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Crypto’s next billion-dollar hacker may move at superhuman speed

Anthropic’s new Claude Fable 5 puts powerful cyber tools behind safety filters. DeFi, already hit by more than $840 million in hacks this year, is one of the industries with the most to lose if the filters fail.

The newest AI model from Anthropic, which gives users access to stronger, faster reasoning and coding capabilities, lands in a crypto market beset by security problems and could well exacerbate them.

The company released Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday, the first public model in the Mythos class and, Anthropic says, its most powerful yet. So powerful, in fact, the company released two versions: one for widespread use and the other for more restricted distribution.

The public version sports stronger reasoning and coding ability while blocking the most dangerous uses. A less-hamstrung counterpart, Claude Mythos 5, is available only to vetted users in cybersecurity and critical infrastructure.

Experts say Mythos can find and chain zero-day vulnerabilities, or previously unknown software flaws, and help turn a bug into a working attack. Anthropic says the software tries to intercept possible attack vectors by detecting high-risk requests. Once identified, they are routed to a weaker model, Claude Opus 4.8.

The company says this specific fallback triggers in fewer than 5% of sessions. It also said in a blog post that specialized cybersecurity teams and more than 1,000 hours of external bug-bounty work found no universal way of breaking the system.

Still, Anthropic recognizes that the system is unlikely to be foolproof and says it expects determined, well-funded attackers to keep trying because the capability is valuable.

“The uplift from Mythos-level capabilities is valuable to many adversaries—for instance, those who could financially gain from cyberattacks—and we therefore expect them to be motivated to try to circumvent our safety measures,” the firm said in the post.

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ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.

amuka Artmeladze, a 43-year-old Georgian national, was found dead on June 4, 2026, in federal immigration custody. Though his name did not appear in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) online death records by the time this article was published, Artmeladze was reported as the 50th person to die in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office. One of two recent deaths at a notorious immigration prison in Louisiana, Artmeladze’s death is one of the latest signs that the president’s mass deportation campaign has predictably created a human rights crisis inside a sprawling system of immigration jails and camps.

At least 51 people have died while in ICE custody since Trump began his second term, federal records show. At least 19 deaths occurred between January 1 and June 4, 2026, an average of about one death every eight days over the first six months of this year.

Additionally, at least two disabled people died this year from exposure shortly after being released by immigration officials in freezing winter weather, including a 31-year-old Haitian woman who died after being left at a Pittsburgh bus stop for 30 hours in early March. While medical examiners determined both deaths to be homicides, ICE does not include them in its official tally, and experts say the 51 deaths reported since January 2025 could be an undercount.

For months, protesters, federal inspectors, and Democrats in Congress have sounded the alarm about the dangerous conditions of confinement faced by more than 68,000 adults and children swept up in Trump’s crackdown. While ICE claims to provide proper care for detainees, oversight data shows a clear pattern of abuse, medical neglect, and preventable deaths inside its jails and camps. Critics say the unprecedented number of deaths is the predictable result of Trump administration policy, including fighting in court to incarcerate immigrants for as long as possible while aggressively expanding privately run jails and prison camps.

“Using the windfall in funding from Congressional Republicans, they are inflicting as much pain as possible no matter the cost,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant rights group America’s Voice, in a statement on June 22.

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The KIDS Act: A Bipartisan Mass Surveillance Megabill

Just weeks after Americans criticized the United Kingdom for imposing intrusive and heavy-handed social media rules, Congress is now advancing legislation that raises strikingly similar concerns about government overreach, privacy erosion, and the expansion of online surveillance.

A bipartisan agreement on children’s online safety legislation unveiled by House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders would impose new obligations on social media platforms, while creating powerful incentives for companies to end online anonymity.

The proposal is part of the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act), an omnibus package that bundles together multiple bills, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the SCREEN Act, the SAFE BOTs Act, COPPA 2.0, the SPY Kids Act, and more, as well as data broker provisions and research and education initiatives.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone announced Monday that they had reached agreement on the legislation, which would require social media companies to provide additional safeguards and parental tools for minors. The lawmakers said it would “hold Big Tech accountable.”

“We worked across the aisle for many months and have now found common ground on policies to significantly improve the digital environment for kids,” Guthrie and Pallone said in a joint statement.

As always, under that framing lies a familiar and deeply controversial approach: imposing broad obligations on platforms that hinge on whether companies know a user is a minor, without clearly defining how that knowledge is supposed to be obtained.

Congress has tried for years to set national rules for social media and youth safety. Those efforts have repeatedly stalled, in part because of unresolved tensions between child protection goals and fundamental privacy rights. In the absence of federal action, states have moved ahead with their own laws, often pushing even more aggressive requirements.

One of the main disputes appears to have been resolved in favor of House Republicans. According to a committee spokesperson, the agreement does not include a “duty of care” provision, a requirement backed by many child-safety advocates and several Senate lawmakers.

The bill text states that nothing in it may be construed to “impose a duty of care on a provider of a covered platform.”

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FDA Altered Autopsy Results of Children Who Died After COVID Vaccines

Scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised the autopsy results of children who died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, reducing the number of children the agency classified as having likely died as a result of their vaccination, according to documents released last week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The documents show that in November 2025, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) identified 10 child deaths related to the COVID-19 shots. But in December 2025, it reduced the number to seven and downgraded the probability that those deaths were connected to the children’s vaccination.

The Daily Caller, which first reported, quoted two former FDA officials and a forensic pathologist who performed two of the children’s autopsies. One of the FDA officials told the outlet the emails reveal “a coverup” by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Johnson included the documents in a letter sent last week to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas.

Even the reduced number of deaths was enough to trigger concern among some FDA scientists about the safety of the COVID-19 shots, Johnson’s letter stated.

“Although what drove the decision to change these three cases remains to be seen, what is clear is that these officials appear to have determined that the seven cases warranted warning about the risks,” Johnson wrote. These risks “should have raised serious concerns at HHS and CDC about the mRNA COVID-19 Injections.”

Even after the downgrade, the FDA’s Division of Pharmacovigilance recommended revising the label of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to include a warning about the risk of “myocarditis with fatal outcomes.”

The change was never made, for reasons that are not clear.

Myocarditis is widely associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and, with reports of deaths connected to the vaccines, particularly among teenage and young adult males.

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When Military Fellows Replace Hill Staff

The pattern is obvious. In an overworked House office, whoever has time and capacity to produce a clean draft often decides what gets written. On defense portfolios, that is increasingly a uniformed fellow on detail from the Department of Defense. In practice, executive-branch detailees do not supplement staff capacity; they replace it on key tasks, shaping agendas, drafting text, and gatekeeping information that will later govern their own departments.

About ninety military fellows cycle through the Hill each year, with roughly two dozen each from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and a dozen more from the Marine Corps. Their credentials are strong and intentions usually public-spirited. The problem is institutional. A congressional staffer owes undivided loyalty to Article I. An officer owes loyalty to a chain of command that runs to Article II. When workloads are crushing, that conflict is resolved by inertia rather than deliberation. The fellow who can deliver tonight becomes the author of governing text tomorrow. It is a story of structural capture by convenience.

Over 60 years ago, in his farewell speech, President Eisenhower warned us that “[i]n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning rings truer than ever in 2026.

The consequences show up at every stage of the legislative cycle. On agenda setting, the person who can assemble a background memo first defines what “the options” are and which studies count as credible. On drafting, the earliest pass at bill or report language anchors debate. Overworked offices edit at the margins rather than reopen baseline assumptions. On oversight, the same fellow who helps frame hearing questions may later return to the department whose programs those questions were meant to scrutinize. Even the most ethical detailee will struggle to elevate uncomfortable data from inside the building where they will soon work again. In practice, the executive’s representative becomes the de facto author of legislative text that will govern the executive.

Defenders of the model claim Congress cannot meet deadlines without fellows. That is an indictment of congressional resourcing, not a defense of blurred powers. Speed at the price of independence is not a neutral trade. Second, they say members direct fellows’ work, so the institution remains in control. Direction is not authorship. When staff are underwater, authorship migrates to the person with time, not the person with authority.

There is also a practical equity problem. In many House offices the fellow becomes the defense staffer by default. That is replacement, not augmentation. Civilian staff lose chances to develop subject matter expertise, and offices become dependent on a pipeline they do not control. When the fellow rotates out, the capacity gap reopens. The department’s institutional memory remains intact. The House’s does not.

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So, How’s Spain’s Mass Amnesty Working Out?

Half a million.

That’s the number that made headlines in April when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government approved plans to grant legal status to 500,000 illegal migrants.

But a leaked police report warned that the true number could be much higher, estimating that between 750,000 and 1 million illegal migrants living in Spain could apply for amnesty, in addition to 250,000 to 350,000 asylum seekers. The report described the amnesty plan’s “very intense media impact, especially in Latin America” and warned of a “highly relevant pull factor,” which we will return to in a moment.

The conservative Popular Party (PP) also disputed the government’s estimates, saying the true number could be double and calling the plan an “outrage.” Sánchez, whom The Economist has called the leader of Europe’s anti-Trump resistance, anticipating such criticism, wrote in a New York Times op-ed in January that “MAGA-style leaders may say that our country can’t handle taking in so many migrants — that this is a suicidal move, the desperate act of a collapsing country.”

Well, the numbers are starting to come in and, just as Joe Biden’s weak border enforcement in the U.S. created a “pull factor” that led to average monthly border crossings of over 100,000, Sánchez’s policies are having a similar magnet effect, far exceeding his government’s estimates. 

Even though the asylum application window remains open until June 30, 900,000 applications have already been submitted, a record number for Spain. The European Conservative reports that “approximately 350,000 additional applications have been submitted since the start of June, a surge that has caught authorities off guard.” The publication notes that these numbers are much higher than the last time mass amnesty was tried in Spain, in 2005 under the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who these days spends his time in court as the subject of a graft probe. Zapatero’s program granted 576,000 residence permits from 691,000 applications received.

Sánchez, of course, looks at every new immigrant as a potential future voter who won’t care about the mind-boggling corruption within his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). As increasing numbers of Spaniards take to the streets to demand the prime minister’s resignation, Muslim migrants are among his most loyal supporters. In the video below, we meet a Muslim store owner a minute in, with a poster of Sánchez on his shop wall, who says Muslims are “100%” going to vote for  the prime minister if they become citizens. Why? Because he “stands with Iran and Palestine.” Indeed he does.

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Local News Anchor Exits Industry After Calling Out ‘Sanitized’ Journalism

An Iowa television anchor who announced Friday that he is leaving the news industry used his final broadcast to criticize what he described as sanitized journalism.

Dustin Nolan, who has spent years waking up early with viewers as the morning anchor for Davenport’s KWQC-TV, announced he is leaving the news industry for good, and he used his parting moments to take a serious swing at the state of modern journalism. In a passionate goodbye, where he became emotional at times, Nolan thanked the community for letting him into their living rooms every morning.

“I have chosen to step away from the news industry,” Nolan said. “Before I say goodbye, I just want to say, I hope every one of you that’s allowed me to be a part of your mornings knows just how important that I have taken this job [and] how much it means to me that you’ve trusted me these past few years to bring you the news in the morning. I promise you, I’ve given you everything I have. I’ve never tried to be perfect, or what many think a newsman should be, supposed to be, but I have always done my best to be transparent, bringing you the facts, and I’ve always been myself.”

Nolan said local news organizations should do more than follow trends or deliver “sanitized news.”

“I’ve always believed that we, as a local news station, owe you, the viewers, the best that we can do, because without you, none of us would be able to do this job,” the departing anchor continued. “I also believe that we, as a local news station, have to be more than trends or sanitized news, because it makes people feel uncomfortable. That’s why the facts matter, and that’s why we do what we do here. We have to take people out of their bubbles and comfort zones and make them think about the world we all live in.”

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Half Of Crimea Goes Dark After Ukrainian Strike Hits Thermal Power Plant

Yet more drone attacks sent by Ukraine’s military has crippled much of the infrastructure of the Crimean peninsula. Reuters is confirming significant power outages, while some regional reports say as much as half of all Crimea is without power Tuesday.

One of the regional publications specified that “Yevpatoria, Saki, Krasnoperekopsk, Dzhankoy, and surrounding areas were left without electricity, reports the Ukrainian service of Radio Svoboda.”

“Preliminary, electricity supply is planned to be restored within 24 hours” – after several facilities in Crimea suffered direct hits by inbound drones. Fires have been witnessed at at railway and military facilities. Importantly, a large fire is being reported at a thermal power plant in Kerch, which left the greatest impact in terms of the widespread regional blackout:

Telegram channel “Crimean Wind” has written, “The CHP plant fire in Kerch is confirmed; the fire spread to a reservoir. The monitoring group, relying on satellite imagery, records a smoke plume about 47 kilometers long.”

According to more: “A strike on an oil depot, a TPP-Terminal, port infrastructure, and facilities in the area of Henichesk and the Arabat Spit is also reported.”

It was only two days ago, on June 21, that an oil depot in the Crimean city of Kerch was attacked, it is reportedly still burning, with reports of fires at the sprawling terminal complex’s Kavkaz port.

Life for millions in Crimea is already seriously strained, after those prior Sunday attacks resulted in the most severe fuel restrictions imposed on the population since the war began over four years ago.

Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov had previously confirmed the fuel crisis for the whole region, saying, “Today, June 21, starting from 09:00 am, fuel sales at Crimean petrol stations have been suspended” – though he added that fuel would only be sold to state enterprises.

He made clear in a Telegram post that starting Sunday morning local time gas stations across the peninsula would stop selling fuel to individuals and businesses. All cash, card and fuel coupons were immediately halted.

Relentless, nightly drone attacks making life harder on common Russians – in tandem to the Ukrainian population also having suffered immensely under Russia’s bombs and drones…

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China’s “Ethnic Unity” Law: A Framework for Forced Assimilation

China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress was submitted to the National People’s Congress on September 8, 2025, passed by a vote of 2,756 to 3 with three abstentions, signed by Xi Jinping on March 12, 2026, and takes effect July 1, 2026. The 62-article law codifies Xi’s sinicization policies and extends their reach into every sector of Chinese society, and beyond China’s borders.

The law also applies to foreign nationals living in or visiting China, who could now be punished or possibly jailed for advocating freedom for Tibet or independence for Taiwan. The law’s preamble frames China as a civilization with more than 5,000 years of history that has forged “a unified multi-ethnic nation” under the CCP. This is despite the fact that China has 56 recognized ethnic groups and five ethnic autonomous regions: Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, and Ningxia. Several of these regions have movements seeking independence or greater autonomy.

China also includes Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region whose residents have mounted sustained resistance to Beijing’s encroachment on political freedoms. Taiwan, meanwhile, already functions as an independent democratic country despite lacking official international recognition.

Its Chapter II mandates fostering identification with the “great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics” through patriotic education, official historical narratives, and promotion of Chinese cultural symbols. Article 14 directs authorities to “establish and highlight … Chinese cultural symbols” in public facilities, architecture, and tourist sites, including in the naming of places.

The law imposes ideological obligations on a sweeping range of actors, including public employees, mass organizations, enterprises, public-service institutions, industry groups, religious institutions, neighborhood committees, and the military. Under Article 20(2), parents and guardians are required to “educate and guide minors to love the Chinese Communist Party” and are forbidden from teaching minors “concepts detrimental to ethnic unity and progress.”

The provision reinforces existing law. The CCP’s 1982 Document 19 banned religious education among minors, a prohibition the U.S. State Department confirms remains in force: children younger than 18 are prohibited from participating in religious activities and receiving religious education, even in schools run by religious organizations, and the law mandates the teaching of atheism in schools.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) has documented enforcement of these prohibitions against minority communities specifically, with Uyghur and Tibetan children, among whom religion and ethnic identity are inseparable, subject to the strictest application.

Language policy is a central mechanism that builds on previous restrictive legislation. In December 2025, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee revised the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, originally adopted in 2000. The revision removed a provision that had allowed minority languages to be used as the medium of instruction in schools, declaring such education “no longer necessary.” The changes took effect on January 1, 2026.

A years-long trend of replacing Mongolian-, Tibetan-, and Uyghur-medium instruction with Mandarin was thereby codified into law. Students in those communities are now permitted to study their mother tongue only as a standalone class, while all other subjects are taught in Chinese.

The March 2026 ethnic unity law reinforced and expanded that framework. It codifies the predominance of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in public life, sets a goal of preschool-level Mandarin proficiency, and requires Chinese characters to be displayed more prominently than minority scripts wherever both appear.

The CECC found that the law promotes Mandarin-language instruction for ethnic minority children beginning in preschool. It also embeds ideological education prescribing a single “correct” understanding of history, ethnicity, culture, and religion as defined by the CCP.

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Chevron Lands 20-Year Deal To Power Microsoft’s AI Expansion

Microsoft has signed a 20-year agreement with Chevron to power a massive new AI-focused data center campus in West Texas, underscoring the growing race among tech companies to secure reliable energy supplies, according to Bloomberg.

The project, known as Project Kilby, is expected to begin generating power in 2028 and eventually reach 2.67 gigawatts—enough electricity for more than 530,000 Texas homes.

Chevron is developing the project with Engine No. 1 and expects to make a final investment decision later this year. Despite the enormity of the deal and the inroads into powering AI directly, Chevron stock was little changed after the cash open.

Bloomberg writes that the site near Pecos, Texas, will use natural gas from the Permian Basin to fuel GE Vernova turbines and generate electricity directly for Microsoft’s planned data center campus. Because the facility will produce its own power, it will not draw from the grid.

“Consumers are concerned about and are already feeling the effect of power-demand growth,” said Jeff Gustavson, Chevron’s president of New Energies. “We specifically designed this, in this part of the country, to avoid any of that.”

The agreement comes as Microsoft accelerates its AI infrastructure buildout to compete with Alphabet and Amazon. The company has said it plans to double its data center footprint over the next two years, driving demand for large-scale, dependable power sources.

Chevron argues the project also creates a productive use for abundant Permian natural gas that is often wasted because pipeline capacity is limited. “This is the most abundant gas basin in the country, maybe the world,” Gustavson said.

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