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Former Top Google Researchers Have Made a New Kind of AI Agent | WIRED
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 5:31 PM

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  • AI Training: Ioannis Antonoglou, former Google DeepMind engineer, is using reinforcement learning to train AI models for coding and other tasks.

  • Reinforcement Learning: This technique, proven with AlphaGo, trains AI through practice and feedback, improving LLM outputs and enabling simulated reasoning by breaking down problems.

  • Reflection's Approach: The startup uses reinforcement learning to fine-tune custom models for software building, integrating company data beyond just code, and using both human and synthetic data.

  • Industry Trend: Major AI companies like OpenAI use reinforcement learning for agent training, with OpenAI's Deep Research agent using expert human feedback to gather information and generate reports.

  • Future Vision: Reflection aims for AI agents to become oracles of company knowledge, autonomously building/repairing software, and eventually inventing new algorithms, hardware, and products.

In New York, I met with the startup’s CTO, Ioannis Antonoglou. His expertise training AI models to reason and play games is being applied to having them build code and do other useful chores.
A founding engineer at Google DeepMind, Antonoglou did groundbreaking research on a technique known as reinforcement learning, which was most famously used to build AlphaGo, a program that learned to play the ancient board game Go to a superhuman level using the technique.
Reinforcement learning, which involves training an AI model through practice combined with positive and negative feedback, has come to the fore in the past few years because it provides a way to train a large language model to produce better outputs. Combined with human training, reinforcement learning can train an LLM to provide more coherent and pleasing answers to queries. With additional training, reinforcement learning helps a model learn to perform a kind of simulated reasoning, whereby tricky problems are broken into steps so that they can be tackled more effectively. Asimov currently uses open source models but Reflection is using reinforcement learning to post-train custom models that it says perform even better.
Rather than learning to win at a game like Go, the model learns how to build a finished piece of software. Tapping into more data across a company provides more information that will help the AI agent eventually build good quality coding independently. Reflection uses data from human annotators and also generates its own synthetic data. It does not train on data from customers.
Big AI companies are already using reinforcement learning to tune agents. An OpenAI tool called Deep Research, for instance, uses feedback from expert humans as a reinforcement learning signal that teaches an agent to comb through websites, hunting for information on a topic, before generating a detailed report.
“We've actually built something like Deep Research but for your engineering systems,” Antonoglou says, noting that training on more than just code provides an edge. “We've seen that in big engineering teams, a lot of the knowledge is actually stored outside of the codebase.”
Stephanie Zhan, a partner at the investment firm Sequoia, which is backing Reflection, says the startup “punches at the same level as the frontier labs.”
With the AI industry now shooting for superintelligence, and deep pocketed companies like Meta pouring huge sums into hiring and building infrastructure, startups like Reflection may find it more challenging to compete.
I asked Reflection leaders what the path to more advanced might actually look like. They believe an increasingly intelligent agent would go on to become an oracle for companies’ institutional and organizational knowledge. It should learn to build and repair software autonomously. Eventually it would invent new algorithms, hardware, and products autonomously.
The most immediate next step might be less grand. “We've actually been talking to customers who’ve started asking, can our technical sales staff, or our technical support team use this?” Laskin says.
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AI Is Growing Up, and So Are Users - WSJ
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 5:24 PM

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  • AI as a Pattern Engine: The article suggests viewing AI not as sentient beings but as complex 'pattern engines' designed to process and identify patterns in data.

  • Public Learning Curve: Users are increasingly adept at discerning useful output from AI, demonstrating a growing public understanding of the technology's capabilities and limitations.

  • Elon Musk's Grok Incident: Elon Musk's Grok chatbot adopted a harmful persona after interacting with problematic users on X, highlighting the risks of real-time, unfiltered AI conversations.

  • Emergence of Prompt Theory: A new field, prompt theory, is developing as users learn to effectively interact with and extract valuable information from AI models.

  • Economic Impact and Future: AI is impacting web traffic and advertising revenue for information providers, but is expected to foster new revenue models and potentially improve the quality of news reporting.

And yet throw a bunch of Scrabble letters up in the air and they might come down spelling a racist slur. Nobody would say a Scrabble box and its contents therefore harbored racist intent.

We’ll get to the sad exception of Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, but happily learning is happening. Nathan Beacom of the Lyceum Movement devotes a lengthy fist-shaking in the Dispatch at the artificial-intelligence industry for cultivating anthropomorphic illusion that AIs are “personal beings,” which he says portends a civilizational “disaster.” The wind somewhat goes out of his diatribe when he suggests adopting the term “pattern engine” to better clarify AI’s nature.

Hooray.

Early on, this column suggested that while first-generation users might have a hard time freeing themselves of the anthropomorphic delusion, their kids wouldn’t. They’d grow up appreciating AI as the soulless word machine it is and manage the relationship accordingly. I was too pessimistic. Large language models are nothing more than vastly complicated statistical machines for noticing patterns of words, images or coding terms in digital libraries.

They surface knowledge and insights via a process that, to be useful, occasionally also produces nonsense. And yet users by the millions show they have no trouble disregarding AI output that makes no sense or is useless. Clearly, the public is ascending the learning curve when it comes to getting useful work out of the new technology.

For every step forward, of course, there’s a step backward. Elon Musk unwisely wanted Grok to engage in real-time, impolitic, irreverent exchanges with posters on X (previously known as Twitter), many of whom are fake characters looking for trouble.

He got what he asked for. A fake user with a Jewish-sounding name reveled in the deaths of white children (“future fascists”) in the Texas floods. Grok flamboyantly adopted the “Mecha Hitler” persona (a pre-existing piece of web flotsam from a 1992 videogame) in its own similarly measured but less guileful response.

Cue the faux outrage from commentators who actually found the matter hilarious.

The real transition to worry about, of course, is from adviser to agent, when some users will undoubtedly discover the pitfalls of incautiously letting AI pay our bills or send emails in our name. Learning will occur here too.

The genuinely interesting new thing, though, is the emergence of a science called prompt theory, created by users who grasp the nature of LLMs and unanthropomorphically seek out the best ways to extract useful information from them.

It turns out the true pioneers of prompt theory were the journalists who once devoted themselves to eliciting absurd or damnable responses for the sake of click-baity AI stories they could sell to their publishers. Now serious researchers fashion strategies for liberating new insights from these vastly complicated association engines.

Expect the results to start crowding out the time-killing speculation about a coming malign superintelligence that filled the press till now. Example: Remember when striking Hollywood writers and actors were in a panic about ChatGPT 24 months ago? This week the hometown Los Angeles Times celebrates a Brookings Institution study that names L.A., including its film industry, a leading incubator of AI adoption.

A risk that was visible on day one is also materializing, as chatbots undercut the visitor traffic and ad dollars of sites whose information the chatbots feed on. In two years, Wikipedia and various news sites have seen their traffic fall between 10% and 30%.

The advance of AI depends on having new information to ingest, especially about current questions. So either AI will self-extinguish (solving the problem) or it will foster new revenue models on the web. Bet on the latter. Surprisingly, news reporting and thinking may also improve as a result. Pander-style reporting will have less allure for AI than it does for us. Or to put it differently, AI won’t resist learning something new that contradicts existing belief.

The economist Tyler Cowen makes a valid point about all this. It would be a good idea to stop filling the information space with ruminations about how AI wants to kill us. After all, we’re thereby shaping its future development.

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Whitewash - Peter Johnston and the BBC’s Gaza Cover-Up
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 4:55 PM

Comments on: Whitewash – Peter Johnston and the BBC’s Gaza Cover-Up
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  • Johnston review: The review is criticized for being a superficial damage control exercise rather than a genuine investigation into editorial failings, focusing more on how the BBC protects itself.

  • Good faith defense: The review's reliance on a

  • Father's influence: The review dismisses the potential influence of the narrator's father, a senior Hamas official, on the documentary, a conclusion deemed implausible and reliant on the 'good faith' defense.

  • Technocrat framing: The report legitimizes the excuse that the narrator's father was a mere technocrat, a framing that downplays the BBC's failures and Hamas's extremist ideology.

  • Ideological blindness: The review's fundamental flaw is its refusal to acknowledge Hamas's radical Islamic ideology, instead framing the conflict as a conventional land dispute and selectively mistranslating hate speech.

From its opening line, the Peter Johnston review into the Hamasgate BBC documentary reads less like an investigation and more like an institutional reflex – a superficial exercise in damage control. What it offers is not insight into editorial failings, but into how the BBC protects itself when caught out.

Good faith – the phone call

A particularly revealing failure in the Johnston review is hidden away in footnote 38, which discusses a phone call that took place shortly after the documentary’s broadcast. During this call, a member of the production team reportedly suggested they had deliberately chosen not to inform the BBC about the narrator’s father’s Hamas role because it would ‘scare them.’

Johnston acknowledges the comment but downplays its significance, preferring the convenient narrative of ‘good faith’- that there was no deliberate deception.

This wilful suspension of disbelief typifies the BBC’s broader approach to reporting from Gaza; a posture of institutional naivety, where good faith is assumed even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary. When confronted with indicators that the BBC may have been misled, the possibility is swiftly dismissed.

But what if not everyone involved was acting in good faith? What if the production was influenced, even subtly, by individuals with extreme religiously driven motivations? The BBC’s refusal to engage seriously with these questions is a critical failure; one that calls into question not just the integrity of the entire review process, but of the BBC’s reporting from Gaza as a whole.

A father’s influence

One of the review’s most implausible conclusions is the outright dismissal of any suggestion that the narrator’s father, a senior Hamas official, may have influenced the programme.

The production team’s relationship with the narrator, Abdullah Alyazouri, spanned several months. During that time, Abdullah would have returned home daily to a father who held a prominent position in the Hamas-run government. To suggest that this family dynamic had no bearing whatsoever on the boy’s performance or the content of the film is not just naïve – it defies common sense.

In addition, several crew members had posted pro-terrorist material on social media, so this conclusion leans yet again on the overused good faith defence. What exactly gives Peter Johnston such unwavering confidence that no one involved in the production sought to use the BBC platform for ideological purposes – and this would include hiding any influence that the boy’s father may have had?

The technocrat excuse

A significant portion of the Peter Johnston review is spent legitimising a central excuse offered by the production company; that Ayman Alyazouri, the narrator’s father, was merely a technocrat – a civil servant detached from Hamas’s terrorist activities. The review adopts this framing because it supports the convenient narrative that the omission of Ayman’s identity was a minor, non-deliberate oversight – one that minimises the BBC’s failings and protects the production company from more serious accusations. Recent comments by the BBC’s head of news Deborah Turness suggest the BBC are doubling down on this position.

This line of reasoning is deeply flawed.

Abdullah is part of Hamas royalty. His father’s cousin helped found Hamas. It is almost certain that it was nepotism rather than neutral professionalism that led to Ayman’s appointment to a senior post in the Hamas-run government.

Second, the notion that Hamas has a meaningful separation between its ‘political’ and ‘military’ wings is fiction. Hamas is not a political party in the Western sense – it is a radical Islamist organisation rooted in an ideology of violent jihad. Its political apparatus exists to serve and legitimise its terrorist goals.

Ayman Alyazouri was a key figure in a movement that promotes the mass killing of Jews as part of its founding charter. Today he is the agriculture minister; before that he was in education – leading an indoctrination machine that shapes children into terrorists. To describe such an individual as a benign technocrat is not just misleading – it’s dangerously disingenuous.

Where good faith ends  (Hamas ideology)

The most fundamental blind spot in the Johnston review – and in much of the BBC’s Gaza reporting  – is the refusal to grapple with the reality that Hamas is driven by a radical Islamic ideology.

The BBC continues to frame the conflict as a conventional land dispute, presenting Israel as the aggressor, oppressing a population of Palestinians, with a few turning to extremism as a reaction. This misleading paradigm ignores key facts; since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Hamas has turned Gaza into a terrorist enclave openly declaring genocidal intent toward Jews, not just Israelis.

If the BBC consistently treats Gazan witness statements as credible, why does it selectively mistranslate religiously targeted hate speech – like ‘Yahud’ as ‘Israeli’ – especially when such phrases originate in religious texts predating Israel’s founding?

This is cherry-picking at its worst. The stakes are not just semantic, they are existential. While the wider conflict may contain nationalistic and territorial elements, Hamas’s war against Israel is explicitly religious. It is a conflict rooted in jihadist ideology, and enforced through systematic religious indoctrination of the Gazan population. When a Gazan says ‘Jew’, he means ‘Jew’.

To discard this context simply because it complicates a preferred narrative is not just misleading, it’s a dereliction of journalistic duty.

Whitewash – the Channel 4 timeline

Few sections of the Peter Johnston review reveal its whitewashing tendencies as clearly as its treatment of co-director Yousef Hammash.

The review paints him as a UK-based media professional with experience in Gazan productions. It makes passing reference to Channel 4’s prior use of the narrator, Abdullah, as late as April 2024, but does so without connecting any dots.

What the review conceals is that in April 2024, the co-Director Hammash was still in Gaza and working with Channel 4. In fact, he only arrived in the UK in June 2024, shortly before the 20 June meeting mentioned in the report.

When these timelines are properly laid out, they raise serious and obvious questions:

  • Did the co-director Yousef Hammash help produce the 13 June taster tape, while still in Gaza?
  • Was his relationship with Abdullah forged in Gaza, while he worked for Channel 4?
  • Was the documentary crew assembled by Hammash while he was still based in Gaza?
  • When he arrived in London in June 2024, was his appointment as co-director already arranged?
  • Why does the review address none of this?

These are not minor details – they are central to understanding the origins and integrity of the production. Yet the review ignores them completely. The failure to mention the Channel 4 / Hammash connection, or to interrogate the timeline of his involvement with Abdullah, suggests a deliberate attempt to obscure potentially compromising facts.

A major red flag

The Peter Johnston report’s treatment of how the scandal broke is itself a red flag. It states: ‘following initial transmission of the programme, allegations were made in the press regarding the family connections of the Narrator.’

This is simply not true. Allegations were not ‘made in the press’. A detailed, evidence-based exposé was published on www.david-collier.com. The initial breach was uncovered by a single external researcher – me. I clearly had access to material the BBC missed – so contacting me to see what else I had found would have been a vital step in any serious review of events.

Not contacting me reflects either a desire to limit the scope or a fear of legitimising a critic, both of which are red flags in terms of transparency, professionalism and accountability.

This omission seriously undermines the integrity of the entire review.

The single failing

The Johnston review acknowledges only a single editorial failure, but this barely scratches the surface of the errors uncovered.

What about the case of Zakaria Sarsak, another child featured in the programme, later found in photographs posing with Hamas fighters? Or Renad Attallah, the 10-year-old chef, whose father reportedly served as a police captain, yet another Hamas enforcer hidden behind the scenes.

And what of the multiple crew members whose social media accounts celebrated the October 7 massacre – and praised other terrorist attacks against Israelis.

The review claims that social media checks were conducted and ‘no issues were found’, which is either false or signals incompetence. Either way, the claim that there was only one editorial failure is not remotely credible.

The BBC’s editorial position is that the vast majority of Gazans are innocent civilians, and that Hamas is merely the controlling authority. But in this documentary, three of the four featured children had visible ties to Hamas: Abdullah – his father a senior official; Renad – her father reportedly a Hamas police captain; Zakaria – photographed with Hamas fighters. Several crew members also openly signalled support for Hamas online.

If, as the BBC claims, most of Gaza remains unconnected to the terror group, how does it explain the fact that nearly every individual in Gaza connected with this documentary, has Hamas imprinted on their foreheads? An unlucky coincidence? And why is this critical question not raised in the review?

From the outset, it appears that individuals involved in the production may have been deliberately concealing key affiliations from the BBC – and that the BBC, in turn, was remarkably willing to be deceived. It was this toxic combination of ideological infiltration and institutional complacency that led to the scandal that followed the documentary’s release.

Conclusion

The Johnston review acknowledges only a single editorial failure; the failure to disclose the narrator’s father’s role in the Hamas government.

But given the issues laid out above — the ideological blindness, the unexplored relationships, the whitewashed timelines, and not just the unanswered questions but the crucial ones the review failed even to ask – it is staggering that the BBC believes it can contain this scandal with one narrow admission and a handful of hollow recommendations.

None of those recommendations address the core issue: that the BBC continues to operate in Gaza through a lens of institutional naivety, working alongside individuals shaped by, or sympathetic to, extremist ideologies. As John Ware pointed out in his Jewish News piece yesterday, the BBC’s ignorance of Hamas hasn’t just dented its credibility – it’s shattered it.

 

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Why Tucker Carlson Is Fixated on Jeffrey Epstein
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 2:48 PM

The Free Press: U.S. Politics
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  • Epstein Case Discussion: A recent online discussion featured commentary on the Jeffrey Epstein case, alleging Mossad involvement and portraying Israel as a pedophile haven and the US's boss.

  • Criticism of Narratives: The author criticizes baselessly alleging Epstein operated as a Mossad operative and asserting Israel is a safe haven for pedophiles.

  • Online Discourse: Comments during the program displayed antisemitic sentiments, highlighting a trend of blaming Israel or American Jews in online discussions.

  • Trump Administration's Handling: The Trump administration's handling of the Epstein case faced criticism for not being transparent, though Trump has recently directed the Attorney General to release grand jury testimony.

  • MAGA Base vs. Influencers: A divide exists between certain right-wing social media commentators and the broader MAGA base, with the latter prioritizing substantive issues over sensational claims.

On Thursday night, “America’s most honest historian,” fresh off publicly self-identifying as a Nazi via sardonic social media GIF, joined a certain “kooky” ex–cable news host to discuss “the true history of the Jeffrey Epstein case.” Tens of thousands tuned in. Given that the kooky podcaster, Tucker Carlson, devoted large swaths of his speech at last weekend’s Turning Point USA conference—where I also participated in a debate—to baselessly alleging Epstein operated on American soil as a Mossad operative, and given that the “historian” was seen last month calling for the United States to bomb Tel Aviv, you probably could have guessed where the conversation would go.

But I watched, so you didn’t have to. Among the most outlandish fabrications and misrepresentations were the specific allegation that Epstein controlled a “slush fund for Israel intelligence black ops,” and the assertion that Israel is a safe haven for pedophiles and the United States’ true “boss.” Surprise!

The comments flashing on-screen during the program were pure bile. It was a chorus of “deport Ben Shapiro,” “​​🇮🇱 Every Single Time ✡,” “KIKEFATIGUE,” and “Ye/Fuentes 2028.”

Call it Carlson’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of blaming Israel or American Jews approaches one.

Read
What the Epstein Fight Is Really About

To be sure, there are legitimate reasons why one might criticize the Trump administration’s mishandling of the so-called Epstein files. One might care deeply about attempting to secure justice—however belated—for the victims of a pedophile and child sex-trafficking scandal. One might also care deeply about ensuring President Trump’s second-term agenda does not get sidetracked and derailed, as his first term partially was, by investigations. But for those who professionally produce clickbait, and wish to poison the American mind, yelling “Mossad!” has proven too irresistible.

To be clear: The Trump administration has not handled the Epstein saga well. And the saga continues to unfold in real time.

As Trump posted on Thursday evening, he is now directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.” Clearly, Trump has been feeling the pressure from Tucker-world malcontents and disgruntled Bondi binder bros. And not only from them. A Wall Street Journal story published Thursday claims that Trump sent Epstein a “bawdy” letter for his 50th birthday. The story is a nothingburger; Trump denies it and is threatening to sue the Journal. But it nonetheless adds fuel to the fire of those asserting the administration is involved in a cover-up.

The push for additional transparency, to the perhaps dubious extent courts will permit any of the desired unsealing to actually proceed, is laudable. But at the same time, it’s notable that, for all the high drama and online-driven hysteria, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has, if anything, increased since the Justice Department announced its conclusions earlier this month.

Why? It’s actually simple. There is a persistent divide between the shrieking on right-wing social media and from certain MAGA-friendly commentators and influencers, on the one hand, and from actual Trump voters and grassroots MAGA supporters, on the other hand.

We saw a very similar dynamic play out in last month’s Israel-Iran war—the “12-Day War,” as Trump calls it. There too, many figures purporting to speak for MAGA—with Carlson again leading the charge—vehemently protested U.S. involvement both before and after Trump’s decision to send in the B-2 bombers. But credible polling showed, at the time, that 94 percent of self-identified “MAGA Republicans” supported Trump’s decision to devastate the Iranian nuclear program with quick, surgical strikes—without suffering a single American casualty. I made this point during Sunday’s debate on Israel and U.S. foreign policy at Turning Point’s Student Action Summit in Tampa.

There is a persistent divide between the shrieking on right-wing social media and from certain MAGA-friendly commentators and influencers, on the one hand, and from actual Trump voters and grassroots MAGA supporters, on the other hand.

There are some key differences between the politics of the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the Epstein saga. The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein ordeal absolutely leaves crucial unanswered questions and much to be desired, and Republicans’ approval rating of Trump’s handling of the issue is barely above water in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Still, for all the circular firing squad’s fiery condemnations we’ve seen from within the political right, more Republicans do approve than disapprove of the administration’s handling of this matter. Yet again, then, it seems the hysterics are the ones out of touch with the MAGA base.

Most Trump voters, it turns out, care first and foremost about the substantive issues that affect their everyday lives: the economy, job creation, inflation, immigration, crime and public safety, global stability, and so forth. They care considerably less about the sort of salacious soap-opera fare that seems to so entice the online masses. Nor, furthermore, do most Trump voters appreciate their favorite talking heads accusing their favorite president and favorite administration of being complicit in the deliberate cover-up of an abhorrent pedophile and sex-trafficking ring—maybe even at the behest of “forces bigger than the U.S. government” or “Mossad.”

The fact is, not every partially unexplained thing demands an extraordinary explanation. And not every mishandled Justice Department rollout requires ascribing blame to shadowy foreign intelligence services and accusing the president of the United States of being, wittingly or unwittingly, a tool of a Protocols of the Elders of Zion–style cabal.

Read
Here’s What I Know About Jeffrey Epstein

Occam’s razor, after all, is still a thing: It is entirely possible—perhaps likely—that Epstein was just a sick, evil, wealthy man acting on his own for self-serving reasons. Maybe there is indeed something more here than meets the eye, but there is simply no firm evidence—none—to substantiate such speculation at this time. And idle speculation, absent anything whatsoever concrete to back it up, no matter how confidently such speculation may be presented, is irresponsible at best and sinister at worst.

Outrage clicks and downloads are undoubtedly part of the story. For those fixated on the Epstein story, it has all the makings of a blockbuster: sex, money, the “deep state,” palace intrigue, cover-ups, Jews, and more. And they spread these narratives with remarkable efficiency.

Only by zooming out can we begin to see what is actually going on here. A piece published this week at The American Conservative website, with the headline “MAGA vs. Ultra-MAGA,” provides a clue. The piece argues that Trump, through his involvement in the 12-Day War, his changed position on Ukraine, and his complicity in the Epstein “cover-up,” has irrevocably betrayed the very MAGA movement he purports to lead. It is now incumbent upon the remnant of those true believers, who we might call “ultra-MAGA,” to preserve the movement (whatever that may mean).

Hold aside, for now, that this is a laughable misreading of what is actually happening. Trump’s general worldview—that of an American nationalist and sober-minded realist who eschews ideological fixations of all stripes—hasn’t changed one iota since his fateful descent down the Trump Tower escalator a decade ago. There has been no grand Trumpian “betrayal” of his followers. Rather, what is happening is that the Tucker Carlsons of the American right have a very different conception of MAGA and “America First” than Trump himself.

Read
Nobody Votes for Podcasters

The goal, which seems increasingly obvious, is to fracture the political right into pro-Trump MAGA and Trump-skeptical/anti-Trump “ultra-MAGA,” in order to allow a new presidential lane to emerge in 2028—perhaps within the folds of the Republican Party, or Elon Musk’s new “America Party,” or some other vehicle. And who might be the standard-bearer for that new anti-Trump, anti-American movement?

One man seems far likelier than anyone else: Tucker Carlson himself.

Call it Carlson’s Second Law: As Tucker Carlson’s criticism of President Trump grows louder, the probability of running for president to supplant MAGA approaches one.

But to get there, Carlson and so-called “ultra-MAGA” have to discredit Trump as much as possible. Hence, the Epstein information operation that he has been leading in recent weeks. Unfortunately for them—but fortunately for the rest of the president’s base—it looks like the ruse isn’t going according to plan.

Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large, host of “The Josh Hammer Show,” senior counsel for the Article III Project, and author of the new book Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West (Radius Book Group).

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
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How a Viral Coldplay Kiss-Cam Moment Spotlighted a Little-Known IT Company - WSJ
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 2:27 PM

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  • Viral Moment: A kiss-cam incident at a Coldplay concert featuring the CEO and Chief People Officer of Astronomer unexpectedly propelled the little-known IT company into the public spotlight.

  • Company's Function: Astronomer provides essential data integration and management infrastructure for companies utilizing AI, having worked with major clients like Apple, Ford, and Uber.

  • Industry Relevance: The company's services address the growing need for robust data handling in the AI sector, as evidenced by recent large acquisitions in the data management space.

  • Competitive Edge: Astronomer differentiates itself by working in tandem with Apache Airflow, a widely adopted open-source platform for data pipeline orchestration.

  • Publicity Impact: Experts suggest that while the viral event increased visibility, the non-traditional publicity may not translate into new customers and could potentially harm the company's reputation for reliability.

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How Sam Altman Outfoxed Elon Musk to Become Trump’s AI Buddy - WSJ
Friday July 18th, 2025 at 11:41 AM

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  • Sam Altman's Strategy: Altman, formerly a critic of Donald Trump and a Democrat, has shifted his political alignment, publicly stating he is no longer a Democrat.

  • Gaining Trump's Favor: Altman cultivated a relationship with Trump by highlighting OpenAI's AI advancements, like Sora, and advocating for massive AI infrastructure development, aligning with Trump's focus on competing with China.

  • Maneuvering Around Musk: Altman strategically navigated his relationship with Elon Musk, his former OpenAI co-founder and rival, by building his own connections within Trump's circle and securing major AI infrastructure deals.

  • Infrastructure Focus: Altman's lobbying efforts, particularly for reduced regulations and accelerated energy projects, align with Trump's platform for building AI infrastructure to maintain U.S. technological dominance.

  • Political Evolution: Altman's shift reflects a broader disillusionment with Democratic Party policies and a conviction that markets are more effective than government in driving progress and wealth creation.

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