This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the revival of Arizona's 1864 abortion ban; the end of No Labels; and the past and future of presidential debates. Here are some notes and references from this week's show: Mary Jo Pitzl and Reagan Priest for The Arizona Republic: Arizona House GOP halt Democrats' effort to overturn Civil War era law in chaotic session A.O. Sulzberger Jr. for The New York Times: Reagan Says Ban On Abortion May Not Be Needed Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times: Has No Labels Become a Stalking Horse for Trump? Michael H. Brown for The Washington Post: Joseph Lieberman, senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82 Here are this week's chatters: David: Hannah Seo for The New York Times: Is It Better to Brush Your Teeth Before Breakfast or After? For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment, David, John, and Emily discuss AI communications with loved ones after they die. See Walter Marsh for The Guardian: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed: 'I'm totally, 100%, sadly addicted' and Ira Glass for This American Life: The Ghost in the Machine.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Southern California's commuter rail system 1.3 million to develop an artificial intelligence-powered security system to detect unexpected movement on Metrolink tracks. The technology would aim to automatically slow down or stop a train when cameras and sensors verified the presence of a person, vehicle or debris, Metrolink said about the proposed "track intrusion detection" system. The technology would integrate with existing GPS that notifies train crew about a possible track danger, such as a homeless encampment or a pedestrian. "If it succeeds, this project will not only improve the safety of our passengers and crew, it will directly benefit pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and everyone else who interacts with our system," Los Angeles City Council President and Metrolink Board member Paul Krekorian said in a statement. The current system, which is also linked to the U.S. earthquake-warning system, relies heavily on what people see and report in real time.

Video captures the moment and aftermath of what appears to be a drone, allegedly of Ukrainian origin, striking Russian drone production facility. Russian officials claimed that only a worker's dormitory was hit. Russia has started to make steady progress against Ukraine as Kyiv's forces face dwindling ammunition supplies, much to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's frustration. "There can be no question, Ukraine could be quickly overwhelmed by both men and arms by odds as great as 10 to 1 within weeks without additional U.S. assistance," Kenneth Braithwaite, a former ambassador and former Navy secretary during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital. "This is a critical juncture in the war and time is of the essence for Congress to act on a comprehensive package," Braithwaite said.

Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their work was once fringe, its become mainstreamed in the Republican Party. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we focus on what these groups are doing, and what this means for voters and the election workers already facing threats and harassment. Write to us at politicslab@wired.com. Our show is produced by produced by Jake Harper. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer and Amar Lal mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is the Executive Producer of Audio Development and Chris Bannon is Global Head of Audio at Conde Nast. Also be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. Leah Feiger: Welcome to WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. Today, we're going to talk about how election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt November.

Forget artificial intelligence breaking free of human control and taking over the world. A far more pressing concern is how today's generative AI tools will transform the labor market. Some experts envisage a world of increased productivity and job satisfaction; others, a landscape of mass unemployment and social upheaval. Someone with a bird's-eye view of the situation is Mary Daly, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, part of the national system responsible for setting monetary policy, maintaining a stable financial system, and ensuring maximal employment. Daly, a labor market economist by training, is especially interested in how generative AI might change the labor market picture.

Don Beyer's car dealerships were among the first in the U.S. to set up a website. As a representative, the Virginia Democrat leads a bipartisan group focused on promoting fusion energy. He reads books about geometry for fun. So when questions about regulating artificial intelligence emerged, the 73-year-old Beyer took what for him seemed like an obvious step, enrolling at George Mason University to get a master's degree in machine learning. In an era when lawmakers and Supreme Court justices sometimes concede they don't understand emerging technology, Beyer's journey is an outlier, but it highlights a broader effort by members of Congress to educate themselves about artificial intelligence as they consider laws that would shape its development.

Since 2020, Donald Trump and his devotees have sown doubt over election results and spread dozens of election conspiracies. Some of these election deniers have become elected officials themselves, serving as governors and US senators. Others, like Mike Lindell, have spent millions of dollars in hopes of overturning the 2020 election. On WIRED.com and in our new podcast, the WIRED Politics team reported that many of these election deniers on both the national and grassroots level have been training others to challenge voter rolls and overwhelm election officials even before polls open in November. And they're using tech to do it.

In November 2019, the US government's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), an influential body chaired by former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, warned that China was using artificial intelligence to "advance an autocratic agenda." Just two months earlier, Schmidt was also seeking potential personal connections to China's AI industry on a visit to Beijing, newly disclosed emails reveal. Separately, tax filings show that a nonprofit private foundation overseen by Schmidt and his wife contributed to a fund that feeds into a private equity firm that has made investments in numerous Chinese tech firms, including those in AI. When the NSCAI issued its full findings in 2021, Schmidt and the NSCAI's vice chairman said in a statement that "China's plans, resources, and progress should concern all Americans," and warned that "China's domestic use of AI is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty." The 2019 email communications, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit research initiative that tracks tech industry influence, show staff at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic venture, asking NSCAI employees to help identify "possible engagements [Schmidt] might have on AI, in a personal capacity."

A video has surfaced of a senior official at Israel's cyber intelligence agency, Unit 8200, talking last year about the use of machine learning "magic powder" to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza. The footage raises questions about the accuracy of a recent statement about use of artificial intelligence (AI) by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which said it "does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist". However, in the video, the head of data science and AI at Unit 8200 – named only as "Colonel Yoav" – said he would reveal an "example of one of the tools we use" before describing how the intelligence division used machine learning techniques in Israel's May 2021 offensive in Gaza for "finding new terrorists". "Let's say we have some terrorists that form a group and we know only some of them," he said. "By practising our data science magic powder we are able to find the rest of them."

Ukraine needs military aid and air defence systems in the face of Russia's intensifying attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as he criticised his country's allies for engaging in "lengthy discussions" and "turning a blind eye". The Russian military launched attacks on five regions across Ukraine, killing at least seven people and damaging infrastructure including substations and power generation facilities, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday. Zelenskyy said Russia fired more than 40 missiles and about 40 attack drones overnight, many targeting energy infrastructure. The attacks show how "critical" air defence has become for Ukraine, he posted on X, adding that the Russian missiles and Iranian-designed one-way drones must not be allowed to hit Ukraine. In southern Odesa, Governor Oleh Kiper said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday night that Russian missile strikes killed four people, including a 10-year-old girl, and left several others in critical condition.