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JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon has long been one of Bitcoin’s most vicious skeptics. In 2017, he said he would fire any employee who traded Bitcoin for being “stupid,” and called it a “fraud.” Last year, he called the cryptocurrency a “pet rock.”

But this week, Dimon announced that JPMorgan Chase would allow its clients to buy Bitcoin. He said it with a grimace on his face, speaking at JPMorgan Chase’s investor day, and rattled off a list of criticisms shared by other Bitcoin cynics, including that the currency facilitated sex trafficking and terrorism. But he conceded that his clients could do what they wished with their money. “I don’t think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke. I defend your right to buy Bitcoin. Go at it.”

The decision marks a significant symbolic and practical victory for the Bitcoin community, which, despite its anti-establishment beginnings, has sought institutional acceptance. Dimon, a heavyweight of traditional finance, has consistently used his perch to discourage regular investors and other financial leaders from getting involved. But he has also often been called a pragmatist—and his shift on Bitcoin reflects a changed political climate and mounting client demand.

Read More: Why Trump’s Meme Coins Have Alarmed Both Crypto Insiders and Legal Experts

Dimon’s decision arises from a year of mounting competition and interest in Bitcoin from other large firms. The entwining of Bitcoin and traditional finance kicked off in January 2024, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reluctantly gave the green light for Bitcoin ETFs—investment vehicles which allow people to bet on Bitcoin’s price without actually holding it—to enter the market. Billions of dollars immediately flowed into these ETFs, proving their value to major financial institutions like BlackRock. That summer, Morgan Stanley allowed its wealth advisors to sell Bitcoin ETFs to clients, and Goldman Sachs purchased $418 million worth of them.

Then, Donald Trump won the presidency, sending crypto hype into overdrive. On the campaign trail, Trump won over many crypto fans for accusing Biden of choking off the industry. Trump then pledged to make the U.S. the “Bitcoin capital of the world.”

Since his election, Trump has thrown both his government influence and personal brand behind cryptocurrency efforts. And the banking sector has been significantly impacted. In his first week in office, Trump repealed SAB 121, a Biden-era accounting rule which discouraged banks from handling crypto assets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency then rescinded their anti-crypto guidance, leaving much greater discretion to the banks on how to deal with digital assets.

Many banks jumped in. Goldman Sachs amassed a stockpile of over $1 billion worth of Bitcoin ETFs. The CEOs of Bank of America and Morgan Stanley both expressed interest in offering crypto products.

Two Evangelical Christian leaders sent an open letter to President Trump on Wednesday, warning of the dangers of out-of-control artificial intelligence and of automating human labor.

The letter comes just weeks after the new Pope, Leo XIV, declared he was concerned with the “defense of human dignity, justice and labor” amid what he described as the “new industrial revolution” spurred by advances in AI.

“As people of faith, we believe we should rapidly develop powerful AI tools that help cure diseases and solve practical problems, but not autonomous smarter-than-human machines that nobody knows how to control,” reads the open letter, signed by the Reverends Johnnie Moore and Samuel Rodriguez. “The world is grappling with a new reality because of the pace of the development of this technology, which represents an opportunity of great promise but also of potential peril especially as we approach artificial general intelligence.”

Rodriguez, the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, spoke at Trump’s first presidential inauguration in 2017. Moore, who is also the founder of the public relations firm Kairos, served on Trump’s Evangelical executive board during his first presidential candidacy.

The letter is a sign of growing ties between religious and AI safety groups, which share some of the same worries. It was shared with journalists by representatives of the Future of Life Institute—an AI safety organization that campaigns to reduce what it sees as the existential risk posed by advanced AI systems.

The world’s biggest tech companies now all believe that it is possible to create so-called “artificial general intelligence”—a form of AI that can do any task better than a human expert. Some researchers have even invoked this technology in religious terms—for example, OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, a mystical figure who famously encouraged colleagues to chant “feel the AGI” at company gatherings. The emerging possibility of AGI presents, in one sense, a profound challenge to many theologies. If we are in a universe where a God-like machine is possible, what space does that leave for God himself?

“The spiritual implications of creating intelligence that may one day surpass human capabilities raises profound theological and ethical questions that must be thoughtfully considered with wisdom,” the two Reverends wrote in their open letter to President Trump. “Virtually all religious traditions warn against a world where work is no longer necessary or where human beings can live their lives without any guardrails.”

Though couched in adulatory language, the letter presents a vision of AI governance that differs from Trump’s current approach. The president has embraced the framing of the U.S. as in a race with China to get to AGI first, and his AI czar, David Sacks, has warned that regulating the technology would threaten the U.S.’s position in that race. The White House AI team is stacked with advisors who take a dismissive view of alignment risks—or the idea that a smarter-than-human AI might be hostile to humans, escape their control, and cause some kind of catastrophe.

“We believe you are the world’s leader now by Divine Providence to also guide AI,” the letter says, addressing Trump, before urging him to consider convening an ethical council to consider not only “what AI can do but also what it should do.”

“To be clear: we are not encouraging the United States, and our friends, to do anything but win the AI race,” the letter says. “There is no alternative. We must win. However, we are advising that this victory simply must not be a victory at any cost.”

The letter echoes some themes that have increasingly been explored inside the Vatican, not just by Pope Leo XIV but also his predecessor, Pope Francis. Last year, in remarks at an event held at the Vatican about AI, Francis argued that AI must be used to improve, not degrade, human dignity.

“Does it serve to satisfy the needs of humanity, to improve the well-being and integral development of people?” he asked. Or does it “serve to enrich and increase the already high power of the few technological giants despite the dangers to humanity?”

Today’s newest AI models might be capable of helping would-be terrorists create bioweapons or engineer a pandemic, according to the chief scientist of the AI company Anthropic.

Anthropic has long been warning about these risks—so much so that in 2023, the company pledged to not release certain models until it had developed safety measures capable of constraining them.

Now this system, called the Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), faces its first real test.

On Thursday, Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4, a new model that, in internal testing, performed more effectively than prior models at advising novices on how to produce biological weapons, says Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief scientist. “You could try to synthesize something like COVID or a more dangerous version of the flu—and basically, our modeling suggests that this might be possible,” Kaplan says.

Accordingly, Claude Opus 4 is being released under stricter safety measures than any prior Anthropic model. Those measures—known internally as AI Safety Level 3 or “ASL-3”—are appropriate to constrain an AI system that could “substantially increase” the ability of individuals with a basic STEM background in obtaining, producing or deploying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to the company. They include beefed-up cybersecurity measures, jailbreak preventions, and supplementary systems to detect and refuse specific types of harmful behavior.

To be sure, Anthropic is not entirely certain that the new version of Claude poses severe bioweapon risks, Kaplan tells TIME. But Anthropic hasn’t ruled that possibility out either.

“If we feel like it’s unclear, and we’re not sure if we can rule out the risk—the specific risk being uplifting a novice terrorist, someone like Timothy McVeigh, to be able to make a weapon much more destructive than would otherwise be possible—then we want to bias towards caution, and work under the ASL-3 standard,” Kaplan says. “We’re not claiming affirmatively we know for sure this model is risky … but we at least feel it’s close enough that we can’t rule it out.”

If further testing shows the model does not require such strict safety standards, Anthropic could lower its protections to the more permissive ASL-2, under which previous versions of Claude were released, he says.

This moment is a crucial test for Anthropic, a company that claims it can mitigate AI’s dangers while still competing in the market. Claude is a direct competitor to ChatGPT, and brings in over $2 billion in annualized revenue. Anthropic argues that its RSP thus creates an economic incentive for itself to build safety measures in time, lest it lose customers as a result of being prevented from releasing new models. “We really don’t want to impact customers,” Kaplan told TIME earlier in May while Anthropic was finalizing its safety measures. “We’re trying to be proactively prepared.”

But Anthropic’s RSP—and similar commitments adopted by other AI companies—are all voluntary policies that could be changed or cast aside at will. The company itself, not regulators or lawmakers, is the judge of whether it is fully complying with the RSP. Breaking it carries no external penalty, besides possible reputational damage. Anthropic argues that the policy has created a “race to the top” between AI companies, causing them to compete to build the best safety systems. But as the multi-billion dollar race for AI supremacy heats up, critics worry the RSP and its ilk may be left by the wayside when they matter most.

Still, in the absence of any frontier AI regulation from Congress, Anthropic’s RSP is one of the few existing constraints on the behavior of any AI company. And so far, Anthropic has kept to it. If Anthropic shows it can constrain itself without taking an economic hit, Kaplan says, it could have a positive effect on safety practices in the wider industry.

Anthropic’s new safeguards

Anthropic’s ASL-3 safety measures employ what the company calls a “defense in depth” strategy—meaning there are several different overlapping safeguards that may be individually imperfect, but in unison combine to prevent most threats.

One of those measures is called “constitutional classifiers:” additional AI systems that scan a user’s prompts and the model’s answers for dangerous material. Earlier versions of Claude already had similar systems under the lower ASL-2 level of security, but Anthropic says it has improved them so that they are able to detect people who might be trying to use Claude to, for example, build a bioweapon. These classifiers are specifically targeted to detect the long chains of specific questions that somebody building a bioweapon might try to ask.

Anthropic has tried not to let these measures hinder Claude’s overall usefulness for legitimate users—since doing so would make the model less helpful compared to its rivals. “There are bioweapons that might be capable of causing fatalities, but that we don’t think would cause, say, a pandemic,” Kaplan says. “We’re not trying to block every single one of those misuses. We’re trying to really narrowly target the most pernicious.”

Another element of the defense-in-depth strategy is the prevention of jailbreaks—or prompts that can cause a model to essentially forget its safety training and provide answers to queries that it might otherwise refuse. The company monitors usage of Claude, and “offboards” users who consistently try to jailbreak the model, Kaplan says. And it has launched a bounty program to reward users for flagging so-called “universal” jailbreaks, or prompts that can make a system drop all its safeguards at once. So far, the program has surfaced one universal jailbreak which Anthropic subsequently patched, a spokesperson says. The researcher who found it was awarded $25,000.

Anthropic has also beefed up its cybersecurity, so that Claude’s underlying neural network is protected against theft attempts by non-state actors. The company still judges itself to be vulnerable to nation-state level attackers—but aims to have cyberdefenses sufficient for deterring them by the time it deems it needs to upgrade to ASL-4: the next safety level, expected to coincide with the arrival of models that can pose major national security risks, or which can autonomously carry out AI research without human input.

Lastly the company has conducted what it calls “uplift” trials, designed to quantify how significantly an AI model without the above constraints can improve the abilities of a novice attempting to create a bioweapon, when compared to other tools like Google or less advanced models. In those trials, which were graded by biosecurity experts, Anthropic found Claude Opus 4 presented a “significantly greater” level of performance than both Google search and prior models, Kaplan says.

President Donald Trump has warned Apple CEO Tim Cook that not manufacturing iPhones in the United States will result in a minimum tariff of 25% on Apple goods.

In a post shared via TruthSocial on Friday, the President said: “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”

Later on Friday, when speaking to reporters at the White HouseTrump said his tariffs could apply to more than just Apple. “It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair,” he said. Trump estimated that it would start by “the end of June.”

“Again, when they build their plants here [in the U.S.]there’s no tariff,” Trump emphasized. “I had an understanding with Tim that he wouldn’t be doing this. He said he’s going to India to build plants, I said: ‘That’s OK to go to India, but you’re not going to sell it to here without tariffs.’ That’s the way it is.”

In an interview on Fox NewsU.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: “I think that one of our greatest vulnerabilities is this external production, especially in semiconductors. And a large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure.”

Trump previously raised the issue of Apple manufacturing abroad, particularly in India, during his three-country tour of the Middle East.

At a business roundtable in Qatar on Thursday, May 15, Trump said: “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday, I said to him: ‘Tim, you’re my friend. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

In February, Apple announced that it would be spending more than $500 billion in the U.S over the next four years. This was slated to include investment in a new factory in Texas, a manufacturing academy, as well as spending in AI and silicon engineering.

Whilst Trump is hopeful that Apple could shift more production to the U.S. in order to avoid tariffs, such a change in manufacturing could take time. Analysts estimate that up to 90% of iPhones are assembled in China, and the devices are made up of 1,000 from countries across the globe.

If iPhones were made in the U.S., would consumers feel the impact?

The likely rise in the retail price of the product has long been a sticking point when it comes to discussing the possibility of having iPhones produced in the U.S.

In response to Trump’s tariffs threat, Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, estimated via social media that if iPhone production were to move Stateside, the cost of the product could rise to $3,500. Therefore, consumers risk being significantly impacted.

The news comes at a time when U.S. consumers are already bracing themselves to feel the impact of Trump’s existing tariffs.

On May 15, Walmart’s chief financial officer John David Rainey warned that the retailer may have to soon start raising prices as the U.S. tariffs are “still too high.”

“We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb,” Rainey said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s more than any supplier can absorb. And so I’m concerned that [consumers are] going to start seeing higher prices. You’ll begin to see that, likely towards the tail end of this month, and then certainly much more in June.”

Trump issued a defiant response, telling the retailer to “eat the tariffs.”

Congress could potentially pass the first major legislation related to children’s online safety since 1998, as the Kids Online Safety Act, sometimes referred to as KOSA, was reintroduced earlier this month after stalling last year.

The bill has proven to be a major talking point, garnering bipartisan support and the attention of tech giants, but it has also sparked concern re: targeted censorship from First Amendment rights groups and others advocating for LGBTQ+ communities.

Now, it will have another shot, and the bill’s Congressional supporters will have a chance to state why they believe the legislation is needed in this ever-evolving digital age.

The revival of the Kids Online Safety Act comes amid U.S. and global discussions over how to best protect children online. In late 2024, Australia approved a social media ban for under-16s. It’s set to come into effect later this year. In March, Utah became the first state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify a user’s age. And Texas is currently moving forward with efforts regarding an expansive social media ban for minors. The Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA)—which would ban social media platforms from allowing children under 13 to create or maintain accounts—was also introduced earlier this year, but has seen little movement since.

In an interview that aired on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, May 25during a special mental health-focused episode, former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, a Democrat who served Rhode Island, expressed a dire need for more protections surrounding children online.

When asked about the Kids Online Safety Act, and if it’s the type of legislation America needs, Kennedy said: “Our country is falling down on its own responsibility as stewards to our children’s future.” He went on to explain why he believes passing bills is just one factor of what needs to be addressed, citing online sports betting as another major concern.

“We can’t just pass these bills. We’ve got to stop all of these intrusive addiction-for-profit companies from taking our kids hostage. That’s what they’re doing. This is a fight,” he said. “And we are losing the fight because we’re not out there fighting for our kids to protect them from these businesses [whose] whole profit motive is, ‘How am I going to capture that consumer and lock them in as a consumer?’”

Calling out giant social media platforms, in particular, Kennedy went on to say: “We, as a country, have seen these companies and industries take advantage of the addiction-for-profit. Purdue, tobacco. Social media’s the next big one. And unfortunately, it’s going to have to be litigated. We have to go after the devastating impact that these companies are having on our kids.”

Amid these ongoing discussions, here’s what you need to know about the Kids Online Safety Act in light of its reintroduction.

What is the Kids Online Safety Act?

The Kids Online Safety Act aims to provide further protections for children online related to privacy and mental health concerns exacerbated by social media and excessive Internet use.

The bill would create “duty of care,” meaning that tech companies and platform giants would be required to take steps to prevent potentially harmful encounters, such as posts about eating disorders and instances of online bullying, from impacting minors.

“A covered platform shall exercise reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature to prevent and mitigate the following harms to minors: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors… patterns of use that indicate or encourage addiction-like behaviors by minors…” the bill reads.

Health organizations including The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Associationhave pushed Congress to pass KOSA to better protect young people online—and see the bill as a potential way to intervene with the detrimental impact social media and Internet usage in general can have on one’s mental health.

Newer versions of the bill have narrowed regulations to apply to limiting “design features” such as notifications, “infinite scrolling or autoplay,” and in-game purchases.

It would also allow for more parental tools to manage the privacy settings of a minor, and ideally enable a parent to limit the ability for adults to communicate with their children via online platforms.

Read More: 6 Red Flags About the Mental-Health Content You’re Being Bombarded With on Social Media

What is the history of the bill?

In 2024, KOSA seemingly had all the right ingredients to pass into law. It had bipartisan support, passed the Senate, and could have been put in front of President Joe Biden, who had indicated he would sign the bill.

“There is undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms contribute to our youth mental health crisis,” President Biden wrote in a statement on July 30, 2024, after KOSA passed the Senate. “Today our children are subjected to a wild west online and our current laws and regulations are insufficient to prevent this. It is past time to act.”

Yet, the bill was stalled. House Speaker Mike Johnson cautioned Republicans against rushing to pass the bill.

“We’ve got to get it right,” Johnson said in December. “Look, I’m a lifelong advocate of protection of children…and online safety is critically important…but we also have to make sure that we don’t open the door for violations of free speech.”

The bill received support across both aisles, and has now been endorsed by some of the “Big Tech giants” it aims to regulate, including Elon Musk and X, Microsoftand Apple.

“Apple is pleased to offer our support for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Everyone has a part to play in keeping kids safe online, and we believe [this] legislation will have a meaningful impact on children’s online safety,” Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director of government affairs, said in a statement earlier in May after the bill was reintroduced.

But other tech giants, including Facebook and Instagram’s parent Meta, opposed the bill last year. Politico reported that 14 lobbyists employed directly by Meta, as well as outside firms, worked the issue.

The bill was reintroduced on May 14 by Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who were joined by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Senator Blackburn and I made a promise to parents and young people when we started fighting together for the Kids Online Safety Act—we will make this bill law. There’s undeniable awareness of the destructive harms caused by Big Tech’s exploitative, addictive algorithms, and inescapable momentum for reform,” said Blumenthal in a statement announcing the bill’s reintroduction. “I am grateful to Senators Thune and Schumer for their leadership and to our Senate colleagues for their overwhelming bipartisan support. KOSA is an idea whose time has come—in fact, it’s urgently overdue—and even tech companies like X and Apple are realizing that the status quo is unsustainable.

Read More: ‘We’re In a New World’: American Teenagers on Mental Health and How to Cope

What is the controversy around KOSA?

Since KOSA’s first introduction, it’s been the site of controversy over free speech and censorship concerns. In 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) discouraged the passage of KOSA at the Senate level, arguing that the bill violated First Amendment-protected speech.

“KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “As state legislatures and school boards across the country impose book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is another act of government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families. The House must block this dangerous bill before it’s too late.”

Some LGBTQ+ rights groups also opposed KOSA in 2024—arguing that the broadly worded bill could empower state attorneys general to determine what kind of content harms kids. One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Blackburn, has previously said that one of the top issues conservatives need to be aware of is “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture and that influence.” Calling out social media, Blackburn said “this is where children are being indoctrinated.”

Other organizations including Center for Democracy & Technology, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and Fight for the Future joined the ACLU in writing a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2024, arguing that the bill would not—as intended—protect children, but instead threaten young people’s privacy and lead to censorship.

In response to these concerns, the newly-introduced version of the bill has been negotiated with “several changes to further make clear that KOSA would not censor, limit, or remove any content from the internet, and it does not give the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] or state Attorneys General the power to bring lawsuits over content or speech,” Blumenthal’s statement on the bill reads.

Where do things currently stand?

Now, KOSA is back where it started—sitting in Congress waiting for support.

With its new changes, lawmakers argue that they have heard the concerns of opposing advocates. KOSA still needs support and passage from Congress—and signing from President Donald Trump—in order to pass into law.