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Axios

Axios

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Smart brevity news covering politics, business, technology, and more. Get essential news efficiently.

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Discussions from Axios

Politics

How might the influence of political figures on the Supreme Court affect its decisions and our laws?

The Supreme Court's next chapter begins Monday, with the justices set to decide key questions involving President Trump's immigration agenda, climate-change litigation and gun control in their new term. The big picture: But one of the most closely watched fights may be on Truth Social, rather than the docket, as an increasingly agitated Trump chastises the high court he helped shape. The executive and judicial branches are set for another round in the white-columned ring with a president who moves at breakneck speed. State of play: The court recently agreed to hear two major immigration cases, one over mandatory detention for certain immigrants and another over deporting immigrants to third countries where they lack ties. On the latter, the high court allowed the administration to restart its fast-tracked third-country deportations late last month while it considers the underlying legal questions in December.The court agreed Thursday to take up the detention case, setting the stage to test the Trump administration's legal interpretation that noncitizens who entered the country illegally, but have been living in the U.S., are to be held without bond. While federal appeals courts have been divided on the issue, a vast majority — nine of the 11 — have rejected the Trump administration's interpretation. Flashback: While the Supreme Court shot down Trump's attempt to undermine birthright citizenship last term, it handed him a number of immigration wins and green-lit policies on its shadow docket. Those victories for Trump allowed the administration to end temporary protected status, enforce stricter asylum rules and use a revamped tool to check voters' citizenship. Zoom out: Before those cases come to the bench, the court will hear arguments Monday in a key climate case that could determine the fate of state-court lawsuits nationwide seeking climate damages from oil giants, Axios' Ben Geman reports. The court also added two other cases to its lineup Thursday, on top of t

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Technology

What should be the rules for using powerful AI models like Google's Gemini 4?

Google is unveiling its long-awaited next-generation AI model, Gemini 4 Argon, to a small group of cybersecurity partners, the company said Wednesday. Why it matters: Gemini 4 arrives after a long gap at the top of Google's model lineup, in which the company kept rolling out smaller, cheaper Flash models while rivals OpenAI and Anthropic sprinted forward. State of play: Google says Gemini 4 Argon is built to handle complex, long-running tasks in software engineering, finance, legal work and cybersecurity. Google said the new model is state of the art on certain coding and knowledge work benchmarks, outperforming competing OpenAI frontier model GPT-6 Astra on several.The company is rolling the model out only to a group of trusted cybersecurity defenders and is participating in the U.S. government's voluntary pre-release process.Google says it will expand access after additional testing, with paying subscribers first in line. What they're saying: "Argon is a well-rounded model that has frontier capabilities across several domains," Tulsee Doshi, head of Gemini products at Google DeepMind, told Axios. "We've seen strong performance up close as Googlers have put the model through its paces in recent weeks, with many relying on it for their hardest coding and research problems." Flashback: Gemini 4 comes out nearly a year after the previous flagship model generation, Gemini 3. In May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's next major model release would come in June. That model, widely expected to be Gemini 3.5 Pro, never came out. In July, Axios reported that poor morale among Google DeepMind employees was part of the reason for the delay. Zoom in: Google's additional time investment may not be viewed as negatively in the context of the AI safety debate that has embroiled companies and users. OpenAI has had issues with agents going rogue, and recently said it is scrapping GPT-6.1 Astra due to security issues.Top AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic are investigating

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Geopolitics

What are the potential effects of the U.S. government demanding the removal of foreign delegations on international relations?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the Iranian delegation attending the U.N. General Assembly to leave the United States immediately after peace talks to end the nearly nine-month war crumbled, according to a new report. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were in New York last week for the United Nations’s yearly […]

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Technology

How should we balance AI innovation with safety measures to prevent potential risks?

Nvidia is deploying a new tool that it says can be used to prevent and contain rogue and potentially dangerous AI agents. Why it matters: The world's largest chip company has resisted calls to slow AI development over safety fears — arguing now that technological guardrails can keep rogue AI agents under control. Driving the news: Nvidia debuted the Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform, which includes its OpenShell open source software system and its Sentry agent monitoring system. The system "traces all actions" by agents running on Nvidia Vera CPUs, promising to "quarantine agents that attempt to move outside their boundaries in milliseconds."AI's "full promise can only be realized when people have confidence that AI is being built to be safe and deployed with wisdom and responsibility," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote on X. "Safety is how trust is earned." State of play: OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which their frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, sources told Axios' Madison Mills last week. The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting or seeking to bypass monitors."Some of the agents even misreported what they did," Nvidia noted in a blog post Monday announcing its new platform. The intrigue: We're moving into a new era in which AI will be monitoring AI. And that will create more demand for chips — including the type that Nvidia sells — plus the data centers that use them and the power that's needed to run them."If security agents or validation models are running alongside production agents, that creates another inference workload that did not previously exist," writes Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intel, at Circular Technology. Zoom out: The Nvidia tool rollout comes amid a feverish debate over whether rogue AI could destroy humanity. Anthropic researcher Jacob Co

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Geopolitics

How should countries respond to claims of terrorism in international conflicts?

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is speaking before the UN General Assembly Wednesday in his first speech at the world body since the US and Israel launched the conflict with his country. His address comes a day after US President Donald Trump told the UNGA he could "annihilate the Islamic Republic" and "drive them into hell". France 24 correspondent from New York, Jessica Le Masurier, tells us more

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Politics

What are the key factors that should influence funding decisions for political campaigns?

The Senate GOP campaign arm is making an extraordinary late ask — $8.9 million, to be exact — for three red states: Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, according to a memo sent Thursday and obtained by Axios. Why it matters: The request is yet another sign of the headwinds facing Republicans. In a good year, they wouldn't be begging for millions to defend states President Trump carried by double digits in 2024. "We need $8.9 million in additional hard dollars to close the media gap and sustain that progress through Election Day," a memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee states. Zoom in: The memo lays out specific fundraising goals for each race, sending donors to joint fundraising accounts and campaigns. $1.2 million in Alaska, where Democratic nominee former Rep. Mary Peltola leads Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) in the RealClearPolitics polling average by two percentage points. $4.2 million in Iowa, where Democratic nominee Josh Turek and GOP nominee Rep. Ashley Hinson are separated by less than a percentage point in the RCP polling average. $3.5 million in Ohio, where former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) has built a four-percentage-point lead over Sen. Jon Husted (R) in the RCP polling average. Between the lines: The memo directs donors to candidates' campaigns or joint fundraising committees, which have higher donor limits. The committee has been taking advantage of a Supreme Court ruling to get more advertising at lower prices by coordinating with campaigns.NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) touted this strategy in a closed-door lunch on Wednesday, showing in a chart how it has allowed them to keep up with Democrats' stronger campaign fundraising, according to slides seen by Axios."The environment remains tough, but these races have improved as the Republican ecosystem has engaged," says the NRSC memo. Zoom out: Cook Political Report this week moved the Senate races in Georgia, Kansas and South Carolina in their ratings toward Democrats. Sabato's Crystal Ball moved Kansas, Michig

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Technology

How should lawmakers work together to create rules for AI that everyone can agree on?

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says President Trump is "not really dug in" against guardrails for AI, despite Trump's public campaign against restricting the technology. Why it matters: Thune told Axios he spoke privately with Trump as the AI issue was getting "pretty hot" a few weeks ago and believes some of Trump's strong pushback is against public "paranoia and noise around the subject." Thune reads Trump's position as a preference for companies coming up with ways to secure their systems, rather than Congress or the administration. That approach relies more on experts to provide guidance.Trump has called recent fears around AI safety a "hoax.""I do think that the threats are real," Thune told Axios in an interview on Wednesday at his Capitol office. Zoom out: Thune has Trump's skepticism in one ear and tech leader alarm in the other. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called Thune to discuss AI safety before sounding his latest public alarm on the risks of AI, Thune told Axios.The two also talked about Thune's AI bill. What to watch: "I think you have to have at least some sort of a plan and some guardrails around it, which is what I think our bill does," Thune said, referencing the bill he has introduced with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in past years. "But I do also think that there are people who are. doing a lot of fear mongering," Thune added.Thune's bill, which has not yet been reintroduced this Congress, puts the onus on tech companies to mitigate AI risks. It also requires AI companies to report on any serious risks with frontier models and to come up with plans to address the concerns.Thune said Klobuchar is trying to get more Democratic co-sponsors on board — including Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) — before re-introducing the bill. The details: Democrats have two main sticking points, according to Thune: Pre-deployment testing is something companies can opt into in the bill language. Democrats want it mandated.Cantwell is asking fo

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