Gen. Paul Nakasone, ex NSA chief, says at an event that he was distressed by the rift between the Pentagon and Anthropic, including the unprecedented ban on contractors using Anthropic on security grounds: “This is not a supply-chain issue.”
It's been a journey of nearly 3 years, but I'm very excited to announce the CNTR AISLE Portal! 🚀 cntr-aisle.org It’s a new way to review and evaluate the 1,000+ AI bills introduced in the U.S. over the last three years. Check out the Bill Library and our Profiles#AIPolicy #OpenData
Kat Duffy: I would add to that. At some point, Congress must deal with privacy of Americans' personal information, full stop. The reason that the mass surveillance concern is such a real one is because there is so much that can be purchased from data brokers that can then be piled together, aggregated and analyzed all within a purely lawful framework. Now by the same token, I don't really understand how Anthropic would monitor whether its software is being used for mass surveillance of US citizens, because what if, for example, Anthropic discovers that it's underpinning 90% of license plate readers in the country or it is now the software of choice of 80% of the country's largest commercial data brokers or it is like it'd become an underpinning for a whole bunch of companies that are a third-party supplier to a lot of bodycam footage that's being indiscriminately analyzed or even potentially sold.
So there is an aspect here of I salute Anthropic and any company that is saying, "We don't want to be paid to be part of the mass surveillance of US citizens," and by the same token, then I would hope all of those companies are really throwing their weight behind much stronger data privacy protections for Americans, so that our data is not the commodity that it currently is and that it has been for so long. And to do that will also, in many respects, undercut how these companies have built what they've built, how they've grown and how they're going to continue to keep their systems learning. So it is a tricky question.
this observation from Kat Duffy is still ringing in my head
new details about the Pentagon's fight with Anthropic are coming in fast and still under dispute, but this excellent analysis from @rightsduff.bsky.social and @amostoh.bsky.social from friday is very much worth your time. bsky.app/profile/just...
It's getting to be you can't even profit off war deaths on the insider trading app anymore
WSJ reporting that the U.S. used Claude for the air strikes in Iran. Centcom has been using Claude "for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios" www.wsj.com/livecoverage...
They beat a blind refugee who speaks no English for failing to obey police commands he could not understand. Then instead of apologizing, they charged him with possession of a “weapon”—HIS WALKING STICK. Then they dumped him miles from home without notifying anyone, after which he was found dead.
An image of an official announcement from Columbia University in the City of New York, dated February 26, 2026. The letter is signed by Claire Shipman, Acting President. The text states that at 6:30 a.m. that morning, Department of Homeland Security agents entered a Columbia Residential building and detained a student, allegedly using misrepresentations about searching for a "missing person" to gain entry. The announcement reiterates university policy that law enforcement must have a judicial warrant or subpoena to access non-public areas, noting that an administrative warrant is insufficient. It instructs community members to ask agents to wait and to contact Public Safety if they seek entry to such areas. The university notes it is working to gather details, reach the student's family, and provide legal support.
Columbia University just emailed affiliates letting them know that federal agents from DHS abducted a student this morning from a campus residence under false pretenses and with no warrant or probable cause.
Deliveristas ending their shift and about to head home over the Williamsburg Bridge, though the blizzard. One of them, Salvador,tells me he’s happy for the cutoff by the city.
“This is more dangerous than last snowstorm, harder to move in,” he tells me in Spanish.
In my newsletter: A free-to-read link to this story and the full kindergarten deportation call
drewharwell.com/stories/a-fa...
New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF
I'm looking for experts of the business and metrics of the podcast industry for a piece on @indicator.media. Whom should I bother?
The Dolarhyde performance is iconic and he played a lot of memorably unsettling characters, but he had the sort of character actor charisma that even in small parts made you wish a movie would follow him around for a while. I saw him carrying his groceries home a few times in the East Village, also.
This is why the phrase comes up in so many of the things I've written about AI.
AI does three main things:
1) dismantle the institutions necessary for democratic society to thrive
2) transfer wealth upwards
3) create the permission structure for (1) and (2)
People who would never otherwise agree with the premise of "downsizing" but nevertheless want to stop paying people to do necessary work now get exactly the panacea they need to justify this position. AI is nothing but permission structures all the way down.
www.artforum.com/features/gen...
Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:
“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.
Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.
www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
New story up on the Homeland Security Department’s new tactic: flood social media companies with subpoenas to unmask anonymous accounts that criticize ICE or monitor the movements of ICE agents.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
hello minnesota and beyond! thank you for your kind messages. it is very weird to be the news when you cover the news. i love this beautiful state and journalism, and i am hopeful for better days. but we will be forever changed bc of the last two months.
Tons of reporting on Musk’s science fictional business plans, not near enough about his white supremacist and fascist worldview. Good to see this from the Guardian!
Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”
10 years ago they told us AI and self-driving cars were going to wipe out up to half of all jobs. They didn’t.
But while everyone was talking about whether they would, companies rolled out algorithmic management and used digital tech as a pretext to reclassify workers as contractors.
When a sitting representative refers to the Super Bowl halftime show as “pornography,” people should use that to reflect on how they and other representatives are simultaneously working to ban, censor, and restrict “pornography” and what that actually means
helth
From the amazing Becca Rothfeld, laid off by the Washington Post last week and immediately hired by the New Yorker:
The Washington Post just laid off its entire award-winning photo team. They were our eyes in places we'll never see. It's a horrifying loss at a time when lying governments, propaganda and AI slop are on the rise.
THEY ARE THE BEST IN THE BIZ. HIRE THEM ASAP
@geoffreyfowler.bsky.social
@joemenn.bsky.social
@naominix.bsky.social
@heatherkelly.bsky.social
@tatumhunter.bsky.social
@ceodonovan.bsky.social
@lisabonos.bsky.social
x.com/evadou
@danielleabril.bsky.social
@pranshuverma.bsky.social
imagine having one of the best tech reporters of all time on your staff and then choosing to lay them off
WaPo’s tech desk was one of the best in the business, and I relied on @nitasha.bsky.social’s reporting countless times in my work. Journalists like her and others laid off today were a source of vital insights into SV politics, helping us in the EU understand who and what we’re facing
Absolutely outrageous how many incredible reporters lost their jobs today. I've been teaching about AI for 2 decades and I've used Natasha Tiku's reporting in my classes, including this piece that's on my syllabus again this semester: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
@nitasha.bsky.social is fantastic and talented and so many in our tech accountability and justice world respect her work. Any org or project would be lucky to have her.
