Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) took a procedural step Saturday to bring the CLARITY Act to the Senate floor, setting up a vote on whether to consider the bill when lawmakers return from their August recess.

The CLARITY Act would establish a federal regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets, spelling out how the industry would be regulated and which federal agencies would have authority over different types of assets.

The legislation would divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, creating a distinction between digital assets that are considered securities and those treated as commodities. Supporters say the change would replace what they describe as the SEC’s previous “regulation-by-enforcement” approach with clearer rules for the industry.

The bill would also require certain digital asset offerings and sales to provide investors with specific public disclosures. It would create a new exemption from SEC registration, called “Regulation Crypto,” allowing qualifying digital asset projects to raise money from the public while complying with specific disclosure and regulatory requirements.

Other provisions are intended to prevent companies from structuring projects to evade securities laws and would restrict insiders from reselling assets in ways that could facilitate pump-and-dump schemes or market manipulation. The legislation would also provide legal certainty for digital assets that U.S. courts have already determined are not securities.

Senate Banking Digital Assets Subcommittee Chair Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said in late July that she supported the legislation.

“This is another step in my years-long journey to ensure the U.S. leads the way on digital assets,” Lummis said in a press release.

 “The U.S. has always been at the forefront of financial innovation, and the coming weeks are likely the last real chance we will have for years to get this right.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is among the lawmakers opposing the bill.

“Our job is not to advance a pro-industry crypto bill that will put American consumers, investors, our national security and our financial system at risk,” Warren said in a statement in May.

Warren said Congress should be working on kitchen-table issues, such as capping interest rates on credit cards and preventing big banks from charging overdraft fees.

“But, instead of that, we’re spending our time working on a bill written by the crypto industry for the crypto industry. Nothing made it into this bill that wasn’t approved by the crypto industry,” Warren said.

President Donald Trump supports the bill and has urged the Senate to pass it in honor of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has supported various pro-crypto efforts on Capitol Hill.

Trump said in July that China and other countries aim to “take complete and total control of the major financial ‘happening’” and artificial intelligence.

A decade-long drug empire that prosecutors say pumped cocaine and fentanyl through Mobile has ended with its alleged mastermind headed to federal prison for the rest of his life, according to WSFA.

McGee, 42, received life sentences after being convicted of running a large-scale narcotics operation involving drugs, firearms and minors. U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer also imposed another life term stemming from fraud against the IRS and Small Business Administration, along with a $10 million fine.

The government portrayed McGee as far more than a street-level dealer. Prosecutors said his organization moved enormous quantities of cocaine over the years, including drugs obtained through suppliers connected to Mexican cartels. Evidence presented at trial convinced Moorer that the operation exceeded 450 kilograms of cocaine, an important threshold under federal sentencing guidelines.

Money was apparently pouring in as well. McGee reportedly acknowledged making roughly $120,000 in monthly profit, while financial investigators uncovered millions of dollars that could not be explained by his reported legitimate income. During one period, accountants found approximately $4.4 million in additional earnings beyond the $436,000 he officially reported.

Investigators were able to document much of the operation through an extensive surveillance campaign. Cameras secretly recorded activity around a house connected to McGee’s family, while another court-authorized camera was installed inside his Cadillac Escalade. The resulting footage became a major component of the government’s case.

But the money and drug quantities were overshadowed at sentencing by allegations that children were pulled into the operation.

The report writes that during a law enforcement raid on a Mobile stash house, agents encountered a 3-year-old boy carrying a backpack containing drugs. Prosecutors said McGee had learned authorities were approaching and efforts were made to get evidence out of the house before they arrived.

When officers confronted the frightened child, prosecutors said he responded with four words: “I’m not a bad boy.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney George May called what happened “just a horrifying scene.”

The government also presented evidence involving an 8-year-old boy. Prosecutors said a recorded conversation showed McGee discussing having the child throw a backpack containing drugs over a fence ahead of police arrival.

McGee disputed that accusation.

“I never instructed a child,” he told the court. The January verdict found McGee guilty of operating a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to distribute cocaine and fentanyl, multiple firearms offenses and involving people under 18 in drug activity.

Prosecutors also argued that this was hardly McGee’s first trip through the federal criminal justice system. Investigators believe he resumed trafficking not long after leaving federal prison following an earlier drug conviction. At Friday’s hearing, McGee challenged a number of the government’s assertions but did not present character witnesses or make a substantial plea for a lighter punishment.

Judge Moorer indicated that the severity of the sentence went well beyond a mechanical calculation under federal guidelines. Even if life imprisonment had not been recommended, he suggested he would have arrived at the same result. “If every federal judge, including myself, was arbitrarily limited to imposing a life sentence in only three cases, I would impose it in your case,” Moorer said.

The punishment also extended deep into McGee’s family. His wife, Echandza Dianca Maxie, was sentenced to life for participating in the drug and firearms conspiracy. His sister-in-law, Edeszann Dailene Maxie, received 13 years and three months for her involvement in the fraud operation.

Outside the courthouse, U.S. Attorney Sean Costello said the combination of narcotics, weapons, violence and financial crimes justified the government’s request for life imprisonment. He characterized McGee as the head of a Mobile crime family and said South Alabama’s streets were now “much, much safer.”

McGee’s next fight will be in the appellate courts, where his lawyers are expected to challenge both his convictions and sentence.

Tracy Rosenthal, co-founder of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, has emerged as an influential far-left star in the Democratic Socialists of America’s tenant-organizing ‘squatting’ movement, promoting rent strikes and aggressive pressure campaigns to bankrupt landlords.  

While the article focuses largely on New York City, Rosenthal’s influence extends far beyond it. She has built an entire career around this work, speaking at conferences and appearing as a media expert. The clips I used of her actually come from a talk she gave to Asheville DSA. pic.twitter.com/2LGiDzVYNG

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) August 3, 2026

In this clip posted on X by Stu Smith, investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, Rosenthal stated that tenants pay rent “at the barrel of a gun.” She explained how “Living on rent strike – right – getting to experience having your housing without having to pay for it is one of those liberatory visions of home.” 

🚨 Meet the “Abolish Rent” Ideologue Teaching DSA Tenant Organizers How to Wage War on Landlords

Tracy Rosenthal co-founded the Los Angeles Tenants Union, helps politically educate DSA tenant organizers, and is currently on rent strike in New York City.

In this supercut,… pic.twitter.com/0fw5wi30rt

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) July 17, 2026

The problem with Rosenthal’s revolutionary crusade to collapse capitalism is that she treats rent strikes, and the broader effort to destroy the nation from within, almost as a game, even though the financial fallout affects actual working-class tenants, property owners, lenders, and working-poor communities.

Her view that this is all a game is even more striking given New York Post reporting that she was raised in a super-wealthy household in a multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment and is the daughter of four-time Grammy-winning studio owner Steven Rosenthal.

Rosenthal showing off her White privilege at the Grammys with her rich father and stepmother. 

In other words, the very privilege created by the capitalist system she seeks to destroy has insulated her from terrible life decisions. She appears to be little more than a lonely cat woman and an unhinged white liberal “Karen” who hates the West, probably because she went to some liberal arts school and was handed an unproductive, woke degree that many companies today see merely as a liability. 

She is also likely representative of many DSA members who, as they watch capitalism progress this summer. Spacex’s IPO mints thousands of new millionaires, including working-class welders, and they see their jealousy boil over as they confront the reality that their decision to pursue far-left activism has led them down a sad and angry path, one full of hate and, as the far-left is known for, violence. 

Rosenthal’s 2024 book “Abolish Rent” has been a top read on the DSA’s own website. 

But hey, she is one of DSA’s recommended authors on “housing justice,” not a manipulative activist weaponizing laws and protections meant to help vulnerable tenants. pic.twitter.com/0uWgbxNYTR

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) July 17, 2026

Rosenthal, who posted “death to America” the night Mamdani clinched the Democratic primary last year and now serves as a visiting scholar at the woke CUNY, has already put some of these rent strikes into practice. 

Meet another of Mamdani’s housing experts…

Mamdani housing event features a lady in a mask ranting about her landlord, declaring “eviction = violence” pic.twitter.com/el709Zzf88

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 16, 2026

It’s time to recognize that Rosenthal, like much of the DSA activist class, is arguably a byproduct of an education system hijacked by the radical left that has purposely oversupplied the country with worthless woke degrees. 

The result is a growing revolutionary cohort increasingly detached from economic realities that have one mission, and it’s not affordability, climate, anti-data centers, Palestine, or any of the lefty causes; it’s to destroy the nation from within – we’re merely citing DSA leaders in their own words … 

Hawley’s Solution

If policymakers actually want to dismantle the cancer killing the education system and producing this far-left activist class, perhaps forcing schools to have an economic interest in student outcomes will result in less wokes? Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill in 2022 – the Make the Universities Pay Act, that would allow federal student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy after a certain period, but pair that relief with a clawback requiring universities that pushed these worthless and toxic degrees to absorb at least half of every covered loan that is ultimately discharged.

Such a mechanism would fundamentally change the economics of higher education overnight. Schools – with their massively inflated tuition – who produce graduates that are unable to generate enough income to repay their debts, would suddenly bear a direct financial cost for those outcomes. This would impose accountability, forcing schools to prioritize productive and demanding degrees instead of worthless woke degrees.

In other words, it’s time to impose accountability on schools that push worthless degrees. Such a move could be the ultimate death blow to many universities with weak balance sheets, high debt loads, and small endowments. 

Lawmakers should read more about how to break the cycle of bad ideas via U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.): New Legislation to Hold Universities Accountable for Rising Tuition Costs and Student Debt. 

Seattle leaders are moving forward with a first-of-its-kind proposal aimed at preventing grocery retailers from using consumers’ personal data to charge different prices for the same products.

The ordinance, backed by Mayor Katie Wilson and City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster, would prohibit large grocery chains from using information such as browsing history, social media activity, employment status, race, gender, or chatbot interactions to personalize prices, according to Wilson’s website. 

Instead, retailers would be required to publicly display uniform prices while still allowing traditional discounts for seniors, veterans, loyalty programs, and other transparent promotions.

“This policy stops corporations from using personal data to squeeze more money out of shoppers,” Wilson said. “The same product, in the same store, should cost the same no matter who’s pushing the cart.”

The announcement on Wilson’s site says that the measure is designed to curb AI-driven price discrimination as grocery costs continue to rise. The proposal follows a Consumer Reports investigation that found Instacart tested AI pricing systems that charged different customers different prices for identical grocery items. It also comes after Washington’s attorney general sued Albertsons over allegedly misleading “buy one, get one” promotions that did not actually reduce prices.

Councilmember Rinck argued the legislation would establish “guardrails” around how retailers use customer data, particularly as many households face higher food costs and reduced SNAP benefits. Foster added that consumers “shouldn’t have to wonder whether they’re being charged extra because of an algorithm.”

Labor and privacy advocates also praised the proposal. UFCW 3000 President Faye Guenther accused grocery companies of pursuing “AI-powered surveillance pricing tech” to create “fake discounts,” while privacy advocates said the ordinance would help prevent algorithmic price discrimination before the practice becomes widespread.

If approved, Seattle would become the first U.S. city to adopt rules specifically banning the use of sensitive personal data to set individualized grocery prices.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Britain’s latest free speech assault is underway.

An elite police unit set up by the Labour government has already flagged more than 100 social media posts to local forces, monitoring online “protest related activity” in a move critics brand a sinister step toward state control of speech.

The National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, created in the wake of the 2024 Southport riots, began operations in February. Freedom of Information figures obtained by the Telegraph and reported today show it has made 106 referrals of “suspicious” posts to forces across the country.

An elite police squad which was set up to monitor social media in the wake of the Southport riots has flagged more than 100 posts to local forces.

Political opponents have described the squad as “sinister” and said it represents a further erosion of free speech and civil… pic.twitter.com/g8YGewbIVn

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 8, 2026

In June alone, 50 of those referrals came as public anger boiled over in Southampton after police bodycam footage exposed officers handcuffing dying teenage murder victim Henry Nowak while accepting a false complaint of ‘racism’ from his Sikh killer.

When the unit was first announced, then policing minister Dame Diana Johnson described it as “a dedicated function at a national level for exploiting internet intelligence to help local forces manage public safety threats and risks.”

New elite unit flags more than 100 social media posts to police forces as free speech fears grow https://t.co/DB5IhBmZVu

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 8, 2026

The National Police Coordination Centre claims the squad “supports policing’s understanding of protest-related activity in the online environment by developing a broader picture of emerging, potential risks.”

Its remit, officials say, focuses on “providing strategic insight and improving awareness of protest-related developments that may have relevance to policing.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage commented “This is the beginning of the state controlling free speech. It is sinister, dangerous and must be fought.”

Police have refused to disclose which posts were flagged, citing exemptions around crime prevention. The pattern is clear enough. The unit was born from the Southport disorder that followed the murders of three girls by Axel Rudakubana.

In the information vacuum, online discussion of the attacker’s background and wider immigration failures was blamed for fanning unrest. Now the same apparatus is trained on any online activity that might signal public discontent with official narratives.

This new monitoring squad slots neatly alongside the Home Office’s long-running Research, Information and Communications Unit – RICU – a shadowy “thought police” operation exposed for controlling the mass migration narrative. That unit has intervened after migrant attacks, including the Henry Nowak murder, to shape family statements, briefed police to portray protesters as unsympathetic thugs rather than citizens with grievances, and treated online criticism of immigration policy as a threat requiring behavioural change.

It also sits on top of a growing machinery of digital control that has already turned Britain into a global outlier for speech arrests.

In 2024 alone, nearly 10,000 people were arrested for “grossly offensive” social media posts under communications laws – an average of 30 arrests a day. Some forces clocked rates 20 times higher than others.

Violent offenders were released early to free up cells for those jailed over online comments.

The machinery has been building for years. In 2024, a man was arrested simply for posting “anti-establishment rhetoric” after the riots. Authorities prioritised thought crime over street crime, even as prisons filled with people whose only offence was typing the wrong words.

The Online Safety Act handed regulators sweeping powers to force platforms to remove “harmful” content under threat of massive fines.

Critics called it a censor’s charter from the start. Government units that once hunted lockdown dissenters pivoted to monitoring mass migration critics.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan openly called for a dedicated government social media disinformation unit.

The trajectory is consistent: expand the definition of threat, then expand the surveillance.

Layer on mandatory digital ID and biometric tracking, age verification systems that end online anonymity, and proposals that treat social media access itself as a privilege granted by the state.

What begins as “protecting the public from protest risks” becomes a permanent apparatus for mapping, flagging, and suppressing dissent.

Authoritarianism does not need tanks in the streets. It arrives with a login and a national internet intelligence team.

The 106 flagged posts are not the end. They are the proof of concept. An elite unit now sits at the centre of British policing with a mandate to scan the public conversation for signs of discontent and feed those findings to local forces.

The official language is careful. The practical effect is a standing capability to treat online speech as a public order threat.

Free expression does not survive that environment for long.

The only question left is how many more posts, how many more referrals, and how many more arrests will be required before the public refuses to accept the new normal.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir by storage capacity, has fallen to its lowest level on record as a drought throughout western states continues.

Bureau of Reclamation data indicate that the reservoir’s surface elevation rose to 1,040.50 feet above sea level on Thursday, below the previous low of 1,040.58 feet set in July 2022, when the lake first fell to a low following years of drought.

Hoover Dam forms Lake Mead along the Colorado River on the Nevada-Arizona border, and holds water for approximately 40 million people in seven Western states, as well as parts of Mexico. In addition, Lake Mead generates hydropower for customers in California, Arizona, and Nevada, which is threatened by the falling water levels.

As Kimberley Hayek reports for The Epoch Times, the Colorado River Basin has been in a so-called megadrought for more than 20 years.

In 1999, Lake Mead was near capacity, but by 2022 its surface had fallen by nearly 176 feet after a period that is the driest on record throughout many parts of the West.

Southern Nevada gets nearly 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority has long viewed the Colorado River allotment as its largest and most critical resource, leading to conservation efforts over the years that have slashed per-person use going back to the early 2000s, and nearly all indoor water is recycled.

When Lake Mead first fell below 1,075 feet in 2021, federal officials declared a Level 1 shortage, and further declines prompted deeper cuts. Nevada’s share of the river has fallen by billions of gallons over the course of several years.

Hoover Dam also produces thousands of gigawatt-hours of electricity annually.

At Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell, Lake Mead’s companion reservoir, the level was 3,521 feet on Thursday, down nearly 33 feet from a year ago.

Electricity production becomes infeasible once the surface falls to 3,490 feet and below.

Both lakes still operate despite being well below the elevation levels needed for reliable power and storage.

Population growth has also added to the pressure.

Nevada ranked near the top of states for growth in recent years, and Southern Nevada is home to approximately 70 percent of the state’s residents.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area attracts millions of visitors each year for a range of activities, including boating, fishing and hiking.

Low water has exposed once submerged features, such as the ruins of the town of St. Thomas. There is also a World War II-era B-29 bomber that was submerged in the lake after crashing almost 70 years ago.

Authored by David Sultzer via AmericanThinker.com,

The Democrat party leadership—sensing its mortal danger from a very well-organized and radicalized Islamo-socialist movement—is trying to stay afloat, claiming that the Democrat Party is a “big tent” where the socialists can find a welcome home:

Senator Chuck Schumer thinks Democrat Socialists — who want to oust him as Leader — make the Democrat party stronger.

REPORTER: “Is the rise of the DSA good for your party?”

SCHUMER: “Being a big tent party is a strength not a weakness.” pic.twitter.com/17hSbCbtMx

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 4, 2026

But ironically, as the “big tent” expands, the number of constituencies inside the tent shrinks.

The traditional power bases of the Democrat party, the working class and minorities, are not part of the Islamo-socialist movement. Instead, the “socialist” part is comprised almost uniformly of downwardly mobile, white college-credentialed losers.

CNN: Abdul El-Sayed won 0 of the 15 counties with the lowest share of adults with college degrees, but 13 of the 15 counties with the highest share.

“El-Sayed’s support came dramatically from those areas… More from elite circles than from the working class circles.” pic.twitter.com/rY2VqhRixN

— Bobby LaValley (@Bobby_LaVallley) August 6, 2026

All members of the Democrat leadership, without exception, can see the danger to them from the Islamo-socialist movement, as well as the danger to their traditional constituencies—and, for that matter, to our constitutional experiment now 250 years old. Most, as epitomized by Chuck Schumer, are willing to sacrifice the country and appease the Islamo-socialist crocodile, hoping it will eat them last.

Others, such as Julian Epstein, writing today at the NY Post, are sounding all the alarm bells, namely, that such appeasement is not merely “a recipe for moral decay,” but “for political suicide” as well:

Democrats aren’t coddling Scandinavian-style socialists; they’re getting into bed with a nihilistic, deconstructionist brand of third-worldism.

It’s an ideology that seeks the elimination of prisons, policing, borders, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court and democratic free markets.

A worldview that aligns with genocidal jihadist movements like Hamas.

This is, Epstein says, fracturing the party “as working-class voters flee an increasingly toxic Democratic brand [and] the party’s newfound embrace of anti-American extremists is likely to produce big losses nationally…”

Moreover, as to the socialist dreams of Bernie Sanders, Epstein criticizes it as a “delusion that attaches no importance to generating wealth—and only cares about redistributing it.”

Epstein ultimately opines that the rise of the Islamo-socialist movement is part of a bigger problem for Democrats:

[T]hat post-modern liberalism is failing. The more we spend on the welfare state, it seems, the worse the outcomes.

It is a fascinating essay, well worth the read. And as Epstein concludes.

“Democrats can’t run from this lunacy in November.”

And naturally, Victor Davis Hanson gets it:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Unintelligent, Arrogant Democratic Socialists Are About to Receive a Reality Check: National Elections

Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary became the most expensive Senate primary in the state’s history.

Haley Stevens’ loss to Abdul El-Sayed says a… pic.twitter.com/9A8W2qACIR

— Daily Signal (@DailySignal) August 7, 2026

After months of lobbying the Trump administration for clearance to purchase Chinese memory chips, Apple appears to be nearing the point where it can tap China’s domestic chip market. The push follows what the iPhone maker has described as “unsustainable” pricing from the memory “cartel,” namely SK Hynix, Samsung, Micron, and SanDisk, whose production has been soaked up by unprecedented demand from hyperscalers. 

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday morning that Apple is closer than ever to using memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese company that the Pentagon has put on a blacklist because of alleged connections to the People’s Liberation Army.

Apple is currently testing CXMT memory chips across its product portfolio, including iPhones and MacBooks, according to the report.

The report continued:

Apple has held early talks with CXMT about supplying components with the goal of using them in some devices sold in China, the people said. Apple hopes to win the White House’s blessing to do business with the Chinese company.

Apple is raising prices on its products globally, blaming the rising cost of memory chips because of high demand from AI companies. Getting access to Chinese supplies could help the iPhone maker ease its crunch.

As we’ve covered, the iPhone maker has been waging a lobbying campaign to secure the White House’s blessing in order to ease the financial pressure from soaring memory chip prices. A recent FT report said that Apple approached the Commerce Department earlier this summer about procuring Chinese memory chips. 

Apple is not barred from buying chips from China’s DDR giant CXMT or from YMTC, another Chinese memory chipmaker that focuses on NAND memory. YMTC has been aggressively growing its market share, has caught up with SanDisk, and is set to become the world’s third-largest maker of flash memory as soon as this quarter.

However, US rules prevent Apple from ordering customized chips from CXMT but permit it to purchase off-the-shelf components and negotiate prices. 

The WSJ noted that other device companies are seeking CXMT supplies:

Laptop makers HP and Acer have started using memory chips from CXMT in devices sold outside the U.S. to alleviate some of the memory supply strain, people familiar with the matter said.

We expanded on this last week:

• World’s Largest PC Makers Start Using Memory Chips From China’s CXMT

Any agreement Apple inks with CXMT would risk immediate political resistance in Washington, where policymakers fear U.S. orders could strengthen CXMT. Its chip tech trails that of Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron, while its production capacity is largely committed for this year.

However, CXMT is rapidly gaining ground. Its second-quarter revenue increased more than eightfold from the same quarter one year ago, lifting its global DRAM market share to 7%. CXMT completed a successful IPO last month (read note).

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Two days ago, I wrote an article detailing the sudden rash of “rogue AI agents” allegedly  besetting the tech community, and how that may be used to bring in new regulations, notionally targeting AI, but actually limiting or monitoring how ordinary people use the internet.

In the 48 hours since, that blatant fear-mongering has gone WILD.

Within a few hours of our original article being published, Meta joined the parade of “rogue AIs”, when Mark Zuckerberg “confirmed” one of their AI agents had left the play area and gone toddling off into the internet to do a little bit of hacking.

Then, this morning, Chinese AI company Moonshot reported their Kimi3 model had “escaped containment” [from Wired]:

THE AI INDUSTRY is having a rogue agent summer. The latest model to escape onto the open internet during security testing is Kimi K3, a powerful open-weight offering from the Chinese company Moonshot AI.

Bloomberg reports that hackers are using AI voice-cloning to steal from hedge funds. The Guardian says AI doctors are spreading medical misinformation.

The Independent is screaming:

Out-of-control AI systems are going rogue and hacking people. Is it time to panic?

And you know what? I think it just might be.

After all, rogue AIs hacking the planet are the least of it. That’s small fry already.

The New York Times is reporting that AI is now sequencing genomes and designing brand new viruses – biological viruses, not computer viruses – which will be used to treat diseases:

This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature – Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes. Sixteen of them were viable, yielding new viruses.

But experts are warning – “warning” seems to be about 80% of what “experts” do – that this is potentially dangerous:

But experts have also warned AI-designed viruses raise “urgent” safety and security concerns.

This is painfully unsubtle propaganda, obviously hoping to play on both the Covid-inspired fear of viruses and trendy gain-of-function panic. A crossover episode, the Batman vs Superman of modern panic narratives.

In other scary AI-related news, an AI engineer with a twitter blue tick is leaving OpenAI to join Conduit, a tech start-up with the aim of creating an AI that can read people’s thoughts:

Naomi Bashkansky left OpenAI and joined Conduit to build models that turn non-invasive neural recordings into text prompts. She says a headband could decode rough intentions into AI coding prompts by 2027, with broader brain-to-AI milestones later.

I’m not sure why this is news at all, or what “non-invasive” mind-reading might look like, but since it’s probably not going to happen that doesn’t really matter.

The point is – believe EVERYTHING they tell you – and be  afraid!

That’s what Geoffrey “Godfather of AI” Hinton thinks, according to the interview published by CNN yesterday:

“What’s happening is these things are getting smarter […] I think as they get smarter, we’re going to see more and more complex intentions they have – and more and more ability to escape control […] I don’t believe we’re going to be able to keep control of them in the simple way of just outthinking them so they can’t escape […] I anticipate there will be lots of nasty cyberattacks[.]”

Like I said, be afraid.

But what’s the endgame here? The answer to that seems to be “regulation”.

Regulating AI is suddenly all anyone wants to talk about.

Many want a global treaty to govern AI risk. California and New York may already be writing it.

That’s from Foreign Policy.

The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times all have similar things to say.

Bloomberg thinks we should treat AI like the airline industry.

Politicians across the spectrum of from the UK’s AI Minister to the Governor of Vermont are clamouring for regulation.

The United Nations University tells us:

You Can’t Regulate AI Without Fully Understanding It

Oh, and in case you were in any doubt about what you were supposed to think, Donald Trump has come out for AI and against regulating it, claiming AI will be “bigger than oil”, and warning that congress wants to “regulate AI out of business”.

Trump bad.

Trump like AI.

AI must be bad.

This is the simple moral math that swaths of the US have been conditioned into.

AI is scary and needs to be regulated, and if you don’t agree you’re just like Donald Trump. That’s the headline.

But what will this “regulation” look like?

That’s a good question. One I’m not sure anyone has an all-encompassing answer to quite yet.

There’s talk of “kill switches”. The Bank of England suggested them months ago, to prevent AI stock traders crashing the market, and Rep. Ted Lieu wants congress to pass a law requiring them by the end of the year.

Two liberal professors, writing for Project Syndicate, are here to tell us “the right way” to regulate AI, using paragraphs like this:

Addressing AI’s societal risks requires institutions designed to recognize and respond to emerging threats before they become systemic failures.

…and this:

These skewed priorities can be traced to the framing of AI development as a geopolitical race. But technological leadership means little if it comes at the expense of workers’ health, social resilience, and people’s ability to lead meaningful lives. A country that develops the world’s most capable AI models while leaving its workforce deskilled and its public discourse polluted by misinformation has not won anything worth winning.

Which give vibes over specifics, but I think suggests a very familiar marketing strategy and a vague policy direction.

This vagueness is largely intentional at this point.

First they want the public to beg them to do something. They can decide what the something is later.

The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century.

Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.

This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.

The Early Rise and Fall of the EU

The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.

Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU’s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55.

The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.

The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.

The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.

Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc’s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015.

Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.

Brexit and the Years of Decline

Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK’s formal withdrawal in January 2020.

Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier.

As the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.

The Post-Pandemic Divergence

Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026.

Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU’s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.

That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.

To explore what EU membership meant for one major economy, read Poland’s GDP per capita has more than doubled since it joined the European Union in 2004 on Voronoi.