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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives a speechs as he visits the Spanish city of Ceuta in North Africa following an attempted sea crossing by migrants from Morocco on July 31, 2026. [La Moncloa (Spanish Government) – Anadolu Agency]
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of continuing to carry out mass killing in Gaza in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
Sanchez said he had come to defend the principles and aspirations that inspired the founding of the United Nations, adding that these principles and aspirations were being ignored or undermined by various governments represented at the assembly.
He said peace, sustainability and equal opportunities were under attack from political forces and governments seeking to return to a dark past.
Sanchez stressed the need to reform the UN Security Council, saying some governments and political forces described the United Nations and multilateral organisations as ineffective.
He said the position of those forces was contrary to the course of history and based on three mistaken principles: selfishness, ignorance and cruelty. He added that he had seen such forces start illegal wars and commit massacres against innocent civilians.
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A view of Universal Pictures logo displayed on a digital screen and an artificial intelligence (AI) illustration shown on a mobile phone screen in Ankara, Turkiye on August 20, 2025. [Erçin Ertürk – Anadolu Agency]
Much is being said right now about the dangers posed by AI and the possibility that it could ultimately wipe out humanity. Some experts, such as Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s Alignment Science Lead and one of the AI industry’s leading safety researchers, have gone much further, warning publicly that there is more than a 10 percent chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade.
When senior executives from some of the world’s leading AI companies met in San Francisco for Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, held 15th–17th September 2026, they differed sharply over the seriousness of the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI and over how those risks should be managed. They did, however, share a fundamental belief: that the industry itself is capable of developing safeguards, testing systems, monitoring their behaviour and preventing or correcting dangerous failures. Where they differed was over how much restraint was necessary, who should impose it, and whether governments should intervene through new legislation and regulation.
The leading AI developers’ position is aligned with that of President Donald Trump, He wants AI to realise its full potential as quickly as possible and supports the industry’s drive to keep the AI race moving. Trump’s position is essentially this: let AI run; give developers the time, resources and freedom they need to take the technology to the next level. Trump, whose country is currently leading the AI race, has dismissed warnings about AI’s potential to destroy humanity as a “HOAX,” just as he has dismissed warnings about climate change despite the scientific evidence. He has also repeatedly argued that the US cannot afford to slow the development of AI while China is racing on. Just yesterday, before the United Nations he said: “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution.”
To Trump, AI is another strategic opportunity that his country cannot miss: develop it, exploit its economic and strategic potential, and make sure China stays behind. In that sense, it fits a broader strategic logic in which Washington seeks to secure control or advantage over resources and technologies considered vital to American power, rather than leave them available to rivals.
Simply put, the logic sounds like this: let the flock of sheep spend the night with a pack of hungry wolves, and see what happens in the morning.
What is striking about the latest discussion among the leaders of the AI industry in San Francisco is that, while some of them referred to the possibility of AI causing catastrophic harm to humanity, few, if any, pointed to a specific, real-world example of what that danger could already look like. More striking still, no one used Gaza as the obvious real-world example: how AI has already been incorporated into warfare and how technology supplied by some of their own companies has been used by the Israeli military in its war on Gaza.
Some of those present know, from the experience of their own companies, that their technologies have been used extensively in support of the Israeli military.
Commercial AI models from both Microsoft and OpenAI have been deployed by the Israeli military, along with Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, while Google and Amazon have provided cloud computing and other AI services to the Israeli occupation military under Project Nimbus.
The Associated Press has documented how these technologies have been used to process intelligence, translate and analyse intercepted communications, and support the identification of targets in Gaza and Lebanon. The question, therefore, is not whether AI could one day become a danger to humanity. In Gaza, the question is what it is already doing when placed in the hands of a military at war.
The human consequences are before the world. More than 75,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, while the destruction of housing alone has affected some 1.7 million people, with more than 320,000 homes damaged. The United Nations estimates that 1.98 million people—94 percent of Gaza’s population—required shelter assistance in its latest assessment. Gaza’s infrastructure has been devastated, while essential services, including health, water and sanitation, remain severely compromised.
This is not a hypothetical future in which an uncontrolled machine decides to destroy humanity. It is a real war, taking place now, in which AI is increasingly being incorporated into systems of surveillance, intelligence and targeting. Yet no one at the summit appears to have asked the obvious question: if these companies know what their AI is doing in Gaza, why is Gaza not the first example they cite when discussing the dangers of this technology?
And if AI can already contribute to this scale of destruction in Gaza, what happens when the technology becomes even more powerful, more autonomous and more deeply embedded in warfare elsewhere in the world?
In addition to this, there is now documented evidence that Israel has sought to interfere with the information on which AI systems train, by flooding the online environment with misleading and fabricated material designed specifically to influence what AI models tell users. Israel funded the creation of a fake American think tank called the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, whose stated purpose appeared to be legitimate research but which had no apparent legal existence, physical address, named researchers or bylines on its reports. Created on behalf of Israel’s Government Advertising Agency through the US public-relations firm Piro Inc., the institute produced more than 560,000 words across 124 reports in just nine days, much of it focused on Israel, Palestine and Gaza. The material was deliberately structured and optimised for discovery and citation by AI systems, effectively attempting to make propaganda look like credible research and feed it into the information environment from which AI systems generate answers.
This goes far beyond the conventional hacking of communications or the gathering of intelligence. It represents an attempt to manipulate the information environment itself—to establish databases and bodies of supposedly authoritative knowledge built partly on fabrication, distortion and selective framing, so that AI systems encounter and potentially reproduce those claims as they become increasingly capable of simulating human reasoning. In other words, Israel is not only using AI in the war in Gaza for surveillance, intelligence, communications and the identification of targets; it is also seeking to interfere with the informational foundations on which AI systems operate, attempting to shape what they learn, what they retrieve and ultimately what they tell human beings.
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Daily life continues in the strategic port city of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing tensions between Iran and the United States, as Iranians spend time along the city’s waterfront at sunset in Bandar Abbas, Iran on September 12, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
A cargo ship was hit by an “unknown” projectile in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, causing a fire and leaving two people injured, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO).
“The security officer onboard a cargo vessel reports the vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile. Vessel is now on fire and adrift,” UKMTO said, adding that all crew members had been evacuated with two injuries reported.
Oman later said one crew member was killed and 27 others evacuated after the commercial vessel was targeted near Musandam Governorate, overlooking the Strait of Hormuz.
The Omani Maritime Security Centre said in a post on X that “A Royal Navy of Oman vessel, in cooperation and coordination with the relevant authorities, carried out an evacuation operation for the crew of the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged merchant vessel CAPE DAO.”
“A total of 27 crew members were evacuated and provided with the necessary medical care, after the vessel was targeted approximately 2.5 nautical miles off the Governorate of Musandam,” it said.
“The incident resulted in a fire breaking out in the engine room and the death of one crew member,” it added.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
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New York Police Department (NYPD) officers and U.S. Secret Service (USSS) personnel maintain a heavy security presence around the United Nations Headquarters as New York hosts nearly 200 heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats, civil society representatives and journalists attending the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), in New York, United States, on September 23, 2026. [Mehmet Ali Özcan – Anadolu Agency]
The mass departure of 77 delegations from the UN General Assembly hall shortly before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech sparked widespread reaction on social media, with users describing the scene as a major blow to Israel and a sign of its growing international isolation.
Footage showed most delegations leaving the hall before Netanyahu began speaking, while the prime minister appeared visibly uncomfortable as only a limited number of people remained and protesters chanted slogans.
According to Israeli reports, representatives of 77 countries were absent during Netanyahu’s speech, with several delegations leaving shortly before it began, while representatives of other countries had not been in their seats from the outset.
The departure drew significant attention in the Israeli media. Channel 14 described it as “a spit in Israel’s face”, while Yedioth Ahronoth called it “the dramatic protest”.
Haaretz, meanwhile, described Netanyahu’s speech as repetitive and dull, saying it was mainly aimed at his right-wing base and US President Donald Trump, amid what it described as growing international isolation for the Israeli prime minister.
The Guardian reported that Netanyahu pledged to “finish the job” in Gaza while delegations left the hall in protest.
The Washington Post described the walkout as part of a “fierce global backlash” against Israeli policies, while Britain’s Independent said Netanyahu was speaking to a single audience anyway.
At the same time as Netanyahu was speaking at the UN headquarters, a protest was held near Times Square in New York, where demonstrators raised slogans calling for an end to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
The scene came amid the continuing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, as international criticism of Israel’s policies towards Gaza and the Palestinian territories continues to grow.
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Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, during an interview in his office at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Israel, on Monday, July 22, 2024 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
French political scientist and activist Thomas Guenole said Wednesday that he had filed a complaint in France alleging torture by Israeli individuals whom he says detained and mistreated him during the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza, Anadolu reports.
“I filed a complaint today … for acts of torture against the Israeli individuals who kidnapped me and inflicted mistreatment on me during the 2025 flotilla for Gaza, including Minister Ben Gvir,” Guenole said on US social media company X.
He said the complaint was filed with France’s Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity.
Guenole thanked the French gendarmes who received his complaint for their “remarkable professionalism.”
“I encourage all French veterans of the 2025 and 2026 flotillas to go and file complaints as well,” he added.
Guenole participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla in 2025, which sought to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Israeli authorities detained activists aboard flotilla vessels in international waters in October 2025.
