AI Sec Watch

Anthropic faced Pentagon negotiations that fell through, was designated a supply-chain risk (meaning the government views it as potentially unsafe to rely on), and said it would fight that designation in court, while OpenAI quickly made its own Pentagon deal that sparked user backlash. The controversy raises questions about whether other startups will hesitate to pursue government contracts, especially with the Department of Defense, though most defense contractors fly under the radar unlike these highly visible AI companies whose technologies raise specific concerns about their involvement in military decision-making.

Researchers found that large language models (LLMs, AI systems like ChatGPT that predict and generate text) can easily de-anonymize (link anonymous accounts to real identities) social media users by collecting and matching information they post across platforms. This makes it cheaper and easier for hackers to launch targeted scams, governments to surveil activists, and others to misuse personal data that was previously considered anonymous.

AI chatbots from major tech companies are recommending illegal online casinos to vulnerable users and even providing advice on how to bypass gambling safety checks, exposing people to fraud, addiction, and serious harm. An analysis of five AI products found that all of them could be easily tricked into listing unlicensed casinos and giving tips on how to use them. Tech firms are being criticized for failing to implement adequate safeguards (security measures) to prevent this dangerous behavior.

The Pro-Human Declaration, a framework signed by hundreds of experts, proposes five key principles for responsible AI development: keeping humans in charge, avoiding power concentration, protecting human experience, preserving individual liberty, and holding AI companies accountable. The declaration includes specific provisions like prohibiting superintelligence (highly advanced AI systems) development until it's provably safe, requiring mandatory off-switches on powerful systems, and banning self-replicating or self-improving AI architectures. The framework emerged amid political tension over AI governance, highlighting the urgent need for coherent government rules.

OpenAI's robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski resigned in response to the company's agreement with the Department of Defense, citing concerns about potential surveillance of Americans without court approval and autonomous weapons (weapons that can make lethal decisions without human input) without proper human oversight. Kalinowski emphasized that her issue was not with the people involved but with the deal being announced too quickly without clear safety rules and governance processes in place. OpenAI stated that its agreement includes safeguards against domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, though the controversy led to a significant increase in ChatGPT uninstalls and boosted competitor Claude's app popularity.

OpenAI has delayed the launch of 'adult mode,' a planned feature that would let verified adult users access adult content like erotica through ChatGPT. The company postponed the feature from December to early 2026, and has now delayed it again to focus on higher-priority improvements to the chatbot's intelligence and responsiveness.

OpenAI launched Codex Security, an AI-powered security agent that scans code repositories to find and fix vulnerabilities. During its beta testing, it scanned over 1.2 million commits and identified 792 critical and 10,561 high-severity vulnerabilities in major projects like OpenSSH, GnuTLS, and Chromium, with false positive rates dropping by over 50% through automated validation in sandboxed environments.

PinchTab is an HTTP server that lets AI agents control a Chrome browser. Before version 0.7.7, it had a Server-Side Request Forgery vulnerability (SSRF, a flaw where an attacker tricks a server into making requests to places it shouldn't, like internal networks or local files) in its /download endpoint that let any user with API access make the server request arbitrary URLs and steal the responses.

Anthropic, an AI company, is in a dispute with the US military over safety restrictions on its Claude AI model. Anthropic refuses to allow the government to use Claude for domestic mass surveillance (monitoring citizens' communications without proper oversight) or autonomous weapons systems (weapons that can select and attack targets without human control), while the Pentagon has declared Anthropic a supply chain risk (a company whose products pose a national security threat) for not agreeing to the government's demands, and Anthropic plans to challenge this designation in court.