Donald Trump

Trump confirms US is seeking 10% stake in Intel. Bernie Sanders approves.

bernie sanders, Chips Act, Donald Trump, intel, Joe Biden, Micron, Policy, samsung, TSMC / Mike M. / August 21, 2025

Trump plan salvages CHIPS Act he vowed to kill

While chipmakers wait for more clarity, Lutnick has suggested that Trump—who campaigned on killing the CHIPS Act—has found a way to salvage the legislation that Joe Biden viewed as his lasting legacy. It seems possible that the plan arose after Trump realized how hard it would be to ax the legislation completely, with grants already finalized (but most not disbursed).

“The Biden administration literally was giving Intel money for free and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies just giving the money for free, and Donald Trump turned it into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action for the American taxpayer,'” Lutnick said.

“It’s not governance, we’re just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity for the Trump administration, for the American people,” Lutnick told CNBC.

Further, US firms could potentially benefit from any potential arrangements. For Intel, the “highly unusual” deal that Trump is mulling now could help the struggling chipmaker compete with its biggest rivals, including Nvidia, Samsung, and TSMC, BBC noted.

Vincent Fernando, founder of the investment consultancy Zero One, told the BBC that taking a stake in Intel “makes sense, given the company’s key role in producing semiconductors in the US,” which is a major Trump priority.

But as Intel likely explores the potential downsides of accepting such a deal, other companies applying for federal grants may already be alarmed by Trump’s move. Fernando suggested that Trump’s deals to take ownership stake in US firms—which economics professor Kevin J. Fox said only previously occurred during the global financial crisis—could add “uncertainty for any company who is already part of a federal grant program or considering one.”

Fox also agreed that the Intel deal could deter other companies from accepting federal grants, while possibly making it harder for Intel to run its business “effectively.”

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Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out

ad boycott, censorship, Donald Trump, elon musk, federal trade commission, ftc, Policy, trump administration, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / Beth Washington / August 19, 2025

Judge blocks FTC’s Media Matters probe as a likely First Amendment violation.

Media Matters for America (MMFA)—a nonprofit that Elon Musk accused of sparking a supposedly illegal ad boycott on X—won its bid to block a sweeping Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe that appeared to have rushed to silence Musk’s foe without ever adequately explaining why the government needed to get involved.

In her opinion granting MMFA’s preliminary injunction, US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan—a Joe Biden appointee—agreed that the FTC’s probe was likely to be ruled as a retaliatory violation of the First Amendment.

Warning that the FTC’s targeting of reporters was particularly concerning, Sooknanan wrote that the “case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” where it’s reasonable to conclude that conservative FTC staffers were perhaps motivated to eliminate a media organization dedicated to correcting conservative misinformation online.

“It should alarm all Americans when the Government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”

FTC staff social posts may be evidence of retaliation

In 2023, Musk vowed to file a “thermonuclear” lawsuit because advertisers abandoned X after MMFA published a report showing that major brands’ ads had appeared next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Musk then tried to sue MMFA “all over the world,” Sooknanan wrote, while “seemingly at the behest of Steven Miller, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, the Missouri and Texas Attorneys General” joined Musk’s fight, starting their own probes.

But Musk’s “thermonuclear” attack—attempting to fight MMFA on as many fronts as possible—has appeared to be fizzling out. A federal district court preliminarily enjoined the “aggressive” global litigation strategy, and the same court issued the recent FTC ruling that also preliminarily enjoined the AG probes “as likely being retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment.”

The FTC under the Trump administration appeared to be the next line of offense, supporting Musk’s attack on MMFA. And Sooknanan said that FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson’s own comments in interviews, which characterized Media Matters and the FTC’s probe “in ideological terms,” seem to indicate “at a minimum that Chairman Ferguson saw the FTC’s investigation as having a partisan bent.”

A huge part of the problem for the FTC was social media comments posted before some senior FTC staffers were appointed by Ferguson. Those posts appeared to show the FTC growing increasingly partisan, perhaps pointedly hiring staffers who they knew would help take down groups like MMFA.

As examples, Sooknanan pointed to Joe Simonson, the FTC’s director of public affairs, who had posted that MMFA “employed a number of stupid and resentful Democrats who went to like American University and didn’t have the emotional stability to work as an assistant press aide for a House member.” And Jon Schwepp, Ferguson’s senior policy advisor, had claimed that Media Matters—which he branded as the “scum of the earth”—”wants to weaponize powerful institutions to censor conservatives.” And finally, Jake Denton, the FTC’s chief technology officer, had alleged that MMFA is “an organization devoted to pressuring companies into silencing conservative voices.”

Further, the timing of the FTC investigation—arriving “on the heels of other failed attempts to seek retribution”—seemed to suggest it was “motivated by retaliatory animus,” the judge said. The FTC’s “fast-moving” investigation suggests that Ferguson “was chomping at the bit to ‘take investigative steps in the new administration under President Trump’ to make ‘progressives’ like Media Matters ‘give up,'” Sooknanan wrote.

Musk’s fight continues in Texas, for now

Possibly most damning to the FTC case, Sooknanan suggested the FTC has never adequately explained the reason why it’s probing Media Matters. In the “Subject of Investigation” field, the FTC wrote only “see attached,” but the attachment was just a list of specific demands and directions to comply with those demands.

Eventually, the FTC offered “something resembling an explanation,” Sooknanan said. But their “ultimate explanation”—that Media Matters may have information related to a supposedly illegal coordinated campaign to game ad pricing, starve revenue, and censor conservative platforms—”does not inspire confidence that they acted in good faith,” Sooknanan said. The judge considered it problematic that the FTC never explained why it has reason to believe MMFA has the information it’s seeking. Or why its demand list went “well beyond the investigation’s purported scope,” including “a reporter’s resource materials,” financial records, and all documents submitted so far in Musk’s X lawsuit.

“It stands to reason,” Sooknanan wrote, that the FTC launched its probe “because it wanted to continue the years’ long pressure campaign against Media Matters by Mr. Musk and his political allies.”

In its defense, the FTC argued that all civil investigative demands are initially broad, insisting that MMFA would have had the opportunity to narrow the demands if things had proceeded without the lawsuit. But Sooknanan declined to “consider a hypothetical narrowed” demand list instead of “the actual demand issued to Media Matters,” while noting that the court was “troubled” by the FTC’s suggestion that “the federal Government routinely issues civil investigative demands it knows to be overbroad with the goal of later narrowing those demands presumably in exchange for compliance.”

“Perhaps the Defendants will establish otherwise later in these proceedings,” Sooknanan wrote. “But at this stage, the record certainly supports that inference,” that the FTC was politically motivated to back Musk’s fight.

As the FTC mulls a potential appeal, the only other major front of Musk’s fight with MMFA is the lawsuit that X Corp. filed in Texas. Musk allegedly expects more favorable treatment in the Texas court, and MMFA is currently pushing to transfer the case to California after previously arguing that Musk was venue shopping by filing the lawsuit in Texas, claiming that it should be “fatal” to his case.

Musk has so far kept the case in Texas, but risking a venue change could be enough to ultimately doom his “thermonuclear” attack on MMFA. To prevent that, X is arguing that it’s “hard to imagine” how changing the venue and starting over with a new judge two years into such complex litigation would best serve the “interests of justice.”

Media Matters, however, has “easily met” requirements to show that substantial damage has already been done—not just because MMFA has struggled financially and stopped reporting on X and the FTC—but because any loss of First Amendment freedoms “unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

The FTC tried to claim that any reputational harm, financial harm, and self-censorship are “self-inflicted” wounds for MMFA. But the FTC did “not respond to the argument that the First Amendment injury itself is irreparable, thereby conceding it,” Sooknanan wrote. That likely weakens the FTC’s case in an appeal.

MMFA declined Ars’ request to comment. But despite the lawsuits reportedly plunging MMFA into a financial crisis, its president, Angelo Carusone, told The New York Times that “the court’s ruling demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump administration.”

“We will continue to stand up and fight for the First Amendment rights that protect every American,” Carusone said.

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

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US government agency drops Grok after MechaHitler backlash, report says

AI, ai action plan, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, chatgpt, Donald Trump, elon musk, grok, openai, Policy, trump administration, US government, xAI / Beth Washington / August 15, 2025

xAI apparently lost a government contract after a tweak to Grok’s prompting triggered an antisemitic meltdown where the chatbot praised Hitler and declared itself MechaHitler last month.

Despite the scandal, xAI announced that its products would soon be available for federal workers to purchase through the General Services Administration. At the time, xAI claimed this was an “important milestone” for its government business.

But Wired reviewed emails and spoke to government insiders, which revealed that GSA leaders abruptly decided to drop xAI’s Grok from their contract offering. That decision to pull the plug came after leadership allegedly rushed staff to make Grok available as soon as possible following a persuasive sales meeting with xAI in June.

It’s unclear what exactly caused the GSA to reverse course, but two sources told Wired that they “believe xAI was pulled because of Grok’s antisemitic tirade.”

As of this writing, xAI’s “Grok for Government” website has not been updated to reflect GSA’s supposed removal of Grok from an offering that xAI noted would have allowed “every federal government department, agency, or office, to access xAI’s frontier AI products.”

xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment and so far has not confirmed that the GSA offering is off the table. If Wired’s report is accurate, GSA’s decision also seemingly did not influence the military’s decision to move forward with a $200 million xAI contract the US Department of Defense granted last month.

Government’s go-to tools will come from xAI’s rivals

If Grok is cut from the contract, that would suggest that Grok’s meltdown came at perhaps the worst possible moment for xAI, which is building the “world’s biggest supercomputer” as fast as it can to try to get ahead of its biggest AI rivals.

Grok seemingly had the potential to become a more widely used tool if federal workers opted for xAI’s models. Through Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, the president has similarly emphasized speed, pushing for federal workers to adopt AI as quickly as possible. Although xAI may no longer be involved in that broad push, other AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have partnered with the government to help Trump pull that off and stand to benefit long-term if their tools become entrenched in certain agencies.

US government agency drops Grok after MechaHitler backlash, report says Read More »

Trump orders cull of regulations governing commercial rocket launches

Commercial space, Donald Trump, executive order, FAA, launch, Science, Space, space policy, spacex, White House / DJ Henderson / August 14, 2025

The head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division will become a political appointee.

Birds take flight at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this 2010 photo. Credit: NASA

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing government agencies to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), grants licenses for commercial launch and reentry operations. The FAA is charged with ensuring launch and reentries comply with environmental laws, comport with US national interests, and don’t endanger the public.

The drive toward deregulation will be welcome news for companies like SpaceX, led by onetime Trump ally Elon Musk; SpaceX conducts nearly all of the commercial launches and reentries licensed by the FAA.

Deregulation time

Trump ordered Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also serves as the acting administrator of NASA, to “use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite… environmental reviews for… launch and reentry licenses and permits.” In the order signed by Trump, White House officials wrote that Duffy should consult with the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and follow “applicable law” in the regulatory cull.

The executive order also includes a clause directing Duffy to reevaluate, amend, or rescind a slate of launch-safety regulations written during the first Trump administration. The FAA published the new regulations, known as Part 450, in 2020, and they went into effect in 2021, but space companies have complained they are too cumbersome and have slowed down the license approval process.

And there’s more. Trump ordered NASA, the military, and DOT to eliminate duplicative reviews for spaceport development. This is particularly pertinent at federally owned launch ranges like those at Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Space Force Base, California; and Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Trump administration also plans to make the head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation a political appointee. This office oversees commercial launch and reentry licensing and was previously led by a career civil servant. Duffy will also hire an advisor on deregulation in the commercial spaceflight industry to join DOT, and the Office of Space Commerce will be elevated to a more prominent position within the Commerce Department.

“It is the policy of the United States to enhance American greatness in space by enabling a competitive launch marketplace and substantially increasing commercial space launch cadence and novel space activities by 2030,” Trump’s executive order reads. “To accomplish this, the federal government will streamline commercial license and permit approvals for United States-based operators.”

News of the executive order was reported last month by ProPublica, which wrote that the Trump administration was circulating draft language among federal agencies to slash rules to protect the environment and the public from the dangers of rocket launches. The executive order signed by Trump and released by the White House on Wednesday confirms ProPublica’s reporting.

Jared Margolis, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, criticized the Trump administration’s move.

“This reckless order puts people and wildlife at risk from private companies launching giant rockets that often explode and wreak devastation on surrounding areas,” Margolis said in a statement. “Bending the knee to powerful corporations by allowing federal agencies to ignore bedrock environmental laws is incredibly dangerous and puts all of us in harm’s way. This is clearly not in the public interest.”

Duffy, the first person to lead NASA and another federal department at the same time, argued the order is important to sustain economic growth in the space industry.

“By slashing red tape tying up spaceport construction, streamlining launch licenses so they can occur at scale, and creating high-level space positions in government, we can unleash the next wave of innovation,” Duffy said in a statement. “At NASA, this means continuing to work with commercial space companies and improving our spaceports’ ability to launch.”

Nipping NEPA

The executive order is emblematic of the Trump administration’s broader push to curtail environmental reviews for large infrastructure projects.

The White House has already directed federal agencies to repeal regulations enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a 1969 law that requires the feds prepare environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to evaluate the effects of government actions—such as licensing approvals—on the environment.

Regarding commercial spaceflight, the White House ordered the Transportation Department to create a list of activities officials there believe are not subject to NEPA and establish exclusions under NEPA for launch and reentry licenses.

Onlookers watch from nearby sand dunes as SpaceX prepares a Starship rocket for launch from Starbase, Texas. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

The changes to the environmental review process might be the most controversial part of Trump’s new executive order. Another section of the order—the attempt to reform or rescind the so-called Part 450 launch and reentry regulations—appears to have bipartisan support in Congress.

The FAA started implementing its new Part 450 commercial launch and reentry regulations less than five years ago after writing the rules in response to another Trump executive order signed in 2018. Part 450 was intended to streamline the launch approval process by allowing companies to submit applications for a series of launches or reentries, rather than requiring a new license for each mission.

But industry officials quickly criticized the new regulations, which they said didn’t account for rapid iteration of rockets and spacecraft like SpaceX’s enormous Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle. The FAA approved a SpaceX request in May to increase the number of approved Starship launches from five to 25 per year from the company’s base in Starship, Texas, near the US-Mexico border.

Last year, the FAA’s leadership under the Biden administration established a committee to examine the shortcomings of Part 450. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee submitted a joint request in February for the Government Accountability Office to conduct an independent review of the FAA’s Part 450 regulations.

“Reforming and streamlining commercial launch regulations and licensing is an area the Biden administration knew needed reform,” wrote Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space consulting firm Astralytical, in a post on X. “However, little was done. Will more be done with this executive order? I hope so. This was needed years ago.”

Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, applauded the Trump administration’s regulatory policy.

“This executive order will strengthen and grow the US commercial space industry by cutting red tape while maintaining a commitment to public safety, benefitting the American people and the US government that are increasingly reliant on space for our national and economic security,” Cavossa said in a statement.

Specific language in the new Trump executive order calls for the FAA to evaluate which regulations should be waived for hybrid launch or reentry vehicles that hold FAA airworthiness certificates, and which requirements should be remitted for rockets with a flight termination system, an explosive charge designed to destroy a launch vehicle if it veers off its pre-approved course after liftoff. These are similar to the topics the Biden-era FAA was looking at last year.

The new Trump administration policy also seeks to limit the authority of state officials in enforcing their own environmental rules related to the construction or operation of spaceports.

This is especially relevant after the California Coastal Commission rejected a proposal by SpaceX to double its launch cadence at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a spaceport located roughly 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles. The Space Force, which owns Vandenberg and is one of SpaceX’s primary customers, backs SpaceX’s push for more launches.

Finally, the order gives the Department of Commerce responsibility for authorizing “novel space activities” such as in-space assembly and manufacturing, asteroid and planetary mining, and missions to remove space debris from orbit.

This story was updated at 12: 30 am EDT on August 14 with statements from the Center for Biological Diversity and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Trump strikes “wild” deal making US firms pay 15% tax on China chip sales

AI, AI chips, AMD, Donald Trump, Huawei, Micron, NVIDIA, Policy, semiconductor, tariffs, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / August 11, 2025

“Extra penalty” for US firms

The deal won’t resolve national security concerns.

Ahead of an August 12 deadline for a US-China trade deal, Donald Trump’s tactics continue to confuse those trying to assess the country’s national security priorities regarding its biggest geopolitical rival.

For months, Trump has kicked the can down the road regarding a TikTok ban, allowing the app to continue operating despite supposedly urgent national security concerns that China may be using the app to spy on Americans. And now, in the latest baffling move, a US official announced Monday that Trump got Nvidia and AMD to agree to “give the US government 15 percent of revenue from sales to China of advanced computer chips,” Reuters reported. Those chips, about 20 policymakers and national security experts recently warned Trump, could be used to fuel China’s frontier AI, which seemingly poses an even greater national security risk.

Trump’s “wild” deal with US chip firms

Reuters granted two officials anonymity to discuss Trump’s deal with US chipmakers, because details have yet to be made public. Requiring US firms to pay for sales in China is an “unusual” move for a president, Reuters noted, and the Trump administration has yet to say what exactly it plans to do with the money.

For US firms, the deal may set an alarming precedent. Not only have analysts warned that the deal could “hurt margins” for both companies, but export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, had been established to prevent US technology thefts, secure US technology leadership, and protect US national security. Now the US government appears to be accepting a payment to overlook those alleged risks, without much reassurance that the policy won’t advantage China in the AI race.

The move drew immediate scrutiny from critics, including Geoff Gertz, a senior fellow at the US think tank Center for a New American Security, who told Reuters that he thinks the deal is “wild.”

“Either selling H20 chips to China is a national security risk, in which case we shouldn’t be doing it to begin with, or it’s not a national security risk, in which case, why are we putting this extra penalty on the sale?” Gertz posited.

At this point, the only reassurance from the Trump administration is an official suggesting (without providing any rationale) that selling H20 or equivalent chips—which are not Nvidia’s most advanced chips—no longer compromises national security.

Trump “trading away” national security

It remains unclear when or how the levy will be implemented.

For chipmakers, the levy is likely viewed as a relatively small price to pay to avoid export curbs. Nvidia had forecasted $8 billion in potential losses if it couldn’t sell its H20 chips to China. AMD expected $1 billion in revenue cuts, partly due to the loss of sales for its MI308 chips in China.

The firms apparently agreed to Trump’s deal as a condition to receive licenses to export those chips. But caving to Trump could bite them back in the long run, AJ Bell, investment director Russ Mould, told Reuters—perhaps especially if Trump faces increasing pressure over feared national security concerns.

“The Chinese market is significant for both these companies, so even if they have to give up a bit of the money, they would otherwise make it look like a logical move on paper,” Mould said. However, the deal “is unprecedented and there is always the risk the revenue take could be upped or that the Trump administration changes its mind and re-imposes export controls.”

So far, AMD has not commented on the report. Nvidia’s spokesperson declined to comment beyond noting, “We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.”

A former adviser to Joe Biden’s Commerce Department, Alasdair Phillips-Robins, told Reuters that the levy suggests the Trump administration “is trading away national security protections for revenue for the Treasury.”

Huawei close to unveiling new AI chip tech

The end of a 90-day truce between the US and China is rapidly approaching, with the US signaling that the truce will likely be extended soon as Trump attempts to get a long-sought-after meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.

For China, gutting export curbs on chips remains a key priority in negotiations, the Financial Times reported Sunday. But Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, are lower priority than high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, sources told FT.

Chinese state media has even begun attacking the H20 chips as a Chinese national security risk. It appears that China is urging a boycott on H20 chips due to questions linked to a recent Congressional push to require chipmakers to build “backdoors” that would allow remote shutdowns of any chips detected as non-compliant with export curbs. That bill may mean that Nvidia’s chips already allow for US surveillance, China seemingly fears. (Nvidia has denied building such backdoors.)

Biden banned HBM exports to China last year, specifically moving to hamper innovation of Chinese chipmakers Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

Currently, US firms AMD and Micron remain top suppliers of HBM chips globally, along with South Korean firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, but Chinese firms have notably lagged behind, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. One source told FT that China “had raised the HBM issue in some” Trump negotiations, likely directly seeking to lift Biden’s “HBM controls because they seriously constrain the ability of Chinese companies, including Huawei, to develop their own AI chips.”

For Trump, the HBM controls could be seen as leverage to secure another trade win. However, some experts are hoping that Trump won’t play that card, citing concerns from the Biden era that remain unaddressed.

If Trump bends to Chinese pressure and lifts HBM controls, China could more easily produce AI chips at scale, Biden had feared. That could even possibly endanger US firms’ standing as world leaders, seemingly including threatening Nvidia, a company that Trump discovered this term. Gregory Allen, an AI expert at a US think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told FT that “saying that we should allow more advanced HBM sales to China is the exact same as saying that we should help Huawei make better AI chips so that they can replace Nvidia.”

Meanwhile, Huawei is reportedly already innovating to help reduce China’s reliance on HBM chips, the SCMP reported on Monday. Chinese state-run Securities Times reported that Huawei is “set to unveil a technological breakthrough that could reduce China’s reliance on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for running artificial intelligence reasoning models” at the 2025 Financial AI Reasoning Application Landing and Development Forum in Shanghai on Tuesday.

It’s a conveniently timed announcement, given the US-China trade deal deadline lands the same day. But the risk of Huawei possibly relying on US tech to reach that particular milestone is why HBM controls should remain off the table during Trump’s negotiations, one official told FT.

“Relaxing these controls would be a gift to Huawei and SMIC and could open the floodgates for China to start making millions of AI chips per year, while also diverting scarce HBM from chips sold in the US,” the official said.

Experts and policymakers had previously warned Trump that allowing H20 export curbs could similarly reduce access to semiconductors in the US, potentially disrupting the entire purpose of Trump’s trade war, which is building reliable US supply chains. Additionally, allowing exports will likely drive up costs to US chip firms at a time when they noted “projected data center demand from the US power market would require 90 percent of global chip supply through 2030, an unlikely scenario even without China joining the rush to buy advanced AI chips.” They’re now joined by others urging Trump to revive Biden’s efforts to block chip exports to China, or else risk empowering a geopolitical rival to become a global AI leader ahead of the US.

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

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Trump wanted a US-made iPhone. Apple gave him a gold statue.

Apple, Donald Trump, iPhones, Policy, tariffs, us-china trade war / DJ Henderson / August 7, 2025

Once again, Apple escapes Trump’s iPhone pressure

Since Trump took office, analysts have suggested that Cook might be the tech CEO best prepared to navigate Trump’s trade war.

During Trump’s last term, Cook launched a charm offensive, wooing Trump with investment commitments to avoid caving to Trump’s demands for US-made iPhones while securing tariff exemptions.

Back then, Apple notably seemed to avoid following through on some of its commitments, abandoning plans to build three “big, beautiful” Apple plants that Trump announced in 2017. Ultimately, only one plant was built, which made face masks, not Apple products. Similarly, in 2019, Trump toured a Texas facility that he claimed could be used to build iPhones, but Apple only committed to building MacBook Pros there, not the Apple product that Trump sees as the crown jewel of his domestic supply chain dreams.

This time, Apple has committed to a total investment of $600 billion to move more manufacturing into the US over the next four years. But Apple was probably going to spend that money anyway, as “analysts say the numbers align with Apple’s typical spending patterns and echo commitments made during both the Biden administration and Trump’s previous term,” Reuters reported.

Trump has claimed that any company found to be dodging pledges will be retroactively charged tariffs if they fail to follow through on investments. However, Apple seems to be chugging along with its usual business in the US, while manufacturing iPhones elsewhere probably wouldn’t change the tariff calculus, as it is now.

So at least at this stage of Cook and Trump’s friendship, it appears that Apple has once again secured exemptions without committing to building a US-made iPhone or even committing significant new investments.

On Wednesday, at least one analyst—Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO of Laffer Tengler Investments, which holds Apple shares—told Reuters that Apple’s moves this week were “a savvy solution to the president’s demand that Apple manufacture all iPhones in the US.”

Trump wanted a US-made iPhone. Apple gave him a gold statue. Read More »

President Trump says Intel’s new CEO “must resign immediately”

Donald Trump, intel, Lip-Bu Tan, Policy, syndication, Tech / Beth Washington / August 7, 2025

Intel and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s post. Intel shares dropped 3 percent in pre-market trading in New York.

Tan was appointed as Intel CEO in March after the Silicon Valley company’s board ousted his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, in December.

Intel is the only US-headquartered company capable of producing advanced semiconductors, though it has so far largely missed out on the current boom for artificial intelligence chips. It has been awarded billions of dollars in US government subsidies and loans to support its chip manufacturing business, which has fallen far behind its rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

However, amid a radical cost-cutting program, Tan warned last month that Intel might be forced to abandon development of its next-generation manufacturing technology if it were unable to secure a “significant external customer.” Such a move would hand a virtual monopoly of leading-edge chipmaking to TSMC.

“Intel is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars and to comply with applicable security regulations,” Cotton wrote in Tuesday’s letter to Intel’s board chair, Frank Yeary. “Mr Tan’s associations raise questions about Intel’s ability to fulfill these obligations.”

Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo.

President Trump says Intel’s new CEO “must resign immediately” Read More »

RIP Corporation for Public Broadcasting: 1967–2026

Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Donald Trump, NPR, PBS, Policy, public media / Shannon Garcia / August 2, 2025

Despite the protests of millions of Americans, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will be winding down its operations after the White House deemed NPR and PBS a “grift” and pushed for a Senate vote that eliminated its entire budget.

The vote rescinded $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In a press release, CPB explained that the cuts “excluded funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades.” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said the corporation had no choice but to prepare to shut down.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” Harrison said.

Concerned Americans also rushed to donate to NPR and PBS stations to confront the funding cuts, The New York Times reported. But those donations, estimated at around $20 million, ultimately amounted to too little, too late to cover the funding that CPB lost.

As CPB takes steps to close, it expects that “the majority of staff positions will conclude with the close of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025.” After that, a “small transition team” will “ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations” by January 2026. That team “will focus on compliance, final distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations, including ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”

“CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care,” Harrison said.

NPR mourns loss of CPB

In a statement, NPR’s president and CEO, Katherine Maher, mourned the loss of CPB, warning that it was a “vital source of funding for local stations, a champion of educational and cultural programming, and a bulwark for independent journalism.”

RIP Corporation for Public Broadcasting: 1967–2026 Read More »

Trump suspends trade loophole for cheap online retailers globally

Amazon, de minimis, Donald Trump, e-commerce, Policy, shein, tariffs, temu, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / July 31, 2025

But even Amazon may struggle to shift its supply chain as the de minimis exemption is eliminated for all countries. In February, the e-commerce giant “projected lower-than-expected sales and operating income for its first quarter,” which it partly attributed to “unpredictability in the economy.” A DataWeave study concluded at the end of June that “US prices for China-made goods on Amazon” were rising “faster than inflation,” Reuters reported, likely due to “cost shocks” currently “rippling through the retail supply chain.” Other non-Chinese firms likely impacted by this week’s order include eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop, and Walmart.

Amazon did not respond to Ars’ request to comment but told Reuters last month that “it has not seen the average prices of products change up or down appreciably outside of typical fluctuations.”

Trump plans to permanently close loophole in 2027

Trump has called the de minimis exemption a “big scam,” claiming that it’s a “catastrophic loophole” used to “evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids as well as other unsafe or below-market products that harm American workers and businesses into the United States.”

To address what Trump has deemed “national emergencies” hurting American trade and public health, he has urgently moved to suspend the loophole now and plans to permanently end it worldwide by July 1, 2027.

American travelers will still be able to “bring back up to $200 in personal items” and receive “bona fide gifts valued at $100 or less” duty-free, but a fixed tariff rate of between $80 to $200 per item will be applied to many direct-to-consumer shipments until Trump finishes negotiating trade deals with the rest of America’s key trade partners. As each deal is theoretically closed, any shipments will be taxed according to tariff rates of their country of origin. (Those negotiations are supposed to conclude by tomorrow, but so far, Trump has only struck deals with the European Union, Japan, and South Korea.)

Trump suspends trade loophole for cheap online retailers globally Read More »

Trump caving on Nvidia H20 export curbs may disrupt his bigger trade war

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But experts seem to fear that Trump isn’t paying enough attention to how exports of US technology could threaten to not only supercharge China’s military and AI capabilities but also drain supplies that US firms need to keep the US at the forefront of AI innovation.

“More chips for China means fewer chips for the US,” experts said, noting that “China’s biggest tech firms, including Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba,” have spent $16 billion on bulk-ordered H20 chips over the past year.

Meanwhile, “projected data center demand from the US power market would require 90 percent of global chip supply through 2030, an unlikely scenario even without China joining the rush to buy advanced AI chips,” experts said. If Trump doesn’t intervene, one of America’s biggest AI rivals could even end up driving up costs of AI chips for US firms, they warned.

“We urge you to reverse course,” the letter concluded. “This is not a question of trade. It is a question of national security.”

Trump says he never heard of Nvidia before

Perhaps the bigger problem for Trump, national security experts suggest, would be if China or other trade partners perceive the US resolve to wield export controls as a foreign policy tool to be “weakened” by Trump reversing course on H20 controls.

They suggested that Trump caving on H20 controls could even “embolden China to seek additional access concessions” at a time when some analysts suggest that China may already have an upper hand in trade negotiations.

The US and China are largely expected to extend a 90-day truce following recent talks in Stockholm, Reuters reported. Anonymous sources told the South China Morning Post that the US may have already agreed to not impose any new tariffs or otherwise ratchet up the trade war during that truce, but that remains unconfirmed, as Trump continues to warn that chip tariffs are coming soon.

Trump has recently claimed that he thinks he may be close to cementing a deal with China, but it appears likely that talks will continue well into the fall. A meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping probably won’t be scheduled until late October or early November, Reuters reported.

Trump caving on Nvidia H20 export curbs may disrupt his bigger trade war Read More »

Skydance deal allows Trump’s FCC to “censor speech” and “silence dissent” on CBS

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Warning that the “Paramount payout” and “reckless” acquisition approval together mark a “dark chapter” for US press freedom, Gomez suggested the FCC’s approval will embolden “those who believe the government can—and should—abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage.”

FCC terms also govern Skydance hiring decisions

Gomez further criticized the FCC for overstepping its authority in “intervening in employment matters reserved for other government entities with proper jurisdiction on these issues” by requiring Skydance commitments to not establish any DEI programs, which Carr derided as “invidious.” But Gomez countered that “this agency is undermining legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand opportunity” by meddling in private companies’ employment decisions.

Ultimately, commissioner Olivia Trusty joined Carr in voting to stamp the agency’s approval, celebrating the deal as “lawful” and a “win” for American “jobs” and “storytelling.” Carr suggested the approval would bolster Paramount’s programming by injecting $1.5 billion into operations, which Trusty said would help Paramount “compete with dominant tech platforms.”

Gomez conceded that she was pleased that at least—unlike the Verizon/T-Mobile merger—Carr granted her request to hold a vote, rather than burying “the outcome of backroom negotiations” and “granting approval behind closed doors, under the cover of bureaucratic process.”

“The public has a right to know how Paramount’s capitulation evidences an erosion of our First Amendment protections,” Gomez said.

Outvoted 2–1, Gomez urged “companies, journalists, and citizens” to take up the fight and push back on the Trump administration, emphasizing that “unchecked and unquestioned power has no rightful place in America.”

Skydance deal allows Trump’s FCC to “censor speech” and “silence dissent” on CBS Read More »

White House unveils sweeping plan to “win” global AI race through deregulation

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Trump’s plan was not welcomed by everyone. J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen, in a statement provided to Ars, criticized Trump as giving “sweetheart deals” to tech companies that would cause “electricity bills to rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers.”

Infrastructure demands and energy requirements

Trump’s new AI plan tackles infrastructure head-on, stating that “AI is the first digital service in modern life that challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today.” To meet this demand, it proposes streamlining environmental permitting for data centers through new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) exemptions, making federal lands available for construction and modernizing the power grid—all while explicitly rejecting “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape.”

The document embraces what it calls a “Build, Baby, Build!” approach—echoing a Trump campaign slogan—and promises to restore semiconductor manufacturing through the CHIPS Program Office, though stripped of “extraneous policy requirements.”

On the technology front, the plan directs Commerce to revise NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework to “eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” Federal procurement would favor AI developers whose systems are “objective and free from top-down ideological bias.” The document strongly backs open source AI models and calls for exporting American AI technology to allies while blocking administration-labeled adversaries like China.

Security proposals include high-security military data centers and warnings that advanced AI systems “may pose novel national security risks” in cyberattacks and weapons development.

Critics respond with “People’s AI Action Plan”

Before the White House unveiled its plan, more than 90 organizations launched a competing “People’s AI Action Plan” on Tuesday, characterizing the Trump administration’s approach as “a massive handout to the tech industry” that prioritizes corporate interests over public welfare. The coalition includes labor unions, environmental justice groups, and consumer protection nonprofits.

White House unveils sweeping plan to “win” global AI race through deregulation Read More »