More from Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry
Wired reports that one of DOGE’s many government initiatives is an attempt to rewrite the Social Security Administration codebase in a more modern programming language in just a few months. A proposed migration in 2017 predicted that modernizing properly would take around five years.
“Of course, one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se; [it’s also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it. The invisible errors and omissions,” an SSA technologist tells WIRED.
Things are about to get even more turbulent for the tech industry.
As reported by the New York Times and CNBC, FCC chair Brendan Carr has followed up on a previous threat against Disney in a new letter (pdf). Now he says its enforcement bureau will investigate to see if it’s “violating FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
Along with an administration-wide push to remake government and industry that targets the catch-all buzzword, Carr has said it will be a focus for merger and acquisition approvals, and has begun inquiries into other companies.
In July, Carlos Watson was convicted on fraud charges for misleading investors with falsified financial records, inflated audience numbers, and made-up business deals. The New York Times reported in 2021 that his co-founder, Samir Rao, had impersonated a YouTube exec on a call with bankers about a potential $40 million investment.
But now that Donald Trump commuted his 116-month sentence on the day he was scheduled to report, Watson won’t even start. The one-year probation for the now-defunct Ozy, as well as $96 million in restitution and penalties, have also been wiped away.
Journalist Ken Klippensten obtained an internal memo directing employees to conduct a “social media review” of foreign students applying for visas, and must flag any online posts or screenshots “advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse [or] support” a terrorist organization. The directive is seemingly aimed at students who participated in pro-Palestine – or as the memo specifically characterized it, “pro-Hamas” – campus protests.
Less than three months after the BitMEX crypto exchange was hit with a $100 million fine for money laundering – and hours after he pardoned ex-Nikola CEO Trevor Milton for defrauding investors in his EV company – Trump issued pardons to Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Dalo and Samuel Reed, CNBC reported Friday. The three men had previously pled guilty to several felony charges related to money laundering and failure to police the exchange.
End-to-end encryption is useful, secure, and reliable. But it’s just not enough.
The Trump administration announced 20,000 layoffs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, part of a drastic restructuring of the agency that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and that oversees Medicare and Medicaid.
More cuts — ranging from 8 to 50 percent of staff across 22 federal agencies — could be on the way, according to an internal White House planning document obtained by the Washington Post.
Rep. Ritchie Torres and the House Democrats, who are reportedly drafting a bill entitled “The HOUTHI PC SMALL GROUP Act” that would criminalize the use of unsecured messaging apps to send classified information. (Per Axios, it’s an acronym for “Homeland Operations and Unilateral Tactics Halting Incursions: Preventing Coordinated Subversion, Military Aggression and Lawless Levies Granting Rogue Operatives Unchecked Power.”)
While claiming that The Atlantic “is going to be out of business soon,” Trump commented on the Signal group chat scandal in a Newsmax interview Tuesday night.
A day after The Atlantic EIC Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he’d been inadvertently included in a group message on Signal where Trump admin officials discussed details of an upcoming military strike, CBS News reports on an NSA warning from February that the app isn’t approved for “nonpublic unclassified” information. Despite testimony today that no classified material was shared, the NSA noted the danger posed by Russian phishing campaigns attempting to add a linked device and bypass Signal’s encryption for surveillance.
Later on Tuesday evening, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries shared a letter he’d sent to the president saying Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “should be fired immediately” over the breach, and watchdog organization American Oversight said it’s filed a lawsuit against several of the officials in the chat.
