Sentinel minutes #7/2025: “Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.”

Status: Greenish 🟢

Top items:

• The Trump administration continues cuts to the US federal government workforce and to government programs, coming into conflict with the US judiciary.

• Sam Altman shared roadmap for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5.

• More H5N1 strains infected dairy herds in the US, which suggests more widespread yet undetected spread in other countries.

• North Korea warns of retaliation after a US nuclear submarine docked in South Korean port.

Geopolitics

United States

The Trump administration disobeyed a court order to unfreeze federal payments, with VP Vance arguing that “Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.”

Trump claimed DOGE would cut “billions or hundred of billions of fraud and abuse” from the defense budget (which was about $820b in 2023) and announced plans to introduce a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports.

The Trump administration lifted a prohibition on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers entering schools, paused enforcement of an anti-bribery law for overseas US firms, and warned most of the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service that they would be fired.

It also ordered all probationary employees of the federal government to be fired. The exact number of such employees is unknown but is estimated to be approximately 220,000. As part of this, several hundred National Nuclear Security Administration were fired. The Trump administration wants to hire them back but can't figure out how to contact all of them.

Russell Vought, the newly confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all of its work. The CFPB’s purview has been described as “doing whatever [Elizabeth Warren] wants” by Republican personalities, but also by neutral and respected experts like Patrick McKenzie.

US Vice President Vance, in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, attacked European democracies over free speech and migration, which are top priorities for the Trump administration. The speech signaled the US’s growing distance from its European partners in NATO.

Five former Democratic US Treasury Secretaries warned about “the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy."

And a judge ordered health information and data that had been removed from federal health websites to be restored.

Europe

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that European rather than American troops would have to provide security guarantees to Ukraine after a peace deal, and played down the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on the other hand, said that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to NATO membership.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agreed to hold talks about ending the Ukraine war, though preparation for these talks could take weeks or months. US Secretary of State Rubio said Ukraine and Europe will be a part of real peace talks, after a Trump envoy suggested they wouldn’t.

UK PM Keir Starmer has said the UK is ready to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine, if a deal is reached.

A cable belonging to Russian Rostelecom broke in the Baltic Sea.

A newly built NATO warship in Germany was found to have dozens of kilograms of metal shavings in the ship's gearbox, in a suspected act of sabotage, likely by Russia.

Our forecasters gave an aggregate of 13% (range 2.5% to 30%) to Russia invading at least one of the Baltic States by 2030. They highlighted that France could have a more Russia-friendly government by 2030, and the US seems much less keen on defending Europe than at any point since 1940, but that Russia doesn’t seem to have the capability and seems pretty exhausted with Ukraine. Forecasters gave a 4% (range: 2% to 10%) to Ukraine joining NATO by 2030, because the Trump administration seems opposed but also remains a bit unpredictable. On whether Ukraine will join the EU by 2030, forecasters gave a 10% (range: 5% to 25%), mentioning that the EU integration process is slow and requires unanimity, but also that it would move the EU politically to the right.

Middle East

Anonymous sources say that Iran’s military has urged its leader to lift the fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons. If US makes a nuclear deal with Iran, Israel will not bomb it, Trump says. Netanyahu says he will make sure Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons.

Iran started an iridium hexafluoride production line at Isfahan nuclear facility.

Israel used toxic gas (carbon monoxide) to suffocate Palestinian fighters, captives in Gaza tunnels. Israeli PM Netanyahu is ready to move forward with removing Palestinians from Gaza. Egypt is to host an emergency Arab summit on Palestinian displacement.

UN suspended its humanitarian work in Houthi rebels’ stronghold in Yemen after more staff detentions.

Asia

North Korea has raised concerns, and warned of retaliation, over the docking of the USS Alexandria, a US Navy fast-attack nuclear submarine, in South Korea’s Busan port, calling it a threat to its national security.

China views the Philippines seeking to organize joint patrols with the US as a provocative move. In response, they conducted their own patrols (cn).

In Taiwan, President Lai announced that he plans to raise defense spending to more than 3% of GDP.

A UN report founds brutal, systematic repression of protests in the fallen Bangladesh regime.

Africa

Sudan confirms agreement on a Russian naval base.

The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia. U.S. Africa Command (Africom), and local officials estimate there are as many as 1,000 militants under its command.

Biorisk

An H5N1 vaccine for poultry has been conditionally approved in the US.

A third strain of H5N1 has been found in milk in Arizona, presumably because one or more dairy herds in Arizona is infected with that strain. That three separate strains have been found to have infected dairy herds in the US in a little more than a year raises the risk that such spillovers from birds to dairy cattle may be happening undetected in other countries as well.

Dairy workers in Nevada, Wisconsin, California, and Ohio have been infected with H5N1 bird flu. More than 80 cats in the US have been confirmed to be infected with H5N1 since 2022.

A third clade 1 mpox case has been reported in the US, in New Hampshire, a first clade 1 case has been reported in Ireland, and a first, probable clade 1 case has been reported in Sudan.

Potential spikes in AIDS-related deaths and a resurgence of untreated infections if access to antiviral drugs continues to be frozen by the US

Artificial Intelligence

Sam Altman shared a roadmap for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5:

We will next ship GPT-4.5, the model we called Orion internally, as our last non-chain-of-thought model.

After that, a top goal for us is to unify o-series models and GPT-series models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not, and generally be useful for a very wide range of tasks.

In both ChatGPT and our API, we will release GPT-5 as a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including o3. We will no longer ship o3 as a standalone model.

Elon Musk launched a bid to buy OpenAI. OpenAI’s board has rejected Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company, with Chairman Bret Taylor quoted on Twitter:

OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition. Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.

—Bret Taylor, Chair, on behalf of the OpenAI Board of Directors

This is despite OpenAI seemingly actually being for sale, with the OpenAI LLC planning to buy control from the nonprofit. Garrison Lovely suggests that Musk’s bid could increase the price that the OpenAI LLC has to pay.

The AI Action Summit was held in Paris. The joint statement didn’t propose any action to address AI risks. The US and the UK didn’t sign it. The UK said that the statement was not sufficiently strong on national security and global governance issues, while the US disliked the emphasis on 'inclusivity' (and also successfully pushed for any mention of existential risk to not be included). US VP JD Vance gave a speech in which he said he wanted to prioritize growth over safety, although he did say that AI “will never replace human beings”, and seemed to be under the impression that AI will be good for American jobs.

A leaked draft of the statement was panned by AI experts:

Herbie Bradley, a former employee of the UK AI Safety Institute, said that the draft “says effectively nothing except for platitudes”, noting that “it doesn't contain anything concrete around either technical AI research or government testing of AI systems”.

Researchers found that as AIs get smarter they develop their own coherent value systems, and become less corrigible. They also found that they value the lives of people from different countries significantly differently.

OpenAI will design its first custom chip this year.

EU Commision president Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU will invest an additional 50 billion euros in AI. In France, President Macron has announced a plan to invest €109b in AI.

The UK AI Safety Institute rebranded to the AI Security Institute.

A UK study suggests AI-generated content may raise the risk of more bank runs.

South Korea’s spy agency (NIS) says DeepSeek excessively collects personal information.