Axios PM

September 17, 2025
Good Wednesday afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 485 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.
1 big thing: AI's growing threat to human workers

Dominance in chips may be the only advantage the U.S. has left over China, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios CEO Jim VandeHei at today's Axios AI+ DC Summit.
- Amodei's not pulling any punches. He says the Trump administration's willingness to let American companies sell chips to China "could be the single most disastrous national security decision made in this term."
- "It is mortgaging our future as a country to sell these chips to China," Amodei said.
💻 Zoom out: Amodei also said AI's ability to displace human workers is accelerating.
- He believes the government may need to subsidize and support white-collar workers displaced by AI in the next one to five years.
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said during the onstage conversation: "You need some kind of policy response at the scale of disruption we expect in the next five years.
🤖 Amodei said that is already happening at Anthropic: The company's AI assistant, Claude, is writing the "vast majority" of code for future versions of itself.
- Watch the livestream ... More from our summit: Chips ... Jobs ... Claude.
2. 🔌 Psychology of EV charging
Behavioral scientists at Toyota are trying to nudge customers to build better habits for charging their EVs and plug-in hybrids, Axios Future of Mobility author Joann Muller writes.
- Why it matters: EVs and plug-in hybrids can't deliver their full climate benefit unless people charge them regularly and at the optimum times to avoid stressing the grid.
🔔 Scientists at Toyota Research Institute's Human-Centered AI division developed a prototype app, ChargeMinder, that delivers just-in-time reminders about when to charge, while providing reinforcement with streaks, summaries and encouraging messages.
- Studies in the U.S. and Japan found that those nudges work.
3. Catch me up

- 🏦 The Fed cut its target interest rate by a quarter of a point, but showed little appetite for the deeper rate cuts President Trump wants. Stephen Miran — Trump's new Fed appointee — dissented, saying the cut should have been bigger. Go deeper.
- 📂 FBI director Kash Patel told a congressional committee he's never spoken to President Trump about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Go deeper.
- 🍦 Jerry quit Ben & Jerry's, saying its parent company, Unilever, has discouraged his social and political activism. Go deeper.
4. 🧸 New finalists for Toy Hall of Fame

Battleship, Connect Four, cornhole and Tickle Me Elmo are all finalists for a spot this year in the Toy Hall of Fame.
- The hall of fame is part of the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y.
- Last year's inductees included My Little Pony and Transformers action figures.
☑️ The public can vote for this year's top toys for the next week. Those votes will be considered alongside the opinions of historians and other experts.
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