GPT-6 Astra might have cracked a World War I radio cipher
The plaintext matches Royal Navy records, though the first-decode claim lacks independent cryptographic verification.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: prinz
Why it matters
Astra connected archival cryptography to independent naval records in a single research workflow. Without a reproducible transcript and expert review, the result remains a case study rather than a benchmark.
A writer publishing as prinz says OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra decoded a German radio message transmitted on November 27th, 1918, producing a plaintext whose central details match surviving Royal Navy records.
The September 17th post identifies the message as one of the remaining unsolved ciphertexts produced with ADFGVX, a German field cipher that combined substitution and columnar transposition. Astra's proposed reading says an English cruiser entered Sevastopol on the 24th and an Allied squadron would follow on the 26th.…
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