Policy

”It’s a huge giveaway to Big Tech,” the Missouri Republican and longtime foe of the tech giants, tells The New York Times. His concerns: tech companies would be able to issue their own stablecoins that would compete with the U.S. dollar, and it would incentivize these companies to collect more of their customers’ financial data. “It allows these tech companies to issue stablecoins without any kind of controls. I don’t see why we would do that.”

Yesterday I wrote about Elon Musk’s fall from power. Today he is beefing with the president on X, instead of picking up his phone to make a call. Hm!

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, writes in The New York Times that though he understands the motivations behind the proposal, “a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument. A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast.”

Isn’t it funny how all these tech and science men have ties to Epstein? I wonder why! Anyway, Epstein invested with Thiel’s Valar Ventures — and that investment hasn’t previously been disclosed. Guess what that means? “There’s a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women.”

That’s the assessment from US Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who just released a 300-page report (PDF) detailing key findings, including “missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership.” Duffy is ordering the agency in charge of the project to respond in 37 days, or risk contract terminations. And he frames the demand as being “good stewards” of US tax dollars — even as Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is projected to grow the federal deficit to $2.4 trillion. Of course, Trump has been angling to kneecap California’s high-speed rail project for years now.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s security agency released footage of the strikes targeting Russian airfields, which show the country’s use of ArduPilot, as reported earlier by 404Media.

This fun story from The Atlantic is about President Trump’s love of phone calls, and the risks that entails: impersonation, hacking, and much more. But as soon as I read an advisor saying that “he is not walking around with a run-of-the-mill iPhone off the shelf,” I immediately had one thousand more questions. I now need to go find answers.

The National Science Foundation — which developed tech such as the literal internet — now has a 23-year-old to veto funding to projects he doesn’t understand. That’s DOGE’s Zachary Terrell, who can barely pretend to pay attention in meetings. Anyway, this is who’s deciding which grants go forward — some guy with no experience in anything except getting a company acquired by Coinbase. Scientific experts? Those are a luxury for functioning countries.

The Washington Post is reporting he’s expected to sign executive orders on drones next week, suggesting they could “end Chinese drone sales in the US.”

We’re at the end of a day-long set of closing arguments, concluding with one final request to the judge from DOJ attorney David Dahlquist to “please seize this moment in time” and order Google to change how it runs search. Judge Mehta thanks everyone for dealing with a “challenging schedule” for the trial and says, “we’ll get back to you as soon as we can,” and with that, the remedies trial portion of US v. Google is officially done.

Its attorney notes that an appeal in the liability case is ongoing, and Google wants that to be able to proceed. The DOJ, in a response, asks Judge Mehta to disregard the request, saying the appeal and remedies can proceed in parallel.

Mehta briefly asks how Google would recommend forming a committee that could handle all the specifics of whatever remedy is proposed, as suggested by the DOJ. Google’s attorney complains any committee could end up simply letting the DOJ — and the executive branch in general — control how the deal gets interpreted. “That delegation of authority, I submit, is a violation of due process.” Schmidtlein also brings up how broad the remit of the committee would be, covering everything from privacy to identifying competitors.

We’re wrapping up final discussions about some of the more obscure remedies, and Google briefly references the issue of advertisers gaming the system if they’re provided search data. “There’s lots of problems with this,” Google’s attorney says, including significant privacy problems.

Judge Mehta has been triaging some non-Google cases to continue past 5, and we’re now back, with Mehta questioning Google’s attorney.

Mehta’s going through a final round of remedies and asking for explanations. First up: a proposed ban on self-preferencing. Government attorney explains it’s focused on search in relation to the Play Store, on-device AI, and a few other products. “Does this mean that, say, let’s say tomorrow Google launches a new product that is... Gemini... Super-Gemini. Do you mean to say if Google launched Super-Gemini, they couldn’t use Google Search to ground it?” Attorney seems to suggest banning something like that might be reasonable, though he equivocates. He says if there’s “a better way to draft” the statute, “we’re all ears.”

Mehta is, again, asking for specifics about a plan to offer incentives to try alternatives to Google. “How does Google deliver that option?” he asks. The attorney’s answer, again: a committee will decide.

Moving on from Chrome acquisitions, we’re in the final section, starting with the state attorney. Michael Schwartz is arguing for an education campaign fund that would address “habit, inertia, and brand recognition” barriers that prevent rivals from attracting users and competing with Google. Mehta asks some practical questions: how much money should be put into the fund, and who decides what the campaign to make people aware of alternatives looks like? The attorney says at a high level, it would be Mehta — who doesn’t seem thrilled about that. “I assure you, I am not qualified to tell you what is a good marketing campaign and what is not,” he says.

Despite Musk’s stated departure from DOGE (and attempts to talk up his focus on his businesses), sources tell Wired that DOGE-related efforts across federal agencies are “escalating.” President Trump confirmed on Friday that Musk’s “really not leaving,” either, as the tech billionaire says he expects “to continue to provide advice.”

We’re back to the DOJ, whose attorney is saying Google’s claim only it can steward Chrome is wrong — and that separating Google from Chrome will, conversely, let it evolve. He struggles to cite a specific legal case that would explicitly justify an order like a Chrome divestiture, but he says looking to the body of law on mergers could be useful, and while the judge can’t require Chromium employees to stick around, he could order financial incentives or other measures that would make Google fill any empty roles.

Google’s lawyer is making a long case against the Chrome sale — essentially arguing that nobody else has the pragmatic incentives to keep developing Chromium or the ability to maintain Chrome as competently. Any divested version of Chrome will be “a shadow of the current Chrome,” he says. “I don’t see how anybody would be better off.” Also, he says, 80 percent of Chrome users are outside the US, and they’d be affected by the divestiture as well.

Schmidtlein says not only is it not justified by the law, the tangible harms outweigh “speculative benefits” to the competitive landscape. There’s “voluminous evidence” Chrome succeeded through innovation.

We’re currently hearing from a lawyer for the state lawsuit against Google, and Mehta is drilling down on a fairly salient issue: will Chromium employees actually move from Google to whoever buys it? The attorney says it’s common industry practice for workers to come with a company. That might be a reasonable claim, but it’s not a hard rule — and if it turns out not to apply here, that’s a potentially big temporary hit to Chromium’s maintenance and all the browser makers that rely on it.

Mehta asks whether a Chrome buyer would need to demonstrate it was capable of maintaining the open source Chromium project that powers numerous other browsers. “There are very few that could actually demonstrate it today,” he says. The DOJ’s attorney says there could be a negotiation with the future buyer to ensure a commitment, and people who are currently working on Chromium at Google would come over to the new owner.

Back after a short break, Dahlquist is arguing for why Google should have to sell its web browser. “Browsers are the way users get into the internet,” he says, and a huge part of that is search. He recaps the basics about Chrome’s popularity, including that 35 percent of Google queries come through Chrome.