Axios

Trump Administration Weighs Building US 5G Network to Counter China

Some White House officials view next-generation 5G wireless service as a “key area of competition,” and they say that the threat from China, in particular, justifies a “moonshot” government effort like the construction of the interstate highway system. A National Security Council memo urges the Trump administration to consider extraordinary efforts to clear the way for the new technology or even to help build it in order to counter the growing economic and political threat from China’s aggressive efforts to develop 5G. 

San Jose mayor quits FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo resigned from the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, alleging that the committee is dealing internet service providers "a very favorable hand” of policy recommendations. "It has become abundantly clear that despite the good intentions of several participants, the industry-heavy makeup of BDAC will simply relegate the body to being a vehicle for advancing the interests of the telecommunications industry over those of the public,” said Mayor Liccardo.

Congress' tech funding falls short

Lawmakers agreed on six spending bills to partially fund the government for the rest of 2024, but fell far short of CHIPS and Science Act goals and agency budget requests. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration received less than half its 

AI brings us a new kind of bug

Generative AI is raising the curtain on a new era of software breakdowns rooted in the same creative capabilities that make it powerful. Every novel tec

AT&T's big network fail was a remote work triumph

The big AT&T network outage was a productivity catastrophe for commuters across the country, but remote workers were totally fine. Without

SNAP recipients can now shop at an online-only grocery store

SNAP recipients will soon be able to use their funds at an online-only grocery store for the first time. Many in the SNAP program—commonl

"Extremely concerned": UN official warns Silicon Valley execs of AI dangers

Volker Türk, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, was in Silicon Valley last week to deliver a simple message to tech companies: Your products can do real harm and it's your job to make sure that they don't. Technologies like artificial intelligence hold enormous potential for addressing a range of societal ills, but without effort and intent, these same technologies can act as powerful weapons of oppression, said Türk. New regulations are often where the tech debate lands, but Türk tells Axios that the firms should already be ensuring their products comply with the existing 

How Gen Z gets its news

For Gen Z, catching up on the news is often a side effect of time spent on social media apps like Instagram and, in particular, TikTok—and media outlets are adapting to serve that behavior. "Gen Z is being fed the news whether they want it or not," Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, CEO of the college-aged media portfolio Her Campus Media, tells Axios, noting that Gen Z news consumers are less likely than Millennials to visit trusted news sources directly. 

Meta won't recommend political content on Threads

Meta will not "proactively recommend political content from accounts you don't follow" on Threads. The policies, which are the same it

News companies reverse course on hard subscriptions

News companies are reversing course on hard subscriptions—once seen as a safer alternative to the volatile ad market—in favor of flexible paywalls, membership programs and more ads. A strategy focused mainly on subscriptions requires upfront spending on premium content. That takes time to pay off—and many publishers don't have the cushion for that in the current ad slowdown. At the same time, many outlets have learned that simply throwing a paywall up over your previously free content doesn't work either. It throttles ad revenue without capturing enough new subscribers.

Child Safety Hearing: Senators Say Tech Platforms Hurt Children

CEO's from Meta, Snap, X, TikTok, and Discord testified in a contentious and emotional Senate hearing on child online safety. Lawmakers invoked the stories of online child abuse victims—many of whom sat directly behind the tech leaders—to issue a stunning rebuke to Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

Tech rivals hound Apple over EU App Store plans

There's one thing uniting big and small tech companies operating in Europe: they can't stand Apple's approach to complying with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA designates six big tech companies as online gatekeepers—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft—and obligates them to open their platforms to competition. Apple's DMA compliance plan allows developers to set up alternative app stores and avoid Apple's in-app payment system.