It’s Friday, April 10. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Eli Lake on the five men running Iran. Olivia Reingold on Zohran Mamdani’s first 100 days as the mayor of NYC. Why did President Donald Trump ask for a $1.5 trillion defense budget? And much more.

But first: AI isn’t about to change your job, your health, or the music you listen to. It already has.

This week, Anthropic quietly rolled out its most powerful model yet: Claude Mythos. It’s the first artificial intelligence model that officials believe could cripple a Fortune 100 company, disable vast swaths of the internet, or penetrate national defense networks. In testing, Claude Mythos autonomously identified and exploited vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser, some of which had lain dormant and undetected for decades.

That’s the version governments are scrambling to contain, for fear that it could rewrite human civilization. But farther from the headlines, and in a less dramatic way, AI is already remaking everyday life for ordinary people. The evidence is in three fascinating essays we’re publishing today.

Evan Gardner reports on how machines are throwing the music industry into turbulence. There’s the North Carolina banjo player who logged onto Spotify to find songs she had never recorded uploaded under her name. There’s the Mississippi choir singer who used AI to land a $3 million record deal. And there’s the billion-dollar platforms where you can type in “Write a song about my dog that sounds like Taylor Swift,” and it’ll do it in minutes.

“They’re not just stealing our work,” one artist told Evan. “They’re stealing us.” Read more here:

Then there’s Andrew Rodriguez, whose 25-year-old girlfriend has a brain tumor that has defied two surgeries—and was missed by multiple medical professionals. Rodriguez decided to take matters into his own hands: Armed with some AI chatbots and a background in biophysics, he began combing through research papers her doctors hadn’t seen. This is the future of medicine. Read it here:

And finally, Melanie Pasch had never written a line of code in her life. Then her boss told her that using AI as a tool wasn’t enough anymore—and asked her to rebuild her entire job around it. Melanie works in corporate communications and, in one night at her parents’ house, she built an automated system that lets her team of two operate like a team of 10. Click here to find out how AI could become your favorite colleague:

—The Editors

Our coverage of the Iran war continues. Today, Eli Lake reports on who is actually running the Islamic Republic right now. He breaks down the five-man council with whom Vice President J.D. Vance will negotiate in Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend and what that means for the ceasefire’s chances. Read the full thing here:

Haviv Rettig Gur argues that no matter what America decides, the war is far from over—and that Israel, unlike the United States, does not have the luxury of walking away:

Elsewhere, Michael Oren writes about the disappointment the ceasefire has brought Israelis, and why so many feel the war ended just short of finishing the job:

And on School of War, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins Aaron MacLean to discuss what’s actually at stake in the Islamabad talks, where the two sides are almost aligned, and where they’re miles apart. Listen here:

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Earlier this week, we published an exclusive report about an unprecedented meeting between the Vatican and the Pentagon, which took place after Pope Leo XIV’s “state of the world” address in January, in which he criticized those who chose war over peace.

Mattia Ferraresi reported that, days later, the Holy See’s then-ambassador to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, was summoned to have a conversation with Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and other U.S. officials. Those with knowledge of the meeting told The Free Press that it was tense. One U.S. official reportedly referenced the Avignon Papacy—the period in the 14th century when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the papal authority.

After we published this report, the vice president was asked about it by a journalist. Vance said: “I would actually like to talk to Cardinal Cristophe Pierre and, frankly, to our people, to figure out what actually happened.” The Department of Defense then released a statement: “Recent reporting of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times, among other publications, has corroborated details of our report—including a U.S. official’s mention of the Avignon Papacy. “It went wrong. It was very bad form. Somebody misspoke,” one source told the London-based paper.

The four astronauts aboard Artemis II’s Integrity splash down off the coast of California tonight—and everyone is holding their breath as they wonder: Will the heat shield hold? Frannie Block reports on the known flaw in the spacecraft’s shield: It cracked and charred on the last unmanned mission, and NASA didn’t have enough time to design a new one. During reentry, the crew will pass through temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and have no way to communicate with Mission Control. One veteran NASA engineer said, “We’re basically playing Russian roulette.”

This week in our newsletter tracking the global rise of antisemitism: Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield writes about watching Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed offer condolences after a man drove a truck into her synagogue, only to pivot the next day and say “Hurt people hurt people.”

Our own Olivia Reingold dove deeper into the coalition behind El-Sayed’s rise. “At this point, man, you can’t be pro-Israel. That’s like being pro-Nazi,” one socialist supporter told her at a rally in Ann Arbor. Reingold reports on how the Senate hopeful, dubbed “Michigan Mamdani,” is winning over Arab Americans and young progressives with a mix of affordability politics, anti-Israel hostility, and the support of Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.