Senior Director for Intelligence @scsp_ai · Founder, Conway Advisors · Former CIA SIS · Fault Lines on Substack · AI · IC Reform · Near East

Bethesda, MD
Joined January 2012
A hidden recording device at OpenAI. A separate dispute over fired researchers. Drone strikes on Russian data centers. @Ylli_Bajraktari and former CIA official @ChipUsher examine why defending frontier AI now means protecting the people and infrastructure behind it, not just the models. Watch the President's Tech Brief every Tuesday & Thursday at 12pm ET!
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US strike plans add the MOAB as a container ship sinks off Hormuz williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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Noteworthy 👇
NEW Report: Significant Activity Identified at Minzadayi, an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Development Site High resolution @vantortech satellite imagery from September and October 2026 shows significant renewed activity at Minzadayi, a nuclear weapons development compound northeast of Tehran revealed by Israel during the 2026 war.  The compound was attacked by Israel on March 3rd, 2026, destroying several buildings and likely underground structures. The recent satellite imagery indicates a return to regular vehicle activity around the site post extensive cleanup operation that included the clearing of rubble and debris and repair of damage on the hillside.  One area attacked in March 2026 shows ongoing earth moving activity.  The earth moving activity is occurring at a surface made to look like a courtyard where multiple craters could be seen following the attacks on the site in March 2026. Significant vehicle presence can be seen throughout the site between early September and early October 2026. Cars are parked outside the security perimeter in the parking lot, and many passenger vehicles and trucks can be seen inside the perimeter.  Given what is known about this compound, this activity may be indicative of an effort by Iran to reestablish a nuclear weapons development capability and to reconstitute what was lost in the attack on the compound.   Based on public reporting and statements released by the IDF, the nuclear weapons work carried out here likely involved research and development on nuclear warheads.  The IDF originally stated, that a “group of nuclear scientists operated covertly to develop a key component in the nuclear weapons system,” adding that “the complex is designed to enable the restoration of the required technology and the advancement of capabilities for the development of nuclear weapons.” @IntelliTimes, released additional information on the compound.  In a post from September 24, 2026, it states that the nuclear weapons related infrastructure was established in 2022 and “absorbed part of the means from the nuclear warehouse,” a common reference to the Turquz Abad site revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2018.  Netanyahu revealed the site following Iran’s removal of more than a dozen shipping containers from the site that were assessed to hold nuclear material and equipment relevant to Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.[4]  When the IAEA visited Turquz Abad in March 2019, it found evidence that nuclear material or contaminated equipment had been present at the site and the IAEA Board has since been pressing Iran to answer the IAEA’s questions about the current whereabouts of said material and/or equipment. @IntelliTimes indicates Iran did not simply move the material and/or equipment to a new long term storage site but used the new site in northeast Tehran, aka Minzadayi, to establish an”  industrial nuclear headquarters for the reconstruction of research, development, and adaptation infrastructure for nuclear warheads,” including the means to “produce cores of enriched uranium and the explosive material required to cast into them the detonation chain.”[5]  The current renewed effort underway at this highly secure compound suggests that the work being conducted here is of top priority. Read the report here: isis-online.org/isis-reports…
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Chip Usher retweeted
It’s true, we have been here before! But I think what it reveals is even more interesting. In Sverdlovsk, declassified docs demonstrate the US knew pretty much what happened immediately when USSR had a huge accident in an illegal anthrax production facility. US diplomats happily
Replying to @ashishkjha
We've been here before. In 1979, anthrax spores escaped a Soviet military facility in Sverdlovsk. At least 66 people died. It took years become public This was all in the old era -- before AI and biological engineering capabilities became widespread
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Iran’s Parliament Floats NPT Exit as Hormuz Closure Hits Day 217 The Strait of Hormuz enters its 217th day of near-total closure, with Iran rejecting any reopening absent seven conditions tied to the June Islamabad memorandum even as tanker strikes continued through the weekend — a six-week-old tanker hit by an unknown projectile on October 4. Tehran's parliament is now weighing withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the Foreign Ministry says IAEA inspector access to damaged nuclear sites hasn't even been discussed by top leadership — undercutting a Bloomberg report, which Iran denies, that its foreign minister floated inspections for sanctions relief. Inside Iran, the rial hit a record low near 270,000 to the dollar and two protesters were executed within 48 hours. In Washington, CENTCOM's war-cost estimate rose to $45.1 billion with no funding mechanism yet approved by Congress. #IranWar #Faultlines Full briefing: williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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Chip Usher retweeted
Why Chinese and Western Analysts See China Differently On a regular basis, I probably review ten Chinese-language podcasts or pieces of writing on China for every two from Hong Kong and one in English. Over time, I have noticed a consistent difference among them. Hong Kong analysis often sits somewhere between the two, but broadly speaking there are two largely separate worlds of China watching: the Chinese-language world and the English-language world. desmondshum.substack.com/p/w…
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Saudi Arabia Weighs Ground War on Houthis as Tankers Burn Near Hormuz Saudi Arabia is weighing a ground offensive — potentially fielding more than 100,000 Yemeni troops under Saudi air cover — to retake the Bab el-Mandeb coastline the Houthis seized last month. Timing estimates range from within a week to after the US midterms. Meanwhile, unidentified projectiles struck two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz within hours of each other on October 2 — part of a pattern shipping-security trackers now count at six-plus attacks since September 28 — and the Pentagon confirmed the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group is Gulf-bound, which would put three carrier strike groups and roughly 20,000 US personnel in theater by late October. No direct Iran-Israel or Iran-US exchange was reported in the last 24 hours, but the secondary fronts are intensifying on every axis — Hormuz, the Red Sea, and now potentially a Saudi ground campaign. #IranWar #FaultLines Full briefing: williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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The Turing Test is cooked.
Introducing Griffin, the first model to pass the video Turing test. 48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate <3%. It is #1 on NVIDIA's benchmark for full-duplex AI video. It’s the first Human Interaction Model (HIM).
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The 48% figure and "video Turing test" claim are from Tavus's own study of 54 one-minute calls, not independently verified or using a standard protocol. Griffin-Lite leads NVIDIA's VideoFDB benchmark on their public leaderboard. cellcog.ai/blog/tavus-gri… research.nvidia.com/labs/amri/proj… tech-ish.com/2026/10/02/tav…
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Chip Usher retweeted
Introducing Griffin, the first model to pass the video Turing test. 48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate <3%. It is #1 on NVIDIA's benchmark for full-duplex AI video. It’s the first Human Interaction Model (HIM).
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The 48% figure and "video Turing test" claim are from Tavus's own study of 54 one-minute calls, not independently verified or using a standard protocol. Griffin-Lite leads NVIDIA's VideoFDB benchmark on their public leaderboard. cellcog.ai/blog/tavus-gri… research.nvidia.com/labs/amri/proj… tech-ish.com/2026/10/02/tav…
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Chip Usher retweeted
I wrote about the systemic failure by the world's most valuable company and powerful government to stop smuggling of AI chips to China US officials say Nvidia is missing obvious signs. Nvidia says "companies honor US laws as they are, not as America’s critics wish they were" 1/
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The AI Exponential — Week of October 2, 2026 This week in AI: AMD agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's spatial-intelligence startup World Labs for $8.2 billion in an all-stock deal, its most direct move yet to compete with Nvidia beyond chips and into AI research talent itself. OpenAI's DevDay introduced persistent "dots" agents and a cheaper GPT-6.1 Sol; Anthropic shipped Claude Sonnet 5.5 as a faster, cheaper sibling to Opus 5.5. In Washington, Executive Order 14434 directed federal agencies to replace "Artificial Intelligence" with "Super Intelligence" in official communications, while California enacted an 11-bill AI package anchored by the "No Robo Bosses Act," requiring human corroboration before AI-driven terminations. DeepSeek open-sourced Huawei-compatible chip tools aimed at Nvidia's CUDA moat, the same week Reuters documented deceptive behavior in Chinese AI agents. #AIExponential Full briefing:aiexponential.substack.com/p…
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The Pentagon ordered the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and up to 10,000 additional troops toward the Middle East overnight, as President Trump told Time a renewed bombing campaign against Iran is "possible" after the November 3 midterms — while Reuters reports Iranian officials are weighing a harder, more geographically expansive retaliation doctrine if struck again. A tanker was hit by an unidentified projectile in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday, the fifth such incident in roughly four days, holding the regional maritime threat level at its highest point. Treasury also unveiled a sweeping new sanctions wave on Iran's auto and rail sectors and a Russia-linked shadow-banking network accused of moving $17B+ for Iranian oil and weapons payments. #IranWar #FaultLines Full briefing: williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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How do the world's biggest AI strategies stack up? 🌍 Explore, compare, and stress-test the national AI action plans of the U.S., China, EU, UK, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Japan in SCSP's new interactive dashboard. scsp.ai/the-global-ai-policy…
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The AI Exponential — Week of September 25, 2026 The biggest AI story this week was price, not capability. Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna ninety minutes apart on September 22. Anthropic says Opus 5.5 costs about 40% less to run than Opus 5; OpenAI priced Sol and Luna at half the 5.6 series. The benchmark claims are the vendors' own. The price cuts are real, and they go straight at the cost advantage Chinese open-weight labs have used to win developers, in a week when Xiaomi's new open model took the top spot on one independent open-weights index. Also in this issue: the Trump-Xi summit opened a US-China AI incident channel and extended the trade truce, but chip controls stayed off the table; the labs' pledge to pace the frontier drew an antitrust suit and a California kill-switch order; and GenAI.mil passed 2 million users in a week as CNN reported a chatbot-written intelligence report nearly triggered a US boarding of a Chinese ship. #AI aiexponential.substack.com/p…
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Iran War Daily — September 23, 2026 · Day 208 US and Iranian negotiators held three hours of talks at the UN, their first in weeks. Tehran's price for reopening Hormuz: end the US blockade and free its assets. Trump says a deal comes "right after the election." US ban on Iranian airlines now in force. Read the full briefing on Fault Lines. #IranWar‌ williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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Near East Weekly Update — September 21, 2026 Washington’s clearance of a $24.3 billion Saudi F-35 sale would make Riyadh the first Arab F-35 operator and test whether deeper Gulf defense ties can coexist with concerns over Chinese technology exposure. #FaultLines Read the full Near East Weekly Update: williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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Iran War Executive Update — September 19, 2026 Saudi Arabia has told European term customers they'll get zero crude allocation in October after the Sept. 10 drone strikes that shut its East-West pipeline — and is now moving roughly 60 million barrels via ship-to-ship transfers off Oman to keep exports flowing to China and South Korea. Brent traded in a volatile $101.92–$104.89/bbl range overnight. In parallel, the Strait of Hormuz saw a second disputed tanker incident: hours after Iran's IRGC Navy claimed it struck and disabled the tanker Trend, UKMTO separately reported another vessel hit by an "unidentified projectile" — and wire reporting could not establish whether these are the same ship described twice or two distinct strikes. In Tehran, the IRGC staged its largest pro-government rally since the war began, claiming 300,000+ attendees, while the Pentagon told Congress the war has now cost $45.1 billion. #IranWar‌ Full briefing: williamusher.substack.com/p/…
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First thought: Read this if you want to better understand the impact of recent strikes against KSA oil infrastructure 👇 Second thought: When people ask me what AI cannot yet replicate of expert human analysis, it’s this level of deep, contextual knowledge acquired through lived experience.
𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗫 𝗦𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗦𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗮'𝘀 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗕𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 "𝗗𝗮𝘆𝘀". 𝗜 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀. 𝗧𝗿𝘆 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. First, let me say plainly that I love the desert and the Arab cultures. But it does shape a timeline the media does not understand because they are talking about something they have never experienced. Lots of people on @X are saying the Saudi East-West pipeline and its pumping stations will be back online in days!?! I have worked these deserts, in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East, and that is not how it goes. Even if it is "Expedited", you are still looking at a month at the very least, and realistically one to three. You have to first understand what the work actually is. This is not a "gas station attendant" tightening a few bolts or replacing a motor. A pumping station hit by a ballistic missile has to be completely demolished, cleared, re-engineered and rebuilt, from the ground and concrete upwards, often with newer technology because the stations are decades old anyways and the original parts no longer exist. That means engineering, contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, each waiting on the one below them, each relying on a supply chain that is nothing like the robust, on-time machine people imagine in Germany or Norway or the West. Now layer the desert summer heat on top of that (we are still in September where the desert heat burns your feet even with shoes), and this is where the delays compound. If you are not short on supplies, your truck is stuck in the sand. If the truck moves, you are waiting on water, or waiting for the temperature to drop, because September in the Saudi desert is so brutal that crews can only work at night or in short bursts before exhaustion and medical emergencies set in. The skilled labor is largely foreign, Pakistani, Afghan, Indian and others, working under experienced engineers who must be flown in and coordinated and some of those highly skilled workers likely left when the missiles started months ago. So how do you convince them to come back? Sure you have some of your own engineers but the highly skilled ones are always brought in from overseas. And the rhythm of the day is cultural. There are the Prayer times that take thirty to forty five minutes each, several times a day, if they end up working during the day. There is a midday rest or naps. These are not flaws, they are how the society works, but they are real hours that Western timelines never account for. Then the piece almost no one has factored in. The ports are blocked via Strait of Hormuz and Bab Al Mandeeb. The heavy equipment a rebuild like this needs, the kind that normally arrives by sea ordered from overseas, cannot come by sea now. It has to be airlifted, which is far more expensive, far slower, and limited by what fits on an aircraft. Some of this machinery is too large to fly intact, so it must be disassembled, flown in pieces, and reassembled on site. Every one of those steps is a new bottleneck stacked on the last. I like to look at things from an order of effects point of view so; 1. FIRST, the immediate one, the repair itself drags out to weeks or months, not days, so Saudi export capacity stays crippled far longer than the market expects. 2. Second, the market one, that prolonged outage keeps upward pressure on oil and shipping costs, because the bypass everyone assumed would reopen quickly does not. 3. Third, the strategic one, and this is the part the optimists miss, even a fully repaired pipeline sits under the same threat that broke it. Why would the Houthis not simply hit it again, you bet they will. They have shown they are less about careful calculation than the IRGC and more about action. A rebuilt station is just a fresh target, which means the real constraint is NOT the repair time at all, perhaps it never was. It is that you cannot durably fix a node your enemy can strike at will at any time of day regardless of the weather conditions.... So ignore the days talk. Between the engineering, the desert, the blocked ports and the standing threat of another strike, this is a one-to-three month problem at best, and possibly one that cannot be permanently solved while the war continues at all. You know what to do, amplify this Signal. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!
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A U.S.–China AI agreement faces a structural divide: • Beijing views restrictions on frontier capabilities as a threat to its economic and state power. • The U.S. ecosystem tends to favor closed-weight frontier models. • China relies on open-weight models to diffuse its technology freely and cheaply. Chip Usher and Channing Lee explain on the latest PTB why the space for an agreement may be narrow.
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