AI builders brace for the "day after," and Congress may wait for it
Axios reporter Maria Curi tells CBS News that tech leaders see a major AI cyber event as inevitable, and expect Washington to act only once it happens.
CBS News
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 331,214 views a day, 22 times a normal first day on this channel (15,031).
AI executives planning "day after" scenarios following possible catastrophic event, Axios reports
According to the people building artificial intelligence, something catastrophic could happen within six to 12 months. Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, brings that warning to a Tech Watch segment on CBS News 24/7. Her reporting describes leaders at companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic quietly planning for the fallout from a significant AI cyberattack.
The scenarios she describes are concrete: utilities shut down, internet access cut off. The companies run red-teaming exercises to probe how such an attack could unfold. "These tech officials think it's inevitable," Curi says. "They think it's definitely going to be happening in the near term."
The second half of the interview turns to Washington. Tech leaders are trying to educate Congress, Curi says, but lawmakers tend to regulate only after disaster strikes, as they did after the 2008 financial crash and COVID-19. She adds that open-source models raise the risk and that transparency measures could help. Her advice to viewers is simple: "I would take it seriously that the people building this technology are sounding the alarms."
The segment runs only a few minutes and has passed 400,000 views in just over a day. Its comment section filled roughly 70 times faster than a typical CBS News first day. Viewers ask whether the executives are preparing their companies rather than the public, and several suggest that households make plans of their own. Others point out the irony of testing AI with AI, and some wonder whether the report reads more like an admission than a warning.
On a day when Hurricane Isaias came ashore on the Gulf Coast, CBS News' landfall report also drew a crowd far beyond its usual. So did Volodymyr Zelenskyy's response to Donald Trump's Russian diesel deal. The interview about a catastrophe that has not happened drew the biggest first day of the three.
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What viewers say
This whole AI thing is like firing a bullet and then try to catch it
@KBDinAKSee it on YouTubewhy does this feel more like an admission than a warning?
@michaelsnedker5446See it on YouTubeThat is completely calming information
@GreenStorm01See it on YouTube
3 more comments
*The Irony Is That They're Using Ai For "The Testing Scenario" Their Logic Has Left The Building* 😂🤣😭
@MichaelErnest666See it on YouTubeWe're just slowly witnessing ourselves going off the cliff
@VRMusicSee it on YouTubeWe've lost the plot
@dansiva1870See it on YouTube
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- Channel
- CBS News
- Subscribers
- 7,100,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 12,421,684
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,933,548 (on a normal day: 1,848,631)
- Video published
- October 10, 2026
- Video views so far
- 407,263 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 397,370
The numbers
A short policy interview ran well ahead of the channel's usual first day, and its comments came in even faster than its views.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which Wall Street firm's bankruptcy in September 2008 became a defining moment of the financial crisis Curi mentions?
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history at the time.