Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from a niche lobbying issue into a central pillar of corporate influence in Washington. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the defense industry, where both legacy defense contractors and an influx of AI-first startups are making the technology a core focus of their lobbying efforts. AI barely registered in federal lobbying disclosures for…
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Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations…
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US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at preventing state-level regulation of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, a gift to tech corporations that bankrolled his inauguration and are currently funding his White House ballroom project. Trump’s order instructs the US Justice Department to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a single mandate…
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Ahead of its annual shareholders meeting on December 5, Microsoft is coming under mounting pressure to reconsider its relationship with the Israeli military, which has used the tech giant’s products to carry out the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. In an open letter to the company released on Tuesday, December 2, an international coalition of legal aid groups said…
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A Gen Z-led advocacy group fighting for working-class priorities on Tuesday announced a boycott campaign targeting major corporations “that enable, profit from, or directly collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the broader racist policies of the Trump administration.” Beyond the Ballot launched “Not With My Dollars: ICE Out of My Wallet” as President Donald Trump’s…
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When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him. At first, the renderings looked like progress for the majority-Black town…
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