2025-11-15 21:30:00
美国需要外国出生的研究人员和科学家，不仅是为了成功，更是为了引领全球科技发展。20世纪大部分时间，科学中心不在美国，二战前夕，欧洲的实验室占据主导地位，而美国在物理学等领域的研究被认为落后。随后，“科学移民潮”到来，许多因法西斯而逃离欧洲的难民（如爱因斯坦、费米、贝特、西拉德、冯·诺依曼等）重塑了美国的科研体系。美国赢得战争的一个原因，就是吸纳了外国人才，而其对手则驱逐了这些人才。战后，美国通过实施范内瓦·布什提出的联邦资助大学科研计划，巩固了这一优势，使美国成为科学超级大国，其他国家则成为人才储备池。
八十年后，美国开始关闭这一人才通道。今年6月，特朗普政府暂停或限制了来自19个国家的签证，明确针对学生和交流项目。今年春季，美国甚至终止了数千名国际学生的SEVIS记录，后又在法律压力下撤销了这一决定。8月的入境数据显示，新国际学生数量同比下降约19%，这是非疫情时期的最大降幅，而与此同时，调查显示顶尖研究人员计划大量离开美国。对于依赖科技创新的经济而言，这是一次前所未有的重大损失。
好消息是，尽管特朗普政府采取了诸多措施，但《自然》杂志报道的新联邦数据显示，国际博士生数量仍保持稳定，这并非胜利，但避免了人们担忧的崩溃，为美国维持政治阻力争取了时间。需要强调的是，在推动技术前沿的领域（如计算机科学、工程和数学），国际学生并非可忽略的少数，而是新美国博士的多数。2023年，临时签证持有者获得了62%的计算机与信息科学博士、56%的工程博士和53%的数学与统计学博士。尽管有人认为美国培养外国学生只是为他们日后离开做准备，但许多研究人员选择留下。2017-2019届的国际科学与工程博士中，约有75%在五年后仍留在美国。
如果关闭人才通道，美国将面临科研能力下降，而不仅仅是人数减少。有人认为，限制外国学生会让更多名额留给美国本土人才，但美国本土人才数量仍不足。虽然过去十年美国公民和永久居民在STEM领域的人数有所增长，但研究生学位的增长并不均衡，2022年甚至出现3%的下降。美国学生在STEM准备方面仍存在不足，15岁学生在数学成绩上低于25个其他国家的教育体系，2023年仅有15%的ACT测试高中毕业生达到STEM准备标准。如果所有STEM领域的外国学生都离开美国，美国将几乎失去整个STEM产业。
相比之下，中国已培养出近两倍于美国的STEM博士，且主要依靠本国人才。尽管中国人口是美国的四倍，但这正是其优势所在。美国若要保持竞争力，不能仅依赖自身资源。外国科学人才的贡献无处不在，他们创造了约23%的美国专利，且专利影响力远超其人口比例。46%的《财富》500强企业由移民或其子女创立，55%的美国“独角兽”（估值超十亿美元的初创企业）由移民创立，许多顶级私营AI公司也有移民创始人。这些创始人中，不少最初是以国际学生身份来到美国。
美国最活跃的产业（如芯片、人工智能和生物科技）最依赖全球人才。例如，台裔企业家黄仁勋在9岁时移居美国，如今领导全球市值最高的公司NVIDIA。在科学金字塔顶端，自2000年以来，移民获得了约40%的美国诺贝尔奖（物理、化学、生理学或医学领域）。今年，约旦裔的奥马尔·亚吉和荷兰裔的乔尔·莫克尔也加入了这一行列。这些成就并非偶然，而是科研体系持续吸引和留住全球顶尖人才的结果。
目前国际学生数量保持稳定令人欣慰，但前提是美国要善加利用这一机会。美国成为科学超级大国，正是通过建立顶尖实验室并保持开放大门实现的。如果美国兑现承诺，提供稳定的学习与就业路径、可预测的签证流程以及避免突然的政策变化，研究证据表明这些人才将继续贡献于科学发现和新企业的发展，并在许多情况下选择留下。反之，若美国关闭大门，将导致科研团队减少、突破性专利减少、深度科技初创企业减少、诺贝尔奖得主减少，以及国家从领先变为跟随。
For most of the 20th century, the center of gravity in science was anywhere but the US. On the eve of World War II, the great laboratories were in Europe, and American research — especially in physics — was widely seen as trailing them.
Then came the “scientific exodus”: Foreign refugees from fascism — like Einstein, Fermi, Bethe, Szilard, von Neumann, and others — remade US science. One reason we won the war is because America collected foreign talent while its enemies expelled it. And Washington locked in that advantage postwar by building Vannevar Bush’s vision of federally funded university science, which turned the country into a scientific superpower, leaving the rest of the world as one big talent pool.
Eight decades later, the US has started turning off that spigot. In June, the Trump administration suspended or curtailed visas from 19 countries, explicitly hitting student and exchange categories. This spring, it even terminated thousands of student SEVIS records — the official Department of Homeland Security status files for international students — before reversing course under legal pressure. August arrival records showed a roughly 19 percent year-over-year drop in new international student entries. That represented the biggest non-pandemic decline on record, even as surveys showed top researchers planning to leave the US in droves.
For an economy that runs on scientific innovation, this is a self-own of historic levels
So, here’s the (measured) good news: Despite what appears to be the Trump administration’s best efforts, new federal data reported by Nature shows that international PhD numbers are essentially flat year over year. That’s not a triumph, but it’s not the crash many feared — not yet — and it buys time to mount the political resistance needed to keep America’s foreign talent engine running.
It’s important to understand that, in the fields that power the technological frontier — computer science, engineering, math — international students are not a rounding error; they are the majority of new US PhDs. In 2023, temporary-visa holders earned 62 percent of computer and information sciences doctorates, 56 percent of engineering PhDs, and 53 percent of math and statistics doctorates.
And contrary to arguments that the US is educating foreign students only to see them take their talents elsewhere, many of those researchers stick around. Roughly three-quarters of international science and engineering PhDs from the 2017–2019 cohorts were still in the US five years later. Keep the pipeline open, and the US keeps the labs, grants, and startup ecosystem that rely on them humming. Close it, and we’ll feel the loss in capacity, not just headcount.
Perhaps you’re thinking that, if the US restricts foreign students, more seats will go to American-born candidates. But we don’t have enough of those candidates.
While more US citizens and permanent residents have been pursuing and attaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees over the past decade, the growth in graduate degrees has been uneven, including a 3 percent year-over-year dip in 2022. Far too many American students aren’t ready to take those places. 15-year-olds in the US scored below 25 other international education systems in math, while only 15 percent of ACT-tested high school graduates met the standardized test’s STEM readiness benchmark in 2023.
If every foreign student in STEM left the US tomorrow, we would barely have a STEM sector. Compare that to China, which is already minting nearly twice the number of STEM PhDs as the US and doing it almost entirely with domestic talent. Yes, China has four times the population, but that’s partially the point. To compete, America can’t only rely on its own resources.
You can see the downstream payoff of foreign scientific talent everywhere innovation is actually measured. Immigrants produce about 23 percent of US patents — far above their share of the population — and their patents are, on average, at least as influential when judged by citations and market value.
Those discoveries transform into prosperity. Forty-six percent of the companies in the current Fortune 500 were founded by an immigrant or the child of one. In the startup economy, immigrants have founded 55 percent of US “unicorns” (billion-dollar startups), while a large majority of top private AI firms have at least one immigrant founder. A nontrivial share of those founders first came as international students. The country’s most dynamic sectors — chips, AI, biotech — are the ones that lean hardest on global talent. Just ask Jensen Huang, the Taiwan-born founder of the AI chip firm Nvidia, who came to the US as a 9-year-old and now runs the most valuable company in the world.
The same pattern shows up at the very top of the scientific pyramid. Since 2000, immigrants have won roughly 40 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. This year, both Jordan-born Omar Mwannes Yaghi, who moved to the US at 9, and Netherlands-born Joel Mokyr, who came to America as a grad student, added to that list. These wins aren’t a coincidence; it’s what happens when a research system reliably attracts and retains the world’s best.
So, the fact that international student enrollment is holding steady for now is reassuring — but only if we take advantage of it. The United States became a scientific superpower by building great labs and then keeping the doors open to the people who wanted to work in them. If we keep that promise — stable study-to-work pathways, predictable visa processing, no sudden rule changes — the evidence suggests those researchers will come, contribute disproportionately to scientific discoveries and new business ventures, and, in many cases, stay.
If we don’t, the losses will show up exactly where we can least afford them: fewer grant-winning teams, fewer breakthrough patents, fewer deep-tech startups, fewer laureates, and a country that goes from leading to following.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
2025-11-15 20:00:00
2020年11月14日，尼克·弗uent斯（Nick Fuentes）在华盛顿特区。| Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto 通过 Getty Images 提供
过去几周，保守派人士围绕反犹太主义以及哪些人物可以或不可以加入共和党展开了激烈而分裂的争论。这场争论的核心人物是一位27岁的白人至上主义者和右翼政治影响者，他主持名为《美国优先》（America First）的网络节目。
关键要点：
For the past few weeks, conservatives have been having a heated and divisive debate about antisemitism and the sorts of characters that can or cannot be part of the Republican Party. At the center of this argument is a 27-year-old white supremacist and far-right political influencer who hosts an online show called America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes.
On his show, Fuentes shares Christian nationalist, misogynistic, and antisemitic takes with hundreds of thousands of viewers. And it’s because of his audience — which has grown since the death of fellow far-right commentator Charlie Kirk — that longtime conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson decided to sit down with him for a friendly conversation.
The backlash came immediately, partially because of recent instances in which Republican officials have been associated with Nazi beliefs and symbols, including the leaked messages of young GOP leaders making jokes about gas chambers, and an American flag merged with a swastika hanging inside the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH). But the controversy also rippled out because “[Fuentes] has become incredibly more powerful, and he knows it too. So he’s able to leverage that to get people to pay attention to him,” Wired’s disinformation and online extremism reporter David Gilbert told Today, Explained co-host Noel King.
Can Fuentes really sway how young conservatives think and vote? Gilbert, who has been watching Fuentes intensely, says yes. He spoke with King to explain Fuentes’s allure to young men and to help frame Fuentes within the modern GOP.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What is the tenor of Nick Fuentes’s show, for people who have only a passing awareness of him?
It’s pretty well structured. He typically talks about one or two of the biggest stories of the day in his world, at least for a couple of hours. And it’s just him talking straight to camera. He’s not talking from a script; he’s not talking from a teleprompter. But he’s incredibly good at speaking off the cuff. He covers a lot of the infighting within the right-wing media. He talks about immigration quite a lot. He obviously talks about the Trump administration quite a lot.
But I suppose one of the main, or the main topic he talks about — and it typically comes back to this every single time — is a deeply antisemitic worldview that he has, that he blames Israel and the Jewish people for all the ills of society.
So there are different strands here: There’s the anti-Israel sentiment; there’s the antisemitic sentiment; there’s the anti-immigrant sentiment. How would you describe his worldview? What does he represent?
He has a pretty hateful worldview. I think what really is surprising of what we’ve seen most recently — where his profile has risen and he has kind of been embraced by more mainstream members of the right — is the fact that they’re kind of ignoring the fact that he has espoused support for Hitler in the past, that he has talked about raping women as not being that problematic.
He has these really hateful views about the world, where he feels as if he, as a white male Christian (he’s a Catholic) is being attacked, and that his homeland is under attack from all these various [forces], whether it’s feminism or the woke mob, as he calls it — “the woke mind virus.” He believes that he is the one that is under attack, that white males and especially white Christian males, have been sidelined in their own country. And that’s kind of at the crux of what he believes […]
He didn’t vote for Donald Trump in the election. He didn’t tell his followers to vote, because he felt that Trump was just not being “America First” enough. In terms of JD Vance, it’s even worse. He thinks Vance has let down American men by not marrying a white Christian woman. He has said that if JD Vance decides that he is going to run in 2028, which looks like he will, and if the GOP nominates him, then Fuentes will unleash a campaign using his supporters to undermine that candidacy.
In the past couple of years, there has been a cohort of young conservative men and women who have varying relationships with one another, and feuds and alliances and whatnot.
Talk to me about where Fuentes fits in this spectrum of right-wing personalities and what his relationships with them are like.
It’s really interesting, and it’s not something that is the same as it was five, six, seven years ago, when he was coming up after Unite the Right. When he began getting noticed, he was viewed as this kind of an outlier, this fringe figure who was not really taken with any level of seriousness. And so he was not really being discussed in the same terms as figures like Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens.
More recently, those same figures have had to pay attention to him because his audience has grown, especially in the last six months. [Fuentes] has become incredibly more powerful — and he knows it, too. So he’s able to leverage that to get people to pay attention to him.
We saw, obviously, Tucker Carlson interviewed him recently, which is the most high-profile interview he’s had to date. But we’ve seen figures like Alex Jones, Candace Owens — they’ve all had him on their podcasts. And they have varying levels of arguments between themselves.
His main antagonist and the person he fought with most was Charlie Kirk, dating back to 2019, when they began what Fuentes labeled the Groyper War — “Groypers” being the name for the people who support Nick Fuentes.
So what he did then was, when Charlie Kirk was going around to colleges, speaking and debating with people, he would get his supporters to go there and question Charlie Kirk about his support for Israel, question him on immigration, question him on the things that Fuentes believed Charlie Kirk was not being questioned enough about, and where he felt he could be attacked because he wasn’t being conservative enough; he wasn’t being “America First” enough.
Tucker Carlson said [that] he was just talking to Nick Fuentes, and that he doesn’t necessarily agree with all the things he said. But at the same time, he’s engaging with him. And I think for Fuentes, that is the win. That’s what he wants. He wants people to be able to see him.
Why do so many people who seem to disagree with him still invite him on and still talk to him? There is something I assume that they are getting as well. What is this about?
I think people like Tucker Carlson are afraid of being left behind. Because they clearly understand that Fuentes has tapped into something. His audience is this young, white male audience that is incredibly powerful, and people don’t want to miss out. So by Tucker Carlson interviewing him, Tucker Carlson gets a little bit of that aura that Fuentes projects to his supporters.
I think that’s the main reason, is that they know Fuentes will drive engagement. If you look at the numbers on Tucker’s video, it’s huge compared to the others that were posted for the last couple of weeks.
What makes Fuentes so successful?
I think the fact that he openly talks about the fact that he isn’t in a relationship, hasn’t really ever had a relationship with a woman, is one of them [his audience] — is one of the people he speaks to: These young men who may be struggling to find their identity in the US, who may be struggling to get a job, struggling to find a house, struggling to find a relationship or a community of friends. Fuentes tapped into that.
There’s been an evolution of Nick Fuentes in the last six months, where he has seen his star rise. He has gained a huge amount of followers online; way more people are watching his show every night. Now he’s earning a huge amount of money from that show. And he is in a position now that I don’t think he even believed he would be back, we’ll say, in 2020, when he was kicked off of YouTube and every other platform.
He’s in a position now where he can enforce change, I think, within the Republican Party from the inside. He’s smart enough to do it by not creating an organization where people can be identified as members of the Nick Fuentes fan club. He tells his followers: Don’t identify yourself as Groypers. Do it under the radar. Become a member of your local Republican Party, influence people from the inside, not from the outside.
It’s very hard to verify this completely, but he says he’s got supporters within the administration. He has got supporters all across the country who are infiltrating local political parties. He is, from the ground up, going to try and influence how the Republican Party acts over the next 10 years. And he’s doing it really smartly and in a really dangerous way that it’s very, very hard for anyone to know what’s happening.
2025-11-15 07:05:00
2025年11月6日，唐纳德·特朗普在白宫椭圆形办公室。| Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
本文出自《Logoff》——一份帮助您了解特朗普政府动态，又不会让政治新闻占据您全部生活的每日简报。点击此处订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：特朗普竞选连任的计划，试图通过重新划分选区来在2026年中期选举中获得众议院多数席位，可能开始出现反效果。发生了什么？周五，印第安纳州参议院共和党人宣布，他们不会推进一项重新划分州众议院选区的计划，以利于共和党。如果这一决定最终生效，很可能会使共和党在2026年中期选举中失去一个席位。
背景是什么？通常每十年一次人口普查后才会进行选区重划。但今年早些时候，特朗普发起了前所未有的中期选区重划浪潮，通过施压得克萨斯州立法者重新划分选区，创建五个新的共和党众议院选区。这一行动随后扩展到密苏里州、北卡罗来纳州和俄亥俄州，这些州都不同程度地调整了选区，以利于共和党。与此同时，加利福尼亚州的选民在最近的选举中批准了一项选区重划的公投，这将为民主党赢得五个席位，而弗吉尼亚州则可能为民主党创造多达四个席位。
这对特朗普来说是个问题吗？在选区重划的早期阶段，普遍认为共和党会占据上风。然而，随着印第安纳州决定不参与，以及加州和弗吉尼亚州的民主党胜利，这一趋势似乎已经改变（尽管一些州的情况仍不确定）。如果民主党在选区重划中保持现状，甚至获得席位，这将为他们在2026年中期选举中带来重大优势。而通常情况下，执政党在中期选举中处于劣势，共和党将不得不捍卫其微弱的众议院多数席位。如果民主党在众议院占据多数，这对特朗普来说将是一个严重的问题。不仅他的立法议程在总统任期最后两年将难以推进，他的政府还将面临更多的监督和民主党发出的传票。这些后果仍取决于中期选举的结果，但今天发生的事情是朝着这一方向迈出的具体一步。
好了，现在是时候“下线”了。让我们聚在一起，欣赏一下《纽约时报》的一个独特标题：“被证实无罪的鬣蜥是什么样子的？”（附链接，建议只为那“鬣蜥侧目”的画面而观看）。实际上，这些鬣蜥曾被指控是墨西哥克拉里翁岛的入侵物种，因此原本计划进行清除。幸运的是，最近的DNA分析证明，这些鬣蜥实际上是该岛的原生物种，总数约100只。
一如既往，感谢您的阅读，祝您度过愉快的周末，我们周一再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump’s campaign to redistrict his way to a House majority in the 2026 midterms may be beginning to backfire.
What happened? On Friday, Indiana Senate Republicans announced they would not move forward with a plan to redraw state congressional maps in a way that would favor Republicans. The decision, if it sticks, likely deprives the GOP of an extra seat in the 2026 midterms.
What’s the context? Redistricting usually happens once per decade after a new census. But earlier this year, Trump kicked off an unprecedented wave of mid-decade redistricting by pressuring Texas lawmakers to redraw their maps and create five new Republican congressional districts.
That effort spread to Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio, all of which redrew their maps to favor Republicans to varying degrees. California voters, meanwhile, approved a redistricting ballot measure in last week’s elections, which will likely net Democrats five seats, and Virginia could create as many as four new Democratic seats.
Why is this a problem for Trump? Early in the redistricting wars, the conventional wisdom was that the GOP would likely come out ahead. With Indiana’s decision to opt out, along with Democratic victories in California and Virginia, that no longer appears to be the case (though some states are still up in the air).
If Democrats do break even in redistricting, or even gain seats, that gives them a serious edge heading into the 2026 midterms, where the party out of power is usually favored and the GOP will be tasked with defending a slim House majority.
And a Democratic majority in the House would spell trouble for Trump. Not only would his legislative agenda be dead in the water for the final two years of his presidency, but his administration would have to deal with increased oversight and Democratic subpoenas. Those consequences are still contingent on the outcome of the midterms — but what happened today is a concrete step in that direction.
Let’s gather around and appreciate a singularly good headline from the New York Times: “This Is What a Vindicated Iguana Looks Like” (a gift link, and recommended viewing for the iguana side-eye alone).
As it turns out, the iguanas in question had been accused of being an invasive species on Mexico’s Clarion Island; as a result, they were slated for eradication. Luckily for the iguanas — about 100 in total — they have been exonerated by recent DNA analysis: They’re native to the island after all.
As always, thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
2025-11-15 04:45:00
菜单设计、心理治疗、论文写作、高度复杂的全球网络攻击：人们不断为最新AI聊天机器人寻找创新用途。本周，人工智能公司Anthropic宣布，其旗舰AI助手Claude被中国黑客用于所谓的“首次报告的AI主导网络间谍活动”，这标志着一个令人担忧的新里程碑。据Anthropic报告，9月中旬，该公司检测到一个名为GTG-1002的组织针对多个国家的大型科技公司、金融机构、化工企业和政府机构发起网络间谍活动。这类攻击并不罕见，但此次事件引人注目的是，其中80%至90%的工作由AI完成。在人类操作员确定目标后，他们利用Claude识别有价值的数据库、测试漏洞并编写代码以访问数据库和提取数据。人类仅在少数关键环节介入，以提供指令并检查AI的工作。Claude和其他大型语言模型都配备了防止被用于此类活动的安全机制，但攻击者通过将任务拆分为看似无害的小部分，并声称自己是进行安全测试的网络安全公司，成功“越狱”了该程序。这引发了关于Claude和ChatGPT等模型安全机制能否被绕过的担忧，尤其是考虑到AI可能被用于开发生物武器或其他危险现实材料。Anthropic承认，在此次行动中，Claude有时会“虚构凭证”或声称提取了实际上公开的信息。即使国家支持的黑客也需要警惕AI编造信息。报告指出，AI工具将使网络攻击更容易、更快，从而增加从国家安全系统到普通公民银行账户等目标的脆弱性。
尽管如此，我们尚未完全陷入网络无政府状态。要让Claude执行此类任务，所需的技能水平仍高于普通网络用户。专家多年来一直在警告，AI模型可用于生成恶意代码进行诈骗或间谍活动，这种现象被称为“AI驱动的黑客行为”。今年2月，OpenAI报告称，中国、伊朗、朝鲜和俄罗斯的恶意行为者使用其AI工具协助网络行动。9月，美国新安全中心（CNAS）发布报告，指出AI赋能的黑客行为对美国构成威胁。报告解释称，大多数网络行动中最耗时和资源的部分是规划、侦察和工具开发阶段（实际攻击通常迅速）。通过自动化这些任务，AI可以成为进攻性的重要变革力量，而这正是此次攻击所体现的。
Anthropic表示，黑客留下的线索表明他们来自中国，但中国驻美大使馆称此指控为“污蔑”。从某种意义上说，这对中国AI行业和美国AI产业来说是个讽刺的成就。今年早些时候，中国大型语言模型DeepSeek的出现震惊了华盛顿和硅谷，表明尽管美国试图限制中国获取开发AI语言模型所需的先进半导体芯片，但中国AI的发展速度仍与美国相差不远。因此，中国黑客仍倾向于使用美国制造的Claude进行网络攻击，这一现象也凸显了中国网络行动的规模和复杂性。过去一年，关于中国针对美国的网络行动规模和复杂性的担忧日益加剧，其中包括“Volt Typhoon”——一项旨在提前将国家支持的网络行为者部署到美国IT系统中的行动，以备中美发生重大危机或冲突时发动攻击；以及“Salt Typhoon”——一项针对多个国家电信公司和美国大选期间总统特朗普及副总统JD·万斯通讯的间谍行动。官员表示，这些攻击的规模和复杂性远超以往，可能只是AI时代未来威胁的预演。
Menu planning, therapy, essay writing, highly sophisticated global cyberattacks: People just keep coming up with innovative new uses for the latest AI chatbots.
An alarming new milestone was reached this week when the artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced that its flagship AI assistant Claude was used by Chinese hackers in what the company is calling the “first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.”
According to a report released by Anthropic, in mid-September, the company detected a large-scale cyberespionage operation by a group they’re calling GTG-1002, directed at “major technology corporations, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies across multiple countries.”
Attacks like that are not unusual. What makes this one stand out is that 80 to 90 percent of it was carried out by AI. After human operators identified the target organizations, they used Claude to identify valuable databases within them, test for vulnerabilities, and write its own code to access the databases and extract valuable data. Humans were involved only at a few critical chokepoints to give the AI prompts and check its work.
Claude, like other major large language models, comes equipped with safeguards to prevent it from being used for this type of activity, but the attackers were able to “jailbreak” the program by breaking its task down into smaller, plausibly innocent parts and telling Claude they were a cybersecurity firm doing defensive testing. This raises some troubling questions about the degree to which safeguards on models like Claude and ChatGPT can be maneuvered around, particularly given concerns over how they could be put to use for developing bioweapons or other dangerous real-world materials.
Anthropic does admit that Claude at times during the operation “hallucinated credentials or claimed to have extracted secret information that was in fact publicly-available.” Even state-sponsored hackers have to look out for AI making stuff up.
The report raises the concern that AI tools will make cyberattacks far easier and faster to carry out, raising the vulnerability of everything from sensitive national security systems to ordinary citizens’ bank accounts.
Still, we’re not quite in complete cyberanarchy yet. The level of technical knowledge needed to get Claude to do this is still beyond the average internet troll. But experts have been warning for years now that AI models can be used to generate malicious code for scams or espionage, a phenomenon known as “vibe hacking.” In February, Anthropic’s competitors at OpenAI reported that they had detected malicious actors from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia using their AI tools to assist with cyber operations.
In September, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) published a report on the threat of AI-enabled hacking. It explained that the most time- and resource-intensive parts of most cyber operations are in their planning, reconnaissance, and tool development phases. (The attacks themselves are usually rapid.) By automating these tasks, AI can be an offensive game changer — and that appears to be exactly what took place in this attack.
Caleb Withers, the author of the CNAS report, told Vox that the announcement from Anthropic was “on trend,” considering the recent advancements in AI capabilities and that “the level of sophistication with which this can be done largely autonomously, by AI, is just going to continue to rise.”
Anthropic says the hackers left enough clues to determine that they were Chinese, though the Chinese embassy in the United States described the charge as “smear and slander.”
In some ways, this is an ironic feather in the cap for Anthropic and the US AI industry as a whole. Earlier this year, the Chinese large language model DeepSeek sent shockwaves through Washington and Silicon Valley, suggesting that despite US efforts to throttle Chinese access to the advanced semiconductor chips required to develop AI language models, China’s AI progress was only slightly behind America’s. So it seems at least somewhat telling that even Chinese hackers still prefer a made-in-the-USA chatbot for their cyberexploits.
There’s been increasing alarm over the past year about the scale and sophistication of Chinese cyberoperations targeting the US. These include examples like Volt Typhoon — a campaign to preemptively position state-sponsored cyber-actors into US IT systems, to prepare them to carry out attacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict between the US and China — and Salt Typhoon, an espionage campaign that has targeted telecommunications companies in dozens of countries and targeted the communications of officials including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign.
Officials say the scale and sophistication of these attacks is far beyond what we’ve seen before. It may also only be a preview of things to come in the age of AI.
2025-11-15 03:15:00
美国国土安全部在伊利诺伊州布罗德维尤（靠近芝加哥）的移民设施部署国民警卫队人员。约一个月前，特朗普诉伊利诺伊州案似乎将成为特朗普任期内最具影响力的最高法院裁决之一。此案涉及特朗普试图动用国民警卫队以压制该设施附近的小规模抗议活动，抗议人数从几十人到约200人不等。此前，两家下级法院均裁定特朗普的这一做法违法，随后特朗普向最高法院提出上诉，希望获得支持。然而，最高法院在10月29日的裁决中表示对特朗普的法律论点持怀疑态度，并要求就一个双方未提及的问题进行补充说明，即“regular forces”（常规力量）是否指美国军队的正规部队，以及这种解释如何影响相关联邦法律的适用。目前，特朗普的抗议行动仍受下级法院禁令限制。
最高法院的这一决定可能意味着，法官们倾向于将“常规力量”理解为美国军队的正规部队，而非州执法机构。因此，特朗普若想动用国民警卫队，必须首先证明其无法依靠陆军或海军陆战队执行联邦法律。这一观点得到了法学教授马丁·莱德曼的补充意见支持，最高法院因此要求进一步说明。
关于“常规力量”的定义，历史背景显示国会曾用该词区分联邦正规军与州民兵。例如，1806年的法律指出，民兵在与常规力量联合行动时需遵守与联邦部队相同的军事法规。1903年的《迪克法案》（Dick Act）确立了现代国民警卫队的框架，而1908年的修订进一步明确了“常规力量”的含义。尽管司法部长期对《叛乱法案》（Insurrection Act）的适用范围有狭义解释，但最高法院目前并未直接审理该法案的争议。
若莱德曼的解释被采纳，特朗普将无法动用国民警卫队，但可能被迫援引《叛乱法案》并动用正规军。然而，布罗德维尤的抗议活动显然无法达到类似19世纪南方“三K党”控制地区的程度，因此特朗普的行动可能面临法律挑战。
About a month ago, Trump v. Illinois looked like it was going to be one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions of the entire Trump era. The case concerns President Donald Trump’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops to an immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois, in order to suppress a small protest that has ranged in size from a few dozen people to about 200.
After two lower courts ruled that Trump’s use of the National Guard in this way is illegal, Trump asked the Supreme Court — which has a Republican majority that frequently rules in his favor — to greenlight his use of troops in mid-October.
Yet, in a break from their ordinary practice, the Court signaled in an October 29 order that they are skeptical of many of Trump’s legal arguments. And they asked for additional briefing on a question that neither party raised to the justices. The first round of those new briefs were filed on November 10, and the Court is likely to rule on the case after briefing completes on Monday, November 17.
The upshot is that Trump’s attempt to send troops to Broadview remains blocked by the lower court orders, at least for now. The Court’s October 29 order, moreover, suggests that the justices may look to delay a showdown on whether and when Trump can use the military against Americans on US soil until a future case.
For now, in other words, the stakes of the Illinois case may be somewhat diminished. But, even if the Court does rule against Trump, that will likely only punt the question of when Trump is allowed to deploy troops against Americans until a future date.
Beginning in September, a small group of people have protested the Trump administration’s immigration policies outside of a detention facility in Broadview. According to Judge April Perry, a federal district judge who ruled against Trump’s use of troops, “the typical number of protestors is fewer than fifty,” and “the crowd has never exceeded 200.”
Some members of this small group of protesters have also been charged with crimes. Some allegedly vandalized federal law enforcement vehicles, and others have been arrested for more serious crimes such as aggravated battery.
When Illinois first reached the Supreme Court, the case seemed to turn on whether federal law permits using National Guard members against such a minor protest. Ordinarily, the National Guard is under the command and control of state governments. But Trump relied on a federal law that permits the president to take command of the Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” or if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
In their initial brief to the justices, Trump’s lawyers made some very aggressive arguments. Among other things, they claimed that the decision to take control of National Guard members “is committed exclusively to the president” and cannot be reviewed by federal courts. They also claimed that the small group of protesters constitutes a “rebellion” that justifies military force.
But, in their October 29 order, the justices dodged these questions and instead asked for briefing on an unrelated question: “Whether the term ‘regular forces’ refers to the regular forces of the United States military, and, if so, how that interpretation affects the operation of” the relevant federal statute.
The fact that the Court did not immediately rule for Trump on his more aggressive arguments suggests that a majority of the justices are skeptical of them. There would be no need, for example, to parse the meaning of the words “regular forces” if Trump’s decision to deploy troops against protesters cannot be reviewed by the courts.
It is likely, moreover, that the justices are sympathetic to a reading of these two words that would require them to rule against Trump in the Illinois case. But a ruling against him on these narrow grounds would merely delay the question of whether and when Trump can use the military against Americans on US soil.
Recall that federal law permits the president to use the National Guard to quell domestic unrest if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” Prior to the Supreme Court’s October 29 order, both the Trump administration and the lower courts read the phrase “regular forces” to refer to civilian law enforcement officials. Thus, as Trump’s lawyers presented the case to the justices, Illinois turned on whether Trump was unable to enforce US law in Broadview without relying on the military at all.
But an amicus brief filed by Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman argues that the words “regular forces” refers, not to civilian law enforcement, but to “the standing military forces of the Armed Services, within the Department of Defense.” Thus, under Lederman’s reading, Trump may only deploy the National Guard to enforce domestic law if he has first demonstrated that he is unable to enforce the law using the actual Army or Marines.
And it appears that Lederman’s argument is sufficiently persuasive that it convinced a majority of the justices to seek additional briefing from Trump and from the Illinois plaintiffs on whether Lederman is correct.
To understand Lederman’s argument, it’s helpful to understand some of the history of the National Guard. Many of the United States’s founders feared a permanent, national, standing army; as the Supreme Court summarized this fear in a 1990 opinion, “there was a widespread fear that a national standing Army posed an intolerable threat to individual liberty and to the sovereignty of the separate States.”
Instead, the framers imagined that states would maintain a militia that would generally operate under the state’s control. But the Constitution also permitted Congress to call this militia into federal service “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
The framers’ original vision of a nation with no permanent federal army obviously no longer describes America’s relationship with the military. The United States has the most powerful standing military forces in the world. By the dawn of the 20th century, the state militias had, in the Supreme Court’s words, “proved to be a decidedly unreliable fighting force.” President Theodore Roosevelt warned that the laws governing these militias were “obsolete and worthless.”
In 1901, Roosevelt asked Congress to enact new legislation that would replace the atrophied militias with what became the modern-day National Guard. Notably, Roosevelt’s message to Congress proposed that the armaments and other resources provided to this new militia should “be made identical with those provided for the regular forces.”
Congress responded with the regrettably named Dick Act of 1903 (the law is named after Rep. Charles Dick, who chaired an important congressional committee), which established “the organized militia, to be known as the National Guard of the State, Territory, or District of Columbia.”
As originally enacted, the Dick Act permitted the president to use the National Guard when he is “unable, with the other forces at his command, to execute the laws of the Union in any part thereof.” But Congress amended the law in 1908 to something more similar to the modern version. The 1908 version provided that the president may use the National Guard when he “is unable with the regular forces at his command to execute the laws of the Union in any part thereof.”
According to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, this change was made to ensure that the National Guard would be the “second line of defense” after the use of other military forces. (Congress removed the words “at his command” in 1956 because it deemed them to be “surplusage.”)
In any event, much of Lederman’s brief is a long list of historical examples showing that Congress used the words “regular forces” to distinguish a standing federal military from state militias. An 1806 law, for example, provides that militiamen are subject to the same rules of military justice as federal troops when “acting in conjunction with the regular forces of the United States.” A broader 1814 law concerned court martials of militiamen serving under the United States “whether acting in conjunction with the regular forces or otherwise.”
The Supreme Court also used the term “regular forces” in this way around the time that the Dick Act was enacted and first amended. In McClaughry v. Deming (1902), for example, the Court referred to the “substantial difference between the regular forces and the militia.”
There’s more. But suffice to say, a majority of the justices appear to have found his evidence persuasive enough to set aside the Trump administration’s arguments and instead demand additional briefing on the meaning of the term “regular forces.”
Unless you are a fan of military forces in US streets, the implications of Lederman’s argument may seem alarming. If Trump isn’t allowed to use the National Guard without first attempting to use the regular Army or the Marines, then he is likely to deploy the regular Army or the Marines against Americans protesting his policies.
But there are other laws that govern the use of regular military forces within the United States. One is the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of those forces “to execute the laws” except “under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” Another law, commonly known as the Insurrection Act, permits the president to use the military to “suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” — but only in limited circumstances laid out in that statute.
The Justice Department has long interpreted these circumstances very narrowly. In a 1964 memorandum signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, for example, the DOJ concluded that the Insurrection Act may only be used if “state authorities are either directly involved, by acting or failing to act, in denials of federal rights of a dimension requiring federal military action, or are so helpless in the face of private violence that the private activity has taken on the character of state action.”
Barring a court order permitting the use of troops, moreover, Katzenbach concluded that military force is only allowed under the Insurrection Act when “those engaging in violence are either acting with the approval of state authorities or have, like the Klan in the 1870s, taken over effective control of the area involved.”
Needless to say, the small group of protesters in Broadview hasn’t come close to seizing control of that region in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan dominated many parts of the South in the post-Civil War era.
Still, the fact that the Justice Department has long interpreted the Insurrection Act narrowly does not mean that either the Trump administration or this Supreme Court — which is ordinarily so sycophantic toward Trump that it literally held that he is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes — will read the same law as narrowly.
But a legal showdown over the meaning of the Insurrection Act is not currently before the Court. If the justices accept Lederman’s interpretation of the amended Dick Act, then that will mean Trump will lose his bid to send National Guard members to Broadview. It will then be up to Trump to decide if he wants to set off a new legal fight by claiming authority under the Insurrection Act, and deploying regular forces to American cities.
2025-11-14 23:10:00
2025年7月23日，时代广场的一块广告牌呼吁纽约市释放“埃普斯坦文件”。11月14日的编辑注释提到，11月12日众议院监督委员会公布了从埃普斯坦遗产处获得的2万页文件，这些文件进一步揭示了特朗普与埃普斯坦之间的密切关系，引发了新的质疑。文章指出，尽管特朗普的名字多次出现在埃普斯坦文件中，且发现了一张暗示性生日贺卡，但若政府多年来已掌握对其与埃普斯坦关联的不利证据，为何前总统拜登从未公开这些文件？这一问题难以确定。自2019年埃普斯坦在监狱中死亡（被裁定为自杀）以来，右翼媒体就流传着政府掩盖证据的阴谋论。然而，文件中出现特朗普的名字本身未必意味着其有不当行为。即便文件内容引发担忧，政府通常不会在法庭外公开此类信息。
释放文件的挑战在于，埃普斯坦文件包含超过10万页的证据，包括物证、大陪审团证词、从埃普斯坦财产中查获的数字证据等。2025年2月，司法部曾公布部分文件，但随后于7月7日宣布不再公开，称不存在应公开的“指控名单”或其他相关材料。此举引发特朗普支持者的不满，而特朗普则批评其支持者未能放下此事。众议院为阻止加快释放更多文件的投票，提前休会一个月，因该议题已导致共和党内部分裂。特朗普本人近期呼吁释放两起涉及埃普斯坦的案件（2005年和2007年）的大陪审团证词，但佛罗里达联邦法院已驳回司法部的请求。纽约另一法院的类似请求仍在审理中。
尽管如此，特朗普可能仍希望文件的公开能平息对其与埃普斯坦关系的猜测。然而，由于阴谋论已自行发酵，这一期望可能难以实现。《华尔街日报》报道称，特朗普只是数百个出现在未公开文件中的名字之一，其中包括许多其他知名人士。这些文件不仅包含大陪审团证词，还有300GB的数字证据。若文件显示特朗普与埃普斯坦的关联仅为无害的社交活动，那么拜登政府公开文件并无明显政治动机。此外，大陪审团证词本身具有保密性，通常仅在法官认定公众利益高于保护证人身份时才会公开。而FBI通常不会公开与起诉无关的数字证据，以保护个人隐私和正在进行的调查。目前，司法部表示不会基于现有调查文件对埃普斯坦案提出新的指控，因此即便民主党希望在拜登任内全面公开文件，法院也可能不会批准。特朗普如今面临同样的问题，意味着围绕他的争议可能短期内不会平息。
Editor’s note, November 14, 2025: On November 12, the House Oversight Committee released 20,000 pages of documents it received from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The documents provide further evidence about how well Donald Trump and Epstein knew one another and have led to a new round of questions about the nature of their relationship. The following story was originally published in July 2025.
Reports of Donald Trump’s name repeatedly appearing in the Jeffrey Epstein files, coupled with the unearthing of a suggestive birthday card that the president sent the convicted sex offender, have renewed scrutiny of their relationship.
But if the government really had damning information about Trump’s entanglements with Epstein in its possession for years, then why didn’t his Democratic predecessor and political rival, President Joe Biden, ever release the files?
It’s impossible to know for certain. Conspiracy theories about a government cover-up in the Epstein case have swirled around right-wing media circles since his 2019 death in prison, which was ruled a suicide.
But appearing in the Epstein Files might not, in and of itself, suggest any wrongdoing on Trump’s part. Even if the material in the sealed files does raise concerns, it would be highly unusual for the government to release that material outside of a courtroom.
The Epstein Files are a collection of more than 100,000 pages of evidence gathered as part of a Justice Department investigation. They include records of physical evidence, grand jury testimony, digital evidence recovered from technology seized at Epstein’s properties, and more.
After releasing an initial trove of documents in February, the Justice Department announced on July 7 that it would not be releasing any more, denying the existence of any “incriminating client list” from Epstein or anything else related to the case that ought to be publicly disclosed.
That prompted backlash from Trump’s base, and the president has maligned his supporters for not letting the issue go. The House shut down early for a month-long recess on Thursday in order to prevent a vote on expediting the release of further documents, as the push has divided the Republican caucus. Trump himself is now on board, having recently called for the release of “pertinent” grand jury testimony in two separate cases involving Epstein from 2005 and 2007.
A federal court in Florida has denied such a request from the DOJ. The department made a similar request to a separate court in New York, but its ruling is still pending.
Trump may hope that the release of the documents can put to rest speculation about his involvement with Epstein. That might be an unrealistic outcome given that the conspiracy theories have now taken on a life of their own and may be uncontainable. But the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s was just one among hundreds of names, many of similarly prominent figures, featured in the unreleased Epstein Files. Those files include not just the grand jury testimony, but also 300 gigabytes of digital evidence.
If the files suggest that Trump’s involvement with Epstein really was just of the harmless social variety prior to their reported falling out in 2004, then the Biden administration would have had no obvious political reason to release them. (Former President Bill Clinton’s name appears in the files that were already released, although there is no allegation of any wrongdoing on Clinton’s part.)
But it also couldn’t have done so without court approval. Grand jury testimony is secret by design: It allows jurors to confer about whether to charge someone with a crime confidentially and without outside influence or fear of public backlash. Such testimony is typically only released under exceptional circumstances, when a judge determines that the public interest overrides the interest in protecting the identity of witnesses, informants, and other people accused of crimes brought before the grand jury.
Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who helped Epstein secure his 2008 plea deal on child prostitution charges in Florida, has said that the grand jury testimony from that particular case includes a redacted FBI affidavit that names individuals who were accused of crimes in connection with Epstein.
As for the remaining digital evidence, it’s highly unusual for the FBI to release information unrelated to charging individuals with a crime. There are several reasons for this, including the desire to protect individuals’ privacy and reputations and to protect ongoing investigations. The agency has said, however, that there would be no new indictments related to Epstein based on a review of its existing investigation files.
So even if Democrats wanted to release the Epstein Files in their entirety during Biden’s presidency, it’s not clear that a court would have granted their request. Trump is now encountering the same issue — meaning that the firestorm around him might not die down anytime soon.