An office in the Treasury Department that helps thwart terrorist financing is encouraging banks to report “suspected domestic terrorist activity,” according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, is upping its resources to support law enforcement investigations related to potential “domestic terrorist” activity, the people said. That comes as President Donald Trump and his administration vow to crack down on antifa and its possible funding sources after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.

FinCEN, an office with a budget of around $190 million, helps combat overseas and domestic financial crimes, including international terror financing. Any unlawful activity would be referred to the Department of Justice.

This month, we’re toasting to America’s technological revolution—it’s given us the automobile, the airplane, and AI. The steamboat and the space shuttle. The Pill and the polio vaccine. But over the past decade, political divisions and fractured trust in institutions have stoked a strong anti-tech backlash. In this essay, Noah Smith digs into the history and data to explain the rise of American Luddism. We mustn’t take modern technology for granted, he argues, lest we “quickly find out why being a medieval peasant was not actually a good life at all.”

—The Editors

Advanced civilizations sometimes really do throw it all away. I recommend reading the book Lost Enlightenment, which is about how the golden age of Islamic science, scholarship, and literature gave way to centuries of religious fundamentalism and backwardness. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, China turned its back on exploration, refused to import Western technologies, and generally de-emphasized science; centuries of economic stagnation and military weakness followed.

These are useful examples, but they’re all from the premodern period, where cutting-edge science and technology didn’t make a huge difference in people’s standard of living; most people were farmers living on the edge of subsistence. But around 200 years ago, technology really started to matter, and living standards began to skyrocket in a way they never had in history. Thanks to technology, humanity is now about 20 times richer on average than we were two centuries ago, and the number keeps going up:

For a civilization to turn its back on algebra in 1100 or on spring clocks in 1800 was certainly foolish. But for a civilization in 2025 to turn its back on the technologies that took our species from indigent peasants to modern standards of living would be just unfathomably insane.

And yet that is exactly what I now see Western civilization doing. In the U.S., the Anglosphere, and Europe, there are simultaneous backlashes against a number of key technologies that have either made the modern world what it is, or promise to make it even wealthier. These include:

KYIV — Eight minutes into his victory lap at Israel’s parliament on Monday, President Donald Trump was already looking to the next conflict that he intends to settle. “The war with Russia and Ukraine, a war that [should] have never happened. . . . but we’ll get that one,” he said. A day earlier, Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that they had just talked on the phone for two days in a row. They will meet in Washington on Friday, and Zelensky has said that he hopes Trump will use the same tactics used to great success in Gaza to pressure Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

It seems like all this would be welcome news in Kyiv. The Trump-Zelensky summit comes less than a year after the Oval Office blowup, when Zelensky corrected Vice President J.D. Vance in front of the press, was kicked out of the White House by Trump, and went home empty-handed. Many Ukrainians feared that the White House might abandon their cause. Trump’s reengagement now could mean more long-range missiles for Ukraine and harsher sanctions on Russia.

But few Ukrainians share their president’s optimism that Trump could bring an end to the war itself. Within Ukraine’s government, there is less hope for a ceasefire than concern that President Trump will lose interest in the conflict once again.

There is only one funeral home in Warren, Minnesota, population 1,600. One of the morticians is Victor M. Sweeney. Most people don’t know his last name, because they don’t need to: He’s the only Victor in town.

It’s not the kind of job most people picture themselves doing: handling dead bodies, planning funerals, writing obituaries. But Sweeney chose it—and he loves it. He explains why in his new book, Now Departing: A Small-Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between, out October 14. We’re delighted to publish an excerpt today.

Being a mortician, Sweeney writes, is not morbid at all; it is about easing the burden carried by the loved ones left behind. In other words, this is a tribute to life, told through stories of laying the dead to rest. —The Editors

Judy died of cancer. It was one of those long declines that families describe in an obituary as a “battle.” Cancer took the best years of her life—she died before reaching retirement—and it also took her hair, both breasts, and a few organs along the way.

When my boss Mike and I arrive at the house, Judy looks absolutely nothing like herself. Death can do this to us, even in less extreme cases. We don’t usually lie perfectly still. Nor do we do so with our mouths hanging open.

It’s Wednesday, October 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: On Breaking History, Eli Lake explores how the home of free speech embraced censorship. Obama speechwriter David Litt explains how his old boss launched podcast politics. Ashley Rindsberg investigates how Reddit created the first digital ghetto. And Peter Coy asks: Who cares if AI is a bubble? All that and much more.

But first: What makes America so innovative?

On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”

In other words, all three recipients have spent their careers grappling with variations on one of the biggest questions out there: How does progress happen?

For Mokyr, an American Israeli economic historian, economic growth and technological innovation is a rare exception in human history. “By and large, the forces opposing technological progress have been stronger than those striving for changes,” he writes in The Lever of Riches. “The study of technological progress is therefore a study of exceptionalism, of cases in which as a result of rare circumstances, the normal tendency of society to slide toward stasis and equilibrium was broken.” (h/t Alex Tabarrok.)

“A study of exceptionalism” would be a good alternative title for America at 250, our year-long series celebrating this exceptional country as it passes the quarter-millennium mark (read all about it here). And, as luck would have it, this month’s installment focuses on some of the same questions as the Nobel winners do.

It’s all about American innovation: the nonstop technological revolution that has been a constant of American life for 250 years, from John Fitch and Robert Fulton to Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. In the next few days, expect essays on everything from the brilliance of the humble shipping container to the rise of techno-pessimism. Later this week we’ll bring you Bari in conversation with one of the great innovators of today, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey. And click here to vote on what you think is the most influential American invention of all time.

To kick things off, we’re proud to present our dear friend, the journalist turned Silicon Valley investor Katherine Boyle. She writes about how America—and especially American tech companies—came to dominate the world.

Mokyr’s answer to the question of what drives innovation is culture. Ideas, not raw materials or imperial conquest, are ultimately what give us prosperity and technological progress. America’s first quarter millennium bears that out. Katherine argues that one idea—and one constitutional amendment in particular—is the key to understanding what turned Palo Alto from a sleepy university town into a world-famous innovation hub. Don’t miss Katherine on what powers American innovation.

—Oliver Wiseman

LIVE in New York City: Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss

Tickets are selling fast for How to Parent in the Digital Age, a live conversation with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss about how we raise kids in 2025—and how we might be getting it all backward. October 22 at 7 p.m. in New York City. Get your tickets before they sell out!

GET TICKETS NOW

• News organizations have roundly denounced strict new Pentagon reporting rules. Everyone from The New York Times and CNN to Fox News and Newsmax has refused to sign on to the policy that restricts access to certain areas of the Pentagon to members of the press and requires them to pledge not to obtain unauthorized material. The one outlet on board with the changes? One America News Network.

• Members of Hamas carried out public executions of blindfolded Palestinians in the days since the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. If Hamas doesn’t disarm, “we will disarm them,” warned Trump on Tuesday. (Watch our video report on Hamas’s crackdown.)

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from Infowars founder Alex Jones over the $1.4 billion judgment levied against him for defaming the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, an event he called a hoax staged by crisis actors. Jones filed for bankruptcy in 2022.

• ICE’s use of a full-body restraint device, known as a WRAP, to restrict individuals during deportation has prompted accusations of inhumane treatment. “It was the most painful thing I’ve been through,” said a deportee who was restrained by a WRAP device for most of his 10-hour deportation flight.

• Instagram announced sweeping changes to its content restrictions for teenagers on Tuesday, introducing guidelines based on the film industry’s PG-13 rating, and restricting adult content and some inappropriate accounts altogether. The new rules will also apply to AI chatbots accessed by teenage users on the platform.

• A new version of ChatGPT will communicate in a “human-like way,” even providing “erotica for verified adults,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a Tuesday post on X. Altman said that the move is now possible thanks to “new tools” developed by OpenAI to mitigate risks for those with mental health issues.

• Corey Balmer, the arsonist who firebombed the residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, pleaded guilty to the arson attack on Tuesday and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. Balmer said the attack was to show Shapiro that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

• Multiple airports across the country are refusing to air a video of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming the government shutdown on congressional Democrats. The video, according to critics, potentially violates the Hatch Act, a 1939 law requiring federal programs to be administered in a nonpartisan manner.

• People who are frequently connected with friends age more slowly compared to those who do not socialize with friends, according to a new study conducted by the U.S. National Institute on Aging. Researchers found that social connectivity can also act as “preventative care,” regulating stress and reducing inflammation.

We have a packed season of conversations, debates, and live events. Here’s what’s coming up:

• Reclaiming Childhood in an Online World with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss
  New York, NY • October 22, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale here

• Would America Be Safer Without the Second Amendment? Featuring Alan Dershowitz, Dana Loesch, and Bari Weiss
  Chicago • November 5, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale here

In a kingdom not so far away, the police visit private homes to inquire about a resident who has posted something on social media that “spreads hate,” “may incite violence,” or “provokes general offense.” A man was recently fined for burning a Quran while his knife-wielding assailant was spared incarceration. And a well-known humorist was met at the airport by armed officers for three social-media posts about trans people.

It sounds like Saudi Arabia or Qatar. But this is Britain in 2025. According to data obtained by The Times of London, police departments in the United Kingdom average 30 arrests a day for offensive posts on the internet. That’s nearly 11,000 per year. The country that gave the world John Stuart Mill and George Orwell now sends its constables to arrest thought criminals. Reply guys and red-pilled Facebook moms are doing time.

And this is a shame. Britain nurtured a culture that produced an intellectual tradition that exemplified and introduced the centrality of free speech for liberal democracy. In this episode of Breaking History, Eli Lake explores how a cradle of liberty became a nation of censors and snitches.

Listen to the episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts:

When people ask if AI is a bubble, as they often do these days, the unstated assumption is that bubbles are bad. But a boom that ends badly for investors often works out just fine for the public.

A century ago, there were more than 100 automobile companies, most of which lost investors money—but out of which emerged a powerful American industry. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s cost investors billions as companies such as Pets.com and eToys crashed and burned—but the companies that survived, like Amazon and eBay, proved that online shopping could thrive. The same is likely to be true of AI: Investors may get burned, but if AI is as important as people think it is, the bubble will have been worth it.

Indeed, according to Robert Atkinson, the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a science and technology think tank, in the long run, it’s usually the general public that ends up being the main beneficiary of new technologies. “Gloom-and-doomers say a few gazillionaires will dominate AI. To me, that’s ridiculous,” Atkinson told me. “The societal benefit—the social rate of return—of new technologies is usually twice as high or three times as high as the private rate of return.”

After enduring months of abuse on Reddit, a group of Jewish moderators finally secured a meeting with company officials in May 2024. The moderators, volunteers who enforce the rules of a subreddit, had been pleading with Reddit for months to enforce its own rules against antisemitism, which soared after October 7, 2023.

The derogatory slur “Zionazi” was being used over 2,000 times a month in comments on Reddit posts, according to publicly available data collected by moderators. New accounts flooded the r/Jewish and r/Israel subreddits with harassment, including Holocaust-themed usernames and direct threats. “Kill Jews” appeared hundreds of times a month in Reddit comments.

At 3:22 a.m. ET on October 7, 2023, I texted my producer: “Candace, there’s war in Israel.” At that moment, Hamas men still roamed southern Israel and the details were far from clear. What we knew was that Israel had been attacked and that videos were beginning to make their way from Telegram to X. Scenes of dozens of Palestinian terrorists breaking thr…