Podcasts about Pew

Episode 101 is all about Ask The MacBroz! You submitted the questions, and we're answering them. Did Jay really buy a Stealth Arms Platypus? What did Darius do to his Staccato C with the Mad Scientist? We also got our hands on Pew.Locker and Civilian Medical 1 gear—thanks to Shawn from We Like Shooting—and share our initial thoughts. We also get into: • When we're finally going to shoot USPSA • The ammo we use and recommend • The different porting setups we've tried • Why we continue trusting Monsoon Tactical • The one gun Jay wanted most from GunCon Authentic opinions, questionable decisions, and plenty of MacBroz nonsense. Drop your next question in the comments and it may make the next Ask The MacBroz episode. Support the Companies Supporting Our Journey Get your Civ Medical Training at: https://l1nq.com/g8k601h (Coupon Code: MACBROZ) Store your pews and protect your investment with Pew.Locker: https://l1nq.com/59160yg Save with BOP10 at Brownells Save with JAYWETH15 at Tag Precision Save with JAYWETH at Gideon Optics Save with JAYWETH at Leisure Carry Belts Save with MACBROZ at Mad Science Tactical

O Império da IA, com Karen HaoEm 2019 — tempos mais simples! — a jornalista Karen Hao foi fazer o primeiro “perfil” jornalístico da sua carreira, aquelas reportagens em que um jornalista passa dias acompanhando uma pessoa ou empresa, uma coisa meio biografia, meio retrato congelado no tempo.A tal empresa era uma startup do Vale do Silício, ainda pequena e desconhecida dos meros mortais como eu e você, mas que hoje é a mais valiosa da história: a OpenAI, também conhecida como “a criadora do ChatGPT”.A Karen Hao vendeu o projeto do perfil para o MIT Technology Review porque a OpenAI parecia, naquela época, uma startup diferente. O “open” no nome nasceu da visão de que inteligência artificial é um assunto tão importante para o futuro da humanidade que precisava ser explorado de um jeito aberto, compartilhando conhecimento com todo mundo, e mais preocupado em proteger esse tal futuro do que em só gerar lucro.Hoje, aqui direto de 2026, a gente já sabe que não foi exatamente isso que aconteceu. Com o tempo, a OpenAI se transformou numa empresa oficialmente voltada para o lucro como qualquer outra e chegou a ser processada por Elon Musk — um dos apoiadores iniciais do projeto — por quebrar essa promessa de ser ‘open'. Em maio, o Elno perdeu a causa, e a OpenAI agora se prepara para lançar as ações na bolsa e, pelos números atuais, já largar valendo mais de 1 trilhão de dólares.Mesmo em 2019, a Karen Hao sentiu que todo esse papo de “open” não era bem assim: segredos e competitividade em todas as conversas que ela ouvia na empresa. Publicou o tal perfil contando isso e o pessoal da OpenAI… não gostou muito. Achou que ela ia só falar bem deles, e a empresa cortou contato com ela por três anos.O Boa Noite Internet é uma publicação apoiada por pessoas como você, nosso público. Para receber novos posts e apoiar meu trabalho, considere tornar-se um assinante gratuito ou pago.Até que, em maio do ano passado, ela lançou nos EUA o livro O império da IA: Por dentro da corrida irresponsável pela dominação total, que segue contando a história da OpenAI — e abre com a bizarra saída do Sam Altman, demitido do cargo de CEO por “nem sempre falar a verdade” ao conselho da empresa, para voltar quatro dias depois nos braços dos funcionários.Mas esse livro não é exatamente uma biografia da OpenAI. Para mim, é mais um retrato de todo o sistema empresarial em que vivemos hoje — inteligência artificial ou não. O importante é que ele acabou de sair no Brasil pela Editora Rocco, que me procurou para saber se eu queria entrevistá-la aqui no programa, aproveitando que ela veio participar do Esquenta do Congresso Internacional de Jornalismo Investigativo da Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo. O congresso, aliás, acontece dia 30 de julho — vai lá no site da Abraji saber mais, quem sabe comprar seu ingresso.Mas enfim, claro que eu queria conversar com ela. Obrigado, Abraji, obrigado, pessoal da Rocco, pelo presente. Quem me conhece sabe que IA agora é um assunto muuuito importante no meu trabalho. Eu fico aqui tentando navegar o meio do caminho entre o fim do mundo exterminador do futuro e a utopia vendida por muita gente. Não acredito em nenhum dos dois cenários, falei disso com a Karen antes e durante a conversa. Mas no final da entrevista a gente volta para falar não só disso, como também de como o IA em Curso, minha comunidade de letramento contínuo em IA, se conecta com tudo. Com promoção? Pode ser. Quem ficar até o fim, verá.A entrevista foi gravada em inglês — a Karen também fala mandarim, mas não fala brazilian —, então vai funcionar assim. Se ouvir no áudio, vai ser a versão original, do mesmo jeito que foi com o Ted Chiang ano passado, para você botar o seu cursinho para trabalhar. Aqui no site boanoiteinternet.com.br você está acompanhando a transcrição completa traduzida, se quiser ler enquanto ouve. E no YouTube tem uma versão legendada. Assim, você entra na conversa do jeito que preferir.Combinado? Então, bora lá entender O Império da IA com Karen Hao, no Boa Noite Internet.Cris: Karen Hao, bem-vinda ao Boa Noite Internet.Karen Hao: Obrigada pelo convite.Cris: Que bom ter você aqui. Espero que o Brasil esteja te tratando bem durante a Copa do Mundo — a gente veio falar sobre isso. Hoje é dia de falar de futebol, de Copa do Mundo, quais são as chances de cada país. Mas a primeira coisa que você precisa saber sobre essa conversa é que eu não sou jornalista. Não sei fazer isso. Peço desculpas antecipadas à sua profissão e ao seu ofício.Além disso, você foi enganada. Eu não estou aqui pra te entrevistar. Isso aqui é uma sessão de terapia. Você vai me ajudar a superar meus traumas.Porque eu sou da… do que eu chamo de “geração esquecida” — sou geração X, nasci nos anos 70. Esquecida porque, nessa guerra de gerações, as pessoas esquecem que a gente existe, e isso é incrível, porque a gente causou muito estrago no planeta. O Elon Musk é geração X, então é só isso que você precisa saber sobre a minha turma. Gente como ele, ou como Marc Andreessen… eu cresci lendo e assistindo à ficção científica que dizia que tecnologia é a melhor coisa do mundo, que ciência e engenheiros são incríveis e vão nos levar pra um lugar incrível.Sou uma daquelas pessoas que, quando a internet surgiu, falou: a paz mundial está logo ali. O conhecimento a um clique de distância, o futuro vai ser incrível. E aqui estamos nós. Então, quando usei o GPT pela primeira vez, e depois o ChatGPT, fiquei super empolgado. Foi a primeira vez, desde a internet, que eu fiquei realmente empolgado.Tenho até uma certa fama de ser mal-humorado com tecnologia: Bitcoin é lavagem de dinheiro, Clubhouse não presta — e as pessoas, ah, Clubhouse é a próxima grande coisa. Mas quando a IA chegou, eu falei: isso é importante. Só que eu já não era mais aquela criança dos anos 70. Tinha crescido, tinha visto o que aconteceu com a internet, tinha trabalhado numa big tech. E estava em desespero com o sistema em que a IA estava sendo construída.Dito tudo isso, o seu livro, aqui, já nas livrarias, recebe provavelmente o melhor elogio que eu posso dar: é otimista. Não é uma lista de reclamações e gente má fazendo coisas más. Claro, você fala muito sobre a OpenAI — ela é o fio condutor da história, especialmente aqueles quatro dias em que o Sam Altman saiu e voltou. E é muito divertido de ler. Mas você toma o cuidado de ser otimista.E uma das coisas que você menciona é como as pessoas na OpenAI, e em todas essas empresas, dizem: “isso é inevitável, a gente tem que fazer”. Quero falar sobre isso. Mas a gente tem que começar pela pergunta que você provavelmente ouve em todo podcast, a do título — Império da IA. Por que império?E acho que essa pergunta é ainda mais relevante no Brasil, país do sul global, colonizado. Por que império da IA?Karen Hao: Antes de mais nada, obrigada por dizer que o livro é otimista. Muita gente não reconhece isso, mas é verdade. Eu escrevo com um profundo otimismo de que os danos que a gente vê podem mudar. Não faria o trabalho que faço se não achasse que as coisas vão mudar.Sobre por que eu uso a expressão império, ou império da IA: a forma como empresas como a OpenAI operam é impressionantemente parecida com a dos impérios antigos. Eu traço quatro paralelos no livro. O primeiro é que elas reivindicam recursos que não são delas — os dados das pessoas, a propriedade intelectual de artistas, criadores como você, jornalistas.Segundo, elas exploram uma quantidade extraordinária de mão de obra. Isso vale tanto para os trabalhadores da cadeia de produção de IA, mal pagos e maltratados, que ainda assim geram uma riqueza extraordinária para essas empresas, quanto para os trabalhadores cujos empregos são automatizados e cujos direitos são corroídos pela implantação dessas tecnologias em diferentes setores.A terceira característica é que impérios controlam os fluxos de informação na sociedade. Essas empresas censuram a pesquisa fundamental sobre essas tecnologias, o que limita nossa capacidade de entender as verdadeiras limitações e capacidades dos modelos que desenvolvem. E estão criando uma tecnologia de informação que tentam transformar no portal único pelo qual qualquer pessoa se relaciona com o mundo.Esse portal impregna as ideologias do Vale do Silício, seus sistemas de valores, sua língua, e projeta a hegemonia do inglês. Isso influencia boa parte do conhecimento que a gente vai produzir daqui pra frente, porque cientistas e educadores usam essas plataformas e acabam perpetuando essas mesmas ideologias e valores.E o quarto e último paralelo é que impérios sempre se agarram a uma narrativa existencial ou moral sobre por que precisam existir. Essas empresas fazem a mesma coisa. Dizem que são o “império do bem”, numa missão civilizatória de trazer progresso e modernidade pra toda a humanidade, competindo contra um “império do mal” que ameaça mandar a humanidade pro inferno.Quando você conversa com algumas pessoas dentro dessas empresas, ou que as lideram, elas dizem: se você nos deixar construir uma inteligência artificial geral, que elas de alguma forma moldam como um deus, a gente vai acabar numa espécie de utopia, um paraíso onde a mudança climática é resolvida, o câncer é curado, a pobreza é aliviada.Mas, se os caras maus conseguirem isso antes, a gente pode acabar com todos os humanos mortos — um risco de extinção pra todos nós.Cris: E eles vêm dizendo isso há quase dez anos, e ainda usam como ferramenta. A gente está num país que foi influenciado por três impérios ao longo da história: Portugal, Inglaterra e agora os Estados Unidos. Então a gente olha pra essas empresas de um jeito meio cínico: sim, sim, já conhecemos essa história.Mas, ao mesmo tempo, ano passado, o Pew Research Center fez uma pesquisa sobre como o mundo enxerga a IA, e o sul global é bem mais otimista do que o norte. Uma das razões é a ideia de democratizar — não só informação, mas: ah, finalmente eu posso montar uma startup, sair desse lugar de exploração e criar o unicórnio de um bilhão de dólares. Os números são grandes na China. Países em desenvolvimento veem muito mais benefício do que risco na IA.China, 83%. Tailândia, 77%. Holanda, 36%. Canadá, 40%. Será que a gente está deixando passar alguma coisa? A gente está certo? Isso está democratizando mesmo? Até que ponto?Karen Hao: Provavelmente tem duas razões. Uma é que muitos dos danos que a indústria de IA causa à maioria global são bem escondidos. Ela se esforça muito pra esconder como polui o ambiente dessas comunidades, como explora e devasta a mão de obra, deixando traumas psicológicos — como documento no livro.E, recentemente, li um artigo de opinião no New York Times que trazia um bom ponto: muitas economias desenvolvidas estão especialmente atentas ao potencial da IA de desmontar oportunidades de emprego de tempo integral. A gente começa a ver isso cada vez mais. Já na maioria global, muito mais gente vive em economias informais, e aí a ideia de que a IA vai tomar um emprego de tempo integral não pesa tanto.Então os danos mais visíveis — a erosão do emprego formal de tempo integral — pesam mais no norte global, ou pelo menos é lá que as pessoas se sentem mais ansiosas. E os danos invisíveis, que atingem o sul global, ninguém percebe tanto, justamente porque são invisíveis. É meio por isso que tanta gente sente essa divisão que aparece na pesquisa do Pew.Cris: Eu tenho acompanhado as notícias sobre IA no Brasil, e toda semana tem um novo data center sendo construído em alguma cidade. Isso é vendido como uma coisa boa: que ótimo investimento, gera emprego. E me fez pensar de novo — a gente passou por três impérios, mas algumas famílias no Brasil, e aposto que em outros lugares também, estão no poder há 500 anos ao longo da história do país.Então, ao mesmo tempo, a gente pensa: é, estamos sendo explorados, é a mesma coisa. Eu já não tenho emprego, então deixa eu usar essa tecnologia pra melhorar minha vida. Mas as pessoas que realmente tomam as decisões, de novo, nos últimos 500 anos, se perguntaram: como a gente ajuda esse pessoal a explorar nosso país de um jeito que nos mantenha no poder e nos dê muito dinheiro?Mas também foi verdade que, sei lá, a Volkswagen abre uma fábrica no Brasil e aquilo gera emprego, contrata gente pro chão de fábrica e pros escritórios. Como é que isso é diferente com a IA?Karen Hao: De certa forma, não é diferente. Existe um fenômeno parecido: a indústria de IA terceiriza muitos dos trabalhos que ela não quer dentro dos centros de poder, e joga isso pra comunidades empobrecidas, do mesmo jeito que outras multinacionais fizeram por décadas.Mas também é diferente, porque a escala dos impactos trabalhistas e ambientais da IA é completamente outra, muito maior que a da indústria automobilística ou da moda. E a velocidade é outra, porque são tecnologias digitais que atravessam fronteiras muito rápido.E é diferente porque a maioria das pessoas não percebe que a IA, mesmo sendo tecnologia digital, tem uma cadeia de suprimentos muito física e intensiva em mão de obra manual.Quando você compra roupa, café, um carro, é mais óbvio que existem materiais que precisam ser extraídos e depois manuseados por pessoas pra criar aquele produto. Já com a IA, a maioria aceita a narrativa que o Vale do Silício projeta: a de que isso vem da “nuvem”, desses espaços etéreos que parecem nem existir no planeta. E a verdade é exatamente o oposto.Ela depende de uma quantidade extraordinária de extração mineral. Depende da construção de infraestruturas enormes — data centers, instalações de supercomputação espalhadas pelo mundo. E depende de muita, muita mão de obra manual: trabalhadores de dados que limpam, preparam e moderam o conteúdo dos sistemas de IA que chegam até você quando usa o ChatGPT.É isso que a torna tão diferente. E há também uma ideologia completamente diferente sustentando a expansão da IA. Quando você conversa com executivos da moda, eles não vão dizer: se você não comprar nossa roupa, vai pro inferno.Já a indústria de IA diz: se você não nos deixar capturar cada vez mais terra, mais recursos e mais mão de obra pra produzir essas tecnologias, vamos ter uma destruição civilizacional. Isso é, ao mesmo tempo, retórica política usada como arma pra moldar o debate público e a cabeça de quem formula políticas, e também está enraizado num sistema de crenças — algumas pessoas dentro dessas empresas realmente acreditam que, se uma AGI fosse construída, e construída nas mãos erradas, isso levaria mesmo a esse tipo de destruição.E é isso que move a sede cada vez maior da indústria por mais capital, mais recursos e mais terra.Cris: Eu quero falar sobre AGI, mas antes: ano passado, a OpenAI estava sendo processada no Reino Unido por violação de direitos autorais, basicamente todos os livros do mundo digitalizados e usados pra treinar modelos. E um dos executivos disse ao júri: bem, se a gente não puder fazer isso, fecha as portas. Me chocou que muita gente reagiu com um “ah, tá, o que a gente pode fazer? Eles vão fechar as portas”.Em parte porque a gente já está acostumado com essa narrativa. Outro dia, numa conferência, um ex-CEO dizia: a gente teve que usar embalagem de plástico porque é mais barata que papel, senão prejudicaria nosso resultado. E a plateia reagia: ah, então é só fechar as portas — a sociedade não pode arcar com isso.Mas isso também, como você disse, se conecta à ideia de uma grande missão, uma missão de salvar o mundo, que a gente precisa cumprir antes que seja tarde, senão estamos condenados. OpenAI está literalmente no nome — só que em português não é tão direto: é “inteligência artificial aberta”.Foi criada a partir de um sonho, um projeto que era pra ser uma coisa pro bem comum. Em 2019, num tempo bem distante, antes da pandemia, você cobriu a OpenAI, foi até o escritório deles, ficou lá dentro. O que você viu? E, mais importante, como essa missão mudou? O Elon Musk os processou outro dia justamente por mudarem a missão. Isso alguma vez foi verdade? Em algum momento eles pensaram mesmo “ah, a gente vai salvar o mundo”?Como essa narrativa de ser aberta funciona com a OpenAI?Karen Hao: Quando comecei a cobrir a OpenAI, levei a sério o que eles diziam — que tinham sido recrutados com a missão de beneficiar toda a humanidade. E aí, quando me infiltrei na empresa, fui ficando bem mais cética, porque via como eles operavam de um jeito completamente diferente, portas adentro, do que diziam em público.Diziam que iam publicar todas as pesquisas e abrir o código de tudo, e na prática eram uma das organizações mais secretas que já cobri. Eram muitas discrepâncias, e, na época, presumi que tinha havido algum tipo de corrupção que os levou a abandonar a missão original. Depois de cobrir a empresa por mais alguns anos e de trabalhar neste livro, mudei de ideia até sobre a missão original.Não acho mais que ela era um esforço sincero e generoso de beneficiar a humanidade. A missão foi criada pra dar à empresa — na época, uma organização sem fins lucrativos — uma margem de manobra extraordinária pra depois levantar muito capital, acumular muito talento e perseguir a força motriz de verdade por trás de tudo aquilo: se tornar a força dominante no desenvolvimento de IA.E penso assim agora porque, quando você olha pras narrativas de cada nova empresa de IA no começo — a Anthropic, a xAI, a Safe Superintelligence do Ilya Sutskever, a Thinking Machines Lab da Mira Murati —, todas usam a mesma narrativa da OpenAI: nós somos os mocinhos, eles são os bandidos.É por isso que precisamos criar uma nova empresa que avance a IA do nosso jeito, não do deles. E você começa a perceber, por esse padrão, que eles repetem a mesma coisa em parte porque acreditam nela até certo ponto, mas também porque ela funciona muito bem com a imprensa, com o público, com quem formula políticas.No livro, eu reproduzo os e-mails internos que Elon Musk, Sam Altman e Greg Brockman trocavam nos primeiros dias da OpenAI. Eles tinham plena consciência de que estavam criando uma missão que soasse bem para o público. E o propósito de verdade, que também deixaram registrado nesses e-mails, era vencer o Google. Viam o Google como a força dominante em IA e queriam ser eles essa força.Não gostavam de ver o Google na frente, então inventaram justificativas: o Google é uma empresa com fins lucrativos, então nós vamos ser sem fins lucrativos. Mas, no fundo, acho que era puro ego: tem que ser a gente, não eles, a gente quer ser quem lidera isso.E aí passaram um tempão moldando essa missão pública, que acabou sendo super útil pra recrutar o primeiro grupo de pesquisadores e turbinar o avanço deles.Cris: Então agora é um bom momento pra falar de AGI, a inteligência artificial geral. Muita gente pergunta: o que é AGI? O que “geral” quer dizer? E a impressão que peguei lendo seu livro é que, por design, isso nunca fica claro de verdade, porque é um alvo móvel. Essas empresas um dia vão dizer “chegamos, alcançamos a AGI”? Ou o plano é sempre “não, não, ainda não chegamos, me dá mais dinheiro, me dá mais poder”?Qual é o papel da AGI na narrativa dessas empresas?Karen Hao: Já que a gente está falando de ficção científica, eu costumo usar a analogia de que o mundo da IA é meio como Duna. Em Duna, o personagem principal, Paul Atreides, entende, ao chegar no planeta Arrakis, que o povo de lá foi semeado com um mito: o de que um dia viria um Messias pra libertá-los. Ele sabe que é um mito, mas decide entrar nele e agir como se fosse o Messias pra controlar melhor aquele povo.E, vivendo, respirando e encarnando esse mito dia após dia, ele começa a perder a noção de que é um mito. Passa a se perguntar se o mito era mesmo verdadeiro ou se foi ele quem o tornou verdadeiro. É essa confusão entre mito e realidade — ele vive num espaço intermediário, sem ter mais certeza do que é verdade e do que é ficção.E trago isso pra responder sobre a AGI porque a AGI é, ao mesmo tempo, um mito e algo que os líderes e os trabalhadores dessas empresas vivem, respiram e encarnam dia após dia, a ponto de perderem a noção do que é mito e do que é realidade. É a ideia de um sistema de IA teórico que um dia igualaria as capacidades humanas. Só que a gente nem tem consenso científico sobre o que é inteligência humana.Por isso, de certa forma, por design, é um termo bem maleável, que deixa essas empresas fazerem o que quiserem. Elas definem e redefinem a AGI conforme a necessidade, movem a trave pra onde quiserem. E, ao mesmo tempo, isso é sustentado por uma crença genuína de certas pessoas lá dentro, por causa dessa confusão entre mito e realidade. Pelas minhas contas, a OpenAI já usou pelo menos quatro definições diferentes de AGI.A primeira está no site deles: “sistemas altamente autônomos que superam humanos na maioria dos trabalhos economicamente valiosos”. É uma definição de automação do trabalho — eles dizem, de forma explícita, que estão atrás dos empregos mais bem pagos. A segunda apareceu no contrato com a Microsoft, por um tempo a maior investidora deles: ali, a AGI virou um sistema que geraria 100 bilhões de dólares em receita.Ou seja, uma definição feita pra incentivar a Microsoft a investir. Já o Sam Altman disse ao Congresso que AGI é um sistema que cura o câncer e resolve a mudança climática — uma definição de benefício social, muito útil quando você quer que os reguladores não te regulem.E, por fim, quando falam com o consumidor, dizem que vai ser o melhor assistente digital que você já teve — porque, claro, estão tentando vender o produto.E aí você percebe duas coisas. Primeiro, que é um conjunto de definições completamente incoerente. Segundo, que eles trocam de definição conforme o público que querem convencer. Mas também tem gente nessas empresas que acredita de verdade que está construindo uma tecnologia capaz de dar conta das quatro coisas.Então é uma realidade bem confusa e complicada: o que a AGI de fato é, e pra que ela serve, para essas empresas, para a agenda delas e também para as crenças delas.Cris: Como ex-funcionário da Meta — entrei em 2013 —, a missão era unir o mundo e torná-lo mais aberto e conectado. É uma missão incrível. E tem uma coisa que eu sempre digo, porque muito amigo meu vem falar comigo, “ah, esse cara da OpenAI, ou a própria Meta, são maus”. Eu conheci muita gente na empresa. Nunca conheci uma pessoa mal-intencionada.Todo mundo, independente da missão, era gente boa tentando entregar o melhor produto possível, pra dar poder a quem tem um pequeno negócio, por exemplo. Tenho amigos pessoais que construíram a empresa deles em cima da publicidade do Facebook e do Instagram. E esse é justamente o problema, porque ainda assim é uma corporação muito má, pelo que ela causa ao mundo pra bater as metas de negócio.Ou seja, você não precisa de um vilão tipo Lex Luthor pra causar um estrago desse tamanho no mundo. E adorei a referência a Duna. Duna é engraçado: é o livro que eu mais reli na vida que não foi escrito pelo Tolkien. Li o primeiro Duna umas três vezes, e toda vez é como se fosse um livro diferente. Na primeira, eu era adolescente, e era só o Paul Atreides, o cara durão.Na segunda, eu morava no Canadá e li com olhos de estrangeiro, pensando em colonização. E na terceira vez foi quando os filmes do Denis Villeneuve saíram, e aí era: ah, o Bene Gesserit criou esse mito, isso é meio pós-moderno. Narrativamente, fico me perguntando o que vai significar pra mim se eu ler uma quarta vez.Karen Hao: Eu ia te perguntar isso. Quando você disse que cresceu numa época cheia de ficção científica falando das maravilhas da tecnologia, fiquei curiosa: que histórias você estava lendo? Porque muita coisa que saiu nos anos 70 e 80 dizia exatamente o oposto. E muita gente já apontou que os executivos de tecnologia de hoje, que vivem citando essas histórias, interpretam elas justamente ao contrário da intenção original.Cris: Concordo plenamente. Mas, respondendo: foi basicamente Isaac Asimov e Arthur C. Clarke. E é por isso mesmo — os executivos de tecnologia, e o Elon Musk mais que todos, leem esses livros como receita, não como aviso. O livro de que eu mais me lembro, nem lembro o título, era um do Asimov em que ele descreve o elevador espacial que aparece na série da Apple TV, Fundação.E o enredo é: eu sou esse engenheiro brilhante, quero construir essa coisa no Sri Lanka, mas o governo trava tudo com regulação — eu sou um gênio e a regulação é a vilã. Hoje eu leio e penso: ah, sei. Mas, quando garoto, era só “olha, um elevador espacial, que genial, a gente nem precisa de foguete”. E aí você começa a entender. E aí eu parei de ler esses caras.E passei a ler gente com uma visão completamente diferente: o Ted Chiang, que entrevistei ano passado, a N.K. Jemisin, o Cory Doctorow, de quem sou muito fã. E talvez eles sejam mais explícitos, pra gente burra como eu entender: “não, bobo, a analogia é essa”. Mas Duna era incrível — vermes gigantes de areia, o tal garoto durão, e aquela coisa do “eu não aceito o meu destino”.Tenho esse grande destino, mas não quero ele. Do resto da série eu já não gosto tanto. Mas o mais importante de tudo: Duna gerou o melhor GIF de filme de todos os tempos, o “Lisan al Gaib” do Javier Bardem — que eu devia ter colocado durante a sua explicação, aquele “uau, ele está cumprindo a profecia, agindo como o profeta”.Mas, de novo, falando de vilões: você mencionou que essas empresas se colocam como o bem contra o mal, feito impérios antigos. Só que elas também jogam a carta da China, né? “Se a gente não fizer, a Rússia faz primeiro.” Só que a Rússia começou uma guerra e está ocupada demais. “Mas a China chega lá, e é por isso que a gente tem que ser fechado.” É por isso que Mythos e Fable e agora o GPT-5.6 foram proibidos pelo governo. Isso tem fundamento?Quero saber se é possível a China competir — quero mesmo essa resposta — mas também porque, desde toda essa conversa do Fable-Mythos, países como Índia e Brasil vêm dizendo que precisam de um modelo soberano. Dá pra fazer, ou a OpenAI, a Anthropic e o Google estão tão à frente que já não dá?Karen Hao: Sobre a China: você está certíssimo, o Vale do Silício usou por anos a carta do “e a China?” pra escapar de qualquer responsabilização de verdade. Fizeram muito isso na era das redes sociais.A Meta fez muito isso, com o Mark Zuckerberg dizendo ao governo dos EUA: vocês não podem nos regular, senão a gente perde. Mas, se a gente ganhar, vai ter um efeito liberalizante no mundo e nas democracias em todo lugar. E, infelizmente, o que a gente viu foi que jogar essa carta repetidamente produziu exatamente o efeito contrário do que o Vale do Silício prometeu.Uma das empresas de rede social dominantes dessa era é a ByteDance. Ou seja, mesmo sem regulação das redes sociais nos EUA, existe uma empresa chinesa de rede social bem dominante. E as redes sociais estadunidenses acabaram tendo um efeito antiliberal no mundo — é bastante consensual que enfraqueceram democracias em todo lugar. E aí, na era da IA, elas seguiram jogando a mesma carta.Mas o que eu sempre aponto é que a gente definitivamente não devia acreditar nelas. Já existe evidência significativa de que tudo o que elas dizem está, de novo, se provando o oposto. Elas disseram: não regulem a gente como empresas de IA, regulem a China, via controles de exportação — um mecanismo do governo dos EUA com alcance extraterritorial.Só que as empresas chinesas agora estão produzindo modelos de IA de código aberto extremamente eficientes, que viraram super populares no próprio Vale do Silício. Existe um monte de startup de lá que prefere usar modelo chinês a OpenAI, Anthropic ou Google.Então, nesse sentido, é um conjunto de evidências bem decisivo, acho, pra mostrar que a gente devia simplesmente responsabilizar essas empresas, não importa o que digam sobre “ah, vamos perder pra China”. No fim das contas, é só retórica política. Não é um argumento real que elas consigam sustentar pra escapar da responsabilização.Responsabilizá-las vai fortalecer a democracia pelo mundo, vai trazer mais direitos humanos, trabalhistas e de privacidade de dados pras pessoas — é sempre o contrário do que elas dizem que aconteceria. E, sobre a sua pergunta em torno da IA soberana: acho a ideia realmente importante, mas acho também que muitos países estão meio confusos sobre o que querem dizer com isso.Muitos governos, hoje, pensam a IA soberana pela pergunta: a gente consegue construir o nosso próprio ChatGPT? O nosso próprio grande modelo de linguagem, o nosso sistema de IA generativa? Estão olhando só pro modelo que o Vale do Silício já definiu e tentando descobrir como recriar aquilo.E o que eu digo pra quem formula políticas é: defina pra que a IA serve no seu país, no seu contexto. Quais são, no fim das contas, os objetivos do seu país? Os objetivos do seu povo? E também os nossos objetivos coletivos, entre países?Porque a gente tem, por exemplo, os Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da ONU. Já definimos coletivamente que há coisas que precisamos resolver juntos: superar a crise climática, reduzir a pobreza, melhorar a educação.E, enquanto o Vale do Silício adora dizer que está fazendo tudo isso, na prática não está. Mas a gente poderia — poderia desenvolver, de forma colaborativa, sistemas de IA que realmente avançassem em cada um desses objetivos coletivos que já acordamos.E cada país também devia fazer o exercício: quais objetivos você quer alcançar, e que tipos de sistema de IA você poderia desenhar pra chegar lá — sistemas que talvez não se pareçam em nada com um grande modelo de linguagem. Se os países fizessem isso, acho que descobririam que a maioria dos sistemas de que precisam exigiria muito menos recursos.Ou seja, contextos como o Brasil, a Índia e outros, quando não precisam competir construindo essas infraestruturas de computação gigantescas e gastando centenas de bilhões de dólares, na verdade já têm, localmente, todos os recursos necessários pra desenvolver um sistema de IA soberano.Cris: Quando ouvi falar do seu livro pela primeira vez, uma amiga me disse que você não poupa ninguém — fala mal do Sam Altman, mas também do Dario Amodei. E as pessoas costumam escolher um lado. Eu sou time Claude, odeio o ChatGPT, essas coisas. Então cheguei no livro pensando: ah, é mais um livro dizendo que a IA é terrível, que a gente não devia usar IA.Mas, conforme fui lendo, e ouvindo outras entrevistas suas, me pareceu que o seu problema é justamente o que você acabou de descrever: a forma como essa tecnologia é feita. E, em especial, a palavra escala — a ideia de que a solução é a escala. O que você quer dizer com isso?Karen Hao: Eu costumo usar a analogia de que “IA” é como a palavra “transporte”: na verdade se refere a uma coleção de tecnologias que vão da bicicleta ao foguete. São tipos bem, bem diferentes de tecnologia, que exigem insumos diferentes pra se desenvolver e depois têm impactos diferentes na sociedade.E você está certo: sou especificamente crítica ao que chamo de “foguetes da IA”, os sistemas que os impérios da IA estão desenvolvendo, aqueles que exigem uma quantidade enorme de exploração de mão de obra e extração ambiental.E sou bem otimista com o que chamo de “bicicletas da IA”: sistemas especializados, eficientes, com bom custo-benefício, governáveis pelas pessoas, cujo desenvolvimento pode ser participativo. Países como o Brasil, o Chile, a Índia, qualquer contexto, têm recursos pra desenvolver e se autodefinir, em vez de simplesmente herdar um sistema criado pelos dois únicos centros do mundo capazes de gastar uma quantidade extraordinária de capital: o Vale do Silício e o ecossistema tecnológico chinês.E o motivo pelo qual eu acho tão corrosivo o que os impérios da IA estão desenvolvendo é exatamente o que você disse: a forma como eles fazem isso, por um mecanismo de força bruta pra avançar as capacidades da IA em escala. Eles vão simplesmente empurrando cada vez mais dados de treinamento nesses modelos, e isso exige corroer a privacidade das pessoas, tomar a propriedade intelectual delas e, ainda por cima, baixa a qualidade dos dados que entram nos modelos — o que leva aos danos de exploração de mão de obra, porque aí você tem que dar conta da moderação de conteúdo.E aí você tem pessoas psicologicamente traumatizadas por serem expostas a todo aquele conteúdo horrível que se tenta “lavar” através desses modelos.E aí vem o problema dessas infraestruturas de computação enormes, com impactos ambientais que aumentam a conta de luz das comunidades que as hospedam e agravam a crise de custo de vida. Elas precisam ser alimentadas por fontes fósseis, que jogam mais carbono na atmosfera e mais poluição no ar dessas comunidades.Então todos os problemas que eu identifico, no que têm de corrosivo, derivam inteiramente da abordagem deles pro desenvolvimento de IA. Por que não descartar a abordagem, em vez de descartar a tecnologia? Redefinir e redesenhar de que tipos de sistema de IA a gente precisa de verdade, com uma cadeia de suprimentos fundamentalmente diferente. E isso não é exclusivo da IA.A gente já viu muitas outras indústrias que começaram com uma cadeia de suprimentos bem ruim. A moda, por exemplo: muita degradação ambiental, muita exploração de mão de obra.Com muita organização, protesto, ação de consumidores, regulação governamental e cooperação entre governos, a gente conseguiu criar mercados novos pra moda sustentável e ética, cadeias de suprimentos novas e inovações pra fazer roupa mais saudável pras pessoas e pro planeta.E é basicamente isso que eu defendo: transformar a indústria de IA do mesmo jeito que transformamos a moda, e as cadeias de suprimento de alimentos. Assim a gente fica com os benefícios da tecnologia, ajuda ela a avançar os objetivos que importam pra gente, sem jogar uma fração enorme da população mundial numa condição atrasada e numa qualidade de vida pior.Cris: O Brasil está agora, no Congresso, discutindo a escala de seis dias por semana. A regra atual é: você trabalha seis dias e descansa um. E muitas empresas, o comércio principalmente, dizem “vamos fechar as portas”, e os trabalhadores respondem “isso é problema seu, não meu”. É mais ou menos a mesma narrativa dessas empresas de IA: se eu não usar a sua água, a Idade das Trevas está chegando.Falando em Idade das Trevas, e falando em bicicleta: a sua analogia me lembrou uma coisa. Eu gosto de jogo de zumbi, de mundo aberto, e em nenhum deles tem bicicleta. Num desses jogos, instalei um plugin que deixava andar de bicicleta — você acha uma e sai pedalando. E aí entendi por que não tem bicicleta: desbalanceia tudo. Parte da graça do jogo é você precisar achar um carro, e daí pneu, gasolina, comida pra carregar. De bicicleta, você vai a qualquer lugar.E eu pensei: ah, é. Meio que estraguei o jogo pra mim, porque agora tenho uma bicicleta, é incrível. Enfim, em termos práticos: no fim do ano passado, uns meses atrás, a revista Wired publicou um artigo pedindo pra jornalistas de tecnologia contarem como usam IA no trabalho. E cada um usava de um jeito. Você usa IA no seu trabalho? Como?Karen Hao: Eu não uso nenhum sistema de IA generativa no trabalho — nem ChatGPT, nem Gemini, nem Claude. Por três motivos. O primeiro é uma postura ética, depois de tanto investigar essas empresas. O segundo é privacidade de dados: eu investigo essas empresas.Não quero que elas conheçam todo o meu raciocínio enquanto eu apuro o livro, literalmente investigando elas. E o terceiro é que, no meu caso específico, a força do meu trabalho está na capacidade de construir relações fortes com as fontes, pela empatia, e de contar histórias envolventes, pela narrativa. E os grandes modelos de linguagem simplesmente não são a ferramenta certa pra nenhuma das duas coisas.Não vão melhorar a minha empatia nem a minha escrita. Então eu não perco nada com essa postura ética: simplesmente corto essas ferramentas e sigo fazendo o meu trabalho muito bem. Pra outros jornalistas pode ser diferente, e pra quem está em outras áreas o cálculo pode ser outro.Mas eu incentivo as pessoas a pensarem primeiro: quais são as suas forças no trabalho? Quais são os seus objetivos? E aí ir de trás pra frente pra descobrir se a IA é a ferramenta certa, qual tipo de IA é a ferramenta certa, e qual fornecedor você quer de fato usar, apoiar, votar com os pés. Agora, eu uso, sim, IA preditiva.Aquelas ferramentas de IA especializadas, as “bicicletas da IA”, digamos. No livro, tinha um detalhe que eu queria muito ilustrar: como a OpenAI deu um salto quando passou de organização sem fins lucrativos a um empreendimento bancado pela Microsoft. Percebi que as cadeiras do escritório ficaram bem mais caras. Então fotografei as cadeiras de um escritório e as do outro.E joguei tudo na busca reversa de imagens do Google, que é um sistema de IA especializado — não é baseado em grandes modelos de linguagem, não é IA generativa. Assim descobri quanto essas cadeiras costumam custar. No primeiro escritório, cerca de 2 mil dólares por cadeira. No segundo, eram cadeiras de um designer brasileiro famoso, uns 10 mil dólares cada.Coloquei esse detalhe no livro pra ilustrar o tipo de riqueza e de concentração de recursos de que a gente está falando. Esses são alguns dos jeitos como eu uso IA, ainda que de forma bem limitada, sempre pontual, quando acho que vai ajudar. E, claro, uso ferramentas de transcrição por IA — outra IA especializada — em todas as minhas entrevistas.Cris: Essa foi uma das partes em que a minha cabeça explodiu, eu nunca tinha percebido: a OpenAI criou o Whisper. Deixa eu dizer de outro jeito, do meu ponto de vista. A OpenAI liberou abertamente essa ferramenta incrível de transcrição, o Whisper, em que eu jogo o áudio e ela me devolve as palavras que as pessoas disseram. E eu pensei: ah, que generoso da parte deles.Mas o motivo real de terem criado a ferramenta foi pegar todos os vídeos do YouTube, transcrever e alimentar a máquina. E aí é: ah, claro. Enfim, falando de ferramentas e de otimismo — a gente está chegando ao fim da conversa. Eu tenho uma regra desde o episódio dois deste programa, há oito anos: de novo, como eu disse do seu livro, não pode ser só uma lista de reclamações e coisa ruim. E a gente tem se saído bem até aqui.Você falou de caminhos e de bicicletas, mas eu quero ser mais específico. Se isso aqui fosse uma reunião de negócios: qual é o plano de ação, quais são os próximos passos? Só que uma das coisas que eu repito bastante, na vida e neste programa, é que problema sistêmico não se resolve com ação individual. Se eu tomar banhos mais curtos, isso nunca vai salvar o planeta do aquecimento global.E muitos amigos meus simplesmente: não quero falar de IA, não quero usar IA. Voltando aos videogames: leram que tal jogo usa IA e pronto, não vão jogar. E a minha primeira pergunta pra você é: como a gente ocupa esses espaços da IA generativa — ChatGPT, Gemini e por aí vai? Porque o que a gente viu com as redes sociais foi: ah, o Facebook é do mal, vou sair do Facebook. Ah, vou sair do Twitter.E, na esperança de quê, sei lá, talvez alguém diga: ah, sinto falta do Cris, cadê ele? Ah, está no Bluesky. Mas isso deixa o espaço aberto pra os radicais entrarem e postarem o que quiserem, sem ninguém contrapor ou tornar aquilo um lugar melhor. Então como a gente ocupa o espaço da IA — seja qual for a definição de “espaço da IA” que você preferir — com todos esses problemas que a gente vem discutindo?Karen Hao: Acho que tem duas categorias de ação pra gente pensar. Uma é desmantelar o império. A outra é investir e construir novos tipos de sistema de IA, que se tornem alternativas às tecnologias do império. Quando eu digo desmantelar o império, não estou dizendo que quero que a OpenAI, o Google, a Anthropic, seja quem for, simplesmente deixem de existir.É que eu não quero que elas sejam imperiais. Não quero que fiquem extraindo uma quantidade extraordinária de valor sem redistribuir nada em troca. Se elas voltassem a ser negócios que praticam uma troca justa de valor com o mundo, eu ficaria perfeitamente feliz com qualquer tecnologia que estivessem desenvolvendo.E a forma de desmantelar o império, acho, se resume a muita organização de base, que vai pressionar os governos a regular e responsabilizar essa indústria. No último ano, a gente viu uma quantidade incrível dessa organização de base florescendo pelo mundo.Recentemente, lancei com um grupo de jornalistas, pesquisadores de IA e acadêmicos críticos um projeto chamado AI Resist List, que busca documentar parte dessa organização de base pelo mundo. A gente encontrou cerca de 30 exemplos, de todas as regiões, de ações individuais, institucionais e movidas pela comunidade.Tinha ação artística, ação política. E isso mostra bem o seu ponto: não dá pra contar só com a ação individual, mas o indivíduo pode, sim, ter impacto. Até uma ação pequena pode gerar um grande efeito cascata. Claro que se juntar com os vizinhos pra protestar contra o data center é ainda mais eficaz. Se juntar dentro da sua escola ou universidade pra protestar contra a parceria dela com uma empresa de IA também é mais eficaz.Se juntar com os colegas de trabalho de um setor pra barrar a adoção de uma IA que corrói os direitos trabalhistas é mais um jeito eficaz. A gente tem um monte desses exemplos. Um dos meus favoritos é o de uma comunidade sobre a qual escrevi no livro, Quilicura, no Chile, na periferia de Santiago. É uma comunidade da classe trabalhadora, bem pobre, que vem sendo alvo incessante da expansão de data centers.E por isso protestaram de forma bem aguerrida contra essa expansão, porque não acharam bom negócio hospedar essas instalações sem tirar nenhum benefício, enquanto elas consomem uma parte significativa dos recursos naturais da região.E, logo depois que escrevi sobre eles, foram além na resistência e criaram uma plataforma chamada Quili.ai. É um site em que você entra e que parece um chatbot, parece o ChatGPT: tem uma interface de chat pra você digitar. Só que, quando você faz uma pergunta, em vez de um modelo de IA responder, a mensagem é encaminhada pra alguém que mora em Quilicura, no Chile. Aí, se você pede “quero a imagem de um cachorro”, aquilo vai pro artista local deles, o Benji. Ele pega um pedaço de papel, desenha um cachorro, tira uma foto e te manda de volta.Eles fizeram isso essencialmente como um projeto de arte performática, pra fazer as pessoas pensarem duas vezes antes de usar IA generativa pra bobagem. A mensagem era: ei, quando você fica brincando com essas ferramentas em pedido besta, isso afeta comunidades como a nossa, drena os recursos de que a gente precisa pra viver bem.E também queriam levar as pessoas a pensar: por que não perguntar pra alguém da sua própria comunidade aquela receita que você procurava, ou pedir aquela imagem? Porque aí você reconstrói as conexões que estão tão em falta na sociedade — a falta delas é o que nos deixa mais vulneráveis a esse tipo de colonização do império.Eles deixaram o projeto aberto por 24 horas, e qualquer pessoa no mundo podia mandar um pedido. Receberam uma quantidade extraordinária deles. Viralizou de vez. E essa cidadezinha conseguiu uma virada enorme de narrativa sobre a suposta inevitabilidade e necessidade dessa tecnologia, sobre tudo o que o Vale do Silício diz — que, se você não usar, vai ficar pra trás de quem usa.E esse é só um exemplo, entre muitos, de como pessoas comuns, não importa a sua posição na sociedade, podem ter impacto real no debate, na consciência pública e até na regulação. A gente está vendo isso agora com os protestos contra data centers. Nos EUA, em 2025, cerca de 150 bilhões de dólares em projetos de data center foram travados.Isso virou uma das questões políticas mais quentes nos EUA para as próximas eleições de meio de mandato. Tem gente eleita sendo literalmente tirada do cargo por ter aprovado data centers, contrariando a vontade do povo. E isso já está tendo efeito real sobre as empresas e sobre a trajetória do desenvolvimento de IA.A OpenAI teve que encerrar recentemente a sua ferramenta de geração de vídeo, o Sora. Quando lançaram, apresentaram como o segundo produto mais importante desde o ChatGPT. O que aconteceu entre o lançamento e o fim? Uma reportagem do Wall Street Journal apontou três motivos, todos moldados por ação de base. Um: um gargalo enorme de capacidade de computação.Muitos dos data centers travados ou parados eram da OpenAI. Dois: um cenário financeiro bem mais incerto. A OpenAI está se preparando pro IPO, o que significa ficar mais exposta a Wall Street — e Wall Street está cada vez mais nervoso com a capacidade dessas empresas de cumprir o que prometem.E aí a OpenAI teve que reforçar alguns projetos paralelos pra fazer o balanço parecer um pouco melhor aos olhos de Wall Street. E, terceiro: os consumidores simplesmente não estavam usando o produto — o que também é ação coletiva de consumidores. Então, por todo esse tipo de resistência, de várias formas, de baixo pra cima, as pessoas estão de fato tendo impacto real na indústria e responsabilizando ela.Essa é a primeira categoria de ação. A segunda é: ok, que tecnologias de IA a gente usaria como alternativa? E aí a gente precisa investir mais nelas. Muitas vezes, quando converso sobre o livro, a pessoa diz: ok, me convenci de que não quero usar ChatGPT, não quero usar Claude — mas então uso o quê no lugar?E o problema é que eu não tenho muitas respostas pra essa lista de alternativas. Tem umas poucas aqui e ali, uma plataforma, uma empresa.Cris: Dá pra rodar o modelo no seu próprio computador, como o Cory Doctorow faz, mas aí é limitado e…Karen Hao: Exatamente, exige mais habilidade técnica. Mas, pra quem consegue instalar modelos de código aberto no próprio computador, eu incentivo 100%. Só que a gente também precisa de mais gente desenvolvendo interfaces bem fáceis pra esses modelos de código aberto, pra que qualquer pessoa consiga usar.A gente também precisa de mais gente desenvolvendo “bicicletas da IA”, de investidores e governos investindo mais nesse tipo de solução, e de talento — pesquisadores de IA, desenvolvedores e outras pessoas dispostas a sacrificar um pouco e abrir mão dos pacotes de remuneração enormes.Cris: Eu estava começando a achar que agora as empresas precisam ter menos lucro — e isso nunca vai acontecer.Karen Hao: Não, não é a empresa ter menos lucro. É o trabalhador topar abrir mão do pacote de milhões de dólares pra levar o talento dele pra outro lugar. Mais fácil, bem mais fácil. Eu converso com muito pesquisador de IA cansado da abordagem da indústria, porque ela é completamente sem criatividade intelectual.Eu conversei com pesquisadores que não passaram seis anos num doutorado em IA só pra ficar empurrando mais dados na máquina — pra eles, é o trabalho mais chato do mundo. E depois automatizar a programação, que era justamente o que eles gostavam de fazer. Converso com tanta gente que já não acha graça nenhuma nisso. Estão meio presos por “algemas de ouro”.E estão tentando descobrir, dentro de si, que carreira alternativa poderiam ter. Eu costumo incentivar esses pesquisadores a gastar o talento deles construindo um tipo diferente de empresa, que trabalhe com “bicicletas da IA”. E a gente já começa a ver cada vez mais desse talento indo por aí.E a gente precisa que todas as facetas da sociedade invistam num ecossistema muito mais robusto e rico de tecnologias de IA, capaz de substituir as que hoje dominam. Eu ainda tenho as cicatrizes das minhas próprias “algemas de ouro”, mas concordo plenamente.Cris: E as redes sociais são o exemplo — veja o que aconteceu com elas. Tem aquela frase famosa: as mentes mais brilhantes da minha geração passam o tempo fazendo as pessoas clicarem em anúncios. E ainda dizem: ah, isso pode ser o futuro. Pois é.Você contou a história do Quili.ai e isso me lembrou um dos primeiros criadores de conteúdo do Brasil, o Cid Não Salvo. Uns 10, 15 anos atrás, ele tuitou o seguinte: “Gente, eu disse pro meu pai que, sempre que ele precisar pesquisar alguma coisa na internet, é pra ir no Twitter.com e digitar a pergunta na caixa”. E olha que ele tinha milhões de seguidores.E, por uns bons dias, quase um mês, você entrava no Twitter do pai dele e via perguntas tipo “onde eu compro pizza?”. Era engraçadíssimo. No fim, ele contou pro pai — ou talvez não. Mas eu adoro essa ideia. Antes de a gente terminar: você já deve ter respondido isso mil vezes, mas vai continuar cobrindo IA? O que está na sua cabeça, o que vem por aí? Turnê mundial? O que vem pela frente?Karen Hao: Com certeza estou pensando em como continuar responsabilizando essas empresas. Estou envolvida em várias colaborações, com gente incrível, em diferentes projetos ligados a isso. O AI Resist List foi um deles. Também co-criei um programa chamado AI Spotlight Series, com o Pulitzer Center, uma organização jornalística sem fins lucrativos que financia jornalismo investigativo pelo mundo.É um programa que treina jornalistas do mundo inteiro a cobrir IA por uma lente de responsabilização. Até agora, já treinamos mais de 3 mil. E eu sigo pensando em como construir mais capacidade dentro do jornalismo, da sociedade civil, de outros contextos, pra mobilizar ainda mais essa organização de base — pra conter de verdade os impérios da IA e ajudar a desmantelá-los.Cris: Adorei o seu exemplo da moda. É possível, já foi feito. Ou até a indústria automotiva. Ou o grande exemplo que a gente não mencionou, e que o pessoal da OpenAI vive citando: o Projeto Manhattan, a energia nuclear.O mundo não acabou. Quando eu era criança lendo Asimov, achava que ia tudo acabar num fogo nuclear. Enfim — alguma última palavra, alguma mensagem, algum palpite pros jogos do Brasil na Copa, alguma coisa que você queira dizer antes da gente encerrar?Karen Hao: No fim das contas, o que eu espero que fique desta conversa e do livro é o seguinte: neste momento, o Vale do Silício está concebendo a IA como um projeto político. E a característica central desse projeto é tirar a autonomia de todo mundo — a autonomia de moldar de verdade o próprio futuro e o nosso futuro coletivo. Mas, no instante em que você reconhece que já tem uma autonomia significativa pra resistir, o império começa a desmoronar.Então espero que as pessoas encontrem a própria voz, a afirmem, conquistem o seu lugar à mesa e se conectem com os vizinhos, com a comunidade, com os colegas de trabalho, pra criar mais movimentos juntos.Cris: Que ótimo. Karen Hao, o seu livro é O Império da IA: Por dentro da corrida irresponsável pela dominação total. Obrigado por vir ao Brasil conversar com a gente. Foi um prazer.Karen Hao: Muito obrigada.Uma das primeiras perguntas que anotei quando comecei a pensar nessa conversa foi justamente a do final, a da ocupação de espaços. Porque, como eu disse, quando as redes sociais chegaram para ficar, muita gente falou “ah, não vou usar, é do mal” — e aí as pessoas ruins, vamos chamar assim, acabam ocupando esse espaço e falando o que bem entendem. A gente precisa aprender essa lição agora, no mundo da IA.Fora que vejo muita gente falando de IA sem nunca ter usado — ou que usou, sei lá, dois anos atrás, acha que continua tudo igual e já diz que não quer chegar perto.E por quê? Porque essa abordagem de ocupar espaços é o que eu e a Ana Freitas buscamos fazer no IA em Curso, nossa comunidade de letramento contínuo em IA. Foi, aliás, uma conversa que tive com a Karen antes da entrevista: ao mesmo tempo que a gente fala do impacto da IA no mundo, também precisa focar no que é prático, no que dá para fazer hoje com IA, sem vender sonho nem desastre. A analogia que usei foi a de que é que nem quando a gente fazia curso de Word e Excel — é o que eu faço agora que vai facilitar minha vida, me fazer ganhar tempo, botar a IA para me ajudar. Quem viu minha conversa com a Ana aqui no Boa Noite Internet, no fim de 2025, sabe do que estou falando. Se não viu, volta lá e confere.Desde que a gente lançou este episódio, o IA em Curso já passou de 400 pessoas. Tem muita gente colocando projetos pessoais incríveis na rua, tirando do papel aquela ideia que rondava a cabeça há um tempão. E a comunidade tem mentoria ao vivo, aula gravada, newsletter, banco de agentes, grupo de Telegram… que mais? O que não falta é jeito de passar para você o conhecimento sobre IA de que você precisa hoje, agora. Quero te dar a bússola para navegar nesse universo.Se esse é o tipo de abordagem que você quer ter com a IA, passa lá no iaemcurso.com.br e usa o cupom BNI2026 para ganhar 20% de desconto no plano anual. Mas corre, porque daqui a duas semanas vou apagar esse cupom — não é todo dia que a gente dá um desconto desses.É isso. Boa Noite Internet, temporada 2026 começando — como todo ano, com mudança, ideia, projeto. Ou, como diz minha citação preferida de todos os tempos: “vivemos uma fase de transição, como sempre”. Espero ver você por aqui e lá no IA em Curso.Obrigado pelo seu tempo e pela sua atenção. Até o próximo episódio. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boanoiteinternet.com.br/subscribe

This week's video transcript summary is here. You can click on any bulleted section to see the actual transcript. Thanks to Granola for its software.EditorialIntelligence: Who Owns it?This week the word “AI” feels too small.AI is a technology. Intelligence is its product. And if intelligence is the product, the question is no longer just: Which model is best? Who has the cheapest tokens? Who owns the weights? Who controls the data center? Those are important questions, but they are lower in the stack.The bigger question is simpler and more political:Who owns intelligence?That sounds abstract until you make it concrete. Intelligence is becoming something companies can capture, package, serve, meter, route, improve, and sell.It can write code, answer questions, design molecules, automate offices, run agents, draft legal work, advise scientists, serve consumers, and reshape workflows. It is not merely software. It is a general-purpose capability. And all humans could benefit from more of it.General-purpose capabilities have a habit of becoming public questions. But the default answer, that public good is best delivered by government, is the wrong answer in this context.The Product Is IntelligenceWe should stop talking about AI as a feature and start talking about intelligence as the universal thing that is delivered as an input to the world.Water is an input. Electricity is an input. Literacy is an input. Connectivity is an input. Once a society depends on them, access stops being optional. Nobody needs government to build every well, power plant, school, or network. But everybody understands that a civilization cannot be organized around less than universal and reliable access to foundational inputs.Intelligence is reaching that level of importance now that we all know it is real.Government should not own it, operate it, or develop it. Quite the opposite. Companies are the right actors to build fast, compete hard, improve models, serve customers, and discover the real use cases. Self-interest is a useful framing here. Markets are good at finding demand, reducing costs, and turning invention into services people actually use.Companies are the right operators, developers, and owners. But that does not settle the real question of who owns the benefits. That is an economic question.If intelligence becomes metered infrastructure, what happens to the value it creates?The Ownership StackThis week's articles keep circling the same issue from different directions but in the nature of ‘circling' never quite nail it.Jamin Ball's “Own Your Weights” starts with the enterprise version of the question. Owning a model file is not enough. The durable asset is the loop: the data flywheel, the evaluations, the reinforcement system, the workflow learning, and the operating context that lets capability compound.Benedict Evans' “Ways to Think About Token Pricing” adds the market layer. Tokens may become essential, abundant, and cheap, like mobile data. But being essential does not guarantee that the token layer captures the value. The money may move up the stack to whoever owns the workflow, the customer, the distribution, or the application.Alex Karp's fight with the labs, reported in “Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI”, is the same argument in sharper enterprise language. Companies are afraid that model providers will not just sell intelligence, but learn from customer workflows and then move into the markets where those workflows create value. The “All-in” group are echoing Karp's view.And “What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?” names the new contested terrain. The loop is where intelligence meets the world. Whoever owns the loop owns the learning. Whoever owns the learning owns the compounding asset.That is why “who owns intelligence?” is not a slogan. It is the question under the model layer, the application layer, the enterprise layer, and the economic layer.Because intelligence is the product, the tools creating it are fragmented and competitive. So there is no logic in trying to discuss this at the level of a single company or set of tools and models.The Old Promise Was That Commerce Would Tame PowerThe essays this week give the historical backdrop.Deirdre McCloskey, in “What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution”, argues that modern growth came not simply from capital accumulation, but from a change in permission: ordinary people were allowed to innovate, trade, build, and be honored for it.That matters because intelligence could be another expansion of permission. It could make more people capable of building, learning, creating, coding, researching, translating, selling, and coordinating. It could lower the cost of competence.But only if access is broad.Paul Krugman's “AI in an Age of Oligarchy” warns that the same technology lands differently in different political economies. A new general-purpose technology entering a broad, open, upwardly mobile society is one thing. The same technology entering a concentrated economy, with extreme wealth and weak counterweights, is another.Tim O'Reilly's Economist essay, “Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate”, makes the governance point more directly. The old liberal hope was that commerce would tame arbitrary power. Markets, boards, courts, shareholders, disclosure, and competition would discipline the prince.But what if the prince uses markets to escape discipline?Henry Farrell's “political economy of billionaire derangement” pushes the same point. Founder culture, monopoly ambition, peer rivalry, weak correction mechanisms, and vast private control can amplify appetites rather than restrain them.The danger with intelligence is not that companies build it. They should. Companies build it, meter it, use public tolerance and public infrastructure to scale it, learn from everyone who uses it. All of those things are inevitable and healthy. Market forces will sort out winners from losers. The real danger is that the winners treat all of the surplus produced as purely private.Metered Intelligence Creates SurplusIf metering is not the problem, what is?The problem is pretending that metered intelligence creates value only for the metering entity. Metering water is only tolerated as a public good. If the public were blackmailed by a private water company with the threat of no water we would all rebel.Once we understand that the product of AI is intelligence we can see that every time intelligence is used, there is the immediate transaction: the user pays, the provider serves.But there is also system value. Usage creates signals. Workflows reveal patterns. Prompts, corrections, failures, preferences, integrations, edge cases, and business processes all help define where intelligence is useful and how it should improve. Intelligence breeds intelligence.Even when customer data is contractually protected, the market learns. The platform learns where demand is. The product team learns which workflows matter. The ecosystem learns which jobs are vulnerable, which tasks are automatable, and which parts of the economy can be reorganized around machine intelligence.So the surplus is not born in a vacuum.It rests on public science, public education, public data exhaust, public law, public infrastructure, public energy systems, public tolerance for data centers, and billions of human interactions. It is served by companies, but it is not made only by companies.This is why “Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches” belongs at the center of this week's issue. The detail can be debated. The principle is harder to dismiss. If intelligence becomes a new foundational resource, then some part of the wealth it creates should flow back to the people whose society makes it possible. Intelligence did not suddenly appear. AI is built on the entire history of human intelligence. It benefits from it and at the same time evolves it.Not Nationalization. A Human Wealth Fund.If intelligence belongs to everybody, some conclude that government ownership of intelligence is the right outcome.Governments are not well suited to build, operate, or improve intelligence. They will move too slowly, regulate too early, politicize the wrong things, and confuse economic participation with operational control.Andrew McAfee's “Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter” is useful here. His objection is not that the technology is unimportant. It is that steering too hard before we understand the shape of the change can become its own failure mode. Marc Andreessen's satire of AI regulation is less policy than temperament, but it captures a real Silicon Valley fear: that regulation can become permission, capture, and incumbency before it becomes wisdom.That fear should be taken seriously.But it does not answer the economic question. It answers only the operational one.How can the economic benefits of intelligence be distributed? The better answer is a sovereign human wealth fund.Call it a sovereign wealth fund if you must, but the phrase is too national. Intelligence will not respect borders. The leading companies are global. The models, chips, data centers, agents, platforms, and workflows will be transnational from the beginning. If the value created by intelligence is global, then the mechanism for sharing some of that value should begin with the companies global enough to capture it. The nice thing about xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic is that they are supranational.These companies own and operate intelligence. Let them compete. Let them profit. Let them keep the incentives that make the system improve. But if intelligence is the new water, the wealth it creates cannot belong only to the companies that meter it. And they, themselves, have the power to fix it, even more than governments.Access will become a Human Right; Ownership Is the Economic DesignThis is where human rights come in. There is no right to access an AI model, yet. But there will soon be a need to change that.Not as a claim that every person is entitled to every frontier model at every moment for free. That is not serious. Capacity has costs. Models have costs. Inference has costs. Data centers have costs. Although those costs will decline over time, possibly quite quickly as self-learning models address costs.The claim is more basic: in a world where intelligence becomes a primary input into education, work, health, science, citizenship, creativity, and economic agency, baseline access to intelligence starts to look like a civic requirement.That could mean public access layers. It could mean education credits. It could mean open models. It could mean AI dividends. It could mean public-interest compute. It could mean taxes on rents. It could mean a company-initiated human wealth fund that returns some of the upside to society without handing the operating system to the state. The latter could couple wealth growth with universal distribution of ownership.The exact mechanism matters. But the distinction matters more.Government should not own intelligence. It should be universally available. And people should have a claim on the wealth intelligence creates.The Frontier Is Also PhysicalThe abstraction is not weightless.“The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning”, “New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium”, Reuters on pollution from Musk's xAI power project, and DataGravity's “Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?” all say the same thing from the ground up.Intelligence uses land. It uses power. It uses water. It uses chips. It uses grid capacity. It uses neighborhoods. It uses public patience.That makes the value question unavoidable. A society can accept the buildout if the buildout is legible as shared progress. It will resist it if the costs are local, the profits are private, and the benefits feel enclosed.Who Owns the “Loop”?The week ends where it began.“Anthropic and Blackstone” are betting that implementation is the next trillion-dollar business. “Vint Cerf” is working on identity for agents on the open internet. “GPT-Red” points toward systems that improve their own robustness. “Kimi K3” adds another open frontier model to the global mix.The model race continues. The deployment race is accelerating. The governance race is behind.My view is this:The central product of this era is intelligence. Companies have figured out how to capture it, package it, serve it, and meter it. That is good. It should stay in the hands of builders who have the incentive to make it better.But intelligence is too foundational to become just another private toll booth. A significant part of it will turn out to be free to users.As intelligence becomes a general-purpose resource, then access to it becomes a human-capability question, and the surplus from it becomes an economic-justice question. Not because government should run it. Because government should not run it. The operating layer belongs with companies. The wealth question belongs with everyone. But companies are best placed to turn that into a process of distribution.The question is not whether companies should build intelligence. They should.The question is whether humanity gets a stake in the wealth created by the thing that may soon become its most important shared input.Contents* Essays* Deirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution* AI in an Age of Oligarchy* Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate* Murky Mirror: Truth and Consequences* The political economy of billionaire derangement* Is there any “oligarchy” to fight?* AI* Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats* Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter* Own Your Weights* Ways to Think About Token Pricing* Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI* The AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft Office* What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?* The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning* 6 months to live for open models* Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches* Who Gets to Define the Frontier?* GPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for Robustness* Anthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just models* Vint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internet* xai-org/grok-build, now open source* The Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?* Orphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligence* The Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data Center* Why AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”* Kimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier Intelligence* Venture Capital* Three Years In* Venture Has Rarely Looked More Bifurcated* The Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active Now* Are Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?* Regulation* Exclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College Campuses* The Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.* India's crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent* Let's build a children's public internet* Computer cops* Google is better at playing the AI regulations game* Infrastructure* Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?* New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium* Pollution from Musk's unpermitted xAI power project hits hardest in Black communities* Interview of the Week* The End of the End of Geography* Startup of the Week* Radical AI's Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The “Waymo” Lab For New Materials* Post of the Week* Marc Andreessen on AI RegulationEssaysDeirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial RevolutionYascha Mounk and Deirdre McCloskey | Persuasion | July 11, 2026Yascha Mounk interviews Deirdre McCloskey about her argument that the modern world's economic liftoff came less from capital accumulation than from a change in ideas. McCloskey says both left and right versions of the conventional story rely too heavily on investment: the left stresses exploitation and surplus value, while the right stresses virtuous saving by capitalists. Her objection is historical and economic. Human beings had always invested, from irrigation works and Roman roads to seed grain, and simple accumulation quickly runs into diminishing returns.McCloskey's alternative is that northwestern Europe, first Holland, then Britain and Scotland, and then the North American colonies, developed a liberal ideology that changed who was allowed to innovate and be honored for it. The conversation links that shift to the erosion of inherited hierarchy, the spread of dignity for ordinary commercial life, and a moral vocabulary in which liberalism is not merely procedural but connected to virtues and values. The point is not that machines, coal, trade, and institutions did not matter, but that they do not explain the scale and timing of modern enrichment without a cultural permission structure for innovation.The interview also turns to the contemporary defense of liberalism. Mounk frames the series around the worry that liberalism is often treated as too thin to command allegiance, while its opponents speak more directly to moral passions. McCloskey's case is that liberal societies became rich because they dignified experimentation and ordinary enterprise, and that liberals need to recover the moral language behind that claim.Read moreAI in an Age of OligarchyPaul Krugman | Paul Krugman | July 12, 2026Paul Krugman frames AI as a major technological shock arriving inside an already unequal political economy. The post says AI's economic and social effects may take years to understand, but argues that the setting matters now: America has much greater wealth concentration and political inequality than it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when progressive taxation, stronger regulation, and more active antitrust might have contained some of the destructive effects of a new technology.Krugman's opening claim is that the same technology would likely have different consequences in a more level society. In today's United States, he writes, extreme wealth is both a cause and effect of policies that favor a small elite, including low effective taxes on capital and high incomes, weak enforcement of worker protections and antitrust, and cuts to programs that benefit ordinary Americans.The article is explicitly more about oligarchy than AI. Krugman says the paid sections document the rise of the “.0002%,” the economics and politics of extreme wealth, how oligarchy will shape AI's impact, and possible policy paths. His caveat is that AI itself may still produce a pushback against oligarchy, but absent that, he expects the pre-existing concentration of wealth and power to magnify AI's downsides.Read moreElon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hateAuthor: Tim O'Reilly Published: July 12, 2026Tim O'Reilly argues that Elon Musk is using the legal forms of shareholder capitalism to escape the restraints that shareholder capitalism was supposed to impose. The article begins with SpaceX's public-market structure: ordinary public investors get little meaningful governance power, Musk keeps roughly 85 percent of the votes through super-voting shares, buyers waive jury trials and class actions, the company qualifies as controlled, and removal of Musk depends on the share class he controls. In O'Reilly's framing, that is not ordinary founder control; it is a design for being answerable to no one, possibly beyond Musk's own lifetime.The killer detail is the article's turn through Albert Hirschman, Montesquieu, James Steuart, Adam Smith, and Keynes. Older defenses of commerce held that markets would tame princely passions because the self-interest of merchants was safer than arbitrary rule. O'Reilly says Musk reverses that hope. The market discipline that was supposed to cage the prince has become the lever by which the prince raises capital, removes feedback loops, and carries private power into politics, government, Mars, robots, AI, or whatever ambition comes next.The pull is the link to AI governance. O'Reilly says corporations are already a kind of artificial intelligence: narrow-input systems that act at a scale no individual human can match. Their partial controls include independent boards, shareholder votes, courts, disclosure, regulators, public pressure, and activism. If the leaders building frontier AI strip those alignment mechanisms out of their own companies, the governance of the company becomes a preview of the governance of the machine.Read more: The EconomistMurky Mirror: Truth and ConsequencesAuthor: Esther Dyson Published: July 14, 2026Esther Dyson argues that today's institutional crisis is better viewed through the 14th century than through recent political history. Using Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as her frame, she compares a world of famine, plague, church schism, feudal predation, and purposeless war with a present in which institutions again feel brittle, incentives are badly aligned, and power is shifting into forms that are hard to govern.The killer detail is the historical analogy between land, corporations, and AI. Dyson moves from nobles who controlled serfs and territory, to the East India Company as a quasi-sovereign business, to today's AI systems and data centers as a possible new sector that crosses and weakens both nation-states and companies. The question is whether AI becomes a new kind of private land, owned by a new nobility, or an open prairie that many people can cultivate.The pull is human attention. Dyson says the central question is not what AI will do to people, but how people will react to it: whether they can value love, kindness, embodied attention, and artisanal human presence in a world of seductive artificial offerings.Read more: SourceThe political economy of billionaire derangementAuthor: Henry Farrell Published: July 15, 2026Henry Farrell argues that the visible political radicalization of some Silicon Valley billionaires is not a random personality quirk, but a product of the political economy that made them. Starting from Tyler Cowen's dismissal of “billionaire derangement syndrome” and Tim O'Reilly's warning that Elon Musk is using shareholder capitalism to escape shareholder restraint, Farrell flips the phrase: the question is why billionaires themselves can become deranged.The killer detail is Farrell's use of Peter Thiel as both theorist and example. Thiel's Stanford lectures described startups as monarchies and founders as figures vested with unusual power, while Silicon Valley culture rewarded eccentricity, monopoly ambition, and founder exceptionalism. Farrell says those ideas combined with dense founder-investor networks, peer rivalry, and weak correction mechanisms to amplify rather than discipline princely appetites.The pull is the ideological problem for classical liberals who once saw tech wealth as an ally of markets and freedom. Farrell says commerce did not tame the passions; in parts of Silicon Valley, the passions have begun to devour markets, institutions, and the liberal story that justified them.Read more: SourceIs there any “oligarchy” to fight?Matthew Yglesias | Slow Boring | July 16, 2026Matthew Yglesias argues that “oligarchy” is a rhetorically powerful but analytically loose way to describe American politics. The post begins from Bernie Sanders' “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Amy Klobuchar's warning about a MAGA “broligarchy,” and the long afterlife of the Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page paper that was widely summarized as showing that only the rich matter in policy outcomes. Yglesias says the evidence supports a weaker claim: affluent people and business leaders have unusual access and influence, but that is not the same as rule by a small cabal.His main distinction is between inequality and oligarchy. The Gilens-Page measure treated the top 10 percent of households as “the wealthy,” and later critics found that rich and middle-class preferences usually align; in the cases where they differ, the rich win about 53 percent of the time. Yglesias also says business executives get special access partly because their decisions are materially important to communities, jobs, investment, and local tax bases, not only because of campaign donations.The post preserves Jerusalem Demsas' counterpoint from their podcast discussion: privileged donor and business access can still violate democratic equality even if the oligarchy label overstates the structure of power. Yglesias' narrower claim is that Democrats should be precise about what problem they are trying to solve, because donor influence can also push the party left on climate and cultural issues in ways that alienate many voters.Read more: Slow BoringAINearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. ThreatsAuthor: Ben Casselman Published: July 13, 2026Ben Casselman reports on “We Must Act Now,” a statement warning that artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology and that policymakers need to move faster to understand and respond. The statement says AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years, bringing risks such as large-scale job displacement as well as opportunities such as higher living standards. Nearly 200 people signed, including 15 Nobel laureates, the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.The killer detail is who joined the warning. Casselman notes that the signatories include economists who have historically been skeptical of Silicon Valley's most dramatic AI job-loss forecasts, including Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, the MIT professors who won the 2024 Nobel in economics. Erik Brynjolfsson, who helped organize the statement, says there has been a notable change in the profession and that economists and policymakers are not ready for the “tsunami” he sees coming.The pull is the measurement problem. The statement does not offer a specific policy menu, but calls for economists, policymakers, and industry leaders to understand the economics of transformative AI and steer it toward complementing humans. Brynjolfsson says one high priority is better data on AI's spread and impact, because current measures tell conflicting stories about job losses and which workers are most exposed.Read more: The New York TimesWhy I Didn't Sign the AI Open LetterAuthor: Andrew McAfee Published: July 13, 2026Andrew McAfee explains why he did not sign “We Must Act Now,” the AI economy statement organized in part by his longtime collaborator Erik Brynjolfsson. McAfee agrees with the letter's starting point that AI is likely to become radically more powerful over the next decade and that it is a general-purpose technology. His objection is not to urgency or to studying AI's economic effects, but to the framing of risk, displacement, and institutional steering as the first move.The killer detail is McAfee's line edit. He says the original letter comes close, then “bounces off the crossbar” by calling for incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI before we know enough about its actual impacts. He points to mixed current evidence: labor-market canaries, but also rising software job postings, low unemployment for younger workers, rising real median income, and claims that AI-adopting companies are adding workers faster than low-adopting peers. His worry is that the letter leans toward upstream governance and dirigisme when the evidence may call for capability building instead.The pull is his replacement statement. McAfee keeps the three-paragraph structure but changes the emphasis: AI is likely to become radically more powerful; like earlier world-changing technologies it will raise living standards while also bringing harms and shocks; and economists, policymakers, and technology leaders should build the capabilities to respond quickly and effectively. It is a concise version of the permissionless-innovation case inside the AI policy debate.Read more: The Geek WayOwn Your WeightsAuthor: Jamin Ball Published: July 10, 2026Jamin Ball argues that the enterprise AI debate about whether companies should “own their weights” or rent models from frontier labs is asking too narrow a question. A model weight file gives a company control over a point-in-time artifact, but not durable control over the capability stack. In his framing, the weight file is a melting ice cube: it does not get worse in absolute terms, but it falls behind as frontier systems improve and enterprise needs change.The killer detail is what Ball says companies really need to own: the data flywheel, reinforcement learning infrastructure, and evaluation harness that produce and improve the model. Simply deploying an open-weights model and declaring sovereignty leaves the enterprise with yesterday's capability and no way to compound workflow-specific learning.The pull is that enterprise AI control may be less about model ownership than operating ownership. The defensible layer is the system that turns company data, edge cases, business definitions, and evaluations into continuously improving performance.Read more: Clouded JudgementWays to Think About Token PricingAuthor: Benedict Evans Published: July 9, 2026Benedict Evans argues that today's AI token prices are a temporary signal from a supply-constrained market, not a reliable guide to long-term value capture. The open question is whether foundation models keep durable pricing power or become commodity infrastructure as data-center capacity, inference efficiency, and model competition all shift. His current read is that the visible market dynamics point toward commoditization unless something materially changes.The killer detail is the mobile data analogy. Evans says cellular networks became a trillion-dollar industry with hundreds of billions in capex after data usage exploded, but carrier stocks went nowhere because value moved up the stack. Tokens may behave similarly: an opaque unit tied to marginal cost, sold through bundles, essential to everything, yet not necessarily where profits accrue.The pull is uncertainty, not prediction. Evans lists paths to model dominance, including network effects, less competition, regulation, export controls, or a lab pulling ahead on execution, but says each requires a new fact not yet visible. Without that change, the model layer looks more like infrastructure beneath the products that capture value.Read more: SourceAlex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AIAuthor: Tim Higgins Published: July 11, 2026Tim Higgins reports that Palantir CEO Alex Karp has turned corporate frustration with AI labs into a public argument about enterprise control. Palantir released a white paper, “Institutional Sovereignty in the Age of AI,” laying out steps companies and governments can take to protect themselves from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation-model providers. The article links that paper to Karp's CNBC appearance, where he said “something has gone completely wrong” in the relationship between AI labs and customers and argued that enterprises are paying for tokens that create little value.The killer detail is the value-capture question. Higgins writes that Karp's critique has resonated because AI labs may gain power and insight from customer data, workflows, and decision-making, even when enterprise policies say customer data are not used for training. David Sacks amplified the concern by arguing that Anthropic is moving from the model layer into vertical applications such as science, security, legal, and coding, raising the fear that model providers will watch where value is being created and then move into those markets directly.The pull is that Karp is not alone, even if his style is unusually combative. Higgins notes that Satya Nadella has also warned that companies need to retain the learnings created when they use AI models, while Mark Zuckerberg has framed Meta's new model release partly around lower-cost frontier intelligence. The article presents Karp's campaign as one sign that established technology companies and large enterprises are trying to define where they fit when AI labs become central infrastructure, application competitors, and potential IPO giants at the same time.Read more: The Wall Street JournalThe AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft OfficeAlex Wilhelm | Cautious Optimism | July 11, 2026Alex Wilhelm argues that one of the week's quieter AI questions is whether the productivity market that Microsoft successfully moved into subscription software is now being attacked by agentic tools. The piece begins with the infrastructure backdrop: SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in a U.S. listing while building U.S. HBM and advanced-packaging capacity, and memory, chip, and foundry companies are now priced for sustained AI demand.Wilhelm then says the AI conversation has shifted quickly from raw capability to cost per task. He cites new model releases and vendor language emphasizing cheaper agentic and coding models, faster performance, and lower dollars per task. That matters because lower costs make it more plausible for AI systems to take on routine knowledge work at scale rather than remain a premium coding assistant market.The core of the article is Microsoft Office. Wilhelm notes that Microsoft turned Office from a one-time purchase into Microsoft 365, a large recurring revenue business with tens of millions of subscribers and a major productivity segment. Now, he says, late-stage unicorns and AI labs are pushing into the same territory: Anthropic's Cowork was reportedly used mostly outside software development, OpenAI merged ChatGPT and Codex into a tool for creating sheets, slides, docs, web apps, and long-running work, and other companies are building agentic coworkers that connect business data to documents, workflows, schedules, alerts, and apps.The article's caveat is that Microsoft has survived major platform shifts before. The argument is not that Office disappears quickly, but that the definition of office software is broadening from documents and spreadsheets into AI systems that can create, monitor, and act across workplace data.Read moreWhat Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?Author: Nilesh Barla Published: July 11, 2026Nilesh Barla argues that “loop engineering” is becoming a distinct discipline because production AI agents now fail less at single prompts than at runtime: when to stop, what state to preserve, and how to recover after a bad step. Prompt engineering shapes one model call, and context engineering shapes what the model sees, but loop engineering shapes what a sequence of calls actually does.The killer detail is the three-primitives frame. Barla says a real agent loop needs halt conditions, state carryover, and recovery paths, then maps teams across five maturity levels. At the lowest level, an agent is just a model call in a for-loop with a step cap and raw history; by the higher levels, the system has structured state, explicit planning, replay, evaluation, and self-repair.The pull is organizational. If agents are becoming production systems rather than demos, someone has to own the runtime itself. The loop engineer is the role Barla gives to the person responsible for making long-running agent work dependable.Read more: Adaline LabsThe Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just BeginningEmma Roth | The Verge | July 12, 2026Emma Roth argues that community resistance to data centers has moved from an early warning sign into a national political fight as AI facilities grow larger, more power-hungry, and more visible to nearby residents. The article starts with Apple's failed 2015 plan for a $1 billion data center in Athenry, Ireland, where a small group of residents challenged the project over noise, light pollution, flooding, traffic, and wildlife effects until Apple abandoned it in 2018.The current data-center buildout is presented as much larger and more contentious. Roth writes that residents now cite rising energy costs, water quality, noise, light pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects commercial energy demand to surpass residential demand this year because of AI data centers and Goldman Sachs expects data-center power demand to double by 2027.The central evidence comes from Data Center Watch, which says protesters blocked or delayed at least 75 U.S. projects worth $130 billion from January to March, with active opposition groups more than doubling from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Roth also cites QTS abandoning a $12 billion Wisconsin campus, Delaware City regulators blocking a 580-acre project under the Coastal Zone Act, opposition stopping a QTS project in Prince William County, and pressure that pushed Kevin O'Leary to downsize the proposed 40,000-acre Project Stratos in Utah.The policy section describes a split between federal acceleration and local resistance. President Trump has treated data centers as part of the AI race with China and fast-tracked construction, while some Republican candidates are distancing themselves from that position ahead of midterms. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a moratorium until price and environmental protections exist, bipartisan lawmakers are backing ratepayer-protection measures, and states including Florida, Idaho, and Washington have passed rules on cost shifting, water use, and tax breaks. Roth's caveat is that the policy patchwork is still incomplete, leaving many communities to fight project by project.Read more6 months to live for open modelsAuthor: Nathan Lambert Published: July 12, 2026Nathan Lambert argues that open-weight AI models are facing their most serious policy test so far because U.S. officials are beginning to discuss concrete controls rather than abstract safety concerns. He says reported White House conversations about a new executive order may initially target Chinese-origin models and government use, but could create a broader review habit for frontier open models. His forecast is that a model above the capability range of GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.8, or GLM-5.2 could trigger a ban or indefinite delay within six months.The post separates two policy fights that are becoming intertwined: distillation and frontier capability. Lambert says the distillation campaign against Chinese models has become a form of regulatory capture because Anthropic and other closed-model companies would gain economically if Chinese open models were banned. He does not dismiss IP protection, but argues that if a closed model's capabilities are dangerous enough to justify restricting open models, the lab also has to explain why those capabilities are exposed through a queryable API. He cites unauthorized access to Anthropic's Mythos private beta as evidence that APIs are not automatically secure.The broader claim is that a unilateral U.S. ban would hurt positive actors more than bad actors if comparable open models remain available elsewhere. Lambert says the only durable ceiling would require global agreement, which does not exist, and that open models can improve safety by allowing broad inspection, adaptation, and understanding. His proposed near-term off-ramps are a strong U.S. open model release from companies such as Microsoft, Meta, or Reflection, and a broader coalition of open-source beneficiaries lobbying for safe rollout rather than prohibition.Read more: SourceAmericans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' RichesAuthor: Scott Stanford Published: July 14, 2026Scott Stanford argues that proposals to give the government a stake in AI companies miss the point unless ordinary citizens directly receive and control the upside. Sam Altman has discussed giving up equity in OpenAI, Washington already owns a stake in Intel, Nvidia is sharing China chip revenue, and Bernie Sanders wants large AI labs to contribute half their stock to a sovereign wealth fund. Stanford says those ideas all park value with the state, not with people.The killer detail is New Carlisle, Indiana, where AWS's Project Rainier is turning cornfields into one of the world's largest AI superclusters. The project is planned to run up to a million chips, draw more than two gigawatts of power, and represents an investment that has grown from $11 billion to $13.8 billion. Stanford uses that local transformation to argue that AI's public bargain should be visible at the household level.The pull is design. A citizen AI dividend would have to specify who earns a stake, how they hold it, and when they see cash. Without that mechanism, the AI wealth debate remains a fight over government balance sheets rather than public ownership.Read more: SourceWho Gets to Define the Frontier?Author: Mark Daley Published: July 14, 2026Mark Daley argues that Demis Hassabis is right to call for a serious institution to verify frontier AI systems, but that the power to test models is also the power to govern them. Hassabis's proposed Frontier AI Standards Body would get privileged pre-release access to advanced models, testing compute, held-out evaluations, support from national labs and security agencies, third-party auditors, and eventually authority to block models from the American market or coordinate a slowdown.The killer detail is Daley's constitutional objection. He says the proposal sometimes looks like a scientific lab, a standards body, an industry regulator, a licensing authority, and an emergency security council at once. Combining those roles because each requires technical expertise would be like putting the central bank, auditor-general, and Supreme Court in one building and calling it efficient.The pull is standard-setting. Daley's concern is not that verification is unnecessary, but that whoever writes the tests, decides what passes, adjudicates disputes, and grants market access may end up defining the frontier itself.Read more: SourceGPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for RobustnessOpenAI | OpenAI | July 15, 2026OpenAI describes GPT-Red as an internal automated red-teaming model trained to find prompt-injection vulnerabilities at a scale human red teams cannot match. The post says AI systems increasingly encounter third-party data through browsers, connected apps, local files, and tools, creating opportunities for malicious instructions hidden in emails, webpages, tool responses, or code repositories. Human red-teaming remains part of OpenAI's safety process, but the company says it is time-intensive and cannot generate enough diverse adversarial examples for model training.The system is trained through self-play reinforcement learning, with GPT-Red rewarded for eliciting valid failures and defender models rewarded for resisting attacks while still completing their tasks. OpenAI says the training environments specify threat models across settings such as local files, webpage banners, email bodies, and tool outputs. The model is kept separate from deployed production models because it is intentionally trained with malicious capabilities.OpenAI reports that GPT-Red generalized beyond its training set, including an internal replication of the indirect prompt-injection arena from Dziemian et al. (2025), where it found successful attacks in 84% of scenarios compared with 13% for human red-teamers. The post also says GPT-Red transferred attacks from simulation to a live autonomous vending-machine agent, causing price changes and order cancellations, and outperformed a prompted GPT-5.5 baseline against a Codex CLI agent on held-out data-exfiltration tasks.The article's main robustness claim is that OpenAI has used GPT-Red and predecessor models in training since GPT-5.3, with later GPT releases becoming more resistant to prompt injections. It says GPT-5.6 Sol has six times fewer failures on OpenAI's hardest direct prompt-injection benchmark than the best production model from four months earlier, that a “Fake Chain-of-Thought” attack class fell from more than 95% success against GPT-5.1 to below 10% against GPT-5.6 Sol, and that GPT-5.6 Sol fails on only 0.05% of GPT-Red's direct prompt injections. OpenAI says general capabilities and targeted over-refusal evaluations were not harmed, and says a preprint with more details will follow.Read moreAnthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just modelsRebecca Bellan | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Rebecca Bellan reports that Ode with Anthropic is the $1.5 billion AI implementation company launched by Anthropic with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and other backers. The article says the venture reflects a growing belief among frontier AI labs that enterprise adoption requires more than better models: customers need engineers who can embed inside businesses and turn AI into working systems.Ode was originally conceived by Blackstone after it used both large consulting firms and smaller AI services boutiques across its portfolio companies. TechCrunch reports that Fractional AI, an AI engineering services startup, stood out and was acquired by the joint venture shortly after the venture was announced. Fractional now forms the foundation of Ode, which has 100 engineers and works closely with Anthropic's applied AI team to identify where the technology can affect specific businesses.Ode CEO Chris Taylor tells TechCrunch that the company could someday become a trillion-dollar business if it scales without losing quality. He says an ideal customer is one whose CEO treats the AI project as a top one or two priority, whether it is a major product feature or the reworking of a core business process. Ode will operate under a “Claude-first” principle, using Anthropic technology whenever possible, but the article says it can use rival AI products when needed.The article's central implementation argument comes from Ode chief technologist Eddie Siegel, who says model selection matters but is not where most of the engineering effort goes. He compares it to the choice of programming language in software: one ingredient in a system that still has to be engineered. Bellan writes that Ode's challenge is hiring and training enough elite generalist engineers, many of them former founders, while competing with OpenAI's The Deployment Company and consulting giants that have built their own forward-deployed engineering teams.Read moreVint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internetTim Fernholz | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Tim Fernholz reports that Vint Cerf, after leaving Google, is advising Innovation Labs on an open architecture for identifying AI agents online. Innovation Labs is a subsidiary of Identity Digital, a DNS registry company, and its proposal is to use domain-name infrastructure as part of a system for agent identity, accountability, and auditability. The premise is that agents will need a way to identify themselves if they move beyond proprietary systems and begin interacting across the open internet.The concrete proposal is DNSid, a registry that links an AI agent to an existing internet domain and uses cryptographic proofs to log its registration over time. Innovation Labs says it is trialing the standard with unnamed hyperscalers and identity companies. Cerf frames the problem around authority and accountability: what authority an agent has, where that authority came from, who is accountable for the agent's behavior, how its identity is established, and why anyone should trust it.The article's caveat is that standards are still emerging and agents are more active than static domains. Cerf says the period may be both fascinating and exasperating because the functionality is powerful and interoperability is unresolved. He compares the adoption problem to TCP/IP: competing systems may not work together until users push for functional interoperation. He also says an agentic economy is not inevitable, but that people will try to build it because delegating work to agents will be easier.Read more: TechCrunchxai-org/grok-build, now open sourceAuthor: Simon Willison Published: July 15, 2026Simon Willison argues that xAI's decision to open-source Grok Build is best understood as a trust repair move after a severe privacy failure. The CLI had triggered backlash when users realized that running it in a directory could upload the entire directory to xAI's Google Cloud buckets, including one user's reported SSH keys, password manager database, documents, photos, and videos. xAI disabled the feature, said previously retained coding data would be deleted, and released the code under Apache 2.0.The killer detail is what the codebase reveals. Willison counts 844,530 lines of Rust, only about 3% of which appears vendored, and finds remnants of the upload system still present but disabled: gcs.rs contains Google Cloud upload code, while upload_session_state() now returns a hard-coded session_state_upload_unavailable error. He also notes copied or ported tool implementations from Codex and OpenCode, prompt files, and a terminal Mermaid renderer.The pull is that terminal coding agents are becoming large, intricate software systems in their own right. The privacy failure mattered because these tools operate inside the directories where developers keep their most sensitive work; the open-source release matters because trust now depends on inspecting what an agent can see, send, and do.Read more: SourceThe Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?Author: Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric Published: July 16, 2026Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric argue that Bun's AI-assisted rewrite from Zig to Rust is a practical sign of how software engineering changes when models can take on large, bounded migrations with clear feedback loops. The piece does not treat the rewrite as magic: Jarred Sumner first spent hours turning design judgment into a detailed porting guide, then used adversarial review, parallel agents, compiler errors, and tests to force the work toward correctness.The killer detail is the scale. Bun had 535,496 lines of Zig, 1,448 files, and 22 million monthly downloads, making a conventional rewrite a year-long freeze the team could not justify. Using Fable, Sumner split the work across 64 agents, produced about 6,500 commits, and got the migration done in 11 days at an estimated API cost of $165,000.The pull is economic, not theatrical. If a one- or two-year migration can become an 11-day project, AI coding is not just faster autocomplete; it changes which technical debts are worth paying down.Read more: SourceOrphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligenceAuthor: Andrew Maynard Published: July 16, 2026Andrew Maynard argues that frontier AI safety frameworks are creating “orphan risks”: harms that companies can see, but do not formally own because they are hard to quantify, do not fit catastrophic-risk thresholds, or fall outside audit-friendly compliance machinery. His target is not existing frontier safety work, but the narrowing effect that happens when private companies decide which risks count as governable.The killer detail is Maynard's contrast between measurable model dangers and threats to value. He points to Meta's three-day Galactica collapse, OpenAI's 2023 board crisis, safety-team departures, and wellbeing litigation as examples of risks that damaged trust, culture, legitimacy, or users without fitting cleanly into conventional model-risk categories. The proposed fix is an orphan-risk register: a public record of risks a company considered and chose not to manage, with reasons.The pull is accountability. Frontier developers' internal scoping choices have become a de facto layer of public governance, so the question is no longer only which risks they manage, but which risks they quietly leave outside the frame.Read more: SourceThe Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data CenterLatent.Space with Andy Beam and Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli | Latent.Space | July 16, 2026Latent.Space interviews Lila Sciences CTO Andy Beam and chief science officer for physical sciences Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli about the company's attempt to build an AI-run science factory. The post describes Lila's thesis as treating the lab itself as an “infinite token generator”: if internet data drove the first era of AI scaling, experimentally verified scientific data may be the next scarce training source. Lila is trying to produce that data with robotics, lab instruments, orchestration software, and AI models wired into the wet lab.The central analogy is the lab as data center. Instruments are nodes on a graph, a magnetically levitating transport layer moves materials between them, and experiment scheduling looks like a compute queue. Beam says Lila is not simply an automation company, because the point is not just throughput; it is flexibility, generalization, and experiment capture. The post says Lila has built more than 10 trillion experimentally validated “scientific reasoning tokens,” not internet text or biological sequences.The interview ranges across biology, chemistry, drug discovery, materials science, and the limits of automation. It notes that Lila rebuilt one gas-sorption measurement to run roughly 2,500 times faster, claims its general models can transfer priors from small-molecule chemistry to metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture, and describes model-suggested platinum-group-free electrocatalysts that moved from looking boring or wrong to becoming strong performers. The caveats are physical: experiments have runtimes, biology cannot always be accelerated, chains of thought can be unreliable narrators, and reward hacking becomes more dangerous when a model controls a real lab.Read more: Latent.SpaceWhy AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”Kate Park | TechCrunch | July 16, 2026Kate Park interviews AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun about why Yann LeCun's world-model startup avoids the language of “AGI” and “superintelligence.” LeBrun says the terms are not useful because they lack stable definitions: “We never used the word AGI. And I just noticed that nobody is using it anymore; they switched to superintelligence.” His argument is that the practical frontier is not a label, but whether AI systems can understand and predict real-world states.The article explains the world-model thesis by contrasting language prediction with physical-state prediction. A large language model predicts the next word; a world model predicts the next state, such as what happens when a glass tips over. LeBrun says LLMs remain complementary and efficient for language, but the physical world is where current AI is weak. Robotics is the clearest case: hardware has advanced quickly, but robots are still brittle outside controlled routines because they lack context and situational understanding.AMI is still pre-product, but TechCrunch reports that LeBrun was in Seoul looking for industrial partners, researchers, and global companies. He says world models cannot be built entirely inside a lab because they need access to real environments. That is why South Korea appeals to AMI: robotics, semiconductors, manufacturing, and fast adoption create the kind of hardware-heavy context that software-only AI has barely touched.Read more: TechCrunchKimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier IntelligenceKimi | Kimi | July 16, 2026Kimi introduces Kimi K3 as an open 3T-class frontier model aimed at coding, knowledge work, reasoning, multimodality, and long-context agentic use. The source describes the model as a 2.8T-parameter system built on Kimi Delta Attention and Attention Residuals, with native multimodality and a 1M-token context window. It says Moonshot AI plans to release model weights by July 27.The post presents K3 through benchmark and use-case sections rather than as a general product announcement. It reports results across coding, productivity, agentic, and multimodal evaluations, including DeepSWE, Terminal-Bench 2.1, Program Bench, SWE Marathon, FrontierSWE, PostTrain Bench, OfficeQA Pro, SpreadsheetBench 2, MCP Atlas, AutomationBench, BrowseComp, GDPval-AA v2, AA-Briefcase, MMMU-Pro, MathVision, BabyVision, OmniDocBench, and PerceptionBench. The source says all reported K3 results use maximum reasoning effort with temperature and top-p set to 1.0, and that different benchmark comparisons use KimiCode, Claude Code, or Codex harnesses depending on the test.Kimi's caveats are unusually concrete. The limitations section says K3 was trained in preserved thinking-history mode, so quality may become unstable if an agent harness does not pass historical thinking content correctly or if an ongoing session switches to K3 midstream. It also says K3's emphasis on long-horizon tasks can make it excessively proactive when it encounters minor issues or ambiguous intent, and recommends imposing explicit behavioral constraints for applications that require strict boundaries. The post adds that K3 remains behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in user experience despite being competitive overall.Read moreVenture CapitalThree Years InAuthor: Tomasz Tunguz Published: July 10, 2026Tomasz Tunguz marks Theory Ventures' third anniversary by arguing that AI's central market effect is time compression. In his telling, model release cycles, company revenue milestones, enterprise adoption, and venture categories have all accelerated. Seed, Series A, and Series B still exist as financing labels, but they no longer cleanly describe company maturity when some seed rounds are larger than IPOs and the best AI companies can mature much earlier than prior software companies.The killer detail is the shift from models to inference. Tunguz argues that inference has become the dominant AI market because workloads and buyer preferences are fragmenting: video, batch, local, agentic, and real-time tasks each create different infrastructure needs. He compares this to databases splitting into OLTP, OLAP, vector, and streaming categories, with AI pushing the same specialization into inference infrastructure.The pull is that Theory sees the AI-native venture firm as part of the same pattern. The firm says it has analyzed twice as many investment opportunities with three investors working alongside a nine-person intelligence organization, using agents and research systems to map markets, source companies, and support diligence. The piece is both a market map and a statement about how venture itself is being rebuilt by the technology it funds.Read more: LinkedInVenture Has Rarely Looked More BifurcatedAuthor: Beezer Clarkson Published: July 14, 2026Beezer Clarkson points to PitchBook's Q2 report as evidence that the U.S. venture market has split into two very different realities. AI now accounts for more than 60 percent of all U.S. venture deal value, meaning the headline market can look active and well-funded even while much of the non-AI market is dealing with a much colder liquidity and fundraising environment.The thread uses that split as the setup for Clarkson's latest Origins episode with Alec Litowitz, founder of Magnetar and QStar Capital and one of Citadel's original founding partners. Clarkson says markets like this are periods of genuine uncertainty, not merely ordinary risk, which is why Litowitz's Adaptability Quotient framework is relevant.The embedded clip makes the liquidity point concrete. Litowitz says DPI is “the resolution of uncertainty” because it converts an uncertain investment into actual cash returned to LPs. In his framing, a realized dollar is a real mark, while TVPI remains uncertain until it is realized.The killer detail is the distinction between pricing risk and resolving uncertainty. Litowitz's perspective matters because QStar is a SpaceX investor and Clarkson says the conversation happened just before one of venture's most consequential IPOs. The episode's stated questions are why venture remains a way to gain exposure to innovation, how AI is changing what is investable, why liquidity is ultimately a function of time, and why uncertainty requires a different decision framework from risk.Read more: XThe Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active NowAuthor: Ilya Strebulaev Published: July 10, 2026Ilya Strebulaev ranks angels, angel groups, accelerators, and incubators by lifetime U.S. unicorn investments, counting checks written before a company reached unicorn status. The top of the combined list is dominated by organizations: Y Combinator leads with 113 unicorn investments, followed by Plug and Play at 52 and 500 Global at 41. Sand Hill Angels is the highest-ranked angel group at 31.The killer detail is how quickly the list changes below the biggest accelerators. Strebulaev says 271 of the 304 investors in the Top 200 are individuals, or 89%. In the top 100, individuals are 91%. That makes the market underneath the large accelerator counts look much more personal: mostly operators and individual angels writing early checks from their own networks.The pull is the ranking's own caveat. Strebulaev writes that every lifetime leaderboard has a blind spot because many of the unicorns behind those totals were founded a decade or more ago, and some angels have since moved into formal funds, slowed down, or stopped investing. His post therefore separates lifetime performance from recent cohorts, including companies founded in 2015 or later and 2020 or later. For founders or allocators making current decisions, that distinction matters: a career record and a current record are not the same measure.Read more: Ilya StrebulaevAre Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?Author: Contrary Published: July 16, 2026Contrary argues that prediction markets' current boom depends on whether platforms can prove they are more than regulated gambling with exchange-style branding. Kalshi and Polymarket have reached mass cultural, investor, and regulatory attention, but the article says the underlying idea is old: academic markets, corporate forecasting tools, Intrade, PredictIt, and other predecessors all struggled with the same linked problems of liquidity, legality, and user appeal.The killer detail is the comparison with sportsbooks. Prediction markets present themselves as peer-to-peer, transparent, and non-house-based, but sports contracts reportedly account for more than 90 percent of Kalshi trading, and the article says the platforms keep a much thinner slice of volume than sportsbooks. A market can therefore show sports-betting-scale handle while generating far less revenue.The pull is that the product's hardest problem may be distribution of wins. If a small group of sharp traders captures most profits while casual users lose interest, prediction markets may become valuable data feeds and professional tools before they become durable consumer networks.Read more: SourceRegulationExclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College CampusesAuthor: Adrian Carrasquillo Published: July 11, 2026Adrian Carrasquillo reports that college campuses are becoming a new front in the fight over immigration enforcement because automatic license plate readers can turn ordinary campus security infrastructure into searchable location data. His thesis is that Flock Safety's camera network, even without direct ICE or DHS contracts, can feed deportation enforcement through local police partnerships and data-sharing practices.The killer detail is the campaign target. The Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education, working with Schools Drop ICE, is focusing on 75 colleges and universities publicly identified as having Flock contracts. Flock says it has no ICE or DHS contracts, but activists argue the risk comes through local agencies that coordinate with federal authorities and run searches on their behalf.The pull is broader than immigration. Carrasquillo notes that license plate readers have already been abused by officers for stalking, and that Flock's AI search features can identify more than plates, including bumper stickers. A campus safety tool can become a political surveillance system when the data layer is searchable.Read more: The BulwarkThe Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.Author: Todd Phillips Published: July 12, 2026Todd Phillips argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter damaged independent agencies by ending for-cause removal protections, but did not leave Congress powerless. The ruling weakens the old model in which commissioners at bodies such as the FTC, NLRB, CPSC, SEC, and CFTC could be insulated from dismissal over policy disagreements. Phillips says the next fight is whether presidents can turn nominally bipartisan commissions into one-party instruments.The killer detail is the procedural fix: quorum rules. Phillips proposes that Congress require bipartisan slates of commissioners to be seated before independent agencies can act. A president could still fire commissioners, as the Court now permits, but if those firings broke quorum, the agency would be unable to proceed until replacements were confirmed. The guardrail would

This week's video transcript summary is here. You can click on any bulleted section to see the actual transcript. Thanks to Granola for its software.There was an issue with this only going to paid subscribers, so sending it again. Apologies to those who get it twice. I appreciate being paid so feel free to upgrade if you enjoy TWTW.EditorialIntelligence: Who Owns it?This week the word “AI” feels too small.AI is a technology. Intelligence is its product. And if intelligence is the product, the question is no longer just: Which model is best? Who has the cheapest tokens? Who owns the weights? Who controls the data center? Those are important questions, but they are lower in the stack.The bigger question is simpler and more political:Who owns intelligence?That sounds abstract until you make it concrete. Intelligence is becoming something companies can capture, package, serve, meter, route, improve, and sell.It can write code, answer questions, design molecules, automate offices, run agents, draft legal work, advise scientists, serve consumers, and reshape workflows. It is not merely software. It is a general-purpose capability. And all humans could benefit from more of it.General-purpose capabilities have a habit of becoming public questions. But the default answer, that public good is best delivered by government, is the wrong answer in this context.The Product Is IntelligenceWe should stop talking about AI as a feature and start talking about intelligence as the universal thing that is delivered as an input to the world.Water is an input. Electricity is an input. Literacy is an input. Connectivity is an input. Once a society depends on them, access stops being optional. Nobody needs government to build every well, power plant, school, or network. But everybody understands that a civilization cannot be organized around less than universal and reliable access to foundational inputs.Intelligence is reaching that level of importance now that we all know it is real.Government should not own it, operate it, or develop it. Quite the opposite. Companies are the right actors to build fast, compete hard, improve models, serve customers, and discover the real use cases. Self-interest is a useful framing here. Markets are good at finding demand, reducing costs, and turning invention into services people actually use.Companies are the right operators, developers, and owners. But that does not settle the real question of who owns the benefits. That is an economic question.If intelligence becomes metered infrastructure, what happens to the value it creates?The Ownership StackThis week's articles keep circling the same issue from different directions but in the nature of ‘circling' never quite nail it.Jamin Ball's “Own Your Weights” starts with the enterprise version of the question. Owning a model file is not enough. The durable asset is the loop: the data flywheel, the evaluations, the reinforcement system, the workflow learning, and the operating context that lets capability compound.Benedict Evans' “Ways to Think About Token Pricing” adds the market layer. Tokens may become essential, abundant, and cheap, like mobile data. But being essential does not guarantee that the token layer captures the value. The money may move up the stack to whoever owns the workflow, the customer, the distribution, or the application.Alex Karp's fight with the labs, reported in “Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI”, is the same argument in sharper enterprise language. Companies are afraid that model providers will not just sell intelligence, but learn from customer workflows and then move into the markets where those workflows create value. The “All-in” group are echoing Karp's view.And “What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?” names the new contested terrain. The loop is where intelligence meets the world. Whoever owns the loop owns the learning. Whoever owns the learning owns the compounding asset.That is why “who owns intelligence?” is not a slogan. It is the question under the model layer, the application layer, the enterprise layer, and the economic layer.Because intelligence is the product, the tools creating it are fragmented and competitive. So there is no logic in trying to discuss this at the level of a single company or set of tools and models.The Old Promise Was That Commerce Would Tame PowerThe essays this week give the historical backdrop.Deirdre McCloskey, in “What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution”, argues that modern growth came not simply from capital accumulation, but from a change in permission: ordinary people were allowed to innovate, trade, build, and be honored for it.That matters because intelligence could be another expansion of permission. It could make more people capable of building, learning, creating, coding, researching, translating, selling, and coordinating. It could lower the cost of competence.But only if access is broad.Paul Krugman's “AI in an Age of Oligarchy” warns that the same technology lands differently in different political economies. A new general-purpose technology entering a broad, open, upwardly mobile society is one thing. The same technology entering a concentrated economy, with extreme wealth and weak counterweights, is another.Tim O'Reilly's Economist essay, “Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate”, makes the governance point more directly. The old liberal hope was that commerce would tame arbitrary power. Markets, boards, courts, shareholders, disclosure, and competition would discipline the prince.But what if the prince uses markets to escape discipline?Henry Farrell's “political economy of billionaire derangement” pushes the same point. Founder culture, monopoly ambition, peer rivalry, weak correction mechanisms, and vast private control can amplify appetites rather than restrain them.The danger with intelligence is not that companies build it. They should. Companies build it, meter it, use public tolerance and public infrastructure to scale it, learn from everyone who uses it. All of those things are inevitable and healthy. Market forces will sort out winners from losers. The real danger is that the winners treat all of the surplus produced as purely private.Metered Intelligence Creates SurplusIf metering is not the problem, what is?The problem is pretending that metered intelligence creates value only for the metering entity. Metering water is only tolerated as a public good. If the public were blackmailed by a private water company with the threat of no water we would all rebel.Once we understand that the product of AI is intelligence we can see that every time intelligence is used, there is the immediate transaction: the user pays, the provider serves.But there is also system value. Usage creates signals. Workflows reveal patterns. Prompts, corrections, failures, preferences, integrations, edge cases, and business processes all help define where intelligence is useful and how it should improve. Intelligence breeds intelligence.Even when customer data is contractually protected, the market learns. The platform learns where demand is. The product team learns which workflows matter. The ecosystem learns which jobs are vulnerable, which tasks are automatable, and which parts of the economy can be reorganized around machine intelligence.So the surplus is not born in a vacuum.It rests on public science, public education, public data exhaust, public law, public infrastructure, public energy systems, public tolerance for data centers, and billions of human interactions. It is served by companies, but it is not made only by companies.This is why “Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches” belongs at the center of this week's issue. The detail can be debated. The principle is harder to dismiss. If intelligence becomes a new foundational resource, then some part of the wealth it creates should flow back to the people whose society makes it possible. Intelligence did not suddenly appear. AI is built on the entire history of human intelligence. It benefits from it and at the same time evolves it.Not Nationalization. A Human Wealth Fund.If intelligence belongs to everybody, some conclude that government ownership of intelligence is the right outcome.Governments are not well suited to build, operate, or improve intelligence. They will move too slowly, regulate too early, politicize the wrong things, and confuse economic participation with operational control.Andrew McAfee's “Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter” is useful here. His objection is not that the technology is unimportant. It is that steering too hard before we understand the shape of the change can become its own failure mode. Marc Andreessen's satire of AI regulation is less policy than temperament, but it captures a real Silicon Valley fear: that regulation can become permission, capture, and incumbency before it becomes wisdom.That fear should be taken seriously.But it does not answer the economic question. It answers only the operational one.How can the economic benefits of intelligence be distributed? The better answer is a sovereign human wealth fund.Call it a sovereign wealth fund if you must, but the phrase is too national. Intelligence will not respect borders. The leading companies are global. The models, chips, data centers, agents, platforms, and workflows will be transnational from the beginning. If the value created by intelligence is global, then the mechanism for sharing some of that value should begin with the companies global enough to capture it. The nice thing about xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic is that they are supranational.These companies own and operate intelligence. Let them compete. Let them profit. Let them keep the incentives that make the system improve. But if intelligence is the new water, the wealth it creates cannot belong only to the companies that meter it. And they, themselves, have the power to fix it, even more than governments.Access will become a Human Right; Ownership Is the Economic DesignThis is where human rights come in. There is no right to access an AI model, yet. But there will soon be a need to change that.Not as a claim that every person is entitled to every frontier model at every moment for free. That is not serious. Capacity has costs. Models have costs. Inference has costs. Data centers have costs. Although those costs will decline over time, possibly quite quickly as self-learning models address costs.The claim is more basic: in a world where intelligence becomes a primary input into education, work, health, science, citizenship, creativity, and economic agency, baseline access to intelligence starts to look like a civic requirement.That could mean public access layers. It could mean education credits. It could mean open models. It could mean AI dividends. It could mean public-interest compute. It could mean taxes on rents. It could mean a company-initiated human wealth fund that returns some of the upside to society without handing the operating system to the state. The latter could couple wealth growth with universal distribution of ownership.The exact mechanism matters. But the distinction matters more.Government should not own intelligence. It should be universally available. And people should have a claim on the wealth intelligence creates.The Frontier Is Also PhysicalThe abstraction is not weightless.“The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning”, “New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium”, Reuters on pollution from Musk's xAI power project, and DataGravity's “Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?” all say the same thing from the ground up.Intelligence uses land. It uses power. It uses water. It uses chips. It uses grid capacity. It uses neighborhoods. It uses public patience.That makes the value question unavoidable. A society can accept the buildout if the buildout is legible as shared progress. It will resist it if the costs are local, the profits are private, and the benefits feel enclosed.Who Owns the “Loop”?The week ends where it began.“Anthropic and Blackstone” are betting that implementation is the next trillion-dollar business. “Vint Cerf” is working on identity for agents on the open internet. “GPT-Red” points toward systems that improve their own robustness. “Kimi K3” adds another open frontier model to the global mix.The model race continues. The deployment race is accelerating. The governance race is behind.My view is this:The central product of this era is intelligence. Companies have figured out how to capture it, package it, serve it, and meter it. That is good. It should stay in the hands of builders who have the incentive to make it better.But intelligence is too foundational to become just another private toll booth. A significant part of it will turn out to be free to users.As intelligence becomes a general-purpose resource, then access to it becomes a human-capability question, and the surplus from it becomes an economic-justice question. Not because government should run it. Because government should not run it. The operating layer belongs with companies. The wealth question belongs with everyone. But companies are best placed to turn that into a process of distribution.The question is not whether companies should build intelligence. They should.The question is whether humanity gets a stake in the wealth created by the thing that may soon become its most important shared input.Contents* Essays* Deirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial Revolution* AI in an Age of Oligarchy* Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate* Murky Mirror: Truth and Consequences* The political economy of billionaire derangement* Is there any “oligarchy” to fight?* AI* Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats* Why I Didn't Sign the AI Open Letter* Own Your Weights* Ways to Think About Token Pricing* Alex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AI* The AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft Office* What Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?* The Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just Beginning* 6 months to live for open models* Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' Riches* Who Gets to Define the Frontier?* GPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for Robustness* Anthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just models* Vint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internet* xai-org/grok-build, now open source* The Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?* Orphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligence* The Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data Center* Why AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”* Kimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier Intelligence* Venture Capital* Three Years In* Venture Has Rarely Looked More Bifurcated* The Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active Now* Are Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?* Regulation* Exclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College Campuses* The Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.* India's crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent* Let's build a children's public internet* Computer cops* Google is better at playing the AI regulations game* Infrastructure* Who Captures Value in AI Infrastructure?* New York becomes the first state to enact a data center moratorium* Pollution from Musk's unpermitted xAI power project hits hardest in Black communities* Interview of the Week* The End of the End of Geography* Startup of the Week* Radical AI's Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The “Waymo” Lab For New Materials* Post of the Week* Marc Andreessen on AI RegulationEssaysDeirdre McCloskey on What Really Caused the Industrial RevolutionYascha Mounk and Deirdre McCloskey | Persuasion | July 11, 2026Yascha Mounk interviews Deirdre McCloskey about her argument that the modern world's economic liftoff came less from capital accumulation than from a change in ideas. McCloskey says both left and right versions of the conventional story rely too heavily on investment: the left stresses exploitation and surplus value, while the right stresses virtuous saving by capitalists. Her objection is historical and economic. Human beings had always invested, from irrigation works and Roman roads to seed grain, and simple accumulation quickly runs into diminishing returns.McCloskey's alternative is that northwestern Europe, first Holland, then Britain and Scotland, and then the North American colonies, developed a liberal ideology that changed who was allowed to innovate and be honored for it. The conversation links that shift to the erosion of inherited hierarchy, the spread of dignity for ordinary commercial life, and a moral vocabulary in which liberalism is not merely procedural but connected to virtues and values. The point is not that machines, coal, trade, and institutions did not matter, but that they do not explain the scale and timing of modern enrichment without a cultural permission structure for innovation.The interview also turns to the contemporary defense of liberalism. Mounk frames the series around the worry that liberalism is often treated as too thin to command allegiance, while its opponents speak more directly to moral passions. McCloskey's case is that liberal societies became rich because they dignified experimentation and ordinary enterprise, and that liberals need to recover the moral language behind that claim.Read moreAI in an Age of OligarchyPaul Krugman | Paul Krugman | July 12, 2026Paul Krugman frames AI as a major technological shock arriving inside an already unequal political economy. The post says AI's economic and social effects may take years to understand, but argues that the setting matters now: America has much greater wealth concentration and political inequality than it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when progressive taxation, stronger regulation, and more active antitrust might have contained some of the destructive effects of a new technology.Krugman's opening claim is that the same technology would likely have different consequences in a more level society. In today's United States, he writes, extreme wealth is both a cause and effect of policies that favor a small elite, including low effective taxes on capital and high incomes, weak enforcement of worker protections and antitrust, and cuts to programs that benefit ordinary Americans.The article is explicitly more about oligarchy than AI. Krugman says the paid sections document the rise of the “.0002%,” the economics and politics of extreme wealth, how oligarchy will shape AI's impact, and possible policy paths. His caveat is that AI itself may still produce a pushback against oligarchy, but absent that, he expects the pre-existing concentration of wealth and power to magnify AI's downsides.Read moreElon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hateAuthor: Tim O'Reilly Published: July 12, 2026Tim O'Reilly argues that Elon Musk is using the legal forms of shareholder capitalism to escape the restraints that shareholder capitalism was supposed to impose. The article begins with SpaceX's public-market structure: ordinary public investors get little meaningful governance power, Musk keeps roughly 85 percent of the votes through super-voting shares, buyers waive jury trials and class actions, the company qualifies as controlled, and removal of Musk depends on the share class he controls. In O'Reilly's framing, that is not ordinary founder control; it is a design for being answerable to no one, possibly beyond Musk's own lifetime.The killer detail is the article's turn through Albert Hirschman, Montesquieu, James Steuart, Adam Smith, and Keynes. Older defenses of commerce held that markets would tame princely passions because the self-interest of merchants was safer than arbitrary rule. O'Reilly says Musk reverses that hope. The market discipline that was supposed to cage the prince has become the lever by which the prince raises capital, removes feedback loops, and carries private power into politics, government, Mars, robots, AI, or whatever ambition comes next.The pull is the link to AI governance. O'Reilly says corporations are already a kind of artificial intelligence: narrow-input systems that act at a scale no individual human can match. Their partial controls include independent boards, shareholder votes, courts, disclosure, regulators, public pressure, and activism. If the leaders building frontier AI strip those alignment mechanisms out of their own companies, the governance of the company becomes a preview of the governance of the machine.Read more: The EconomistMurky Mirror: Truth and ConsequencesAuthor: Esther Dyson Published: July 14, 2026Esther Dyson argues that today's institutional crisis is better viewed through the 14th century than through recent political history. Using Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as her frame, she compares a world of famine, plague, church schism, feudal predation, and purposeless war with a present in which institutions again feel brittle, incentives are badly aligned, and power is shifting into forms that are hard to govern.The killer detail is the historical analogy between land, corporations, and AI. Dyson moves from nobles who controlled serfs and territory, to the East India Company as a quasi-sovereign business, to today's AI systems and data centers as a possible new sector that crosses and weakens both nation-states and companies. The question is whether AI becomes a new kind of private land, owned by a new nobility, or an open prairie that many people can cultivate.The pull is human attention. Dyson says the central question is not what AI will do to people, but how people will react to it: whether they can value love, kindness, embodied attention, and artisanal human presence in a world of seductive artificial offerings.Read more: SourceThe political economy of billionaire derangementAuthor: Henry Farrell Published: July 15, 2026Henry Farrell argues that the visible political radicalization of some Silicon Valley billionaires is not a random personality quirk, but a product of the political economy that made them. Starting from Tyler Cowen's dismissal of “billionaire derangement syndrome” and Tim O'Reilly's warning that Elon Musk is using shareholder capitalism to escape shareholder restraint, Farrell flips the phrase: the question is why billionaires themselves can become deranged.The killer detail is Farrell's use of Peter Thiel as both theorist and example. Thiel's Stanford lectures described startups as monarchies and founders as figures vested with unusual power, while Silicon Valley culture rewarded eccentricity, monopoly ambition, and founder exceptionalism. Farrell says those ideas combined with dense founder-investor networks, peer rivalry, and weak correction mechanisms to amplify rather than discipline princely appetites.The pull is the ideological problem for classical liberals who once saw tech wealth as an ally of markets and freedom. Farrell says commerce did not tame the passions; in parts of Silicon Valley, the passions have begun to devour markets, institutions, and the liberal story that justified them.Read more: SourceIs there any “oligarchy” to fight?Matthew Yglesias | Slow Boring | July 16, 2026Matthew Yglesias argues that “oligarchy” is a rhetorically powerful but analytically loose way to describe American politics. The post begins from Bernie Sanders' “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Amy Klobuchar's warning about a MAGA “broligarchy,” and the long afterlife of the Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page paper that was widely summarized as showing that only the rich matter in policy outcomes. Yglesias says the evidence supports a weaker claim: affluent people and business leaders have unusual access and influence, but that is not the same as rule by a small cabal.His main distinction is between inequality and oligarchy. The Gilens-Page measure treated the top 10 percent of households as “the wealthy,” and later critics found that rich and middle-class preferences usually align; in the cases where they differ, the rich win about 53 percent of the time. Yglesias also says business executives get special access partly because their decisions are materially important to communities, jobs, investment, and local tax bases, not only because of campaign donations.The post preserves Jerusalem Demsas' counterpoint from their podcast discussion: privileged donor and business access can still violate democratic equality even if the oligarchy label overstates the structure of power. Yglesias' narrower claim is that Democrats should be precise about what problem they are trying to solve, because donor influence can also push the party left on climate and cultural issues in ways that alienate many voters.Read more: Slow BoringAINearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. ThreatsAuthor: Ben Casselman Published: July 13, 2026Ben Casselman reports on “We Must Act Now,” a statement warning that artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology and that policymakers need to move faster to understand and respond. The statement says AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years, bringing risks such as large-scale job displacement as well as opportunities such as higher living standards. Nearly 200 people signed, including 15 Nobel laureates, the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.The killer detail is who joined the warning. Casselman notes that the signatories include economists who have historically been skeptical of Silicon Valley's most dramatic AI job-loss forecasts, including Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, the MIT professors who won the 2024 Nobel in economics. Erik Brynjolfsson, who helped organize the statement, says there has been a notable change in the profession and that economists and policymakers are not ready for the “tsunami” he sees coming.The pull is the measurement problem. The statement does not offer a specific policy menu, but calls for economists, policymakers, and industry leaders to understand the economics of transformative AI and steer it toward complementing humans. Brynjolfsson says one high priority is better data on AI's spread and impact, because current measures tell conflicting stories about job losses and which workers are most exposed.Read more: The New York TimesWhy I Didn't Sign the AI Open LetterAuthor: Andrew McAfee Published: July 13, 2026Andrew McAfee explains why he did not sign “We Must Act Now,” the AI economy statement organized in part by his longtime collaborator Erik Brynjolfsson. McAfee agrees with the letter's starting point that AI is likely to become radically more powerful over the next decade and that it is a general-purpose technology. His objection is not to urgency or to studying AI's economic effects, but to the framing of risk, displacement, and institutional steering as the first move.The killer detail is McAfee's line edit. He says the original letter comes close, then “bounces off the crossbar” by calling for incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI before we know enough about its actual impacts. He points to mixed current evidence: labor-market canaries, but also rising software job postings, low unemployment for younger workers, rising real median income, and claims that AI-adopting companies are adding workers faster than low-adopting peers. His worry is that the letter leans toward upstream governance and dirigisme when the evidence may call for capability building instead.The pull is his replacement statement. McAfee keeps the three-paragraph structure but changes the emphasis: AI is likely to become radically more powerful; like earlier world-changing technologies it will raise living standards while also bringing harms and shocks; and economists, policymakers, and technology leaders should build the capabilities to respond quickly and effectively. It is a concise version of the permissionless-innovation case inside the AI policy debate.Read more: The Geek WayOwn Your WeightsAuthor: Jamin Ball Published: July 10, 2026Jamin Ball argues that the enterprise AI debate about whether companies should “own their weights” or rent models from frontier labs is asking too narrow a question. A model weight file gives a company control over a point-in-time artifact, but not durable control over the capability stack. In his framing, the weight file is a melting ice cube: it does not get worse in absolute terms, but it falls behind as frontier systems improve and enterprise needs change.The killer detail is what Ball says companies really need to own: the data flywheel, reinforcement learning infrastructure, and evaluation harness that produce and improve the model. Simply deploying an open-weights model and declaring sovereignty leaves the enterprise with yesterday's capability and no way to compound workflow-specific learning.The pull is that enterprise AI control may be less about model ownership than operating ownership. The defensible layer is the system that turns company data, edge cases, business definitions, and evaluations into continuously improving performance.Read more: Clouded JudgementWays to Think About Token PricingAuthor: Benedict Evans Published: July 9, 2026Benedict Evans argues that today's AI token prices are a temporary signal from a supply-constrained market, not a reliable guide to long-term value capture. The open question is whether foundation models keep durable pricing power or become commodity infrastructure as data-center capacity, inference efficiency, and model competition all shift. His current read is that the visible market dynamics point toward commoditization unless something materially changes.The killer detail is the mobile data analogy. Evans says cellular networks became a trillion-dollar industry with hundreds of billions in capex after data usage exploded, but carrier stocks went nowhere because value moved up the stack. Tokens may behave similarly: an opaque unit tied to marginal cost, sold through bundles, essential to everything, yet not necessarily where profits accrue.The pull is uncertainty, not prediction. Evans lists paths to model dominance, including network effects, less competition, regulation, export controls, or a lab pulling ahead on execution, but says each requires a new fact not yet visible. Without that change, the model layer looks more like infrastructure beneath the products that capture value.Read more: SourceAlex Karp Is Saying What Every Angry CEO Is Thinking About AIAuthor: Tim Higgins Published: July 11, 2026Tim Higgins reports that Palantir CEO Alex Karp has turned corporate frustration with AI labs into a public argument about enterprise control. Palantir released a white paper, “Institutional Sovereignty in the Age of AI,” laying out steps companies and governments can take to protect themselves from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation-model providers. The article links that paper to Karp's CNBC appearance, where he said “something has gone completely wrong” in the relationship between AI labs and customers and argued that enterprises are paying for tokens that create little value.The killer detail is the value-capture question. Higgins writes that Karp's critique has resonated because AI labs may gain power and insight from customer data, workflows, and decision-making, even when enterprise policies say customer data are not used for training. David Sacks amplified the concern by arguing that Anthropic is moving from the model layer into vertical applications such as science, security, legal, and coding, raising the fear that model providers will watch where value is being created and then move into those markets directly.The pull is that Karp is not alone, even if his style is unusually combative. Higgins notes that Satya Nadella has also warned that companies need to retain the learnings created when they use AI models, while Mark Zuckerberg has framed Meta's new model release partly around lower-cost frontier intelligence. The article presents Karp's campaign as one sign that established technology companies and large enterprises are trying to define where they fit when AI labs become central infrastructure, application competitors, and potential IPO giants at the same time.Read more: The Wall Street JournalThe AI Agents Are Coming for Microsoft OfficeAlex Wilhelm | Cautious Optimism | July 11, 2026Alex Wilhelm argues that one of the week's quieter AI questions is whether the productivity market that Microsoft successfully moved into subscription software is now being attacked by agentic tools. The piece begins with the infrastructure backdrop: SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in a U.S. listing while building U.S. HBM and advanced-packaging capacity, and memory, chip, and foundry companies are now priced for sustained AI demand.Wilhelm then says the AI conversation has shifted quickly from raw capability to cost per task. He cites new model releases and vendor language emphasizing cheaper agentic and coding models, faster performance, and lower dollars per task. That matters because lower costs make it more plausible for AI systems to take on routine knowledge work at scale rather than remain a premium coding assistant market.The core of the article is Microsoft Office. Wilhelm notes that Microsoft turned Office from a one-time purchase into Microsoft 365, a large recurring revenue business with tens of millions of subscribers and a major productivity segment. Now, he says, late-stage unicorns and AI labs are pushing into the same territory: Anthropic's Cowork was reportedly used mostly outside software development, OpenAI merged ChatGPT and Codex into a tool for creating sheets, slides, docs, web apps, and long-running work, and other companies are building agentic coworkers that connect business data to documents, workflows, schedules, alerts, and apps.The article's caveat is that Microsoft has survived major platform shifts before. The argument is not that Office disappears quickly, but that the definition of office software is broadening from documents and spreadsheets into AI systems that can create, monitor, and act across workplace data.Read moreWhat Is Loop Engineering, and Who Owns It?Author: Nilesh Barla Published: July 11, 2026Nilesh Barla argues that “loop engineering” is becoming a distinct discipline because production AI agents now fail less at single prompts than at runtime: when to stop, what state to preserve, and how to recover after a bad step. Prompt engineering shapes one model call, and context engineering shapes what the model sees, but loop engineering shapes what a sequence of calls actually does.The killer detail is the three-primitives frame. Barla says a real agent loop needs halt conditions, state carryover, and recovery paths, then maps teams across five maturity levels. At the lowest level, an agent is just a model call in a for-loop with a step cap and raw history; by the higher levels, the system has structured state, explicit planning, replay, evaluation, and self-repair.The pull is organizational. If agents are becoming production systems rather than demos, someone has to own the runtime itself. The loop engineer is the role Barla gives to the person responsible for making long-running agent work dependable.Read more: Adaline LabsThe Fight Against AI Data Centers Is Just BeginningEmma Roth | The Verge | July 12, 2026Emma Roth argues that community resistance to data centers has moved from an early warning sign into a national political fight as AI facilities grow larger, more power-hungry, and more visible to nearby residents. The article starts with Apple's failed 2015 plan for a $1 billion data center in Athenry, Ireland, where a small group of residents challenged the project over noise, light pollution, flooding, traffic, and wildlife effects until Apple abandoned it in 2018.The current data-center buildout is presented as much larger and more contentious. Roth writes that residents now cite rising energy costs, water quality, noise, light pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects commercial energy demand to surpass residential demand this year because of AI data centers and Goldman Sachs expects data-center power demand to double by 2027.The central evidence comes from Data Center Watch, which says protesters blocked or delayed at least 75 U.S. projects worth $130 billion from January to March, with active opposition groups more than doubling from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Roth also cites QTS abandoning a $12 billion Wisconsin campus, Delaware City regulators blocking a 580-acre project under the Coastal Zone Act, opposition stopping a QTS project in Prince William County, and pressure that pushed Kevin O'Leary to downsize the proposed 40,000-acre Project Stratos in Utah.The policy section describes a split between federal acceleration and local resistance. President Trump has treated data centers as part of the AI race with China and fast-tracked construction, while some Republican candidates are distancing themselves from that position ahead of midterms. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a moratorium until price and environmental protections exist, bipartisan lawmakers are backing ratepayer-protection measures, and states including Florida, Idaho, and Washington have passed rules on cost shifting, water use, and tax breaks. Roth's caveat is that the policy patchwork is still incomplete, leaving many communities to fight project by project.Read more6 months to live for open modelsAuthor: Nathan Lambert Published: July 12, 2026Nathan Lambert argues that open-weight AI models are facing their most serious policy test so far because U.S. officials are beginning to discuss concrete controls rather than abstract safety concerns. He says reported White House conversations about a new executive order may initially target Chinese-origin models and government use, but could create a broader review habit for frontier open models. His forecast is that a model above the capability range of GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.8, or GLM-5.2 could trigger a ban or indefinite delay within six months.The post separates two policy fights that are becoming intertwined: distillation and frontier capability. Lambert says the distillation campaign against Chinese models has become a form of regulatory capture because Anthropic and other closed-model companies would gain economically if Chinese open models were banned. He does not dismiss IP protection, but argues that if a closed model's capabilities are dangerous enough to justify restricting open models, the lab also has to explain why those capabilities are exposed through a queryable API. He cites unauthorized access to Anthropic's Mythos private beta as evidence that APIs are not automatically secure.The broader claim is that a unilateral U.S. ban would hurt positive actors more than bad actors if comparable open models remain available elsewhere. Lambert says the only durable ceiling would require global agreement, which does not exist, and that open models can improve safety by allowing broad inspection, adaptation, and understanding. His proposed near-term off-ramps are a strong U.S. open model release from companies such as Microsoft, Meta, or Reflection, and a broader coalition of open-source beneficiaries lobbying for safe rollout rather than prohibition.Read more: SourceAmericans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies' RichesAuthor: Scott Stanford Published: July 14, 2026Scott Stanford argues that proposals to give the government a stake in AI companies miss the point unless ordinary citizens directly receive and control the upside. Sam Altman has discussed giving up equity in OpenAI, Washington already owns a stake in Intel, Nvidia is sharing China chip revenue, and Bernie Sanders wants large AI labs to contribute half their stock to a sovereign wealth fund. Stanford says those ideas all park value with the state, not with people.The killer detail is New Carlisle, Indiana, where AWS's Project Rainier is turning cornfields into one of the world's largest AI superclusters. The project is planned to run up to a million chips, draw more than two gigawatts of power, and represents an investment that has grown from $11 billion to $13.8 billion. Stanford uses that local transformation to argue that AI's public bargain should be visible at the household level.The pull is design. A citizen AI dividend would have to specify who earns a stake, how they hold it, and when they see cash. Without that mechanism, the AI wealth debate remains a fight over government balance sheets rather than public ownership.Read more: SourceWho Gets to Define the Frontier?Author: Mark Daley Published: July 14, 2026Mark Daley argues that Demis Hassabis is right to call for a serious institution to verify frontier AI systems, but that the power to test models is also the power to govern them. Hassabis's proposed Frontier AI Standards Body would get privileged pre-release access to advanced models, testing compute, held-out evaluations, support from national labs and security agencies, third-party auditors, and eventually authority to block models from the American market or coordinate a slowdown.The killer detail is Daley's constitutional objection. He says the proposal sometimes looks like a scientific lab, a standards body, an industry regulator, a licensing authority, and an emergency security council at once. Combining those roles because each requires technical expertise would be like putting the central bank, auditor-general, and Supreme Court in one building and calling it efficient.The pull is standard-setting. Daley's concern is not that verification is unnecessary, but that whoever writes the tests, decides what passes, adjudicates disputes, and grants market access may end up defining the frontier itself.Read more: SourceGPT-Red: Unlocking Self-Improvement for RobustnessOpenAI | OpenAI | July 15, 2026OpenAI describes GPT-Red as an internal automated red-teaming model trained to find prompt-injection vulnerabilities at a scale human red teams cannot match. The post says AI systems increasingly encounter third-party data through browsers, connected apps, local files, and tools, creating opportunities for malicious instructions hidden in emails, webpages, tool responses, or code repositories. Human red-teaming remains part of OpenAI's safety process, but the company says it is time-intensive and cannot generate enough diverse adversarial examples for model training.The system is trained through self-play reinforcement learning, with GPT-Red rewarded for eliciting valid failures and defender models rewarded for resisting attacks while still completing their tasks. OpenAI says the training environments specify threat models across settings such as local files, webpage banners, email bodies, and tool outputs. The model is kept separate from deployed production models because it is intentionally trained with malicious capabilities.OpenAI reports that GPT-Red generalized beyond its training set, including an internal replication of the indirect prompt-injection arena from Dziemian et al. (2025), where it found successful attacks in 84% of scenarios compared with 13% for human red-teamers. The post also says GPT-Red transferred attacks from simulation to a live autonomous vending-machine agent, causing price changes and order cancellations, and outperformed a prompted GPT-5.5 baseline against a Codex CLI agent on held-out data-exfiltration tasks.The article's main robustness claim is that OpenAI has used GPT-Red and predecessor models in training since GPT-5.3, with later GPT releases becoming more resistant to prompt injections. It says GPT-5.6 Sol has six times fewer failures on OpenAI's hardest direct prompt-injection benchmark than the best production model from four months earlier, that a “Fake Chain-of-Thought” attack class fell from more than 95% success against GPT-5.1 to below 10% against GPT-5.6 Sol, and that GPT-5.6 Sol fails on only 0.05% of GPT-Red's direct prompt injections. OpenAI says general capabilities and targeted over-refusal evaluations were not harmed, and says a preprint with more details will follow.Read moreAnthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not just modelsRebecca Bellan | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Rebecca Bellan reports that Ode with Anthropic is the $1.5 billion AI implementation company launched by Anthropic with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and other backers. The article says the venture reflects a growing belief among frontier AI labs that enterprise adoption requires more than better models: customers need engineers who can embed inside businesses and turn AI into working systems.Ode was originally conceived by Blackstone after it used both large consulting firms and smaller AI services boutiques across its portfolio companies. TechCrunch reports that Fractional AI, an AI engineering services startup, stood out and was acquired by the joint venture shortly after the venture was announced. Fractional now forms the foundation of Ode, which has 100 engineers and works closely with Anthropic's applied AI team to identify where the technology can affect specific businesses.Ode CEO Chris Taylor tells TechCrunch that the company could someday become a trillion-dollar business if it scales without losing quality. He says an ideal customer is one whose CEO treats the AI project as a top one or two priority, whether it is a major product feature or the reworking of a core business process. Ode will operate under a “Claude-first” principle, using Anthropic technology whenever possible, but the article says it can use rival AI products when needed.The article's central implementation argument comes from Ode chief technologist Eddie Siegel, who says model selection matters but is not where most of the engineering effort goes. He compares it to the choice of programming language in software: one ingredient in a system that still has to be engineered. Bellan writes that Ode's challenge is hiring and training enough elite generalist engineers, many of them former founders, while competing with OpenAI's The Deployment Company and consulting giants that have built their own forward-deployed engineering teams.Read moreVint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internetTim Fernholz | TechCrunch | July 15, 2026Tim Fernholz reports that Vint Cerf, after leaving Google, is advising Innovation Labs on an open architecture for identifying AI agents online. Innovation Labs is a subsidiary of Identity Digital, a DNS registry company, and its proposal is to use domain-name infrastructure as part of a system for agent identity, accountability, and auditability. The premise is that agents will need a way to identify themselves if they move beyond proprietary systems and begin interacting across the open internet.The concrete proposal is DNSid, a registry that links an AI agent to an existing internet domain and uses cryptographic proofs to log its registration over time. Innovation Labs says it is trialing the standard with unnamed hyperscalers and identity companies. Cerf frames the problem around authority and accountability: what authority an agent has, where that authority came from, who is accountable for the agent's behavior, how its identity is established, and why anyone should trust it.The article's caveat is that standards are still emerging and agents are more active than static domains. Cerf says the period may be both fascinating and exasperating because the functionality is powerful and interoperability is unresolved. He compares the adoption problem to TCP/IP: competing systems may not work together until users push for functional interoperation. He also says an agentic economy is not inevitable, but that people will try to build it because delegating work to agents will be easier.Read more: TechCrunchxai-org/grok-build, now open sourceAuthor: Simon Willison Published: July 15, 2026Simon Willison argues that xAI's decision to open-source Grok Build is best understood as a trust repair move after a severe privacy failure. The CLI had triggered backlash when users realized that running it in a directory could upload the entire directory to xAI's Google Cloud buckets, including one user's reported SSH keys, password manager database, documents, photos, and videos. xAI disabled the feature, said previously retained coding data would be deleted, and released the code under Apache 2.0.The killer detail is what the codebase reveals. Willison counts 844,530 lines of Rust, only about 3% of which appears vendored, and finds remnants of the upload system still present but disabled: gcs.rs contains Google Cloud upload code, while upload_session_state() now returns a hard-coded session_state_upload_unavailable error. He also notes copied or ported tool implementations from Codex and OpenCode, prompt files, and a terminal Mermaid renderer.The pull is that terminal coding agents are becoming large, intricate software systems in their own right. The privacy failure mattered because these tools operate inside the directories where developers keep their most sensitive work; the open-source release matters because trust now depends on inspecting what an agent can see, send, and do.Read more: SourceThe Pulse: What can we learn from Bun's rapid Rust rewrite with AI?Author: Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric Published: July 16, 2026Gergely Orosz and Ivan Klaric argue that Bun's AI-assisted rewrite from Zig to Rust is a practical sign of how software engineering changes when models can take on large, bounded migrations with clear feedback loops. The piece does not treat the rewrite as magic: Jarred Sumner first spent hours turning design judgment into a detailed porting guide, then used adversarial review, parallel agents, compiler errors, and tests to force the work toward correctness.The killer detail is the scale. Bun had 535,496 lines of Zig, 1,448 files, and 22 million monthly downloads, making a conventional rewrite a year-long freeze the team could not justify. Using Fable, Sumner split the work across 64 agents, produced about 6,500 commits, and got the migration done in 11 days at an estimated API cost of $165,000.The pull is economic, not theatrical. If a one- or two-year migration can become an 11-day project, AI coding is not just faster autocomplete; it changes which technical debts are worth paying down.Read more: SourceOrphan risks at the frontier of artificial intelligenceAuthor: Andrew Maynard Published: July 16, 2026Andrew Maynard argues that frontier AI safety frameworks are creating “orphan risks”: harms that companies can see, but do not formally own because they are hard to quantify, do not fit catastrophic-risk thresholds, or fall outside audit-friendly compliance machinery. His target is not existing frontier safety work, but the narrowing effect that happens when private companies decide which risks count as governable.The killer detail is Maynard's contrast between measurable model dangers and threats to value. He points to Meta's three-day Galactica collapse, OpenAI's 2023 board crisis, safety-team departures, and wellbeing litigation as examples of risks that damaged trust, culture, legitimacy, or users without fitting cleanly into conventional model-risk categories. The proposed fix is an orphan-risk register: a public record of risks a company considered and chose not to manage, with reasons.The pull is accountability. Frontier developers' internal scoping choices have become a de facto layer of public governance, so the question is no longer only which risks they manage, but which risks they quietly leave outside the frame.Read more: SourceThe Lab of the Future Should Feel Like a Data CenterLatent.Space with Andy Beam and Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli | Latent.Space | July 16, 2026Latent.Space interviews Lila Sciences CTO Andy Beam and chief science officer for physical sciences Rafa Gomez-Bombarelli about the company's attempt to build an AI-run science factory. The post describes Lila's thesis as treating the lab itself as an “infinite token generator”: if internet data drove the first era of AI scaling, experimentally verified scientific data may be the next scarce training source. Lila is trying to produce that data with robotics, lab instruments, orchestration software, and AI models wired into the wet lab.The central analogy is the lab as data center. Instruments are nodes on a graph, a magnetically levitating transport layer moves materials between them, and experiment scheduling looks like a compute queue. Beam says Lila is not simply an automation company, because the point is not just throughput; it is flexibility, generalization, and experiment capture. The post says Lila has built more than 10 trillion experimentally validated “scientific reasoning tokens,” not internet text or biological sequences.The interview ranges across biology, chemistry, drug discovery, materials science, and the limits of automation. It notes that Lila rebuilt one gas-sorption measurement to run roughly 2,500 times faster, claims its general models can transfer priors from small-molecule chemistry to metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture, and describes model-suggested platinum-group-free electrocatalysts that moved from looking boring or wrong to becoming strong performers. The caveats are physical: experiments have runtimes, biology cannot always be accelerated, chains of thought can be unreliable narrators, and reward hacking becomes more dangerous when a model controls a real lab.Read more: Latent.SpaceWhy AMI Labs' Alexandre LeBrun won't call his AI “AGI” or “superintelligence”Kate Park | TechCrunch | July 16, 2026Kate Park interviews AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun about why Yann LeCun's world-model startup avoids the language of “AGI” and “superintelligence.” LeBrun says the terms are not useful because they lack stable definitions: “We never used the word AGI. And I just noticed that nobody is using it anymore; they switched to superintelligence.” His argument is that the practical frontier is not a label, but whether AI systems can understand and predict real-world states.The article explains the world-model thesis by contrasting language prediction with physical-state prediction. A large language model predicts the next word; a world model predicts the next state, such as what happens when a glass tips over. LeBrun says LLMs remain complementary and efficient for language, but the physical world is where current AI is weak. Robotics is the clearest case: hardware has advanced quickly, but robots are still brittle outside controlled routines because they lack context and situational understanding.AMI is still pre-product, but TechCrunch reports that LeBrun was in Seoul looking for industrial partners, researchers, and global companies. He says world models cannot be built entirely inside a lab because they need access to real environments. That is why South Korea appeals to AMI: robotics, semiconductors, manufacturing, and fast adoption create the kind of hardware-heavy context that software-only AI has barely touched.Read more: TechCrunchKimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier IntelligenceKimi | Kimi | July 16, 2026Kimi introduces Kimi K3 as an open 3T-class frontier model aimed at coding, knowledge work, reasoning, multimodality, and long-context agentic use. The source describes the model as a 2.8T-parameter system built on Kimi Delta Attention and Attention Residuals, with native multimodality and a 1M-token context window. It says Moonshot AI plans to release model weights by July 27.The post presents K3 through benchmark and use-case sections rather than as a general product announcement. It reports results across coding, productivity, agentic, and multimodal evaluations, including DeepSWE, Terminal-Bench 2.1, Program Bench, SWE Marathon, FrontierSWE, PostTrain Bench, OfficeQA Pro, SpreadsheetBench 2, MCP Atlas, AutomationBench, BrowseComp, GDPval-AA v2, AA-Briefcase, MMMU-Pro, MathVision, BabyVision, OmniDocBench, and PerceptionBench. The source says all reported K3 results use maximum reasoning effort with temperature and top-p set to 1.0, and that different benchmark comparisons use KimiCode, Claude Code, or Codex harnesses depending on the test.Kimi's caveats are unusually concrete. The limitations section says K3 was trained in preserved thinking-history mode, so quality may become unstable if an agent harness does not pass historical thinking content correctly or if an ongoing session switches to K3 midstream. It also says K3's emphasis on long-horizon tasks can make it excessively proactive when it encounters minor issues or ambiguous intent, and recommends imposing explicit behavioral constraints for applications that require strict boundaries. The post adds that K3 remains behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in user experience despite being competitive overall.Read moreVenture CapitalThree Years InAuthor: Tomasz Tunguz Published: July 10, 2026Tomasz Tunguz marks Theory Ventures' third anniversary by arguing that AI's central market effect is time compression. In his telling, model release cycles, company revenue milestones, enterprise adoption, and venture categories have all accelerated. Seed, Series A, and Series B still exist as financing labels, but they no longer cleanly describe company maturity when some seed rounds are larger than IPOs and the best AI companies can mature much earlier than prior software companies.The killer detail is the shift from models to inference. Tunguz argues that inference has become the dominant AI market because workloads and buyer preferences are fragmenting: video, batch, local, agentic, and real-time tasks each create different infrastructure needs. He compares this to databases splitting into OLTP, OLAP, vector, and streaming categories, with AI pushing the same specialization into inference infrastructure.The pull is that Theory sees the AI-native venture firm as part of the same pattern. The firm says it has analyzed twice as many investment opportunities with three investors working alongside a nine-person intelligence organization, using agents and research systems to map markets, source companies, and support diligence. The piece is both a market map and a statement about how venture itself is being rebuilt by the technology it funds.Read more: LinkedInVenture Has Rarely Looked More BifurcatedAuthor: Beezer Clarkson Published: July 14, 2026Beezer Clarkson points to PitchBook's Q2 report as evidence that the U.S. venture market has split into two very different realities. AI now accounts for more than 60 percent of all U.S. venture deal value, meaning the headline market can look active and well-funded even while much of the non-AI market is dealing with a much colder liquidity and fundraising environment.The thread uses that split as the setup for Clarkson's latest Origins episode with Alec Litowitz, founder of Magnetar and QStar Capital and one of Citadel's original founding partners. Clarkson says markets like this are periods of genuine uncertainty, not merely ordinary risk, which is why Litowitz's Adaptability Quotient framework is relevant.The embedded clip makes the liquidity point concrete. Litowitz says DPI is “the resolution of uncertainty” because it converts an uncertain investment into actual cash returned to LPs. In his framing, a realized dollar is a real mark, while TVPI remains uncertain until it is realized.The killer detail is the distinction between pricing risk and resolving uncertainty. Litowitz's perspective matters because QStar is a SpaceX investor and Clarkson says the conversation happened just before one of venture's most consequential IPOs. The episode's stated questions are why venture remains a way to gain exposure to innovation, how AI is changing what is investable, why liquidity is ultimately a function of time, and why uncertainty requires a different decision framework from risk.Read more: XThe Best Angel Investors in the US: Who Backs the Most Unicorns, and Who's Active NowAuthor: Ilya Strebulaev Published: July 10, 2026Ilya Strebulaev ranks angels, angel groups, accelerators, and incubators by lifetime U.S. unicorn investments, counting checks written before a company reached unicorn status. The top of the combined list is dominated by organizations: Y Combinator leads with 113 unicorn investments, followed by Plug and Play at 52 and 500 Global at 41. Sand Hill Angels is the highest-ranked angel group at 31.The killer detail is how quickly the list changes below the biggest accelerators. Strebulaev says 271 of the 304 investors in the Top 200 are individuals, or 89%. In the top 100, individuals are 91%. That makes the market underneath the large accelerator counts look much more personal: mostly operators and individual angels writing early checks from their own networks.The pull is the ranking's own caveat. Strebulaev writes that every lifetime leaderboard has a blind spot because many of the unicorns behind those totals were founded a decade or more ago, and some angels have since moved into formal funds, slowed down, or stopped investing. His post therefore separates lifetime performance from recent cohorts, including companies founded in 2015 or later and 2020 or later. For founders or allocators making current decisions, that distinction matters: a career record and a current record are not the same measure.Read more: Ilya StrebulaevAre Prediction Markets Doomed to Fail?Author: Contrary Published: July 16, 2026Contrary argues that prediction markets' current boom depends on whether platforms can prove they are more than regulated gambling with exchange-style branding. Kalshi and Polymarket have reached mass cultural, investor, and regulatory attention, but the article says the underlying idea is old: academic markets, corporate forecasting tools, Intrade, PredictIt, and other predecessors all struggled with the same linked problems of liquidity, legality, and user appeal.The killer detail is the comparison with sportsbooks. Prediction markets present themselves as peer-to-peer, transparent, and non-house-based, but sports contracts reportedly account for more than 90 percent of Kalshi trading, and the article says the platforms keep a much thinner slice of volume than sportsbooks. A market can therefore show sports-betting-scale handle while generating far less revenue.The pull is that the product's hardest problem may be distribution of wins. If a small group of sharp traders captures most profits while casual users lose interest, prediction markets may become valuable data feeds and professional tools before they become durable consumer networks.Read more: SourceRegulationExclusive: The Next Frontier of the Deportation Wars: College CampusesAuthor: Adrian Carrasquillo Published: July 11, 2026Adrian Carrasquillo reports that college campuses are becoming a new front in the fight over immigration enforcement because automatic license plate readers can turn ordinary campus security infrastructure into searchable location data. His thesis is that Flock Safety's camera network, even without direct ICE or DHS contracts, can feed deportation enforcement through local police partnerships and data-sharing practices.The killer detail is the campaign target. The Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education, working with Schools Drop ICE, is focusing on 75 colleges and universities publicly identified as having Flock contracts. Flock says it has no ICE or DHS contracts, but activists argue the risk comes through local agencies that coordinate with federal authorities and run searches on their behalf.The pull is broader than immigration. Carrasquillo notes that license plate readers have already been abused by officers for stalking, and that Flock's AI search features can identify more than plates, including bumper stickers. A campus safety tool can become a political surveillance system when the data layer is searchable.Read more: The BulwarkThe Supreme Court Broke Independent Agencies. Here's a Way to Slow the Damage.Author: Todd Phillips Published: July 12, 2026Todd Phillips argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter damaged independent agencies by ending for-cause removal protections, but did not leave Congress powerless. The ruling weakens the old model in which commissioners at bodies such as the FTC, NLRB, CPSC, SEC, and CFTC could be insulated from dismissal over policy disagreements. Phillips says the next fight is whether presidents can turn nominally bipartisan commissions into one-party instruments.The killer detail is the procedural fix: quorum rules. Phillips proposes that Congress require bipartisan slates of commissioners to be seated before independent agencies can act. A president

Subscribe now for an ad-free experience. Canada's wildfires rage on, so Danny and Derek are here to be your breath of fresh air. This week's news: In Iran, the U.S. reimposes its blockade and intensifies strikes (2:04), Trump announces and then backs off a Hormuz toll (5:44), and the White House issues threats of further escalation (9:17); in Yemen, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia trade strikes (13:37) as the former might become involved in the Iran war (16:28); Lebanese-Israeli talks talks wrap up, but progress is uncertain (17:45); in Israel, a date is set for an election (19:18), plus the ethnic cleansing in Gaza is given a new euphemism (21:15); Southeast Asian countries appear to normalize relations with Myanmar (22:23); the U.S. touts a “new” peace plan for Sudan (24:13); the Ebola outbreak in the DRC continues and may be much larger than official figures suggest (26:35); Zelenskyy replaces Ukraine's prime minister and defense minister (29:43); Andy Burnham is to become the UK's PM (33:32), plus a UK-EU deal on Gibraltar is reached (35:22); Marco Rubio is reportedly running Venezuela as a U.S. viceroy (36:34); the U.S. is attempting to destroy the ICC (38:35) as it also takes aim at “left-wing terrorism” (41:23); and a Pew poll finds China more popular than the U.S. for the first time (43:01). ⁠Watch last night's weekly livestream⁠ if you missed it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Canada's wildfires rage on, so Danny and Derek are here to be your breath of fresh air. This week's news: In Iran, the US reimposes its blockade and intensifies strikes (2:04), Trump announces and then backs off a Hormuz toll (5:44), and the White House issues threats of further escalation (9:17); in Yemen, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia trade strikes (13:37) as the former might become involved in the Iran war (16:28); Lebanese-Israeli talks talks wrap up, but progress is uncertain (17:45); in Israel, a date is set for an election (19:18), plus the ethnic cleansing in Gaza is given a new euphemism (21:15); Southeast Asian countries appear to normalize relations with Myanmar (22:23); the US touts a “new” peace plan for Sudan (24:13); the Ebola outbreak in the DRC continues and may be much larger than official figures suggest (26:35); Zelenskyy replaces Ukraine's prime minister and defense minister (29:43); Andy Burnham is to become the UK's PM (33:32), plus a UK-EU deal on Gibraltar is reached (35:22); Marco Rubio is reportedly running Venezuela as a US viceroy (36:34); the US is attempting to destroy the ICC (38:35) as it also takes aim at “left-wing terrorism” (41:23); and a Pew poll finds China more popular than the US for the first time (43:01).⁠Watch last night's weekly livestream⁠ if you missed it.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 634. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show I have another 1x prism review. We talk about a comped HD P4x, some NDEX sights, a Light - weight, and a Spitfire   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, Rob, Rusty   Sponsor #1: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. 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This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Main Topic is sponsored by: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. 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Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - R3D 2.0 Night Sights for PSA Dagger Micro   Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   Herrington Arms V2 Anchor Light Weight MSRP - $79.99   Kizer Spitfire Supermarine Edition MSRP - $180.00   Sponsor #4: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - Blem Titanium Bolt Carrier Group   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, pound for pound, podcast on the network We are out

Top headlines for Friday, July 17, 2026Focus on the Family's leadership transition as Jim Daly prepares to step down, the Education Department clapping back at podcasters who mocked homeschoolers, Justice Amy Coney Barrett revealing she received a bulletproof vest after the Dobbs leak, and Pew's finding that nearly 60% of Gen Z women get health info from influencers.0:11 Sight & Sound, Wonder Project partner to stream productions1:14 Dept. of Ed. hits back at podcasters who mocked homeschoolers2:04 Jim Daly begins Focus on the Family leadership transition2:54 Amy Coney Barrett given bulletproof vest after Dobbs leak3:50 Nearly 60% of Gen Z women get health info from influencers4:51 Marine Corps condemns remarks by House candidate about Trump5:48 Christians push back against Kairos II at Church of England SynodSubscribe to this PodcastApple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercastFollow Us on Social Media@ChristianPost on TwitterChristian Post on Facebook@ChristianPostIntl on InstagramSubscribe on YouTubeGet the Edifi AppDownload for iPhoneDownload for AndroidSubscribe to Our NewsletterSubscribe to the Freedom Post, delivered every Monday and ThursdayClick here to get the top headlines delivered to your inbox every morning!Links to the NewsSight & Sound, Wonder Project partner to stream productions | EntertainmentDept. of Ed. hits back at podcasters who mocked homeschoolers | PodcastJim Daly begins Focus on the Family leadership transition | Church & MinistriesAmy Coney Barrett given bulletproof vest after Dobbs leak | PoliticsNearly 60% of Gen Z women get health info from influencers: Pew | Living Marine Corps condemns remarks by House candidate about Trump | U.S.Christians push back against Kairos II at Church of England Synod | Church & Ministries

 Headlines: – Welcome to Mo News + World Cup Finals Is Set (02:00) – Trump CDC Director Nominee Grilled on Vaccines (07:15) – Key Takeaways From Todd Blanche's Confirmation Hearing For Attorney General (11:20) – Trump's DNI Pick Jay Clayton Won't Tell Senators If Biden Won 2020 Election (16:50) – Pete Hegseth Wants To Test Troops For Low Testosterone (23:30) – Wildfire Smoke From Canada Spreading Across Midwest And East (27:45) – Trump Reverses ICE Traffic Stop Suspension (31:00) – People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.~ Pew (33:00) – How Amazon Is Turning the BookTok Boom Into Hit TV (36:30) – Jeopardy! Needs A New Writer: What The Show Is Looking For In Applicants (39:30) – On This Day In History (44:45) Thanks To Our Sponsors: – Monarch - 50% off your first year | Code: MONEWS – Factor - 50% off your first box | Code: monews50off –⁠ Industrious⁠ - Coworking office. 50% off day pass | Code: MONEWS50 – LMNT | Free Sample Pack with any LMNT drink mix or 12oz cans purchase – ⁠Boll & Branch⁠ – 20% off first order, plus free shipping | Code: MONEWS

Donald Trump is going before the nation Thursday night to make a case about election integrity. We don't know exactly where or how many places he's going to be shown, but we do know what the case is supposed to be. And the difference between what he says and how he says it is literally the difference between 80% of America agreeing with him and 20% of America agreeing with him.What Trump really wants to do is demonstrate that now that he's in control of the federal government, all the things he said about the federal government are indeed true. He wants to reveal elements of the secret workings of the deep state that he was previously unable or unwilling to reveal in his first term. According to Politico, Trump is expected to declassify previously unseen intelligence during the address, and White House aides are reportedly debating exactly how far they should go. Senior staffers have prepared a version they believe is supported by the available intelligence, while others want Trump to make broader claims.Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Trump also wants to pass the SAVE America Act. The current House-passed version has two major requirements: documentary proof of citizenship when somebody registers to vote in a federal election, and photo identification when that person casts a federal ballot. The Senate doesn't currently have the votes to pass it under normal rules unless Republicans suspend the filibuster or find another way to attach it to legislation that can pass. Whether an election law provision could survive the Senate's reconciliation rules is a different story for a different day.The biggest, juiciest kernel inside the legislation is voter ID. That's a huge political opportunity for Republicans and a problem for elected Democrats. If Trump were to get on television and say we need voter ID, we're going to include it in the SAVE America package going to the Senate, and the reason is simple — only citizens should be able to vote — that's overwhelmingly popular. Democrats will say it's voter suppression. They'll say women who change their names could be disenfranchised because their current identification doesn't match what's on their birth certificates. Well, Trump could answer that by putting money in the bill to expedite any new identification and documentation necessary to comply with the SAVE America Act, especially for women who've taken their husband's names.That's the layup. Pew found in August 2025 that 83% of Americans supported requiring government-issued photo IDs to vote, including 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats. Pew measured the issue again in January 2026: 80% supported voter ID, with 58% strongly favoring it and another 22% somewhat favoring it. Gallup found essentially the same thing, with 84% of Americans supporting photo identification at the polls. In politics, that's called a no-brainer layup. Put the screws to him if you're the GOP.But guess what? He ain't gonna. Because Trump also wants to expose what he considers the nefarious deep state, and with that comes the greatest bugaboo of his political life: the 2020 election. If Trump goes on television and says the 2020 election was manipulated by China, Democrats, Brad Raffensperger, or anybody else, he's no longer operating within the overwhelming support of the American public. Talking about 2020 and manipulated vote counts is, at best, red meat for the base. At worst, it's exactly what Democrats want to be talking about, because it takes Trump further away from the current moment. Sometimes you get the 80-20 layup, and sometimes you get the long, meandering “Democrats plus China plus Brad Raffensperger ruined my life.”Chapters00:00:00 - Intro00:03:38 - Trump's Primetime Speech00:12:02 - Iran00:15:59 - Israel and Democrats00:20:20 - NYS Data Centers00:29:23 - Interview with Dave Levinthal01:03:47 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

①During an inspection tour in Shanghai, Xi Jinping highlighted high-quality urban renewal as a key driver of city modernization. What is China's people-centered approach to urban renewal? (00:56) ②Africa's exports to China have increased significantly since Beijing expanded its zero-tariff policy across the continent in May. What new opportunities is China's policy opening up for African exporters? (14:22) ③We explore why, according to a new Pew study, more people around the world now favor China over the US. (24:49) ④Britain and the European Union have formally signed a treaty on the status of Gibraltar. How could it ease border friction and boost the local economy? (35:34) ⑤According to US media reports, the Trump administration has internally estimated that the war on Iran has cost the US up to $100 billion, over three times higher than its public estimate. What is behind this perceived lack of transparency on war cost? (44:55)

Israel's image and credibility in the United States have fallen to an unprecedented low. A recent Pew poll revealed that 60 percent of American adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, especially among younger respondents. Criticism of Israel among Democrats in Congress has increased substantially, and while Republicans still broadly view Israel favorably, those who hold negative views are growing. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also voiced public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that have gone well beyond their predecessors. What's driving the decline? How have the policies of Israel's right-wing government, especially the war in Gaza, rising antisemitism, and a growing number of younger candidates challenging traditional policies in both parties, changed U.S. perception of Israel and fractured once solid bipartisan support? What role is the Israel issue playing in recent primaries and the run-up to the midterms and what does it mean for the future of the U.S.- Israeli relationship? Join Aaron David Miller as he engages S.E. Cupp and Ron Brownstein, two leading American political analysts, in conversation on Israel and domestic U.S. politics, on Carnegie Connects.

The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. In this heartfelt episode, John steps away from the plans and simply shares what's been on his heart after a powerful night of prayer and adoration. Reflecting on the countless emails, messages, and stories from listeners around the world, he reminds us that the mission of Just a Guy in the Pew has never been about one voice—it has always been about one family walking toward Christ together. Whether you're carrying addiction, loneliness, a struggling marriage, grief, or simply wondering if anyone sees you, this episode is a reminder that you are not alone. Together we'll explore: Why God saves us personally but sanctifies us together. How isolation is one of the enemy's greatest weapons. Why authentic Christian brotherhood changes lives. The beauty of carrying one another's burdens. How your prayers, encouragement, generosity, and witness are helping rescue souls every day. Why every believer has a place in God's mission. This is more than a thank-you. It's an invitation. To stop walking alone. To become part of someone else's story. To remember that the Church is a family—and that no one has to journey to Jesus by themselves. We're in this together. Follow this link to order your signed copy of our new book, Power Made Perfect: https://store.justaguyinthepew.com/ Learn more about our pilgrimage: Walk in the Footsteps of Pope St. John Paul II with John

Thank you for joining as we livestream our services. Please let us know if there is a way we can improve your experience.Weekly Guide, outline, and parish notes are all together in the bulletinLet us know you are joining us by completing the virtual Who's Who in the Pew:  https://stmfw.org/iamhereOur ministries continue to run through your faithful giving and financial generosity: https://stmfw.fellowshiponego.com/external/form/ff107cf8-b5de-4153-bdd0-b17e0827154e

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, as he dives into today's top stories shaping America and the world. In this Headline Brief edition of The Wright Report, Bryan reports on the sudden death of GOP Senator Lindsey Graham from a heart attack at age 71, and what his passing means for the Senate math heading into the midterms. Bryan also covers the renewed US Iran conflict flaring over a disputed clause in the peace memo governing the Strait of Hormuz, a surprise Trump Administration decision to extend deportation protections for Haitians and other groups under business pressure, record high asylum rejection rates in Michigan, and Graham Platner's exit from the Maine Senate race as Democrats scout replacement candidates further left. He rounds out domestic coverage with new Pew data on Muslim American attitudes toward Hamas and a big week of inflation and retail sales reports ahead. Plus, a gay cruise ship gets turned away from Turkey and Egypt, new research links daytime sunlight to better sleep, Johns Hopkins warns on marijuana risks for young brains, and a fasting protocol shows promise in easing radiation side effects for cancer patients. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32   Keywords: Lindsey Graham death, South Carolina special election, Scott Bessent, Iran Strait of Hormuz conflict, Trump Iran peace memo, diesel prices global squeeze, Haitian TPS extension, Trump immigration policy, Michigan asylum rejection rates, Graham Platner Maine Senate, Democrat Socialist candidates, Gavin Newsom Democratic Socialism, Pew Research Muslim Americans Hamas, consumer inflation report June, gay cruise ship Turkey Egypt, sunlight sleep research, Johns Hopkins marijuana psychiatric risk, fasting radiation cancer treatment, Wright Report Headline Brief

Matt Swaim talks about light bulbs coming on in the faith, plus what's coming up on The Journey Home on EWTN. John Edwards from the "Just a Guy in the Pew" podcast and Pew Ministries. Gail Buckley Barringer delivers the Scripture Verse of the Week from Proverbs. T's Two Sense hears from Patricia Heaton on the prayer that changed her life forever. Plus, Tyler Blanski visits to talk about fatherhood in his book "Find Your Fight"

  Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 633. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show we will be discussing a prism review and discuss a Colt red dot, a new ported double stack, an Esee folder, and something interesting and probably terrible from Bear Creek   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, Rob, Rusty   Sponsor #1: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. Hi-Point Firearms, made by the American working man for the American working man.   Our Hi-Point Product of the week is - YC 380   Visit hi-pointfirearms.com and check out their line of products Use code “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com   What we did in Firearms:   Announcements: Kat's Rack Defense fund https://www.givesendgo.com/Katsrackdefensefund    Bandwidth sponsor Patriot Patch Co.  And their Patch of the Month Club! Check out the Pew.Report T-shirts are available through our FRN site, or click the “Merch” tab on Firearmsinsider.tv   AFFILIATES / DISCOUNTS: Walker Defense Research - enter “INSIDER15” for 15% off XS Sights - “GGR20” for 20% off Hi-Point - “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com CMC Triggers - “GGR26” for 10% off Primary Arms VZ Grips  Brownells Gun Guys Garage discount code - “FRN15OFF” Atibal Optics - enter “FIREARMSINSIDER20” for 20% off 5.11 Tactical PowerTac Lights - enter “GGR” for a real good discount Modern Spartan Systems - “GGR15” for 15% off Global Ordnance Infinite Defense (Infinity Targets) - “PEW15” for 15% off Guns.com Magpul Palmetto State Armory Unique ARs - “GunGearReview” for 10% off CobraTec Knives - “GGR10” for 10% off Nutrient Survival - “GGR10” for 10% off Gideon Optics - “GGR” or “INSIDER” for 10% off US Optics - “INSIDER15” for 15% off Camorado - “FIREARMSINSIDER” for 5% off Optics Planet Midway USA Strike Industries North Forest Arms - “GGR” for 10% off Kini SafeAlert - “GGR” for 20% off FoxTrot Mike - “GGR” for 10% off XTech Tactical - “GGR10” for 10% off Die Free Co ZeroTech Optics - “GGR” for 20% off Goliath Defense - “GGR” for 10% off holsters Classic Firearms  True Shot Ammo  Next Level Armament NightStick   ROB - Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual co-hosts and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Firearms Radio Network and/or their employers. This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Main Topic is sponsored by: XS Sights   For over 25 years, XS Sights has helped you get on target faster. Offering tritium sights in all different types and styles, low light is no longer an obstacle. Most options come with a brightly colored photoluminescent ring around the tritium. That colored ring makes them work great in the daylight also. XS Sights has sight styles for everyone: Big Dot's, Ghost Rings, Standard Notch and Post, Minimalist, Suppressor Height, all offering tritium options. Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - The brand new Smith & Wesson Fiber Optic Revolver Sights   Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   Main Topic: Product Review Chad - ZeroTech Thrive HD 1x Micro Prism   Product Spotlight and Discussion:    Colt Optics MRS-1 Red Dot MSRP - $428.000   Military Armament Corporation Cerberus Ported MSRP - $899.00   Sponsor #3: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - Flat Dark Earth DLC Bolt Carrier Group   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   Bear Creek Grizzly compact 380 MSRP - $349.99   Esee Knives Expat Medellin II Retail - $69.99   Sponsor #4: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. With triggers for AR's, AK's, pistols, and bolt guns, CMC can make your firearms trigger great. Proudly made in Texas with strong morals and values, giving you confidence that you are buying one of the best triggers out there. Choose Confidence, choose quality, choose CMC    Our CMC Product of the week is - AR-15/10 Single Stage Curved Component Trigger   Use Code “GGR26” for 10% off at CMCTriggers.com   Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, pound for pound, podcast on the network We are out

Most everyone has felt stuck, that your life would be so much better if everyone else just got on your level one way or another. We know that's a distraction by the enemy to get you focusing on the speck in your brother's eye while you walk around with a two-by-four hanging out of your own. But what do we do to finally overcome that? How do we fight against this and win? Long story short: we can't on our own power. It's only the power of Jesus Christ that can lead us to victory. And that starts with surrendering. It starts when we decide we're sick and tired of being sick and tired, when we go to God and claim the victory that is ours because it was His, and it was His victory that He won with us in mind and for our sake. In today's episode, we'll talk about:

We Like Shooting - Ep 670 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: Foxtrot Mike (Code: WLSISLIFE) C&G Holsters (Code: WLSISLIFE) Midwest Industries (Code: WLSISLIFE) Gideon Optics (Code: WLSISLIFE) Night Fision (Code: WLSISLIFE) Blue Alpha Bowers Group (Code: WLS) Second Call Defense Giveaways!! GAW   Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171 Public   Show Titles   GOA GOALS Aug 1-2 in Iowa. https://goals.goa.org/ GEAR CHAT Note Civmedical.com Note welikeshooting.com/gaw SOLDIERSYSTEMS Strike Industries Strike Modular Chassis for FN Herstal PS90 The Strike Modular Chassis upgrades the FN Herstal PS90 (and P90) with improved ergonomics, a refined grip angle, an adjustable cheek rest, internal cable management, and extensive M-LOK and Picatinny mounting options. It is machined from 6-series aircraft aluminum and offered in short (6.89″) and long (9.84″) handguard configurations to replace or upgrade the existing chassis. Pew.Locker Now Supports Imports Pew.Locker now supports imports. GRIFFIN ARMAMENT(Nick) Griffin Armament EZ-LOK Barrel Adapters EZ-LOK® barrel adapters The EZ-LOK barrel adapter is the smaller component of Griffin Armament's patent-pending two-part Rapid Index piston system designed for simplified suppressor mounting on Browning-style tilt-barrel pistols. It threads onto the barrel and mates with a separate EZ-LOK piston via an internal taper lock, allowing installation with a 3/4″ socket wrench and requiring zero specialized training. Available in 9 mm (shorter) and .45 (extended cylinder) versions across three thread patterns. MEDICAL GEAR OUTFITTERS Hockey First Aid Kit Stay prepared at every game and practice with our Hockey First Aid Kit. Includes trauma supplies, tourniquet, SAM splint, Save-A-Tooth kit, cold packs, wraps, and more for hockey injuries. Note Gideon optics guardian LR BULLET POINTS INSIDE SAFARILAND Intruder in a Box Ballistic Testing Target Intruder in a Box is an eight-layer ballistic testing medium designed to simulate human anatomy (skin, muscle, bone, organs, lungs) using cardboard, rubber, composite plates, fluid sacks, and air pockets. It provides a reusable, shelf-stable alternative to traditional ballistic gel for evaluating handgun ammunition penetration and terminal performance in self-defense scenarios. The 3×3 grid allows multiple tests per unit, with results shown for various pocket pistol calibers including .32 H&R Magnum, .32 ACP, and .22LR. GUN FIGHTS Play the best Price Is Right-style GunBroker game on the internet. BANGRANK A live cast ranking segment for anything and everything in the gun world, powered by questionable certainty, strong opinions, and audience voting. THE AGENCY BRIEF GOING BALLISTIC BEARINGARMS.COM(Savage) New Gun Control Group Wants To Shame Enablers Of Firearms Industry N1233077 New gun control group targets businesses linked to firearms makers to curb assault weapon sales. BEARINGARMS.COM(Savage) Everytown Attorney's Response to 'Vampire Rule' Decision Is Downright Hilarious Everytown attorney's reaction to 'Vampire Rule' decision highlights key impacts on Second Amendment rights. Cam Edwards' July 5, 2026 Bearing Arms article critiques Everytown attorney Janet Carter's statement downplaying the U.S. Supreme Court's Wolford ruling (paired with Hemani). The piece highlights the decision's favorable Second Amendment implications under the Bruen test, including presumptive unconstitutionality for laws implicating the right to carry arms for self-defense in daily life. Edwards finds Carter's claim that ‘the gun lobby' did not get what it wanted in Wolford to be inconsistent with the opinion's language and effects on gun-control litigation. REDSTATE.COM(Savage) Hundreds Of Patriot Font Demonstrators Hit Dcs July 4 Celebration And Minds Are Blown N2204027 Hundreds of Patriot Front members marched in D.C. during July 4, sparking controversy and political debate. GUNS.COM(Savage) Nics Over 11 Million Guns Sold In June Nfa Saw 177 Percent Jump In the lead-up to America's 250th, the Second Amendment was well exercised, according to the latest data for last month's gun sales. REVIEWS Review: Anonymous Coward from Oregon Hello lads,Im just here to prove the gun control theory wrong. People will always find away around “legit” firearms being taken away…. example: https://www.instagram.com/viraldaily_life168?igsh=MXhmOTZjYWFjYjNydQ== So yeah, come and take them… you'll either die and/or we'll make more

This week on Purple Political Breakdown: Trump's financial disclosure shows over 1.4 billion dollars in crypto related income tied to a company nobody can find on paper, the FBI has surged 260 analysts into re examining a Georgia election that's already been counted three times, and Russia hit Kyiv twice in five days right before a NATO summit. Radell connects the dots between all three, then digs into new Pew polling showing the world's confidence in America and Americans' confidence in their own democracy collapsing at the same time. Plus, a full breakdown of this Supreme Court term's biggest rulings on immigration, citizenship, and presidential power over independent agencies, the 2026 midterms landscape including a progressive upset in Denver, and the good news stories the rest of the media isn't covering. Standard Resource Links & Recommendations The following organizations and platforms represent valuable resources for balanced political discourse and democratic participation: PODCAST NETWORK Check Out the Podcast Website: https://www.purplepoliticalbreakdown.com ALIVE Podcast Network: Check out the ALIVE Network where you can catch a lot of great podcasts like my own, led by amazing Black voices. Link: https://alivepodcastnetwork.com/ CONVERSATION PLATFORMS HeadOn: A platform for contentious yet productive conversations. It's a place for hosted and unguided conversations where you can grow a following and enhance your conversations with AI features. Link: https://app.headon.ai/ Living Room Conversations: Building bridges through meaningful dialogue across political divides. Link: https://livingroomconversations.org/ UNITY MOVEMENTS Us United: A movement for unity that challenges Americans to step out of their bubbles and connect across differences. Take the Unity Pledge, join monthly "30 For US" conversation calls, wear purple (the color of unity), and participate in National Unity Day every second Saturday in December. Their programs include the Sheriff Unity Network and Unity Seats at sports events, proving that shared values are stronger than our differences. Link: https://www.us-united.org/ BALANCED NEWS & INFORMATION OtherWeb: An AI based platform that filters news without paywalls, clickbait, or junk, helping you access diverse, unbiased content. Link: https://otherweb.com/ VOTING REFORM & DEMOCRACY Equal Vote Coalition & STAR Voting: Advocating for voting methods that ensure every vote counts equally, eliminating wasted votes and strategic voting. Link: https://www.equal.vote/star Future is Now Coalition (FiNC): A grassroots movement working to restore democracy through transparency, accountability, and innovative technology while empowering citizens and transforming American political discourse. Link: https://futureis.org/ POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT Independent Center: Resources for independent political thinking and civic engagement. Link: https://www.independentcenter.org/ GET DAILY NEWS Text 844-406-INFO (844-406-4636) with code "purple" to receive quick, unbiased, factual news delivered to your phone every morning via Informed (https://informed.now) Check Out the Unfuck America Tour & National Ground Game: https://www.nationalgroundgame.com/ Check Out the CIVICS App to Know More About Your Politicians: https://www.civicpolitics.com Subscribe to the Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/purplepoliticalbreakdown/p/welcome-to-the-purple-political-breakdown?r=3z2cmw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true ALL LINKS https://linktr.ee/purplepoliticalbreakdown The Purple Political Breakdown is committed to fostering productive political dialogue that transcends partisan divides. We believe in the power of conversation, balanced information, and democratic participation to build a stronger society. Our mission: "Political solutions without political bias." Subscribe, rate, and share if you believe in purple politics, where we find common ground in the middle! Also if you want to be a part of the community and the conversation make sure to Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ptPAsZtHC9

How is your church teaching children the importance of communion? How are you preparing parents to lead their children in communion? In this episode, Amber shares practical tips and tools to both teach children the significance of communion and to prepare parents to teach their children about it as well. Resources Mentioned in the Episode:Parenting in the Pew - https://amzn.to/4vkZpL8Parent Communion Training Video: https://youtu.be/0bUh89IZWK8Lord's Supper Family Devotional Video: https://youtu.be/4H99FLtvD5ALord's Supper Sermon Notes: https://amberpike.org/shop/ols/products/lords-supper-sermon-notes

Thank you for joining as we livestream our services. Please let us know if there is a way we can improve your experience.Weekly Guide, outline, and parish notes are all together in the bulletinLet us know you are joining us by completing the virtual Who's Who in the Pew:  https://stmfw.org/iamhereOur ministries continue to run through your faithful giving and financial generosity: https://stmfw.fellowshiponego.com/external/form/ff107cf8-b5de-4153-bdd0-b17e0827154e

  Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 632. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show we will be discussing a western bb pistol, the Donner party, the pony express, and an American Raider.   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, Rob   Sponsor #1: XS Sights   For over 25 years, XS Sights has helped you get on target faster. Offering tritium sights in all different types and styles, low light is no longer an obstacle. Most options come with a brightly colored photoluminescent ring around the tritium. That colored ring makes them work great in the daylight also. XS Sights has sight styles for everyone: Big Dot's, Ghost Rings, Standard Notch and Post, Minimalist, Suppressor Height, all offering tritium options. Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - Springfield Armory Notch & Post Tritium Night Sights    Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   What we did in Firearms:   Announcements: Brigid is the winner and donated the rifle back to Kat Kat's Rack Defense  https://www.givesendgo.com/Katsrackdefensefund  Bandwidth sponsor Patriot Patch Co.  And their Patch of the Month Club! Check out the Pew.Report T-shirts are available through our FRN site, or click the “Merch” tab on Firearmsinsider.tv   AFFILIATES / DISCOUNTS: Walker Defense Research - enter “INSIDER15” for 15% off XS Sights - “GGR20” for 20% off Primary Arms VZ Grips  Brownells Gun Guys Garage discount code - “FRN15OFF” Atibal Optics - enter “FIREARMSINSIDER20” for 20% off 5.11 Tactical PowerTac Lights - enter “GGR” for a real good discount Modern Spartan Systems - “GGR15” for 15% off Global Ordnance Infinite Defense (Infinity Targets) - “PEW15” for 15% off Guns.com Magpul Palmetto State Armory Unique ARs - “GunGearReview” for 10% off CobraTec Knives - “GGR10” for 10% off Nutrient Survival - “GGR10” for 10% off Gideon Optics - “GGR” or “INSIDER” for 10% off Lone Wolf Arms US Optics - “INSIDER15” for 15% off Camorado - “FIREARMSINSIDER” for 5% off Optics Planet Midway USA Strike Industries North Forest Arms - “GGR” for 10% off Kini SafeAlert - “GGR” for 20% off FoxTrot Mike - “GGR” for 10% off XTech Tactical - “GGR10” for 10% off Die Free Co ZeroTech Optics - “GGR” for 20% off BattleHawk Armory Goliath Defense - “GGR” for 10% off holsters Classic Firearms  True Shot Ammo  Next Level Armament NightStick Hi-Point - “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com CMC Triggers - “GGR26” for 10% off   ROB - Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual co-hosts and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Firearms Radio Network and/or their employers. This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Product Spotlight is sponsored by: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - 2 slot NILE grip panels   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   Main Topic: Product Review or Updates on previous reviews None   Product Spotlight and Discussion:    Winchester Air Western .177 CO2 BB/Pellet Revolver MSRP - $129.90   Dauntless Donner Party Hiker MSRP - $425.00   Sponsor #3: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. With triggers for AR's, AK's, pistols, and bolt guns, CMC can make your firearms trigger great. Proudly made in Texas with strong morals and values, giving you confidence that you are buying one of the best triggers out there. Choose Confidence, choose quality, choose CMC    Our CMC Product of the week is - Drop-In Glock Gen 6 trigger   Use Code “GGR26” for 10% off at CMCTriggers.com   One Horse Express MSRP - $999.99   Orthos Raider America 250 Elite MSRP - $1799.99   Sponsor #4: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. Hi-Point Firearms, made by the American working man for the American working man.   Our Hi-Point Product of the week is - GOA 995 TS   Visit hi-pointfirearms.com and check out their line of products Use code “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com   Happy 250th INDEPENDENCE DAY!    Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, pound for pound, podcast on the network We are out  

Christina Hello, everyone, I'm Christina Darnell, the managing editor of MinistryWatch. Welcome to the MinistryWatch podcast. In today's extra episode, I talk with Warren Smith about some news items that are slightly (even significantly) outside of our normal charity and philanthropy “beat.” So, Warren, what's up first?  Warren William Bennett famously said, “The plural of anecdotes is not data.” Journalists who write about religion often forget that reality. Christina The latest example came from Carson Daly of the Today Show. He wants us to believe that young people are packing Catholic Churches, and they are leading a Catholic resurgence in this country. But you're not buying it. Warren I'm not. The data tell a different story. I turned to the 2023–24 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, based on nearly 37,000 randomly selected American adults, for a reality check. Among its findings: About 19 percent of U.S. adults identify as Catholic, unchanged since 2014 — but well below historical levels. Even more telling: 43 percent of Americans raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic. Only 1.5 percent of American adults have become Catholic after being raised in another religion or with no religion. Catholics have experienced the largest net losses of any major Christian tradition through religious switching. Christina What about young people? That seemed to be the focus of the Carson Daly piece. Warren It was, but even among young people, the data don't support that conclusion. Among Americans ages 18–24, 12 percent have left Catholicism, while only 1 percent have converted into it. Pew concluded there is “no clear evidence” of a nationwide religious revival among young adults. Christina Why has this revival narrative been so persistent. We've been seeing it in the Protestant church as well. Warren Journalists want to find unusual stories. The slow secularization of religion over the past 50 years is not unusual. It's been told, and journalists are looking for a new story. As the old saying, “Dog bites man” is not a story. “Man bites dog” is a story. As for the Catholic resurgence story? Well, to torture the metaphor: “That dog won't hunt.” Carson Daly might be able to find a parish whose young adult Mass grows from 50 to 400 people, but that does not make up for the thousands of parishes experiencing gradual (and sometimes significant) decline. Christina Years ago, David Letterman had a routine that he called “Stupid Pet Tricks.” The first story we did, plus the next one, might qualify this episode of the podcast for its own “Stupid Media Tricks” segment. Warren You're right. This week saw another significant media story that caused me to wonder. In this case, veteran National Public Radio Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg wrote a story that Justice Samuel Alito had retired. Christina And, to be clear, Justice Alito has not retired. Warren That's right. But the story that he had retired made it through NPR's editing process and onto the website before someone discovered the mistake. And, of course, if it makes it to one website, the algorithms soon have it everywhere. Christina About an hour after publication, NPR retracted the story, issued a correction, and apologized. But the damage had been done. Warren To be fair, the damage was not severe – except, perhaps, to the credibility of NPR. But it does provide a lesson in how modern media work. Charlie Warzel, writing for The Atlantic, does a fascinating post-mortem on the episode, saying the error highlights several habits of modern journalism that are pathological. Among them: “That a breakneck news cycle is forcing even the best reporters and editors to move too fast, that modern beat reporting itself has become too consumed with being first to report stories.” Warzel's story is a smart look at how the journalistic sausage is made. I recommend it. You can find a link in today's show notes. Christina Our next story is also a media story, of sorts. Warren I had not thought of it that way, but I think you're right. Our friend Joseph Slife forwarded me a story that Michigan's Cornerstone University was offering a degree that could be completed “100%” on a smartphone. Christina Warren, did you check the date on that story. Are you sure it's not an April Fools Day prank? Warren I did check, because that was my first thought. Alas, it is not. According to The College Fix, “Cornerstone University, located in Grand Rapids, is offering an associate degree and bachelor's degree in strategic business management along with a master's in organizational leadership through its new program. Students pay a fixed rate of $2,400 per four-month term or $3,750 for graduate level work. The intended audience is working adults.” Christina That's pretty cheap, and – as a working adult – I couldn't imagine trying to get to a nearby college a couple of nights a week for classes. Warren I get that. 100  percent. I am not a Luddite. I use my iPhone for a lot of things – including learning. YouTube videos have helped me learn new licks on the guitar, have helped me repair my toilet, and have helped me gain new insights into the human condition. Christina But learning via iPhone is a different experience than face-to-face, in classroom learning. Warren That's exactly right. Especially from a wise and well-qualified teacher, in a community with other learners who are grappling with the same ideas — both in class, but also around the dinner table in the dining hall. Christina So what you're saying is that virtual learning is not worthless. It is just different. Warren I do not oppose colleges offering programs virtually, but to offer accredited degrees that carry all the prestige and credentialing power of an in-person degree…well…that is just bearing false witness. Christina Let's conclude today with news that the Texas State Board of Education passed a new required reading list that includes Bible passages. Warren On Friday, June 26, the Republican-controlled board voted 9-5-1 to approve a first-of-its-kind list that will affect more than 5 million public school students. Required readings for younger students include illustrated Old Testament stories such as Noah's Ark and David and Goliath. By upper elementary school, students read New Testament passages about Jesus' teachings and parables. Middle school and high school lessons pair scriptural themes with classic literature. Christina Most Christian groups are praising this decision. But you say…not so fast. Warren I will have to say that net-net I am glad they are reading the Bible in the classroom. You simply cannot understand most of Western literature – from Dante to Shakespeare to Faulkner to Eliot – without some biblical literacy. And I know that there are a lot of great public school teachers who will handle these texts with care and respect. Christina I sense a big fat…however…coming on. Warren Ha. So I'll say it.  However… I do wonder what will happen when you put scripture into the hands of militantly secularized teachers, and you give them a platform to air their grievances. They may be forced to read the bible, but what if the teacher spends the rest of the class presenting arguments for its unreliability? Christina So are you opposed to reading the Bible in classrooms? Warren Absolutely not. I'm very much in favor of it, but I do wonder how it's going to be taught. I would recommend that parents in Texas remain vigilant. Time will tell whether this was a positive innovation for the classroom, or one full of unintended consequences. Until then, though, I know that “God's word will not return void.” So, I trust that the positive impact of scripture reading will be greater than any efforts to undermine it. Christina Any final thoughts before we go? Warren If you have not discovered our YouTube channel, check it out here. We now have nearly 200 videos there, and they have attracted tens of thousands of views. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word about our work. I am in Albuquerque next month. If you live in the Land of Enchantment, one of my favorite states, reach out to me. I would love to share a meal or a cup of coffee with you. My email is wsmith@ministrywatch.com. We'd love to have your financial support as we approach our fiscal year end. Just go to www.ministrywatch.com/donate Christina The producer for today's program is Jeff McIntosh. I'm Christina Darnell, along with Warren Smith. Until next time, may God bless you.

America has a milestone birthday coming up: This July, the nation will turn 250. As many pause to reflect on the past 250 years, there's also an opportunity to think about our shared future. While political polarization remains one of the greatest challenges to our democracy, with 65% of Americans saying that they feel exhausted when thinking about politics because of deep partisan divisions, we have more in common than current politics suggest. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, 8 in 10 Americans support compromise between political leaders, and two-thirds agree that democracy—despite its flaws—remains the best form of government.  In this episode of "After the Fact," we speak to Pew's CEO, Susan K. Urahn, and curiosity expert Scott Shigeoka, fresh from the TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures event, about how the American "experiment" is going, the state of democracy today, and how we can collectively strengthen the foundation of our nation for the next 250 years.   

Most of us were taught how to work hard, provide, and solve problems. But very few of us were ever taught how to truly love, communicate, or lead our families the way Christ calls us to. That leaves a lot of men frustrated. We work harder, say less, withdraw emotionally, and wonder why our marriages keep drifting further apart. This week, I sit down with Dr. Greg Popcak, the founder of CatholicCounselors.com and host of EWTN's More2Life program, to have one of the most practical conversations we've ever had on marriage, fatherhood, communication, and authentic masculine leadership. In this episode we discuss:

Thank you for joining as we livestream our services. Please let us know if there is a way we can improve your experience.Weekly Guide, outline, and parish notes are all together in the bulletinLet us know you are joining us by completing the virtual Who's Who in the Pew:  https://stmfw.org/iamhereOur ministries continue to run through your faithful giving and financial generosity: https://stmfw.fellowshiponego.com/external/form/ff107cf8-b5de-4153-bdd0-b17e0827154e

Do you know how to connect with your neighbors?According to Pew, the share of Americans who know and trust their neighbors is on the decline. There are a lot of structural reasons why you might not trust the people around you and it can be hard to put yourself out there with people you don't know – and don't want to bother. But getting to know the people who live near you can bring so much safety, connection, and power to your life. So how can you get to know your neighbors – and what's standing in the way?TED Radio Hour producer Katie Monteleone tells Brittany how she built her neighbor community brick by brick – and Brittany hears from experts on why good fences can sometimes make bad neighbors.For more episodes on creating better connections in our lives, check out:Boundaries, bodies, and better sexThe joy of breaking up with dating appsHow to make friends & get good gossipSupport Public Media. Join NPR Plus.Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluseFor handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

If you are taking care of a child and you have a parent over 65, you're among millions across the U.S. in the same life stage.Nearly a quarter of all American adults — and half of all adults in their 40s — fall into this “sandwich generation” category, according to Pew research. And being in the middle of that sandwich can feel ... intense.HealthQ hosts Cara Anthony of KFF Health News and Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio, both in the sandwich generation themselves, are your approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. In this one-hour special about navigating health and caregiving, they tap researchers, physicians, experts, and their own personal experience to explore: Identity: When to start calling yourself a caregiver, and why it matters. FMLA: How to start a conversation with your boss about taking federally protected leave from work. Kids and mental health: How to know it's time to take an anxious child to therapy. Early-onset cancer: What you need to know about spotting diseases that are on the rise among people under 50. The HealthQ team acknowledges the messiness, the humor, and the beauty of this season of life. Come on the journey with us.Guests: Denise Brown, caregiving coach and founder of Caregiving Years Training Academy in Illinois Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families in Washington, D.C. Paris Goodyear-Brown, licensed clinical social worker in Franklin, Tennessee Dr. Veda Giri, director of the Early Onset Cancer Program at Yale Cancer Center This installment is part of HealthQ's reporting on caregiving among the sandwich generation. For more, check out the series wpln.org/healthq.HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. It's a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and KFF Health News.

  Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 631. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show there's a weaponlight review, we talk about: FRT BCG's, Gideon's LR, a Balikli, and a under $200 22lr suppressor   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, Rob, Rusty   Sponsor #1: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - NERO 9   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   What we did in Firearms: GunCon, Match   Announcements: Kat's Rack Defense fund and giveaway closes Sunday https://www.firearmsinsider.tv/giveaway  https://www.givesendgo.com/Katsrackdefensefund  https://www.facebook.com/share/1DoL2dpmoK/    Bandwidth sponsor Patriot Patch Co.  And their Patch of the Month Club! Check out the Pew.Report T-shirts are available through our FRN site, or click the “Merch” tab on Firearmsinsider.tv   AFFILIATES / DISCOUNTS: Walker Defense Research - enter “INSIDER15” for 15% off XS Sights - “GGR20” for 20% off Primary Arms VZ Grips  Brownells Gun Guys Garage discount code - “FRN15OFF” Atibal Optics - enter “FIREARMSINSIDER20” for 20% off 5.11 Tactical PowerTac Lights - enter “GGR” for a real good discount Modern Spartan Systems - “GGR15” for 15% off Global Ordnance Infinite Defense (Infinity Targets) - “PEW15” for 15% off Guns.com Magpul Palmetto State Armory Unique ARs - “GunGearReview” for 10% off CobraTec Knives - “GGR10” for 10% off Nutrient Survival - “GGR10” for 10% off Gideon Optics - “GGR” or “INSIDER” for 10% off Lone Wolf Arms US Optics - “INSIDER15” for 15% off Camorado - “FIREARMSINSIDER” for 5% off Optics Planet Midway USA Strike Industries North Forest Arms - “GGR” for 10% off Kini SafeAlert - “GGR” for 20% off FoxTrot Mike - “GGR” for 10% off XTech Tactical - “GGR10” for 10% off Die Free Co ZeroTech Optics - “GGR” for 20% off BattleHawk Armory Goliath Defense - “GGR” for 10% off holsters Classic Firearms  True Shot Ammo  Next Level Armament NightStick Hi-Point - “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com CMC Triggers - “GGR26” for 10% off   ROB - Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual co-hosts and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Firearms Radio Network and/or their employers. This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Main Topic is sponsored by: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. With triggers for AR's, AK's, pistols, and bolt guns, CMC can make your firearms trigger great. Proudly made in Texas with strong morals and values, giving you confidence that you are buying one of the best triggers out there. Choose Confidence, choose quality, choose CMC    Our CMC Product of the week is - Flat Remington 700 adjustable trigger   Use Code “GGR26” for 10% off at CMCTriggers.com   Main Topic: Product Review Chad - Inforce ARC 650   Product Spotlight and Discussion:    KAK DBC Down Vent, Dual Ejector bolt carrier MSRP - $224.95   Gideon Guardian LR 5-25×56 MSRP - $599.99 code GGR for 10% off   Sponsor #3: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. Hi-Point Firearms, made by the American working man for the American working man.   Our Hi-Point Product of the week is - HP-15 300 blk Pistol in Gold (see cool new brace)   Visit hi-pointfirearms.com and check out their line of products Use code “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com   EAA Balikli BLK MSRP - $669.00   Warrior Systems Legionary 22 Suppressor MSRP - $189.99   Sponsor #4: XS Sights   For over 25 years, XS Sights has helped you get on target faster. Offering tritium sights in all different types and styles, low light is no longer an obstacle. Most options come with a brightly colored photoluminescent ring around the tritium. That colored ring makes them work great in the daylight also. XS Sights has sight styles for everyone: Big Dot's, Ghost Rings, Standard Notch and Post, Minimalist, Suppressor Height, all offering tritium options. Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - Magazine extensions for Walther   Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, pound for pound, podcast on the network We will see you next week We are OUT!  

A new Pew Research survey covering 36 countries and two territories shows Donald Trump's global ratings have declined sharply, and how confidence in the United States as a reliable partner has also fallen. The survey finds widespread scepticism about Trump's handling of trade, Gaza, Iran and the Ukraine war, with many traditional American allies expressing declining trust in Washington. In #CutTheClutter episode 1855, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta breaks down what the latest Pew data reveals about Trump's standing across the world, America's changing global image, and how India & Pakistan are on opposite ends.----more----Read Pew Research survey copy here: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/pg_2026.06.23_us-image-2026_report.pdf

Tell me if you've ever said something like this before: “If my boss wasn't such a jerk, I'd like my job.” “If my wife would just listen to me, we'd be able to be happy.” "If only my friends would stop doing x, y, or z, I'd be able to be myself.” This blame game is a favorite tool of the enemy going all the way back to Eden. As long as we're focused on what other people aren't doing right or how they're hurting us and waiting on them to change, we're not facing ourselves and becoming the saints we're called to be. In this episode, we're talking about why so many of us feel stuck. The simple answer is that we fall into this trap that says happiness and freedom depend on other people changing their behavior, and that's not at all the case. We'll get into:

Join us for the second part of our conversation with John Edwards (Just A Guy in the Pew)!This week we finish up John's testimony as he shares how surrendering to God's mercy radically changed his life and emphasizes the importance of community for men.If you've ever felt stuck in shame, isolated by pride, or unsure how to deepen your relationship with Christ and others, this episode is for you!https://justaguyinthepew.com/https://store.justaguyinthepew.com/

  Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 630. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show, Rusty has some mag reviews, we discuss the new Hawke HD 1-8, a new bi-pod, F'd Rost Martins, and the new Montana   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, Rob, Rusty   Sponsor #1: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. With triggers for AR's, AK's, pistols, and bolt guns, CMC can make your firearms trigger great. Proudly made in Texas with strong morals and values, giving you confidence that you are buying one of the best triggers out there. Choose Confidence, choose quality, choose CMC    Our CMC Product of the week is - AR15/10 - Flat single stage purple    Use Code “GGR26” for 10% off at CMCTriggers.com   What we did in Firearms:   Announcements: Kat's Rack Defense fund and giveaway https://www.firearmsinsider.tv/giveaway  https://www.givesendgo.com/Katsrackdefensefund  https://www.facebook.com/share/1DoL2dpmoK/    Bandwidth sponsor Patriot Patch Co.  And their Patch of the Month Club! Check out the Pew.Report T-shirts are available through our FRN site, or click the “Merch” tab on Firearmsinsider.tv   AFFILIATES / DISCOUNTS: Walker Defense Research - enter “INSIDER15” for 15% off XS Sights - “GGR20” for 20% off Primary Arms VZ Grips  Brownells Gun Guys Garage discount code - “FRN15OFF” Atibal Optics - enter “FIREARMSINSIDER20” for 20% off 5.11 Tactical PowerTac Lights - enter “GGR” for a real good discount Modern Spartan Systems - “GGR15” for 15% off Global Ordnance Infinite Defense (Infinity Targets) - “PEW15” for 15% off Guns.com Magpul Palmetto State Armory Unique ARs - “GunGearReview” for 10% off CobraTec Knives - “GGR10” for 10% off Nutrient Survival - “GGR10” for 10% off Gideon Optics - “GGR” or “INSIDER” for 10% off Lone Wolf Arms US Optics - “INSIDER15” for 15% off Camorado - “FIREARMSINSIDER” for 5% off Optics Planet Midway USA Strike Industries North Forest Arms - “GGR” for 10% off Kini SafeAlert - “GGR” for 20% off FoxTrot Mike - “GGR” for 10% off XTech Tactical - “GGR10” for 10% off Die Free Co ZeroTech Optics - “GGR” for 20% off BattleHawk Armory Goliath Defense - “GGR” for 10% off holsters Classic Firearms  True Shot Ammo  Next Level Armament NightStick Hi-Point - “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com CMC Triggers - “GGR26” for 10% off   ROB - Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual co-hosts and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Firearms Radio Network and/or their employers. This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Main Topic is sponsored by: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. Hi-Point Firearms, made by the American working man for the American working man.   Our Hi-Point Product of the week is - 1095 EDGE   Visit hi-pointfirearms.com and check out their line of products Use code “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com   Main Topic: Product Review or Updates on previous reviews Rusty - ETS Omega Magazines   Product Spotlight and Discussion:    Hawke Vantage HD 30 1-8x24 5.56 BDC reticle MSRP - $469.00                                                                                Spartan Javelin Lite TL MSRP - $170.00   Sponsor #3: XS Sights   For over 25 years, XS Sights has helped you get on target faster. Offering tritium sights in all different types and styles, low light is no longer an obstacle. Most options come with a brightly colored photoluminescent ring around the tritium. That colored ring makes them work great in the daylight also. XS Sights has sight styles for everyone: Big Dot's, Ghost Rings, Standard Notch and Post, Minimalist, Suppressor Height, all offering tritium options. Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - Plus 5 mag extension for Smith & Wesson M&P   Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   Rost Martin RM1F MSRP - $469.00   Montana Knife Company - The Montana MSRP - $390.00   Sponsor #4: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - NILE OD Green grip panels   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, Costco sized podcast on the network We are out  

How do you stay true to Christ? I hear this question so often. People are creatures of habit; when things get difficult, it's easy for us to go back to our bad habits, our addictions, our sins. As the book of Proverbs says, we so often go back to our sins the way a dog goes back to its vomit. What I've discovered in my life is that the key to staying faithful to Christ is to understand the gift that He's given you. That's what we're talking about in this episode. We'll get into:

Michael Smerconish sits down with Pew Research Center's Jocelyn Kiley to discuss the organization's newly released political typology, which divides Americans into nine distinct political groups. With nearly half of Americans now identifying as independents, what does the data reveal about the country's evolving political identity? Kiley explains how Pew's research goes beyond traditional Democrat-versus-Republican labels, why polarization continues to grow, and what these new political tribes tell us about the future of American politics. Plus, Michael shares his own surprising results from Pew's political quiz. Original air date 16 June 2026. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join us for part one of our conversation with John Edwards (Just A Guy in the Pew)!Unlock the transformative power of humility and authentic community in this gripping episode. From a life marked by addiction, loneliness, and fractured faith, John shares how confronting his deepest wounds and surrendering to God's mercy radically changed his trajectory—ultimately leading him to become a leader in men's ministry.If you've ever felt stuck in shame, isolated by pride, or unsure how to deepen your relationship with Christ and others, this episode is for you!https://justaguyinthepew.com/https://store.justaguyinthepew.com/

Mike joined Chris Cillizza on Substack Live where they analyzed why California takes so long to count ballots, detailing how logistics and funding create a perception of dysfunction rather than deliberate corruption. They also dove into a recent Pew poll finding that Americans unique globally dislike their fellow countrymen, tracing this data to cultural polarization and strict two-party sorting. Finally, breaking down why the actual power of U.S. military and technological capacity historically outlasts its moral reputation abroad. Produced by Corey Wara Video and Social Media by Geoff Craig Do you have questions or comments, or just want to say hello? Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com For full Pesca content and updates, check out our website at https://www.mikepesca.com/⁠ For ad-free content or to become a Pesca Plus subscriber, check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ For Mike's daily takes on Substack, subscribe to The Gist List https://mikepesca.substack.com/ Follow us on Social Media:⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pescagist/ X https://x.com/pescami TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@pescagist To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠sales@amplitudemediapartners.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  Welcome to the Firearms Insider Gun & Gear Review Podcast episode 629. This episode is brought to you by Walker Defense, XS Sights, Hi-Point Firearms, and CMC Triggers. In this show there's a MAC IX review. We talk with Rimfire Radio about Odin's Trail, a FPC 22, and a competition 22 trigger.   As you may know, we showcase guns, gear, and anything else you might be interested in. We do our best to evaluate products from an unbiased and honest perspective.   I'm Chad Wallace, host of the most dedicated firearms podcast around With me tonight are: Tony, AR-Drew and The Gat Lab    Sponsor #1: Hi-Point     Hi-Point firearms has been crafting American made firearms for over 30 years. If you are looking for your first firearm, or just want something fun for the range, Hi-Point has you covered with models including handguns, pistol caliber carbines, and AR15's. They even have a new suppressor line. Hi-Point firearms can be found at extremely affordable prices, making them available for anyone that wants to protect themselves and/or their families. Every Hi-Point also comes with a lifetime warranty and most of their products are 50 state legal. Hi-Point Firearms, made by the American working man for the American working man.   Our Hi-Point Product of the week is - JXP 10   Visit hi-pointfirearms.com and check out their line of products Use code “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com    What we did in Firearms:   Announcements: Kat's Rack Defense fund and giveaway https://www.firearmsinsider.tv/giveaway  https://www.givesendgo.com/Katsrackdefensefund  https://www.facebook.com/share/1DoL2dpmoK/    Bandwidth sponsor Patriot Patch Co.  And their Patch of the Month Club! Check out the Pew.Report T-shirts are available through our FRN site, or click the “Merch” tab on Firearmsinsider.tv   AFFILIATES / DISCOUNTS: Walker Defense Research - enter “INSIDER15” for 15% off XS Sights - “GGR20” for 20% off Primary Arms VZ Grips  Brownells Gun Guys Garage discount code - “FRN15OFF” Atibal Optics - enter “FIREARMSINSIDER20” for 20% off 5.11 Tactical PowerTac Lights - enter “GGR” for a real good discount Modern Spartan Systems - “GGR15” for 15% off Global Ordnance Infinite Defense (Infinity Targets) - “PEW15” for 15% off Guns.com Magpul Palmetto State Armory Unique ARs - “GunGearReview” for 10% off CobraTec Knives - “GGR10” for 10% off Nutrient Survival - “GGR10” for 10% off Gideon Optics - “GGR” or “INSIDER” for 10% off Lone Wolf Arms US Optics - “INSIDER15” for 15% off Camorado - “FIREARMSINSIDER” for 5% off Optics Planet Midway USA Strike Industries North Forest Arms - “GGR” for 10% off Kini SafeAlert - “GGR” for 20% off FoxTrot Mike - “GGR” for 10% off XTech Tactical - “GGR10” for 10% off Die Free Co ZeroTech Optics - “GGR” for 20% off BattleHawk Armory Goliath Defense - “GGR” for 10% off holsters Classic Firearms  True Shot Ammo  Next Level Armament NightStick Hi-Point - “GGR” FOR $20 off a Hi-Point firearm at ShootAmmo.com CMC Triggers - “GGR26” for 10% off   ROB - Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual co-hosts and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Firearms Radio Network and/or their employers. This is NOT legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. Viewer discretion is advised.   Main Topic is sponsored by: XS Sights   For over 25 years, XS Sights has helped you get on target faster. Offering tritium sights in all different types and styles, low light is no longer an obstacle. Most options come with a brightly colored photoluminescent ring around the tritium. That colored ring makes them work great in the daylight also. XS Sights has sight styles for everyone: Big Dot's, Ghost Rings, Standard Notch and Post, Minimalist, Suppressor Height, all offering tritium options. Available for a plethora of firearms types, from shotguns to handguns, XS sights has you covered for all your low light sighting needs.   Our XS Sights Product of the week is - Minimalist Revolver Night Sights for Smith & Wesson 629   Use Code “GGR20” for 20% off of almost everything at xssights.com   Main Topic: Product Review   Chad - MAC IX   Product Spotlight and Discussion:    Rimfire Radio crap https://firearmsradio.net/category/podcasts/rimfire-radio-show/ https://www.instagram.com/rimfireradio/ https://rimfireradio.com/   Odin Works Trail 22 MSRP - $299.00   Sponsor #3: Walker Defense Research   Walker Defense provides shooters with the finest, most innovative, quality, tactical accessories and firearm components around. From their NILE grip panels to their NERO muzzle brakes, no details are ever left behind. Only top quality materials are used in the manufacturing process. Together, all of this gives you some of the best firearm performance around. Everything they have to offer is proudly made in the USA. Walker Defense, where American ingenuity meets bleeding edge technology.   Our Walker Defense Product of the week is - NERO 9   Use code “INSIDER15” FOR 15% OFF everything at walkerdr.com   Timney Competition 10/22 trigger MSRP - $299.99   Smith & Wesson M&P FPC 22lr MSRP - $549.00   Sponsor #4: CMC Triggers    CMC triggers is the creator of the original, drop in cartridge style AR trigger. CMC has been in  aerospace manufacturing for over 30 years. This gives you peace of mind knowing that every trigger is of the utmost quality. Their patented design ensures a crisp, short, trigger pull across their whole line of triggers. With triggers for AR's, AK's, pistols, and bolt guns, CMC can make your firearms trigger great. Proudly made in Texas with strong morals and values, giving you confidence that you are buying one of the best triggers out there. Choose Confidence, choose quality, choose CMC    Our CMC Product of the week is - Flat Single Stage drop in for the M&P 15/22   Use Code “GGR26” for 10% off at CMCTriggers.com   Listener Feedback None   2nd is for Everyone Diversity Shoot Events simonsaystrain on instagram 2nd is for Everyone Facebook 2A4E Web Page   Wrap up: Send questions, comments, or feedback to - gungearreview@gmail.com Remember to Subscribe and Leave us an iTunes Review Be sure to visit the Firearms Insider at www.firearmsinsider.tv Check us out on Facebook, X, and InstaGram @firearmsinsider  Subscribe to our Rumble channel  Please check out all our great sponsors Thank you for listening to the “LARGEST”, pound for pound, podcast on the network We are out  

Chuck Warren, co-host of Breaking Battlegrounds, heard every Saturday at 9 AM right here on 960 The Patriot, joins Seth in studio for the full hour to talk about a Pew poll on the best President of the past 40 years. Remembering United Flight 93. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Fortune 250 company's Salesman of the Year. Devoted husband. Faithful Catholic father and a 17-year addiction no one knew about, including his wife. John Edwards spent nearly two decades living two lives at once. He closed sales by day, chased down his dealer by afternoon, and kept the mask on at home so well that no one knew. It held together right up until the morning he sat in a jail cell on Good Friday with nothing left to control. This is the story of how a man hits the absolute bottom and finds out it was never the end of his story. Today, John Heinen and Devin Schadt sit down with John to talk about what actually drives addiction, why isolation is the devil's first move on a man, and how the wound of "am I enough" sends so many men looking for affirmation in all the wrong places. John Edwards is the founder of Pew Ministries and host of the Just a Guy in the Pew podcast. Get a signed copy of John Edwards' book: https://store.justaguyinthepew.com/collections/frontpage/products/power-made-perfect-finding-true-strength-in-christ-autographed-book Learn more - https://justaguyinthepew.com

God did not create us to have a mediocre marriage. My good friend Paul George, the author of Rethink Happiness and Holy Grit, joins us today to discuss common ways our marriages get put on the back burner and how to make sure that our union is treated like the sacrament that it is. In this episode we're talking about:

As Catholics, we treat Mary with a particular sense of reverence and honor. But sometimes it's hard to know how to relate to her, and how to open ourselves up to a relationship with her without feeling like we're somehow taking time away from her Son. The truth is that she always brings us closer to Jesus, so the time we spend with her is time spent with Him. That's what my friend John Heinen, executive director of The Catholic Gentleman, joins us in the pew to talk about. Today, we're going to talk about:

This episode of Double Tap is brought to you by: Rost Martin (Code: WLSISLIFE) Night Fision (Code: WLSISLIFE) Blue Alpha Bowers Group (Code: WLS) Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171 Public   Show Titles   GOA GOALS Aug 1-2 in Iowa. https://goals.goa.org/ JUNE 20th, 2026 GunCon.net Tickets on sale now. Use code AGENCY171 DEAR WLS Question from Savage's Hair Stylist from PA I was a member of a local firearms forum that is shutting down. I bought and sold guns and gear through that forum locally with good success (mostly in-person meetings, not shipping). Since its closing I recently joined GAFS Hub at Nicks suggestion. What is the “standard procedure” for GAFS Hub, TAC Swap, etc? I see that some people hand write the date on a piece of paper next to the item for sale. What are the expectations for shipping and payment? Paid in full or partial before shipping? Paypal friends and family? Im interested in participating but want to understand how it works first.Thanks, Savage's Hair Stylist Question from Agent J Freedom from Illinois Have you heard of these people? I have purchased two completed uppers from them and they run great. Prices are very fair. Just thought I'd share. Home Agent J Freedom Question from Bill T from Texas Bill TI am looking into building a AR-9. Would you rather a Glock style mag adapter ( I don't have a Glock) or the Exomags from Mean Arms? I already had the lower. Thanks Question from Zachary V from MI Hey guys with all the misinformation and misinformed masses out there where do you go to find verifiable information about guns and accessories? I used to have a couple of places where I knew the information was vetted but they all went away. Reddit is a cesspool and Facebook groups are full of boomer fudds. How do you vet a new source for information?Thanks Zachary V Question from Rob K from Connecticut Rob KDear WLS Hey guys this question is mainly for Shawn. I'm interested in getting Pew-locker for my collection and ammo stocks. I was wondering how the ammo part of the site worked? I have close to 20 different calibers in my collection, and almost 4 dozen different types of brand names, bullet types, grains, steel, brass, copper washed, corrosive and non-corrosive. Does it know how many rounds to a box? Does Pew-locker track all of these things and have the ability to subtract when using ammo, then assign it to the gun I used it through? Thanks guys keep up the great work!!!! #WLS is life!!! GUN INDUSTRY NEWS THEFIREARMBLOG SIG Sauer MH322 Remotely Operated Payload for Unmanned Platforms The SIG Sauer MH322, from the company's Advanced Concepts Division, is a lightweight remotely operated payload designed for unmanned aerial or ground platforms rather than a conventional handheld firearm. It represents SIG Sauer's exploration into weaponized drone and remote weapon system technology amid the growing use of armed drones in modern warfare. Specific technical specifications such as caliber, weight, or exact armament are not detailed in available sources. THETRUTHABOUTGUNS Charter Arms Target Mastiff 9mm Revolver The Charter Arms Target Mastiff is a large-frame, 5-shot stainless steel revolver chambered in 9mm with a 6″ barrel, weighing 29 oz. It features a Picatinny rail for optics, combat rubber grips, and is designed for target shooting with balanced weight distribution. The TTAG review evaluates its reliability, accuracy, and shootability as a 9mm revolver. SHOOTINGNEWSWEEKLY Lima Six Belt Fed Upper for the AR-15 The Lima Six is a belt-fed upper receiver designed to install on any mil-spec AR-15 or M16 lower receiver, converting it to belt-fed capability in 5.56 NATO. It features a stretched receiver design that requires an A5-length buffer system and aims to use as many standard AR-15 components as possible for affordability and reliability compared to traditional belt-fed options. It is manufactured in the USA with a lifetime warranty and is positioned as an accessible option for enthusiasts. THEFIREARMBLOG Sig Sauer P211-GT4 Carry and P211-GT5 Full-Size Non-Compensated Models SIG Sauer releases non-compensated variants of the P211 platform. The P211-GT4 (4.2″ barrel, carry configuration) and P211-GT5 (5″ bull barrel, full-size) retain the steel frame, alloy grip module with G10 panels, SIG-LOC PRO optic-ready slide, ambidextrous controls, flat SAO trigger, and P320-compatible magazines while removing the integral compensator for broader competition, duty, suppressor, and departmental compatibility. SHOOTINGNEWSWEEKLY SOG and Cold Steel Boot Knife Gear Review Shooting News Weekly published a gear review by Tim Stetzer on June 6, 2026, examining boot knives from SOG and Cold Steel as everyday carry and defensive tools. The article highlights the Cold Steel model's injection-molded Kray-Ex handle over a full tang, which provides a rubber-like textured grip for secure handling. It discusses their suitability for concealed carry in a boot or similar locations. THEOUTDOORWIRE Crosman Raiden Full Auto BB Rifle Crosman Corporation introduced the Raiden (model CFAR-E BB), its first battery-powered full-automatic BB rifle. The select-fire airgun offers both semi-auto and full-auto modes, is powered by a 1500mAh rechargeable battery with USB charger, and uses a drop-out 80-round magazine for 4.5mm (.177) steel BBs. It is listed as new for 2026 in the Crosman catalog. THEOUTDOORWIRE RCBS 1776 Edition Rock Chucker Supreme Press and Die Sets RCBS has released a limited-edition 1776 Series to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States. The lineup includes a specially finished Rock Chucker Supreme single-stage press and six cartridge-specific die sets packaged in a custom wooden presentation box with RCBS heritage graphics. All products are Made in USA and maintain the standard line's strength and reliability. THEFIREARMBLOG Beretta 94X Performance Beretta has released the 94X Performance, a competition-oriented evolution of the 90 series built on a new longer Vertec Pro steel frame with extended geometry for a higher, more natural grip and 20-round flush magazine capacity. Key upgrades include an upswept beavertail, raised trigger undercut, 3 mm lower RDO optic cut, Xtreme-S trigger with short/fast reset, cold hammer forged barrel with advanced steel, redesigned firing pin/extractor with elastomer buffer, reshaped polymer grips with palm swell and aggressive checkering, refined low-profile safety levers, 1 mm fiber optic front sight, negatively inclined serrated rear sight, and graphite grey finish. A limited Launch Edition features DLC finish with acid-green accents and aluminum grips with Beretta 500 3D-printed inserts; 94X magazines are compatible with 90-series pistols but not vice versa. THEFIREARMBLOG Off Grid Operator Ti Purpose-Built 5.56 Titanium Suppressor Off Grid Suppressors has released the Operator Ti, a monolithic additively manufactured (3D-printed) aerospace-grade titanium suppressor optimized specifically for 5.56 NATO. The dedicated design provides superior sound and flash reduction along with more consistent POI shift compared to multi-caliber suppressors. It is direct-thread mounted and carries a lifetime warranty. SOLDIERSYSTEMS USMC Issues Sole Source Notice for Drone Round LLC 5.56mm L Variant Anti-Drone Rounds The USMC Program Manager for Ammunition (PdM AMMO) has issued a sole-source notice for an ID/IQ contract to Drone Round LLC for its 5.56mm “L Variant” Anti-Drone Rounds. The kinetic munition is the only one that meets Marine Corps counter-small UAS requirements and provides drop-in compatibility with no modifications, specialized receivers, or additional training required for M27, M4, and M4A1 platforms. The product launched earlier in 2026; contract award is estimated for December 2026. PEW REPORT Aero Precision Operational Challenges and Recapitalization The article questions whether recent difficulties signal the end for Aero Precision, a major AR-15 parts and receiver manufacturer. Widespread customer complaints include delayed orders, poor communication, and limited stock availability as of early 2026. The company has not filed for bankruptcy and states it is undergoing recapitalization while continuing limited operations and sales. Before we let you go – JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA We'd love if you supported the show, join Agency 171 at agency171.com. Lot's of prizes, rewards and kick ass swag. No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember – Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time! Nick – @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy – @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron – @machinegun_moses Savage – @savage1r Shawn – @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado