Category: Government & Policy

Stay updated on the intersection of tech and governance. From CISA security alerts to federal AI mandates and global policy shifts, get the latest at Geek Guy.

Apple lost more than $250 billion in market value Thursday, with shares down as much as 8.5% as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff spree. The iPhone maker took one of the biggest hits on Wall Street, where tech stocks dropped as investors shifted money away from volatile assets. Tesla, Nvidia, and Meta were…

Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O’Reilly books

April 1, 2025

OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on non-public books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on…

Signal sees its downloads double after scandal

March 31, 2025

Encrypted messaging app Signal continues to see spiking downloads in the wake of the messaging scandal, which saw The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg added to a group chat where high-ranking officials in the Trump administration were discussing an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The resulting press coverage around the leak of these…

‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters are planning a global day of action on March 29, and things might get ugly

March 29, 2025

“Tesla Takedown” organizers have promised their biggest day of global action today, encouraging thousands to protest outside Tesla showrooms, dealerships, and even charging stations to peacefully object to Elon Musk’s role in slashing government spending. As Tesla protests have spread, so has the backlash. Activists holding up signs are being conflated with masked vandals throwing…

‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters are planning a global day of action on March 29, and things might get ugly

March 28, 2025

‘Tesla Takedown’ organizers have promised their biggest day of global action this weekend, encouraging thousands to protest outside Tesla showrooms, dealerships, and even charging stations to peacefully object to Elon Musk’s role in slashing government spending. As Tesla protests have spread, so has the backlash. Activists holding up signs are being conflated with masked vandals…

New Utah law makes app stores responsible for age verification

March 27, 2025

Meta, X, and Snap are celebrating a new Utah law that will require Apple and Google to take responsibility for verifying users’ ages on their app stores and obtain parental consent for minors. The tech giants have been battling to determine which party should be responsible for age verification on the app stores. Companies like…

UnitedHealth removes mentions of DEI from its website

March 26, 2025

The health insurance giant is the latest to remove references to diversity, equity and inclusion policies amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment

March 26, 2025

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore hubs, according to reporting from ProPublica. SpaceX is a defense contractor for the Pentagon, one that handles sensitive work like building a classified spy satellite network. Investment from China…

Bradley Tusk says he makes more money with ‘equity-for-services’ than he did as a traditional VC

March 26, 2025

Bradley Tusk, co-founder and managing partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told TechCrunch in today’s episode of Equity that VC as we know it is dead. And it has been for the last four years. “Maybe there’s some VC that I’ve never heard of that’s awash with liquidity the last couple of years, but we haven’t…

Trump admin directs DOE officials to shield DOGE documents from disclosure

March 24, 2025

The Department of Energy’s acting general counsel reportedly issued a memo telling political appointees how to complete DOGE spreadsheets.

Google claims news is worthless to its ad business after test involving 1% of search results in eight EU markets

March 21, 2025

Google has reported the results of an experiment it ran which removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight* markets in Europe — claiming the results show that news is essentially worthless to Google’s ad business. The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law requires it to…

AI’s answers on China differ depending on the language, analysis finds

March 20, 2025

It’s well-established that AI models developed by Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek censor certain politically sensitive topics. A 2023 measure passed by China’s ruling party forbids models from generating content that “damages the unity of the country and social harmony.” According to one study, DeepSeek’s R1 refuses to answer 85% of questions about subjects deemed…

Meta AI is finally coming to the EU, but with limitations

March 20, 2025

Amid an ongoing regulatory battle with European privacy authorities, Meta announced on Thursday that its AI-powered virtual assistant, Meta AI, is finally launching in the European Union. The chatbot-like tool will be rolled out across Meta’s portfolio of social platforms, albeit with a more limited feature set compared to what it offers in its domestic…

Sequoia shutters D.C. office, lets go of policy team

March 19, 2025

Sequoia will shutter its D.C. office as well as part ways with the policy team there at the end of March, TechCrunch has confirmed. The news comes — and is somewhat in contrast — with the other prominent VC firms in Silicon Valley strengthening their ties with Capitol Hill and the new Trump administration. Andreessen…

Group co-led by Fei-Fei Li suggests that AI safety laws should anticipate future risks

March 19, 2025

In a new report, a California-based policy group co-led by Fei-Fei Li, an AI pioneer, suggests that lawmakers should consider AI risks that “have not yet been observed in the world” when crafting AI regulatory policies. The 41-page interim report released on Tuesday comes from the Joint California Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models,…

Judge orders Citibank to release nonprofit funds, rejects EPA’s arguments

March 19, 2025

Google search, Play Store falling foul of Digital Markets Act rules, says EU

March 19, 2025

Google Search and its Play Store app marketplace are suspected of breaching the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), per preliminary findings announced Wednesday by EU Commission enforcers of the bloc’s flagship market contestability law, who have been investigating the company for months. The DMA applies to a handful of tech giants, Alphabet (Google’s parent)…

EPA was ‘arbitrary and capricious’ when it froze nonprofits’ Citibank accounts, judge finds

March 19, 2025

EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and connected devices

March 19, 2025

The European Union has sent Apple preliminary instructions on how it expects the iPhone maker to comply with interoperability provisions in the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), its flagship market contestability reform. According to the Commission, device manufacturers and app developers should be able to access nine iOS connectivity features that were restricted to Apple’s…

Cape opens $99/month beta of its privacy-first mobile plan, inks Proton deal, raises $30M

March 19, 2025

Mobile networks continue to be a major target for cybersecurity breaches, and Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon‘s persistent attacks on multiple carriers are only the latest known examples. The mobile carrier startup Cape is taking a novel approach to addressing the problem: it has built a service it says can provide a more secure, private…

Trump fires FTC commissioners, setting up a legal battle

March 18, 2025

President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, setting up a challenge to a 1935 Supreme Court precedent prohibiting the firing of FTC commissioners for reasons other than “good cause.” The White House terminated commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported. In…

Elon Musk’s DOGE leadership likely violates constitution’s appointments clause, judge says

March 18, 2025

Elon Musk’s role overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency is likely a violation of the United States constitution’s appointments clause, a federal judge wrote Tuesday. Theodore Chuang, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, wrote in an opinion there is more than enough evidence — mostly from statements made by…

FTC removes posts critical of big tech from its website

March 18, 2025

The FTC has removed over 300 blog posts published during the agency’s leadership under former chair Lina Khan, Wired reports. These include posts that are critical of companies like Amazon and Microsoft for their handling of customer data. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment. As FTC chair during the Biden years,…

Apple loses appeal against Germany’s special abuse control for Big Tech

March 18, 2025

Being a staggeringly successful big tech company does have some downsides: Apple has lost an appeal against a special abuse control regime that Germany’s competition watchdog applied to it last year. The iPhone maker can expect to continue to face bespoke competition controls in a major European market, in addition to other similar laws (such…

Google revives talks to acquire Wiz at higher valuation

March 17, 2025

Google’s parent company Alphabet is again in advanced talks to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, a person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The two companies were close to securing a deal at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but the transaction failed to materialize. This time, the price being discussed is higher, the person…

DOGE staffer violated Treasury rules by emailing unencrypted personal data

March 17, 2025

UK’s internet watchdog puts storage and file-sharing services on watch over CSAM

March 17, 2025

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…

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…

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