News and Notes, Oct 10

More and More AI

Welcome back. Hopefully you had a chance earlier this week to read about the long history of American business in Saudi Arabia, which has come back into the news this week after the fallout from the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Read about that here.

In other news this week:

Ten days ago, a new endeavor from OpenAI was released that will change the world.

It is called Sora, an app that allows to users to create videos of anyone—as in, anyone ever, including themselves and their friends—doing almost anything. The user can instantaneously create ultra realistic videos that are nearly indiscernible-from-reality: of themselves being sworn in as President, Taylor Swift marching in Tiananmen Square wearing a neon tuxedo, or Martin Luther King, Jr. hosting Saturday Night Live alongside musical guest, Ludwig van Beethoven. All the user has to do is type in such a description into Sora (“chocolate lab gets standing ovation from crowd at Fenway Park”) and voila! There it is. These aren’t cartoons or caricatures. The lighting, shadows, and sound all look real. And they take about ten seconds to produce.

You can read more it about here.

Casey Neistat, the eminent YouTuber, gave it a really good rundown earlier this week in an eight-minute video. It’s worth your time.

Right now, Sora is the most downloaded app in the Apple Store, ahead of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s most famous product. In Sora videos, the app’s logo appears to faintly bounce around in the foreground, indicating to the discerning viewer that the video is fake. And to the discerning viewer, it’s clear that (beyond the ridiculous prompts most users create) that the videos are indeed fake. But, of course, most viewers are not discerning. People already believe so much of what they see on the Internet to be real, whether it’s headline, or now, a shockingly well produced video. And soon—very, very soon I fear—even the trained eye will be unable to tell if something Sora, or another app like it, produces is real or not.

While it will be easy to distinguish that no, Spongebob never officiated a wedding between Ringo Starr and Mother Theresa at Graceland, it will be increasingly difficult to discern whether a video of someone getting arrested, using drugs, or using a slur is authentic. AI-produced videos of politicians and celebrities doing any of those things—or doing anything deemed harmful—will soon dominate both the comments section and substantive offline conversations. Again, to repeat, all it might take for any rogue actor to change American history might be someone on their couch typing, “ANTIFA soldiers led by Obama and Pelosi storm Mar a Lago,” and there will be no going back. These kinds of worries have been around for some time now, but now, the stream of disinformation will be so much steadier, at such a higher quality and immediacy. Beyond the political implications, it will also be personal. One can imagine a Sora-produced video floating around a high school, causing deep and lasting pain within a targeted teenager, all because one of their classmates decided to type in a prompt that created a reputation-ruining video in under 10 seconds.

The bottom line is that starting right now, as OpenAI’s Sora and competitors develop, with every swipe of the finger, it will be incumbent upon every person to question if what they are seeing is real. Things are about to get, well, un-real.

Other News:

• “America is now one big bet on AI” in The Financial Times. Think about this: “AI companies have accounted for 80 per cent of the gains in US stocks so far in 2025… In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI. Outside of the AI plays, even European stock markets have been outperforming the US this decade, and now that gap is starting to spread. So far in 2025, every major sector from utilities and industrials to healthcare and banks has fared better in the rest of the world than in the US.” That’s to say, the American economy is totally dependent on a gamble that may or may not work out. At the same time, “the wealthiest 10 percent of the population own 85 per cent of US stocks…[who also] account for half of consumer spending, the highest share on record since the data begins.” Which means, if the AI bubble pops and the 10 percent stop spending, it’s the bottom 90 percent that will pay the price.

• Back on Sora, you might ask: how is that OpenAI is able to use all this copyrighted intellectual property, beyond the users who upon opening the app allow for their own likenesses to be used? How is that, within seconds, a user can prompt Sora to create a re-cut of The Godfather in which Jeff Bridges’ character from The Big Lebowski also appears as one of the Corleone sons? As the WSJ explains, “The opt-out process for the new version of Sora means that movie studios and other intellectual property owners would have to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their copyright material in videos the tool creates.” The market’s message to artists and individuals alike is: get bent, AI is in charge now.

• “Inside the Justice Department Where the President Calls the Shots,” in The Wall Street Journal. Here is some incredible reporting from Josh Dawsey, Sadie Gurman, and Aruna Viswanatha. Just like everyone else, I assumed Trump’s Sept. 20 post on Truth Social which began, “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action…” was meant for a mass audience. It turns out the post which helped lead to the indictment of James Comey, as the WSJ reports, was supposed to be a private, direct message from the President to the Attorney General. It’s an incredible look into how Trump actually deals with people who work for him, and the level to which he alone is in control of all aspects of his administration, including the nominally-independent Justice Department. Of course, we knew this, but this is a much more direct insight than conjecture. As the WSJ reports, “Privately, Trump has acknowledged…Bondi appears great on TV, but has continued to complain to aides about the pace of the cases, even after the Comey indictment. Aides have reminded him about work in progress. “She’s moving too slow,” Trump has said about Bondi, according to administration officials.”

• That story relates to another I’m reading: “Nixon Now Looks Restrained,” by Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. As Marcus writes, in 1970, Nixon’s off hand comments on the ongoing Manson trial caused a national stir. “Chaos ensued. The sitting President had done something that then seemed an unthinkable breach of ethics: he had opined on the guilt of a criminal defendant…The jury for the Manson trial was sequestered and prohibited from reading newspapers or watching TV news…That didn’t stop defense lawyers from demanding a mistrial; surely, they argued, jurors would see the front-page headlines: “manson guilty, nixon declares,” blared the Los Angeles Times; “nixon’s tate trial furor,” said the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Ronald Hughes, a lawyer for one of the women accused alongside Manson, said, “When the President of the United States finds it necessary to comment on the guilt or innocence of a defendant, it indicates that defendant is past the point of getting a fair trial.”

• Also, from Ken Klippenstein on President Trump’s national security order, “NSPM-7” which has vastly expanded the federal government’s definition of what a terrorist is. As Klippenstein reports, in NSPM-7, President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”As the order states, “the United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” This is dystopian stuff that is barely receiving national news attention.

Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators”

Sports:

The baseball playoffs roll on. The Blue Jays are headed to the ALCS for the first time since 2016, after knocking off a New York Yankees team that continues to fail in big moments. Since 2021, future Hall of Famer Aaron Judge—the best hitter in baseball—has hit 249 home runs. It is one of the greatest individual stretches in Major League history, and yet, the Yankees can’t cash in. Judge will turn 34 next April, an age at which players don’t tend to get better. One wonders if they blew a generational opportunity in the Bronx. The Blue Jays will face whoever wins tomorrow night’s game between the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers. For Seattle to win, they’ll have to beat Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher on the planet.

In the National League, the Dodgers beat the Phillies (in tragic fashion for Philly fans). They will play either Milwaukee or Chicago in the NLCS. It might be music to anyone’s ears, but at this point I would favor the Dodgers to repeat as World Series champions.

In college football, last week I said watch out for the unranked Florida Gators to upset the Texas Longhorns and turns out I was right. This weekend, Texas gets the chance to redeem themselves vs #6 Oklahoma in the Red River shootout, at 3:30 EST on ABC. I like Texas’ chances. That’s after #8 Alabama travels to Columbia, MO to face the #14 Missouri Tigers in what is probably the best matchup of the week. Look for Alabama to cover: Bama -2.5.

In the NFL, there’s a much better slate than last week, though again, I was right to predict that the Patriots would upset the Bills. This week, Seattle at Jacksonville at 1PM is a game that sounds boring but should feature a matchup between two possible playoff teams. At 4:30EST , the action gets better when the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers play in a game between two of the NFC’s best. Again, however, the best game is Sunday night: Lions at Chiefs. The Chiefs are slightly favored at home, but I like the Lions to win. Take Lions ML, +110.

Until next week.