Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Trump attacks Arizona ally’s office
On Monday, President Donald Trump spread conspiracy theories involving one of his most loyal allies in the effort to promote election denialism. Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, the top election official in Arizona’s largest locality, has been so committed to using his office to assist the Trump administration that his actions have even alarmed fellow Republican officials in the Phoenix area. Nonetheless, Trump effectively trampled all over him when he spread falsehoods about Heap’s office having been “caught” sending out thousands of mail-in ballots “illegally.” He added that Maricopa “is a very, very dishonest county.”
As The Arizona Republic explained, what really happened is a vendor mistakenly mailed out more than 3,000 ballots a week early. Heap said the company has taken responsibility; no voters were adversely impacted; and that the packets are still valid and won’t need to be reissued.
Read more at The Arizona Republic.
Temporary win for Musk on ‘nudification’ ban
A federal appeals court delivered a temporary victory for Elon Musk and users who may be using his X platform for “nudification” when it paused Minnesota’s enforcement of a law banning artificial intelligence tools that allow users to generate nonconsensual nude images of other people.
Read more at CBS News.
Flock faces growing backlash in Congress
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are the latest lawmakers to introduce a bill targeting Flock Safety’s license plate readers, which have been misused by police officers to stalk and harass people.
Read more at Politico.
Trump taps tech bros for Pentagon gig
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that a triumvirate of Musk, tech investor Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will lead a government-funded program called Project Meridian that will study ways for the Pentagon to advance its AI-based warfare capabilities. The effort is troubling on several fronts, particularly given that Musk and Luckey run businesses that have benefited greatly from government contracts.
Read more at NPR.
NYT’s Epstein search engine
Dylan Freedman, the AI projects editor for The New York Times, joined tech news platform MTS Live to discuss a search engine the Times launched that allows its journalists to use AI to sift through the millions of documents from the Epstein files that have been released so far by the Justice Department.
Watch an excerpt of the interview here.
More articles
Bipartisan governors form AI group
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said he’s forming a bipartisan coalition of governors to address growing concerns about AI. The coalition, which the Democratic governor said will be co-chaired by Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, comes as Trump seeks to thwart AI regulation and as congressional efforts to establish guardrails around the technology remain stalled.
Read more at The Associated Press.
Trump taps spy chief as AI czar
Trump just named his top spy chief, Jay Clayton, as his new AI czar. The move comes as the Trump administration has sought to deploy high-tech spy tools that have been used by repressive regimes to crack down on dissent.
Read more at MS NOW.
You should accept ‘bad things,’ Altman says
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world “should accept some bad things happening” in order to reap AI’s benefits.
Read more at The Guardian.
OpenAI models hack Australian government
Speaking of “bad things,” OpenAI is facing increased scrutiny from Australian lawmakers after its AI tools were found to have hacked Australian government systems.
Read more at The New York Times.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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