national affairs

Bitcoin Bros Go Wild for Donald Trump

Bitcoin Bros Go Wild for Donald Trump

Trump’s speech is an hour behind. A half hour into the wait, restless attendees start chanting “Trump.” The woman sitting in front of me murmurs her own chant:“Bitcoin, bitcoin—that’s what they should be chanting.” She must have gotten the memo: It’s not a Trump rally; it’s a bitcoin rally.When Trump finally takes the stage to “God Bless the USA,” he basks in the glory of his standing ovation, “thrilled…to become the first American president ever to address a bitcoin event.” His next step is to pander to his supporters in the audience. “This is the kind of spirit that will…
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French AI Startups Felt Unstoppable. Then Came the Election

French AI Startups Felt Unstoppable. Then Came the Election

“Then on the other extreme, [the left-wing New Popular Front] have been so vocal about all the taxation measures they want to bring back that it looks like we're just going back to pre-Macron period,” Varza says. She points to France’s 2012 “les pigeons” (or “suckers”) movement, a campaign by angry internet entrepreneurs that opposed Socialist president François Hollande’s plan to dramatically raise taxes for founders.Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, is worried not only about France’s ability to attract overseas talent, but also about how appealing the next government will be to foreign investors.…
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Neo-Nazis Are All-In On AI

Neo-Nazis Are All-In On AI

Extremists across the US have weaponized artificial intelligence tools to help them spread hate speech more efficiently, recruit new members, and radicalize online supporters at an unprecedented speed and scale, according to a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an American non-profit press monitoring organization.The report found that AI-generated content is now a mainstay of extremists’ output: They are developing their own extremist-infused AI models, and are already experimenting with novel ways to leverage the technology, including producing blueprints for 3D weapons and recipes for making bombs.Researchers at the Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor, a group within…
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Foreign Influence Campaigns Don’t Know How to Use AI Yet Either

Foreign Influence Campaigns Don’t Know How to Use AI Yet Either

Today, OpenAI released its first threat report, detailing how actors from Russia, Iran, China, and Israel have attempted to use its technology for foreign influence operations across the globe. The report named five different networks that OpenAI identified and shut down between 2023 and 2024. In the report, OpenAI reveals that established networks like Russia’s Doppleganger and China’s Spamoflauge are experimenting with how to use generative AI to automate their operations. They're also not very good at it.And while it’s a modest relief that these actors haven’t mastered generative AI to become unstoppable forces for disinformation, it’s clear that they’re…
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