Threat Status is keeping a close eye on the rapidly rising tensions between the Philippines and China. The Washington Times’ Andrew Salmon reports on the latest developments, including a speech Sunday by the Philippine president in which he broadcast a mixed message of goodwill and defiance six days after a violent clash with Chinese forces in the tense South China Sea.

The Philippine leader made the remarks after a flight with his top commanders to the western island province of Palawan. He met there to award medals to navy personnel who battled the Chinese coast guard last week as they attempted to deliver food and other supplies to an outpost on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal.

Mr. Marcos’ messaging should reassure those who fear that the U.S. could be dragged into the fight, but may not be enough to restrain an increasingly assertive China.

“We are not in the business to instigate wars,” he said. “In defending the nation, we stay true to our Filipino nature that we would like to settle all these issues peacefully.”

Russia on Sunday was hit by its second major terrorist attack in just the past three months. More than 15 police officers and several civilians, including an Orthodox priest, were reportedly killed by gunmen in the country’s Dagestan region. The armed militants opened fire on two Orthodox churches, a synagogue and a police post in two cities.

As of Monday morning, no group had yet claimed responsibility for the assault. But suspicion will immediately turn to ISIS-K, the Afghan-based Islamic State affiliate group that counts Russia, Iran, the U.S. and even Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban among its enemies. The group claimed responsibility for a March attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people.

The latest terror attack inside Russia will also once again call into question Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to keep his own people safe and will cast further doubt on the competence of the country’s security services. Key foreign policy insiders and former top U.S. officials have said that Russia probably could have stopped the March ISIS-K attack, especially given the specific warnings publicly delivered by the Biden administration two weeks before the incident.

Russian state-run media reported Monday morning that U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Lynne Tracy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry after a Sunday attack on Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. Russian officials said four people died and more than 100 were wounded by Ukrainian drone and missile attacks there. Around the same time, Russia launched its own aerial bombing of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, killing at least one person.

The Kremlin seems to be blaming the U.S. for the Sevastopol attack. In a statement Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Ukrainian military is “being sponsored and armed by Washington, which conducted a deliberate missile attack on civilians in Sevastopol, causing numerous casualties, including among children.”

Amid the violence, Ukraine’s prospects for an eventual victory against Russia look as grim as ever. Does that mean that President Biden has essentially led the U.S. into a new “forever war”? Jed Babbin, a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times, poses that question in a new op-ed.

“Mr. Biden’s policy has always been to content himself with a stalemate in this war. If neither Russia nor Ukraine can break the stalemate to its advantage, the war between them may become Mr. Biden’s biggest ‘forever war,’” he writes.

The Times’ Ryan Lovelace has an inside look at major changes atop one of the nation’s leading artificial intelligence companies — changes driven by fear over the potential dangers posed by AI.

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever recently left the company and is now working on Safe Superintelligence Inc., whose aim is to safely develop superintelligence, or AI systems thought to be smarter than human beings.

While at OpenAI, known for its ChatGPT technology, Mr. Sutskever warned that AI systems could go rogue, disobey their human creators and ultimately spark the end of humanity.

A group of other ex-OpenAI employees also recently published an open letter warning about the risks AI could pose to humanity.

Elsewhere in the tech sector, the European Commission said Monday that a preliminary investigation found that Apple broke new rules on digital competition by imposing rules in its App Store marketplace that prevent app makers from pointing users to cheaper options on other venues.

European regulators said that Apple violated the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, which could lead to fines worth up to 10% of the company’s global revenue. Specifically, EU regulators said that Apple’s current App Store rules “prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and content.”

The Israeli prime minister isn’t backing off his accusations that the Biden administration is slow-walking key weapons deliveries to Israel for its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Times’ David R. Sands has all the latest, as Mr. Netanyahu escalates a feud that has caused strategic and political headaches for Mr. Biden.

“For many weeks,” Mr. Netanyahu told a weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on  Sunday, “we appealed to our American friends to speed up the shipments. We did it time and time again. We did this at the senior echelons, and at all levels, and — I want to emphasize — we did it in private chambers.”

Mr. Netanyahu also made clear he won’t accept a partial cease-fire in Gaza. After any pause in the fighting, he said, the Israeli Defense Forces will resume their mission to crush Hamas — even though key IDF officials don’t believe that goal is achievable.

• June 25 — 2024 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes launch, Atlantic Council

• June 25 — AI in the Field of Economic Development, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• June 25 — Korean War Legacies: Healing the Trauma of Korean American Family Separation, U.S. Institute of Peace

• June 27 — Swarms over the Strait: Drone Warfare in a Future Fight to Defend Taiwan, Center for a New American Security

• July 2 — Force Design: A conversation with Gen. Eric Smith, 39th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Brookings Institution