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With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

Sophia Goodfriend reports: On Dec. 10, Israeli military officials, weapons manufacturers, and American venture capitalists gathered at Tel Aviv University for the first ever DefenseTech Summit. The two day affair featured panels on “The Future of Global Conflict,” “Challenges of Iron Swords” (the IDF’s name for the war in Gaza) and “Exploring Innovation in Drone Technology.” Representatives from Palantir, Sequoia Capital, and Elbit shared the stage with the Director General of the IDF and the head of LOTEM, the army…

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Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Avi Steinberg writes: I recently entered an Israeli consulate and submitted papers to formally renounce my citizenship. It was an unseasonably warm fall day and office workers on break were lounging by the pond in Boston Common. The night before had seen a particularly gruesome series of aerial attacks by Israel on refugee tent camps in Gaza. Even as Palestinians were still counting bodies or, in many cases, collecting what remained of loved ones, the suburban woman in front of…

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In a war between tech bros and core MAGA, the winner is easy to spot

In a war between tech bros and core MAGA, the winner is easy to spot

Adam Lashinsky writes: The spiteful bickering in recent days between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley enablers and his MAGA acolytes is an unexpected reminder of how quickly the folks around the president-elect can put everything to the side while trying to hurt one another. Apparently preferring to sling insults rather than enjoy Christmas with their families, Trump’s anti-immigrant supporters spent much of the last week battling on X with his new tech-industry pals over the arcane issue of limited-term visas for…

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MAGA influencer Laura Loomer: Trump world is afraid to challenge ‘king of the world’ Musk

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer: Trump world is afraid to challenge ‘king of the world’ Musk

Mediate reports: Right wing MAGA influencer Laura Loomer told host Eric Bolling on Monday that Donald Trump insider and billionaire Elon Musk has made “junkies” of the right with his massive donor money and control of X, and suggested that Trump world is afraid to cross him. Loomer is one of the latest and most vocal among MAGA influencers to join in scorched earth internal warfare over the issue of H-1B guest worker visas. She joins Trump insider Steve Bannon…

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MAGA civil war is spiraling out of control and insiders fear it’s just the beginning

MAGA civil war is spiraling out of control and insiders fear it’s just the beginning

The Daily Beast reports: The MAGA Civil War has already rendered the Republican Party ungovernable, according to former GOP lawmakers who think the “s—show” is going to continue spiraling out of control. The party is already acrimoniously split between the tech billionaires like Elon Musk, who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s re-election, and the original MAGA grassroots who have been loyal to Trump since 2016. To make matters worse, the tiny Republican majority in the House means there is absolutely no…

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Jimmy Carter might have saved the climate, if the country had let him try

Jimmy Carter might have saved the climate, if the country had let him try

Dave Levitan writes: It’s an old and well-worn story, of course. On June 20, 1979, President Jimmy Carter stood in front of 32 newly installed solar panels on the White House roof, and announced a set of recommendations he sent to Congress regarding a grand new solar strategy. “Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we’re taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our…

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Australia banned kids from social media. Now it has advice for the U.S.

Australia banned kids from social media. Now it has advice for the U.S.

Politico reports: As countries around the world race to counter the tech industry’s ever-expanding influence, one issue in particular has become a major rallying cry: protecting children online. And Australia just put itself out front. In late November, Australia became the first country in the world to ban minors under age 16 from social media. Oddly enough, it’s an American who will help enforce the unprecedented legislation: Julie Inman Grant, who has served as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner since 2017. The…

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Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Andrew Prokop writes: A bitter public feud split the MAGA movement over the holidays, as supporters of high-skilled legal immigration like Elon Musk argued vociferously (and sometimes profanely) with the right’s immigration critics over the topic of H-1B visas. Musk, like many tech executives, strongly supports that program, which lets companies bring skilled foreign workers to the US for specific jobs — indeed, Musk said he once had such a visa himself. Critics on the right have long argued that it suppresses wages…

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How much do Democrats need to change?

How much do Democrats need to change?

Peter Slevin writes: The mood among Democrats on a December morning in the Wisconsin state capitol was celebratory. Ten Assembly candidates—among them a school administrator, a tavern owner, an accountant, and a county politician—had flipped Republican seats after the state Supreme Court threw out a heavily gerrymandered map. “I am super excited. Who else is super excited?” Representative Lisa Subeck, the caucus chair, said. Some of the newly elected spoke about what they hope to deliver: affordable housing, broadband, clean…

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Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Reuters reports: The jailed leader of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group’s decades-old insurgency. Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key…

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Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

The New York Times reports: Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him. As he hunkered inside a Hezbollah fortress 40 feet underground on Sept. 27, his aides urged him to go to a safer location. Mr. Nasrallah brushed it off, according to intelligence collected by Israel and shared later with Western allies. In his view, Israel had no interest in a full-scale war. What he did not realize was that Israeli…

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Facebook and Instagram to unleash AI-generated ‘users’ no one asked for

Facebook and Instagram to unleash AI-generated ‘users’ no one asked for

Rolling Stone reports: Since burning through tens of billions of dollars on its flop “metaverse” concept and laying off thousands in the aftermath of that gamble, tech giant Meta has strained to reinvent itself as a company poised to capitalize on the overhyped AI revolution. Last year, for example, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled animated AI chatbots modeled as alter egos of celebrities including Snoop Dogg, MrBeast, Paris Hilton, and Kendall Jenner. But licensing the voices and likenesses of famous people did little to endear Meta to the younger demographics it wants to turn…

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Large Language Models don’t actually model human language

Large Language Models don’t actually model human language

The Register reports: In May, Sam Altman, CEO of $80-billion-or-so OpenAI, seemed unconcerned about how much it would cost to achieve the company’s stated goal. “Whether we burn $500 million a year or $5 billion – or $50 billion a year – I don’t care,” he told students at Stanford University. “As long as we can figure out a way to pay the bills, we’re making artificial general intelligence. It’s going to be expensive.” Statements like this have become commonplace…

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An archeological revolution is transforming our image of human freedoms

An archeological revolution is transforming our image of human freedoms

David Wengrow writes: Contemporary historians tell us that, by the start of the Common Era, approximately three-quarters of the world’s population were living in just four empires (we’ve all heard of the Romans and the Han; fewer of us, perhaps, of the Parthians and Kushans). Just think about this for a minute. If true, then it means that the great majority of people who ever existed were born, lived and died under imperial rule. Such claims are hardly original, but…

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