The Digest

Elon Musk confirmed SpaceX is actifsely seeking additional AI compute customers beyond Anthropic, framing the company as a emerging infrastructure player in AI compute. The announcement follows a disclosed deal in which Anthropic pays SpaceX $1.25 billion per month — a figure confirmed by an Anthropic spokesperson — for access to the Colossus cluster for inference workloads. Per Benzinga, the deal could total $45 billion through 2029.

"As the recently expanded partnership with @AnthropicAI demonstrates, @SpaceX is offering AI compute as a service at significant scale. We are in discussions with other companies to do the same." — Elon Musk

The implication: SpaceX is building out a compute business parallel to its satellite and launch operations, with AI inference as the anchor use case. For the AI infrastructure landscape, it's a signal that Hyperscale-A is no longer the only game in town for distributed compute at scale.

Weekly usage of Chinese AI models reached 9.223 trillion tokens — a 19.89% weekly increase — while US AI models hit 4.93 trillion tokens, a 16.27% increase. Chinese models have now surpassed the US in weekly token usage for four consecutive weeks. DeepSeek-V4-Flash is topping the charts.

Context: the figure comes from an OpenRouter-based report; it measures API-level throughput, not underlying model quality or research leadership. But the volume gap is real and it's now been building for a month.

After a scanning study found more than 1-in-5 dissertations now use AI for at least some of the writing, a number of universities appear to have stopped hosting AI-written dissertations by deleting PDFs — but Codex was able to locate alternate versions of the same files still hosted on university sites in several cases.

"Not sure what that's about." — Cremieux

The universities' apparent response — deletion rather than retraction — raises questions about academic record integrity and whether deletion is a genuine correction mechanism or just visibility management.

Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for advanced negotiations under the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program — a federal initiative to convert Cold War-era surplus plutonium into fuel for advanced nuclear reactors.

The company confirmed the selection via press release and an SEC filing. The DOE program represents a pathway for surplus weapons-grade material to be turned into reactor fuel, and Oklo's Aurora reactor design is positioned to consume that fuel. OKLO stock rose ~10% on the news.

Oklo has been lobbying for a role in the program as nuclear lobbying spending climbs across the sector. The company is one of a handful of advanced nuclear players angling for DOE contracts in the fuel cycle space.

Bryan Johnson amplified Cremieux's report on Eli Lilly's VERVE-102: a single-infusion gene therapy that reduced LDL cholesterol by up to 62% in early-stage trial participants — patients with genetically high LDL or established heart disease.

VERVE-102 is an in vivo base editor designed to permanently turn off the PCSK9 gene, which regulates LDL cholesterol metabolism. Eli Lilly reported Phase 1b Heart-2 data on May 25 showing durable effects at the highest dose. The therapy is positioned as a potential one-time treatment for hypercholesterolemia.

"Don't Die is the sunrise on the horizon." — Bryan Johnson

Clinical context update (Dr Gary McGowan): 71% of trial participants were already on high-intensity statins, 43% also on ezetimibe. The 62% LDLc reduction was achieved in a population already receiving standard-of-care lipid therapy — making the result more impressive, not less. Patients with refractory hypercholesterolemia on maximum oral therapy still saw substantial additional benefit from a single infusion.

VC Doubt Meets Clinical Signal: Lada Nuzhna notes that more than 90% of biotech VCs approached were bearish on the one-and-done cure model — 'Why cure a disease if you can do monthly injections?' Yet Eli Lilly has placed multiple bets to prove otherwise. Verve is betting the curative commercial model outpaces VC caution before the science is proven wrong.

RoboStrategy, a newly launched public investment vehicle focused on robotics, has appointed Kevin McCordic (aka @intern) as Chief Marketing Officer. McCordic announced the role with a thesis that robotics is 'the highest potential emerging technology field that currently exists and the least well understood by the general population' — expecting it to dominate social media, politics, and markets within 12-18 months.

The fund's pitch: robotics companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX have reached enormous private market valuations while public market access has been limited. RoboStrategy is designed to provide public market exposure to the robotics build-out.

"Elon calls the combination of AI and Robotics the supersonic tsunami. I've never been in a tsunami before, but I imagine it would be quite intense. Especially a supersonic one." — Kevin McCordic

Elon Musk has publicly accused the Trump administration of improperly using SpaceX's civilian Starlink system for military purposes — escalating a pricing dispute with the Pentagon over Starlink terminals used on LUCAS kamikaze drones during operations against Iran.

The core conflict: SpaceX says the US military used Starlink in a significantly more expensive mode than contracted for — specifically on LUCAS suicide drones, which use the connection for only minutes or hours at a time but consume bandwidth at aviation-tariff rates. SpaceX demanded the per-terminal price be raised from roughly $5,000 to $25,000 per month. The Pentagon objected, arguing a kamikaze drone pricing tier is unreasonable for a system designed to stay connected indefinitely.

"They made improper use of the Starlink civilian system for military purposes." — Elon Musk

Update: The Department of War's official account (on X) denied the Reuters story, calling it 'not based in reality' and claiming SpaceX 'remains a strong and valued partner.' The denial explicitly references the Reuters piece — meaning the DoW is responding to the reporting rather than denying a specific factual claim. A denial that names your source is not a refutation; it is a confirmation in the language of institutional politics.

Elon Musk welcomed American Airlines to the Starlink family, per ZeroHedge. The deal marks another aviation connectivity contract for SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service — a growing vector for Starlink's commercial B2B revenue outside residential and maritime.

Starlink's aviation product has now signed multiple airline partners. The pitch: high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity for passengers and crew at cruising altitude, displacing older Ku-band satellite systems and ground-to-air cellular solutions.

ZeroHedge flagged the semiconductor cost shift: hyperscalers' server bill of materials now has roughly 25% going to memory, up from 7% — a structural repricing of the compute stack that points to memory vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) capturing far more of the hyperscaler spend than they did two years ago.

The Nvidia Vera Rubin rack context: at $7.8 million per rack — double a Blackwell rack — the memory component alone has become a major cost driver. This aligns with the historic Korean/Taiwan stock selling Goldman flagged: memory makers' margins and pricing power are at historical peaks, which historically precedes cyclical corrections.

Georgia Power is using eminent domain to seize homes and hundreds of easements across Coweta and Fayette counties to ram through a 35-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line feeding at least four massive AI data centers. Project Wansley is the flashpoint.

20-30 homes face outright demolition. Another 300+ properties get permanent easements for towers in backyards and next to pools. Georgia Power is offering below-market compensation — residents report offers $70-100K below market value.

The story: Ansley Brown's viral TikTok (6M+ views) exposed the lowball offers on a family home purchased through a USDA rural development loan. Her mother — a single mother — bought the property in 2003. Now the utility wants it for the corridor.

The wider pattern: this is the third major data center backlash story this week — Northern Virginia rejections, Texas water lawsuits, and now Georgia eminent domain. Each follows the same structure: hyperscale demand collides with local infrastructure limits, costs get socialized, profits stay private.

Ferrari has unveiled the Luce, its first electric vehicle, designed by Jony Ive. The announcement marks Ferrari's formal entry into the EV era — a significant design and strategic shift for a marque historically defined by combustion performance.

'Luce' means light in Italian — a brand-building choice signaling a new aesthetic direction. Ive brings a design language rooted in restraint and material honesty, distinct from Ferrari's historical maximalism.

Strive Asset Management has purchased an additional 1,109 Bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to 16,500 BTC. The purchase ranks Strive 7th on the Bitcoin 100 corporate treasury tracker.

The acquisition continues Strive's stated strategy of accumulating BTC as a treasury reserve asset. At current prices the position is worth approximately $1.7 billion.

CalleBTC announced major progress on Cashu's ecash protocol: Bitcoin-private-key-less mints running in secure enclaves, where the mint operator has no access to the private keys and cannot steal Bitcoin, inflate supply, or manipulate the ecash ledger. Demos already exist.

The use case: communities can run mints without trusting operators — eliminating internal malicious actors and external hacker threats. The team is building for the Bitcoin community first, then expanding to local currency communities globally, describing existing local currency tech stacks as 'old and antiquated.'

Update — Wallet Week #2: Cashu launched a new web wallet (wallet.cashu.me) with a mint discovery page featuring ratings, recommendations, and a Nostr-based web of trust. The team teased further wallet news coming soon.

Kevin Warsh, now officially sworn in as the 17th Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is being re-amplified on his 2021 CNBC Squawk Box line: 'If you're under 40, Bitcoin is your new gold.' The quote, originally made when BTC was around $30,000, is surfacing in crypto and financial media as Warsh assumes leadership of the Fed.

Warsh has since elaborated that Bitcoin does not 'make him nervous' and can function as a sustainable store of value like gold — while still calling most private crypto 'software, not money' and criticizing speculative projects. His Fed chair nomination is now being received as a potential signal for BTC-friendly monetary policy.

The Mined in America Act would distort the overall economic incentives of the Bitcoin network and capture US-based miners in a situation where dependence on associated loan or grant programs makes it economically non-viable for them to deny government demands.

"Effectively, the bill would turn miners into their own surveillance teams, collecting and reporting information to the government in exchange for economic favoritism." — Brian Trollz, The Rage

The structural concern: miners who become dependent on government-linked financing lose the economic independence that lets them resist demands. It's a consent mechanism disguised as an industrial policy bill.

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe and Adam Back sat down to discuss the persistent gap between how Bitcoin and memecoins are perceived outside the industry versus within it.

The framing: to people building in the space, Bitcoin and memecoins are fundamentally different assets — one representing sound money and decentralized infrastructure, the other pure speculation with no underlying technical thesis. To the outside world, they're often lumped together as 'crypto.'

The interview addresses why that gap persists and what it will take to close it — presumably through education, infrastructure, and the continuing build-out of Bitcoin-native financial products that differentiate the asset class from pure speculation.

Manuel Araoz (maraoz), former Bitcoin engineer and known figure in crypto security circles, issued a stark warning: 'I now consider all of DeFi unsafe.'

Coding agents are superhuman at finding smart contract vulnerabilities. The asymmetry is structural — defenders must fix every single bug, while attackers need only one exploit to drain funds. Traditional security audits scale linearly with human reviewer hours; AI red teams scale exponentially.

The question is not whether systemic vulnerabilities exist, but whether they will be found first.

The digital euro CBDC architecture would hand the European Central Bank administrative power over digital wallets, with a planned cap of €3,000 per wallet — a limit Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel argued would prevent large-scale capital flight from commercial banks.

The analysis contrasts the EU's centralized CBDC approach against privately issued dollar stablecoins (Tether has ~$190B market volume). Stablecoins enable real-time transfers outside the traditional SWIFT system with only a smartphone required. The digital euro project is framed as systematic centralization of monetary power by Brussels, with first wallets not expected before end of 2029.

The $2.5 trillion crypto industry has deployed significant sums into Texas primary runoffs via two dominant vectors: the Fairshake network (Protect Progress, Defend American Jobs) and the Fellowship PAC (Tether/Cantor Fitzgerald/Anchorage).

The marquee race: TX-18 (Houston), where Protect Progress has spent roughly $5M supporting Christian Menefee and $2.8M opposing incumbent Al Green — making it the most expensive House runoff in Texas history. Fairshake affiliates have spent over $6.5M across TX-18 alone.

Fellowship PAC spent $500K supporting Ken Paxton for Texas Senate — a move widely interpreted as positioning for the 2026 Senate race to replace John Cornyn. Trump endorsed Paxton, signaling crypto-friendly conservative alignment.

Update — Paxton Wins Texas Senate Republican Primary (May 27): Ken Paxton defeated incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Senate Republican primary runoff. Tarrant County's early votes shifted 28 points toward Paxton from round one — Cornyn was +10 in first round, Paxton won +28. Greg Abbott: 'Next, he will destroy Talarico and become the next US Senator from Texas.'

In TX-18 (Houston), Al Green — who famously interrupted Trump's state of the union — lost his primary to Christian Menefee. Protect Progress (Fairshake) spent ~$5M supporting Menefee, the most expensive House runoff in Texas history. Fairshake affiliates spent over $6.5M in TX-18 alone. Prediction markets had priced Menefee and Paxton at ~90%+ odds throughout.

BP has removed Albert Manifold as board chair mid-term, citing 'serious' governance concerns. The departure came less than a year into his tenure — an unusually rapid exit for a FTSE 100 chair.

No further detail on the specific governance issue has been disclosed. The removal follows a pattern of governance-related exits at major energy companies and adds to investor uncertainty around BP's strategic direction at a time of acute pressure on traditional energy majors from both EV disruption and activist investor scrutiny.

At least two dispersion funds confirmed they were 'carted out' in the last two months, per ZeroHedge. The event follows Goldman Sachs's March note flagging dispersion trading as the third-worst month on record for equity dispersion strategies (long single-stock volatility vs. short index vol), particularly in gamma-neutral formats.

Dispersion trading — betting that individual stocks will diverge from the index — has been squeezed by the persistent low-vol, high-correlation environment. When the correlation breakdown finally came, it came in the wrong direction for dispersion shorts.

The implication: volatility products structured around dispersion trades face redemption pressure. Any fund with material exposure to dispersion strategies in energy, financials, or EM-facing names should be on the watch list for further contagion.

Japan's auto industry is in forced reset as Chinese automakers outpace traditional rivals in EVs, software, and manufacturing speed. Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe formally retreated from the company's 2040 EV target, admitting the plan was 'not realistic under current circumstances.' Honda posted its first full-year net loss since going public in 1957.

The retreat marks a sharp reversal: Honda had committed trillions of yen to EVs, battery production, and a Canadian supply chain while betting heavily on Afeela, its software-focused EV partnership with Sony Group. That project was meant to prove Japanese automakers could compete in the era of connected, software-defined cars.

Nissan is also recording heavy losses. Across the sector, Japanese OEMs are cutting EV spending, delaying factory projects, and pivoting back toward hybrids — while BYD and Chinese peers accelerate their lead in both global market share and technology.

Hyperliquid has cleanly flipped Coinbase's fully-diluted valuation on public market metrics:

• COIN FDV: $48.1 billion
• HYPE FDV: $58.3 billion

The crossover is notable: Hyperliquid is a perpetual futures DEX operating entirely on-chain, with no corporate structure, no SEC filings, and no institutional custody. Coinbase is a regulated US publicly listed exchange with 17 years of operational history and 110M verified users.

The narrative: HYPE's on-chain token holders are pricing in a future where decentralized perps capture meaningful share of CME's volume. COIN's institutional moats — licensing, banking relationships, regulatory compliance — are being weighed against a protocol that routes trades with no intermediary. The valuation gap may reflect either genuine DeFi optimism or crypto-native multiple expansion that hasn't been tested against a prolonged bear market.

Occidental has acquired a position in Exxon's Trinidad deepwater block, per Reuters. The transaction is a strategic positioning move: Trinidad is an increasingly important LNG feedstock source as Caribbean and Gulf LNG demand grows, and deepwater blocks offer higher-pressure reservoirs with better production economics than shallow-shelf equivalents.

The acquisition reflects a pattern of Western IOC repositioning in the Caribbean after years of underinvestment in legacy onshore and shallow-water assets. Deepwater Trinidad offers long-reach wells with strong initial production rates — and unlike US Gulf shallow water, the regulatory path for new development is faster.

Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers (PD) made a pointed observation: the concept of 'reputational risk' for financial institutions used to mean solvency and safety — you don't want a bank run. But corporate 'reputations' for ESG/DEI were later smuggled in, enabling debanking of political opponents.

Bessent's move: no longer. The State Department official statement signals a policy reversal — financial institutions will no longer face reputational or regulatory pressure to maintain ESG commitments as a condition of good standing.

The framing: what was once a mechanism for ideological capture of banking relationships is being explicitly disavowed. For crypto companies that have faced debanking for political or ideological reasons, this is a structural tailwind.

Goldman Sachs has flagged historic foreign selling of Korean (memory) and Taiwanese (TSMC) stocks, per ZeroHedge. The chart shows a structural shift: foreign institutional investors are rotating out of Korean semiconductor names (SK Hynix, Samsung Memory) and Taiwanese foundry exposure (TSMC) at a pace that represents a historical anomaly.

The signal: TSMC and memory makers have been the backbone of the AI trade's hardware layer. Historic selling at this scale suggests either macro risk re-pricing (Korea/Taiwan geopolitical risk premium rising), or institutional rotation away from AI hardware exposure after the recent run-up. The chart is the thing to watch.

SK Hynix shares surged 11% on May 27, pushing the company above $1 trillion market cap — the first Korean semiconductor company to cross that threshold.

The move reflects sustained AI memory demand: HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chips are critical components in Nvidia's GPU clusters, and SK Hynix is the dominant supplier. AI infrastructure buildout globally keeps memory tight.

SK Hynix is the primary memory partner for Nvidia's H100 and H200 GPU lines, which remain in tight supply at hyperscalers.

Semiconductor stocks are up +14% over five days relative to the broader Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), posting a 16.5% outperformance versus Nvidia — the largest 5-day SOX/NVDA spread since 2018, per Goldman.

The rally suggests investors rotating into semiconductor equipment and memory names beyond the primary GPU manufacturer. A bet on the full supply chain rather than just the headline AI GPU provider.

Iran's Foreign Ministry has formally condemned US strikes on vessels in the Gulf as a ceasefire violation, throwing US-Iran nuclear talks into acute crisis. The condemnation follows overnight US strikes on boats and missile launchers in the Hormozgan province (Bandar Khamir, Sirik, Qeshm Island) — which the US characterized as self-defense. Iran's Ebrahim Zolfaghari called it 'a gross violation' of the ceasefire framework.

The timing is critical: the ceasefire framework included a planned opening of the Strait of Hormuz roughly 30 days post-signing. Iran's formal accusation puts that opening in doubt — and with it, roughly 20% of global oil flows.

Rubio had signaled a deal was still possible 'within days' despite earlier strikes. That window appears to be closing rapidly. Britain's RFA Lyme Bay remains docked at Gibraltar awaiting a finalized ceasefire before Hormuz deployment. The Guardian is live-tracking the escalation as of this morning.

Update (May 27): Iran connectivity recovering but Filternet remains and WhatsApp is now restricted. A partial restoration — not a full reopening. The ceasefire architecture remains under pressure.

The 'LeadingFutureAI' super PAC has raised $125 million from a consortium of Silicon Valley AI interests — Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and linked donors, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale — per CNBC and Bloomberg reporting. Roughly $70 million was on hand at last reporting.

The PAC's purpose: support candidates who favor a single federal AI framework over a patchwork of state-level regulations. It has already begun spending in competitive primaries and congressional races for the 2026 midterms.

"Politicians know the PAC is toxic but accept the money under plausible deniability — 'oh sorry I didn't see that they spent a bunch on my campaign.'" — Peter Wildeford

The scale of AI-industry money flowing into electoral politics in 2026 is becoming one of the undercovered structural stories of the election cycle.

Update: Hasan Piker named Neville Roy Singham as the 'funding vehicle' for political agitation in the US — directly corroborating BPI research on foreign influence operations targeting AI policy. Singham-linked organizations are under Treasury investigation and congressional scrutiny for potential tax-exempt status abuse.

Iraq's oil production has collapsed to just 1.39 million bpd after the Strait of Hormuz blockade stranded exports — down from a 3.47M bpd monthly average and 4.1M bpd in the three months before the US/Israel-Iran conflict began on Feb 28. This is the lowest production level since the 2003 invasion.

Over 90% of Iraq's budget comes from oil, and ~95% of that normally flows through the Hormuz bottleneck. With storage tanks full, Baghdad has been forced to shut in wells — which can cause permanent reservoir damage through pressure loss, water infiltration, and corrosion.

The race now: revive northern export routes through Turkey, including the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline system and a new Kirkuk-Nineveh pipeline. Chinese firms are heavily involved in the north-south pipeline expansion — a development with geopolitical weight given the broader context of US-China competition for energy infrastructure influence in the Middle East.

The deeper problem: Iraq's mature southern fields are highly susceptible to well damage from prolonged shutdowns. Even if Hormuz reopens, production may not recover quickly.

Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, met with President Trump at the White House on May 26 — a signal of continued alignment between the right-wing Bolsonarista movement and the Trump administration.

The meeting's significance in the context of Latin America's leftward electoral drift: Brazil's Lula government has been navigating a careful balance between maintaining traditional BRICS alignment and engaging with Washington. A White House meeting with the younger Bolsonaro — who remains influential in Brazilian conservative circles — signals the Trump administration's continued interest in cultivating relationships across Latin America's right-of-center political infrastructure.

The framing: this is not just a family photo — it's a signal to Brasilia about the administration's priorities in the region.

Hasan Piker's Treasury RFI coverage took an unexpected turn: he named Neville Roy Singham — the China-based Marxist financier linked by NYT to CCP-aligned propaganda networks — as 'the funding vehicle behind all political agitation in the US,' naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, and CodePink as recipients.

"Hasan didn't refute the network. He mapped it." — Stu Smith

The operational significance: Piker — who was subpoenaed over a CodePink cofounder's 'humanitarian trip' to Cuba — confirmed Treasury's broader target is Singham and his operation. This directly corroborates Bitcoin Policy Institute research on foreign influence operations targeting US AI policy.

The GOP investigator angle: Asra Nomani flagged that activist groups are meeting inside union halls with foreign government representatives to receive direction on protest targets and legislation. Federal investigators have been tracking these funding flows for years.

The Singham network's core thesis: organizations operating as charitable nonprofits but functioning as political agitation fronts funded by a foreign-linked financier living in China. Congressional and Treasury scrutiny is building.

Marc Andreessen flagged the broader coverage as 'Concerning.'

Byron Donalds — Republican Congressman from Florida — has earned Trump's endorsement, calling it 'incredibly honored' to earn the trust of the president.

Donalds has been one of the most prominent Black Republicans in Congress and a rising figure in the party's national profile. The endorsement positions him for a elevated role in the GOP's electoral infrastructure heading into the 2026 cycle.

The broader context: Trump's endorsement footprint in competitive Republican primaries has been a decisive signal all cycle — candidates who receive it tend to clear their primaries, and the ripple effects on donor allocation have been significant.

A second Chinese 'combat' patrol buzzed Taiwan within days of the Xi-Trump diplomatic summit. The summit produced modest détente signals while military pressure continued alongside.

Taiwan remains the flashpoint in US-China relations. Back-to-back patrols suggest whatever diplomatic warmth emerged from the summit did not alter operational military posture.

Health workers responding to a rapidly spreading outbreak of a rare type of Ebola in eastern Congo face two threats: the virus itself and hostility from wary locals. The outbreak in the Bunia area has triggered fear, misinformation, and attacks on aid workers — Red Cross volunteers conducting outreach have been met with resistance from communities suspicious of external intervention.

The CDC has expanded entry screening to four US airports: Washington Dulles (already operational), plus Atlanta and Houston starting May 26. Travelers from Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan are subject to enhanced screening. The double burden on responders complicates containment efforts in a region already challenged by limited infrastructure and community trust deficits.

Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025, per Freedom House's 2026 Freedom in the World report covering 195 countries. More than 50 countries saw political rights and civil liberties deteriorate, including the United States.

Finland topped the rankings with a perfect score of 100, followed by New Zealand (99), Norway (99), and Sweden (99). The Nordic and Western European cluster dominates: Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and Uruguay (97), and Japan (96) round out the highest-scoring countries outside Europe.

The outliers: Belarus (7) and Russia (12) sit at the bottom of Europe's rankings, with neither press independence nor free elections. South Sudan scored 0 — the world's least free country.

The framing: the Nordics flourish while 'the land of the free' flounders. The data supports the comparison, but the interpretation — that bureaucratic social democracy produces better outcomes than American liberal capitalism — is contested terrain.

America's public schools are in a phase of regret over the laptop era. After pouring billions into devices, tablets, and learning apps during the pandemic, a growing number of parents, teachers, and school districts are saying it's time to scale back.

The Los Angeles Unified School District — the country's second-largest — recently became the first major school system to say it will stop giving devices to its youngest students. A sweeping resolution passed last month by the LA school board requires the district to eliminate devices until second grade. Teachers describe the Chromebook as 'a world of distraction' competing with actual instruction.

The dynamic: edtech vendors made billions selling into schools during the device rush, but the learning outcomes argument never materialized the way vendors promised. Now districts are under pressure to demonstrate value from prior spending while simultaneously cutting back. The reversal is as much fiscal as pedagogical.

Over 280 University of California STEM faculty have signed an open letter calling on the Board of Regents to reinstate standardized testing in admissions. The letter's key line: 'Current admissions practices do not provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors.'

The context: UC eliminated SAT/ACT requirements during the pandemic and has kept them out. Faculty argue the removal has degraded signal quality in STEM preparation — particularly in math readiness — and that without a standardized benchmark, admissions decisions rely on grade inflation-prone coursework and less reliable holistic measures.

The pushback: standardized tests correlate with income, and critics argue the real problem is unequal K-12 preparation, not the test itself. The debate mirrors national higher-ed arguments about meritocracy, access, and signal reliability.

Balaji Srinivasan published a long-form thread arguing the internet is the most underestimated force in the world: 'To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.' His thesis: the internet now exceeds America in both users and economic scale, and drives every major political and military event — from Twitter-driven elections to crypto and AI to drone warfare.

The concrete argument: Meta's Ohio datacenter was 'printed out from the internet' — the internet was used to gather capital, organize materials, purchase territory and coordinate labor. Coordination costs are falling, so tomorrow it could be an internet community organized around a coin rather than a traditional company. 'If you can print out a datacenter, you can also print out a new city.'

Balaji cites Paul Baran of RAND's original packet-switching design — proposed to survive nuclear attack — as evidence the internet was designed to outlive the nation-state. 'Even if the American state went down, the Internet's network would stay up. So that we could restore America from cloud backup.'

The punchline: internet infrastructure is now a form of sovereign coordination that exists parallel to and partially independent of nation-state infrastructure. The physical datacenter is an expression of a cloud community's will, not merely a corporate asset.

Kelsey Piper argues in The Argument that literary prizes not checking for AI-generated content are rewarding dishonesty — and that the literary world is 'sleepwalking' into a crisis of authenticity.

The piece: prize submissions are increasingly AI-assisted or AI-generated, and prize committees are not auditing for it. The consequence is a system that incentivizes writers to hide AI assistance rather than disclose it, penalizing those who are transparent and rewarding those who aren't.

Piper's framing on X: 'I write for the Argument.' The implication: the solution is not to ban AI in writing, but to have honest frameworks for disclosure — and prizes that don't check are complicit in the deception.