What JD Vance Knew About the War, and New Warnings About A.I.

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Tracy Mumford (0:34)

From the New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, September 11th. Here's what we're covering.

JD Vance (0:45)

Over the past six months, as the president of the United States says, we have the cards, we have the military advantage, we now have additional economic pressure that we're applying on them through the blockade that we…

Tracy Mumford (0:56)

Vice President JD Vance has been one of President Trump's key messengers about the war in Iran.

JD Vance (1:01)

I think that they're losing their capabilities by the day. I think they're realizing, by the way, that their control over the Strait of Hormuz is effectively gone.

Tracy Mumford (1:10)

He has publicly echoed Trump's confident tone about the American military campaign.

JD Vance (1:15)

We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. So as the president just told me, we're locked and loaded.

Tracy Mumford (1:22)

Now, my colleagues in the Times Washington Bureau have learned how, behind the scenes, Vance has gone out of his way to get his own updates about the war directly from US military commanders and how that information has sometimes been vastly different from what the administration presented to the public. According to interviews with more than half a dozen current and former administration officials, Vance, who opposed the war from the outset, has taken the unusual step of personally contacting commanders in the field before their views are consolidated by the Pentagon. Over the course of the spring and summer, Vance reached out to officers in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, asking them about everything from battlefield tactics to casualty estimates to how they assessed Iran's resilience. He also asked for a detailed accounting of what weapons remained in US stockpiles and how any shortages could affect the U.S.'s ability to deter China, Russia and North Korea. The commanders gave him a blunt, sobering assessment, saying their stocks of critical munitions like interceptor missiles were the lowest they'd ever seen. According to people who spoke to Vance, the vice president came away from some of his conversations with deep concerns about the overall strategy in the war. The commanders made clear to him that the US had limited ability to block Iranian strikes and deal with threats elsewhere in the world, and that the Iranian government was prepared to endure huge amounts of pain to fight for its survival. The officials the Times talked to said Vance communicated those concerns in his private talks with President Trump, though they could not say what role, if any, Vance's insights had on the administration's decision to shift away from its initial full-scale bombing campaign.

In response to questions from the Times about how Vance has gathered information on the war, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement that the Defense Secretary has, quote, facilitated direct access to combatant commanders for the Vice President and other senior White House leaders.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, an Iranian-backed militia made a major battlefield advance yesterday that could snarl global oil shipping even more. According to officials in Yemen, the Houthis there seized control of a strategic port city on the Red Sea, fighting off government forces backed by Saudi Arabia. With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed for months, the Red Sea has become a crucial alternative route for tankers and other ships. But the Houthis have been partially blockading it, firing on Saudi ships. And this new victory puts an Iranian ally one step closer to controlling another critical maritime choke point.

Also, amid all the disruption in the global energy trade, a new report from the International Energy Agency says that this year, the world is on track to burn more coal than it ever has before. For years, leaders in nearly every country had pledged to cut back on coal, which produces more air pollutants and more greenhouse gases than any other energy source. But, with the current shortages of oil and gas, countries have been burning more and more coal to meet their power needs.

The AI giant Anthropic released a report yesterday about the increasingly concerning ways people may be abusing the technology. The company outlined a number of incidents over the last few months where it said it stepped in to disrupt users whose actions set off alarms. That included Russian state media asking the chatbot Claude to generate online propaganda, suspected Chinese and Iranian government-linked actors using AI tools to try and target dissidents, and attempts to use Claude to develop more sophisticated missiles, drones, and bombs. In one of the most troubling examples, Anthropic said it blocked possible efforts to use AI to build biological weapons. The report detailed how people located in regions that were supposed to be blocked from using the tech got around safeguards. In one case, a scientist asked for Claude's help with a project that involved mutating chikungunya, the mosquito-borne virus, in a way that would make it more harmful. The caveat to all this is that Anthropic says it couldn't determine what the user's motives were. That's especially hard when it comes to things like biological research because the same kind of work that can lead to breakthroughs like vaccines can also help engineer dangerous pathogens. Still, Anthropic said, it erred on the side of caution and blocked a number of accounts because the consequences of not catching malicious activity could be so severe.