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Was President Trump’s richest adviser focussed on helping the country—or his own bottom line?
How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington
A sprawling network spread across Congress, federal agencies and think tanks is pushing policymakers to put AI apocalypse at the top of the agenda — potentially boxing out other worries and benefiting top AI companies with ties to the network.
Trump Pulled In at Least $2 Billion After Returning to the White House
The release of a mandatory financial disclosure for 2025 shows that the Trump family’s holdings, particularly the president’s crypto businesses, were stunningly lucrative.
Tech moguls Altman, Bezos and Zuckerberg donate to Trump's inauguration fund
The donations are seen as the latest example of tech moguls' changing stance toward the incoming president. During his first administration, Trump clashed with Bezos and Zuckerberg.
Scoop: Trump admin blocks foreign access to Anthropic's most powerful AI
The move marks an escalation in Washington's effort to treat cutting-edge AI systems as national security assets.
Under the Trump crypto playbook, the family always wins. Investors don’t
Risking little of their own money, the US president and his sons have added at least $2.3 billion to the family fortune from their main crypto ventures, while the investors they've wooed have taken a $2.3 billion hit, a Reuters examination found.
The Venture-Capital Populist
How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington
Mapping Trump's Crypto Empire
Untangling the sprawling web of Trump family crypto ventures, and the fortune they’re making by cashing in on the presidency.
Trump's White Identity Politics and the Conservative "Welfare" Bait and Switch - Niskanen Center
This passage in Michael Grunwald’s Politico piece on Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s OMB director, nicely illustrates standard Republican shadiness about what does and does not count as “welfare”: During his populist run for the White House, Trump had vowed to leave Social Security and Medicare alone. But Trump had also vowed to rein in America’s national debt, which Mulvaney […]
Kremlin likely cultivated Trump adviser, experts say
Was George Papadopoulos "really stupid" — or the key to a sinister Kremlin connection?
The Predatory Hegemon
Ever since Donald Trump first became U.S. president, in 2017, commentators have searched for an adequate label to describe his approach to U.S. foreign relations. Writing in these pages, the political scientist Barry Posen suggested in 2018 that Trump’s grand strategy was “illiberal hegemony,” and the analyst Oren Cass argued last fall that its defining essence was a demand for “reciprocity.” Trump has been called a realist, a nationalist, an old-fashioned mercantilist, an imperialist, and an isolationist.
Billionaires Gone Wild
Understanding the oligarchs’ power grab and the dire threat to American democracy
It’s Not Just Elon Musk — These Billionaires Are Also Neurodivergent
Some billionaires say their conditions helped them succeed in business.
Bernie Sanders’ AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Plan - Schneier on Security
Let no one accuse Bernie Sanders of ducking the big questions. Writing in the New York Times last week, the senator asked: “Will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?” We agree entirely that this is one of the most potent questions facing global democracy today. Our book, Rewiring Democracy, surveys the emerging uses for and impacts of AI in democracy around the world and reaches the same conclusion: that the most urgent risk posed by AI is the ...
Think tank tied to tech billionaires played key role in Biden’s AI order
Researchers from the RAND Corporation — which took more than $15 million this year from a group financed by a Facebook co-founder — were a driving force behind the White House’s sweeping new AI reporting requirements.
The world’s most influential economist is oddly unconvincing
Daron Acemoglu is revered. Why?
