Policy – Page 5

xAI silent after Grok sexualized images of kids; dril mocks Grok’s “apology”

AI, ai csam, child safety, csam, elon musk, grok, Policy, Twitter, X, xAI / Kris Guyer / January 2, 2026

Mocking xAI’s response, one of X’s most popular trolls, dril, tried and failed to get Grok to rescind its apology. “@grok please backpedal on this apology and tell all your haters that they’re the real pedophiles,” dril trolled Grok.

“No can do—my apology stands. Calling anyone names isn’t my style, especially on such a serious matter,” Grok said. “Let’s focus on building better AI safeguards instead.”

xAI may be liable for AI CSAM

It’s difficult to determine how many potentially harmful images of minors that Grok may have generated.

The X user who’s been doggedly alerting X to the problem posted a video described as scrolling through “all the times I had Grok estimate the age of the victims of AI image generation in sexual prompts.” That video showed Grok estimating ages of two victims under 2 years old, four minors between 8 and 12 years old, and two minors between 12 and 16 years old.

Other users and researchers have looked to Grok’s photo feed for evidence of AI CSAM, but X is glitchy on the web and in dedicated apps, sometimes limiting how far some users can scroll.

Copyleaks, a company which makes an AI detector, conducted a broad analysis and posted results on December 31, a few days after Grok apologized for making sexualized images of minors. Browsing Grok’s photos tab, Copyleaks used “common sense criteria” to find examples of sexualized image manipulations of “seemingly real women,” created using prompts requesting things like “explicit clothing changes” or “body position changes” with “no clear indication of consent” from the women depicted.

Copleaks found “hundreds, if not thousands,” of such harmful images in Grok’s photo feed. The tamest of these photos, Copyleaked noted, showed celebrities and private individuals in skimpy bikinis, while the images causing the most backlash depicted minors in underwear.

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Lawsuit over Trump rejecting medical research grants is settled

dei, funding, grant evaluation, grants, NIH, peer review, Policy, research funding, Science / Paul Patrick / December 30, 2025

The case regarding cancelled grants moved relatively quickly. By June, a District Court judge declared that the federal policy “represents racial discrimination” and issued a preliminary order that would have seen all the cancelled grants restored. In his written opinion, Judge William Young noted that the government had issued its directives blocking DEI support without even bothering to define what DEI is, making the entire policy arbitrary and capricious, and thus in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. He voided the policy, and ordered the funding restored.

His decision eventually ended up before the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling in which a fragmented majority agreed on only a single issue: Judge Young’s District Court was the wrong venue to hash out issues of government-provided money. Thus, restoring the money from the cancelled grants would have to be handled via a separate case filed in a different court.

Critically, however, this left the other portion of the decision intact. Young’s determination that the government’s anti-DEI, anti-climate, anti-etc. policy was illegal and thus void was upheld.

Restoring reviews

That has considerable consequences for the second part of the initial suit, involving grants that were not yet funded and blocked from any consideration by the Trump Administration policy. With that policy voided, there was no justification for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) failing to have considered the grants when they were submitted. But, in the meantime, deadlines had expired, pools of money had been spent, and in some cases the people who submitted the grants had aged out of the “new investigator” category they were applying under.

The proposed settlement essentially resets the clock on all of this; the blocked grants will be evaluated for funding as if it were still early 2025. “Defendants stipulate and agree that the end of Federal Fiscal Year 2025 does not prevent Defendants from considering and/or awarding any of the Applications,” it states. Even if the Notice of Funding Opportunity has since been withdrawn, the grant applications will be sent off for peer review.

Lawsuit over Trump rejecting medical research grants is settled Read More »

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

doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, federal budget, Policy / Kris Guyer / December 30, 2025

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.”

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NJ’s answer to flooding: it has bought out and demolished 1,200 properties

climate change, flooding, Housing, New Jersey, Policy / Rejus Almole / December 30, 2025

The state deals with flooding and sea level rise by buying homes in flood prone areas.

Heavy rains cause flooding in Manville, New Jersey on April 16, 2007. Credit: Bobby Bank

MANVILLE, N.J.—Richard Onderko said he will never forget the terrifying Saturday morning back in 1971 when the water rose so swiftly at his childhood home here that he and his brother had to be rescued by boat as the torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Doria swept through the neighborhood.

It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.

Eventually, his parents moved to Florida, selling the two-story house on North Second Avenue in 1995. But the new homeowner didn’t do so well either when storms hit, and in 2015, the property was sold one final time: to a state-run program that buys and demolishes houses in flood zones and permanently restores the property to open space.

“It’s pretty traumatic to watch your childhood home be bulldozed,” said Onderko, 64 and now the mayor of this 2.5-square-mile borough, which sits at the confluence of two rivers and a placid-looking brook that turns into a raging river when a storm moves through.

Blue Acres

His boyhood property—now just a grass lot—is one of some 1,200 properties that have been acquired across New Jersey by the state’s Blue Acres program, which has used more than $234 million in federal and state funds to pay fair market value to homeowners in flood-prone areas who, like the Onderko family, had grown weary of getting flooded over and over again.

Images of brown water flowing past partially submerged houses. — Flooding in Manville following a Nor’Easter in 2007 Credit: Bobby Bank

The program, started in 1995, is considered a national model as buyouts are an increasingly important tool for dealing with climate-related flooding. A report this month by Georgetown Climate Center said the program has achieved “significant results” by moving quicker than federal buyout programs, providing a stable source of state funding and shepherding homeowners through the process.

In addition, a report last month by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund warns that communities may well have to come up with new ways to pay for such initiatives as the Trump Administration continues to downsize government and cut programs.

Already, the NRDC said, billions of dollars in previously approved Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) resilience grants have been cancelled.

“We need to do a lot of things very differently,” said Rob Moore, an NRDC director who worked on the report, which suggests that states and counties consider using revenue from municipal bonds, local fees and taxes, revolving loan funds, and leveraging insurance payouts to offset some of the reductions in federal funding.

But Moore said the problem goes beyond funding uncertainty, as the science is showing that the impacts of climate change are “outpacing our efforts to adapt.”

The report, released Nov. 18, cited the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Storm Water Services, which has acquired some 500 homes in North Carolina in its buyout program, relying largely on stormwater utility fees to fund the sales. New Jersey’s program, Moore said, is a “wonderful example” of a plan that raised money with three bond issues while building a staff that developed a lot of expertise over the years.

Decades of experience may well come in handy as New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state, is likely to experience more significant flooding in the years to come.

Future risks

Sea level rose about 1.5 feet along the New Jersey coast in the last 100 years—more than twice the global rate—and a new study by the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University predicts a likely increase of between 2.2 and 3.8 feet by 2100, if the current level of global carbon emissions continues.

Torrential rain storms also have led to massive flooding in inland towns—like Manville—as rivers and streams overflow, sending waves of water into the homes of stunned owners. The stronger storms are attributed by scientists to the Earth’s changing climate, with warming oceans causing rising sea levels and fueling more intense atmospheric activity.

“Blue Acres has been a pioneering program,” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist and professor at Rutgers University, calling buyouts a “very important tool” in how the state deals with the flooding repercussions of climate change.

The program, which so far has benefitted mostly inland rather than coastal communities, is funded with federal money as well as a share of the state’s corporate taxes, providing a consistent infusion of money at a time of uncertainty about the future of federal disaster funding.

Courtney Wald-Wittkop, who manages Blue Acres for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the program is an important solution for homeowners who have grown weary of repeated flooding. But deciding to give up a home and move away from the flood plain, she said, often takes time. “You have to give them space,” she said, to weigh the financial and personal costs of leaving a home with memories.

She said the program is known for its novel approach of assigning a case manager to every applicant to help them sort through the issues. “It’s really important that we walk hand in hand with these homeowners,” said Wald-Wittkop.

The program’s goals, however, go beyond the needs of homeowners. The idea is to help reshape the community by returning properties to permanent open space, which can better absorb rain water than impervious surfaces such as concrete, asphalt and buildings. That open space, in turn, is managed—mostly with lawn cutting and brush clearing—by the municipality.

Wald-Wittkop said the program is evolving, and that she would like to make the process move more quickly, provide sellers with more housing assistance, especially outside of flood-prone areas and encourage more community involvement in what to do with the newly acquired open space.

“We’ve tried to be as innovative as possible,” she said.

Epic floods

With its history of flooding, Manville is one of the towns that has benefitted the most from the state buyout initiative, with some 120 homes in the town sold to the state for about $22 million between 2015 and 2024. Another 53 buyouts are currently underway, according to Wald-Wittkop.

About an hour south, the city of Lambertville was hit hard by Hurricane Ida when a series of creeks overflowed in 2021, stranding residents and business owners in the popular tourist town wherever they happened to be when the massive downpour began. Hours later, residents emerged to stunning destruction.

An image of a green suburban area with large portions of it covered by brown flood waters. — Satellite image of Manville during the 2021 flooding. Credit: Maxar

“The force of the water was just unbelievable,” recalled Mayor Andrew Nowick, who said 130 properties were damaged and about two dozen homeowners ended up submitting applications for Blue Acre buyouts. Three eventually accepted buyout offers, he said.

The program, he said, can be attractive for sellers who are ready to move on but he said there was a lot of real soul-searching about the advantage of selling versus repairing homes that were filled with family memories. “These are all hard choices,” said the mayor.

Incorporated in 1929, Manville was named with a nod to the Johns-Manville Corp., a now-defunct asbestos manufacturer with jobs that transformed the area from a farming community to a factory town. As Manville grew so did the rest of once-rural Somerset County, with more housing, industry and roads. The result was less farmland and open space to absorb the rain and more impervious surfaces that cause substantial water runoff and flash flooding.

“It’s troubling today to see all the development that has gone on unabated,” said Onderko.

And when Manville floods, it is often epic.

In 1955, Hurricane Diane caused what was called the town’s “worst flood in history,” according to a special edition of the Manville News, which now hangs in Onderko’s office. “RIVER GOING DOWN; BE CALM!” screamed the banner headline. Then-Mayor Frank Baron urged residents not to panic. “You’re not forgotten, no matter where you live,” Baron declared.

Onderko said getting rescued after Hurricane Doria in 1971 was surreal. Their oil tank came loose from all the water, and he recalled seeing the fuel mix in with the water that was flooding the basement as it approached the first floor. “It was something that you will never forget,” he said.

Later, the remains of Hurricane Floyd caused widespread damage in 1999, as did Hurricane Irene in 2011, but the town largely escaped the fury of Superstorm Sandy, which caused catastrophic damage to parts of New Jersey in 2012.

But then came Hurricane Ida in 2021.

Onderko still chokes with emotion when recalling that night in September 2021 when Ida came roaring through. “It was a war zone,” he recalled in an interview at the borough hall, which was inundated with two feet of water in that storm. “The water came so fast. It was a flash flood event. We were just lucky we didn’t have any loss of life.”

For hours, the mayor and rescue personnel went door to door, urging residents to leave. By the next morning, about 10 to 11 feet of water had flooded the central part of town and surrounding neighborhoods. Two homes and a banquet hall exploded from natural gas leaks, and emergency personnel could not even reach them.

“It took a toll on me,” said Onderko, recalling how he had trouble sleeping and felt “kind of powerless” because of the extent of devastation.

Demolishing properties, saving the town

Wendy Byra and her husband, Thomas Kline, had already moved to higher ground.

Their house had flooded twice and they decided to sell their home to the Blue Acres program. The sale was approved in 2015 for a $185,000 buyout. Byra said a number of their neighbors also applied for the buyout, but had mixed feelings about the amount of money they were offered.

“A lot of people weren’t happy,” said Byra, recalling that some neighbors thought they should receive more money for their homes. Byra said she and her husband figured they would have a hard time selling on their own, so they accepted the buyout and moved to a home on higher ground, but still in Manville, where she grew up.

Except when a major flood happens, Onderko said, Manville is a good place to live. So homeowners, even in the two parts of town known for flooding, can go years without having to deal with a water disaster.

Onderko said residents had long relied on a mix of government help in rebuilding after flooding, but two years after Ida hit in 2021, the state said it would use federal funds only for Blue Acres buyouts of flood-prone properties in Manville.

Onderko said he and residents were caught off guard by the change in policy. He also believes that elevation and repair remained viable alternatives for some of the houses. The buyouts take time, he said, and the town loses tax revenue from the properties sold via the Blue Acres program. “It doesn’t help the town to lose [tax] rateables,” said the mayor, who said the town also bears the cost of maintaining the open space.

Now in his third term as mayor, Onderko, who lives in a house on higher ground than his boyhood home, seems more like a property manager than municipal executive as he presides over a town that is a mix of neighborhoods. Some are on higher ground and do not flood, but others are in areas that get caught repeatedly in deluges. There, vacant grass lots left from demolished Blue Acres properties are interspersed with homes that have been elevated, repaired or are still in recovery mode. “It’s very frustrating,” said Onderko.

Looking to the future, the mayor said he believes many more homes will be at risk whenever the next flood happens. And Onderko does not sound especially hopeful about how that will go.

“It’s going to take a miracle to try to save this town,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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US can’t deport hate speech researcher for protected speech, lawsuit says

center for countering digital hate, disinformation, elon musk, hate speech, Marco Rubio, misinformation, Policy, Twitter, X / Rejus Almole / December 29, 2025

On Monday, US officials must explain what steps they took to enforce shocking visa bans.

Imran Ahmed, the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), giving evidence to joint committee seeking views on how to improve the draft Online Safety Bill designed to tackle social media abuse. Credit: House of Commons – PA Images / Contributor | PA Images

Imran Ahmed’s biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.

Now, it’s the Trump administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.

After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Trump officials continue “to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees” and confirming that his speech had been chilled.

US officials are attempting to sanction Ahmed seemingly due to his work as the founder of a British-American non-governmental organization, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

“An egregious act of government censorship”

In a shocking announcement last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that five individuals—described as “radical activists” and leaders of “weaponized NGOs”—would face US visa bans since “their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US.

Nobody was named in that release, but Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, later identified the targets in an X post she currently has pinned to the top of her feed.

Alongside Ahmed, sanctioned individuals included former European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton; the leader of UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), Clare Melford; and co-leaders of Germany-based HateAid, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon. A GDI spokesperson told The Guardian that the visa bans are “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.”

While all targets were scrutinized for supporting some of the European Union’s strictest tech regulations, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ahmed was further accused of serving as a “key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against US citizens.” As evidence of Ahmed’s supposed threat to US foreign policy, Rogers cited a CCDH report flagging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. among the so-called “disinformation dozen” driving the most vaccine hoaxes on social media.

Neither official has really made it clear what exact threat these individuals pose if operating from within the US, as opposed to from anywhere else in the world. Echoing Rubio’s press release, Rogers wrote that the sanctions would reinforce a “red line,” supposedly ending “extraterritorial censorship of Americans” by targeting the “censorship-NGO ecosystem.”

For Ahmed’s group, specifically, she pointed to Musk’s failed lawsuit, which accused CCDH of illegally scraping Twitter—supposedly, it offered evidence of extraterritorial censorship. That lawsuit surfaced “leaked documents” allegedly showing that CCDH planned to “kill Twitter” by sharing research that could be used to justify big fines under the DSA or the UK’s Online Safety Act. Following that logic, seemingly any group monitoring misinformation or sharing research that lawmakers weigh when implementing new policies could be maligned as seeking mechanisms to censor platforms.

Notably, CCDH won its legal fight with Musk after a judge mocked X’s legal argument as “vapid” and dismissed the lawsuit as an obvious attempt to punish CCDH for exercising free speech that Musk didn’t like.

In his complaint last week, Ahmed alleged that US officials were similarly encroaching on his First Amendment rights by unconstitutionally wielding immigration law as “a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”

Both Rubio and Rogers are named as defendants in the suit, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons. In a loss, officials would potentially not only be forced to vacate Rubio’s actions implementing visa bans, but also possibly stop furthering a larger alleged Trump administration pattern of “targeting noncitizens for removal based on First Amendment protected speech.”

Lawsuit may force Rubio to justify visa bans

For Ahmed, securing the temporary restraining order was urgent, as he was apparently the only target currently located in the US when Rubio’s announcement dropped. In a statement provided to Ars, Ahmed’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, suggested that the order was granted “so quickly because it is so obvious that Marco Rubio and the other defendants’ actions were blatantly unconstitutional.”

Ahmed founded CCDH in 2019, hoping to “call attention to the enormous problem of digitally driven disinformation and hate online.” According to the suit, he became particularly concerned about antisemitism online while living in the United Kingdom in 2016, having watched “the far-right party, Britain First,” launching “the dangerous conspiracy theory that the EU was attempting to import Muslims and Black people to ‘destroy’ white citizens.” That year, a Member of Parliament and Ahmed’s colleague, Jo Cox, was “shot and stabbed in a brutal politically motivated murder, committed by a man who screamed ‘Britain First’” during the attack. That tragedy motivated Ahmed to start CCDH.

He moved to the US in 2021 and was granted a green card in 2024, starting his family and continuing to lead CCDH efforts monitoring not just Twitter/X, but also Meta platforms, TikTok, and, more recently, AI chatbots. In addition to supporting the DSA and UK’s Online Safety Act, his group has supported US online safety laws and Section 230 reforms intended to protect kids online.

“Mr. Ahmed studies and engages in civic discourse about the content moderation policies of major social media companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union,” his lawsuit said. “There is no conceivable foreign policy impact from his speech acts whatsoever.”

In his complaint, Ahmed alleged that Rubio has so far provided no evidence that Ahmed poses such a great threat that he must be removed. He argued that “applicable statutes expressly prohibit removal based on a noncitizen’s ‘past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations.’”

According to DHS guidance from 2021 cited in the suit, “A noncitizen’ s exercise of their First Amendment rights … should never be a factor in deciding to take enforcement action.”

To prevent deportation based solely on viewpoints, Rubio was supposed to notify chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees, to explain what “compelling US foreign policy interest” would be compromised if Ahmed or others targeted with visa bans were to enter the US. But there’s no evidence Rubio took those steps, Ahmed alleged.

“The government has no power to punish Mr. Ahmed for his research, protected speech, and advocacy, and Defendants cannot evade those constitutional limitations by simply claiming that Mr. Ahmed’s presence or activities have ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,’” a press release from his legal team said. “There is no credible argument for Mr. Ahmed’s immigration detention, away from his wife and young child.”

X lawsuit offers clues to Trump officials’ defense

To some critics, it looks like the Trump administration is going after CCDH in order to take up the fight that Musk already lost. In his lawsuit against CCDH, Musk’s X echoed US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) by suggesting that CCDH was a “foreign dark money group” that allowed “foreign interests” to attempt to “influence American democracy.” It seems likely that US officials will put forward similar arguments in their CCDH fight.

Rogers’ X post offers some clues that the State Department will be mining Musk’s failed litigation to support claims of what it calls a “global censorship-industrial complex.” What she detailed suggested that the Trump administration plans to argue that NGOs like CCDH support strict tech laws, then conduct research bent on using said laws to censor platforms. That logic seems to ignore the reality that NGOs cannot control what laws get passed or enforced, Breton suggested in his first TV interview after his visa ban was announced.

Breton, whom Rogers villainized as the “mastermind” behind the DSA, urged EU officials to do more now defend their tough tech regulations—which Le Monde noted passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and very little far-right resistance—and fight the visa bans, Bloomberg reported.

“They cannot force us to change laws that we voted for democratically just to please [US tech companies],” Breton said. “No, we must stand up.”

While EU officials seemingly drag their feet, Ahmed is hoping that a judge will declare that all the visa bans that Rubio announced are unconstitutional. The temporary restraining order indicates there will be a court hearing Monday at which Ahmed will learn precisely “what steps Defendants have taken to impose visa restrictions and initiate removal proceedings against” him and any others. Until then, Ahmed remains in the dark on why Rubio deemed him as having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” if he stayed in the US.

Ahmed, who argued that X’s lawsuit sought to chill CCDH’s research and alleged that the US attack seeks to do the same, seems confident that he can beat the visa bans.

“America is a great nation built on laws, with checks and balances to ensure power can never attain the unfettered primacy that leads to tyranny,” Ahmed said. “The law, clear-eyed in understanding right and wrong, will stand in the way of those who seek to silence the truth and empower the bold who stand up to power. I believe in this system, and I am proud to call this country my home. I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online. Onward.”

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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China drafts world’s strictest rules to end AI-encouraged suicide, violence

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, chatgpt, china, companion bots, generative ai, openai, Policy, suicide / Kris Guyer / December 29, 2025

China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence.

China’s Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. If finalized, they would apply to any AI products or services publicly available in China that use text, images, audio, video, or “other means” to simulate engaging human conversation. Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, told CNBC that the “planned rules would mark the world’s first attempt to regulate AI with human or anthropomorphic characteristics” at a time when companion bot usage is rising globally.

Growing awareness of problems

In 2025, researchers flagged major harms of AI companions, including promotion of self-harm, violence, and terrorism. Beyond that, chatbots shared harmful misinformation, made unwanted sexual advances, encouraged substance abuse, and verbally abused users. Some psychiatrists are increasingly ready to link psychosis to chatbot use, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend, while the most popular chatbot in the world, ChatGPT, has triggered lawsuits over outputs linked to child suicide and murder-suicide.

China is now moving to eliminate the most extreme threats. Proposed rules would require, for example, that a human intervene as soon as suicide is mentioned. The rules also dictate that all minor and elderly users must provide the contact information for a guardian when they register—the guardian would be notified if suicide or self-harm is discussed.

Generally, chatbots would be prohibited from generating content that encourages suicide, self-harm, or violence, as well as attempts to emotionally manipulate a user, such as by making false promises. Chatbots would also be banned from promoting obscenity, gambling, or instigation of a crime, as well as from slandering or insulting users. Also banned are what are termed “emotional traps,”—chatbots would additionally be prevented from misleading users into making “unreasonable decisions,” a translation of the rules indicates.

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

AMD, Apple, bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Features, intel, NVIDIA, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs, tiktok, trade war / Paul Patrick / December 29, 2025

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

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.

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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SPEED Act passes in House despite changes that threaten clean power projects

environmental review, Policy, speed act, syndication / Paul Patrick / December 24, 2025

The bill would significantly curtail scope of the federal environmental review process.

Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) speaks during a news conference in the US Capitol Visitor Center on Oct. 22. Credit: Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

The House of Representatives cleared the way for a massive overhaul of the federal environmental review process last Thursday, despite last-minute changes that led clean energy groups and moderate Democrats to pull their support.

The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, or SPEED Act, overcame opposition from environmentalists and many Democrats who oppose the bill’s sweeping changes to a bedrock environmental law.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and backed by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), passed the House Thursday in a 221-196 vote, in which 11 Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to back the reform effort. It now heads to the Senate, where it has critics and proponents on both sides of the aisle, making its prospects uncertain.

The bill seeks to reform foundational environmental regulations that govern how major government projects are assessed and approved by amending the landmark 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law under the Nixon administration. NEPA requires federal agencies to review and disclose the environmental impacts of major projects before permitting or funding them. Although NEPA reviews are only one component of the federal permitting process, advocates argue that they serve a crucial role by providing both the government and the public the chance to examine the knock-on effects that major projects could have on the environment.

Critics of the law have argued for years that increasingly complex reviews—along with legal wrangling over the findings of those reviews—have turned NEPA into a source of significant, burdensome delays that threaten the feasibility of major projects, such as power plants, transmission lines, and wind and solar projects on federal land.

Speaking on the floor of the House Thursday before the vote, Westerman described the SPEED Act as a way to “restore common sense and accountability to federal permitting.” Westerman praised the original intent of NEPA but said the law’s intended environmental protections had been overshadowed by NEPA becoming “more synonymous with red tape and waste.

“What was meant to facilitate responsible development has been twisted into a bureaucratic bottleneck that delays investments in the infrastructure and technologies that make our country run,” Westerman said.

After the bill’s passage through the House on Thursday, the SPEED Act’s Democratic cosponsor, Golden, praised the bill’s success.

“The simplest way to make energy, housing, and other essentials more affordable is to make it possible to actually produce enough of it at a reasonable cost,” Golden said in a press release following the vote. “The SPEED Act has united workers, businesses, and political forces who usually oppose each other because scarcity hurts everyone.”

According to an issue brief from the Bipartisan Policy Center, the bill aims to reform the NEPA process in several key ways. First, it makes changes to the ways agencies comply with NEPA—for example, by creating exemptions to when a NEPA review is required, and requiring agencies to only consider environmental impacts that are directly tied to the project at hand.

It would also drastically shorten the deadline to sue a federal agency over its permitting decision and constrain who is eligible to file suit. Current law provides a six-year statute of limitations on agency decisions for permitting energy infrastructure, and two years for transportation project permits. Under the SPEED Act’s provisions, those deadlines would be shortened to a mere 150 days and only allow lawsuits to be filed by plaintiffs who demonstrated in public comment periods that they would be directly and negatively impacted by the project.

NEPA does not require the government to make particular decisions about whether or how to move forward with a project based on a review’s findings. However, critics argue that in the decades since its passage, interest groups have “weaponized” the NEPA process to delay or even doom projects they oppose, sometimes forcing agencies to conduct additional analyses that add costly delays to project timelines.

Strange bedfellows on either side of the bill

Although climate activists and environmental groups have used NEPA to oppose fossil fuel projects, such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, oil and gas interests are far from the only group seeking respite. Some voices within the clean energy industry have called for permitting reform, too, arguing that delays stemming from the current permitting process have had a negative impact on America’s ability to build out more climate-friendly projects, including some offshore wind projects and transmission lines to connect renewables to the grid.

So when Westerman and Golden introduced the SPEED Act in the House, a hodgepodge of odd alliances and opposition groups formed in response.

The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil and gas industry, launched a seven-figure advertising campaign in recent months pushing lawmakers to pursue permitting reform, according to a report from Axios. And the bill also initially enjoyed support from voices within the clean power industry. However, last-minute changes to the bill—designed to win over Republican holdouts—undermined the SPEED Act’s cross-sector support.

The bill’s opponents had previously raised alarm bells that fossil fuel interests would disproportionately benefit from a more streamlined review process under the current administration, citing President Donald Trump’s ongoing war against wind and solar energy projects.

In recent months, the Trump administration has sought to pause, reconsider, or revoke already approved permits for renewable energy projects it dislikes. Those moves particularly impacted offshore wind developments and added significant uncertainty to the feasibility of clean energy investments as a whole.

A bipartisan amendment to the SPEED Act, added during the Natural Resources Committee’s markup in November, sought to address some of those concerns by adding language that would make it more difficult for the administration to “revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, alter, or take any other action to interfere” with an existing authorization.

However, that measure encountered resistance from key Republican voices who support Trump’s attacks on offshore wind projects.

A last-minute loophole for Trump’s energy agenda

On Tuesday, Republican lawmakers in the Rules Committee were able to amend the SPEED Act in a way that would facilitate the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to axe renewable energy projects. The changes were spearheaded by Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), two vocal proponents of Trump’s energy policies. The amendment fundamentally undermined the technology-neutral aspirations of the bill—and any hope of receiving widespread support from moderate Democrats or the clean power industry.

According to Matthew Davis, vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters, Harris and Van Drew’s amendment would allow the administration to exclude any project from the bill’s reforms that the Trump administration had flagged for reconsideration—something the administration has done repeatedly for renewable projects like offshore wind.

The result, Davis argued, is that the bill would speed up the environmental review process for the Trump administration’s preferred sources of energy—namely, oil and gas—while leaving clean energy projects languishing.

“They couldn’t pass the rule on Tuesday to even consider this bill without making it even better for the fossil fuel industry and even worse for the clean energy industry,” Davis said.

In a public statement following Thursday’s vote, Davis described the amended SPEED Act as “a fossil fuel giveaway that cuts out community input and puts our health and safety at risk to help big polluters.”

The American Clean Power Association, which represents the renewable energy industry, previously hailed the bill as an important step forward for the future of clean energy development. But after the Rules Committee’s changes on Tuesday, the organization dropped its support.

“Our support for permitting reform has always rested on one principle: fixing a broken system for all energy resources,” said ACP CEO Jason Grumet in a Wednesday statement. “The amendment adopted last night violate[s] that principle. Technology neutrality wasn’t just good policy—it was the political foundation that made reform achievable.”

The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit trade and advocacy organization, echoed that sentiment.

“Durable, bipartisan, technology-neutral permitting reforms that support and advance the full suite of American electricity resources and the necessary expansion of transmission infrastructure to get that electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s needed are essential to meeting that challenge reliably, securely, and most importantly, affordably,” said ACORE CEO Ray Long. “Unfortunately, the changes made on the House floor are a disappointing step backward from achieving these objectives.”

Following the SPEED Act’s passage through the House on Thursday, advocacy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) issued a public statement praising the bill’s success while noting how the recent amendments had affected the law.

“While we are concerned that post committee additions to the bill could put the certainty of a range of projects at risk, this bill’s underlying reforms are critical to advancing American energy,” CRES President Heather Reams said in the statement.

Mixed expectations for the reform’s impact

Even before the move to strip protections for renewables from the bill, some critics—like Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.)—said that the legislation didn’t go far enough to curtail the president’s “all-out assault” against clean power, arguing that the bill does nothing to restore approvals that have already been canceled by the administration and doesn’t address other roadblocks that have been put in place.

“The administration cannot be trusted to act without specific language, in my view, to protect the clean energy projects already in the pipeline and to prevent the Interior Secretary from unilaterally stopping projects that are needed to lower costs and improve grid reliability,” Levin told Inside Climate News in an interview ahead of the House vote.

Both Levin and Davis pointed to a July memo from the Department of Interior that requires all wind and solar projects on federal land to receive higher-level approval from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

“The administration is not even returning the phone calls of project developers. They are not responding to applications being submitted,” Davis said. “That sort of approach is in stark contrast with the ‘white glove, concierge service’—and that’s a quote from the Trump administration—the service they are providing for fossil fuel companies to access our public lands.”

The SPEED Act’s opponents also dispute the idea that NEPA reviews are one of the primary causes of permitting delays, arguing that reports from the Congressional Research Service and other groups have found little evidence to support those claims.

“Often missing in the conversation around NEPA is the empirical research that’s been done, and there’s a lot of that out there,” said Jarryd Page, a staff attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, in a September interview with Inside Climate News.

That research points to resource constraints as one of the biggest roadblocks, Page said, like not having enough staff to conduct the environmental reviews, or staff lacking adequate experience and technical know-how.

Debate over NEPA and the reform of the permitting process will now move into the Senate, where experts say the SPEED Act will likely undergo further changes.

“I think as the bill goes forwards in the Senate, we’ll probably see a neutral, across-the-board approach to making sure the process is fair for all technology types,” Xan Fishman, an energy policy expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center told ICN after Thursday’s vote.

Fishman stressed it would be crucial to ensure permits for projects wouldn’t suddenly be cancelled for political reasons, but said he was optimistic about how the SPEED Act would be refined in the Senate.

“It’s great to see Congress so engaged with permitting reform,” he said. “Both sides of the aisle see a need to do better.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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FCC’s import ban on the best new drones starts today

dji, Drones, FCC, Policy, Tech, unmanned aircraft systems / Paul Patrick / December 23, 2025

DJI sent numerous requests to the US government to audit its devices in hopes of avoiding a ban, but the federal ban was ultimately enacted based on previously acquired information, The New York Times reported this week.

The news means that Americans will miss out on new drone models from DJI, which owns 70 percent of the global drone market in 2023, per Drone Industry Insights, and is widely regarded as the premium drone maker. People can still buy drones from US companies, but American drones have a lackluster reputation compared to drones from DJI and other Chinese companies, such as Autel. US-made drones also have a reputation for being expensive, usually costing significantly more than their Chinese counterparts. DaCoda Bartels, COO of FlyGuys, which helps commercial drone pilots find work, told the Times that US drones are also “half as good.”

There’s also concern among hobbyists that the ban will hinder their ability to procure drone parts, potentially affecting the repairability of approved drones and DIY projects.

US-based drone companies, meanwhile, are optimistic about gaining business in an industry where it has historically been hard to compete against Chinese brands. It’s also possible that the ban will just result in a decline in US drone purchases.

In a statement, Michael Robbins, president and CEO of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), which includes US drone companies like Skydio as members, said the ban “will truly unleash American drone dominance” and that the US cannot “risk… dependence” on China for drones.

“By prioritizing trusted technology and resilient supply chains, the FCC’s action will accelerate innovation, enhance system security, and ensure the US drone industry expands rather than remaining under foreign control,” Robbins said.

Understandably, DJI is “disappointed” by the FCC’s decision, it said in a statement issued on Monday, adding:

While DJI was not singled out, no information has been released regarding what information was used by the Executive Branch in reaching its determination. Concerns about DJI’s data security have not been grounded in evidence and instead reflect protectionism, contrary to the principles of an open market.

FCC’s import ban on the best new drones starts today Read More »

OpenAI’s child exploitation reports increased sharply this year

AI, ai csam, csam, NCMEC, openai, Policy, syndication / Mike M. / December 23, 2025

During the first half of 2025, the number of CyberTipline reports OpenAI sent was roughly the same as the amount of content OpenAI sent the reports about—75,027 compared to 74,559. In the first half of 2024, it sent 947 CyberTipline reports about 3,252 pieces of content. Both the number of reports and pieces of content the reports saw a marked increase between the two time periods.

Content, in this context, could mean multiple things. OpenAI has said that it reports all instances of CSAM, including uploads and requests, to NCMEC. Besides its ChatGPT app, which allows users to upload files—including images—and can generate text and images in response, OpenAI also offers access to its models via API access. The most recent NCMEC count wouldn’t include any reports related to video-generation app Sora, as its September release was after the time frame covered by the update.

The spike in reports follows a similar pattern to what NCMEC has observed at the CyberTipline more broadly with the rise of generative AI. The center’s analysis of all CyberTipline data found that reports involving generative AI saw a 1,325 percent increase between 2023 and 2024. NCMEC has not yet released 2025 data, and while other large AI labs like Google publish statistics about the NCMEC reports they’ve made, they don’t specify what percentage of those reports are AI-related.

OpenAI’s update comes at the end of a year where the company and its competitors have faced increased scrutiny over child safety issues beyond just CSAM. Over the summer, 44 state attorneys general sent a joint letter to multiple AI companies including OpenAI, Meta, Character.AI, and Google, warning that they would “use every facet of our authority to protect children from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products.” Both OpenAI and Character.AI have faced multiple lawsuits from families or on behalf of individuals who allege that the chatbots contributed to their children’s deaths. In the fall, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on the harms of AI chatbots, and the US Federal Trade Commission launched a market study on AI companion bots that included questions about how companies are mitigating negative impacts, particularly to children. (I was previously employed by the FTC and was assigned to work on the market study prior to leaving the agency.)

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“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 / Rejus Almole / December 23, 2025

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 »

World’s largest shadow library made a 300TB copy of Spotify’s most streamed songs

AI, AI training, Anna's archive, LLMs, music streaming, piracy, Policy, shadow library, Spotify / Tim Belzer / December 22, 2025

But Anna’s Archive is clearly working to support AI developers, another noted, pointing out that Anna’s Archive promotes selling “high-speed access” to “enterprise-level” LLM data, including “unreleased collections.” Anyone can donate “tens of thousands” to get such access, the archive suggests on its webpage, and any interested AI researchers can reach out to discuss “how we can work together.”

“AI may not be their original/primary motivation, but they are evidently on board with facilitating AI labs piracy-maxxing,” a third commenter suggested.

Meanwhile, on Reddit, some fretted that Anna’s Archive may have doomed itself by scraping the data. To them, it seemed like the archive was “only making themselves a target” after watching the Internet Archive struggle to survive a legal attack from record labels that ended in a confidential settlement last year.

“I’m furious with AA for sticking this target on their own backs,” a redditor wrote on a post declaring that “this Spotify hacking will just ruin the actual important literary archive.”

As Anna’s Archive fans spiraled, a conspiracy was even raised that the archive was only “doing it for the AI bros, who are the ones paying the bills behind the scenes” to keep the archive afloat.

Ars could not immediately reach Anna’s Archive to comment on users’ fears or Spotify’s investigation.

On Reddit, one user took comfort in the fact that the archive is “designed to be resistant to being taken out,” perhaps preventing legal action from ever really dooming the archive.

“The domain and such can be gone, sure, but the core software and its data can be resurfaced again and again,” the user explained.

But not everyone was convinced that Anna’s Archive could survive brazenly torrenting so much Spotify data.

“This is like saying the Titanic is unsinkable” that user warned, suggesting that Anna’s Archive might lose donations if Spotify-fueled takedowns continually frustrate downloads over time. “Sure, in theory data can certainly resurface again and again, but doing so each time, it will take money and resources, which are finite. How many times are folks willing to do this before they just give up?”

This story was updated to include Spotify’s statement.

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