NEW | Foreign Policy magazine argued that the US-Israeli war on Iran was a clear strategic mistake and called on President Donald Trump to acknowledge the failure rather than continue avoiding responsibility. The publication said Washington is still refusing to confront the reality of the war’s consequences, despite months of fighting, mounting regional instability, and growing pressure to reach a negotiated agreement with Tehran.
Given their increasing hold on the levers of political power, in other words, it’s likely that the world’s richest would get advance news of a civilization-threatening event.Kyle McDonald, a programmer and artist from Los Angeles, has developed a new jet tracker with exactly that dynamic in mind. Called the Apocalypse Early Warning System, the vibecoded website is meant to warn of impending doom based on how many private jets are in the air at any one time.
The mechanics are complicated, but the concept itself is rather simple: is the number of private jets in the air unusual for a given time? If so, it could indicate that the ultra rich have advanced knowledge of a world-ending emergency, and are scrambling for their privatecompounds while they still can.
Basically, the AEWS is designed to map private aircraft signals from around the world, which it then compares against typical numbers. Based on the difference, it assigns a score between 1 and 5, with 1 being completely normal, and 5 signalling that the level of private jet activity is higher than it’s been over the previous year.
McDonald caveats that the score is not a guarantee of apocalypse, but “should be read alongside other public signals.” A level 5 can be triggered by holidays or major political events, for example, so it’s important to view the data in context.
Still, McDonald told Business Insider, the tool has already mapped some surprising trends. For example, the AEWS’ highest spike so far came on April 6, the day when Iran launched a massive offensive barrage on US and Israeli targets in retaliation for earlier attacks.
“That freaked me out,” McDonald wrote. “I remember thinking, ‘oh my God, it’s real.’”
The programmer-activist has also worked on a few other public-information tools that have helped reveal useful facts hidden under piles of noisy data. One app he worked on with friends, meant to track the Los Angeles Police Department’s infamously aggressive helicopters, helped uncover the fact that the agency was frequently disabling or manipulating their transponder signals to avoid detection by the public.
How useful the information will actually be if disaster strikes is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, it’ll be fascinating to see whether the programmer identifies more trends in the flight data as regional wars and climate disasters continue roiling the globe.
You probably don’t think twice when your kid disappears into their room for a few hours on Minecraft or Roblox. That’s exactly what makes this conversation worth having, writes Chase Reid, co-founder and CEO of Aslan, an intelligence platform for law enforcement, defense and intelligence professionals.
Threat level: Generative AI, deepfakes and autonomous chatbots are helping bad actors target susceptible kids more easily.
Reality check: You probably won’t find obvious warning signs on your kid’s phone.
What you might notice instead: withdrawal from longtime friends, a fixation on one online community to the exclusion of everything else, new language or memes that feel unusually dark, or sudden secrecy around their devices.
Here’s what parents can do:
1. Talk about manipulation, not ideology.
The instinct is to frame this as a political problem: Don’t believe extreme ideas. But that’s not quite the right conversation.
Dangerous networks operate more like grooming operations than political movements. They find kids who are lonely, angry or searching for belonging, and they offer community. The ideology comes later.
2. Build your kid’s sense of connection.
Teenagers are now the loneliest age group on earth, with 1 in 5 adolescents reporting chronic loneliness, according to a 2025 World Health Organization report.
The most vulnerable kids are the ones who feel isolated and purposeless. Your job is to make sure that void isn’t there — through dinner conversations, car rides and showing up for small moments (that are big to them).
3. Know what you can’t see.
Most recruitment happens invisibly by design — closed servers, encrypted messaging apps and coded memes.
Parents, platforms and law enforcement are often all looking at the same blank wall. Your relationship with your kid is the most important safeguard there is.
The bottom line: One open conversation won’t fix everything. But it’s the right place to start.
Resources worth bookmarking: Common Sense Media: platform-by-platform guides for parents. NCMEC: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a reporting tool for online exploitation. FBI Safe Online Surfing: internet safety curriculum for kids and families.
The Rundown: We sat down with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis for an exclusive interview discussing when he expects AGI, AI’s role in drug discovery, which diseases are likely to get cured first, and what he thinks is still going unnoticed.
The details:
Hassabis said AGI is on track for 2030, plus or minus a year, but a few things remain unsolved: world physics, memory, consistency, and continual learning.
Timelines have hardened on drug discovery, too, with focus on oncology and immunology first and eventually an engine that could help cure any disease.
After AGI, Hassabis said he’d turn to understanding the nature of reality using AI and study more philosophical topics, like what it means to be human.
He said he can’t wait to see what students will build with advanced AI, adding that taste, original thinking, and emotional connection will be more valuable.
Why it matters: This interview with Hassabis paints a picture that AGI is going to be here soon, provided we fix the gaps. It will be an interesting age with kids growing up with advanced AI in their hands, and we can surely expect some big discoveries. The question is: will the adults be able to adapt to this new reality as quickly?
Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration is bracing for the potential collapse of Cuba’s totalitarian government as early as this summer, and has war-gamed military response plans in case the island descends into chaos, U.S. officials tell Axios’ Marc Caputo.
Why it matters: President Trump hasn’t authorized an invasion and prefers a peaceful transition to a free Cuba. So the administration will keep pushing economic sanctions to try to strangle the regime in Havana in a slow-motion constriction.
“The best way to describe it is ‘accelerationism,'” a senior administration official said, referring to hastening societal collapse. “But we don’t want to kill off the regime just yet. There’s a method to this. It’s in stages.”
Zoom in: This methodical squeezing of Cuba’s communist regime aims to buy time for Trump, engrossed in peace talks with Iran, to eventually focus on Cuba.
“Iran’s not finished, and the president is not in a rush,” another senior administration official said. “Trump wants to exhaust all the levers that he can. But at this point, there aren’t as many levers as before.”
A third senior administration official said: “We have a pretty deep toolbox, especially when it comes to sanctions and enforcing them. More is on the way.
“The big picture: The Cuba operation aims to eliminate the wellspring of Latin American Marxist agitation and anti-U.S. activism, ever since Fidel and Raúl Castro led their successful revolution in 1959.
To bring Cuba to its knees this year, the administration first targeted the island’s lifeline: Venezuela and its socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro, who kept Havana afloat with oil shipments that powered the country and gave it export revenue.
Inside the room: Last month, U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean, held a multiagency “tabletop” exercise to prepare for military action in Cuba, one of the senior administration officials said.
“Everything is on the table, but no invasion is planned or imminent,” the official said. “When POTUS says go, we’re ready for anything.
“In the exercise, another source said, U.S. officials discussed Cuba’s possession of drones and how to respond to possible unrest in the sweltering Cuban heat as spring turns to summer.
“It’s going to be hot,” the source said. “People won’t have electricity. Food spoils without refrigeration. People get angry. They can take to the streets. And then what happens? I can’t see the president doing nothing if there’s repression.”
Another source, a Trump adviser, disagreed: “The president does not want boots on the ground for more than 48 hours. It’s a quagmire in the making. This could get messy.
“One presidential adviser said the approach to Cuba is “classic Trump: Push your enemy off balance. It’s pressure, watch the response, apply more pressure, watch the response, apply more pressure.
“One of the officials said: “We have time. The regime doesn’t.”Go deeper: 3 crucial differences between Cuba and Venezuela.
Donald Trump has sparked international controversy after reportedly threatening to “blow up” Oman if the Gulf nation sides with Iran during stalled negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran’s nuclear programme. During remarks linked to ongoing US-Iran tensions, Trump pic.twitter.com/Oys8eb08jS
NATO is staging military drills near Russia’s border amid fear in the Baltics over drone incursions and Donald Trump’s threats to scale back US resources committed to the Alliance.
The Milburn review published today is warning of a ‘lost generation’ of young people not in work or education. But crucially it identifies that this is a systemic problem, not an issue of individual responsibility. George Bangham responds.
Nvidia founder and CEO, Jensen Huang.Patrick T. Fallon—AFP via Getty Images
NvidiaCEO Jensen Huang may have studied engineering, but he says it won’t matter what your child studies in the future.
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Huang said even in a world dominated by AI journalism, the arts, and design are still going to matter. Therefore, parents shouldn’t worry about pushing their kids into AI-focused careers.
“I think that it won’t matter. All the things that used to matter are still things that are going to matter in the future,” he told Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia Monday.
He noted that even with advanced AI, storytelling will be just as important, and young people should instead focus on how technology can enhance their area of study.
“The only one thing that you have to do is to make sure that you ask yourself: ‘How can AI help elevate my learning, my craft, you know, my purpose,’” he told the broadcaster.
Why is China eliminating arts degrees?
Huang’s advice comes as China has taken the opposite stance, eliminating degrees that authorities claim are no longer justified in the AI era.One of the most prestigious schools in China for media and the arts, the Communication University of China in Beijing, last year cut five undergraduate degrees as it recalibrates its offerings for a new era.
Several arts degrees were cut including photography, comics, visual communication design, new media art, and fashion design. They will no longer be offered as standalone programs, but will be integrated into broader, technology-infused disciplines, according to Sixth Tone, a China state media outlet.
The university’s top official, Liao Xiangzhong, said these changes were made because advances in technology have made it so that offering these degrees as standalone programs no longer makes sense. For example, photography can’t be offered as a standalone degree because “today everyone can be a self-media creator and recorder,” Liao said. Instead, its curriculum was rolled into the “film and television photography and production” degree.
Translation, another degree that was cut at the university, “has already been largely replaced by AI,” he added.
“Setting up a four-year major for translation in a specific language is a huge waste of national resources,” Liao said, according to the outlet.
At the same time, the university added three degrees, “intelligent imaging art,” “intelligent audiovisual engineering,” and “intelligent engineering and creative design.”
Apart from the Communication University of China, other universities across China are cutting degrees in the arts as the government aims to cut down on oversaturated fields and graduate more students with high-tech skills.
Other colleges like Jilin University in northeastern China as well as East China Normal University and Nanchang University in the east have cut arts majors like drama, film literature, broadcasting, and animation.
What did Jensen Huang study?
Before Huang turned a company focused primarily on gaming graphics cards into one of the most valuable companies in the world and the $5.2 trillion go-to AI chip provider for Google, Amazon, and Meta, he studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate at Oregon State University. Soon after, he pursued a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford. He graduated from college two years early, at age 20, after he skipped multiple grades and also graduated early from high school. A year after finishing his master’s degree in 1992, he started Nvidia.
Huang has previously said if he were to repeat his studies, he probably would’ve pursued “more of the physical sciences than the software sciences.”
Other top tech leaders also share Huang’s view of the future of education. Jack Clark, a billionaire cofounder of Anthropic who majored in English literature and creative writing said during a conference last month his education on “history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,” was essential to his work on AI at Anthropic.
Another Anthropic cofounder, Daniela Amodei, who studied literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in an interview with ABC News earlier this year, while AI models have incredible STEM knowledge, young people should focus on areas where the technology still needs improvement such as communication skills and critical thinking.
“I actually think studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever,” she said.
In 2001, Fortune first convened the smartest people we know, bringing together CEOs and founders, builders and investors, thinkers and doers. Since then, Fortune Brainstorm Tech has been the place where bold ideas collide. From June 8–10, we will return to Aspen—where it all began—to mark 25 years of Brainstorm. Register now.
Threat level: Generative AI, deepfakes and autonomous chatbots are helping bad actors target susceptible kids more easily.
Know what you can’t see.
Zoom in: This methodical squeezing of Cuba’s communist regime aims to buy time for Trump, engrossed in peace talks with Iran, to eventually focus on Cuba.
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