Author: Frank Salvato

TikTok rejected advertisements from Meta that urged TikTok and YouTube to participate in Meta’s sweeping multistate child-safety settlement, classifying the campaign as prohibited political advertising. The dispute highlights a growing battle over who will set the rules governing minors on social media. Meta’s agreement with state attorneys general imposes tighter restrictions on teenage users and ties billions of dollars in additional settlement payments to TikTok and YouTube adopting comparable safeguards and financial commitments. Meta argues that restrictions limited to Facebook and Instagram could simply drive young users toward competing platforms, while TikTok’s refusal underscores the difficulty of turning one company’s…

Artificial intelligence could become a powerful engine for American economic growth, but concentrating its infrastructure and development among a handful of dominant technology companies poses risks that extend beyond ordinary questions of market competition. Patmos CEO John Johnson argues that decentralized AI infrastructure would distribute both economic opportunity and technological power beyond Silicon Valley, while warning that AI’s growing ability to convincingly imitate human beings could create “counterfeit” people capable of influencing, deceiving, or manipulating the public. His concern places human agency at the center of the AI debate: the danger is less that machines independently seize control than that…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly creating a privacy problem that could dwarf the concerns Americans have spent years debating over social media. Unlike traditional platforms that primarily harvest clicks, searches, purchases, locations and social connections, AI chatbots invite users to voluntarily disclose extraordinarily intimate information—medical concerns, financial problems, relationship troubles, political opinions, workplace secrets and deeply personal reflections. A 2025 study cited in the source article found that 73% of messages sent to ChatGPT were non-work related, illustrating how quickly AI has evolved from a productivity tool into something resembling a personal adviser. That transformation gives AI companies access to unusually…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang used the opening day of Dreamforce 2026 in San Francisco to reject calls for new artificial-intelligence regulations, arguing that AI safety should primarily be handled as an engineering and corporate-responsibility problem rather than through additional government mandates. Huang’s position broadly aligns with President Donald Trump’s emphasis on accelerating American AI development and limiting regulatory barriers, but it contrasts with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has urged the industry to slow frontier-model development when safety measures cannot keep pace. The disagreement highlights an increasingly consequential divide within the technology industry over whether competition, engineering standards and corporate…

A California appellate court has cleared the way for the state’s Civil Rights Department to continue investigating sex-discrimination and retaliation allegations against SpaceX, despite the employee having lived and worked in Washington state and the company subsequently moving its headquarters from California to Texas. The former employee alleges that she was paid less than a similarly situated male colleague, denied a promotion that went to a less-experienced man, and ultimately fired after participating in an employee letter criticizing workplace conditions and alleged sexual harassment. SpaceX argued that California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act should not reach employment decisions involving a…

Meta is preparing to deploy a new generation of internally designed artificial-intelligence processors as it seeks tighter control over the soaring cost and energy demands of its AI infrastructure. The company is testing its MTIA 450 chip, code-named Arke, with deployment planned for the first half of 2027, while the more broadly deployed MTIA 500, code-named Astrid, is expected to enter data centers by the end of 2027. Working with Broadcom on design and TSMC on manufacturing, Meta is betting that purpose-built processors can deliver better performance per watt and per dollar than general-purpose AI hardware. The strategy also reduces…

China has implemented new border-control regulations giving authorities broader power to prevent citizens from leaving the country when their conduct is deemed to threaten national, industrial, or technological security. Effective September 15, the rules permit exit bans lasting from six months to three years for citizens who return after committing illegal or criminal acts abroad that authorities determine harmed national security or national interests. They also explicitly connect violations of technology import and export controls with restrictions on an individual’s ability to leave China, reflecting Beijing’s determination to protect advanced technology and technical knowledge as competition with the United States…

The most consequential arms race of the twenty-first century may not be taking place in the Taiwan Strait, beneath the Arctic ice, or inside the laboratories developing hypersonic missiles. It may be unfolding silently hundreds of miles above our heads, where artificial intelligence is poised to transform space from a military support system into a battlefield of its own. America should understand what is at stake. For decades, the United States enjoyed extraordinary advantages because of its dominance in space. Satellites provide communications, intelligence, missile warning, navigation, targeting, weather information, and the GPS signals upon which military and civilian infrastructure…

The Gates Foundation is committing at least $1 billion over the next two years to expand artificial-intelligence tools in health care, education, agriculture and digital infrastructure, particularly in lower-income countries and communities that commercial AI developers might otherwise overlook. The initiative directs roughly 40 percent each to health and education, 10 percent to agriculture and 10 percent to infrastructure such as datasets for languages poorly represented in current AI systems. The foundation is already working with major technology companies on projects ranging from clinical support and vaccine research to agricultural assistance and educational tools. Bill Gates argues that market forces…

The United States has publicly acknowledged for the first time that it has deployed weapons in orbit, with Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirming that the Space Force possesses “on-orbit space control weapons” intended to defend American and allied forces from hostile actions. Meink deliberately withheld details about the systems, including whether they are kinetic or non-kinetic, saying excessive disclosure could undermine their deterrent value. The announcement represents a significant shift from Washington’s previous reluctance to discuss offensive or defensive orbital capabilities openly and comes amid growing concern over Chinese and Russian counterspace programs. It also arrives as the United…