AI Executives Privately Expect a Catastrophe Within a Year. They Are Not Rehearsing How to Stop It. They Are Rehearsing What to Say the Day After.

What does catastrophic mean to them? I hear that word from AI people a lot, and it usually means a slide deck.

This time, it means a large-scale cyber attack.

The scenario they keep returning to is one that shuts down financial services, internet access, or power and water.

Your bank app dead and the tap dry.

Hold on.

Every bank and every airline runs disaster drills on paper.

Why is it news that an AI company does too? Because of

which way the drill points, a bank rehearses getting the systems back.

Axios says these plans are about wargaming the worst cases and educating members of Congress so that when lawmakers reach for a response, the companies have already shaped what they reach for.

So the rehearsal is for the lobbying? They're practicing the politics of a disaster they say they can't prevent?

That's the part a bank doesn't do.

And Axios says the executives expect Democrats to come after the industry hard if they take Congress in the midterms next month.

What do the companies

say to all this? OpenAI told Axios it runs preparedness exercises, like many companies, and that the scenarios are not treated as inevitable.

Anthropic, ask the same, declined to comment.

Not treated as inevitable is a careful sentence.

It doesn't say unlikely.

It doesn't, and OpenAI's chief executive said the quiet part days earlier.

Sam Altman told Politico that the world should accept some bad things happening, his words, for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.

He wouldn't promise a world with no major hacks.

The line he drew was at a serious loss of control to AI.

What does catastrophic mean to them? I hear that word from AI people a lot, and it usually means a slide deck.

This time, it means a large-scale cyber attack.

The scenario they keep returning to is one that shuts down financial services, internet access, or power and water.

Your bank app dead and the tap dry.

Hold on.

Every bank and every airline runs disaster drills on paper.

Why is it news that an AI company does too? Because of

which way the drill points, a bank rehearses getting the systems back.

Axios says these plans are about wargaming the worst cases and educating members of Congress so that when lawmakers reach for a response, the companies have already shaped what they reach for.

So the rehearsal is for the lobbying? They're practicing the politics of a disaster they say they can't prevent?

That's the part a bank doesn't do.

And Axios says the executives expect Democrats to come after the industry hard if they take Congress in the midterms next month.

What do the companies

say to all this? OpenAI told Axios it runs preparedness exercises, like many companies, and that the scenarios are not treated as inevitable.

Anthropic, ask the same, declined to comment.

Not treated as inevitable is a careful sentence.

It doesn't say unlikely.

It doesn't, and OpenAI's chief executive said the quiet part days earlier.

Sam Altman told Politico that the world should accept some bad things happening, his words, for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.

He wouldn't promise a world with no major hacks.

The line he drew was at a serious loss of control to AI.