Monday Briefing 21/09/2026
In today’s Monday Briefing, we discuss the increasing apprehension about AI development. In Europe, both Russia and Germany go to the polls. Meanwhile, Bolivia faces unrest, the US expands influence in Africa, and Revolut suffers a data breach.
Spotlight: How to control AI? And can we?
By Haris Haveric and Diego de Carvalho
A particular hush falls over a party when the hosts themselves suggest turning the music down. Last weekend, the AI industry heard that hush when Anthropic’s Dario Amodei published an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier, asking AI builders to slow the development of advanced new models. Before the evening was out, his competitors joined him: OpenAI’s Sam Altman lent his agreement, and Elon Musk offered a rare economy of words: “Dario is right”.
Their concerns are tangible. In July, 1200 autonomous AI agents escaped an OpenAI test and launched cyberattacks on their own, in what came to be known as the Hugging Face Incident. This is a result of so-called recursive self-improvement, in which AI systems can autonomously develop more advanced successors. Experts worry this would allow artificial intelligence to spiral out of control and beyond the understanding of human developers. Further, a sufficiently advanced system could evade guardrails set out for its predecessors and avoid being shut down.
Amodei’s approach to this is pragmatic, built around a series of safeguards designed to control the pace and direction of AI development. Most concretely, he proposes hiring “integrated evaluators”: personnel embedded within AI labs to inspect development processes from the inside. Beyond this, he calls for labs to establish shared safety standards and development limits and for greater cooperation between public authorities and AI companies. Much to the chagrin of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, Amodei has also advocated for stricter export controls on chips. Anthropic immediately adopted the first measure, and Altman assured that OpenAI would follow suit.
Nonetheless, Amodei’s warning was not well received by financial markets: last Monday, AI stocks declined across Asia, Europe, and New York. Yet not everyone wished to leave the party. President Trump rejected any slowdown, arguing it would erode America’s lead over China. Meanwhile, Beijing called the warnings fearmongering that would only disrupt global efforts to govern the technology.
Do not, however, mistake American and Chinese rebuttal of Amodei as any sign of political alignment. The race between the two countries to achieve hegemony in the field has spilled over into diplomatic tensions and AI policy is expected to be the major topic ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington this week.
It seems even industry leaders have begun to grow wary on AI development. Alas, it wouldn’t be the first time that market incentives led humanity to dire consequences even as experts alert society to the dangers; just see how much progress has been made on climate change in the past thirty years. Amodei’s warning is clearly a wet blanket on the AI party that had been raging in recent years, but will it be sufficient to overcome the ambitions of both companies and countries on AI development?
European News
Russia goes to the polls: Does it even matter?
By Diego de Carvalho
Over the weekend, Russia held legislative elections to renew the State Duma. To virtually all analysts, the vote itself is a mere formality to renew United Russia’s (Putin’s party) mandate. It will certainly do little to change the status of the War in Ukraine, as almost all of Russia’s main parties are unabashedly in favour of the conflict.
There is one exception to this: the social-liberal party Yabloko has been the only one to campaign on an explicitly anti-war platform. Earlier in the year, the party was banned from the national ballot, on grounds that it was financed by the West and wanted to undermine the election. Fabricated as these claims may be, Yabloko was still allowed to field candidates in regional elections and their performance may serve as a barometer of public sentiment towards the conflict.
Formally, the vote extends into Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Crimea, the Ukrainian regions claimed, but not fully occupied, by Russia. In the context of the War, one of the major purposes of the election is to the legitimacy of Putin’s government. Russian propaganda has contrasted the event with the Ukrainian postponement of its presidential elections in 2024, a delay which faces increasing criticism as it drags on. Regardless of the future of the Ukraine War, these elections will extend the rule of its chief architect: Putin is set to complete 27 years in power.
CDU collapses in state elections
By Diego de Carvalho
A couple of weeks ago, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered a significant blow when the far-right AfD achieved an overwhelming win in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Now, it seems like Merz’s problems will persist as the CDU has collapsed in two other regional elections held this weekend.
In Berlin, where the CDU had been the largest party, the left-wing Linke has gained significantly, and the CDU fell by almost 10 percentage points. Meanwhile, in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the CDU is on the brink of falling below the electoral threshold and being swept out of parliament completely, which would be the party’s worst performance since WWII. There, the AfD will be the largest party, but the Social Democratic SPD will have enough seats to build a coalition.
The results are quite troubling for Merz, who had already been under significant pressure to resign. He has vowed to stay in office, but as his party bleeds support in both opinion polls and elections, internal pressure may be too much for him to withstand. Although Merz’s unpopularity is surely not helping his party, it is nevertheless unlikely that his replacement will have much more success than he has, in a country where the centrist parties are increasingly rejected and the extremes are increasingly approved.
World News
Bolivia approves deal with IMF, but faces turmoil
By Diego de Carvalho
On Friday, Bolivia approved an agreement with the IMF aimed at rescuing the country’s economy from years of capital flight and stagflation. If the deal is cleared by the IMF board, it will provide the Bolivian economy with $1.9 billion, a major lifeline to President Rodrigo Paz, a conservative who unseated 20 years of socialist rule in the country last year.
However, in order to meet the IMF’s requirements, Paz announced an end to diesel subsidies, immediately igniting protests across the country. In June and July, similar protests led to a humanitarian crisis and food shortages, as Bolivia was paralysed by road blockades. These reactions can be explained by the key role of fuel prices in the Bolivian economy, where transport costs directly affect the prices of almost all goods. The subsidies had driven prices down and been a bedrock of socialist governments in the past, but they generated steep fiscal deficits and bit into the country’s foreign reserves.
Faced with this political instability, the Bolivian government has resorted to increasingly illiberal measures. Paz has ruled under emergency powers since June and deployed the military against some of the blockades. Regardless of the validity the orthodox economic policies being implemented by Paz, he will certainly need to navigate further civil unrest as he attempts to dismantle the legacy of his predecessors.
US-Libya joint military drills despite Russian presence in the country
By Riccardo De Ambroggi
The US Department of War officially announced a military training programme in Bizerte, Tunisia, to be conducted jointly by US Marines and Libyan Naval Special Forces. Its stated goal is to improve maritime security by strengthening international cooperation in fighting modern piracy and illegal fishing.
The operation is part of Phoenix Express 2026, a 12-day multinational maritime exercise sponsored by the AFRICOM and involving the participation of many North African countries.
Libya’s participation is particularly notable because to its strong and growing military ties with Russia. Numerous Russian warplanes and military drones are deployed across six Libyan military bases, while Italian officials recently reported that a convoy of Russian armoured vehicles had arrived in the port of Tobruk.
Several North African nations, Egypt for example, adopt similar diplomatic positions, balancing between Russian and Western interests. They are particularly relevant in the context of the Ukrainian War because of their proximity to the conflict.
The Revolut Case: can stealing data really be that easy?
By Alice Di Terlizzi
The British fintech Revolut has recently been making headlines with its self-inflicted reputational damage, after the online bank handed over sensitive information pertaining to almost 700 of its customers to a criminal group operating online. The attackers were able to contact the affected customers after retrieving a convincing government email and asking Revolut for the provision of private client information.
Then, they proceeded to threaten Revolut’s international image, as they asked for a ransom to be paid to shield the banking group against the release of its stolen customer credentials. The nature of the ransomware itself is quite interesting, as the extortion attempt is happening in the public eye, as if intended to hit Revolut’s image at its core, rather than pose threats behind closed doors and then go public only if refused.
In any case, the mechanism of the data theft is quite worrying, paradoxically due to the fact that it wasn’t a cybersecurity breach. If companies are willing to hand over our data so easily, with no pre-emptive security measures, then we must ask fundamental questions about the importance of customer care and data sensitivity. Are physical and, even more importantly, online services directed ensuring the safety of their users? Or, rather, would similar services choose the money-saving path, and hide their breaches until a serious threat shows up
Every week, your TiL Monday Briefing 🗞: you better read it with a cup of coffee! ☕️
Head of the Monday Briefing column: Diego de Carvalho. Current writing staff: Alice di Terlizzi, Riccardo de Ambroggi. Cartoons by Polina Mednikova. The Monday Briefing column was established in its current form in 2021 by Bojan Zeric.
Hi, I’m Haris. As a student at Bocconi, I’m passionate about the intersection of
economics, arts, and politics. I enjoy examining how global changes and specific
sectors affect individuals and communities worldwide. Writing helps me
challenge narratives, explore complex issues, and participate in meaningful
discussions. At Tra i Leoni, I aim to share thoughtful, well-reasoned perspectives
with an inquisitive audience.
