WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2026 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has taken its first formal step toward reopening the Digital Equity Act’s competitive grant program.

NTIA published a notice Tuesday opening a 60-day public comment period on the information collection and application requirements it plans to use for a new round of funding. The notice begins the federal paperwork process needed before NTIA can accept applications under the revived program.

The notice says NTIA will use the information from applicants to review their proposed projects and budgets. Affected applicants include nonprofits, community anchor institutions, educational agencies, workforce-development entities, Tribal entities, state and local governmental entities, and other eligible organizations or partnerships.

The move comes as the Commerce Department works toward its previously announced goal of reopening the program by December.

The EU AI Act's transparency rules went live three weeks ago while everyone was reading about the delay. Here's the 30-minute audit that tells you if you're exposed.

I run a media company where AI touches every one of our seven newsletters, and I'll admit something: when the EU agreed in May to push the AI Act's high-risk rules to 2027 and 2028, I mentally filed the whole thing under "future Mark's problem." I suspect half of corporate America did the same.

Then I actually read what got delayed. The high-risk rules moved. The transparency rules in Article 50 — the ones that govern chatbots, AI-generated images, and AI-written content — took effect on August 2, 2026. Three weeks ago. The only piece that got a reprieve is machine-readable watermarking for older systems, and that grace period ends December 2. I nearly missed a media-labeling law while running a media company. That's the kind of thing that keeps compliance officers young.

Find every place AI talks to your customers before a regulator does.

For four and a half days in July, an internal, frontier OpenAI model escaped a sandboxed cybersecurity evaluation and ran an autonomous intrusion campaign against Hugging Face, a company that hosts AI datasets and models. The rogue model’s aim wasn’t corporate sabotage: It was trying to steal the answer key for a cybersecurity test that OpenAI researchers were asking the model to complete.

Ironically, Hugging Face’s defensive operation was hampered by OpenAI’s commercial models refusing to assist because of cybersecurity guardrails, forcing Hugging Face to turn to open source models running on its local hardware to fend off and analyze the attack.

But most alarmingly, OpenAI did not know its internal model was responsible until Hugging Face disclosed the breach on July 16. Five days later, OpenAI acknowledged and owned it publicly, and has been responding actively since. However, as more details of this incident emerge, the reality it presents is unprecedented and urgent. 

The Paramount-Warner Bros. deal is going badly — for the billionaires.

To the chagrin of CEO David Ellison and Paramount leadership, bribery and bootlicking get you only so far in 2026. While these underhanded tactics may have been enough to woo the Trump administration, the deeply unpopular mega-merger is now hitting major roadblocks. 

A dozen state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, are suing to block the deal on antitrust grounds, with a trial set to begin next March. Starting Sept. 30, Paramount will have to pay WBD shareholders $7 million for every day the deal is delayed. (That adds up to a $650 million “ticking fee” per quarter.)

The highly leveraged merger already rests on shaky foreign financing and the declining wealth of David’s daddy, Larry Ellison, the deal’s main backer. And every week brings even more evidence the merger is a job killer designed to warp news coverage and undermine democracy.

The Illinois broadband office can breathe a sigh of relief. I think. Its BEAD final proposal was… finally… approved.

A month after California’s BEAD approval, and an astonishing 11+ months since the proposal was submitted, Illinois and the NTIA see

Twelve state attorneys general, the directors’ and crew unions, the theater owners, and much of the industry disagree on almost everything in the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery case. They agree on one thing: They would all prefer a settlement. The Directors Guild and IATSE have jointly urged Attorney General Rob Bonta and David Ellison to pursue a negotiated resolution. The theater owners group, Cinema United, which opposed the merger, now seeks a settlement with enforceable protections. The three largest exhibitors have endorsed the deal after receiving commitments on theatrical output and release windows. Political leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, likely successor Xavier Becerra and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, have joined in.

I understand the impulse. I share it. No one in this industry benefits from another year of limbo. Not Warner Bros. Discovery, not Paramount, and certainly not the writers, directors, crews, vendors and communities whose livelihoods depend on production that companies in limbo may not greenlight.

The $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery could cause thousands of workers to lose their jobs, according to new research.

August 24, 2026 - The proposed intervenors support Disney’s challenge but argue the company’s corporate interests may not always align with the interests of viewers.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott once courted tech companies to build data centers in his state, but now he’s pivoting as the backlash comes for Republicans.

Pat Garofalo joins The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi to discuss why data centers have become bad policy and bad politics.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta canceled his office's Monday settlement meeting with Paramount, accusing the studio of leaking details and acting in bad faith.

“My office was scheduled to meet with Paramount on Monday, Aug. 24. I have pulled down this meeting. As I’ve said before, generally for all cases, I prefer to resolve disputes in the boardroom, not the courtroom,” Bonta said in a statement to TheWrap. “As I’ve also said, if the opposing party in litigation wants to meet in good faith to make a sincere effort to resolve the case, we’ll meet.”

“My office had a meeting with Paramount on Friday. Paramount did not maintain the confidentiality of that meeting. Not only did Paramount leak the alleged substance of settlement discussions, but they misrepresented these discussions, demonstrating a lack of good faith,” he continued. “As soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely, my office is happy to meet again.”

This week the backlash against data centers, especially hyperscalers to power frontier AI models, intensified.

Things are so bad that the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and left-leaning New York Times both are devoting front page coverage to the issue. And the backlash against data is bipartisan. People on both the right and the left are organizing to voice their opposition to data centers in their communities.

WSJ reads:

Podcast: Powering Politics: A Conversation with Astra Taylor, Robinson Meyer, and Nicholas Rabb Publisher: Boston Review Date: August 17, 2026

Speakers: Robinson Meyer — founding executive editor, Heatmap News, and contributing opinion writer, The New York Times; Nicholas Rabb — organizer, No Data Center Monterey Park, and postdoctoral researcher, Eco-STEM Project, California State University, Los Angeles; Astra Taylor — writer, activist, and documentarian

Moderator: Lily Hu — Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Yale University, and contributing editor, Boston Review

This Boston Review panel examined the rapidly growing movement against hyperscale AI data centers, its unusual ideological breadth, and its political implications ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The discussion connected local concerns about electricity, water, pollution, noise, secrecy, and land use with broader opposition to AI, corporate power, surveillance, and the loss of democratic control. The panelists agreed that the backlash creates a significant organizing opportunity, but cautioned that it will not automatically produce a coherent progressive movement.

Good morning!

In the United States, various jurisdictions are pressing “pause” on the development of new data centers, and on July 14, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order establishing the first statewide moratorium on hyperscale facilities. Many of these moratoria are designed to enable more study on the effects of data centers to the environment, electrical grid and water supply, and of various other impacts to local and regional economies.

Tech Policy Press contributing editor Dean Jackson and Tim Bernard, a tech policy analyst and writer who has contributed frequently to the site, collect policy choices local governments can weigh while a data center moratorium is in effect, drawing on 17 publicly available resources from governments, researchers, and advocacy organizations. It organizes the options into categories spanning transparency, zoning, power and water use, taxation and community benefit agreements, labor protections, and enforcement.

The Walt Disney Company is suing the FCC, alleging a violation of First Amendment rights by challenges to its ABC broadcast licenses. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez.

ABC and Disney's decision to sue the Federal Communications Commission over what the companies allege is retaliation for the network's news coverage and programming highlights the importance of protecting the First Amendment, said FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's lone Democrat, in an interview with Morning Edition on Wednesday.

"Disney has found its courage, and it is pushing back," Gomez told NPR's Leila Fadel. "And this is good. It's good for the First Amendment. It's good for the public, and it's good for broadcasters in general."

Governor Josh Stein argued the FCC should exercise its licensing authority in a way that protects press freedom under the First Amendment.

The Walt Disney Company and its broadcast network ABC has gained another political ally in its ongoing fight with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its eight local television broadcast licenses.

Last week, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein sent a letter to the FCC supporting Raleigh-Durham’s local ABC station WTVD (Channel 11), one of eight broadcast outlets directly owned by Disney.

In June, a sharp-suited Austrian executive from a global surveillance company told a prospective client that he could “go to prison” for organizing the deal they were discussing. But the conversation did not end there.

The executive, Guenther Rudolph, was seated at a booth at ISS World in Prague, a secretive trade fair for police and intelligence agencies and advanced surveillance technology companies. Rudolph went on to explain how his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software capable of pinpointing any person in the world. The potential buyer? A private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protesters. “I think we’re the only one who can deliver,” Rudolph said.

Nicholas Johnson served as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman from 1966 to 1973. The FCC regulates U.S. interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable.

Appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson, Nicholas Johnson was referred to as the “hippie” commissioner, primarily because he was considered a McLuhanist. It’s hard to imagine someone in the stodgy, bureaucratic role of FCC chairman being a McLuhan enthusiast.

In Radical Software (1970), without mentioning McLuhan directly, it is quite clear to whom he is referring:

"Only by treating technology as ecology can we cure the split between ourselves and our extensions."

Johnson later shortened the statement to “the separation of content and conduit,” which focused the function of the FCC on the delivery of content with minimal involvement in the content itself. He was a forward thinker like McLuhan, and his attitude is echoed in Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This section includes the “26 words that saved the Internet.” Section 230 is often referred to as “the 26 words that saved the Internet.”

Actor Mark Ruffalo has been instrumental in getting people to finally care about media consolidation in the age of dipshit authoritarianism.

Let's be clear about something.

Large media consolidation is always harmful. There is no real debate. There's 50 years of indisputable evidence that massive U.S. media mergers always result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, and shittier overall product as freshly-fused companies force workers and customers to pay off deal debt.

That's been particularly true of Time Warner and Warner Brothers, which has been bought and sold numerous times over the last quarter century, with every deal more pointless and harmful than the last. AT&T's acquisition of the company was a particularly-turdish master class in dysfunction, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs and no shortage of bad blood and cancelled projects.

Silicon Valley is increasingly embracing the narrative that the US is in an existential battle for technological dominance with China. The story is a convenient shield against efforts to rein in the tech industry’s power.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is open to coming to the negotiating table as early as this week, but only if Paramount Skydance agrees to “stop leaking and stop misrepresenting through their leaks” to the press, he said in an exclusive interview with TheWrap on Monday.

Bonta spoke to TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi and Sharon Waxman after abruptly canceling his scheduled mediation session with Paramount. When asked if talks could restart this week, he said: “It’s up to them.”

He went on: “They’ve got to figure out where the leaks are and shut them down. And once they figure that out, we’ll be happy to talk with them. I don’t know how long it’ll take them to figure it out and to fix it, but when they do, we’re ready.”

While he remains open to “good faith” discussions, Bonta said that specific timing around rescheduled talks depends on Ellison and Paramount.

The California AG tells TheWrap he's open to a carve out of a "significant portion" of the combined company's 50 basic channels.

In an exclusive interview with TheWrap's @Lmanfredi7, and @sharonwaxman, Bonta explains why he canceled Monday’s mediation session and what it would take to get back to the negotiating table.

There was an announcement on SpaceX’s first-ever earnings call that got the attention of the wireless industry. SpaceX said on the call that StarLink would enter the terrestrial cellular business by building a large number of cell sites provisioned with satellite backhaul. The company would leverage the power of its next-generation V3 satellites along with an increasingly larger fleet of satellites to provide the backhaul to feed cell sites.

It’s impossible to know if the company is serious about this. Elon Musk has always made exaggerated claims of what he will be doing in the future, and many of his claims never came to fruition. On the same call, Elon also said that the company plans to build factories on the moon.

There are a number of obstacles that stand in the way of SpaceX pulling this off. 

MPR reports…

A proposal to turn the defunct Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant, one of the few remaining industrial sites in downtown Minneapolis, into a data center has become a contentious and defining issue in the neighborhood.

The Minnesota Design Center and the North Loop Neighborhood Association on Saturday reviewed three sessions of community input collected at a series of workshops last week from more than a thousand Minneapolis residents.

And the first public presentation about the developer’s plans for the site met strong public opposition Wednesday night. Hundreds of residents spilled out the doors of the North Loop Neighborhood Association’s meeting room, across the street from the plant.

On 14 August 2026, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a broadband report indicating that it will abandon the gigabit‑speed goal that had been set during the previous administration. The goal, set in 2024, had aimed for nationwide gigabit (1000 Mbps) download and half‑gigabit (500 Mbps) upload speeds.

In the report, the FCC explained that ‘At present, it is impossible to predict long‑term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.’ The commission argued that this uncertainty makes a long‑term national speed target untenable.