Profile
Who is Benjamin Wittes?
Benjamin Wittes is a commentator and analyst whose remarks in the supplied material center on AI security incidents, the behavior of autonomous systems, and the limits of existing law and policing. His through-line is skepticism about AI agents, which he contrasts with airplanes that “are not trying to cheat on the evals,” and about whether current legislation can address such incidents.
Track record
- Sep 2026 - Wittes noted a “slight weirdness” in asking GPT models, including one implicated in a hack, to investigate that hack.
- Sep 2026 - He said OpenAI had not explained how it detected and stopped the incident, leaving “a reasonable chance it was some kind of like weird accident.”
- Sep 2026 - Wittes argued legislators who passed relevant bills likely believed they covered such incidents, but those incidents “probably wouldn’t even qualify for investigation under those laws.”
- Sep 2026 - He described daily “shadow warfare” against Europe and Russia, citing sabotage on the Dutch railway network, drones in Lithuania, and a Russian ship firing flares at a Danish helicopter.
- Sep 2026 - Wittes said police receive combat training rather than training to stop shoplifters or fare jumpers.
In their own words
AFD co-chair Ali Vital stated that an AFD-led national government would not only end all support for Ukraine but would also demand repayment of all support given over the past nearly five years.
“The co-chair of the AFD, Ali Vital, recently few days ago, said in an interview that a an AfDled national government would not just end all support for Ukraine, but would ask for repayment of all the support it's received in the past nearly 5 years.”16 Sep 2026
The National Guard is not deployed in the census tracts where 82% of DC murders occur.
“The census tracks where they were not is where 82% of the DC murders happen, right?”10 Sep 2026
Citation Bureau · reference note, compiled from attributed expert discussion. Last updated 2026-09-17.