Category: Government & Policy

Cybersecurity, Department of Government Efficiency, Global IT News, Global Security News, Government & Policy, privacy, Security, U.S. Treasury

As duties under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA) related to tackling illegal content came into force Monday, the internet watchdog, Ofcom, said it has launched a new enforcement program focused on online storage and file-sharing services. The regulator said its evidence shows that file-sharing and file-storage services are “particularly susceptible” to being used for…

European tech industry coalition calls for ‘radical action’ on digital sovereignty — starting with buying local

March 17, 2025

A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc’s economic prospects, resilience, and security in increasingly fraught geopolitical times. In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der…

Meta takes aim at ex-employee’s memoir ‘Careless People’

March 16, 2025

Meta won a legal victory this week against Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta)…

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan asks Big Tech if Biden tried to censor AI

March 14, 2025

On Thursday, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to 16 American technology firms, including Google and OpenAI, asking for past communications with the Biden Administration that might suggest the former President “coerced or colluded” with companies to “censor lawful speech” in AI products. The Trump Administration’s top technology advisers previously signaled it would pick…

What to know about TikTok’s uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it

March 14, 2025

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Just this past month, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before…

UK’s secret iCloud backdoor order triggers civil rights challenge

March 14, 2025

The U.K. government’s secret order to Apple demanding it backdoor the end-to-end encrypted version of its iCloud storage service has now been challenged by two civil rights groups, Liberty and Privacy International, which filed complaints Thursday. They called the order “unacceptable and disproportionate” and warned of “global consequences” as the access order is thought to…

Trump family is reportedly in talks to acquire stake in Binance’s US arm

March 14, 2025

President Trump’s family has been weighing an investment in Binance.US, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The investment would come just a couple of years after Binance’s U.S. arm pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering regulation. As part of that guilty plea, Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, paid a…

Y Combinator urges the White House to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act

March 13, 2025

Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump Administration to openly support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to crack open Big Tech’s market power. The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon,…

Ex-Twitter AI ethics lead Rumman Chowdhury is worried about Musk’s impact on the federal government

March 13, 2025

Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist, nonprofit founder, and former director of Twitter’s machine ethics team, had strong words for Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during an SXSW panel on Thursday. “When your funding is frozen and you don’t know if you’re gonna be fired, and there’s this, like, absolutely unhinged person…

FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds as Trump administration tries to claw back climate money

March 13, 2025

OpenAI calls DeepSeek ‘state-controlled,’ calls for bans on ‘PRC-produced’ models

March 13, 2025

In a new policy proposal, OpenAI describes Chinese AI lab DeepSeek as “state-subsidized” and “state-controlled,” and recommends that the U.S. government consider banning models from the outfit and similar People’s Republic of China (PRC)-supported operations. The proposal, a submission for the Trump Administration’s “AI Action Plan” initiative, claims that DeepSeek’s models, including its R1 “reasoning” model,…

OpenAI calls for US government to codify ‘fair use’ for AI training

March 13, 2025

In a proposal for the U.S. government’s “AI Action Plan,” the Trump Administration’s initiative to reshape American AI policy, OpenAI called for a U.S. copyright strategy that “[preserves] American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.” “America has so many AI startups, attracts so much investment, and has made so many research breakthroughs largely…

Huawei’s lobbying lands it in a bribery scandal with EU politicians

March 13, 2025

Huawei is at the center of a fresh scandal in Europe, following reports that lobbyists representing the Chinese tech titan bribed members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to curry favor with lawmakers. After being cast out of the U.S. market over fears that its telecommunications equipment could be infiltrated by the Chinese government for nefarious…

Singapore grants bail for Nvidia chip smugglers in alleged $390M fraud

March 13, 2025

A judge in Singapore granted bail to three men suspected of deceiving suppliers of server computers that may contain Nvidia chips affected by U.S. export rules that bar the sale of them to certain countries, as a route to halting them being sold to organizations in China. The move comes nearly two weeks after the…

FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds as Trump administration tries to claw back climate money

March 12, 2025

The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe

March 12, 2025

UK competition probe of mobile browsers finds Apple-Google duopoly is ‘anti-innovation’

March 12, 2025

A U.K. competition authority investigation of Apple and Google’s mobile browsers has concluded that the mobile duopoly’s policies are “holding back innovation” and could also be limiting economic growth. “Mobile browsers are apps which provide the primary gateway for consumers to access the web on their mobile devices, and hence for businesses to reach them…

Donald Trump Jr. has been boosting MAGA-related startups

March 12, 2025

Since Donald Trump Jr. joined VC firm 1789 Capital after his father won the election, he’s been busy monetizing the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ecosystem. He’s been making bets in media, pharmaceutical, guns, and crypto while pushing against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Financial Times reported. The…

Trump says he will label violence against Tesla as domestic terrorism

March 11, 2025

President Donald Trump said he will label violence against Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism, per a transcript shared by the White House pool reporters, a sign of deepening ties with Elon Musk. “Tesla Takeovers” have been breaking out across the globe at Tesla dealerships as people protest what they see as a hostile takeover of…

EU AI Act: Latest draft Code for AI model makers tiptoes towards gentler guidance for Big AI

March 11, 2025

Ahead of a May deadline to finalize guidance for providers of general purpose AI (GPAI) models on complying with provisions of the EU AI Act, a third draft of the Code of Practice was published on Tuesday. The Code has been in development since last year, and this draft is expected to be the last.…

Elon Musk says DOGE involvement is making it harder to run his businesses

March 10, 2025

In an interview with Fox’s Larry Kudlow on Monday, billionaire Elon Musk admitted that his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Donald Trump’s initiative to reduce federal spending, is making it tougher to run his many businesses: X, Tesla, xAI, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Starlink. “How are you running your other businesses?”…

Trump administration in talks with four groups about potential TikTok sale

March 10, 2025

President Donald Trump says his administration is in talks with four different groups about the sale of TikTok, Reuters reports. When asked if there was going to soon be a deal on TikTok, Trump told reporters on Sunday, “it could.” He added, “We’re dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it…

Trump Administration and the Russian Cyber Threat, Firefox Privacy Changes

March 9, 2025

In this episode, we discuss whether the Trump administration ordered the U.S. Cyber Command and CISA to stand down on the Russian cyber threat. We also touch on the Canadian tariff situation with insights from Scott Wright. Additionally, we discuss the recent changes to Firefox’s privacy policy and what it means for user data. **…

Musk may still have a chance to thwart OpenAI’s for-profit conversion

March 9, 2025

Elon Musk lost the latest battle in his lawsuit against OpenAI this week, but a federal judge appears to have given Musk — and others who oppose OpenAI’s for-profit conversion — reasons to be hopeful. Musk’s suit against OpenAI, which also names Microsoft and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as defendants, accuses OpenAI of abandoning its…

New DOJ proposal still calls for Google to divest Chrome, but allows for AI investments

March 8, 2025

The US Department of Justice is still calling for Google to sell its web browser Chrome, according to a Friday court filing. The DOJ first proposed that Google should sell Chrome last year, under then-President Joe Biden, but it seems to be sticking with that plan under the second Trump administration. The department is, however,…

Google scrubs mentions of ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ from responsible AI team webpage

March 8, 2025

Google has quietly updated the webpage for its Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology (RAI-HCT) team, the team charged with conducting research into AI safety, fairness, and explainability, to scrub mentions of “diversity” and “equity.” A previous version of the page used language such as “marginalized communities,” “diverse,” “underrepresented groups,” and “equity” to describe the…

Judge allows authors’ AI copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward

March 8, 2025

A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit. In Kadrey vs. Meta, authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have alleged that Meta has violated their intellectual property rights by using their books to train its Llama AI models, and…

US lawmakers have already introduce hundreds of AI bills in 2025

March 7, 2025

Just over two months into 2025, the number of pending AI bills in the U.S. has grown to 781, according to an online tracking tool. The tool, maintained by consulting firm MultiState, shows that the number of pending U.S. bills pertaining to AI now exceeds the total number of AI bills proposed in all of…

Russian propoganda is reportely influencing AI chatbot results

March 7, 2025

Russian propaganda may be influencing certain answers from AI chatbots including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Meta AI, according to a new report. NewsGuard, a company that develops rating systems for news and information websites, claims to have found evidence that a Moscow-based network named “Pravda” is publishing false claims to affect the responses of AI…

Anthropic submits AI policy recommendations to the White House

March 6, 2025

A day after quietly removing Biden-era AI policy commitments from its website, Anthropic submitted recommendations to the White House for a national AI policy that the company says “better prepare[s] America to capture the economic benefits” of AI. The company’s suggestions include preserving the AI Safety Institute established under the Biden Administration, directing NIST to…

UK quietly scrubs encryption advice from government websites

March 6, 2025

Eric Schmidt argues against a ‘Manhattan Project for AGI’

March 5, 2025

In a policy paper published Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks said that the U.S. should not pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with “superhuman” intelligence, also known as AGI. The paper, titled “Superintelligence Strategy,” asserts that an aggressive…

Trump gives Big 3 automakers one month reprieve for Canada, Mexico tariffs

March 5, 2025

President Donald Trump has delayed tariffs on automobile imports from Canada and Mexico for one month after requests from executives at the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — according to Politico. The reprieve comes less than two days after Trump issued 25% tariffs on all goods from the U.S.’s neighbors, which…

Anthropic quietly removes Biden-era AI policy commitments from its website

March 5, 2025

Anthropic has quietly removed from its website several voluntary commitments the company made in conjunction with the Biden Administration in 2023 to promote safe and “trustworthy” AI. The commitments, which included pledges to share information on managing AI risks across industry and government and research on AI bias and discrimination, were deleted from Anthropic’s transparency…

EU must ‘fully’ apply its market fairness rulebook on Google, search rivals urge

March 5, 2025

The European Union is once again being urged to expand its investigation of Google under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The big aim of the EU’s flagship competition reform — which came into force last spring — was to level the digital playing field by forcing platform giants into fairer dealing with rivals and…

U.K.’s competition authority says Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership doesn’t quality for investigation

March 5, 2025

Britain’s competition authority, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), said Wednesday that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI doesn’t qualify for investigation under the merger provisions of the U.K.’s Enterprise Act 2002, the country’s anticompetitive practices law. “Overall, taking into account all of the available evidence […] the CMA does not believe that Microsoft currently controls OpenAI’s…

Apple is challenging U.K.’s iCloud encryption backdoor order

March 5, 2025

Apple is challenging a U.K. Government data access order in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the Financial Times reports. The order targeted iCloud backups that are protected by end-to-end encryption. Last month, press leaks revealed the existence of the January order asking Apple to build a backdoor in iCloud’s encrypted backups. U.K. officials are exercising…

Google still limits how Gemini answers political questions

March 4, 2025

While several of Google’s rivals, including OpenAI, have tweaked their AI chatbots to discuss politically sensitive subjects in recent months, Google appears to be embracing a more conservative approach. When asked to answer certain political questions, Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini, often says it “can’t help with responses on elections and political figures right now,” TechCrunch’s…

Mistral urges telcos to get into the hyperscaler game

March 4, 2025

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch brought a sales pitch to Mobile World Congress on Tuesday, urging delegates at the world’s biggest telecoms confab in Barcelona to invest in building data center infrastructure and “becoming hyperscalers” to boost the regional AI ecosystem. “We would welcome more domestic effort in making more data centers,” he said during an on-stage…

Trump Administration cuts may threaten AI research efforts

March 3, 2025

The Trump Administration has fired a number of National Science Foundation employees who had been handpicked for their expertise in AI, threatening the agency’s ability to sustain key AI research, Bloomberg reported. One of the affected departments inside NSF, called the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, was instrumental in funneling government grants focused on…

The author of SB 1047 introduces a new AI bill in California

March 3, 2025

The author of California’s SB 1047, the nation’s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024, is back with a new AI bill that could shake up Silicon Valley. California state Senator Scott Wiener introduced a new bill on Friday that would protect employees at leading AI labs, allowing them to speak out if they think…

What to know about TikTok’s uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it

March 3, 2025

UK probes how TikTok, Reddit, and Imgur protect child privacy

March 3, 2025

The U.K.’s privacy watchdog has launched investigations into three social media companies over how they go about protecting the privacy of children on their respective platforms. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced today that it’s looking into how TikTok uses personal information of 13- to 17-year-olds to recommend videos, “in light of growing concerns” around…

Trump calls for creation of a ‘crypto strategic reserve’

March 2, 2025

President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the idea of creating a federal reserve of cryptocurrency assets — he specifically mentioned XRP, Solana, and Cardano, but not Bitcoin or Ethereum. In January, Trump issued an executive order calling for the formation of a working group that would study and make recommendations around crypto policy,…

Mark Cuban offers to fund government tech unit that was cut in the middle of the night

March 2, 2025

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban waded into the latest government tech shake-up on Saturday, posting an unexpected offer of support for newly laid-off federal workers on the social network Bluesky. His message, which quickly gained traction, urged the displaced engineers and designers to turn the upheaval to their advantage. “If you worked for 18F and got…

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia takes wraps off his first assignment for DOGE

February 27, 2025

Almost two weeks after The New York Times reported that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia had joined Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” Gebbia clarified his role on Thursday, announcing on X that as a starting point, he’ll be leveraging his design expertise as part of an effort to overhaul the government’s notoriously slow, paper-heavy retirement…

SEC says meme coins are not securities

February 27, 2025

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance on Thursday saying it does not view most meme coins, which are crypto tokens that originated from memes, as securities under United States federal law. As a result, the SEC says it does not believe people who purchase or hold meme coins are protected by federal securities law,…

Trump signs executive order to expand DOGE’s spending review powers

February 26, 2025

In a newly issued executive order (EO), the Trump administration has instructed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-advised initiative to reduce federal spending, to create a “centralized technological system” in every agency to record contract and grant awards. As part of the ramp-up of these systems, agency employees who approved individual contract…

a16z hires former Republican congressman Patrick McHenry as advisor

February 26, 2025

Former North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry announced Wednesday that he landed a job with VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He will be a senior advisor. His post on X said little about what the job entails, except to be advocating for startups (which a16z likes to call “little tech”) with policymakers. Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately…

Here are all the tech companies rolling back DEI or still committed to it — so far

February 26, 2025

Companies around America have started cutting DEI programs and eliminating DEI commitments from public documents in response to legal and political threats from the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize,” DEI programs deemed illegal in private sector companies that receive…

Indonesia, Apple reach agreement to end iPhone 16 sales ban

February 26, 2025

Apple will be able to resume its iPhone 16 smartphone sales in Indonesia after the two sides came to an agreement, the Industry Ministry said during a press conference Wednesday, per a Reuters report. The ban was lifted five months after Indonesia blocked the U.S. iPhone maker from selling its iPhone 16 phones in Indonesia…

The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe

February 25, 2025

DOGE has an official ‘acting’ administrator, and it’s not Elon Musk, White House confirms

February 25, 2025

IBM’s $6.4B HashiCorp acquisition cleared by UK

February 25, 2025

The U.K.’s antitrust authority has given the go-ahead to IBM’s planned multibillion acquisition of infrastructure software company HashiCorp. In a brief case update published today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had “cleared the anticipated acquisition by IBM of HashiCorp,” and it would publish the full rationale for its decision in due course.…

1,000 artists release ‘silent’ album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI

February 24, 2025

The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region by proposing changes to copyright law that would allow developers to train AI models on artists’ content on the internet—without permission or payment—unless creators proactively “opt out.” Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. On Monday, a…

The SEC will not sue Robinhood over crypto

February 24, 2025

Robinhood on Monday said that the SEC has closed its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit and will not pursue action. This follows Coinbase saying on Friday that the SEC has dropped its lawsuit against it. The SEC, under former chair and crypto hawk Gary Gensler, was looking into a number of crypto exchanges over how…

Three years on, Europe looks to Ukraine for the future of defense tech

February 24, 2025

Today marks three years since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have heroically fought the war with grit and determination, but they have also, against the odds, innovated on and off the battlefield. In addition to establishing a defense tech initiative called BRAVE1, the country has also hosted tech conferences like…

Apple commits $500B to US manufacturing, including a new AI server facility in Houston

February 24, 2025

The U.S. government is leaning hard on tech companies to make more commitments to building their businesses in the country, and Big Tech is falling in line. On Monday, Apple laid out its own plans in that area: it will spend $500 billion over the next four years in areas like high-end manufacturing, engineering, and…

Palantir CEO’s new book says Silicon Valley has ‘lost its way’

February 23, 2025

Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander Karp opens his new book with a provocative declaration: “Silicon Valley has lost its way.” Over the past decade or so, as the data analytics company rose to prominence with its work for U.S. military and intelligence, Karp has largely stayed out of the limelight. Last year, in a rare…

This mental health chatbot aims to fill the counseling gap at understaffed schools

February 23, 2025

As school districts struggle to support the mental health of their students, a startup called Sonar Mental Health has built a “wellbeing companion” called Sonny to help. As described in the Wall Street Journal, Sonny is a chatbot that relies on a combination of human staff and AI. When students text their questions to Sonny,…

US AI Safety Institute could face big cuts

February 22, 2025

The National Institute of Standards and Technology could fire as many as 500 staffers, according to multiple reports — cuts that further threaten a fledgling AI safety organization. Axios reported this week that the US AI Safety Institute (AISI) and Chips for America, both part of NIST, would be “gutted” by layoffs targeting probationary employees…

Trump administration reportedly shutting down federal EV chargers nationwide

February 22, 2025

The General Services Administration, the agency that manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down its entire network of electric vehicle chargers, according to a report in The Verge. The GSA reportedly operates a network of hundreds of EV chargers with a total of 8,000 plugs that can be used to…

Brian Armstrong says Coinbase spent $50M fighting SEC lawsuit – and beat it

February 21, 2025

Coinbase on Friday said the SEC has agreed to drop the lawsuit against the company with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again. The move, which is still subject to the approval of the SEC’s Commissioners, is yet another signal that the Trump administration plans to be more friendly to crypto than the SEC was…

The real reason why oil and gas companies are bullish on carbon capture

February 21, 2025

Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub compared using CO2 in enhanced oil recovery to fracking, the technology that sent U.S. oil and gas production skyrocketing. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s DOGE comes for agency that regulates autonomous vehicles

February 21, 2025

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is firing nearly half of a small government team that regulates autonomous vehicles, the Washington Post reported. The firings are part of a broader 10% reduction at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as a result of firings of probationary workers and buyout offers, the Post reported, citing…

Mark Zuckerberg’s charity U-turns, ends DEI efforts

February 19, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg’s charity has eliminated its DEI programs and efforts just weeks after assuring staff it would continue supporting DEI efforts, the Guardian reports. The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), co-founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, will end internal DEI programs and no longer provide “social advocacy funding,” which provided grants for racial equity and…

Trump admin reverses hydropower layoffs that sparked grid stability fears

February 18, 2025

Elon Musk staffer created a DOGE AI assistant for making government “less dumb”

February 18, 2025

Apple purges apps without contact info from EU app store, as DSA deadline hits

February 18, 2025

A change requiring app developers to disclose their address, phone number, and email information to consumers has gone live on the App Store within the European Union. Apple on Tuesday announced it has removed any EU apps that haven’t yet complied with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that had added a requirement in…

The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe

February 18, 2025

Thousands protest Elon Musk’s DOGE in NYC on Presidents’ Day

February 17, 2025

More than 10,000 protesters gathered in New York City on Presidents’ Day to speak out against the current Trump administration and the actions in particular of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It was one of several protests that took place Monday in major cities across the country and came during the same long…

Trump fires hundreds of air traffic support staff as SpaceX visits FAA command center

February 17, 2025

The Trump Administration has begun firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, reports CNN. The firings, which began late Friday night, come as Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been tapped to help create a new air traffic control system. It’s not yet clear how many workers were fired, but the…

What the US’ first major AI copyright ruling might mean for IP law

February 17, 2025

Copyright claims against AI companies just got a potential boost. A U.S. federal judge last week handed down a summary judgment in a case brought by tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters against legal tech firm Ross Intelligence. The judge found that Ross’ use of Reuters’ content to train its AI legal research platform infringed on Reuters’…

X is blocking links to Signal, a secure messaging platform used by federal workers

February 17, 2025

Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is blocking links to Signal.me, a URL shortener used by the private messaging app Signal that allows users to send out a link that’s used to contact them directly through the service. The blocks, which impact direct messages, public posts, and profile pages, were first spotted by the blog Disruptionist. …

What to know about TikTok’s uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it

February 17, 2025

South Korea blocks downloads of DeepSeek from local app stores

February 17, 2025

South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app stores in the country pending an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said the Chinese app would be available to be downloaded once it complies with Korean privacy laws…

Broadcom, TSMC reportedly exploring deals that would split up Intel

February 16, 2025

Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are separately exploring deals to take over parts of Intel, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Broadcom is reportedly considering an acquisition of Intel’s chip-design and marketing business, and would want a partner for the company’s manufacturing business, while TSMC is reportedly looking at controlling…

Open source LLMs hit Europe’s digital sovereignty roadmap

February 16, 2025

Large language models (LLMs) landed on Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda with a bang last week, as news emerged of a new program to develop a series of “truly” open source LLMs covering all European Union languages. This includes the current 24 official EU languages, as well as languages for countries currently negotiating for entry to…

North Carolina Amazon workers vote against unionizing

February 15, 2025

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results…

xAI’s “Colossus” supercomputer raises health questions in Memphis

February 15, 2025

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI plans to continue using 15 gas turbines to power its “Colossus” supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, according to an operating permit with the Shelby County Health Department for non-stop turbine use from June 2025 to June 2030. Why does it matter? The Commercial Appeal, a news outlet that obtained the documents,…

What is an encryption backdoor?

February 15, 2025

Talk of backdoors in encrypted services is once again doing the rounds after reports emerged that the U.K. government is seeking to force Apple to open up iCloud’s end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) device backup offering. Officials were said to be leaning on Apple to create a “backdoor” in the service that would allow state actors to…

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly set to meet with China’s Xi Jinping

February 14, 2025

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly set to meet with China’s top politicians, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during a summit that Alibaba founder Jack Ma is also expected to attend. The summit, which could happen as soon as next week, may be intended as a signal by China’s Communist Party that…

NATO backs its first cohort of European dual-use startups

February 14, 2025

With both Vice President J.D. Vance and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth making loud noises Friday about Europe stepping up to the plate in spending more on its own defense, it might come as a surprise that Europe is already on the path toward far greater investment in defense, especially in tech. Not only has…

Europe denies dropping AI liability rules under pressure from Trump

February 14, 2025

The European Union has denied that recent moves to row back on some planned tech regulation — principally by ditching the AI Liability Directive, a 2022 draft law which had been aimed at making it easier for consumers to sue over harms caused by AI-enabled products and services — were made in response to pressure…

OpenAI removes certain content warnings from ChatGPT

February 13, 2025

OpenAI says it has removed the “warning” messages in its AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT, that indicated when content might violate its terms of service. Laurentia Romaniuk, a member of OpenAI’s AI model behavior team, said in a post on X that the change was intended to cut down on “gratuitous/unexplainable denials.” Nick Turley, head of…

OpenAI scrubs diversity commitment web page from its site

February 13, 2025

OpenAI has eliminated a page on its website that used to express its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The URL “https://openai.com/commitment-to-dei/” now redirects to “https://openai.com/building-dynamic-teams/,” a page that talks about people with “different backgrounds” with no use of the word diversity. The previous page stated that the company’s “investment in diversity, equity and inclusion”…

Apple’s app tracking privacy framework could fall foul of German antitrust rules

February 13, 2025

Germany’s antitrust watchdog has been investigating Apple’s app privacy framework since 2022. On Thursday, releasing preliminary findings from this probe, the Bundeskartellamt (FCO) said it suspects the iPhone maker may not be treating third-party app developers as equally as the law requires. The antitrust watchdog said it believes Apple’s behavior could amount to self-preferencing. Apple…

VC industry reacts to Trump nominating a16z’s Brian Quintez for regulatory role

February 12, 2025

Brian Quintenz, who leads policy for Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto team, announced on Wednesday that he’s being tapped to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to his X post. And many in the VC industry appear to be thrilled about it. The CFTC regulates the trading of commodity futures, options, and swaps, otherwise known…

OpenAI pledges that its models won’t censor viewpoints

February 12, 2025

Possibly in response to political pressure, OpenAI is making clear that its AI models won’t shy away from sensitive topics while refraining from making assertions that might “shut out some viewpoints.” In an updated version of its Model Spec, a collection of high-level rules that indirectly govern OpenAI’s models, OpenAI says that its models “must…

Trump picks Apple exec to lead transportation safety agency

February 12, 2025

President Donald Trump has chosen Jonathan Morrison, an Apple executive, to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, per a Senate filing. The nomination will be reviewed and voted on by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation before being sent for a full Senate vote. If he’s sworn in, Morrison will oversee an…

EU abandons ePrivacy, AI liability reforms, as bloc shifts focus to competitiveness & data access for AI

February 12, 2025

A long stalled bid to beef up European Union rules around online tracking technologies — and put penalties on a similar footing to the bloc’s data protection framework, GDPR, which allows for fines of up to 4% of annual turnover for breaches — has been withdrawn by the Commission after co-legislators failed to reach agreement…

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