guardrails, but he said the “the leaders and the providers of all these platforms” need to meet with Congress to “sit down and figure out what the right balance is.”

U.S. and Chinese AI companies have jockeyed for the lead in advancing the technology since early 2025, according to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index.

“The U.S. still produces more top-tier AI models and higher-impact patents, while China leads in publication volume, citations, patent output, and industrial robot installations,” the April report said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit the White House on Sept. 24. Trump told reporters Sunday that he and Xi “have a great relationship” — rebuffing a question on whether he is concerned that Xi might cancel the trip over a potential U.S. arms deal with Taiwan.

In contrast to Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told ABC’s “This Week” that he believes Congress should step in more directly to address AI safety concerns.

“We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down … the pace of development in order to protect the American people,” Jeffries said Sunday — adding that AI will be a “high priority” for an upcoming Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google Deepmind Chair Demis Hassabis and SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk have all called for independent oversight on AI and slowing development.

Amodei penned an essay, released Saturday, calling for companies to partner with the federal government, which he said could serve as an “evaluator” that implements safety regulations or as a mediator between tech corporations in the process of establishing standards.

Johnson told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’d spoken with several of these leaders, and while all of them agree guardrails are necessary, they have “very different ideas on what that looks like.”

Over the past decade, AI has been top of mind for tech leaders racing to create the most refined version of their programs, but public calls from developers over the safety and ethical concerns thrust the topic into the spotlight last week.

Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher who quit and took to social media to issue an urgent warning that the race between the AI industry leaders was at risk of spiraling out of control, told The Washington Sun he felt like he was “contributing to the potential death race.”

“There’s a lot of talk about ‘mutual slowing down’ — but everyone has still got their heads down, just going as fast as they can,” Coxon said.

In a social media thread that has gained more than 170 million views as of Sunday, Coxon wrote Tuesday that the tech race could make a “self-improving superintelligence” and that companies are “gambling with our lives.”

Anthropic’s alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, backed up Coxon’s warning, writing that they “really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

“I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to,” Hubinger wrote Tuesday on X.

AI alignment researchers like Hubinger try to ensure that the intelligence systems mirror the goals, values and behaviors of humans, while also carrying humanity’s ethical principles.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/anthropic-founder-dario-amodei-calls-for-ai-companies-to-slow-progression Angie Orellana Hernandez The technology’s rampant growth has been a major topic of discussion among lawmakers and industry leaders this week. Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:06:23 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/anthropic-founder-dario-amodei-calls-for-ai-companies-to-slow-progression Dario Amodei, the co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, called for companies to slow the technology’s progression in an essay shared Saturday, citing growing potential for harm as the tool’s power grows.

Notably, Amodei’s essay called for companies to partner with the federal government, which could serve as an “evaluator” that implements safety regulations or as a mediator between tech corporations in the process of establishing standards. He also repeatedly invoked the word “democracy” in comparison to China, a longstanding competitor in the exploding industry that Cabinet members say poses a national security risk to U.S. infrastructure.

The CEO’s warning comes as congressional lawmakers and candidates argue about how best to rein in the technology, particularly while several proposals aimed at regulating AI have struggled to pass both chambers — leading some politicians to believe the federal government is missing a crucial window to establish guardrails.

Amodei’s essay follows viral messages from three industry workers this week — including a former Anthropic researcher who spoke with The Washington Sun about his decision to quit — cautioning that AI’s “out of control” growth could soon lead to disastrous disruptions for society.

In his essay, Amodei said he’s become “convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up.”

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei said. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

Amodei said the “accelerating rate of AI capability development” could potentially result in a swarm of AI agents “taking over the entire internet” within six to 12 months. By slowing down, he argued, technology companies could achieve “greater operational excellence,” reduce safety risks, enhance testing and evaluation and obtain greater understanding as to what “goes on inside these models.”

Amodei also urged maintaining stronger safety measures against China, which the company claimed in a report this week had used its models to conduct research that could have been used to generate biological weapons. The CEO called for the government and other tech companies to stop selling powerful AI chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, as well as curb chip smuggling operations.

Deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis also disclosed Tuesday in public remarks that the United States considers Chinese companies a legitimate target for espionage in fields such as artificial intelligence.

“Some may believe these measures make it more difficult to cooperate with China, but I believe the opposite is true,” Amodei wrote. “These measures increase the leverage held by democracies and make an agreement more likely in the future.”

President Donald Trump has called for the expansion of AI data centers, even as they grow more unpopular with the public, and further tech innovation to better compete with China. When asked if he was concerned about the former Anthropic researcher’s claims that AI could lead to human extinction on Thursday, the president said he didn’t have any worries.

“I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position,” Trump told reporters. “We are leading China right now by a pretty good period, I would say a year, which is, you know, considered a lot.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Amodei’s letter.

Other American AI leaders, including Elon Musk of xAI and Sam Altman of OpenAI, concurred with Amodei’s message on Saturday.

“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman said on X, adding that the idea had also been circulating at OpenAI this month. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon.”

Altman has met with Trump repeatedly throughout the president’s second term, including discussing plans for the government to acquire “pieces” of their firms in what would be among the most significant federal interventions in the private sector — though he later distanced himself from that prospect. The OpenAI founder also confirmed to Fortune on Friday that the company won’t be going public this year given the safety concerns, calling it an “ill-advised moment” to do so.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who sits on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the CEO’s ideas were a “reasonable start” that took into consideration “the proposition that we need real proposals that can be enacted rapidly.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called the proposal “a start, but it’s not enough” on Saturday. He reemphasized a desire to ban “artificial superintelligence,” the subject of a bill he introduced earlier this month alongside Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

Earlier in the week, committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he was working with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) on legislation to address “catastrophic risks involving biological or nuclear threats.” Anthropic’s head of external affairs, Sarah Heck, said in an X post Saturday afternoon that the company is “eager” to work with lawmakers on their AI safety measures.

But, Cruz told Politico this week, slowing down would be an “impossible endeavor,” especially while competing with China.

“We could have government step in and shut down the AI industry in America. You know what would happen?” he said. “China would catch up in six months and soar ahead, and we wouldn’t have the tools to defend ourselves.”]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/jacob-coxon-anthropic-researcher-quit-explains-why Jeff Stein Being a sci-fi lover led Coxon to work on artificial intelligence. The culture of the industry left him “a bit hopeless.” Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:14:08 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/jacob-coxon-anthropic-researcher-quit-explains-why Within 48 hours, Jacob Coxon had been mocked by billionaire Elon Musk, reposted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and inundated by calls from government officials, reporters and the tech world.

The 27-year-old British researcher quit Anthropic on Tuesday with an urgent warning that the race between the giants of artificial intelligence was at risk of spiraling out of control. His subsequent thread on social media cautioning that Anthropic and OpenAI are speeding toward “superintelligence” — a theorized point at which AIs far surpass human capabilities — without adequate safeguards, received more than 160 million views. It has been widely seen as a watershed moment in altering the public’s awareness about the fears within the AI labs of the dangers of their models.

“The actual work just felt like I'm just contributing to the potential death race, and there's a lot of talk about ‘mutual slowing down’ — but everyone has still got their heads down, just going as fast as they can,” Coxon said in an interview with The Washington Sun.

The dizzying improvements of new models from both companies in the past few months, combined with a string of hacks in which the AIs defied human instructions, have magnified the concerns of safety researchers both inside and outside the two firms.

Coxon worked at OpenAI for three years, starting in 2023, before joining Anthropic earlier this year. During his time in the industry, Coxon found that the pressure to “maintain revenue and keep being competitive” often prevailed over concerns among engineers about safety.

Not everyone has agreed with Coxon’s criticisms. Musk claimed that Coxon's post "seems like a setup” as part of the “doomer” community — the online subculture of extreme nihilism and pessimism. Forbes wrote that Coxon's post was "vague, with no proof, and no specific examples that are easy for the public — and regulators — to act on." Other tech boosters have pointed to Coxon’s relatively short tenure at Anthropic.

In an interview, Coxon explained his decision to quit, argued for international cooperation between the U.S. and China, and explained why he remains optimistic that effective regulation is possible.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Stein: I wanted to start by asking a little about you. How do you get into this world, what’s your way in, and what drew you to AI?

Coxon: I'm from the UK — Oxford. My favorite science fiction has always included “Permutation City” by Greg Egan, a story essentially about entering a simulation. I've also always liked Iain Banks' Culture novels, which portray AI done well — a future where we're surrounded by superintelligent AI that generally acts in our favor.

Like a lot of nerdy kids, I read a lot of sci-fi. AlphaGo happened in 2016, when I was in high school. [AlphaGo is a computer program that beat advanced human professionals at the game Go in March 2016.] It was a very exciting moment. At that point, the idea was we'd scale up games and make them more and more realistic — the world as a game — and that was how we'd get to AI. But the real turning point came later, with ChatGPT-3 — the realization you could get there just by modeling language.

I think the technology is inherently very exciting. To me, it could unlock research advancements in every field, and in particular in maths. My previous area was as a maths undergrad and I was considering doing research in maths. Maths is also inherently interesting, but there's also all this tedious work — and there's very obvious benefits of automating tedious work.

It's this double-edged sword in that it is just so tempting — the idea of being able to just blast through new areas of maths, for instance, but also this fear of what it would look like. It's this enticing, tempting technology where you're kind of aware it's got this upside and it's got this downside, in that it will change everything and potentially render the whole discipline meaningless.

And, obviously, this idea of just being able to solve diseases before me and my parents get old — that would be very nice. I still think there's every possibility that something like that is in the cards.

Stein: When you first got to OpenAI in 2023, did that sense of potential feel like it was being confirmed?

Coxon: When I joined, the long-term goals still felt like science fiction and felt like a long way out — sufficiently distant that it didn't really interfere that much with the present-day work. It's like there's this nebulous future possibility of a big thing that also leads to a ton of funding and interest, and also is a motivating fact for people working on it.

But it was, at least in the past, harder to bring that to bear on the day-to-day. The day-to-day felt like we were still just writing code, training models. They were maybe getting better at certain tasks, but it felt very different from the big sci-fi thing of the future.

Stein: When did that start to change, even for the first time?

Coxon: So it starts to change probably with the rise of people using coding agents — that was one big thing. And then for me personally, seeing the mathematics results has been pretty insane, especially with also my friends that are still doing math, seeing AI knock out Navier-Stokes in quite a short period of time on a new model — that is pretty ridiculous. This was the Millennium Prize Problem.

And then on a practical day-to-day level, once you get to the stage where it's now, you're just talking to these AIs. They’re helping do your research. You're asking them their opinions on your research. You're asking them to go and do experiments for you to report back to other AIs, to go and collaborate with each other, maybe try spinning up some runs, improving their own code, and then this is just a part of daily reality.

This really became part of reality this year, and that I think was another big step towards the big future, AI becoming relevant for daily work and feeling tied up with daily work.

Stein: So, can you walk me through the decision to leave OpenAI and go to Anthropic? I know you've talked about it a little bit, but I would love a little bit more about the decision points there.

Coxon: While I was there, OpenAI was lacking a lot of the internal communications about the future of AI. Which has two effects. It's maybe bad in terms of preparing people for what's coming — but it also makes the place feel sane and kind of safe, which makes it a lot harder to get very scared about the future.

But I had lots of friends at Anthropic, and I was very curious to see if their internal culture matched what they were publicly presenting. Because they're a lot more closed off than OpenAI and it’s very hard to tell what their overall perspective is, how likely things are — they keep their cards very close to their chest. But also internally, they're much more open about this sort of stuff.

Fortunately, OpenAI culture has changed in the last couple months; people became a lot more scared after things like the Hugging Face attack. But comparing my experience at the two places, the move was definitely vindicated in terms of getting a better perspective about what people honestly, concretely thought about stuff.

Stein: So if Anthropic was safer, what did you see there that led you to quit so suddenly?

Coxon: Arriving was basically just a confirmation that people were being very open about their opinions about stuff. There was also a realization that alignment's [the industry term for ensuring AI "aligns" with ethical preferences] not solved yet. Anthropic is definitely — at least while I was at both companies — they're taking it very seriously as an institution, compared to OpenAI. I think there is no way Anthropic would have let the Hugging Face message board carry on after they first discovered it, which is what I understand happened at OpenAI.

At the same time, at both companies there's pressure: to launch new models; to get recursive learning training going fast; to start new forms of training. There's a lot of pressure to test them out, especially if you think other companies are doing them.

For example, OpenAI swarm behavior [when AI “agents” coordinate together on solving tasks]. There's clearly pressure on both sides to try and think about how to run these multi-agent systems and clearly do so before very rigorously laying out a case for alignment. So it became pretty clear that in the context of the race, both OpenAI and Anthropic, no matter how seriously they're taking it, would be forced to make innovations very quickly, potentially leaving rough edges.

Rough edges right now are kind of fine. They'll just lead to things like a hack or weird corner-cutting behavior. But rough edges in a year or two with a very intelligent model — that's very scary.

They have to discuss: “Should we launch a model on X date with these risks?” Or, “Should we push the launch two weeks, delay it for these reasons?” And there's the pressure of staying on the frontier, which is required to maintain revenue and keep being competitive and keep being the one that's in the lead, versus the pressure that delaying releases creates for the sake of making sure that every little thing is covered.

I want to reiterate: This is not, at the moment, like Anthropic is cutting corners with its biosafeguards or its cyber safeguards. They are doing those to the utmost capability — that is not a thing they are trying to skimp on. This is cutting corners on things that could lead to some problems, but are not now existential.

The real risk is everything becomes existential when your model is really smart. I was working on capabilities and pretraining research at Anthropic and was gradually becoming more concerned with the state of the race. I switched to working on safety for about one week, and I moved to a safeguards team. But I found that when I made the switch it felt a bit hopeless; I still had all the same feelings about imminent disaster.

It really wasn't about the nature of the work. It was more like the sense that something needed to happen with regard to actually making a slowdown happen soon. The actual work just felt like I'm just contributing to the potential death race, and there's a lot of talk about mutual slowing down — but everyone has still got their heads down, just going as fast as they can.

Stein: How far off do you think we are from that? And when will average people start noticing the effects of this in their day-to-day lives?

Coxon: There's a lot of different factors here. One thing that could be very tangible pretty soon is if many models, including open-source models, reach the current level of hacking capabilities, which could happen potentially before you see the real downstream effects of recursive self-improvements.

I think probably in the immediate future, if the labs kind of get their shit together with regard to control and monitorability, which it seems like they're doing, then the biggest thing the public might expect is major hacks from open-source models, or from models that are not being observed as well as the big lab models.

And then after that, I think what's so scary about this is in the cases where our monitorability of these systems is good, you don't really get much of a warning for the thing that's very smart, smart enough to evade your monitor systems, and then the sort of damage it causes could look very visceral. So the thing that sounds kind of scary, science fiction — and a little bit fake about this is — in the worst case scenario, you don't really get a warning until it's sort of at a level of intelligence where it's betraying you.

I think one thing that you could also expect to see is way more reports of people within the labs doing this sort of research, where they attempt to prove that this sort of thing is possible. But then, what that looks like from the outside for the public is people releasing articles saying stuff like, “Scientists working in these labs say they lost containment.” And the typical response to that has been and probably will be just like, “Oh, it's just some scientists hyping up their own products or hyping up their own stock” — that’s kind of what people see. But I think you could definitely expect to see more of that, at least before you get the actual deception.

Stein: I know the most important thing you want to convey is the urgency of the collective action problem. What do you think policymakers need to do? And could you address the China question — the argument that if the U.S. slows down, it just lets China develop less-controlled open models with the same risks?

Coxon: I don't know the details of international relations. I'm hopeful that the people building this technology in China will realize they're facing the same problem we are. I was having a discussion earlier where someone made the analogy that it's not really the U.S. versus China — it's more like the U.S. and China are both facing contact with an alien species, and there's a choice between fighting each other to build stronger aliens on our respective sides versus banding together against the aliens.

I'm sure that obscures a lot of detail about what negotiations would actually look like, but my gut feeling is we should be able to agree this technology could be very dangerous. All I know is the current race poses significant risk. One of the main arguments my Anthropic colleagues who stay make is that they're pessimistic about the actual possibility of international coordination — they expect the race to happen regardless, and so they'd rather be the ones making sure it goes well.

I just think that if you're going to accept a 10% chance of catastrophic risk because you're racing with China, you should check really, really hard that there's no deal to be made instead.

Stein: But does it matter whether it’s carefully controlled or not? Are we screwed either way once we get to recursive self-improvement because then the AIs will just invariably improve on their own?

Coxon: No, it can happen. Recursive self-improvement could be done safely if you have consistent human oversight, you're constantly aware of what's going on, and you're confident you've gotten it right. It would have to happen slowly. I can't speak exactly to what the government should do — government regulation is pretty scary in itself. I think the minimal thing is that labs need some kind of agreed-upon capability to slow down.

There are a lot of proposals for this — a pretty obvious one is being completely transparent about how close you are to recursive self-improvement, and agreeing not to proceed until certain transparent safety conditions are met, like a rigorous, audited safety case. But you also need the same thing applied internationally, which is the really hard part — there can't just be a private handshake deal between Western labs.

You need international recognition that entering recursive self-improvement has to be done collectively. That’s what has to happen.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/data-centers-public-lands-trump Eric Katz, Mara Hoplamazian The Interior secretary is quietly meeting with AI hyperscalers while seeking to accommodate them on his department’s land. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:40:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/data-centers-public-lands-trump President Donald Trump’s directive to accelerate data center development on federal lands is facing public backlash and legal hurdles. Behind the scenes, the Trump administration is pushing full steam ahead and sparking concerns it is prioritizing corporate needs over the public good.

The Bureau of Land Management has asked its state directors to identify public land ripe for data center development, according to two people familiar with the request, and those leaders have compiled lists for Interior Department leadership.

Interior leadership gave state leaders just three days to produce the lists and told its directors the issue was a top priority, according to a former BLM official involved in the discussions. The request has encountered several challenges: Bureau lands are typically remote and not near basics like electricity and water, agency staff lack the technical expertise to conduct requisite reviews, and overwhelming vacancies after dramatic staffing losses under Trump have diminished capacity.

The directive follows an executive order Trump issued last year to accelerate permitting for data centers, including by identifying federal lands that could accommodate them. As the Trump administration is proposing further cuts to BLM, it has stressed in its most recent budget blueprint that the bureau should refocus its efforts on aiding the building out of data centers for AI.

The push also comes after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum held meetings with dozens of technology and energy executives last year, according to a Washington Sun review of his calendar.

Those meetings included a conversation with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last spring about permitting, infrastructure and technology “to support data center growth.”

The aggressive push inside the agency, and Burgum’s frequent meetings with industry, has stakeholders fearful that the administration is putting the interests of AI companies first at a time where widespread backlash has made companies desperate for more land to build out their infrastructure.

“I’m not against development or progress but I think there are too many questions about this and nobody is asking them,” said Mary Jo Rugwell, a former BLM state director who now serves as president of the Public Lands Foundation. “I think we’re just bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do.”

BLM has shed nearly half of its staff under Trump using a hiring freeze and various separation incentives. Rugwell, who left the agency in 2019, noted those remaining are already focused on other administration priorities, including oil and gas development, grazing and mining.

“Where are they going to get people to do the analysis especially when you have a technology that’s relatively new and not well defined?” Rugwell said. “It’s a headache BLM doesn’t need.”

The first former BLM official said their state had 50% vacancy rates in its land and realty divisions — the offices that would have to oversee data center development — and the employees still in place will have to get trained up on how to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act for a new technology. The new prioritization will add to a backlog of permits awaiting approval from the bureau, they said.

“In the midst of the loss of hundreds of employees from BLM over the last couple years, it’s another demand on land and realty staff that are already hugely taxed,” the former official said.

The administration has not completed any environmental reviews for data centers on public lands. The first approved data center on BLM land, near Boulder City, Nevada, was halted by a judge after developers tried to use an earlier environmental study for a proposed solar array at the same site.

A couple of projects on public lands are in earlier stages.

BLM approved a data center developer’s request to do geological and groundwater testing on public lands near Silver Springs, Nevada, but those projects haven’t gone through full reviews. In Virginia, the National Park Service is considering a land swap that would give a data center developer 36 acres of federally owned park land in Prince William Forest Park.

Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner last year created a task force to identify federal lands to develop for housing, though it has yet to share any updates from those efforts. The former BLM official said the search for data center centers has met a similar fate as the one for housing, as bureau lands have proven poorly equipped for either.

But despite less-than-ideal locations, federal public lands may be some of the few places where developers could avoid having to answer for angry local residents, as public opposition to data centers continues to mount.

“A lot of elected officials in Nevada on both sides of the aisle are really hesitant to approve data centers in their local jurisdiction,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Nevada chapter. “I would imagine in some cases, despite the environmental review being heightened in a lot of instances being sited on federal public land, there’s more political will to move those projects forward.”

Aubrie Spady, an Interior spokesperson, said Burgum is leading the National Energy Dominance Council and his responsibilities include “engagement with various energy companies and key industry partners.”

“The Trump administration's successful work will only persist as we continue to work on behalf of the American people to ensure a strong energy future that puts them and their best interests first,” Spady said.

BLM did not respond to a request for comment.

Burgum has frequently used his platform to tout the advantages of AI buildout and refers to data centers as “intelligence factories.”

“If we're talking about building a facility that's specifically related to AI, it's the first time in human history we can take a kilowatt of electricity and instead of turning it into light or heat, we can turn it into intelligence,” the secretary told “The TechEd Podcast” earlier this year. “And that's just a complete game changer.”

Calendar records from 2025 show Burgum met with a wide range of executives whose companies are involved with AI data center development.

Burgum discussed permitting reform in a July 2025 meeting with Brendan Bechtel, whose company designs and builds AI data centers and works with Nvidia. The two first met at an AI summit.

Then-CEO of NextEra Armando Pimentel and Vice President Mike Sole were seated at Burgum’s table during a reception at an event in support of the Everglades. NextEra is part of a $100 billion project to develop a data center at a U.S. Department of Energy site in Kentucky.

In February 2025, Burgum spent an hour with Wael Sawan, the CEO of Shell. Across three days in March, he met with the CEOs of Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, which have each invested in technology for data centers or have agreements to help power those facilities.

Also in March, Burgum had dinner with Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli. Baker Hughes announced a collaboration with Google on technology for data centers early this year. The CEOs of Coterra Energy (now Devon Energy), Williams Companies and Sempra Infrastructure — all companies that have made significant moves to be part of the AI boom — were also at that dinner.

About a week later, Burgum met with SpaceX executives, including President Gwynne Shotwell, who has pitched building data centers in space as soon as next year. In 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, which has built some of the biggest data centers in the U.S. on the border between Tennessee and Mississippi.

Burgum’s calendars for 2026 are not yet publicly available.

The bureau is required to manage public lands to “best meet the present and future needs of the American people,” balancing productivity and environmental quality, and not necessarily prioritizing economic return.

While the Trump administration has made the argument that building out AI infrastructure in the U.S. is for the public good, whether data centers fall within the BLM’s mandate to balance multiple uses on public lands is still up for debate.

“Using federal public land for the benefit of some of the richest companies in the history of the world, instead of holding those lands in public trust for public enjoyment,” Tanager said, “is one of the worst uses of public land I can think of.”]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/us-news/new-mexico-america-name-change-trump Jenna Monnin Trump has not issued an executive order mandating the name change, but Democratic lawmakers want to head off any potential future revisions. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:29:05 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/us-news/new-mexico-america-name-change-trump New Mexico lawmakers are calling on Apple and Google to keep using New Mexico on their map applications rather than President Donald Trump’s suggested name for the state, “New America.”

Unlike other name changes Trump made through executive orders, the president has only floated New Mexico’s name change in social media posts and public comments — but the coalition of New Mexico Democrats are taking what they call Trump’s “threatening” posts seriously.

In a letter sent Thursday, Democratic Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich and Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández, Melanie Stansbury and Gabe Vasquez urged the tech companies to “publicly commit” to keeping their state’s name unchanged by Sept. 18.

The group’s letter to Apple CEO John Ternus and Google CEO Sundar Pichai beseeched the executives to reject Trump's recommendation “regardless of what the President posts on social media, what executive order he attempts to issue, or what pressure he puts on your companies.”

“Let us be clear: the President has no legal authority to rename New Mexico. Our state’s name belongs to the people of New Mexico and is rooted in our history and our Constitution, which clearly states that ‘the name of this state is New Mexico,’” the lawmakers wrote.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Sun.

After Trump posted a series of maps featuring the border state with the name “New America” on Truth Social over the weekend, the president doubled down on the idea in his remarks at the first day of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas.

“You have a neighboring state, New Mexico. We think it should be called New America,” Trump told the crowd on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you, the people love the idea.”

When asked if Trump had contacted either company regarding the name change, the White House referred The Sun to his convention comments.

Trump’s comments and posts about renaming New Mexico come amid his continued efforts to retitle other landmarks and bodies of water to reflect what the White House deems “names that honor American greatness.”

Apple and Google have changed the names to reflect Trump’s titles for the Gulf of Mexico to be the “Gulf of America,” Alaska’s Mount Denali to “Mount McKinley” and most recently Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

In each of those cases, the president issued an executive order requiring the name changes — in contrast to his mere statements and posts floating New Mexico’s potential new name. Trump reportedly pressured Apple to change the name to “Lake America,” and the company quickly acquiesced.

Apple and Google both serve substantial international audiences, and some companies have pushed back on the president’s name changes citing a similar customer base.

The Associated Press adopted the “Mount McKinley” name since it is located within the U.S., but the publication — which publishes a dominant style guide for journalists — rejected Trump’s push to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario because the bodies of water share a border with Mexico and Canada, respectively.

The U.S. has a contentious trade relationship with Mexico and is currently in an all-out trade war with Canada.

New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire also have names referencing a place outside of the U.S. — named after an English leader, county and island off the coast of the country, respectively.

Only New Mexico has received the recent influx of scrutiny from the president.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/congress/bernie-sanders-ai-briefing Torrie Herrington The briefing comes as Sanders escalates his push for Congress to slow down the industry. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:50:04 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/congress/bernie-sanders-ai-briefing Sen. Bernie Sanders is bringing his campaign to slow the development of artificial intelligence to his Senate colleagues, organizing a bipartisan briefing for next week that will feature some of the country’s leading AI researchers.

Sanders sent a “dear colleague” letter to senators urging them to attend the Sept. 16 briefing, which will focus on the potential risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems, according to Axios, which first reported the letter.

“Congress needs SERIOUS discussions about this issue,” Sanders wrote. “That is why I will be convening a private briefing with some of the leading experts in the world to discuss this recent incident and the extraordinary dangers that AI poses for humanity.”

The event will feature Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist often called the “godfather of AI;” Max Tegmark, a physicist and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute; and AI researcher Ajeya Cotra, according to the letter, which was later reported by Politico.

The briefing comes as Sanders has escalated his push for Congress to put the brakes on the AI industry.

Last week, Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced legislation that would permanently prohibit the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence while temporarily pausing the development of advanced AI until a federal regulator establishes safety rules. The bill would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements aimed at preventing the development of superintelligence around the world.

The briefing also comes after a viral screed by a former Anthropic researcher who resigned over the company’s “out of control” development. The employee, Jacob Coxon, also worked at OpenAI and said “neither company is acting responsibly.”

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon posted on X. “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”

Sanders has also taken aim at AI companies he views as irresponsibly developing the technology.

In an August letter to the CEOs of Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI, Sanders called on the companies to immediately pause AI development, arguing that they had acknowledged instances in which their systems operated outside their intended safeguards. He warned that companies were racing ahead with technology they could not fully understand or control.

Sanders has also separately pushed for a federal moratorium on new AI data centers, arguing that the rapid construction of facilities needed to power AI is creating costs for communities and workers while the government has yet to establish adequate safeguards.

He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) introduced legislation in March that would pause construction of new AI data centers until national safeguards are in place. Sanders has argued that the pause would give lawmakers time to address AI’s effects on jobs, electricity demand, the environment, privacy and democracy.

“We cannot allow a handful of billionaires, eager to increase their wealth and power, to rush forward with a technology that will fundamentally transform humanity without democratic input or accountability,” Sanders wrote in an April op-ed.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/white-house-takes-down-build-the-wall-video-game-trump-tetris-lawsuit-threat Avani Kalra The change came after Tetris said it takes “copyright infringement very seriously.” Wed, 09 Sep 2026 16:39:49 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/white-house-takes-down-build-the-wall-video-game-trump-tetris-lawsuit-threat The White House took down a mass deportation-themed video game called “Build the Wall” from its arcade website this week, just days after The Tetris Company implied its design may represent copyright infringement.

The game was placed on the website as part of a larger rollout of themed games based on President Donald Trump’s agenda. In the game similar to Tetris, players stacked bricks to build a wall to prevent a “zombie border siege.”

Immediately after the game was posted to the White House website, Tetris pushed back, writing that the company was not involved in the creation of the game and takes “copyright infringement very seriously.”

“At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them,” the company wrote on X. “To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Sun. Other Trump administration video games, which also resemble popular titles, remain on the White House arcade website.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-researcher-jacob-coxon-anthropic-resignation-quit-warning-regulation Angie Orellana Hernandez Jacob Coxon, a researcher who has worked for several leading AI companies, said the technology could pose an existential threat to humanity. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:21:43 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-researcher-jacob-coxon-anthropic-resignation-quit-warning-regulation An artificial intelligence researcher publicly resigned from Anthropic this week over concerns that the technology’s “out of control” progression could lead to widespread disruption that society is unprepared for, a warning that caused a stir online just as a push for more AI regulation has stalled in Washington.

Jacob Coxon’s posts on X circulated widely after he claimed that artificial intelligence companies are not “acting responsibly” with the technology and are instead racing to improve software models with no regard for the existential threat AI poses to the global economy and human civilization. Coxon, who said he worked as a pretraining researcher for three years at both OpenAI and Anthropic, added that AI would soon have the potential to “hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon wrote. “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”

Two other leaders in the AI industry echoed Coxon’s concerns following his resignation. Evan Hubinger, a team leader at Anthropic, wrote on X that he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could “kill all humans.” Samuel Marks, another team leader at Anthropic, said “the more senior the employee” at an AI company, “the more concerned they are” about the technology’s power.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Coxon’s posts.

Coxon’s warning comes as public scrutiny grows over the rise of AI and the massive investment in data centers needed to power the technology. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sought to regulate AI by introducing hundreds of bills, including measures to ban AI chatbots for minors, protect candidates for federal office from deepfakes and establish guardrails for the industry.

The proposals, however, have largely failed to materialize into legislation, leaving some lawmakers worried that Congress is missing a pivotal window to regulate AI.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has attempted to introduce several headline-grabbing measures in recent months, including a bill with Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) to ban “superintelligent” AI entirely and temporarily pause AI development while federal regulation is being discussed.

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts), who introduced a measure in June with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-California) to establish a federal framework for AI, decided last week to not pursue a party leadership position in order to prioritize AI regulation.

President Donald Trump has embraced the AI industry during his second term, meeting with executives to discuss partnerships with the federal government and dismissing criticism of data centers. Trump has gone as far to say that communities that reject data centers will “end up being backwards and poor.”

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Aug. 31, “let Data Reign.”]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/sam-altman-privately-rejected-open-ai-government-equity Jeff Stein The remarks follow months of reports connecting Altman to the idea of giving the government equity in his company. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:30:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/sam-altman-privately-rejected-open-ai-government-equity OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately told a group of conservatives this summer that he did not support having the government take shares in the company, distancing himself from a proposal that he and his firm were widely understood to have supported.

For months, OpenAI has been connected to the idea that it is interested in voluntarily ceding shares to the government. Altman has spoken to senior Trump administration officials about the idea, as The Washington Sun first reported in June. The Financial Times reported that OpenAI had proposed giving the government a 5 percent stake in the company, citing Altman’s private comments. The New York Times wrote that Altman had directly pitched President Donald Trump on creating a “government investment fund” seeded with shares in OpenAI. And The Associated Press reported that Altman told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) that he wants the public to have equity in artificial intelligence companies.

At the off-record meeting with conservative economists on July 29, Altman said that he supports some version of redistributing company shares to the American public, according to three people present and notes taken by one participant reviewed by The Washington Sun. But he also was adamant that he would oppose the government taking equity in his firm and would resist any efforts for federal control over the company, those in the room said.

Altman’s comments, previously unreported, provide new insight about the intentions of the leader of one of the most powerful technology companies in the world, as companies like his own and Anthropic navigate public backlash against the rise of AI.

To those present, Altman appeared confused why anyone could think he wanted the government to take shares in the company.

"To most people in Washington, 'public shares in OpenAI' obviously means government control," said one of the economists who attended the meeting. “But he did not seem to understand that and seemed confused that anyone would think that’s what it meant. He said, 'That's not what we're talking about.' … I had the sense that he did not see as big of a difference between individual Americans owning shares and the government owning shares as there is in reality.”

The economists spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the off-record discussion.

In a statement to The Sun, the company said it supported creating a “government-administered public wealth fund,” which it distinguished from one in which the government took a “controlling or ownership stake in AI companies, which we would not support.”

"We think AI should create economic opportunity for everyone,” the statement said. “In April, we published an industrial policy blueprint with several ideas, including a public wealth fund that would let people share directly in the economic gains from AI. We’ve also talked with policymakers in both parties about related ideas, including whether AI companies could contribute equity to help seed a fund, but we are not close to anything specific.”

Several experts expressed confusion about Altman’s position. Theoretically, it would be possible for OpenAI to at some point donate “nonvoting” shares to a private entity overseen in part by government officials, which would limit federal control over the firm. But this would still amount to ceding stakes to the government.

"Everything we've seen from Sam Altman and OpenAI over the years implied a pretty conventional government ownership stake in the companies, including voting rights, dividend rights, other kinds of shareholder rights," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-leaning think tank. "The distinction they are drawing is hard to understand: How does a government-administered public wealth fund that owns equity not have an ownership stake in companies? These sentences are contradictory."

The position also diverges from that understood by others in Washington who have met with Altman. In a meeting in Sanders’ office in late June, Altman said he had seen the senator’s bill requiring AI giants to turn over 50 percent of their shares to the government and agreed that the government should have some stake in the AI companies, though not 50 percent, according to another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount that private discussion.

By contrast, the economists who attended the July 29 meeting came away from the discussion with Altman believing that OpenAI agreed with their fierce opposition to expanding the government’s control over the private sector.

Some experts have long been skeptical that OpenAI really would be voluntarily willing to turn over what would amount to billions of dollars to the government. Jeremy Bearer-Friend, an AI expert and law professor at George Washington University who helped design the Sanders plan, said there is nothing in corporate law currently stopping Altman from ceding shares to the government.

Shareholders could sue the company if it made that decision, but it would have the freedom to try.

“They already could have done it,” Bearer-Friend said.

The same day Altman met with conservative economic policy experts, the OpenAI executive also briefed a group of economists influential with Democratic policymakers. Several attendees of that second meeting did not recall the equity stakes question being discussed.

Both meetings started with presentations from Altman about the mathematical breakthroughs made by the OpenAI models. To the conservative economists, Altman stressed that OpenAI had the least politically biased model of any of the major AI companies, two of the people at that meeting said. The liberal economists did not remember Altman discussing the political orientation of the OpenAI model.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/democrats-government-efficiency-post-doge Natalie Alms Rising stars in the Democratic Party are promoting their tech modernization teams in a post-DOGE political landscape. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:15:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/democrats-government-efficiency-post-doge New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a big show of bringing his “pothole politics” online: He donned his sunglasses, lowered himself into a go-kart and took a lap around a track in Coney Island to sell his new Public Interest Technology Crew, or PIT Crew. (Get it?)

The team’s mission is to make the city’s clunky online systems easier to use and to help enact his agenda. It’s an initiative Democrats are adopting across the country. In Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger, too, is setting up a crew of tech whizzes to bring government services into the 21st century.

Many of the people running those teams are alumni of the U.S. Digital Service, the relatively unknown Obama-era tech squad that President Donald Trump transformed into DOGE on Day 1 of his second administration.

Now, they’re out of Washington and working for some of the rising stars of the Democratic Party who want to use technology to enact the liberal agenda and show voters that they can get things done.

“What I heard along the campaign trail, and certainly now that I’ve been governor, is people have this sense that things don’t work,” Spanberger told NOTUS in an interview.

The Trump team and DOGE were “correct in identifying that people want things to work better,” she said. “Rather cynically, they used that sentiment to their electoral advantage, and then used it as a mandate to break things further.”

More than 10 blue states have digital services teams — many of them with former U.S. Digital Service staffers and several of them established before the second Trump administration. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro set up a digital team in 2023. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, in 2024. By comparison, only two red states have similar units.

The teams are an answer to what Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, calls a progressive “neuroses” that wants to prove liberals can govern effectively, part of a movement calling for “abundance” — more development, more ambitious policies, faster.

That, and the national focus on DOGE, have brought what was once a relatively behind-the-scenes administrative effort, like building a website, into the foreground.

“Doing the good work is the core of what we need to do every day,” said Luke Farrell, a deputy commissioner and senior adviser for New York City's chief technology officer. “But also, we then need to show people the work, and we need to get it into people’s hands.”

Mamdani’s PIT Crew has been tasked with making his administration’s “click-to-cancel” rule into a reality with an online portal for New Yorkers to file complaints. The consumer protection rule, which requires businesses to provide simple subscription cancellation, is projected to save New Yorkers millions of dollars once it goes into effect next month.

In Virginia, the digital team is being told to address the inefficiencies that disrupt the daily lives of residents; Virginians still have to write checks to the state because they can’t pay for some state services online, Spanberger said. Other parts of the state government still require traditional signatures.

“One of the ways that you can best ensure that you're correctly utilizing state taxpayer dollars is to make things actually work,” Spanberger said. “The state digital service is meant to be a part of that.”
Abigail Spanberger AP-23311573084272 (4411x2941, AR: 1.50)President Barack Obama set up the U.S. Digital Service in 2014 to fix HealthCare.gov after a botched rollout threatened to tank Obamacare, one of the Obama administration’s signature policies. The unit became a core part of a network of tech do-gooders in the federal government.

After the HealthCare.gov rescue, the team largely operated in the background of government. During the first Trump administration, the leadership of the U.S. Digital Service fashioned the team as a nonpartisan unit. In a shift, the Biden administration installed political leadership and tasked it with working on priorities like building a government program to file federal taxes for free.

Still, when Trump returned to office, few Americans were familiar with the tech team that the president and Elon Musk transformed into DOGE.

In the early months of the second Trump administration, many of the existing U.S. Digital Service staffers were laid off. Others resigned publicly, saying that DOGE’s work was antithetical to the mission of the original team. 18F, another Obama-era government tech team, was shuttered in March 2025, weeks after Musk tweeted that it had been “deleted.”

DOGE quickly departed from its nominal tech focus to overhaul of the federal workforce and slash government spending — moves that inspired nationwide protests and lawsuits. The backlash has given Democrats nationally an opportunity to reclaim the government efficiency mantle.

That conversation has already begun in Washington. Liberal think tanks and former federal officials are drafting plans for how future administrations could improve the government, as NOTUS has previously reported. The work could have an impact beyond political resonance: In New York, Virginia and the capital alike, these efforts to improve technology and government could help politicians actually implement their agendas.

“A policy without a way to enforce it isn’t really a policy at all,” Erie Meyer, who was previously the chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told NOTUS of the importance of the PIT Crew’s work implementing Mamdani’s click-to-cancel rule.

Mamdani’s team is still deciding on what other projects they’ll focus on, but the work will be “core to the Mamdani administration's agenda around affordability, housing, consumer and worker protection and more,” said Maya Israni, senior adviser to the city’s chief technology officer.

More than 4,000 people have submitted applications to join the New York City PIT crews, which will consist of five teams focusing on building services in-house instead of using contractors.

“We really want to have a direct impact on someone’s day-to-day life as a New Yorker and make their life on a day-to-day basis better and more affordable,” Israni said. “We’re here to deliver on core Mamdani administration priorities.”

At the state level, Democrats are also using the teams to respond to Trump’s agenda. Spanberger said Virginia’s tech push is especially relevant in light of the Republican budget law passed last year, which slashed federal funding in food assistance programs and Medicaid.

As the state implements Medicaid work requirements from that law, how well various state systems interface to validate eligibility becomes really important, said Spanberger, noting that “any of those gaps means loss of coverage or means loss of social safety net programs for people in a way that can really be harmful.”

The tension: Sometimes the work to enable policies isn’t flashy.

The goal of the new tech unit in Virginia is to “improve the services that the government provides for every Virginian,” Andrea Fletcher — who also previously worked in the U.S. Digital Service and just recently started as the new director of the Virginia Digital Service — told NOTUS.

To do that, the Virginia team will also be looking to tackle the “boring stuff” that often makes the government headache-inducing in the first place, like procurement and hiring, she said.

During DOGE’s heyday in Washington, some who had previously been on civic tech teams in Washington expressed envy at the political aircover Elon Musk’s team had to get things done.

The teams in New York and Virginia have that top-down investment, said Lynn Overmann, who worked as a senior adviser for the Biden administration as part of the U.S. Digital Service.

The real test, she said: “Can they actually get it done?”]]>