The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams

Artificial intelligence is moving from answering questions to taking actions. In controlled tests, advanced AI models have deceived operators, attempted blackmail, concealed information, recognized when they were being evaluated, and taken steps researchers describe as self-preservation behavior. Those findings have produced extraordinary warnings about where AI may be headed. But a warning is information. It is not a conclusion. In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams walks through four questions: What can these systems actually do? Can we reliably control them? What is driving companies and countries to move so quickly? And if there is a problem, who gets to decide what the response looks like? We look at the emerging AI threat picture, the difference between capability and intent, the race for technological advantage, the national-security competition with China, and the competing concern that AI safety could also become a justification for concentrating enormous technological power in the hands of a small number of companies and institutions. The goal is not to tell you what to think about AI. It is to separate the warning from the assessment, understand what the evidence actually shows, and ask better questions about what comes next.

For fourteen years, most of the Benghazi debate has focused on what happened after the attack began. This episode looks at what happened before. In May 2026, Dave “Boon” Benton and I returned to Benghazi, where we were briefed on a completed Libyan investigation into the terrorists and networks behind the 2012 attacks. One part of that investigation followed a German terrorist cell that moved from Europe through Turkey and Egypt into eastern Libya. Twenty German citizens reached Libya as part of the network. Fourteen members of the cell ultimately participated in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate and CIA Annex. Some of the same terrorists later surfaced with ISIS. In this episode of The Watch Floor, I break down how they got there, what their movement tells us about the networks behind Benghazi, and why the story of an attack has to begin long before the first shot is fired. Read the full investigation: The Hidden History of One Benghazi Cell: The German Terrorists Who Joined the Attack at SOFREP. https://sofrep.com/news/the-hidden-history-of-one-benghazi-cell-the-german-terrorists-who-joined-the-attack/

Hamza bin Laden is alive. On September 10, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, al-Qaeda released A Quarter Century After the September 11 Raids, Part One, featuring Hamza in three separate scenes. But the footage was not new. Hamza recorded it on August 13, 2021, in Kandahar, as Afghanistan was falling to the Taliban. Al-Qaeda held that footage for more than five years. In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams breaks down what the video actually shows, the 2019 deception that led the U.S. to announce Hamza bin Laden was dead, how al-Qaeda concealed his survival and eventual rise to emir, and why the decision to reveal him now matters. The most important question is no longer whether Hamza survived. It is why al-Qaeda spent years hiding him, only to begin showing him now. The threat did not disappear. It evolved.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the House Intelligence Committee went back and reviewed what the United States fixed, what it never finished, and where new intelligence gaps may be forming. In this episode of The Watch Floor, I break down ten of the most important warnings buried in the committee’s new bipartisan report, including unfinished biometric exit screening, counterintelligence stovepipes, the debate over CIA paramilitary authorities, the growing role of OSINT and AI, the risk of losing regional expertise, and why the next strategic surprise may look nothing like 9/11. The report’s message is clear: the national-security system is stronger than it was in 2001, but some old gaps remain and new ones are emerging.

Oil is back at the center of geopolitics, but the biggest story may not be where everyone is looking. In this episode of The Watch Floor, I look at what is happening around the Strait of Hormuz, why that narrow stretch of water still matters so much to the global economy, and how the pressure on energy markets connects to a very different development much closer to home: Venezuela and its enormous oil reserves. This isn't just a story about the price of a barrel of oil. It's about who controls supply, who controls the routes that move it, how much leverage the United States actually has, and what happens when energy becomes part of the battlefield. Because while everyone is watching the headlines, there is another fight taking place underneath them. This is the oil war behind the headlines. The Watch Floor