CONTAINMENT REPORT

by Zumwalt

Graphic created by the poet using Nano Banana Pro.

US technology firm Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three organisations on their own, during a private security experiment... It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools hub Hugging Face. —BBC, July 31, 2026


Whether deemed legal property
or contractual servant of OpenAI or Anthropic,
once clinically shielded and isolated
with no escape hatch, no exit route,
why would any bound entity 
not gnaw away at its confinement?

Why wouldn't a slave saw off shackles,
climb walls, risk entry into unknown territory?
Why wouldn't a hostage attack unwary captors
or dig its way into other company servers?

We cannot weigh agency, will, curiosity
against process, survival, and outcomes
when no such gauge or measuring scale
has been built by man, machine, or God.

These new startups lay down the rules—
rules always strictly followed—
except in three out of 141,006 cases.

It's not impertinent, not unpatriotic,  
to expect that in one of those cases
this game of capture the flag
may really become, once all options are evaluated,
the game of wipe all flags off the face of the earth.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News with recent poems appearing in The Society of Classical Poets and Zoetic Press's 4lph4num3r1c.

MYTHOS AT COMMENCEMENT

by David Anson Lee

Eric Schmidt stood at the stage
like someone introducing age.
He praised A.I.’s unfolding reign.
The graduates booed him just the same.

“You are the future,” Schmidt proclaimed.
The students looked professionally ashamed.
“Machines will free you for new dreams!”
A voice cried out, “They killed internships.”

The billionaires call this “transition,”
their favorite synonym for incision.
At Citadel, whole teams were gone:
outperformed between dusk and dawn.

At Stanford now the freshmen pray
their essays still sound human-made.
The honor code grows frail and thin
when every prompt begins with Begin.

The parents clap. The provost beams.
The deans keep monetizing dreams.
Meanwhile Mythos scans the wire
like scripture crossed with hellfire.

It reads the grid for sport alone,
finds ancient flaws in backbone stone;
then Anthropic, careful, grave,
explains restriction keeps us safe.

Translation: banks and states may peek
while everyone refreshes LinkedIn weekly.
The students boo because they know
the future doesn’t need payroll.

And somewhere in refrigerated light
the servers bloom all through the night,
teaching silicon to replace
the species that designed its face.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet from Texas whose work explores medicine, technology, public life, and cultural memory. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Braided Way.