# AI is eating bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy (slim)

> Vlad Cealicu on AI agents eating the busywork in bureaucracy. Form filling is finally a job for machines and a lot of process can be cut and automated, but the friction that kept requests down is gone with it. The hoax bomb threats on European flights in the week of 2 November 2026, AI-made receipts, planning objections and bug reports, and why the longest form becomes a way your company gets attacked.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/ai-is-eating-bureaucracy.md (~3,050 tokens) · this version ~1,430 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/ai-is-eating-bureaucracy.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/ai-is-eating-bureaucracy
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

By Vlad Cealicu, 7 November 2026. 1,166 words, about 5 min to read.

AI is eating bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.

Form filling is finally a thing for the machines.

So please ask an agent to review your processes, a lot can be cut and automated.

## What happened to the flights?

On Monday 2 November a Wizz Air flight from London Luton to Sofia was diverted to Budapest after a bomb threat [[3]](#ref-3), on Tuesday at least seven flights and a cruise ship got threats [[1]](#ref-1), and on Thursday 5 November it was nearly 30 flights leaving from 16 countries [[1]](#ref-1) [[2]](#ref-2).

Most of it came by email.

Sending the threats against handling them

| Who | Time | Outcome |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Three emailed threats to Spain | all within 20 minutes | Air Europa and Iberia flights named |
| A flight out of Cork | 90 minutes late | nothing found |
| RTÉ | up to three hours off air | nothing found |

Time on a log scale.

Nobody has said who sent them yet, the EU's transport commissioner, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, said it was too early to say whether they're even linked [[3]](#ref-3), and none of the reports I read say AI wrote the emails (it could be one person with a list of addresses and a lot of free time).

## Asymmetric support attacks

The same thing is happening on a smaller scale everywhere a company or a government takes requests from strangers.

curl ended its bug bounty at the end of January 2026, after Daniel Stenberg had spent two years complaining about AI-generated reports and said they put a high load on curl's security team [[5]](#ref-5).

Not all of it is malicious, and that makes it harder.

With agents, the longest, most complicated form becomes one of the vectors your company will be attacked on, because you have to validate every request and you can't rely on the friction that made it unlikely for people to fill the form in.

## What we do about it on Anchor

We have the same problem on a small scale.

I don't know yet what the cheap version of a real check looks like for most companies, and I'd rather find out before the forms arrive than after.

---

More in [Opinion](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/opinion/index.md) · Older opinion [A machine that finds the bug in hours](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/a-machine-that-finds-the-bug-in-hours.md)

- Older: [Find the best tools for agents, and how we decide what to return](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/find-the-best-tools-for-agents.md)
- Newer: [A machine that runs all night, and why the labs aren't at the forefront](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/a-machine-that-runs-all-night.md)
- All posts: https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/index.md

Anchor Terminal grades the tools AI agents run on, with a source for every score.

## References

Read on 7 November 2026.

[1] Reuters, "New wave of bomb hoaxes hits dozens of flights across Europe", 5 November 2026, updated 6 November, as published by Investing.com.

[2] Virginia Pietromarchi, Al Jazeera, "Hoax or bomb threats? What we know about flight disruptions across Europe", 6 November 2026. Source for the 16 countries, Spain's three emailed threats within 20 minutes, the 90-minute delay at Cork, how threats are graded and planes searched, Philip Baum's estimate of up to $250,000 a disruption, and nothing being found.

[3] Euronews, "'Too early' to say if Europe flight bomb threats linked, EU transport chief says", 5 November 2026. Source for the Wizz Air flight from Luton diverted to Budapest on the Monday, Prague airport receiving its threats by email from anonymous addresses, and Apostolos Tzitzikostas saying it was too early to tell whether they were linked.

[4] Interesting Engineering, "'Message to the West', bomb threats target European flights, newsrooms", November 2026. Source for RTÉ evacuating and suspending programmes for up to three hours, and Prague airport's nine threatened flights on the Friday.

[5] Simon Sharwood, The Register, "Curl shutters bug bounty program to remove incentive for submitting AI slop", 21 January 2026. Source for curl ending its bug bounty at the end of January 2026, Daniel Stenberg complaining about AI-generated reports since early 2024, and the load on curl's security team.

[6] Chris Gaetano, Accounting Today, "Use of AI receipts in expense fraud soars", 23 June 2026. Source for AppZen's share of flagged fake receipts made with AI (0% in March 2025, 70.8% by mid-May 2026) and Emburse's survey of 2,000 US and UK workers (34% admitted using AI to fake a receipt).

[7] Simon Cairnes, The Negotiator, "'Supercharged' AI-created nimbyism to jam planning", 11 November 2025. Source for Objector's £45 objections and committee speeches, and its co-founder Hannah George saying it levels the playing field.

[8] Paul Dobson, The Ferret, on the Energy Consents Unit's ban on emailed objections, 4 August 2026. Source for the change in January 2026, the reason given (a significant rise in AI in emailed representations, handled by hand with no check on the sender) and ObjectNow's objection to it.

[9] Fran Luin, South China Morning Post, on Chinese shoppers using AI to alter product photos for refunds, November 2025. Source for the mouldy fruit and the rusty toothbrush, as sellers described them.