Donald Trump – Page 2

Satellite shows what’s really happening at the East Wing of the White House

Donald Trump, earth observation, planet labs, remote sensing, Space, White House / DJ Henderson / October 24, 2025

“Now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on October 22, 2025. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

You need to go up—way up—to fully appreciate the changes underway at the White House this week.

Demolition crews starting tearing down the East Wing of the presidential mansion Tuesday to clear room for the construction of a new $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a recent priority of President Donald Trump. The teardown drew criticism and surprise from Democratic lawmakers, former White House staffers, and members of the public.

It was, after all, just three months ago that President Donald Trump defended his ballroom plan by saying it wouldn’t affect the existing structure at the White House. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he said in July. “It’ll be near it but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

So it shocked a lot of people when workers took a wrecking ball to the East Wing. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters Thursday that the “optics are bad” as the Trump administration demolishes part of the White House, especially during a government shutdown.

“People are saying, ‘Oh, the government’s being destroyed,’” she said. “Well, now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The US Secret Service on Thursday closed access to the Ellipse, a public park overlooking the South Lawn of the White House. Journalists were capturing “live images” of the East Wing destruction from the Ellipse before the Secret Service ushered them out of the park, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto. Employees at the Treasury Building, just across the street from the East Wing, were instructed not to share photos of the demolition work, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some Trump supporters used their social media accounts to push back against the outcry, claiming only a small section of the East Wing’s facade would be torn down. An image taken from space revealed the reality Thursday.

Eyes always above

Without press access to see the demolition firsthand, it fell to a camera hundreds of miles above the White House to see what was really happening at the East Wing. Planet Labs released an image taken Thursday morning from one of its SkySat satellites showing the 123-year-old annex leveled.

What became known as the East Wing was first constructed in 1902 and was then rebuilt in 1942 during the Franklin Roosevelt administration to create more office space and provide cover for a bunker during World War II. In modern presidencies, the East Wing was typically home to the first lady’s staff.

Planet Labs, based in San Francisco, operates a fleet of hundreds of small Earth-imaging satellites mapping the planet every day. The company sells its imagery to commercial customers and the US government, including intelligence agencies, which use the imagery to augment the surveillance capabilities of more exquisite government-owned spy satellites.

Users often turn to satellite imagery from companies like Planet Labs to find out what’s going on in war zones, countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Satellite constellations like Planet Labs scan for changes across the globe every day, making it virtually impossible to hide a large construction project.

The SkySat satellite used for Thursday’s examination of the White House flies at an altitude of approximately 295 miles (475 kilometers). It can capture imagery with a resolution of about 20 inches (50 centimeters) per pixel. Planet Labs owns 15 SkySats, each with three overlapping 5.5-megapixel imaging sensors fitted under a downward-facing 14-inch-diameter (35-centimeter) telescope, according to the company.

Who’s paying?

It turns out some of Planet Labs’ cohorts among the government’s cadre of defense and aerospace contractors are actually funding the construction of the new White House ballroom. Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest defense contractor, is on the list of donors released by the White House. At least two other companies with business relating to defense and aerospace were also on the list: Booz Allen Hamilton and Palantir Technologies.

Palantir has invested in BlackSky, one of Planet’s competitors in the commercial remote sensing market.

People watch along a fence line Thursday as crews demolish the East Wing of the White House. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration has said no public money will go toward the new ballroom, but officials haven’t said how much each donor is contributing. Many donors have business dealings with the federal government, raising ethical concerns that those paying for the ballroom might win favor in future contract decisions.

Trump said he will also contribute an undisclosed sum for the ballroom.

Regardless of whether the donors are buying influence, they are funding the most significant overhaul of the White House grounds since former President Harry Truman renovated the mansion’s interior and added a balcony to the South Portico. The Truman-era changes were approved by Congress, which established a commission to oversee the work. There’s been no such oversight from Congress this time.

The new ballroom will be nearly twice the size of the most iconic element of the White House grounds: the two-century-old executive residence.

“It’s going to turn the executive mansion into an annex to the party space,” said Edward Lengel, who served as chief historian of the White House Historical Association during Trump’s first term. “I think all the founders would have been disgusted by this,” he told CNN.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, shared a different point of view in an interview with Fox News earlier this week.

“I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” Leavitt said.

An official White House fact sheet published Tuesday used similar sensationalized language, accusing “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies” of “clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately-funded ballroom to the White House.”

President Donald Trump displays a rendering of the White House ballroom as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (left) in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s true that every president has put their own mark on the White House, but all of the updates cost at least an order of magnitude less than Trump’s ballroom. Most amounted to little more than redecorating, and none were as destructive as this week’s teardown. Former President Barack Obama repainted the lines of the White House tennis court and installed hoops to turn it into a basketball court. During the George W. Bush administration, the White House press briefing room got a significant makeover. Taxpayers and media companies shared the bill. It’s hard to imagine that happening today.

Former President Gerald Ford had an outdoor swimming pool built near the West Wing. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy famously spearheaded the redesign of the White House Rose Garden and East Garden, which was later renamed in her honor. The grass in the Rose Garden was paved over with stone tiles earlier this year, and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was razed this week, the result of which was also visible from space.

In July, Leavitt said the East Wing would be “modernized.” Like Trump, she did not mention plans for demolition, only saying: “The necessary construction will take place.”

Thanks to satellites and commercial space, we now know what necessary construction really meant.

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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“Extremely angry” Trump threatens “massive” tariff on all Chinese exports

china tariffs, Donald Trump, Policy, rare earth, rare earth magnets, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / October 11, 2025

The chairman of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), issued a statement, suggesting that, unlike Trump, he’d seen China’s rare earths move coming. He pushed Trump to interpret China’s export controls as “an economic declaration of war against the United States and a slap in the face to President Trump.”

“China has fired a loaded gun at the American economy, seeking to cut off critical minerals used to make the semiconductors that power the American military, economy, and devices we use every day including cars, phones, computers, and TVs,” Moolenaar said. “Every American will be negatively affected by China’s action, and that’s why we must address America’s vulnerabilities and build our own leverage against China.”

To strike back forcefully, Moolenaar suggested passing a law he sponsored that he said would “end preferential trade treatment for China, build a resilient resource reserve of critical minerals, secure American research and campuses from Chinese influence, and strangle China’s technology sector with export controls instead of selling it advanced chips.”

Moolenaar also emphasized steps he recommended back in September that he claimed Trump could take to “create real leverage with China” in the face of its stranglehold on rare earths.

Those included “restricting or suspending Chinese airline landing rights in the US,” “reviewing export control policies governing the sale of commercial aircraft, parts, and maintenance services to China,” and “restricting outbound investment in China’s aviation sector in coordination with key allies.”

“These steps would send a clear message to Beijing that it cannot choke off critical supplies to our defense industries without consequences to its own strategic sectors,” Moolenaar wrote in his September letter to Trump. “By acting together, the US and its allies can strengthen our resilience, reinforce solidarity, and create real leverage with China.”

“Extremely angry” Trump threatens “massive” tariff on all Chinese exports Read More »

One NASA science mission saved from Trump’s cuts, but others still in limbo

Donald Trump, NASA, osiris rex, osiris-apex, planetary science, Science, science funding, solar system, Space, space policy / Beth Washington / October 9, 2025

“Damage is being done already. Even if funding is reinstated, we have already lost people.”

Artist’s illustration of the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft at asteroid Apophis. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA has thrown a lifeline to scientists working on a mission to visit an asteroid that will make an unusually close flyby of the Earth in 2029, reversing the Trump administration’s previous plan to shut it down.

This mission, named OSIRIS-APEX, was one of 19 operating NASA science missions the White House proposed canceling in a budget blueprint released earlier this year.

“We were called for cancellation as part to the president’s budget request, and we were reinstated and given a plan to move ahead in FY26 (Fiscal Year 2026) just two weeks ago,” said Dani DellaGiustina, principal investigator for OSIRIS-APEX at the University of Arizona. “Our spacecraft appears happy and healthy.”

OSIRIS-APEX repurposes the spacecraft from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, which deposited its extraterrestrial treasure back on Earth in 2023. The spacecraft was in good shape and still had plenty of fuel, so NASA decided to send it to explore another asteroid, named Apophis, due to pass about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from the Earth on April 13, 2029.

The flyby of Apophis offers scientists a golden opportunity to see a potential killer asteroid up close. Apophis has a lumpy shape with an average diameter of about 1,100 feet (340 meters), large enough to cause regional devastation if it impacted the Earth. The asteroid has no chance of striking us in 2029 or any other time for the next century, but it routinely crosses the Earth’s path as it circles the Sun, so the long-term risk is non-zero.

It pays to be specific

Everything was going well with OSIRIS-APEX until May, when White House officials signaled their intention to terminate the mission. The Trump administration’s proposed cancellation of 19 of NASA’s operating missions was part of a nearly 50 percent cut to the agency’s science budget in the White House budget request for fiscal year 2026, which began October 1.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have moved to reject nearly all of the science cuts, with the Senate bill maintaining funding for NASA’s science division at $7.3 billion, the same as fiscal year 2025, while the House bill reduces it to $6 billion, still significantly more than the $3.9 billion for science in the White House budget proposal.

The Planetary Society released this chart showing the 19 operating missions tagged for termination under the White House’s budget proposal.

For a time this summer, Trump’s political appointees at NASA told managers to make plans for the next year assuming Trump’s cuts would be enacted. Finally, last month, those officials relented and instructed agency employees to abide by the House appropriations bill.

The House and Senate still have not agreed on any final budget numbers or sent an appropriations bill to the White House for President Trump’s signature. That’s why the federal government has been partially shut down for the last week. Despite the shutdown, ground teams are still operating NASA’s science missions because suspending them could result in irreparable damage.

Using the House’s proposed budget should salvage much of NASA’s portfolio, but it is still $1.3 billion short of the money the agency’s science program got last year. That means some things will inevitably get cut. Many of the other operating missions the Trump administration tagged for termination remain on the chopping block.

OSIRIS-APEX escaped this fate for a simple reason. Lawmakers earmarked $20 million for the mission in the House budget bill. Most other missions didn’t receive the same special treatment. It seems OSIRIS-APEX had a friend in Congress.

Budget-writers in the House of Representatives specified NASA should commit $20 million for the OSIRIS-APEX mission in fiscal year 2026. Credit: US House of Representatives

The only other operating mission the Trump administration wanted to cancel that got a similar earmark in the House budget bill was the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), a fleet of four probes in space since 2015 studying Earth’s magnetosphere. Lawmakers want to provide $20 million for MMS operations in 2026. Ars was unable to confirm the status of the MMS mission Wednesday.

The other 17 missions set to fall under Trump’s budget ax remain in a state of limbo. There are troubling signs the administration might go ahead and kill the missions. Earlier this year, NASA directed managers from all 19 of the missions at risk of cancellation to develop preliminary plans to wind down their missions.

A scientist on one of the projects told Ars that NASA recently asked for a more detailed “termination plan” to “passivate” their spacecraft by the end of this year. This goes a step beyond the closeout plans NASA requested in the summer. Passivation is a standard last rite for a spacecraft, when engineers command it to vent leftover fuel and drain its batteries, rendering it fully inert. This would make the mission unrecoverable if someone tried to contact it again.

This scientist said none of the missions up for termination will be out of the woods until there’s a budget that restores NASA funding close to last year’s levels and includes language protecting the missions from cancellation.

Damage already done

Although OSIRIS-APEX is again go for Apophis, DellaGiustina said a declining budget has forced some difficult choices. The mission’s science team is “basically on hiatus” until sometime in 2027, meaning they won’t be able to participate in any planning for at least the next year and a half.

This has an outsize effect on younger scientists who were brought on to the mission to train for what the spacecraft will find at Apophis, DellaGiustina said in a meeting Tuesday of the National Academies’ Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences.

“We are not anticipating we will have to cut any science at Apophis,” she said. But the cuts do affect things like recalibrating the science instruments on the spacecraft, which got dirty and dusty from the mission’s brief landing to capture samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.

“We are definitely undermining our readiness,” DellaGiustina said. “Nonetheless, we’re happy to be reinstated, so it’s about as good as can be expected, I think, for this particular point in time.”

At its closest approach, asteroid Apophis will be closer to Earth than the ring of geostationary satellites over the equator. Credit: NASA/JPL

The other consequence of the budget reduction has been a drain in expertise with operating the spacecraft. OSIRIS-APEX (formerly OSIRIS-REx) was built by Lockheed Martin, which also commands and receives telemetry from the probe as it flies through the Solar System. The cuts have caused some engineers at Lockheed to move off of planetary science missions to other fields, such as military space programs.

The other active missions waiting for word from NASA include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the New Horizons probe heading toward interstellar space, the MAVEN spacecraft studying the atmosphere of Mars, and several satellites monitoring Earth’s climate.

The future of those missions remains murky. A senior official on one of the projects said they’ve been given “no direction at all” other than “to continue operating until advised otherwise.”

Another mission the White House wanted to cancel was THEMIS, a pair of spacecraft orbiting the Moon to map the lunar magnetic field. The lead scientist for that mission, Vassilis Angelopoulos from the University of California, Los Angeles, said his team will get “partial funding” for fiscal year 2026.

“This is good, but in the meantime, it means that science personnel is being defunded,” Angelopoulos told Ars. “The effect is the US is not achieving the scientific return it can from its multi-billion dollar investments it has made in technology.”

Artist’s concept of NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, which has orbited Mars since 2014 studying the planet’s upper atmosphere.

To put a number on it, the missions already in space that the Trump administration wants to cancel represent a cumulative investment of $12 billion to design and build, according to the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. An assessment by Ars concluded the operating missions slated for cancellation cost taxpayers less than $300 million per year, or between 1 and 2 percent of NASA’s annual budget.

Advocates for NASA’s science program met at the US Capitol this week to highlight the threat. Angelopoulos said the outcry from scientists and the public seems to be working.

“I take the implementation of the House budget as indication that the constituents’ pressure is having an effect,” he said. “Unfortunately, damage is being done already. Even if funding is reinstated, we have already lost people.”

Some scientists worry that the Trump administration may try to withhold funding for certain programs, even if Congress provides a budget for them. That would likely trigger a fight in the courts.

Bruce Jakosky, former principal investigator of the MAVEN Mars mission, raised this concern. He said it’s a “positive step” that NASA is now making plans under the assumption the agency will receive the budget outlined by the House. But there’s a catch.

“Even if the budget that comes out of Congress gets signed into law, the president has shown no reluctance to not spend money that has been legally obligated,” Jakosky wrote in an email to Ars. “That means that having a budget isn’t the end; and having the money get distributed to the MAVEN science and ops team isn’t the end—only when the money is actually spent can we be assured that it won’t be clawed back.

“That means that the uncertainty lives with us throughout the entire fiscal year,” he said. “That uncertainty is sure to drive morale problems.”

One NASA science mission saved from Trump’s cuts, but others still in limbo Read More »

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak

AI, AI stocks, alphabet, Amazon, andrew bailey, Apple, bank of england, Biz & IT, Donald Trump, dotcom bubble, Federal Reserve, financial stability, Google, Lisa Cook, machine learning, mark zuckerberg, market correction, Meta, microsoft, NVIDIA, UK economy / DJ Henderson / October 9, 2025

Share valuations based on past earnings have also reached their highest levels since the dotcom bubble 25 years ago, though the BoE noted they appear less extreme when based on investors’ expectations for future profits. “This, when combined with increasing concentration within market indices, leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic,” the central bank said.

Toil and trouble?

The dotcom bubble offers a potentially instructive parallel to our current era. In the late 1990s, investors poured money into Internet companies based on the promise of a transformed economy, seemingly ignoring whether individual businesses had viable paths to profitability. Between 1995 and March 2000, the Nasdaq index rose 600 percent. When sentiment shifted, the correction was severe: the Nasdaq fell 78 percent from its peak, reaching a low point in October 2002.

Whether we’ll see the same thing or worse if an AI bubble pops is mere speculation at this point. But similar to the early 2000s, the question about today’s market isn’t necessarily about the utility of AI tools themselves (the Internet was useful, afterall, despite the bubble), but whether the amount of money being poured into the companies that sell them is out of proportion with the potential profits those improvements might bring.

We don’t have a crystal ball to determine when such a bubble might pop, or even if it is guaranteed to do so, but we’ll likely continue to see more warning signs ahead if AI-related deals continue to grow larger and larger over time.

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak Read More »

Trump obtains another settlement as YouTube agrees to pay $24.5 million

Donald Trump, Policy, youtube / Kelly Newman / September 30, 2025

Google owner Alphabet today agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit that President Trump filed against YouTube in 2021. Trump sued YouTube over his account being suspended after Trump supporters’ January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Alphabet agreed to pay $22 million “to settle and resolve with Plaintiff Donald J. Trump… which he has directed to be contributed, on his behalf, to the Trust for the National Mall, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall, to support the construction of the White House State Ballroom,” a court filing said. Trump recently announced plans for the 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

The settlement notice, filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California, said Alphabet will also pay $2.5 million to settle claims with plaintiffs the American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory, and Naomi Wolf. Under the settlement, Alphabet admits no wrongdoing and the parties agreed to dismiss the case.

When contacted by Ars today, Google said it would not provide any comment beyond what is in the court filing. Trump was suspended from major social media platforms after the January 6, 2021, attack and was subsequently impeached by the House of Representatives for incitement of insurrection.

Meta settled a similar lawsuit in January this year, agreeing to pay $25 million overall, including $22 million toward Trump’s presidential library. In February, Elon Musk’s X agreed to a $10 million settlement.

“Google executives were eager to keep their settlement smaller than the one paid by rival Meta, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal wrote today.

Trump obtains another settlement as YouTube agrees to pay $24.5 million Read More »

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection

Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, Policy, semiconductors, Taiwan, trump administration, trump tariffs, TSMC, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / September 29, 2025

The Trump administration is pressuring Taiwan to rapidly move 50 percent of its chip production into the US if it wants ensured protection against a threatened Chinese invasion, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NewsNation this weekend.

In the interview, Lutnick noted that Taiwan currently makes about 95 percent of chips used in smartphones and cars, as well as in critical military defense technology. It’s bad for the US, Lutnick said, that “95 percent of our chips are made 9,000 miles away,” while China is not being “shy” about threats to “take” Taiwan.

Were the US to lose access to Taiwan’s supply chain, the US could be defenseless as its economy takes a hit, Lutnick alleged, asking, “How are you going to get the chips here to make your drones, to make your equipment?”

“The model is: if you can’t make your own chips, how can you defend yourself, right?” Lutnick argued. That’s why he confirmed his “objective” during his time in office is to shift US chip production from 2 percent to 40 percent. To achieve that, he plans to bring Taiwan’s “whole supply chain” into the US, a move experts have suggested could take much longer than a single presidential term to accomplish.

In 2023, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forecast that the US was “somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence,” emphasizing that “it’s not a really practical thing for a decade or two.”

Deal is “not natural for Taiwan”

Lutnick acknowledged this will be a “herculean” task. “Everybody tells me it’s impossible,” he said.

To start with, Taiwan must be convinced that it’s not getting a raw deal, he noted, explaining that it’s “not natural for Taiwan” to mull a future where it cedes its dominant role as a global chip supplier, as well as the long-running protections it receives from allies that comes with it.

Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection Read More »

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / September 26, 2025

Previously, experts had suggested that China had little incentive to follow through with the deal, while as recently as July, ByteDance denied reports that it agreed to sell TikTok to the US, the South China Morning Post reported. Yesterday, Reuters noted that Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the “new US company will be valued at around $14 billion,” a price tag “far below some analyst estimates,” which might frustrate ByteDance. Questions also remain over what potential concessions Trump may have made to get Xi’s sign-off.

It’s also unclear if Trump’s deal meets the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, with Reuters reporting that “numerous details” still need to be “fleshed out.” Last Friday, James Sullivan of JP Morgan suggested on CNBC that “Trump’s proposed TikTok deal lacked clarity on who is in control of the algorithm, leaving the national security concerns wide open,” CNBC reported.

Other critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene, warned in a statement to Ars that the US now risks “turning over” TikTok “to the allies of a President who seems to have no respect for the First Amendment.”

Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, agreed. “The arrangement creates uncertainty about what influence or oversight the US government might require over this separate algorithm that could raise potential First Amendment concerns regarding government influence over a private actor,” Huddleston said.

Will TikTok become right-wing?

The Guardian recently conducted a deep dive into how the Murdochs’ and Ellisons’ involvement could “gift Trump’s billionaire allies a degree of control over US media that would be vast and unprecedented” by allowing “the owners of the US’s most powerful cable TV channels” to “steer the nation’s most influential social network.”

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA” Read More »

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok / DJ Henderson / September 17, 2025

However, Trump seems to think that longtime TikTok partner Oracle taking a bigger stake while handling Americans’ user data at its facilities in Texas will be enough to prevent remaining China-based owners—which will maintain less than a 20 percent stake—from allegedly spying, launching disinformation campaigns, or spreading other kinds of propaganda.

China previously was resistant to a forced sale of TikTok, FT reported, even going so far as to place export controls on algorithms to keep the most lucrative part of TikTok in the country. And “it remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal,” FT noted.

On Tuesday, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, did not go into any detail on how China’s access to US user data would be restricted under the deal. Instead, Wang only noted that ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security,” presumably to US owners, FT reported.

One Asia-based investor told FT that the US would use “at least part of the Chinese algorithm” but train it on US user data, while a US advisor accused Trump of chickening out and accepting a deal that didn’t force a sale of the algorithm.

“After all this, China keeps the algorithm,” the US advisor said.

To the Asia-based investor, it seemed like Trump gave China exactly what it wants, since “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

It’s likely more details will be announced once Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a phone conference on Friday. ByteDance has yet to comment on the deal and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal Read More »

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown.

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, trump administration, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

According to Bessent, China agreed to “commercial terms” and “technical details” of a deal “between two parties,” but Xi and Trump still needed to discuss the terms—as well as possibly China’s demands to ease export controls on chips and other high-tech goods—before the deal can be finalized, Reuters reported.

ByteDance, TikTok’s current owner, which in the past has opposed the sale, did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

While experts told Reuters that finalizing the TikTok deal this week could be challenging, Trump seems confident. On Truth Social, the US president boasted that talks with China have been going “very well” and claimed that TikTok users will soon be “very happy.”

“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump said, confirming that he would speak to Xi on Friday and claiming that their relationship “remains a very strong one!!!”

China accuses US of “economic coercion”

However, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on Monday continued to slam US export controls and tariffs that are frustrating China. The spokesperson suggested that those trade restrictions “constitute the containment and suppression of China’s development of high-tech industries,” like advanced computer chips and artificial intelligence, NBC News reported.

“This is a typical act of unilateral bullying and economic coercion,” the spokesperson said, indicating it may even be viewed as a retaliation violating the temporary truce.

Rather than committing to de-escalate tensions, both countries have recently taken fresh jabs in the trade war. On Monday, China announced two probes into US semiconductors, as well as an antitrust ruling against Nvidia and “an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector,” NBC News reported.

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown. Read More »

GOP may finally succeed in unrelenting quest to kill two NASA climate satellites

climate change, Donald Trump, Earth science, greenhouse gases, NASA, nasa budget, orbiting carbon observatory, Science, Space, space policy / DJ Henderson / September 6, 2025

Before satellite measurements, researchers relied on estimates and data from a smattering of air and ground-based sensors. An instrument on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, with the longest record of direct carbon dioxide measurements, is also slated for shutdown under Trump’s budget.

It requires a sustained, consistent dataset to recognize trends. That’s why, for example, the US government has funded a series of Landsat satellites since 1972 to create an uninterrupted data catalog illustrating changes in global land use.

But NASA is now poised to shut off OCO-2 and OCO-3 instead of thinking about how to replace them when they inevitably cease working. The missions are now operating beyond their original design lives, but scientists say both instruments are in good health.

Can anyone replace NASA?

Research institutes in Japan, China, and Europe have launched their own greenhouse gas-monitoring satellites. So far, all of them lack the spatial resolution of the OCO instruments, meaning they can’t identify emission sources with the same precision as the US missions. A new European mission called CO2M will come closest to replicating OCO-2 and OCO-3, but it won’t launch until 2027.

Several private groups have launched their own satellites to measure atmospheric chemicals, but these have primarily focused on detecting localized methane emissions for regulatory purposes, and not on global trends.

One of the newer groups in this sector, known as the Carbon Mapper Coalition, launched its first small satellite last year. This nonprofit consortium includes contributors from JPL, the same lab that spawned the OCO instruments, as well as Planet Labs, the California Air Resources Board, universities, and private investment funds.

Government leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland, have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2027, and 100 percent by 2035. Mark Elrich, the Democratic county executive, said the pending termination of NASA’s carbon-monitoring missions “weakens our ability to hold polluters accountable.”

“This decision would … wipe out years of research that helps us understand greenhouse gas emissions, plant health, and the forces that are driving climate change,” Elrich said in a press conference last month.

GOP may finally succeed in unrelenting quest to kill two NASA climate satellites Read More »

Trump’s move of SPACECOM to Alabama has little to do with national security

Alabama, Colorado, Donald Trump, military space, national security, redstone arsenal, Science, Space, us space command, US Space Force / Kelly Newman / September 3, 2025

The Pentagon says the move will save money, but acknowledges risk to military readiness.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on September 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that US Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama, returning to the Pentagon’s plans for the command’s headquarters from the final days of Trump’s first term in the White House.

The headquarters will move to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office, flanked by Republican members of the Alabama congressional delegation.

The move will “help America defend and dominate the high frontier,” Trump said. It also marks another twist on a contentious issue that has pitted Colorado and Alabama against one another in a fight for the right to be home to the permanent headquarters of Space Command (SPACECOM), a unified combatant command responsible for carrying out military operations in space.

Space Command is separate from the Space Force and is made up of personnel from all branches of the armed services. The Space Force, on the other hand, is charged with supplying personnel and technology for use by multiple combatant commands. The newest armed service, established in 2019 during President Trump’s first term, is part of the Department of the Air Force, which also had the authority for recommending where to base Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

“US Space Command stands ready to carry out the direction of the president following today’s announcement of Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters location,” SPACECOM wrote on its official X account.

Military officials in the first Trump administration considered potential sites in Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas before the Air Force recommended basing Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 13, 2021, a week before Trump left office.

Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation protested the decision, suggesting the recommendation was political. Trump won a larger share of votes in Alabama in 2016, 2020, and 2024 than in any of the other states in contention. On average, a higher percentage of Colorado’s citizens cast their votes against Trump than in the other five states vying for Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

Trump’s reasons

Trump cited three reasons Tuesday for basing Space Command in Alabama. He noted Redstone Arsenal’s proximity to other government and industrial space facilities, the persistence of Alabama officials in luring the headquarters away from Colorado, and Colorado’s use of mail-in voting, a policy that has drawn Trump’s ire but is wholly unrelated to military space matters.

“That played a big factor, also,” Trump said of Colorado’s mail-in voting law.

None of the reasons for the relocation that Trump mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday explained why Alabama is a better place for Space Command’s headquarters than Colorado, although the Air Force has pointed to cost savings as a rationale for the move.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation concluded in 2022 that the Air Force did not follow “best practices” in formulating its recommendation to place Space Command at Redstone Arsenal, leading to “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”

A separate report in 2022 from the Pentagon’s own inspector general concluded the Air Force’s basing decision process was “reasonable” and complied with military policy and federal law, but criticized the decision-makers’ record-keeping.

Former President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, stood by the recommendation in 2023 to relocate Space Command to Alabama, citing an estimated $426 million in cost savings due to lower construction and personnel costs in Huntsville relative to Colorado Springs. However, since then, Space Command achieved full operational capability at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

Now-retired Army Gen. James Dickinson raised concerns about moving Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. Credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman

Army Gen. James Dickinson, head of Space Command from 2020 until 2023, favored keeping the headquarters in Colorado, according to a separate inspector general report released earlier this year.

“Mission success is highly dependent on human capital and infrastructure,” Dickinson wrote in a 2023 memorandum to the secretary of the Air Force. “There is risk that most of the 1,000 civilians, contractors, and reservists will not relocate to another location.”

One division chief within Space Command’s plans and policy directorate told the Pentagon’s inspector general in May 2024 that they feared losing 90 percent of their civilian workforce if the Air Force announced a relocation. A representative of another directorate told the inspector general’s office that they could say “with certainty” only one of 25 civilian employees in their division would move to a new headquarters location.

Officials at Redstone Arsenal and information technology experts at Space Command concluded it would take three to four years to construct temporary facilities in Huntsville with the same capacity, connectivity, and security as those already in use in Colorado Springs, according to the DoD inspector general.

Tension under Biden

Essentially, the inspector general reported, officials at the Pentagon made cost savings their top consideration in where to garrison Space Command. Leaders at Space Command prioritized military readiness.

President Biden decided in July 2023 that Space Command’s headquarters would remain in Colorado Springs. The decision, according to the Pentagon’s press secretary at the time, would “ensure peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period.” Alabama lawmakers decried Biden’s decision in favor of Colorado, claiming it, too, was politically motivated.

Space Command reached full operational capability at its headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, two years ahead of schedule in December 2023. At the time, Space Command leaders said they could only declare Space Command fully operational upon the selection of a permanent headquarters.

Now, a year-and-a-half later, the Trump administration will uproot the headquarters and move it more than 1,000 miles to Alabama. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Space Command in Colorado.

A new report by the GAO published in May said Space Command faced “ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges” at Peterson, despite the command’s declaration of full operational capability. Space Command officials told the GAO the command’s posture at Peterson is “not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed” in Colorado Springs.

Space Command was originally established in 1985. The George W. Bush administration later transferred responsibility for military space activities to the US Strategic Command, as part of a post-9/11 reorganization of the military’s command structure. President Trump reestablished Space Command in 2019, months before Congress passed legislation to make the Space Force the nation’s newest military branch.

Throughout its existence, Space Command has been headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. But now, Pentagon officials say the growing importance of military space operations and potentially space warfare requires Space Command to occupy a larger headquarters than the existing facility at Peterson.

Peterson Space Force Base is also the headquarters of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, US Northern Command, and Space Operations Command, all of which work closely with Space Command. Space Command officials told the GAO there were benefits in being co-located with operational space missions and centers, where engineers and operators control some of the military’s most important spacecraft in orbit.

Several large space companies also have significant operations or headquarters in the Denver metro area, including Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems, and Sierra Space.

In Alabama, ULA and Blue Origin operate rocket and engine factories near Huntsville. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command are located at Redstone Arsenal itself.

The headquarters building at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Keefer Patterson

Colorado’s congressional delegation—six Democrats and four Republicans—issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing their disappointment in Trump’s decision.

“Today’s decision to move US Space Command’s headquarters out of Colorado and to Alabama will directly harm our state and the nation,” the delegation said in a statement. “We are united in fighting to reverse this decision. Bottom line—moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time.”

The relocation of Space Command headquarters is estimated to bring about 1,600 direct jobs to Huntsville, Alabama. The area surrounding the headquarters will also derive indirect economic benefits, something Colorado lawmakers said they fear will come at the expense of businesses and workers in Colorado Springs.

“Being prepared for any threats should be the nation’s top priority; a crucial part of that is keeping in place what is already fully operational,” the Colorado lawmakers wrote. “Moving Space Command would not result in any additional operational capabilities than what we have up and running in Colorado Springs now. Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for US Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”

Alabama’s senators and representatives celebrated Trump’s announcement Tuesday.

“The Air Force originally selected Huntsville in 2021 based 100 percent on merit as the best choice,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama). “President Biden reversed that decision based on politics. This wrong has been righted and Space Command will take its place among Huntsville’s world-renowned space, aeronautics, and defense leaders.”

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the Trump administration should provide “full transparency” and the “full details of this poor decision.”

“We hope other vital military units and missions are retained and expanded in Colorado Springs. Colorado remains an ideal location for future missions, including Golden Dome,” Polis said, referring to the Pentagon’s proposed homeland missile defense system.

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Ars Live: Consumer tech firms stuck scrambling ahead of looming chip tariffs

ars live, consumer tech, Donald Trump, game console prices, laptop prices, Policy, smartphone prices, tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / September 2, 2025

And perhaps the biggest confounding factor for businesses attempting to align supply chain choices with predictable tariff costs is looming chip tariffs. Trump has suggested those could come in August, but nearing the end of the month, there’s still no clarity there.

As tech firms brace for chip tariffs, Brzytwa will share CTA’s forecast based on a survey of industry experts, revealing the unique sourcing challenges chip tariffs will likely pose. It’s a particular pain point that Trump seems likely to impose taxes not just on imports of semiconductors but of any downstream product that includes a chip.

Because different electronics parts are typically assembled in different countries, supply chains for popular products have suddenly become a winding path, with potential tariff obstacles cropping up at any turn.

To Trump, complicating supply chains seems to be the point, intending to divert entire supply chains into the country to make the US a tech manufacturing hub, supposedly at the expense of his prime trade war target, China—which today is considered a world manufacturing “superpower.”

However, The New York Times this week suggested that Trump’s bullying tactics aren’t working on China, and experts suggest that now his chip tariffs risk not just spiking prices but throttling AI innovation in the US—just as China’s open source AI models shake up markets globally.

Brzytwa will share CTA research showing how the trade war has rattled, and will likely continue to rattle, tech firms into the foreseeable future. He’ll explain why tech firms can’t quickly or cheaply divert chip supply chains—and why policy that neglects to understand tech firms’ positions could be a lose-lose, putting Americans in danger of losing affordable access to popular tech without achieving Trump’s goal of altering China’s trade behavior.

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