The midterms are shaping up to be a battle of bank accounts as much as ballot boxes, and one industry in particular is putting an enormous amount of money behind its political priorities.
The cryptocurrency industry has emerged as one of the largest sources of political cash in the 2026 elections, pouring roughly $200 million into the midterm cycle as it seeks to elect a Congress willing to rewrite the rules governing digital assets.
Four major crypto interests alone — Ripple Labs and co-founder Chris Larsen, Coinbase, the Winklevoss twins, and Crypto.com — have contributed roughly $202 million during the election cycle, according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/28/us/politics/billionaire-midterms-donors.html">New York Times</a> campaign-finance data published Friday. 
Ripple and Larsen have given $65.7 million, according to the Times. Coinbase has contributed $55.2 million, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have given $42.7 million, and Crypto.com has contributed another $38.6 million.
At the center of that effort is Fairshake, a crypto-focused super PAC whose affiliated groups operate on both sides of the aisle. Fairshake had raised nearly $137 million during the 2026 elections by July, according to <a href="https://perma.cc/9HD8-SKG9">FEC records</a>.
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/which-midterm-candidates-is-crypto-industry-backing-2026-08-03/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Reuters</a> reported in August that the industry has backed a bipartisan collection of candidates who have generally supported crypto-friendly candidates. Congress has already delivered one major victory on that front, with President Donald Trump signing the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-sends-genius-act-to-trump-passes-two-other-crypto-bills">GENIUS Act</a> last year, establishing a federal regulatory framework for dollar-backed stablecoins. 
Now, the industry is pushing for the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/what-is-us-senates-landmark-crypto-bill-2026-07-22/">CLARITY Act</a>, which would establish broader rules for digital assets and delineate regulatory authority over the industry.
The legislation has become a major priority for crypto companies, which have spent more than $225 million on lobbying since Trump returned to the White House, according to the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/352a15ac-53c4-46eb-b75e-957f0388dc79?syn-25a6b1a6=1">Financial Times</a>. 
The bill passed the House but has encountered resistance in the Senate, including from Republicans concerned about its implications for traditional financial institutions.
Not to be outdone, traditional partisan mega-donors such as Republicans Jeff Yass, Miriam Adelson, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin and Democrats George and Alex Soros remain major players, pouring hundreds of millions into races across the country.
But the Times&#8217; list of the 20 largest donors shows how quickly technology and industry-specific political interests have moved into the upper echelon of campaign finance. 
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, along with their venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, lead the list with $115.3 million in contributions. Elon Musk follows with $90.5 million, while OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife Anna have contributed $50 million.
Andreessen Horowitz is a major funder of Fairshake while also backing Leading the Future, a super PAC focused on electing politicians favorable to the artificial intelligence industry. 
Reuters reported that the firm has contributed more than $81 million to political action committees focused primarily on crypto and AI, while its founders have also made personal contributions.
For all the tech dollars pouring into the political arena, however, the traditional party structures remain <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-democrats-cash-crunch-and-what-it-means-for-2026-and-beyond">the sweetest plum</a>. 
Republican committees and allied congressional super PACs entered the general election with roughly $657 million in cash on hand, compared with approximately $334 million for Democratic committees and their allied organizations. President Trump&#8217;s MAGA Inc. super PAC adds another enormous reservoir of Republican-aligned money, with more than $400 million available heading into the final months of the campaign.
With the general election approaching, the cryptocurrency industry has amassed enough political firepower to make sure lawmakers in both parties are listening.

Illustration shows representations of cryptocurrency Bitcoin

Crypto Industry Becomes One Of Midterms’ Biggest Political Players

2026 election

2026 elections

2026 midterm

2026 Midterms

Big Tech

campaign donation

Campaign Donations

campaign finance

campaign funds

campaigns

Congress

Cryptocurrency

Dark Money

Democrats

Donors

elections 2026

finance

House of Representatives

Money

Money In Politics

Republicans

Senate

Super PACs

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

For years, Washington has been consumed by fears of foreign influence campaigns targeting American democracy. Pundits and lawmakers constantly warn about foreign adversaries attempting to subvert American discourse through covert online ops.
Yet the most successful foreign influence operation reshaping the American internet isn&#8217;t operating out of Moscow or Beijing. It is operating in plain sight out of London… and it is working to dismantle the First Amendment state by state.
According to an <a href="https://www.effort.news/uk-lobby">investigation</a> published by Effort News, five foreign non-governmental organizations have launched a coordinated campaign across the United States. Pushing bills across 21 statehouses and Congress, their playbook uses the shield of “child safety” to mandate digital identity frameworks. These regulations force platforms to demand government IDs, credit cards, or biometric facial scans before granting access to ordinary websites — effectively eliminating online anonymity for adults.
As someone living in the United Kingdom, I&#8217;m watching this all play out in front of me. Americans need to understand what is being imported before it is too late: in Britain, “online safety” was the Trojan horse used to kill our anonymity and enforce state-backed policing of public discourse. Now, the exact people who engineered Britain’s system are selling it to American state lawmakers who seem completely unaware of who is pulling the strings.
Skeptics might dismiss this with the classic refrain: “If you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear?” But anonymity has always been the cornerstone of a free society. America was quite literally argued into existence under the shield of anonymity: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay published the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym “Publius,” precisely to allow ideas to be judged on their merits, free from state reprisal or social retaliation. The secret ballot and anonymous public assembly exist for the exact same reason. When you remove anonymity, you snatch away the ability to challenge institutional power.
The investigation reveals that many of those pushing for digital IDs hold the keys to power in the United Kingdom.
​Take the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). It was co-founded by Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney (who served as chief of staff to former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer). 
Although run by British individuals, the group spent years involved in U.S. policy debates on age verification without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), leading to complaints to the Department of Justice.
Similarly, the 5Rights Foundation is an NGO founded and directed by Baroness Beeban Kidron, a member of the British House of Lords. 5Rights openly co-designed California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273), which was explicitly copied from the UK’s own regulatory framework.
Public records show 5Rights — acting as a foreign principal — paid the lobbying firm Capitol Connection $50,000 to push the bill through the California legislature in 2022. Yet Capitol Connection failed to disclose its foreign agent status for 5Rights under FARA until 2024, long after the bill had passed. When disclosures were finally submitted, they denied foreign government influence and conveniently left blank the section that would explain the control wielded by an unelected British parliamentarian. To date, 5Rights has engaged with 42 age-assurance and online design bills across 18 U.S. states, with 11 already signed into law. 
Perhaps most shocking is where the funding comes from. ​The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which produces reports labeling normal political dissent as “misinformation” or “anti-Ukraine narratives,” has taken in over $11.2 million directly from U.S. government grants through the State Department, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security. That dwarfs the £720,000 they received from the U.K. government. American taxpayers are literally footing the bill for a foreign think tank that advises on transatlantic censorship frameworks.
Behind these ideological NGOs stands an even more cynical player: the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA). Dominated by British executives from identity-tech vendors like Yoti, AVPA is an industry cartel whose members stand to make millions in corporate windfalls if American statehouses force every website to purchase digital ID-checking software.
American state legislators voting for these “design codes” and age-verification bills genuinely believe they are voting for mere innocent child welfare protections.
In Britain, we were told the exact same story. 
First came the U.K.’s Age Appropriate Design Code. Then came the Online Safety Act. Each step was sold as a common-sense measure to shield minors from online harm.
In Britain, the consequences have been dire; our civil liberties have been hollowed out. To follow these mandates, platforms are forced to build highly intrusive verification software: uploading government IDs, biometric facial scans, and tying real-world identities to every digital footprint. Digital anonymity — the greatest historical defense against government overreach and public ostracization — has been virtually eliminated in the U.K.
Worse, once this infrastructure is established, the mission inevitably creeps. British police <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/">routinely</a> investigate citizens for non-crime hate incidents and social media commentary.
The reason British NGOs are targeting American statehouses is simple: in the United States, the First Amendment makes top-down federal censorship uniquely difficult. Unable to pass a direct federal speech code, foreign activists are using a state-by-state strategy. If California, Maryland, or 20 other states require websites to determine user age and assess whether platform features create vague “psychological harm,” tech companies will standardize those restrictions nationwide for operational efficiency.
State lawmakers must not continue to introduce copy-paste versions of these bills, blindly trusting foreign lobby groups.
The United States became independent from Britain almost 250 years ago precisely to reject authoritarianism. It is odd that in 2026, American state legislators are inviting unelected British peers and foreign lobbies to make the rules for Americans.
Protecting children online is a noble goal, but it cannot be achieved by adopting the playbook of an increasingly illiberal state. When lobbyists work to remove digital anonymity in America, lawmakers should remember why that anonymity exists in the first place.
​It is time for states to firmly reject the British export of online censorship.
***
Samiksha Bhattacharjee runs Ladies of Liberty Alliance UK, is a Young Voices UK contributor, and serves as President of the University College London Libertarian Society. You can find more of her work at<a href="https://samikshabhattacharjee.github.io/"> Samiksha’s State of the Debate.</a>

Free Count Dankula Protest In London

How U.K. Operatives Are Exporting Censorship To Twenty-One States

Censorship

DW Opinion

I moved from Seattle to Chattanooga in 2021. My house in Seattle was less than a mile from the Microsoft campus. Whenever I went to an after-hours tech get-together or happy hour, everyone who attended worked at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or some other massive tech company. Everyone around me made tech wages and was on the cutting edge of their field. I really enjoyed living there. The people felt like my people; we were all tech-savvy, tech optimists, eager for work and building the latest of whatever we thought the world needed (or would make a lot of money). Politics aside, we shared a vision of technology and of the future that seemed filled with promise and potential.
A few months after I moved to Chattanooga, I was chatting with a young couple in the pew behind me at my church. I asked the gentleman where he worked, and he said he worked at Amazon. I lit up because I had several friends who worked at Amazon. He seemed confused at my eagerness and quickly changed the topic.
I didn’t realize until later that this was because we lived in very different worlds. In my world, a job at Amazon was a prestigious job. Amazon was infamous for a brutal working environment but rapid elevation and generous stock options. They have their 14 leadership principles that everyone knows and every new employee builds their first desk from a slab door, just like Jeff Bezos did when he founded the company. Everyone I knew who had been with Amazon for more than five years was very well off.
But in Chattanooga, Amazon is not a premier tech company that makes its employees millionaires. Here, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/amazon-avoids-paying-warehouse-workers-for-long-waits-and-walks-practices-that-affect-thousands/">Amazon is a warehouse owned by a stringent, wealthy task master who gets sued regularly</a> for requiring unpaid wait times from their hourly employees. His Amazon job is not a prestigious job. It’s not going to make him generationally wealthy. It’s just a job. We know two different Amazons because we are in two different working cultures.
Despite moving to Chattanooga, I still mostly live in this tech culture. That’s why I was caught off guard by the raging debate around data centers. As a technologist, an optimist, and an AI enthusiast, I have long thought that the resentment against AI-centric infrastructure was more of a fringe position held largely by people who are instinctively anti-corporate or anti-technology. I assumed they would fail in their attempts to shoot down these very expensive, very lucrative infrastructure projects driven by the richest and most powerful companies in the world.
The last six months have convinced me otherwise. This week, Pennsylvania Governor <a href="https://www.pa.gov/governor/newsroom/2026-press-releases/governor-shapiro-signs-executive-order-on-data-center-developmen">Josh Shapiro signed an order</a> demanding the strictest rules on data centers in the country. New York Governor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/nyregion/new-york-data-center-moratorium-hochul.html">Kathy Hochul ordered a statewide moratorium</a> on hyperscale data centers and <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/texas-halts-data-center-connections-to-power-grid-amid-overwhelming-demand/">even Texas Governor Greg Abbott</a> has ordered a pause on new approvals pending an audit on what this will mean for the Texas electrical grid.
There have been dozens of other examples of state and local efforts to restrict construction, and these efforts are not following a reliable partisan pattern. If there is any pattern at all, it is that the entire vibe over the last 12 months has become substantially more negative against new data centers. According to polling from HeatMap, public support for data centers <a href="https://heatmap.news/daily/data-center-opposition-poll-collapse">has collapsed across the ideological spectrum</a>.
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1165539" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/89a73c35-9de7-4804-bd77-8d1ab81c5397_1464x1020.jpg" alt="" width="1464" height="1020" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/89a73c35-9de7-4804-bd77-8d1ab81c5397_1464x1020.jpg 1464w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/89a73c35-9de7-4804-bd77-8d1ab81c5397_1464x1020-300x209.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/89a73c35-9de7-4804-bd77-8d1ab81c5397_1464x1020-827x576.jpg 827w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/89a73c35-9de7-4804-bd77-8d1ab81c5397_1464x1020-768x535.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1464px) 100vw, 1464px" /></div>
&nbsp;
Why is this? If you listened to the rhetoric from the people leading the anti-data center charge, you might think you know why they are anti-data-center. You would be wrong.
What They Say They Want
<a href="https://open.substack.com/users/109001275-cremieux?utm_source=mentions">Cremieux</a> <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-211797956">wrote up a well researched overview of the reasons people give for hating data centers</a>, why most of those reasons are false, and how learning the truth doesn’t seem to change people’s opinions. As for what to do about this, his conclusion was basically “do whatever it takes to placate the opposition and just build.”
I’m not sure that is going to work because I think the problems that opponents are citing aren’t really the thing that bothers them. Worries about water, energy, noise, aesthetics, and subsidies are not the root problem that people have with data centers.
The piece “<a href="https://jasmi.news/p/no-data-centers-in-my-backyard">No Data Centers In My Backyard</a>” from Jasmine Sun cuts much closer to the heart of the issue. Sun writes from Wisconsin and Michigan about the tension between local leaders, who see that data centers are a natural fit for land that is otherwise undevelopable, and local residents, who fear that these big companies are making empty promises, manipulating local politicians, and planning to roll over the local community.
A core part of Sun’s reporting is that these residents have been made promises in the past by big corporations. She mentions a Foxconn deal in Wisconsin where the company was offered $4 billion in tax incentives for a plant that would have created 13,000 jobs. A decade later, only 1,000 jobs materialized.
The biggest difference between that deal and these data centers is that there are no promises for permanent jobs with data centers. After construction is complete, even a hyper-scale data center can be run with 100-200 employees, which is <a href="https://www.lonestarlive.com/news/2024/06/how-much-do-buc-ees-employees-make-the-answer-may-surprise-you.html?outputType=amp">fewer employees than it takes to run a Buc-ee’s gas station</a>. In 2025, a look at the permit filings across 17 data center projects showed plans for <a href="https://poweredbywho.com/methodology/jobs">only 1,547 permanent operations employees</a>.
In the meantime, the tech companies that are building these data centers<a href="https://layoffhedge.com/industry/tech-layoffs-2026"> have fired 170,000 of their own employees in the last year</a> alone, claiming that these layoffs are due to AI. For computer science students ready to start their careers in this high-tech culture, the on-ramp to a lucrative career has been blocked off. The<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/02/23/unemployment-and-underemployment-rates-among-recent-college-graduates/"> unemployment rates for new graduates in computer engineering and computer science</a> are higher than for graduates in art history.
While previous industrial construction projects promised thousands of jobs and economic revitalization, this time the industry that wants more data centers is plainly telling people that more data centers mean fewer jobs.
Techies vs Normies
I consider myself a part of the tech industry. I am excited about AI and what we are going to build. This is a moment of tremendous opportunity. But I have also seen a very dark cloud rolling over our labor market. Most of my friends from Microsoft have been laid off or taken the “early retirement” buyout option. People in the industry that I’ve known for 15 years are writing LinkedIn posts about how excited they are for the future, but they have an undertone of despair. It’s bad out there. It’s bad for 20-year tech veterans and for newly minted junior developers.
While all this is happening, I see fountains of money gushing out of AI startups based in San Francisco and New York City. There is a hyper-optimism in my AI tech circles, but the optimism is mostly about how good things are for us, the builders. To the extent that the tech culture believes things will get good for those outside our orbit (the normies), we seem to think that they will benefit from our grand benevolence and that they will be lucky to get it. We seem to view people outside our tech sphere not as participants in the future but as recipients of whatever good things we create for them.
I don’t want to pick on Cremieux here, but when you click to his post about trying to persuade the data center skeptics, the first thing you see is an AI company sponsor offering $300K for junior software engineers. All the positions are in-person in San Francisco. That is what things look like from inside the tech cultural bubble.
But when I look outside my tech bubble, I don’t see that energy or optimism. Much of tech culture is not open to everyone. It is an elitist culture that looks down on those who don’t share its values. One of the values they have is that you have to physically live in their bubble. You can make $300K as a junior engineer but not if you need to stay in Indiana so your spouse can be available to help your aging parents. You can raise millions for your AI startup but not if you live in the South or Midwest.
Venture capital is pouring billions into these companies. It isn’t because they have the best ideas or the best people. It is because they exist within the right culture, within the right cities. This isn’t a merit-based proposition. It’s a social club.
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1165541" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/25f3ec84-54eb-4550-862d-f30aa3e95d51_1126x682.jpg" alt="" width="1126" height="682" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/25f3ec84-54eb-4550-862d-f30aa3e95d51_1126x682.jpg 1126w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/25f3ec84-54eb-4550-862d-f30aa3e95d51_1126x682-300x182.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/25f3ec84-54eb-4550-862d-f30aa3e95d51_1126x682-951x576.jpg 951w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/25f3ec84-54eb-4550-862d-f30aa3e95d51_1126x682-768x465.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1126px) 100vw, 1126px" /></div>
&nbsp;
A tech company will spend $10 billion building a data center outside of a Wisconsin town but they won’t sponsor a Little League team. They won’t support the local Girl Scouts. They won’t build a park. They want the land and space and they want to escape the burdensome regulations and insane anti-growth politics of California, but that doesn’t mean they actually like any of the people who live near their data centers. They don’t care if these outsiders find growth and success; they want them to get out of the way. And if paying enough taxes to reduce the overall tax burden of the local bumpkins is what placates them, fine. Whatever gets them to shut the hell up, leave us to our more important business, and accept their rightful place as the underlings of this particular arrangement. They don’t really have any place in our vision of the future.
This is starting to sound like a populist rant, but that’s not where it is coming from. I love working in tech. I love the people in tech (most of them). I love what is happening in AI, and I’m really excited to build with this new tool and to help others build. We are in the middle of the most exciting tech development of my lifetime (so far!) I want to share that excitement with friends and colleagues and especially with young people who are just graduating and coming into the world of tech. I love being part of a culture with this optimistic energy and eagerness to build the future. But I want this to be an open door. I want $300K junior developers in Atlanta and Nashville. If the AI promise is everything it says, then why are the jobs and money increasingly concentrated in a few culturally isolated tech hubs?
How Do We Fix This? Do We Even Know What We Are Trying To Fix?
Even assuming I’ve identified this cultural backlash as the real reason people oppose data centers, how would we fix this problem? I’m going to try to avoid the smarmy answer to this, which is “Go back in time and don’t make a decade worth of corporate and cultural mistakes that led to this problem.&#8221;
In my view, the core problem is the astonishing arrogance of people within the tech culture. Even in debating this issue, the overwhelming response from libertarian and tech-adjacent people seems to be dismissal and disdain. There is some outright anger against both people who oppose data centers and the politicians who are responding to this movement. There is a lot of this sentiment that “these idiots don’t know what is good for them,” along with a seemingly resilient insistence that data center opposition is just a successful Chinese psy-op. The “Chinese psy-op” position is a perfect distillation of this arrogance because it assumes that these people couldn’t possibly be thinking for themselves or using their own judgment; they must just be stupid people who are easily manipulated.
Of course, now I’m being a bit dismissive of my friends within tech culture. Many of them really do want to address the actual concerns that the data center opposition is raising. The problem is that very few of the data center opponents have articulated the cultural resentment I’ve brought forward here. It is reasonable for the pro-data-center people to become exasperated as they repeatedly ask:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1165543" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/36a3a8b0-d4d3-4bda-bd78-ad506fbab6d4_459x195.gif" alt="" width="459" height="195" /></div>
And if we want to do a deep dive on introspection, we could argue that I’m being smug and arrogant in this very article towards the very people I say we need to understand because I’m elevating myself as the “normie-whisperer” while portraying myself as acting as “team tech” at the same time. Maybe I’m part of the problem that I’ve just identified.
At the end of the day, I genuinely do want the following things:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li3">More data centers to support the most tremendous innovative technology of my lifetime.</li>
<li class="li3">Everyone to feel like they are participants in and beneficiaries of this emerging world.</li>
</ol>
You shouldn’t have to live in San Francisco or New York City to feel like you’re a part of this revolution. I want the towns that build these data centers to feel like they are a part of this movement and not like they are a cheap and convenient place for Californians to build the things they need but are unable to build in their state because they have spent decades supporting a completely dysfunctional government that they inexplicably refuse to abandon. I want tech companies to say, “We want to build with you because we want you to be a part of this great thing,” not “We have to build with you because our native state is so screwed up that we can’t possibly build here despite having near-endless land and money.”
Flipping the script, there can’t be any form of compromise if the data center opposition can’t even tell us what changes they would accept in exchange for permission to build. If what they really want is to be treated with respect, they might not get that. Respect might simply not be on the table. If that’s the case, they will end up in a place where they don’t get the respect, but they also don’t get the fringe benefits of boosted tax revenues.
From a practical perspective, I don’t see that the anti-data-center team needs to compromise. They have overwhelming support at the moment. If we want more data centers (and I do), the question then shifts to “How do we change this so that people will accept more data centers?” I suspect the answer is something close to “We need to treat these communities with respect and make them feel like a part of our team in this endeavor.&#8221;
What I see instead is the tech community doubling down on disdain. This makes me feel crazy because, as a tech person, I place very high value on strategies that work. If my first tactic doesn’t work with my target customer, I can bitterly blame the customer while my company goes out of business, or I can change my tactics to something that finds more success.
To their credit, many in the tech community are trying to figure out what will work. To their detriment, most of these strategies assume that their opponents are stupid and that we can just deftly outmaneuver them with money and power and the fact that they are oh so much smarter than those flyover hicks. Which is exactly the attitude that makes negotiations pointless.
***
This is republished with permission from the author. The original can be found <a href="https://www.marginallycompelling.com/p/data-centers-are-a-culture-war">here</a>. Subscribe to Marginally Compelling <a href="https://www.marginallycompelling.com/">here</a>.
Matt Shapiro is a data visualization artist and software engineer and the creator of the Substack newsletter Marginally Compelling.

Demonstrators Against Data Centers On National Day Of Protest

How Data Centers Became The New Culture War Provocation

Data Centers

There they were, crammed in the close quarters of the filled-to-capacity Capitol Rotunda to shield our aged political leaders from the cold outside, flanking the once-and-future president as he took the oath of office for a second time. The richest and most powerful people in the world rubbing shoulders awkwardly – there were Elon, Jeff, Tim, Sundar Pichai from Google and (ominously) Shou Zi Chew of TikTok shifting in uncomfortable folding chairs designed to put them on display. The most natural thing that happened was Mark Zuckerberg accidentally reminding the world that he’s straight.
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_1165413" style="width: 1546px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://nypost.com/2025/01/20/us-news/mark-zuckerberg-busted-staring-at-lauren-sanchezs-cleavage-at-trump-inauguration/"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1165413" class="size-full wp-image-1165413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211.jpg" alt="" width="1536" height="1194" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-741x576.jpg 741w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-768x597.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px" /></a>Credit: Fox</div>
They were there to give homage to the man who had beaten them, and who now they needed to woo back to their side. Big Tech did a terrible job navigating the Trump years, and they knew it. They let their woke control freak employees go wild after 2016, and were forced to debase themselves as having not done enough to stop Hillary’s collapse. Pronouns and politics became mandatory in an industry that had been all about whatever nerd could build the best company in their dorm room. The media pressure was enormous. Out of nowhere, they were deemed the new pontiffs of the Trumpian era: what their platforms decided was okay was an endorsement. They had an obligation to censor, to silence, to shadowban, to debank, and, above all, to fund dying newspapers. They suddenly had to throw a gigantic pile of money at race problems because a random drug addict died in Minnesota. They caved to the forces of censorship in the 2020 election and indoctrination during the Covid years, becoming synonymous with a leftist authoritarianism totally at odds with the rebellious hacker mentality that birthed their industry. They didn’t care about politics – but it cared about them. So they did what they had to do, or so they thought at the time. And they lost.
Now here they were, sitting and grinning, as just off stage their high-paid consultants and their NGO partners and their Aspen and Sun Valley and DAVOS friends were all losing their minds. But what else were they supposed to do? If the rule they followed brought them to this, of what use was the rule?
It was time to make amends. They would do the work of politicking; they would shake hands and smile and talk about working together. They would survive the return of the president they had tried and failed to ban. Because all this came just as the next stage of technological advancement, long burgeoning and anticipated, was about to skyrocket. And that would reorder not just our economy, but the world.
This moment was more significant for our politics than many grasped at the time. It represented a dramatic shift where, for the first time, Republicans were about to become the party of Big Tech. Where Silicon Valley had been a punching bag for conservatives for years, what with their climate change nattering and San Francisco values, they left California behind for the welcoming arms of pro-business red state leaders. The taxes were low, the regulations more forgiving, and their employees could finally afford a house. They were flush with consumers and data and cash after years of lockdown. And for the GOP’s influential investor class, the A.I. spark made these companies synonymous with skyrocketing market success. The sides had flipped.
Few states were more welcoming to this shift than Texas under Republican Governor Greg Abbott, which became a haven for Big Tech headquarters. The attitude from the state’s Republican leadership wasn’t just advocacy but cheerleading advancement and a Western agreement with moving fast and breaking things. That’s why it should serve as such a stunning warning to these same companies that it’s the same governor who promised to lead the country in A.I. who is warning them now that they’ve gone too far, too fast:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Gov. Abbott on voter concerns: ‘People are not talking to me about Trump’" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0cz302gYek" width="822" height="462" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<blockquote>
ABBOTT: One thing is the rapidity that these data centers are coming online, that people didn&#8217;t see coming. The other is the way that the data centers, they didn&#8217;t do their job to get the support of people in local communities. Gaining the support of people in local communities is essential.
Because they did not do that, that&#8217;s why I am now coming in as governor saying, listen, if you&#8217;re a data center and you want to operate in Texas, you have to first get the approval of those in local communities…
KARL: It was last year that you said that Texas was the epicenter of the A.I. industry. In hindsight, did Texas move too fast?
ABBOTT: It wasn&#8217;t Texas that was moving fast, it was these data centers.
KARL: But they needed approval from, you know, from the government.
ABBOTT: Well, so what data centers we&#8217;re doing, and this is the problem that we are facing here in Texas, but you mentioned what&#8217;s going on nationally. And that is, they pop up in places that nobody ever heard of before, until they started the construction. And so they had not been working in collaboration with the state, they&#8217;d not been in collaboration with local governments, and so they basically dug their own grave for the problem that&#8217;s been caused for them. And that&#8217;s why they got the backlash they deserve.
</blockquote>
“They got the backlash they deserve.” The frustration of Texas communities and voters is what’s driving Abbott’s shift, just as it is across the country for politicians who welcomed a tech boom without thinking about the attendant risks. It’s as if these companies thought that the A.I. race was something they could win with just top-down approval from Washington and the governors – not convincing local voters and communities they wouldn’t raise their costs or wreck their environment.
You can hear the lunacy of this hubris expressed by the leader of one tech company, which is clearly the next in the barrel. The backlash to Flock cameras is growing in parallel to the animosity toward data centers, at an astonishing rate considering how quickly the issue has taken hold. It’s easy to understand why when you hear Flock CEO Garrett Langley talk with obvious irritation about the intransigence of local voters who have the audacity to… go to a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/flock-cameras-are-spreading-across-america-the-backlash-is-growing-just-as-fast-fff74ed2?mod=mhp">council meeting</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Flock&#8217;s CEO mocks people showing up at council meetings, saying we should &#8220;trust that the system works.&#8221; Meanwhile, his &#8220;huge team whose entire job is going to city council meetings&#8221; went to &#8220;close to 10,000 city council meetings&#8221; just last year. <a href="https://t.co/5XbiFDvBqs">pic.twitter.com/5XbiFDvBqs</a>
— Have I Been Flocked? (@HIBFlocked) <a href="https://x.com/HIBFlocked/status/2092048985993167000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote>
What I’ve come to agree with is the notion of a horseshoe mentality, that it’s just a very very small number of people, incredibly small, that tend to be really loud.
I imagine you’ve never been to a city council meeting.
Interviewer: I never have.
And I imagine you never will, because generally, I hope you vote, you should vote, and then you trust that the system works, that the person you voted for as generally aligned views, and like they’re going to go do the hard work, because that’s what you elect them to do.
</blockquote>
The political problem Big Tech failed to realize still exists: the views of the electorate still matter. It’s not just about gladhanding with the guys at the top. In the wake of the past decade, the American people’s level of trust in these companies is practically nil. It doesn’t matter to the normal voter if we’re in an A.I. race with China. It doesn’t matter that these companies have promised to back off of politics (Elon and Larry Ellison excepted). It doesn’t matter that they stood in that Capitol Rotunda to be publicly shamed. They have no depth of faith among the American people who use their products because they have to, even through a mist of resentment and laziness. We know we said A.I. is going to take all your jobs, but wasn’t it enough to give to the Inauguration Committee? No, it is not.
For Big Tech, the problem is easier to solve: work and spend. They have to make the case for themselves instead of dismissing the valid concerns of Americans. But somewhere there’s always going to be a state and a community to take their money and make a deal, even with the political costs.
For Republicans, though, the potential problem goes deeper. They are unused to navigating a world where being pro-business isn’t necessarily good for their voters. And they may find out they became the party of Big Tech just as much of the country turned against it. Billionaires are fun to play with, until they aren&#8217;t. And then, you find out they can be a real drag.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Did Republicans Embrace Big Tech Billionaires Just As America Turned Against Them?

Elon Musk

Mark Zuckerberg

A powerful industry demands special treatment. Its executives promise national prosperity. Its lobbyists warn that resistance will only help a foreign rival. And ordinary Americans are told to accept the costs because that’s what the free market requires.
That was the argument behind NAFTA and decades of offshoring. Corporate America shipped jobs overseas and hollowed out communities that had supported American manufacturing for generations in search of cheaper labor. When companies couldn’t move the work abroad, they pushed for more guest workers and looked the other way when illegal immigration expanded the supply of cheap labor.
But the profits kept flowing upward. Working Americans were left with the consequences.
Now Big Tech is using the same playbook to push data center projects through without answering basic questions. Is there enough reliable power and water, and will the companies demanding them actually pay the full cost?
Instead of answering, the industry hides behind “artificial intelligence” and “China.”
Question whether another data center should be built, and someone will accuse you of helping Beijing. Ask who will supply the electricity or pay for the infrastructure, and you’re told you oppose innovation. Raise concerns about water, land, or higher utility bills for consumers, and the industry dismisses you as an environmental extremist.
China is a real threat. America should lead the world in technological innovation. But Big Tech is presenting a false choice. Give it every approval, subsidy and public resource it wants, or risk losing the technological race to China.
Look at what these companies are actually demanding here in Virginia: approvals, tax breaks, electricity, water and infrastructure, all paid for by homeowners and working Virginians. They don’t get to wave the flag while shifting the bill onto Virginia families. That is corporate welfare.
And Virginia shows exactly where this argument leads. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/chart/top-states-data-centers/">A national database counted nearly four hundred data centers in the Commonwealth, with hundreds more planned or under construction</a>. Virginia has far more operating and proposed facilities than Texas, California, or any other state.
Big Tech’s track record should make conservatives skeptical of its sudden appeals to “American jobs.” <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley-durbin-take-aim-at-tech-finance-and-retail-sectors-for-favoring-h-1b-visa-holders-over-american-workers">These same companies have laid off huge numbers of American employees while continuing to import foreign workers through the H-1B program</a>. They make business decisions based on labor costs and profit margins. Yet when they want tax breaks, electricity, water, land, and infrastructure, they suddenly invoke the American worker and national security.
The industry has spent heavily to make its own corporate interests sound like the national interest, building an enormous political and messaging operation of lobbyists, political action committees, advertising campaigns and paid influencers. <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-palantir-is-paying-tiktok-influencers-to-fear-monger-about-china">Recent reporting even exposed a coordinated campaign offering social media influencers thousands of dollars per video to warn that any limits on the industry would help China</a>. Conservatives should recognize an astroturf campaign when they see one.
Virginia has already done more than its share. That’s why <a href="https://www.wtkr.com/news/virginia-state-senator-calls-for-data-center-moratorium">I’ve called on Governor Abigail Spanberger to use every lawful authority available to immediately pause new data center approvals across the Commonwealth</a>.
<a href="https://jlarc.virginia.gov/landing-2024-data-centers-in-virginia.asp">An analysis prepared for Virginia’s General Assembly</a> found that data center growth is the main reason the state’s electricity demand could double within ten years. Meeting that demand would be extraordinarily difficult even if Virginia had a sensible energy policy.
It does not.
The <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/static/bill-details/20201/SB851">Virginia Clean Economy Act</a> requires utilities to retire nearly all power plants in Virginia that emit carbon by 2045. It also mandates an enormous buildout of intermittent solar and wind generation, with the costs generally recovered directly from utility customers.
The law didn’t create the data center boom. It just makes the consequences worse by tying one hand behind Virginia’s back while electricity demand explodes.
<a href="https://jlarc.virginia.gov/pdfs/reports/Rpt598.pdf">Virginia’s own analysis warns that data center growth will add hundreds of dollars a year to a family’s electric bills</a>. That comes after Virginia already gives the industry <a href="https://budget.lis.virginia.gov/amendment/2026/1/SB30/Introduced/MR/0/14s/">about a billion dollars in tax breaks each year</a>. Families are subsidizing the industry through the tax code, and now they are being forced to subsidize it again through their electric bills.
And then there is the water. <a href="https://jlarc.virginia.gov/pdfs/reports/Rpt598.pdf">Virginia data centers already use more than 2 billion gallons of water a year</a>. <a href="https://rga.lis.virginia.gov/Published/2026/RD295/PDF">A state study warns that groundwater supplies in eastern Virginia are already severely strained</a>. In much of the region, there simply isn’t enough dependable groundwater to support another large data center.
The hypocrisy is glaring. Families and businesses around Virginia were <a href="https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2026/june-releases/name-1119790-en.html">asked to conserve water</a>, even as massive new data center projects continued moving through the approval process. Take shorter showers. Use less water. Accept higher electric bills. Watch your local countryside disappear beneath solar farms and transmission corridors.
Virginia tells families to cut back. But it refuses to tell Big Tech “no.”
Governor Spanberger’s response has been to tax growth and announce narrow reforms while keeping approvals moving. Virginia recently <a href="https://budget.lis.virginia.gov/item/2026/2/HB30/Chapter/3/3-5.24/">imposed a new tax on electricity consumed by data centers</a>, which the governor presents as a measure of accountability. In reality, it gives state government a new revenue stream tied directly to even more data center growth. That just creates a perverse incentive for state and local leaders to keep rubber-stamping projects.
<a href="https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2026/august-releases/name-1122057-en.html">State regulators did recently require data centers to pay for transmission infrastructure built exclusively for their projects</a>. That fixes one bill. But it doesn’t determine who pays to build the power plants needed to meet the new demand, how to protect constrained water supplies, how to fix the disastrous Virginia Clean Economy Act, or how to stop another project from being approved.
That is why Virginia needs a moratorium.
Stop approving projects while the Commonwealth determines whether more data centers should be permitted at all, whether reliable power and water actually exist, who will pay the true costs, and what protections must be in place before approvals resume.
The industry will call that radical. What’s radical is approving hundreds of industrial projects first, and expecting families and ratepayers to deal with the fallout later.
America needs computing capacity to remain competitive. But that doesn’t mean trillion-dollar companies get to build wherever they want, consume whatever resources they want, and hand the bill to everyone else.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Powerful corporations promise prosperity. Government gives them what they want. The profits flow upward, the costs are spread among everyone else, and working Americans are told that questioning the arrangement makes them backward, anti-business, or unpatriotic.
We shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of NAFTA and offshoring simply because today&#8217;s corporations sell computing power instead of imported goods.
America can beat China without giving Big Tech a blank check.
Virginia families shouldn’t have to pay more, use less water, and watch their communities transformed so these global corporations can keep building without any restrictions.
Virginia families have carried enough of the load.
Pause the projects.
***
Glen Sturtevant is a Virginia state senator representing Central Virginia in the state’s General Assembly.

Amazon Bets $150 Billion on Data Centers Required for AI Boom

Big Tech Is Selling Corporate Welfare As Patriotism

Corporate Welfare

Energy Policy

Virginia

A growing number of drivers are pushing back against increasingly tech-heavy vehicles, saying they prefer the simplicity of analog controls over touchscreens and software-driven features.
The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted what it described as a &#8220;vocal minority&#8221; of consumers seeking out older vehicles or newer models with fewer digital features, arguing that modern automotive technology has become more frustrating than helpful.
Brett Doyle, a computer scientist from St. Louis, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/driver-assistance-technology-dashboard-ead96bd2">told</a> the Journal that he and his sons continue repairing their four vehicles from the 2010s rather than buying newer models packed with digital features.
“If I get hot in my car and want some air conditioning, I just want to turn a knob and have cold air come out,” Doyle said. “There’s this fatigue of having to learn one more new thing.”
Others like Doyle have created online communities dedicated to finding older, more analog vehicles.  
Sports writer Brandon Marcus <a href="https://www.inkl.com/glance/news/the-no-tech-car-trend-drivers-are-rejecting-screens-and-sensors?first_login=true&amp;section=personalized">said</a> the movement is about reclaiming control behind the wheel, not simply reliving the past. 
“The &#8216;no-tech car&#8217; trend doesn’t just whisper nostalgia. It shouts intention. People want control back in their hands, not buried in menus or hidden behind software updates,” Marcus said. “This movement isn’t about rejecting progress. It’s about reclaiming the driving experience and deciding what actually matters behind the wheel.” 
Supporters have pointed out that basic functions like adjusting the temperature or changing the radio station have become unnecessarily complicated as automakers increasingly rely on touchscreen interfaces, which they say can also be more distracting. 
Even some industry leaders have questioned how new technology is being introduced.
Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa recently suggested the industry’s approach may be backward because its most technology-packed vehicles are often marketed to older buyers, while younger customers tend to purchase entry-level models. 
“Sometimes, actually, your entry cars should start adopting these technologies because that’s where the younger customers are trying to go,” Espinosa said.
For some consumers, concerns extend beyond convenience to privacy and security.
Gordon Chang, author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America,” <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/on-balance-with-leland-vittert/chinese-driverless-cars-in-us-danger/">told</a> NewsNation that vehicles with Chinese autonomous driving technology could be used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to present national security risks via “rolling spy machines.”
“Conceivably, they could use these as a weapon of mass destruction — crash into oncoming traffic, drive over a cliff, be disabled. Who knows what the Chinese will be able to do with these?” Chang said.
Some automakers are already betting there is a demand for simpler vehicles.
Startup automaker Slate <a href="https://www.slate.auto/en?utm_medium=paidsearch&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_campaign=slategtm&amp;utm_term=nonbrand&amp;utm_content=search&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=22508070611&amp;gbraid=0AAAAA_B-XWOzeMYK2D4oy31f_qtVt39B2&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwj7HTBhBiEiwA8s35OkG-go3PHMAJ91L1dfJGLcunqM8zeGNhELrz73Iv8xdozQYKqVbtHhoCDGgQAvD_BwE">markets</a> what it calls “the most affordable truck in America.” Its base model, the “Blank Slate,” features hand-crank windows, physical climate-control knobs, and a smartphone mount instead of an extensive built-in infotainment system, leaving additional customization up to buyers. 
Other affordable models have also retained more traditional controls. Edmunds <a href="https://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/how-to-buy-a-low-tech-car.html">notes</a> that the 2026 Hyundai Venue keeps its technology relatively simple despite offering digital features, while the 2026 Mazda CX-50 relies on physical knobs for many functions rather than a touchscreen-heavy interface.

1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 Sport Coupe

Why A ‘Vocal Minority’ Is Pushing Back On New Car Tech

Automobiles

Cars

Driving

rugged

Trucks

Wall Street Journal

Congress is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/kids-internet-and-digital-safety-act-passes-house-free-speech-concerns-rcna352341">considering</a> passage of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text">Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act</a> (KIDS), a sweeping omnibus bill that would require age verification across much of the internet, restrict messaging for teens, ban certain app features, and grant the Federal Trade Commission a vague mandate to police &#8220;compulsive usage&#8221; on platforms. As with most power grabs in Washington, KIDS is framed as common-sense child protection. However noble it is to want age verification on the front-end of porn-sites, going down this road will have parents give up ultimate authority in their own households — authority they’ll never recover.
The House package is, to its credit, a compromise for anti-tech activists. KIDS is a much narrower bill than the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which was previously approved by the Senate. The controversial “duty of care” provision was cut out, which would have required social media companies to act in the best interests of the youngest users on their platforms.
Again, sounds nice — until you consider that if this principle were applied everywhere in public life, every shopping center and downtown area would resemble a Chuck E. Cheese.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5032362-house-republicans-cautious-online-safety/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">expressed</a> reservations about KOSA. The act&#8217;s viability remains to be seen, as it currently sits stalled in the Senate. The false choice being offered by KIDS and the advocates boosting it is a world where children wander the online world with no guidance, and a censorship-surveillance regime that surrenders the privacy of all children and adults.
Parenting today, like in all times prior, is kind of scary. Technology moves so fast, and as <a href="https://www.calm.com/blog/millennials-and-parenting">millennials</a> start having children of their own, they remember the trouble they got into unsupervised on AOL Instant Messenger and in pre-Reddit chat rooms.
Older parents with kids on their way to high school have been swimming in the deep end for years. By the time politicians took notice of the troubling trends on TikTok and began pressuring social media firms to offer more child-protection features, teens <a href="https://mashable.com/tech/snapchat-safety-report">moved</a> to Snapchat, Kik, Yubo, and <a href="https://consumer.sd.gov/docs/Resources-20appstoMonitor.pdf">even more discreet apps</a> disguised as <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.privatesmsbox.calc&amp;hl=en_US">calculators</a>.
Congress is <a href="https://reason.com/2024/05/06/dont-co-parent-with-congress/">too slow</a> to meaningfully protect kids or to pass legislation that is tech-savvy enough to understand where youths spend time online. That’s what parents are for, and they have a wide array of tools at their disposal that can help guide their kids online.
Your internet service provider (Xfinity, Verizon, Spectrum, etc.) can block sites. Your mobile carrier can filter content as you see fit. If you want something more hands-on, companies like <a href="https://www.bark.us/">Bark</a>, Gabb, and Pinwheel have nerfed smartphones designed specifically for kids, with built-in restrictions on downloads, screen time, and contact access.
I used Bark to onboard my 13-year-old to using a phone, after intentionally raising her without access to any tech devices. The experience was excellent. Using AI-powered features, Bark would scan all webpages visited and any text messages sent or received for harmful content: nudity, suicidal ideation, mention of narcotics, and yes, curse words as well. It was helpful to me, as a parent, to know that one of her friends was using all sorts of ugly language that we don’t welcome into our home.
Blocked.
She also took an interest in Reddit and Quora upon getting the freedom to surf the web and get questions answered. Because I’d get notifications about that, I could have a conversation with my child about the reliability of these sites for quality information.
Eventually, they got blocked. This was a helpful way for us to teach online safety at home and for the child to get comfortable using a phone, with all the new stresses it brings alongside additional freedoms.
When we felt it was appropriate, she got a proper iPhone on the family plan. Apple&#8217;s parental controls — Screen Time, App Limits, Communication Safety — are easy to use and pretty effective. Any parent can restrict app downloads and require the child to request it first. That gives you time to vet an app and read about it before consenting. The iOS features allow parents to lock down web browsing, set bedtimes for phone use, and <a href="https://www.techlockdown.com/articles/monitor-text-messages-iphone">monitor</a> messaging.
These tools work. No congressman required. They&#8217;re also optional, which means you have to devote time to research, configuration, and enforcement. The number one thing stopping parents from protecting their children online is not the lack of tools or legislation; it’s the willingness to say “no” and learn about products already on the market to help them in what is, truly, a hard job.
I don’t want to diminish how hard it is. But I also have never met a teenager who pays their own phone bill. Parents are in charge and have real power because they pay for the device and its internet connection.
Every bill that moves through Congress is built on a timeless lie: that Americans are powerless in their private lives to affect change. The KIDS Act, like its earlier iterations, is no different. The Senate, but more importantly, America’s parents, should reject it. You already have all the power you need — use it.
***
Stephen Kent is the media director for the Consumer Choice Center.

Children looking at a smartphone

The KIDS Act Pretends To Give Parents Power They Already Have

Internet safety

KIDS Act

Parental control

Our great country is celebrating 250 years of independence. That’s on 250 years of freedom, innovation, and economic strength that all began with the strong and simple declaration that we would no longer be controlled by a hostile foreign power.
Today, maintaining that independence is not just a political necessity; it’s an economic one too. The threat is real, and countering it starts in our factories, our supply chains, and our homes.
For too long, we&#8217;ve allowed foreign adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party, to quietly take control of the brands Americans trust, the infrastructure Americans depend on, and the household products Americans bring into their living rooms. They didn&#8217;t get there only through espionage or cyberattacks. They got there through deals, acquisitions, and joint ventures that most Americans never saw coming.
Put simply, buying products made here is no longer enough on its own. We need to ask who owns the company making it.
Once that Chinese appliance, smart bulb, or other device is connected to your Wi-Fi, Xi Jinping’s thugs could then have an opening to weasel their way in to spy on and disrupt every aspect of your family’s life.
Just pause and think about everything we entrust to apps, online banking, and social media. Now imagine it all being pipelined straight to a state-affiliated hacker farm in Communist China. Then imagine those hackers now having an off switch to disrupt every utility and service your family relies on.
That’s not a free and independent America, but it’s the one we’re willingly paying for right now.
Take GE Appliances. Most Americans still think it&#8217;s still the same all-American brand. Not anymore. In 2016, it was <a href="https://pressroom.geappliances.com/news/ge-completes-sale-of-appliances-business-to-haier">sold</a> to Haier, a company whose roots trace back to a Chinese state-owned factory and that has operated for decades under Beijing&#8217;s close watch. That brand now sits in millions of American kitchens, connected to home networks, drawing power from our grid. Americans buying that product have no idea who is really on the other end. But China knows what they’re doing here. They’re listening to you — all the while <a href="https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/2026/5/exclusive-sen-rick-scott-rep-andy-ogles-america-s-cybersecurity-cannot-be-an-easy-target-for-communist-china">tapped into our power and water grids</a>. The Soviet Union only wished it could have had the same access to Americans’ information.
Last month, the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/31/chinese-owned-company-is-bringing-factory-jobs-back-united-states/">heralded</a> Haier for bringing jobs back to America under the GE Appliances name. In the piece, GE Appliances leadership claims they would never hand Americans&#8217; data over to Beijing. But they don&#8217;t get to make that choice.
Under China’s police state laws, no Chinese company can refuse a government data request. No exceptions. That means every Chinese-owned brand operating on American soil is a potential instrument of Beijing.
Zhang Ruimin, former CEO and chairman, has long-standing <a href="https://www.bjreview.com/17thCPC/txt/2007-10/18/content_81345.htm">ties</a> to the CCP. Zhou Yunjie, current chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Haier Group, is a <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202503/05/WS67c7abcea310c240449d8b3b.html">Deputy to the National People&#8217;s Congress</a>. Haier has been promoted by the state as a model of a successful Chinese enterprise, which means pleasing Xi Jinping comes before protecting customers.
Then there is Lenovo, which <a href="https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-completes-full-acquisition-motorola-mobility-from-google/">acquired</a> Motorola Mobility from Google in 2014. Lenovo is a Chinese company with deep ties to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a state-linked institution. Yet Motorola Mobility smartphones sit in the pockets of American workers, law enforcement officers, and government contractors, connected to voice, location, and network data around the clock. Think about all the personal and data that goes through those phones and how it could be used against those officials to blackmail them and undermine our safety.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Electrolux <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/electrolux-group-and-midea-group-form-a-highly-complementary-long-term-strategic-partnership-in-north-america-to-accelerate-profitable-growth-and-strengthen-innovation-302752046.html">announced</a> a joint venture with Midea, a Chinese-owned appliance giant, that includes partial operational control of a factory in Anderson, South Carolina. Not only does this further expose American information and our infrastructure, but now <a href="https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/04/24/electrolux-lay-off-more-than-1000-workers-upstate-plans-new-partnership/">1,200</a> American workers are temporarily displaced while a CCP-linked company moves into their plant. This is happening right now to real American workers in real American communities, to American workers and their jobs today.
In response, President Trump made his position clear. He’s <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-orders-federal-agencies-prioritize-american-made-goods-curb-waiver-use">called</a> on every federal agency to buy American, close waiver loopholes, and implement policies that prevent the federal government from purchasing foreign products when great American alternatives already exist.
He&#8217;s right. This is exactly how we become less dependent on foreign nations, create more American jobs, and protect our country.
Still, there’s more we can do. My <a href="https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/2025/8/sen-rick-scott-introduces-protect-the-grid-act-to-target-communist-china-s-control-of-smart-devices">PROTECT the Grid Act</a> would direct the Department of Commerce to assess exactly how deeply CCP-linked smart devices have penetrated American homes and our power grid and create a clear pathway to cut off that access before it’s too late.
If we want to remain truly independent, we cannot keep handing our adversaries the keys to our economy, our infrastructure, and our power grid, one appliance, one joint venture, one government contract at a time.
Communist China is playing the long game. It is time we started playing ours — and playing to win.
***
Rick Scott is currently serving as a U.S. Senator from Florida.

The LG Smart Refrigerator with THINQ is

Rick Scott: Who Really Owns the Products in Your Home?

Communist China

Electric grid

Electrolux

Haier

PROTECT The Grid Act

This morning, over coffee and a croissant, Erin Houchin told me about her daughter.
Her biggest concern at 13 years old wasn&#8217;t a pop quiz or whether her crush liked her back. It was a stranger — or strangers — on the other side of a screen, circling closer.
That&#8217;s the childhood these kids have. That&#8217;s the world we handed them on a silver, gold, or rose-gold platter. 
I am a social media influencer. I post for part of my living. My entire career is built on these platforms. And I am here to tell you, with zero ambiguity, that social media is a loaded weapon in the hands of a child, and we have spent the better part of a decade handing it to them and acting surprised when someone gets hurt.
Representative Erin Houchin (IN-9) is one of the only lawmakers in Washington actually trying to drag Big Tech and the rest of Congress into the 21st century on this catastrophe. While everyone else is riveted to AI doomsday headlines and the latest geopolitical chaos, have you checked in with your kid lately? Have you actually hung out with a teenager? These kids are a mess. Zoned out, anxious, depressed, and eerily indistinguishable from one another because they all think, talk, TikTok, and dress the same way.
The algorithm is the new parent, and it is doing a spectacularly terrible job.
Houchin can&#8217;t keep playing the lone wolf here, fighting the woke Left and Big Tech. Their reasons for keeping your 13-year-old scrolling are not benign. They are mercenary. Maybe I&#8217;m just an old-fashioned woman stuck in a 24-year-old&#8217;s body, but I say we make June &#8220;Put Down the Phone and Go Outside Month.&#8221; Celebrate touching grass. Riding bikes. Reading books. Let&#8217;s give kids a few more years of actual childhood before the algorithm owns their developing prefrontal cortex, because once you&#8217;re on social media, the psychological grip is almost impossible to break.
What Houchin is doing makes total sense, and the fact that it&#8217;s stalling is concerning.
She’s a mom of three from Indiana who has watched this wreckage up close. The current federal rule, straight out of 1998&#8217;s <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa">COPPA</a>, sets a laughably inadequate minimum age of 13 for social media.
Thirteen. That’s when you can get on KiK and get sent <a href="http://dailywire.com/news/see-it-graham-platner-has-active-profile-on-predators-paradise-messaging-app">messages by Graham Platner.</a>
The legislation governing your child&#8217;s digital life predates the iPhone by nearly a decade. Houchin&#8217;s flagship RESET Act (H.R. 6488) would raise that floor to 16, force platforms to default to safer settings for minors, kill the dopamine-engineered algorithmic feeds, and give parents real, functional oversight. She introduced it in December <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">2025</a>.
It&#8217;s stalled, sitting in committee.
She co-led the bipartisan <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6333">Parents Over Platforms Act</a>, which closes the loopholes that kids, including her own daughter, exploit to bypass controls. It squeaked through the subcommittee. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) authored the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text">KIDS</a> Act, which includes Houchin&#8217;s two bills — AWARE and SAFEBOTs — that require warnings on AI chatbots and protect kids from deceptive bots. It cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in <a href="http://houchin.house.gov/media/press-releases/houchin-bills-protect-children-ai-dangers-pass-energy-commerce-committee">March 2026</a>.
Progress? Sure. But none of this is law yet. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">RESET</a> hasn’t moved an inch. Congress is too busy grandstanding while kids’ brains quietly melt. 
And we don&#8217;t have to speculate about the damage anymore. The CDC&#8217;s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304a9-H.pdf">40</a>% of high schoolers reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness. Twenty percent seriously considered suicide. Nine percent attempted it. Young girls are disproportionately devastated. More than three hours a day on social media doubles the risk of depression and <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html">anxiety</a>. Suicide rates for teens exploded alongside smartphones, up over <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm">57</a>% from 2007 to 2017. An estimated 500,000 active predators are online daily. Forty percent of children have been approached by strangers attempting to groom <a href="https://childsafety.losangelescriminallawyer.pro/children-and-grooming-online-predators.html">them</a>. One in seven minors has been solicited for explicit images. The victims are overwhelmingly young <a href="https://ourrescue.org/resources/child-exploitation/online-exploitation/how-online-grooming-impacts-child-exploitation">girls</a>. 
 
Where is the outrage? I thought the Left hated child predators? Or do they only care when the predator&#8217;s name is Jeffrey and selectively ignore when the predator is from below the southern border or on a platform run by Big Tech? 
To be clear, no one is yanking your child’s phone out of their hand and burning it in the street. Free speech is freer than ever. Parents who decide their kid is mature enough can still grant permission. That&#8217;s the entire point of parental oversight. But the inconvenient truth is that these kids are sophisticated and sneaky little operators. They are running circles around their parents through loopholes, secondary accounts, VPNs, and borrowed devices, and hurting themselves in the process.
The law isn&#8217;t there to replace parenting. It&#8217;s there because platforms have deliberately engineered their products to circumvent it.
The ugliest dimension of this fight is that a sizable portion of the Left wants to keep that access age low precisely because they want the indoctrination pipeline wide open. Online furry spaces, LGBTABCDEFG+ echo chambers, and trans-activist corners thrive on vulnerable preteens. 
Imagine if the 16-year-old, transgender, Denver, Colorado shooter was restricted in his online access during those earlier ages and wasn’t exposed to all of that hatred and indoctrination at such an early age? Maybe things would be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_School_Highlands_Ranch_shooting">different</a>. 
We know that algorithms push division, rage, and identity crises that turn confused kids into activists, or worse, isolated and radicalized. Social media is not neutral; it’s a culture-war supercharger creating echo chambers that breed anxiety, self-harm, and societal fractures. Some on the Left are perfectly comfortable with platforms functioning as unregulated youth indoctrination zones.
They call it inclusion. It’s not; it’s reckless exploitation with better marketing.
And to Big Tech: I genuinely wish you the best in the A.I. arms race against China. I mean it. Build great things and make America more awesome. I’m a big fan.
But your social media business model for children runs on addiction, dopamine manipulation, and harvesting data from developing brains. For children, this part is simply not a public good.
Apple, Meta, Google: build real parental controls, default them to “on,” and keep the predators and the algorithmic psychological warfare away from kids who can&#8217;t yet drive a car, sign a contract, or vote.
I vividly remember getting my iPhone 5C in fifth grade at 11 years old. This was life-changing in the best way. I could text my friends, call them, and make plans. But social media came later, so despite the phone, I still ran around outside, read actual books, had awkward face-to-face conversations with acne all over my face, and no beauty filter in sight. I experienced the profound indignity of a middle school crush who did not reciprocate. I wasn&#8217;t addicted. I was a kid. My self-worth wasn&#8217;t being quantified in likes. My sense of beauty wasn&#8217;t being calibrated against an algorithm&#8217;s highlight reel. I had the extraordinary, irreplaceable gift of boredom, and it made me interesting and interested.
We owe the next generation that same fighting chance.
Erin Houchin is in that fight. The rest of us, parents, lawmakers, social media users who know better, and yes, even the self-proclaimed &#8220;pro-children&#8221; Left, need to show up.
June is here. Be proud of your low screen time. Put the phones down. Go outside.
Your kids are waiting.

Social Media

Don’t Let The AI Algorithm Parent Your Kids

Children's Health

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has spent years being treated by mainstream media as the go-to expert on hate groups and extremism. Now it is facing an 11-count federal indictment for wire fraud, lying to a bank, and money laundering.
As Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto recently put it, the SPLC does not act like a neutral watchdog. It behaves more like a competitor to real journalism, with every incentive to hype threats because “hate pays.”
The real test is whether the institutions that have propped it up will finally take these charges seriously. So far, the response has been disappointing. The indictment claims the SPLC secretly funneled millions of dollars to leaders of the very white-supremacist groups it claims to track, including more than $270,000 to an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. That rally gained instant notoriety, and it became prime fodder for left-leaning media that endlessly replayed former President Joe Biden’s misleading claim about Trump saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Three of the Big Four news apps — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — completely ignored the April 21 indictment. Apple News featured just two stories on the scandal, both from left-leaning outlets. As for the other three apps, the story did not crack their top 20 headlines in the days after it broke. Wikipedia went even further than ignoring it. Editors buried the indictment deep in the SPLC’s page, 65 paragraphs down under a mild “criticism” heading. Efforts to move it higher, including into the lead section, were quickly shot down. One editor said it had “no place so far up.” Key details, like the payments to the Unite the Right organizer, were stripped out as “UNDUE.”
They also removed references to the indictment from the Unite the Right rally page itself, despite the obvious connection, and blocked it from the list of groups the SPLC labels as hate groups. This protective editing stands in sharp contrast to how quickly Wikipedia highlights indictments against Republicans and conservatives.
It is not just dishonest coverage. Wikipedia still treats the SPLC as a “generally reliable” source, letting editors cite it over 7,000 times. Meanwhile, right-leaning outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, the New York Post, and The Daily Wire are heavily restricted or blacklisted. After the indictment, editors shut down debates about the SPLC’s special status and even topic-banned a dissenting editor.
The bias runs deep. The SPLC’s “extremist” files and hate lists still get prominent placement on pages about conservatives like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec, Moms for Liberty, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. At the same time, the SPLC is accused of quietly paying an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America and a leader of the National Socialist Party of America while publicly condemning them.
Wikipedia matters because it dominates Google search results and AI summaries. Google has given millions to the Wikimedia Foundation, and tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft partner with it. When these platforms downplay damaging news about a favored group while keeping its power to label enemies intact, tens of millions of people get a distorted picture every day.
This fits a broader pattern tracked by the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America project. Our monitoring of the Big Four news apps shows consistent favoritism toward liberal sources. Paired with Wikipedia’s practices, it shows how big tech amplifies left-leaning gatekeepers and sidelines stories that do not fit the narrative. In short, major news aggregators and Wikipedia have buried the SPLC indictment. They have protected one of the Left’s most powerful smear machines from real accountability while it keeps attacking conservatives online.
When the information gatekeepers suppress a major federal corruption case against an organization that shapes so much of our public debate, they erode trust across the board. Millions of Americans end up seeing a cleaned-up version of reality that serves the SPLC’s defenders, not the truth.
***
David Bozell is president of the Media Research Center.

Wikipedia

How The SPLC Gets Big Time Protection From Big Tech — And Why It Matters

Media Bias

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

There is a current tendency to blame free markets and technology for dyspepsia with the economy, as if there is a nefarious group of people destroying your way of life.
People are literally trying to attack data centers.
As David Friedberg noted on the “<a href="https://x.com/theallinpod/status/2046280245758787914">All-In Podcast</a>”:
<blockquote>Most people in America are starting to really hate rich people. And there&#8217;s no physical space that better represents the wealth in America, the wealth creation that&#8217;s happened that a lot of people feel left behind from, than the data center. It is the temple of the wealthy. It is the way that the rich, elite, tech, kind of political, connected billionaires that we&#8217;re obviously all attached to are taking from the poor, getting themselves ahead, shooting themselves to space, leaving everyone else behind, and the data center, I think, is the representation of their progress. And it is a representation of the progress that others don&#8217;t feel.
For a consumer&#8217;s life to actually be altered in a meaningfully positive way, most people don&#8217;t feel that yet. The best thing they see is some medical advice they&#8217;re getting on ChatGPT or something, and that&#8217;s kind of the end of it for them. So I think there&#8217;s a lot of this populism that&#8217;s swollen and that&#8217;s taken over, not just the US, but probably a good chunk of the West. And the data center is the target.</blockquote>
David Friedberg&#8217;s explanation is exactly right. This is the way that economic populists have been pushing.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-ep-2410?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Let’s differentiate between moral and economic populism. Moral populism was exemplified by William F. Buckley back in the 1960s when he stated that he would trust the first 100 names in the Harvard phone book on matters of public policy more than he would trust 100 Harvard professors.
The idea was that the common man in the United States — shaped as he or she was by the institutions of church and family and community — had a better moral compass, on average, than the elites.
I totally agree with that, because elites very often believe that they have been freed from these systems of morality.
However, when it comes to the economy, economic populism is virtually the inverse. Economic populism assumes that there should be some sort of centralized control placed into the hands of that central power by “the people,” and centralized control should overwhelm the disseminated knowledge that is implicit in free markets and capital markets.
The basic principle of capitalism is that disparate views on things lead to better outcomes, that differential knowledge and the diffusion of knowledge are actually significantly more effective than one guy at the top with a stick beating people into submission.
But economic populism says that free markets are bad if the product of the free market is something I don&#8217;t like, therefore, we should take power away from the free market to destroy it.
Whenever there is economic unease, people tend to attack free market capitalism, or what they see as the symbols of free market capitalism, and they tend to blame people who are wealthy.
The great lie is that people in the United States are wealthy because they&#8217;re stealing from the poor. It is a full-scale lie. It is not true.
The only places in the world where people are rich because they steal from the poor are communist countries and other forms of tyranny. The reason people get rich in a free market economy is because they are providing products and services at a price people are willing to pay. People want that product or service.
But if you can somehow recast the economy of the United States as “rigged” on behalf of the wealthy and go after the means of production, you target data centers.
What you are going to end up doing, in this view, is overthrow the capitalist system.
The outcome of that will be quite dire.
There is a grievance-based, horseshoe-theory economic Right that is also wildly upset about artificial intelligence data centers because they&#8217;re big and ugly.
You know what else is big and ugly? Walmart — but it’s wonderful for the vast majority of consumers.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman&#8217;s home was allegedly targeted in the second attack in just two days; a shot was even fired. This is part and parcel of a broader movement that is targeting technology more generally, including technologies that are required for the United States to win wars.
City Journal <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/palantir-protests-ice-national-security?utm_source=virtuous&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=cjdaily">reported</a> there is a campaign against the military contractor Palantir — which generates extraordinary technologies in terms of intelligence gathering, capacity to target, and much of the actual technology that goes into the machines that we use.
This crosses paths with all of America&#8217;s enemies. America&#8217;s enemies are delighted to watch us destroy ourselves by taking down the technologies that allow us to win.
If you buy into this entire shtick — the idea that AI as a technology must be destroyed — it won&#8217;t be destroyed.
We&#8217;ll just lose.
If you think that China is going to forgo AI, you&#8217;re a fool. They won’t.
If the United States were to heavily restrict AI, not just in terms of preventing its gravest harms, but restricting the development of AI, or if there were to be a political party that attempts to prevent the building of data centers, not for any sort of understandable economic reason — like, for example, make the data centers pay their fair share of electricity production, which I think is a fair argument — if there&#8217;s a broad scale movement to destroy the AI industry out of either misplaced agrarianism or a deep and abiding hatred for capitalism or the generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.
If the United States heavily restricts AI, not just by preventing its gravest harms but by restricting its development, we will lose. If a political party tries to stop the construction of data centers, we will lose. That is different from making data centers pay their fair share for electricity production, which I think is a fair argument. But if there is a broad-based movement to destroy the AI industry out of misplaced agrarianism, a deep and abiding hatred of capitalism, or a generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.
China wins.
This is not a vacuum. It is not as though if the United States forgoes AI magically, we would continue to have a burgeoning, wealthy economy, and China goes weapons down.
When it comes to AI, indeed, there are problems, there are dangers — and we should all recognize those dangers, not whistling past the graveyard — but at the same time, it is a tremendous opportunity.
A China in a dominant AI position means a China in a dominant military position. The amount of AI that is being used right now by the United States military in the conflict in Iran and in the operation in Venezuela is tremendous and growing.
If China outpaces us in AI development, that means their military is now superior to ours. If their military is superior to ours, that means they can not only effectuate change in their region, it means they can also spread that technology throughout the world and make other countries dependent on the receipt of that technology.
It means that many, many other countries all over planet Earth would suddenly become dependent on China.
That is a huge problem, and it also leaves China in a dominant economic position, because AI means more productivity. If productivity goes up for China but remains stagnant for the United States, they will outcompete us. If they outcompete us, one of two things happens: Either we block off our economy and become backward and protectionist — meaning we don&#8217;t have any of the best goods and products and services at the best price, we&#8217;re all poorer and we slide into poverty and stagnation — or we have to be dependent on Chinese products, our kids work for Chinese companies, and China is able to spread its influence.
When it comes to the game of economics, you must win.
When it comes to the game of military dominance, you must win.
And when it comes to the technological game, you must win.
The economic populism that&#8217;s been rising says that we ought to tariff our way out of all our problems, that we ought to attack technological development, that it would be great to have an economy based on t-shirts — none of this is going to solve the bigger problem.
Attacking tech CEOs or healthcare CEOs or burning up Teslas and attacking Tesla showrooms or shooting Charlie Kirk or attempting to shoot President Trump — all of these are the most extreme manifestations of an ideology.
That ideology says that you are a victim of American society and therefore you get to do bad things. On a broader political level, you are a victim of American society, and therefore you ought to get together with the other victims, take over the government, and use centralized, tyrannical power r to cram down your view of the world.

Working robots

Populist Rage And AI: National Surrender

Anti-capitalist

Artificial Intelligence

Ben Shapiro

Capitalism

China

Economy

Opinion

Populism

Technology

President Donald Trump said his first interaction with outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook came during his first term when the tech mogul called to get his help with a &#8220;fairly large problem.&#8221;
“I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim,” Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post on Tuesday.
The post came a day after Apple announced that Cook would be leaving the company in September after 15 years leading it. Trump said Cook called him at the beginning of his first term asking for his help with a problem.
“He had a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well,” Trump said. “The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
Trump said he thought that Cook was right and got the problem “taken care” of “quickly and effectively.”
“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could,” Trump said, saying he helped Cook three or four times with big issues.
“He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t,” Trump said. “Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!!”
In August 2025, Cook joined Trump at the White House to announced $100 billion in investments in the United States. Cook gifted Trump an Apple logo nameplate with gold base during the meeting.
Under Cook&#8217;s leadership, Apple became a $4 trillion company. He will be replaced by John Ternus, currently the senior vice president of hardware engineering.

Menu