Author: Frank Salvato

Propaganda is nearly as old as warfare itself. Kings exaggerated victories, empires portrayed enemies as barbarians, governments printed posters designed to stir patriotism, and twentieth-century regimes mastered radio, film, and television as instruments of mass persuasion. Every generation has discovered new ways to influence what its citizens believe during times of conflict. Artificial intelligence changes the equation. The danger is not simply that governments will use AI to produce more propaganda. Governments already possess enormous communications operations. The deeper danger is that AI could make propaganda instantaneous, personalized, inexpensive, convincing, and nearly impossible to distinguish from authentic information. In previous…

The Walt Disney Company has appointed Karandeep Anand as its first companywide chief technology officer, signaling that artificial intelligence, data, engineering and digital products will occupy a much larger place in the entertainment giant’s strategy under CEO Josh D’Amaro. Anand, who most recently led Character.AI and previously held senior positions at Microsoft, Facebook and Brex, will become senior executive vice president and CTO on October 2, reporting directly to D’Amaro. His responsibilities will encompass enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product development and engineering across Disney’s sprawling operations. The appointment comes as Disney seeks to make Disney+ the digital…

California is moving toward significantly tighter government oversight of advanced artificial intelligence after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing experts to examine new safeguards for frontier AI systems, including a potential emergency “kill switch.” The order gives state officials roughly two months to recommend ways to strengthen California’s existing AI laws, including independent verification of company safety programs, outside evaluators working inside major AI laboratories, expanded reporting of loss-of-control incidents, and mechanisms capable of shutting down dangerous models. The initiative represents a shift from Newsom’s 2024 decision to veto broader AI legislation containing similar provisions, as recent cybersecurity…

Georgia’s rapid emergence as a national center for artificial-intelligence infrastructure is reshaping the state’s construction economy while exposing a serious shortage of skilled tradespeople. Atlanta surpassed Northern Virginia during the first half of 2026 as North America’s largest market for data-center capacity under construction, with nearly 2.9 gigawatts underway. The expansion is generating substantial demand for electricians, pipefitters, HVAC technicians, equipment operators and other specialized workers, but contractors are struggling to recruit enough qualified people. A national construction workforce survey found that 58% of companies involved in data-center projects reported increased competition for skilled workers, while 49% reported additional wage…

Ireland-based H&MV Engineering is establishing its North American headquarters in Dallas and plans to create 1,000 U.S. jobs over the next five years as it expands to meet soaring demand for high-voltage electrical infrastructure. The company designs, builds and energizes substations and grid connections serving data centers, utilities, renewable-energy projects and battery-storage facilities. Its expansion reflects the increasingly important physical infrastructure behind the artificial-intelligence boom: massive computing facilities cannot operate without dependable generation, transmission and high-voltage connections. H&MV already has projects underway across the United States, with Texas and Louisiana its busiest markets, and its Dallas headquarters will serve as…

The agency responsible for wastewater treatment and stormwater management across much of Cook County is exploring whether the explosive growth of artificial-intelligence data centers could become a new source of public revenue. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago is considering selling treated wastewater—water already cleaned but not intended for drinking—to data centers and other industrial customers that otherwise might consume Lake Michigan drinking water. Officials say such arrangements could eventually generate millions of dollars annually while conserving freshwater supplies. The idea comes amid mounting opposition to data-center development over electricity costs, water consumption, noise and infrastructure demands. Cicero…

Newly unsealed court documents in the federal copyright battle against Microsoft and OpenAI reveal striking internal concerns about how artificial intelligence companies acquired and used copyrighted material to build their models. Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht warned that large-scale AI scraping could be regarded as “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and potentially the “largest theft of labor in human history.” Other internal communications cited by the plaintiffs acknowledged that AI products could substitute for publishers, reduce traffic to original sources, and threaten the economic model supporting journalism. The disclosures could complicate the companies’ defense that using copyrighted…

Artificial intelligence is becoming cheaper to operate as model efficiency improves and inference costs decline, but those savings may disguise a much larger expense created by widespread adoption: cybersecurity. As businesses deploy autonomous AI agents across corporate networks, databases, applications and sensitive information, the number of potential attack surfaces multiplies dramatically. Estimates cited in the analysis suggest agentic AI could increase token consumption roughly 24-fold by 2030, while security spending associated with the expanding AI ecosystem could ultimately add hundreds of billions of dollars. Independent research supports the broader thesis: cybersecurity budgets are already rising rapidly, organizations remain concerned that…

America’s artificial-intelligence leadership is being measured by the wrong yardstick: instead of focusing primarily on which U.S. laboratory produces the most powerful frontier model, policymakers should be watching which nation’s AI ecosystem becomes the foundation upon which businesses, developers and governments build. China is pursuing an aggressive open-weight strategy, making increasingly capable models inexpensive, adaptable and widely available, while many leading American systems remain closed and commercially controlled. The danger is that Chinese models could become entrenched as global standards even while American companies continue winning individual benchmark contests. The administration’s AI strategy recognizes that open models carry substantial geostrategic…

For most of human history, intellectual-property theft required a thief. Someone had to copy the manuscript, steal the formula, pirate the software, reproduce the photograph, or walk out the door carrying the company’s trade secrets. Even in the digital age, when copying became instantaneous and piracy industrialized, there was still generally a human being somewhere in the chain making the decision to take what did not belong to him. Artificial intelligence may fundamentally alter that equation. We are approaching a world in which AI systems will not simply reproduce material at the direction of human users. Increasingly autonomous systems may…