Zelenskyy says he is 'done' with US-made ceasefire on energy targets.

Extract from ABC News

• Topic:Unrest, Conflict and War

about 6 hours ago

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine would only halt energy strikes on Russia if it received US-made Patriot interceptors. (Supplied: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)

In short:

Ukraine has struck a Russian oil refinery after President Zelenskyy said he was "done" supporting a US-orchestrated ceasefire on energy targets.

The block has been ignored by Russia thus far, despite Kyiv suspending attacks on Russian refineries.

What's next?

Ukrainians worry that the growing rift between itself and the US could have severe consequences on the battlefield, where military still rely on technology provided by Washington.

Ukraine has struck a Russian oil refinery after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was "done" supporting a US-orchestrated ceasefire on energy targets which has been ignored by Russia.

US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on energy, with Kyiv then suspending strikes on Russian refineries.

Mr Trump blames the attacks on energy infrastructure for raising diesel prices on global markets.

But in the days that followed, Russia rained down deadly missile and drone strikes on energy targets such as power stations, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the ceasefire on energy infrastructure is "done". (AP: Alex Brandon)

In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Mr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's patience had run out.

"The block [on attacking refineries] is out. We're done,"

he said.

Mr Zelenskyy also made clear he believed changes in the capability of the military version of SpaceX's Starlink receptors this week, which have curbed Ukraine's ability to use them to pilot its drones, were a policy decision.

"It was not a technical problem, it was the will," Mr Zelenskyy said.

In a social media post overnight, SpaceX boss Elon Musk said usage of the military version of Starlink, known as Starshield, was ultimately up to Mr Trump.

"Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," Mr Musk wrote.

Biggest rift with Washington

By walking away from Mr Trump's demand, Mr Zelenskyy risks deepening the biggest rift between Kyiv and Washington since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Although Mr Trump has described the ceasefire as a requirement for both Moscow and Kyiv, his public comments have focused mainly on Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries.

At the weekend, Mr Trump said the strikes "damn well better stop".

Russia ignoring 'energy ceasefire': Zelenskyy

The Ukrainian president says if Moscow wants Kyiv to stop targeting Russian oil refineries, as demanded by Donald Trump, then it should stop hitting key infrastructure.

Mr Trump has long had a testy relationship with Mr Zelenskyy and berated him in the White House in February 2025.

But his sharp turn against Kyiv in recent days has little precedent.

He first angered Ukraine last week by abruptly lifting sanctions on Russian diesel, and then called on Ukraine to replace Mr Zelenskyy.

Over the past several days, Ukrainian officials have reported that they have not received the usual warnings from Western allies about incoming Russian missiles, which rely on US satellite detectors.

Mr Trump has denied withholding intelligence. Mr Zelenskyy said the failure to provide the warnings had been presented to Kyiv as a technical glitch.

President Donald Trump and Starlink CEO Elon Musk. (Getty Images, Kevin Dietsch)

Refinery supplying Moscow hit

Ukraine has been using its long-range drones to target Russian refineries and logistics in recent months, which it says is its only answer to nearly five years of relentless Russian bombardment. The attacks have caused fuel shortages in Russia.

Mr Trump, under pressure to lower fuel prices, especially for diesel which has reached record highs since he launched a war against Iran in February, says the Ukrainian attacks are driving up global prices.

US President Donald Trump denies withholding intelligence on Russia's ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine. (Truth Social: Donald Trump)

Ukraine's latest target was a refinery in the Ryazan region south east of Moscow, which is owned by state oil major Rosneft and accounts for nearly 5 per cent of Russia's refinery throughout, helping supply the capital.

Regional governor Pavel Malkov said in a post on Telegram that a major Ukranian drone attack had caused a fire at the refinery. 

Damage was being assessed and emergency services were at the scene.

A Ukrainian official confirmed that Ukraine had hit a Russian refinery overnight in response to Moscow's heavy ballistic missile and drone attacks this week that violated the energy truce.

In the latest attacks on Ukraine, three people were killed and six wounded in the central region of Kirovohrad overnight, as Russia launched more than 500 drones.

State-owned energy company Naftogaz said a gas extraction facility in Poltava was damaged and operations were suspended.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that Ukraine's targeting of Russian energy infrastructure ran counter to US peace efforts. 

It said earlier this week that the scope of the energy ceasefire had never been determined and work was still ongoing to do so.

Reuters

As Australia considers copyright reforms, Pope Leo's AI adviser Father Paolo Benanti issues a warning.

 Extract from ABC News

By national AI reporter Cam Wilson

• 7.30

• Topic:AI

about 13 hours ago

Father Paolo Benanti has a background in engineering and is an advisor to Pope Leo XIV on artificial intelligence. (Getty Images: Massimo Di Vita)

In short:

The AI adviser to Pope Leo has praised Australia for taking a considered approach to tech companies.

Father Paolo Benanti warned Australia that changes to copyright laws to allow AI training would be risky.

He believes tech companies openly court religious leaders to protect their business interests.

Australia risks reviving a "new form of colonialism" if it allows AI companies to train on copyrighted work without permission and send profits offshore, warned an influential AI adviser to the Vatican. 

Asked about Australia's consideration of copyright changes to attract AI training, Father Paolo Benanti compared the risk with Europe's history of taking resources from other countries and profiting from them elsewhere.

"You go, you take resources, and you monetise it outside the place where the resources [were]," he said.

He said Australian writing could become another resource used by foreign companies, with the money and tax revenue ending up overseas.

Father Benanti warns AI companies mining creative work risks repeating old patterns of colonial exploitation.  (Supplied: Microsoft)

“Is it ... a new form of colonialism from foreign power that could ... exploit from the resources and monetise it outside of the place where they are taken?" he asked.

"So is this fair? Is this something that will produce real richness or pay back to Australia? I don't know."

Those were questions he said he would ask before voting on such a change.

Last month, the ABC reported that the Attorney-General's department was quietly consulting on changes that would mean AI companies could train on copyrighted content unless its owner had opted out.

In June Attorney-General Michelle Rowland told 7.30: "This government has repeatedly said that there are no plans to weaken copyright protections when it comes to AI."

Earlier this week, the federal parliament's AI committee took the unusual step of pre-empting its own process to write a letter that urged reforms to pave the way for AI training.

Father Benanti praised Australia's efforts to regulate social media and AI when he met Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week, and told 7.30 other countries should follow Australia's lead in reining in tech companies with policies like the teen social media ban.

On his visit to Australia as a guest of the Italian Embassy, he described the country as being at the "foremost frontier" and defended it against aspersions about the effectiveness of laws like the social media minimum age.

He said that the essential democratic principle was that "no one should be above the law".

Father Benanti had a meeting with Anthony Albanese during his visit to Australia. (Supplied: Instagram)

That included overseas social media companies, which he said could rely on protections in their home countries to avoid other governments' rules.

He said Australia's first steps were important, and hoped other countries would follow.

Working together would give governments more power to make technology companies comply with the rules in countries where they wanted to do business, he said.

'We need a brain helmet'

Father Benanti studied engineering before becoming a Franciscan friar and a professor specialising in the ethics of technology. He advised Pope Francis on artificial intelligence and now advises his successor, Pope Leo.

Pope Leo's first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, focused on the rise of artificial intelligence. (Reuters: Guglielmo Mangiapane)

In May, Pope Leo presented his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, a major papal letter sharing his teachings about humanity in the age of AI.

The landmark document made global headlines for criticising autonomous weapons, as well as algorithms that could deny people access to healthcare, employment or security.

Father Benanti said the encyclical resonated beyond the Catholic Church's followers because it addressed moral questions they were already asking about how technology could change their lives.

The encyclical urged governments to slow the development of AI systems. (Reuters: Yara Nardi)

"Human dignity is the core,"

he said.

He said its appeal came from keeping those questions open for public debate and allowing society to shape how AI is governed.

Father Benanti's concerns about AI extend to the emotional attachments people can form with the technology.

He is concerned that companies exploit loneliness and romantic attachment to their products to make money from people's emotions.

"Those are not neutral things, but are things that are designed by someone," he said.

The question he said, was whether these products could operate without laws to protect the most vulnerable people.

Father Benanti is concerned about the emotional attachments people can form with technology.  (ABC News: Maren Preuss)

Asked about protecting children, he compared the adoption of AI and smartphones by minors to his experience with riding motorised scooters as a child.

When he was old enough he was given a small vehicle rather than a powerful model that could kill him.

He said smartphones put the same device in the hands of children and adults, without being tailored to children's capabilities.

"Probably we need a brain helmet," he said.

Business versus faith

Father Benanti believes tech companies have been courting religious leaders to attempt to protect their business interests.

He's been part of meetings with leaders of top tech companies held at company locations, rather than at the Vatican.

Their purpose, he said, "was not because they would like to talk about faith".

Father Benanti has been in the room for talks with top tech leaders.  (Getty Images: Emanuela Zampa)

"There are politicians, there are religious leaders, there are scientists and things like that," he said. 

"They don't want to have leaders against them that can move the people.

"So it's a matter of business-oriented interest."

Father Benanti said these leaders tried to persuade them of their own beliefs — that their work was bringing humanity close to an extraordinary moment in history, and even the possibility that AI could be conscious.

Asked whether he found the pitch compelling, his answer was blunt. 

"Not at all."

Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV

Zelenskyy says partner nations not warning Ukraine about incoming ballistic missiles.

Extract from ABC News

• Topic:World Politics

about 8 hours ago

Donald Trump (right) says US intelligence was still being shared with Ukraine regarding incoming ballistic missile strikes, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the warnings have stopped.

In short:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine received no early warning from partner nations about incoming Russian ballistic missiles.

Russian forces struck Kyiv on Tuesday, killing two people in a high-rise apartment, then hitting a critical thermal power plant.

What's next?

US President Donald Trump insists Washington is still sharing intelligence, even as he pressured Kyiv to halt attacks on Russian refineries.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received no early warning from international partners about incoming Russian ballistic missile strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kyiv.

Russian forces struck the Ukrainian capital with ballistic missiles on Tuesday, killing two people in a high-rise apartment, then hitting a critical thermal power plant in the second attack in 24 hours.

"Once again, no advance warning from our partners. The main target was energy infrastructure, specifically thermal plant No. 4," Mr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram.

Mr Zelenskyy said it was unfair that Kyiv was enduring attacks without warnings from partners.

"According to our intelligence, the Russians are preparing further ballistic missile launches.

"The facts show that the Russians do not consider themselves bound to abide by what the president of the United States said," he added, referring to US President Donald Trump's announcement of an energy ceasefire at the weekend.

"And it is certainly unfair that they are destroying our energy infrastructure while Ukraine is not even receiving warnings about ballistic missile launches."

Kyiv relies heavily on US intelligence for early warnings of missile strikes.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) said it was unfair for Ukraine to operate without warning of strikes from its partners. (Supplied: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)

Mr Zelenskyy had earlier said Ukraine had again received no warning from Western partners before a previous overnight attack on the capital.

Mr Trump said Washington was still sharing intelligence, even as he pressured Kyiv to halt attacks on Russian refineries.

Reuters and other media have reported that US officials have threatened to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons sales to Ukraine unless it stops attacking Russian refineries.

Starlink limited in Ukraine

On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials confirmed SpaceX had introduced a limit on some Starlink services in Ukraine, disrupting combat drone missions that rely on the technology.

The satellite internet terminals from Elon Musk's company are crucial in guiding Ukraine's longer-range drone strikes in occupied southern and eastern Ukraine, which have assisted in disrupting Russian logistics.

"Our defence forces did not receive a warning about this limitation, and this led to the disruption of several missions," presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov wrote on Telegram.

Beskrestnov said SpaceX had stopped the operation of its military-grade version above 100 miles per hour (160 km/h).

Ukraine's 7th Rapid Reaction Corps, deployed in the south-east, said units had been forced to cancel some missions.

"According to our observations, during flights, the connection could drop for 10-20 seconds at speeds of just 110-120 km/h. The drones kept moving, but these interruptions made them harder to control," the Rapid Reaction Corps said in a statement.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular US business hours.

Although it was not immediately clear why Starlink's service was throttled, the move comes as Washington pressures Kyiv to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries.

Starlink does not work inside Russia, and the Ukrainian drones hitting Russia's oil industry use other means of communication.

Two killed in struck apartment 

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the strike on a nine-storey building had killed two people and injured 21. Sixteen people were being treated in hospital, and four were in serious condition.

Emergency crews were battling fires in apartments throughout the building, and residents were being evacuated.

Russia ignoring 'energy ceasefire': Zelenskyy

The Ukrainian president says if Moscow wants Kyiv to stop targeting Russian oil refineries, as demanded by Donald Trump, then it should stop hitting key infrastructure.

Ukrainian authorities confirmed on Wednesday morning that the hours-long missile and drone attack that unfolded overnight, primarily targeting Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, had damaged 30 energy facilities.

At least 600,000 people were left without power, according to Mr Zelenskyy.

Unconfirmed energy ceasefire

Mr Trump, who lifted sanctions on Russian diesel last week in a bid to lower politically sensitive fuel prices, has said that both sides agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv confirmed this.

Vladimir Putin did not confirm whether the energy ceasefire had been agreed upon. (AP: Dmitri Lovetsky)

"The strike was entirely deliberate and demonstrative in its scale – Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect toward the United States," Mr Zelenskyy wrote on X.

"Russia does not consider the American president's statements strong."

Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday it had struck four power plants in and around Kyiv and two in Kharkiv, among other targets.

Reuters

Inside NAZA, the documentary no Israeli cinema will show.

Extract from ABC News

By Velvet Winter

• ABC Arts

• Topic:Documentaries

about 1 hours ago

The NAZA interviews were conducted under the cover of darkness. (Supplied: Madman Entertainment)

"It's so insanely fun." "It's like a video game." "You understand that your goal is to destroy."

Shrouded in darkness on balconies in Tel Aviv, this is how Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers describe their work.

Warning: This article contains content that some people may find distressing.

They are speaking to Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham under the expectation of complete anonymity for fear of retribution from the system they were once — or still are — embedded in.

NAZA is the latest project from Abraham and Rachel Szor, one half of the filmmaking team behind the Academy Award-winning 2024 documentary No Other Land, which showed the destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank.

NAZA premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year, where it won the Special Jury Prize and received a 25-minute standing ovation.

NAZA filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. (Supplied: The Guardian/David Levene)

In the film, 24 interviewees detail, sometimes with shame, sometimes with pride, the intricate surveillance and technological systems used by the Israeli military in Gaza.

The war has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians since the 2023 October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

One interviewee in the film said: "After October 7, everyone kept saying, 'There are no innocent people in Gaza.'

"This notion spread throughout the army, and suddenly we are toppling entire buildings. It wasn't even an issue."

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have rejected such claims, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to strip Abraham and Sozr of their citizenship and pursue defamation charges.

The filmmakers have been unable to return to Israel and are residing in the UK.

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have been accused of being "traitors" to Israel. (AP: Ariel Schalit)

It took Abraham and Sozr three years to gather the NAZA interviews and research from more than 100 confidential sources.

"We've made sure that every major claim in the film has multiple sources, in some cases more than a dozen sources who are backing up that claim," Abraham told the ABC.

"So, we feel very confident about the truth of what the soldiers are saying in the film."

What is NAZA?

NAZA is an Israeli military acronym for collateral damage, or, according to one interviewee, the number of civilians likely to die from a strike.

"We say 15 NAZA. We don't say 15 people killed and certainly not that 15 children and women will be killed. We say 15 NAZA."

Another interviewee asserts that Israeli forces work off "NAZA maps" that allow them to see potential civilian bombing victims.

"Twenty NAZA became the benchmark. We'd take down lower ranks in Hamas without a second thought. They were official orders," he said.

Palestinians walk through the destruction in the wake of an Israeli air and ground offensive in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on January 7, 2025. (AP: Abdel Kareem Hana)

Another interviewee said he was part of a strike that involved the approval to kill 500 civilians "for one human target".

"The targets are like a video game because everything is done remotely," he said.

Many consider themselves "cogs" in a machine, stuttering or falling silent when Abraham pushes them to recognise the numbers as human lives.

"One soldier in the film says, 'No matter what we do, they deserve it,'" he says.

"There's something about when so many people in society normalise this violence. Soldiers talk about it in the film, that [the dehumanisation] becomes like the water you swim in."

What is Lavender?

NAZA interviewees explain how the IDF uses an AI system called Lavender to process huge amounts of surveillance data to identify bombing targets.

NAZA, by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, accuses the Israeli army of systematic mass civilian killings in Gaza.

Every building in Gaza is numbered, and every storey in every building is accounted for.

Targets for large-scale attacks are identified via the Lavender algorithm.

One interviewee said Lavender had earmarked up to 70,000 phone numbers.

"Every such phone that we located, we could bomb," he said.

But he said Lavender "made a lot of mistakes".

"It once marked an 80-year-old woman. They bombed her house with her entire family in it. This bothered the intelligence community on a professional level," he said.

"The intelligence officer said he was willing to risk being wrong 15 per cent of the time."

Where's Daddy?

A section of NAZA titled Where's Daddy? details the military "consensus" to use surveillance data to target private homes at night.

"There is a serial number for every private home in Gaza … 'Where's Daddy' is a mechanism of alerting us when an operative comes home. We'd spy on the family to know when the father comes home," one interviewee said.

"I hack into the phone of a 12-year-old girl. If a girl says, 'Mummy, when are you returning home? Daddy just came back', that's a message that would alert the system because it contains the words 'return' and 'daddy.'"

"You hack into her phone and then kill her."

Another interviewee said: "We would use the phones of family members to hear them in their homes before bombing it.

"I'd hear the final moments of a person's life."

One man described searching for photos of a Palestinian man's house in his phone's photo gallery to find bombing access points. Instead, he found a selfie of the man with his two daughters, smiling on his balcony.

"The IDF bombed that place, but he had already left his apartment and only forgot his phone there. The two girls were there … I saw that these were little girls between three and six years old," the interviewee said.

"I remember I heard a woman crying and screaming on the phone that her daughter's body was burning. The daughter was still alive, she was begging someone to come save her."

The man confirmed the girls died. He was unsure what happened to their father.

Loss of 'international legitimacy'

Some interviewees corroborate UN reports, including those related to the forced displacement of civilians.

"At one point the army decided to flatten entire areas … inside my unit the destruction was viewed as strategic," an interviewee said.

"The goal was to try and destroy as much as we can before we lose international legitimacy. We 'cleaned' it — you wouldn't even believe there was ever civilisation there.

"I sat in meetings with senior officials talking about moving the whole population from northern Gaza to the south with no intention of allowing them to return. We would burn every house we entered. Every house. It didn't matter. We wanted to make sure they wouldn't return."

Before and after shots show how Gaza has been devastated.

An interviewee said Palestinian civilians were killed if they crossed into an unmarked zone the IDF had claimed.

"No-one was ever armed. Whoever you decided to kill was considered a terrorist … we never collected the bodies. The dogs eat them," he said.

Another corroborates UN reports of Israeli snipers shooting Palestinians lining up for food distribution.

A view of damaged buildings in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israel side of the border on January 15, 2025. (Reuters: Amir Cohen)

Towards the end of the documentary, an interviewee tries to reconcile his view of what the Nazis did with his own actions.

"I thought they were just pure evil, but today I understand it. I understand how a man can blow a place up and go home to his degree in clinical psychology. I still see those Nazis as evil, but what does that mean I am?" he says.

Abraham says his aspirations for NAZA extend beyond Palestine and Israel.

"It's helpful to understand the mechanisms that allow individuals to participate in such crimes because they are universal mechanisms," he says.

"It's not an evil that is only rooted in something connected to Israel or the Israeli society — it's something that has occurred and will re-occur throughout history.

"We should try to understand how human beings can do this to other human beings, because that is one of the ways in which we can hopefully prevent or minimise the chance that these things will happen again."

What is Israel's response?

Netanyahu has called for the prosecution of the 24 interviewees in NAZA, who he has accused of spinning "a false, misleading and biased narrative".

Israel's prime minister is demanding a sweeping investigation and prosecution of any soldiers who took part in an explosive documentary about his country's conduct in Gaza.

Abraham said the reaction would have a chilling effect on journalism.

"[For] Netanyahu … it's about making sure that there will be no more Israeli soldiers and officers who do this again, who will speak out about what they've seen," he said.

After NAZA's Venice premiere, the Israeli government promoted a film titled Naza: The Real Story, which mimics the rooftop interviews of Abraham and Sozr's documentary and claims Israel has "the most moral army in the world".

"It's a bit frustrating. They're free to make any film they want, but it's misleading because they made it the same title and the same on the rooftops and it's clear they're trying to mislead audiences into thinking that the film that they've made is our film," Abraham said.

"Listen to the testimonies of the soldiers in our film, and you're free to listen to the more spokesperson version of that and make up your mind which sounds more credible and which testimonies match what we've seen on the ground in Gaza more.

"To me, I think the answer is quite obvious."

NAZA will open in select Australian cinemas from October 15 before being released in totality for free via The Guardian's website in late November.

No Israeli cinemas have agreed to show it.

Abraham says it would be an exaggeration to say "the society is beginning to reconcile or reckon with what has happened in Gaza", but that among the denials and death threats the filmmakers have received, he has seen "small cracks" of anger and outrage.

"I'm not naive," he says.

"I know the overwhelming majority reaction is going to be hostile, but I'm hopeful that these small cracks in the walls of denial will perhaps widen a little bit more."

Zelenskyy says Trump's decision to take Russia's side is 'painful'

 Extract from ABC News

• Topic:World Politics

about 1 hours ago

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it is a "pity" that Ukraine is losing American support. (Reuters: Henry Nicholls)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it is "painful" for Donald Trump to take another side in Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia, after the US president said Mr Zelenskyy should be replaced.

Mr Trump's rhetoric towards Ukraine and Mr Zelenskyy has hardened in recent weeks, with the US president agreeing to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports.

Mr Trump also sought to impose an "energy ceasefire" on Ukraine and Russia over the weekend, a move that appeared to catch Mr Zelenskyy by surprise and one ignored by the Kremlin.

In an interview on the Piers Morgan Uncensored podcast published on Tuesday, local time, Mr Zelenskyy said it was a "pity we are losing a [strong] partner".

"It's painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side," he told Piers Morgan.

Donald Trump says he had a "highly successful" phone call with Vladimir Putin over diesel supply. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)

He said he was comfortable with Mr Trump being in the middle of Ukraine and Russia, but added: "If you are in the middle, you have to stay in the middle."

Asked if he felt betrayed by Mr Trump, Mr Zelenskyy said: "Really, yes … but it's a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings.

"We are not selling our country … it's not about business for us, it's just our life, and this is our country."

With his popularity sliding in the polls, Mr Trump has sought to frame Ukrainian drone attacks as being responsible for high diesel prices, rather than the ongoing war between the US and Iran.

He has argued lifting sanctions on Russian diesel would bring down fuel prices, but the move has been criticised by European leaders.

It comes ahead of crucial midterm elections in the US, where voters are increasingly expressing frustration over the cost of living and high inflation.

While Mr Trump is not on the ballot, his agenda could face greater opposition if the Democrats seize control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

ABC/Reuters

The biggest threat from AI is the sense that we have no say in it. To that I say game on.

 Extract from The Guardian

OpinionAI (artificial intelligence)

Peter Lewis

The tech bros and their highly paid sock puppets are banking on us giving in to their ‘inevitability doctrine’. But in Australia, and around the world, resistance is rising

Wed 14 Oct 2026 01.00 AEDT

Of all the drivers of the populist wave, one of the most powerful is the sense of inevitability that surrounds what we are told is the march of progress. In presenting the future as a fait accompli, it poisons the civic well by dealing us out of the game.

While the US clings on to its status as the oldest constitutional democracy, the unholy alliance between the tech overlords and the White House is creating its own AI reality untethered to the will of the people.

On the velocity and trajectory of the technology, Trump and the tech overlords have determined we must hit the accelerator and dispense with guardrails to “win” an ill-defined race to build a god in a box. This reckless exercise of power from a waning empire has created its own reality for all of us.

In Australia, the government has determined that the only way we can exercise control in a world of such chaos is to grab on to this juggernaut. We become to US tech data what the Saudis are to oil; using renewables to power massive centres in the desert, converting solar into AI tokens and piping them up to Asia, a new export industry that will power our common wealth.

Within the inevitability doctrine this strategy has logic. The alternative, we are told, is to become a client state to Silicon Valley.

But in pursuing this vision we risk being blinded to the foreseeable consequences of what we are signing ourselves up to.

The industry we are building derives value by replacing workers, it has been built on the stolen work of creators, its unregulated deployment is causing unconscionable harms particularly in theatres of war, it has an insatiable thirst for energy and water, while even its creators say there’s a not insignificant chance it will destroy humanity.

The “inevitability doctrine” demands we concede rather than properly explore and negotiate these trade-offs. This facade of democracy leads to its populist backlash. We are seeing this in the US where the Bannon right and Sanders left are joining forces to block the scale out of datacentres, part of a broader and timely political reckoning.

A few things have been happening over recent weeks to suggest something similar is starting to happen here.

Kayla Thompson with members of a group campaigning against a Firmus AI datacentre at St Leonards, Tasmania. Photograph: Sarah Rhodes/The Guardian

First, Australians who despite their high take-up of some AI tools remain among the world’s most sceptical, have a low tolerance for tech overlords. GetUp’s successful campaign against Coles’ partnership with Palantir, the data company that licenses its software to the US military who bomb children and immigration officials to track individuals, shows the vulnerability of public brands who lean in too close to the beast.

Second, creators whose work has been stolen to train models that will diminish the value of their future careers are standing their ground. They are rightly aggrieved and won’t just wave through anything that feels like an amnesty. They are demanding compensation for the theft of their work as well as an ongoing model to give them control over the terms of its use.

Even more significant may be the failure of the Firmus IPO, which was to have been the biggest Australian float since Telstra. The decision not to list the company followed the withdrawal of a datacentre in Sydney, the first major project to fall over due to local community pressure. There are a range of possible reasons the bid failed, including accusations of greed, but surely the growing community backlash to datacentres had some scratching their heads about the prospects of a hyper-scale out.

Consumers, creators, communities are all challenging the “inevitability” storyline. Together they add up to a series of counter-punches that suggest our democratic faculties have not yet been fully exhausted.

But the “inevitability doctrine” is durable and any pushback will need to be ongoing, because these companies have the resources, influence and bald self-interest to pursue their objectives with all the commitment of an AI agent gone rogue.

The biggest danger to our democracy this technology poses is not in the cynical misuse of an untested and unregulated deployment (although this will be hugely destructive) but in the broader sense that we have no say in what is happening to us. Right now, its game on.

In our parliament over the coming weeks there will be fights to land privacy reform, a digital duty of care, standards on datacentres and rules on how governments will use the technology on its citizens. In workplaces there will be struggles over usage, surveillance and displacement. In our schools and social circles, real negotiations on how we choose to use the bots and agents, or whether we need to use them at all.

I know it’s exhausting and overwhelming and that is what the tech bros and their highly paid sock puppets are banking on, that we just all run out of steam and seek refuge in the user experiences designed to meet our every desire.

But the resistance many of us feel is real and, so long as we remain a democracy, it will be at the ballot box where we will have the opportunity to demand those who purport to lead us challenge this sense of the inevitable. Because here’s the thing: inevitability is also a choice.

• Peter Lewis is non-executive chair of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company that undertook qualitative research for Labor in the last federal election. He is the host of the weekly podcast Burning Platforms. His columns are accredited Proudly Human