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

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Plus, your Friday news quiz. Here’s what we’re covering:Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War, by Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous and Maggie HabermanHouthis Seize Strategic Red Sea Port, a Major Victory for Iranian Ally, by Saeed Al-Batati, Shuaib Almosawa and Vivian NereimThe Iran War Is Pushing Global Coal Use to Record Highs, by Brad PlumerAnthropic Says It Blocked Possible Efforts to Build Biological Weapons, by Dustin VolzU.S. Officials Expected to Announce Cyclospora Outbreak Is Over, by Christina Jewett, Caroline Hopkins Legaspi and Alice CallahanThe Most Enduring Piece of 9/11 Art? A Musical Set in Canada., by Michael Paulson Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, September 11th. Here's what we're covering. 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. Vice President J.D. Vance has been one of President Trump's key messengers about the war in Iran. 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. He has publicly echoed Trump's confident tone about the American military campaign. 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. 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 U.S. 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. Of 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 press. 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, Anthropics 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 chicken gunya, the mosquito-borne virus, in a way that would make it more harmful. The caveat to all this is that Anthropics 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, Anthropics 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. To me, this report really shows not just the risks out there for how these platforms are being used, but the sort of hard decisions that are having to be made every day by Anthropic and other AI labs, as they consider what is appropriate use? How careful and restrictive should we be in controlling queries on Claude and other chatbots? My colleague Dustin Volz covers cybersecurity and intelligence for the times.

So this is landing at a time when there's rising concern about AI models and whether or not there needs to be a regulatory framework in place to limit their acceleration, limit how they can be used, and how we're going to govern them going forward. And right now it remains to be seen what steps if any policymakers in Washington or internationally are going to take. But for the time being, this is like very much a voluntary effort by Anthropic and it. its peers to try to curtail abuses on their models. The Times has learned that the federal government is about to declare that this summer's big cyclospora outbreak is over, according to senior officials in the administration. The outbreak sickened a record number of people and had Americans throwing out their lettuce and saying no to salad for months. In all, more than 11.

11,000 cases were definitively linked to iceberg lettuce sold by Taylor Farms, one of the country's biggest produce companies, and thousands more cases were reported. By comparison, there were only roughly 1,200 cyclospora cases over the same period last year. Generally, the CDC deems a food-borne outbreak to be over when it determines that new illnesses are no longer being reported and that the product causing the issue has been cleared from shelves. And finally, today on the 25th anniversary of September 11th, theaters across the U.S. and around the world are putting on a musical called Come From Away, which has emerged as one of the most popular pieces of art reflecting on that day.

Recently, it's been performed by more regional theaters in the U.S. than almost any other show, according to one survey. The musical is set in a small town way out on Canada's Atlantic coast, Gander, Newfoundland, where more than 30 passenger planes were diverted on 9-11 once American airspace had been shut down. Within hours, the town's population almost doubled, with some 7,000 passengers stranded there for nearly a week. The people of Gander rushed to help, letting people sleep in their homes and cooking them meals. What do you remember about when you heard this was going to become a musical? We didn't know what to think of it.

We thought it was interesting and maybe a little crazy. Like, to us, we wondered aloud, like, you're going to write a musical about a bunch of people making sandwiches. There must be a better use of your time than that. My colleague Michael Paulson, who covers theater, recently went to Gander to talk to the town's mayor, Percy Farwell, and other residents who were there on 9-11, some of whom inspired character. in Come From Away. The mayor told Michael that he and others were initially skeptical

that their experience was worthy of a Broadway show. But over time, they came to see the musical as capturing something bigger than them. People needed a reassurance of humanity, and the story provides that. So I think that's why it's so enduring is because that's the story. It's not about Gander.

It's told through the people of Gander because this particular example of it happened in Gander. But it's a reminder to every day. There is goodness out there in the world, too, right? You know, it's not all, the world's not all bad. It's not all gone. There is still hope. Those are the headlines.

If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It's just after these credits. And if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to all of the journalism we publish when you download the Times app now. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Margaret Cedifa, Jake Lucas, Yon Stewart,

and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Sam Dolnik, Lauren Jackson, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, and Chris Wood. Now, time for the quiz. Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories the Times has been covering. Can you get them all? Okay, here we go.

The president posted on his social media sites of photos showing the map of New Mexico with Mexico crossed out and, of course, replaced with the word America. This week, President Trump started publicly toying with the idea of renaming another part of the U.S., saying the state of New Mexico should change its name to New America. Now, the president has no legal authority to do that. It's a state-level decision. In New Mexico, the state's democratic leaders have already rejected the idea.

But another state actually did change its official name, shortening it, just a few years ago. Your question, what state was it? A hint, it's one of the 13 original colonies, and before the change, its name had referenced plantations. The answer? Rhode Island. Its full official name used to be the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. But in 2020, after mass protests against systemic racism, Rhode Islanders voted to remove the plantations reference. Okay, next question.

I'm not that person. I can promise you that. This week, a new documentary stunned audiences during its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The project was actually a complete secret. People in the audience weren't even told what they were about to see until they stepped into the theater. Why would I deceive you?

There's no reason for me to do that. The film, which is called You Can See Everything, centers around an infamous, disgraced tech entrepreneur. You're being real right now. I'm always being real. Your question. Who is the movie about?

Maybe you recognize that deep voice. The answer? Elizabeth Holmes, who invited a documentary crew into her home just before she had to report to prison for defrauding investors in Theranos, her infamous blood testing startup. Nathan Fielder. who's known for his very absurd, sometimes cringe-inducing mix of comedy and documentary

is shown in the trailer interviewing Holmes. He said that the time he and the film crew spent talking to her was so strange and unnerving that none of them could, quote, reach a consensus on what was happening. The film will be out in theaters in mid-October. And last question. The school year is back in full swing and just in time for students to return to campus. Cornell University in upstate New York has put a very specific new rule in place

for the communal kitchens in its dorms. Your question, what is no longer allowed in those kitchens at Cornell? A little bit of a hint here. Schools in more urban areas probably don't have to deal with this. To give you the answer, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Matt Yon,

who's the host of the Times newly relaunched newsletter for college students, called Extra Credit. Matt has the answer. Recently, Cornell banned students from processing wild game in residential kitchens on campus. Apparently, it became an issue after two students who were also licensed hunters, killed a black bear and brought it back to campus to make pastrami out of it. A spokeswoman for Cornell said for students who do hunt, there are plenty of certified meat processors near campus.

So there you go. No more butchering wild game in the dorm kitchen. For more college news and everything relevant for life on campus, sign up for the extra credit newsletter. You can find it at NYTimes.com slash newsletters. They even share some great cheap and easy recipes you can pull off in your dorm room, but likely no DIY bear pastrami. That's it for the news quiz.

If you want to tell us how you did, our email is The Headlines at NYTimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. Have a great weekend. We will be back on Monday.