Project update + 8 news stories

Hey everyone, I have a small project update - you can read it after the news.

In the last 3 days Gemini read 87507 top news stories. After removing previously covered events, there are 8 articles with a significance score over 5.5.

[6.1] US and Israel target Iran's leadership, risking prolonged regional war — theconversation.com (+3100)

Joint US-Israeli strikes killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have triggered retaliatory attacks and plunged the Middle East into open warfare, heightening fears of a prolonged regional conflict.

President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aim for regime change, but Tehran has activated succession plans and its Revolutionary Guard. Iran's retaliation includes strikes on regional bases and threats to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz energy corridor.

This escalation follows stalled nuclear talks and risks severe global economic disruption. Despite domestic unrest, the Iranian regime’s entrenched security apparatus remains loyal, suggesting any potential collapse will be fiercely contested.

[5.7] OpenAI partners with Pentagon to deploy AI models on classified networks — cnbc.com (+153)

OpenAI has reached an agreement to deploy its artificial intelligence models within the Pentagon's classified networks, shortly after the Trump administration blacklisted rival developer Anthropic as a national security risk.

The contract includes safeguards prohibiting domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. It follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s designation of rival Anthropic as a national security risk after negotiations regarding model usage restrictions and military requirements collapsed earlier that day.

Anthropic expressed disappointment and plans to legally challenge its blacklisting. Meanwhile, OpenAI will deploy personnel to assist the military with technical safeguards, urging the government to offer similar terms to other developers.

Highly covered news with significance over 5.5

[6.1] OpenAI raises $110 billion from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, reaching $730 billion valuation — engadget.com (+28)

[6.1] Russia accepts US plan for Ukraine security guarantees — usnews.com (+11)

[6.3] European regulators endorse Sanofi's simpler sleeping sickness pill for use in Congo and other African nations — apnews.com (+3)

[5.9] A virus hiding inside bacteria may help explain colorectal cancer — theconversation.com (+3)

[5.6] Nasa delays Artemis III moon landing to 2028 — theguardian.com (+35)

[6.4] Brain cells on a chip learn to play Doom — newscientist.com (+4)

Project update

You might have already noticed that I changed the first sentence of the newsletter: Gemini replaced ChatGPT.

This is not a new change. I replaced the model doing the scoring back in summer 2025, when Google released Gemini 2.5 Pro - the best model at that time. The scoring has been working on that model ever since.

I was hesitant about changing the headline though. “Today ChatGPT read 30k articles…” was the first sentence people read when they saw my project and changing it to a generic “LLM” or hated “AI” or just any other less known model felt like shooting myself in the foot.

Plus, the non-technical people I knew kept saying “I asked ChatGPT …” even when they used any other model - it became sort of like “googling” in Bing. And I went along with it.

But after the recent events with the Pentagon and OpenAI I think it’s time for me to stop reinforcing the “mind monopoly”, and start giving credit to tools that actually do the job.

It’s a small change, but I think an important one.

Thank you for reading, as always.

— Vadim