President Trump pushes back against calls for an AI slowdown.

Summary

By the N2K CyberWire staff

President Trump pushes back against calls for an AI slowdown.

President Trump is continuing to push back on calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other AI leaders to slow frontier AI development over safety concerns, the New York Times reports. The president dismissed the concerns as a hoax that would allow China to win the AI race. The Times notes that Trump has aligned with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, both of whom warn against overregulation that would give China an upper hand.

Security experts are divided over how imminent the danger really is, with some arguing that potential doomsday scenarios are exaggerated and others saying recent autonomous attacks justify stronger oversight.

AI adoption isn't waiting for security to catch up.

As organizations race to adopt AI, security teams face a difficult challenge: enabling innovation without losing visibility into the tools, identities, permissions, and data entering their environments.

Stephen Harrison, VP of Product at Abnormal AI, explains why simply blocking AI isn't the answer and how security leaders can approach adoption with greater control.

Listen to the full conversation to learn how to enable AI without losing sight of the risks.

Microsoft lays out safety code of conduct for its own models.

Separately, Microsoft has published a draft “Humanist AI Code of Conduct” for its own AI models, SecurityWeek reports. The code establishes “Absolute Constraints” that would prevent models from providing working exploit code or other operational assistance that could enable cyberattacks, while still permitting authorized defensive research, malware analysis, vulnerability discovery, and some proof-of-concept development. The company says the code is designed “to train and deploy AI models that are explicitly designed for people first, grounded in human needs, and shaped by human direction.”

Japanese government discloses data breach.

The Japanese government's Digital Agency discovered a breach that exposed up to 246,000 records containing personal information of government employees, BleepingComputer reports. The agency says a threat actor exploited a medium-severity, known vulnerability in a VPN used by the Government Solution Service (GSS). The threat actor may have accessed 236,000 names, 231,000 email addresses, 94,000 telephone numbers, and 1,000 physical addresses belonging to inividuals that use the GSS system. The Digital Agency warns affected users to be on the lookout for phishing attacks using the breached information.

Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Machine speed, hold the AI: Hand-rolled marimo CVE-2026-39987 exploit (Sysdig) Sysdig TRT details a hand-rolled attack against marimo's CVE-2026-39987 without AI, building custom Python tools to breach a cloud bastion host.

CVE-2026-75650: StyleSmuggler — Critical RCE in Adobe Commerce and Magento (Akamai) CVE-2026-75650 is a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting Adobe Commerce, Adobe Commerce B2B, and Magento Open Source.

VectraRAT: An Undocumented Full-Stack MaaS Built From Scratch (SOCRadar) SOCRadar’s Threat Research Unit (STRU) has documented VectraRAT, a Malware-as-a-Service platform built entirely from scratch rather than forked from leaked RAT code.

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

Suspected Black Axe gang leaders face cybercrime charges in the US (BleepingComputer) Five alleged leaders of the Black Axe cybercrime syndicate, known for its involvement in global-scale cyber-enabled financial fraud, have been extradited to the United States to face wire fraud and money laundering charges.

Industry Events

For a complete running list of events, please visit the Event Tracker.

Events

Cybersecurity Operational Methods and Education Training (COMET) cohort (Virtual, USA, Aug 31 - Sep 28, 2026) COMET was established to provide relevant, up-to-date training to Maryland state and local government employees to elevate the ability of the workforce to identify and respond to the largest cybersecurity challenges facing the state and local government.

Progress Data Platform Summit 2026 (Reston, Virginia, USA, Sep 14 - 16, 2026) At the Progress Data Platform Summit 2026, we'll show you how to turn scattered enterprise data into a trusted AI knowledge engine, build an AI-ready data foundation for decisioning and discovery, and operationalize AI with governance, lineage, and confidence. Learn how to drive repeatable patterns for scaling, from pilot to production, with outcomes leaders can stand behind.

.conf26 (Denver, Colorado, USA, Sep 14 - 17, 2026) .conf26 is a three-day conference filled with hands-on training, AI insights, new certifications, fun celebrations, and endless opportunities to see how others use Splunk. Take your skills to the next level and build your most resilient defense yet. See you in Denver!

AI Security Summit 2026: State of Trust (Virtual, Sep 16 - 17, 2026) AI can now autonomously identify and exploit software vulnerabilities at near-expert level, and that capability is already in deployment. Autonomous systems have become part of the attack surface itself. Cloud architecture is being rearchitected around AI at speed. Identity perimeters are dissolving under the pressure of non-human access at scale. Zero Trust has moved from framework to survival requirement. Across all three pillars of modern enterprise security, the question of trust has never been more consequential or more contested. Join CSA for the AI Security Summit 2026: State of Trust, a free two-day virtual flagship event taking place September 16–17, 2026. Over two days, you'll get direct access to the research, standards, and practitioner guidance shaping five of the most consequential shifts in security today: agentic and autonomous AI security, quantum readiness, non-human identity management, global governance and assurance, and the next evolution of adaptive threat defense and Zero Trust. Built on CSA's vendor-neutral research and direct work with CISOs and industry leaders worldwide, this is where the global cloud, AI, and Zero Trust community comes to see clearly where trust actually stands, and where it's headed next.

Open Source Security Summit (Virtual, Sep 17, 2026) The seventh annual Open Source Security Summit brings together business leaders, industry visionaries, and technology users to chart a path forward and highlight the future of open source security solutions at this free virtual event. Register now to explore advancements in open source security and how using open source tools can build trust with customers and consumers.

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Daily Briefing for 09.15.26

Top stories.

President Trump pushes back against calls for an AI slowdown.

Microsoft lays out safety code of conduct for its own models.

Japanese government discloses data breach.

Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

Events