“Natcast signed on 200 members — notably, Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Samsung, Google and AMD — to pursue breakthroughs in the foundational technology that powers virtually every modern asset from AI to defense systems. The group spent its year-and-a-half existence trying to set up and eventually run a national hub where that R&D would happen, along with programs to ease the semiconductor industry’s severe talent crunch.
Lutnick’s clawback produced deep uncertainty while companies, researchers and lawmakers scrambled to understand where it leaves over a dozen awardees, plus the remaining billions. Nearly $2 billion was promised to infrastructure, research and workforce projects in states like Arizona, New York, California and Texas.
…
The Commerce head has focused its dealmaking heavily on chipmakers. His new “investment accelerator” was handed supervision of tens of billions of dollars in CHIPS subsidies and ordered to negotiate “much better deals than those of the previous administration.” The undermining of Natcast followed an agreement to grant the U.S. a 10 percent stake in Intel, when Lutnick redid the terms of its CHIPS award.
Seven people, including from three Capitol Hill offices, raised concerns with the possibility that renegotiations for this $7.4 billion may involve similar government equity stakes. People also questioned whether requirements to share revenue from research patents could be under consideration. Lutnick spoke about subjecting universities to the idea the day after he voided the Natcast contract.
…
When the agency started soliciting proposals for R&D funding last week, it told applicants, as a condition of an award, they “may be required to issue to the Department equity, warrants, licenses to intellectual property, royalties or revenue sharing, or other such instruments to ensure a return on investment.” The guidelines do not mention the national hub, yet cite the law that established it.
LC: If we need these companies to produce important technology, then we don’t need special deals to help them. We should help them because it is good for the country. The technology will produce a better economy and therefore more normal tax revenue. If we want these companies to pay us back directly, just make sure they are paying their normal taxes.
…
“They decided to burn two years of delay to try to create their own thing,” said a former Trump official, who, like several others for this report, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “While Natcast was not a Republican initiative and wasn’t how we wanted it go, I think it was better than burning down the whole system and starting over again.”
…
“The companies are scared,” said a person familiar with the industry dynamics. “Companies want CHIPS funding, and they’re very afraid that if they speak out, they’ll lose it. No one wants to come into the crosshairs of the administration.”
…
“There’s just a feeling of, for many of us, a year’s work going down the tubes, taxpayer dollars being flushed down the toilet,” said one person closely associated with Natcast.”
…
An industry lobbyist said, “those who stand to lose the most in this process will be start-ups and research centers that were at the cutting edge of innovation.””
China has been trying to attract top intellectual talent for years. Trump is discouraging such talent from working in the U.S. and China is encouraging them to live in China. This is hugely dumb policy that could make China the clear leader in world technology.
“a new annual fee of $100,000 will be levied on each H-1B visa applicant going forward, which will serve as a big deterrent. Some number of the roughly 500,000 people currently in the U.S. with H-1Bs—high-skill visas used by tech workers, medical workers, and other professionals working in the fields they received degrees in—would have been dissuaded from coming here had the new system been in place. For companies hiring new talent, this fee will be a huge barrier to sponsoring foreign workers—which appears to be the point.
…
Companies in many industries will probably respond to this shift by offshoring more of their workforces or relying on contract workers. (For the medical industry, this won’t really work. Bigger shortages might just become a fact of life.)”
“the idea that people—especially young men—would not be radicalized if it weren’t for social media belies most of human history.
I’ve been listening recently to a podcast called A Twist of History. One episode details Adolf Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in 1923. Another episode features a riot during a Shakespearean performance in New York City in 1849, fomented by Ned Buntline, a nativist newspaper pundit with ambitions of fame and notoriety. Both instances featured fringe political elements, violence, and deaths.
History is littered with examples like these: men driven to violence by people in close physical proximity, sometimes with the help of inflammatory political rhetoric printed in pamphlets and newspapers.
…
if he encountered bad ideas online, it’s because the internet is now where we encounter ideas. If he cloaked his violence in the language of internet memes, it’s because that’s where culture is these days.
In another era, he may have encountered bad ideas at a town hall and dressed up his horrific act in different slogans. But a man with a capacity for such premeditated and dramatic violence is a man with a capacity for such things in any era. And conversely, countless billions of people encounter the same online ecosystem without committing assassinations.”
“Interviews with more than a dozen technology executives over the past week revealed that the Trump administration’s announcements of government stakes in companies such as Intel have had a chilling effect, with executives now filtering many decisions through the prism of how the White House might respond.”
Criminals can steal your car’s key fob’s signal and use that to steal your car. This is causing insurance rates to go up. Some kids do this because Tik Tok teaches them how to do it.
“Almost all of the AI models showed a preference to escalate aggressively, use firepower indiscriminately and turn crises into shooting wars — even to the point of launching nuclear weapons. “The AI is always playing Curtis LeMay,” says Schneider, referring to the notoriously nuke-happy Air Force general of the Cold War. “It’s almost like the AI understands escalation, but not de-escalation. We don’t really know why that is.””