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inventor-claims-bleach-injections-will-destroy-cancer-tumors

Inventor claims bleach injections will destroy cancer tumors

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A lack of medical training isn’t stopping a man from charging $20,000 for the treatment.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Xuewu Liu, a Chinese inventor who has no medical training or credentials of any kind, is charging cancer patients $20,000 for access to an AI-driven but entirely unproven treatment that includes injecting a highly concentrated dose of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleach solution, directly into cancerous tumors.

One patient tells WIRED her tumor has grown faster since the procedure and that she suspects it may have caused her cancer to spread—a claim Liu disputes—while experts allege his marketing of the treatment has likely put him on the wrong side of US regulations. Nonetheless, while Liu currently only offers the treatment informally in China and at a German clinic, he is now working with a Texas-based former pharmaceutical executive to bring his treatment to America. They believe that the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as US health secretary will help “open doors” to get the untested treatment—in which at least one clinic in California appears to have interest—approved in the US.

Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement is embracing alternative medicines and the idea of giving patients the freedom to try unproven treatments. While the health secretary did not respond to a request for comment about Liu’s treatment, he did mention chlorine dioxide when questioned about President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed during his Senate confirmation hearing in February, and the Food and Drug Administration recently removed a warning about the substance from its website. The agency says the removal was part of a routine process of archiving old pages on its site, but it has had the effect of emboldening the bleacher community.

“Without the FDA’s heavy-handed warnings, it’s likely my therapy would have been accepted for trials years earlier, with institutional partnerships and investor support,” Liu tells WIRED. He says he wrote to Kennedy earlier this year urging him to conduct more research on chlorine dioxide. “This quiet removal won’t immediately change everything, but it opens a door. If mainstream media reports on this shift, I believe it will unlock a new wave of serious [chlorine dioxide] research.”

For decades, pseudoscience grifters have peddled chlorine dioxide solutions—sold under a variety of names, such as Miracle Mineral Solution—and despite warnings and prosecutions have continued to claim the toxic substance is a “cure” for everything from HIV to COVID-19 to autism. There is no credible evidence to back up any of these claims, which critics have long labeled as nothing more than a grift.

The treatments typically involve drinking liquid chlorine dioxide on a regular basis, using solutions with concentrations of chlorine dioxide of around 3,000 parts per million (ppm), which is diluted further in water.

Liu’s treatment, however, involves a much higher concentration of chlorine dioxide—injections of several millilitres of 20,000 ppm—and, rather than drinking it, patients have it injected directly into their tumors.

I injected myself to test it

Liu claims he has injected himself with the solution more than 50 times and suffered no side effects. “This personal data point encouraged me to continue research,” he says.

Liu has been making the solution in his rented apartment in Beijing by mixing citric acid with sodium chlorite, according to an account he shared earlier this month on his Substack that revealed that a “violent explosion” occurred when he made a mistake.

“The blast blacked out my vision,” Liu wrote. “Dense clouds of chlorine dioxide burst into my face, filling my eyes, nose, and mouth. I stumbled back into the apartment, rushing to the bathroom to wash out the gas from my eyes and respiratory tract. My lungs were burning. Later, I would find 4–5 cuts on my upper thigh—shards of glass had pierced through my pants.” Liu also revealed that his 3-year-old daughter was nearby when the explosion happened.

Liu began a preclinical study on animals in 2016, before beginning to use the highly concentrated solution to treat human patients in more recent years. He claims that between China and Germany, he has treated 20 patients to date.

When asked for evidence to back up his claims of efficacy, Liu shared links to a number of preprints, which have not been peer-reviewed, with WIRED. He also shared a pitch deck for a $5 million seed round in a US-focused startup that would provide the chlorine dioxide injections.

The presentation contains a number of “case studies” of patients he has treated—including a dog—but rather than featuring detailed scientific data, the deck contains disturbing images of the patients’ tumors. The deck also contains, as evidence of the treatment’s efficacy, a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation with a patient who was apparently treating a liver tumor with chlorine dioxide.

“Screenshots of WhatsApp chats with patients or their doctors is not evidence of efficacy, yet that is the only evidence he provides,” says Alex Morozov, an oncologist who has overseen hundreds of drug trials at multiple companies including Pfizer. “Needless to say, until appropriate studies are done and published in peer-reviewed journals, or presented at a reputable conference, no patients should be treated except in the context of clinical trials.”

WIRED spoke to a patient of Liu’s, whose descriptions of the treatment appear to undermine his claims of efficacy and raise serious questions about its safety.

“I bought the needles online and made the chlorine dioxide by myself [then] I injected it into the tumor and lymph nodes by myself,” says the patient, a Chinese national living in the UK. WIRED granted her anonymity to protect her privacy.

The patient had previously been taking oral solutions of chlorine dioxide as an alternative treatment for cancer, but, unsatisfied with the results, she contacted Liu via WhatsApp. On a spring evening last year, she took her first injection of chlorine dioxide and, she says, almost immediately suffered negative side effects.

“It was fine after the injection, but I was woken up by severe pain [like] I had never experienced in my life,” she says. “The pain lasted for three to four days.”

Despite the pain, she says, she injected herself again two months later, and a month after that she traveled to China, where Liu, despite having no medical training, injected her, using an anesthetic cream to numb the skin.

“While this act technically fell outside legal boundaries, in China, if the patient is competent and gives informed consent, such compassionate-use interventions rarely attract regulatory attention unless harm is done,” Liu tells WIRED.

Legal in China?

Experts on Chinese medical regulations tell WIRED that new treatments like Liu’s would have to meet strict conditions before they can be administered to patients. “It would have to go through the same steps in China as it does in the US, so that will involve clinical studies, getting ethics approval at the hospitals, and then the situation would have to be reviewed by the Chinese government,” Ames Gross, founder and president of Pacific Bridge Capital, tells WIRED. “I don’t think any of it sounds very legal.” The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handles all international press inquiries, did not respond to a request for comment.

As well as the initial pain, the chlorine dioxide injections also appear, the patient says, to have made the cancer worse.

“The tumor shrinks first, then it grows faster than before,” she says, adding: “My tumor has spread to the skin after injection. I suspect it is because the chlorine dioxide has broken the vein and the cancer cells go to the skin area.”

Liu did not agree with this assessment, instead blaming the fact that the patient had not completed the full course of four injections within a month, as he typically prescribes.

The patient says that thanks to a WeChat group that Liu set up, she is also in contact with other people who have had chlorine dioxide injections. One of the women, who is based in Shenzhen, China, had at least one injection of chlorine dioxide to treat what was described as vaginal cancer, but she says she is also suffering complications, according to screenshots of conversations reviewed by WIRED.

“After the injection, there was swelling and difficulty urinating,” the Chinese woman wrote. “It was very uncomfortable.”

Despite having injected a patient in China last August, Liu tells WIRED, he is not a licensed physician—he calls himself “an independent inventor and medical researcher.” The treatment, which he says is “designed to be administered by licensed physicians in clinical settings,” is so painful that it needs to be given under general anesthetic.

While Liu’s website says the treatment is being offered at clinics in Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines, he tells WIRED that the treatment is currently only being offered at the CMC Rheinfelden clinic on the German-Swiss border. Liu features Dr. Wolfgang Renz from the clinic on his own website as one of his partners; the clinic itself does not advertise the treatment on its own website.

In conversations on WhatsApp shared with WIRED, a representative of the clinic named Lena told a prospective patient that it didn’t advertise the chlorine dioxide procedure because it was “not a legal treatment.” Lena later wrote that chlorine dioxide was not referenced on an invoice the clinic sent the same prospective patient because it is “not a legal treatment.” Lena also told the prospective patient that they had treated patients from France, Italy, and the US, according to a recording of a phone call shared with WIRED. One Italian woman is currently trying to raise money to fund her treatment in the German clinic on GoFundMe.

When asked about her comments, Lena told WIRED, “Either [the patient] misquoted me or my English was not very accurate. I repeatedly told [the patient] that it is not an approved therapy and therefore requires very detailed consent and special circumstances to be eligible for this treatment.” The prospective patient was told that she would need to bring documents detailing her prior treatment.

Renz did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lena also says that patients who have exhausted every other possible treatment have “the right to be treated with non-approved interventions under strict ethical conditions, full medical supervision, and informed patient consent.” The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, which regulates medical products in Germany, did not respond to a request for comment, but Liu tells WIRED that German authorities are investigating a complaint about the clinic.

Expanding across the Pacific

Liu now appears laser-focused on making his treatment available in the US. Despite the lack of clinical data to back up his claims, Liu claims to have signed up over 100 US patients to take part in a proposed clinical research program. Liu shared a screenshot with WIRED including what appeared to be patients’ full names, zip codes, and the type of cancer they are suffering from. It’s unclear if any of the patients had agreed to have their information shared with a journalist.

Liu says he has recruited most of his potential patients via his own website. “Are You a U.S. Cancer Patient? Join the National Campaign to legalize a breakthrough therapy,” a popup that sometimes appears on Liu’s website reads, urging visitors to fill out a patient advocacy application to potentially become part of a clinical trial.

One of those who signed up is Sarah Jones, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 anal cancer that has metastasized to the lymph nodes. Jones, whose identity WIRED is protecting with a pseudonym, has already been treated with chemotherapy and drugs like cisplatin and paclitaxel. The chemotherapy originally caused the tumor to shrink, but it has since returned, and Jones is now seeking alternative treatments.

“I spend my days treating this disease like a job. Red light therapy, guided meditations, exercising, eating a keto-strong diet, and researching,” Jones tells WIRED. “This is how I stumbled upon Liu and his intratumoral injections.”

Despite signing up for a potential trial, Jones understands the risks but feels as if she is running out of choices. “I am extremely concerned that there are but a handful of patients and no data to speak of for this procedure,” Jones says. “I am debating all of my options and am constantly looking for anything that can help.”

This sentiment was echoed by Kevin, whose father has neck cancer and who also signed up as a potential patient for the trial. “If you’re in any cancer patient’s shoes, if you’re out of options, what else do you have to do? You either keep trying new therapies, or you die.”

Another US-based patient with untreated colon cancer who signed up on Liu’s website was informed that they should consider traveling to Germany for treatment, according to a screenshot of an email response from Liu, shared with WIRED. The email outlined that the cost would be €5,000 per injection, adding that “typically 4 injections [are] recommended.”

When the conversation moved to WhatsApp, Liu asked the patient what size the tumor was. The patient, who was granted anonymity to protect their privacy, told Liu the tumor was 3.8 centimeters, according to a screenshot of the WhatsApp conversation reviewed by WIRED.

Liu responded with inaccurate details and information that the patient did not share. Liu also referred to a rectal tumor rather than a colon tumor.

When the patient said they didn’t have the money to travel to Europe for the treatment and asked about getting it in the US, referencing the Williams Cancer Institute in Beverly Hills, California, Liu suggested contacting the clinic directly.

The clinic has indicated its interest in Liu’s unproven procedure by writing about Liu’s chlorine dioxide injection protocol on its own website and mentioned it on a post on its Facebook page. Liu tells WIRED that he has spoken to Jason Williams, director of the clinic. “He is very interested and is a pioneer in the field of intratumoral injections,” Liu says. “His clinic is fully capable of implementing my therapy.”

Neither Williams nor his colleague Nathan Goodyear, who Liu also says he spoke to, responded to repeated emails and phone calls seeking comment.

Liu also gave WIRED the names of a radiologist in California, an anesthesiologist in Seattle, and a physician in Missouri who he claims to have spoken to about providing his treatment in the US, but none of them responded to requests for comment.

The Chinese inventor did, however, appear on a livestream with two US-based doctors, Curtis Anderson, a Florida-based physician, and Mark Rosenberg, who works at the Institute for Healthy Aging. The discussion, hosted on Liu’s YouTube channel, saw the two doctors ask about which cancers to treat with the injections, how to buy chlorine dioxide, or even whether it’s possible to make it themselves.

Rosenberg and Anderson did not respond to requests for comment.

Maybe RFK Jr. will dig it?

Conducting a clinical trial of a new drug in the US requires approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Liu initially claimed to WIRED that “according to Article 37 of the Declaration of Helsinki and the US Right to Try laws, my therapy is already legally permissible in the United States.” Legal experts WIRED spoke to disagree strongly with Liu’s assertions.

“It sounds like Mr. Liu may not understand how the Right to Try Act or the Declaration of Helsinki work or how they fit within the broader context in which the FDA regulates investigational drugs,” Clint Hermes, an attorney with Bass, Berry & Sims, with extensive expertise in biomedical research, tells WIRED. “If he is under the impression that the ‘breast cancer trial’ referenced on his website is sufficient on its own to allow him to market or study his therapy in the US under right to try and/or the Declaration of Helsinki, he is mistaken.”

Even advertising the efficacy of an unproven treatment could land Liu in trouble, according to the American Health Law Association (AHLA).

“Companies cannot make claims regarding safety or efficacy until their products have been approved for marketing by the FDA,” Mary Kohler, a member of the AHLA’s Life Science leadership team, tells WIRED. “From a quick glance at the website, I see several claims that FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) would likely consider violative as pre-approval promotion even if this company were in trials that FDA was overseeing.”

The FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

When asked about these issues, Liu clarified that he was planning to initially conduct a 100-person “clinical research program” that would not require FDA approval, but Liu’s treatment doesn’t appear to meet any of the most common exemptions that would allow such a trial to take place, according to the FDA’s own website.

Liu also says he is working with “patient advocates” and leveraging their local connections to lobby state lawmakers in “liberty-leaning states” to allow the experimental treatment to be administered. This would appear to circumvent federal rules. Liu says that he has yet to make contact with such a lawmaker directly.

While he has no approval from US government agencies or support of a state or national lawmaker, Liu does have the full backing of Scott Hagerman, an entrepreneur and former executive with 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including a decade working at Pfizer.

“It’s an unbelievable breakthrough,” Hagerman tells WIRED, adding that he and his wife have been using oral chlorine dioxide solution “for some time” as a preventative measure rather than to treat a specific ailment.

Hagerman’s time in the pharmaceutical industry included over a decade running a company called Chemi Nutra, which has in the past received a US patent for a soy-based supplement that addresses testosterone decline in men. He also says he oversaw teams of scientists who worked on drug applications to the FDA for oncology drugs.

Hagerman retired from Chemi Nutra in 2021, and in the intervening years his comments indicate that he appears to have become entirely disillusioned with the modern pharmaceutical industry, referring to it as a “drugs cartel” and “a corrupt entity that is only profit-driven.” One of the issues Hagerman references is the COVID-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, which he describes as a “con job” while also boosting the debunked theory that childhood vaccines are linked to increasing levels of autism reported in the population.

As a result, he sees Liu’s lack of experience as a positive.

“I would welcome the fact that he’s not a doctor, that he’s not an MD, because he’s not clouded, jaded, and biased with all kinds of misguidance that would push them the wrong way,” Hagerman says, adding, “I’d like to help him establish some network here in the US, because obviously the US is where the action is.” Hagerman says he is “100 percent sure” that there would be investors willing to fund the development of this treatment.

When asked about a timeline to have this procedure legally available in the US, Hagerman said he hopes it could be achieved before the end of 2025. Liu, however, thinks it could take slightly longer, saying that he believes clinical trials will begin in 2026.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Photo of WIRED

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Microsoft to stop using China-based teams to support Department of Defense

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Last week, Microsoft announced that it would no longer use China-based engineering teams to support the Defense Department’s cloud computing systems, following ProPublica’s investigation of the practice, which cybersecurity experts said could expose the government to hacking and espionage.

But it turns out the Pentagon was not the only part of the government facing such a threat. For years, Microsoft has also used its global workforce, including China-based personnel, to maintain the cloud systems of other federal departments, including parts of Justice, Treasury and Commerce, ProPublica has found.

This work has taken place in what’s known as the Government Community Cloud, which is intended for information that is not classified but is nonetheless sensitive. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, the US government’s cloud accreditation organization, has approved GCC to handle “moderate” impact information “where the loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability would result in serious adverse effect on an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.”

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has used GCC to support its criminal and civil investigation and litigation functions, according to a 2022 report. Parts of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education have also used GCC.

Microsoft says its foreign engineers working in GCC have been overseen by US-based personnel known as “digital escorts,” similar to the system it had in place at the Defense Department.

Nevertheless, cybersecurity experts told ProPublica that foreign support for GCC presents an opportunity for spying and sabotage. “There’s a misconception that, if government data isn’t classified, no harm can come of its distribution,” said Rex Booth, a former federal cybersecurity official who now is chief information security officer of the tech company SailPoint.

“With so much data stored in cloud services—and the power of AI to analyze it quickly—even unclassified data can reveal insights that could harm US interests,” he said.

Microsoft to stop using China-based teams to support Department of Defense Read More »

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Nvidia AI chips worth $1B smuggled to China after Trump export controls

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Black market for US semiconductors operates despite efforts to curb Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

Credit: VGG | Getty Images

At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence processors were shipped to China in the three months after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls, exposing the limits of Washington’s efforts to restrain Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

A Financial Times analysis of dozens of sales contracts, company filings, and multiple people with direct knowledge of the deals reveals that Nvidia’s B200 has become the most sought-after—and widely available—chip in a rampant Chinese black market for American semiconductors.

The processor is widely used by US powerhouses such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta to train their latest AI systems, but banned for sale to China.

In May, multiple Chinese distributors started selling B200s to suppliers of data centers that serve Chinese AI groups, according to documents reviewed by the FT. This was shortly after the Trump administration moved to prevent sales of the H20—a less-powerful Nvidia chip tailored to comply with Joe Biden-era curbs.

It is legal to receive and sell restricted Nvidia chips in China, as long as relevant border tariffs are paid, according to lawyers familiar with the rules. Entities selling and sending them to China would be violating US regulations, however.

Last week, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang announced that the Trump administration would begin to allow the selling of its China-specific H20 chip once more.

In the three months beforehand, Chinese distributors from Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces sold Nvidia’s B200s, as well as other restricted processors such as the H100 and H200.

According to contracts reviewed by the FT and people with knowledge of the transactions, the total sales during this period are estimated to be more than $1 billion.

Nvidia has long insisted there is “no evidence of any AI chip diversion”. There is no evidence that the company is involved in, or has knowledge of, its restricted products being sold to China.

“Trying to cobble together data centers from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically,” Nvidia told the FT. “Data centers require service and support, which we provide only to authorized Nvidia products.”

“The new century of a smart China”

One Anhui-based company, whose name translates to “Gate of the Era,” is one of the largest sellers of B200s, according to documents seen by the FT.

It was founded in February, as speculation mounted that Trump would stop H20 chip sales to China. The company is fully owned by a group with the same name based in Shanghai, registered on the same day, according to company filings.

The chips were sold in ready-built racks, each containing eight B200s as well as other components and software needed to plug straight into a data centre. Such a rack is about the size of a large suitcase and weighs close to 150 kg including packaging.

The current market price ranges between RMB 3 million to RMB 3.5 million ($489,000) per rack, down from more than RMB 4 million in mid-May when they first became available in China in large quantities. The current prices represent about a 50 percent premium from the average selling price of similar products in the US.

Since mid-May, Gate of the Era obtained at least two shipments of a few hundred B200 racks each, according to people with knowledge of the deals. They sold them directly—or indirectly via secondary distributors—to various data centre suppliers and other companies. Gate of the Era and its affiliates are estimated to have sold close to $400mn of such products.

Gate of the Era lists an AI solution provider China Century—or Huajiyuan in Chinese—as its largest shareholder, according to company registration files.

Also headquartered in Shanghai, China Century states on its website it has a lab in Silicon Valley as well as a supply chain centre in Singapore, with the company saying it uses data tools to build “the new century of a smart China.”

China Century claims to have more than 100 business partners and highlights AliCloud, ByteDance’s Huoshan Cloud, as well as Baidu Cloud as “trusted partners” on its website.

AliCloud and Baidu did not respond to requests for comment. Huoshan Cloud’s name was taken off China Century’s website after the FT approached them for comment. Huoshan Cloud said: “It is standard practice for any company to manage the unauthorized use of its logo.

“We have not procured Nvidia’s chips. We do not have any related [Nvidia chip] business,” said China Century, adding that it did “smart city work,”

The FT visited the registered headquarters of Gate of the Era at an office in a government-run industrial park dedicated to cryptography companies. No representative was available. The company had not yet moved into the office since changing its registration to the address in June.

The FT also visited its previous registered address, which was occupied by a real estate investment group that had been there for more than two years and claimed no connection. When reached on the phone, Gate of the Era declined to comment.

According to industry insiders, product specifications and pictures of packaging seen by the FT, many of the B200 racks sold by Gate of the Era, as well as other Chinese distributors, over the past months were originally from Supermicro, a US-based assembler that provides chip solutions to data centers.

There is no suggestion that Supermicro is involved in or has knowledge of its products being smuggled into China. Supermicro said it “complies with all US export control requirements on the sale and export of GPU systems.”

“Export controls will not prevent the most advanced Nvidia products from entering China,” said one Chinese data centre operator. “What it creates is just inefficiency and huge profits for the risk-taking middlemen.”

“It’s like a seafood market”

Some Chinese distributors openly market products such as Supermicro’s B200 racks on social media that show photos of packages with the company’s logo—although it has not been verified if the sales have been completed.

To showcase the “plug-and-use” nature of such racks, some vendors provide testing for buyers, according to those with knowledge of the practice and clips posted online. Transactions tend to happen on the spot, with buyers picking up the products after checking their legitimacy.

On social media, groups are created to match supply and demand from hundreds of traders and data centre suppliers.

Apart from B200, various other restricted Nvidia chips such as H200, H100, and 5090 are being advertised openly on Chinese social media platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Packaging and installation pictures and videos seen by the FT show product logos of companies such as Supermicro, Dell, and Asus—infrastructure providers that assemble Nvidia’s chips into servers.

There is no suggestion that these companies are aware of the social media advertising or their products being sold in China.

Like Supermicro, Dell, and Asus said they maintained rigorous and strict compliance to all laws and regulations, including US export controls, and took action against partners who failed to comply.

“It’s like a seafood market,” said one distributor, “There’s no shortage.”

Racks for sale—with more smuggled stock to come

The B200 is in high demand given its performance, value, and relatively easy maintenance compared with the more complex Grace Blackwell series, according to industry insiders.

The GB200 AI rack, containing Nvidia’s most high-end products, also appear to be available in China despite US export controls.

One distributor claimed it had sold 10 racks of GB200 at close to RMB 40 million ($5.6 million) each. The FT could not independently verify this claim, while marketing information about GB200 from various distributors’ accounts on social media shows consistent pricing and stock status as “available for pick up onshore.”

Some Chinese distributors have even started advertising for their future stock of B300s, Nvidia’s upgrade from the B200 expected to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year.

US export controls have had some effect on the black market.

Given the nature of such products, leading Chinese AI players with global operations are not able to order them in a legally compliant way, install them in their own data centers, or receive Nvidia’s customer support.

This has led to third-party data centre operators becoming key buyers who then provide computing services. Other clients include smaller companies in tech, finance, and health care that do not have strong compliance requirements, as well as Chinese companies on the so-called US entity list that are not allowed to buy any Nvidia chips legally.

However, the scale of these projects is much smaller compared with mega clusters of data centers being built by tech giants around the world.

With H20 export controls having been lifted, many Chinese tech companies are expected to resume purchasing the compliant chips in large sums even though its performance is generations behind the still restricted products such as B200, according to people familiar with their plans.

Black market sales for B200s and other restricted Nvidia chips dropped noticeably after the relaxation of the H20 ban, according to multiple distributors.

“People are weighing their options now H20 is available again,” said one distributor. “But there will always be demand for the most cutting-edge stuff.”

The Southeast Asia stop off

Industry experts said that Southeast Asian countries have become markets where Chinese groups obtained restricted chips.

The US Department of Commerce is discussing adding more export controls on advanced AI products to countries such as Thailand as soon as September, according to two people familiar with the matter. This rule is mainly targeting Chinese intermediaries used to obtain advanced AI chips via these countries.

The US commerce department declined to comment. The Thai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Malaysia introduced stricter export controls targeting advanced AI chip shipments from the country to other destinations, especially China.

The potential tightening of export controls on Southeast Asian countries has also contributed to buyers rushing to place orders before such rules take effect, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Even if these avenues to obtain AI chips are closed, Chinese industry insiders said new shipping routes would be established. Supplies have already started arriving via European countries not on the restricted list.

“History has proven many times before that given the huge profit, arbitrators will always find a way,” said one Chinese distributor.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton, Demetri Sevastopulo, and Anantha Lakshmi.

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

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Win for chemical industry as EPA shutters scientific research office

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Deregulation runs rampant

Companies feared rules and lawsuits based on Office of Research and Development assessments.

Soon after President Donald Trump took office in January, a wide array of petrochemical, mining, and farm industry coalitions ramped up what has been a long campaign to limit use of the Environmental Protection Agency’s assessments of the health risks of chemicals.

That effort scored a significant victory Friday when EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his decision to dismantle the agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD).

The industry lobbyists didn’t ask for hundreds of ORD staff members to be laid off or reassigned. But the elimination of the agency’s scientific research arm goes a long way toward achieving the goal they sought.

In a January 27 letter to Zeldin organized by the American Chemistry Council, more than 80 industry groups—including leading oil, refining, and mining associations—asked him to end regulators’ reliance on ORD assessments of the risks that chemicals pose for human health. The future of that research, conducted under EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System program, or IRIS, is now uncertain.

“EPA’s IRIS program within ORD has a troubling history of being out of step with the best available science and methods, lacking transparency, and being unresponsive to peer review and stakeholder recommendations,” said an American Chemistry Council spokesperson in an email when asked about the decision to eliminate ORD. “This results in IRIS assessments that jeopardize access to critical chemistries, undercut national priorities, and harm American competitiveness.”

The spokesperson said the organization supports EPA evaluating its resources to ensure tax dollars are being used efficiently and effectively.

Christopher Frey, an associate dean at North Carolina State University who served as EPA assistant administrator in charge of ORD during the Biden administration, defended the quality of the science done by the office, which he said is “the poster case study of what it means to do science that’s subject to intense scrutiny.”

“There’s industry with a tremendous vested interest in the policy decisions that might occur later on,” based on the assessments made by ORD. “What the industry does is try to engage in a proxy war over the policy by attacking the science.”

Among the IRIS assessments that stirred the most industry concern were those outlining the dangers of formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, arsenic, and hexavalent chromium. Regulatory actions had begun or were looming on all during the Biden administration.

The Biden administration also launched a lawsuit against a LaPlace, Louisiana, plant that had been the only US manufacturer of neoprene, Denka Performance Elastomer, based in part on the IRIS assessment of one of its air pollutants, chloroprene, as a likely human carcinogen. Denka, a spinoff of DuPont, announced it was ceasing production in May because of the cost of pollution controls.

Public health advocates charge that eliminating the IRIS program, or shifting its functions to other offices in the agency, will rob the EPA of the independent expertise to inform its mission of protection.

“They’ve been trying for years to shut down IRIS,” said Darya Minovi, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists and lead author of a new study on Trump administration actions that the group says undermine science. “The reason why is because when IRIS conducts its independent scientific assessments using a great amount of rigor… you get stronger regulations, and that is not in the best interest of the big business polluters and those who have a financial stake in the EPA’s demise.”

The UCS report tallied more than 400 firings, funding cuts, and other attacks on science in the first six months of the Trump administration, resulting in 54 percent fewer grants for research on topics including cancer, infectious disease, and environmental health.

EPA’s press office did not respond to a query on whether the IRIS controversy helped inform Zeldin’s decision to eliminate ORD, which had been anticipated since staff were informed of the potential plan at a meeting in March. In the agency’s official announcement Friday afternoon, Zeldin said the elimination of the office was part of “organizational improvements” that would deliver $748.8 million in savings to taxpayers. The reduction in force, combined with previous departures and layoffs, have reduced the agency’s workforce by 23 percent, to 12,448, the EPA said.

With the cuts, the EPA’s workforce will be at its lowest level since fiscal year 1986.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, EPA has taken a close look at our operations to ensure the agency is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback,” Zeldin said in the prepared statement. “This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars.”

The agency will be creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions; a report by E&E News said an internal memo indicated the new office would be much smaller than ORD, and would focus on coastal areas, drinking water safety, and methodologies for assessing environmental contamination.

Zeldin’s announcement also said that scientific expertise and research efforts will be moved to “program offices”—for example, those concerned with air pollution, water pollution, or waste—to tackle “statutory obligations and mission essential functions.” That phrase has a particular meaning: The chemical industry has long complained that Congress never passed a law creating IRIS. Congress did, however, pass many laws requiring that the agency carry out its actions based on the best available science, and the IRIS program, established during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, was how the agency has carried out the task of assessing the science on chemicals since 1985.

Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, the union representing 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said the organizational structure of ORD put barriers between the agency’s researchers and the agency’s political decision-making, enforcement, and regulatory teams—even though they all used ORD’s work.

“For them to function properly, they have to have a fair amount of distance away from political interference, in order to let the science guide and develop the kind of things that they do,” Chen said.

“They’re a particular bugbear for a lot of the industries which are heavy donors to the Trump administration and to the right wing,” Chen said. “They’re the ones, I believe, who do all the testing that actually factors into the calculation of risk.”

ORD also was responsible for regularly doing assessments that the Clean Air Act requires on pollutants like ozone and particulate matter, which result from the combustion of fossil fuels.

Frey said a tremendous amount of ORD work has gone into ozone, which is the result of complex interactions of precursor pollutants in the atmosphere. The open source computer modeling on ozone transport, developed by ORD researchers, helps inform decision-makers grappling with how to address smog around the country. The Biden administration finalized stricter standards for particulate matter in its final year based on ORD’s risk assessment, and the Trump administration is now undoing those rules.

Aidan Hughes contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Photo of Inside Climate News

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UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

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Under the terms of the legislation, recipients of such a notice are unable to discuss the matter publicly, even with customers affected by the order, unless granted permission by the Home Secretary.

The legislation’s use against Apple has triggered the tech industry’s highest-profile battle over encryption technology in almost a decade.

In response to the demand, Apple withdrew its most secure cloud storage service from the UK in February and is now challenging the Home Office’s order at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which probes complaints against the UK’s security services.

Last month, Meta-owned WhatsApp said it would join Apple’s legal challenge, in a rare collaboration between the Silicon Valley rivals.

In the meantime, the Home Office continues to pursue its case with Apple at the tribunal.

Its lawyers discussed the next legal steps this month, reflecting the divisions within government over how best to proceed. “At this point, the government has not backed down,” said one person familiar with the legal process.

A third senior British official added that the UK government was reluctant to push “anything that looks to the US vice-president like a free-speech issue.”

In a combative speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance argued that free speech and democracy were threatened by European elites.

The UK official added, this “limits what we’re able to do in the future, particularly in relation to AI regulation.” The Labour government has delayed plans for AI legislation until after May next year.

Trump has also been critical of the UK stance on encryption.

The US president has likened the UK’s order to Apple to “something… that you hear about with China,” saying in February that he had told Starmer: “You can’t do this.”

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also suggested the order would be an “egregious violation” of Americans’ privacy that risked breaching the two countries’ data agreement.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment. “We have never built a back door or master key to any of our products, and we never will,” Apple said in February.

The UK government did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Vance declined to comment.

The Home Office has previously said the UK has “robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy” and that these powers “are only used on an exceptional basis, in relation to the most serious crimes.”

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Southwestern drought likely to continue through 2100, research finds

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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.

The drought in the Southwestern US is likely to last for the rest of the 21st century and potentially beyond as global warming shifts the distribution of heat in the Pacific Ocean, according to a study published last week led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Using sediment cores collected in the Rocky Mountains, paleoclimatology records and climate models, the researchers found warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions can alter patterns of atmospheric and marine heat in the North Pacific Ocean in a way resembling what’s known as the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), fluctuations in sea surface temperatures that result in decreased winter precipitation in the American Southwest. But in this case, the phenomenon can last far longer than the usual 30-year cycle of the PDO.

“If the sea surface temperature patterns in the North Pacific were just the result of processes related to stochastic [random] variability in the past decade or two, we would have just been extremely unlucky, like a really bad roll of the dice,” said Victoria Todd, the lead author of the study and a PhD student in geosciences at University of Texas at Austin. “But if, as we hypothesize, this is a forced change in the sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific, this will be sustained into the future, and we need to start looking at this as a shift, instead of just the result of bad luck.”

Currently, the Southwestern US is experiencing a megadrought resulting in the aridification of the landscape, a decades-long drying of the region brought on by climate change and the overconsumption of the region’s water. That’s led to major rivers and their basins, such as the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, seeing reduced flows and a decline of the water stored in underground aquifers, which is forcing states and communities to reckon with a sharply reduced water supply. Farmers have cut back on the amount of water they use. Cities are searching for new water supplies. And states, tribes, and federal agencies are engaging in tense negotiations over how to manage declining resources like the Colorado River going forward.

Southwestern drought likely to continue through 2100, research finds Read More »

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RFK Jr. wants to change program that stopped vaccine makers from leaving US market

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RFK Jr. is targeting a little-known program that underpins childhood immunizations in the US.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Capitol Hill on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Tasos Katopodis

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system.

Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.

In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots—without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts.

Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccination group and previously accused the pharmaceutical industry of inflicting “unnecessary and risky vaccines” on children for profits, has long argued that the program removes any incentive for the industry to make safe products.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy condemned what he called corruption in the program and said he had assigned a team to overhaul it and expand who could seek compensation. He didn’t detail his plans but did repeat the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and suggested, without citing any evidence, that shots could also be responsible for a litany of chronic ailments, from diabetes to narcolepsy.

There are a number of ways he could blow up the program and prompt vaccine makers to stop selling shots in the US, like they did in the 1980s. The trust fund that pays awards, for instance, could run out of money if the government made it easy for Kennedy’s laundry list of common health problems to qualify for payments from the fund.

Or he could pick away at the program one shot at a time. Right now, immunizations routinely recommended for children or pregnant women are covered by the program. Kennedy has the power to drop vaccines from the list, a move that would open up their manufacturers to the kinds of lawsuits that made them flee years ago.

Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, who served as New Jersey’s state epidemiologist and then spent a dozen years as a vaccine executive at Merck, is among those worried.

“If his unstated goal is to basically destroy the vaccine industry, that could do it,” said Bresnitz, who retired from Merck and has consulted for vaccine manufacturers. “I still believe, having worked in the industry, that they care about protecting American health, but they are also for-profit companies with shareholders, and anything that detracts from the bottom line that can be avoided, they will avoid.”

A spokesperson for PhRMA, a US trade group for pharmaceutical companies, told ProPublica in a written statement that upending the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program “would threaten continued patient access to FDA-approved vaccines.”

The spokesperson, Andrew Powaleny, said the program “has compensated thousands of claims while helping ensure the continued availability of a safe and effective vaccine supply. It remains a vital safeguard for public health and importantly doesn’t shield manufacturers from liability.”

Since its inception, the compensation fund has paid about $4.8 billion in awards for harm from serious side effects, such as life-threatening allergic reactions and Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition that can cause paralysis. The federal agency that oversees the program found that for every 1 million doses of vaccine distributed between 2006 and 2023, about one person was compensated for an injury.

Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has turned the staid world of immunizations on its ear. He reneged on the US government’s pledge to fund vaccinations for the world’s poorest kids. He fired every member of the federal advisory group that recommends which shots Americans get, and his new slate vowed to scrutinize the US childhood immunization schedule. Measles, a vaccine-preventable disease eliminated here in 2000, roared back and hit a grim record—more cases than the US has seen in 33 years, including three deaths. When a US senator asked Kennedy if he recommended measles shots, Kennedy answered, “Senator, if I advised you to swim in a lake that I knew there to be alligators in, wouldn’t you want me to tell you there were alligators in it?”

Fed up, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies sued Kennedy last week, accusing him of dismantling “the longstanding, Congressionally-authorized, science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans.” (The federal government has yet to respond to the suit.)

Just about all drugs have side effects. What’s unusual about vaccines is that they’re given to healthy people—even newborns on their first day of life. And many shots protect not just the individuals receiving them but also the broader community by making it harder for deadly scourges to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that routine childhood immunizations have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations among the generation of Americans born between 1994 and 2023.

To most people, the nation’s vaccine system feels like a solid, reliable fact of life, doling out shots to children like clockwork. But in reality it is surprisingly fragile.

There are only a handful of companies that make nearly all of the shots children receive. Only one manufacturer makes chickenpox vaccines. And just two or three make the shots that protect against more than a dozen diseases, including polio and measles. If any were to drop out, the country could find itself in the same crisis that led President Ronald Reagan to sign the law creating the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.

Back then, pharmaceutical companies faced hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the vaccine protecting kids from whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus caused unrelenting seizures that led to severe disabilities. (Today’s version of this shot is different.) One vaccine maker after another left the US market.

At one point, pediatricians could only buy whooping cough vaccines from a single company. Shortages were so bad that the CDC recommended doctors stop giving booster shots to preserve supplies for the most vulnerable babies.

While Congress debated what to do, public health clinics’ cost per dose jumped 5,000 percent in five years.

“We were really concerned that we would lose all vaccines, and we would get major resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases,” recalled Dr. Walter Orenstein, a vaccine expert who worked in the CDC’s immunization division at the time.

A Forbes headline captured the anxiety of parents, pediatricians, and public health workers: “Scared Shotless.” So a bipartisan group in Congress hammered out the no-fault system.

Today, the program covers vaccines routinely recommended for children or pregnant women once Congress approves the special tax that funds awards. (COVID-19 shots are part of a separate, often-maligned system for handling claims of harm, though Kennedy has said he’s looking at ways to add them to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.)

Under program rules, people who say they are harmed by covered vaccines can’t head straight to civil court to sue manufacturers. First, they have to go through the no-fault system. The law established a table of injuries and the time frame for when those conditions must have appeared in order to be considered for quicker payouts. A tax on those vaccines — now 75 cents for every disease that a shot protects against — flows into a trust fund that pays those approved for awards. Win or lose, the program, for the most part, pays attorney fees and forbids lawyers from taking a cut of the money paid to the injured.

The law set up a dedicated vaccine court where government officials known as special masters, who operate like judges, rule on cases without juries. People can ask for compensation for health problems not listed on the injury table, and they don’t have to prove that the vaccine maker was negligent or failed to warn them about the medical condition they wound up with. At the same time, they can’t claim punitive damages, which drive up payouts in civil courts, and pain and suffering payments are capped at $250,000.

Plaintiffs who aren’t satisfied with the outcome or whose cases drag on too long can exit the program and file their cases in traditional civil courts. There they can pursue punitive damages, contingency-fee agreements with lawyers and the usual evidence gathering that plaintiffs use to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing.

But a Supreme Court ruling, interpreting the law that created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, limited the kinds of claims that can prevail in civil court. So while the program isn’t a full liability shield for vaccine makers, its very existence significantly narrows the cases trial lawyers can file.

Kennedy has been involved in such civil litigation. In his federal disclosures, he revealed that he referred plaintiffs to a law firm filing cases against Merck over its HPV shot in exchange for a 10 percent cut of the fees if they win. After a heated exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation proceedings, Kennedy said his share of any money from those cases would instead go to one of his adult sons, who he later said is a lawyer in California. His son Conor works as an attorney at the Los Angeles law firm benefiting from his referrals. When ProPublica asked about this arrangement, Conor Kennedy wrote, “I don’t work on those cases and I’m not receiving any money from them.”

In March, a North Carolina federal judge overseeing hundreds of cases that alleged Merck failed to warn patients about serious side effects from its HPV vaccine ruled in favor of Merck; an appeal is pending.

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program succeeded in stabilizing the business of childhood vaccines, with many more shots developed and approved in the decades since it was established. But even ardent supporters acknowledge there are problems. The program’s staff levels haven’t kept up with the caseload. The law capped the number of special masters at eight, and congressional bills to increase that have failed. An influx of adult claims swamped the system after adverse reactions to flu shots became eligible for compensation in 2005 and serious shoulder problems were added to the injury table in 2017.

The quick and smooth system of payouts originally envisioned has evolved into a more adversarial one with lawyers for the Department of Justice duking it out with plaintiffs’ attorneys, which Kennedy says runs counter to the program’s intent. Many cases drag on for years.

In his recent interview with Carlson, he described “the lawyers of the Department of Justice, the leaders of it” working on the cases as corrupt. “They saw their job as protecting the trust fund rather than taking care of people who made this national sacrifice, and we’re going to change all that,” he said. “And I’ve brought in a team this week that is starting to work on that.”

The system is “supposed to be generous and fast and gives a tie to the runner,” he told Carlson. “In other words, if there’s doubts about, you know, whether somebody’s injury came from a vaccine or not, you’re going to assume they got it and compensate them.”

Kennedy didn’t identify who is on the team reviewing the program. At one point in the interview, he said, “We just brought a guy in this week who’s going to be revolutionizing the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.”

The HHS employee directory now lists Andrew Downing as a counselor working in Kennedy’s office. Downing for many years has filed claims with the program and suits in civil courts on behalf of clients alleging harm from shots. Last month, HHS awarded a contract for “Vaccine Injury Compensation Program expertise” to Downing’s firm, as NOTUS has reported.

Downing did not respond to a voicemail left at his law office. HHS didn’t reply to a request to make him and Kennedy available for an interview and declined to answer detailed questions about its plans for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In the past, an HHS spokesperson has said that Kennedy is “not anti-vaccine—he is pro-safety.”

While it’s not clear what changes Downing and Kennedy have in mind, Kennedy’s interview with Carlson offered some insights. Kennedy said he was working to expand the program’s three-year statute of limitations so that more people can be compensated. Downing has complained that patients who have certain autoimmune disorders don’t realize their ailments were caused by a vaccine until it’s too late to file. Congress would have to change the law to allow this, experts said.

A key issue is whether Kennedy will try to add new ailments to the list of injuries that qualify for quicker awards.

In the Carlson interview, Kennedy dismissed the many studies and scientific consensus that shots don’t cause autism as nothing more than statistical trickery. “We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said.

The vaccine court spent years in the 2000s trying cases that alleged autism was caused by the vaccine ingredient thimerosal and the shot that protects people from measles, mumps, and rubella. Facing more than 5,000 claims, the court asked a committee of attorneys representing children with autism to pick test cases that represented themes common in the broader group. In the cases that went to trial, the special masters considered more than 900 medical articles and heard testimony from dozens of experts. In each of those cases, the special masters found that the shots didn’t cause autism.

In at least two subsequent cases, children with autism were granted compensation because they met the criteria listed in the program’s injury table, according to a vaccine court decision. That table, for instance, lists certain forms of encephalopathy—a type of brain dysfunction—as a rare side effect of shots that protect people from whooping cough, measles, mumps, and rubella. In a 2016 vaccine court ruling, Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. explained, “The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism.”

Hastings noted that when Congress set up the injury table, the lawmakers acknowledged that people would get compensated for “some injuries that were not, in fact, truly vaccine-caused.”

Many disabling neurological disorders in children become apparent around the time kids get their shots. Figuring out whether the timing was coincidental or an indication that the vaccines caused the problem has been a huge challenge.

Devastating seizures in young children were the impetus for the compensation program. But in the mid-1990s, after a yearslong review of the evidence, HHS removed seizure disorder from the injury table and narrowed the type of encephalopathy that would automatically qualify for compensation. Scientists subsequently have discovered genetic mutations that cause some of the most severe forms of epilepsy.

What’s different now, though, is that Kennedy, as HHS secretary, has the power to add autism or other disorders to that injury table. Experts say he’d have to go through the federal government’s cumbersome rulemaking process to do so. He could also lean on federal employees to green-light more claims.

In addition, Kennedy has made it clear he’s thinking about illnesses beyond autism. “We have now this epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country, and there’s no way to rule out vaccines as one of the key culprits,” he told Carlson. Kennedy mentioned diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, seizure disorders, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, peanut allergies, and eczema.

President Donald Trump’s budget estimated that the value of the investments in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program trust fund could reach $4.8 billion this year. While that’s a lot of money, a life-care plan for a child with severe autism can cost tens of millions of dollars, and the CDC reported in April that 1 in 31 children is diagnosed with autism by their 8th birthday. The other illnesses Kennedy mentioned also affect a wide swath of the US population.

Dr. Paul Offit, a co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for years has sparred with Kennedy over vaccines. Offit fears that Kennedy will use flawed studies to justify adding autism and other common medical problems to the injury table, no matter how much they conflict with robust scientific research.

“You can do that, and you will bankrupt the program,” he said. “These are ways to end vaccine manufacturing in this country.”

If the trust fund were to run out of money, Congress would have to act, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at University of California Law San Francisco who has studied the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Congress could increase the excise tax on vaccines, she said, or pass a law limiting what’s on the injury table. Or Congress could abolish the program, and the vaccine makers would find themselves back in the situation they faced in the 1980s.

“That’s not unrealistic,” Reiss said.

Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, last year proposed the End the Vaccine Carveout Act, which would have allowed people to bypass the no-fault system and head straight to civil court. His press release for the bill—written in September, before Kennedy’s ascension to HHS secretary—quoted Kennedy saying, “If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”

The legislation never came up for a vote. A spokesperson for the congressman said he expects to introduce it again “in the very near future.”

Renée Gentry, director of the George Washington University Law School’s Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic, thinks it’s unlikely Congress will blow up the no-fault program. But Gentry, who represents people filing claims for injuries, said it’s hard to predict what Congress, faced with a doomsday scenario, would do.

“Normally Democrats are friends of plaintiffs’ lawyers,” she said. “But talking about vaccines on the Hill is like walking on a razor blade that’s on fire.”

Photo of ProPublica

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EU presses pause on probe of X as US trade talks heat up

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While Trump and Musk have fallen out this year after developing a political alliance on the 2024 election, the US president has directly attacked EU penalties on US companies calling them a “form of taxation” and comparing fines on tech companies with “overseas extortion.”

Despite the US pressure, commission president Ursula von der Leyen has explicitly stated Brussels will not change its digital rule book. In April, the bloc imposed a total of €700 million fines on Apple and Facebook owner Meta for breaching antitrust rules.

But unlike the Apple and Meta investigations, which fall under the Digital Markets Act, there are no clear legal deadlines under the DSA. That gives the bloc more political leeway on when it announces its formal findings. The EU also has probes into Meta and TikTok under its content moderation rule book.

The commission said the “proceedings against X under the DSA are ongoing,” adding that the enforcement of “our legislation is independent of the current ongoing negotiations.”

It added that it “remains fully committed to the effective enforcement of digital legislation, including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.”

Anna Cavazzini, a European lawmaker for the Greens, said she expected the commission “to move on decisively with its investigation against X as soon as possible.”

“The commission must continue making changes to EU regulations an absolute red line in tariff negotiations with the US,” she added.

Alongside Brussels’ probe into X’s transparency breaches, it is also looking into content moderation at the company after Musk hosted Alice Weidel of the far-right Alternative for Germany for a conversation on the social media platform ahead of the country’s elections.

Some European lawmakers, as well as the Polish government, are also pressing the commission to open an investigation into Musk’s Grok chatbot after it spewed out antisemitic tropes last week.

X said it disagreed “with the commission’s assessment of the comprehensive work we have done to comply with the Digital Services Act and the commission’s interpretation of the Act’s scope.”

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Rough road to “energy dominance” after GOP kneecaps wind and solar

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Experts argue that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will increase costs for consumers.

As the One Big Beautiful Bill Act squeaked its way through Congress earlier this month, its supporters heralded what they described as a new era for American energy and echoed what has become a familiar phrase among President Donald Trump’s supporters.

“Congress has taken decisive action to advance President Trump’s energy dominance agenda,” said American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers in a statement after the House passed the bill.

Republicans concurred, with legislators ranging from Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, to Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky releasing statements after the bill’s passage championing its role in securing “energy dominance.”

The idea and rhetoric of energy dominance has its roots in the first Trump administration, although a formal definition for the phrase is hard to come by. When Trump signed an executive order this February establishing the National Energy Dominance Council, he included expanding energy production, lowering prices and reducing reliance on foreign entities among the council’s goals, while also emphasizing the importance of oil production and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

The phrase has become something of a battle cry among the president’s supporters, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin writing in the Washington Examiner on July 8 that “Trump is securing America’s energy future in a modern-day version of how our Founding Fathers secured our freedom.”

“Through American energy dominance, we’re not just powering homes and businesses,” Zeldin said. “We’re Powering the Great American Comeback.”

But despite claims from Republican officials and the fossil fuel industry that the megabill will help secure energy dominance, some experts worry that the legislation’s cuts to wind and solar actually undermine those goals at a time when electricity demand is rising, limiting America’s ability to add new generation capacity, raising prices for consumers and ceding global leadership in the clean energy transition.

Dan O’Brien, a senior modeling analyst at the climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, said the bill will increase domestic production of oil and gas by increasing lease sales for drilling—mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, onshore and in Alaska, O’Brien said.

A January study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute reported that a legislatively directed offshore oil and natural gas leasing program, which API says is similar to the measures included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act months later, would increase oil and natural gas production by 140,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day by 2034.

That number would rise to 510,000 BOE per day by 2040, the study says.

Losses likely to outweigh the gains

However, O’Brien said the gains America can expect from the fossil fuel industry pale in comparison to losses from renewable energy.

Energy Innovation’s analysis projects that less than 20 gigawatts of additional generation capacity from fossil fuels can be expected by 2035 as a result of the bill, compared to a decrease of more than 360 gigawatts in additional capacity from renewable energy.

The difference between those numbers—a decrease of 344 gigawatts—is roughly equivalent to the energy use of about 100 million homes, O’Brien said.

According to O’Brien, if the One Big Beautiful Bill had not been passed, the U.S. could have expected to add around 1,000 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity in the next 10 years.

But as a result of the bill, “around a third of that will be lost,” O’Brien said.

Those losses largely stem from the bill’s rollback of incentives for wind and solar projects.

“Solar and wind are subject to different—and harsher—treatment under the OBBB than other technologies,” according to the law firm Latham & Watkins. Tax credits for those projects are now set to phase out on a significantly faster timeline, rolling back some of the commitments promised under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Lucero Marquez, the associate director for federal climate policy at the Center for American Progress, said that removing those incentives undercuts America’s ability to achieve its energy needs.

“America needs affordable, reliable and domestically produced energy, which wind and solar does,” Marquez said. “Gutting clean energy incentives really just does not help meet those goals.”

New projects will also be subject to rules “primarily intended to prevent Chinese companies from claiming the tax credits and to reduce reliance on China for supply chains of clean energy technologies,” the Bipartisan Policy Center wrote in an explainer.

However, those rules are “extremely complex” and could lead to “decreased U.S. manufacturing and increased Chinese dominance in these supply chains, contrary to their goal,” according to the think tank.

Surging energy prices

O’Brien said Energy Innovation’s modeling suggests that the loss in additional generation capacity from renewable energies will lead existing power plants, which are more expensive to run than new renewable energy projects would have been, to run more frequently to offset the lack of generation from wind and solar projects not coming online.

The consequences of that, according to O’Brien, are that energy prices will rise, which also means the amount of energy produced will go down in response to decreased demand for the more expensive supply.

An analysis by the REPEAT Project from the Princeton ZERO Lab and Evolved Energy Research similarly predicted increased energy prices for consumers as a result of the bill.

According to that analysis, average household energy costs will increase by over $280 per year by 2035, a more than 13 percent hike.

One of the authors of that analysis, Princeton University professor Jesse D. Jenkins, did not respond to interview requests for this article but previously wrote in an email to Inside Climate News that Republicans’ claims about securing energy dominance through the bill “don’t hold up.”

In an emailed statement responding to questions about those analyses and how their findings align with the administration’s goals of attaining energy dominance, White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers wrote that “since Day One, President Trump has taken decisive steps to unleash American energy, which has driven oil production and reduced the cost of energy.”

“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will turbocharge energy production by streamlining operations for maximum efficiency and expanding domestic production capacity,” Rogers wrote, “which will deliver further relief to American families and businesses.”

In an emailed statement, Rep. Guthrie said that the bill “takes critical steps toward both securing our energy infrastructure and bringing more dispatchable power online.”

“Specifically, the bill does this by repairing and beginning to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was drained during the Biden-Harris Administration, and through the creation of the Energy Dominance Financing program to support new investments that unleash affordable and reliable energy,” the Energy and Commerce chairman wrote.

Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, also said that the bill “advances the administration’s stated goal of energy dominance,” but added that it does so “primarily in sunsetting, last-generation technologies, while ceding the renewable energy future to others.”

“It wants lower energy costs at home and more U.S. energy exports abroad—for both economic and strategic reasons … the OBBB delivers on that agenda,” Hendrix said.

Still, Hendrix added that “the United States that emerges from all this may be a bigger player in a declining sector—fossil fuels—and a massively diminished player in a rapidly growing one: renewable energy.”

“It will help promote the Trump administration’s ambitions of fossil dominance (or at least influence) but on pain of helping build a renewable energy sector for the future,” Hendrix wrote. “That is net-negative globally (and locally) from a holistic perspective.”

Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, argued that he sees a lot in the bill “that is going to move us in the opposite direction from energy dominance.”

“They should have named this bill the ‘Energy Inflation Act,’ because what it’s going to mean is less energy generated and higher costs for households and for businesses, and particularly manufacturing businesses,” Hersh said.

Hersh also said that even if the bill does lead to increased exports of U.S. produced energy, that would have a direct negative impact on costs for consumers at home.

“That’s only going to increase domestic prices for energy, and this has long been known and why past administrations have been reluctant to expand exports of LNG,” Hersh said. “That increased demand for the products and competition for the resources will mean higher energy prices for U.S. consumers and businesses.”

“Pushing against energy dominance”

Frank Maisano, a senior principal at the lobbying firm Bracewell LLP, said that although the bill creates important opportunities for things such as oil and gas leasing and the expansion of geothermal and hydrogen energy, the bill’s supporters “undercut themselves” by limiting opportunities for growth in wind and solar.

“The Biden folks tried to lean heavily onto the energy transition because they wanted to limit emissions,” Maisano said. “They wanted to push oil and gas out and push renewables in.”

Now, “these guys are doing the opposite, which is to push oil and gas and limit wind and solar,” Maisano said. “Neither of those strategies are good strategies. You need to have a combination of all these strategies and all these generation sources, especially on the electricity side, to make it work and to meet the challenges that we face.”

Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative, said that while she isn’t concerned about whether the U.S. will build enough electricity generation to meet the needs of massive consumers like data centers and AI, she is worried that the bill pushes the next generation of that growth further towards fossil fuels.

“I don’t think energy dominance—not just right this instant, but going forward—is just in fossil fuels,” Gross said.

Even beyond the One Big Beautiful Bill, Gross said that many of the administration’s actions run counter to their stated objectives on energy.

“You hear all this talk about energy dominance, but for me it’s just a phrase, because a lot of things that the administration is actually doing are pushing against energy dominance,” Gross said.

“If you think about the tariff policy, for instance, ‘drill, baby, drill’ and a 50 percent tariff on pipeline steel do not go together. Those are pulling in completely opposite directions.”

Aside from domestic energy needs, Gross also worried that the pullback from renewable energy will harm America’s position on the global stage.

“It’s pretty clear which way the world is going,” Gross said. “I worry that we’re giving up … I don’t like the term ‘energy dominance,’ but future leadership in the world’s energy supply by pulling back from those.”

“We’re sort of ceding those technologies to China in a way that is very frustrating to me.”

Yet even in the wake of the bill’s passage, some experts see hope for the future of renewable energy in the U.S.

Kevin Book, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners, said that the bill “sets up a slower, shallower transition” toward renewable energy. However, he added that he doesn’t think it represents the end of that transition.

“Most of the capacity we’re adding to our grid in America these days is renewable, and it’s not simply because of federal incentives,” Book said. “So if you take away those federal incentives, there were still economic drivers.”

Still, Book said that the final impacts of the Trump administration’s actions on renewable energy are yet to be seen.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is not the end of the story,” Book said. “There’s more coming, either regulatorily and/or legislatively.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Photo of Inside Climate News

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BYD has caught up with Tesla in the global EV race. Here’s how.

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“Tesla has partnered with Baidu [a Chinese search and AI group] but Baidu can’t disclose all the data points to Tesla,” Duo adds. “The real-world data is definitely more valuable.”

Home field advantage

While BYD might have home turf advantage when it comes to data collection and security, Wang’s late pivot to driverless functionality has created some risks for the group.

One is question marks over financial sustainability. Price wars among Chinese carmakers are putting margins and the industry’s balance sheet under strain as Beijing demands more action to protect suppliers in the world’s largest car market.

It has also opened up some rare gaps in BYD’s otherwise formidable vertical integration. Its market leadership has also enabled it to pressure suppliers for price cuts and extended payment terms, allowing it to rigorously control costs.

But according to Chris McNally, an analyst with US investment bank Evercore, the God’s Eye platform uses software and hardware partners, including Momenta, a Chinese group backed by General Motors in the US, and some chips from Nvidia.

BYD EVP next to car

BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li said competition with Tesla in EVs and autonomous technology would accelerate innovation, ultimately making BYD a “better’” company.

Credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li said competition with Tesla in EVs and autonomous technology would accelerate innovation, ultimately making BYD a “better’” company. Credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

For years, the risks associated with reliance on US-made chips in particular have hovered over the Chinese car sector—plans for driverless systems could be held back at any moment by US export controls or sanctions.

“Given the geopolitical environment, no one will invest in a technology with such a high risk that they’re still relying on foreign technology,” says Raymond Tsang, an automotive technology expert with Bain in Shanghai.

However, these vulnerabilities might not persist. Analysts believe BYD will soon develop most of its driverless systems in house and increasingly swap out Nvidia chips for those made by Beijing-based Horizon Robotics. “This is the BYD way to drive costs down,” McNally says.

It would also be consistent with a broader shift towards self-reliance in key technologies, in response to Washington’s steadily increasing restrictions on technology exports to China.

Yuqian Ding, a veteran Beijing-based auto analyst with HSBC, says that while BYD has not talked about developing a robotaxi service, executives have made “very clear” their plans to develop in-house all the important software and hardware needed for autonomous vehicles.

Wang, the BYD boss, has also previously indicated to analysts that the company has all the tech and know-how to develop robots, in another potential long-term challenge to Musk.

“With more than 5 million scale per annum, they can do everything,” Ding says, adding: “That’s the ultimate goal . . . Their target is much closer to Tesla.”

In an interview with the Financial Times this year, BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li said competition with Tesla in EVs and autonomous technology would accelerate innovation, ultimately making BYD a “better” company.

“In the future, if you are not producing an electric car, if you’re not introducing technology in intelligence and autonomous driving, you will be out,” she warned.

Additional reporting by Gloria Li in Hong Kong

Graphic illustration by Ian Bott and data visualisation by Ray Douglas

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Why Gov. Greg Abbott won’t release his emails with Elon Musk

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The language Abbott’s office used appears to be fairly boilerplate. Paxton’s office, in an explanation of the common-law privacy exception on its website, mentions that “personal financial information” that doesn’t deal with government transactions “is generally highly intimate or embarrassing and must be withheld.”

But Bill Aleshire, a Texas-based attorney specializing in public records law, was appalled that the governor is claiming that months of emails between his office and one of the world’s richest people are all private.

“Right now, it appears they’ve charged you $244 for records they have no intention of giving you,” Aleshire said. “That is shocking.”

Aleshire said it’s not unusual for government agencies to tap the common-law privacy exception in an attempt to withhold records from the public. But he’s used to it being cited in cases that involve children, medical data, or other highly personal information—not for emails between an elected official and a businessman.

“You’re boxing in the dark,” Aleshire said. “You can’t even see what the target is or what’s behind their claim.”

Aleshire added that due to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling, there is effectively no way to enforce public records laws against Abbott and other top state officials. He called the decision an “ace card” for these politicians.

The case dealt with requests to release Abbott and Paxton’s communications in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. The high court ruled that it is the only body that can review whether these officials are in compliance with public records laws.

Kevin Bagnall, a lawyer representing Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, also wrote a letter to Paxton’s office arguing the emails should be kept secret. He cited one main reason: They contain “commercial information whose disclosure would cause SpaceX substantial competitive harm.”

Most of the rest of Bagnall’s letter, which further explained SpaceX’s argument, was redacted.

Musk and representatives for his companies did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Abbott’s spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about the records, including whether The Texas Newsroom would be refunded if Paxton withholds them.

In a statement, he said, “The Office of the Governor rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and will release any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.”

The office of the attorney general has 45 business days to determine whether to release Abbott’s records.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT in Austin. Reach her at [email protected]. Sign up for KUT newsletters. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

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5 big EV takeaways from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”

Cars, EV charger, EVs, One Big Beautiful Bill, syndication / /

Plus, OBBB got rid of penalties for automakers who fail to meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. These standards have ramped up over the last 50 years and forced auto companies to make their vehicles more gas-efficient. They pushed manufacturers to, for example, get into hybrids, and build some of the first modern electrics. Now, they’ll no longer have that extra incentive to get clean, emission-wise.

Keep your eye on your city or state

Just because federal EV support is going away doesn’t mean all government support is over in the US. “I do think we’ll see states step in to fill the gap,” says Harris. So it’s worth doing a bit of research to see what incentives exist where you live.

To date, 11 states—California, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington—have joined together to experiment with new polices and programs that promote cleaner vehicles.

And last month, in the middle of a fight with the Trump administration over California’s power to set its own clean air rules, California governor Gavin Newsom directed state agencies to come up with new and innovative ways to support zero-emission vehicles. The state still plans to phase out sales of new gas cars by 2035.

Stay optimistic, EV fans

Industry watchers seem certain of one thing: Despite this setback in the US, electric vehicles are the future. So while American consumers and automakers try to figure out how to cope with uncertainty, electric progress will continue all over the world.

Expect China to continue to put out well-built and -priced EVs, and export them all over the world. “Americans are paying more and closer attention to those offerings, and eventually there’s going to be demand,” says Nigro. American companies are going to have to keep up—or else. ”That’s the existential crisis the industry faces,” he says.

Yoon, the Edmunds analyst, also expects the new bill to result in short-term electric pain. But he believes there’s light ahead. In fact, Yoon is so optimistic, he allows himself an auto metaphor. “Ultimately, this will be a speed bump rather than a true obstacle,” he says.

This story originally appeared at wired.com.

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