Big tech companies tend to make a lot of enemies — but there are none more powerful than the US government. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta are regularly called in front of Congress to fend off monopoly accusations — and lawmakers bring up bills to rein in the companies just as often. The Federal Trade Commission has taken a particularly central role, leading a lawsuit to sever Facebook and Instagram while blocking new acquisitions for Oculus and the company’s virtual reality wing. Like it or not, these regulatory fights will play a huge role in deciding the future of tech — and neither side is playing nice.
Trump Media announced the plan earlier this month for paid, real-time access to its most influential accounts. Today the API went live, with subscriptions as high as $100,000 per month. Other platforms offer similar API services, but none of those count the sitting US president as its most influential user and its largest shareholder.
The Wall Street Journal gets into the “staggering” fundraising efforts launched by President Donald Trump and his team, including the tech giants making multimillion-dollar donations:
SoftBank donated $50 million toward Trump’s presidential library. Apple cut a check for around $25 million toward his White House ballroom project, while Microsoft gave around $10 million and Amazon chipped in around $5 million, according to people familiar with the contributions. Meta Platforms recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.
[The Wall Street Journal]
A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”
[The New York Review of Books]
The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.
[U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation]
Having surpassed the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the bloc, both services will be required to clamp down on illegal and harmful content per the EU’s strict DSA rules. Roblox and ChatGPT search will have to comply as soon as August, per Bloomberg’s sources.
Correction: Bloomberg corrected its story to say”ChatGPT search,“ not ChatGPT in general.
In the ongoing battle for control of the messaging platform that claims over 1 billion active users, Durov has been charged with facilitating terrorism by failing to remove information “actively used by Ukrainian special services, terrorist organizations and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate sabotage and terrorist acts, mass killings and cyber fraud activities” in Russia, according to the New York Times. Durov responded like Durov.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s unusual move demanding ABC renew its broadcast licenses early is part of a “broader pattern” in a “campaign to punish speech disfavored by the Trump administration,” over a dozen bipartisan former high-ranking officials charge. Several of them recently warned Carr was abusing the News Distortion Policy.
The company has signed a voluntary code to comply with obligations under the EU’s AI Act to mark and label AI-generated content that takes effect on August 2nd. Meta unironically said it wants to help prevent “a growing array of different labels and disclosures” from confusing people and regulators, after launching its own bespoke system this month.
Altana CEO Evan Smith on the new normal of global trade.
Judge Leo Sorokin struck down the fees in June. The White House appealed, but the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block the ruling while the government pursues its appeal. The three-judge panel said the administration didn’t provide convincing evidence that it was likely to succeed in its efforts.
President Donald Trump threatened a “substantial” tariff on Europe for what he claimed were “discriminatory” fines against US tech companies over alleged competition violations, most recently involving Google. While Trump claimed Europe’s high fines started during the Biden administration, some early fines were also imposed during Trump’s first term.
Brendan Carr’s FCC keeps approving the very drones it was supposed to ban. How did it go so wrong?
That was the message to Chinese companies from a confidant of leader Xi Jinping, who’s heading up domestic efforts to overcome Nvidia’s stranglehold on cutting-edge AI chips. Go read this report from the Wall Street Journal that lays out the global stakes and the likelihood that China can repeat the playbook that saw it upending (and then dominating) industries like drones, EVs, display panels, solar, batteries… you get the idea.
With previous import taxes struck down by the courts or set to expire, the Trump administration announced a new set of tariffs ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners, including the EU. This time around, the administration is accusing dozens of countries of failing to enforce bans on forced labor as a justification.
Quoted by the New York Times, Peter Harell says the small difference between tariffs gives away the labor investigation as a smokescreen, and that, shockingly, “It’s not really about forced labor.”
The conservative backlash is about jobs, the environment, quality of life — and China.
The push to solve issues, including the soaring energy demands of AI data centers, using AI, revealed “more than $5 billion in Federal commitments” across 278 awards and 342 institutions in its list of awards.
Big tech companies like Microsoft and Google have announced millions in compute and AI credits for the effort, but this WSJ report says the administration could give political appointees more power over grants, while prioritizing fellowships and awards for individuals could hurt large universities reliant on federal research funding.
[Nextgov.com]
The former Federal Trade Commission chair under Biden will help lead the city’s Economic Development Corporation, alongside newly announced president Anthony Shorris, who recently worked as a partner at McKinsey.
Khan was known at the FTC for pursuing antitrust action against Big Tech, which often riled up the business community.
Michael Kratsios, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director, writes on X that Moonshot accessed Nvidia’s high-end GB300 processors in Thailand, which are subject to strict export controls. Kratsios also accuses Moonshot of distilling Anthropic’s Fable AI model to build Kimi K3, an open-source AI system claimed to rival flagship models from US companies.
Executive agencies including the Department of Labor and Department of Transportation are joining the app once declared a national security threat. Following the close of the deal to bring TikTok US under a US entity, the Justice Department said government employees are free to download it.
Both houses of France’s Parliament voted to approve a new law that could restrict under-15s from social media as soon as September 1st, while also banning cellphone use in high schools. Australia began restricting kids under 16 from social media last year, though a recent study found that many underage users can still access the platforms.
6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, due to a DMV error. Fewer than 400 voted, and were registered across both parties or unaffiliated (for context, 154 million voted in the 2024 election). Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) ordered their removal from voter rolls and launched an investigation.
[The New York Times]
Chris Fall was picked to be the Trump administration’s leader of the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI, previously called the AI Safety Institute until it was renamed last year) in April, but now CNBC and Reuters report he is out. The reasons for his departure are unclear, as is the role of CAISI in the administration’s constantly shifting priorities around AI.
[Reuters]
The Artificial State author explains how counting everything breaks society — and how college grads booing AI might save us all.
Andy Burnham has now officially replaced Keir Starmer, and is reportedly planning to drop his predecessor’s plans to introduce a government-issued digital ID for all British adults by 2029. Burnham’s spokesperson told BBC News that resources allocated for the scheme will instead go towards “helping with the cost of living.”
The country’s gambling regulator ordered local internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket website on Friday, citing noncompliance concerns with rules for gambling and gaming services. The regulator also said that some bets on the platform “appeared to be rigged.”
According to Reuters, the DOJ has issued a memo stating that “employees of Executive Branch agencies may download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion,” now that the deal limiting ByteDance’s ownership is in place and US user data is secured in American data centers.
