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Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Good morning — Anthropic has unveiled a model so capable at finding security vulnerabilities that it has elected, on reflection, not to share it with the general public; the U.S.-Iran ceasefire has expired, been extended, and remains juridically disputed, all before lunch; the Labor Secretary has resigned under circumstances that resist polite summary; and Drake has embedded his album release date in a Toronto ice sculpture. Here's what happened.

AI News

Anthropic Builds a Model So Capable at Hacking That It Immediately Gave It Only to People Who Stop Hackers

Anthropic has unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, a new AI model so alarmingly proficient at computer security tasks that the company's immediate response was to decide, on reflection, not to release it to the general public. In recent weeks, the model identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser — including a 17-year-old remote code execution flaw in FreeBSD that it exploited autonomously, in the manner of a houseguest who fixes your plumbing and then points out that the roof is also unsound. To manage the situation, Anthropic assembled Project Glasswing, a coalition of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and JPMorganChase, who will receive early access to patch their own systems before anyone less scrupulous obtains something of similar capability. One notes, with quiet admiration, that the company has managed to announce a terrifying capability and a responsible deployment plan in the same breath, and hopes the combination continues to hold.

Source: TechCrunch

Amazon Adds $25 Billion to Its Anthropic Position, Two Months After Pledging $50 Billion to Anthropic's Rival

Amazon has agreed to invest an additional $25 billion in Anthropic, bringing its total commitment to the AI safety company to approximately $33 billion — a sum that, set against the $50 billion it pledged to Anthropic's rival OpenAI in February, suggests Amazon has approached the AI landscape with the strategy of a man who has decided to bet on every horse and is concerned only that he has not bet enough. The deal values Anthropic at $380 billion and includes $5 billion immediately, with up to $20 billion more tied to "certain commercial milestones," while Anthropic in return commits to spending over $100 billion across the next decade on Amazon's cloud infrastructure and custom Trainium silicon — an arrangement in which everyone writes very large numbers on paper and hopes they eventually correspond to something tangible. Amazon shares rose on the news, which is either the market's endorsement of the strategy or its appreciation for the sheer scale of the ambition. When the two largest AI bets in history belong to the same company, one suspects the word "diversification" is being used rather liberally.

Source: CNBC

Geopolitics

The U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Has Expired, Been Extended, and Remains Disputed, All Before Lunch

The two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran expired at midnight Tuesday in a condition best described as diplomatically ambiguous: President Trump announced an extension on Truth Social contingent on Tehran submitting a peace proposal, while Tehran announced it would not negotiate "under the shadow of threats" while a U.S. naval blockade of its ports remained in place — a blockade Iran's Foreign Minister has classified as "an act of war," leaving all parties technically uncertain whether the ceasefire is currently operative. Vice President Vance's planned trip to join the negotiations was quietly suspended after Iran declined to confirm it would even send a delegation, which is the diplomatic equivalent of RSVPing "maybe" to an event that may also be a trap. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply transits daily, remains in the condition officials are carefully calling "a fluid situation," with crude swinging nearly seven percent in a single session to express what language apparently cannot. One concludes that the parties have not found a formula for peace, but have identified, with impressive precision, every reason the current arrangement cannot hold.

Source: CNN

Lebanon Assures France It Has a Handle on Hezbollah, Though "Handle" May Be Too Strong a Word

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam held a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, confirming that his government does not seek a confrontation with Hezbollah and will not be intimidated by it — a position of studied equilibrium that manages to promise exactly as much as it delivers. Hezbollah's political bloc responded with what it described as a "cautious commitment" to the fragile new ceasefire with Israel, while simultaneously condemning the Lebanese government for "submission to the enemy's will," a critique that Salam and Macron received with the expressions of men who had been briefed on this dynamic and expected it. France's involvement in Lebanese affairs stretches back the better part of a century, during which it has provided guidance, emergency assistance, investment, and at intervals the concerned presence of its president — with results that resist easy summary. "Cautious commitment," one reflects, is the condition in which Lebanon and Hezbollah most reliably find themselves: needing each other, trusting nothing, and awaiting events.

Source: Al Jazeera

Politics

Labor Secretary Exits After Investigation Finds, Among Other Things, That Her Husband Was Barred From Department Headquarters

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has resigned from the Trump Cabinet amid an Inspector General investigation that covered, with impressive comprehensiveness, an alleged relationship with a member of her security detail, the misuse of official travel for personal excursions, the creation of what staff described as a hostile work environment, and the additional complication that her husband had been formally barred from department headquarters after at least two staffers reported he had touched them inappropriately — a collection of findings that suggests the investigation cast quite a wide net. The White House announced she would be "leaving to pursue an opportunity in the private sector," which is the institutional equivalent of a perfectly maintained straight face. Keith Sonderling has been named acting secretary, inheriting a department that has lately been applying its own workplace standards with considerable vigor. Chavez-DeRemer is the third Cabinet member to depart this term, confirming that "cabinet stability" remains, for this administration, an aspirational rather than descriptive phrase.

Source: The Washington Post

Four Former Presidents Gather to Express Hope for America, Which Is Either Touching or Clarifying

Former Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden appeared together at a Philadelphia event on Tuesday to deliver messages of optimism ahead of America's 250th anniversary — a circumstance that marks, for three of the four, their first appearance on a History Channel production, and for the fourth, a Tuesday. Obama urged Americans to "remember what's best in us" and noted that hope is not blind optimism; Bush counseled being a citizen rather than a spectator; Biden invoked his journey from Scranton to the Oval Office; and Clinton asked whether the country was prepared to honor, on its anniversary, the proposition that all are created equal. That four former occupants of the same office felt moved to stage a joint expression of optimism about a country's continued existence is, depending on one's disposition, either touching or usefully informative about the current state of things. The anniversary is in July; one trusts the situation will have simplified itself by then, though the historical record on this point is mixed.

Source: TODAY

The Economy

Wall Street Declined Tuesday, Having Priced In Peace and Then Noticed There Wasn't Any

U.S. equities fell on Tuesday as investors confronted mounting evidence that the Iran ceasefire, which markets had been pricing with some optimism, was not proceeding as optimistically as hoped — the S&P 500 closing down 0.63% at 7,064, the Nasdaq shedding 0.59%, and the Dow losing 293 points in a synchronized expression of collective recalibration. Crude oil declined to choose a direction at all, swinging in a range of nearly seven percentage points as traders weighed the probability of resumed hostilities against the probability that Vance would make it to the negotiations — a trip that was, in the event, not taken. South Korea's Kospi, presumably operating under a different assessment of global risk, rose 2.72% to a record high of 6,388, a divergence one could attribute to geographic distance, or to a more philosophical relationship with uncertainty. Markets, as is their custom, expressed the full complexity of geopolitical peril as a fraction of a percent, which is the only vocabulary available to them.

Source: EconCurrents

Trump's Fed Pick Vows Not to Be His "Sock Puppet," Which Is the Kind of Promise One Doesn't Usually Have to Make

Kevin Warsh, President Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday and assured senators, with notable frequency, that he would not bend monetary policy to presidential preference — noting that he had made no rate promises to Trump and that the president had not asked for any, both of which the committee received with the expressions of people who feel this particular reassurance has been attempted before. Warsh also proposed what he called "regime change" at the Fed, including a potential reduction in annual policy meetings and a new inflation framework, a vision of institutional renovation that Senate Democrats received with visible enthusiasm for the questioning and visible skepticism for everything else. The confirmation faces a specific obstacle in Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has declared himself a firm "no" until the Justice Department drops its investigation of sitting Fed Chair Jerome Powell — a condition the administration shows no inclination to meet. "Sock puppet" has now entered the formal vocabulary of Federal Reserve oversight, which is, depending on one's perspective, either a sign of the times or a remarkable personal legacy.

Source: CNN Business

Culture

The Michael Jackson Biopic Premieres in Los Angeles, Where His Nephew Received a Standing Ovation for Playing His Uncle

The Michael Jackson biopic Michael had its Los Angeles premiere Monday night at the Dolby Theatre, drawing a crowd that included Magic Johnson, Usher, Martin Lawrence, Raven-Symoné, and Miles Teller — all of whom are well-positioned to evaluate the representation of a pop star whose cultural footprint has not diminished in the eleven years since his death. Jaafar Jackson, the late star's nephew and the film's lead — working from what can only be described as a formidable genetic starting point — closed the evening with an emotional tribute to his uncle and received a standing ovation from an audience that had just spent several hours watching him embody him, which must be a singular emotional experience at any family gathering. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and opening wide on April 24, the film has drawn warm first reactions, with critics noting Jaafar's uncanny resemblance to his subject and, in several cases, stopping there. A biopic about Michael Jackson is, by its nature, a complicated proposition; the industry has resolved this complication by making one anyway, and the subsequent discourse will presumably address everything the reviews do not.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Drake Announces Album Release Date via Ice Sculpture in Toronto Hotel Parking Lot, as One Does

Drake has revealed that his long-awaited album Iceman will be released on May 15, via the mechanism of a large ice pyramid installed in the parking lot of the Bond Hotel in downtown Toronto, at the base of which a piece of paper bearing the date was frozen — a revelation extracted by a Twitch streamer named Kishka, who cracked the installation open before a live online audience, which is one method of announcing a release date and is, by almost any measure, more memorable than a press release. The album has been anticipated, teased, and declared forthcoming for the better part of two years, and will arrive three days after Drake's thirty-ninth birthday, a coincidence his team has almost certainly not overlooked. Industry observers have described the rollout as "unconventional," which is the word the music business uses when it can describe what happened but cannot explain why. The parking lot of the Bond Hotel will presumably need to be resurfaced; the album, at least, now has a date.

Source: The Source

Tech

Tim Cook to Step Down as Apple CEO, Handing the Keys to the Man Who Built the Hardware Cook Spent 15 Years Selling

Apple announced Monday that Tim Cook, who has served as chief executive for fifteen years and overseen an increase in the company's market capitalization that would embarrass a small country, will step down effective September 1 and become executive chairman, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus assuming the top role — a succession Apple described as the product of "thoughtful, long-term planning," which is the corporate way of saying a great deal of thought went into the wording. Ternus, who has spent twenty-five years at Apple and was instrumental in the development of the iPhone, AirPods, and the M-series chips, is by every internal metric the known and trusted choice, which is precisely why Wall Street — requiring something to respond to — sent Apple shares lower anyway. Cook will remain engaged as executive chairman, focusing in particular on engaging with "policymakers around the world," a role that, given the regulatory scrutiny Apple has faced across four continents, one imagines will keep him reasonably occupied. The transition is, by Apple's standards, orderly; it is the next product lineup under Ternus that will determine whether the word continues to apply.

Source: CNBC

Framework Launches Its Next-Gen Modular Laptops With Linux Front and Center, Making It the First Mainstream PC Maker to Do So

Framework Computer held its "Next Gen" launch event Tuesday, unveiling a new generation of its modular, user-repairable laptops with a notable departure from industry convention: Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, CachyOS, and Bazzite are receiving first-class support from day one, making Framework the first mainstream PC manufacturer to position Linux ahead of Windows in a product launch — a distinction that the Linux community received with the enthusiasm one reserves for validation that has been a long time coming. The machines are expected to carry AMD's Ryzen AI 400 series mainboards, with meaningfully improved NPU performance for local AI inference, arriving at the precise moment the industry is debating whether such inference belongs in the cloud or on the device. The modular design, which allows users to replace keyboards, ports, and mainboards rather than buying entirely new machines, has built Framework a devoted following among those who consider planned obsolescence a character flaw. That a company built on the principle of user repairability would also champion user-configurable operating systems is, on reflection, perfectly consistent; the only surprise is that no one did it first.

Source: Framework

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The AI that hacks everything, and other Tuesday complications