October 1, 2026

Good morning,

I just finished listening to Ezra Klein's podcast with Bill Gates on AI. If you wanna have your day ruined, I suggest checking it out. Gates is so much more pessimistic/doomer than I would have thought given his life's work. Aren't these people supposed to be techno-optimists? It's really quite striking.

Gates' theory of the case is essentially that AI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates in the short-to-medium term, but that the job displacement — disruptive as it will be — is actually ancillary to the high likelihood of a bad actor commandeering one of these frontier models to commit a major cyber and/or bioterror attack, which he seems to suggest is all but certain to happen sooner than later. This AI-triggered period of disruption we are entering will probably last the next 20 years before the technology advances to the point where it delivers "super abundance" that solves most of our earthly problems, assuming we make it to the other side. Therefore, he argues, our most important job right now is to get through the transition period with humans remaining in control. The whole conversation is worth listening to, especially to hear Gates get prickly when Klein brings up his relationship with Epstein.

So we've definitely got a contender for our list of Craziest Stories of the Year with this FlyDubai attempted hijack, right? This was developing yesterday as we were putting the letter to bed. The more that comes out, the more it seems that we just avoided a major catastrophe that would have thrown the Middle East into a new spiral of turmoil.

Things are still developing, but here's what we know for sure. A FlyDubai commercial airliner going from Dubai to Tel Aviv was being piloted by an Indian national and Omani national. Halfway through the flight, the Omani co-pilot stabbed the other pilot, took control of the plane and put it into a plunge, likely trying to crash it into the ground with 180 passengers on board. But the plan was thwarted by a combination of heroism and quick thinking on the part of the Indian pilot, who managed to unlock the cockpit door as he was getting attacked, and the Israeli civilians who immediately rushed the cockpit and took control of the aircraft while disabling the attacker.

Now, if you can’t even successfully hijack the plane that you’re piloting, you’re a bad terrorist who should probably find a new line of work. And if I were said terrorist, I would probably not choose to hijack a jet full of Israelis. They do not f— around. Say what you will about the Israeli government, but that country produces some serious spines of steel in its people. These passengers saw a moment of peril and did not hesitate to act. And thank God they did. In a way, it's a coda to the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers as well as an example of one of the two big real-world lessons of 9/11:

As it happens, the second lesson was also put into practice in another close call this week. On Sunday, a British farmer ambling home from a late-night party noticed something off with a group of men wearing balaclavas hanging around this RAF base that also happens to be the US Air Force’s main forward operating base for bombers heading to Iran. The drunken farmer thought something was strange so he called it in and appears to have foiled what could have been a major attack on that base. (The WSJ is now reporting one of the men also tipped police off himself, suggesting he may have gotten cold feet). Both US and UK intelligence believe there was some kind of nexus to Iran with these men.

Was Tehran also behind this attempted hijack? Or was it a lone wolf? Either way, if an Emirati jetliner full of Israelis went down in Saudi airspace, at the hand of an Omani national who may or may not have been working for Iran... boy, that would have been like throwing a match into a tinderbox. Not what anybody needed right now! Instead, we got a planeload of Jews fighting back against an Islamist hijacker thanks to the quick thinking of an Indian pilot and an Israeli dude who said he knew how to pull the plane out of its descent because he watched a lot of TV shows about air disasters (seriously). The plane from the UAE was brought down safely and the Israelis were treated on the ground by Saudi doctors, despite landing in a country that still doesn't have formal relations with Israel.

The US and our allies have spent the past quarter century building this massive anti-terror apparatus that is mostly either a huge waste of money or actively harmful in preventing terrorism. Trillions of dollars spent trying to bring "democracy" to a region that has no use for it, the creation of an all-seeing surveillance panopticon at home, so much wasted, or plundered, or spent on security theater like the TSA meant to make us feel safe. And in the end, what actually stops terrorism? None of that stuff. It's always the quick-thinking civilians who notice something's not quite right, or the brave souls who jump into action the moment they realize what's unfolding in front of them.

In other words... human intelligence.

Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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A Republican political action committee spent $131 million over 17 days supporting Ken Paxton’s Senate bid, according to filings.

President Donald Trump participated in a Hispanic Heritage Month event Wednesday at the White House.

The biggest headline from the event had nothing to do with Hispanics, but rather with the White House ballroom construction.

As soon as the event began, POTUS announced that the Latino attendees would be the first group to tour the ballroom construction site and step onto the floor of what has already been built.

The entire White House press corps, including myself, was hoping to accompany the group and get a firsthand look at the construction. Unfortunately, as soon as the event ended, the press was escorted out before we could even catch a glimpse of the ballroom or watch attendees tour the construction site.

I did manage to speak with a couple of attendees before the event began. I asked them whether they were concerned that Hispanic voters might turn out for Democrats, given recent polls showing warning signs for the GOP among Latino voters.

Krista Lewie-Cepero, EVP of LUCA (Latinos United for Conservative Action), told me, “I think our message is strong.” However, she acknowledged that it will depend “on each candidate to put in the work and really appeal to their constituents.”

Meanwhile, Pastor Libia Duran appeared less certain about whether Hispanic voters would turn out for Republicans. She told me, “I’ll be candid and say, it has yet to be seen.”

Watch my conversations with both attendees here.

Some of the richest Republican neighborhoods in Texas are sending more money to the Democrat than to their own Senate nominee. In University Park, the Dallas enclave that ranks as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's second-best ZIP code in the country, James Talarico has raised $214,296 to Paxton's $181,656 through June 30.

I wanted to see whether that was a one-off, so I took the Houston Chronicle's analysis of Federal Election Commission records and checked how each ZIP code votes. Election results don't come by ZIP code, so I used the state House districts they sit in.

The Woodlands is in a district Trump won by about 27 points in 2024, and Talarico raised $238,622 there to Paxton's $39,281. Across 11 ZIP codes in Trump-won districts, he out-raised Paxton roughly $1.3 million to $422,000.

Talarico's biggest hauls still come from places that voted against Trump, and the polls are tight.

Paxton was reportedly recorded telling donors Trump's Dallas convention "dropped our numbers." His campaign called it "manipulated nonsense." Asked about it Wednesday, Trump said he "hadn't heard that" and called the convention "amazing." So the president loved the show and his nominee did not.

Democrats haven't won a Senate race in Texas since 1988, and the suburbs that used to be the Republican cushion are now where the party is starting to leak, with Trump's own brand getting some of the blame.

"Even President Xi, the first thing he said to me, 'Wow, you've done a good job!' He said that in Chinese, by the way."

— President Trump

Mitch Landrieu joins Carlo Versano on The 1600 to discuss why the South has become the center of American politics, what Democrats need to do to compete in red states, and the frustrations driving working-class voters across party lines.

The former New Orleans mayor also weighs in on Kamala Harris's future while acknowledging he is considering a presidential run of his own.

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