Big tech's big problems

Last week, the official White House Instagram account posted that Americans “Should Not Foot the Electric Bill for the Benefit of Private AI Companies,” announcing that “President Trump is taking action to ensure data center infrastructure price hikes DO NOT affect American consumers.”

But the word “ensure” is doing a lot of work there. The language in that post echoes that of the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which is a thing AI companies and government officials can sign to promise that Americans won’t see rate hikes because of AI data centers. But the pledge isn’t binding. It has the same weight as me promising you I won’t hide a link about the X-Men somewhere in this newsletter — in other words, I could lie to your face without any consequences. So can the 23 Republican governors who Trump recently invited to sign the pledge.

Meanwhile, bipartisan hatred of data centers has successfully blocked many of these projects around the country. It’s a case study in how people can get stuff done when we find something to hate besides each other. Gallup found that majorities of all party groups say they wouldn’t want a data center where they live.

Still, the tech industry in California has opposed legislation that would protect consumers from rate hikes. One grid operator announced there may be an additional $6.3 billion in costs. And the Trump administration has fought against efforts to regulate the AI industry. So vaguely promising that we won’t face rising costs is one thing, but playing nice with corporations working to raise those costs is quite another, especially ahead of a midterm election when voters are pretty unified on this issue.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Economist, tech CEO and DOGE architect Elon Musk predicted an AI-powered future in which humans are no longer in charge, rejected the proposition that he should pay more taxes, took zero responsibility for the suffering caused by DOGE cuts, and responded to accusations of racism by pointing to his half-Indian partner and their children. Let’s break each of these things down.

In Musk’s AI-powered future, artificial intelligence would be able to produce nude images of people without their consent. At least, that’s the outcome Musk’s AI company is fighting for in Minnesota, where x.AI has sued the state over a law banning tech that allows users to make and share nonconsensual nude deepfakes of people.

DOGE cuts led to over 260,000 job losses in the federal government. And Musk’s claim that zero people died because of DOGE is a demonstrable lie. NPR has reported on children and teenagers dying after losing access to medication and delayed diagnoses that could have been mitigated if USAID was fully funded. The human toll of these cuts doesn’t stop there. Federal funding cuts to things like addressing HIV have sparked pushback from activists, including the revival of ACT UP here in Chicago.

From October 2025 to April 2026, Musk posted about race 850 times. That has included echoing the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory and peddling baseless claims that white, straight men face “unrelenting hate” when just the opposite is incredibly well-documented. Elon Musk’s social media app also infamously harbors Nazi accounts, and Musk himself used a Nazi salute on stage.

A weapons manufacturer is making and selling drones aimed at stopping school shooters. Mithril Defense launched “Campus Guardian Angel” to make drones that it says are not lethal. They’re equipped with strobe lights, sirens, and pepper gel. They can also ram into people at 60 miles per hour.

The drones have faced criticism on several fronts. The father of a student killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School called for focusing “on the prevention piece rather than the reaction piece.” The executive director of a school safety training group fears the drones could mistakenly target fleeing students.

Huge percentages of voters support other measures to stop shootings. Per a 2023 Fox News poll, 87% support criminal background checks, 81% support better enforcement, 81% also support raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21 years old, and 80% want to require mental health checks.

Being called before Congress to testify about my leaked diary is both the premise of a stress dream I will certainly have tonight and the reality that Dr. Anthony Fauci faced earlier this week. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) released Fauci’s COVID-era diary, which showed Fauci felt confident that the virus jumped from animals to humans but hadn’t completely ruled out other possibilities.

It chronicled how when Fauci convened 11 scientists to discuss the origin of COVID, only two agreed the virus emerged naturally. He also wrote in emails that if the scientists’ suspicions were true, they would have to alert authorities. Still, the lab leak theory is unproven, despite what Rand Paul says.

In the diary entries, Fauci wrote that “somewhere, the virus jumped from animals to humans” and that a market in Wuhan was a likely amplifier. He also publicly said the same thing in an interview around that same time. So there’s not much to back up Paul’s claims that the diary shows Fauci misled the public about COVID’s origins.

Paul also didn’t like that Fauci kept on exercising the Fifth Amendment during the Senate hearing. That amendment protects against self-incrimination, meaning you can refuse to answer questions from people trying to throw you in prison, as Paul has been wanting to do to Fauci for years. But Paul argues that because former president Joe Biden already pardoned Fauci, he no longer has that right.

There is a Supreme Court precedent to back that up. That precedent was set by the same justices that upheld racial segregation, so deferring to their legal judgment is certainly a choice. A Senate panel may soon vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for obstructing their investigation, which could mean fines or incarceration if Fauci doesn’t comply.

This brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise!

Ever since COVID hit, movie theaters have been struggling to stay afloat. Barely more than half of US adults told Pew Research last summer that they’d seen a movie in theaters in the past year. And ticket sales only go so far — theaters only keep about half of that money, while studios get the other half.

So, how do you solve for this conundrum? Theaters have one answer: those new, fancy, expensive popcorn buckets. Or as the kids are calling them, “collectible concession vessels.” People are paying for them, and AMC Theatres estimates they’ll generate $100 million in revenue this year. We come to this place for magic, and for collectible concession vessels.

I need to disclose a conflict of interest here: popcorn is my favorite food. Can’t get enough of the stuff. So when theaters start selling ways to make the experience of eating it more fun, I’m a mark if there ever was one. But theaters targeting people like me to stay afloat isn’t new. During the Great Depression, theaters needed a way to convince people to spend money on movies. So they turned to selling popcorn, adding a new revenue stream as ticket sales plunged.