I Have Returned

Sobered and jet lagged but back in action

Good Morning:

This is the front door of the dining hall at the now-abandoned Kibbutz Nir Oz, on the Israel-Gaza border. Many dozens of residents of the kibbutz were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023. More than two dozen remain hostages in Gaza.

I am still collecting my thoughts from a week of briefings and meetings in Israel. I will have a lot more to say about the trip, both here and on Lawfare, in the coming few days.

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The Sol Invictus on Steroids Sale continues. Between now and the end of the year, get half off on all subscriptions to #DogShirtDaily—including all gift subscriptions for the relative or friend who has everything in life except access to the Greek Chorus—and know that half of the rest of the proceeds will go to charity.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Eve Gaumond and I set out on a quest to get Sora, OpenAI’s new video production program, to make us some antisemitic propaganda. It didn’t turn out to be much of a quest, though. It took less than 30 minutes to create a video sufficiently offensive that I felt obliged to censor it on YouTube.

Great work, OpenAI, the future is bright!

In all seriousness, pigs dressed as hassidic Jews? Really, Sora? Your content moderation needs some work.

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Today on Lawfare

OpenAI's Latest Model Shows AGI Is Inevitable. Now What?

Kevin Frazier, Alan Rozenshtein, and Peter Salib explore the implications of OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) model, o3, which they are signals the inevitability of artificial general intelligence (AGI). They discuss a new scaling law in AI power, how the “o3” model’s advances will accelerate democratization in the AI ecosystem, how AI keeps improving despite consistent underestimation, and they make policy recommendations:

The implications are profound and urgent. We are witnessing not just incremental progress but a fundamental shift in AI capabilities. The question is no longer whether we will achieve AGI, but when—and more importantly, how we will manage its arrival. This reality demands an immediate recalibration of policy discussions. We can no longer afford to treat AGI as a speculative possibility that may or may not arrive at some undefined point in the future. The time has come to treat AGI as an inevitability and focus the Hill’s regulatory energy on ensuring its development benefits humanity as a whole.

China’s Counterterrorism Ambitions in Africa

In this week’s installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Jason Warner discusses China’s growing counterterrorism operations across Africa, including Chinese motivations for providing assistance, its economic development alongside counterterrorism efforts, China’s hiring of “private” security firms, why the United States should be scrutinizing—but not be alarmed by—China’s increased security presence on the continent:

Beijing’s interests also have been marked by other evident, though quiet, steps since the rollout of the GSI. These included China’s hosting of the first and second Horn of Africa Peace Conferences in 2022 and 2024 and a joint counterterrorism military exercise with Mozambique and Tanzania in August 2024. In line with its broader ethos, China’s increasing forays into African counterterrorism have been calculated, quiet, and generally risk averse.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Natalie Orpett sits down with Michael Posner to discuss last month’s verdict in Al-Shimari v. CACI, including the claims of a government contractor’s abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners in 2004, Al-Shimari’s path to trial, the jury verdict that found the company liable and imposed $42 million in damages, consequences for private companies and government contractors, and the future of human rights litigation:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is this rock hyrax, whom I met in Jerusalem when I was out walking and it was lounging on the rooftop of a collapsed shed: