The AI Policy Podcast

This week, we cover updates from the ongoing cyber saga, including OpenAI's two-week pause on RL training and the cyber capabilities of Z.ai's latest model GLM-5.3. We also unpack Anthropic's move to add watermarks to text generated by Claude in compliance with the EU AI Act.

Timestamps:

Mark Zuckerberg's essay on AI (00:20)

OpenAI pauses RL training (5:56)

Cyber capabilities of GLM-5.3 (15:29)

EU AI Act refresher (24:29)

How Anthropic's text watermark works (31:21)

What's driving the backlash against Anthropic (40:59)



Additional Reading:

Zuckerberg's essay "The Future is for Everyone": https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/

OpenAI announces two-week pause on RL training: https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/

Letter from Sanders to tech CEOs: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf

Letter from House reps to Mike Johnson: https://casar.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/casar.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/final-letter-to-speaker-johnson-requesting-ai-hearings-1.pdf

Z.ai blog post "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities": https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3

Z.ai article "Preparing GLM-5.3 for Open Release: A Responsible Path to Cyber Defense": https://x.com/Zai_org/status/2088280509474320693

"The EU's AI Transparency Code of Practice, Explained" (Tech Policy Press): https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-ai-transparency-code-of-practice-explained/

Anthropic blog post "How Claude's text watermark works": https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark

"Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" (CSIS): https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation

Check out our upcoming event, "AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses": https://www.csis.org/events/ai-agent-containment-failures-technical-realities-and-policy-responses

In this episode, we're joined by Adrian Brown, founder and CEO of Windfall Trust, for a conversation about the economic impacts of AI.



Why the economic focus (00:58)

Capturing AI's impact in macro statistics (5:03)

Planning under uncertainty (9:44)

What's driving the AI backlash (17:27)

A new social contract for the AI era (20:31)

Are governments taking AI seriously enough? (31:21)

Why AI is likely to create major wealth concentration (39:10)



Adrian Brown is the founder and CEO of Windfall Trust, a policy accelerator working to prepare governments and societies for the economic impacts of AI. Before founding Windfall, he spent two decades at the intersection of government and technology, including as the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Public Impact in London.



Additional Reading



"Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" (Stanford Digital Economy Lab): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publication/canaries-in-the-coal-mine-six-facts-about-the-recen…



"AI as Normal Technology" (Knight First Amendment Institute): https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology



"Forging a New AGI Social Contract" (Windfall Trust): https://windfalltrust.substack.com/p/forging-a-new-agi-social-contract



"Betting on Humans" by Anton Leicht and Dean Ball: https://writing.antonleicht.me/p/betting-on-humans

Join CSIS’s Aalok Mehta, Director of the Wadhwani AI Center, on a deep dive into the world of AI policy. Every two weeks, tune in for insightful discussions covering AI regulation, economic impacts, national security, geopolitics, and more. CSIS is a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

In this episode, we touch on Texas' new verification and audit requirement for data center developers seeking connection to the state's grid (1:11) before unpacking Anthropic's disclosure of three incidents in which its models hacked into another company during internal cyber evaluations (11:02). We discuss how these incidents—in addition to a previously disclosed incident at OpenAI—are driving calls for the U.S. government to help "pace the frontier" of AI development (21:53). We also explore the connection between AI safety and open model development, including Nvidia's open letter to U.S. policymakers, "Open Weights and American AI Leadership." (33:18).

Additional Reading:

Gov. Abbott's data center directive: https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/Thomas_Gleeson_Pablo_Vegas_Data_Centers_Directive_Letter_…

"China's AI Blitz Creates 'Death Zone' for Rival US Model Makers" (Bloomberg): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-04/china-s-ai-blitz-creates-death-zone-for-rival-us-model-makers

Anthropic's blog post "Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations": https://www.anthropic.com/news/investigating-incidents-cybersecurity-evals

Hugging Face's technical writeup "Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion": https://huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion-technical-timeline

State Attorneys General letter to OpenAI: https://www.iowaattorneygeneral.gov/media/cms/08_5392C9E17791C.pdf

House Committee on Homeland Security briefing request: https://x.com/HomelandDems/status/2084389406194929918

"How OpenAI Lost Control of an AI Model—and What Needs to Change" (TIME): https://time.com/article/2026/07/24/openai-hugging-face-attack/

"Pacing the Frontier" petition: https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/

Nvidia's open letter "Open Weights and American AI Leadership": https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-Leadership.pdf

In this episode, we're joined by Fathom co-founder and President Bri Treece for a conversation about third-party solutions to AI governance. Bri makes the case for Independent Verification Organizations, or IVOs, as the ideal AI governance model (5:32) and explains what historical analogies have to teach us about regulating AI (10:39). We also discuss the role IVOs can play in assuaging the public's concerns about AI (32:27).

Bri is a co-founder and the President of Fathom. She previously served as the Chief Operations Officer of the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works to reduce societal risks from AI through research and field-building. She also founded the Center for AI Safety Action Fund, an advocacy organization that connects technical AI experts with policymakers to advance U.S. leadership in AI.