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The world lives in an age of anxiety, marked by media depictions of horror and mayhem.

It's important to distinguish anxiety, which is pervasive, from fear, which is immediate and specific.

National leaders may induce a state of anxiety in the population to ensure compliance with their actions.

On April 8, 2026, readers of The New York Post awoke to this headline: "Apocalypse Not Now." It capped an unparalleled 24 hours of national and international anxiety over whether a full-scale attack on Iran by Israel and the United States would proceed and succeed to pulverize Iran "back to the Stone Age."

All of us experienced an escalating drumroll of tension, thanks to newscasts and commentaries all day and into early evening, about what might happen at 8 p.m. (the deadline imposed on Iran). An hour before the 8 p.m. deadline, a temporary truce of two weeks was announced.

With hardly a pause, the nation’s anxiety level was kicked up an additional notch by Anthropic’s announcement—on the same day as the Israel-US-Iran impasse reached a temporary solution—of a very limited release of Claude Mythos2 Preview. The accompanying description by Anthropic described Claude Mythos2 Preview as a generational leap in AI beyond Anthropic’s Claude and all other existing AI models. For instance, Claude Mythos2 Preview can rapidly identify weaknesses in security systems and exploit them with an accuracy never previously encountered; plan and execute military attacks totally independent of any human input. “The fallout—for economies, public safety, and national security—could be severe.”

To address the consequences of releasing such a leviathan upon an unprepared world, Anthropic set up “Project Glasswing,” composed of frontline AI developers and technology companies, and aimed at locating and patching potential security breaches.

According to the Project Glasswing release, “The software that all of us rely on every day—responsible for running banking systems, storing medical records, linking-up logistics networks, keeping power grids functioning, and much more........

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