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Category: Technology

Data centers ‘dug their own grave,’ says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

Data centers ‘dug their own grave,’ says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

Axios reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered one of the starkest warnings yet from a Republican to the AI industry, saying data center companies “dug their own grave” and deserve the backlash they’re facing after failing to win community support. Why it matters: Abbott is the latest governor to sharply change course on the AI data center boom he once enthusiastically courted, as local opposition becomes a potent political force. Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who last year celebrated a $20 billion Amazon data center investment, imposed new restrictions this week….

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Stanford University’s dirty secrets, according to the student who exposed them

Stanford University’s dirty secrets, according to the student who exposed them

  How does a college freshman take down the president of Stanford University? Theo Baker became the youngest-ever recipient of the George Polk Award after exposing research misconduct tied to former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Now, in his new book How to Rule the World, Baker argues that the story goes far beyond one university leader—and reveals how Stanford became the training ground for Silicon Valley’s most powerful people. Kara and Theo discuss Stanford’s secretive power networks, the university’s no-boundaries…

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How Big Tech steers the public school system in the service of its commercial interests

How Big Tech steers the public school system in the service of its commercial interests

Natasha Singer writes: One humid afternoon in the summer of 2025, representatives from Microsoft were waiting as some 200 teachers trooped into a conference hall in downtown Manhattan. The educators were there for a workshop on the school technology of the moment: artificial intelligence chatbots. The Microsoft team gave a presentation on their Copilot chatbot and asked the teachers to practice using it for tasks like generating emails to parents and customizing lesson plans. Microsoft instructors also screened an A.I….

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The rise of the Nerd Reich

The rise of the Nerd Reich

  In part one of a series on the rise and power of the tech oligarchs, Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz speak up with Gil Duran, author of “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy,” on the origins of techno-authoritarianism, its hallucinatory fascist theorists, the central role of Peter Thiel and his PayPal Mafia, and how they merge with Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

The Nerd Reich in power

The Nerd Reich in power

  In part two of a series on the rise and power of the tech oligarchs, Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz interview Gil Duran, author of “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy,” on how Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the tech oligarchs came to power under Donald Trump, how they control key parts of his administration, and how they created JD Vance, made him vice president and plan to make him president.

Technofascism: This Palantir billionaire’s passion project is criminalizing homelessness

Technofascism: This Palantir billionaire’s passion project is criminalizing homelessness

Mother Jones reports: Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the weapons-tech company Palantir, is also a major force behind the Trump administration’s policy of pushing unhoused people toward incarceration. Lonsdale, a longtime critic of “housing first” policy—which proposes that homelessness be solved by supplying those in need of housing with somewhere to live—argues that fining and arresting people for sleeping in public will push them into mental health treatment. “We’ve made it easier to civilly commit those who are mentally ill and…

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Record corporate spending on the 2026 midterms driven by crypto, AI and betting firms

Record corporate spending on the 2026 midterms driven by crypto, AI and betting firms

Reuters reports: A handful of billionaires and companies are driving corporate spending in U.S. midterm elections this year, and they aren’t the usual power brokers who have sat atop the political food chain in Washington in previous decades. Crypto companies, artificial intelligence firms and online betting have emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 midterm races, driving a record amount of business spending on congressional contests, according to campaign finance watchdogs and interviews with more than a dozen political…

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Author of The Nerd Reich, Gil Durán, on tech fascism, Peter Thiel, and the war on democracy

Author of The Nerd Reich, Gil Durán, on tech fascism, Peter Thiel, and the war on democracy

  A new book by longtime Bay Area journalist Gil Durán investigates “tech fascism” and its mounting influence on U.S. politics. The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy follows the rise of Vice President JD Vance, the former venture capitalist whose “outsider” campaign for Senate was bankrolled by the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, Peter Thiel. Durán traces the ideological lineage of the current Trump administration back from Vance to Thiel and the far-right-wing monarchist…

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How Silicon Valley’s AI accelerationists swept aside safety concerns

How Silicon Valley’s AI accelerationists swept aside safety concerns

Chang Che writes: In January 2025, a new regime of Silicon Valley’s AI maximalists took charge of AI policy whose ethos can be summed up by a Bay Area party slogan: “Accelerate or die.” Established federal guardrails were cast off, and a global consensus was scrapped. The February 2025 AI safety summit in Paris was renamed the “AI Action Summit.” In a speech there, Vice-President J.D. Vance warned against “excessive regulation” of the AI industry and criticized those who partnered…

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GOP warns AI CEOs that data centers are as popular as spent nuclear waste

GOP warns AI CEOs that data centers are as popular as spent nuclear waste

Axios reports: The Senate GOP campaign arm, in a private memo to top AI companies, warns that toxic views of U.S. data centers are killing the party’s chances of holding a vital seat in Ohio. In the memo, obtained by Axios, the National Republican Senatorial Committee says Democrats have made data centers a “centerpiece” of their campaign to defeat Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) — and that it’s working. “If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will…

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Under Trump, the U.S. has ‘completely ceded the AI-governance agenda to China’

Under Trump, the U.S. has ‘completely ceded the AI-governance agenda to China’

Chang Che writes: So many people had signed up for China’s premier artificial-intelligence expo in mid-July — over 200,000 by some estimates — that the ticketing system had crashed. A mob of frustrated AI enthusiasts had formed outside as a result. “How could they do this to us?” one woman cried. “Report the venue! Dial 12345!” a man hollered, evoking the Chinese equivalent of 311. A decade ago, people around the world traveled to Silicon Valley to glimpse the future….

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Flock has a powerful new AI tool for police. WIRED got its code

Flock has a powerful new AI tool for police. WIRED got its code

Wired reports: Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned. Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often…

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In a major shift, Gov. Josh Shapiro restricts data center development in Pennsylvania

In a major shift, Gov. Josh Shapiro restricts data center development in Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a sweeping executive order on Tuesday dramatically restricting data center development in Pennsylvania, marking a major shift from his initial embrace of the increasingly unpopular projects. Shapiro, a first-term Democrat running for reelection and a rumored 2028 presidential contender, had been an early champion of data center development in the state, including a $20 billion commitment from Amazon to build at least two data centers in Bucks and Luzerne Counties. Now he…

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How Israel is trying to shape what AI tells users about Gaza

How Israel is trying to shape what AI tells users about Gaza

Politico Influence reports: Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum. — French PR firm Havas Media, which runs the lion’s share of Israel’s Foreign Agents Registration Act-registered foreign influence work in the U.S., appears to have stood up an “institute” aimed at feeding LLMs positive information about Israel via one of its subcontractors, boutique ad agency Piro, Inc. — In a…

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Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI

Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI

Ars Technica reports: For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon. On Monday, 404 Media revealed…

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China wants to shape what the world’s AI knows

China wants to shape what the world’s AI knows

The New York Times reports: When ChatGPT was still a new technology, researchers in Beijing tested how well it handled Chinese-language questions. Their response to its results was telling. The chatbot described the former N.B.A. star Yao Ming as the first Chinese woman to play professional basketball in the United States. It confused two classic works of Chinese literature, “Journey to the West” and “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which were written two centuries apart. The researchers at the Beijing…

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