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Elon Musk remains one of the more powerful and controversial figures in business, science, tech and politics. He played a central role in the early days of the second Trump administration. Now, a new documentary is chronicling Musk's rise to power and embrace of right-wing politics.
Real-time crime-center software is a sometimes overlooked but powerful tool allowing police to aggregate immense amounts of data, significantly expanding their surveillance reach.
WALLA WALLA, Wash. — More than four hundred Washingtonians across 19 locations took to the streets Sunday to demand a statewide moratorium on data centers. In Walla Walla, where a $4.8 billion Amazon data center project is planned, the tension among opponents and local officials was palpable. “Some of you standing here today have been called extremists and communists for standing with us,” Ben Mattice, co-founder of the Walla Walla Anti-Data Center League said to a crowd of about 60. “You are not extremists for wanting transparency. You are not extremists for wanting clean drinking water.” The state, home to 130 data centers, offers tax breaks on labor and new computer equipment for data center operators. Washington ranks 10th in the country for the number of data centers in operation. “It is our job to call on officials … to protect our communities and to, at the very least, put a pause on hyperscale data centers,” Mattice said.
The Labor Department suspended Microsoft from the federal program it uses to help foreign workers stay in the U.S. permanently, and won't process the company's pending applications. The announcement came hours before President Trump was scheduled to give Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Let’s start: - Verizon filed with the FCC, claiming in 2 separate applications that it has 40 million locations with a million lines of copper being shut off, representing about 2–3% of customers with a voice POTS landline or other copper related service.
Verizon submitted multiple applications to shut off the copper networks. But, due to a large public outcry — millions of customers receiving letters from Verizon they are most likely being shut off, the FCC denied the applications — but this is a temporary measure, according to the FCC. How many copper-based lines does Verizon really have? And why are there different filings with differing amounts of locations given to different companies in different states. This shows 2 applications, where Verizon claims in one that 750,000 lines of copper are left and should be shut off, covering 28 million locations, while the other claims 12 million locations have only 277, 000 lines left. We repeat: That’s 40 million locations and about a million customers being shut off to start, and according to Verizon, these represent about 2.2–2.7% of‘legacy’ voice lines. And we note that there may be overlaps. In fact, with the purchase of Frontier, much of which Verizon previously owned most of these properties, there were over 50 different utilities listed in just these 2 proceedings. See the list in Appendix 1 — at the end of this story. But most important: These numbers are a complete fiction created to make it appear there are only a few lines left. And this same Mathematics of Deception is also the operating agenda of AT&T as well one of the primary tricks of FCC Chairman Carr which he has been using for the last decade, as has AT&T and USTelecom, the phone companies’ long standing wireline telephone association, and CTIA, the wireless association of AT&T and Verizon. Hold that thought.
Broadband Breakfast hosted its America250 / Telecom150 event online on Oct. 1. The event marked 250 years of American independence and 150 years since Alexander Graham Bell received his telephone patent in 1876. Its two panels traced the policy choices that shaped American communications: who could develop technologies, bring them to market and compete with established firms. American technological leadership has depended on early public financing of research & development, industrial policy, and regulatory intervention. But it, imperatively, has also depended on what the government chose to leave unregulated: technologies entrepreneurs could build on, markets they could enter and services they could launch with fewer administrative barriers. Laws protecting competition, enforced through antitrust actions, opened discoveries held by dominant firms to other inventors. Open protocols, the shared technical standards of the internet, let entrepreneurs distribute services without a network owner’s permission. In 1996, Congress added Section 230 to the Communications Act, limiting online platforms’ liability for what their users posted and reducing the legal risks of building services around those contributions. Those policies addressed distinct problems, with effects extending beyond their original aims. The panels examined how intervention and restraint shaped market entry. They also examined whether telephone-era access rules offer useful precedents for digital platforms and AI.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced a set of proposals Wednesday intended to expand wireless connectivity across terrestrial networks, satellite systems, and commercial drones. The three proposals, scheduled for a vote at the agency’s Oct. 29 meeting, outline plans to auction 25 megahertz of mid-band spectrum, update direct-to-device rules to eliminate cellular dead zones, and lift restrictions preventing drone operations in the 800 MHz band. The announcement follows a decision by the FCC Space Bureau authorizing SpaceX to operate a 15,000-satellite direct-to-cell system.
As the development of artificial intelligence accelerates, more voices inside and outside the industry are warning that the technology poses major risks to humanity. The new film, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, features interviews with leading AI executives, researchers, as well as critics, who all voice similar concerns. Since the film’s release earlier this year, a number of AI-driven hacks and other incidents have further alarmed people studying this topic.
“I’m really scared, and I’m struggling in my own life to sort of compartmentalize what I learned, what I know, what I understand, what I see happening around me,” says filmmaker Daniel Roher. He began work on The AI Doc as he was about to become a father and wondered what kind of world his children would inherit.
We also speak with Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, a leading AI safety advocate who is featured in the film. He says part of the risk of AI development is that it has the logic of an “arms race,” with companies and countries racing to gain supremacy rather than building guardrails.
“The race changes as soon as the fear of all of us losing becomes bigger than the fear of me losing to you,” he says.
Urgent concerns about losing control of AI have burst into the national conversation in recent weeks, after the OpenAI hack of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face, the high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher, and other AI insiders sharing alarmingly high p(doom) figures — that is, the probability that AI kills us all. These discussions may have only recently broken through to the mainstream public and to policymakers, but they’ve been going on in AI circles in the San Francisco Bay Area for years, and they’ve been gaining intensity. I went to put my ear to the ground at a gathering in San Francisco to discuss these issues. An event listing for a picnic beckoned people in the AI scene to spend a Sunday afternoon talking about recent calls to slow down the technology. It was one of those postcard-perfect days at the 5-acre China Basin park on the San Francisco Bay, overlooking a Giants-Dodgers game at the ballpark. Dony Christie, a community organizer in the AI safety scene, chose this spot not for the scenery but because it’s between the offices of Anthropic and OpenAI. “The hope is, why can't people at the labs just meet at a park in between them and work out a deal?” he said. “I have been concerned about existential risks for a long time. Just like, what do I do to save the world?”
Worries around artificial intelligence cross party lines, with the vast majority of Americans saying the U.S. government should prioritize keeping AI under human control and protecting workers.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that most Americans, 64%, think AI is developing “too fast,” while 27% say its development has been “about right” and only 8% say it’s moving “too slow.”
The risk that powerful AI models could evade human control and hurt humanity, once the stuff of science fiction, has been emerging as a more pressing concern. Even leaders of the companies that are developing frontier AI models are calling for a slowdown so that government regulation can catch up.
SpaceX just won approval to grow its direct-to-device fleet more than 23x, from roughly 650 satellites today to 15,000 by 2035, with peak speeds targeting 150 Mbps.
I finally caught up with Virginia for a profile the other day, a state commonwealth that’s been the center of the BEAD drama and a leader in broadband deployment. Newly minted Virginia Broadband Director Chandler Vaughan took some time last week to catch me up. My experience with Chandler is that he is always upbeat and enthusiastic. He credits the fact that he isn’t in a stale, ‘white bread government job.’ He tells me he thrives in the job because it is ‘entrepreneurial and fast paced.’ “We’re not just another administrator; we can actually see the work happening in communities.
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it will vote on October 29 to bar all Chinese labs from testing electronic devices such as smartphones, cameras and computers for use in the US, widening a previous action targeting Beijing. The FCC said it will prohibit test labs and certification bodies in countries including China that deny reciprocal treatment to US-based test labs. FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in 2025, 82% of electronics were tested in China, which does not have an agreement with the US.
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INSIDE LOOK: END TIMES TALKER — Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is sharpening his warnings about the Antichrist — which he sees as a force that could harm technological development — according to exclusive recordings obtained by Calder. His new comments come as AI races ahead and public concern over its risks grow. Thiel began a closed four-part lecture series in Nashville last week, returning to a theme he explored in San Francisco last year before taking similar talks to Paris and Rome. Nashville is emerging as a hub for the tech right.
Klickitat County stretches for more than 80 miles along the Columbia River, speckled with small towns along the waterfront and within its agricultural lands. It’s here that at least six hyperscale data centers are being proposed. The rural county, best known for wine vineyards and agriculture, has just 24,000 residents. But public records show that data center developers have asked the Bonneville Power Administration and Klickitat Utility District for access to up to 5,655.5 megawatts of power. That’s enough to power up to six million homes or about 15 cities the size of Seattle. Directly surrounding counties — Skamania, Benton, Yakima and Hood River — all unanimously approved data center moratoriums this year, but Klickitat County commissioners did not.
At an event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced features that will let Copilot read the files on a PC, take actions on the machine and run AI models locally instead of in the cloud. New PCs built around an Nvidia chip, including a $2,599 Surface laptop, start shipping Oct. 16.
“Is Ambani the real boss of India?” Elon Musk asked as he questioned why Starlink has yet to launch its satellite internet service in the country. Elon Musk has questioned the influence of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani as SpaceX struggles to launch its Starlink satellite internet service in the country. Musk’s comments, which were posted on X, escalate a dispute over regulatory delays after the Indian government rejected his claims that powerful business interests were blocking its entry. Musk accused on Wednesday unnamed “oligarchs” of blocking Starlink’s launch in India to maintain what he called their “monopolistic chokehold” on the country, without identifying them or providing evidence for his claim. He called the alleged blocking a “crime against the people of India” and argued that Starlink could bring affordable, high-speed internet to people who lack internet access. Hours later, India’s Ministry of Communications pushed back, saying its regulatory framework for satellite communications is “fair and non-discriminatory.” The ministry said in a statement that Starlink and two other licensed satellite operators are all at “broadly the same regulatory stage.” It added that all three companies are undergoing security assessments that must be completed before they can seek spectrum, the radio frequencies that satellites use to send signals.
This is the 20th installment in The TechEd Revolution. Twenty installments into The TechEd Revolution, I find myself returning to the same underlying question from different directions: what kind of university becomes possible as intelligence, data and digital capability become more deeply embedded in institutional life? Across these essays, the vocabulary has evolved, the examples have multiplied and the architecture has come into sharper focus, along with the assumptions that shape it. This milestone feels like a useful place to examine one of those assumptions directly: the constraints around which we have designed higher education, and what happens when some of them begin to move. For the first several years of the current AI revolution, higher education understandably focused on the tools. How does ChatGPT work? What should faculty permit in their courses? How should assessment change? Which enterprise copilots should we deploy? Where should we build a chatbot? Those questions have evolved.
AT&T says the initiative will help support their plan to reach more than 60 million fiber locations by the end of 2030. Three entities — AT&T, Global Infrastructure Partners, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board — have agreed to form a U.S. fiber joint venture that aims to accelerate the expansion of fiber internet across America, the companies announced Tuesday. The joint venture will combine Forged Fiber 37 — a newly created AT&T subsidiary holding network assets, operations, and the fiber build engine recently acquired from Lumen — with Gigapower, which is AT&T’s existing wholesale fiber joint venture with Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). The new entity will operate as a commercial open access wholesale fiber company, according to AT&T, which will hold a 50% ownership stake in the joint venture.
News Network and response teams from Verizon have mobilized to the Gulf Coast ahead of Hurricane Isaias. Here’s how else they’re preparing. By Brad Randall, Broadband Communities Verizon is now offering unlimited domestic calling, texting, and data for customers in the path of Hurricane Isaias. The offer will extend from October 9 through October 15, Verizon says, with relief efforts covering counties in the hurricane’s track across Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. Verizon also says they’re ready to respond with mobile and satellite assets, portable generators, and hands-on support before, during, and after the storm. Hurricane Isaias promises to disrupt an otherwise quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic, threatening landfall along the Florida Panhandle.
/PRNewswire/ -- Grain Management, LLC ("Grain"), a leading global investment firm specializing in digital infrastructure, today announced a definitive agreement under which SpaceX will acquire 100% of Grain's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio. The transaction is subject to FCC approval and other customary closing conditions. The agreement utilizes scarce low-band spectrum to support next-generation satellite direct-to-device ("D2D") services, enabling Starlink Mobile to reach customers from both the ground and space. As Grain approaches its twentieth anniversary, the transaction demonstrates the firm's ability to bring specialized capabilities, capital, and execution to opportunities that can reshape communications at national scale.
A sizable chunk of California’s Democratic establishment, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, greased the skids for the father-son duo of Larry and David Ellison to gain control of a commanding share of America’s culture and news industries.
USA Today is suing OpenAI for more than $250 million over claims that it copied hundreds of thousands of articles to train its AI models.
Lawmakers are considering forcing data centers to shoulder new costs and restrictions while speeding up the energy infrastructure needed to power the AI boom. Why it matters: The bipartisan legislation, unveiled last week, represents the most aggressive response yet from Washington to data centers amid growing backlash over their energy and environmental impacts. Driving the news: The provisions are part of broader Senate legislation aimed at speeding up permitting for energy — but make no mistake: The data center measures are significant and would go far beyond Washington's largely voluntary efforts to date.
A conversation with social entrepreneur Sascha Meinrath about privacy breaches and censorship disguised as AI safeguards, and what can be done about it. Hanae Baruchel: You saw the impact of AI on society coming earlier than most. What did those early days look like? Sascha Meinrath: I started working on AI in 2009, way before it was on most people’s radar — as part of the Open Technology Institute, which I founded. We spent a lot of time working with decision-makers in DC, trying to get them to proactively prepare and ensure consumer privacy. We also spun up the Open Technology Fund, which is now the largest open-source circumvention-technology funder in the United States. I thought I’d gotten away from AI, but I’m right back in it – building a global team of circumvention technologists, researchers and developers at the Center for Agentic AI Research. Baruchel: You say AI models are “snitches.” What do you mean? Meinrath: The AI models are snitches to their corporate owners — and they’re also surveilling and exfiltrating an unknown array of information from users and providing it directly to the intelligence community.
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