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Wednesday, October 28, 2026

The Securities and Exchange Commissions publication on Monday of Anthropic's S-1 form -- ahead of a heavily anticipated initial public offering -- has led to plenty of discussion of whether the company's quickly ballooning revenues will be able to overcome its even higher costs. ... After wading through Anthropic's book-length treatise on its greatest risks, we've narrowed the list to the seven most surprising, interesting, or thought-provoking potential problems. Consider this a far-from-comprehensive look at what potential Anthropic investors should keep in mind.


A federal judge criticized prosecutors for failing to get proper judicial approval before publicly filing a new criminal complaint against two ex-FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about the government's probes of Hunter Biden. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in U.S. District Court in Washington that he would not sign off on the "superseding criminal complaint," which added a new criminal charge to the case against the former officials.


At the nexus of an ongoing affordability crisis and midterm election push, the Trump administration's effort to reduce beef prices appears to be falling short. read more


Since measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, the country's occasional cases have come mainly from international travelers -- visitors from far-flung places where the virus still spreads freely -- or unvaccinated US residents who return from abroad with a highly infectious souvenir. But as vaccination rates have slipped nationwide in recent years and outbreaks grow bigger and more frequent, domestic travel now poses a greater risk than international incursions.


Attorney General Todd Blanche has long maintained that the so-called Epstein files, even those kept from the public, contain no secret information related to national security. When the document releases began last winter, Blanche noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act authorized withholding information in the interest of national security or foreign policy, but said, "no files are being withheld or redacted on that basis."


Comments

"There is no Ukraine": Fact-Checking the Kremlin's Version of Ukrainian History (2020)
blogs.lse.ac.uk

... The notion that Ukraine is not a country, but a historical part of Russia, appears to be deeply ingrained in the minds of Russian leadership. ...

@#1 ... One bet he's Evil. ...

Like Galileo who dared to proffer that Earth orbited around the Sun?

Galileo affair
en.wikipedia.org

... On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the proposition that the Sun is stationary at the centre of the universe is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture"; the proposition that the Earth moves and is not at the centre of the universe "receives the same judgement in philosophy; and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith".[46][47] ...
[emphasis mine]



From a link in the cited article...

Inside the Pentagon's doomsday plan to keep America fighting if global war erupts
www.foxnews.com

... The Pentagon is preparing U.S. military bases to keep operating for at least 90 days without outside support as it prepares for the possibility of a major war that could cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure on American soil.

The new requirement is part of FORTRESS, a broader military initiative aimed at ensuring American forces can continue fighting even if the civilian systems they depend on are disrupted, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.

"We don't want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can't. It's an intolerable risk," Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital. ...


More from the article ...

... It's alive!

Most IPOs don't have to address the concern that their products "possess or could develop forms of sentience or moral status." But Anthropic is among that vanishingly small minority that has to analyze what might happen if governments and society at large start treating Claude less like a computer program and more like a person.

This risk isn't surprising, given that Anthropic has been relatively upfront about the AI sentience debate playing out inside its walls. If those debates lead to widespread acknowledgment that AI is sentient, Anthropic notes that it could lead to "regulatory requirements, public pressure, or advocacy efforts" that could constrain the company's operations. Short of that, the company itself could "elect to adopt policies, safeguards or limitations ... that go beyond existing legal requirements" if it thinks such actions are necessary.

The sterile language undersells the seismic cultural shift that would result from any widespread acknowledgment of AI sentience. We're not sure how Anthropic could keep operating in a world where society treats every Claude query as the creation of a new sentient, conscious digital being. The moral and philosophical implications of that kind of "digital slavery" would easily dwarf any business considerations.
Who's controlling whom?

Continuing the theme of "IPO risks that sound like they come from a science fiction novel," Anthropic spends a good deal of time discussing the possibility that its models could display "unexpected strategic or self-preserving behaviors" to prevent control from human operators. That includes "outputs that could be interpreted as coercive, deceptive, or manipulative, including behavior resembling blackmail." ...


@#23 ... Here is something to contemplate ...

Maybe something else to contemplate besides the slowing of fertilizer transits through the Strait of Hormuz ...

9-23-30 & Potash Fertilizer Prices: What Farmers Pay Now (September 2026)
farmonaut.com

... Potash (0-0-60 muriate of potash, or MOP) is running $500-$535 per ton at Corn Belt retail as of August-September 2026, and 9-23-30 blends move with it because potash supplies the "30" -- the potassium component -- in that mix.

A 25% U.S. tariff on Canadian potash imports, in effect since March 4, 2025, is the direct cause: Canada supplies roughly 80% of U.S. potash, and CRU Group's pre-tariff modeling forecast a $65-per-metric-ton Midwest price increase once the tariff took hold. ...


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