Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Trump Jr.’s Polymarket investment
Donald Trump Jr.’s firm is making a major investment in Polymarket, the glorified gambling company that has been linked to various trades made by people seemingly looking to profit off decisions made by the Trump administration. The president’s son is an adviser to both Polymarket and its main rival, Kalshi.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump Jr.’s firm, 1789 Capital, is making a $300 million investment as part of a funding round totaling $1 billion. The news follows recent reporting from The New York Times that the younger Trump urged Republican state attorneys general earlier this year to back off regulating prediction markets. The Trump administration has already sued several states over such efforts.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
Trump’s assault on free speech
The Guardian detailed how the Trump administration has been using an obscure law to secretly spy on journalists, nonprofits and unions. The law was used to acquire several months of journalist Georgia Fort’s phone records after she was arrested in January over her reporting inside a Minnesota church where an ICE official served as pastor.
Read more at The Guardian.
Judges green-light AI-generates child porn
A federal judicial panel issued a ruling last week saying the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to privately possess artificial intelligence-generated content depicting child sexual abuse. However, U.S. Circuit Judge John Lee pushed for the Supreme Court to take up the issue of AI-generated abusive content and warned that technological advancements have made it difficult to regulate.
Read more at The Washington Post.
Musk makes a plea for AI deregulation
During a speech at a G20 event in North Carolina on Tuesday, Elon Musk railed against AI regulations — particularly those in Europe — and declared his view that new technologies must be declared “default legal” rather than “default illegal.” His comments come as polling shows that Americans are wary of new AI tools and strongly believe there should be more regulation.
ICE’s ‘Digidog’ acquisition
The Trump administration has put in a multimillion-dollar order for robotic dogs — or “Digidogs,” as they’ve been called — from the company Boston Dynamics to deploy in its racist anti-immigrant crusade, and I wrote about the dystopian purchase.
Read more at MS NOW.
Trump’s terrible data center messaging
Amid the growing backlash to data centers, President Donald Trump — whose financial disclosure forms have shown significant investments in AI companies — arguably created more problems for his own party when he said the only reason for communities to oppose data centers is if they want to be “backwards and poor.”
Tech execs target midterm voters
Speaking of data centers, a group funded by a bunch of Big Tech executives is planning to pour money into pro-data center ads in an effort to sway voters in the midterms.
Read more at TechCrunch.
Pentagon propagandists
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon secretly hired conservative military influencers — including at least one known for promoting racist propaganda — to help push Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda and defend him from backlash. MS NOW’s Chris Hayes discussed the report on Monday night.
Flock takes a flogging
Bipartisan backlash continues against Flock Safety, the Trump-aligned tech company known for making license plate readers that have been used by police officers to stalk people. On Monday, the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memo ordering all license plate readers — including Flock cameras — to be removed from state roads. As WTSP-TV in Tampa Bay reported:
The memo does not ban local law enforcement agencies from using LPRs on roads controlled by counties or cities. However, several local municipalities have already taken steps toward ending their relationships with Flock.
Read more at WTSP.
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