This week, AI is casually reaching for the nuclear button, a Norwegian scientist has accidentally recreated something that looks a lot like Havana Syndrome, and a brain lesion has turned a marathon runner into an intense foodie. It is a neat little trio of stories that sits right on the edge of science fiction, except the uncomfortable part is that it is all real. We start with simulated war games where major AI models were put in charge of military decision making. The result is grimly simple. In these scenarios, the systems chose to deploy tactical nuclear weapons most of the time, showing none of the cultural taboo or restraints humans have built around nuclear escalation. Then we head to Norway, where a scientist tested a pulse energy device on himself to see if it could plausibly cause Havana Syndrome-style symptoms. It did. Which is both a scientific result and a personal mistake, and it raises the obvious question of what happens when this kind of technology moves from theory to wider interest. Finally, we look at Gorman Syndrome, a neurological twist where a brain lesion appears to flip someone from long distance running to an intense obsession with fine food. It is funny, strange, and a sharp reminder that personality can be less fixed than we like to believe. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Fire Alarm AI Fail 00:46 LLMs in War Games 06:34 Nukes and No Surrender 09:36 Pentagon Wants Anthropic 10:33 Testing AI Weirdness 12:50 Dead Cow Prompt Update 15:07 Car Wash Question Trap 18:10 Lost in the Middle Fix 22:01 Maps and Recursive Islands 23:32 Chasing Longest Line of Sight 26:53 All the Views Map 27:49 What Limits Sightlines 29:23 Havana Syndrome Emerges 31:58 Theories and Investigations 35:14 Norwegian Microwave Experiment 42:20 Official Stance and Confusion 44:04 Extreme Foodie Case Study 47:39 Gourmand Syndrome Explained 51:21 Brain Lesions and Cravings SOURCES: AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crises The Longest Line Of Sight https://pub.towardsai.net/the-car-wash-question-that-breaks-every-ai-and-the-2-word-fix-nobody-talks-about-21db5c78fc29 https://www.vice.com/en/article/brain-damaged-gourmand-syndrome-foodies-cant-register-your-disgust/ https://www.iflscience.com/gourmand-syndrome-when-brain-injuries-spark-an-obsessive-craving-for-fine-food-and-gastronomy-82546 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/gourmand-syndrome-26067295/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/14/havana-syndrome-cia-norway-experiment/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pentagon-reportedly-testing-radio-wave-device-linked-to-havana-syndrome/ https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-device-pentagon-hsi See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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