China is using American AI against the U.S. Here’s how to stop it.; The Washington Post, December 29, 2025

 Jack Crovitz, The Washington Post; China is using American AI against the U.S. Here’s how to stop it.

"An agent of the Chinese domestic security state recently asked an artificial intelligence model to plan a sophisticated surveillance system targeting the minority Uyghur population. This system would compile police records, real-time transportation data and other information to help the Chinese government track and control Uyghurs. The agent called it a “Warning Model for High-Risk Uyghur Individuals.”

You might assume that the AI model in question was produced by a Chinese lab such as DeepSeek, Zhipu AI or Moonshot AI, all of which cooperate closely with the Chinese government. Yet the model the Chinese Communist Party agent chose to plan this instrument of oppression came not from China but from Silicon Valley. It was OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

OpenAI quickly banned that user from accessing ChatGPT. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) But this was not the first time the CCP has used American frontier AI models for its authoritarian agenda — and unless the United States acts now to set basic security standards for its AI labs, such exploitation will continue apace. That would be a grave danger to American freedom and security...

American taxpayers and investors are allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure that the U.S. develops the world’s most advanced AI. It would be a catastrophic strategic failure if this investment produces systems that are immediately weaponized by our adversaries to subvert American freedom, prosperity and national security.

America must safeguard its most valuable technology, secure its labs and ensure that U.S. innovation serves U.S. interests."

Acting CISA director failed a polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation.; Politico, December 21, 2025

JOHN SAKELLARIADIS , Politico; Acting CISA director failed a polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation.

"At least six career staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were suspended with pay this summer after organizing a polygraph test that the agency’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, failed.

The Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into whether the staff provided “false information” about the need for the test — which was scheduled after Gottumukkala sought access to certain highly sensitive cyber intelligence shared with the agency.

This article is based on interviews with eight current and four former U.S. cybersecurity officials, including multiple Trump administration appointees, who have either worked closely with Gottumukkala or have knowledge of the polygraph examination and the chain of events that followed. They were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

The incident this July and the subsequent fallout — which has not been reported before — have angered career staff, alarmed fellow Trump administration appointees and raised questions about Gottumukkala’s leadership of the nearly $3 billion cyber defense agency.

“Instead of taking ownership and saying, ‘Hey, I screwed up,’ he gets other people blamed and potentially ruins their careers,” said a current official, who described Gottumukkala’s tenure at CISA so far as “a nightmare” for the agency."

Secret meetings between FBI and Ukraine negotiator spark concern; The Washington Post, December 12, 2025

John Hudson

, 

Siobhán O'Grady

 and 

Perry Stein

, The Washington Post; Secret meetings between FBI and Ukraine negotiator spark concern

 "Secret meetings between Ukraine’s top peace negotiator and FBI leaders have injected new uncertainty into the high-stakes talks to end the war there, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the matter.

Over the last several weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, flew to Miami three times to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and discuss a proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.

But during his time in the United States, Umerov also held closed-door meetings with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, according to four people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

The meetings have caused alarm among Western officials who remain in the dark about their intent and purpose. Some said they believe Umerov and other Ukrainian officials sought out Patel and Bongino in the hopes of obtaining amnesty from any corruption allegations the Ukrainians could face. Others worry the newly established channel could be used to exert pressure on Zelensky’s government to accept a peace deal, proposed by the Trump administration, containing steep concessions for Kyiv."

Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping; Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2025

The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping

"President Trump said this week he will let Nvidia sell its H200 chip to China in return for the U.S. Treasury getting a 25% cut of the sales. The Indians struck a better deal when they sold Manhattan to the Dutch. Why would the President give away one of America’s chief technological advantages to an adversary and its chief economic competitor?"

U.S. to mandate checks of some tourists’ social media history from past 5 years; CNBC, December 10, 2025

Sawdah Bhaimiya, CNBC; U.S. to mandate checks of some tourists’ social media history from past 5 years

 "The U.S. is planning to impose social media inspections on some tourists as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up travel restrictions for foreign visitors. 

Tourists — including those from Britain, Australia, France, and Japan — will be mandated to provide five years of their social media history as part of their applications to visit the U.S., according to a notice posted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, on Wednesday. The proposal, which has been given a 60 day-notice with requests for comments from the public, is not final and may see some revisions. 

Tourists from nations that are included in the U.S.′ Visa Waiver Program can apply to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to visit the country for 90 days or less, with a fee of $40. The social media check will now form a “mandatory data element” as part of the ESTA application.

The border force said it will also collect “several high value data fields,” including applicants’ email addresses from the past 10 years, their telephone numbers used in the past five years, and names and details of family members."

Trump Family’s Business Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Ethics Worries; The New York Times, November 18, 2025

 Vivian Nereim, The New York Times; Trump Family’s Business Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Ethics Worries

"The leveraging of political relationships for personal profit is ordinary in the Persian Gulf, where hereditary ruling families hold near-total power and the term “conflict of interest” carries little weight.

But the mixing of politics and profitmaking during President Trump’s second term has shattered American norms, shocking scholars who study ethics and corruption. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, engaging in sensitive national security talks with a foreign leader who also oversees a major construction project, known as Diriyah, that is in talks over a potential deal with the Trump family business.

Even if that deal never comes to fruition, the Trump family’s real estate and other business interests in Saudi Arabia have flourished during his second term."

As Trump Weighs Sale of Advanced A.I. Chips to China, Critics Sound Alarm; The New York Times, October 29, 2025

 Ana Swanson and Tripp Mickle, The New York Times; As Trump Weighs Sale of Advanced A.I. Chips to China, Critics Sound Alarm

"Mr. Trump’s comments signaled a major potential change for U.S. policy that many Washington officials warn poses a national security risk. Selling such advanced A.I. chips to China is currently banned, and U.S. officials have worked for years to restrain Beijing’s access to the cutting-edge technology.

The president’s reversal, if it comes to pass, would have widespread implications. Nvidia, which has emphasized the importance of maintaining access to the Chinese market, would reap new sales. But critics have argued that A.I. technology is important enough to potentially shift the balance of power in a strategic competition between the United States and China."

Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks; The Washington Post, October 1, 2025

 

Alex Horton

, 

Tara Copp

 and 

Ellen Nakashima

, The Washington Post; Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks

"The Pentagon plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements andrandom polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials, according to two people familiar with the proposal and documents obtained by The Washington Post, escalating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on leakers and internal dissent.

All military service members, civilian employees and contract workers within the office of the defense secretary and the Joint Staff, estimated to be more than 5,000 personnel, would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process,” according to a draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg...

More recently, the Pentagon has issued a requirement that reporters covering the military sign an agreement not to solicit or gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, the penalty for which could be press credential revocation. Reporters have until later this month to agree to those terms."

Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief; The New York Times, August 22, 2025

Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times ; Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief

"The Pentagon has fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a senior defense official and a senator said on Friday, weeks after the agency drafted a preliminary report that contradicted President Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” in U.S. military strikes.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse is the latest senior Pentagon official, and the second top military intelligence official, to be removed since Mr. Trump’s return to office. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency, was ousted this spring after a right-wing conspiracy theorist complained about him.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also fired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, who was chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command, a Defense Department official said on Friday. The Pentagon offered no immediate explanation why.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the firing of General Kruse, who had a long career of nonpartisan service, was troubling.

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” Mr. Warner said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is in charge of collecting intelligence on foreign militaries, including the size, position and strength of their forces. The agency provides the information to the military’s combatant commands and planners at the Pentagon."

The Era of A.I. Propaganda Has Arrived, and America Must Act; The New York Times, August 5, 2025

Brett J. Goldstein and Brett V. Benson , The New York Times; The Era of A.I. Propaganda Has Arrived, and America Must Act

"To counter the growing threat of A.I.-driven foreign influence operations, a coordinated response is essential. Academic researchers must work urgently to map how artificial intelligence, open-source intelligence and online influence campaigns converge to serve hostile state objectives. The U.S. government must take the lead in disrupting the infrastructure behind these operations, with the Defense Department targeting foreign influence networks and the Federal Bureau of Investigation working closely with digital platforms to identify and counter false personas. The private sector needs to accelerate A.I. detection capabilities to bolster our ability to detect synthetic content. If we can’t identify it, we can’t stop it.

We are entering a new era of gray-zone conflict — one marked by information warfare executed at a scale, speed and degree of sophistication never seen before. If we don’t quickly figure out how to defend against this kind of A.I.-driven influence, we will be completely exposed."

The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies; Task & Purpose, July 14, 2025

MATT WHITE , Task & Purpose; The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies

"The Pentagon announced Monday it is going to spend almost $1 billion on “agentic AI workflows” from four “frontier AI” companies, including Elon Musk’s xAI, whose flagship Grok appeared to still be declaring itself “MechaHitler” as late as Monday afternoon.

In a press release, the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office — or CDAO — said it will cut checks of up to $200 million each to tech giants Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Musk’s xAI to work on:

• “critical national security challenges;”
• “joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain;”
• “DoD use cases.”

The release did not expand on what any of that means or how AI might help. Task & Purpose reached out to the Pentagon for details on what these AI agents may soon be doing and asked specifically if the contracts would include control of live weapons systems or classified information."

CIA historian Tim Weiner: ‘Trump has put national security in the hands of crackpots and fools’; The Guardian, July 15, 2025

 Aaron Gell, The Guardian; CIA historian Tim Weiner: ‘Trump has put national security in the hands of crackpots and fools’

"Trump’s anti-diversity crusade will also have national security repercussions, Weiner predicted. In February, a judge allowed the administration to reassign the team responsible for diversifying the agency. “For decades, the CIA has tried to hire people who don’t look like they just got off the bus from Kansas on the very sound principle that if you want to spy in a nation like Somalia or Pakistan or China, it might be wise to have a workforce that is not made up exclusively of white guys, and who speak languages other than English,” Weiner said. “Diversity was one of the CIA’s few superpowers, and the mindless abolition of the effort to diversify the CIA’s officers and analysts was one of the most stupid self-inflicted wounds that Ratcliffe could have delivered.”"

A Plane From Qatar? C’mon, Man.; The New York Times, May 14, 2025

Norman Eisen, Virginia Canter, and Richard W. Painter

The writers were ethics counsels in the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama White Houses., The New York Times; A Plane From Qatar? C’mon, Man.

"As lawyers responsible in recent White Houses for enforcing the rules against foreign government presents for presidents, we believe Donald Trump is transgressing them in the most brazen of ways. We’re not just talking about his apparent eagerness to accept an airplane valued at about $400 million from Qatar. His crypto entanglements are just as bad — perhaps even worse." 

Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.; The New York Times, April 9, 2025

Emily Badger and Sheera Frenkel, The New York Times ; Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.

"The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start...

These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government — some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.

The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.

The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections."

Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥; The New York Times, March 26, 2025

Noah Shachtman , The New York Times; Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥

"The people at the center of Signalgate — the national security adviser, Michael Waltz; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; to name a few — all know this. They all served in the military. They no doubt heard innumerable lectures from counterintelligence experts about all the different ways an adversary can make off with sensitive data. But this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence."

AI firms push to use copyrighted content freely; Axios, March 20, 2025

 Ina Fried, Axios; AI firms push to use copyrighted content freely

"A sharp divide over AI engines' free use of copyrighted material has emerged as a key conflict among the firms and groups that recently flooded the White House with advice on its forthcoming "AI Action Plan."

Why it matters: Copyright infringement claims were among the first legal challenges following ChatGPT's launch, with multiple lawsuits now winding their way through the courts.

Driving the news: In their White House memos, OpenAI and Google argue that their  use of copyrighted material for AI is a matter of national security — and if that use is limited, China will gain an unfair edge in the AI race."

Pay Attention to the FBI; The Atlantic, February 6, 2025

 Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic; Pay Attention to the FBI

"In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we discuss where Trump and Musk seem to be headed and the obstacles they are likely to encounter in the future. What happens when Trump starts to face challenges from courts? What happens when Musk goes after programs that Americans depend on, particularly those who voted for Trump? What new political alliances might emerge from the wreckage? We talk with staff writer Jonathan Chait, who covers politics. And we also talk with Shane Harris, who covers national security, about Trump’s campaign to purge the FBI of agents who worked on cases related to the insurrection at the Capitol.

“I think that will send a clear message to FBI personnel that there are whole categories of people and therefore potential criminal activity that they should not touch, because it gets into the president, his influence, his circle of friends,” Harris says. “I think that is just a potentially ruinous development for the rule of law in the United States.”"

Congress Must Change Copyright Law for AI | Opinion; Newsweek, January 16, 2025

 Nicholas Creel  Assistant Professor of Business Law, Georgia College and State University , Newsweek; Congress Must Change Copyright Law for AI | Opinion

"Luckily, the Constitution points the way forward. In Article I, Section 8, Congress is explicitly empowered "to promote the Progress of Science" through copyright law. That is to say, the power to create copyrights isn't just about protecting content creators, it's also about advancing human knowledge and innovation.

When the Founders gave Congress this power, they couldn't have imagined artificial intelligence, but they clearly understood that intellectual property laws would need to evolve to promote scientific progress. Congress therefore not only has the authority to adapt copyright law for the AI age, it has the duty to ensure our intellectual property framework promotes rather than hinders technological progress.

Consider what's at risk with inaction...

While American companies are struggling with copyright constraints, China is racing ahead with AI development, unencumbered by such concerns. The Chinese Communist Party has made it clear that they view AI supremacy as a key strategic goal, and they're not going to let intellectual property rights stand in their way.

The choice before us is clear, we can either reform our copyright laws to enable responsible AI development at home or we can watch as the future of AI is shaped by authoritarian powers abroad. The cost of inaction isn't just measured in lost innovation or economic opportunity, it is measured in our diminishing ability to ensure AI develops in alignment with democratic values and a respect for human rights.

The ideal solution here isn't to abandon copyright protection entirely, but to craft a careful exemption for AI training. This could even include provisions for compensating content creators through a mandated licensing framework or revenue-sharing system, ensuring that AI companies can access the data they need while creators can still benefit from and be credited for their work's use in training these models.

Critics will argue that this represents a taking from creators for the benefit of tech companies, but this misses the broader picture. The benefits of AI development flow not just to tech companies but to society as a whole. We should recognize that allowing AI models to learn from human knowledge serves a crucial public good, one we're at risk of losing if Congress doesn't act."

US intelligence agencies’ embrace of generative AI is at once wary and urgent; Associated Press, May 23, 2024

FRANK BAJAK , Associated Press; US intelligence agencies’ embrace of generative AI is at once wary and urgent

"The CIA’s inaugural chief technology officer, Nand Mulchandani, thinks that because gen AI models “hallucinate” they are best treated as a “crazy, drunk friend” — capable of great insight and creativity but also bias-prone fibbers. There are also security and privacy issues: adversaries could steal and poison them, and they may contain sensitive personal data that officers aren’t authorized to see.

That’s not stopping the experimentation, though, which is mostly happening in secret. 

An exception: Thousands of analysts across the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies now use a CIA-developed gen AI called Osiris. It runs on unclassified and publicly or commercially available data — what’s known as open-source. It writes annotated summaries and its chatbot function lets analysts go deeper with queries...

Another worry: Ensuring the privacy of “U.S. persons” whose data may be embedded in a large-language model.

“If you speak to any researcher or developer that is training a large-language model, and ask them if it is possible to basically kind of delete one individual piece of information from an LLM and make it forget that -- and have a robust empirical guarantee of that forgetting -- that is not a thing that is possible,” John Beieler, AI lead at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview.

It’s one reason the intelligence community is not in “move-fast-and-break-things” mode on gen AI adoption."

More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites; Pew Research Center, November 15, 2023

KATERINA EVA MATSA, Pew Research Center; More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites

[Kip Currier: This November 2023 Pew Research Center article about news consumption by Americans--particularly increasing numbers of teens--who use TikTok should be concerning to anyone who has an interest in democratic principles, informed citizenries, accuracy of information, national security, and public health.

It's not going to be easy, though, to stem access to dis- and misinformation and instill more guardrails against conspiracy theories and hate speech (--looking at you too, Elon/Twitter-cum-X) for Big Tech platforms like TikTok (though states like Montana are trying to provide bulwarks) that are well-documented for-profit purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.

One step in raising awareness of social media platform concerns is to get more informed about TikTok's meteoric rise from new-kid-on-the-social-media-block just a few years ago to prodigious social media sensation/Trojan horse threat today: the Washington Post's May 2023 "How TikTok went from teen sensation to political pariah" provides an informative timeline of TikTok's onset and vitality.

A significant concern of TikTok usage and market penetration is public health-related: Social media companies like TikTok and Meta utilize known (and unknown "trade secret-shielded") design features that foster addictive consumption of their content, which, in part, is having documented negative impacts on mental health. Bloomberg's April 2023 article "TikTok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids" is one example.

Ongoing concerns about TikTok's threats to U.S. national security and cybersecurity have also prompted the Biden administration to speak out forcefully in March 2023.

The burden of addressing the "information threats" these sites present is going to be on schools and public libraries: to advance "social media information literacy" and critical thinking skills in young people, as well as persons of all ages. Unfortunately, libraries are, in many instances, jumping pell-mell on the TikTok bandwagon: rhapsodically promoting the platform, both tacitly and overtly, without commensurately weighing the substantive downsides of its use for community engagement and messaging that, admittedly, can have positive upshots, like combatting rising rates of book challenges and bans.

Notice, too, on television the increased Public Relations/Crisis Management "feel-good ad" campaigning that TikTok--like Meta/Facebook--has been engaging in the past few years to counter reporting about the burgeoning amounts of disinformation and misinformation on these sites, as well as other real concerns highlighted above. These ads employ folksy, "nothing-to-worry-about-on-here" messages in attempts to downplay the genuine dangers that they represent to individuals and democratic societies. The reality, however, is that there is bonafide "stuff" to worry about regarding TikTok and its ilk -- and ample evidence of these intersectional problems to vindicate taking affirmative steps now to mitigate and push back against their negative impacts.

Are you listening, U.S. Congress and state legislatures?]

"A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.

In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

TikTok, primarily known for short-form video sharing, has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report ever using the platform – as well as young adults."