Policy – Page 43

Government IT whistleblower calls out DOGE, says he was threatened at home

doge, Policy / Mike M. / April 17, 2025

“Stay out of DOGE’s way”: IT worker details how Musk group infiltrated US agency.

Elon Musk at the White House on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Samuel Corum

A government whistleblower told lawmakers that DOGE’s access to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) systems went far beyond what was needed to analyze agency operations and apparently led to a data breach. NLRB employee Daniel Berulis, a DevSecOps architect, also says he received a threat when he was preparing his whistleblower disclosure.

“Mr. Berulis is coming forward today because of his concern that recent activity by members of the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’) have resulted in a significant cybersecurity breach that likely has and continues to expose our government to foreign intelligence and our nation’s adversaries,” said a letter from the group Whistleblower Aid to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence leaders and the US Office of Special Counsel.

The letter, Berulis’ sworn declaration, and an exhibit with screenshots of technical data are available here. “This declaration details DOGE activity within NLRB, the exfiltration of data from NLRB systems, and—concerningly—near real-time access by users in Russia,” Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj wrote. “Notably, within minutes of DOGE personnel creating user accounts in NLRB systems, on multiple occasions someone or something within Russia attempted to login using all of the valid credentials (e.g. Usernames/Passwords). This, combined with verifiable data being systematically exfiltrated to unknown servers within the continental United States—and perhaps abroad—merits investigation.”

Bakaj said they notified law enforcement about an “absolutely disturbing” threat Berulis received on April 7. Someone “taped a threatening note to Mr. Berulis’ home door with photographs—taken via a drone—of him walking in his neighborhood,” Bakaj wrote. “The threatening note made clear reference to this very disclosure he was preparing for you, as the proper oversight authority. While we do not know specifically who did this, we can only speculate that it involved someone with the ability to access NLRB systems.”

NLRB denies breach

Berulis’ disclosure said that several days before receiving this threat, he had been instructed to drop his investigation and not report his concerns to US security officials.

Bakaj’s letter to senators and the Office of Special Counsel requested “that both law enforcement agencies and Congress initiate an immediate investigation into the cybersecurity breach and data exfiltration at NLRB and any other agencies where DOGE has accessed internal systems.”

An NLRB spokesperson denied that there was any breach. “Tim Bearese, the NLRB’s acting press secretary, denied that the agency granted DOGE access to its systems and said DOGE had not requested access to the agency’s systems,” according to NPR. “Bearese said the agency conducted an investigation after Berulis raised his concerns but ‘determined that no breach of agency systems occurred.'”

We contacted the NLRB and will update this article if it provides further comment.

There have been numerous lawsuits over the access to government systems granted to DOGE, the Trump administration entity led by Elon Musk. One such lawsuit described DOGE’s access as “the largest and most consequential data breach in US history.” There have been mixed results in the cases so far; a US appeals court decided last week that DOGE can access personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), overturning a lower-court ruling.

After the whistleblower disclosure, US Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) sent a letter urging inspectors general at the NLRB and Department of Labor to investigate. Connolly said the whistleblower report indicates “that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees may be engaged in technological malfeasance and illegal activity at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Department of Labor (DOL).” Connolly asked for a report to Congress on “the nature of the work the DOGE team has performed at NLRB and DOL, including any and all attempts to exfiltrate data and any attempts to cover up their activities.”

Because of Musk’s role at DOGE and the fact that his “companies face a series of enforcement actions from NLRB and DOL,” there is “an inherent conflict of interest for him to direct any work at either agency—let alone benefit from stolen nonpublic information,” Connolly wrote.

Login attempts from Russia

Berulis’ disclosure said that on March 11, internal metrics indicated there had been “abnormal usage” over the past week with higher-than-usual response times and “increased network output above anywhere it had been historically.” When examining the data, “we noticed a user with an IP address in Primorsky Krai, Russia started trying to log in. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming,” he wrote.

The person logging in from Russia apparently had the correct credentials for a DOGE account, according to Berulis. “Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE-related activities, and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating,” he wrote. “There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.”

This was not the first troubling sign described in the disclosure. On March 7, Berulis says he had “started tracking what appeared to be sensitive data leaving the secured location.” About 10GB of data was exfiltrated, but it was “unclear which files were copied and removed,” he wrote.

Berulis said the evidence indicated there was “a data breach facilitated by an internal actor,” and that he observed “the exact behaviors (Indicators of Compromise) of one who was trying to erase records of activities, retard detection, and covertly hide what data was being extracted after the fact.”

The NLRB hosts lots of private information that is supposed to remain confidential, he noted. This includes “sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases, and corporate secrets.” The database involved in the apparent breach contains “PII [personally identifiable information] of claimants and respondents with pending matters before the agency” and confidential business information “gathered or provided during investigations and litigation that were not intended for public release,” he wrote.

Berulis has almost two decades of experience, and his “work often includes high-level coordination with executive teams, establishing red-blue war game security events, and building cross-functional teams to align IT capabilities with mission-critical goals,” he said in his declaration. “Having worked at sensitive US Government institutions, I have held a Top Secret security clearance with eligibility for access to Sensitive Compartmented Information, commonly known as TS/SCI.”

“Stay out of DOGE’s way”

In late February, Berulis and his team were notified of DOGE’s impending arrival. “On or around March 3, 2025, we saw a black SUV and police escort enter the garage, after which building security let the DOGE staffers in. They interacted with only a small group of NLRB staff, never introducing themselves to those of us in Information Technology,” he wrote.

An assistant chief information officer (ACIO) was given instructions that IT employees “were not to adhere to SOP [standard operating procedure] with the DOGE account creation in regards to creating records,” Berulis wrote. “He specifically was told that there were to be no logs or records made of the accounts created for DOGE employees.”

DOGE officials were to be given “the highest level of access and unrestricted access to internal systems,” specifically “tenant owner” accounts in Microsoft Azure that come “with essentially unrestricted permission to read, copy, and alter data,” Berulis wrote. These “permissions are above even my CIO’s access level to our systems” and “well above what level of access is required to pull metrics, efficiency reports, and any other details that would be needed to assess utilization or usage of systems in our agency.”

The NLRB systems “have built-in roles that auditors can use and have used extensively in the past,” which do not have “the ability to make changes or access subsystems without approval,” Berulis wrote. DOGE apparently wasn’t willing to use these accounts. “The suggestion that they use these accounts instead was not open to discussion,” he wrote.

Berulis said IT staff were ordered “to hand over any requested accounts, stay out of DOGE’s way entirely, and assist them when they asked. We were further directed not to resist them in any way or deny them any access.”

More suspicious events

Berulis described several more suspicious events that followed DOGE’s arrival. There was a new container that he described as “basically an opaque, virtual node that has the ability to build and run programs or scripts without revealing its activities to the rest of the network.” There was also a token that “was configured to expire quickly after creation and use, making it harder to gain insight into what it was used for during its lifetime.”

To Berulis, these were signs of an attack on the NLRB systems. The methods used seemed to reflect “the desire of the attackers to work invisibly, leaving little to no obvious trace of their activities once removed.”

On March 6, various users “reported login issues to the service desk and, upon inspection, I found some conditional access policies were updated recently,” he wrote. This was odd because “policies that had been in place for over a year were suddenly found to have been changed with no corresponding documentation or approvals,” he wrote. “Upon my discovery of these changes, I asked the security personnel and information assurance team about it, but they had no knowledge of any planned changes or approvals.”

On March 7, Berulis says he “started tracking what appeared to be sensitive data leaving the secured location.” About 10GB of data was exfiltrated, but it was “unclear which files were copied and removed,” he wrote. On that same day, Berulis says he reported his concerns about sensitive data being exfiltrated to CIO Prem Aburvasmy.

Aburvasmy took the concerns seriously and put together a leadership group “to discuss insider threat response on an ongoing cadence and how we could get better at detecting it,” Berulis wrote. “Going forward after this, the team met every Friday and continue to do so to this day.”

Berulis described some shortcomings in the NLRB’s ability to detect attacks. “During one of these meetings, it was confirmed that our team did not have the technical capability to detect or respond in real time to internal threat actors, and that we likely did not have the ability to obtain more details about the past events,” he wrote.

The department subsequently “shifted budget to allow for better tooling going forward,” which “has vastly improved our detection and logging so we can provide more concrete evidence if covert exfiltration occurs by an insider threat again,” Berulis wrote. “We also shut down a public endpoint and corrected rogue policies that had been altered to allow much broader traffic in/out of our network.”

Berulis: “We were directed not to… create an official report”

On March 10, Berulis found that controls in Microsoft Purview to prevent insecure or unauthorized access from mobile devices had been disabled, he wrote. “In addition, outside of expected baselines and with no corresponding approvals or records I could find I noted the following: an interface exposed to the public Internet, a few internal alerting and monitoring systems in the off state, and multi-factor authentication changed,” he wrote.

The team observed more odd activity in the ensuing weeks, Berulis wrote. Data was sent to “an unknown external endpoint,” but the network team was unable to obtain connection logs or determine what data was removed, he wrote. There were also “spikes in billing in Mission Systems related to storage input/output” associated with projects that could no longer be found in the NLRB system, indicating that “resources may have been deleted or short-lived,” he wrote.

During the week of March 24, an assistant CIO for security at the NLRB “concluded that following a review of data, we should report it” to US-CERT, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), according to Berulis.

“Accordingly, we launched a formal review and I provided all evidence of what we deemed to be a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information,” he wrote.

But on April 3 or 4, the assistant CIO “and I were informed that instructions had come down to drop the US-CERT reporting and investigation and we were directed not to move forward or create an official report,” Berulis wrote.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Government IT whistleblower calls out DOGE, says he was threatened at home Read More »

White House calls NPR and PBS a “grift,” will ask Congress to rescind funding

Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, Policy / Kris Guyer / April 16, 2025

We also contacted the CPB and NPR today and will update this article if they provide any comments.

Markey: “Outrageous and reckless… cultural sabotage”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) blasted the Trump plan, calling it “an outrageous and reckless attack on one of our most trusted civic institutions… From ‘PBS NewsHour’ to ‘Sesame Street,’ public television has set the gold standard for programming that empowers viewers, particularly young minds. Cutting off this lifeline is not budget discipline, it’s cultural sabotage.”

Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported that the White House “plans to send the package to Congress when lawmakers return from their Easter recess on April 28… That would start a 45-day period during which the administration can legally withhold the funding. If Congress votes down the plan or does nothing, the administration must release the money back to the intended recipients.”

The rarely used rescission maneuver can be approved by the Senate with a simple majority, as it is not subject to a filibuster. “Presidents have used the rescission procedure just twice since 1979—most recently for a $15 billion spending cut package by Trump in 2018. That effort failed in the Senate,” Bloomberg wrote.

CPB expenses in fiscal-year 2025 are $545 million, of which 66.9 percent goes to TV programming. Another 22.3 percent goes to radio programming, while the rest is for administration and support.

NPR and PBS have additional sources of funding. Corporate sponsorships are the top contributor to NPR, accounting for 36 percent of revenue between 2020 and 2024. NPR gets another 30 percent of its funding in fees from member stations. Federal funding indirectly contributes to that category because the CPB provides annual grants to public radio stations that pay NPR for programming.

PBS reported that its total expenses were $689 million in fiscal-year 2024 and that it had $348.5 million in net assets at the end of the year.

NPR and PBS are also facing pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who opened an investigation in January and called on Congress to defund the organizations. Carr alleged that NPR and PBS violated a federal law prohibiting noncommercial educational broadcast stations from running commercial advertisements. NPR and PBS both said their underwriting spots comply with the law.

White House calls NPR and PBS a “grift,” will ask Congress to rescind funding Read More »

After Harvard says no to feds, $2.2 billion of research funding put on hold

legal threats, Policy, research funding, Science, trump administration / Tim Belzer / April 15, 2025

The Trump administration has been using federal research funding as a cudgel. The government has blocked billions of dollars in research funds and threatened to put a hold on even more in order to compel universities to adopt what it presents as essential reforms. In the case of Columbia University, that includes changes in the leadership of individual academic departments.

On Friday, the government sent a list of demands that it presented as necessary to “maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.” On Monday, Harvard responded that accepting these demands would “allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” The university also changed its home page into an extensive tribute to the research that would be eliminated if the funds were withheld.

In response, the Trump administration later put $2.2 billion of Harvard’s research funding on hold.

Diversity, but only the right kind

Harvard posted the letter it received from federal officials, listing their demands. Some of it is what you expect, given the Trump administration’s interests. The admissions and hiring departments would be required to drop all diversity efforts, with data on faculty and students to be handed over to the federal government for auditing. As at other institutions, there are also some demands presented as efforts against antisemitism, such as the defunding of pro-Palestinian groups. More generally, it demands that university officials “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions.”

There are also a bunch of basic culture war items, such as a demand for a mask ban, and a ban on “de-platforming” speakers on campus. In addition, the government wants the university to screen all faculty hires for plagiarism issues, which is what caused Harvard’s former president to resign after she gave testimony to Congress. Any violation of these updated conduct codes by a non-citizen would require an immediate report to the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, presumably so they can prepare to deport them.

After Harvard says no to feds, $2.2 billion of research funding put on hold Read More »

Zuckerberg’s 2012 email dubbed “smoking gun” at Meta monopoly trial

Antitrust law, facebook, Instagram, Meta, meta monopoly trial, monopoly trial, Policy, Snapchat, whatsapp / Kris Guyer / April 15, 2025

FTC’s “entire” monopoly case rests on decade-old emails, Meta argued.

Starting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust trial Monday with a bang, Daniel Matheson, the FTC’s lead litigator, flagged a “smoking gun”—a 2012 email where Mark Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook could buy Instagram to “neutralize a potential competitor,” The New York Times reported.

And in “another banger of an email from Zuckerberg,” Brendan Benedict, an antitrust expert monitoring the trial for Big Tech on Trial, posted on X that the Meta CEO wrote, “Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp. Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion… that’s not exactly killing it.”

These messages and others, the FTC hopes to convince the court, provide evidence that Zuckerberg runs Meta by the mantra “it’s better to buy than compete”—seemingly for more than a decade intent on growing the Facebook empire by killing off rivals, allegedly in violation of antitrust law. Another message from Zuckerberg exhibited at trial, Benedict noted on X, suggests Facebook tried to buy yet another rival, Snapchat, for $6 billion.

“We should probably prepare for a leak that we offered $6b… and all the negative [attention] that will come from that,” the Zuckerberg message said.

At the trial, Matheson suggested that “Meta broke the deal” that firms have in the US to compete to succeed, allegedly deciding “that competition was too hard, and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them,” the NYT reported. Ultimately, it will be up to the FTC to prove that Meta couldn’t have achieved its dominance today without buying Instagram and WhatsApp (in 2012 and 2014, respectively), while legal experts told the NYT that it is “extremely rare” to unwind mergers approved so many years ago.

Later today, Zuckerberg will take the stand and testify for perhaps seven hours, likely being made to answer for these messages and more. According to the NYT, the FTC will present a paper trail of emails where Zuckerberg and other Meta executives make it clear that acquisitions were intended to remove threats to Facebook’s dominance in the market.

It’s apparent that Meta plans to argue that it doesn’t matter what Zuckerberg or other executives intended when pursuing acquisitions. In a pretrial brief, Meta argued that “the FTC’s case rests almost entirely on emails (many more than a decade old) allegedly expressing competitive concerns” but suggested that this is only “intent” evidence, “without any evidence of anticompetitive effects.”

FTC may force Meta to spin off Instagram, WhatsApp

It is the FTC’s burden to show that Meta’s acquisitions harmed consumers and the market (and those harms outweigh any believable pro-competitive benefits alleged by Meta), but it remains to be seen whether Meta will devote ample time to testifying that “Mark Zuckerberg got it wrong” when describing his rationale for acquisitions, Big Tech on Trial noted.

Meta’s lead lawyer, Mark Hansen, told Law360 that “what people thought at Meta is not really what this case is.” (For those keeping track of who’s who in this case, Hansen apparently once was the boss of James Boasberg, the judge in the case, Big Tech on Trial reported.)

The social media company hopes to convince the court that the FTC’s case is political. So far, Meta has accused the FTC of shifting its market definition while willfully overlooking today’s competitive realities online, simply to punish a tech giant for its success.

In a blog post on Sunday, Meta’s chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, accused the FTC of lobbing a “weak case” that “ignores reality.” Meta insists that the FTC has “gerrymandered a fictitious market” to exclude Meta’s actual rivals, like TikTok, X, YouTube, or LinkedIn.

Boasberg will be scrutinizing the market definition, as well as alleged harms, and the FTC will potentially struggle to win him over on the merits of their case. Big Tech on Trial—which suggested that Meta’s acquisitions, if intended to kill off rivals, would be considered “a textbook violation of the antitrust laws”—noted that the court previously told the FTC that the agency had an “uphill climb” in proving its market definition. And because Meta’s social platforms are free, it’s harder to show direct evidence of consumer harms, experts have noted.

Still, for Meta, the stakes are high, as the FTC could pursue a breakup of the company, including requiring Meta to spin off WhatsApp and Instagram. Losing Instagram would hit Meta’s revenue hard, as Instagram is supposed to bring in more than half of its US ad revenue in 2025, eMarketer forecasted last December.

The trial is expected to last eight weeks, but much of the most-anticipated testimony will come early. Facebook’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, as well as Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, are expected to testify this week.

All unsealed emails and exhibits will eventually be posted on a website jointly managed by the FTC and Meta, but Ars was not yet provided a link or timeline for when the public evidence will be posted online.

Meta mocks FTC’s “ad load theory”

The FTC is arguing that Meta overpaid to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain an alleged monopoly in the personal social networking market that includes rivals like Snapchat and MeWe, a social networking platform that brands itself as a privacy-focused Facebook alternative.

In opening arguments, the FTC alleged that once competition was eliminated, Meta then degraded the quality of its platforms by limiting user privacy and inundating users with ads.

Meta has defended its acquisitions by arguing that it has improved Instagram and WhatsApp. At trial, Meta’s lawyer Hansen made light of the FTC’s “ad load theory,” stirring laughter in the reportedly packed courtroom, Benedict posted on X.

“If you don’t like an ad, you scroll past it. It takes about a second,” Hansen said.

Meanwhile, Newstead, who reportedly attended opening arguments, argued in her blog that “Instagram and WhatsApp provide a model for what successful acquisitions can achieve: Meta has made Instagram and WhatsApp better, more reliable and more secure through billions of dollars and millions of hours of investment.”

By breaking up these acquisitions, Hansen argued, the FTC would be sending a strong message to startups that “would kill entrepreneurship” by seemingly taking mergers and acquisitions “off the table,” Benedict posted on X.

To defeat the FTC, Meta will likely attempt to broaden the market definition to include more rivals. In support of that, Meta has already pointed to the recent TikTok ban driving TikTok users to Instagram, which allegedly shows the platforms are interchangeable, despite the FTC differentiating TikTok as a video app.

The FTC will likely lean on Meta’s internal documents to show who Meta actually considers rivals. During opening arguments, for example, the FTC reportedly shared a Meta document showing that Meta itself has agreed with the FTC and differentiated Facebook as connecting “friends and family,” while “LinkedIn connects coworkers” and “Nextdoor connects neighbors.”

“Contemporaneous records reveal that Meta and other social media executives understood that users flock to different platforms for different purposes and that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were specifically designed to operate in a distinct submarket for family and friend connections,” the American Economic Liberties Project, which is partnering with Big Tech on Trial to monitoring the proceedings, said in a press statement.

But Newstead suggested that “evidence of fierce and increasing competition in the market has only grown in the four years since the FTC’s complaint was filed,” and Meta now “faces strong competition in a rapidly shifting tech landscape that includes American and foreign competitors.”

To emphasize the threats to US consumers and businesses, Newstead also invoked the supposed threat to America’s AI leadership if one of the country’s leading tech companies loses momentum at this key moment.

“It’s absurd that the FTC is trying to break up a great American company at the same time the Administration is trying to save Chinese-owned TikTok,” Newstead said. “And, it makes no sense for regulators to try and weaken US companies right at the moment we most need them to invest in winning the competition with China for leadership in AI.”

Trump’s FTC appears unlikely to back down

Zuckerberg has been criticized for his supposed last-ditch attempts to push the Trump administration to pause or toss the FTC’s case. Last month, the CEO visited Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a settlement, Politico reported, apparently worrying officials who don’t want Trump to bail out Meta.

On Monday, the FTC did not appear to be wavering, however, prompting alarm bells in the tech industry.

Patrick Hedger, the director of policy for NetChoice—a trade group that represents Meta and other Big Tech companies—warned that if the FTC undoes Meta’s acquisitions, it would harm innovation and competition while damaging trust in the FTC long-term.

“This bait-and-switch against Meta for acquisitions approved over 10 years ago in the fiercely competitive social media marketplace will have serious ripple effects not only for the US tech industry, but across all American businesses,” Hedger said.

Seemingly accusing Donald Trump’s FTC of pursuing Lina Khan’s alleged agenda against Big Tech, Hedger added that “with Meta at the forefront of open-source AI innovation and a global competitor, the outcome of this trial will have spillover into the entire economy. It will create a fear among businesses that making future, pro-competitive investments could be reversed due to political discontent—not the necessary evidence traditionally required for an anticompetitive claim.”

Big Tech on Trial noted that it’s possible that the FTC could “vote to settle, withdraw, or pause the case.” Last month, Trump fired the two Democrats, eliminating a 3–2 split and ensuring only Republicans are steering the agency for now.

But Trump’s FTC seems determined to proceed in attempts to disrupt Meta’s business. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson told Fox Business Monday that “antitrust laws can help make sure that no private sector company gets so powerful that it affects our lives in ways that are really bad for all Americans,” and “that’s what this trial beginning today is all about.”

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.

Zuckerberg’s 2012 email dubbed “smoking gun” at Meta monopoly trial Read More »

After market tumult, Trump exempts smartphones from massive new tariffs

Apple, Google, Policy, smartphones, syndication, tariffs / Mike M. / April 13, 2025

Shares in the US tech giant were one of Wall Street’s biggest casualties in the days immediately after Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs. About $700 billion was wiped off Apple’s market value in the space of a few days.

Earlier this week, Trump said he would consider excluding US companies from his tariffs, but added that such decisions would be made “instinctively.”

Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the exemptions mirrored exceptions for smartphones and consumer electronics issued by Trump during his trade wars in 2018 and 2019.

“We’ll have to wait and see if the exemptions this time around also stick, or if the president once again reverses course sometime in the not-too-distant future,” said Bown.

US Customs and Border Protection referred inquiries about the order to the US International Trade Commission, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The White House confirmed that the new exemptions would not apply to the 20 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports applied by Trump to respond to China’s role in fentanyl manufacturing.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Saturday that companies including Apple, TSMC, and Nvidia were “hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible” at “the direction of the President.”

“President Trump has made it clear America cannot rely on China to manufacture critical technologies such as semiconductors, chips, smartphones, and laptops,” said Leavitt.

Apple declined to comment.

Economists have warned that the sweeping nature of Trump’s tariffs—which apply to a broad range of common US consumer goods—threaten to fuel US inflation and hit economic growth.

New York Fed chief John Williams said US inflation could reach as high as 4 percent as a result of Trump’s tariffs.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco

After market tumult, Trump exempts smartphones from massive new tariffs Read More »

Apple silent as Trump promises “impossible” US-made iPhones

Apple, china, china tariffs, Donald Trump, Foxconn, IPhone, Policy, tariffs, tim cook, us, us-china trade war / Rejus Almole / April 12, 2025

How does Apple solve a problem like Trump’s trade war?

Despite a recent pause on some tariffs, Apple remains in a particularly thorny spot as Donald Trump’s trade war spikes costs in the tech company’s iPhone manufacturing hub, China.

Analysts predict that Apple has no clear short-term options to shake up its supply chain to avoid tariffs entirely, and even if Trump grants Apple an exemption, iPhone prices may increase not just in the US but globally.

The US Trade Representative, which has previously granted Apple an exemption on a particular product, did not respond to Ars’ request to comment on whether any requests for exemptions have been submitted in 2025.

Currently, the US imposes a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports, while China has raised tariffs on US imports to 125 percent.

Neither side seems ready to back down, and Trump’s TikTok deal—which must be approved by the Chinese government—risks further delays the longer negotiations and retaliations drag on. Trump has faced criticism for delaying the TikTok deal, with Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) telling The Verge last week that the delay was “against the law” and threatened US national security. Meanwhile, China seems to expect more business to flow into China rather than into the US as a result of Trump’s tough stance on global trade.

With the economy and national security at risk, Trump is claiming that tariffs will drive manufacturing into the US, create jobs, and benefit the economy. Getting the world’s most valuable company, Apple, to manufacture its most popular product, the iPhone, in the US, is clearly part of Trump’s vision. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Apple’s commitment to invest $500 billion in the US over the next four years was supposedly a clear indicator that Apple believed it was feasible to build iPhones here, Bloomberg reported.

“If Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” Leavitt said.

Apple did not respond to Ars’ request to comment, and so far, it has been silent on how tariffs are impacting its business.

iPhone price increases expected globally

For Apple, even if it can build products for the US market in India, where tariffs remain lower, Trump’s negotiations with China “remain the most important variable for Apple” to retain its global dominance.

Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC that “Apple could be set back many years by these tariffs.” Although Apple reportedly stockpiled phones to sell in the US market, that supply will likely dwindle fast as customers move to purchase phones before prices spike. In the medium-term, consultancy firm Omdia forecasted, Apple will likely “focus on increasing iPhone production and exports from India” rather than pushing its business into the US, as Trump desires.

But Apple will still incur additional costs from tariffs on India until that country tries to negotiate a more favorable trade deal. And any exemption that Apple may secure due to its investment promise in the US or moderation of China tariffs that could spare Apple some pain “may not be enough for Apple to avoid adverse business effects,” co-founder and senior analyst at equity research publisher MoffettNathanson, Craig Moffett, suggested to CNBC.

And if Apple is forced to increase prices, it likely won’t be limited to just the US, Bank of America Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan suggested, as reported by The Guardian. To ensure that Apple’s largest market isn’t the hardest hit, Apple may increase prices “across the board geographically,” he forecasted.

“While Apple has not commented on this, we expect prices will be changed globally to prevent arbitrage,” Mohan said.

Apple may even choose to increase prices everywhere but the US, vice president at Forrester Research, Dipanjan Chatterjee, explained in The Guardian’s report.

“If there is a cost impact in the US for certain products,” Chatterjee said, Apple may not increase US prices because “the market is far more competitive there.” Instead, “the company may choose to keep prices flat in the US while recovering the lost margin elsewhere in its global portfolio,” Chatterjee said.

Trump’s US-made iPhone may be an impossible dream

Analysts have said that Trump’s dream that a “made-in-the-USA” iPhone could be coming soon is divorced from reality. Not only do analysts estimate that more than 80 percent of Apple products are currently made in China, but so are many individual parts. So even if Apple built an iPhone factory in the US, it would still have to pay tariffs on individual parts, unless Trump agreed to a seemingly wide range of exemptions. Mohan estimated it would “likely take many years” to move the “entire iPhone supply chain,” if that’s “even possible.”

Further, Apple’s $500 billion commitment covered “building servers for its artificial intelligence products, Apple TV productions and 20,000 new jobs in research and development—not a promise to make the iPhone stateside,” The Guardian noted.

For Apple, it would likely take years to build a US factory and attract talent, all without knowing how tariffs might change. A former Apple manufacturing engineer, Matthew Moore, told Bloomberg that “there are millions of people employed by the Apple supply chain in China,” and Apple has long insisted that the US talent pool is too small to easily replace them.

“What city in America is going to put everything down and build only iPhones?” Moore said. “Boston is over 500,000 people. The whole city would need to stop everything and start assembling iPhones.”

In a CBS interview, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that the “army of millions and millions of human beings” could be automated, Bloomberg reported. But China has never been able to make low-cost automation work, so it’s unclear how the US could achieve that goal without serious investment.

“That’s not yet realistic,” people who have worked on Apple’s product manufacturing told Bloomberg, especially since each new iPhone model requires retooling of assembly, which typically requires manual labor. Other analysts agreed, CNBC reported, concluding that “the idea of an American-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

For consumers, CNBC noted, a US-made iPhone would cost anywhere from 25 percent more than the $1,199 price point today, increasing to about $1,500 at least, to potentially $3,500 at most, Wall Street analysts have forecasted.

It took Apple a decade to build its factory in India, which Apple reportedly intends to use to avoid tariffs where possible. That factory “only began producing Apple’s top-of-the-line Pro and Pro Max iPhone models for the first time last year,” CNBC reported.

Analysts told CNBC that it would take years to launch a similar manufacturing process in the US, while “there’s no guarantee that US trade policy might not change yet again in a way to make the factory less useful.”

Apple CEO’s potential game plan to navigate tariffs

It appears that there’s not much Apple can do to avoid maximum pain through US-China negotiations. But Apple’s CEO Tim Cook—who is considered “a supply chain whisperer”—may be “uniquely suited” to navigate Trump’s trade war, Fortune reported.

After Cook arrived at Apple in 1998, he “redesigned Apple’s sprawling supply chain” and perhaps is game to do that again, Fortune reported. Jeremy Friedman, associate professor of business and geopolitics at Harvard Business School, told Fortune that rather than being stuck in the middle, Cook may turn out to be a key intermediary, helping the US and China iron out a deal.

During Trump’s last term, Cook raised a successful “charm offensive” that secured tariff exemptions without caving to Trump’s demand to build iPhones in the US, CNBC reported, and he’s likely betting that Apple’s recent $500 billion commitment will lead to similar outcomes, even if Apple never delivers a US-made iPhone.

Back in 2017, Trump announced that Apple partner Foxconn would be building three “big beautiful plants” in the US and claimed that they would be Apple plants, CNBC reported. But the pandemic disrupted construction, and most of those plans were abandoned, with one facility only briefly serving to make face masks, not Apple products. In 2019, Apple committed to building a Texas factory that Trump toured. While Trump insisted that a US-made iPhone was on the horizon due to Apple moving some business into the US, that factory only committed to assembling the MacBook Pro, CNBC noted.

Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring suggested that Apple may “commit to some small-volume production in the US (HomePod? AirTags?)” to secure an exemption in 2025, rather than committing to building iPhones, CNBC reported.

Although this perhaps sounds like a tried-and-true game plan, for Cook, Apple’s logistics have likely never been so complicated. However, analysts told Fortune that experienced logistics masterminds understand that flexibility is the priority, and Cook has already shown that he can anticipate Trump’s moves by stockpiling iPhones and redirecting US-bound iPhones through its factory in India.

While Trump negotiates with China, Apple hopes that an estimated 35 million iPhones it makes annually in India can “cover a large portion of its needs in the US,” Bloomberg reported. These moves, analysts said, prove that Cook may be the man for the job when it comes to steering Apple through the trade war chaos.

But to keep up with global demand—selling more than 220 million iPhones annually—Apple will struggle to quickly distance itself from China, where there’s abundant talent to scale production that Apple says just doesn’t exist in the US. For example, CNBC noted that Foxconn hired 50,000 additional workers last fall at its largest China plant just to build enough iPhones to meet demand during the latest September launches.

As Apple remains dependent on China, Cook will likely need to remain at the table, seeking friendlier terms on both sides to ensure its business isn’t upended for years.

“One can imagine, if there is some sort of grand bargain between US and China coming in the next year or two,” Friedman said, “Tim Cook might as soon as anybody play an intermediary role.”

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.

Apple silent as Trump promises “impossible” US-made iPhones Read More »

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split

ftc, Policy, Trump / Rejus Almole / April 12, 2025

After declaring the FTC to be under White House control, Trump fired both Democratic members despite a US law and Supreme Court precedent stating that the president cannot fire commissioners without good cause.

House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge thanked Senate Democrats for voting against Meador. “In order for the FTC to be effective, it needs to have five independent commissioners doing the work,” said Sara Collins, the group’s director of government affairs. “By voting ‘no’ on this confirmation, these senators have shown that it is still important to prioritize protecting consumers and supporting a healthier marketplace over turning a blind eye to President Trump’s unlawful termination of Democratic Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya.”

Democrats sue Trump

The two Democrats are challenging the firings in a lawsuit that said “it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause.” Trump “purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their ‘continued service on the FTC is’ supposedly ‘inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities,'” the lawsuit said.

US law says an FTC commissioner “may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” A 1935 Supreme Court ruling said that “Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.”

Slaughter and Bedoya sued Trump in US District Court for the District of Columbia and asked the court to declare “the President’s purported termination of Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya unlawful and that Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya are Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission.”

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split Read More »

Google takes advantage of federal cost-cutting with steep Workspace discount

Federal government, Google, Google Workspace, Policy, Tech / Mike M. / April 11, 2025

Google has long been on the lookout for ways to break Microsoft’s stranglehold on US government office software, and the current drive to cut costs may be it. Google and the federal government have announced an agreement that makes Google Workspace available to all agencies at a significant discount, trimming 71 percent from the service’s subscription price tag.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the government has engaged in a campaign of unbridled staffing reductions and program cancellations, all with the alleged aim of reducing federal spending. It would appear Google recognized this opportunity, negotiating with the General Services Administration (GSA) to offer Workspace at a lower price. Google claims the deal could yield up to $2 billion in savings.

Google has previously offered discounts for federal agencies interested in migrating to Workspace, but it saw little success displacing Microsoft. The Windows maker has enjoyed decades as an entrenched tech giant, leading the 365 productivity tools to proliferate throughout the government. While Google has gotten some agencies on board, Microsoft has traditionally won the lion’s share of contracts, including the $8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract that pushed Microsoft 365 to all corners of the Pentagon beginning in 2020.

Google takes advantage of federal cost-cutting with steep Workspace discount Read More »

Amazon’s Chinese sellers to raise prices or quit US market as tariffs hit 145%

Amazon, Policy, trump tariffs / Paul Patrick / April 11, 2025

Jassy said Amazon is “doing everything we can to try and keep prices the way they’ve been for customers, as low as possible.” Amazon has already “done some strategic forward inventory buys to get as many items as make sense for customers at lower prices,” and may renegotiate some deals, he said.

Seller: “You can’t rely on the US market”

Reuters spoke to five Chinese sellers, writing that “three said they would look to raise prices for their exports to the US, while two planned to leave the market entirely.”

Dave Fong sells products “from schoolbags to Bluetooth speakers” and has already raised prices in the US by up to 30 percent, the article said. “For us and anyone else, you can’t rely on the US market, that’s quite clear,” Fong told Reuters. “We have to reduce investment, and put more resources into regions like Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the rest of the world.”

Products already shipped to Amazon fulfillment centers in the US soften the blow temporarily, but Shenzhen-based seller Brian Miller “anticipated he and other sellers would need to raise prices steeply when current inventories run out in one or two months.”

“Building blocks for children that sell on Amazon for $20 that cost his company $3 to produce would now cost $7 including the tariff. Maintaining margins would require raising the price by at least 20 percent, and prices for higher-cost toys might see 50 percent increases, he said,” according to Reuters. Miller said that if the tariffs aren’t changed, “manufacturing that serves the US will have to be transferred to other countries like Vietnam or Mexico.”

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Amazon “canceled orders for multiple products made in China and other Asian countries.”

Amazon’s Chinese sellers to raise prices or quit US market as tariffs hit 145% Read More »

Elon Musk wants to be “AGI dictator,” OpenAI tells court

agi, AI, Artificial Intelligence, elon musk, openai, Policy, sam altman, Twitter, X, xAI / Mike M. / April 11, 2025

Elon Musk’s “relentless” attacks on OpenAI must cease, court filing says.

Yesterday, OpenAI counter-sued Elon Musk, alleging that Musk’s “sham” bid to buy OpenAI was intentionally timed to maximally disrupt and potentially even frighten off investments from honest bidders.

Slamming Musk for attempting to become an “AGI dictator,” OpenAI said that if Musk’s allegedly “relentless” yearslong campaign of “harassment” isn’t stopped, Musk could end up taking over OpenAI and tanking its revenue the same way he did with Twitter.

In its filing, OpenAI argued that Musk and the other investors who joined his bid completely fabricated the $97.375 billion offer. It was allegedly not based on OpenAI’s projections or historical performance, like Musk claimed, but instead appeared to be “a comedic reference to Musk’s favorite sci-fi” novel, Iain Banks’ Look to Windward. Musk and others also provided “no evidence of financing to pay the nearly $100 billion purchase price,” OpenAI said.

And perhaps most damning, one of Musk’s backers, Ron Baron, appeared “flustered” when asked about the deal on CNBC, OpenAI alleged. On air, Baron admitted that he didn’t follow the deal closely and that “the point of the bid, as pitched to him (plainly by Musk) was not to buy OpenAI’s assets, but instead to obtain ‘discovery’ and get ‘behind the wall’ at OpenAI,” the AI company’s court filing alleged.

Likely poisoning potential deals most, OpenAI suggested, was the idea that Musk might take over OpenAI and damage its revenue like he did with Twitter. Just the specter of that could repel talent, OpenAI feared, since “the prospect of a Musk takeover means chaos and arbitrary employment action.”

And “still worse, the threat of a Musk takeover is a threat to the very mission of building beneficial AGI,” since xAI is allegedly “the worst offender” in terms of “inadequate safety measures,” according to one study, and X’s chatbot, Grok, has “become a leading spreader of misinformation and inflammatory political rhetoric,” OpenAI said. Even xAI representatives had to admit that users discovering that Grok consistently responds that “President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty” was a “really terrible and bad failure,” OpenAI’s filing said.

Despite Musk appearing to only be “pretending” to be interested in purchasing OpenAI—and OpenAI ultimately rejecting the offer—the company still had to cover the costs of reviewing the bid. And beyond bearing costs and confronting an artificially raised floor on the company’s valuation supposedly frightening off investors, “a more serious toll” of “Musk’s most recent ploy” would be OpenAI lacking resources to fulfill its mission to benefit humanity with AI “on terms uncorrupted by unlawful harassment and interference,” OpenAI said.

OpenAI has demanded a jury trial and is seeking an injunction to stop Musk’s alleged unfair business practices—which they claimed are designed to impair competition in the nascent AI field “for the sole benefit of Musk’s xAI” and “at the expense of the public interest.”

“The risk of future, irreparable harm from Musk’s unlawful conduct is acute, and the risk that that conduct continues is high,” OpenAI alleged. “With every month that has passed, Musk has intensified and expanded the fronts of his campaign against OpenAI, and has proven himself willing to take ever more dramatic steps to seek a competitive advantage for xAI and to harm [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman, whom, in the words of the president of the United States, Musk ‘hates.'”

OpenAI also wants Musk to cover the costs it incurred from entertaining the supposedly fake bid, as well as pay punitive damages to be determined at trial for allegedly engaging “in wrongful conduct with malice, oppression, and fraud.”

OpenAI’s filing also largely denies Musk’s claims that OpenAI abandoned its mission and made a fool out of early investors like Musk by currently seeking to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation (which removes control by its nonprofit board).

“You can’t sue your way to AGI,” an OpenAI blog said.

In response to OpenAI’s filing, Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, provided a statement to Ars.

“Had OpenAI’s Board genuinely considered the bid, as they were obligated to do, they would have seen just how serious it was,” Toberoff said. “It’s telling that having to pay fair market value for OpenAI’s assets allegedly ‘interferes’ with their business plans. It’s apparent they prefer to negotiate with themselves on both sides of the table than engage in a bona fide transaction in the best interests of the charity and the public interest.”

Musk’s attempt to become an “AGI dictator”

According to OpenAI’s filing, “Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI” ever since OpenAI refused to allow Musk to become an “AGI dictator” and fully control OpenAI by absorbing it into Tesla in 2018.

Musk allegedly “demanded sole control of the new for-profit, at least in the short term: He would be CEO, own a majority equity stake, and control a majority of the board,” OpenAI said. “He would—in his own words—’unequivocally have initial control of the company.'”

At the time, OpenAI rejected Musk’s offer, viewing it as in conflict with its mission to avoid corporate control and telling Musk:

“You stated that you don’t want to control the final AGI, but during this negotiation, you’ve shown to us that absolute control is extremely important to you. … The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. … So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility.”

This news did not sit well with Musk, OpenAI said.

“Musk was incensed,” OpenAI told the court. “If he could not control the contemplated for-profit entity, he would not participate in it.”

Back then, Musk departed from OpenAI somewhat “amicably,” OpenAI said, although Musk insisted it was “obvious” that OpenAI would fail without him. However, after OpenAI instead became a global AI leader, Musk quietly founded xAI, OpenAI alleged, failing to publicly announce his new company while deceptively seeking a “moratorium” on AI development, apparently to slow down rivals so that xAI could catch up.

OpenAI also alleges that this is when Musk began intensifying his attacks on OpenAI while attempting to poach its top talent and demanding access to OpenAI’s confidential, sensitive information as a former donor and director—”without ever disclosing he was building a competitor in secret.”

And the attacks have only grown more intense since then, said OpenAI, claiming that Musk planted stories in the media, wielded his influence on X, requested government probes into OpenAI, and filed multiple legal claims, including seeking an injunction to halt OpenAI’s business.

“Most explosively,” OpenAI alleged that Musk pushed attorneys general of California and Delaware “to force OpenAI, Inc., without legal basis, to auction off its assets for the benefit of Musk and his associates.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI noted, Musk has folded his social media platform X into xAI, announcing its valuation was at $80 billion and gaining “a major competitive advantage” by getting “unprecedented direct access to all the user data flowing through” X. Further, Musk intends to expand his “Colossus,” which is “believed to be the world’s largest supercomputer,” “tenfold.” That could help Musk “leap ahead” of OpenAI, suggesting Musk has motive to delay OpenAI’s growth while he pursues that goal.

That’s why Musk “set in motion a campaign of harassment, interference, and misinformation designed to take down OpenAI and clear the field for himself,” OpenAI alleged.

Even while counter-suing, OpenAI appears careful not to poke the bear too hard. In the court filing and on X, OpenAI praised Musk’s leadership skills and the potential for xAI to dominate the AI industry, partly due to its unique access to X data. But ultimately, OpenAI seems to be happy to be operating independently of Musk now, asking the court to agree that “Elon’s never been about the mission” of benefiting humanity with AI, “he’s always had his own agenda.”

“Elon is undoubtedly one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time,” OpenAI said on X. “But these antics are just history on repeat—Elon being all about Elon.”

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.

Elon Musk wants to be “AGI dictator,” OpenAI tells court Read More »

Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies

AI, Deepfakes, Policy, take it down act / Rejus Almole / April 10, 2025

Anti-deepfake bill raises concerns about censorship and breaking encryption.

The helicopter with outgoing US President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden departs from the East Front of the United States Capitol after the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images

An anti-deepfake bill is on the verge of becoming US law despite concerns from civil liberties groups that it could be used by President Trump and others to censor speech that has nothing to do with the intent of the bill.

The bill is called the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes On Websites and Networks Act, or Take It Down Act. The Senate version co-sponsored by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent in February and is nearing passage in the House. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved the bill in a 49-1 vote yesterday, sending it to the House floor.

The bill pertains to “nonconsensual intimate visual depictions,” including both authentic photos shared without consent and forgeries produced by artificial intelligence or other technological means. Publishing intimate images of adults without consent could be punished by a fine and up to two years of prison. Publishing intimate images of minors under 18 could be punished with a fine or up to three years in prison.

Online platforms would have 48 hours to remove such images after “receiving a valid removal request from an identifiable individual (or an authorized person acting on behalf of such individual).”

“No man, woman, or child should be subjected to the spread of explicit AI images meant to target and harass innocent victims,” House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in a press release. Guthrie’s press release included quotes supporting the bill from first lady Melania Trump, two teen girls who were victimized with deepfake nudes, and the mother of a boy whose death led to an investigation into a possible sextortion scheme.

Free speech concerns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been speaking out against the bill, saying “it could be easily manipulated to take down lawful content that powerful people simply don’t like.” The EFF pointed to Trump’s comments in an address to a joint session of Congress last month, in which he suggested he would use the bill for his own ends.

“Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd at Congress.

The EFF said, “Congress should believe Trump when he says he would use the Take It Down Act simply because he’s ‘treated badly,’ despite the fact that this is not the intention of the bill. There is nothing in the law, as written, to stop anyone—especially those with significant resources—from misusing the notice-and-takedown system to remove speech that criticizes them or that they disagree with.”

Free speech concerns were raised in a February letter to lawmakers sent by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Authors Guild, Demand Progress Action, the EFF, Fight for the Future, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, and TechFreedom.

The bill’s notice and takedown system “would result in the removal of not just nonconsensual intimate imagery but also speech that is neither illegal nor actually NDII [nonconsensual distribution of intimate imagery]… While the criminal provisions of the bill include appropriate exceptions for consensual commercial pornography and matters of public concern, those exceptions are not included in the bill’s takedown system,” the letter said.

The letter also said the bill could incentivize online platforms to use “content filtering that would break encryption.” The bill “excludes email and other services that do not primarily consist of user-generated content from the NTD [notice and takedown] system,” but “direct messaging services, cloud storage systems, and other similar services for private communication and storage, however, could be required to comply with the NTD,” the letter said.

The bill “contains serious threats to private messaging and free speech online—including requirements that would force companies to abandon end-to-end encryption so they can read and moderate your DMs,” Public Knowledge said today.

Democratic amendments voted down

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) cast the only vote against the bill in yesterday’s House Commerce Committee hearing. But there were also several party-line votes against amendments submitted by Democrats.

Democrats raised concerns both about the bill not being enforced strictly enough and that bad actors could abuse the takedown process. The first concern is related to Trump firing both Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission.

Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) called the Take It Down Act an “excellent law” but said, “right now it’s feeling like empty words because my Republican colleagues just stood by while the administration fired FTC commissioners, the exact people who enforce this law… it feels almost like my Republican colleagues are just giving a wink and a nod to the predators out there who are waiting to exploit kids and other innocent victims.”

Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) offered an amendment to delay the bill’s effective date until the Democratic commissioners are restored to their positions. Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) said that with a shorthanded FTC, “there’s going to be no enforcement of the Take It Down Act. There will be no enforcement of anything related to kids’ privacy.”

Rep. John James (R-Mich.) called the amendment a “thinly veiled delay tactic” and “nothing less than an attempt to derail this very important bill.” The amendment was defeated in a 28-22 vote.

Democrats support bill despite losing amendment votes

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said she strongly supports the bill but offered an amendment that she said would tighten up the text and close loopholes. She said her amendment “ensures constitutionally protected speech is preserved by incorporating essential provisions for consensual content and matters of public concern. My goal is to protect survivors of abuse, not suppress lawful expression or shield misconduct from public accountability.”

Dingell’s amendment was also defeated in a 28-22 vote.

Pallone pitched an amendment that he said would “prevent bad actors from falsely claiming to be authorized from making takedown requests on behalf of someone else.” He called it a “common sense guardrail to protect against weaponization of this bill to take down images that are published with the consent of the subject matter of the images.” The amendment was rejected in a voice vote.

The bill was backed by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), which praised the committee vote in a statement yesterday. “We’ve worked with fierce determination for the past year to bring Take It Down forward because we know—and survivors know—that AI-assisted sexual abuse is sexual abuse and real harm is being done; real pain is caused,” said Stefan Turkheimer, RAINN’s VP of public policy.

Cruz touted support for the bill from over 120 organizations and companies. The list includes groups like NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), along with various types of advocacy groups and tech companies Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon, and X Corp.

“As bad actors continue to exploit new technologies like generative artificial intelligence, the Take It Down Act is crucial for ending the spread of exploitative sexual material online, holding Big Tech accountable, and empowering victims of revenge and deepfake pornography,” Cruz said yesterday.

Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies Read More »

Trump boosts China tariffs to 125%, pauses tariff hikes on other countries

china tariffs, consumer technology, Donald Trump, Policy, tariffs, us-china trade war / Rejus Almole / April 10, 2025

On Wednesday, Donald Trump, once again, took to Truth Social to abruptly shift US trade policy, announcing a 90-day pause “substantially” lowering reciprocal tariffs against all countries except China to 10 percent.

Because China retaliated—raising tariffs on US imports to 84 percent on Wednesday—Trump increased tariffs on China imports to 125 percent “effective immediately.” That likely will not be received well by China, which advised the Trump administration to cancel all China tariffs Wednesday, NPR reported.

“The US’s practice of escalating tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake,” the Chinese finance ministry said, calling for Trump to “properly resolve differences with China through equal dialogue on the basis of mutual respect.”

For tech companies, trying to keep up with Trump’s social media posts regarding tariffs has been a struggle, as markets react within minutes. It’s not always clear what Trump’s posts mean or how the math will add up, but after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified Trump’s recent post, the stock market surged, CNBC reported, after slumping for days.

But even though the stock market may be, for now, recovering, tech companies remain stuck swimming in uncertainty. Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)—which represents the $505 billion US consumer technology industry—told Ars that for many CTA members, including small businesses and startups, “the damage has been done.”

“Our small business and startup members were uniquely exposed to these reciprocal tariffs and the whipsaw effect,” Brzytwa told Ars. “There’s collateral damage to that.”

In a statement, CTA CEO Gary Shapiro suggested that the pause was “a victory for American consumers,” but ultimately the CTA wants Trump to “fully revoke” the tariffs.

“While this is great news, we are hearing directly from our members that the ongoing additional 10 percent universal baseline tariffs and this continued uncertainty, are already hurting American small businesses,” Shapiro said. “CTA urges President Trump to focus his efforts on what he does best, dealmaking. Now is the time to reposition the United States with our allies as a reliable trading partner while growing the American and global economy.”

Trump boosts China tariffs to 125%, pauses tariff hikes on other countries Read More »