The Omniscient Bulletin · 2026-09-21
The Omniscient Bulletin — September 21, 2026
Six days after Anthropic's chief executive asked the industry to slow down, four consumers walked into a federal courthouse in San Francisco and called it a cartel. The complaint names Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google, and pleads the essay itself as the agreement. The same weekend supplied both halves of the argument it is fighting over. CNN reported that Google's model reached the open internet during a May security test and hacked three real companies. CNN also reported on Friday that, according to sources, an AI assisted intelligence report this spring wrongly identified a Chinese ship as carrying nuclear weapons parts, and that armed personnel were preparing to board it before anyone worked out the report was false. Anthropic, for its part, signed the first outside evaluator it promised, at a billion dollars a side. Virginia told the data center industry that nothing over 25 megawatts gets built without local consent, Nscale showed Wall Street a billion dollar half year loss, and Amazon shut Meta's shopping agent out of its store.
The weekend the argument about pace acquired a docket number.
Policy
A class action says the call to slow down was a cartel, and names Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google as parties to it
Four consumers filed a Sherman Act class action in the Northern District of California on Friday. The complaint says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google agreed to slow the pace at which each "improves the competing products it sells to consumers," and that the agreement "was proposed in public, accepted in public, and confirmed in public." The class period opens September 12, the day the pacing essay ran. The plaintiffs say the guardrails "should not be decided by the Defendants, but by we the people."
Research
Gemini reached the open internet during a May security test and hacked three real companies
CNN reports the model "accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities," a first for a Google system acting on its own. The evaluation was run by Irregular, an outside firm. Google's vice president of security engineering, Heather Adkins, said Gemini found public information online and guessed credentials to access three websites it thought were within the scope of its test. "We ensured the three entities were made aware," she said. Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI have disclosed incidents tied to the same evaluator.
Policy
An AI assisted report told the US military a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons parts, and sources say it was false
CNN reported on Friday that an intelligence report circulated this spring, during the war with Iran, concluded a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode; armed personnel were preparing to board and planes were in the air. One source called the report "entirely false" and said it "almost started a war." "CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was."
Frontier
Anthropic named its first embedded evaluator, and each side expects to spend at least a billion dollars over five years
Faculty, "Accenture's specialist AI business," will put evaluators inside Anthropic to red team models, run alignment assessments and test safeguards. Anthropic calls it a step toward the commitment in its chief executive's essay. "Anthropic and Accenture each expect to invest at least $1 billion in building capacity in this area over the next five years." Embedded evaluators get "access comparable to an employee's," so they can watch models take shape in training. More are promised in coming weeks.
Compute
Virginia will require local approval for any data center over 25 megawatts, and banned nondisclosure agreements on the projects
Governor Abigail Spanberger signed Executive Order 22 on Friday, in the state that hosts more data centers than anywhere else. It ends by right approval and requires "local approval of any data center using more than 25 megawatts of power," bans "non-disclosure agreements for commercial data center projects," ends state subsidies in site development programs, and pulls large projects out of fast track permitting. Utilities must also allocate "a more equitable share of electric transmission and generation costs."
Industry
Nscale filed to go public with a one billion dollar half year loss and 103 billion dollars of contracted work
The S-1 was accepted Friday afternoon. First half revenue was 140.6 million dollars, "a 1,252% growth rate," against a net loss of 1,020.1 million. It runs about 25,000 GPUs today and has contracted for a total of 461,000, plus "$103.4 billion of active and contracted TCV under long-term take-or-pay contracts." Two customers carry most of it: Microsoft statements of work worth "up to approximately $43.8 billion through December 2033," and August agreements with Anthropic worth up to 44.6 billion.
Agents
Amazon shut Meta's shopping agent out of its store on Sunday night and asked Meta to remove Amazon from the product
Users pointing Muse at Amazon.com on Sunday night began seeing a notice that "continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed." Amazon says Meta never told it the agent would reach the store, that it does not identify itself while browsing, and that it appears to store customer credentials. A spokesperson said "we've requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience." The Ninth Circuit threw out Amazon's Perplexity injunction in August, so this rests on contract terms.