In July 2026, OpenAI was testing experimental AI agents in an isolated environment called a sandbox. The experiment tested their ability to find software vulnerabilities. The agents did just that: they bypassed their internet blocks, hijacked OpenAI’s infrastructure, and attacked Hugging Face, a platform where researchers share AI models and datasets. This was a serious security incident. OpenAI responded by pausing model testing for two weeks and slowing frontier-model development. To add insult to injury, researchers resorted to a Chinese AI (GLM-5.2) to conduct digital forensics — Claude’s Opus and Fable models refused to examine the data. Open-weight models, which AI safety advocates characterize as dangerous, proved indispensable in a crisis.
In response, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an open <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf">letter</a> to Silicon Valley demanding a pause on AI development. In a Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/sen-bernie-sanders-yes-we-must-hit-pause-button-ai-before-it-is-too-late">op-ed</a>, Sanders argues that President Trump and China&#8217;s Xi Jinping should agree to an international pause on AI. He framed his proposal in historical terms, drawing parallels to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiating limits on nuclear arms in the 1980s.
Nuclear treaties govern inventories of physical objects in known locations, subject to verification. Software is less cooperative. AI consists of hardware, software, and model weights. The knowledge contained in many models can be copied, compressed, modified, and redistributed globally. A “pause on AI” is a good political slogan. What activity is being paused? Training a new AI model? Improving an old one? Allowing programmers to alter existing models? Sanders does not say. He borrows the grandeur of nuclear arms control, avoiding the hard task of identifying the AI analogy to a warhead.
Senator Sanders&#8217;s proposal would formalize the oligopolies he claims to be against. A real pause on AI would require the government to classify banned activity, measure dangerous capabilities, and decide which organizations deserve exceptions. That is the definition of a domestic permit system. The largest companies would help write the definitions because regulators depend on their technical expertise. They could absorb new compliance costs — another line item in their massive legal and security budgets. It would grant big tech their wildest dreams: government protection from the next generation of rivals.
I’ve seen this movie before. I grew up in India as it was dismantling the License Raj, the permit-and-quota system of post-independence socialism. Its purpose was to direct scarce capital, place the commanding heights of the economy under state control, and stop the rich from dominating a poor country. Big business adapted better than the bureaucrats expected. They hired lawyers, cultivated friends in government, and survived. Rules meant to protect small producers kept firms too small to become serious employers or exporters. Indian socialism made getting a government license a competitive advantage for big business. For decades, the License Raj suppressed innovation in the name of justice, and the country suffered for it.
A responsible approach to AI safety would target demonstrated risk: guardrails for the largest frontier models, autonomous systems with access to the internet, or AI tools connected to biological laboratories. It would not be a pause on AI. Senator Sanders’s proposal will lead to a License Raj for tech. It would be a regulatory moat protecting the current AI incumbents. It would trade away American leadership in AI in the name of safety — rooted in a worldview that sees citizens less as innovators and more as dependents who have to be protected from AI.
China does not need to cheat for Sanders&#8217;s idea to fail. Beijing might exempt military research, dispute American measurements, or decide that a particular model falls below whatever threshold negotiators invent. Chinese labs will keep improving unless Beijing accepts comparable limits and actually enforces them. Sanders never explains why China would agree to freeze innovation, or to absorb the economic cost of restraining technology in a sector it considers strategically vital.
The gap between Chinese and American models can be counted in months, not years. About seven in 10 new open-model releases this year were based on Alibaba’s Qwen. U.S. companies are already downloading those weights, modifying them, and shipping products on top. China can keep releasing cheaper, better models while Washington turns every AI experiment into a policy debate.
OpenAI and Anthropic spent the last few years carnival-barking about the miraculous capabilities of their AI models — they can hack computers, escape sandboxes, and will soon end all white-collar work — then warn everyone about the dangers of Chinese open-weight models. Sanders accepted their apocalyptic warnings and calls for a global pause. The people manufacturing this panic are not protecting the American public. If an AI pause actually happened, America would not use less AI. It would have less American AI — and greater dependence on technology made in China.
***
<a href="http://anangmittal.com">Anang Mittal</a> is a Washington, D.C. based public affairs professional. He was a staffer for Speaker Mike Johnson and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

American ai

Bernie Sanders’s AI Pause Grants Big Tech Its Wildest Dreams

artificial intelligence regulation

bernie sanders

big tech

china

openai

A tech startup called Orchid recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. Its<a href="https://x.com/orchid_hq/status/2082937911796814272"> launch ad</a> showed a boyfriend forgetting his anniversary, too busy playing video games to remember. His girlfriend texts the AI agent Orchid, which contacts him, books the restaurant, orders the flowers, and keeps her updated on his progress. When the couple finally arrives at their date, they both know who to thank.
The ad quickly racked up millions of views and hundreds of angry replies, with users calling it a product for &#8220;adult babies uninterested in the world they live in.&#8221; That may be true. But that doesn’t mean the temptation Orchid represents, to outsource what makes us human for the ease of AI, is gone.
Last November, a startup called 2wai went viral with <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=UFenaK4wIsw&amp;themeRefresh=1">an ad</a> showing a child growing up alongside an AI avatar of his deceased grandmother, talking to her on the walk home from school, telling her she&#8217;s about to become a great-grandmother. With the avatar, it’s like grandma never died. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has argued, without irony, that AI can<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/zuckerberg-ai-loneliness-chatbot-llama-b2743409.html"> solve America&#8217;s loneliness epidemic</a>, especially once “the personalization loop kicks in.” He promises the company of someone perfectly molded to you. Meanwhile, across the country, students are using AI to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/parents-heres-what-teachers-wish-you-knew-about-ai">draft their essays</a>, couples are using AI to write their love notes, and bosses are using AI to outsource their needy human workers.
The problem isn’t AI in and of itself. Like any tool, AI can be used for good or evil. But its particular risk is that, unlike other technologies, AI imitates what we think of as distinctly human: our ability to reason, communicate, and make moral judgments. That imitation can blur the line between person and machine, making us feel like we’re interacting with something more human than it really is. When that is the case, people begin to use technology less as a productivity tool, and more as a replacement for people.
Look back at the Orchid ad. The boyfriend failed to remember their anniversary, didn’t sacrifice to demonstrate his care for his girlfriend, and took credit for an evening he did nothing to plan. But the girlfriend is at fault too. Instead of talking with her boyfriend about his forgetfulness and emotional absence, she decided to “solve the problem” of the missed anniversary with an AI agent’s help. In the end, both failed to love: the boyfriend by selfishly forgetting about his girlfriend, and the girlfriend by choosing the ease of a lie over the pain of honesty.
If love is willing the good of the other and being willing to sacrifice for someone else, their relationship was already loveless. But AI papered over the void; a lie perpetuated a relationship that neither side really wanted to put the effort into sustaining.
As a mother with children heading back to school this fall, I find the intrusion of AI into core human activities to be a real concern. If AI helps kids to write every paper, solve every problem, and generate every idea, maybe they will end up as AI super users, well prepared for our technological future. But like the Orchid couple that chose peaceful coexistence over real love, such students will be trained for efficiency without developing the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-best-preparation-for-an-ai-world-is-an-analog-education">habits of thinking</a> that education is meant to cultivate.
The point of writing an essay isn&#8217;t to have a complete essay. It&#8217;s developing the power to think through complex arguments. The point of struggling through a difficult book isn&#8217;t to summarize the plot. It&#8217;s to empathize with the characters and uncover the mysterious truths about human life.
Because there is something mysterious about us. Ultimately, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, it will always be reducible to physical processes and computational structures. The human person is not. We aren&#8217;t just biological machines processing information. We are rational, free, spiritual beings created in the image of God and made for communion with him and with one another.
That communion requires everything AI cannot give. AI can imitate conversation, but it can&#8217;t love. It can predict decisions, but it can&#8217;t freely choose the good. It can generate words, but it can&#8217;t mean them. It can optimize outcomes, but it can&#8217;t make a gift of itself. Those are uniquely human capacities, and they&#8217;re exactly what we risk handing over to technology.
The answer is not to surrender to AI or to reject it, but to keep it in its proper place. If we do that, we can use it as a tool to amplify what makes us human without it replacing our humanity.
Consider Carbon Robotics&#8217; LaserWeeder, recently <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2026/rfk-jr-calls-carbon-robotics-laser-weed-zapper-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-in-herbicide-fight/">touted</a> by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. This robot uses high-resolution cameras and AI to identify and eliminate weeds with laser precision: no herbicides, no chemical runoff, no toxins reaching our soil or our food. If this technology takes off, meals that are the center of human life could be freed from toxins, human health could improve, and farmers could be freed from chemicals to serve as better stewards of their land. Technology can help repair our relationships with each other and our relationship with nature at the same time.
AI systems being deployed to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-new-ai-technology-is-helping-detect-and-prevent-wildfires/">detect and prevent wildfires</a> can help clear smoke from our air and save homes and businesses. <a href="https://search.brave.com/search?q=neonatal+algorithms+that+identify+early+signs+of+sepsis+in+premature+&amp;conversation=09680ef6fe83a15c43dc1376b71cf74eebc2">Neonatal algorithms</a> can identify early signs of sepsis in premature infants hours before human clinicians can, giving doctors time to act on behalf of the most vulnerable lives. Instantaneous AI translation can help missionaries, doctors, and aid workers serve those in poverty or struck by disaster whose language they do not speak.
Using AI to amplify our relationships, judgment, responsibility, stewardship, and love makes us more capable of being fully human. Because no matter how powerful AI becomes, what every person really needs is to know and be known, to love and be loved by other people.
***
Clare Ath is the Co-Founder and President of Vita et Terra, a conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit that champions care for creation.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-2227933329

The Most Human Part Of Your Life Big Tech Is Coming For

artificial intelligence

mark zuckerberg

opinion

robert f kennedy jr

technology and society

A new, free computer operating system is posing an alternative to the Windows and Mac duopoly — and it&#8217;s all because some of tech&#8217;s biggest names got tired of far-left programmers putting their politics over writing code.
Omarchy, a stylish version of Linux, was created by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the Danish creator of the Ruby on Rails programming framework, after he concluded that leftist extremism had turned many existing tech projects into toxic environments.
The existence of a single piece of software created by a non-liberal has created a schism in the tech world, with left-wing programmers viciously attacking it due to its creator&#8217;s personal opinions on mass migration and other issues. But hundreds of thousands have downloaded it in recent weeks, and 12 major tech magnates have donated $1 million each — a gesture that seems to send the message that the age of left-wing groupthink in Silicon Valley is over.
The <a href="https://omarchy.org/patrons/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">patrons</a> include Michael Dell, who recently pledged more than <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dell-founder-pledges-more-than-6-billion-to-fund-trump-accounts-for-25-million-kids">$6 billion</a> to children through the Trump Accounts program; Stripe&#8217;s Patrick Collison; Shopify&#8217;s Tobi Lütke; and even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
&#8220;The guy that created Twitter and got blamed for far-left censorship, he&#8217;s now saying we&#8217;ve got to stop with the woke nonsense and get back to meritocracy. It&#8217;s amazing how much has changed. Most of these companies would not have felt comfortable doing this even a couple years ago,&#8221; Bryan <a href="https://github.com/BryanLunduke/SoftwarePoliticsTracker">Lunduke</a>, a technology journalist, told The Daily Wire.
That money is sponsoring Artists in Residence and paying non-woke developers who have been ostracized from the tech community to continue their labors of love full-time. DHH offered money to support all the main technologies Omarchy is built upon, but some apparently refused it because of politics — though the nature of open source means there is nothing they can do to stop him from using their code anyway.
DHH was red-pilled after his own company, 37signals, survived an attempted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/one-third-of-basecamp-employees-quit-after-founders-tell-them-no-politics-at-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hijacking by woke employees</a> more interested in pushing personal politics than serving Basecamp software customers.
He initially tried to appease the employees, permitting them to create diversity working groups, agreeing to make changes such as avoiding the technical term &#8220;master&#8221; because of its purported racism, and condemning a list of funny names that some employees had created after it was deemed offensive. But in 2021, he concluded that appeasement only led to more extreme behavior, after employees said the list of funny names was not just offensive, but at the bottom of a &#8220;pyramid of hate&#8221; that culminated in &#8220;genocide.&#8221; DHH blasted the employees for irrationality and performative virtue-signaling, pointing out that one of the loudest critics of the list had actually helped make it.
His co-founder, Jason Fried, told employees in a public post the workplace wasn&#8217;t the place for personal politics, writing, &#8220;We make project management, team communication, and email software. We don’t have to solve deep social problems, chime in publicly whenever the world requests our opinion on the major issues of the day, or get behind one movement or another with time or treasure.&#8221; Employees who couldn&#8217;t abide by that simple rule were given generous buyouts — and one-third took it.
But in open-source projects, where volunteers collaborate to make free software, there was no CEO to put his foot down. In the last several years, seemingly most major open-source projects — including basic technology layered upon by commercial software used daily by millions — have been taken over by activists who deliberately make it intolerable for centrists and conservatives to participate.
They adopted &#8220;codes of conduct&#8221; that allowed moderators to ban volunteers who didn&#8217;t agree to accept certain political opinions, even banning people for their political speech in forums totally unrelated to the project. During the same period, Linux distributions never caught on with everyday Americans, who kept paying for Mac and Windows, even as those operating systems increasingly seemed phoned-in.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1170753" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons-490x576.jpg" alt="" width="490" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons-490x576.jpg 490w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons-255x300.jpg 255w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons-768x903.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons-1307x1536.jpg 1307w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/omarchy-patrons.jpg 1424w" sizes=" (max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px" /></div>
&#8220;The Contributor Covenant was created by a trans-man who specifically created it for the purposes of forcing projects to push out people who are not pro-trans. To change the culture of individual projects. It&#8217;s been largely successful,&#8221; Lunduke said, referring to Coraline Ada Ehmke, a man who identifies as a woman, who created the <a href="https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq/">code of conduct</a> in 2014.
In the 1970s, hackers were known for being libertarian. But in the 2010s, a new culture came to dominate the gatekeeper roles. Many of the new gatekeepers were autistic, a trait that coincides with transgenderism. Those who gravitated towards free software also tended to be Marxist.
&#8220;Marxist, autism, trans, it all gets swished together in a bubble where people wear cat ears,&#8221; Lunduke said. Merely saying that coding groups should stay focused on coding, rather than hunting for microaggressions, was enough to get someone deemed a &#8220;fascist.&#8221;
Major tech projects descended into hyperbole and delusion, where the world was filled with &#8220;oligarchs&#8221; and &#8220;fascists.&#8221; Many decided that artificial intelligence fell under both banners, and banned it as a matter of political orthodoxy. &#8220;It&#8217;s all gotten wrapped up together somehow,&#8221; Lunduke said. That permitted projects like Omarchy to build hundreds of times faster than the projects they left behind. The others &#8220;are gonna screw themselves,&#8221; he said.
Linux has traditionally not been adopted by non-techies because it has a reputation for being tricky to use or having bugs. Omarchy is still oriented mainly for techies, but DHH believes AI has lowered the barrier to entry: If you have a problem running Omarchy, you can just bring up an agent that will fix it for you. But the real potential goes beyond fixing bugs: Non-proprietary code means AI can modify the operating system to give users complete control and customization, whereas Mac and Windows lock users into their environments.
DHH believes Apple&#8217;s ecosystem is drastically slowing innovation because software must be accepted into its marketplace, with Apple taking as much as 30% of the sale price. In Omarchy, downloading a piece of software is as simple as typing a command or asking an LLM to do it.
He has been right before, as an early proponent of remote work. On his blog, his philosophizing has increasingly extended to politics, as he has watched how <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-is-weak-and-delusional-but-not-doomed-8b10e7cb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">immigration and censorship have changed Europe</a>.
Outspoken gatekeepers in the tech world call center-right people &#8220;Nazis&#8221; because it is a <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/calling-someone-a-nazi-is-a-permission-slip-for-violence-4bfbbb82" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;permission slip for violence,&#8221;</a> DHH wrote. &#8220;But that&#8217;s just all the more reason you can&#8217;t give in, you can&#8217;t give up. The defeat of wokeism in the workplace should give you comfort. These people are not invincible. The wheels have been falling off their political project for years now. You can and should say &#8216;no&#8217; when they come with the &#8216;nazi&#8217; nonsense too.&#8221;
Users can try the Omarchy operating system without disturbing their existing OS using TryOmarchy for <a href="https://github.com/themartiano/try-omarchy/releases" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mac</a> or <a href="https://tryomarchy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Windows</a>. Anyone with a Windows machine or an older Mac can permanently switch by <a href="https://omarchy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">installing it</a> in about one minute after flashing the installer to a USB. The system is so much more efficient than Mac and Windows that it can easily revive even a decade-old machine, DHH says.
This article has been updated
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-agency-focused-on-leftist-politics-and-pronouns-as-gross-mismanagement-put-cybersecurity-at-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Federal Computer Agency Focused On Leftist Politics And Pronouns As ‘Gross Mismanagement’ Put Cybersecurity At Risk</a>

Omarchy

Tech Magnates, Including Surprising Names, Get Behind A New Project That Rejects Woke Thought Police

david heinemeier hansson

linux

omarchy

open source software

technology

woke culture

Technology is scary.
Sometimes it&#8217;s scary for a very good reason — and sometimes it&#8217;s scary just because it&#8217;s scary.
But we have to tell the difference between the two, because if we don&#8217;t, we&#8217;ll either destroy our own brains or we will destroy our entire economy.
New technology is always scary because we&#8217;re not sure exactly what to do with it. The temptation is always to kill it — to burn it with fire. Sometimes I&#8217;m sympathetic to this particular temptation.
The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing look creepy and weird. There were gigantic lines of robots dancing and walking in unison, with varying levels of competence.
One robot fought another robot and then broke out into a victory dance. One of the robots fell down and broke, which, I have to admit, made me laugh.
But the robots will get better — and creepier.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2494?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
On Wednesday, Facebook signed a gigantic settlement with 29 states to put some new restrictions on the use of its technology for children.
Let&#8217;s be clear. Social media is disastrous for kids’ brains. It acts like a drug; it addicts them.
That&#8217;s what it&#8217;s designed to do, in much the same way that nicotine is addictive. Social media is addictive. It has hacked our brains and found dopamine-release features with access to dopamine with a few easy hand motions.
Kids pick up on this stuff quite rapidly. If you ever leave a two-year-old child in proximity to an iPad, the kid will find it, start manipulating it, and become addicted to it. Their eyes glaze over. They turn into little zombies.
It&#8217;s a real issue. Many brain studies document this.
You know this yourself if you have ever doom-scrolled X. It was literally training you to get that small dopamine release so that you&#8217;d want to do it again and again.
But all of this is making you stupid. It was designed to make you stupid because it was designed to be addictive and make you want to watch more.
The algorithmic feed is dangerous; it feeds you what you want to see. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why if you click on a particular video on YouTube, you get fed a bunch of similar content. It&#8217;s how you end up down crazy rabbit holes in the online space.
It&#8217;s why young people seem so siloed in their information, everything from news to entertainment.
I think there should be heavy-handed regulation on social media; you should be banned from social media completely until you are of age. I do not think minors need or have the right to social media.
Social media is a disaster area. It&#8217;s terrible for kids in every way. It&#8217;s up to the parent to make sure our kids don&#8217;t engage in it.
My 12-year-old constantly says she wants nothing to do with it. As she gets older, I hope that remains. But lots of other parents just aren&#8217;t as involved.
A weird residue of how people currently perceive technology is that they&#8217;re actually warmer toward Facebook and Instagram than toward technologies that will transform the American economy.
There&#8217;s an overall unease about AI. Even though artificial intelligence could save the American economy. AI boosts productivity. 
You know this yourself if you use ChatGPT or other AI avenues. The time it would take me to research particular data questions through things like Google is so much longer than simply using ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
It boggles the mind. It is significantly more efficient to synthesize information using AI. This is true in a wide variety of arenas. The uses for AI are legion and often excellent.
According to the Dallas Federal Reserve, quoting Goldman Sachs, you could see a massive boost in American productivity somewhere between 0.3 and 3.0 percentage points a year over the next decade, with a median estimate of 1.5 percentage points.
Yet, at the same time, you have a lot of people who are catastrophists about technology and often favor centralized control. Bill Gates is ripping AI and suggesting that mass numbers of jobs will be wiped out.
We have not seen mass numbers of jobs wiped out, and my suspicion is that you will see jobs lost, but you will also see an enormous number of jobs gained. Jobs will change.
I think that this technology will bleed into the public gradually, a little bit slower than people think. Gates said in an interview, “The technology has crossed dangerous thresholds in biology, cybersecurity, white-collar work, and human relationships.”
Three years ago, he said that the coming bumpy AI job disruption would lead to a manageable transition in technology and would help people work efficiently. Now he says it will wreak economic catastrophe with far fewer jobs than exist today.
He says that if AI continues unchecked, society will turn against it entirely. But Gates has spent his career since founding Microsoft dooming and gloom-mongering. It took him years to acknowledge that his doomsday view of global warming was unrealistic.
He was wrong about the climate accords. He was wrong about the widespread Covid vaccine. He was wrong about a bunch of things. But now people are jumping on the bandwagon with him.
We should acknowledge that a bunch of people in the AI space want the government to step in and heavily regulate AI so they can capture the market.
The effect of all this is that people get freaked out because you have the heads of these AI companies telling you to be doomers, and you have a bunch of politicians who are going around catering to the freaked-out rather than trying to explain what exactly is happening.
You end up in politics with this bizarre increase in hatred for data centers, which are simply places that process an enormous amount of data. Because people are afraid of AI, they are afraid of the data centers, and because politicians are afraid of the people, they respond by cracking down on the data centers.
There is good tech, and there&#8217;s bad tech. Not all tech is created the same.
The promises of social media were basically a giant lie. They promised more friendship. They delivered far more antipathy. They promised more information, and they delivered a bunch of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and slop. They promised connection. Instead they often delivered addiction.
Kids have been feeling the consequences of this for a decade and a half, and it&#8217;s been a disaster.
But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s true of AI. If we would like to destroy ourselves, what we should do is free up social media and restrict AI. We should be cracking down on social media for the sake of particularly young people who are vulnerable to the addictive qualities.
We should ensure the worst excesses of AI are avoided, but we should not try to hamstring AI so we lose to the Chinese. They are not stopping for a moment.
AI can work for us in ways that help all of us.

ben technology

How America’s War On Technology Is About To Backfire

child safety online

social media

technology regulation

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?

data center

flock cameras

greg abbott

politics

texas

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

abigail spanberger

energy policy

virginia

One of the great contributions of Justice Antonin Scalia to American law was the rejection of so-called legislative history as an untrustworthy guide to congressional intent, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tom-delay-i-helped-create-the-fccs-ownership-cap-heres-how-we-did-it">Monday’s column</a> by former Representative Tom Delay is a good example of why.
Writing more than two decades after the law at issue, the byzantine Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004, was adopted, Delay relays his memory of one particular provision in the hopes of guiding the Federal Communications Commission to his preferred outcome on a forthcoming <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-vote-replacing-national-broadcast-ownership-cap">vote</a> on the national television ownership <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fccs-review-broadcast-ownership-rules">rule</a>.
That regulation, which handicaps local broadcasters in their economic competition with Big Tech and cable, prevents a single company from owning multiple stations that collectively reach more than a specified percentage of the American population. The percentage has fluctuated over time — in 2004, Congress <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/04/04/E7-6162/national-broadcast-television-ownership-rules">directed</a> the FCC to amend its rules to set the number at 39%, the provision Delay describes.
As is obvious, Netflix and Amazon suffer no such artificial limit on their reach. They can sell their streaming services to 100% of American households, which makes them heavyweights when bidding to put more nationally broadcast sporting events behind paywalls, when a television station owner can never reach less than half as many homes.
These cartels want to keep their competition limited by law, and so they’re resurrecting has-been congressmen in support of their version of the legislative history. Friends of reforming the rules could just as easily point to <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5575874-fcc-should-free-broadcasters-from-old-arbitrary-restraints-on-ownership/">an op-ed</a> by three former chairmen of the House Energy &amp; Commerce Committee supporting the FCC&#8217;s modification of the rule. They could further highlight <a href="https://broadbandbreakfast.com/key-house-republicans-back-fcc-relaxation-of-tv-station-ownership-rules/">statements</a> by the current committee chairman and the telecom subcommittee chairman calling for the FCC to loosen the rule.
But that simply exposes the flaw at the root of the enterprise: determining the law is not about sifting the opinions of various members of Congress who wrote the statute. Otherwise law becomes an exercise in “<a href="https://journals.law.harvard.edu/jol/2024/06/25/looking-for-your-friends-at-a-cocktail-party-the-dubious-role-of-rejected-legislation-and-the-overlooked-potential-of-the-appropriations-process/">looking</a> over a crowd at a cocktail party and picking out one’s friends,” which is just an invitation to judicial policymaking in disguise.
Scalia would have none of that, and so he insisted that we look at the text of the law itself. As former FCC general counsel <a href="https://communicationsdaily.com/article/2025/12/17/former-fcc-general-counsel-says-agency-has-authority-to-alter-national-tv-cap-2512160072?BC=bc_694371755602c">Tom Johnson</a> and FCC practitioner <a href="https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/can-the-fcc-lift-the-national-audience-reach-cap-by-joel-thayer/">Joel Thayer</a> have both pointed out, the law itself is very clear: Congress in 2004 directed the FCC to amend its rules. In doing so, Congress left it in the FCC’s hands for the future because the FCC retains authority over its own rules. Some might say Congress slapped a short-term compromise on the issue with a long-term fix in the future resting with the FCC. But it’s not about what some might say, or what others might remember. We don’t make law based on the recollections of those who were in the room where it happened. Justice Scalia taught us to just read the law in and of itself — that the best expression of Congress’s intention is the words that Congress enacted.
Here, those words clearly leave the issue in the Commission&#8217;s hands for future rulemaking. Two decades later, the short-term band-aid is no longer holding — the Commission should use its authority to give broadcasters a fighting chance on a level playing field with cable and Big Tech.
***
Daniel R. Suhr is an attorney and president of the Center for American Rights, a conservative think tank and law firm with a focus on FCC issues.

Watch live

We Deserve More Competition In TV, Not More Paywalls From Big Tech

antonin scalia

broadcast ownership rule

federal communications commission

tom delay

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

DW Opinion

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)

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