Elizabeth Dwoskin

There is a battle set to play out across the country as super PACs backed by Trump-supporting tech moguls and the social network giant Meta try to use the 2026 midterms to reengineer Congress and state legislatures in favor of their ambitions for artificial intelligence. The groups aim to wrest control of the public narrative around AI, just as politicians in both parties have started warning that the industry is moving too fast. The largest of the pro-AI super PACs, Leadin

Elon Musk arrived at the White House prepared to take a chainsaw to the federal government, promising to slash $2 trillion in spending. A little more than 100 days later, the world’s richest man is retreating from Washington far short of that goal after an often painful education in the mechanics of the U.S.

Under pressure from the U.S.

President-elect Joe Biden is set to have a very different relationship with the tech industry from when he served as vice president. Tech companies have grown more powerful over the past four years — and more perilous. They have continued to amass data and wealth. But they have been used as tools for election interference and disinformation, contributing to the divide in the nation.

San Francisco-based analytics firm Zignal Labs has found that online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies.

As leaders in Silicon Valley, China and Washington raced to seal the fate of one of the world’s fastest-growing social media companies, a shouting match broke out in the Oval Office between two of President Trump’s top advisers. In front of President Donald Trump, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and other aides, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin began arguing that the Chinese-owned video-sharing service TikTok should be sold to a US company.

Hours after President Trump’s incendiary post about sending the military to the Minnesota protests, he called Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The post put the company in a difficult position, Zuckerberg told President Donald Trump. The same message was hidden by Twitter, the strongest action ever taken against a presidential post.

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission has finalized a settlement with Google in its investigation into YouTube for violating federal data privacy laws for children. The settlement — backed by the agency’s three Republicans and opposed by its two Democrats — finds that Google inadequately protected kids who used its video-streaming service and improperly collected their data in breach of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which prohibits the tracking and targeting of users younger than 13, the people said.

YouTube said it will remove false videos alleging that major events like the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech.