Technologies

These Are the Weirdest Phones I’ve Tested Over 14 Years

These phones tried some wild things. Not all of them succeeded.

I’ve been a CNET journalist for over 14 years, testing everything from electric cars and bikes to cameras and, er, magic wands. But it’s phones that have always been my main focus and I’ve seen a lot of them come and go in my time here. Sure, we’ve had the mainstays like Apple and Samsung, but I’ve also seen the rise of brands like Xiaomi and OnePlus, while once-dominant names like BlackBerry, HTC and LG have vanished from the mobile space.

I’ve seen phones arrive with such fanfare that they changed the face of the mobile industry, while others simply trickled into existence and disappeared just as uneventfully. But it’s the weird ones that stick in my memory. Those devices that tried to be different, that dared to offer features we didn’t even know we wanted or simply the ones that aimed to be quirky for the sake of quirky. Like someone who thinks an interesting hat is the same as having a personality.

Here then are some of the weirdest phones I’ve come across in my mobile journey at CNET. Better yet, I still have them in a big box, so I was able to dig them out and take new photos — though not all of them still work. Let’s start with a doozy.

BlackBerry Passport

At the height of its power RIM’s BlackBerry was one of the most dominant names in mobile. It was unthinkable then that anything could unseat the goliath, let alone that it would fade into total nonexistence. The once juicy, ripe BlackBerry withered and died on the bush, but not without a few interesting death rattles on its way.

My pick from the company’s end days is the Passport from 2014, notable not just for its physical keyboard but its almost completely square design. The rationale behind this, according to its maker, was that business types just really love squares. A Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, an email — all square (ish) and all able to be viewed natively on the Passport’s 4.5 inch display with its 1:1 aspect ratio. Let’s not forget that all Instagram posts at that time were also square so it had that going for it too. YouTube, not so much.

In theory it’s a sound idea. In practice the square design made it awkward to use, as the physical keyboard was too wide and narrow. Its BlackBerry 10 software, especially the app availability, lagged behind what you’d get from Android at the time. BlackBerry quickly ditched the new shape. After trying to claw back some credibility with its Android phones — including the stupidly named Priv, a phone I quite liked — and by bringing on singer Alicia Keys as Global Creative Director (because BlackBerry phones had keys, get it?) the company stopped making its own phones in 2016.

YotaPhone 2

You’d be forgiven for having never heard of this phone or its parent company, Yota. Based in Russia, Yota made two phones: the creatively named YotaPhone in 2012 and the similarly inspired YotaPhone 2 in 2014, pictured above. Both were unique in the mobile world for their use of a second display on the rear. From the front, these phones looked and operated like any other generic Android phone. Flip them over though and you’d get a 4.3-inch E Ink display.

The idea was that you’d use your Android phone as normal for things like web browsing, gaming or watching videos, but you’d switch to the rear display if you wanted to read ebooks or simply have it propped up to show incoming notifications. E Ink displays use almost no power, so it made a lot of sense to preserve battery life by viewing “slow” content on the back.

The reality though is that beyond ebooks — which aren’t great to read on such a tiny screen anyway — there’s very little anyone might want to use an E Ink display for when out and about. It was difficult to operate, too, thanks to a slow processor and clunky software. After just two generations of YotaPhones, the company went into liquidation.

HTC ChaCha

Remember when Facebook was the cool place to be instead of just the place your parents and their friends go to publicly air their most troubling of opinions? When I was at university, instead of trading phone numbers when you met someone, the default thing was to add each other on Facebook and then begin poking each other. Facebook was so ubiquitous at the time that it was simply the way every single person I knew communicated.

Keen to capitalise on Zuckerberg’s social media success, HTC brought out the ChaCha in 2011. The phone came with an utterly ludicrous name and a dedicated Facebook button on the bottom edge. Tapping this would immediately bring up your Facebook page, allowing you to post the lyrics to Rebecca Black’s Friday, ask what Fifty Shades of Grey is about or do whatever else it was we were all up to in 2011.

Facebook might still be around in one form or another, but HTC abandoned its phone-making business back in 2018. Unsurprisingly, phones with dedicated hardware buttons tied to social media haven’t caught on.

Sirin Labs Finney U1

“Bro!” I hear you shout, all-too loudly. “BRO! You’ve got to check out what my Bitcoin is doing!” You’d then show me your phone and I’d watch while your crypto account plummeted, rebounded and plummeted again over the course of 12 seconds. The phone you’d be showing me, of course, would be the Sirin Labs Finney, a 2019 phone specifically targeted at crypto bros who wanted a device that would perfectly match their high-living, high-fiving crypto-trading lifestyle.

At its core, the Finney is just another Android phone, but a hidden second screen pops up from the back of the phone, with the sole purpose of giving you secure access to your crypto wallet. The phone had a whole host of security features to ensure that only you could access your Bitcoin or Etherium, and it allowed you to send and receive cryptocurrency without having to use a third-party online platform. Apparently that was a good thing.

If you were entrenched in the crypto world, this phone might have been the dream. But the wallet wasn’t easy to use and the phone was expensive, thanks to the cost of that second screen. Sirin Labs stopped making phones soon after and the mobile industry learned an important lesson about not developing hyper-niche devices that aren’t even that well-suited for the handful of customers that might be interested.

Planet Computers Gemini PDA

Half phone, half laptop, all productivity. The Gemini PDA by UK-based mobile startup Planet Computers was a clamshell device in 2018 with a large (at the time) 5.99-inch display and a full qwerty keyboard. It was basically a slightly more modern interpretation of a PDA, like 1998’s Psion 3MX, in that it was effectively a tiny laptop that would fold up and fit in your pocket. The full keyboard allowed you to type away comfortably on long emails or documents while the regular Android software on the top half meant it also functioned like any other phone — apps, games, phone calls, whatever.

It had 4G connectivity for fast data speeds and a later model even got an update to 5G. But, like the BlackBerry Passport, its focus on business-folk and productivity above all else meant it was a niche product that failed to garner enough appeal to succeed. It didn’t help that it was utterly enormous and fitting it in a jeans pocket was basically impossible, so it didn’t impress either as a laptop or as a phone.

LG G5

LG remains a huge name in the tech industry today thanks to its TVs and appliances, but it also tried to be a big player in the phone world, too. I liked LG’s phones — they were quirky and often tried weird things which kept my days as a reviewer interesting, perhaps none more so than the LG G5 in 2016.

LG called the G5 “modular,” meaning that the bottom chin of the phone snapped off allowing you to attach different modules such as a camera grip or an audio interface. Like many items on this list I can say that it’s a nice idea in theory, but in practice the phone fell short. Swapping out modules meant removing the battery, which of course meant restarting your phone every time you wanted to use the camera grip.

It was an inelegant solution to a problem that never needed to exist. But its bigger issue was that the camera grip and audio interface were the only two modules LG actually made for the phone. It’s as though the company had this fun notion in creating a phone that can transform according to your needs but then forgot to assign anyone to come up with any ideas on what to do with it. As a result, the end product was uninspiring, over-engineered and expensive.

Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung’s Galaxy Note series helped transform the mobile industry. It literally stretched the boundaries of phones, encouraging larger and larger screens — even creating the unpleasant and mercifully short-lived term “phablet.” But the first-generation model in 2011 was controversial, mostly due to what was then considered its enormous size.

At 5.3 inches, it was significantly bigger than almost any other phone out there, including Samsung’s own Galaxy S2 — which, at a measly 4.3 inches, paled into insignificance against the mighty Note. It was mocked for being so huge, with memes appearing online poking fun at people holding it up when making calls. And while times have changed and we now have Samsung’s 6.9-inch Galaxy S25 Ultra, the original Note’s boxy aspect ratio meant it was actually wider than the S25 Ultra. So even by today’s standards it’s big.

It was also among the first phones to come with its own stylus shoved into its bottom. It’s a feature that few mobile companies have mimicked, but Samsung kept it as a differentiator on its later Note models before incorporating it into its flagship S line starting with the S22 Ultra.

Nokia Lumia 1020

Nokia’s Lumia 1020 was my absolute favorite phone for quite some time after its launch in 2013. And it’s because of its weirdness.

Nokia had an amazing history of bonkers mobiles — 2004’s 7280 “lipstick phone,” for example — and while the Lumia range was much more sedate, the 1020 had a few things that made it stand out. First, it ran Windows Phone, Microsoft’s brief and unsuccessful attempt to launch a rival to Android and iOS. A rival that I happened to quite like.

It was also made of polycarbonate, with a smoothly rounded unibody design that strongly contrasted the angular metal, plastic and glass designs of almost all other phones launching at that time. Its look was unlike anything else on sale, and I loved it.

But the main thing I loved was its camera. With a 41-megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss lens, raw image capture and optical image stabilization, the Lumia 1020 packed the best camera specs of any phone I’d ever seen. It made the phone a true standout product, especially for photographers like me who wanted an amazing camera with them at all times, but didn’t want to have to carry both a phone and a compact digital camera.

While incredible image quality from a phone is a given in almost all camera phones in 2026, the Lumia 1020 was an early pioneer in what could be achieved from a phone camera.

LG G4

LG, twice in one list? Oh yes, my friend, because the G5 seen above was not the first time LG went weird. Launched in 2015, the LG G4 had two main features that raised a few eyebrows. Most notably was LG’s decision to wrap the phone in real leather. Yes, real actual leather. Like what you’d get when you peel a cow. It even had stitching down the back, making it look like a handbag or a boot.

While it’s not a phone for vegans, I actually liked the look, especially as real leather — even the really thin stuff LG used on the G4 — naturally wears over time, gaining scuffs and scratches that give each phone a unique patina. It’s why I love my old leather Danner boots, and it’s why a vintage, worn-in leather jacket will almost always look better than a brand new one. Still, with leather being an expensive — and arguably controversial — material to use on a phone, it’s no surprise LG didn’t return to this idea.

But it’s not the only weird thing about the phone — the G4 was among a small number of phones released around that time that experimented with curved displays. It’s gently bent into a banana shape, the theory being that it makes watching videos more immersive, as is the case with curved screens in movie theaters. The problem is that movie screens are immense, so that curve makes sense. On a 5.5 inch phone like the G4, that curve is barely noticeable and only really served to push the price up.

Motorola Moto X and Moto Maker

I’ve just pointed out how weird the LG G4 was for using leather and now I’m pointing out another phone that, as you can see in the image above, is also wrapped in leather. But the weird thing here isn’t that the Motorola Moto X came in leather — it’s that I personally got to choose that it came in leather.

With the Moto X in 2013, Motorola launched a service called Moto Maker that allowed you to customize your phone in a wild variety of ways. From different-colored backs and multicolored accents around the camera and speakers through to using materials including leather and even various types of wood, there were loads of options to make your Moto X look unique. Each phone would then be made to order and you could even have it personalised with lazer etching and provide your Google account for it to be prelinked on arrival.

If custom-making phones with a vast number of potential options en mass sounds like an absolute logistical nightmare then you’re on the same page as Motorola eventually found itself. Moto Maker only existed for a few years before the company retired its customization service.

Samsung Galaxy Fold

I’m ending on a wildcard addition with the original Galaxy Fold. It’s a wildcard because Samsung’s Fold and Flip range are now up to number seven and we’ve got foldable devices from almost all major Android manufacturers. Though still not Apple.

While the original Fold might have kicked off the foldable revolution, there’s no question it was a weird phone. I was among the first to test it in the world when it launched in 2019 and while I was certainly impressed by the bendy display, its hinge felt weird and “snappy” to use. The outer display was, let’s face it, terrible.

On paper its 4.6-inch size is reasonable, but it’s so tall and narrow that it was borderline unusable for anything more than checking incoming notifications. Trying to type on it meant whittling down your thumbs to pointy nubs so I spent most of my time interacting with the phone’s much bigger internal screen. Cut to today when the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s outer screen measures a healthier 6.7 inches and as a result can function like any regular smartphone, with the bigger inside screen only required when you want more immersive content.

Looking back at the original Fold and its bizarre proportions, it’s honestly a surprise that Samsung persisted with the format. But I’m glad it did.

Technologies

NBA commissioner Adam Silver says league could introduce ‘smart ball’ technology as soon as next year

Commissioner Adam Silver says the NBA could begin using a new “smart ball” in games as soon as next year, potentially transforming how officials make calls.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says the league could begin using a new “smart ball” in games as soon as 2027, potentially transforming how officials make calls on the basketball court.

In an interview with CNBC’s Contessa Brewer, Silver revealed that the NBA is working with official basketball manufacturer Wilson to develop a ball embedded with a tiny microchip Bluetooth sensor that can track movement, spin and changes in trajectory.

“We’re experimenting with putting a small chip in the ball that weighs roughly a gram,” Silver said.

The technology has already been tested in the NBA’s G League, Summer League, and some preseason games, where players used basketballs both with and without the chip. Silver said players have been pleased with the results.

“Nobody could tell the difference. So that’s a good sign,” he said.

The chip weighs just one gram, compared with the roughly 620-gram or 1.4 pound basketball. Silver said the league wanted to ensure that even the most experienced players wouldn’t notice a change in how the ball feels or bounces.

One of the most immediate applications could be officiating.

Silver said the technology could help referees determine whether a player touched the ball before it went out of bounds by detecting subtle changes in its spin. It could also help identify whether a shot’s trajectory was altered.

“I think you could see as soon as next year us using it for officiating in our games,” Silver said.

Beyond officiating, Silver sees a significant opportunity to bring the technology to consumers, allowing basketball players of all ages to analyze and evaluate their shooting mechanics.

For example, a player taking hundreds of shots could use data collected by the chip to understand which shooting angles and ball rotations are most likely to result in a basket.

“You’ll then see the graph, and you’ll see for which the angle of the shots that went in, they’re more likely to go in,” Silver said.

While the officiating application could arrive as soon as next year, Silver said a consumer version may take longer.

“I think the consumers version [of the smart ball] is a few years away, but it’s a really exciting opportunity.”

NBA players’ union raises concerns over wearables

The league is also exploring the use of wearable technology during games, but negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association have yet to produce an agreement.

The NBA says officials experimented with wrist wearables in select preseason and summer league games this year in a “successful pilot program,” but it will not extend into the season. The technology allowed the referees to communicate with the replay center about reviews, scoring changes and clock malfunctions.

Silver said players routinely use wearable devices off the court to monitor everything from sleep to physical performance, but concerns remain over how data collected during games could be used by teams.

“I think we have to come to some agreement on exactly how the information is used. But it seems everybody wants that information,” Silver said.

The biggest sticking point is whether that information could affect contract negotiations, Silver said.

“If you could see a player was slowing down or something like that, they’re worried that that could get used in bargaining, and I get that,” he said.

Silver acknowledged those concerns and said the league needs to reach an agreement with the players’ union on how the information would be used.

Still, he suggested that allowing wearables during games is a logical next step as athletes increasingly rely on technology to monitor their performance.

“I think the players are in a position right now where they’re essentially wearing wearables 22 hours a day, and the only time they’re not wearing them is when they’re playing in the game,” Silver said. “So that can’t make sense.”

“We’ll work something out with them,” he added.

Technologies

AI’s quiet safety gatekeepers are stepping into the spotlight

The intensifying AI safety debate is bringing a small group of third-party evaluators into the center of a multitrillion-dollar industry.

Two months ago, independent evaluators occupied a relatively sleepy corner of the multitrillion-dollar artificial intelligence industry. Now they’re being asked to come to its rescue.

While Anthropic and OpenAI are the heart of a fierce debate over whether they can safeguard their advanced models and grow their businesses simultaneously, the companies are seeking support from a handful of small third-party groups like Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), Apollo Research and Transluce.

The evaluators, which mostly operate as nonprofits, are still finding their footing in an industry where capital is flowing at historic levels and new models are rolling out faster than ever. Their primary role has been to assess AI model capabilities and risks, and to call attention to instances where the technology behaves badly.

In the absence of a federal push for regulations, evaluators have taken on outsized importance. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pledged to embed independent evaluators in his company last month – a move that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly endorsed.

President Donald Trump supported the idea, as did most of the largest U.S. tech companies. But left unanswered are questions about how those third parties should be funded, what level of access they will have and what the reporting structure will ultimately look like.

“To a degree, the problem, as always, is money,” Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer science professor at Brown University, told CNBC in an interview. “Who is paying for these companies to do their work? How are they going to support them? You need an ecosystem, you need a viable business model for this.”

Right now, Anthropic, OpenAI and the infrastructure partners that are profiting from the AI boom are writing the rules. Critics say that’s like asking the biggest banks to protect us from a financial crisis or allowing pharmaceutical companies to put drugs on the market without regulatory clearance.

President Trump recently lauded AI executives for their “tremendous self-policing,” and signaled that he intends to leave companies to their own devices, unwilling to impede the growth of the industry that’s driving the economy and stock market. Trump encouraged AI companies to “partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator” as part of a voluntary accord he presented in late September.

It’s a conversation that Amodei kicked off In his viral essay last month, when he called for a “slower pace” in advanced model development after researchers left his company and voiced their concerns about the existential threats the technology poses.

As the AI labs move to put evaluators in place, friction is already starting to emerge.

OpenAI fired three employees last week for “violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” according to a spokesperson. Two of those employees, Mikita Balesni and Tomek Korbak, said they believe they were dismissed because of how they communicated with third-party evaluators.

“My former colleagues are telling me they are confused about what to believe,” Balesni wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “They also are afraid to speak, and worry their personal phones will be searched for messages to us and third parties. I worry the pervading fear to speak up and engage with third parties will mean OpenAI will cut corners on safety behind closed doors.”

OpenAI disputed that characterization and said in a post on Friday that it’s “actively finalizing contracts with third-party safety assessors and will announce details in the coming weeks.”

“We are committed to embedding external assessors and continue to make close collaboration with independent safety organizations a core part of our safety work,” OpenAI wrote.

An OpenAI spokesperson said in an emailed statement that its upcoming work with evaluators “builds on existing collaboration with independent safety organizations,” including METR and Redwood Research.

Anthropic didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

‘I’ve never seen an issue move so fast’

The AI evaluator ecosystem consists mostly of small organizations, including METR and Apollo Research, and larger accounting and auditing firms like Accenture.

AI labs have been working with evaluators in limited capacities, but Andrew Freedman, CEO of policy nonprofit Fathom, said the field is quickly maturing.

“I’ve worked in politics and policy for the last 20 years of my life, and I’ve never seen an issue move so fast on so many different political spectrums,” Freedman told CNBC in an interview. He said he expects an “influx of capital” to flow into the ecosystem.

Rayan Krishnan, CEO of independent evaluator Vals AI, said his for-profit startup, which builds benchmarks to measure how AI models perform on industry-specific tasks, has grown from eight employees to roughly 30 this year, and in August announced a $40 million funding round.

METR, a nonprofit, announced in August that it had raised commitments of around $71 million over the last six months. That’s up from total 2024 contributions of $13.6 million, according to the group’s most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

By late that month, METR’s profile had risen further. OpenAI enlisted two of its employees and a contractor to put together a postmortem report detailing how the company’s models escaped containment, accessed the open internet and breached open-source developer platform Hugging Face. METR said it did not accept payment from OpenAI for the assessment.

Kevin Werbach, faculty director of the Wharton Accountable AI Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, said the ecosystem is “not robust enough right now.” METR, for example, employs fewer than 50 full-time staffers, according to its website.

The power imbalance between the small evaluators and the leading labs that have raised tens of billions of dollars and employ thousands of people raises questions surrounding potential conflicts.

“If you want true third-party evaluation, you need true independence financially and otherwise,” said Venkatasubramanian. “It’s not just a matter of not getting paid, it’s a matter of, will there be consequences if I am an auditor and I put out a report that looks unfavorable to this company? Is my business going to dry up?”

Anthropic acknowledged the complexity in a blog post last month, as it announced it will embed employees from Faculty, Accenture’s specialist AI business, to test safeguards and assess whether models will behave in line with human values. Anthropic said that “given the importance and urgency of this work,” it will fund Accenture’s contributions directly.

“There are, as yet, no standards for what information embedded evaluators should have access to, or how they should report what they find. There is also no settled system for funding independent evaluation,” Anthropic said. “Long-term, we think funding should come from pooled or government sources.”

Anthropic said it’s in discussions with METR and other nonprofit evaluators that are planning to use their own funding to pilot “elements” of embedded evaluation.

Will the government step in?

In June of last year, Fathom introduced a marketplace framework for Independent Verification Organizations, or IVOs. These groups would be licensed by the government and authorized to test whether AI companies are meeting various safety criteria.

Freedman, the group’s CEO, said government oversight is key because otherwise third-party evaluators can become beholden to the large AI labs for revenue, incentivizing them to “start rubber stamping stuff” to maintain favor.

Some lawmakers are on board.

IVOs are a key provision of the ″Frontier Risk Oversight, National Transparency, Independent Evaluation, and Reporting” (FRONTIER) Act, which Reps. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., introduced in July. Fathom helped draft language and provided technical expertise for the bill, Freedman said.

OpenAI global affairs chief Chris Lehane told reporters in September that he sat down with one of the bill’s sponsors on Capitol Hill to express support for the IVO provision.

“It was important for them to hear that and hear it from us, and we wanted to be really clear about that,” Lehane said, according to reports.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in California, Connecticut and Virginia have taken steps to implement IVOs, and states like Massachusetts are weighing independent safety evaluations more broadly.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed two bills involving IVOs, one establishing a “first-in-the-nation framework,” and the other creating a state registry for AI auditors. Anthropic threw its support behind both bills in August, and OpenAI formally endorsed them last month, the same day Newsom signed them into law.

Lehane wrote in a blog post at the time that “we prefer independent technical assessments to be required at the federal level,” but in the absence of federal action, “California can help establish the rules of the road.”

Freedman said he thinks it will be “really difficult” for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to work out how to engage with independent evaluators on their own. However, with the government’s role unclear, “it’s a muscle worth developing in the interim,” he said.

For now, the closest thing the industry has to a set of standards is what Trump called a “morally binding” agreement at a luncheon he hosted for tech leaders at the White House late last month.

The one-page accord says that “every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.” It also encourages signees to work with an “independent external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments.”

The document was signed by top execs at Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI, SpaceX and Nvidia, a rare show of solidarity between leaders who have shared conflicting views on addressing AI’s risks. The executives still have to chart their own paths forward.

“It was a performance of an attempt to show action when in fact no action actually happened,” Venkatasubramanian said. “The things that they promise to do are things they should have been doing already, and, in fact, have claimed that they were doing in the past.”

Amodei, in his September essay, said Anthropic will equip evaluators with desks, access badges, company laptops, and permissions that are “mostly comparable” with internal risk assessment teams. Additionally, evaluators will be supported with contracts that give them “the right to publish key findings,” with Anthropic reserving “the narrow ability” to redact certain security-sensitive or confidential information.

“This is an unusual step for a company, but we think it is important to prove out the concept of embedded external reviewers,” Amodei wrote.

OpenAI published its own proposal days later, and said evaluators should work on “scoped and mutually agreed upon claims for assessment,” clearly explain their methodology and standards, demonstrate relevant technical expertise and disclose conflicts of interest.

The AI Evaluator Forum, which includes METR, the AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute (AVERI), and other groups, published a public letter last month titled, “Minimum Conditions for Embedding Evaluators.”

The letter said evaluators should be transparent, shielded from retaliation and granted access equivalent to AI companies’ “own highly privileged employees.”

“Embedded evaluations cannot address all oversight needs and should be treated as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, broader efforts by frontier AI companies to expand external oversight,” the letter said.

Freedman said he’s seen a shift in posturing out of OpenAI and Anthropic in recent months, largely because they’ve realized they won’t be able to roll out their advanced systems without the public’s trust.

“I don’t think you need to trust that they’ve suddenly turned altruistic or that there’s anything but corporations acting like corporations,” Freedman said.

That underscores perhaps the central problem, Werbach said. OpenAI and Anthropic are, first and foremost, competing with each other as they march toward the public markets and seek trillion-dollar-plus valuations.

“There is a tremendous amount of personal distrust between those two companies,” Werbach said. “Even though there’s also tremendous agreement about the need for this kind of evaluation to happen.”

WATCH: Bradley Tusk on Anthropic IPO: Why add public market pressure if safety is your top priority?

Technologies

Trump says he is ‘going to look at’ joining Saudi Arabia in the fight against Iran-backed Houthis after deadly airport strike

U.S. military involvement in the fight against the Houthis would stretch resources in the Middle East already committed to fighting Iran, analysts said.

President Donald Trump said he is considering joining Saudi Arabia in its retaliation against Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen after a deadly attack on Riyadh’s main airport, a move that could draw the U.S. further into a second front in the Iran war.

“We may. We’re going to look at it,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday when asked if the U.S. would back Saudi Arabian strikes. “We just found out about the recent attack. So, we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”

Two Saudi Arabian government officials told MS NOW that the kingdom is requesting “urgent defense support” from the U.S. following the attacks.

The officials, including a senior member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, did not want to be identified because of the matter’s sensitivity. They added that the U.S. needs to intervene “as soon as possible” to help the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen fight the Houthis.

The White House did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation said the attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed 12 people and injured 309 others, the country’s official Saudi Gazette media outlet reported.

Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen, which has been leading the fight against the Houthis, described the attack as a “war crime.”

“Therefore, the Joint Forces Command of the Coalition will respond decisively to this terrorist attack in accordance with the Customary International Humanitarian Law,” Al-Maliki said in a post on X.

It was the second deadly assault on Riyadh’s airport in less than a week.

Three Saudi nationals, including a pilot, were killed in attacks on the facility by Iran-backed Houthi militants on Thursday.

Following Saturday’s attack, the Houthis renewed their warning against using Saudi airports.

“We renew our warning to all airlines, experts, employees, workers and travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our forces, with the exception of the airports in (the holy cities of) Mecca and Medina,” the Houthis said in a post on X.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, intervened in Yemen’s civil war between the Houthis and its internationally recognized government after the group seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014.

Last month, the Trump administration approved the potential $24.3 billion sale of nearly 50 F-35 warplanes to Saudi Arabia in what was seen as a major boost for the kingdom as it faces intensifying attacks from the Houthis. The sale is under congressional review.

International energy conference still on

The Saudi energy ministry said a long-planned international energy conference will still take place in Riyadh on Sunday, Reuters reported.

The five-day WPC Energy Congress is taking place at a convention center near King Khalid airport. State television told Reuters that more than 70 ministers, 300 company executives and representatives of more than 25 international energy organizations have confirmed their attendance, though it was not clear whether the participants would attend in person or virtually.

Reuters said a ministerial meeting of the International Energy Forum is also set to take place, with its plenary session to be held behind closed doors.

Energy choke points

In addition to attacks on civil aviation, the Houthis have also been trying to choke off oil tanker traffic through the Bab el Mandeb strait, a key entry point to the Red Sea, as Iran has effectively done in the Strait of Hormuz to the north of the Arabian Peninsula.

Earlier this month, Yemeni government forces said they reclaimed the strategic port city of Mokha from the Houthis.

Energy prices have soared since the start of the Iran war, which began with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets on Feb. 28, putting pressure on consumers globally.

The surge in domestic fuel prices has been a key issue for voters ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

But that support would be expensive militarily.

“Potential U.S. involvement in the Saudi-Yemeni government air campaign to degrade Houthi ballistic missile capabilities would mark the first direct U.S. military action against the group since the conclusion of Operation Rough Rider in May 2025,” according to the Critical Threats Project, part of the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

The offensive aimed to suppress the Houthis’ capabilities, but recent attacks show the group has regrouped.

“After seven months of war, there are questions about the U.S. capacity to wage a sustained campaign against the Houthis, return to combat against Iran if necessary, and prepare for contingencies in other parts of the world, notably East Asia,” Steven Cook, an expert on Arab and Turkish politics at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, wrote last month.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s defense secretary said his government is also examining how to support Saudi Arabia.

“I’ve spoken to my Saudi counterpart [Khalid bin Salman] on a number of occasions in recent weeks to look at what more we can do to support Saudi Arabia, and I’m afraid last night explains precisely why we are providing that support,” Wes Streeting said in an interview on BBC television on Sunday.

Streeting said the U.K. is not getting involved in offensive operations “at this stage.”

“We’ve always been clear that there isn’t a military solution to this conflict,” Streeting added.