Donald Trump

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TikTok users “absolutely justified” for fearing MAGA makeover, experts say

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Spectacular coincidence or obvious censorship?

TikTok’s tech issues abound as censorship fears drive users to delete app.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

TikTok wants users to believe that errors blocking uploads of anti-ICE videos or direct messages mentioning Jeffrey Epstein are due to technical errors—not the platform seemingly shifting to censor content critical of Donald Trump after he hand-picked the US owners who took over the app last week.

However, experts say that TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified, whether the bugs are to blame or not.

Ioana Literat, an associate professor of technology, media, and learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied TikTok’s politics since the app first shot to popularity in the US in 2018. She told Ars that “users’ fears are absolutely justified” and explained why the “bugs” explanation is “insufficient.”

“Even if these are technical glitches, the pattern of what’s being suppressed reveals something significant,” Literat told Ars. “When your ‘bug’ consistently affects anti-Trump content, Epstein references, and anti-ICE videos, you’re looking at either spectacular coincidence or systems that have been designed—whether intentionally or through embedded biases—to flag and suppress specific political content.”

TikTok users are savvy, Literat noted, and what’s being cast as “paranoia” about the app’s bugs actually stems from their “digital literacy,” she suggested.

“They’ve watched Instagram suppress Palestine content, they’ve seen Twitter’s transformation under Musk, they’ve experienced shadow-banning and algorithmic suppression, including on TikTok prior to this,” Literat said. “So, their pattern recognition isn’t paranoia, but rather digital literacy.”

Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of technology ethics and internet law at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agreed that TikTok’s “bugs” explanation wasn’t enough to address users’ fears. She told CNN that TikTok risks losing users’ trust the longer that errors damage the perception of the app.

“Even if this isn’t purposeful censorship, does it matter? In terms of perception and trust, maybe,” Fiesler told CNN.

Some users are already choosing to leave TikTok. A quick glance at the TikTok subreddit shows many users grieving while vowing to delete the app, Literat pointed out, though some are reportedly struggling to delete accounts due to technical issues. Even with some users blocked from abandoning their accounts, however, “the daily average of TikTok uninstalls are up nearly 150 percent in the last five days compared to the last three months,” data analysis firm Sensor Tower told CNN.

A TikTok USDS spokesperson told Ars that US owners have not yet made any changes to the algorithm or content moderation policies. So far, the only changes have been to the US app’s terms of use and privacy policy, which impacted what location data is collected, how ads are targeted, and how AI interactions are monitored.

For TikTok, the top priority appears to be fixing the bugs, which were attributed to a power outage at a US data center. A TikTok USDS spokesperson told NPR that TikTok is also investigating the issue where some users can’t talk about Epstein in DMs.

“We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues,” TikTok’s spokesperson said.

TikTok’s response came after California governor Gavin Newsom declared on X that “it’s time to investigate” TikTok.

“I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content,” Newsom said. His post quote-tweeted an X user who shared a screenshot of the error message TikTok displayed when some users referenced Epstein and joked, “so the agreement for TikTok to sell its US business to GOP-backed investors was finalized a few days ago,” and “now you can’t mention Epstein lmao.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the results of TikTok’s investigation into the “Epstein” issue were not publicly available, but TikTok may post an update here as technical issues are resolved.

“We’ve made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner,” TikTok USDS’s latest statement said. “However, the US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content. We’re committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We’ll continue to provide updates.”

TikTokers will notice subtle changes, expert says

For TikTok’s new owners, the tech issues risk confirming fears that Trump wasn’t joking when he said he’d like to see TikTok be tweaked to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Because of this bumpy transition, it seems likely that TikTok will continue to be heavily scrutinized once the USDS joint venture officially starts retraining the app on US data. As the algorithm undergoes tweaks, frequent TikTok users will likely be the first to pick up on subtle changes, especially if content unaligned with their political views suddenly starts appearing in their feeds when it never did before, Literat suggested.

Literat has researched both left- and right-leaning TikTok content. She told Ars that although left-leaning young users have for years loudly used the app to promote progressive views on topics like racial justice, gun reforms, or climate change, TikTok has never leaned one way or the other on the political spectrum.

Consider Christian or tradwife TikTok, Literat suggested, which grew huge platforms on TikTok alongside leftist bubbles advocating for LGBTQ+ rights or Palestine solidarity.

“Political life on TikTok is organized into overlapping sub-communities, each with its own norms, humor, and tolerance for disagreement,” Literat said, adding that “the algorithm creates bubbles, so people experience very different TikToks.”

Literat told Ars that she wasn’t surprised when Trump suggested that TikTok would be better if it were more right-wing. But what concerned her most was the implication that Trump viewed TikTok “as a potential propaganda apparatus” and “a tool for political capture rather than a space for authentic expression and connection.”

“The historical irony is thick: we went from ‘TikTok is dangerous because it’s controlled by the Chinese government and might manipulate American users’ to ‘TikTok should be controlled by American interests and explicitly aligned with a particular political agenda,’” Literat said. “The concern was never really about foreign influence or manipulation per se—it was about who gets to do the influencing.”

David Greene, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which fought the TikTok ban law, told Ars that users are justified in feeling concerned. However, technical errors or content moderation mistakes are nearly always the most likely explanations for issues, and there’s no way to know “what’s actually happening.” He noted that lawmakers have shaped how some TikTok users view the app after insisting that they accept that China was influencing the algorithm without providing evidence.

“For years, TikTok users were being told that they just needed to follow these assumptions the government was making about the dangers of TikTok,” Greene said. And “now they’re doing the same thing, making these assumptions that it’s now maybe some content policy is being done either to please the Trump administration or being controlled by it. We conditioned TikTok users to basically to not have trust in the way decisions were made with the app.”

MAGA tweaks risks TikTok’s “death by a thousand cuts”

TikTok USDS likely wants to distance itself from Trump’s comments about making the app more MAGA. But new owners have deep ties with Trump, including Larry Ellison, the chief technology officer of Oracle, whom some critics suggest has benefited more than anyone else from Trump’s presidency. Greene noted that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a key investor in Silver Lake. Both firms now have a 15 percent stake in the TikTok USDS joint venture, as well as MGX, which also seems to have Trump ties. CNBC reported MGX used the Trump family cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial, to invest $2 billion in Binance shortly before Trump pardoned Binance’s CEO from money laundering charges, which some viewed as a possible quid pro quo.

Greene said that EFF warned during the Supreme Court fight over the TikTok divest-or-ban law that “all you were doing was substituting concerns for Chinese propaganda, for concerns for US propaganda. That it was highly likely that if you force a sale and the sale is up to the approval of the president, it’s going to be sold to President’s lackeys.”

“I don’t see how it’d be good for users or for democracy, for TikTok to have an editorial policy that would make Trump happy,” Greene said.

If suddenly, the app were tweaked to push more MAGA content into more feeds, young users who are critical of Trump wouldn’t all be brainwashed, Literat said. They would adapt, perhaps eventually finding other apps for activism.

However, TikTok may be hard to leave behind at a time when other popular apps seem to carry their own threats of political suppression, she suggested. Beyond the video-editing features that made TikTok a behemoth of social media, perhaps the biggest sticking point keeping users glued to TikTok is “fundamentally social,” Literat said.

“TikTok is where their communities are, where they’ve built audiences, where the conversations they care about are happening,” Literat said.

Rather than a mass exodus, Literat expects that TikTok’s fate could be “gradual erosion” or “death by a thousand cuts,” as users “likely develop workarounds, shift to other platforms for political content while keeping TikTok for entertainment, or create coded languages and aesthetic strategies to evade detection.”

CNN reported that one TikTok user already found that she could finally post an anti-ICE video after claiming to be a “fashion influencer” and speaking in code throughout the video, which criticized ICE for detaining a 5-year-old named Liam Conejo Ramos.

“Fashion influencing is in my blood,” she said in the video, which featured “a photo of Liam behind her,” CNN reported. “And even a company with bad customer service won’t keep me from doing my fashion review.”

Short-term, Literat thinks that longtime TikTok users experiencing inconsistent moderation will continue testing boundaries, documenting issues, and critiquing the app. That discussion will perhaps chill more speech on the platform, possibly even affecting the overall content mix appearing in feeds.

Long-term, however, TikTok’s changes under US owners “could fundamentally reshape TikTok’s role in political discourse.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, unfortunately, if it suffers the fate of Twitter/X,” Literat said.

Literat told Ars that her TikTok research was initially sparked by a desire to monitor the “kind of authentic political expression the platform once enabled.” She worries that because user trust is now “damaged,” TikTok will never be the same.

“The tragedy is that TikTok genuinely was a space where young people—especially those from marginalized communities—could shape political conversations in ways that felt authentic and powerful,” Literat said. “I’m sad to say, I think that’s been irretrievably broken.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks

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US will soon retrain TikTok

“I am so happy”: Trump closes deal that hands TikTok US to his allies.

The TikTok deal is done, and Donald Trump is claiming a win, although it remains unclear if the joint venture he arranged with ByteDance and the Chinese government actually resolves Congress’ national security concerns.

In a press release Thursday, TikTok announced the “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC,” an entity established to keep TikTok operating in the US.

Giving Americans majority ownership, ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture, the release said, which has been valued at $14 billion. Three managing investors—Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX—each hold 15 percent, while other investors, including Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell’s investment firm, Dell Family Office, hold smaller, undisclosed stakes.

Americans will also have majority control over the joint venture’s seven-member board. TikTok CEO Shou Chew holds ByteDance’s only seat. Finalizing the deal was a “great move,” Chew told TikTok employees in an internal memo, The New York Times reported.

Two former TikTok employees will lead the joint venture. Adam Presser, who previously served as TikTok’s global head of Operations and Trust & Safety, has been named CEO. And Kim Farrell, TikTok’s former global head of Business Operations Protection, will serve as chief security officer.

Trump has claimed the deal meets requirements for “qualified divestiture” to avoid a TikTok ban otherwise required under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. However, questions remain, as lawmakers have not yet analyzed the terms of the deal to determine whether that’s true.

The law requires the divestment “to end any ‘operational relationship’ between ByteDance and TikTok in the United States,” critics told the NYT. That could be a problem, since TikTok’s release makes it clear that ByteDance will maintain some control over the TikTok US app’s operations.

For example, while the US owners will retrain the algorithm and manage data security, ByteDance owns the algorithm and “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.” The Trump administration seemingly agreed to these terms to ensure that the US TikTok isn’t cut off from the rest of the world on the app.

“Interoperability enables the Joint Venture to provide US users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring US creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale,” the release said.

Perhaps also concerning to Congress, Slate noted, while ByteDance may be a minority owner, it remains the largest individual shareholder.

Michael Sobolik, an expert on US-China policy and senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the Hudson Institute, told the NYT that the Trump administration “may have saved TikTok, but the national security concerns are still going to continue.”

Some critics, including Republicans, have vowed to scrutinize the deal.

On Thursday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) complained that the White House had repeatedly denied requests for information about the deal. They’ve provided “virtually no details about this agreement, including whether TikTok’s algorithm is truly free of Chinese influence,” Markey said.

“This lack of transparency reeks,” Markey said. “Congress has a responsibility to investigate this deal, demand transparency, and ensure that any arrangement truly protects national security while keeping TikTok online.”

In December, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said that he wants to hold a hearing with TikTok leadership to discuss how the deal addresses national security concerns. On Thursday, Moolenaar said he “has two specific questions for TikTok’s new American owners,” Punchbowl News reported.

“Can we ensure that the algorithm is not influenced by the Chinese Communist Party?” Moolenaar said. “And two, can we ensure that the data of Americans is secure?”

Moolenaar may be satisfied by the terms, as the NYT suggested that China hawks in Washington appeared to trust that Trump’s arrangement is a qualified divestiture. TikTok’s release said that Oracle will protect US user data in a secure US cloud data environment that will regularly be audited by third-party cybersecurity experts. The algorithm will be licensed from ByteDance and retrained on US user data, the release said, and Vice President JD Vance has confirmed that the joint venture “will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users.”

Last September, a spokesperson for the House China Committee told Politico that “any agreement must comply with the historic bipartisan law passed last year to protect the American people, including the complete divestment of ByteDance control and a fully decoupled algorithm.”

Users brace for MAGA tweaks to algorithm

“I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok!” Trump said on Truth Social after the deal was finalized. “It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice.”

However, it’s unclear to TikTokers how the app might change as Trump allies take control of the addictive algorithm that drew millions to the app. Lawmakers had feared the Chinese Communist Party could influence the algorithm to target US users with propaganda, and Trump’s deal was supposed to mitigate that.

Not only do critics worry that if ByteDance maintains ownership of the algorithm, it could allow the company to continue to influence content, but there is now concern that the app’s recommendations could take a right-leaning slant under US control.

Trump has already said that he’d like to see TikTok go “100 percent MAGA,” and his allies will now be in charge of “deciding which posts to leave up and which to take down,” the NYT noted. Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, told the NYT that the TikTok deal offered Trump and his allies “more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing.”

“My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda,” Chander said.

For business owners who rely on the app, there’s also the potential that the app could be glitchy after US owners start porting data and retraining the algorithm.

Trump clearly hopes the deal will endear him to TikTok users. He sought praise on Truth Social, writing, “I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”

China “played” Trump, expert says

So far, the Chinese government has not commented on the deal’s finalization, but Trump thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping in his Truth Social post “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.”

“He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision,” Trump said.

Experts have suggested that China benefits from the deal by keeping the most lucrative part of TikTok while the world watches it export its technology to the US.

When Trump first announced the deal in September, critics immediately attacked him for letting China keep the algorithm. One US advisor close to the deal told the Financial Times that “Trump always chickens out,” noting that “after all this, China keeps the algorithm.”

On Thursday, Sobolik told Politico that Trump “got played” by Xi after taking “terrible advice from his staff” during trade negotiations that some critics said gave China the upper hand.

Trump sees things differently, writing on Truth Social that the TikTok deal came to “a very dramatic, final, and beautiful conclusion.”

Whether the deal is “dramatic,” “final,” or “beautiful” depends on who you ask, though, as it could face legal challenges and disrupt TikTok’s beloved content feeds. The NYT suggested that the deal took so long to finalize that TikTokers don’t even care anymore, while several outlets noted that Trump’s deal is very close to the Project Texas arrangement that Joe Biden pushed until it was deemed inadequate to address national security risks.

Through Project Texas, Oracle was supposed to oversee TikTok US user data, auditing for security risks while ByteDance controlled the code. The joint venture’s “USDS” “coinage even originated from Project Texas,” Slate noted.

Lindsay Gorman, a former senior advisor in the Biden administration, told NYT that “we’ve gone round and round and ended up not too far from where we started.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks Read More »

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Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers

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Taking responsibility for power usage

In the Microsoft blog post, Smith acknowledged that residential electricity rates have recently risen in dozens of states, driven partly by inflation, supply chain constraints, and grid upgrades. He wrote that communities “value new jobs and property tax revenue, but not if they come with higher power bills or tighter water supplies.”

Microsoft says it will ask utilities and public commissions to set rates high enough to cover the full electricity costs for its data centers, including infrastructure additions. In Wisconsin, the company is supporting a new rate structure that would charge “Very Large Customers,” including data centers, the cost of the electricity required to serve them.

Smith wrote that while some have suggested the public should help pay for the added electricity needed for AI, Microsoft disagrees. He stated, “Especially when tech companies are so profitable, we believe that it’s both unfair and politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public to shoulder added electricity costs for AI.”

On water usage for cooling, Microsoft plans a 40 percent improvement in data center water-use intensity by 2030. A recent environmental audit from AI model-maker Mistral found that training and running its Large 2 model over 18 months produced 20.4 kilotons of CO2 emissions and evaporated enough water to fill 112 Olympic-size swimming pools, illustrating the aggregate environmental impact of AI operations at scale.

To solve some of these issues, Microsoft says it has launched a new AI data center design using a closed-loop system that constantly recirculates cooling liquid, dramatically cutting water usage. In this design, already deployed in Wisconsin and Georgia, potable water is no longer needed for cooling.

On property taxes, Smith stated in the blog post that the company will not ask local municipalities to reduce their rates. The company says it will pay its full share of local property taxes. Smith wrote that Microsoft’s goal is to bring these commitments to life in the first half of 2026. Of course, these are PR-aligned company goals and not realities yet, so we’ll have to check back in later to see whether Microsoft has been following through on its promises.

Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers Read More »

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Judge: Trump violated Fifth Amendment by ending energy grants in only blue states

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The Trump administration violated the Fifth Amendment when canceling billions of dollars in environmental grants for projects in “blue states” that didn’t vote for him in the last election, a judge ruled Monday.

Trump’s blatant discrimination came on the same day as the government shut down last fall. In total, 315 grants were terminated in October, ending support for 223 projects worth approximately $7.5 billion, the Department of Energy confirmed. All the awardees, except for one, were based in states where Donald Trump lost the majority vote to Kamala Harris in 2024.

Only seven awardees sued, defending projects that helped states with “electric vehicle development, updating building energy codes, and addressing methane emissions.” They accused Trump officials of clearly discriminating against Democratic voters by pointing to their social media posts boasting about punishing blue states.

On X, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, bragged that nearly “$8 billion in Green NewScam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” then listed only states that did not vote for Trump. Meanwhile on Truth Social, Trump confirmed he met with Vought to “determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut” during the shutdown.

On Monday, US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his opinion that the case was “unique” because ordinarily “the mere presence of political considerations in an agency action” does not mean that officials have run “afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”

Judge: Trump violated Fifth Amendment by ending energy grants in only blue states Read More »

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DOGE did not find $2T in fraud, but that doesn’t matter, Musk allies say

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Over time, more will be learned about how DOGE operated and what impact DOGE had. But it seems likely that even Musk would agree that DOGE failed to uncover the vast fraud he continues to predict exists in government.

DOGE supposedly served “higher purpose”

While Musk continues to fixate on fraud in the federal budget, his allies in government and Silicon Valley have begun spinning anyone criticizing DOGE’s failure to hit the promised target as missing the “higher purpose” of DOGE, The Guardian reported.

Five allies granted anonymity to discuss DOGE’s goals told The Guardian that the point of DOGE was to “fundamentally” reform government by eradicating “taboos” around hiring and firing, “expanding the use of untested technologies, and lowering resistance to boundary-pushing start-ups seeking federal contracts.” Now, the federal government can operate more like a company, Musk’s allies said.

The libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, did celebrate DOGE for producing “the largest peacetime workforce cut on record,” even while acknowledging that DOGE had little impact on federal spending.

“It is important to note that DOGE’s target was to reduce the budget in absolute real terms without reference to a baseline projection. DOGE did not cut spending by either standard,” the Cato Institute reported.

Currently, DOGE still exists as a decentralized entity, with DOGE staffers appointed to various agencies to continue cutting alleged waste and finding alleged fraud. While some fear that the White House may choose to “re-empower” DOGE to make more government-wide cuts in the future, Musk has maintained that he would never helm a DOGE-like government effort again and the Cato Institute said that “the evidence supports Musk’s judgment.”

“DOGE had no noticeable effect on the trajectory of spending, but it reduced federal employment at the fastest pace since President Carter, and likely even before,” the Institute reported. “The only possible analogies are demobilization after World War II and the Korean War. Reducing spending is more important, but cutting the federal workforce is nothing to sneeze at, and Musk should look more positively on DOGE’s impact.”

Although the Cato Institute joined allies praising DOGE’s dramatic shrinking of the federal workforce, the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, Elaine Kamarck, told Ars in November that DOGE “cut muscle, not fat” because “they didn’t really know what they were doing.”

DOGE did not find $2T in fraud, but that doesn’t matter, Musk allies say Read More »

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Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down

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From Apple gifting a gold statue to the US taking a stake in Intel.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

As the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war winds down, the tech industry is stuck scratching its head, with no practical way to anticipate what twists and turns to expect in 2026.

Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump’s unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect “a little pain” after he issued executive orders imposing 10–25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

Costs of tariffs only got higher as the year wore on. But the tech industry has done very little to push back against them. Instead, some of the biggest companies made their own surprising moves after Trump’s trade war put them in deeply uncomfortable positions.

Apple gives Trump a gold statue instead of US-made iPhone

Right from the jump in February, Apple got backed into a corner after Trump threatened a “flat” 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, which experts said could have substantially taxed Apple’s business. Moving to appease Trump, Apple promised to invest $500 billion in the US in hopes of avoiding tariffs, but that didn’t take the pressure off for long.

By April, Apple stood by and said nothing as Trump promised the company would make “made in the USA” iPhones. Analysts suggested such a goal was “impossible,” calling the idea “impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

Apple’s silence did not spare the company Trump’s scrutiny. The next month, Trump threatened Apple with a 25 percent tariff on any iPhones sold in the US that were not manufactured in America. Experts were baffled by the threat, which appeared to be the first time a US company was threatened directly with tariffs.

Typically, tariffs are imposed on a country or category of goods, like smartphones. It remains unclear if it would even be legal to levy a tariff on an individual company like Apple, but Trump never tested those waters. Instead, Trump stopped demanding the American-made iPhone and withdrew other tariff threats after he was apparently lulled into submission by a gold statue that Apple gifted him in August. The engraved glass disc featured an Apple logo and Tim Cook’s signature above a “Made in USA” stamp, celebrating Donald Trump for his “Apple American Manufacturing Program.”

Trump’s wild deals shake down chipmakers

Around the same time that Trump eased pressure on Apple, he turned his attention to Intel. On social media in August, Trump ordered Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to “resign immediately,” claiming he was “highly conflicted.” In response, Tan did not resign but instead met with Trump and struck a deal that gave the US a 10 percent stake in Intel. Online, Trump bragged that he let Tan “keep his job” while hyping the deal—which The New York Times described as one of the “largest government interventions in a US company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis.”

But unlike the auto industry, Intel didn’t need the money. And rather than helping an ailing company survive a tough spot, the deal risked disrupting Intel’s finances in ways that spooked shareholders. It was therefore a relief to no one when Intel detailed everything that could go wrong in an SEC filing, including the possible dilution of investors’ stock due to discounting US shares and other risks of dilution, if certain terms of the deal kick in at some point in the future.

The company also warned of potential lawsuits challenging the legality of the deal, which Intel fears could come from third parties, the US government, or foreign governments. Most ominous, Intel admitted there was no way to predict what other risks may come, both in the short-term and long-term.

Of course, Intel wasn’t the only company Trump sought to control, and not every company caved. He tried to strong-arm the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in September into moving half its chip manufacturing into the US, but TSMC firmly rejected his demand. And in October, when Trump began eyeing stakes in quantum computing firms, several companies were open to negotiating, but with no deals immediately struck, it was hard to ascertain how seriously they were entertaining Trump’s talks.

Trump struck another particularly wild deal the same month as the Intel agreement. That deal found chipmakers Nvidia and AMD agreeing to give 15 percent of revenue to the US from sales to China of advanced computer chips that could be used to fuel frontier AI. By December, Nvidia’s deal only drew more scrutiny, as the chipmaker agreed to give the US an even bigger cut—25 percent—of sales of its second most advanced AI chips, the H200.

Again, experts were confused, noting that export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, were imposed to prevent US technology thefts, maintain US tech dominance, and protect US national security. Those chips are six times less powerful than the H200. To them, it appeared that the Trump administration was taking payments to overlook risks without a clear understanding of how that might give China a leg-up in the AI race. It also did not appear to be legal, since export licenses cannot be sold under existing federal law, but government lawyers have supposedly been researching a new policy that would allow the US to collect the fees.

Trump finally closed TikTok deal

As the end of 2025 nears, the tech company likely sweating Trump’s impulses most may be TikTok owner ByteDance. In October, Trump confirmed that China agreed to a deal that allows the US to take majority ownership of TikTok and license the TikTok algorithm to build a US version of the app.

Trump has been trying to close this deal all year, while ByteDance remained largely quiet. Prior to the start of Trump’s term, the company had expressed resistance to selling TikTok to US owners, and as recently as January, a ByteDance board member floated the idea that Trump could save TikTok without forcing a sale. But China’s approval was needed to proceed with the sale, and near the end of December, ByteDance finally agreed to close the deal, paving the way for Trump’s hand-picked investors to take control in 2026.

It’s unclear how TikTok may change under US control, perhaps shedding users if US owners cave to Trump’s suggestion that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA” under his hand-picked US owners. It’s possible that the US version of the app could be glitchy, too.

Whether Trump’s deal actually complies with a US law requiring that ByteDance divest control of TikTok or else face a US ban has yet to be seen. Lawmaker scrutiny and possible legal challenges are expected in 2026, likely leaving both TikTok users and ByteDance on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the globally cherished short video app may change.

Trump may owe $1 trillion in tariff refunds

The TikTok deal was once viewed as a meaningful bargaining chip during Trump’s tensest negotiations with China, which has quickly emerged as America’s fiercest rival in the AI race and Trump’s biggest target in his trade war.

But as closing the deal remained elusive for most of the year, analysts suggested that Trump grew “desperate” to end tit-for-tat retaliations that he started, while China appeared more resilient to US curbs than the US was to China’s.

In one obvious example, many Americans’ first tariff pains came when Trump ended a duty-free exemption in February for low-value packages imported from cheap online retailers, like Shein and Temu. Unable to quickly adapt to the policy change, USPS abruptly stopped accepting all inbound packages from Hong Kong and China. After a chaotic 24 hours, USPS started slowly processing parcels again while promising Americans that it would work with customs to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

Trump has several legal tools to impose tariffs, but the most controversial path appears to be his favorite. The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants a US president unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

Seizing this authority, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal tariffs” at whim, the Consumer Technology Association and the Chamber of Commerce told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief in which they urged the justices to end the “perfect storm of uncertainty.”

Unlike other paths that would limit how quickly Trump could shift tariff rates or how high the tariff rate could go, under IEEPA, Trump has imposed tariff rates as high as 125 percent. Deferring to Trump will cost US businesses, CTA and CoC warned. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro estimated that Trump has changed these tariff rates 100 times since his trade war began, affecting $223 billion of US exports.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s biggest stated goals of his trade war—forcing more manufacturing into the US—is utterly failing, many outlets have reported.

Likely due to US companies seeking more stable supply chains, “reshoring progress is nowhere to be seen,” Fortune reported in November. That month, a dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report that an expert summarized as showing that the “US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic.”

A month earlier, the nonpartisan policy group the Center for American Progress drew on government labor data to conclude that US employers cut 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August, and payrolls for manufacturing jobs had decreased by 42,000 since April.

As tech companies take tech tariffs on the chin, perhaps out of fears that rattling Trump could impact lucrative government contracts, other US companies have taken Trump to court. Most recently, Costco became one of the biggest corporations to sue Trump to ensure that US businesses get refunded if Trump loses the Supreme Court case, Bloomberg reported. Other recognizable companies like Revlon and Kawasaki have also sued, but small businesses have largely driven opposition to Trump’s tariffs, Bloomberg noted.

Should the Supreme Court side with businesses—analysts predict favorable odds—the US could owe up to $1 trillion in refunds. Dozens of economists told SCOTUS that Trump simply doesn’t understand why having trade deficits with certain countries isn’t a threat to US dominance, pointing out that the US “has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades” precisely because the US “has the dominant technology sector in the world.”

Justices seem skeptical that IEEPA grants Trump the authority, ordinarily reserved for Congress, to impose taxes. However, during oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy.” Countering that, small businesses have argued that it’s possible for Customs and Border Patrol to set up automatic refunds.

While waiting for the SCOTUS verdict (now expected in January), the CTA ended the year by advising tech companies to keep their receipts in case refunds require requests for tariffs line by line—potentially complicated by tariff rates changing so drastically and so often.

Biggest tariff nightmare may come in 2026

Looking into 2026, tech companies cannot breathe a sigh of relief even if the SCOTUS ruling swings their way, though. Under a separate, legally viable authority, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on semiconductors and any products containing them, a move the semiconductor industry fears could cost $1 billion.

And if Trump continues imposing tariffs on materials used in popular tech products, the CTA told Ars in September that potential “tariff stacking” could become the industry’s biggest nightmare. Should that occur, US manufacturers could end up double-, triple-, or possibly even quadruple-taxed on products that may contain materials subject to individual tariffs, like semiconductors, polysilicon, or copper.

Predicting tariff costs could become so challenging that companies will have no choice but to raise prices, the CTA warned. That could threaten US tech competitiveness if, possibly over the long term, companies lose significant sales on their most popular products.

For many badly bruised by the first year of tariffs, it’s hard to see how tariffs could ever become a winning strategy for US tech dominance, as Trump has long claimed. And Americans continue to feel more than “a little pain,” as Trump forecasted, causing many to shift their views on the president.

Americans banding together to oppose tariffs could help prevent the worst possible outcomes. With prices already rising on certain goods in the US, the president reversed some tariffs as his approval ratings hit record lows. But so far, Big Tech hasn’t shown much interest in joining the fight, instead throwing money at the problem by making generous donations to things like Trump’s inaugural fund or his ballroom.

A bright light for the tech industry could be the midterm elections, which could pressure Trump to ease off aggressive tariff regimes, but that’s not a given. Trump allies have previously noted that the president typically responds to pushback on tariffs by doubling down. And one of Trump’s on-again-off-again allies, Elon Musk, noted in December in an interview that Trump ignored his warnings that tariffs would drive manufacturing out of the US.

“The president has made it clear he loves tariffs,” Musk said.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down Read More »

“yo-what?”-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-“60-minutes”-segment

“Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment

CBS News, censorship, Donald Trump, government censorship, LimeWire, peer-to-peer networks, Policy, torrents / /

Early 2000s tool LimeWire used to pirate episode

As Americans scrambled to share the “Inside CECOT” story, assuming that CBS would be working in the background to pull down uploads, a once-blacklisted tool from the early 2000s became a reliable way to keep the broadcast online.

On Reddit, users shared links to a LimeWire torrent, prompting chuckles from people surprised to see the peer-to-peer service best known for infecting parents’ computers with viruses in the 2000s suddenly revived in 2025 to skirt feared US government censorship.

“Yo what,” one user joked, highlighting only the word “LimeWire.” Another user, ironically using the LimeWire logo as a profile picture, responded, “man, who knew my nostalgia prof pic would become relevant again, WTF.”

LimeWire was created in 2000 and quickly became one of the Internet’s favorite services for pirating music until record labels won a 2010 injunction that blocked all file-sharing functionality. As the Reddit thread noted, some LimeWire users were personally targeted in lawsuits.

For a while after the injunction, a fraction of users kept the service alive by running older versions of the software that weren’t immediately disabled. New owners took over LimeWire in 2022, officially relaunching the service. The service’s about page currently notes that “millions of individuals and businesses” use the global file-sharing service today, but for some early Internet users, the name remains a blast from the past.

“Bringing back LimeWire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit,” a Bluesky user wrote.

“We need a champion against the darkness,” a Reddit commenter echoed. “I side with LimeWire.”

“Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment Read More »

bytedance-confirms-tiktok-will-be-controlled-by-us-owners

ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us / /

According to Trump, the deal ensures that TikTok complies with the divest-or-ban law, but the White House is still not providing more details. Instead, the Trump administration “referred questions about the deal to TikTok,” Reuters reported.

If the deal closes as expected on January 22, the new US company will have an estimated value of $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance noted in September.

At that point, the deal will likely face mounting scrutiny from lawmakers, including Republicans, who aren’t yet sure if the US operation resolves all national security concerns. Chinese control of the algorithm was a particular sticking point for critics, who claimed that Trump was giving China exactly what it wanted: international recognition for exporting leading technology to the US.

In September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) vowed to take a “hard line” and oppose the deal’s framework if it violates the divest-or-ban law. Already, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, is planning to hold a hearing next year with US TikTok leadership.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has accused Trump of handing over “even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies,” through the TikTok deal, which she likened to enabling a “billionaire takeover of TikTok.” Many TikTokers likely share her concerns, after Trump suggested he’d like to see his hand-picked investors tweak the algorithm to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Questions remain until the exact terms of the deal become public, Warren said.

ByteDance did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

With the terms obscured, it’s unclear how quickly TikTok may change in 2026 under US ownership. In July, the Information reported that when approximately 170 million US users get ported over to the new US-owned app, it could be buggy.

ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners Read More »

man-sues-cops-who-jailed-him-for-37-days-for-trolling-a-charlie-kirk-vigil

Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil

censorship, charlie kirk, Donald Trump, false arrest, meme, Policy, social media censorship / /

While there’s no evidence of anyone interpreting the meme as a violent threat to school kids, there was a “national uproar” when Bushart’s story started spreading online, his complaint noted. Bushart credits media attention for helping to secure his release. The very next day after a local news station pressed Weems in a TV interview to admit he knew the meme wasn’t referencing his county’s high school and confirm that no one ever asked Bushart to clarify his online remarks, charges were dropped, and Bushart was set free.

Morrow and Weems have been sued in their personal capacities and could “be on the hook for monetary damages,” a press release from Bushart’s legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) said. Perry County, Tennessee, is also a defendant since it’s liable for unconstitutional acts of its sheriffs.

Perry County officials did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Bushart suffered “humiliating” arrest

For Bushart, the arrest has shaken up his life. As the primary breadwinner, he’s worried about how he will support himself and his wife after losing his job while in jail. The arrest was particularly “humiliating,” his complaint said, “given his former role as a law enforcement officer.” And despite his release, fear of arrest has chilled his speech, impacting how he expresses his views online.

“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” Bushart said. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”

Bushart is seeking punitive damages, alleging that cops acted “willfully and maliciously” to omit information from his arrest affidavit that would’ve prevented his detention. One of his lawyers, FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh, said that a win would protect all social media meme posters from police censorship.

“If police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post, no one’s First Amendment rights are safe,” Steinbaugh said.

Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil Read More »

bursting-ai-bubble-may-be-eu’s-“secret-weapon”-in-clash-with-trump,-expert-says

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says

Accenture, AI, Digital Services Act, Donald Trump, elon musk, European Commission, Mistral, Policy, Spotify, trump administration, X / /

Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.

The US threatened to restrict some of the largest service providers in the European Union as retaliation for EU tech regulations and investigations are increasingly drawing Donald Trump’s ire.

On Tuesday, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issued a warning on X, naming Spotify, Accenture, Amadeus, Mistral, Publicis, and DHL among nine firms suddenly yanked into the middle of the US-EU tech fight.

“The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against US service providers,” USTR’s post said.

The clash comes after Elon Musk’s X became the first tech company fined for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is widely considered among the world’s strictest tech regulations. Trump was not appeased by the European Commission (EC) noting that X was not ordered to pay the maximum possible fine. Instead, the $140 million fine sparked backlash within the Trump administration, including from Vice President JD Vance, who slammed the fine as “censorship” of X and its users.

Asked for comment on the USTR’s post, an EC spokesperson told Ars that the EU intends to defend its tech regulations while implementing commitments from a Trump trade deal that the EU struck in August.

“The EU is an open and rules-based market, where companies from all over the world do business successfully and profitably,” the EC’s spokesperson said. “As we have made clear many times, our rules apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU,” ensuring “a safe, fair and level playing field in the EU, in line with the expectations of our citizens. We will continue to enforce our rules fairly, and without discrimination.”

Trump on shaky ground due to “AI bubble”

On X, the USTR account suggested that the EU was overlooking that US companies “provide substantial free services to EU citizens and reliable enterprise services to EU companies,” while supporting “millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment in Europe.”

To stop what Trump views as “overseas extortion” of American tech companies, the USTR said the US was prepared to go after EU service providers, which “have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.”

“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures,” USTR’s post said. “Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”

The pushback comes after the Trump administration released a November national security report that questioned how long the EU could remain a “reliable” ally as overregulation of its tech industry could hobble both its economy and military strength. Claiming that the EU was only “doubling down” on such regulations, the EU “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the report predicted.

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the report said.

However, the report acknowledged that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.”

“Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity,” the report said. “European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

At least one expert in the EU has suggested that the EU can use this acknowledgement as leverage, while perhaps even using the looming threat of the supposed American “AI bubble” bursting to pressure Trump into backing off EU tech laws.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, Johnny Ryan, the director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, suggested that the EU could even throw Trump’s presidency into “crisis” by taking bold steps that Trump may not see coming.

EU can take steps to burst “AI bubble”

According to Ryan, the national security report made clear that the EU must fight the US or else “perish.” However, the EU has two “strong cards” to play if it wants to win the fight, he suggested.

Right now, market analysts are fretting about an “AI bubble,” with US investment in AI far outpacing potential gains until perhaps 2030. A Harvard University business professor focused on helping businesses implement cutting-edge technology like generative AI, Andy Wu, recently explained that AI’s big problem is that “everyone can imagine how useful the technology will be, but no one has figured out yet how to make money.”

“If the market can keep the faith to persist, it buys the necessary time for the technology to mature, for the costs to come down, and for companies to figure out the business model,” Wu said. But US “companies can end up underwater if AI grows fast but less rapidly than they hope for,” he suggested.

During this moment, Ryan wrote, it’s not just AI firms with skin in the game, but potentially all of Trump’s supporters. The US is currently on “shaky economic ground” with AI investment accounting “for virtually all (92 percent) GDP growth in the first half of this year.”

“The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every MAGA voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival,” Ryan said.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, could exploit this apparent weakness first by messing with one of the biggest players in America’s AI industry, Nvidia, then by ramping up enforcement of the tech laws Trump loathes.

According to Ryan, “Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon,” and Nvidia needs those machines if it wants to remain the world’s most valuable company. Should the US GDP remain reliant on AI investment for growth, von der Leyen could use export curbs on that technology like a “lever,” Ryan said, controlling “whether and by how much the US economy expands or contracts.”

Withholding those machines “would be difficult for Europe” and “extremely painful for the Dutch economy,” Ryan noted, but “it would be far more painful for Trump.”

Another step the EU could take is even “easier,” Ryan suggested. It could go even harder on the enforcement of tech regulations based on evidence of mismanaged data surfaced in lawsuits against giants like Google and Meta. For example, it seems clear that Meta may have violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), after the Facebook owner was “unable to tell a US court that what its internal systems do with your data, or who can access it, or for what purpose.”

“This data free-for-all lets big tech companies train their AI models on masses of everyone’s data, but it is illegal in Europe, where companies are required to carefully control and account for how they use personal data,” Ryan wrote. “All Brussels has to do is crack down on Ireland, which for years has been a wild west of lax data enforcement, and the repercussions will be felt far beyond.”

Taking that step would also arguably make it harder for tech companies to secure AI investments, since firms would have to disclose that their “AI tools are barred from accessing Europe’s valuable markets,” Ryan said.

Calling the reaction to the X fine “extreme,” Ryan pushed for von der Leyen to advance on both fronts, forecasting that “the AI bubble would be unlikely to survive this double shock” and likely neither could Trump’s approval ratings. There’s also a possibility that tech firms could pressure Trump to back down if coping with any increased enforcement threatens AI progress.

Although Wu suggested that Big Tech firms like Google and Meta would likely be “insulated” from the AI bubble bursting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t seem so sure. In November, Pichai told the BBC that if AI investments didn’t pay off quickly enough, he thinks “no company is going to be immune, including us.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says Read More »

us-taking-25%-cut-of-nvidia-chip-sales-“makes-no-sense,”-experts-say

US taking 25% cut of Nvidia chip sales “makes no sense,” experts say

AI, AI chips, china, Donald Trump, NVIDIA, Policy, us-china trade war / /

Trump’s odd Nvidia reversal may open the door for China to demand Blackwell access.

Donald Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia to export an advanced artificial intelligence chip, the H200, to China may give China exactly what it needs to win the AI race, experts and lawmakers have warned.

The H200 is about 10 times less powerful than Nvidia’s Blackwell chip, which is the tech giant’s currently most advanced chip that cannot be exported to China. But the H200 is six times more powerful than the H20, the most advanced chip available in China today. Meanwhile China’s leading AI chip maker, Huawei, is estimated to be about two years behind Nvidia’s technology. By approving the sales, Trump may unwittingly be helping Chinese chip makers “catch up” to Nvidia, Jake Sullivan told The New York Times.

Sullivan, a former Biden-era national security advisor who helped design AI chip export curbs on China, told the NYT that Trump’s move was “nuts” because “China’s main problem” in the AI race “is they don’t have enough advanced computing capability.”

“It makes no sense that President Trump is solving their problem for them by selling them powerful American chips,” Sullivan said. “We are literally handing away our advantage. China’s leaders can’t believe their luck.”

Trump apparently was persuaded by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his “AI czar,” David Sacks, to reverse course on H200 export curbs. They convinced Trump that restricting sales would ensure that only Chinese chip makers would get a piece of China’s market, shoring up revenue flows that dominant firms like Huawei could pour into R&D.

By instead allowing Nvidia sales, China’s industry would remain hooked on US chips, the thinking goes. And Nvidia could use those funds—perhaps $10–15 billion annually, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated—to further its own R&D efforts. That cash influx, theoretically, would allow Nvidia to maintain the US advantage.

Along the way, the US would receive a 25 percent cut of sales, which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle warned may not be legal and suggested to foreign rivals that US national security was “now up for sale,” NYT reported. The president has claimed there are conditions to sales safeguarding national security but, frustrating critics, provided no details.

Experts slam Nvidia plan as “flawed”

Trump’s plan is “flawed,” The Economist reported.

For years, the US has established tech dominance by keeping advanced technology away from China. Trump risks rocking that boat by “tearing up America’s export-control policy,” particularly if China’s chip industry simply buys up the H200s as a short-term tactic to learn from the technology and beef up its domestic production of advanced chips, The Economist reported.

In a sign that’s exactly what many expect could happen, investors in China were apparently so excited by Trump’s announcement that they immediately poured money into Moore Threads, expected to be China’s best answer to Nvidia, the South China Morning Post reported.

Several experts for the non-partisan think tank the Counsel on Foreign Relations also criticized the policy change, cautioning that the reversal of course threatened to undermine US competition with China.

Suggesting that Trump was “effectively undoing” export curbs sought during his first term, Zongyuan Zoe Liu warned that China “buys today to learn today, with the intention to build tomorrow.”

And perhaps more concerning, she suggested, is that Trump’s policy signals weakness. Rather than forcing Chinese dependence on US tech, reversing course showed China that the US will “back down” under pressure, she warned. And they’re getting that message at a time when “Chinese leaders have a lot of reasons to believe they are not only winning the trade war but also making progress towards a higher degree of strategic autonomy.”

In a post on X, Rush Doshi—a CFR expert who previously advised Biden on national security issues related to China—suggested that the policy change was “possibly decisive in the AI race.”

“Compute is our main advantage—China has more power, engineers, and the entire edge layer—so by giving this up, we increase the odds the world runs on Chinese AI,” Doshi wrote.

Experts fear Trump may not understand the full impact of his decision. In the short-term, Michael C. Horowitz wrote for CFR, “it is indisputable” that allowing H200 exports benefits China’s frontier AI and efforts to scale data centers. And Doshi pointed out that Trump’s shift may trigger more advanced technology flowing into China, as US allies that restricted sales of machines to build AI chips may soon follow his lead and lift their curbs. As China learns to be self-reliant from any influx of advanced tech, Sullivan warned that China’s leaders “intend to get off of American semiconductors as soon as they can.”

“So, the argument that we can keep them ‘addicted’ holds no water,” Sullivan said. “They want American chips right now for one simple reason: They are behind in the AI race, and this will help them catch up while they build their own chip capabilities.”

China may reject H200, demand Blackwell access

It remains unclear if China will approve H200 sales, but some of the country’s biggest firms, including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba, are interested, anonymous insider sources told Reuters.

In the past, China has instructed companies to avoid Nvidia, warning of possible backdoors giving Nvidia a kill switch to remotely shut down chips. Such backdoors could potentially destabilize Chinese firms’ operations and R&D. Nvidia has denied such backdoors exist, but Chinese firms have supposedly sought reassurances from Nvidia in the aftermath of Trump’s policy change. Likely just as unpopular with the Chinese firms and government, Nvidia confirmed recently that it has built location verification tech that could help the US detect when restricted chips are leaked into China. Should the US ever renew export curbs on H200 chips, adopting them widely could cause chaos in the future.

Without giving China sought-after reassurances, Nvidia may not end up benefiting as much as it hoped from its mission to reclaim lost revenue from the Chinese market. Today, Chinese firms control about 60 percent of China’s AI chip market, where only a few years ago American firms—led by Nvidia—controlled 80 percent, the Economist reported.

But for China, the temptation to buy up Nvidia chips may be too great to pass up. Another CFR expert, Chris McGuire, estimated that Nvidia could suddenly start exporting as many as 3 million H200s into China next year. “This would at least triple the amount of aggregate AI computing power China could add domestically” in 2026, McGuire wrote, and possibly trigger disastrous outcomes for the US.

“This could cause DeepSeek and other Chinese AI developers to close the gap with leading US AI labs and enable China to develop an ‘AI Belt and Road’ initiative—a complement to its vast global infrastructure investment network already in place—that competes with US cloud providers around the world,” McGuire forecasted.

As China mulls the benefits and risks, an emergency meeting was called, where the Chinese government discussed potential concerns of local firms buying chips, according to The Information. Reportedly, Beijing ended that meeting with a promise to issue a decision soon.

Horowitz suggested that a primary reason that China may reject the H200s could be to squeeze even bigger concessions out of Trump, whose administration recently has been working to maintain a tenuous truce with China.

“China could come back demanding the Blackwell or something else,” Horowitz suggested.

In a statement, Nvidia—which plans to release a chip called the Rubin to surpass the Blackwell soon—praised Trump’s policy as striking “a thoughtful balance that is great for America.”

China will rip off Nvidia’s chips, Republican warns

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress criticized Trump’s plan, including senators behind a bipartisan push to limit AI chip sales to China.

Some have questioned how much thought was put into the policy, as the US confusingly continues restricting less advanced AI chips (like the A100 and H100) while green-lighting H200 sales. Trump’s Justice Department also seems to be struggling to keep up. The NYT noted that just “hours before” Trump announced the policy change, the DOJ announced “it had detained two people for selling those chips to the country.”

The chair of the Select Committee on Competition with China, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), warned on X that the news wouldn’t be good for the US or Nvidia. First, the Chinese Communist Party “will use these highly advanced chips to strengthen its military capabilities and totalitarian surveillance,” he suggested. And second, “Nvidia should be under no illusions—China will rip off its technology, mass produce it themselves, and seek to end Nvidia as a competitor.”

“That is China’s playbook and it is using it in every critical industry,” Moolenaar said.

House Democrats on committees dealing with foreign affairs and competition with China echoed those concerns, The Hill reported, warning that “under this administration, our national security is for sale.”

Nvidia’s Huang seems pleased with the outcome, which comes after months of reportedly pressuring the administration to lift export curbs limiting its growth in Chinese markets, the NYT reported. Last week, Trump heaped praise on Huang after one meeting, calling Huang a “smart man” and suggesting the Nvidia chief has “done an amazing job” helping Trump understand the stakes.

At an October news conference ahead of the deal’s official approval, Huang suggested that government lawyers were researching ways to get around a US law that prohibits charging companies fees for export licenses. Eventually, Trump is expected to release a policy that outlines how the US will collect those fees without conflicting with that law.

Senate Democrats appear unlikely to embrace such a policy, issuing a joint statement condemning the H200 sales as dooming the US in the AI race and threatening national security.

“Access to these chips would give China’s military transformational technology to make its weapons more lethal, carry out more effective cyberattacks against American businesses and critical infrastructure and strengthen their economic and manufacturing sector,” Senators wrote.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

US taking 25% cut of Nvidia chip sales “makes no sense,” experts say Read More »

republicans-drop-trump-ordered-block-on-state-ai-laws-from-defense-bill

Republicans drop Trump-ordered block on state AI laws from defense bill

AI, AI safety, Donald Trump, Policy, raise act, state AI laws / /

“A silly way to think about risk”

“Widespread and powerful movement” keeps Trump from blocking state AI laws.

A Donald Trump-backed push has failed to wedge a federal measure that would block states from passing AI laws for a decade into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday that a sect of Republicans is now “looking at other places” to potentially pass the measure. Other Republicans opposed including the AI preemption in the defense bill, The Hill reported, joining critics who see value in allowing states to quickly regulate AI risks as they arise.

For months, Trump has pressured the Republican-led Congress to block state AI laws that the president claims could bog down innovation as AI firms waste time and resources complying with a patchwork of state laws. But Republicans have continually failed to unite behind Trump’s command, first voting against including a similar measure in the “Big Beautiful” budget bill and then this week failing to negotiate a solution to pass the NDAA measure.

Among Republican lawmakers pushing back this week were Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, The Hill reported.

According to Scalise, the effort to block state AI laws is not over, but Republicans caved to backlash over including it in the defense bill, ultimately deciding that the NDAA “wasn’t the best place” for the measure “to fit.” Republicans will continue “looking at other places” to advance the measure, Scalise said, emphasizing that “interest” remains high, because “you know, you’ve seen the president talk about it.”

“We MUST have one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. “If we don’t, then China will easily catch us in the AI race. Put it in the NDAA, or pass a separate Bill, and nobody will ever be able to compete with America.”

If Congress bombs the assignment to find another way to pass the measure, Trump will likely release an executive order to enforce the policy. Republicans in Congress had dissuaded Trump from releasing a draft of that order, requesting time to find legislation where they believed an AI moratorium could pass.

“Widespread” movement blocked Trump’s demand

Celebrating the removal of the measure from the NDAA, a bipartisan group that lobbies for AI safety laws, Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI), noted that Republicans didn’t just face pressure from members of their own party.

“The controversial proposal had faced backlash from a nationwide, bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers, parents, faith leaders, unions, whistleblowers, and other public advocates,” an ARI press release said.

This “widespread and powerful” movement “clapped back” at Republicans’ latest “rushed attempt to sneak preemption through Congress,” Brad Carson, ARI’s president, said, because “Americans want safeguards that protect kids, workers, and families, not a rules-free zone for Big Tech.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called the measure “controversial,” The Hill reported, suggesting that a compromise that the White House is currently working on would potentially preserve some of states’ rights to regulate some areas of AI since “you know, both sides are kind of dug in.”

$150 million war over states’ rights to regulate AI

Perhaps the clearest sign that both sides “are kind of dug in” is a $150 million AI lobbying war that Forbes profiled last month.

ARI is a dominant group on one side of this war, using funding from “safety-focused” and “effective altruism-aligned” donor networks to support state AI laws that ARI expects can be passed much faster than federal regulations to combat emerging risks.

The major player on the other side, Forbes reported, is Leading the Future (LTF), which is “backed by some of Silicon Valley’s largest investors” who want to block state laws and prefer a federal framework for AI regulation.

Top priorities for ARI and like-minded groups include protecting kids from dangerous AI models, preventing AI from supercharging crime, protecting against national security threats, and getting ahead of “long-term frontier-model risks,” Forbes reported.

But while some Republicans have pushed for compromises that protect states’ rights to pass laws shielding kids or preventing fraud, Trump’s opposition to AI safety laws like New York’s “RAISE Act” seems unlikely to wane as the White House mulls weakening the federal preemption.

Quite the opposite, a Democrat and author the RAISE Act, Alex Bores, has become LTF’s prime target to defeat in 2026, Politico reported. LTF plans to invest many millions in ads to block Bores’ Congressional bid, CNBC reported.

New York lawmakers passed the RAISE Act this summer, but it’s still waiting for New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, to sign it into law. If that happens—potentially by the end of this year—big tech companies like Google and OpenAI will have to submit risk disclosures and safety assessments or else face fines up to $30 million.

LTF leaders, Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto, have accused Bores of “pushing “ideological and politically motivated legislation that would ‘handcuff’ the US and its ability to lead in AI,” Forbes reported. But Bores told Ars that even the tech industry groups spending hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing his law have reported that tech giants would only have to hire one additional person to comply with the law. To him, that shows how “simple” it would be for AI firms to comply with many state laws.

To LTF, whose donors include Marc Andreessen and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, defeating Bores would keep the opposition out of Congress, where it could be easier to meddle with industry dreams that AI won’t be heavily regulated. Scalise argued Tuesday that the AI preemption is necessary to promote an open marketplace, because “AI is where a lot of new massive investment is going” and “we want that money to be invested in America.”

“And when you see some states starting to put a patchwork of limitations, that’s why it’s come to the federal government’s attention to allow for an open marketplace, so you don’t have limitations that hurt innovation,” Scalise said.

Bores told Ars that he agrees that a federal law would be superior to a patchwork of state laws, but AI is moving “too quickly,” and “New York had to take action to protect New Yorkers.”

Why Bores’ bill has GOP so spooked

With a bachelor’s degree in computer science and prior work as an engineer at Palantir, Bores hopes to make it to Congress to help bridge bipartisan gaps and drive innovation in the US. He told Ars that the RAISE Act is not intended to block AI innovation but to “be a first step that deals with the absolute worst possible outcomes” until Congress is done deliberating a federal framework.

Bores emphasized that stakeholders in the tech industry helped shape the RAISE Act, which he described as “a limited bill that is focused on the most extreme risks.”

“I would never be the one to say that once the RAISE Act is signed, we’ve solved the problems of AI,” Bores told Ars. Instead, it’s meant to help states combat risks that can’t be undone, such as bad actors using AI to build “a bioweapon or doing an automated crime spree that results in billions of dollars in damage.” The bill defines “critical harm” as “the death or serious injury of 100 people or at least $1 billion in damages,” setting a seemingly high bar for the types of doomsday scenarios that AI firms would have to plan for.

Bores agrees with Trump-aligned critics who advocate that the US should “regulate just how people use” AI, “not the development of the technology itself.” But he told Ars that Republicans’ efforts to block states from regulating the models themselves are “a silly way to think about risk,” since “there’s certain catastrophic incidents where if you just said, ‘well, we’ll just sue the person afterwards,’ no one would be satisfied by that resolution.”

Whether Hochul will sign the RAISE Act has yet to be seen. Earlier this year, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar law that the AI industry worried would rock their bottom lines by requiring a “kill switch” in case AI models went off the rails. Newsom did, however, sign a less extreme measure, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act. And other states, including Colorado and Illinois, have passed similarly broad AI transparency laws providing consumer and employee protections.

Bores told Ars in mid-November that he’d had informal talks with Hochul about possible changes to the RAISE Act, but she had not yet begun the formal process of proposing amendments. The clock is seemingly ticking, though, as Hochul has to take action on the bill by the end of the year, and once it reaches her desk, she has 10 days to sign it.

Whether Hochul signs the law or not, Bores will likely continue to face opposition over authoring the bill, as he runs to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District in 2026. With a history of passing bipartisan bills in his state, he’s hoping to be elected so he can work with lawmakers across the aisle to pass other far-reaching tech regulations.

Meanwhile, Trump may face pressure to delay an executive order requiring AI preemption, Forbes reported, as “AI’s economic impact and labor displacement” are “rising as voter concerns” ahead of the midterm elections. Public First, a bipartisan initiative aligned with ARI, has said that 97 percent of Americans want AI safety rules, Forbes reported.

Like Bores, ARI plans to keep pushing a bipartisan movement that could scramble Republicans from ever unifying behind Trump’s message that state AI laws risk throttling US innovation and endangering national security, should a less-regulated AI industry in China race ahead.

To maintain momentum, ARI created a tracker showing opposition to federal preemption of state AI laws. Among recent commenters logged was Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat and state senator in New York—where Bores noted a poll found that 84 percent of residents supported the RAISE Act, only 8 percent opposed, and 8 percent were undecided. Gounardes joined critics on the far right, like Steve Bannon, who warned that federal preemption was a big gift for Big Tech. AI firms and the venture capitalist lobbyists “don’t want any regulation whatsoever,” Gounardes argued.

“They say they support a national standard, but in reality, it’s just cheaper for them to buy off Congress to do nothing than it is to try and buy off 50 state legislatures,” Gounardes said.

Bores expects that his experience in the tech industry could help Congress avoid that fate while his policies like the RAISE Act could sway voters who “don’t want Trump mega-donors writing all tech policy,” he wrote on X.

“I am someone with a master’s in computer science, two patents, and nearly a decade working in tech,” Bores told CNBC. “If they are scared of people who understand their business regulating their business, they are telling on themselves.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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