Concerns are being raised that neither the Commerce Department nor Nvidia are doing their due diligence when it comes to vetting Chinese firms cleared to handle the company's H200 AI chips. According to The New York Times, New Matrix is on the list of approved firms, yet its offices are empty, "a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be." In fact, the paper could find little evidence that the company exists in any meaningful way:

Only scant information can be found online about New Matrix, which was created 17 months ago. At the building that New Matrix lists as its address, a company directory does not …

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I'm calling it: time of death, November 6th, 1:30 AM, by tweet.

Elon Musk's declaration Friday that Tesla would be "winding down" production of the Cybertruck next year to make room for the Cybercab was fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it was a humiliating way to kill a vehicle that was once hailed as the pinnacle of Tesla's engineering - faster than a Porsche 911, more powerful than an F-150, able to leap over the Model Y as a singular representation of Musk's Blade Runner-inspired designs for the future. "I think the Tesla Cybertruck is our best product ever," he declared during a 2019 earnings call. (He prefaced the statement …

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A massive permitting bill that could help energy projects come online much quicker and potentially lower utility bills for Americans is advancing with bipartisan support. And while it could be a catalyst for lots of clean energy, it could also speed up polluting projects and limit oversight of new data centers.

With data centers demanding more electricity for AI, environmental advocates fear that developers could take advantage of the reforms to evade public scrutiny and rely more heavily on fossil fuels. The bill sacrifices caution for speed, limiting environmental reviews and preventing communities from stopping a project from moving forw …

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Someone at the White House appears to be running software that could enable outsiders to rent access on the presidential network for just "a few dollars," as reported by Krebs on Security and The Register. That's according to findings from the security firms Layer3 Intel and Synthient, which discovered residential proxy activity on the White House network.

A residential proxy opens up a way for people to rent access to a home IP address and route their internet traffic through it, allowing them to conceal where their activity is actually coming from. Some apps and browser extensions include third-party software development kits (SDKs) that …

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On Tuesday, millions of American voters went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly for Democrats and against AI. The fight against Big Tech is about to come roaring back, and the fight over data centers is looking even harder for the folks trying to build them.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David discuss what the 2026 midterms mean for the tech industry going forward. They dig into the self-quarantining echo chamber that is X, the congressional energy likely to be pointed at tech CEOs and AI regulation, and whether anything is actually likely to get done in the next two years.

After that, the hosts turn to AI. Specifically, …

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The European Commission claims TikTok broke its online platform rules by offering a recommendation algorithm that creates a "rabbit hole effect" on users. In an announcement on Friday, the regulators allege TikTok's algorithm can harm users with "endless and repeated exposure" to content related to sadness, isolation, or body image.

The findings come months after the EU Commission declared that TikTok's design is too "addictive." While TikTok has implemented controls to mitigate the algorithm's "rabbit hole effect," the Commission says its preliminary findings suggest that they're not effective. TikTok must now change the design of its For …

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A week before the midterm elections, Vice President JD Vance hosted a town hall in Texas with Fox News host Jesse Watters. It was a friendly event with a friendly audience in what should have been a friendly state, and maybe that's why Vance couldn't help himself. When a college student earnestly asked how the right expected young people like her to settle down and have kids, given the ever-growing cost of living, Vance replied with a quip about Jon Husted's ass.

The student, Kate White, introduced herself as the vice president of the Texas Christian University chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative group started by Donald Trump all …

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On Tuesday night, Democrats made history as they took control of the House and the Senate, and a blue wave swept through traditionally red and swing states - with the nation's first Black woman governor elected in Georgia, the country's first Native American woman governor elected in New Mexico, and a Maine Senator ceding to a Democrat after 30 years in office. In these and other campaigns, one theme kept coming up: holding AI companies accountable to the American people. Now, the AI industry is left considering the prospect of regulation, data center construction slowdowns, and more.

Publicly, most major AI company CEOs have remained silen …

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It's the year 2026 and the Federal Aviation Administration is still running critical pieces of American airspace on 3.5-inch magnetic floppy disks.

But those technology artifacts could be headed for the dustbin after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced an effort to ditch floppy disks in favor of a new digital system.

Duffy announced Thursday that the FAA is rolling out the Enterprise - Information Display System (E-IDS) to replace four legacy setups across more than 400 air traffic control facilities. E-IDS aggregates real-time weather alerts, equipment outages, restricted airspace changes, and pilot reports onto a modern digit …

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Tech CEO hearings. Tougher AI and data center guardrails. Investigations of Elon Musk's DOGE cuts. The gates are open for Democrats once they regain control of committee gavels come January after a historic win of majorities in both the House and Senate on Tuesday.

"LAWYER UP," the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee wrote on X in a message aimed at the Trump administration as well as "corporate corruption" shortly after networks like NBC News projected Democratic control of the House. "Subpoenas," Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) posted. It's clear tech executives will also be caught in Democrats' crosshairs. "They …

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One of the basic problems of spending too much time on social media is that you are cooking your brain by reading posts from a pack of attention-seeking lunatics. If your social media of choice is the site formerly known as Twitter, and it is your main source of contact with the outside world, you may delusionally throw away nearly $500 million dollars on midterm elections, just like Elon Musk.

In particular, $47 million of that money from Musk's America PAC was aimed at defeating Texas Democrat James Talarico, who trounced Musk's preferred Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, with 55 percent of the vote. Talarico even made Musk's influence a cent …

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Data center developers are poised to face a more restrictive building environment after voters across the country voted in candidates who favor moratoriums and ballot measures that put more obstacles on their expansion, delivering a stinging blow to a central pillar of the AI industry.

Of voters polled by NBC News on Election Day, 76 percent said they opposed data centers in their communities. Dozens of local communities voted directly to restrict development through ballot measures. And upset winners like Texas Democratic Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa and Michigan's Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed support moratoriums on development.

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James Talarico, the Democratic Texas senator-elect, not only managed to flip the state in yesterday's midterms but prevailed in the most expensive Senate election to date. More than $573 million was spent on advertisements between Talarico, his Republican opponent Ken Paxton, and their aligned PACs. And a big chunk of that money came from just one man: Elon Musk.

Musk reportedly spent more than $445 million supporting Republicans in the midterms, making him not only by far the biggest donor in the 2026 election cycle but also in American history. And most of his money was spent in Texas, his home state and the headquarters of both Tesla and …

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When Donald Trump began his second term as president, Silicon Valley gratefully embraced moral nihilism. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and more collectively donated millions to Trump's inauguration fund to ensure his favor in a new era of gangster tech regulation. Meta overhauled its content policy to allow calling gay people mentally ill and women property. Elon Musk started throwing Nazi salutes - yes, allegedly, but he would soon be posting nonstop about protecting the white race from extinction, so that's the most fragile of fig leafs.

As of mere months ago, this was working out pretty well for them. The Trump administration took a mostly …

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It's the midterms! Here's a fun fact for you as you head to the polls: Gas prices today are the highest ever recorded for a US Election Day.

The national average for a gallon of gasoline is $4.12 and $6.28 for a gallon of diesel, according to GasBuddy. Meanwhile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is maintained by the US Department of Energy as a safeguard during energy crises, is down to 282.2 million barrels of crude, the lowest level in 44 years.

Gas prices, along with other essential cost-of-living items, are certainly top of mind for many voters this election cycle. And perhaps many will also remember which political party ran o …

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The 2026 midterm elections will determine the scope of President Donald Trump’s power in his final two years in office, and signal what voters care about going into the 2028 presidential election. While this year’s races are expected to be most broadly defined by affordability issues, there are several topics impacting the tech industry that appear to be on voters’ minds.

Among them are concerns about data centers, and whether voters will have to bear the burden of higher energy costs, AI safety, and the rapid expansion of surveillance technology through Flock. There’s also the question of how to tax billionaires’ wealth in California, a topic that has driven heavy tech spending and creative stock class structures meant to keep tech executives from fleeing the state should a ballot measure pass.

The next Congress is likely to continue grappling with how to regulate AI, and stem the data center backlash, among other issues. How that conversation shapes up, and which tech CEOs are hauled to testify on Capitol Hill, will be shaped by the outcome of November 3rd.

• Severe weather is affecting some voters across the country.
• A ballot scanner issue is impacting a New York suburb.
• Election protection hotline has received 3,000 calls this morning.
• DOJ sends 1,000 election monitors to watch polls in every state.
• Prop 45 in California could be hiding a loophole for data centers
• Another election year, another tech company war room.
• Voters in Texas agree: They hate data centers
• Data center backlash is uniting America
• Republican politicians have embraced anti-Indian racism — and it’s costing them votes
• Meta made a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg from leaving California over its billionaire tax.
• Trump is giving Nick Shirley $10,000 and launching a $25 million fraud bounty program
• Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge
• Tech billionaires have reportedly donated over $340 million to fight a wealth tax in California.
• Elon Musk has donated over $276 million to Republican midterm efforts
• The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare
• Democrats preview how they’d go after the Ticketmaster settlement if they regain power
• AI backlash is coming for elections

Ford vowed to never sell customer driving data to third-party data brokers as part of a new privacy promise aimed at setting the automaker apart from competitors that have faced legal and regulatory blowback for sharing telematics with data brokers without authorization.

As part of its new promise, Ford says it will strive to protect customer data by using aggregating and anonymizing techniques. It will also "provide clear and easy-to-understand information about how we use your personal information." And while Ford says it will still use data to improve safety, it will allow customers to adjust how much or how little data they would prefe …

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Patti Zirhut, a lifelong Republican, has been studying her ballot for weeks. Zirhut eagerly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, but she isn't toeing the party line this year. "My ballot is all mixed up," she says. She's voting for some Republicans, some independents, and even a few Democrats. Zirhut remains undecided on a few races, but of one thing she is absolutely certain: "I will not vote for Byron Donalds," she tells me. "No way will I ever vote for him."

Donalds, the Republican nominee in Florida's gubernatorial election, has Trump's endorsement, the party's backing, and $148 million in campaign funds, much of it …

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Gravity is a cruel mistress, slowly dragging the famed Hubble Space Telescope ever closer to its ultimate demise with every day. Hubble is in no immediate danger of burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, but its time will run out in the early to mid 2030s unless its orbit is boosted. So NASA is taking proposals from the private sector to see if anyone can save it.

In a post on NASA's site, Administrator Jared Isaacman said:

Hubble still has important science ahead of it, and we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible … If there are innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life …

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While more cities are canceling their contracts with Flock Safety, just as many are discovering how difficult that can be in some instances. Plymouth, Minnesota's city council voted to terminate its contract with Flock in September, but failed to respond to the city's request. For over a month, the cameras remained up, and the city had received no acknowledgment from the company. So, Police Chief Eric Fadden took matters into his own hands and physically disconnected the cameras.

"After hearing nothing for more than a week, I directed our staff to disconnect the power cords from the cameras in order to be sure that they are not functioning …

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