More from Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry
It’s “going to look a little different” as it migrates to a more general science site, according to NASA. President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and researchers have been archiving environmental data in case it starts to disappear from federal websites.
The Biden administration’s climate and economic justice screening tool, a federal website on reproductive rights, and NASA’s diversity and inclusion pages appear to be down.
In a CNBC interview this morning, Microsoft’s CEO avoided the accusations that OpenAI and Softbank don’t have the money to support their AI infrastructure dreams.
Nadella said he’s “not in the details” of investments in The Stargate Project, confirming only the $80 billion Microsoft will invest annually in building up Azure to handle AI.
The EV tax credit is still alive and kicking — but for how long?
There is, alas, no grand conspiracy here. It’s just that every four years, on X, Instagram, and Facebook, accounts like @POTUS, @VP, and @WhiteHouse are transferred to the incoming administration. Here’s how it went down in 2021, and with the first Trump term.
There are people who say they never followed these accounts and now suddenly do, which would be much stranger. I have a theory about this, but if it happened to you I want to know!
Here he is talking about it during today’s big data center announcement, with Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, and Masa Son standing in the room with him.
Extreme First Amendment issues with having the government own a social platform aside, it’s striking how he keeps talking about “permits” even though nothing in the TikTok bill has anything to do with permits. Once a real-estate guy, always a real-estate guy, I suppose.
“We’re talking about a tariff of 10 percent on China based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada,” President Donald Trump said during today’s press conference where he also helped announce The Stargate Project. The administration is “looking at” imposing the tariff on February 1st.
You can watch Trump’s comments about the tariffs on YouTube.
Something tells me he’s not going to divest himself of it.
It’s reportedly part of “billions of dollars in private sector investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure” that Donald Trump is preparing to announce, with the first project in Texas. Oddly, earlier rumors about “Stargate” included Microsoft and this one doesn’t so far, but their connection with OpenAI has grown more complicated since then.
Executives from the companies are expected to say they plan to commit $100 billion initially and pour up to $500 billion into Stargate over the next four years.
The USDS was set up under Obama, and it was more or less the federal government’s software product management group. I interviewed outgoing head Mina Hsiang on Decoder in 2023, and it was one of our most popular episodes that year — it turns out being the PM of healthcare.gov looks a lot like being the PM of any other software product.
Trump’s executive order creating DOGE says USDS is now the US DOGE Service, so we’ll see if Elon Musk approaches the government’s tech teams the same way he did Twitter. It’s a lot riskier to screw up the VA website!
Kathy Harris, clean vehicle director at NRDC, swats down one of Trump’s falsehoods about Biden’s EV incentives:
“There is no `EV mandate,’” Harris said in a statement, “but Trump’s move to repeal existing standards and federal investments would be a huge blow to the U.S. auto industry – and bad news for American drivers. Fat-cat oil executives are the only ones cracking open the champagne about this one.
“Still, this is not the end of this story. The administration will need to follow the facts and the law in making any changes to the electric vehicle incentives or the federal vehicle standards and state waivers. Our lawyers are watching. If the administration tries to cut corners or ignore the law, they will end up in court.”
