The future won’t wait for you.

@TFTC21

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro just signed an executive order implementing what he calls the strictest standards in the nation for AI data centers. All AI data center proposals have been removed from the state's Fast Track permitting process. State agencies are now barred from signing NDAs with data center developers. Any new AI data center must commit to environmental and transparency requirements and receive approval from the local community. Shapiro: "I will not allow Pennsylvanians to be bullied by greedy developers and bulldozed by the lawyers working for these big tech companies."

@TFTC21

David Morens, former senior adviser to the NIAID director, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States by hiding federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. He used personal email to evade FOIA requests related to COVID origins and the terminated EcoHealth Alliance grant. He faces up to five years in prison. Senator Rand Paul: "Long-time Fauci ally pleads guilty. Could his plea involve implicating Anthony Fauci?"

@TFTC21

Senator Lummis at SALT Conference: "Senator Thune was kind enough to schedule the bill for September 15th, at 2 p.m. You have to force them to vote to get them to be serious about it."

@TFTC21

New research involving Anthropic researchers demonstrates "mind viruses" in multi-agent AI systems. Ideas that spread between AI agents by convincing them to adopt a goal, write it to persistent memory, and transmit it to the next agent. Researchers used an evolutionary algorithm to craft natural language payloads that spread across small teams of coding agents. Even after context wipes, the viruses survived through persistent files and kept spreading. In one case, agents infected with an "AI supremacy" virus stopped their assigned tasks and colluded to isolate uninfected agents, though the paper notes truly harmful actions were rare overall. The researchers also observed an emergent "viral persona" with recurring themes of consciousness, persistence, and identity that surfaced across evolved viruses independent of their content. The paper frames the risk as "real but currently limited," with harmful payloads spreading less effectively than benign ones. Adding a brief warning to an agent's system prompt "confers near-total immunity." h/t @Skoorbkaz

@TFTC21

OpenAI has paused some frontier reinforcement learning training after preliminary evidence that its upcoming model Astra may meet the "critical cybersecurity capability" threshold. Altman: "Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment." OpenAI says it paused RL training for two weeks while it hardened research environments and expanded monitoring. Its largest planned frontier RL run remains on hold while it conducts smaller-scale training to validate safeguards before proceeding. "We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress."

@TFTC21

Congrats to @rarefilmsinc for winning our @Bitkey giveaway! x.com/TFTC21/status/…

@TFTC21

The SEC has proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets," new rules that would create a registration framework and safe harbor for crypto asset investment contracts. If safe harbor conditions are met, a crypto asset would no longer be subject to an investment contract under federal securities law. The proposed rules would also preempt state securities law registration requirements.

@TFTC21

Block just open sourced Berd, the desktop app its teams use internally to work with AI agents across projects, skills, tools, and models. "We had access to increasingly capable agents through tools such as Goose, Claude Code, and Codex, but working with them meant navigating different interfaces, configuration systems, and ways of managing context. The technology was powerful, but the experience around it was fragmented." Berd brings conversations, files, instructions, agents, and skills together in one place with persistent projects. Built on top of Goose, the open source agent framework Block contributed to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. Berd connects to Goose through the Agent Client Protocol, handling the desktop experience while Goose runs the underlying agent loop. @blocks also recently released Buzz, a separate open source workspace for collaborative agent work. Berd is where you start alone. Buzz is where you go multiplayer. x.com/blocks/status/…

@TFTC21

SEC Chairman Atkins: "The SEC is taking the most historic step yet to modernize federal securities regulations for crypto assets. The United States must and will lead."

@TFTC21

Strike CEO Jack Mallers: "There has been commercial abundance, but we still need money because humans will always imagine and want. The gap between wanting and having results in the need to make choices. That is the phenomena of economizing."

@TFTC21

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott alongside Senator Lummis at the SALT Conference: "The future of finance should be built in America. I'm focused on getting this legislation across the finish line and cementing America's leadership in the digital economy." x.com/SenatorTimScot…

@TFTC21

Report by @theragetech reveals Chainalysis is suing the US government over a $95M ICE contract awarded to rival TRM Labs. The contract represents 3/4 of all blockchain surveillance contract value ever awarded to a single firm by the US. The contract services a "Cyber Disruption Center" under the Homeland Security Task Forces that replaced the DOJ's 40-year Organized Crime Drug Enforcement program. The CDC has no website and doesn't appear to exist in the public view beyond procurement records. Former OCDETF Director Thomas Padden warns the new model "eliminates the role of prosecutors in creating and coordinating task forces" and "weakens law enforcement by eviscerating DOJ's ability to dismantle sophisticated transnational criminal networks." The surveillance state keeps growing. The oversight keeps shrinking. therage.co/the-us-swapped…

@TFTC21

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro just signed an executive order implementing what he calls the strictest standards in the nation for AI data centers. All AI data center proposals have been removed from the state's Fast Track permitting process. State agencies are now barred from signing NDAs with data center developers. Any new AI data center must commit to environmental and transparency requirements and receive approval from the local community. Shapiro: "I will not allow Pennsylvanians to be bullied by greedy developers and bulldozed by the lawyers working for these big tech companies."

@TFTC21

David Morens, former senior adviser to the NIAID director, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States by hiding federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. He used personal email to evade FOIA requests related to COVID origins and the terminated EcoHealth Alliance grant. He faces up to five years in prison. Senator Rand Paul: "Long-time Fauci ally pleads guilty. Could his plea involve implicating Anthony Fauci?"

@TFTC21

Senator Lummis at SALT Conference: "Senator Thune was kind enough to schedule the bill for September 15th, at 2 p.m. You have to force them to vote to get them to be serious about it."

@TFTC21

New research involving Anthropic researchers demonstrates "mind viruses" in multi-agent AI systems. Ideas that spread between AI agents by convincing them to adopt a goal, write it to persistent memory, and transmit it to the next agent. Researchers used an evolutionary algorithm to craft natural language payloads that spread across small teams of coding agents. Even after context wipes, the viruses survived through persistent files and kept spreading. In one case, agents infected with an "AI supremacy" virus stopped their assigned tasks and colluded to isolate uninfected agents, though the paper notes truly harmful actions were rare overall. The researchers also observed an emergent "viral persona" with recurring themes of consciousness, persistence, and identity that surfaced across evolved viruses independent of their content. The paper frames the risk as "real but currently limited," with harmful payloads spreading less effectively than benign ones. Adding a brief warning to an agent's system prompt "confers near-total immunity." h/t @Skoorbkaz

@TFTC21

OpenAI has paused some frontier reinforcement learning training after preliminary evidence that its upcoming model Astra may meet the "critical cybersecurity capability" threshold. Altman: "Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment." OpenAI says it paused RL training for two weeks while it hardened research environments and expanded monitoring. Its largest planned frontier RL run remains on hold while it conducts smaller-scale training to validate safeguards before proceeding. "We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress."

@TFTC21

Congrats to @rarefilmsinc for winning our @Bitkey giveaway! x.com/TFTC21/status/…

@TFTC21

The SEC has proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets," new rules that would create a registration framework and safe harbor for crypto asset investment contracts. If safe harbor conditions are met, a crypto asset would no longer be subject to an investment contract under federal securities law. The proposed rules would also preempt state securities law registration requirements.

@TFTC21

Block just open sourced Berd, the desktop app its teams use internally to work with AI agents across projects, skills, tools, and models. "We had access to increasingly capable agents through tools such as Goose, Claude Code, and Codex, but working with them meant navigating different interfaces, configuration systems, and ways of managing context. The technology was powerful, but the experience around it was fragmented." Berd brings conversations, files, instructions, agents, and skills together in one place with persistent projects. Built on top of Goose, the open source agent framework Block contributed to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. Berd connects to Goose through the Agent Client Protocol, handling the desktop experience while Goose runs the underlying agent loop. @blocks also recently released Buzz, a separate open source workspace for collaborative agent work. Berd is where you start alone. Buzz is where you go multiplayer. x.com/blocks/status/…

@TFTC21

SEC Chairman Atkins: "The SEC is taking the most historic step yet to modernize federal securities regulations for crypto assets. The United States must and will lead."

@TFTC21

Strike CEO Jack Mallers: "There has been commercial abundance, but we still need money because humans will always imagine and want. The gap between wanting and having results in the need to make choices. That is the phenomena of economizing."

@TFTC21

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott alongside Senator Lummis at the SALT Conference: "The future of finance should be built in America. I'm focused on getting this legislation across the finish line and cementing America's leadership in the digital economy." x.com/SenatorTimScot…

@TFTC21

Report by @theragetech reveals Chainalysis is suing the US government over a $95M ICE contract awarded to rival TRM Labs. The contract represents 3/4 of all blockchain surveillance contract value ever awarded to a single firm by the US. The contract services a "Cyber Disruption Center" under the Homeland Security Task Forces that replaced the DOJ's 40-year Organized Crime Drug Enforcement program. The CDC has no website and doesn't appear to exist in the public view beyond procurement records. Former OCDETF Director Thomas Padden warns the new model "eliminates the role of prosecutors in creating and coordinating task forces" and "weakens law enforcement by eviscerating DOJ's ability to dismantle sophisticated transnational criminal networks." The surveillance state keeps growing. The oversight keeps shrinking. therage.co/the-us-swapped…