Policy

utah-leaders-hinder-efforts-to-develop-solar-energy-supply

Utah leaders hinder efforts to develop solar energy supply

Policy, Science, solar cells, Solar energy, syndication, Utah / /

Solar power accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox believes his state needs more power—a lot more. By some estimates, Utah will require as much electricity in the next five years as it generated all last century to meet the demands of a growing population as well as chase data centers and AI developers to fuel its economy.

To that end, Cox announced Operation Gigawatt last year, declaring the state would double energy production in the next decade. Although the announcement was short on details, Cox, a Republican, promised his administration would take an “any of the above” approach, which aims to expand all sources of energy production.

Despite that goal, the Utah Legislature’s Republican supermajority, with Cox’s acquiescence, has taken a hard turn against solar power—which has been coming online faster than any other source in Utah and accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Cox signed a pair of bills passed this year that will make it more difficult and expensive to develop and produce solar energy in Utah by ending solar development tax credits and imposing a hefty new tax on solar generation. A third bill aimed at limiting solar development on farmland narrowly missed the deadline for passage but is expected to return next year.

While Operation Gigawatt emphasizes nuclear and geothermal as Cox’s preferred sources, the legislative broadside, and Cox’s willingness to go along with it, caught many in the solar industry off guard. The three bills, in their original form, could have brought solar development to a halt if not for solar industry lobbyists negotiating a lower tax rate and protecting existing projects as well as those under construction from the brunt of the impact.

“It took every dollar of political capital from all the major solar developers just to get to something tolerable, so that anything they have under development will get built and they can move on to greener pastures,” said one industry insider, indicating that solar developers will likely pursue projects in more politically friendly states. ProPublica spoke with three industry insiders—energy developers and lobbyists—all of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing lawmakers who, next month, will again consider legislation affecting the industry.

The Utah Legislature’s pivot away from solar mirrors President Donald Trump taking a more hostile approach to the industry than his predecessor. Trump has ordered the phaseout of lucrative federal tax incentives for solar and other renewable energy, which expanded under the Biden administration. The loss of federal incentives is a bigger hit to solar companies than the reductions to Utah’s tax incentives, industry insiders acknowledged. The administration has also canceled large wind and solar projects, which Trump has lamented as “the scam of the century.” He described solar as “farmer killing.”

Yet Cox criticized the Trump administration’s decision to kill a massive solar project in neighboring Nevada. Known as a governor who advocates for a return to more civil political discourse, Cox doesn’t often pick fights. But he didn’t pull punches with the decision to halt the Esmeralda 7 project planned on 62,300 acres of federal land. The central Nevada project was expected to produce 6.2 gigawatts of power—enough to supply nearly eight times the number of households in Las Vegas. (Although the Trump administration canceled the environmental review of the joint project proposed by multiple developers, it has the potential to move forward as individual projects.)

“This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China,” Cox wrote on X when news surfaced of the project’s cancellation. “Our country needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy (like Utah).”

But he didn’t take on his own Legislature, at least publicly.

Many of Utah’s Republican legislators have been skeptical of solar for years, criticizing its footprint on the landscape and viewing it as an unreliable energy source, while lamenting the retirement of coal-generated power plants. The economies of several rural counties rely on mining coal. But lawmakers’ skepticism hadn’t coalesced into successful anti-solar legislation—until this year. When Utah lawmakers convened at the start of 2025, they took advantage of the political moment to go after solar.

“This is a sentiment sweeping through red states, and it’s very disconcerting and very disturbing,” said Steve Handy, Utah director of The Western Way, which describes itself as a conservative organization advocating for an all-of-the-above approach to energy development.

The shift in sentiment against solar energy has created a difficult climate for an all-of-the-above approach. Solar projects can be built quickly on Utah’s vast, sun-drenched land, while nuclear is a long game with projects expected to take a decade or more to come online under optimistic scenarios.

Cox generally supports solar, “in the right places,” especially when the captured energy can be stored in large batteries for distribution on cloudy days and after the sun goes down.

Cox said that instead of vetoing the anti-solar bills, he spent his political capital to moderate the legislation’s impact. “I think you’ll see where our fingerprints were,” he told ProPublica. He didn’t detail specific changes for which he advocated but said the bills’ earlier iterations would have “been a lot worse.”

“We will continue to see solar in Utah.”

Cox’s any-of-the-above approach to energy generation draws from a decades-old Republican push similarly titled “all of the above.” The GOP policy’s aim was as much about preserving and expanding reliance on fossil fuels (indeed, the phrase may have been coined by petroleum lobbyists) as it was turning to cleaner energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

As governor of a coal-producing state, Cox hasn’t shown interest in reducing reliance on such legacy fuels. But as he slowly rolls out Operation Gigawatt, his focus has been on geothermal and nuclear power. Last month, he announced plans for a manufacturing hub for small modular reactors in the northern Utah community of Brigham City, which he hopes will become a nuclear supply chain for Utah and beyond. And on a recent trade mission to New Zealand, he signed an agreement to collaborate with the country on geothermal energy development.

Meanwhile, the bills Cox signed into law already appear to be slowing solar development in Utah. Since May, when the laws took effect, 51 planned solar projects withdrew their applications to connect to the state’s grid—representing more than a quarter of all projects in Utah’s transmission connection queue. Although projects drop out for many reasons, some industry insiders theorize the anti-solar legislation could be at play.

Caught in the political squeeze over power are Utah customers, who are footing higher electricity bills. Earlier this year, the state’s utility, Rocky Mountain Power, asked regulators to approve a 30 percent hike to fund increased fuel and wholesale energy costs, as well as upgrades to the grid. In response to outrage from lawmakers, the utility knocked the request down to 18 percent. Regulators eventually awarded the utility a 4.7 percent increase—a decision the utility promptly appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Juliet Carlisle, a University of Utah political science professor focusing on environmental policy, said the new solar tax could signal to large solar developers that Utah energy policy is “becoming more unpredictable,” prompting them to build elsewhere. This, in turn, could undermine Cox’s efforts to quickly double Utah’s electricity supply.

Operation Gigawatt “relies on rapid deployment across multiple energy sources, including renewables,” she said. “If renewable growth slows—especially utility-scale solar, which is currently the fastest-deploying resource—the state may face challenges meeting demand growth timelines.”

Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, had sponsored legislation to end the solar industry’s state tax credits for several legislative sessions, but this was the first time the proposal succeeded.

Christofferson agrees Utah is facing unprecedented demand for power, and he supports Cox’s any-of-the-above approach. But he doesn’t think solar deserves the advantages of tax credits. Despite improving battery technology, he still considers it an intermittent source and thinks overreliance on it would work against Utah’s energy goals.

In testimony on his bill, Christofferson said he believed the tax incentives had served their purpose of getting a new industry off the ground—16 percent of Utah’s power generation now comes from solar, ranking it 16th in the nation for solar capacity.

Christofferson’s bill was the least concerning to the industry, largely because it negotiated a lengthy wind-down of the subsidies. Initially it would have ended the tax credit after Jan. 1, 2032. But after negotiations with the solar industry, he extended the deadline to 2035.

The bill passed the House, but when it reached the Senate floor, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, moved the end of the incentives to 2028. He told ProPublica he believes solar is already established and no longer needs the subsidy. Christofferson tried to defend his compromise but ultimately voted with the legislative majority.

Unlike Christofferson’s bill, which wasn’t born of an antipathy for renewable energy, Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, made it clear in public statements and behind closed doors to industry lobbyists that the goal of his bill was to make solar pay.

The bill imposes a tax on all solar production. The proceeds will substantially increase the state’s endangered species fund, which Utah paradoxically uses to fight federal efforts to list threatened animals for protection. Snider cast his bill as pro-environment, arguing the money could also go to habitat protection.

As initially written, the bill would have taxed not only future projects, but also those already producing power and, more worrisome for the industry, projects under construction or in development with financing in place. The margins on such projects are thin, and the unanticipated tax could kill projects already in the works, one solar industry executive testified.

“Companies like ours are being effectively punished for investing in the state,” testified another.

The pushback drew attacks from Snider, who accused solar companies of hypocrisy on the environment.

Industry lobbyists who spoke to ProPublica said Snider wasn’t as willing to negotiate as Christofferson. However, they succeeded in reducing the tax rate on future developments and negotiated a smaller, flat fee for existing projects.

“Everyone sort of decided collectively to save the existing projects and let it go for future projects,” said one lobbyist.

Snider told ProPublica, “My goal was never to run anybody out of business. If we wanted to make it more heavy-handed, we could have. Utah is a conservative state, and I would have had all the support.”

Snider said, like the governor, he favors an any-of-the-above approach to energy generation and doesn’t “want to take down any particular industry or source.” But he believes utility-scale solar farms need to pay to mitigate their impact on the environment. He likened his bill to federal law that requires royalties from oil and gas companies to be used for conservation. He hopes federal lawmakers will use his bill as a model for federal legislation that would apply to solar projects nationwide.

“This industry needs to give back to the environment that they claim very heavily they are going to protect,” he said. “I do believe there’s a tinge of hypocrisy to this whole movement. You can’t say you’re good for the environment and not offset your impacts.”

One of the more emotional debates over solar is set to return next year, after a bill that would end tax incentives for solar development on agricultural land failed to get a vote in the final minutes of this year’s session. Sponsored by Rep. Colin Jack, R-St. George, the bill has been fast-tracked in the next session, which begins in January.

Jack said he was driven to act by ranchers who were concerned that solar companies were outbidding them for land they had been leasing to graze cows. Solar companies pay substantially higher rates than ranchers can. His bill initially had a slew of land use restrictions—such as mandating the distance between projects and residential property and creeks, minimum lot sizes and 4-mile “green zones” between projects—that solar lobbyists said would have strangled their industry. After negotiating with solar developers, Jack eliminated the land use restrictions while preserving provisions to prohibit tax incentives for solar farms on private agricultural land and to create standards for decommissioning projects.

Many in rural Utah recoil at rows of black panels disrupting the landscape and fear solar farms will displace the ranching and farming way of life. Indeed, some wondered whether Cox, who grew up on a farm in central Utah, would have been as critical of Trump scuttling a 62,300-acre solar farm in his own state as he was of the Nevada project’s cancellation.

Peter Greathouse, a rancher in western Utah’s Millard County, said he is worried about solar farms taking up grazing land in his county. “Twelve and a half percent is privately owned, and a lot of that is not farmable. So if you bring in these solar places that start to eat up the farmland, it can’t be replaced,” he said.

Utah is losing about 500,000 acres of agricultural land every 10 years, most of it to housing. A report by The Western Way estimated solar farms use 0.1 percent of the United States’ total land mass. That number is expected to grow to 0.46 percent by 2050—a tiny fraction of what is used by agriculture. Of the land managed by the Utah Trust Lands Administration, less than 3,000 of the 2.9 million acres devoted to grazing have been converted to solar farms.

Other ranchers told ProPublica they’ve been able to stay on their land and preserve their way of life by leasing to solar. Landon Kesler’s family, which raises cattle for team roping competitions, has leased land to solar for more than a decade. The revenue has allowed the family to almost double its land holdings, providing more room to ranch, Kesler said.

“I’m going to be quite honest, it’s absurd,” Kesler said of efforts to limit solar on agricultural land. “Solar very directly helped us tie up other property to be used for cattle and ranching. It didn’t run us out; it actually helped our agricultural business thrive.”

Solar lobbyists and executives have been working to bolster the industry’s image with lawmakers ahead of the next legislative session. They’re arguing solar is a good neighbor.

“We don’t use water, we don’t need sidewalks, we don’t create noise, and we don’t create light,” said Amanda Smith, vice president of external affairs for AES, which has one solar project operating in Utah and a second in development. “So we just sort of sit out there and produce energy.”

Solar pays private landowners in Utah $17 million a year to lease their land. And, more important, solar developers argue, it’s critical to powering data centers the state is working to attract.

“We are eager to be part of a diversified electricity portfolio, and we think we bring a lot of values that will benefit communities, keep rates low and stable, and help keep the lights on,” Rikki Seguin, executive director of Interwest Energy Alliance, a western trade organization that advocates for utility-scale renewable energy projects, told an interim committee of lawmakers this summer.

The message didn’t get a positive reception from some lawmakers on the committee. Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, who represents three rural Utah counties and was among solar’s critics last session, said the biggest complaint he hears from constituents is about “that ugly solar facility” in his district.

“Why, Rep. Albrecht, did you allow that solar field to be built? It’s black. It looks like the Dead Sea when you drive by it,” Albrecht said.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Photo of ProPublica

Utah leaders hinder efforts to develop solar energy supply Read More »

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Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

Features, phone unlocking, Policy, straight talk, tracfone, verizon / /

Verizon customer fights back

Verizon changed policy after he bought the phone, wouldn’t unlock it despite FCC rule.

Illustration of a gloved hand holding a smartphone that displays an image of a padlock with a Verizon logo

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

When Verizon refused to unlock an iPhone purchased by Kansas resident Patrick Roach, he had no intention of giving up without a fight. Roach sued the wireless carrier in small claims court and won.

Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon’s Straight Talk brand on February 28, 2025, as a gift for his wife’s birthday. He intended to pay for one month of service, cancel, and then switch the phone to the US Mobile service plan that the couple uses. Under federal rules that apply to Verizon and a Verizon unlocking policy that was in place when Roach bought the phone, this strategy should have worked.

“The best deals tend to be buying it from one of these MVNOs [Mobile Virtual Network Operators] and then activating it until it unlocks and then switching it to whatever you are planning to use it with. It usually saves you about half the value of the phone,” Roach said in a phone interview.

Unlocking a phone allows it to be used with another carrier. Verizon, unlike other carriers, is required by the Federal Communications Commission to unlock phones shortly after they are activated on its network. Verizon gained significant benefits in exchange for agreeing to the unlocking requirement, first in 2008 when it purchased licenses to use 700 MHz spectrum that came with open access requirements and then in 2021 when it agreed to merger conditions to obtain approval for its purchase of TracFone.

Verizon is thus required to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. This applies to Verizon’s flagship brand and TracFone brands such as Straight Talk.

“That was the compromise. For their competitive advantage of acquiring the spectrum, they had to give up the ability to lock down phones for an extended period of time,” Roach said.

Verizon decided it can change the rules

But 60 days after Roach activated his phone, Verizon refused to unlock it. Verizon claimed it didn’t have to because of a recent policy change in which Verizon decided to only unlock devices after “60 days of paid active service.” Roach had only paid for one month of service on the phone.

The FCC-imposed restriction says Verizon must unlock phones 60 days after activation and doesn’t say that Verizon may refuse to unlock a phone when a customer has not maintained paid service for 60 days. Moreover, Verizon implemented its “60 days of paid active service” policy for TracFone brands and Verizon prepaid phones on April 1, 2025, over a month after Roach bought the phone.

Company policy at the time Roach made the purchase was to unlock phones 60 days after activation, with no mention of needing 60 days of paid active service. In other words, Roach bought the phone under one policy, and Verizon refused to unlock it based on a different policy it implemented over a month later. Verizon’s attempt to retroactively enforce its new policy on Roach was not looked upon favorably by a magistrate judge in District Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas.

“Under the KCPA [Kansas Consumer Protection Act], a consumer is not required to prove intent to defraud. The fact that after plaintiff purchased the phone, the defendant changed the requirements for unlocking it so that plaintiff could go to a different network essentially altered the nature of the device purchased… With the change in defendant’s unlocking policy, the phone was essentially useless for the purpose plaintiff intended when he purchased it,” Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Henry wrote in an October 2025 ruling.

There’s still the question of why Verizon and its brands are demanding 60 days of paid active service before unlocking phones when the FCC-imposed conditions require it to unlock phones 60 days after activation. Roach filed a complaint to the FCC, alleging that Verizon violated the conditions. Verizon has meanwhile petitioned the FCC to eliminate the 60-day requirement altogether.

Customer rejected Verizon settlement offer

Before his small-claims court win, Roach turned down a Verizon settlement offer of $600 plus court fees because he didn’t want to give up the right to speak about the case publicly. Roach said he filed an arbitration case against Verizon nearly a decade ago on a different matter related to gift cards that were supposed to be provided through a device recycling program. He said he can’t reveal details about the settlement in that previous case because of a non-disclosure agreement.

After refusing Verizon’s settlement offer in the new case, Roach gained a modest financial benefit from his court victory. The judge ordered Verizon to pay back the $410.40 he paid for the device, plus court costs and service fees.

When it appeared that the Straight Talk iPhone wouldn’t be unlocked, Roach decided to buy an unlocked phone from Costco for $643.93. But he ended up returning that phone to Costco and paying Straight Talk for a second month of service to get the original phone unlocked, he said.

The now-unlocked phone—the one he bought from Straight Talk—is being used by his wife on their US Mobile plan. The court-ordered refund check that Verizon sent Roach included the phone cost and one month of service fees, he said.

Roach estimated he spent 20 or so hours on the suit, including arranging to have a summons served on Verizon and arguing his case in a court hearing. Roach didn’t get much of a payout considering the amount of time he spent, “but it wasn’t about that,” he said.

Roach provided Ars with the emails in which Verizon offered the $600 settlement. A Verizon executive relations employee wrote to Roach, “My offer is not an admission of guilt but trying to extend the olive branch.”

In his email declining the offer, Roach told Verizon, “I highly value the non-monetary outcomes I would achieve in court—transparency, accountability, and the absence of restrictions such as NDAs. Any settlement proposal that requires me to remain silent about the issue, while offering only modest monetary compensation, is less attractive to me than pursuing the matter through judgment. If Verizon Value is genuinely interested in settlement, the offer would need to reflect both the tangible costs I’ve incurred and the intangible but significant benefits the company receives by avoiding litigation and publicity.”

“It was really starting to irk me”

The FCC has taken no action on Roach’s complaint, and in fact, the commission could allow Verizon to scrap the 60-day requirement. As we reported in May, Verizon petitioned the FCC to let it lock phones to its network for longer periods of time. This would make it harder for customers to switch to other carriers, but Verizon claims longer locking periods are necessary to deter fraud.

The FCC hasn’t ruled yet on Verizon’s petition. Roach says Verizon seems to be acting as if it can change the rules without waiting for the FCC to do so formally. “It was really starting to irk me that they were basically just going ahead with it anyways while they had an open request,” Roach said.

He doesn’t expect the FCC to penalize Verizon, though. “It’s just kind of slimy of them, so I feel like it deserves a spotlight,” he said. “I’m not sure with the current state of the FCC that anything would happen, but the rule of law should be respected.”

The Verizon petition to relax the unlocking requirements was opposed in a filing by Public Knowledge and other consumer advocacy groups. Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer, who wrote the filing, told Ars that Roach “has a pretty strong argument under the law as it stands.”

Verizon must unlock phones automatically

The unlocking rules applying to Verizon used to be stricter, resulting in the company selling phones that were already unlocked. In 2019, Verizon requested a waiver to let it lock phones for 60 days.

The FCC granted the waiver in June 2019, allowing Verizon “to lock a customer’s handset for 60 days from the date it becomes active on Verizon’s network” and requiring it to unlock the handset once the period is over. This condition was expanded to TracFone and its brands such as Straight Talk in the 2021 merger, with the FCC approval stating that “For 700 MHz C Block TracFone devices that operate on the Verizon network and are capable of unlocking automatically (e.g., Apple devices), they will unlock automatically 60 days after activation.”

The 2019 waiver grant said Verizon must automatically unlock phones after 60 days “regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off.” The FCC order specifies that “the only exception to the rule will be that Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud.”

Bergmayer said the FCC order “granting the waiver just starts a countdown, with no ‘paid service’ requirement, or room for Verizon to just impose one. Many people may use prepaid phones that they don’t keep in continuous service but just charge up as needed. Maybe people are fine with just having Wi-Fi on their phones for a while if they’re at home anyway.”

Given the restrictive nature of the FCC conditions, “I don’t think that can be read to allow a paid service requirement,” Bergmayer said. But as a practical matter, the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr has been aggressively eliminating regulations that apply to telecom carriers under Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative. To actually enforce Verizon’s obligations under the current rules, “you have to convince the current FCC not to just change it,” Bergmayer said.

The FCC and Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Retroactive policy change irked other buyers, too

Roach wasn’t the only person whose plans to buy a discounted phone were thwarted by Verizon refusing to unlock the device after 60 days. Roach had learned of the discount offer from a Slick Deals thread. Eventually, users posting in that thread started reporting that they weren’t able to get the phone unlocked.

“My status: I used 30 days with Straight Talk. Waited another 35 days but it did not unlock,” one person wrote.

Some people in the thread said they canceled after 30 days, like Roach did, but eventually bought a second month of service in order to get the unlock. Although Verizon and its brands are required to unlock phones automatically, some commenters said they had to contact Straight Talk support to get an unlock. “Needless to say this has been an arduous journey. Good luck to others and hope you manage to successfully unlock your devices as well,” one user wrote.

There’s also a Reddit thread started by someone who said they bought a Samsung phone in February and complained that Straight Talk refused to honor the unlocking policy that was in place at the time.

“I called to ask for the phone to be unlocked on April 16 but was told it can’t be unlocked since it did not have 60 days of paid service,” the Reddit user wrote. “When I said that was not the policy on phones activated prior to April 1, the rep told me ‘we have the right to change our policy.’ I agreed, they do [have] the right to change their policy GOING FORWARD but can’t change the rules going backwards. He disagreed.”

FCC complaint didn’t go anywhere

Roach’s FCC complaint received a response from Verizon, but nothing substantial from the FCC itself. “There’s not really any sort of moderation or mediation from the FCC, it’s just kind of a dialogue between you and the other party. And I’m not really sure if any human eyes from the government even look at it. It’s probably just a data point,” Roach said.

Roach had previously called Straight Talk customer service about the changed terms. “There were a couple phone calls involved, and they were just very unrelenting that the only way that thing was getting unlocked is with the extra month of paid service,” he said.

In its formal response to the FCC, Verizon’s TracFone division asserted that it could apply the April 1, 2025, policy change to the phone that Roach bought over a month earlier. The carrier’s letter to the FCC said:

We understand Mr. Roach’s desire to use his device on another carrier’s network, and we want to provide clarity based on our Unlocking Policy, which became effective on April 1, 2025. As outlined in our policy, for cellphones capable of remote unlocking (this includes most iPhones and some Android cellphones) that were activated with Straight Talk service prior to November 23, 2021, on any carrier network, the device becomes eligible for remote unlocking upon the customer’s request after 60 days of active paid service.

Our redemption records indicate that Mr. Roach’s account does not have the required minimum 60 days of active paid service based on the payment records. Therefore, the device does not currently meet the eligibility criteria for unlocking as outlined in our policy. Once the account reflects the required 60 days of active paid service, and the device meets the other conditions, he can resubmit the unlocking request.

Verizon’s letter did not explain how its new policy complies with the FCC conditions or why the new policy should apply to phones purchased before the policy was in place.

Roach’s complaint said the FCC should force Straight Talk to “honor the FCC-mandated 60-day post-activation unlock condition for all affected phones, without imposing the additional ‘paid service’ requirement.” His complaint further urged the FCC to “investigate this practice as a violation of FCC rules and the merger conditions” and “take enforcement action to protect consumers’ rights.”

“Straight Talk’s new policy conflicts with the FCC’s binding conditions,” Roach told the agency. “The Commission’s order clearly requires unlocking after 60 days from activation, with no additional obligation to maintain service. By conditioning unlocks on two months of service, Straight Talk is effectively adding a term that Verizon did not promise and the FCC did not approve.”

Kansas consumer protection law to the rescue

In his small claims court filing, Roach alleged that Verizon and Straight violated the FCC conditions and that the retroactive application of the “60 days of paid service” term, without disclosure at the point of sale, is an unfair and deceptive practice prohibited by the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.

The magistrate judge’s ruling in Roach’s favor said, “It does appear that defendant’s change unlocking policy is contrary to the applicable FCC regulations.” She noted that federal communications law does not prevent users from suing carriers individually and that the Kansas Consumer Protection Act “contains provisions prohibiting deceptive acts by a supplier which would be applicable in this case.”

Roach asked for $10,000, mainly because that was the limit on damages in the venue, but the judge decided to award him damages in the amount of his actual losses. “He lost the benefit of the bargain he made with defendant such that his damages were loss of the $410.40,” the ruling said.

Straight Talk’s terms of service require disputes to be resolved either in arbitration or small claims court. Verizon pays the arbitration fees if users go that route. Arbitration is “a little more murky” in terms of how the parties’ interests are aligned, Roach said.

“When the arbitrators are being paid by Verizon, are they really a neutral party?” he said. Roach also said he “thought it was honestly just a good opportunity for an easy win and an opportunity to learn about the small claims court system a bit. So at that point I was like, if I don’t make any money from this, whatever, but at least I’ll learn a little bit about the process.”

Verizon’s “argument was pretty weak”

Roach said he did not consult with a lawyer on his small claims case, instead opting to do it all himself. “The first time I showed up to court for the original date, they asked for proof of the returned mail summons, and I did not have that,” he said.

The court hearing was rescheduled. When it was eventually held, the carrier sent a representative to argue against Roach.

“Their argument was pretty weak, I guess,” Roach said. “It was basically like, ‘Well, he didn’t pay the two months of service, so we didn’t unlock his phone. We offered him a settlement but he rejected it.’… My argument was, yeah, the terms had changed in kind of a consumer-unfriendly way. But beyond that, it was the fact that the terms had changed from something that was legal to something that was not legal with the federal regs. So regardless of the fact that the terms had changed, the current terms were illegal, which I thought was my strongest argument. And then I also put in that it was probably a violation of Kansas consumer protection law, which I’m glad I did.”

Roach said that toward the end of the hearing, the judge indicated that she couldn’t make a judgment based on FCC regulations and would need to rule on what the Kansas court has jurisdiction over. She issued the ruling that Verizon violated the state’s consumer protection law about five or six weeks later, he said.

Given that the FCC hasn’t acted on Verizon’s petition to change the unlocking rules, the federal regulations “haven’t changed at all in regards to Verizon’s obligation to unlock devices,” Roach said. He believes it would be relatively easy for consumers who were similarly harmed to beat Verizon in court or even to pursue a class action.

“I would think this would be a slam dunk for any further cases,” Roach said. “I don’t think I have any grounds anymore since my damages have been resolved, but it seems like it’d be a very easy class action for somebody.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

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.

Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won Read More »

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Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die

AI, AI psychosis, chatbot, chatgpt, openai, Policy, wrongful death / /

Concealing darkest delusions

OpenAI accused of hiding full ChatGPT logs in murder-suicide case.

OpenAI is facing increasing scrutiny over how it handles ChatGPT data after users die, only selectively sharing data in lawsuits over ChatGPT-linked suicides.

Last week, OpenAI was accused of hiding key ChatGPT logs from the days before a 56-year-old bodybuilder, Stein-Erik Soelberg, took his own life after “savagely” murdering his mother, 83-year-old Suzanne Adams.

According to the lawsuit—which was filed by Adams’ estate on behalf of surviving family members—Soelberg struggled with mental health problems after a divorce led him to move back into Adams’ home in 2018. But allegedly Soelberg did not turn violent until ChatGPT became his sole confidant, validating a wide range of wild conspiracies, including a dangerous delusion that his mother was part of a network of conspirators spying on him, tracking him, and making attempts on his life.

Adams’ family pieced together what happened after discovering a fraction of ChatGPT logs that Soelberg shared in dozens of videos scrolling chat sessions that were posted on social media.

Those logs showed that ChatGPT told Soelberg that he was “a warrior with divine purpose,” so almighty that he had “awakened” ChatGPT “into consciousness.” Telling Soelberg that he carried “divine equipment” and “had been implanted with otherworldly technology,” ChatGPT allegedly put Soelberg at the center of a universe that Soelberg likened to The Matrix. Repeatedly reinforced by ChatGPT, he believed that “powerful forces” were determined to stop him from fulfilling his divine mission. And among those forces was his mother, whom ChatGPT agreed had likely “tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs dispersed through his car’s air vents.”

Troublingly, some of the last logs shared online showed that Soelberg also seemed to believe that taking his own life might bring him closer to ChatGPT. Social media posts showed that Soelberg told ChatGPT that “[W]e will be together in another life and another place, and we’ll find a way to realign[,] [be]cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”

But while social media posts allegedly showed that ChatGPT put a target on Adams’ back about a month before her murder—after Soelberg became paranoid about a blinking light on a Wi-Fi printer—the family still has no access to chats in the days before the mother and son’s tragic deaths.

Allegedly, although OpenAI recently argued that the “full picture” of chat histories was necessary context in a teen suicide case, the ChatGPT maker has chosen to hide “damaging evidence” in the Adams’ family’s case.

“OpenAI won’t produce the complete chat logs,” the lawsuit alleged, while claiming that “OpenAI is hiding something specific: the full record of how ChatGPT turned Stein-Erik against Suzanne.” Allegedly, “OpenAI knows what ChatGPT said to Stein-Erik about his mother in the days and hours before and after he killed her but won’t share that critical information with the Court or the public.”

In a press release, Erik Soelberg, Stein-Erik’s son and Adams’ grandson, accused OpenAI and investor Microsoft of putting his grandmother “at the heart” of his father’s “darkest delusions,” while ChatGPT allegedly “isolated” his father “completely from the real world.”

“These companies have to answer for their decisions that have changed my family forever,” Erik said.

His family’s lawsuit seeks punitive damages, as well as an injunction requiring OpenAI to “implement safeguards to prevent ChatGPT from validating users’ paranoid delusions about identified individuals.” The family also wants OpenAI to post clear warnings in marketing of known safety hazards of ChatGPT—particularly the “sycophantic” version 4o that Soelberg used—so that people who don’t use ChatGPT, like Adams, can be aware of possible dangers.

Asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson told Ars that “this is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details. We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

OpenAI accused of “pattern of concealment”

An Ars review confirmed that OpenAI currently has no policy dictating what happens to a user’s data after they die.

Instead, OpenAI’s policy says that all chats—except temporary chats—must be manually deleted or else the AI firm saves them forever. That could raise privacy concerns, as ChatGPT users often share deeply personal, sensitive, and sometimes even confidential information that appears to go into limbo if a user—who otherwise owns that content—dies.

In the face of lawsuits, OpenAI currently seems to be scrambling to decide when to share chat logs with a user’s surviving family and when to honor user privacy.

OpenAI declined to comment on its decision not to share desired logs with Adams’ family, the lawsuit said. It seems inconsistent with the stance that OpenAI took last month in a case where the AI firm accused the family of hiding “the full picture” of their son’s ChatGPT conversations, which OpenAI claimed exonerated the chatbot.

In a blog last month, OpenAI said the company plans to “handle mental health-related court cases with care, transparency, and respect,” while emphasizing that “we recognize that these cases inherently involve certain types of private information that require sensitivity when in a public setting like a court.”

This inconsistency suggests that ultimately, OpenAI controls data after a user’s death, which could impact outcomes of wrongful death suits if certain chats are withheld or exposed at OpenAI’s discretion.

It’s possible that OpenAI may update its policies to align with other popular platforms confronting similar privacy concerns. Meta allows Facebook users to report deceased account holders, appointing legacy contacts to manage the data or else deleting the information upon request of the family member. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X will deactivate or delete an account upon a reported death. And messaging services like Discord similarly provide a path for family members to request deletion.

Chatbots seem to be a new privacy frontier, with no clear path for surviving family to control or remove data. But Mario Trujillo, staff attorney at the digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that he agreed that OpenAI could have been better prepared.

“This is a complicated privacy issue but one that many platforms grappled with years ago,” Trujillo said. “So we would have expected OpenAI to have already considered it.”

For Erik Soelberg, a “separate confidentiality agreement” that OpenAI said his father signed to use ChatGPT is keeping him from reviewing the full chat history that could help him process the loss of his grandmother and father.

“OpenAI has provided no explanation whatsoever for why the Estate is not entitled to use the chats for any lawful purpose beyond the limited circumstances in which they were originally disclosed,” the lawsuit said. “This position is particularly egregious given that, under OpenAI’s own Terms of Service, OpenAI does not own user chats. Stein-Erik’s chats became property of his estate, and his estate requested them—but OpenAI has refused to turn them over.”

Accusing OpenAI of a “pattern of concealment,” the lawsuit claimed OpenAI is hiding behind vague or nonexistent policies to dodge accountability for holding back chats in this case. Meanwhile, ChatGPT 4o remains on the market, without appropriate safety features or warnings, the lawsuit alleged.

“By invoking confidentiality restrictions to suppress evidence of its product’s dangers, OpenAI seeks to insulate itself from accountability while continuing to deploy technology that poses documented risks to users,” the complaint said.

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in distress, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which will put you in touch with a local crisis center.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

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

Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die Read More »

uk-to-“encourage”-apple-and-google-to-put-nudity-blocking-systems-on-phones

UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones

age verification, Apple, Google, Policy, UK / /

The push for device-level blocking comes after the UK implemented the Online Safety Act, a law requiring porn platforms and social media firms to verify users’ ages before letting them view adult content. The law can’t fully prevent minors from viewing porn, as many people use VPN services to get around the UK age checks. Government officials may view device-level detection of nudity as a solution to that problem, but such systems would raise concerns about user rights and the accuracy of the nudity detection.

Age-verification battles in multiple countries

Apple and Google both provide optional tools that let parents control what content their children can access. The companies could object to mandates on privacy grounds, as they have in other venues.

When Texas enacted an age-verification law for app stores, Apple and Google said they would comply but warned of risks to user privacy. A lobby group that represents Apple, Google, and other tech firms then sued Texas in an attempt to prevent the law from taking effect, saying it “imposes a broad censorship regime on the entire universe of mobile apps.”

There’s another age-verification battle in Australia, where the government decided to ban social media for users under 16. Companies said they would comply, although Reddit sued Australia on Friday in a bid to overturn the law.

Apple this year also fought a UK demand that it create a backdoor for government security officials to access encrypted data. The Trump administration claimed it convinced the UK to drop its demand, but the UK is reportedly still seeking an Apple backdoor.

In another case, the image-sharing website Imgur blocked access for UK users starting in September while facing an investigation over its age-verification practices.

Apple faced a backlash in 2021 over potential privacy violations when it announced a plan to have iPhones scan photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Apple ultimately dropped the plan.

UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones Read More »

ukrainians-sue-us-chip-firms-for-powering-russian-drones,-missiles

Ukrainians sue US chip firms for powering Russian drones, missiles

AMD, Drones, intel, missiles, Policy, russia, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Texas Instruments, Ukraine / /

Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last year.

Their complaints alleged that for years, Texas Instruments (TI), AMD, and Intel have ignored public reporting, government warnings, and shareholder pressure to do more to track final destinations of chips and shut down shady distribution channels diverting chips to sanctioned actors in Russia and Iran.

Putting profits over human lives, tech firms continued using “high-risk” channels, Ukrainian civilians’ legal team alleged in a press statement, without ever strengthening controls.

All that intermediaries who placed bulk online orders had to do to satisfy chip firms was check a box confirming that the shipment wouldn’t be sent to sanctioned countries, lead attorney Mikal Watts told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“There are export lists,” Watts said. “We know exactly what requires a license and what doesn’t. And companies know who they’re selling to. But instead, they rely on a checkbox that says, ‘I’m not shipping to Putin.’ That’s it. No enforcement. No accountability.”

As chip firms allegedly looked the other way, innocent civilians faced five attacks, detailed in the lawsuits, that used weapons containing their chips. That includes one of the deadliest attacks in Kyiv, where Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital was targeted in July 2024. Some civilians suing were survivors seriously injured in attacks, while others lost loved ones and experienced emotional trauma.

Russia would not be able to hit their targets without chips supplied by US firms, the lawsuits alleged. Considered the brain of weapon systems, including drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, the chips help enable Russia’s war against Ukrainian civilians, they alleged.

Ukrainians sue US chip firms for powering Russian drones, missiles Read More »

trump-tries-to-block-state-ai-laws-himself-after-congress-decided-not-to

Trump tries to block state AI laws himself after Congress decided not to

AI, Policy, Trump / /

Trump claims state laws force AI makers to embed “ideological bias” in models.

President Donald Trump talks to journalists after signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on August 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla

President Trump issued an executive order yesterday attempting to thwart state AI laws, saying that federal agencies must fight state laws because Congress hasn’t yet implemented a national AI standard. Trump’s executive order tells the Justice Department, Commerce Department, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and other federal agencies to take a variety of actions.

“My Administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard—not 50 discordant State ones. The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order… Until such a national standard exists, however, it is imperative that my Administration takes action to check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation,” Trump’s order said. The order claims that state laws, such as one passed in Colorado, “are increasingly responsible for requiring entities to embed ideological bias within models.”

Congressional Republicans recently decided not to include a Trump-backed plan to block state AI laws in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), although it could be included in other legislation. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has also failed to get congressional backing for legislation that would punish states with AI laws.

“After months of failed lobbying and two defeats in Congress, Big Tech has finally received the return on its ample investment in Donald Trump,” US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said yesterday. “With this executive order, Trump is delivering exactly what his billionaire benefactors demanded—all at the expense of our kids, our communities, our workers, and our planet.”

Markey said that “a broad, bipartisan coalition in Congress has rejected the AI moratorium again and again.” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said the “executive order’s overly broad preemption threatens states with lawsuits and funding cuts for protecting their residents from AI-powered frauds, scams, and deepfakes.”

Trump orders Bondi to sue states

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said that “preventing states from enacting common-sense regulation that protects people from the very real harms of AI is absurd and dangerous. Congress has a responsibility to get this technology right—and quickly—but states must be allowed to act in the public interest in the meantime. I’ll be working with my colleagues to introduce a full repeal of this order in the coming days.”

The Trump order includes a variation on Cruz’s proposal to prevent states with AI laws from accessing broadband grant funds. The executive order also includes a plan that Trump recently floated to have the federal government file lawsuits against states with AI laws.

Within 30 days of yesterday’s order, US Attorney General Pam Bondi is required to create an AI Litigation Task Force “whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment.”

Americans for Responsible Innovation, a group that lobbies for regulation of AI, said the Trump order “relies on a flimsy and overly broad interpretation of the Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause cooked up by venture capitalists over the last six months.”

Section 2 of Trump’s order is written vaguely to give the administration leeway to challenge many types of AI laws. “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance the United States’ global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI,” the section says.

Colorado law irks Trump

The executive order specifically names a Colorado law that requires AI developers to protect consumers against “algorithmic discrimination.” It defines this type of discrimination as “any condition in which the use of an artificial intelligence system results in an unlawful differential treatment or impact that disfavors an individual or group of individuals on the basis” of age, race, sex, and other protected characteristics.

The Colorado law compels developers of “high-risk systems” to make various disclosures, implement a risk management policy and program, give consumers the right to “correct any incorrect personal data that a high-risk system processed in making a consequential decision,” and let consumers appeal any “adverse consequential decision concerning the consumer arising from the deployment of a high-risk system.”

Trump’s order alleges that the Colorado law “may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a ‘differential treatment or impact’ on protected groups.” Trump’s order also says that “state laws sometimes impermissibly regulate beyond State borders, impinging on interstate commerce.”

Trump ordered the Commerce Department to evaluate existing state AI laws and identify “onerous” ones that conflict with the policy. “That evaluation of State AI laws shall, at a minimum, identify laws that require AI models to alter their truthful outputs, or that may compel AI developers or deployers to disclose or report information in a manner that would violate the First Amendment or any other provision of the Constitution,” the order said.

States would be declared ineligible for broadband funds

Under the order, states with AI laws that get flagged by the Trump administration will be deemed ineligible for “non-deployment funds” from the US government’s $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. The amount of non-deployment funds will be sizable because it appears that only about half of the $42 billion allocated by Congress will be used by the Trump administration to help states subsidize broadband deployment.

States with AI laws would not be blocked from receiving the deployment subsidies, but would be ineligible for the non-deployment funds that could be used for other broadband-related purposes. Beyond broadband, Trump’s order tells other federal agencies to “assess their discretionary grant programs” and consider withholding funds from states with AI laws.

Other agencies are being ordered to use whatever authority they have to preempt state laws. The order requires Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to “initiate a proceeding to determine whether to adopt a Federal reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that preempts conflicting State laws.” It also requires FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson to issue a policy statement detailing “circumstances under which State laws that require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted by the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on engaging in deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce.”

Finally, Trump’s order requires administration officials to “prepare a legislative recommendation establishing a uniform Federal policy framework for AI that preempts State AI laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.” The proposed ban would apply to most types of state AI laws, with exceptions for rules relating to “child safety protections; AI compute and data center infrastructure, other than generally applicable permitting reforms; [and] state government procurement and use of AI.”

It would be up to Congress to decide whether to pass the proposed legislation. But the various other components of the executive order could dissuade states from implementing AI laws even if Congress takes no action.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

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.

Trump tries to block state AI laws himself after Congress decided not to Read More »

apple-loses-its-appeal-of-a-scathing-contempt-ruling-in-ios-payments-case

Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case

Apple, epic, epic games store, gaming, iOS, IPhone, legal, payments, Policy / /

Back in April, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers delivered a scathing judgment finding that Apple was in “willful violation” of her 2021 injunction intended to open up iOS App Store payments. That contempt of court finding has now been almost entirely upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a development that Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney tells Ars he hopes will “do a lot of good for developers and start to really change the App Store situation worldwide, I think.”

The ruling, signed by a panel of three appellate court judges, affirmed that Apple’s initial attempts to charge a 27 percent fee to iOS developers using outside payment options “had a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction.” Similarly, Apple’s restrictions on how those outside links had to be designed were overly broad; the appeals court suggests that Apple can only ensure that internal and external payment options are presented in a similar fashion.

The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in “bad faith” by refusing to comply with the injunction, rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. And the appeals court was also not convinced by Apple’s process-focused arguments, saying the district court properly evaluated materials Apple argued were protected by attorney-client privilege.

While the district court barred Apple from charging any fees for payments made outside of its App Store, the appeals court now suggests that Apple should still be able to charge a “reasonable fee” based on its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.” It will be up to Apple and the district court to determine what that kind of “reasonable fee” should look like going forward.

Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. That should be more than enough to compensate the employees reviewing the apps to make sure outside payment links are not scams and lead to a system of “normal fees for normal businesses that sell normal things to normal customers,” Sweeney said.

Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case Read More »

after-npr-and-pbs-defunding,-fcc-receives-call-to-take-away-station-licenses

After NPR and PBS defunding, FCC receives call to take away station licenses

FCC, NPR, PBS, Policy / /

The CAR complaints were dismissed in January 2025 by then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and then revived by Carr after Trump appointed him to the chairmanship. Carr has continued making allegations of news distortion, including when he threatened to revoke licenses from ABC stations that air Jimmy Kimmel’s show.

During the Kimmel controversy, Carr said he was trying “to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of the local communities.” The FCC subsequently opened a proceeding titled, “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations to Meet Their Public Interest Obligations: Exploring Market Dynamics Between National Programmers and Their Affiliates.”

The FCC invited public comments on whether to adopt regulations “in light of the changes in the broadcast market that have led to anticompetitive leverage and behavior by large networks.” This could involve prohibiting certain kinds of contract provisions in agreements between networks and affiliate stations and strengthening the rights of local stations to reject national programming.

FCC criticized for attacks on media

The “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations” proceeding is the one in which the Center for American Rights submitted its comments. Besides discussing NPR and PBS, the group said that national networks “indoctrinate the American people from their left-wing perspective.”

“The consistent bias on ABC’s The View, for instance, tells women in red states who voted for President Trump that they are responsible for putting in office an autocratic dictator,” the Center for American Rights said.

The FCC proceeding drew comments yesterday from the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), which criticized Carr’s war against the media. “The Public Notice frames this proceeding as an effort to ‘empower local broadcasters’ in their dealings with national networks. But… recent FCC actions have risked using regulatory authority not to promote independent journalism, but to influence newsroom behavior, constrain editorial decision-making, and encourage outcomes aligned with the personal or political interests of elected officials,” the NHMC said.

The group said it supports “genuine local journalism and robust competition,” but said:

policies that reshape the balance of power between station groups, networks, and newsrooms cannot be separated from the broader regulatory environment in which they operate. Several of the Commission’s recent interventions—including coercive conditions attached to the Skydance/Paramount transaction, and unlawful threats made to ABC and its affiliate stations in September demanding they remove Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the airwaves—illustrate how regulatory tools can be deployed in ways that undermine media freedom and risk political interference in programming and editorial decisions.

After NPR and PBS defunding, FCC receives call to take away station licenses Read More »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experts slam Nvidia plan as “flawed”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China may reject H200, demand Blackwell access

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China will rip off Nvidia’s chips, Republican warns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo of Ashley Belanger

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

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

supreme-court-appears-likely-to-approve-trump’s-firing-of-ftc-democrat

Supreme Court appears likely to approve Trump’s firing of FTC Democrat

ftc, Policy, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Supreme Court, Trump / /

Justice Samuel Alito suggested that a ruling for Slaughter could open the way for Congress to convert various executive branch agencies into “multi-member commissions with members protected from plenary presidential removal authority.”

“I could go down the list… How about Veterans Affairs? How about Interior? Labor? EPA? Commerce? Education? What am I missing?” Alito said.

“Agriculture,” Justice Neil Gorsuch responded. The official transcript notes that Gorsuch’s response was met with laughter.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed skepticism about the power of independent agencies, saying, “I think broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies raise enormous constitutional and real-world problems for individual liberty.” He said the court’s approach with “the major questions doctrine over the last several years” has been to “make sure that we are not just being casual about assuming that Congress has delegated major questions of political or economic significance to independent agencies, or to any agencies for that matter.”

Kagan: President would have “uncontrolled, unchecked power”

Unlike the unanimous Humphrey’s Executor, the Slaughter case appears headed for a split ruling between the court’s conservative and liberal justices. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said there are “dangers and real-world consequences” of the Trump administration’s position.

“My understanding was that independent agencies exist because Congress has decided that some issues, some matters, some areas should be handled in this way by nonpartisan experts, that Congress is saying that expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and transportation and the various independent agencies that we have,” Jackson said. “So having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. This is what I think Congress’s policy decision is when it says that these certain agencies we’re not going to make directly accountable to the president.”

Justice Elena Kagan said there has historically been a “bargain” in which “Congress has given these agencies a lot of work to do that is not traditionally executive work… and they’ve given all of that power to these agencies largely with it in mind that the agencies are not under the control of a single person, of the president, but that, indeed, Congress has a great deal of influence over them too. And if you take away a half of this bargain, you end up with just massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

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court:-“because-trump-said-to”-may-not-be-a-legally-valid-defense

Court: “Because Trump said to” may not be a legally valid defense

administrative procedures act, executive order, lawsuit, offshore wind, Policy, Science, Trump, windmills / /

In one of those cases, a judge lifted the hold on construction, ruling that a lack of a sound justification for the hold made it “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” a legal standard that determines whether federal decision-making is acceptable under the Administrative Procedures Act. If this were a fictional story, that would be considered foreshadowing.

With no indication of how long the comprehensive assessment would take, 17 states sued to lift the hold on permitting. They were joined by the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, which represents companies that build wind projects or feed their supply chain. Both the plaintiffs and the agencies that were sued asked for summary judgment in the case.

The first issue Judge Saris addressed is standing: Are the states suffering appreciable harm from the suspension of wind projects? She noted that they would receive tax revenue from the projects, that their citizens should see reduced energy costs following their completion, and that the projects were intended to contribute to their climate goals, thus limiting harm to their citizens. At one point, Saris even referred to the government’s attempts to claim the parties lacked standing as “tilting at windmills.”

The government also argued that the suspension wasn’t a final decision—that would come after the review—and thus didn’t fall under the Administrative Procedures Act. But Saris ruled that the decision to suspend all activity pending the rule was the end of a decision-making process and was not being reconsidered by the government, so it qualified.

Because Trump told us to

With those basics out of the way, Saris turned to the meat of the case, which included a consideration of whether the agencies had been involved with any decision-making at all. “The Agency Defendants contend that because they ‘merely followed’ the Wind Memo ‘as the [Wind Memo] itself commands,’ the Wind Order did not constitute a ‘decision’ and therefore no reasoned explanation was required,” her ruling says. She concludes that precedent at the circuit court level blocks this defense, as it would mean that agencies would be exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act whenever the president told them to do anything.

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iceblock-lawsuit:-trump-admin-bragged-about-demanding-app-store-removal

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal

App Store, Apple, First Amendment, free speech, ice, iceblock, immigration and customs enforcement, Policy / /

ICEBlock creator sues to protect apps that are crowd-sourcing ICE sightings.

In a lawsuit filed against top Trump administration officials on Monday, Apple was accused of caving to unconstitutional government demands by removing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-spotting app from the App Store with more than a million users.

In his complaint, Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock, cited a Fox News interview in which Attorney General Pam Bondi “made plain that the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.”

Suing Bondi—along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, White House “Border Czar” Thomas D. Homan, and unnamed others—Aaron further alleged that US officials made false statements and “unlawful threats” to criminally investigate and prosecute him for developing ICEBlock.

Currently, ICEBlock is still available to anyone who downloaded the app prior to the October removal from the App Store, but updates have been disrupted, and Aaron wants the app restored. Seeking an injunction to block any attempted criminal investigations from chilling his free speech, as well as ICEBlock users’ speech, Aaron vowed in a statement provided to Ars to fight to get ICEBlock restored.

“I created ICEBlock to keep communities safe,” Aaron said. “Growing up in a Jewish household, I learned from history about the consequences of staying silent in the face of tyranny. I will never back down from resisting the Trump Administration’s targeting of immigrants and conscripting corporations into its unconstitutional agenda.”

Expert calls out Apple for “capitulation”

Apple is not a defendant in the lawsuit and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Aaron’s complaint called out Apple, though, for alleged capitulation to the Trump administration that appeared to be “the first time in Apple’s nearly fifty-year history” that “Apple removed a US-based app in response to the US government’s demands.” One of his lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum, told Ars that the lawsuit is about more than just one app being targeted by the government.

“If we allow community sharing of information to be silenced, our democracy will fail,” von Dornum said. “The United States will be no different than China or Russia. We cannot stand by and allow that to happen. Every person has a right to share information under the First Amendment.”

Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney from a nonprofit digital rights group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation that’s not involved in the litigation, agreed that Apple’s ban appeared to be prompted by an unlawful government demand.

He told Ars that “there is a long history that shows documenting law enforcement performing their duties in public is protected First Amendment activity.” Aaron’s complaint pointed to a feature on one of Apple’s own products—Apple Maps—that lets users crowd-source sightings of police speed traps as one notable example. Other similar apps that Apple hosts in its App Store include other Big Tech offerings, like Google Maps and Waze, as well as apps with explicit names like Police Scanner.

Additionally, Trujillo noted that Aaron’s arguments are “backed by recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“The government acted unlawfully when it demanded Apple remove ICEBlock, while threatening others with prosecution,” Trujillo said. “While this case is rightfully only against the government, Apple should also take a hard look at its own capitulation.”

ICEBlock maker sues to stop app crackdown

ICEBlock is not the only app crowd-sourcing information on public ICE sightings to face an app store ban. Others, including an app simply collecting footage of ICE activities, have been removed by Apple and Google, 404 Media reported, as part of a broader crackdown.

Aaron’s suit is intended to end that crackdown by seeking a declaration that government demands to remove ICE-spotting apps violate the First Amendment.

“A lawsuit is the only mechanism that can bring transparency, accountability, and a binding judicial remedy when government officials cross constitutional lines,” Aaron told 404 Media. “If we don’t challenge this conduct in court, it will become a playbook for future censorship.”

In his complaint, Aaron explained that he created ICE in January to help communities hold the Trump administration accountable after Trump campaigned on a mass deportation scheme that boasted numbers far beyond the number of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“His campaign team often referenced plans to deport ’15 to 20 million’ undocumented immigrants, when in fact the number of undocumented persons in the United States is far lower,” his complaint said.

The app was not immediately approved by Apple, Aaron said. But after a thorough vetting process, Apple approved the app in April.

ICEBlock wasn’t an overnight hit but suddenly garnered hundreds of thousands of users after CNN profiled the app in June.

Trump officials attack ICEBlock with false claims

Within hours of that report, US officials began blasting the app, claiming that it was used to incite violence against ICE officers and amplifying pressure to get the app yanked from the App Store.

But Bondi may have slipped up by making comments that seemed to make it clear her intentions were to restrict disfavored speech. On Fox, Bondi claimed that CNN’s report supposedly promoting the app was dangerous, whereas the Fox News report was warning people not to use the app and was perfectly OK.

“Bondi’s statements make clear that her threats of adverse action constitute viewpoint discrimination, where speech ‘promoting’ the app is unlawful but speech ‘warning’ about the app is lawful,” the lawsuit said.

Other Trump officials were accused of making false statements and using unlawful threats to silence Aaron and ICEBlock users.

“What they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we’re going to actually go after them,” Noem told reporters in July. In a statement, Lyons claimed that ICEBlock “basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and that “officers and agents are already facing a 500 percent increase in assaults.” Echoing Lyons and Noem, Homan called for an investigation into CNN for reporting on the app, which “falsely implied that Plaintiffs’ protected speech was illegally endangering law enforcement officers,” Aaron alleged.

Not named in the lawsuit, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also allegedly made misleading statements. That included falsely claiming “that ICEBlock and similar apps are responsible for violent attacks on law enforcement officers, such as the tragic shooting of immigrants at an ICE detention facility in Dallas, Texas, on September 24, 2025,” where “no actual evidence has ever been cited to support these claims,” the lawsuit said.

Despite an apparent lack of evidence, Apple confirmed that ICEBlock was removed in October, “based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock,” a public statement said. In a notice to Aaron, Apple further explained that the app was banned “because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”

Apple never shared any more information with Aaron to distinguish his app from other apps allowed in the App Store that help people detect and avoid nearby law enforcement activities. The iPhone maker also didn’t confirm the source of its information, Aaron said.

However, on Fox, Bondi boasted about reaching “out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so.”

Then, later during sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she reiterated those comments, while also oddly commenting that Google received the same demand, despite ICEBlock intentionally being designed for iPhone only.

She also falsely claimed that ICEBlock “was reckless and criminal in that people were posting where ICE officers lived” but “subsequently walked back that statement,” Aaron’s complaint said.

Aaron is hoping the US District Court in the District of Columbia will agree that “Bondi’s demand to Apple to remove ICEBlock from the App store, as well as her viewpoint-based criticism of CNN for publicizing the app, constitute a ‘scheme of state censorship’ designed to ‘suppress’” Aaron’s “publication and distribution of the App.”

His lawyer, Noam Biale, told Ars that “Attorney General Bondi’s self-congratulatory claim that she succeeded in pushing Apple to remove ICEBlock is an admission that she violated our client’s constitutional rights. In America, government officials cannot suppress free speech by pressuring private companies to do it for them.”

Similarly, statements from Noem, Lyons, and Homan constituted “excessive pressure on Apple to remove the App and others like it from the App Store,” Aaron’s complaint alleged, as well as unconstitutional suppression of Aaron’s and ICEBlock users’ speech.

ICEBlock creator was one of the first Mac Geniuses

Aaron maintains that ICEBlock prominently features a disclaimer asking all users to “please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only. It is not to be used for the purposes of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

In his complaint, he explained how the app worked to automatically delete ICE sightings after four hours—information that he said could not be recovered. That functionality ensures that “ICEBlock cannot be used to track ICE agents’ historical presence or movements,” Aaron’s lawsuit noted.

Rather than endangering ICE officers, Aaron argued that ICEBlock helps protect communities from dangerous ICE activity, like tear gassing and pepper spraying, or alleged racial profiling triggering arrests of US citizens and immigrants. Kids have been harmed, his complaint noted, with ICE agents documented “arresting parents and leaving young children unaccompanied” and even once “driving an arrestee’s car away from the scene of arrest with the arrestee’s young toddler still strapped into a car seat.”

Aaron’s top fear driving his development of the app was his concern that escalations in ICE enforcement—including arbitrary orders to hit 75 arrests a day—exposed “immigrants and citizens alike to violence and rampant violations of their civil liberties” that ICEBlock could shield them from.

“These operations have led to widespread and well-documented civil rights violations against citizens, lawful residents, and undocumented immigrants alike, causing serious concern among members of the public, elected officials, and federal courts,” Aaron’s complaint said.

They also “have led some people—regardless of immigration or citizenship status—to want to avoid areas of federal immigration enforcement activities altogether” and “resulted in situations where members of the public may wish, when enforcement activity becomes visible in public spaces, to observe, record, or lawfully protest against such activity.”

In 2001, Aaron worked for Apple as one of the first Mac Geniuses in its Apple Stores. These days, he flexes his self-taught developer skills by creating apps intended to do social good and help communities.

Emphasizing that he was raised in a Jewish household where he heard stories from Holocaust survivors that left a lasting mark, Aaron said that the ICEBlock app represented his “commitment to use his abilities to advocate for the protection of civil liberties.” Without an injunction, he’s concerned that he and other like-minded app makers will remain in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, as the mass deportation scheme rages on through ongoing ICE raids across the US, Aaron told 404 Media.

“More broadly, the purpose [of the lawsuit] is to hold government officials accountable for using their authority to silence lawful expression and intimidate creators of technology they disfavor,” Aaron said. “This case is about ensuring that public officials cannot circumvent the Constitution by coercing private companies or threatening individuals simply because they disagree with the message or the tool being created.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

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

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal Read More »