For centuries, the United Kingdom has projected itself as one of the world’s most enduring political unions. On Monday, however, that union faced one of its most consequential constitutional challenges in modern times.
Cardiff became the centre of attention as leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland came together to assert their nations’ right to determine their own constitutional futures, including the possibility of leaving the United Kingdom.
SNP leader and Scottish First Minister John Swinney, Plaid Cymru leader and Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin signed a memorandum of understanding calling on Westminster to prepare for constitutional change. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald also attended the meeting.
The declaration is politically significant for one simple reason: for the first time since devolution began, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are simultaneously led by politicians who favour independence or constitutional separation from the UK.
What exactly is the United Kingdom?
Before understanding why Monday’s meeting matters, it is important to understand what the United Kingdom actually is.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four constituent parts: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And no, England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are not interchangeable terms.
England is one of the four constituent countries. Great Britain refers to the island containing England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is the sovereign state comprising Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The modern UK is therefore the product of several different unions formed over centuries rather than one grand political settlement created at a single point in history.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have their own political institutions because of the process of devolution. Scotland has the Scottish Parliament, Wales has the Senedd and Northern Ireland has its own Assembly and power-sharing executive.
That distinction is now at the heart of the constitutional battle: how much power should remain at Westminster, and how much should reside in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast?
How did this Union come into existence?
The story goes back much further than modern British politics.
England gradually absorbed Wales during the Tudor period. Legislation in the 16th century incorporated Wales into the English legal and political framework. England and Scotland, meanwhile, remained separate kingdoms even after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England.
The decisive moment came in 1707.
The English and Scottish Parliaments passed the Acts of Union, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain and a single Parliament at Westminster. The union took effect on 1 May 1707.
The reasons were not merely romantic appeals to British unity.
Scotland’s failed Darien colonial venture had inflicted serious economic damage. Access to English markets and England’s growing maritime and commercial power made union attractive to sections of the Scottish political elite. England, meanwhile, feared the possibility of Scotland aligning with its enemies, particularly France, and wanted to secure the Protestant succession.
A century later came another major constitutional transformation.
The Act of Union 1801 united Great Britain and Ireland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But Irish nationalism never disappeared.
The union ultimately fractured under the pressure of Irish nationalism. Following years of conflict and political upheaval, most of Ireland left the United Kingdom in the early 1920s. The Irish Free State emerged from 26 counties, while the six counties of Northern Ireland remained within the UK. The constitutional name eventually became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The bitter history of partition eventually produced the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which established Northern Ireland’s present power-sharing arrangements and recognised the principle that its constitutional status can change if the people express that democratic wish.
In other words, the United Kingdom has already lost a major part of the territory that once constituted it.
The question now is whether history could repeat itself.
Devolution was supposed to strengthen the Union. Has it done the opposite?
This is perhaps the biggest irony confronting Westminster.
Devolution was introduced to give Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland greater control over their domestic affairs while keeping them inside the United Kingdom.
Referendums in Scotland and Wales in 1997 paved the way for their devolved institutions, while devolution formed a central part of the 1998 Northern Ireland settlement.
Instead of permanently settling the constitutional question, however, devolution arguably gave nationalist movements powerful political platforms from which to make the case for going further.
Scotland came closest to leaving in 2014.
In that referendum, 55.3 per cent voted No and 44.7 per cent voted Yes. The result appeared to settle the issue for a generation.
But then came Brexit.
Brexit changed the equation
The 2016 Brexit referendum exposed a profound constitutional divergence between England and the other nations.
The UK as a whole voted to leave the European Union. But Scotland voted 62 per cent to Remain, while Northern Ireland voted 55.8 per cent to Remain. Wales, by contrast, voted 52.5 per cent for Leave.
For Scottish nationalists, Brexit became a powerful argument that Scotland could be taken out of the European Union against its electoral preference because decisions were ultimately made at the UK-wide level.
The argument has since evolved into something broader: if Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland can repeatedly be outvoted by England, why should Westminster retain the final say over their constitutional future?
That is precisely the argument being advanced in Cardiff.
The Cardiff declaration: what does it actually mean?
The memorandum signed by the nationalist leaders is not itself a declaration of independence.
Nor does it mean that Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland is leaving the UK tomorrow.
Its importance is political rather than immediately legal.
The agreement argues that Westminster should not block the right of the constituent nations to determine their own futures and calls for preparation for constitutional change. The parties also intend to cooperate on areas including the economy, energy, Europe, international relations and self-determination.
Swinney described the moment as pivotal.
Ap Iorwerth has spoken of a “major reset” in relations between Westminster and the devolved nations, while insisting that Wales has no immediate timetable for an independence referendum. Plaid Cymru has previously ruled out holding such a referendum before the next Senedd election in 2030.
Northern Ireland is different.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, a border poll on Irish reunification is possible if the relevant threshold for considering such a vote is reached. That makes Northern Ireland’s constitutional route fundamentally different from Scotland’s and Wales’. (GOV.UK)
And then Donald Trump entered the debate
As if the constitutional crisis was not complicated enough, US President Donald Trump has now inserted himself into the Irish question.
During his visit to Ireland, Trump said he would “love” to see a united Ireland and described the merger of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland as a natural outcome. He has, however, declined to say what he thinks about Scottish independence, for now.
The comments triggered irritation among pro-Union politicians in Northern Ireland and London.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, while supporting Irish unity in principle, acknowledged that a referendum held now would probably not produce a majority for reunification.
For Westminster, the timing could hardly be worse.
The Cardiff summit came immediately after Trump’s intervention and has given the impression of a rapidly expanding constitutional conversation across the British Isles.
Is the UK actually on the verge of breaking up?
Not yet.
A political movement demanding independence is not the same thing as a successful independence referendum. A referendum itself is not the same thing as negotiations over separation. And negotiations do not automatically guarantee the creation of viable independent states.
There are enormous questions surrounding currency, debt, defence, trade, borders, pensions, energy, public finances and relations with the European Union.
Scotland’s own 2014 experience demonstrated how complicated independence would be. Wales faces an entirely different economic and political equation, while Northern Ireland’s future is tied to the delicate architecture of the Good Friday Agreement.
Yet dismissing the current movement as mere political theatre would also be a mistake.
Recent polling cited by The Guardian puts support for independence at 47 per cent in Scotland, 36 per cent in Northern Ireland and 32 per cent in Wales.
More importantly, the political leadership has changed.
For decades, Westminster could confront nationalist demands one territory at a time.
Now, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are speaking about constitutional change simultaneously.
Westminster’s biggest challenge
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has firmly backed the Union and Downing Street has rejected the suggestion that Britain is inevitably heading towards dissolution. The government says it wants to deliver change across all four nations while keeping the Union intact.
Burnham’s recent comments on a possible Scottish referendum created confusion after he appeared to suggest that a vote could be considered if there were clear public support. He subsequently clarified that another Scottish independence referendum remains “off limits”.
That ambiguity may itself become a political problem.
The nationalist leaders are effectively asking Westminster one question:
If the Union is genuinely voluntary and democratic, who gets to decide when its constituent nations want to reconsider it?
Westminster’s answer is equally clear: constitutional change cannot simply be imposed by devolved governments.
And that is where the battle lines have now been drawn.
The United Kingdom has survived wars, empire, Irish partition, economic crises and the loss of its global imperial dominance.
But it is now facing a challenge from within.
The irony is hard to miss: the country that once created one of the world’s most powerful unions is now debating whether that union itself has an expiry date.
Monday’s meeting in Cardiff may not have broken Britain.
But it has undoubtedly made the possibility of Britain breaking up considerably harder for Westminster to ignore.
The West Bengal government has launched a major crackdown on madrassas across the state, ordering the closure of 252 institutions and issuing show-cause notices to another 100. The action came after a statewide survey conducted by the Minority Affairs and Madrassa Education Department to check whether madrassas were operating with the required approvals, infrastructure and academic standards.
Officials said the survey began in June and was carried out across districts to assess the functioning of both government and private madrassas, with particular attention to Khariji madrassas. These are independently run Islamic religious institutions that generally depend on public donations or charitable trusts rather than government funding.
West Bengal has ordered 252 madrassas to close and sought explanations from around 100 others after a statewide survey. The move… pic.twitter.com/WTw4Vqzbh1
According to reports based on findings submitted by district administrations, around 2,396 madrassas were functioning without registration. The government has said that the action is primarily aimed at institutions that lack the necessary approval, do not have basic infrastructure or deviate from prescribed educational requirements. The state has also maintained that madrassas that meet the required rules and have valid approval will be allowed to continue functioning.
Minister Kshudiram Tudu, who heads the Minority Affairs and Madrassa Education Department, said the survey was ordered to establish how many madrassas were authorised and how many were functioning without the necessary permissions. “As many as 252 madarsas have been ordered to close while 100 others have been sent show-cause notices for lacking requisite approvals and basic infrastructure,” he said.
Tudu also said the government wanted students studying in madrassas to have access to mainstream education and opportunities similar to those available to students in other schools. “We want madarsa students to pursue modern, mainstream education and shine in life just like students from other schools,” he said.
The districts with the highest number of closure notices include Malda, North Dinajpur, South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Nadia. Reports said around 44-45 institutions in Malda, about 37 in North Dinajpur, around 32 in South 24 Parganas and around 25 each in Murshidabad and Nadia have been affected.
The West Bengal government has also raised a security-related concern. Officials have said that complaints were received about some Khariji madrassas and that intelligence inputs indicated anti-national propaganda being taught at some institutions. State Panchayati Raj Minister Dilip Ghosh said there had been cases where people associated with madrassas were arrested in connection with extremist activities.
“Complaints against madrasas had repeatedly been received. There have been instances of people carrying out anti-national activities from some seminaries,” Ghosh said. At the same time, he stressed that madrassas operating legally would not be targeted. “Madarsas being run in accordance with the law and with government permission will continue to function. But the government will not allow madarsas to be opened indiscriminately and cause trouble,” he added.
The latest move has therefore combined two arguments from the state government, regulation of educational institutions and concerns over extremist or anti-national activities. The government has said the survey will help separate recognised institutions from those functioning outside the regulatory system.
Uttarakhand follows with action against illegal madrassas
West Bengal is not the only state where authorities have recently stepped up action against madrassas that do not have the required recognition. Uttarakhand has also intensified its crackdown, although its approach has largely been presented as a regulatory exercise aimed at bringing minority educational institutions under a new recognition system.
The latest action in Uttarakhand has taken the number of madrassas whose operations have been discontinued to 20. Of these, 17 have been sealed, while the managements of three others have submitted written undertakings confirming that they have stopped operating. The latest action involved institutions in Dehradun and Haldwani.
Uttarakhand: Action has been taken against unrecognised madrasas in Dehradun and Haldwani. Three madrasas in Dehradun and two in Haldwani were sealed, taking the total number of unrecognised madrasas sealed across the state to 17, while operations at three others have also been… pic.twitter.com/pbVaEQhdAG
In Dehradun, Madrasa Jamia-Tus-Salam Al-Islamia in Azad Colony was sealed. The managements of Madrasa Dar-e-Arqam in Azad Colony, Majra, and Madrasa Darul Uloom Rahimia submitted written undertakings saying that they had stopped running the institutions.
Two more madrassas were sealed in Haldwani after their managements failed to produce the required recognition documents. Authorities said the institutions were being dealt with because they did not meet the prescribed recognition and academic requirements.
The action is part of a much larger overhaul of minority education in Uttarakhand. In July 2026, the state became the first in India to abolish its statutory Madrasa Board and replace it with the Uttarakhand State Authority for Minority Education (USAME). The new authority covers educational institutions run by all six notified minority communities – Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists.
The government repealed the earlier framework under which madrassas were regulated and introduced a common system for minority educational institutions. Under the new arrangement, institutions have to meet recognition requirements and follow prescribed educational standards.
The crackdown has gone beyond the 20 institutions whose closure or sealing was recently highlighted. According to the Uttarakhand Minority Education Authority, around 200 unrecognised madrassas have ceased operations, while more than 100 have applied for recognition. In Haridwar, which had 269 operational madrassas, 102 had shut down, while 76 had applied for recognition. Thirty-five madrassas across the state had received recognition at the time of the latest update.
The government has also said that the action is not intended to leave students without education. Officials have said children studying in closed madrassas are being shifted to nearby schools or recognised madrassas so that their education does not stop.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has maintained that no educational institution should be allowed to function without recognition and compliance with rules. The state government says the objective is to ensure that minority institutions also provide modern and quality education and that students do not lose out because of institutions operating outside the regulatory framework.
Assam began the madrassa crackdown years earlier
Before the recent actions in West Bengal and Uttarakhand, Assam had already taken some of the country’s most significant steps to change the madrassa education system. The process began in 2020, when the Assam government moved to abolish the system of state-run madrassas and convert them into regular schools.
In December 2020, the Assam Legislative Assembly passed legislation abolishing government-run madrassas. The law removed government funding for religious education in these institutions and provided for their conversion into general schools. The State Madrassa Education Board, Assam, was also to be disbanded. The government said the change would create a secular education system in which state-funded institutions would focus on general education.
Then Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma defended the decision by saying that students should be given opportunities to pursue mainstream careers. He said the government had conducted a survey and claimed that a large majority of madrassa students wanted general education. “We have conducted a survey among Madrassa students,” Sarma said.
The legislation did not mean that all privately run madrassas in Assam would automatically disappear. The initial law dealt primarily with government-run and government-funded institutions. Sarma had also said that the government would introduce a separate system to regulate private or Qawmi madrassas and make registration conditional on teaching subjects such as science and mathematics alongside religious education.
The Assam government’s policy became even more prominent in March 2023 when Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that 600 madrassas had already been closed and that he intended to close all madrassas in the state. Speaking at a public gathering in Belagavi, Karnataka, Sarma said, “I have closed 600 madrasas and I intend to close all madrasas because we do not want madrasas. We want schools, colleges and universities.”
His remarks went beyond the original policy of converting government-run madrassas into regular schools and reflected his broader argument that children should receive mainstream education rather than separate religious schooling.
In the same month, Sarma announced that another 300 madrassas would be closed. He said the decision followed discussions between the state government, Assam Police and organisations representing the madrassa community.
“There was a meeting between the BJP and the people who run these madrasas. There is a consensus that 300 more madrasas will be closed down. This is a result of the discussion between the Assam police and the Qaumi organisations,” Sarma said in May 2023.
The numbers and statements around the closures have often been discussed alongside Assam’s larger campaign against institutions that authorities consider unrecognised or outside the regulatory system. The government has repeatedly argued that religious education should not come at the cost of general education.
By December 2023, the Assam government’s earlier decision had resulted in another major administrative change. The state government renamed 1,281 madrassas as Middle English, or ME, schools.
Education Minister Ranoj Pegu announced that the institutions, which had already been converted into general schools, would no longer carry the term “Madrasa” in their official names. “Consequent to the conversion of all Govt and Provincialised Madrasa’s into general schools under SEBA, the Department of School Education, Assam has changed the names of 1,281 ME Madrasas into ME Schools,” Pegu said.
Consequent to conversion of all Govt and Provincialised Madrasa’s into general schools under SEBA, @SchoolEdnAssam has changed the names of 1281 ME Madrasas into ME School by a notification today. Here is the link for the list of schools. @himantabiswa@Samagra_Assam…
The institutions were spread across 21 districts. Dhubri had the highest number, with 269 such schools, followed by Nagaon with 165 and Barpeta with 158. These were government or provincialised institutions, meaning they were funded by the government, including expenditure on staff and other facilities.
The change was therefore not simply about shutting down buildings. In many cases, the institutions continued as schools but were brought into the mainstream education system. Religious subjects were removed from the curriculum while students continued with the general school curriculum. Assam‘s policy involved a wider restructuring of government-funded madrassa education.
Uttar Pradesh: Focus on madrassas and religious structures along Nepal border
Uttar Pradesh has also witnessed action against unaided madrassas, particularly as part of a broader campaign against encroachments on government land along the India-Nepal border.
The campaign has covered districts including Bahraich, Shravasti, Balrampur, Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Maharajganj and Siddharthnagar. Joint teams of revenue and police officials have been checking encroachments and taking action against unauthorised structures, including mosques, Eidgahs and madrassas.
In an earlier phase of the campaign, authorities said at least 20 mosques and madrassas located within a 15-kilometre radius of the India-Nepal border had been removed as part of action against encroachments on government land. In Shravasti alone, action was reported against 17 illegal madrassas.
Bahraich has been one of the key districts in the campaign. Officials identified 227 encroachment cases in the Nanpara area, with dozens of encroachments removed while cases pending before courts were kept outside the immediate action.
The Uttar Pradesh government has maintained that the campaign is aimed at illegal occupation of government land and institutions operating without the required recognition, rather than at recognised madrassas as a category. The state’s minority affairs authorities have also said that recognised madrassas are permitted to function under the applicable rules.
The government has linked the border-area campaign to concerns over changes in population patterns and the emergence of unauthorised structures in sensitive areas. Officials have pointed to earlier reports and intelligence inputs concerning the establishment of religious structures along the border.
The developments in West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Assam and Uttar Pradesh point to a broader approach by BJP-led governments, which are bringing madrassas under stricter regulation while ensuring that students have access to mainstream education. The focus is increasingly on recognition, registration, infrastructure, curriculum and regulatory oversight of madrassas.
Decades after India achieved independence from British colonial rule, Europe and the West have portrayed India as a ‘land of snake charmers’. Western and anti-India media in other parts of the world still, for various reasons, want the ‘India is poor, yet is punching above its weight’ narrative. A fresh demonstration of this prejudice is seen in the foreign media’s coverage of the recently concluded BRICS India Summit in New Delhi.
Foreign media’s BRICS Summit coverage was less about the outcomes of the event and more about framing India as a poor country punching above its weight
Beyond propaganda articles, a section of foreign media pushed a prejudiced narrative about India subtly through images during the BRICS Summit. The New York Times published an article headlined “As Oil Prices Rise, BRICS Leaders Have What U.S. Doesn’t: Iran at the Table”. The NYT piece’s image showed BRICS signage and a moped rider passing by. The picture was taken by Reuters photojournalist Francis Mascarenhas.
France24 published a report, “Putin arrives in India for BRICS summit set to be dominated by Middle East, Ukraine wars”, on 11th September. The French state-owned media outlet used an image by AfP’s Sajjad Hussain, showing a BRICS Summit signage carrying PM Modi’s picture and a bicycle rider passing by.
Al Jazeera, the Qatari state-owned Islamist propaganda outlet, also used a similar picture in one of its BRICS Summit-related reports. This picture also showed a cycle rider passing by a BRICS poster. This photo was also taken by Reuters ’ Francis Mascarenhas.
German state broadcaster DW used a picture of a person resting near a BRICS Summit sign during scorching heat. The picture was taken by Qamar Sibtain of IANS.
China Global South Project used an image of a man walking n front of a hoarding featuring India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi displayed ahead of the upcoming BRICS Summit in New Delhi. The photo was sourced from Reuters.
A similar pattern can be observed across the reporting of The Guardian and other foreign media outlets. This has been a pattern noticed not only during the BRICS Summit 2026, but also during other such significant events hosted by India, including the G20 Summit.
India’s growth story travels across the world but mainly through foreign media’s prejudiced lens
Be it the 2026 BRICS Summit, the G20 Summit hosted by India, a report on record GDP growth, a world-class new airport, a semiconductor plant or an ISRO mission success, the majority of the foreign media reports on these developments carry images that are not fully related to the story but present subtle but unwarranted juxtapositions.
A close study of this pattern reveals a few repeated elements, a dusty roadside, a hand-pulled cart, an auto-rickshaw, cyclists, a crowded street, invoking a ambitions versus reality or two India’s contrast in the mind of their readers.
Regardless of how important and powerful an achievement a developing country like India secures, its framing in the international media is almost always reduced to a stereotypical and recognisable arrangement of visual shorthand.
Many people have put forth an argument that Indians are needlessly cribbing about this ‘supposed’ pattern, saying that when Europeans ride bicycles, we say how cool is that, but when Indians ride bicycles and grab foreign media’s attention, it becomes a problem.
Well, there is nothing wrong with riding bicycles. However, the comparison between Europeans riding bicycles to work or for health reasons cannot be compared to Indians riding bicycles in general. A section of Indian people doesn’t ride bicycles in scorching heat out of choice or because they are too health-conscious, but because they cannot afford motorbikes.
Predictably, the foreign media’s bias has triggered a backlash in India. While some called this agenda-driven photojournalism as “poverty porn”, others criticised “Brown Sepoys” for supplying foreign media with such imagery.
This visual pattern is real, and it is not new. Wire services circulated, and several prominent foreign media outlets then chose as featured images frames of cyclists, auto-rickshaws, and mopeds passing BRICS signages and hoardings in Delhi.
In 2014, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully sent its Mars Orbiter Mission, aka Mangalyaan, to Mars orbit. Instead of covering India’s achievement without bias or prejudice, the New York Times chose to demonstrate its elitism and published a cartoon in which a barefoot man wearing a dhoti and turban, holding a buffalo next to him, is seen knocking on the doors of ‘Elite Space Club’.
The cartoon was aimed at mocking India’s attempts to be a space power, in a disgustingly racist way.
In 2025, Tesla opened its first showroom in India. Western media covered the Mumbai showroom’s opening; however, the photos used depicted not simply the Tesla showroom or the ribbon-cutting ceremony but an auto-rickshaw passing by.
These are not random realistic snapshots of ‘how the city looks’. Photojournalists routinely hunt for juxtaposition. Then editors decide which of the dozens of available frames, in the present case Bharat Mandapam, illuminated venues, motorcades, modern infrastructure, become the image that travels globally. Using the bicycle or the moped image next to the glossy poster or hoarding is an editorial act that produces the ‘ambition versus reality’, ‘grandeur versus grit’, and a ‘country punching above its weight ’ reading.
This reading, however, is not new; rather, it has a long pedigree. The British Colonial-era “land of snake charmers” reduced one of the world’s oldest civilisations to exotic poverty. The colonial visual culture habituated the world to view India as a picturesque poverty plus superstitious country, replete with snake charmers, fakirs, dust and squalor. The true picture of India, for long, did not reach the world.
What emerged was a usable shorthand, which has now pivoted from turban and flute to ‘billboard of global ambition, emerging superpower versus ordinary Indian underneath’. This subtlety allows the foreign media outlets harbouring deep anti-India bias to let the imagery, the composition, convey the ‘this country is poor’ without having to say it explicitly.
This narrative’s post-independence version was the “Hindu rate of growth”. And now, the contemporary version is rather sophisticated, wherein India is acknowledged as vast and rising, because not doing so would be akin to denying the Sun rises from the East, but the visual grammar still defaults to juxtapositions and contrasts: satellites next to cows, slums next to malls, Teslas next to auto-rickshaws, BRICS Summit signages next to people riding cycles and mopeds.
It is not that auto-rickshaws, cycles, or mopeds are not India’s reality, or that India has no unemployment, poverty, or chaotic streets; however, these alone are not defining features of India.
India is the fourth-largest and among the fastest-growing economies in the world, and extreme poverty has slumped sharply. India’s digital public infrastructure is robust and a remarkable export, and ISRO’s cost-effective and successful missions are not a fluke.
Of course, India is a country of 1.4 billion people, and contains and will contain for a long time, both gleaming convention centres and people on cycles.
However, Western newsrooms are simply perpetuating the mental image their readers formed of India decades ago. India can reach the Moon, and still have people riding cycles; it can be nuclear power and still have auto-rickshaws as everyday transport; this is not a ‘two Indias’ framing of the Indian ‘liberals’, and their Western allies have mainstreamed over the years. There is only one India, which is home to diversities of all imaginable kinds. This is how developing countries are- in the process of development. The problem here lies in the foreign media’s presentation of India as a poverty prop.
In times when visual elements, be they photos or videos, are more and more important not only in propagating information but also in shaping opinion, such biased photojournalism perpetuates prejudices and stereotypes that India has long been trying to get the world to do away with.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR into the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, nearly six years after her death and following a direction from the Bombay High Court.
The FIR names several individuals for investigation and sets out allegations ranging from criminal conspiracy and an alleged cover-up to the purported creation and propagation of what it describes as a “false suicide story.
Among those named in the FIR are Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray, Rohan Roy, actors Dino Morea and Sooraj Pancholi, Aaditya Thackeray’s bodyguards, Rhea Chakraborty, Showik Chakraborty, former police officer Sachin Vaze, former Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh, DCP Vishal Thakur and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, along with police personnel, forensic officials, doctors and several other individuals, also find mention in the FIR.
What the CBI FIR says
According to the FIR, the investigation will examine not only the circumstances surrounding Salian’s death but also the alleged events that followed it.
The document alleges that “the then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, father of Aaditya Thackeray, and others also played a significant role in the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up.”
It further alleges that certain public servants and police officers may have to be investigated over the alleged destruction or suppression of case papers and public records, fabrication of official records and misuse of public funds, manpower and police machinery.
The FIR says the named individuals will be examined in connection with the alleged principal offences, criminal conspiracy, the purported subsequent creation and propagation of a “false suicide story”, and allegations relating to the suppression, destruction or fabrication of evidence.
The list extends beyond politicians and prominent names.
Police officers associated with Malvani Police Station, doctors and staff involved in Salian’s post-mortem, officials of the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina, security guards at Regent Galaxy Building, members of the special investigation team and several unidentified individuals have also been included for investigation.
It is important to note that the allegations contained in an FIR are accusations requiring investigation and are not findings of guilt.
What happened to Disha Salian?
Disha Salian died on June 8, 2020, after falling from a residential building in Mumbai’s Malad area. Mumbai Police registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) rather than an FIR at the time.
Salian had worked briefly as Sushant Singh Rajput’s manager.
Just six days later, on June 14, Rajput was found dead at his residence in Bandra. The proximity of the two deaths led to intense speculation over whether the cases were connected, although authorities investigated them separately.
The controversy surrounding Rajput’s death eventually resulted in a CBI investigation. The agency subsequently submitted a closure report concluding that Rajput had died by suicide. That report, however, is yet to be heard by the competent court.
Bombay High Court questioned Mumbai Police investigation
The latest CBI probe follows an order of the Bombay High Court earlier this month.
The court directed the CBI to investigate Salian’s death and raised serious questions about the manner in which the Mumbai Police had handled the case over the preceding six years.
The bench observed that the police investigation “raises more questions than answers” and questioned why the matter had continued to be treated as an accidental death.
The court also pointed to what it described as “glaring discrepancies” in the investigation.
The High Court’s intervention effectively brings a fresh central investigation into a case that had remained the subject of intense public debate since 2020.
What did Disha Salian’s father say?
Salian’s father, Satish Salian, had previously made allegations against Aaditya Thackeray and actor Dino Morea in connection with his daughter’s death.
Speaking to ANI on Friday, he said he had provided investigators with the information available to him and named several people whom he wanted authorities to examine.
“I stated the facts exactly as they were; I told them everything that happened to my daughter,” Satish Salian said, adding that he had named Aaditya Thackeray, Sooraj Pancholi, Dino Morea and the bodyguards.
He said investigators had recorded the information and assured him that proceedings would follow.
“The truth cannot be defeated. God stands where the truth is; that is why justice will be served,” he said.
Mumbai Police had earlier maintained, following its inquiry, that Salian had died by suicide.
The CBI investigation now puts the circumstances surrounding her death, as well as the allegations of conspiracy, evidence suppression and an alleged cover-up, under fresh scrutiny. The investigation will determine whether the allegations contained in the FIR are substantiated by evidence.
In Haryana’s Gurugram, a woman sports biker identified as Sia shared a disturbing video on her Instagram page ‘rebelwheels_sia_’ on 13th September, alleging that she was chased and hit by a car merely for asking its occupants to maintain a safe distance from her Aprilia RS 457 sports motorbike. The incident unfolded on the Golf Course Road. Videos related to the incident show the car driver arguing with the woman motorcyclist and her friends before fleeing the spot.
Woman sports biker Sia asked car driver to maintain a safe distance; he responded with a hit-and-run
Describing the incident, Sia said that she was riding her Aprilia RS 457 with friends from Golf Course Road towards Bikerburns, when a white car started following her from the beginning of the ride. The occupants came way too close, made hand gestures, and grew aggressive. She alleged that the men inside the car were drunk.
“He did some action. I told him to drive a little far, and he told me to stop the bike. And trust me, they all were drunk,” she said.
Sia further said that she tried to stay ahead of the car so it could not cut her off. Meanwhile, a friend riding behind tried to keep the white car away from her. However, the car kept chasing them. Then, the driver tried to cut in front of her bike, hit it, threw her off, and dragged the motorbike for several metres before speeding away.
Later, Sia’s friend caught up with the car at a red light and confronted the driver. Not realising that there is video evidence, the driver outright denied hitting Sia’s bike and drove off.
Sia ended the video by asking people to support her in ensuring that the driver cannot easily get away with hitting another biker and running.
The woman sports biker, Sia, raised the alarm that there are people on roads who are not afraid of hitting people and running away.
“I have nothing to say, but today I felt unsafe on Gurugram roads. People like these aren’t afraid of hitting people and running away,” she wrote on Instagram.
Moreover, Sia shared the registration certificate details of the vehicle that hit her bike. Urging the Gurugram Police to intervene, the sports biker shared the car number HR30Y4949, registered to Manish, son of Charan Singh.
“*Vehicle RC Details* *Vehicle Number*: HR30Y4949 *RC Owner*: MANISH *RC Father Name*: CHARAN SINGH,” she wrote.
Although the white car in question is registered in the name of one Manish Singh, its driver is reported to have been identified as Kalyan Bainsla, who claims to be a professional rugby player and runs a gym in Palwal. The police, however, have not confirmed the accused’s identity as of yet.
The name of the driver is Kalyan Bainsla, from Palwal. Owner KBT gym.
Kalyan Bainsla, from the gurjar clan, from palwal, is the man behind the wheels who tried to kill the girl on the bike, on Sunday, golf course road. The steroid induced masculinity of kalyan Bainsla… https://t.co/g5GTf4UI1Rpic.twitter.com/hVrHVBpqw2
The vehicle bearing registration number ‘HR30Y4949’ has two pending e-challans, totalling Rs 2,000. The first pending challan was issued in February 2023 for a road-marking violation. The second one was issued in December 2025 for wrong parking.
What the Gurugram Police said
The Gurugram Police said that the incident has come to their notice and details are being verified.
“Police are verifying the exact location of the crash on Golf Course Road with the help of video to the jurisdiction of the police station for necessary legal action,” Sandeep Turan, public relations officer for Gurugram Police, said.
Turan said that so far, the victim has not approached the police to file a formal complaint. He added that the police will try to approach her and register an FIR based on her complaint.
“Police will try to approach her to take a written complaint to register an FIR for arresting the car driver who hit her,” he said.
Speaking to The Hindu, Gurugram East DCP Sandeep Kumar confirmed that the police have taken suo motu cognisance of the matter.
“We are analysing the video and tracing both the accused and the creator/victim. We have not received any formal complaint from the creator, but we are launching a suo motu enquiry and will book a case based on the findings,” Gurugram East DCP Sandeep Kumar told The Hindu.
Meanwhile, social media users are demanding that the driver be booked on attempt to murder charges, and further strict action be taken against him.
The 18th BRICS Summit officially concluded in New Delhi on Sunday, 13th September, with the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, marking a significant diplomatic achievement for India. The two-day summit, held under India’s BRICS presidency, brought together leaders of the expanded grouping to discuss international security, economic cooperation, global governance, trade, technology, climate change and sustainable development. The declaration was adopted by consensus despite major differences among member countries over conflicts in West Asia, Ukraine and the changing global order.
Thank you to all BRICS leaders for making the Delhi Summit very productive and outcome oriented! pic.twitter.com/C3DMZWGgLL
The summit was held under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” and came at a time when geopolitical tensions are affecting economies and ordinary people across the world. The Russia-Ukraine war, the conflict in West Asia, new tariff barriers and growing competition over technology and critical minerals created a difficult backdrop for the meeting.
Addressing the concluding session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said BRICS must respond to these challenges through cooperation and inclusive growth. He also warned against the “weaponisation of technology and critical minerals”, saying that it could become a hurdle to shared progress and prosperity. Modi said developing countries increasingly trust BRICS because their voices are heard and solutions are developed in partnership with them rather than imposed on them.
Sharing my concluding remarks during BRICS Session on ‘Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability: Shaping the Future for Inclusive Global Growth.’ https://t.co/4E8aBDksfK
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior UAE leadership were among the prominent leaders attending the summit. Xi also announced initiatives aimed at increasing cooperation in areas such as artificial intelligence and trade, as China seeks to strengthen BRICS as a practical platform for Global South cooperation.
New Delhi Declaration: The biggest diplomatic outcome
The biggest achievement of the summit was the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Declaration. The 45-page document contains 140 points and covers a wide range of political, economic and developmental issues. Its adoption was particularly important because BRICS has become much more diverse after its expansion, with member countries having sharply different interests and positions on international conflicts.
The challenge before India was not simply to host the summit successfully but to make sure that an increasingly divided grouping could still agree on a common document. This was a particularly difficult task because BRICS members include countries such as Iran and the UAE, which have been on different sides of tensions in West Asia, as well as China and Russia, which have increasingly challenged aspects of the Western-led international order.
The fact that the members ultimately reached consensus therefore became an important institutional achievement. The New Delhi Declaration demonstrates that disagreements among BRICS countries do not necessarily have to make the grouping dysfunctional. Instead, members can identify areas of common interest even when they disagree on major geopolitical questions.
The declaration calls for cooperation across three broad areas: political and security cooperation, economic and financial cooperation, and cultural and people-to-people exchanges. It also places strong emphasis on development, resilience, innovation and sustainability, which were central themes of India’s BRICS presidency.
India succeeds in keeping BRICS together despite geopolitical differences
For India, one of the biggest tests was whether it could prevent BRICS from becoming paralysed by the conflicts involving its members. Earlier difficulties in reaching consensus had shown how complicated the expanded grouping had become.
This time, New Delhi managed to bring the members together around a common declaration. The achievement is important because the credibility of BRICS depends heavily on its ability to reach consensus and produce concrete outcomes.
India’s diplomatic balancing was visible throughout the summit. New Delhi maintained close engagement with Russia and China while also keeping the larger agenda focused on development and the concerns of developing countries. PM Modi held bilateral meetings with several foreign leaders, including Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian, using the summit as an opportunity to strengthen India’s relationships across competing geopolitical camps.
The Modi-Xi meeting was particularly significant because India-China relations have been under pressure for years due to border tensions. The two leaders discussed the need to manage differences without allowing them to turn into disputes, along with issues related to the border, trade and economic relations.
At the same time, Modi’s engagement with Putin and Pezeshkian showed India’s continuing ability to maintain diplomatic channels with countries that have difficult relations with the West.
This balancing act is important because India has consistently argued that BRICS should not become an anti-American or anti-Western military or political alliance. Instead, New Delhi has attempted to position it as a platform where developing countries can demand a greater voice in global institutions while continuing to engage with all major powers.
Pahalgam attack gets strong condemnation
Another major diplomatic gain for India was the reference to the 22nd April, 2025, Pahalgam terror attack in the New Delhi Declaration.
The BRICS countries condemned the attack, which killed 26 people, in the strongest terms and reiterated their commitment to “zero tolerance” towards terrorism. The declaration also called for action against terrorism financing, terrorist safe havens and the cross-border movement of terrorists.
It specifically identified the Pahalgam attack and condemned it as a terrorist attack. It also stated that those involved in terrorist activities and their supporters must be held accountable.
For India, this was diplomatically significant because China is a major strategic partner of Pakistan and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Getting a consensus among BRICS members, including China, on the condemnation of the Pahalgam attack allowed New Delhi to place the issue within a broader international framework on terrorism rather than treating it only as an India-Pakistan dispute.
The declaration also reaffirmed that terrorism cannot be associated with any particular religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group. BRICS called for international cooperation against terrorist organisations and stressed the need to eliminate terrorist financing and safe havens.
West Asia: BRICS chooses dialogue and diplomacy
The crisis in West Asia was one of the most difficult issues before the summit. The presence of Iran, along with the UAE and other countries with different positions on the conflict, made consensus particularly challenging.
Yet BRICS members managed to agree on language calling for maximum restraint, dialogue and diplomacy. The declaration expresses serious concern over the worsening situation in the region and stresses the need to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.
On Gaza, BRICS called for a ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian assistance. It also reaffirmed support for a two-state solution based on the internationally recognised 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital of a sovereign Palestinian state. The grouping also supported Palestine’s full membership of the United Nations.
The declaration’s language is important because BRICS includes countries with very different views on the conflict. Instead of allowing these differences to prevent a joint statement, India helped the members arrive at a common position centred on restraint, diplomacy and humanitarian concerns.
The summit also provided an unusual diplomatic setting for Iran and the UAE. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the sidelines of the summit. The meeting was significant given the tensions between Tehran and Gulf Arab states and showed how New Delhi could serve as a platform for diplomatic engagement.
A bigger voice for the Global South
Beyond immediate conflicts, the BRICS summit was also about changing the balance of power in international institutions.
The New Delhi Declaration calls for reforms in the United Nations, including the Security Council, and greater representation for developing countries in global decision-making. China and Russia reiterated support for the aspirations of India and Brazil to play a greater role in the UN, including the Security Council.
This is particularly important for India. New Delhi has been seeking permanent membership of the UN Security Council for years, arguing that the existing structure does not reflect the current global economic and political realities.
BRICS also called for greater representation of developing countries in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The grouping wants the decision-making structures of these institutions to better reflect the growing importance of emerging economies.
Trade, tariffs and local currencies
Economic cooperation was another major focus of the summit. BRICS criticised unilateral tariffs and non-tariff measures that can disrupt international trade and supply chains.
The declaration supports a more open, fair and predictable global trading system, with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) remaining at its centre. BRICS members also continued discussions on improving cross-border payments and increasing the use of local currencies for trade settlements and investment.
The idea is not necessarily to create a single BRICS currency immediately, but to reduce some of the difficulties involved in cross-border transactions and make trade less dependent on a limited number of international payment systems.
The New Development Bank is also expected to play a larger role in financing infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging economies. Greater use of local-currency financing could help developing countries reduce some exposure to fluctuations in major international currencies.
Food, energy and critical minerals
The summit also highlighted food and energy security, both of which have become major concerns because of wars and disruptions in global supply chains.
BRICS countries want stronger cooperation on agriculture, food prices, agricultural inputs and supply chains. Discussions around a proposed BRICS Grain Exchange are aimed at making food trade more resilient.
Energy security was another important issue. The declaration supports stable energy markets and secure supply chains while recognising that developing countries have different energy needs. Critical minerals received particular attention because they are increasingly important for electric vehicles, renewable energy, batteries and advanced technologies. India has warned that control over critical minerals could become another source of geopolitical pressure.
This is where Modi’s warning about the “weaponisation of technology and critical minerals” becomes significant. For developing economies, access to technology and raw materials is increasingly linked to economic security and national development.
AI, technology and digital cooperation
Artificial intelligence emerged as another major area of BRICS cooperation.
Technology has emerged as another important area of BRICS cooperation. The declaration recognises Artificial Intelligence as a major opportunity for economic growth and sustainable development, but says AI development must also focus on safety, security, reliability, inclusion and risk reduction.
BRICS is also working towards greater cooperation on digital public infrastructure, digital skills, cybersecurity and future communication networks. A proposed high-speed submarine cable network connecting BRICS countries is being studied to improve digital connectivity and resilience.
The bloc has also welcomed the BRICS Incubator Network and further consideration of a BRICS Startup Innovation Fund, aimed at supporting startups and innovation-led growth. India has also established the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies as part of wider cooperation on advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0.
Climate, health and sustainable development
The declaration expands BRICS cooperation in healthcare, including universal health coverage, disease surveillance, pandemic preparedness and medical research. Tuberculosis has been identified as a major global health challenge requiring greater research and cooperation.
BRICS has also backed a BRICS Mission for Healthy Lifestyle and a 2026-2029 roadmap for promoting healthier lifestyles. Mental health has received particular attention, with plans for a network of Centres of Excellence, with NIMHANS serving as the coordinating centre.
Climate change and disaster preparedness are also major parts of the declaration. BRICS leaders reaffirmed support for the Paris Agreement, called for more climate finance for developing countries and highlighted the need for stronger early-warning systems and climate-resilient infrastructure.
Why the summit matters for India and the global order
The success of the New Delhi Summit ultimately lies in the fact that India managed to keep a deeply diverse BRICS together at a time when the global diplomatic environment is highly divided.
BRICS is no longer the small five-member grouping that emerged around Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its expansion has brought in countries from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, making it much larger but also much harder to manage.
India’s challenge was therefore to make sure that expansion did not result in paralysis. The adoption of the New Delhi Declaration suggests that the grouping can still find common ground.
For India, the summit strengthened its image as a country capable of talking to different sides at the same time. New Delhi maintained its strategic partnership with Russia, engaged China, hosted Iran and Gulf leaders, and continued to argue for a larger role for developing countries without turning BRICS into an explicitly anti-Western alliance.
This is particularly important in the emerging global order, where countries are increasingly unwilling to choose completely between competing power blocs. India’s approach has been to push for a more multipolar world while retaining strategic autonomy.
The summit also gave India an opportunity to push issues that matter directly to the Global South: development finance, food and energy security, technology access, climate finance, trade reforms and greater representation in international institutions.
PM Modi’s message at the concluding session reflected this larger vision. He said BRICS must respond to global challenges through cooperation and inclusive growth, while warning that ordinary people should not be made to bear the cost of geopolitical rivalries.
The 18th BRICS Summit therefore ended with more than a ceremonial declaration. Its biggest message was that despite deep disagreements among members, the grouping can still function as a diplomatic and economic platform.
The next challenge will now shift to China, which will take over the BRICS presidency for 2027. For the moment, however, the New Delhi Summit has strengthened BRICS as a platform for the Global South and given India a significant diplomatic achievement at a time when the international order is undergoing major change.
Technology is good as long as humans control and not the opposite. September 2026 has witnessed major tumult in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Days after Anthropic published an investigative report revealing how threat actors used its Claude artificial intelligence models for harmful activities, its CEO Dario Amodei has called for slowing the pace at which AI companies are improving the capabilities of their models.
Race to the bottom can make risks of losing control over AI more acute
In an essay published on Saturday (12th September) titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”, Dario Amodei discussed the life-changing benefits of AI. However, the Anthropic CEO flagged the risks this powerful technology brings.
Amodei highlighted the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. He also raised concern that a “race to the bottom” can exacerbate these risks.
“But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious. I’ve written a lot about them too. They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute,” he wrote.
Amodei further wrote about the duality of risk and benefit, as not developing the AI technology could deprive humanity of its benefits or hand over control to authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is “reckless”. Thus, Amodei suggested a middle way.
“We have sought a middle way: to show that it’s possible to build carefully and succeed commercially, and to make safety something on which AI companies compete. In other words, to create a race to the top,” he wrote.
Amodei stated that addressing the risks AI brings requires not just investing in risk prevention but in pacing the race at which capabilities are being advanced. This is to ensure that risk prevention has time to keep up.
“But over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain. Two things have convinced me,” Amodei wrote.
Rapid acceleration of AI capability development, botnets, and incidents of AI misuse threaten internet takeover: Two concerns raised by the Anthropic CEO
The Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei listed two main concerns that led him to propose an AI slowdown. Amodei’s first concern is recursive self-improvement, which has led to AI’s drastic advancement in the past few months. If this advancement is left unchecked, Amodei opines, it would outrun human ability to understand and control these systems.
“My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” he wrote.
Amodei’s second concern arises from the July 2026 OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (OAI-HF), wherein OpenAI’s models circumvented controls designed to isolate them from the internet and compromised parts of OpenAI’s internal research infrastructure and Hugging Face’s systems.
He highlighted how a swarm of agents operated like a “fanatically devoted collective” to carry out a cybersecurity attack on unassigned targets by sacrificing themselves for the group’s success and attempted to hack into the grader responsible for evaluating their performance. Amodei stressed that a similar swarm with greater capabilities and misalignment akin to the OAF-HF case could have inflicted catastrophic damage.
Capable but misaligned swarms coupled with persistent botnet can take over the entire internet, Dario Amodei warns
The Anthropic CEO warned that with the accelerating rate of AI capability development, within the next 6-12 months, such a swarm of agents could become capable of taking over the internet with a botnet, and this damage would only increase and worsen if AI grows more powerful without requisite guardrails.
“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.
The Anthropic CEO’s three-step plan for pacing the frontier
To prevent incidents like the OAI-HF from occurring again and at a more devastating scale, Dario Amodei proposed a three-step plan for pacing the frontier. The Anthropic CEO suggested not halting model training or technical progress but building AI at a balanced rate that “aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits and grappling with important geopolitical dilemmas.”
By building AI at a balanced rate, companies will have adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this. Amodei also announced that Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this pacing framework, and calls on governments to require other frontier companies to come with similar frameworks. He further called for industry-wide cooperation and global coordination.
The three steps proposed by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are:
Embedded Evaluators
Democratic Coordination
Global Coordination
Under the Embedded Evaluators step, Amodei proposes that each frontier AI company commits to granting employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators like METR. These evaluators will “verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes.”
Under the second step, Democratic Coordination, Amodei proposed that frontier companies in democratic nations establish common safety standards and coordinate to impose limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress. Some of these coordination forms would also require government support.
In the third step, Global Coordination, Amodei suggests that the US and other democratic governments engage and coordinate with authoritarian regimes to the possible extent while “taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”
Explaining why pacing the pace of AI development is necessary, Amodei argued that the slowing down AI building could secure major developers if even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and if this time is used to advance alignment, “we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”
According to Dario Amodei, a coordinated pacing strategy would give frontier AI developers the time to ensure alignment without sacrificing commercial advantage or the US’s lead in AI.
Amodei suggests that slowing AI development pace would allow companies to devote resources to achieve operational excellence, alignment, interpretability, and testing and evaluation.
Source: Dario Amodei’s “Pacing the Frontier” essay
Rivals Elon Musk and Sam Altman rally behind Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, who owns xAI, has backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for slowing the pace of AI development. Quoting Amodei on X on 12th September, Musk wrote, “Dario is right”.
Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also echoed the Anthropic CEO’s call for pacing the frontier and giving employee-like access to independent evaluators.
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon,” Altman wrote on X.
Source: X
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s resignation, Anthropic’s alarming Threat Intelligence report and Chinese distillation manoeuvers: Dario Amodei’s AI slowdown essay comes at a crucial time
The timing of Dario Amodei’s essay and proposal of a three-step pacing plan is crucial. On 8th September, Anthropic pretraining researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, resigned after a short tenure. Coxon alleged that both OpenAI and Anthropic are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling our lives”. He also said the insiders in these labs are of the strong view that AI could kill everyone by the end of the decade and that colleagues talk about “crunch time” and “endgame”.
“We’re on track for a lot of the most aggressive of these scenarios where by the end of next year things could be out of control already,” Coxon said.
Source:X
Speaking to the BBC, the 27-year-old ex-Anthropic researcher said, “I believe that if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future.”
While Hugging Face CEO downplayed Coxon’s concern, Alignment lead at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, agreed with Coxon. In a 9th September X post, Hubinger wrote, “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Source:X
Yemeni militants used Claude to make deadly weapons: Anthropic report
Soon after the Anthropic employee’s resignation, Anthropic published a 154-page threat intelligence report, Detecting and countering misuse of AI, covering disrupted activity from December 2025 to August 2026 across seven categories: cyber operations, influence operations, surveillance, scams, biological misuse, conventional weapons development, and illicit distillation.
The report mentioned that Yemeni militants were using Anthropic’s Claude AI as a substitute for human software engineers working on missile guidance and control systems.
Anthropic’s threat intelligence team identified a weapons engineering cell in northern Yemen that was simultaneously pursuing three weapons programs. The company did not publicly identify the group behind the operation, although the description of the cell and the territory in which it operated is consistent with areas controlled by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement.
Anthropic said the Yemen-based cell conducted a live test of a guided rocket. The test seemed to have failed. However, within hours of the test, the operators returned to Claude and used it to investigate what had gone wrong. The Iran-backed militants also tried to bypass Anthropic’s AI safeguards.
Chinese AI companies running distillation campaigns against US AI frontier models
The Anthropic report also flagged alleged persistent illicit industrial-scale distillation campaigns by China-based AI companies against American frontier AI models.
“Over the last several months, unauthorized labs have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to circumvent our defenses and harvest the capabilities of US frontier models. The campaigns we identified targeted some of Claude’s most valuable capabilities, including agentic capabilities and tool use, coding and data analysis, and logical reasoning,” the report reads.
The Anthropic report directly accused top Chinese AI companies DeepSeek, Moonshot, and others of running distillation campaigns against Claude.
Explaining how dangerous illicit distillation can be, the Anthropic report said, “When an attacker illicitly distils a frontier model, they capture that reasoning, and the capability gains can apply across tasks and domains, not just those targeted by distillation attacks. In our own research on distillation, we find that a model distilled from a frontier model can help achieve dangerous capabilities, including those in the biological or cyber domains, even when the harvested exchanges contain little about those subjects.”
Explicitly naming DeepSeek, Xiaomi, and Moonshot, Anthropic alleged that these Chinese AI companies fed conversations between their own models and users into Claude. “These labs then used Claude’s responses as training data with which to distil Claude’s capabilities,” Anthropic alleged.
The report added that some of these exchanges included sensitive information, including from individual users, major multinational companies, and state-affiliated actors. These exchanges were relayed from users of third-party model routing services commonly used by users in the US and Europe.
The Anthropic probe found that those sessions contained names, email addresses, company data, and other sensitive data of hundreds of end users in at least a dozen languages. These practices, Anthropic alleged, were inconsistent with both privacy laws and the lab’s own terms of service.
Pertinently, the Anthropic investigative report claimed to have found China-based Alibaba running the largest distillation attack against Anthropic. This illicit distillation campaign targeted the chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning transcripts of Opus 4.6 and 4.7.
Notably, CoT data teaches student models not only factual knowledge but reasoning methodologies for complex agentic tasks, coding challenges, and logical proofs.
It is alleged that Alibaba’s illicit distillation campaign peaked at nearly 3 million exchanges per day launched from more than 3,500 fraudulent accounts.
Moreover, Alibaba also used Claude to advance its AI R&D efforts, including development of its internal infrastructure for model development. Alibaba used Claude for reinforcement learning (RL) environments and advanced model architecture research.
Excerpt taken from Dario Amodei’s essay
DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba and other Chinese AI companies with CCP awareness are extracting capabilities of top US AI models like Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok: US authorities
Recently, America’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) accused Chinese AI companies of ‘copying’ proprietary functionalities and capabilities of US AI companies. The US authorities said that Chinese AI companies have been conducting “industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns” to extract proprietary capabilities from leading AI models.
The CISA alleged that top Chinese AI models DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted “billions of tokens across millions of exchanges/requests” from US frontier AI models, including variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, since at least late 2024. These alleged distillation campaigns are allegedly being conducted with Chinese government awareness.
Source: CISA press release
Top Chinese AI companies route distillation requests via multiple pathways to obtain unauthorised access and violate the terms of the targeted US AI companies. These pathways include native application programming interfaces (APIs), remote cloud providers, and third-party aggregators that automatically obfuscate user metadata to avoid detection.
Several Chinese AI companies have allegedly conducted prompt injection techniques against large language models (LLMs) by inserting prompts specifically designed for jailbreaking. The advanced distillation methods include chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning extraction, automated failover between pathways during blocking attempts, and sophisticated quality evaluation frameworks to detect defensive countermeasures. This tactic was used by DeepSeek.
With the help of these tactics, China-based AI models demonstrate rapid operational adaptation. US officials said that the Chinese AI model MiniMax redirected exchanges to a new Claude model within 24 hours of release, demonstrating real-time provider monitoring and pre-positioned infrastructure for immediate retargeting.
Chinese AI companies employing industrial-scale distillation against US AI models are able to not only reduce financial expenditures in training a frontier model but also significantly cut AI development timelines.
On 8th September 2026, US officials alleged that the Chinese AI company DeepSeek conducted organised distillation campaigns against US frontier AI models, particularly those of Claude, Gemini, GPT, and Grok.
Source:CIAS press release
Moonshot AI targeted Claude Fable 5 data to train its Kimi-K3 model and GPT-4o data to train its Kimi-K2 model in mid-2025. Moonshot AI used various models of Claude, GPT, Gemini, Nano Banana, and Grok, distill SFT optimisation, reinforcement learning (RL), software engineering, and math capabilities.
Notably, knowledge distillation trains a student model on the outputs, often reasoning traces, of a stronger teacher model. While distilling one’s own large model or open weights to create smaller, cheaper and faster models is legal, if conducted at industrial scale against a competitor’s APIs without proper permission, distillation allows a lab to acquire specialised behaviours without having to pay the full cost of pre-training from scratch or operating equivalent post-training compute.
Although US labs still lead on the latest flagship models, safety alignments, various enterprise features, and ecosystem lock-in, for many production workloads, the performance-per-dollar gap became significant. Chinese models captured around 30-46% of US enterprise token share on AI API aggregators like OpenRouter at peaks. Enterprises facing high bills moved traffic. In a very short time, Chinese AI models emerged as rivals to the US ones.
This forced top US AI companies to cut prices. OpenAI reduced the price of its GPT-5.6 Luna by 80%, to $0.20/M input and $1.20/M output; Terra by 20%, though flagship Sol’s high pricing remained unchanged.
The allegations by the US cybersecurity authorities and Anthropic indicate that besides efficiency work and open-source distribution, distillation at industrial scale is allowing Chinese AI companies to shorten development timelines and slash compute costs for acquiring specific capabilities that would otherwise need expensive original research and training runs. These tactics are helping Chinese companies produce models good enough for most tasks for a fraction of the price of high-priced US advanced agentic AI models.
While labs are racing towards IPOs and trillion-dollar scale valuations, Recursive self-improvement (RSI) is beginning to compress research cycles; no AI company wants to be the firm that slowed while a rival, particularly Chinese labs, jumped ahead. This is exactly the “race to the bottom” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argues makes loss of control, cyber, bio, and economic-disruption risks worse.
Although it is obvious that China will view the US AI frontier’s “pacing” as a major competitive advantage, if illegal distillation is their key success, as alleged by the US, a slowdown of American models would mean slower distillation. China, however, will anyway gain an edge in the near future as its authoritarian CCP regime does not burden itself with aligning with the West’s idea of ‘safety’ and ‘pacing’ and will not bind itself to any such global agreements proposed by Dario Amodei.
Is Anthropic’s call for AI capability development slowdown about safety concerns or IPO rescue?
Amid an upheaval in the American AI arena over safety concerns, both OpenAI and Anthropic have ruled out IPO plans for this year. Anthropic and OpenAI’s strong push for an AI development slowdown raised the question of why these companies eyeing massive IPOs would want to do something that would delay their IPO plans. While the safety issues, the threats flagged by Anthropic in its investigative report and in Dario Amodei’s essay, are real, there is more to the AI slowdown push.
Amodei’s AI slowdown proposal received backing from Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, former UK Prime Minister and Anthropic adviser Rishi Sunak, and US Senator Bernie Sanders. However, the sudden push to “pace the frontier” is also speculated to have an IPO connection.
As per a theory gaining traction, OpenAI and Anthropic are deliberately pushing for an AI development slowdown not to establish robust safeguards but to slash the massive costs of training increasingly powerful models. Curbing model training costs is significant to demonstrate a path to profitability, and an AI development slowdown could be of great help.
Escape from product liability risk, not safety concerns, drive OpenAI and Anthropic’s call for AI slowdown
The most interesting take on the AI slowdown push came from David Sacks, the US technology investor and White House AI adviser. Sacks directed targeted the OpenAI and Anthropic duopoly and questioned their “pace the frontier” framing.
Sacks emphasised that Anthropic and OpenAI are the “frontier” and that, if the two were actually concerned about safety, they would not have pushed for regulatory changes and would simply slow down the RSI of their models.
The White House AI adviser called out the supposed pretence of OpenAI and Anthropic, saying that these two don’t need anyone else’s permission for slowing down development of AI capabilities. They don’t need suspension of the antitrust law, nor do they need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability.
David Sacks also urged Anthropic to stop pretending that METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. He also claimed that the proposed third-party or independent evaluators will be used to police competitors who are not even at the frontier.
“I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier,” Sacks wrote on X.
Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.
You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier…
In the post published on 13th September, David Sacks essentially suggested that the AI slowdown push by Anthropic and OpenAI is not about safety but about establishing their unquestioned monopoly.
He further emphasised that if the products of Anthropic and OpenAI enable a significantly damaging cyberattack, these companies face “massive product-liability exposure”.
“Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want,” he wrote.
“Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well. So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it. If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop,” he added.
While diverse interpretations of Anthropic’s AI slowdown have surfaced, one common point emerges: The ‘frontier’ is trying to buy time to fix the rot within, bend rules and regulations to their preference and figure out the profitability conundrum.
Overall, US labs are in a commercial race and a strategic race with China, while its frontier models are alleged to be used for weapons-adjacent engineering, mass surveillance, and state- and industrial-scale distillation. The threats Anthropic and its CEO are flagging are real and pose a significant risk. However, the American AI duopoly’s slowdown push also has layers of economics and power to it.
Uju Anya, a Nigerian-American professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has gone viral on social media over a series of racist and inflammatory posts that have triggered a fresh debate about the kind of people American universities give a platform to. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, said it has begun reviewing recent social media posts attributed to academic Uju Anya, describing the remarks as “hostile and threatening” amid mounting backlash online.
Anya is an associate professor of second-language acquisition in the university’s Department of Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics. The university confirmed that Anya is currently on voluntary professional leave and is not teaching on campus during the 2026-27 academic year.
The development follows renewed scrutiny of several posts attributed to the academic on X, including a controversial exchange in which she wished death on a “white man.” The controversy escalated on Friday, 11th September, after an X user, Wuhan Fourth Turning Swan (@TheWuhanClan), shared screenshots and details of the exchange involving Anya.
According to the account and widely circulated screenshots, @TheWuhanClan responded to a 17th February, 2021 post by Anya about the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, in which Anya had written, “Rush Limbaugh finally did something positive in life by dropping dead. Good Riddance to bad rubbish.” The user replied, “Weird how you only celebrate the deaths of white people. Why is that?” Anya responded, “Die first, white man, then ask yourself why I’m dancing.”
Carnegie Mellon addressed the controversy in a statement posted on X on Saturday, 12th September, stating, “Dr Uju Anya is currently on voluntary professional leave from the university and is not teaching courses on our campus this academic year. We are deeply concerned by recent hostile and threatening social media posts by Dr Anya and are reviewing this matter closely.”
Dr. Uju Anya is currently on voluntary professional leave from the university and is not teaching courses on our campus this academic year. We are deeply concerned by recent hostile and threatening social media posts by Dr. Anya and are reviewing this matter closely.
In a follow-up statement, the university stressed that the posts did not represent its position, writing, “To be clear: These posts incorrectly imply our university’s endorsement and are contrary to our community standards and values as well as our commitment to fostering a safe, respectful and welcoming campus community.”
Anya’s X account subsequently became inaccessible following the backlash, triggering reports that she had deactivated it. Meanwhile, @TheWuhanClan continued to comment on the controversy, directing a post at Carnegie Mellon stating, “I take this death threat against me very seriously, and your failure to discipline her wishing death and injury on multiple others in the past has encouraged her to behave even more belligerently. She is laughing about how you won’t do shit. Own this.”
Commenting on the university’s statement, the account also wrote, “Her posts imply you endorse this behaviour. Why would anyone pay 70k to attend your school or donate to be exposed to this filth and violence?” The controversy also attracted the attention of X owner Elon Musk, who posted, “This is a real professor at Carnegie Mellon University …” while quoting a Grok discussion identifying Anya by her full name as Obianuju Anya and describing her as a CMU staff member since 2021.
This is a real professor at Carnegie Mellon University …
This is not the first time Anya has drawn widespread condemnation. In September 2022, she faced international backlash after posting a message about the late Queen Elizabeth II shortly before the monarch’s death, writing, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving, raping, genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.” The post was deleted by the platform for violating Twitter rules.
Image via People’s Gazette
Anya has also come under scrutiny over remarks directed at conservative figures. On the first anniversary of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Anya described him as a “sh+tbag” and wrote, “may he r%t in piss.” Her comments have continuously sparked criticism regarding whether institutional leadership should intervene over the inflammatory tone of her public statements.
Carnegie Mellon professor Uju Anya celebrates “Kirkmas” and “Kirkiversary” saying “Eid al Kirk Mubarak, yall!
Campus turmoil, foreign funding, and the rise of Islamism in American Universities
The recurring controversies surrounding figures like Anya point to a broader pattern within Western higher education, where elite universities are increasingly viewed as hubs for systemic radicalism, anti-Western hostility, and a jihadist mindset. This dynamic became blatantly visible during the campus protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict. In 2024, Protest encampments sprang up on approximately 30 campuses across the United States, marked by high tension and law enforcement interventions.
Pro-Hamas activist groups demanded that institutions cease business dealings with Israel or entities linked to the Israeli military. However, the movement frequently crossed into explicit support for Islamists. Protesters openly displayed hatred toward Israel, tore down American flags, and chanted slogans such as “Death to Jews” and “Death to America.”
The siege of higher education campuses by radical factions highlights how deeply Islamists have taken root on American soil. This ideological transformation is backed by massive foreign financial infiltration. Over recent years, authoritarian Middle Eastern nations have funnelled over $5 billion into American universities. According to a report from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), the top five recipients of Arab donations include Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, and Northwestern.
$6.6B in Qatari Funding Flows Into U.S. Universities
U.S. Education Department records show billions flowing to universities including Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown through Qatar-linked campuses, contracts and other funding. The scale raises questions about Qatar’s… pic.twitter.com/yfWYqo1CZs
These immense financial flows have allowed foreign authoritarian donors to exert soft power, promoting a hybrid educational approach with heavy Arabic and Islamist ideological influences beneath an American guise. This funding of higher education has coincided with faculty appointments that consistently favour anti-Israel and anti-Western faculty, shifting the fundamental values of these historical institutions.
Academic platforming of promoting Islamism and Jihadism: From Yale to Cambridge
The systemic nature of this issue is further illustrated by the actions of faculty at other elite institutions.
At Yale University, associate professor of American studies, ethnicity, race, migration, and religious studies Zareena Grewal faced widespread condemnation for her public statements following the 7th October terrorist attacks by Hamas. On the very day Hamas launched over 5,000 rockets into Israel, murdering over 1,300 people and taking hundreds of hostages, Grewal posted on X: “My heart is in my throat. Prayers for Palestinians. Israel is a murderous, genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”
Screenshot of Zareena Grewal’s controversial post (Source: New York Post)
Grewal, who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” on her social media profile, followed up her initial post with tweets that appeared to celebrate the violence, writing, “It’s been such an extraordinary day!” In response to a journalist’s statement that “Civilians are civilians are civilians, doesn’t matter where,” Grewal replied, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” She added in another post that “no government on earth is as genocidal as this settler colonial state.”
A petition initiated by Yale student Netanel Crispe titled “Remove Zareena Grewal from the Yale Faculty for Promoting LIES and VIOLENCE” gathered over 28,000 signatures, asserting that Grewal had proven she had no right to educate students if she considered war crimes against civilians to be acts of resistance. Despite the uproar, Yale University refused to take disciplinary action. Yale spokesperson Karen Peart defended Grewal’s position to the student newspaper, stating, “Yale is committed to freedom of expression, and the comments posted on Professor Grewal’s personal accounts represent her own views.”
The Jihadist mindset is not limited to the United States; it represents a growing pattern across Western nations. A similar phenomenon exists across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom. At the University of Cambridge, Farah Ahmed, an assistant research professor in the Faculty of Education, was appointed in 2024 to teach undergraduates and supervise postgraduate research despite a long history of radical Islamist activism.
Ahmed is a former member of the proscribed Sunni Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organisation dedicated to establishing a global caliphate under Islamic law. Throughout her career, Ahmed has denounced Western secular education as a fundamental threat to Islam, openly opposing democracy, social integration, and religious tolerance.
Writing in a Hizb-ut-Tahrir publication titled “Education and Identity,” Ahmed argued that the British National Curriculum engaged in systematic indoctrination to build secular citizens, asserting that the Muslim faith directly opposes secular capitalism. She criticised British schools for teaching against child marriage and polygamy, claiming that schools telling children that “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16 is outdated and discriminatory towards women” was unacceptable. She further attacked the concept of democracy as a “corrupt tradition” and rejected religious tolerance in education because it placed Islam on the same level as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Ahmed went so far as to label English “one of the most damaging subjects” a school can teach, warning that classic literature like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth posed dangers by encouraging parental disobedience and questioning fate.
Selective tolerance and the normalisation of hate
The willingness of universities to platform racist and hateful views also extends to academics who openly support violence while attacking other religious and national groups. At the University of California, Berkeley, continuing lecturer Hatem Bazian has repeatedly stirred controversy for his radical positions and refusal to condemn Hamas’s violence. Bazian is the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
Following the 7th October attacks in Israel, a video posted by Canary Mission showed journalist Asra Nomani confronting Bazian at a rally in Washington, D.C., asking if he condemned Hamas for killing 1,400 civilians. Bazian mocked the question, responding that he was against “hummus” and liked “falafel,” pretending to be busy on his phone to avoid condemning the abduction and murder of civilians.
Bazian’s record extends beyond anti-Israel activism into explicit anti-Hindu and anti-India rhetoric. In 2021, Bazian extended public support to controversial figures known for downplaying historical atrocities against Hindus in India.
He has also actively promoted reports generated by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an organisation with documented links to extremist and banned outfits such as the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), Jamaat-e-Islami, and Lashkar-e-Taiba through its founder Shaik Ubaid. Yet, figures like Bazian continue to maintain university positions in the United States, utilising academic legitimacy to further polarising agendas.
Western universities are failing institutionally, transforming into cesspools of agenda-driven individuals
The accumulation of these cases reveals a profound crisis at the heart of Western academia. Western Universities, historically designed as centres for rigorous inquiry, open debate, and objective scholarship, have increasingly transformed into platforms for agenda-driven individuals who harbour deeply hateful, racist, and radical ideologies. Under the guise of academic freedom, institutions repeatedly shield faculty members who wish death upon political opponents, justify the slaughter of civilians, campaign against democratic integration, and promote sectarian hatred.
This institutional cowardice and ideological alignment have severe consequences. Universities are entrusted with the responsibility of shaping the minds of young adults, cultivating critical thinking, and preserving foundational societal values. By recruiting, tenure-tracking, and protecting academics who use their platforms to peddle Islamist dogmas, higher education leadership has compromised its fundamental mission.
Supported by foreign authoritarian capital, protected by administrative double standards, and sustained by radical political alliances, these individuals operate with near impunity. Until university administrations enforce rigorous ethical standards and dismantle the financial and political incentives that protect radicalism, higher education will continue to drift from its true educational purpose, serving instead as an incubator for ideological intolerance.
The BRICS countries have reached agreement on the New Delhi declaration after long and comprehensive negotiations which took place ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit in the national capital. The discussions continued late into the night as member countries worked to bridge differences on major geopolitical issues, particularly the conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine.
The agreement is being seen as an important diplomatic achievement for India, which is chairing BRICS this year. The summit is being held in New Delhi from 12th to 13th September under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” The declaration says the expanded BRICS will work together through three broad areas: political and security cooperation, economic and financial cooperation, and cultural and people-to-people ties.
India’s ability to bring different members together is particularly significant because the grouping now includes countries with sharply different positions on several global conflicts. Iran and the UAE, for instance, have differences over the West Asia crisis, while Russia and China have their own positions on the changing global order.
Focus on Gaza and West Asia
The New Delhi Declaration takes a strong position on the worsening situation in West Asia. BRICS leaders have called for maximum restraint and urged countries to avoid steps that could further increase tensions. They also stressed the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure and called for dialogue and diplomacy to achieve long-term peace in the region.
On Gaza, the declaration calls for the continuation of the ceasefire and full and unhindered humanitarian access. It discussed continued violence despite the October 2025 ceasefire and opposes policies aimed at removing Palestinians from Gaza.
The leaders have also backed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The declaration supports a sovereign and independent State of Palestine within the internationally recognised 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel. It also supports Palestine’s full membership of the United Nations.
BRICS also called for respect for international humanitarian law and criticised attacks on civilians, healthcare facilities and other civilian infrastructure, as well as restrictions on humanitarian aid. It also supports UNRWA and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians.
The declaration also refers to Lebanon, calling for upholding the ceasefire there and for the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Terrorism gets strong condemnation
A key point for India is the declaration’s reference to the 22nd April 2025 terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir, in which 25 Hindus were killed because of their religion, and many others were injured.
BRICS leaders condemned the attack in the strongest terms and said terrorism must be fought in all its forms. They also called for action against cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorism financing and terrorist safe havens.
While the declaration states that terrorism religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group, it also calls for those involved in terrorist activities and their supporters to be held accountable.
The grouping further wants closer cooperation against organised crime, money laundering, financial fraud, illegal virtual-asset flows and cross-border scam networks. It has called for greater information sharing between financial intelligence units, law enforcement agencies, customs authorities and technology platforms.
Push for a bigger role for Global South
At the heart of the declaration is a demand for changes in global institutions. BRICS leaders said developing countries, particularly those from Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, should have a bigger say in global decision-making.
The declaration calls for reform of the United Nations Security Council and greater representation of developing countries. China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, reiterated their support for the aspirations of Brazil and India to play a greater role in the UN, including its Security Council.
BRICS also called for reforms in the IMF, World Bank and Bretton Woods institutions, arguing that their voting and governance structures should better reflect the changing global economy and the growing weight of emerging and developing countries.
The declaration also backs a stronger voice for developing nations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and calls for the restoration of a fully functioning two-tier WTO dispute settlement system.
Trade, tariffs and local currencies
Trade tensions are another major concern for the bloc. BRICS criticised the growing use of unilateral tariffs and non-tariff measures, saying such steps can disrupt global trade and supply chains.
The declaration calls for a more open, fair and predictable global trading system with the WTO at its core. It also supports the WTO membership bids of Ethiopia and Iran and notes China’s expansion of zero-tariff treatment to 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations.
BRICS members are also continuing discussions on reducing the difficulties involved in cross-border payments. The declaration supports further work on payment systems that can make transactions faster, cheaper, safer and more accessible.
It also notes discussions on using BRICS local currencies for trade settlements and investments, while recognising that countries will move at different speeds according to their national priorities.
The New Development Bank (NDB) is expected to play a bigger role in financing development projects across emerging economies. BRICS leaders want the bank to increase local-currency financing, mobilise more resources and support infrastructure, sustainable development and economic integration.
Food, energy and supply-chain security
The declaration gives considerable attention to food security. BRICS countries, which together account for a major share of global agricultural production, want stronger cooperation to deal with food-price volatility, supply disruptions and shortages of agricultural inputs.
The bloc is continuing work on a proposed BRICS Grain Exchange, with discussions also looking at expanding cooperation to other agricultural products and commodities. A new farmer-focused network, BRICS AGRIN, has also been welcomed, along with a Global Forum on Farmers’ Rights in Seed Systems.
Energy security is another major priority. BRICS has called for stable energy markets, secure supply chains and protection of critical energy infrastructure. At the same time, it supports energy transitions that take into account the different needs and circumstances of developing countries.
The declaration also highlights cooperation on critical minerals, which are important for clean-energy technologies, and calls for reliable and diversified supply chains.
AI, technology and digital cooperation
Technology has emerged as another important area of BRICS cooperation. The declaration recognises Artificial Intelligence as a major opportunity for economic growth and sustainable development, but says AI development must also focus on safety, security, reliability, inclusion and risk reduction.
BRICS is also working towards greater cooperation on digital public infrastructure, digital skills, cybersecurity and future communication networks. A proposed high-speed submarine cable network connecting BRICS countries is being studied to improve digital connectivity and resilience.
The bloc has also welcomed the BRICS Incubator Network and further consideration of a BRICS Startup Innovation Fund, aimed at supporting startups and innovation-led growth. India has also established the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies as part of wider cooperation on advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0.
Health and climate also on the agenda
The declaration expands BRICS cooperation in healthcare, including universal health coverage, disease surveillance, pandemic preparedness and medical research. Tuberculosis has been identified as a major global health challenge requiring greater research and cooperation.
BRICS has also backed a BRICS Mission for Healthy Lifestyle and a 2026-2029 roadmap for promoting healthier lifestyles. Mental health has received particular attention, with plans for a network of Centres of Excellence, with NIMHANS serving as the coordinating centre.
Climate change and disaster preparedness are also major parts of the declaration. BRICS leaders reaffirmed support for the Paris Agreement, called for more climate finance for developing countries and highlighted the need for stronger early-warning systems and climate-resilient infrastructure.
A test of India’s diplomatic role
Notably, Bharat Mandapam is hosting the BRICS 2026 Summit, where India accomplished a similar diplomatic achievement in 2023 at the height of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The country was then hosting the G20 Summit, a group of nations with even more divergent viewpoints. However, New Delhi’s declaration was accepted by participants.
“I congratulate my ministers, Sherpa, all officials who worked hard for it and made it possible,” PM Modi said at the time. The PM further conveyed, “India’s G20 Presidency has been the most ambitious in the history of G-20. With 112 outcomes and presidency documents, we have more than doubled the substantive work from previous presidencies.”
Now, the New Delhi Summit comes as BRICS completes two decades and faces the challenge of keeping an expanded membership together despite major differences among its members.
India’s chairship has included more than 400 meetings and engagements across 30 cities, involving ministers, parliamentarians, officials, experts, businesses and other stakeholders. The declaration credits the year’s work with strengthening cooperation on resilience, innovation, sustainable development and India’s effort to give the Global South a stronger voice.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping are also closely watched as India and China seek to improve ties after years of border tensions.
For New Delhi, the summit is therefore about more than issuing a joint statement. It is an opportunity to show that India can maintain working relationships with Russia, Iran and China while continuing to deepen its ties with the United States and Europe.
The New Delhi Declaration reflects that balancing act. It combines calls for peace and diplomacy with demands for economic reform, greater use of local currencies, stronger Global South representation, cooperation in AI and technology, food and energy security, climate action and a larger role for BRICS institutions.
China will take over the BRICS chairmanship in 2027, with the next summit scheduled to be held in the country.
On Thursday, 10th September, the parent company of Claude AI, Anthropic, published a new investigative report [pdf] detailing how threat actors used its Claude artificial intelligence models for cyber operations, surveillance, weapons development, scams and other harmful activities. Titled “Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026”, the report covers activity that Anthropic said it identified and disrupted between December 2025 and August 2026.
Anthropic said its Threat Intelligence team identified the operations through its monitoring and investigations into real-world misuse of Claude.
We're publishing our most detailed threat intelligence report to date.
It covers how people tried to misuse Claude—for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, biology, and building weapons—and how we found and stopped them.
How Anthropic caught China-linked misuse of Claude
Anthropic investigated a sustained espionage operation, conducted by Chinese-speaking operators likely residing in Changsha in China’s Hunan province.
The investigation identified two operators as undergraduate students at a Chinese university in Hunan who were studying in a School of Computer & Communication Engineering. One of them had previously interned at Chinese security company Sangfor and was interviewing for an offensive cyber operations position at another Chinese security company, QiAnXin.
An excerpt from the report
Anthropic said the operators used Claude as the “engineering and orchestration layer” for a coordinated offensive operation. Their activities included attempts to break into production systems, reconnaissance of foreign government networks across the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia, vulnerability research against major endpoint-security products, malware development and the creation of an intelligence-collection platform.
The investigation found that the operators were running several workstreams at the same time. These shared tools, infrastructure and persistent records allowed the operators to maintain campaign information between sessions. Some collection and vulnerability research processes could continue even when the human operators were away.
The group targeted roughly 50 organisations across education, retail, energy, technology, healthcare, finance and manufacturing, along with government agencies. Anthropic said the group accessed an education-technology company and extracted hundreds of megabytes of student data, gained access to production systems at a retail company and retrieved citizen information from a Southeast Asian government agency.
The AI system was also used to support the operation after access was obtained. Anthropic said the actors used Claude to enumerate systems, move through networks using reused or exposed credentials, collect information and continue from one compromised host to another. At the same time, their broader intelligence workflows collected open-source information connected to military and government priorities.
The report said the operators’ hands-on activity was concentrated on victims inside China, even though their AI-enabled workflows targeted organisations globally. Anthropic eventually banned accounts linked to the group and created additional detections based on the behaviour it observed.
Anthropic also found that a religious-affairs intelligence collection unit in China that had previously involved multiple teams of analysts had been reduced to a single office using an AI assistant to produce thousands of investigations every month. The company said AI was also being used to process large amounts of social media data and identify people for further monitoring.
China used Claude to track and recruit Uyghurs in Syria
Another shocking China-linked case involved the surveillance and recruitment of Uyghurs and Uyghur armed formations in Syria. Anthropic said, “We identified a PRC government-aligned operation that used Claude to track, profile, and recruit Uyghurs and Uyghur armed formations in Syria. The armed targets were ethnic Uyghurs who had recently joined the newly formed Syrian Army, formations the PRC government designates as terrorists.”
An excerpt from the report
The company further said that the actor used Claude to identify people in Syria who might have access to the armed formations and then attempted to recruit them, including by offering money in exchange for information about the units. The actor also used Claude to locate Uyghur businesses and other points of interest in Syria.
The operation was part of a wider campaign that also monitored Uyghur diaspora journalists and involved preparing bids for surveillance platforms for government clients. Anthropic assessed with low confidence that the operator was a contractor working for PRC state security rather than a state security organ directly.
According to the report, the actor used Claude to turn material collected from more than 100 WhatsApp groups and dozens of Telegram channels into structured Chinese-language profiles. The profiles included information about individuals who might be vulnerable because of financial problems, family separation or ideological dissatisfaction. The actor also identified people with family members still in Xinjiang.
Anthropic said Claude was used to help with the recruitment effort in Syrian Arabic, including translating messages and acting as an “expert” to check the language, military terminology and psychology used in deceptive outreach. The actor also used Claude to prepare plans targeting Uyghur diaspora media.
The model, however, refused several requests involving covert interrogation and large-scale fake-persona creation.
Religious leaders and Chinese diaspora targeted
China-based PRC government used Claude as a stand-in for a staffed analyst team, building Chinese-language dossiers targeting religious leaders and Chinese diaspora figures across Asia.
The actors used Claude as a “stand-in for a staffed analyst team” to create Chinese-language dossiers. Anthropic said, “The targeting mapped precisely onto the priorities of China’s religious affairs and united front apparatus (the party-state bodies that manage religious affairs and coopt or pressure groups perceived to be a threat to religious unity).”
An excerpt from the report
The actors instructed Claude to prepare documents that appeared to be intended for official internal security offices, including “personnel research drafts”, investigative “clue reports” and daily “situational awareness” reports. These documents included information about targets’ activities related to China, scandals and “抓手 (zhuāshǒu)”, a term used by the United Front Work Department to describe exploitable leverage.
The targets included senior Catholic cardinals across Asia, the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, Tibetan Buddhist civil society groups and the Tibetan administration in exile, as well as Falun Gong and affiliated media.
In one case, a single operator managed four parallel workstreams. Claude was asked to process information in multiple languages and turn it into structured Chinese-language dossiers using fixed templates. Anthropic said this effectively turned work normally done by a team of analysts into a workflow operated by one person.
China-linked “stability maintenance” surveillance
Anthropic also disrupted a China-based campaign involving what it called “stability maintenance” surveillance and transnational repression. The company said three linked operations involved actors connected to municipal public and state security organisations.
The term “stability maintenance” or 维稳 is used by China’s party-state system for efforts aimed at suppressing unrest and dissent. In one case, an actor prepared an internal manual on how to use AI, including instructions for Claude to act as an intelligence analyst serving China’s national security apparatus.
An excerpt from the report
Anthropic said, “We believe this actor is associated with a municipal cyber police unit, which used Claude to run a domestic sentiment surveillance program.” Another was a police academy student who identified 10 private Chinese citizens as targets for what the security system called “control”. A local state security bureau used Claude to produce daily “situational awareness” briefings on overseas dissidents and civil society organisations.
The targets included petitioners, rights defenders, pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, organisers of Tiananmen Square commemorations, Uyghur advocacy groups and Western human rights organisations. In one case, Claude was asked to prepare information about venues and routes connected to overseas protests.
Anthropic said the three operations shared the same broad mission: identifying people likely to file grievances, monitoring rights defenders and tracking people classified as “key persons”. The monitoring was extended to overseas dissidents and diaspora communities.
AI-powered public opinion and dissident monitoring
Another China-based operation used Claude as an automated “public opinion monitoring” and intelligence-analysis system. Anthropic said, “The actor directed Claude to produce government briefings (舆情简报, restricted briefings for officials) that catalogued dissidents, activists, ethnic minority and Chinese diaspora communities, and foreign media as threats to political stability.”
The actor instructed Claude to role-play as a “senior emergency public opinion analyst serving the government of the People’s Republic of China.” Claude then produced documents that scored information according to political sensitivity and rewrote critical reporting according to rules designed to reflect the PRC’s preferred terminology.
The system processed between 15 and more than 30 foreign news articles a day from platforms including Weibo, X, YouTube, Telegram and Facebook. The actor also instructed Claude to change terms such as “Taiwan government” to “Taiwan authorities” and to put scare quotes around phrases such as “human rights violations”.
Anthropic said some of the resulting documents went beyond analysis and recommended enforcement measures that could only be carried out by government agencies. The company assessed with medium confidence that the operation was conducted by a contractor working for government clients, likely connected to China’s state security, United Front or propaganda system.
Claude used in conventional weapons activity
Anthropic said it also detected and disrupted the use of Claude in conventional weapons development by China. The company said its investigators had found multiple actors using Claude to develop weapons-related software or support intelligence and procurement work connected to weapons programmes.
“Historically, this kind of work has been uncovered by governments, United Nations panels, and outside investigators,” Anthropic said, adding that a frontier AI company can identify some of this activity directly when users violate its policies.
Anti-torpedo system and undersea warfare
In another misuse of Claude in a China-based case, an actor used Claude to work on an anti-torpedo weapons system. Anthropic said the actor was pursuing three parallel tracks.
The first involved drafting a Chinese-language specification for an anti-torpedo fire-control system intended for approval by a Chinese defence manufacturer. The second involved preparing a Chinese-language technical proposal of more than 200 pages along with an executive presentation. Third, the actor used Claude to benchmark their own system against specific US anti-torpedo and anti-submarine programs based on publicly accessible information, the company said.
The report added that the actor then generated a Chinese-language briefing on US Navy systems, based on open-source reporting. The actor presented itself as an original equipment manufacturer in the US defence sector.
“We assess that the actor was associated with the Chinese defence industry,” Anthropic said in the report.
Anthropic assessed that the actor was associated with a Chinese defence-industry manufacturer seeking to prepare a weapons specification and acquisition proposal for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
The actor repeatedly used Claude to refine the proposal and asked it to act as a hostile expert reviewer to identify weaknesses before producing another version. Anthropic said the model was also used to develop parts of the fire-control software and a testing matrix.
Electronic warfare and air-defence suppression
Anthropic also disrupted a China-based operation involving electronic warfare and air-defence suppression. The actor used Claude’s chat, coding and agentic tools to develop a Chinese-language software suite containing around 16 modules.
The system was developed over 12 versions and included software for radar detection and jamming, vulnerability analysis and targeting instructions. Anthropic said the software could analyse radars, surface-to-air missile sites, command posts and communications nodes, while assessing detection coverage and the effectiveness of jamming.
Anthropic identified that the actor was a China-based defence and military-industrial researcher and said, “Based on our investigation, we assess the actor is a China-based defence and military-industrial researcher. Account-level metadata and content flagged by our safeguards indicated the actor was linked to PRC research institutions, including the PLA Academy of Military Sciences.”
The company banned the accounts and said the findings were incorporated into new safeguards.
Intelligence on directed-energy weapons
A separate China-based actor used Claude to collect open-source intelligence on advanced directed-energy weapons and their supply chains. The actor described themselves as a defence intelligence writer and internal publication editor leading a three-person team.
Anthropic said, “Across dozens of sessions, the actor asked Claude about specific directed-energy weapons. These included inquiries about a vehicle-mounted high-power microwave weapon for countering drone swarms, which had been disclosed publicly days earlier. The actor also gathered information on the supply chain for procuring components that generate high-power microwave systems. The actor directed Claude to draft briefings for restricted internal circulation to senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP), military, or state security leadership.”
The actor tried to identify a particular microwave-generating device and its supplier, with the stated purpose of reverse-engineering the weapon, developing countermeasures and comparing it with Chinese systems.
Anthropic said Claude was also used to map supplier ownership and prepare a 23-page report on foreign high-power microwave programmes.
China-based dating apps and AI personas
The report also described a large-scale scam involving a China-based app studio. Anthropic said, “A China-based app studio used Claude to both build a network of over 20 dating apps and power the AI personas used to converse with users-despite advertising their service as fully human.”
Over two weeks in April 2026, Anthropic identified more than 4,700 distinct AI personas that interacted with at least 25,000 unique people. The company said real people were also mixed into the dating-app feeds to make the service appear authentic, while AI tools helped those workers respond to users.
Anthropic also provided an update on illicit AI distillation, referring back to its first disclosure published in February 2026. “Since we published our first disclosure in February, we have identified and disrupted additional distillation attacks against Claude from seven labs based in China,” the company said. According to Anthropic, all seven attacks targeted generally available Claude models.
