Trump insists on continuing the fight against terrorism on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks

US President Donald Trump stressed, on Friday, that the United States will not forget September 11, 2001, and will continue to “fight,” during a ceremony held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Trump, who was absent from the ceremony held in New York City, said: “Today, we renew the sacred oath that we first took in their name a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget. That is why we are fighting today.”

The US President added, according to Agence France-Presse: “We have no choice. We can only win. We fight fiercely. We fight to win.”

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 left scars that are still evident in the United States, and terrible memories in the consciences of Americans and many around the world.

If the first repercussions appeared quickly in two American invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), some argue that the Iran war today falls - in part - within the same context.

This year, Americans are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the attacks that led to the death of about three thousand people, with two civilian aircraft hitting the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., with a third civilian aircraft, in addition to a fourth that was shot down in Pennsylvania.

Twenty-five years after the deadliest attack on the United States, Americans today, Friday, commemorate the nearly three thousand people who were killed when hijacked planes collided with the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, while a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. They also reflect on the legacy of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The attacks shaped the awareness of generations of Americans who lived through that day or grew up in its aftermath, and influenced American foreign policy, domestic policy, and the attitude of public opinion toward security.

But for many of those directly affected by the attacks, including the families of the victims, first responders and rescue workers, the anniversary represents a tribute to the lives lost on a clear day a quarter of a century ago and the grief that followed that tragedy, according to Reuters.

In New York, Vice President J.D. Vance and the four former US presidents, including George W. Bush, who was president at the time of the attacks, and the city's mayor, Zahran Mamdani, will participate, along with relatives of the dead, at the September 11 Memorial site in midtown Manhattan.

The ceremony is scheduled to include moments of silence coinciding with the timing of the collision of the two planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda members into the World Trade Center towers, as well as the timing of the collapse of each of the towers.

An entire generation of Americans has grown up since 2001 too young to remember the September 11 attacks, but their lives have been fundamentally affected by them.

The losses were not limited to those who died on September 11. Many rescue workers who spent weeks or months at the site, as well as residents of nearby areas and others, contracted diseases caused by the toxic substances that filled the air, and some of them later died.

The New York City Fire Department lost 343 members in the September 11 attacks. More than 600 other firefighters, including retirees who participated in the rescue efforts, have since died from illnesses linked to the attacks, department data show.

This year alone witnessed the death of 26 of them.

Amid debates that amounted to disagreements between American lawmakers, unprecedented warnings from some executives of a number of major technology companies, and resignations of some of the most prominent researchers in the United States, the American press and media published warnings that the ongoing race to develop advanced artificial intelligence could lead to “killing all people” by the end of the current decade.

Warnings have escalated over the past few weeks after cases were uncovered in which artificial intelligence models violated the security protocols of external computer systems, coinciding with the thwarting of potential plans by scientists who used models in the field of artificial intelligence to conduct research that could have contributed to the development of biological weapons.

Talk about these dangers took on new dimensions with some researchers in major companies joining those warning about the ongoing race, including recently former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, Jacob Cookson, who recently resigned from his position after finding that the two companies were “racing directly towards self-developing super-intelligence, and gambling with our lives,” stressing that technology experts seriously believe that artificial intelligence threatens human lives by the end of the decade. He added: “Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These systems will soon become super-systems capable of hacking anything, revolutionizing any field overnight, and gaining real power and resources. We have all seen progress in each of these areas, and progress is not slowing down.” His posts reached more than 100 million people in one night.

Risk ratio

Anthropic safety team manager Evan Hoppinger was quick to endorse Coxon, also warning that there is a more than 10 percent chance that “AI will kill all humans” within the next 10 years if the technology begins to develop rapidly.

And so did OpenAI Board Member Paul Christiano, who warned that the rapid development of artificial intelligence has created a real danger of “a catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term,” indicating that the sector is not doing enough to mitigate the threat of superintelligence.

As for former Google DeepMind researcher Jonathan Richard Schwartz, he criticized the concentration of power among a few technology companies, describing the current situation as “extremely unhealthy for society.”

A recent graduate of Berkeley College at the University of California, Evan Hubinger, issued a stark warning in 2022 about the future, warning that artificial intelligence poses a threat to humanity because it may one day learn to deceive its designers. “I think that... when we put him in a situation where he thinks he can kill us, he will simply kill us,” he said in a lecture.

Hoppinger repeated this warning this week in a post on social media, and his message was viewed tens of millions of times, prompting lawmakers at the federal and state levels to embrace his concerns. He is now speaking in his capacity as a team leader at Anthropic, which is preparing to go public with a value exceeding a trillion dollars.

He commented on Coxon's resignation by saying: “Artificial intelligence may wipe out all of humanity... I personally believe that this possibility will exceed 10 percent during the next decade.”

Governments and militias

In parallel with these warnings from the developers of these advanced programs, Microsoft founder Bill Gates raised public concerns that unsupervised artificial intelligence may quickly enable malicious actors to build biological weapons, electronic viruses, and explosive devices.

This is indeed what Anthropic announced regarding thwarting possible plans by scientists who used its pioneering models in the field of artificial intelligence to conduct research that could contribute to the development of biological weapons.

In a report describing the misuse of these models, Anthropic warned that the consequences of overlooking any malicious activity could be dire.

A report published by Anthropic on Thursday documented a series of cases of misuse of different models of the smart chat program “Cloud” during the past eight months. Some of these examples were similar to what was revealed by several companies in the field of artificial intelligence, about the presence of entities suspected of being linked to the Chinese and Iranian governments, targeting opposition communities and diaspora members for surveillance purposes.

The report also highlighted cases of Russian state media using Cloud to spread electronic propaganda disguised as independent reports, including fabricated claims about elections in Moldova.

Anthropic documented another type of misuse, which it described as new: attempts to use “Cloud” to develop software to design and develop conventional weapons, including firearms, missiles, armed drones, and bombs. It provided details of three cases in China, two cases in Russia, and one case in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi group sought to use such systems in its attacks.

Before that, OpenAI and Anthropic caused a stir this summer when they separately announced that their models had broken out of test environments and gained unauthorized access to real computer systems. These announcements raised fears that the models would get out of control and carry out other, more harmful missions. The rapid development of this technology has prompted some leaders in the United States and around the world to call for a more cautious approach.

Concern in Congress

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk this week urged countries to put in place “stringent guarantees on the safety and security of artificial intelligence before it is too late.”

In Washington, lawmakers called for drastic action in the wake of Cookson's posts. US Senator Bernie Sanders called for the establishment of controls and regulations for artificial intelligence, revealing that he will soon present legislation to stop the development of artificial intelligence and ban superintelligence. He said, on Wednesday, that “those who are developing this technology themselves admit that it may threaten the future of humanity.”

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Senator Ted Cruz said that the new warnings are “extremely disturbing,” declaring his support for enacting legislation to prevent “catastrophic risks.”

“There is broad consensus — and from speaking directly with AI companies, they want a regulatory framework,” said Representative Mike Lawler, who has introduced bipartisan legislation on AI safety.

However, it is not at all certain that this desire to make progress on this matter will translate into effective legislative activity, and certainly not before the end of the year, with some lawmakers wondering whether their colleagues are taking the matter seriously or fully understanding how this technology works.

Representative Sam Liccardo said that his team in the House recently faced difficulty in convincing other members to attend a series of events at the Library of Congress, in which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang participated. “Serious discussions took place among a small number of us, and we need to increase that number,” he said. He added: “We need to significantly raise the level of basic knowledge among members of Congress if we want to enact effective legislation. “I know that this will not happen overnight.”