Surfing the Broadband Bit Stream

Anthropic leaders flew to Washington, DC, to meet with White House officials on Monday. After high-level talks, they’re still split on the risk Claude Fable 5 presents.

Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified by the Financial Times, that OpenAI lost around $38.5 billion in 2025, as well as other crucial details about the financial condition of the company. 

Due to the seriousness of this story, I am not going to do very much editorializing, as the numbers speak for themselves.

One’s a narcissist, the other’s a socialist, but there’s room for all in this improbable coming together.

The case for having the government take co-ownership of AI—make that the *cases* for having the government take co-ownership of AI—grow louder.

I had to pluralize “case” since President Trump’s perspective on the virtues of government co-ownership are distinct from Bernie Sanders’s and those of his fellow democratic socialists (like, e.g., me).

Last week, Trump returned to the topic, saying the White House would soon host a meeting with a dozen or so top AI executives to discuss the industry’s future. For Trump, this isn’t breaking new ground. He’s already made deals to take partial government ownership of a host of corporations: U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse, and roughly 15 companies (where some deals are still in progress) in the fields of rare earth mining or quantum computing.

The Trump administration has approved Paramount’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. On Friday, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said it had seen no evidence that the media megamerger would harm consumers, writing instead that the deal would “increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem.”

If completed, the merger would consolidate two major movie studios, two top streaming services, and news outlets CNN and CBS News — all under the control of billionaire David Ellison, a vocal supporter of President Trump.

Reconnecting with voters is going to be extremely difficult for the Brahmin Left.

For three decades, social democracy was the most successful product of a working-class movement that had long contained both revolutionary and reformist elements. Between 1946 and 1973, United States GDP grew by 3.8% annually, and by 2.4% on a per-capita basis. Unemployment averaged 4.8%, and real median family incomes rose at a rate of 2.8% per year, more than doubling over the time period. What’s more, this growth was stronger at the bottom and relatively weaker at the top, meaning income inequality fell substantially.

The Keynesian economic consensus in Western industrial democracies during this period produced strong economic growth, low unemployment, rapidly rising living standards, and government action to provide protection and security for the average citizen.

Reflecting these positive developments, the social democratic-oriented Democratic Party received high levels of electoral support. In the six elections between 1932 and 1948, Democratic presidential support averaged 55%. After the liberal Republican Dwight Eisenhower won two terms in the 1950s, the Democrats again averaged 55% presidential support in 1960 and 1964. And during almost all of this period, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

But as the 1970s dawned, three factors converged and reinforced one another to undermine social democracy—and eventually lead to its death. First, the social democratic economic model lost effectiveness; second, the social democratic base got smaller; and third, the social democratic influence within the Left weakened.

Let’s start with the economic model. With the end of the post-war Bretton Woods system and the OPEC oil price shock of 1973, inflationary pressures that had been building up inside the U.S. and other advanced countries could no longer be contained, producing high inflation rates and high unemployment, or “stagflation.” Social democrats failed to develop an alternative to or extension of the postwar Keynesian system, leading to the end of the Keynesian consensus.

A conservative counter-revolution in economic thinking filled the vacuum. Conservatives, of course, had never been happy with the Keynesian consensus, as they were ideologically opposed to the idea that the unregulated market contained intrinsic flaws that only the government could correct. So when the Keynesian system wobbled, they seized the opportunity to reinstate their views and discredit the government’s role.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Alpha School, an AI-powered private school chain that has students complete core academics in two hours a day, plans to open a campus in Kirkland this fall and will run summer programs on Microsoft's Redmond campus.

The layoffs hit software developers, quality-assurance testers, project managers, business analysts and others across Expeditors' offices in downtown Seattle, Bellevue, Lynnwood and Federal Way, according to laid-off employees and others with knowledge of the situation.

China is “strongly dissatisfied” with a U.S. move to add several large Chinese companies to the Pentagon’s list of firms it says are aiding China’s military, the commerce ministry said on Saturday.

The Pentagon added a slew of Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba, Baidu and BYD, to a list of entities it believes have aided China's military.

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta has 'made mistakes' during its AI-driven workforce overhaul, warning of challenges tied to the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

Zuckerberg made the remarks in an internal memo to employees, according to Reuters, which reported that the Meta chief warned of challenges associated with the rapid development of AI technology.

Meta has poured billions of dollars into AI infrastructure and tools as it competes with OpenAI, Google and Microsoft for dominance in the emerging technology.

The company has also explored ways to use AI agents to perform tasks currently handled by employees.

Communications Daily reports...

NTIA sees the current BEAD program as the “last broadband subsidy program” the U.S. will need, said David Brodian, the agency's chief counsel, during an FCBA webinar Thursday. Brodian’s comments were at odds with those from other officials who questioned whether the current program will lead to universal coverage (see 2606110064).

In late May 2026, Reuters reported that SpaceX had renegotiated the price the Pentagon is paying for getting Starlink connectivity on LUCAS one-way attack drones during the Iran campaign. Connectivity that had been costing about $5,000 per terminal at the land/mobility tier was reclassified by SpaceX as aviation-tier service, and increased the price to approximately $25,000 per terminal. The Pentagon agreed to the increase while strikes against Iran were ongoing.

As any modern technologist is well aware, LUCAS is the US’ Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, a one-way attack drone built by SpektreWorks and modeled on the Iranian Shahed-136. It saw combat in February 2026, during Operation Epic Fury against Iranian drone and missile infrastructure. The LUCAS platform's unit cost runs approximately $30,000 to $35,000. Its entire value proposition is being cheap enough to use in quantity against targets that would otherwise require Tomahawks at $1.3M per shot.

Most of the cloud applications that businesses have added over the last decade was designed around the same basic assumption, that bandwidth is for consuming and not for creating. You received email, streamed video, loaded web applications. The data flowed toward you.

That assumption shaped how commercial internet infrastructure was built and sold across the country, including here in Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and Rhode Island. A business internet plan promising 500 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up seemed reasonable. The ratio made sense for the workflows it was serving.

What can Seattle learn from Cleveland's fall and comeback? GeekWire's John Cook and Seattle angel investor Charles Fitzgerald spent several days in Cleveland, talking with civic, business and political leaders — including the city's mayor and the governor of Ohio — to find out.

In April, for the first time, an Earth observation satellite has found what it was looking for — on its own, without human analysts on the ground. The milestone, which occurred in April, marks the first reported use of a vision-language model in orbit, and offers a glimpse of how AI could fundamentally change what space-based sensors are capable of — and how much they’re worth.

Typically, satellites download large chunks of data to analysts on the Earth below, who use machine learning algorithms or their own eyes to figure out what’s going on. But onboard YAM-9, a spacecraft built by space infrastructure company Loft Orbital, a software package built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory identified areas of interest in response to natural language queries.

SpaceX won’t get easy access to billions of dollars from passive investors. 

SpaceX has requested unusually swift entry into several leading stock market indexes as a condition of its historic stock market debut. But the S&P 500 stock market index representing many of the largest profitable US companies has surprised market analysts by refusing to bend the rules for Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

The June 4 decision by S&P Dow Jones Indices—the company that creates and manages stock market indexes such as the S&P 500—means that SpaceX will not gain accelerated access to potentially billions more dollars through passive investment funds that automatically purchase shares of S&P 500 companies. Modifying the rules in response to SpaceX’s request could have also allowed leading AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic to gain entry not long after their own expected initial public offerings (IPOs). That possibility has now been shuttered.

The Trump administration has approved media conglomerate Paramount’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros., one year after Paramount and Skydance Media signed a similar merger that placed Paramount’s movie studio, streaming service and broadcast network CBS under the control of the multibillionaire Ellison family, founders of Skydance and close allies of Donald Trump.

The Warner Bros. merger, if completed, would bring an even larger slice of the industry’s market share into Ellison control. It’s been contested for months as a likely violation of antitrust laws amid a wider trend of corporate consolidation in the media and entertainment industry.

“This has been one of the most shallow and corrupt merger review processes we’ve ever seen,” says Craig Aaron, co-CEO of the advocacy organizations Free Press and Free Press Action (not to be confused with Paramount Skydance’s conservative news outlet The Free Press), about the Justice Department’s greenlighting of the merger.

New York’s ConnectALL is sending $3.8M to expand affordable broadband to 21,575 mostly rural Genesee County locations via a county-tower fixed wireless network, with plans as low as $25/month plus digital literacy help.

The awards include $3.8 million from the federal Municipal Infrastructure Program, nearly $4 million from the state’s Connectivity Innovation Awards, and almost $600,000 from the Regional and Local Assistance Program, which will help bring affordable internet to low-income and rural communities, expand broadband in Genesee County, and assist local governments in improving connectivity.

Today, before getting to the full round-up of news, I’m going to take a step back and try to focus on the spiritual dimensions behind our political economy, since all rules are fundamentally oriented around how any society sees the human soul. And the two key characters I’ll look at are Elon Musk and Pope Leo XIV. Because Musk, more than anyone else, represents the dominant institutional set-up for how our societies operate, while the Pope, with his social justice teachings, represents the older set of traditions we have tossed aside, but know are true.

Elon Musk is a trans-humanist, the ultimate expression of the Chicago School philosophy. The Pope offers a different vision about how limits make us human. 

Musk is compelling because he offers a vision, a temptation really, of a world in which we can become God-like. He likes to analogize himself to “Iron Man,” the Marvel character who wears a sci-fi magical set of armor to do battle. That is exactly what he peddles - fiction about becoming more than human.

Musk is part of a group in Silicon Valley who believe in a philosophy of ‘trans-humanism,’ or the belief that we can use technology to transcend human limits. 

A few weeks ago, Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native named Robert Francis Prevost, offered a different vision of the future. The first American-born Pope, Prevost’s career is rooted in missionary work in Peru, the spiritual opposite of seeking immense wealth. As Pope, he issued what is called an “encyclical,” an official Church statement to denote something of meaningful social and religious significance. Previous encyclicals tackled problems like industrialization, this one was titled “On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” The document is the result of an institutional track that has nothing to do with financial markets, but a decade-long discussion in and around the church on digital platforms.

The Pope represents something odd in modern American life, an explicit moral force completely outside of the realm of finance. This document is the anti-Musk argument.

ArchAstro just emerged from stealth with an artificial intelligence network designed to automate complex, cross-company software deployments and integrations.

Explore the Broadband in America Report: Cable Focus — May 2026 edition analyzing cable broadband coverage trends through FCC BDC & Fabric Version 7

SpaceX’s initial public offering is likely to boost the company’s valuation to $1.77 trillion, promote CEO Elon Musk to trillionaire status — and benefit the Seattle area’s space community as well.

The $75 billion IPO, which will add SpaceX to the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday, is expected to be the biggest initial public offering in history. It’ll provide more capital for expanding SpaceX’s satellite networks and putting the company’s Starship mega-rocket into operation. Shareholders, including some of the hundreds of SpaceX employees in the Seattle area, could get a golden opportunity to cash in.

Pacific Northwest ventures look forward to taking advantage of what SpaceX and Starship will have to offer in the post-IPO space age.

A coalition of state attorneys general has reportedly opened an investigation into OpenAI.

It's not clear which states are involved, but they're asking about everything from OpenAI's ad policies to its handling of health data.

The company was served with a subpoena from New York’s attorney general on Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal. That subpoena sought documents related to a broad range of topics including the company’s advertising, user engagement and retention, model sycophancy, handling of consumer data and health data, and treatment of minors and seniors.

As the leaked documents demonstrate, the abundance project is orchestrated by Silicon Valley elites—they even use the word “elite” by choice.

According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: “Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.” Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance.

Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says “the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.”

This sentiment is laid out in substantial detail, filling 31 pages across two separate documents obtained by the Prospect. In an email exchange, Rosen confirmed the documents’ legitimacy.

I'm borrowing the recap from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society on the following. It you want more information, I suggest reading the original letter:

Representative April McClain Delaney (D-MD-06) led a letter with her House colleagues demanding that the Department of Commerce explain its continued withholding of appropriated funds that Congress explicitly authorized under its historic $65 billion-dollar internet initiative known as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. 

Prior to serving as a Member of Congress, Rep. McClain Delaney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Deputy Administrator at NTIA under the Biden-Harris Administration and helped build and launch the national BEAD program.