Opinion & Analysis
The AI Industry Keeps Breaking the Internet
The AI giants talk a big game about the future they’re building. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has previously written that AI could usher in a world so perfect that “many will be literally moved to tears”—a world pruned of disease, poverty, and illiberalism. “We’re now in the singularity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said over the weekend on a podcast, and it will be “awesome for the world.”
How Should Democrats Talk About Identity in Hiring?
Last week, Senator Edward Markey published a social-media post seeking interns for his Boston office. He wrote that “BIPOC, LGBTQ+, working class, veterans, and other underrepresented candidates with Massachusetts ties are encouraged to apply.” Outrage quickly followed:
The Armageddon Economy
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube It can feel like an existential moment right now—one where many tech leaders are both warning against and accelerating the destructive forces of AI. But Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue that this could also be a turning point toward building something better.
<em>Wicker</em> Asks Whether Love and Marriage Are Incompatible
The new film Wicker is, first and foremost, a love story. And I need to acknowledge this promptly: It is a love story about a woman who falls for a person-shaped basket. Olivia Colman’s character, who is known to the audience only as Fisherwoman, is a classic spinster.
Photos of the Week: Foam Fight, Santa Dance, Orangutan Escape
Kiran Ridley / AFP / GettyA protester wearing a period costume stands during a demonstration against the high cost of living in Paris, on October 17, 2026, as part of a nationwide call for mobilization, bringing together various groups expressing their anger: former gilets jaunes protesters, secondary-school and university students, climate activists, farmers, and more. Carl Court / GettyA police officer wearing riot gear stands in front of a burning barricade during a demonstration near...
Why Trump Can’t Sell Putin a Deal
On April 7, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University in which he effectively offered to build the equivalent of the Tennessee Valley Authority for North Vietnam on the condition that Hanoi cease supporting the insurgency in South Vietnam. On the helicopter ride back from the speech, Johnson leaned across to an assistant, put his hand on his knee, and said of Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, “Old Ho can’t turn that down, Old Ho can’t turn that down....
The Party That Must Not Be Named
For most of the past two decades, Ohio Democrats have hobbled home in defeat on Election Day, beaten and battered in a state that used to be a national bellwether. In 2024, Donald Trump ran up an 11-point margin, while Sherrod Brown lost his seat in the Senate. But earlier this month, I found Brown campaigning at Ohio State University, his red L.L.Bean fleece blending in with the students’ scarlet-and-gray apparel.
The Man in the Middle of Trump’s Deeply Conflicted Ukraine Policy
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have never enjoyed a warm relationship, or even a stable one. But last week, it hit a new low. Trump called on the Ukrainian people to elect a new president, describing Zelensky as “more difficult to deal with” than Vladimir Putin.
The Man Who Saved the Internet Yesterday
On Tuesday, the world found out about two massive security vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that is used by roughly 70 percent of websites. The flaw was discovered by cybersecurity researchers using a frontier model from OpenAI. If they exploited it, attackers could gain full control of servers, stealing or copying anything inside or simply taking sites offline.
Trump’s Gamble to End the Iran War
President Trump has been hearing lately from two trusted confidants, each promising a quick path to ending the war in Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that Iran is on the brink of economic collapse and that a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, combined with sanctions, will force Tehran to capitulate at the negotiation table. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a series of calls with Trump, has offered a different route: one more round of devastating U.S. and...
America Needs Its Indian Immigrants
Ask many successful Indian CEOs, entrepreneurs, or scientists how they rose to prominence in America, and they will tell you that, grit and talent aside, the key factor was the country itself: an economy and a culture that rewarded merit and drew ambitious, talented people from around the world. Indian Americans are among the most affluent and best-educated groups in the country. What distinguishes them from other immigrant groups is that they have risen to the top in one generation.
The Job Market Is Not the Problem
Thirty years ago this summer, the sociologist William Julius Wilson published When Work Disappears, in which he attributed high unemployment in urban, largely Black neighborhoods to structural changes in the economy. Conservatives dismissed his argument, contending instead that the problem was a poor work ethic enabled by a welfare system in desperate need of reform. But as a new unemployment crisis has arisen—this time more white, male, and rural—many figures on the right have discovered...
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Appalling Campaign Ad
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. If you don’t live in Ohio, you’ve probably been blissfully free from thinking about Vivek Ramaswamy since the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which he left after arousing the visceral dislike of pretty much all of his rivals, as well as many voters. Ramaswamy, who’s now running for Ohio governor, is back in the...
<em>The Atlantic</em> Publishes List of “50 Unforgettable Love Stories”
Today The Atlantic launches “50 Unforgettable Love Stories,” a new editorial project that highlights stories of romantic love. The list includes works published across more than four centuries—from its earliest selection, Astrophil and Stella by Philip Sidney, published in 1591, to its most recent, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, published in 2024. The list below is an effort to name the love stories—novels, of course, but also poetry, plays, and short stories—that are the most enduring.
A Self-Help Book for an Era of Self-Help Overload
Marisa G. Franco is familiar with the art of secure attachment. She’s spent years studying it: that coveted quality that makes some people so trusting, so quick to accept that they are, in fact, loved. She wrote the 2022 best seller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—And Keep—Friends.
This Is Not a Cycle of Retribution
Donald Trump has spent nearly two years investigating, suing, or prosecuting anybody in politics, media, or government who ever defied him. Now, with Democrats poised to win control of one or both chambers of Congress, the administration and its allies are prepared to slip back into their familiar pose of victimhood. The putative evidence of imminent GOP persecution comes from Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who recently told the Vox journalist Astead Herndon during an event at the...
When the Public Good Is in the Hands of Big Tech
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Many people are understandably focused on the question of how AI will transform our civilization. Will it end world hunger?
Sally Rooney Is Wrong, and So Is What’s Happening to Her
On October 14, the publisher Faber & Faber announced that it would stop selling books by the Irish novelist Sally Rooney in the United Kingdom. Rooney has declared her intention to donate her earnings to a group called Palestine Action, which was banned last year by the British government. Her publisher concluded that it could not continue to pay royalties that would end up in the hands of a registered terrorist organization.
An Unexpected Iran-War Opponent: The President’s Son
Donald Trump Jr. had a simple vision for his father’s foreign policy during the 2024 presidential campaign: If elected, Donald Trump was going to keep America out of another war in the Middle East. “Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?” he wrote on X that April, as Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones toward Israel. “Times like these should make us all realize how lucky we were to have Trump, his strength and his resolve.”Two
All the President’s Hotties
“There are some reasons to be president,” Donald Trump mused at a rally in Georgia earlier this month. Take a wild guess what these might be. The cool armored car?
What Lego Lost When It Grew Up
Next month, just in time for the holidays, Lego will launch its largest set yet: a miniature version of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia. (“Perfect for anyone who loves visionary design, architecture or travel,” the website proclaims.) The price tag, at $799.99, is a bargain if you assess it on a per-brick basis:
Everyone Is Buying Electric Cars—Except Americans
For the first time since the dawn of the automobile, the majority of new cars are not powered exclusively by gasoline: So far in 2026, electric vehicles and hybrids are outselling traditional gas-powered cars. As oil prices have gone up and up since the start of the war in Iran, drivers from Hanoi to Hamburg are picking up EVs like never before. According to the energy think tank Ember, 49 countries have broken EV-sales records this year.
The Perfect Liberal
In 1989, the year the West won the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama published an essay announcing “the end of history.” He wasn’t claiming that historic events would stop taking place; what was over, rather, was the debate about the meaning of those events. Since the Enlightenment, Western thinkers had believed that history was progressing toward a final destination.
How Corruption Got This Bad
“Isn’t that illegal?”That’s a question I get asked a lot as a former federal prosecutor. Donald Trump, his family, and members of his administration are most often the inspiration. Last year, the Qataris gave the U.S. Defense Department a $400 million luxury jumbo jet for the president’s use, which he plans to take with him to his presidential library when he leaves office.
Like <em>Yesteryear</em>, but Better
How’s this for a job offer? In the span of no more than 10 years, you’re to have seven babies for C-suite women at a major tech firm. You’ll be on a strict diet and exercise regime, your vitals constantly monitored.
Mamdani Is the Centrist We’ve Been Waiting For
Ever since Zohran Mamdani exhilarated the left with his out-of-nowhere mayoral campaign, mainstream Democrats have been dejectedly searching for an inspirational figure of their own. Where is the Democratic executive who has the media savvy to inspire his own cultlike following while making pragmatic governing decisions and ignoring the incessant demands of progressive activists?At last, the moderates have found such a Democrat. His name is Zohran Mamdani.
How Is Canada’s Military Buildup Going?
Suddenly, Canada is in the middle of a defense boom. Like other NATO countries that have skimped on their armed forces for decades, Canada is trying to quickly build up its military in the face of both rising international-security threats and a White House that regularly treats friends like foes. In the absence of trustworthy American leadership, many allies are working to become more self-reliant.
Maine Has Changed. Susan Collins Hasn’t.
Senator Susan Collins desperately needed to change the subject. As she stepped around cow manure at the annual Fryeburg Fair, a reporter was asking her about President Trump’s musing that he might campaign in Maine during the closing weeks of the election—an invitation that Collins, trying once again to save her seat, almost certainly had not extended to a man with an approval rating of 32 percent in the state. A campaign staffer tried to cut off the questioning, but the nearly 74-year-old...
The Democratic Party’s New Villain
A new boogeyman arrived in Democratic campaign ads this year with such force that it was possible to forget it had ever been absent. Slotted between clichés about “rising costs,” the “rigged economy,” and the elusive “fair shot” for the middle class, the familiar villains of billionaires, insurance companies, and “MAGA extremists” were joined by a friend turned foe. “Big Tech’s invading Ohio, driving up our electric rates, damaging our environment, destroying our farmland,” Representative...
America Is Now an Ally of Russia
In the past week, the president of the United States has conclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation. Donald Trump has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful—security arrangement in human history.