Happy Tuesday! Here’s Your Tuesday Tech Drop — my final roundup of the year highlighting the previous week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
The year began with a bunch of Big Tech oligarchs flanking Donald Trump at his inauguration, a fitting symbol of the outsize influence that tech executives would wield in the first year of Trump’s second stint in the White House. And it’s ending with the president attempting to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence — a boon to these tech execs, who have showered him with money and gifts.
All of this has made one thing clear: The nation’s fight for democracy and its fight against Big Tech overreach are inextricably linked. And I look forward to highlighting this even more in the year ahead.
MAGA media figure says she’s back in U.S.
The Trump administration seemingly took steps to allow a right-wing Canadian couple to reenter the United States after their media company was allegedly used by the Russian government to pay prominent MAGA influencers in the U.S. to peddle divisive and pro-Russian propaganda.
A new report from The Bulwark’s Will Sommer highlighted recent social media posts from Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen thanking the Trump administration — specifically, the State Department, the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection — for helping her and her husband return to the U.S. after Chen lost her work visa amid the ongoing federal investigation into the Russian propaganda effort. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., suggested that it shows Russian President Vladimir Putin is “in charge” of Trump’s administration.
A State Department senior adviser, Joe Rittenhouse, shared Chen’s post on X, saying he was “so happy to help correct the wrongs of the past administration.” (The FBI declined to comment to MS NOW, while the State Department and CBP did not immediately respond. The Bulwark reported that neither Chen nor Rittenhouse responded to its requests for comment.aure)
Read more at The Bulwark.
Former ‘South Park’ writer trolls Trump
A former “South Park” writer bought the domain name for TrumpKennedyCenter.org months before the president decided to slap his name on the renowned performing arts center in Washington — and now he’s using it to troll Trump.
Read more at Vanity Fair.
Warning labels for social media
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed a bill last week that officially requires social media companies to display warning labels on their platforms, to alert young users that they’re being exposed to “addictive” features such as autoplay or infinite scrolling.
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Sanders backs moratorium on data centers
During an interview on CNN, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., reiterated his call for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers, the hubs that Big Tech companies are using to power their AI tools. The centers have faced growing backlash for their corrosive environmental impact and their drain on local resources.
Sanders also expressed his fears about the coming age of AI — which he called the “most consequential technology in the history of humanity” — and advocated for slowing down the development of AI tools to better understand their effect on society.
Watch the interview here.
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