Like Trump, Netanyahu Finds the Limits to Fear-Mongering
By leaning into nativist absolutism, Netanyahu almost doubled the Arab vote, creating a political — and foundational — crisis for Israel.By Roger Cohen
In 1995, Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared on camera brandishing the hood ornament of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Cadillac. “We got to his car,” he vowed, “and we’ll get him, too.” Soon after, in one of history’s most successful assassinations, Rabin was killed by a fanatical religious-nationalist Jew, and 27 years later the teenage hoodlum who boasted of his theft became Israel’s minister of national security.
There is perhaps no better representation of Israel’s steady march rightward over the past three decades than the ascent of Ben-Gvir to the high office he still holds. The vandal became responsible for preventing vandalism, the ethnocentric fanatic for stopping sectarian violence. This unhappy outcome, and its predictable consequences, reflects the nationalist and more messianic country that Israel has become as the idea of a two-state peace, the ultimate target of Rabin’s assassination, withered and died.
Even the Worst Job on the Internet Isn’t Safe From A.I.
There used to be an honorable way to try to profit from online infamy: selling nearly worthless memecoins. The machines could take it over. By Willy Staley
I’m not afraid to admit it, right here in the newspaper: It finally happened to me. I saw an A.I. video, and I thought — if that’s the right word — it was real. It showed a guy standing on a street corner somewhere in Europe, with an insane haircut and a houndstooth suit, shadowboxing while a French rap song played in the background. In his misplaced confidence and swagger, he called to mind a protomemetic figure from my youth, Napoleon Dynamite.
This was Jean Phil, someone who — as far as anyone can tell — doesn’t exist. Has never existed. Was conjured from a bunch of NVIDIA chips in a low-slung building outside of Kenosha.
You Don’t Need to Be a Gambler to Be on ‘Tilt’
The term captures the self-defeating loop of losing and not being able to stop. It also describes doomscrolling, politics and our society’s default state. By Mitch Therieau
What Should the Rules for A.I. Companies Actually Be? We Asked the Experts.
Five experts on how best to limit a rapidly evolving technology.
By Emily Bazelon
Oct. 26, 2026
Artificial intelligence is alarming many of its human creators by leaping the guardrails designed to contain it. In the last few months, safety researchers have resigned from OpenAI and Anthropic, warning that their former employers could be courting disaster: A.I. that escapes our control irrevocably. The companies are reportedly gaming out scenarios of a catastrophic cyberattack or other event in the next six to 12 months.
