America is barreling towards authoritarianism at such a breakneck pace that it should alarm every single one of us. But instead of meeting this moment with courage and integrity, the corporate media has utterly capitulated, stuffing money in Trump's pockets, spiking stories that might offend the regime, and firing journalists who refuse to go along and get along. That is not journalism. That’s complicity.
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As delegates from dozens of nations attending a key artificial intelligence summit in India prepare to deliver a statement Saturday on how humanity should handle development of the rapidly evolving technology, the Trump administration stood out for opposing centralized regulation of generative AI.
"We are barreling into the unknown. AI innovation is moving at the speed of light—outpacing our collective ability to fully understand it—let alone govern it," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday during his address to attendees at the AI Impact Summit.
"AI does not stop at borders—and no nation can fully grasp its implications on its own," Guterres continued. "If we want AI to serve humanity, policy cannot be built on guesswork. It cannot be built on hype or disinformation. We need facts we can trust—and share—across countries and across sectors."
"That is why the United Nations is building a practical architecture that puts science at the center of international cooperation on AI," he added. "And it starts with the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence."
The panel—whose creation was recommended in a 2024 report authored by a high-level advisory board created by Guterres—is calling for a global AI governance framework and shared standards and monitoring mechanisms.
Looking forward to Saturday's statement, Indian Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters Friday that "there is huge consensus on the declaration, we are just trying to maximize the number" of endorsing nations, which he said he hoped would top 80. The United States apparently will not be one of them.
"As the Trump administration has now said many times, we totally reject global governance of AI," White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios said in New Delhi. "We believe AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralized control."
Although Republican US lawmakers' bid to slip a 10-year ban on state-level AI regulation into the massive One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump last July was shot down in the Senate, a bill introduced last September by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.) would, if passed, impose a temporary moratorium on state laws regulating artificial intelligence.
To date, Trump’s most notable artificial intelligence regulation has been his July 2025 executive order aimed at preventing “woke AI.” His other AI-related edicts have rolled back regulations, including some meager steps taken under former President Joe Biden to bolster safety.
As was the case during the breakneck nuclear arms race during the Cold War, US officials have attempted to justify unfettered AI development by claiming that guardrails would slow progress and give adversaries like China an edge. And as with thermonuclear weapons during the Cold War, experts warn that a poorly governed race toward general artificial intelligence—a hypothetical advanced AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge of any subject as well as or better than a typical human—could pose an existential threat to humanity.
With so much uncertainty—and potential danger—alongside the unprecedented promise of AI, an increasingly aware public favors caution. Majorities of respondents to poll after poll say they want more, not less, AI regulation.
While very real, existential threats posed by AI are still many years off. However, there are pressing concerns over AI that are affecting the world today. Guterres noted Friday that AI can "deepen inequality, amplify bias, and fuel harm."
"As AI’s energy and water demands soar, data centers and supply chains must switch to clean power—not shift costs to vulnerable communities," he continued.
"We must invest in workers so AI augments human potential—not replaces it," Guterres stressed. "We must protect people from exploitation, manipulation, and abuse. No child should be a test subject for unregulated AI."
"Real impact means technology that improves lives and protects the planet," he argued. "So let’s build AI for everyone—with dignity as the default setting. Let us be clear: Science informs, but humans decide."
"Our goal is to make human control a technical reality—not a slogan," Guterres added. "And that requires meaningful human oversight in every high-stakes decision... And it requires clear accountability, so responsibility is never outsourced to an algorithm."
Palestinian authorities and witnesses to an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian-American this week said the young man, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, had been trying to stop settlers from attacking a farmer in the village of Mukhmas when he was fatally shot.
Abu Siyam was an American citizen, his mother told the Associated Press, and was in his village Wednesday afternoon when a group of settlers arrived there and attempted to steal sheep from a local farmer.
After residents intervened, the Israel Defense Forces arrived and shot tear gas, sound grenades, and live ammunition, according to Mukhmas resident Raed Abu Ali. The IDF told the AP that it had only used "riot dispersal methods" to stop Palestinians in the town from throwing rocks.
But Abu Ali reported that the settlers who had initiated the assault "were encouraged" when the IDF got involved, and they "started shooting live bullets" as well as hitting injured people with sticks.
Several other Palestinians sustained gunshot wounds. The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed Abu Siyam's killing.
The governorate of Jerusalem called the killing a “fully-fledged crime... carried out under the protection and supervision of the Israeli occupation forces.”
Abu Siyam was the second Palestinian-American to be killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year and at least the 11th to be killed since 2022.
Israeli settlers and military forces killed 240 Palestinians in the West Bank last year as violence there surged and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government pushed to further illegally annex the occupied territory, with Israelis building 130 new settlements in the West Bank in 2024 and 2025.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, progressive lawmakers in the US have called on President Donald Trump to take action to stop Israel from its illegal annexation, but the president has reportedly approved of plans like one that proposes the creation of the E1 settlement, which "buries the idea of a Palestinian state," according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Abu Siyam was killed days after Israel approved a plan to designate large parts of the West Bank as "state property" of Israel, forcing Palestinians to prove that they own their land.
Breaking the Silence, a group formed by former Israeli soldiers to oppose Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, emphasized that while the IDF did not carry out the attack that killed Abu Siyam, the military has played an active role in settlers' assaults on Palestinian communities in the West Bank, including in Mukhmas.
"Since October, the village has faced escalating settler terror: olive trees uprooted, Palestinians and activists attacked and hospitalized, homes torched," said the group. "When residents tried to rebuild their burned homes after the pogrom that took place three weeks ago, the army blocked them, declaring the area a 'closed military zone.' Somehow, measures are taken only after the pogrom. Never to prevent it. This is not a mistake, it's strategy."
"The IDF is not 'failing its mission,'" Breaking the Silence added. "It is implementing a policy: Settlers initiate the violence, the army enforces the outcome, until communities are pushed out. If we don’t stop it, Muḥkmas’ story will be no different."
A US official toldReuters that “the US Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas," and a spokesperson for the US embassy in Israel told the AP that US officials "condemn this violence."
The anti-war group CodePink, however, emphasized that deadly settler attacks, including those that have killed US citizens, are "funded by the United States," the largest international financial backer of the IDF.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2023 and have forcibly displaced more than 10,000.
"I know that a deal is achievable, but it should be fair and based on a win-win solution," said Abbas Araghchi. "A military option would only complicate this, would only bring about disastrous consequences."
As President Donald Trump continued to threaten a potentially massive war, Iran's foreign minister stressed his commitment to peaceful negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
Amid the largest military buildup in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq, Trump said on Thursday that he was weighing an initial, limited strike in order to force Iran to negotiate a new deal to limit its nuclear enrichment and would launch a broader attack—potentially aimed at toppling the entire government—if the country refused to do so.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded to these demands in a lengthy interview on MS NOW's "Morning Joe" on Friday, discussing recent talks with the US in Geneva.
"One thing I have to emphasize is that there is no military solution for Iran's nuclear program," Araghchi said. "That was tested last year, and there was a huge attack on our facilities. They killed and assassinated our scientists, but they couldn't kill our nuclear program."
After his strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in June, Trump claimed to have “obliterated” Iran's nuclear program and enrichment capabilities. But less than a year later, he is once again threatening a much bigger attack on Iran using the same justification.
Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian insisted earlier this week that his country is “absolutely not seeking nuclear weapons” and invited international inspectors in to verify it. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, meanwhile, has reiterated that Iran has the right to a nuclear industry.
"If they want a solution for Iran's nuclear program, if they want to ensure that Iran's nuclear program would remain peaceful forever," Araghchi said on Friday, "the only solution is diplomatic negotiation."
Although Iran is allowed to pursue nuclear power for peaceful means under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Trump publicly declared that he would not accept a deal that allows "any enrichment” by Iran.
Araghchi, however, said that's not what the discussion has looked like behind the scenes. "The US side has not asked for zero enrichment,” he said.
Instead, he said they discussed "political commitments and technical measures" to "make sure that this program is only for peaceful purposes" and said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, was involved in helping to craft them.
"This is what we have already done in 2015," Araghchi said, referring to the first nuclear deal between Iran and the US, which Trump ripped up during his first term, even though Iran was complying with its strict enrichment limits. "I believe that we can do it again, even a better one," he said.
Although the US president warned on Thursday that Iran must agree to a deal within 10 days or "bad things happen," Araghchi said there has been "no ultimatum" from Trump and that the only discussion between the two sides was on how to reach a "fast deal."
"We are under sanctions. Obviously, any day the sanctions are terminated sooner would be better for us. So we have no reason to delay a possible deal," Araghchi said. "For the US side also, President Trump and his team are interested in a quick deal. So we agreed to work with each other to achieve a deal as soon as possible. The only question is how to make it a fair deal, a win-win deal, an equitable deal."
Trump has also demanded that Iran surrender its ballistic missile program and support for regional allies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen, which Iran has said are nonstarters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nudged Trump keep pushing these maximal demands and has been accused of attempting to goad the US into war with its number one adversary by injecting "poison pills" into the negotiations.
Araghchi did not clarify the extent to which these demands have come up as sticking points during recent talks.
"I know that a deal is achievable, but it should be fair and based on a win-win solution," Araghchi said. "[A] military option would only complicate this, would only bring about disastrous consequences, not only for us, perhaps for the whole region and for the whole international community, which is fed up with different escalations and wars in our region and beyond."
Soon after Araghchi's interview aired, Trump told reporters he was considering a military strike to force Iran into a deal.
“I guess I can say I am considering that,” he said at the start of a meeting with governors at the White House.
