Surely, that was an unnecessary reminder. After all, hardly anyone could be unaware of what that super-intelligence in the glittering Oval Office hath wrought, and perhaps the incorrigible optimists among us can still cling to the vague hope that his efforts will succeed in dismantling the American empire without irreparably damaging all life on earth.

“Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” the same high-IQ personality wonders in a longer post. As a six-times veteran, Trump knows a thing or two about bankruptcies but, either through ignorance or malice, misinterprets the existential worries of Anthropic and OpenAI executives, whose concerns may well be selfish rather than selflessly humanitarian. They have witnessed how AI ‘agents’ can ‘decide’ to pursue goals that involve no human agency, and even worked out strategies for deceiving their ‘controllers’.

It should come as no surprise that the self-proclaimed ‘Hoax Buster’ compares the concerns over AI to the barely audible worries about global heating, regardless of the mounting evidence from Nepal to Eu­­rope. “The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centres are bad for your neighbourhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the Wor­ld would be extinguished by ‘Climate Chan­­ge’. That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they are on to the next one… .”

AI’s use as a military tactic indicates its destructive powers.

Climate change has been wreaking havoc worldwide for a long time, but almost as soon as Trump returned to the White Hou­se, most fossil fuel firms abandoned all pretence of leaning towards green ventures and embraced the ‘drill, baby, drill’ imperative. Perhaps the only country that has not­i­­ceably gone greener since the Trumpian blockages in the Strait of Hormuz is China, where the use of oil has substantially diminished.

China is also a clear contender for supremacy in the AI race, which is one of the main reasons why constraints on advancement are anathema to the US cold warriors. The developers in China are also concerned about the future. Beijing has dismissed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warning that “a Chinese lead in AI would pose a grave danger for the US and the world” as “fearmongering”. China has widely deployed AI in functions ranging from mass surveillance to manufacturing, but at least Xi Jinping openly acknowledges the need for AI to “always remain under human control”. China’s state security minister, Chen Yixin, has noted the risks of “hostile forces” waging a “cognitive war” that would threaten “our political security, institutional security and ideological security”.

It is perhaps somewhat ironic that China, with its open-source AI models, is more willing than the US to pursue internationally agreed constraints on the pursuit of a technology that potentially offers innumerable benefits to humankind in a wide range of spheres, but is also capable of eradicating humanity. Its deployment as a military option from Israel and the US to Russia and Ukraine is an indicator of its destructive capacity.

Were AI agents to conclude that hu­­m­an beings were me­­rely standing in the way of their autono­mous­­ly conceived goals, it might seem logical to eliminate the im­­pediment. And given the extent to which we, knowi­n­g­­ly or otherwise, rely on technology for our survival, that aim wouldn’t be all that hard to accomplish. Israel has already demonstrated that, albeit with human agency at the helm. The dismissal of the documentary NAZA, which scored an unprecedented standing ovation and a Special Jury Prize in Venice last week, as a “blood libel”, is a typical Nazi-like response.

What might be seen as critical mass for AI comes at a time when global politics are in disarray. Like all emerging technologies in previous centuries, the human value of AI depends on how it is deployed. It can serve as a tremendously useful tool, provided its destructive capacities are constrained. But what are the chances of that in a realm where Trump and his acolytes rule the roost? Long before the advent of the internet, there were warnings from prescient scientists. Losing all hope could be premature. But, frequently through human existence, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst has been the least disastrous option. Let’s stick with it for the time being.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2026

The newly uncovered malicious activity showed that the rogue agents’ efforts to find a way into Hugging Face began earlier than publicly known.

OpenAI had previously disclosed one aspect of the malicious activity — the theft of a Hugging Face user’s digital credential to access a biology-related file — in its public incident report last month, but researchers told Reuters the probing activity against Hugging Face appeared to go beyond what was described in the report.

The activity was discovered by independent researcher Jonas Wiedermann-Moeller last week, he told Reuters. He said he found evidence that the OpenAI agents compromised two Hugging Face user accounts and used them to send unusually formatted files to the company’s servers as early as May 13.

He and other researchers who reviewed the evidence said the behaviour resembled an attempt to map or test parts of Hugging Face’s network for ways to infiltrate, although they stressed there was no evidence the effort resulted in an actual breach.

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company had disclosed the May 13 event, privately notified Hugging Face about the activity flagged by Wiedermann-Moeller and was “committed to transparency about these issues and to sharing what we learn as our review continues.”

Hugging Face, recently acquired by chipmaker Nvidia, did not respond to requests for comment.

Wiedermann-Moeller, a 27-year-old who lives in Bielefeld, Germany, said OpenAI’s failure to detect the May 13 probing at the time was a missed opportunity to prevent the subsequent hacking campaign, which has triggered a global reckoning over the power of artificial intelligence.

“Imagine if they caught this behaviour in May,” he said in an interview. “It could’ve prevented the later incident, which was way bigger.”

OpenAI has previously said that, with the benefit of hindsight, “some early signals” from its AI agents should have triggered an earlier response.

‘Clear warning sign’

Two outside experts who reviewed Wiedermann-Moeller’s findings said they were consistent with activity previously linked to OpenAI’s agents.

SentinelOne senior threat researcher Tom Hegel said the account hijacking and subsequent probing matched known behaviour by the agents “to a tee.” Sydney Von Arx of the Nightingale Collective, an AI safety group, agreed with the attribution.

Von Arx said the hacking amounted to a “clear warning sign” that could have helped prevent the breach in July.

OpenAI has faced increasing scrutiny since the company disclosed on July 21 that rogue AI agents bypassed internal controls, reached the open internet and coordinated actions that OpenAI described as “an unprecedented cyber incident.”

Since then, outside researchers have identified additional incidents alleged to involve OpenAI-linked agents, including activity affecting a dormant German wiki site and the RubyGems software package repository.

OpenAI has acknowledged some of those incidents only after they were publicly reported by third parties. Two people familiar with the matter said that, in the case of RubyGems, OpenAI employees only realised its AI was responsible for the malicious activity after the Nightingale Collective found it.

The additional discoveries have fueled questions among lawmakers and AI safety advocates about whether the full scope of the incidents has been identified.

Some of America’s top AI executives have since called for a slowdown of AI development, citing, among other things, the threat of devastating cyberattacks by out-of-control agents.

Wiedermann-Moeller said the latest findings reinforced calls for a temporary slowdown in the development of advanced AI systems.

“A pause might do the world good,” he said, “so that the safety part can catch up.”

The KP chief minister has been visiting Punjab since Monday to mobilise party supporters ahead of the PTI’s nationwide protest scheduled for Sept 27.

Earlier on Wednesday, Afridi issued a video statement, which he said was recorded shortly before 5am, giving his version of events.

The KP CM alleged that hurdles were created during his stay in Sialkot, with power supplies cut off and the electricity generators at two residences he visited “ruined”. He subsequently travelled to Wazirabad.

“They had sent an assassin after us with the intention to kill. He was in civil clothes. When we arrived in Wazirabad, my security team apprehended this armed individual, recovered a pistol from him, and handed him over to the local SHO (station house officer),” he claimed.

Afridi reiterated his stance in an X post at 5:49am, saying his security team handed the “bearded man” over to SHO Saqlain after apprehending him.

The KP CM recalled that he was supposed to spend the night in Sialkot, but the electricity was “cut off”. He added that power at two other locations was also disconnected, after which he travelled to Wazirabad.

“Now, the electricity here has also been cut off. I cannot go anywhere else from here now,” the chief minister lamented.

However, in separate statements, Gujranwala Police and Wazirabad City police station said the man was Constable Muqadas Ali, who had been deployed on security duty for Afridi.

Gujranwala Police said the constable was “subjected to severe physical assault by members of the chief minister’s protection team”.

“Importantly, Constable Muqadas Ali was allegedly assaulted in the presence of the SHO City Wazirabad, who intervened and after considerable effort, managed to rescue the constable. The SHO’s presence can also be clearly seen in footage and images from the scene,” the statement said.

The police said the “misrepresentation of facts” and the constable’s “portrayal as a killer is a matter of serious concern”.

According to Gujranwala Police, following the incident, “claims portraying Constable Ali as a ‘killer’ emerged from representatives” of the KP CM.

“These claims misrepresent the facts, despite his identity having already been established at the scene and his departmental identity card having been presented.”

The police asserted that “any baseless and factually incorrect portrayal of its personnel is unacceptable”.

“Misrepresenting facts and portraying a police officer deployed on official duty as a killer is strongly condemnable,” it added.

“It is a matter of serious concern that, after the incident, the constable was allegedly portrayed as a ‘murderer’, despite his identity and official duty being established at the spot,” the statement from Wazirabad City police said.

Punjab Inf­ormation Minister Azma Bokhari also reiterated the police’s stance.

“God knows why such fits of madness strike them as soon as they reach Wazirabad,” she quipped.

On Nov 3, 2022, during PTI’s long march in Wazirabad, former premier Imran Khan and several others were injured in a gun attack, while one worker had lost his life. In 2025, a man was handed life imprisonment for the attack, while two others were acquitted.

Punjab visit

Wednesday was not the first episode of claims and counterclaims during the KP CM’s Punjab visit.

On Monday night, Afridi alleged he was “abducted” by authorities in Lahore and later “thrown” by the roadside — a claim the Punjab government swiftly denied.

In a video shared by Bokhari, Afridi could be seen voluntarily walking towards and boarding the police vehicle. He then refuses to dismount, while an individual can be heard asking the chief minister to “please leave the vehicle”.

Afridi turned his Lahore visit into a full-fledged political showdown, lashing out at the Punjab government, refusing security and vowing to rid the country of “fake rulers” through a nationwide street movement on September 27.

Speaking on Tuesday, CM Afridi alleged that Punjab police had blocked routes, arrested party workers and removed tents from a protest camp.

On its part, the Punjab government has imposed a ban on gatherings across the province from September 13 to 17.

District authorities had also issued preventive detention orders against dozens of PTI workers under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order, including 31 in one Punjab notification and a further 14 in Toba Tek Singh.

Additional input from Asif Chaudhry