The War Is Over (?) & The U.S. Loses A B52 Bomber

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering the (possible) end of the U.S.-Iran war, Anthropic’s latest AI model controversy, the G7 summit, the U.K.’s social media ban, a Scandinavian scandal, leaks in the Situation Room, the B52 bomber crash, and Elon Musk’s roller coaster week.

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.” – Soren Kierkegaard

War Is Over (For Now)

On Sunday, the U.S. and Iran jointly announced that they had reached a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending their four-month-long war. “Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED,” wrote Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif via Twitter, adding, “The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.” Pakistani diplomats worked as the main mediators of the conflict, ferrying messages back and forth between Washington and Tehran for months.

At the G7 summit in France, Trump announced that “the deal’s all signed.” He claimed that the details of the agreement will be made public “probably pretty soon. I would say ⁠after sometime after Friday … I think sometime in the very near future.” Under the terms of the agreement that we know so far, Iran, the U.S., Israel, and Hezbollah are expected to immediately end their military operations against each other. Once the deal is signed in person on Friday, both Iran and the U.S. will also immediately lift their blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations will begin on the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. sanctions on Iran, and other contentious issues. Essentially, diplomats have extended the broken U.S.-Iran ceasefire for another 60 days, and have committed to ending the war via those future talks. 

It’s likely that both Iran and the U.S. will uphold their parts of the deal, but the biggest question mark in all of this is the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. On Sunday, just hours before the deal was announced, Hezbollah fired drones into Israel, which replied with a deadly airstrike on suburbs south of Beirut. After the deal was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated,“This agreement was made by the United States, by the president of the United States. That’s his decision … We have our own interests.” 

Anthropic At The Summit

The annual G7 summit kicked off yesterday in Évian-les-Bains, France, with leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. attending. G7 summits are normally high-stakes meetings, but this year’s event – at least to start – has been overshadowed by the Trump administration’s decision to block other countries from accessing Anthropic’s latest AI models. 

On Friday, Anthropic (which develops Claude) announced that it would “abruptly disable” access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, its most cutting-edge models. Fable 5 is accessible to most of the public, while Mythos 5 is only available to “vetted users” due to its potential for abuse. According to Anthropic, the U.S. government provided the AI firm with “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak,” referring to a hack used to bypass model safeguards. The U.S. ordered the company to block all foreign nationals from accessing Fable 5 and Mythos 5, but the company decided to suspend access for all users (including Americans) instead.

As he headed to the G7 summit, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney remarked that the whole incident highlights the need for the world to avoid becoming overreliant on U.S.-based AI models. Outside of AI gripes, world leaders held a working dinner last night and are expected to discuss the Iran conflict later today with help from specially-invited diplomats from Egypt, the U.A.E., and Qatar. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also set to drop in to discuss prospects for ending the war in Ukraine.

Cutting Off The Kiddos

• On Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his government plans to ban all children under the age of 16 from using social media. Details on the ban haven’t been made public yet, but the policy is expected to bar under-16s from communicating with strangers and also block them from livestreaming themselves. The ban is expected to come into effect sometime in early 2027.

• “I am not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children, and that is why this ban must happen,” Starmer told the press. He acknowledged that blanket bans aren’t a perfect solution, but added, “Government is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a full ban is the right choice.”

• The U.K. government asked the public for their opinions on social media regulation in March. Since then, Britons have sent in more than 116,000 responses, with feedback coming from parents, young people, and experts. According to the government, 90% of parents supported a blanket ban for children under 16; 85% of parents also thought that the risks of social media outweigh the benefits.

A Scandinavian Scandal

• Marius Borg Høiby, the son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, was found guilty of two counts of rape yesterday. The 29-year-old will face four years in prison for those crimes (as well as an assortment of others), though judges cleared him of two other rape charges. Høiby is technically not part of the royal family, as he was a child of the Crown Princess from a relationship before her marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, Norway’s heir apparent. 

• The series of four rape charges against Høiby began when he was arrested for physically abusing his girlfriend and causing serious bodily harm to another partner in 2024. Police searched his phone in relation to those physical abuse cases, and discovered videos – taken by Høiby himself – of the Crown Princess’ son sexually assaulting four different women while they were asleep or incapacitated.

• Høiby’s mother was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, and her condition has recently worsened to the point where she’s on a waiting list for a lung transplant. She’s also been embroiled in controversy recently over her close relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She exchanged hundreds of emails with the predator between 2011 and 2014; while she claims she was manipulated by Epstein, email logs show she sent him a message reading, “Googled u after last email. Agree didn't look too good” in 2011, after he was convicted for soliciting underage sex.

Additional World News

• Russia was behind arson attacks targeting PM, BBC reveals (BBC)

• China, Myanmar pursue deeper ties as leaders hold talks in Beijing (Reuters)

• Swiss reject right-wing's bid to cap population at 10 million, early results show (NPR)

• Indian outrage over US killing of sailors mounts as leaders attend G7 summit (Guardian) 

• Helicopter with singer Oliver Tree on passenger list collides with another in Brazil, killing 6 (AP)

• Starbucks Korea to temporarily shut all stores for history lesson after bungled coffee promotion (Guardian)

A Situation In The Situation Room

• It appears that there’s a leak in the most important room in America. The Situation Room is a command center located in the White House’s West Wing, where intelligence officers monitor global events around the clock, and where the nation’s leaders gather to hold emergency meetings during times of crisis. Normally, recording devices aren’t allowed in the Situation Room, but the Trump White House is now worried that the room’s security has been breached after New York Times reporters appear to have obtained audio recordings of Situation Room meetings for their upcoming book, “Regime Change.”

• “We’re afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded,” an unnamed administration source reportedly told Axios. “And we have no idea which ones.” The Times reporters published two articles related to conversations supposedly held in the Situation Room in order to drum up publicity for their book: one touched on a meeting about Trump’s role in the Epstein files, and another detailed a conversation between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding their war with Iran. Axios has reported that Trump is “furious about the blow-by-blow accounts,” but it’s unclear whether the reporters actually have recordings of the conversations or if they’re just publishing “reconstructed” dialogue from sources’ accounts of Situation Room meetings. Their book will be published on June 23.

B52 Down

• The U.S. Air Force lost one of its 76 operational B52 bombers yesterday. The plane (specifically a B52 Stratofortress) wasn’t involved in any conflict or even located outside the U.S. – instead, it crashed just moments after taking off from Edwards Air Force Base, which is located in the Mojave Desert in Southern California.

• B52 bombers were first introduced to the Air Force inventory during the 1950s, and have been used in bombing campaigns ranging from the Vietnam war to the current Iran conflict. They’re capable of launching both conventional and nuclear missiles, are operated by crews of 5, and cost $121.8 billion in today’s dollars to procure.

• According to the Air Force, the plane went down for as-yet-undetermined reasons “shortly after takeoff on the Edwards airfield at 11:20 a.m.” The crash left a massive scorch mark on the base’s runway (which was quickly shut down), and just a few pieces of the massive plane were visible in photos taken of the incident. Eight people are presumed dead in relation to the crash.

Additional USA News

• Algae Is Turning the Reflecting Pool Green. Again. (NYT, $)

• Newsom: Trump DOJ Investigating Governor and First Partner (NPR)

• Dozens walk out as Google boss Pichai addresses Stanford graduates (BBC)

• Woman’s hypothermia death after her release by ICE is ruled a homicide (Guardian)

• Trump celebrates 80th birthday with Iran deal and UFC fights at the White House (NPR)

• Trump wants to put a $75m coal terminal in this liberal California city. Residents aren’t having it. (Guardian)

I Want To Get Off Mr. Musk’s Wild Ride

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public last Friday, debuting at a price of $135 per share. The stock rose 19.2% on the day, reaching a peak of $176 before closing the day at $160. That half-day of trading pushed SpaceX’s valuation north of $2 trillion, and made Elon Musk a trillionaire. On Monday, the company’s stock surged again, rising 19.6% to close at $192.50 – that means SpaceX is worth roughly $2.5 trillion. 

• While that’s great news for Musk’s wallet, the newly-minted trillionaire’s ego took a hit on Monday when he lost yet another lawsuit against OpenAI. This time, Musk’s suit was a follow-up to a case he lost in February, in which he claimed that OpenAI had stolen trade secrets from xAI, Musk’s AI firm (which has been rolled up into SpaceX). The February case was dismissed when Musk’s lawyers failed to show that ex-xAI engineers had used those alleged trade secrets while working at OpenAI, or that OpenAI had prompted them to disclose the information.

• Yesterday, the same judge that dismissed the February suit sent Musk packing once again, saying it was “futile” for him to keep pursuing the issue and dismissing the suit with prejudice this time. The courtroom loss follows up a more-publicized humiliation from late May, when a jury unanimously dismissed a suit from Musk accusing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of “stealing a charity.” The SpaceX CEO is planning to appeal that decision.

Additional Reads

• Lessons from the Original Tech Bubble (New Yorker, $)

• There’s a Name for the People Who Drain You (Atlantic, $)

• We’re not as helpless against dementia as we think (Vox)

• I tested AI glasses in Paris. Here’s what they got wrong (BBC)

• Why older people are happier and what we can learn from them (Psyche)

• The future of Hollywood isn’t feeding prompts into vanilla gen AI models (Verge)

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