The United States' standing as an important place for cancer research is under threat.
As the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/cancer-research-grants-funds-trump.html"> New York Times reports</a>, the Trump administration has dramatically slashed funding to US-based cancer research, endangering the country's overall leading position in science research — not to mention the fates of cancer patients across the country.
"We are great in science," Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and a Nobel prize-winning scientist, told the NYT. "Why would we want to destroy one of our greatest assets?"
In the first three months of his second term, <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/in-the-news/trump-administration-cut-2-7-billion-in-nih-research-funding-through-march-senate-committee-minority-report-says/">Trump has slashed $2.7 billion from the NIH's budget</a>. Federal cancer research, in particular, has seen drastic reductions, which critics say will hamper any advancement in finding effective treatments. This has translated into <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-07-16/thousands-laid-off-from-nih-fda-and-cdc-after-supreme-court-decision">mass layoffs</a> and the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1">freezing of important ongoing studies</a>.
In addition, Trump has proposed another round of cuts for next year, such as reducing the budget of the NIH agency, the National Cancer Institute, from $7.2 billion to $4.5 billion, according to the NYT.
The cuts could have devastating consequences. According to a <a href="https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.22.01826">study</a> published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, every $326 spent on cancer research adds a year to one's life expectancy — a bargain, relatively speaking.
The five-year survival rate for cancer has risen from just 49 percent in the 1970s to 68 percent today, according to the NYT. The implications are enormous — <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics">approximately 38.9 percent</a> of Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The push for cuts is animated by <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8631569/">distrust among many conservatives</a> that the overall health apparatus in this country has become corrupt, oppressive, and politicized, especially during the worst days of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html">COVID pandemic when lockdowns were in place</a>. (Tellingly, conservatives also tend to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10625042/#:~:text=Discussion,health%20care%20experience%20and%20outcomes.">distrust information</a> on cancer from government health organizations.)
Conservatives have also used Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives to justify funding cuts,<a href="https://georgiarecorder.com/2025/09/16/nih-grant-cuts-throw-science-into-a-downward-spiral-researchers-and-advocates-say/"> some of which were flagged erroneously</a> because grant applications contained hot-button words like "trans."
Vaccine skeptic and secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr, also <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cancels-cancer-vaccine-mrna">canceled promising work on mRNA</a>, which could've potentially led to a <a href="https://ufhealth.org/news/2025/surprising-finding-could-pave-way-for-universal-cancer-vaccine">universal vaccine against cancer</a>, according to experts.
That's what's especially galling about these cuts — we know so much more about cancer and are on the brink of some incredible scientific breakthroughs, such as new cancer radiation therapies that are <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9591027/">more targeted and less harmful</a> to surrounding healthy tissue, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/trump-administration-cancer.html">according to the NYT</a>.
"I believe I am one of only a small handful of labs in the country that specializes in drug-delivery barriers in pediatric brain cancer," University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School professor Rachael Sirianni told the NYT.
Sirianni's research focuses on a fast-growing brain cancer in children called medulloblastoma.
"When you remove me from the ecosystem, you are removing something that can’t be replaced."
Meanwhile, top scientists are <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-brain-drain-trump-white-house">looking to leave the US behind</a>. Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on cancer, has received invitations from foreign governments to continue his work.
More on cancer research: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cancels-cancer-vaccine-mrna">RFK Jr. Cancels Promising Work on Cancer Vaccine</a>

Sick Move

Cancer

"Why would we want to destroy one of our greatest assets?"

Trump Shutting Down Cancer Research

A year after a glitch at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike triggered a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/airlines-flight-times-whiteboards-it-outage">global computer outage</a> affecting millions of computers, the software vendor is being forced to contain a new threat: a swarm of self-replicating worms.
As first <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/09/self-replicating-worm-hits-180-software-packages/">reported by</a> investigative cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, CrowdStrike once again became the launchpad for a potentially debilitating security hazard when some 25 code packages were compromised by a novel strand of malware.
Dubbed "Shai-Hulud," the malicious software is designed to slip into developer machines through the JavaScript repository "Node Package Manager" (NPM), a widely used database of software modules and coding tools. According to Krebs, once the malware nabs credentials from an infested computer, it publishes its finds to a public file on GitHub, which includes the name "Shai-Hulud" — the mythic sandworm from Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel "Dune."
What makes Shai-Hulud particularly devastating is that every time an unsuspecting developer installs an infected module from NPM, the worm searches their system for "access tokens" — a way to <a href="https://docs.npmjs.com/about-access-tokens">download NPM content</a> without a username or password — and infects the 20 most popular packages associated with that person's account.
"This creates a cascading effect where an infected package leads to compromised maintainer credentials, which in turn infects all other packages maintained by that user," <a href="https://www.stepsecurity.io/blog/ctrl-tinycolor-and-40-npm-packages-compromised">said</a> StepSecurity researcher Ashish Kurmi.
In a breakdown of the attack, software engineer <a href="https://www.reversinglabs.com/blog/shai-hulud-worm-npm">Karlo Zanki of ReversingLabs</a> called Shai-Hulud a "first of its kind self-replicating worm."
So far, Kreb says that at least 187 NPM modules have been affected, including the 25 managed by CrowdStrike. Intriguingly, the worm is designed to assume its victim is operating a computer with a Linux or Mac operating system, and to "deliberately skip" Windows PCs.
NPM and CrowdStrike quickly removed the infected packages, which has slowed the worm's spread.
"After detecting several malicious NPM packages in the public NPM registry, a third-party open source repository, we swiftly removed them and proactively rotated our keys in public registries," a CrowdStrike representative <a href="https://thehackernews.com/2025/09/40-npm-packages-compromised-in-supply.html">told The Hacker News</a>.
Charlie Eriksen, a researcher at <a href="https://www.aikido.dev/blog/s1ngularity-nx-attackers-strike-again">security firm Aikido</a>, put it in even starker terms in an interview with Krebs.
"I would think of this attack as a 'living' thing almost, like a virus," he warned. "Because it can lay dormant for a while, and if just one person is suddenly infected by accident, they could restart the spread. Especially if there’s a super-spreader attack."
More on cybersecurity: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/life-destroyed-ai">Man's Entire Life Destroyed After Downloading AI Software</a>

Like A Leech

"I would think of this attack as a 'living' thing almost, like a virus."

CrowdStrike Infested With "Self-Replicating Worms"

A <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/ok_should_we_start_worrying/">new viral video</a> shows a kickboxing humanoid robot shrugging off a flying dropkick from a human being.
"OK, should we start worrying?" one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/ok_should_we_start_worrying/">asked</a> on the r/singularity subreddit in response to the video.
"It looks like it doesn't like falling," another user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/comment/nehzoey/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">added</a>.
The research behind the stunt was conducted by scientists at the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, using Unitree's popular G1 robot.
The robot's incredible agility highlights how far the tech has come in a matter of years. Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree's G1, in particular, has quickly turned into a popular test bed for reinforcement learning techniques, allowing it to pick up new skills very quickly.
In fact, the only thing that even came close to defeating the robot in the video was a loose tile that tripped it up — and even in that case, it made an impressive recovery, jumping right back up to fight some more in less than a second.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Testing Humanoid Robots to the Limit
Professor He Kong&#39;s team from the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, has released a video showcasing a &quot;violence test&quot; designed to challenge the limits of… <a href="https://t.co/B01K1ez8g6">https://t.co/B01K1ez8g6</a> <a href="https://t.co/97161kcnHh">pic.twitter.com/97161kcnHh</a>
&mdash; RoboHub🤖 (@XRoboHub) <a href="https://twitter.com/XRoboHub/status/1967496323701276997?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
We've already seen the G1 show off its martial arts prowess several times, from punching the air and delivering a <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-learned-kung-fu">swooping roundhouse kick</a> to two of the bots <a href="https://futurism.com/unitree-robots-boxing">facing off in a kickboxing showdown</a> event at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last month.
However, things can still go off the rails — with alarming results. A <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-experimental-fighting-robot-thrashing-uncontrollably">video of a failed test run</a> by robot combat company REK in July showed a G1 flailing its arms and legs, seemingly trying to break free of a harness.
Others are using the robot for dramatically different purposes as well. Case in point, a cowboy hat-toting bipedal robot, dubbed "Jake the Rizzbot," has been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/rizzbot-cowboy-hat-robot-austin">wandering the streets</a> of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jake-rizzbot-gay">several US cities</a> this summer, turning heads and flinging compliments — instead of punches and kicks — at passersby.
More on humanoid robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-keytar-disguise">Band Appears on Stage With Poorly-Disguised Robot Playing the Keytar</a>

And It Gets Up Again

"OK, should we start worrying?"

Unstoppable Martial Arts Robot Can Take a Direct Dropkick Without Falling Down

Partisan politics in the United States makes for a generally contentious atmosphere But these days, the mainstream rift isn't just between blue and red — even some of president Donald Trump's most diehard fanatics have become openly belligerent over the president's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-embraced-ai-exploded-deepseek">obsession with AI</a>.
Following the release this summer of president Trump's "AI Action Plan" — a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf">sweeping blueprint</a> outlining the white house's strategy to ramp up AI development while slashing regulation — a number of far-right stalwarts from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Steven Bannon have ripped into Trump over his tech policies.
"I have many concerns about the AI Executive Order signed yesterday by President Trump," <a href="https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1948400163875152237">Taylor Greene wrote</a> on X-formerly-Twitter, the day after Trump's "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/">Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government</a>" executive order.
"My deep concerns are that the EO [executive order] demands rapid AI expansion with little to no guardrails and breaks," the Georgia representative continued. "This needs a careful and wise approach. The AI EO takes the opposite."
And Bannon, a longtime Trump loyalist who briefly served as Trump's chief strategist at the outset of his first term, compared the approach to "summoning the demon," according to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/ai-is-opening-a-maga-trump-split-00534925">new reporting from Politico</a>. The former Trump aide also made headlines in early September when he joined conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in a <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-big-tech-dinner-zuckerberg-cook-rcna229425">scathing critique</a> of the president's photo-op dinner with tech tycoons including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
"There isn’t a single Trump supporter who is going to be happy to see this photo tonight," <a href="https://x.com/lauraloomer/status/1963770145358143598?s=46&amp;t=MOrgn1OciSYSUInllbgRZw">Loomer said in a post</a> on X-formerly-Twitter. "Zuckerberg and Gates belong in prison. Not at the dinner table with President Trump."
Candace Owens, another formerly prominent personality in Trump media circles, went a step further when she <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/candace-owens-says-she-embarrassed-031428399.html">rescinded her support</a> for Trump this summer, saying that she was "embarrassed" to have campaigned for the president during his 2024 election bid.
While Owens hasn't criticized Trump's AI policy directly, she has blasted the tech in the past, calling software like <a href="https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/1948787888876884461">Elon Musk's Grok</a> an "inherent danger."
Other political characters in the outer rings of the Trump orbit are also taking issue with the president's embrace of AI. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn — who <a href="https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2025/9/crime/video-blackburn-joins-president-trump-at-white-house-for-announcement-of-memphis-safe-task-force-to-combat-crime">recently cheered</a> as Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-signs-order-send-national-guard-memphis-crime-crackdown-rcna231517">signed an order</a> deploying hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops to her home city of Memphis — has likewise spurned the president over an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-big-beautiful-bill-ai-regulation-ban-tech-2025-6">AI regulation provision</a> in the "Big Beautiful Bill."
"This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives," Blackburn said in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/30/congress/blackburn-yanks-support-for-ai-moratorium-00434635">statement</a> at the time. "Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens."
The rift highlights a fascinating contradiction between Trump's ideological supporters and his moneyed interests: essentially, it's the "drain the swamp" style conservative populists who voted him into <del>the</del> office versus the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-tech-billionaires-zuckerberg-musk-wealth-0896bfc3f50d941d62cebc3074267ecd">billionaire tech bros</a> whose vast fortunes are now <a href="https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/04/03/what-will-tech-moguls-do-with-their-wealth/">deeply embedded</a> in the US economy.
"The base’s concerns about Big Tech are colliding with Silicon Valley’s influence in this administration," Mark Beall, former Director of Strategy and Policy at the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told Politico.
When it comes to Trump's AI ambitions, Wynton Hall, the social media director at the right wing publication Breitbart concurred.
"There is within the conservative movement certainly a concern about child safety, mental health, all those things," he told Politico. "The transhumanism stuff is also a real concern for conservatives."
More on Trump: <a href="https://futurism.com/president-trump-billions-crypto">A Sitting President Is Making Billions Off Crypto, Which Feels Like a Bit of an Outrage</a>

Friendly Fire

"Summoning the demon."

Trump's Biggest Fans Furious at His Embrace of AI

Welcome to the future, where the vibes are bad in almost every meaningful respect — but where you do, at the very least, get to "vibe code," or use an AI model to write code and even build entire pieces of software.
But rarely does the process go smoothly enough for prime time. The jury's still out on whether experienced programmers actually benefit from using AI coding assistants, and the tech's shortcomings are even more obvious when it's being relied on by untrained amateurs who openly embrace the whole shtick of working off mainly "vibes." 
Nothing illustrates that last point better than the fact that some veteran programmers are apparently now making a killing by fixing these AI-hallucinated disasters, <a href="https://www.404media.co/the-software-engineers-paid-to-fix-vibe-coded-messes/">as spotlighted by 404 Media</a>, which interviewed a few of these canny opportunists.
"I started fixing vibe-coded projects because I noticed a growing number of developers and small teams struggling to refine AI-generated code that was functional but lacked the polish or 'vibe' needed to align with their vision," Hamid Siddiqi, a programmer who offers to "fix your vibe code" on Fiverr, told the outlet.
Siddiqi added that these clients need help with everything from horrendously optimized code to botched AI-generated UIs. 
And business is booming.
"I've been offering vibe coding fixer services for about two years now, starting in late 2023," Siddiqi told 404. "Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year."
AI models are notorious for hallucinating and generally not doing what you intend them to do. One man found this out the hard way after his vibe-coding AI <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-vibe-code-deletes-company-database">wiped out his business's entire database</a>. Nonetheless, even the largest tech firms have embraced using AI coding assistants. Google CEO Sundar Pichai <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ceo-code-ai">claimed</a> that as much as 25 percent of the company's code is now AI-generated; Microsoft chief Satya Nadella did one better and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/satya-nadella-says-as-much-as-30percent-of-microsoft-code-is-written-by-ai.html">claimed that it was 30 percent</a> at his company.
Some research has suggested that relying on the tech does the opposite of making workflows more efficient, as programmers have to constantly <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-programming-assistants-code-error">double and triple check the AI's error-laden outputs</a>. One <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-coding-programmers-reality">recent study</a> found that programmers who used tools like Anthropic's Claude were a whopping 19 percent slower, and ended up using less than half of the AI's suggestions.
It's no surprise, then, that Siddiqi is far from alone. Searching "vibe code fixer" on Fiverr, which is just one of many popular gig work platforms, returns over 230 results. Fixing "vibe code," or some permutation thereof, is explicitly mentioned by many of these programmers describing their services.
Some companies are getting in on the scene, too. 404 cited one software firm, Ulam Labs, which says on its website that "we clean up after vibe coding. Literally."
There's even an entire website dedicated to the niche: <a href="http://vibecodefixers.com">VibeCodeFixers.com</a>. Its founder Swatantra Sohni told 404 that over 300 veteran programmers have already signed up. He bought the domain immediately after Andrej Karpathy, a prominent computer scientist and a former director of AI at Tesla, coined the term in February. The writing on the wall was that obvious.
"Most of these vibe coders, either they are product managers or they are sales guys, or they are small business owners, and they think that they can build something," Sohni told 404.
Often, he found that vibe coders burn money on AI usage fees in the final stages of development when they try to add new features that break the app, at which point it would be cheaper to just start from scratch.
Luckily for Siddiqi and company, they often don't.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-coding-security-problems">Programmers Using AI Create Way More Glaring Security Issues, Data Shows</a>

Helping Hands

Vibe first, ask for professional help later.

Amateurs Using AI to “Vibe Code” Are Now Begging Real Programmers to Fix Their Botched Software

A single-engine plane crashed landed in a field of sugar cane in Brazil over the weekend, <a href="https://www.alagoas24horas.com.br/1692258/aviao-monomotor-cai-com-180kg-de-drogas-e-piloto-morre-em-al/">according to local news media Alagoas 24 Horas</a>, killing the pilot and leaving behind 180 kilograms — or almost 400 pounds — of cocaine.
So far, it just sounds like a tale of drug smuggling gone awry. Except that the coke, stacked together in neat bricks and wrapped in plastic, as shown in a video from local police obtained by Alagoas, sported a distinctive label: the official SpaceX logo, in blue and white, giving the story a bizarre space-age twist.
The plane crash occurred in the coastal city of Coruripe on the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday afternoon, according to Alagoas. The deceased pilot was <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15098973/Australian-plane-crash-cocaine-Brazil.html">later identified</a> as 46-year-old Timothy James Clark, an Australian businessman from Melbourne who seemed to have worked in the country's mining industry and as a pilot.
Photos from police show the crumpled plane with a blue-colored tail lying upside down in a field of shattered sugarcane.  The craft was registered to the African nation of Zambia.
The case remains under investigation, local law enforcement told Alagoas. The street value of the detained coke is unknown, but according to <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/10/25/how-much-does-cocaine-cost-around-the-world">one recent estimate</a>, the stuff goes for around $1,500 per kilo in Latin America, meaning the plane could have easily been carrying a quarter million dollars in illicit cargo.
There's little to indicate where the pilot was headed and why were the drugs branded with the SpaceX logo, but this isn't the first time that a brand affiliated with Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, has been slapped on some illegal drugs.
A <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/08/08/tastes-like-tesla-how-tesla-ecstasy-pills-became-the-hot-way-to-get-high/">2017 Forbes article</a> highlighted how drug sellers were using tech company names, such as TripAdvisor and Skype, to brand illicit drugs to users. Musk's electrical vehicle company Tesla was a prominent example, with pills of MDMA often being pressed into the shape of its logo.
"The appeal of high tech companies, who have already paid millions for the best graphic design available, as the image they want to be associated with their product is a natural fit," Johnboy Davidson, a representative from ecstasy pill testing database Pill Reports, told Forbes at the time. "You may not be able to afford an actual Tesla but hey why not have the pill with that logo and you’ll feel just as good?"
We can imagine that the drug manufacturer for the marooned cocaine in Brazil wanted potential buyers to associate their product with SpaceX's image (not to mention <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html">Musk's reportedly worrisome drug use</a>): bold, risk taking, and ready to send you into orbit like a <a href="https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon">SpaceX Dragon capsule</a>.
More on SpaceX: <a href="https://futurism.com/nudists-declare-war-spacex">Nudists Declare War on SpaceX</a>

Snow Crash

Like a Starship test flight, it went down.

Police Puzzled by 180 Kilos of SpaceX-Branded Cocaine Found at Crash Site

The Trump administration issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/further-exclusions-from-the-federal-labor-management-relations-program/">executive order</a> late last month, quietly declaring that NASA will operate as a national intelligence and security agency going forward.
The order stipulates that the agency will now "have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work."
It's a major departure for the agency, which has historically focused on space exploration, as well as space and Earth sciences over its 67-year lifespan.
"No mention of that science and exploration stuff," NASA Watch founder Keith Cowing, a former scientist at the agency who now closely follows its internal and external politics, wrote in a <a href="https://nasawatch.com/trumpspace/nasa-is-now-primarily-an-intelligence-national-security-agency/">blog post</a>.
There are signs that Trump's intentions behind the order were at least partially related to labor concerns, rather than spycraft. The order also added NASA to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), excluding it from collective bargaining representation.
The news that NASA will now be a spy agency was seemingly overshadowed in the media by the president's elimination of union rights for thousands of federal employees — mere days before Labor Day — despite multiple lawsuits <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/08/29/nx-s1-5500604/unions-fight-back-as-trump-terminates-federal-workers-union-rights">challenging the change</a>.
The change of status outlined in the order will also affect other agencies and subdivisions of the government, including the International Trade Administration and the National Weather Service.
The move <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/09/protestors-denounce-cuts-nasas-staff-budget-and-union-rights/408127/">sparked a protest</a> outside of NASA's Washington, DC, headquarters earlier this week.
"A huge part of the reason that I have that independence, and that my colleagues do, is that as a union-represented worker I know that I am protected from unfair retaliation," Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association area vice president Monica Gorman told the crowd, as <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/09/protestors-denounce-cuts-nasas-staff-budget-and-union-rights/408127/">quoted by Government Executive</a>.
Trump's latest declaration comes at a turbulent time for NASA. The White House has already <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-budget-nasa-horrifying">threatened to cut</a> the agency's science budget in half for the next fiscal year, potentially putting dozens of major space missions on ice.
While lawmakers have come up with a <a href="https://futurism.com/democrats-republicans-unite-effort-save-nasa">far more lenient revision to the proposed budget</a>, NASA is <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-trump-omb-budget-congress">quickly running out of time</a>.
Trump's most recent reimagining of NASA also underlines the president's desire to militarize space and commitment and send "boots" to the Moon and Mars, as interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-signs-life-mars-trump-error">recently put it</a>.
The president has also proposed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/20/trump-says-us-will-put-weapons-in-space-as-part-of-golden-dome-plan">sending weapons into space</a> for the first time as part of his proposed "Golden Dome" missile defense program, raising <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/trumps-golden-dome-risks-weaponization-space-china/story?id=122022810">concerns over a space arms race</a> with the United States' adversaries.
Meanwhile, space science has taken a back seat, with Duffy <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/nasa-administrator-says-the-agency-will-move-aside-from-climate-sciences-to-focus-on-exploring-moon-and-mars">vowing</a> last month that NASA will give up on "all of these Earth sciences," highlighting the White House's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-climate-change-government-websites">dismissal of climate change</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-brain-drain-trump-white-house">anti-science stance</a>.
Despite its doubling down on crewed space exploration, experts warn that the United States could <a href="https://futurism.com/lawmakers-china-beat-us-moon">fall behind China</a> in the race to return to the Moon.
Put it all together, and it feels as though the government is increasingly NASA's primary adversary, with the agency is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/09/nasa-staff-departures-00444674?utm_source=chatgpt.com">expected to lose thousands</a> of senior-ranking employees as Trump remakes the United States in his image.
More on NASA: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-signs-life-mars-trump-error">Now That NASA Found Signs of Life on Mars, It's Clear Trump Made a Massive Error</a>

Putting the NSA Into NASA

So long, space science.

Trump Executive Order Quietly Declared That NASA Is Now a Spy Agency

In the months following the 2025 conclave that elected him, Pope Leo XIV warned that the astronomical and still widening gap between the rich and the poor means that "we're in big trouble."
In <a href="https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/09/in-interview-with-crux-correspondent-pope-talks-ukraine-synodality-polarization-world-cup">remarks to Catholic newspaper Crux</a> in July, which were published over the weekend, the Pope reflected on the "continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive."
"Yesterday [there was] the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world," he told the newspaper.
The Pope was seemingly referring to estimates that the mercurial CEO's net worth <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/business/elon-musk-richest-person-trillionaire">could reach 13 figures in the coming years</a>.
"What does that mean, and what’s that about?" the Pope asked. "If that is the only thing that has any value any more, then we are in big trouble."
His comments evoke a similar progressive stance to his predecessor, Pope Francis, who condemned capitalism and the "<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/pope-francis-dead-obituary-economic-justice/">idolatry of money</a>" months after being named the Pope in 2013.
In retrospect, Pope Leo's July remarks were prescient. Weeks after he sat down with Crux, the board of Musk's EV maker, Tesla, <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-give-elon-musk-1-trillion">proposed a new pay package</a> — potentially worth around $1 trillion, depending on the company's future performance — which could boost the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#60eff7313d78">richest man in the world's wealth</a> to unprecedented heights.
The Pope's comments touch on an alarming trend as global inequality continues to climb. It's an especially troubling situation in the United States, which has seen its income gap grow for more than 30 years now. The richest 0.01 percent of Americans are <a href="https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/">enjoying massively accelerated income growth</a>, with the top 12,000 households growing almost 27 times as fast as the income of the bottom 20 percent of earners.
The tech industry, in particular, has made high-ranking executives obscenely wealthy in a relatively short period of time. It's a trend that was kicked into overdrive as the hype surrounding artificial intelligence keeps growing, minting an <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/10/ai-artificial-intelligence-billionaires-wealth.html">entirely new class of billionaires</a> at a record pace.
And the latest head of the Catholic church seems deeply concerned.
"CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times what average workers are receiving," the sovereign of the Vatican told Crux.
For now, the 70-year-old Chicago-born is still adjusting to his new life as Pope.
"I’ve followed current affairs for many, many years," he added. "I’ve always tried to stay up on the news, but the role of Pope is certainly new to me. I’m learning a lot and feeling very challenged, but not overwhelmed."
More on the Pope: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-pope-skeptical-ai">The New Pope Is Deeply Skeptical of AI</a>

Big Trouble in Little Vatican

"If that is the only thing that has any value any more, then we are in big trouble."

Pope Slams Elon Musk for Obscene Greed

The estate of famed singer Whitney Houston is reviving her legendary vocals with AI for an upcoming orchestral tour, 13 years after her tragic death.
The event, called "The Voice of Whitney: A Symphonic Celebration," used "stem separation technology" courtesy of an AI-powered music platform called Moises to isolate her voice from recordings and produce "near-studio quality audio."
"This project demonstrates how legacy artists and their estates can create meaningful experiences for music lovers through the thoughtful use of AI technology," said Ross Michaels, whose firm Park Avenue Artists collaborated with Houston's estate and Moises on the project, in a <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-voice-lives-on-moises-powers-whitney-houstons-return-to-the-stage-302557537.html">statement</a>. "It's a powerful example of how AI can honor artists' legacies while enriching the audience experience in beautiful and respectful ways."
The collision between AI and the music industry has raised hotly-disputed questions about the legacy and rights of deceased artists. We've already seen Aubrey "Drake" Graham using AI to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tupac-estate-threatens-drake-ai">revive the voice of rapper Tupac Shakur</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/paul-mccartney-ai-training-data">The Beatles using similar tech</a> to bring John Lennon's voice for a recent song.
The phenomenon can be particularly gauche when interlopers use it to profit off deceased artists' likenesses without permission. In July, Spotify was <a href="https://www.404media.co/spotify-publishes-ai-generated-songs-from-dead-artists-without-permission/">caught sharing AI-generated covers</a> on the profile of country musician Blaze Foley, who died 36 years ago, in what a surviving Foley business associate called an "AI schlock bot." Some of the biggest names in the industry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/02/musicians-demand-protection-against-ai">signed an open letter last year</a>, denouncing the use of AI in music and demanding protections against the tech.
However, some cases are far more nuanced than that. For instance, country music star Randy Travis used AI to <a href="https://futurism.com/country-star-stroke-new-song-using-ai">recreate his own voice</a> after suffering a debilitating and near-fatal stroke.
The AI-powered isolation of Houston's voice, considered one of the greatest of all time, is another complex case. On the one hand, Houston's estate has given the project its full support.
"We knew this had to be done right," said Houston's sister-in-law and executor of her estate, Pat Houston, in the statement. "Moises and our partner Park Avenue Artists elevated the idea with the heart, care, and creative excellence that Whitney always embodied."
"The result is something truly special," she added. "A gift for longtime fans and a powerful introduction for a new generation discovering her voice."
But at the same time, Houston herself passed away in 2012, long before it was mainstream for artists to make decisions about the use of AI after their death.
The tour is <a href="https://www.whitneyhouston.com/news/the-voice-of-whitney-a-symphonic-celebration-3/">scheduled to kick off</a> on September 20 at the Cincinnati Music Hall.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-ai-fraud-crisis-imitate">Sam Altman Warns That AI Is About to Cause a Massive "Fraud Crisis" in Which Anyone Can Perfectly Imitate Anyone Else</a>

From Beyond

"We knew this had to be done right."

Startup Using AI to Bring Whitney Houston Back on Tour 13 Years After Her Death

A slew of religious smartphone apps are allowing untold millions of users to confess to AI chatbots, some of which claim to be channeling God himself.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/chatbot-god.html">New York Times reports</a>, Apple's App Store is teeming with Christian chatbot apps. One "prayer app," called Bible Chat, claims to be the number one faith app in the world, boasting over 25 million users.
"Our AI was trained exclusively on Scripture and developed with guidance from Christian pastors and theologians," the <a href="https://thebiblechat.com/">company's website</a> boasts.
"Greetings, my child," a service called ChatWithGod.ai told one user, as quoted by the NYT. "The future is in God’s merciful hands. Do you trust in His divine plan?"
Religious leaders told the NYT that these tools could serve as a critical entry point for those looking to find God.
"There is a whole generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue," A British rabbi named Jonathan Romain told the paper. "Spiritual apps are their way into faith."
Instead of going on long pilgrimages or driving to the closest place of worship, users can simply turn to AI chatbots to seek spiritual guidance.
It's a fascinating new development, especially considering the language surrounding companies attempting to "<a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-imply-openai-building-god">build God</a>" by developing an AI that can vastly surpass human intelligence.
However, while users are finding that chatbots are an accessible way to get in touch with their religious side, they're not much more than a cheap parlor trick behind the scenes, essentially reshuffling holy texts by using clever statistical modeling.
Worse yet, experts worry that <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-ai-annoying-user-backlash">AI's strong tendency</a> to please the user may have unintended consequences.
The AIs "tell us what we want to hear," Texas A&amp;M technology and religion professor Heidi Campbell told the NYT. "It’s not using spiritual discernment, it is using data and patterns."
Researchers have also warned that countless people are using AI chatbots <a href="https://futurism.com/teens-ai-friends">for companionship</a>, which in extreme cases are <a href="https://futurism.com/psychiatrist-warns-ai-psychosis">driving some into dangerous spirals of delusion</a> in the form of "<a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">AI psychosis</a>."
"It shouldn’t be something where it replaces human connection," prayer app Hallow founder Alex Jones told the NYT. "It does not have a soul from the church’s perspective."
In short, it's a dystopian new spin on spirituality in the digital age — and one that just might be poised to change the face of religion itself.
More on AI and God: <a href="https://futurism.com/christians-jesus-christ-ai">A Bunch of Incredibly Sleazy AI Apps Are Claiming to Be Jesus Christ Himself</a>