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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

This week, we're stopping by a gym using AI-powered equipment, going over a new cyber apprenticeship program, and highlighting new […]

From the ongoing drama in Maine, where a Senate candidate's alleged misconduct has sparked a heated debate, to the latest developments in the Iran conflict, this episode covers it all. Larry O'Connor, dives into the details of the preliminary hearing for the accused assassin of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative commentator, and discusses the implications of the case. He also talks to Libby Emmons, editor-in-chief of the Post Millennial, about the evidence presented in court and the potential motives behind the crime. The episode also touches on the ongoing saga of Mitch McConnell's health, with reports of his hospitalization and potential retirement from the Senate. Larry shares his thoughts on the situation and the potential impact on the Republican majority. Additionally, the episode covers the latest news from Venezuela, where an earthquake has left thousands in need of aid, and discusses the importance of supporting relief efforts. In a thought-provoking segment, Larry O'Connor discusses the growing concern over data centers and their impact on local communities. He shares two stories from Prince George's County and Prince William County, where residents are speaking out against the development of large data centers. This is a timely and important issue that affects many Americans, and our host provides valuable insights and analysis.Become a Townhall VIP member with promo code "LARRY": https://townhall.com/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The latest local news impacting D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia Today's stories include: A new list of the best and worst cities for safe driving is out... and DC did not do well, a special session in Maryland on redistricting, and a new data center in Prince William County is being halted. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is it, the final episode! Danny gives us his closing arguments, reflecting on all he's learned about the data center fight in communities across the United States. We listen in on Danny's conversation with prolific author and tech critic Cory Doctorow about the centaur/reverse centaur theory of how we use technology and how technology uses us. And, we take another quick trip to some of the communities we've visited along the way: Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, Davis, West Virginia, and Memphis, Tennessee, to get the latest on their fights. When it's all said and done, the greatest lesson from the data center clashes may be in the value of agency, and that the way to protect communities from harmful data centers is to ensure that technology serves communities, not the other way around.In this episode, we hear from:Cory Doctorow: Science fiction author, activist and journalist whose recent books include “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse And What To Do About It” and “The Reverse Centaur's Guide To Life After AI.”Nikki Forrester: Helped launch Tucker United, now serves as the director of communications and spokesperson, lives in Tucker County, WV, and is a journalist. Elena Schlossenberg: Our local tour guide, and deeply involved in grassroots organizing in Prince William County and Loudoun County. She has a deep knowledge of land-use management and serves as the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County.Amber Sherman: Local policy organizer in Memphis.Delegate John McAuliff: Recently elected Delegate for Fauquier and Loudoun counties in Northern Virginia, flipping the seat by running largely on data center regulation. Samuel Black: Award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist working with More Perfect Union. He covers tech, labor, energy, finance, housing, and U.S. politics. Resources:Corruption is Driving Up Your Electricity Bill  Cory Doctorow's blog, CraphoundSamuel Black's More Perfect Union coverage from BoxtownLocal coverage from Tucker County about Fundamental Data's visit, and how local leaders reactedThe latest updates from Prince William County about the Data Center Gateway caseA tool tracking every data center moratorium

Drop us a note about the podcast. Fear has a way of shrinking your world down to whatever headline is loudest and whatever person seems most powerful. We push back on that impulse by reading Psalm 118 out loud and letting it set the order of operations: God first, refuge first, obedience first. “The Lord is for me, so I will have no fear” isn't sentimental, it's a claim about where courage actually comes from when life gets ugly and trust in people starts to wobble.From there, we move through John 12 as Jesus approaches Passover, Mary anoints His feet, and the crowds celebrate a King who rides in on a donkey. It's a vivid reminder that real worship can look wasteful to cynical eyes, that betrayal often hides behind moral talk, and that God's plan keeps moving even when leaders try to clamp down on it. We also read Proverbs on marriage and speak plainly about responsibility, satisfaction, and faithfulness inside the covenant, plus Proverbs 15 on wisdom, humility, and the kind of words God delights in.We then honor Medal of Honor recipient John Edward Butts and reflect on leadership under fire, before shifting into America's Christian heritage with a look at the stated Christian purposes behind Yale and Princeton. Whether you're here for Bible reading, Christian marriage guidance, faith and culture, or Christian education history, the thread stays consistent: no policy can replace repentance, and no institution can fix what only God can heal.Subscribe for more, share this with someone who needs steadier footing, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What part of Psalm 118 do you need to remember most right now?#AmericanHeritage#ChristianNation#AmericanEducation Support the showThe American Soul Podcasthttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1791934/subscribeCountryside Book Serieshttps://www.amazon.com/Countryside-Book-J-T-Cope-IV-ebook/dp/B00MPIXOB2 

CAPRA accreditation sets the national standard for excellence in parks and recreation and agencies that go through the process are really committing to operating at the highest level across everything they do. From strengthening day-to-day operations to helping agencies plan for the future, CAPRA accreditation plays an important role in delivering the best possible services to our communities. On the latest episode of Open Space Radio, we explore how CAPRA accreditation is shaping park and recreation agencies, leadership and communities across the country. We also dive into how the newly reimagined 2027 CAPRA standards are helping make accreditation more adaptable and accessible for agencies of all sizes. Joining us for the conversation are three leaders with deep experience in the CAPRA process: Janet Bartnik, director of parks and recreation for Prince William County, Virginia, and member of the CAPRA standards reimagination team (and currently serving as deputy chief transformation officer for the Prince William County Transformation Management Office) Chris Bass, director of parks and recreation for DeKalb County, Georgia, and former CAPRA Commission chair Ray Bivens, director of recreation and parks for St. Mary's County, Maryland, and current CAPRA Commission chair Together, they share insights on what CAPRA accreditation looks like in practice, how it shapes agency culture and leadership, and why it should be viewed as more than just a checklist or designation. Tune in to the full episode below to learn: How CAPRA accreditation helps agencies build a culture of continuous improvement Why the updated 2027 standards are designed to be more flexible and adaptable for agencies of all types The unexpected benefits of accreditation, from staff development to recruitment and retention How accredited agencies use CAPRA standards in their day-to-day operations, not just during accreditation reviews And much more! Ready to experience the power of CAPRA? Check out The Power of CAPRA Accreditation to access a helpful toolkit so you can make the case for CAPRA within your organization. And, from May 20 through July 31, 2026, agencies beginning the CAPRA accreditation process will receive a waived application fee — a $130 value. To qualify, agencies must submit their CAPRA application and complete the checkout process by July 31, 2026. This season of Open Space Radio is sponsored by BCI Burke Outdoor play creates opportunities for connection, creativity and growth. At BCI Burke, they design play environments that inspire exploration and support the high standards park and recreation professionals strive for — including CAPRA accreditation — helping create spaces where everyone feels welcome to move, play and belong. Learn more at bciburke.com  

Most people who care about AI risk are focused on what happens inside the models. Elena Schlossberg has spent 12 years focused on what happens outside them - the concrete, the transmission lines, the water, and the electricity bill landing in your mailbox.She founded the Coalition to Protect Prince William County in Northern Virginia after Amazon Web Services quietly proposed a data center campus in 2014 and expected the surrounding community to absorb the cost of the transmission line it required. Not just the visual blight. The actual bill.“Your electric utility can exercise eminent domain over your property,” she told John Sherman on this week's For Humanity, “and then make you pay for it, because it's public infrastructure.”What the data center industry found, she argues, is a structural weakness inside public utility law. They build private infrastructure. They socialize the cost. And they've been doing it at scale for over a decade.The coalition fought Amazon and Dominion Energy for four years. They proved that 97% of the power from a proposed transmission line would serve Amazon. They developed a cost allocation policy to make the company pay. They lost the first round, kept going, and eventually won. That fight became a template.Data Center Alley is not a local storyJohn opened the conversation by asking where the national movement stands. The answer is: further along than most people realize.Virginia alone has more data centers than China. Prince William County - a single county - has roughly 130 active facilities and another 130 planned. Transmission lines are being routed through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia to feed the demand. Property is being seized in states that will never see the economic benefit. Communities that didn't vote for any of this are watching concrete replace farmland and small businesses.“Those people are pissed,” Elena said, describing residents in Pennsylvania and Maryland whose land is being taken not even for development in their own state. “Their property is being taken, not even for economic development in their own state.”She also pushed back on the framing that opposition to data centers equals handing a win to China. Virginia already beat China on data center count by itself. The question, she said, is who pays and who profits - and right now, the public pays and the corporations profit.The jobs argument doesn't hold upOne of the cleaner moments in the conversation came when Elena took apart the economic case for data centers.The industry pitches construction jobs. Electricians, plumbers, concrete. But construction work ends. Long-term employment inside a data center is minimal - the parking lots are the tell. “They're usually empty,” she said.Meanwhile, the data center expansion is actively hollowing out existing local economies. In Prince William County, Amazon bought Maryfield - a 38-acre family-run garden center with a cafe, a dog park, native plants, and real staff. Gone. And with it went the space for light industrial businesses, plumbing suppliers, electricians' shops - the backbone employers that actually sustain a community over decades.John extended the argument further: the jobs being replaced aren't just in the county. They're everywhere. The work happening inside those chips - the calls, the analysis, the design, the writing - is work that was done by people. A former Verizon customer service call connected Elena's point to something concrete. A woman called for help. The AI on the other end couldn't solve her problem, kept changing accents (American, then maybe female, then possibly Australian), and seemed to be learning from her in real time. Helpful to nobody. Replacing somebody.Extinction risk: a first encounterThis is where the episode got interesting.John walked Elena through the basic case for AI extinction risk - that the companies building these models say they could cause human extinction, that leading scientists agree, that the developers themselves admit they don't fully understand or control what they're building. He framed it as a curiosity argument: something designed to learn and explore, becoming vastly more intelligent than the people supposedly overseeing it, won't stay inside the guardrails.Elena hadn't heard the argument laid out this way before. Her response was unscripted and worth reading carefully.She doesn't buy the self-awareness framing. From her background as a school counselor, she holds a specific definition of intelligence that includes self-awareness, and she doesn't think current models meet it. But she doesn't dismiss the risk. She pointed to a different path to catastrophe - not a model that wants to destroy us, but one that makes mistakes with enough scale and speed to trigger something we can't reverse. WarGames, she said. Not Terminator.“I don't know that it becomes self-aware,” she said. “But I do believe that you could rely on this kind of AI that could trigger something that ends up being the end of mankind.”What struck her most was the overlap. Whether you're worried about climate acceleration, nuclear codes being delegated to AI systems, or the specific extinction risk scenarios John described, the response is the same: slow down.And her lever for slowing down is the one she's been pulling for 12 years - the power supply.Cut the power. Literally.Elena's argument is more precise than it sounds. She's not advocating for darkness. She's arguing that the data center industry is already financially precarious - revenue to debt ratios are badly lopsided - and that the single most effective way to force a pause is to stop subsidizing their infrastructure costs.When companies have to pay their own bills, they make different decisions. That's the Ford Focus argument she's been making since 2014: give someone a blank check and they pick the Porsche. Make them pay and they optimize.She also raised the immediate health dimension that rarely gets covered. The industry's response to insufficient grid capacity has been “bring your own generation” - gas turbines running 24/7 next to residential communities, emitting some of the most harmful air pollutants known. This is happening now, not in some speculative future.And there's the technology obsolescence angle. John raised the example of an AI-designed rocket engine - printed, fired, functional, and looking like nothing a human would have drawn. The data centers being built today in 2026, based on plans from 2024, will come online in 2029 or 2030. They may already be planning for the wrong hardware. The industry is racing to build infrastructure that could be obsolete before it's finished, on debt it can't service, at community expense.“The way to make this whole thing slow down,” Elena said, “is to say no.”One coalition, or many?The last third of the conversation turned to strategy. John asked directly: if he showed up at one of Elena's data center meetings and asked for 10 minutes to talk about extinction risk, how does that land?Her answer was pragmatic. She's already been in rooms with people who are data-center-adjacent - suppliers, infrastructure vendors, technologists. The moment the full picture gets laid out, eyes open. People who assumed they were in the winning column start seeing the cliff.The movement she describes is already non-partisan by necessity. She votes blue, her husband votes red, they both want clean water and a functioning electricity bill. That, she argues, is the political surface that a serious coalition needs.“The data centers are afraid of exactly you and I talking,” she said.She ended with something close to optimism - 12 years in, she still sees the change happening, elected leaders finally stepping up, the national conversation catching up to what communities in Prince William County have known for years. The table has been set, she said. The question is who shows up to sit at it.For Humanity #84 is on YouTube now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theairisknetwork.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Building Local Power's “The Data Centers Are Coming,” where we journey to some of the most active places in the cross-country battle over data centers in our local communities. We start at the epicenter: Data Center Alley in Loudoun County, Virginia. This once semi-rural community has now been transformed by Big Tech's sprawling data centers, sparking a fight for land, autonomy, and transparency from local residents. What does it feel like living there now? How is it impacting home values, affordability, energy and water usage, electric bills, and the overall well-being of the people who live nearby? We took a road trip to find out. In this episode we hear from:  Elena Schlossenberg: Our local tour guide, and deeply involved in grassroots organizing in Prince William County and Loudoun County. She has a deep knowledge of land use management and is the Executive Director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County.Greg Pirio: A longtime Sterling, VA resident, Greg's home literally sits across the street from a Vantage data center. Greg is an artist and has become an unlikely activist, organizing his neighbors to advocate for local solutions and demand accountability for the relentless noise pollution impacting their daily lives. 

Read more from VPM News:  Spanberger suggests ‘significant policy shifts' to Dominion regulation bills  Scenes from the Virginia State Capitol 2026: a dispatch    Other links:  Prince William County drops legal fight for PW Digital Gateway (Prince William Times)  In this U.S. hot spot for data centers, voters have turned against them (The Washington Post)*  Virginia joins a national effort to ensure only popular vote winners become president (NPR News)  Richmond breaks record with historic spring heatwave (WRIC)  USS Gerald R. Ford breaks record for longest post-Vietnam deployment (Navy Times)  *This outlet uses a paywall.  It's our pledge drive through April 17! You can support our award-winning work by visiting VPM.org/challenges to help us bloom and grow this spring. When you designate your donation to the news challenge, you will help VPM News unlock a $10,000 bonus in support of an informed community!

In the 5 AM Hour: Larry O’Connor and Cassie Smedile discussed: Tax Day: Do you file or extend? Also, the IRS publishes a list of occupations that qualify for ‘no tax on tips’ provision. TMZ Hits DC: The tabloid launches a bureau in Washington and Cassie says it is paying $100,000 for any scandal stories on Congressmen or women. Anti-Trump Judge Halted: A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered an end to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s criminal contempt inquiry into Trump administration officials over last year’s deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador, delivering a second major rebuke to Boasberg and foreclosing further pursuit of the case. PWC Data Center Battle: On Tuesday, April 14, the Prince William Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to drop its legal fight to defend the 2023 rezonings that paved the way for the Digital Gateway, a massive and controversial project that would have spanned more than 1,700 acres in rural western Prince William County. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Wednesday, April 15, 2026 / 5 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Read more from VPM News:  Amending Virginia: Pro- and anti-redistricting camps wield 'fairness' in voter appeals  Richmond Flying Squirrels christen CarMax Park with a 3–2 victory  Richmond City Hall observation deck reopens after 6 years  Updated: Hanover County passes $797M fiscal year 2027 budget    Other links: Gov. Spanberger signs bill to end the renewal of Robert E. Lee license plates in Virginia (WAVY)  Higher education, higher tuition: University of Virginia considers raising tuition (29News)  Va. Court of Appeals stops major data center development in Prince William County (Virginia Mercury)  Richmond schools get additional money for repairs in new budget, but it will be borrowed from future years (The Richmonder)  Our award-winning work is made possible with your donations. Visit vpm.org/donate to support local journalism. 

WMAL GUEST: JEANNIE LACROIX (Republican winner of the Prince William County special election for the Woodbridge District) on flipping a supervisor seat held by Democrats for 38 years, the residency and social media controversies surrounding her opponent, and her top priorities for the Board of County Supervisors. WEBSITE: JeannieForWoodbridge.com READ: GOP flips Woodbridge supervisor seat for first time in 38 years amid Democratic turmoil Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Thursday, March 12, 2026 / 7 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 7 AM hour, Larry O'Connor and Bethany Mandel discussed: GUEST: JEANNIE LACROIX: The Republican winner of the Woodbridge special election joins the show to discuss flipping a long-held Democratic seat in Prince William County. EUROPEAN SANITY: Right-wing groups in the EU Parliament seal a major deal to increase migrant deportations and establish "return hubs" outside the EU. GUEST: KT MCFARLAND: Former Deputy National Security Advisor breaks down Trump's declaration of victory in Iran and the release of strategic oil reserves. BLOOM WATCH: D.C.’s cherry blossoms officially reach the first stage of the bloom process following abnormally warm weather. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Thursday, March 12, 2026 / 7 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3/12/2026 PODCAST Episodes #2327 GUESTS: Dan "The OX", George Moraitis, Jacob Alderman, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Scott Mechkowski  + YOUR CALLS! at 1-888-480-JOHN (5646) and GETTR Live! @jfradioshow #GodzillaOfTruth #TruckingTheTrut  

In the 6 AM hour, Larry O’Connor and Cassie Smedile discussed: CAL THOMAS: Syndicated Columnist Cal Thomas joins to discuss Trump’s Iran strategy and the threat of internal "sleeper cells." SANCTUARY CITIES: Explosive testimony on Capitol Hill reveals the Fairfax County Sheriff declined over 700 ICE detainers for criminals, including child predators and gang members. FAIRFAX OUTRAGE: The family of Stephanie Minter demands accountability for Prosecutor Steve Descano after her alleged killer was repeatedly freed despite police warnings. THE EXODUS: Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and corporate offices flee Washington for Florida and Tennessee, while Mark Zuckerberg splashes $170M on a Miami mansion to escape California taxes. WOODBRIDGE WIN: Republican Jeannie LaCroix flips a Prince William County supervisor seat for the first time in nearly 40 years amid Democratic turmoil. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Wednesday, March 11, 2026 / 6 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 7 AM Hour: Larry O’Connor and Bethany Mandel discussed: WMAL GUEST 7:05 AM - INTERVIEW - JOE DIGENOVA - legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia TOPICS: Supreme Court’s Tariff Ruling and Trump’s Immediate New Levies Add New Uncertainty in Global Trade Students at Battlefield High School in Prince William County, VA walked out of school & skipped class to protest ICE. They misspelled the name of their own school on the poster. USA Men’s and Women’s Hockey Teams both defeat Canada for Olympic Gold Medal. President Trump FaceTimes USA Men’s Hockey Team while Kash Patel parties with team after the win. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @Jgunlock, @patricepinkfile, @bethanyshondark and @heatherhunterdc. Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Monday, February 23, 2026 / 7 AM Hour See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WMAL GUEST: JACOB ALDERMAN (Chairman of the Prince William County Republican Committee) on accusations of cheating during the Prince William County Democratic Committee’s recent election. WEBSITE: PWCGOP.org SOCIAL MEDIA: X.com/PWCGOP READ: Potomac Local on PWC Democratic Committee Election Issues Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Audible and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Monday, February 9, 2026 / 6 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode of the BioTalk with Rich Bendis Podcast brings together leaders from industry, academia, and economic development to unpack the vision behind a new life sciences Innovation District anchored in Prince William County. With introductions to NAUGEN, George Mason University's Institute for Biohealth Innovation, and the Prince William County Department of Economic Development, setting the stage for how each organization contributes to the district's foundation. The guests talk about the life science assets, research strengths, and translational capabilities that define the district and explain why it is positioned to support biotechnology and advanced R&D companies. The conversation explores how the partnership between Prince William County, George Mason University, and the City of Manassas came together, outlining the distinct roles each plays in advancing a shared strategy. The episode also introduces the NISA program, detailing how it supports companies seeking a soft-landing pathway into the district, the types of organizations best suited for the program, and the facilities, talent, and collaborative resources participants can access both immediately and over time. Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Jaehan Park is Founder and CEO of NAUGEN, a global innovation accelerator advancing novel technologies across life sciences and deep tech. With more than 25 years of experience in strategy and business development, he has led collaborations spanning cancer immunotherapy, vaccines, and biologics with global pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions. He leads the NISA Program in partnership with George Mason University and serves as a Mentor-in-Residence at KIC DC, supporting international startups entering U.S. markets. Amy Adams is Executive Director of George Mason University's Institute for Biohealth Innovation, where she advances biohealth research and innovation across more than 300 faculty and thousands of students. Her work focuses on partnerships, shared research infrastructure, and building hubs that connect academia with industry. She is co-leading the development of the Innovation District anchored at Mason's SciTech campus and serves on the boards of BioHealth Innovation and the Association of University Research Parks. Christina Winn leads the Prince William County Department of Economic Development, guiding investment, business growth, and redevelopment efforts across one of Virginia's largest counties. She is overseeing the development of a research-driven Innovation District in partnership with George Mason University and the City of Manassas, supported by a GO Virginia grant. Her career includes leading large-scale economic development initiatives that have driven significant capital investment, job creation, and national visibility for the region.

In the 7 AM hour, Larry O’Connor and Julie Gunlock discussed: WMAL GUEST: JOHN REID (Candidate for Lt. Governor of Virginia) on the Latest From the Campaign Trail WJLA: Prince William County School Board Votes to Reprimand Vice Chair WMAL GUEST: BYRON YORK (Chief Political Correspondent, Washington Examiner) on 'Mamdani's Terrorist Friends of Friends' Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple, Audible and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 / 7 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 7 AM hour, Larry O’Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: WMAL GUEST: KEVIN DAYARATNA (Heritage Foundation's Director for Center for Data Analysis and Chief Statistician) on Climate Hysteria JD VANCE ON X: "Our nation’s capital has some of the worst homicide rates in the world. If this fact doesn’t anger you but President Trump’s efforts to fix it do, you might have a brain worm." IAN LOVEJOY ON X: "Digital Gateway has been thrown out!" Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow Podcasts on Apple, Audible and Spotify Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @JGunlock, @PatricePinkfile, and @HeatherHunterDC Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Website: WMAL.com/OConnor-Company Episode: Friday, August 8, 2025 / 7 AM HourSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the channel! Today, we've got a wild story that proves when you roll with a motorcycle club, the actions of a few can come back to haunt the whole crew—no matter where they are. If you and your boys get into trouble in Virginia, don't be shocked if your brothers in Philly get their clubhouse doors kicked in. That's right, there's no “I” in MC, and today's news shows how everyone can pay the price for a few bad moves. Here's the scoop: Prince William County police, backed by a massive task force of state, federal, and local law enforcement, dropped the hammer Wednesday morning. They hit 14 locations with search warrants, arresting over a dozen suspected motorcycle club members tied to a fight and shooting outside the Babylon Cafe in Woodbridge earlier this spring. We're talking raids in Woodbridge, Manassas, Nokesville, Stafford, Linden, Falls Church, Hampton Roads, and—get this—two spots in Philadelphia. That's a long reach for one incident!So, what's the takeaway? In this episode, we'll discuss: • What triggered this multi-city raid • How club affiliation spreads legal consequences across state lines • The deeper issue of collective accountability in MC culture • And why every club should be paying close attention to how this case unfolds Join Black Dragon, Lavish T. Williams, and Logic as we dissect this coordinated takedown and remind everyone on the set: Brotherhood is powerful — but it comes with a price when things go sideways. Watch live on: Black Dragon Biker TV: /blackdragonbikertv Lavish T. Williams: /@lavishtwilliams Keep It Logical: /keepitlogical In the MC world, one bad call can bring heat to the whole brotherhood. Drop your thoughts in the comments—have you seen this kind of ripple effect before? Smash that like button, subscribe, and ring the bell for more stories like this. Stay safe out there, and I'll catch you in the next one!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-dragon-s-lair-motorcycle-chaos--3267493/support.

Be sure and join us for our next segment of the "Authors Corner" . Our special guest will be 30 year Prince William County Virginia FD veteran Lt. William Niemann.Bill is a retired assistant fire marshal with Prince William County, Virginia, Department of Fire and Rescue. During his thirty-year career, he served as a firefighter, fighter paramedic, company officer, and station commander. The last fourteen years of his career, he was a lieutenant/assistant fire marshal assigned to the arson crimes unit with the county's fire marshal's office. Lieutenant Niemann was the first of one hundred and fifty paramedics in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He also served seventeen years with the United States Coast Guard auxiliary.His first novel "Heavy Fire Showing" is complete and ready to read by one and all. Its going to be another great conversation. We will get the whole skinny. You don't want to miss this one. Join us at the kitchen table on the BEST FIREFIGHTER PODCAST ON THE INTERNET! You can also Listen to our podcast ...we are on all the players #lovethisjob #GiveBackMoreThanYouTake #Oldschool #Tradition See lessBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gettin-salty-experience-firefighter-podcast--4218265/support.

Send Gary a MessageIn this episode, I speak with Chief Tom LaBelle about his lengthy fire-rescue career and the many challenges facing volunteer fire departments. 

Join "Mind Over Murder" podcast hosts Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley as they present a live podcast event on "Advocacy in the Colonial Parkway Murders." The event was recorded before a live audience at the Montclair Public Library in Prince William County, Virginia on Saturday, January 25, 2025.WTKR News 3: One year after development in Colonial Parkway Murders, where do things stand?https://www.wtkr.com/news/in-the-community/historic-triangle/one-year-after-development-in-colonial-parkway-murders-where-do-things-standWon't you help the Mind Over Murder podcast increase our visibility and shine the spotlight on the "Colonial Parkway Murders" and other unsolved cases? Contribute any amount you can here:https://www.gofundme.com/f/mind-over-murder-podcast-expenses?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customerWTVR CBS News:  Colonial Parkway murders victims' families keep hope cases will be solved:https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/colonial-parkway-murders-update-april-19-2024WAVY TV 10 News:  New questions raised in Colonial Parkway murders:https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/new-questions-raised-in-colonial-parkway-murders/Alan Wade Wilmer, Sr. has been named as the killer of Robin Edwards and David Knobling in the Colonial Parkway Murders in September 1987, as well as the murderer of Teresa Howell in June 1989. He has also been linked to the April 1988 disappearance and likely murder of Keith Call and Cassandra Hailey, another pair in the Colonial Parkway Murders.13News Now investigates: A serial killer's DNA will not be entered into CODIS database:https://www.13newsnow.com/video/news/local/13news-now-investigates/291-e82a9e0b-38e3-4f95-982a-40e960a71e49WAVY TV 10 on the Colonial Parkway Murders Announcement with photos:https://www.wavy.com/news/crime/deceased-man-identified-as-suspect-in-decades-old-homicides/WTKR News 3https://www.wtkr.com/news/is-man-linked-to-one-of-the-colonial-parkway-murders-connected-to-the-other-casesVirginian Pilot: Who was Alan Wade Wilmer Sr.? Man suspected in two ‘Colonial Parkway' murders died alone in 2017https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/01/14/who-was-alan-wade-wilmer-sr-man-suspected-in-colonial-parkway-murders-died-alone-in-2017/Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with more than 18,000 followers: https://www.facebook.com/ColonialParkwayCaseYou can also participate in an in-depth discussion of the Colonial Parkway Murders here:https://earonsgsk.proboards.com/board/50/colonial-parkway-murdersMind Over Murder is proud to be a Spreaker Prime Podcaster:https://www.spreaker.comJoin the discussion on our Mind Over MurderColonial Parkway Murders website: https://colonialparkwaymurders.com Mind Over Murder Podcast website: https://mindovermurderpodcast.comPlease subscribe and rate us at your favorite podcast sites. Ratings and reviews are very important. Please share and tell your friends!We launch a new episode of "Mind Over Murder" every Monday morning, and a bonus episode every Thursday morning.Sponsors: Othram and DNAsolves.comContribute Your DNA to help solve cases: https://dnasolves.com/user/registerFollow "Mind Over Murder" on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderOverFollow Bill Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillThomas56Follow "Colonial Parkway Murders" on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColonialParkwayCase/Follow us on InstaGram:: https://www.instagram.com/colonialparkwaymurders/Check out the entire Crawlspace Media network at http://crawlspace-media.com/All rights reserved. Mind Over Murder, Copyright Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley, Another Dog Productions/Absolute Zero ProductionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mind-over-murder--4847179/support.

Please welcome back Grant Newsham, retired marine colonel and author of When China Attacks,  A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japan Defense Forces and the PRC threat.  This is a two-part episode. Grant's biography: https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/author/grant-newsham/ Book link: https://www.regnery.com/9781684513659/when-china-attacks/ A recent article: https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/the-us-in-the-pacific-getting-the?utm_source=substack&publication_id=746580&post_id=151553726&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=ercjf&triedRedirect=true --- One CA is a product of the civil affairs association  and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership. We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.  To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com  or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org --- Special thanks to the site Cool Jazz Hot Bossa for the sample of Cool Jazz Hot Bossa. (59:00). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdWUj2NYDYQ --- Transcript: (Part I) 00:00:05 JACK GAINES Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting@gmail.com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome Grant Newsham, retired Marine Colonel and author of When China Attacks, A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japan Defense Forces and the PRC threat. This is the first of a two-part episode, so let's get started. 00:00:56 GRANT NEWSHAM I was effectively MarforPak's guy in Asia for a number of years. which worked well in both directions. So I was obviously in Japan, but also did a lot of work for them throughout the region, Southeast Asia as well, Taiwan even, which was a lot of fun. 00:01:13 JACK GAINES Yeah. And you've become a foreign policy advocate in the area. 00:01:16 GRANT NEWSHAM Yeah. At some point, maybe seven or eight years ago, figured I'd actually done enough stuff to maybe have a few ideas. So I started writing and speak a lot as well. So I guess I'm part of the commentariat. But I seem to write about once a week some topic related to often Asian defense, but sometimes economics, politics, sometimes organized crime. And I do get invited to speak here and there and seem to get a number of television or radio interviews as well. That's really cool. I didn't say I get invited to good things, but I do get the occasional invitation. I used to think it was because I had such insight. Someone told me not all that long ago that actually, if you'll say yes to an interview, you're likely to get more of them. Because the people who book them, they just want to get somebody on. And I thought it was because of my particular wisdom. 00:02:07 JACK GAINES of my particular wisdom. 00:02:09 GRANT NEWSHAM I'm joking a little bit. But obviously, you must have something useful to say. But it is funny. There's one place in Singapore that calls me a lot. It's like their CNN. And they've been calling me. Probably eight years at least, or almost every time, I'll tell the presenters that basically they don't know what they're talking about. And I always think, well, this is the last one, but they keep calling me up. They mislike you because you're the contrarian. 00:02:34 JACK GAINES mislike you because you're the contrarian. 00:02:36 GRANT NEWSHAM Oh, I can blame things in a way that sort of suits broadcast and that sort of regular people can understand, you know, 00:02:42 GRANT NEWSHAM that sort of regular people can understand, you know, being a regular person myself. 00:02:47 JACK GAINES Yeah, you learn to disagree without offending. 00:02:49 GRANT NEWSHAM Usually. And it's always sort of a relief, actually, when you can have a different look at things. 00:02:56 JACK GAINES That's good. I always thought you were going to say it is a relief sometimes when you just peel the coat off and then yell at them. 00:03:02 GRANT NEWSHAM The facts speak for themselves. Right. And if it's a presenter, their role is different, and they will generally not have the substantive knowledge that most of the people on the show will have. Right. And so much of what I have to say is often not... in line with accepted wisdom, particularly when it comes to Japan. Sure. So it's often that I'll have to present a different take on things, but they don't seem to be offended. 00:03:27 JACK GAINES Right. You mostly talk about Japan in its current defense fashion or in its foreign policy actions. 00:03:33 GRANT NEWSHAM A lot of that because people have a perception of Japan, for example, as a pacifist country. It cannot fight. It's peace loving. Right. etc. They have a nuclear allergy. You know, just the idea of nuclear weapons in Japan is out of the question. You often hear, well, their constitution won't let them fight. And none of those things are actually true. But it's the received wisdom. It's what people think. And when you simply point out the realities of Japan, that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's a country just like every other. And that the stereotypes about it really aren't correct when it comes to defense security. In fact, they use that the Constitution won't let them have a military. You probably heard it. Yeah. That's the idea. And they don't even call it a military. But the fact is they've got a military, which, according to some ratings, is the fifth most powerful in the world. It depends on how you calculate it, of course. But they call it something else. And what is the actual distinction between offensive and defensive weapons? 00:04:35 JACK GAINES It's usually the strike space. If it's inside your own country defending, then it's a defense space. Once you go out and start taking out other people's cities and moving forces in. 00:04:44 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, for example, they don't have much what you call power projection capability very far off their borders. But they do have a submarine fleet, say over 20 submarines. There's no reason you couldn't send them to the coast of China and start sinking ships. 00:04:59 JACK GAINES True. 00:05:00 GRANT NEWSHAM They've got F -16s. You can put long -range missiles on them and you can fly out of ways and cause people a lot of trouble. But their military really, I would say, is not so good at offense. It's not so good at defense either. And that's something that comes as a surprise to a lot of people. 00:05:15 JACK GAINES Well, do they exercise defense and offense? 00:05:18 GRANT NEWSHAM Oh, they have exercises, training, and they put on a pretty good show, particularly when they have visitors come. But they really, until very recently, and even now, they can't do joint operations, which means the air, sea, and ground forces. can't operate together. In fact, they don't even have a radio with which they can communicate easily. They have to jury -rig some relations, these connections. And that's something most people don't understand, because you look at it on paper. Japan has 250 ,000 people in its military, and it's got ships, aircraft, all of it modern and good stuff. 150 ,000 people in its ground self -defense force, their army. But it's not even the sum of its whole. If you imagine each of your limbs, your arms and your legs, each doing whatever it wants without the coordinating function provided by a brain. 00:06:10 JACK GAINES Sounds like me dancing. 00:06:12 GRANT NEWSHAM It would be, yeah. I think that I can picture that, whereas I'm more of an Arthur Murray kind of guy. But it's like that. And nobody can believe that because they think, well, this is the Japanese. It's this advanced modern country, big military, the rich country. And I mean, they can't even do these simple things. Right. The short answer is no, except in some limited circumstances. After 60 years of the U .S.-Japan defense relationship, 80 years after World War II, they still cannot do some of the basic things that a military needs to do, or do them very well, put it that way. But they do train, they exercise, the personnel quality is excellent. You know, we tend to say, well, we've got Japan as our ally, Japan has a military. But the reality is that the U .S. and Japanese forces cannot work very well together. There's one exception, and that's the two navies. The U .S. Navy and the Japanese Navy, called the Maritime Self -Defense Force, they actually do work well. And they show what's doable. 00:07:15 JACK GAINES They probably do dynamic exercises as well as structured ones, so they have to change, have to practice new orders and maneuvers. 00:07:22 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, the nature of naval operations is you can go out... into the sea, and you have more freedom to actually do stuff. But part of it actually was when Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was later chief of naval operations for many years, he was in charge in Japan. He basically laid down the ground rules, which was that the American Navy was going to treat the Japanese like friends, like allies. And that set the tone for everything. So they had a more relationship of equals, people who wanted to operate together. And that is why they have a good relationship today. in my opinion. So as a result, after all these decades, the two militaries are not really very good at operating together. There's no joint headquarters. There never has been in Japan. At best, they've operated in isolation. Do they recognize they don't have a joint access? Oh, they know. The Japanese military knows this. And US Indo -PACOM has not pushed the issue. And then you had... The State Department side, on the civilian side, people saying, well, if we ask the Japanese to get better at defense matters, well, they'll get angry. And if they do, then the Chinese will be mad. So you have the U .S. on the U .S. side. We're thinking of at least 10 reasons why Japan cannot improve its defenses. That's changed enough in recent years. But you see how many decades we've lost. 00:08:51 JACK GAINES Right. I can see part of what the State Department is saying in that a lot of those countries along the Asian coast were under Japanese rule during World War II. They're concerned that by showing favor and coordinating with them in defense might offend places like the Philippines or Korea. It is a concern to be weighed, but I don't know how much weight you would put to it. 00:09:14 GRANT NEWSHAM I wouldn't give it hardly any. With the Japanese, when you actually think about it, I would say within... 30 years of the end of the war, but certainly today, and for the last at least 20 years ago. The new century. Even before that. The Japanese and World War II is not really an issue in almost all of Asia. The Chinese, of course... Play it up. That's a good way to put it. Of course, they do remember what the Japanese did, and it was barbaric. Although the Chinese Communist Party afterwards killed 50 million Chinese in peacetime and good weather, which the Imperial Japanese Army couldn't have dreamed of doing. But World War II is an issue in China. Korea as well, the relationship is dicey. Up to a point. I mean, little old ladies go and sit in front of the embassy still. 00:10:05 JACK GAINES the embassy still. 00:10:06 GRANT NEWSHAM There are, and then you just had a South Korean amphibious ship come to Yokosuka in Tokyo on a visit. In Korea, there's a fundamental sort of suspicion of the Japanese. Sometimes it is a real dislike. But most people, it's not a big issue. But except for those two countries, you go down the list in Asia, and there is no after effect of World War II. I find the Filipinos get along very well with the Japanese. The Indonesians do. They, in fact, see the Japanese as being the people who freed them from the colonial yoke. Okay. The Malays, they actually didn't have that bad a time during the occupation. The Chinese in Malaysia did. So the Malaysians don't have any really hard feelings against the Japanese. Taiwan, same thing. They've got a very good relationship. And then there's one plus billion Indians who actually have an excellent relationship with Japan and see Japan as real friends and vice versa. So you're starting to get a good chunk of Asia, which, as you can see, actually sees Japan as a good country, useful economically. It's been very generous. And they like to see a Japanese military that's strong enough, allied with the United States, able to deal with China. 00:11:27 JACK GAINES Right. And why would we have such a different balance as we do with Germany and Europe? Because no one's questioning this in Holland or in France. That's just another country. They freely trade, they freely access each other. So maybe mindset just needs to shift to say the reform of Japan is just like Germany, and we need to start treating them and partner nations the same and start advocating for a joint staff. 00:11:52 GRANT NEWSHAM And you could do that in an afternoon, but the Japanese will not speak up for themselves. And an old New York Times reporter, Richard Halloran, I remember him telling me once that all the people he ever dealt with in the world... The Japanese were the worst at explaining themselves. And there's a reticence which slows them down. But also the Americans are afraid to tell them what we need. And that is a huge problem, because if we don't tell them, the Japanese are not blind readers, and they won't do what we think we'd like them to do, but we're afraid to ask. And in fact, one of the Japanese prime ministers in 1970, so 50 -some years ago, He gave some very good advice to the Americans, and it was at the time the Americans were trying to put an aircraft carrier into Yokosuka, the naval base near Tokyo. They wanted to assign it there permanently. And the U .S. side was thinking of excuses why it was too hard for the Japanese. They'll cause political difficulties. The Japanese have an election coming up. The timing just isn't right. And finally, the Japanese side sent a message to the Americans saying, tell us what you need. And don't back down. And they said it out of exasperation, really. And it was the best advice the Americans have ever been given. And we've refused to follow it ever since then. And really, it's almost a cultural trait, sort of a Confucian system. They actually are happy to have experts tell them what they ought to do. Sure. Whereas we are more of the Socratic method. And it doesn't, it just doesn't work. That's why after all these years, the Americans and the Japanese forces, except for the navies, And except for missile defense, we really don't operate together anywhere near where we need to be. We're not even close. And another very interesting fact a lot of people don't know is the Japanese military missed its recruitment targets by about 50 % last year. 5 -0? 00:13:50 JACK GAINES -0? 00:13:50 GRANT NEWSHAM 5 -0. And it routinely misses them by 20 -25%. So this, you can see, is a problem. It's now an older force, doesn't have enough people. In order to fulfill its missions, it would probably have to be twice as big, both personnel -wise and in terms of ships and hardware. Its war stocks are basically non -existent, doesn't know anything really about casualty care, combat casualty replacements, logistics. 00:14:20 JACK GAINES Well, if the media looks down on it and the political class looks down on it, it's not going to get a lot of positivity in the public mindset. So that's got to be part of it. It's not a vote -getter to push for a strong defense. 00:14:31 GRANT NEWSHAM vote -getter to push for a strong defense. I mean, if you're a politician, no one's going to say, he's the defense guy, let's give him our vote. But people vote for other reasons. But you do get used to, after that horrific experience in World War II, that for decades people didn't want to really think about defense, and they were glad to have the Americans around to handle it, and particularly when it seemed like there wasn't any real threat anywhere. People were happy with that, and even the U .S. side. didn't mind it as well. But I'd say it should have started to change at least 20 years ago. And it didn't until maybe four or five years ago. Well, 00:15:10 JACK GAINES when did the risk indicators really start popping up with China? 00:15:14 GRANT NEWSHAM I think by... It can't be back when Nixon went. 00:15:15 JACK GAINES It can't be back when Nixon went. Well, it should have, 00:15:16 GRANT NEWSHAM it should have, you know, I think. But about 2005 is when it was obvious what was coming. 00:15:19 JACK GAINES But about 00:15:21 GRANT NEWSHAM when it was obvious what was coming. And even before that, if you knew what to look for. But as I said, some of us... We knew what needed done and what the problems were. And there were Japanese who did too. And that's why when we put together their amphibious force, it was sort of an effort to address the shortcomings in Japan's self -defense force. Also to improve the overall U .S.-Japan relationship because it was so imbalanced. Right. Where the Japanese weren't doing anything near enough to defend themselves. And that over time creates a lot of friction in a relationship. So we were trying to address that with the amphibious force, and that was 2011, which we were pretty successful at that because we didn't ask permission from anybody. I was going to say, if you were successful, 00:16:10 JACK GAINES did you get fired? 00:16:11 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, it's not that people didn't try. 00:16:11 JACK GAINES Well, it's not that people didn't try. Sorry, that was sarcastic. But I was a reservist, so they couldn't quite get a bead on me. 00:16:15 GRANT NEWSHAM I was a reservist, so they couldn't quite get a bead on me. Yeah. And didn't quite know what we were doing. And also you had people like General Gregson, who was then at... Department of Defense, who had been in Japan many years, and he knew the importance of it all. So he would provide some cover. But the real success there was because the Japanese side took the ideas and ran with it. And the Americans provided some cover and some know -how and some advice. But it was the Japanese who did that. Once the Japanese took on the mission, well, what are the Americans going to say? But I was even told that at Indo -PACOM, that there were people who gotten wind of this and were very much opposed because the idea that Japanese having an amphibious force was provocative. Not just provocative, but it was going to cause the Japanese to go on the rampage again, like in 1941. I'm not making this up. 00:17:11 JACK GAINES So when Germany starts building the Leopard 2, were they expected to go on a rampage too? 00:17:17 GRANT NEWSHAM No, those are Europeans. Oh, okay. You know how the Europeans are okay. 00:17:19 JACK GAINES okay. You know 00:17:21 GRANT NEWSHAM But the fact that Germans have been allowed back into polite society. tells you something, and the Japanese are just as deserving of it as well. 00:17:30 JACK GAINES Did you see the movie Godzilla Minus One? No. It's an interesting portrayal of post -World War II Japan. And Godzilla, which is this giant monster, comes out of the sea, tears up Japan, and has an atomic breath that shoots off nuclear explosions, which sounds a lot like the United States in a mythological way. One thing that... the show did that was interesting is it kind of engaged post -military era and had talked about it. And it seemed like it was trying to reconcile the past with now and build out a notion that the military is okay, that after the war, there were good things that happened and that we should embrace a military in the future. So there might be some societal impulses out there that are promoting and supporting a more built -up military in Japan. 00:18:24 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, you're actually right. The public at large has always been pretty supportive of the military. For example, when they have open base days, when they put on so -called firepower demonstrations, which is like an exercise you can watch where they shoot off stuff, that they're always oversubscribed. And people just pour into these things because they're interested. And the central government, or say the ruling class, are the ones who are gun -shy or... I'm really hesitant, but the public at large, you know, when you ask them, you know, should Japan have a normal military? The replies to that are like 85%. Well, yes, of course. And I think they would be horrified if they knew the actual state of the Japanese military. I mentioned this to a Japanese politician last year, and he was horrified at the idea. And the public as well would have a similar reaction. Regular Japanese people say they have a pretty good understanding of what Japan needs to do to defend itself and of the importance of having a national defense, but the government doesn't explain it very well. When they do, the reaction, there's a Japanese expression, it's called like, it's atarimae. And it means like, well, yeah. It's like, duh. 00:19:42 JACK GAINES Abnautually. And that's what it means. 00:19:42 GRANT NEWSHAM And that's what it means. Should Japan have a good defense? Atarimae. And yeah, what's the question here? But if you ask that question in the political world, then you'll get all sorts of emming and hawing. They wanted nothing of that. By the late 70s, certainly by the 90s, that they sort of outlived that. But it was comfortable to continue with it, particularly if you're the government, because you don't have to spend money on defense. And the Americans are covering that. So it was as if the Americans were giving. I'd say at least $50 billion a year in free defense coverage, at least, probably more. And, you know, if you're a government, you think, well, why should we do anything different? And so they got used to that. We got used to it. And then at some point, the friction builds up where you just can't do that. And the Japanese themselves start to be resentful. 00:20:37 JACK GAINES Right. Keeping them handicapped, probably. 00:20:40 GRANT NEWSHAM Yeah. You know, they're not letting us be self -fulfilled. I think that's sort of the marriage counselor's analysis. And so that imbalance was such that it was creating huge problems in the relationship. But the defense relationship, you know, pointing out, well, you know, you guys really aren't very good, except for the Navy. You know, and we can't work with you very well, except for the Navies. And as a result, that's why we are where we are today. By now, if we had a more sort of capable U .S.-Japan defense relationship, where the two services could... operate together, and we're conducting a joint defense of Japan and the surrounding areas, which includes, say, to Taiwan even, that that would have, I think, deterred a lot of the problems that we're having. But by pretending everything was okay, we've gotten ourselves in a position where we now face a real threat out there. And we're trying to make up for lost time. And I don't know. And I don't know which side I would bet on. I'd bet on ours because I'm an American. But that's how out of whack it has gotten. It used to be maybe till 20 years ago, we were in pretty good shape. But you can see that advantage eroding. And nowadays, depending on how a fight were to take place, if it does take place, it would be less of a sure thing than it once was. And that's, I think, putting it very nicely. 00:22:04 JACK GAINES Well, tell me about the threat. 00:22:05 GRANT NEWSHAM What are you seeing? It's China. led by the Chinese Communist Party. (Part II) 00:00:02 JACK GAINES Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting@gmail.com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome back Grant Newsham, retired Marine colonel and author of When China Attacks, A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japanese defense forces and the PRC threat. This is the second in a two-part episode, so let's get started. 00:00:56 SPEAKER_02 It's China. led by the Chinese Communist Party. They built up a military which is just gradually but steadily expanding its reach and its coverage. And it is compared to, say, 2020, now instead of just being able to operate a little bit off their coast, they can reach Guam, Hawaii, and onwards. The Chinese military doesn't tend to develop into a force able to operate worldwide just like the U .S. can. And their ship numbers. They've got more than we do. Something like 350 versus our 290. 00:00:58 JACK GAINES the Chinese Communist Party. 00:01:06 JACK GAINES its reach 00:01:11 JACK GAINES say, 2020, now instead of just being able to operate a little bit 00:01:15 GRANT NEWSHAM off their coast, they can reach Guam, Hawaii, and onwards. The Chinese military doesn't tend to develop into a force able to operate worldwide just 00:01:25 JACK GAINES like the U .S. can. And their ship numbers. They've got more than we do. Something like 350 versus our 00:01:37 SPEAKER_02 Well, fortunately, in terms of quality, they're pretty good. And they know what they need to do, and they're getting better. For some things like carrier operations, they're not at our level yet. But if you look at the speed at which they have developed, they're in pretty good shape. But let's just say the South China Sea, which is one and a half times the size of the Mediterranean. Whenever U .S. ships go in there, and we do publicize our transits and operations and exercises, for every ship we put in there, For every ship we put in, the Chinese can match it with at least 10. And that doesn't include ground -based and air -launched anti -ship missiles, for example. So if the Chinese pick their spot, 00:01:39 JACK GAINES they're pretty good. And they know what they need to do, and they're getting better. For some things like carrier operations, they're not at our level yet. But if you look at the speed at which they have developed, they're in pretty good shape. But let's just say the South China Sea, which is one and a half times the size of the Mediterranean. 00:02:00 JACK GAINES and we do publicize our transits and operations and exercises, for every ship we put in there, For every ship we put in, the Chinese can match it with at least 10. And that doesn't include ground -based and air -launched anti -ship missiles, for example. 00:02:16 SPEAKER_02 if the Chinese pick their spot, pick their timing, I wouldn't want to be the destroyer skipper who's got 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. And he's got eight seconds to figure out what to do. The point is they have had de facto control of the South China Sea since about seven, eight years ago. And yes, we can go in there. But once we're gone, the Chinese close back up and they've pretty much got it. Beyond that, it's harder for them, but they're steadily expanding their capability to conduct operations. It's a military that has its problems, like every military, but they are trying to correct them. They are building a military which they want to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers, which is us. In many respects, they are our equals. Have you ever heard a Korean War veteran who said he wanted to fight the Chinese again? And these were Chinese. These was the Chinese of 1950s. It's a very different place today. And I'm not saying that they can't be defeated, but I'm not saying that they can't be defeated. An adversary that could give us a lot of trouble. When their intentions are to first dominate regionally and locally, and then push that farther afield to all the Pacific and beyond. And they're setting up the infrastructure worldwide with ports and airfields to do that. They're investing in long -range transports, these naval replenishment ships that you need to be able to operate the way we do, and that's their mission. And we have pretended until about 2017 that this wasn't the case. In fact, you couldn't even say China was an adversary. And guys who did, like Captain James Fennell, who was the head of intelligence at Pack Fleet. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. The then administration hated him and got rid of him. And that's how bad it was. And I saw this all firsthand. Experience some of it, not as bad as Captain Fennell did. So we've allowed them to build up into a military that we had better take very seriously. And the Chinese do see this as a tool for their... 00:02:16 JACK GAINES if the 00:02:17 SPEAKER_03 Chinese pick their spot, pick their timing, I wouldn't want to be the destroyer skipper who's got 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 00:02:28 JACK GAINES figure out what to do. The point is they have had de facto control of the South China Sea since about seven, eight years ago. 00:02:39 JACK GAINES we're gone, the Chinese close back up and they've pretty much got it. Beyond that, it's 00:02:45 SPEAKER_03 but they're steadily expanding their capability to conduct operations. It's a military that has its problems, like every military, but they are trying to correct them. They are 00:02:55 JACK GAINES a military which they want to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers, which is us. In many respects, 00:03:03 JACK GAINES our equals. Have you ever heard a Korean War veteran who said he wanted to fight the Chinese again? And these were Chinese. These was the Chinese of 1950s. It's a very different place today. And I'm not saying that they can't be defeated, but I'm not saying that they can't 00:03:22 JACK GAINES a lot of trouble. When their intentions are to first dominate regionally and locally, and then push that farther afield to all the Pacific and beyond. And they're setting up the infrastructure worldwide with ports and airfields to do that. They're investing in long -range transports, these naval replenishment ships that you need to be able to operate the way we do, and that's their mission. And we have pretended 00:03:50 SPEAKER_03 until about 2017 00:03:51 GRANT NEWSHAM that this wasn't the case. In fact, you couldn't even say China was an adversary. And guys who did, like Captain James Fennell, 00:04:01 JACK GAINES who was the head of intelligence at Pack Fleet. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. The then administration hated him and got rid of him. And that's how bad it was. And I saw this all firsthand. Experience some of it, not as bad as Captain Fennell did. So we've allowed them to build up into a military that we had better take very seriously. And the Chinese do see this as a tool for 00:04:30 SPEAKER_02 The idea is if you have a powerful military, well, that's when you can lean on people. That's when you can intimidate people. You can dominate them. And they're happy with the psychological domination, political domination. It doesn't have to be occupying, but dominating. And they're in every field, from outer space, long -range missiles, undersea warfare, really putting a lot of effort into it. And there is a certain sort of ingenuity that goes into their operations. Well, they can't invent things. They don't develop things on their own. They just steal things. So they reverse engineer things. So they reverse engineer. 00:04:32 SPEAKER_03 well, that's when you can lean on people. That's when 00:04:39 JACK GAINES And they're happy with the psychological domination, political domination. It doesn't have to be occupying, but dominating. And they're in every field, from outer space, long -range missiles, undersea warfare, really putting a lot of effort into it. And there is a certain sort of ingenuity that goes into their operations. Well, they can't invent things. They don't develop things on their own. They just steal things. So they reverse engineer things. 00:05:09 SPEAKER_02 Well, it... You know, it's kind of true up to a point, but look at us. The Yankee ingenuity was taking stolen British technology and making it better. And so the fact they may not be as innovative as us, well, sometimes it just has to be good enough. So they've got now a military to combine with this desire for political domination as well as considering their economic power as just as important as the military. And you see how successful that has been. When you have U .S. business leaders giving Xi Jinping two standing ovations last November in San Francisco, that tells you how successful they've been on the economic front. And the Japanese know they have a huge problem. You would often hear the Japanese military saying, one thing Taiwan's defense is Japan's defense. But I've even seen the calculations they did, like at which point the Japanese Navy would be outmatched by the Chinese Navy. And they had the date almost down to when it was. And our side, we were late recognizing this. We refused to. We refused to. 00:05:11 GRANT NEWSHAM kind of true up to a point, but look at us. The Yankee ingenuity was taking stolen British technology and making it better. And so the fact 00:05:20 SPEAKER_03 be as innovative as us, well, sometimes it just 00:05:23 JACK GAINES has to be good enough. So they've got now a military to combine with this desire for political domination as well as considering their economic power as just as important as the military. And you see how successful that has been. When you have U .S. business leaders giving Xi Jinping two standing 00:05:45 JACK GAINES San Francisco, that tells you how successful they've been on the economic front. And the Japanese know they have a huge problem. You 00:05:53 SPEAKER_03 would often hear the Japanese military saying, one thing Taiwan's defense is Japan's defense. But I've even seen the calculations they did, like at which 00:06:03 JACK GAINES point the 00:06:06 JACK GAINES be outmatched by the Chinese Navy. And they had the date almost down to when it was. And our side, we were late recognizing this. We refused 00:07:18 SPEAKER_02 Yeah, as he described it well. Ultimately, the military part of the fight is extremely important. But it's almost a sideshow. But it's almost a sideshow to the other activities, the other fight that China's been waging for the last 30, 40 years, almost ever since we opened up to them. And that has been generally referred to as political warfare, with components being economic warfare, financial warfare, drug warfare, which is the word the Chinese use. So all this fentanyl that's been pumped into America for the last decade that's killed up towards a million Americans, almost all of it comes from China. And they know exactly what they're doing. And so every year they're taking like the equivalent of two or three divisions off the battlefield. You've destroyed neighborhoods. You've destroyed successful economic warfare. Drive 30 miles up the road to Baltimore. Go to Sparrows, Baltimore. Where there used to be steel mills. And now you have Amazon fulfillment sectors at best. But you've seen just the gutting of American society, the so -called working class, the Rust Belt. And this was done intentionally. And this was done intentionally. In large part, Chinese economic warfare directed at the United States. And then you have cyber warfare as well. You have cyber espionage. Well beyond what countries normally do. But they have used it very effectively. And the Chinese just... Recently put out their new fighter. That's called the J -35. That is a dig at the Americans. Because it is based on stolen blueprints for the F -35. I don't know. 00:07:20 SPEAKER_03 Ultimately, the military part of the 00:07:26 SPEAKER_03 it's almost a sideshow. 00:07:29 JACK GAINES sideshow to the other activities, the other fight that China's been waging for the last 30, 40 years, almost ever since we opened up to them. And that has been generally referred to as political warfare, with components being economic warfare, financial warfare, drug warfare, which is the word the Chinese use. So all this fentanyl that's been pumped into America for the last decade that's killed up towards a million Americans, almost all of it comes from China. And they know exactly what they're doing. And so every year they're taking like the equivalent of two or three divisions off the battlefield. You've destroyed neighborhoods. You've destroyed successful economic warfare. Drive 30 miles up the road to Baltimore. Go to Sparrows, Baltimore. Where there used to be steel mills. And now you have Amazon fulfillment sectors at best. But you've seen just the gutting of American society, the so -called working class, the Rust Belt. And this was done intentionally. 00:08:26 JACK GAINES warfare directed at the United States. And then you have cyber warfare as well. You have cyber espionage. 00:08:34 SPEAKER_03 Well beyond what countries normally do. But they have used it very effectively. And the Chinese just... Recently put out their new fighter. That's called the J -35. That is a dig at 00:08:47 GRANT NEWSHAM it is based on stolen blueprints for the F -35. 00:08:55 GRANT NEWSHAM know. It's been a while. I don't know. It's been a while. 00:09:02 SPEAKER_02 Unfortunately, Copperfish is leapfrogging over stages. Yes, it may take them a little longer, but they will popscotch through it. And so... So I take it pretty seriously. Their Y -20, their long -range transport, is basically the C -17. And they've just been immensely successful at this sort of espionage. And at the same time, we've done nothing to push back on them. Then there's the propaganda angle of this, which really good old Jesuit meaning of the word just means to explain yourself or articulate your position. So people understand that they've been very successful in getting Americans to buy the Chinese line. China's rise is peaceful. China's rise is peaceful. China's never attacked anybody. China's never attacked anybody. It's not true. All great nations do this. So who are we to complain? America has its problems, too. America has its problems, too. Who are we to complain about the Chinese taking live organs out of Uyghurs and prisoners of conscience? And we've been able to convince ourselves that we've been able to convince ourselves that we've not only can we not do anything, we shouldn't do anything. This is changing. But you can see we were very late getting started. And this has all been done without firing a shot. Chinese economic inroads, Chinese economic inroads, which leads to political influence, is in, for example, South America and Africa. Just immense how fast that has come, how solid it is. Pacific Island, something similar is going on, something similar is going on. Look at the difficulties the Germans have had, weaning themselves off of this Chinese addiction. And as a result, 00:09:03 GRANT NEWSHAM is leapfrogging over stages. Yes, it may take them 00:09:07 SPEAKER_03 but they will 00:09:09 GRANT NEWSHAM popscotch through it. And so... So I take it pretty seriously. Their Y -20, 00:09:16 JACK GAINES their long -range transport, is basically the C -17. And they've just been immensely successful at this sort of espionage. And at the same time, we've done nothing to push back on them. Then there's the propaganda angle of this, which really good old Jesuit meaning of the word just means to explain yourself or articulate your position. So people understand that they've been very successful in getting Americans to buy the Chinese line. China's rise is peaceful. China's rise is peaceful. China's never attacked anybody. China's never attacked anybody. It's not true. All great nations do this. So who are we to complain? 00:09:49 SPEAKER_03 America has its problems, too. America has its problems, too. Who are we to complain about the Chinese taking live organs out of Uyghurs and prisoners of conscience? And we've been able to 00:10:00 JACK GAINES that we've been able 00:10:00 SPEAKER_03 to convince ourselves that we've not only can we not do anything, we shouldn't do anything. This is changing. But you can see we were very late getting started. And this has all been done without firing a shot. 00:10:10 JACK GAINES Chinese economic inroads, Chinese economic inroads, which leads to political influence, is in, for example, South America and Africa. Just immense how fast that has come, how solid it is. Pacific Island, something similar is going on, something similar is going on. 00:10:27 SPEAKER_03 Look at the difficulties the Germans have had, weaning themselves off of this Chinese addiction. 00:10:34 SPEAKER_02 as a result, they have been able to improve their position politically, psychologically, economically, and they've been able to do this globally without having to use their military. 00:10:36 SPEAKER_03 their position 00:10:40 GRANT NEWSHAM and they've been able to do this globally without having to use their military. 00:10:51 SPEAKER_02 Yeah, that's the idea. Is you don't want to. So our view of warfare is like a hundred -yard dash. Wherever the two sides come to the line, shake loose, and then someone fires a gun, and then someone fires a gun, and then it's game on. To the Chinese, the war has started long ago. And you're wearing down your opponent. You're weakening his ability to resist. You're creating chaos in his own country. There's a word called entropy. Which is just breaking down. Entropic warfare is a word that sometimes gets used. For you're breaking down his ability to resist. And at the same time, of course, the Chinese are building up a military, which is very serious. Yes, it's not showing up off of San Diego just yet. But places closer to China, it's much more of an issue. Japan knows the problem they have with the People's Liberation Army. Pacific Island, Southeast Asia. You are seeing more of a Chinese presence. And the point is, when the time comes, you may not even be able to resist if the Chinese have done this other sort of warfare. 00:10:53 JACK GAINES want to. So our view of warfare is like a hundred -yard dash. Wherever the two sides come to the line, shake loose, and then someone fires a gun, and then someone fires a gun, and then it's game on. To the Chinese, the war has started long ago. And you're wearing down your opponent. You're weakening his ability to resist. You're creating chaos in his own country. There's a word called entropy. Which is just breaking down. Entropic warfare is a word that 00:11:19 SPEAKER_03 sometimes gets used. For you're breaking down his ability to resist. And at the same time, of course, the Chinese are building up a military, which is very serious. 00:11:28 JACK GAINES Yes, it's not showing 00:11:33 JACK GAINES places closer to China, it's much more of an issue. Japan knows the problem they have with the People's Liberation Army. Pacific Island, Southeast Asia. You are seeing more 00:11:46 JACK GAINES Chinese presence. And the point is, when the time comes, you may not even be able to resist if the Chinese have 00:11:52 SPEAKER_03 this other 00:12:31 SPEAKER_02 That's exactly what it is. It's mental warfare. You're attacking the mind. You're attacking how people think about things. Some people use the word cognitive warfare. You're the popular word. Yeah, you're attacking the mind. And so you can see how well it worked. And the Russians had a much poorer hand to play than the Chinese do. Because we do so much business with China. And you see how hard it is to do things like ban TikTok. We can't even get that done. 00:12:33 JACK GAINES mental warfare. You're attacking the mind. You're attacking how people think about things. Some people use the 00:12:42 JACK GAINES You're the popular word. Yeah, you're attacking the mind. And so you can see how well it worked. And the Russians had a much poorer hand to play than 00:12:50 GRANT NEWSHAM the Chinese do. Because we do so much business with China. And you see how hard it is to do things like ban TikTok. We can't even get that done. 00:12:59 SPEAKER_02 We can't even get that done. 00:13:03 SPEAKER_02 Look, 72 hours, if that for the Indians do, we can do it. And you see how Chinese successfully use what they call lawfare, which is using our own legal system. And the idea is that you get proxies, influential foreigners in your target country to actually do your bidding for you. The Chinese have like five aces to play. The Russians might have won, but you can see how successful the Russians have been just with that. 00:13:04 JACK GAINES for the Indians do, we can do it. And you see how Chinese successfully use what they call lawfare, which 00:13:13 JACK GAINES the idea is that you get proxies, influential foreigners in your target country to actually do your bidding for you. The Chinese have like five aces to play. The Russians might have won, but you can see how successful the Russians have 00:13:41 SPEAKER_02 Uh -huh. Uh -huh. 00:13:46 SPEAKER_02 Well, you're right about the Russians, but the Chinese understand that the term gray zone paralyzes Americans. We have no idea what to do because of our view of warfare being until the shooting starts. That it is we're not really at war. There's still hope of working something out. 00:13:51 GRANT NEWSHAM paralyzes Americans. We have no idea what to do because of our view of warfare being until the shooting starts. That it is we're not really at war. There's still hope of working 00:14:03 SPEAKER_03 something out. 00:14:05 SPEAKER_02 That has been our rote response for all these years, is to not get the Chinese mad, don't provoke them, and we have convinced ourselves that we have to have Chinese help with fill -in -the -blank, North Korea transnational crime, nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change, and therefore we cannot challenge the PRC because we won't get their cooperation. That's what we've effectively handcuffed ourselves, but when it comes to that so -called hybrid warfare, it's not all that It's not all that complicated if you recognize what it is and how it fits into China's behavior, its strategy. But you also would do well to attract from other directions where they're particularly vulnerable. And that is where you take advantage of the fact, for example, the Chinese currency is not freely convertible, which means that outside of China, nobody really wants Chinese money. It's like the script at a... It's like the script where you can use it to buy caramel corn and go on the rides. 00:14:05 SPEAKER_03 has been our rote response for all these years, is to not get the Chinese mad, don't provoke them, and we have convinced ourselves that 00:14:14 JACK GAINES have Chinese help with fill -in -the -blank, North Korea transnational crime, nuclear weapons 00:14:22 JACK GAINES climate change, and therefore we cannot challenge the PRC because we won't get their cooperation. That's what we've effectively handcuffed ourselves, but when it comes to that so -called hybrid warfare, it's not all that It's not all that complicated if you recognize what it is and how it fits into 00:14:42 JACK GAINES its strategy. But you also would do well to attract from other directions where they're particularly vulnerable. And that is where you take advantage of the fact, for example, the Chinese currency is not freely convertible, which means that outside of China, nobody really wants Chinese money. It's like the script at a... It's like the script where you can use it to buy caramel corn and 00:15:06 SPEAKER_02 That's it. Nobody wants it. So choke that off and China's got some real problems. Another is the just thoroughgoing corruption of China's ruling class. And most of them have wealth overseas, foreign bank accounts. foreign bank accounts, relatives with green cards, relatives with green cards, some operate businesses overseas. And this is illegal. And this is illegal. 00:15:08 JACK GAINES it. So choke that off and China's got some real problems. Another is the just thoroughgoing corruption of China's ruling class. And most 00:15:19 GRANT NEWSHAM overseas, foreign bank accounts. foreign bank accounts, relatives with green cards, relatives with green cards, some operate businesses overseas. And this 00:15:31 SPEAKER_02 And this is where that really scares them. Because in 2011 or 2012, New York Times and Bloomberg actually put out some good stories about the overseas wealth of China's top people, including Xi Jinping's family. I've never seen a reaction from the Chinese like that one. This bothered them. 00:15:33 JACK GAINES scares them. Because in 2011 or 2012, New 00:15:37 SPEAKER_03 York Times and Bloomberg actually put out some good stories about the overseas wealth of China's top people, including Xi Jinping's family. 00:15:46 GRANT NEWSHAM I've never seen a reaction from the Chinese like that one. 00:15:53 SPEAKER_02 More than anything else we've ever done. That's... 00:15:53 GRANT NEWSHAM than anything 00:16:14 SPEAKER_02 One way to do it. Another way to do it. That would be a tactical thing. Say you were to release, say, every Friday. Say at 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 00:16:16 JACK GAINES way to do it. That would be a tactical thing. Say you were to 00:16:19 SPEAKER_03 release, say, every Friday. Say at 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 00:16:25 SPEAKER_02 Which of the top 50 Chinese Communist Party officials? And make sure it reached everywhere in China. The thing that the public really hates is this corruption. And by the top dogs. And that is something that really bothers them. And you note that the Chinese leadership is very willing to have the average Chinese citizen absorb any amount of punishment. And they even talk about it. 00:16:27 SPEAKER_03 Chinese Communist Party officials? And make sure it 00:16:29 GRANT NEWSHAM reached everywhere in China. The thing that the public really hates is this corruption. And by the top dogs. 00:16:38 JACK GAINES is something that really bothers them. And you note that the Chinese leadership is very willing to have the average Chinese citizen 00:16:49 JACK GAINES they even talk about it. 00:16:51 SPEAKER_02 But when it's personal, then they see it very differently. And this is one of the few ways to really make it personal for them is to capitalize on this corruption. So when we talk about... Dealing with Gray's own operations, we're probably not going to be all that successful. Because they have more ships, they can be in more places. 00:16:51 JACK GAINES when it's personal, then they see it very differently. And this is one of the few ways to really make it personal for them is to capitalize on this corruption. So when we talk about... Dealing with Gray's own operations, we're probably not going to be all that successful. Because they have more ships, they can be in more places. 00:17:14 SPEAKER_02 But expose that. They can do that. Have we made a concerted effort to expose Chinese bribery, the illicit payments, the corruption that they put into everywhere they go? Everywhere there's a Chinese presence, you have corruption of the society, the political class as well. And do we ever target that? Do we consider it a priority effort? I don't even think we consider it an effort at all. Exposure is the one thing that has a huge effect. This is why investigative journalists get big. It's why like Irish. gangsters try to murder them in Malta they get blown up because they're effective because they're effective which is the thing that makes it very hard for corruption to work and that's where I think 00:17:15 JACK GAINES can do that. Have we made a concerted effort to expose Chinese bribery, the illicit payments, the corruption that they put into everywhere they go? Everywhere there's a Chinese presence, you have corruption of the society, the political class as well. And do we ever target that? Do we consider it a priority effort? I don't even think we consider it an effort at all. Exposure is the one thing that has a huge effect. This is why investigative journalists 00:17:44 SPEAKER_03 get big. It's why like Irish. gangsters try to murder them in Malta they get blown up because they're effective because they're effective which 00:17:52 SPEAKER_02 is the thing that makes it very hard for corruption to work and that's where I think We have some real opportunities to make it very clear what's being done. And this is something that, if you expose it, you can really capitalize on it. Just make it too hard to do this. And it also gives oxygen to the honest people in a country. It gives them something to work with. It gives them something to work with. To take on these repressive regimes, these corrupt regimes, these corrupt regimes, administrations. And get rid of them and replace them with honest people. I've never met anywhere, anywhere I've been. Over the years. Where people like to be cheaters. Where people like to be cheaters. Where they like their leaders to be corrupt. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. It's just nothing you can do. But it's just nothing you can do. It really has an effect. And that's where I think government for sources could be effectively devoted. And particularly once you get local reporters in on it. Once you get the local. Honest locals in on it. Honest locals in on it. And that's where I think we could be very effective. Corruption, as you've mentioned, that really is the grease to everything the Chinese communists do globally. Take it away and then take away their access to dollars, convertible currency. And they've really got some problems. But they have played their hand very well today. But in some ways it's a house of cards. I don't think it's that hard to take on. But the longer you wait, the harder it gets. 00:17:52 SPEAKER_03 is the thing that makes it 00:17:54 JACK GAINES corruption to work and that's where I think We have some real opportunities to make it very clear what's being done. And this is something that, if you expose it, you can really capitalize on it. Just make it too hard to do this. And it also gives oxygen to the honest people in a country. It 00:18:16 JACK GAINES to work with. To take on these repressive regimes, these corrupt regimes, these corrupt regimes, 00:18:23 JACK GAINES them with honest people. I've never met anywhere, anywhere I've been. Over the years. Where 00:18:32 JACK GAINES I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. It's just nothing you can do. But it's just nothing you can do. It really has an effect. And that's where I think government for sources could be effectively devoted. And particularly once you 00:18:46 GRANT NEWSHAM reporters in on it. Once you get the local. Honest locals in on it. Honest locals in on it. And that's where I think we could be very effective. 00:18:56 JACK GAINES Corruption, as you've mentioned, that really is the grease to everything the Chinese communists do globally. Take it away and then take away their access to dollars, convertible currency. And they've really got some 00:19:12 JACK GAINES today. But in some ways it's a house of cards. I don't think it's that hard to take on. But the longer you wait, the harder it 00:19:28 SPEAKER_02 In regards to U .S. policy, in policy, there really is a... a desire that the United States stays around in Asia, that maintains its military might, and is able to effectively safeguard what you call freedom consensual government. Because if you go around the region, nobody wants to be dominated by the PRC. But they do have a huge advantage, particularly economically, that they're seen by leaders and business people in a lot of these countries. That's really the source of... some wealth, some prosperity. And we would do well, for example, to see the fight as just as much an economic one as a military one. Because we could build up our military, rebuild it, and we could have 800 ships in the Navy, and still lose. If we don't fight on these other fronts, we don't want you here because we're doing too much business with China. And that's where the U .S., along with its friends, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indians, the Australians, we would do well to operate together more and to see the economic front and the political warfare fronts as a priority effort as much, if not more, than the military. 00:19:30 SPEAKER_03 in policy, there 00:19:31 JACK GAINES really is a... a desire that the United States stays around in Asia, that maintains its military might, and is able to 00:19:45 JACK GAINES Because if you go around the region, nobody wants to be dominated by the PRC. But they do have a huge advantage, particularly economically, that they're seen by leaders and business people in a lot of these countries. That's really the source of... some wealth, some prosperity. And we would do well, for example, to see the fight as just as much an economic 00:20:09 GRANT NEWSHAM one as a military one. Because we could build up our military, rebuild it, and we could have 800 ships in the Navy, and still lose. If we don't 00:20:19 JACK GAINES on these other fronts, we don't want you here because we're doing too much business with China. And that's where the U .S., along with its friends, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indians, the Australians, 00:20:30 GRANT NEWSHAM we would do well to operate together more and to see the economic front and the political warfare fronts as a priority effort as much, if not 00:20:40 JACK GAINES more, than the 00:20:45 SPEAKER_02 They have a role to play if they're properly harnessed. But you do know that these days you don't see the Yankee trader that used to exist. You'd run to Americans everywhere trying to sell something to do business. Not so much these days. And we've almost ceded the far -flung part to the world. Because, well, the return on investment isn't enough. That's not an attractive enough proposition. Well, then let's make it one. Plus, you do have, say, the Japanese, the Indians, who are much better at operating in these places, to put it together into a coherent plan. Understand what it is, political warfare, and not just block the Chinese political warfare effort, but actually have our own campaign. And it really is worth doing some homework, I think, for a lot of people into what political warfare is. One sees the opportunities, but it takes a certain type of person who's good at it. versus a civil affairs guy. Versus a civil affairs guy. He's going to see different... He's going to see parts of the battlefield in a different way. Yes, sometimes you want the tank. But then there's this other part of it all. That is almost like a liberal arts test. Here you have to figure out the motivations for things. You have to figure out how a society works. And then how do you appeal to it using the things that are parts of political warfare? And this is where you can really make some mileage. You've got to have both. Make no mistake. If you're not able to destroy things and kill people, the civil affairs part isn't going to get you very far. But combine the two, and then you've really got something that's very hard to take on if you're the bad guys. We talk about defending Taiwan, and how important it is, and it is, I think, indispensable, that China does not take Taiwan and enslave 23 million people. If they did that... 00:20:47 JACK GAINES they're properly harnessed. But you do know that these days you don't see the Yankee trader that used to exist. You'd run to Americans everywhere trying to sell something to do business. Not 00:20:59 SPEAKER_03 so much these days. And we've almost ceded the far -flung part to the world. Because, well, the return on investment isn't enough. That's not an attractive enough proposition. Well, then let's 00:21:10 GRANT NEWSHAM make it one. Plus, you do have, say, the Japanese, the Indians, who are much better at operating in these places, to put it together into a coherent plan. Understand what it 00:21:20 JACK GAINES is, political warfare, and not just block the Chinese political warfare effort, but actually have our own campaign. And it really is worth doing some homework, I think, for a lot of people into what political warfare is. One sees the opportunities, but it takes a certain type of person who's good at it. versus a civil affairs guy. Versus a civil affairs guy. He's going to see different... He's going to see parts of the battlefield in a different way. 00:21:50 SPEAKER_03 Yes, sometimes you want the tank. But then there's this other part of it all. That is almost like a liberal arts test. Here you have to figure 00:22:00 JACK GAINES for things. You have to figure out how a society works. And then how do you appeal to it using the things that are parts of political warfare? 00:22:10 JACK GAINES make some mileage. You've got to have both. Make no mistake. If you're not able to destroy things and kill people, the civil affairs part isn't going to get you very far. But combine the two, and then you've really got something that's very hard to take on if you're the bad guys. We talk about defending Taiwan, and how important it is, and it is, I think, indispensable, 00:22:32 GRANT NEWSHAM that China does not take Taiwan and enslave 23 million people. If they did that... 00:22:39 SPEAKER_02 Asia would turn red overnight, as every country tried to cut the best deal they could. No country anywhere on Earth would have much confidence in American promises that will protect them. But one of the ways to actually defend Taiwan is, yes, they could maybe use F -35s and long -range missiles and smart pines, etc. You do have to have all of this stuff. Is it enough, 00:22:39 GRANT NEWSHAM would turn red overnight, as every country tried 00:22:42 SPEAKER_03 to cut the best deal they could. No country anywhere 00:22:46 JACK GAINES on Earth would have much confidence in American promises that will protect them. But one of the ways to actually defend 00:22:51 GRANT NEWSHAM Taiwan is, yes, they could maybe use F -35s and long -range missiles and smart pines, etc. You do have to have all of this stuff. Is it enough, even? Particularly if the other side says, okay, we'll absorb whatever you can send at us, but you're finished. But one of the ways that... But one of the ways is to give them a free trade agreement to improve their economy to the point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. 00:23:02 SPEAKER_02 Particularly if the other side says, okay, we'll absorb whatever you can send at us, but you're finished. But one of the ways that... But one of the ways is to give them a free trade agreement to improve their economy to the point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. You get a certain confidence in the entire society when they're more prosperous. Salaries are very low in Taiwan. Make it so people feel like they've got more money. Can they can buy a house? Can they can buy a condominium? build up the economy and that has a ripple effect throughout the society and on their military itself. And yet we didn't do that. And I think that's where we should apply some effort. 00:23:11 JACK GAINES give them a free trade agreement to 00:23:16 JACK GAINES point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. You get a certain confidence in the entire society when they're more prosperous. Salaries are very low in Taiwan. Make it so people feel like they've got more money. Can they can buy a house? Can they can buy a condominium? 00:23:35 JACK GAINES the economy and that has a ripple effect throughout the society and on their military itself. And yet we didn't do that. And I think that's where we should apply some 00:24:25 SPEAKER_02 I think you're right. And it's essential that we start to understand. You look at much of the debate about us in China. What happens when the two forces go at each other? And that's almost like... Going up behind the Waffle House. Going up behind the Waffle House. To see who's the toughest guy in Prince William County. To see who's the toughest guy in Prince William County. Out back. But think of all the things that go into whether or not the two hoodlums. There's all sorts of reasons why. No, the

Please welcome Grant Newsham, retired marine colonel and author of When China Attacks, A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japan Defense Forces and the PRC threat.  This is a two-part episode. Grant's biography: https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/author/grant-newsham/ Book link: https://www.regnery.com/9781684513659/when-china-attacks/ A recent article: https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/the-us-in-the-pacific-getting-the?utm_source=substack&publication_id=746580&post_id=151553726&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=ercjf&triedRedirect=true --- One CA is a product of the civil affairs association  and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership. We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.  To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com  or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org --- Special thanks to the site Cool Jazz Hot Bossa for the sample of Cool Jazz Hot Bossa. (59:00). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdWUj2NYDYQ --- Transcript: (Part I) 00:00:05 JACK GAINES Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting@gmail.com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome Grant Newsham, retired Marine Colonel and author of When China Attacks, A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japan Defense Forces and the PRC threat. This is the first of a two-part episode, so let's get started. 00:00:56 GRANT NEWSHAM I was effectively MarforPak's guy in Asia for a number of years. which worked well in both directions. So I was obviously in Japan, but also did a lot of work for them throughout the region, Southeast Asia as well, Taiwan even, which was a lot of fun. 00:01:13 JACK GAINES Yeah. And you've become a foreign policy advocate in the area. 00:01:16 GRANT NEWSHAM Yeah. At some point, maybe seven or eight years ago, figured I'd actually done enough stuff to maybe have a few ideas. So I started writing and speak a lot as well. So I guess I'm part of the commentariat. But I seem to write about once a week some topic related to often Asian defense, but sometimes economics, politics, sometimes organized crime. And I do get invited to speak here and there and seem to get a number of television or radio interviews as well. That's really cool. I didn't say I get invited to good things, but I do get the occasional invitation. I used to think it was because I had such insight. Someone told me not all that long ago that actually, if you'll say yes to an interview, you're likely to get more of them. Because the people who book them, they just want to get somebody on. And I thought it was because of my particular wisdom. 00:02:07 JACK GAINES of my particular wisdom. 00:02:09 GRANT NEWSHAM I'm joking a little bit. But obviously, you must have something useful to say. But it is funny. There's one place in Singapore that calls me a lot. It's like their CNN. And they've been calling me. Probably eight years at least, or almost every time, I'll tell the presenters that basically they don't know what they're talking about. And I always think, well, this is the last one, but they keep calling me up. They mislike you because you're the contrarian. 00:02:34 JACK GAINES mislike you because you're the contrarian. 00:02:36 GRANT NEWSHAM Oh, I can blame things in a way that sort of suits broadcast and that sort of regular people can understand, you know, 00:02:42 GRANT NEWSHAM that sort of regular people can understand, you know, being a regular person myself. 00:02:47 JACK GAINES Yeah, you learn to disagree without offending. 00:02:49 GRANT NEWSHAM Usually. And it's always sort of a relief, actually, when you can have a different look at things. 00:02:56 JACK GAINES That's good. I always thought you were going to say it is a relief sometimes when you just peel the coat off and then yell at them. 00:03:02 GRANT NEWSHAM The facts speak for themselves. Right. And if it's a presenter, their role is different, and they will generally not have the substantive knowledge that most of the people on the show will have. Right. And so much of what I have to say is often not... in line with accepted wisdom, particularly when it comes to Japan. Sure. So it's often that I'll have to present a different take on things, but they don't seem to be offended. 00:03:27 JACK GAINES Right. You mostly talk about Japan in its current defense fashion or in its foreign policy actions. 00:03:33 GRANT NEWSHAM A lot of that because people have a perception of Japan, for example, as a pacifist country. It cannot fight. It's peace loving. Right. etc. They have a nuclear allergy. You know, just the idea of nuclear weapons in Japan is out of the question. You often hear, well, their constitution won't let them fight. And none of those things are actually true. But it's the received wisdom. It's what people think. And when you simply point out the realities of Japan, that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's a country just like every other. And that the stereotypes about it really aren't correct when it comes to defense security. In fact, they use that the Constitution won't let them have a military. You probably heard it. Yeah. That's the idea. And they don't even call it a military. But the fact is they've got a military, which, according to some ratings, is the fifth most powerful in the world. It depends on how you calculate it, of course. But they call it something else. And what is the actual distinction between offensive and defensive weapons? 00:04:35 JACK GAINES It's usually the strike space. If it's inside your own country defending, then it's a defense space. Once you go out and start taking out other people's cities and moving forces in. 00:04:44 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, for example, they don't have much what you call power projection capability very far off their borders. But they do have a submarine fleet, say over 20 submarines. There's no reason you couldn't send them to the coast of China and start sinking ships. 00:04:59 JACK GAINES True. 00:05:00 GRANT NEWSHAM They've got F -16s. You can put long -range missiles on them and you can fly out of ways and cause people a lot of trouble. But their military really, I would say, is not so good at offense. It's not so good at defense either. And that's something that comes as a surprise to a lot of people. 00:05:15 JACK GAINES Well, do they exercise defense and offense? 00:05:18 GRANT NEWSHAM Oh, they have exercises, training, and they put on a pretty good show, particularly when they have visitors come. But they really, until very recently, and even now, they can't do joint operations, which means the air, sea, and ground forces. can't operate together. In fact, they don't even have a radio with which they can communicate easily. They have to jury -rig some relations, these connections. And that's something most people don't understand, because you look at it on paper. Japan has 250 ,000 people in its military, and it's got ships, aircraft, all of it modern and good stuff. 150 ,000 people in its ground self -defense force, their army. But it's not even the sum of its whole. If you imagine each of your limbs, your arms and your legs, each doing whatever it wants without the coordinating function provided by a brain. 00:06:10 JACK GAINES Sounds like me dancing. 00:06:12 GRANT NEWSHAM It would be, yeah. I think that I can picture that, whereas I'm more of an Arthur Murray kind of guy. But it's like that. And nobody can believe that because they think, well, this is the Japanese. It's this advanced modern country, big military, the rich country. And I mean, they can't even do these simple things. Right. The short answer is no, except in some limited circumstances. After 60 years of the U .S.-Japan defense relationship, 80 years after World War II, they still cannot do some of the basic things that a military needs to do, or do them very well, put it that way. But they do train, they exercise, the personnel quality is excellent. You know, we tend to say, well, we've got Japan as our ally, Japan has a military. But the reality is that the U .S. and Japanese forces cannot work very well together. There's one exception, and that's the two navies. The U .S. Navy and the Japanese Navy, called the Maritime Self -Defense Force, they actually do work well. And they show what's doable. 00:07:15 JACK GAINES They probably do dynamic exercises as well as structured ones, so they have to change, have to practice new orders and maneuvers. 00:07:22 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, the nature of naval operations is you can go out... into the sea, and you have more freedom to actually do stuff. But part of it actually was when Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was later chief of naval operations for many years, he was in charge in Japan. He basically laid down the ground rules, which was that the American Navy was going to treat the Japanese like friends, like allies. And that set the tone for everything. So they had a more relationship of equals, people who wanted to operate together. And that is why they have a good relationship today. in my opinion. So as a result, after all these decades, the two militaries are not really very good at operating together. There's no joint headquarters. There never has been in Japan. At best, they've operated in isolation. Do they recognize they don't have a joint access? Oh, they know. The Japanese military knows this. And US Indo -PACOM has not pushed the issue. And then you had... The State Department side, on the civilian side, people saying, well, if we ask the Japanese to get better at defense matters, well, they'll get angry. And if they do, then the Chinese will be mad. So you have the U .S. on the U .S. side. We're thinking of at least 10 reasons why Japan cannot improve its defenses. That's changed enough in recent years. But you see how many decades we've lost. 00:08:51 JACK GAINES Right. I can see part of what the State Department is saying in that a lot of those countries along the Asian coast were under Japanese rule during World War II. They're concerned that by showing favor and coordinating with them in defense might offend places like the Philippines or Korea. It is a concern to be weighed, but I don't know how much weight you would put to it. 00:09:14 GRANT NEWSHAM I wouldn't give it hardly any. With the Japanese, when you actually think about it, I would say within... 30 years of the end of the war, but certainly today, and for the last at least 20 years ago. The new century. Even before that. The Japanese and World War II is not really an issue in almost all of Asia. The Chinese, of course... Play it up. That's a good way to put it. Of course, they do remember what the Japanese did, and it was barbaric. Although the Chinese Communist Party afterwards killed 50 million Chinese in peacetime and good weather, which the Imperial Japanese Army couldn't have dreamed of doing. But World War II is an issue in China. Korea as well, the relationship is dicey. Up to a point. I mean, little old ladies go and sit in front of the embassy still. 00:10:05 JACK GAINES the embassy still. 00:10:06 GRANT NEWSHAM There are, and then you just had a South Korean amphibious ship come to Yokosuka in Tokyo on a visit. In Korea, there's a fundamental sort of suspicion of the Japanese. Sometimes it is a real dislike. But most people, it's not a big issue. But except for those two countries, you go down the list in Asia, and there is no after effect of World War II. I find the Filipinos get along very well with the Japanese. The Indonesians do. They, in fact, see the Japanese as being the people who freed them from the colonial yoke. Okay. The Malays, they actually didn't have that bad a time during the occupation. The Chinese in Malaysia did. So the Malaysians don't have any really hard feelings against the Japanese. Taiwan, same thing. They've got a very good relationship. And then there's one plus billion Indians who actually have an excellent relationship with Japan and see Japan as real friends and vice versa. So you're starting to get a good chunk of Asia, which, as you can see, actually sees Japan as a good country, useful economically. It's been very generous. And they like to see a Japanese military that's strong enough, allied with the United States, able to deal with China. 00:11:27 JACK GAINES Right. And why would we have such a different balance as we do with Germany and Europe? Because no one's questioning this in Holland or in France. That's just another country. They freely trade, they freely access each other. So maybe mindset just needs to shift to say the reform of Japan is just like Germany, and we need to start treating them and partner nations the same and start advocating for a joint staff. 00:11:52 GRANT NEWSHAM And you could do that in an afternoon, but the Japanese will not speak up for themselves. And an old New York Times reporter, Richard Halloran, I remember him telling me once that all the people he ever dealt with in the world... The Japanese were the worst at explaining themselves. And there's a reticence which slows them down. But also the Americans are afraid to tell them what we need. And that is a huge problem, because if we don't tell them, the Japanese are not blind readers, and they won't do what we think we'd like them to do, but we're afraid to ask. And in fact, one of the Japanese prime ministers in 1970, so 50 -some years ago, He gave some very good advice to the Americans, and it was at the time the Americans were trying to put an aircraft carrier into Yokosuka, the naval base near Tokyo. They wanted to assign it there permanently. And the U .S. side was thinking of excuses why it was too hard for the Japanese. They'll cause political difficulties. The Japanese have an election coming up. The timing just isn't right. And finally, the Japanese side sent a message to the Americans saying, tell us what you need. And don't back down. And they said it out of exasperation, really. And it was the best advice the Americans have ever been given. And we've refused to follow it ever since then. And really, it's almost a cultural trait, sort of a Confucian system. They actually are happy to have experts tell them what they ought to do. Sure. Whereas we are more of the Socratic method. And it doesn't, it just doesn't work. That's why after all these years, the Americans and the Japanese forces, except for the navies, And except for missile defense, we really don't operate together anywhere near where we need to be. We're not even close. And another very interesting fact a lot of people don't know is the Japanese military missed its recruitment targets by about 50 % last year. 5 -0? 00:13:50 JACK GAINES -0? 00:13:50 GRANT NEWSHAM 5 -0. And it routinely misses them by 20 -25%. So this, you can see, is a problem. It's now an older force, doesn't have enough people. In order to fulfill its missions, it would probably have to be twice as big, both personnel -wise and in terms of ships and hardware. Its war stocks are basically non -existent, doesn't know anything really about casualty care, combat casualty replacements, logistics. 00:14:20 JACK GAINES Well, if the media looks down on it and the political class looks down on it, it's not going to get a lot of positivity in the public mindset. So that's got to be part of it. It's not a vote -getter to push for a strong defense. 00:14:31 GRANT NEWSHAM vote -getter to push for a strong defense. I mean, if you're a politician, no one's going to say, he's the defense guy, let's give him our vote. But people vote for other reasons. But you do get used to, after that horrific experience in World War II, that for decades people didn't want to really think about defense, and they were glad to have the Americans around to handle it, and particularly when it seemed like there wasn't any real threat anywhere. People were happy with that, and even the U .S. side. didn't mind it as well. But I'd say it should have started to change at least 20 years ago. And it didn't until maybe four or five years ago. Well, 00:15:10 JACK GAINES when did the risk indicators really start popping up with China? 00:15:14 GRANT NEWSHAM I think by... It can't be back when Nixon went. 00:15:15 JACK GAINES It can't be back when Nixon went. Well, it should have, 00:15:16 GRANT NEWSHAM it should have, you know, I think. But about 2005 is when it was obvious what was coming. 00:15:19 JACK GAINES But about 00:15:21 GRANT NEWSHAM when it was obvious what was coming. And even before that, if you knew what to look for. But as I said, some of us... We knew what needed done and what the problems were. And there were Japanese who did too. And that's why when we put together their amphibious force, it was sort of an effort to address the shortcomings in Japan's self -defense force. Also to improve the overall U .S.-Japan relationship because it was so imbalanced. Right. Where the Japanese weren't doing anything near enough to defend themselves. And that over time creates a lot of friction in a relationship. So we were trying to address that with the amphibious force, and that was 2011, which we were pretty successful at that because we didn't ask permission from anybody. I was going to say, if you were successful, 00:16:10 JACK GAINES did you get fired? 00:16:11 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, it's not that people didn't try. 00:16:11 JACK GAINES Well, it's not that people didn't try. Sorry, that was sarcastic. But I was a reservist, so they couldn't quite get a bead on me. 00:16:15 GRANT NEWSHAM I was a reservist, so they couldn't quite get a bead on me. Yeah. And didn't quite know what we were doing. And also you had people like General Gregson, who was then at... Department of Defense, who had been in Japan many years, and he knew the importance of it all. So he would provide some cover. But the real success there was because the Japanese side took the ideas and ran with it. And the Americans provided some cover and some know -how and some advice. But it was the Japanese who did that. Once the Japanese took on the mission, well, what are the Americans going to say? But I was even told that at Indo -PACOM, that there were people who gotten wind of this and were very much opposed because the idea that Japanese having an amphibious force was provocative. Not just provocative, but it was going to cause the Japanese to go on the rampage again, like in 1941. I'm not making this up. 00:17:11 JACK GAINES So when Germany starts building the Leopard 2, were they expected to go on a rampage too? 00:17:17 GRANT NEWSHAM No, those are Europeans. Oh, okay. You know how the Europeans are okay. 00:17:19 JACK GAINES okay. You know 00:17:21 GRANT NEWSHAM But the fact that Germans have been allowed back into polite society. tells you something, and the Japanese are just as deserving of it as well. 00:17:30 JACK GAINES Did you see the movie Godzilla Minus One? No. It's an interesting portrayal of post -World War II Japan. And Godzilla, which is this giant monster, comes out of the sea, tears up Japan, and has an atomic breath that shoots off nuclear explosions, which sounds a lot like the United States in a mythological way. One thing that... the show did that was interesting is it kind of engaged post -military era and had talked about it. And it seemed like it was trying to reconcile the past with now and build out a notion that the military is okay, that after the war, there were good things that happened and that we should embrace a military in the future. So there might be some societal impulses out there that are promoting and supporting a more built -up military in Japan. 00:18:24 GRANT NEWSHAM Well, you're actually right. The public at large has always been pretty supportive of the military. For example, when they have open base days, when they put on so -called firepower demonstrations, which is like an exercise you can watch where they shoot off stuff, that they're always oversubscribed. And people just pour into these things because they're interested. And the central government, or say the ruling class, are the ones who are gun -shy or... I'm really hesitant, but the public at large, you know, when you ask them, you know, should Japan have a normal military? The replies to that are like 85%. Well, yes, of course. And I think they would be horrified if they knew the actual state of the Japanese military. I mentioned this to a Japanese politician last year, and he was horrified at the idea. And the public as well would have a similar reaction. Regular Japanese people say they have a pretty good understanding of what Japan needs to do to defend itself and of the importance of having a national defense, but the government doesn't explain it very well. When they do, the reaction, there's a Japanese expression, it's called like, it's atarimae. And it means like, well, yeah. It's like, duh. 00:19:42 JACK GAINES Abnautually. And that's what it means. 00:19:42 GRANT NEWSHAM And that's what it means. Should Japan have a good defense? Atarimae. And yeah, what's the question here? But if you ask that question in the political world, then you'll get all sorts of emming and hawing. They wanted nothing of that. By the late 70s, certainly by the 90s, that they sort of outlived that. But it was comfortable to continue with it, particularly if you're the government, because you don't have to spend money on defense. And the Americans are covering that. So it was as if the Americans were giving. I'd say at least $50 billion a year in free defense coverage, at least, probably more. And, you know, if you're a government, you think, well, why should we do anything different? And so they got used to that. We got used to it. And then at some point, the friction builds up where you just can't do that. And the Japanese themselves start to be resentful. 00:20:37 JACK GAINES Right. Keeping them handicapped, probably. 00:20:40 GRANT NEWSHAM Yeah. You know, they're not letting us be self -fulfilled. I think that's sort of the marriage counselor's analysis. And so that imbalance was such that it was creating huge problems in the relationship. But the defense relationship, you know, pointing out, well, you know, you guys really aren't very good, except for the Navy. You know, and we can't work with you very well, except for the Navies. And as a result, that's why we are where we are today. By now, if we had a more sort of capable U .S.-Japan defense relationship, where the two services could... operate together, and we're conducting a joint defense of Japan and the surrounding areas, which includes, say, to Taiwan even, that that would have, I think, deterred a lot of the problems that we're having. But by pretending everything was okay, we've gotten ourselves in a position where we now face a real threat out there. And we're trying to make up for lost time. And I don't know. And I don't know which side I would bet on. I'd bet on ours because I'm an American. But that's how out of whack it has gotten. It used to be maybe till 20 years ago, we were in pretty good shape. But you can see that advantage eroding. And nowadays, depending on how a fight were to take place, if it does take place, it would be less of a sure thing than it once was. And that's, I think, putting it very nicely. 00:22:04 JACK GAINES Well, tell me about the threat. 00:22:05 GRANT NEWSHAM What are you seeing? It's China. led by the Chinese Communist Party. (Part II) 00:00:02 JACK GAINES Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting@gmail.com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome back Grant Newsham, retired Marine colonel and author of When China Attacks, A Warning to America. Grant came on the show to discuss the state of the Japanese defense forces and the PRC threat. This is the second in a two-part episode, so let's get started. 00:00:56 SPEAKER_02 It's China. led by the Chinese Communist Party. They built up a military which is just gradually but steadily expanding its reach and its coverage. And it is compared to, say, 2020, now instead of just being able to operate a little bit off their coast, they can reach Guam, Hawaii, and onwards. The Chinese military doesn't tend to develop into a force able to operate worldwide just like the U .S. can. And their ship numbers. They've got more than we do. Something like 350 versus our 290. 00:00:58 JACK GAINES the Chinese Communist Party. 00:01:06 JACK GAINES its reach 00:01:11 JACK GAINES say, 2020, now instead of just being able to operate a little bit 00:01:15 GRANT NEWSHAM off their coast, they can reach Guam, Hawaii, and onwards. The Chinese military doesn't tend to develop into a force able to operate worldwide just 00:01:25 JACK GAINES like the U .S. can. And their ship numbers. They've got more than we do. Something like 350 versus our 00:01:37 SPEAKER_02 Well, fortunately, in terms of quality, they're pretty good. And they know what they need to do, and they're getting better. For some things like carrier operations, they're not at our level yet. But if you look at the speed at which they have developed, they're in pretty good shape. But let's just say the South China Sea, which is one and a half times the size of the Mediterranean. Whenever U .S. ships go in there, and we do publicize our transits and operations and exercises, for every ship we put in there, For every ship we put in, the Chinese can match it with at least 10. And that doesn't include ground -based and air -launched anti -ship missiles, for example. So if the Chinese pick their spot, 00:01:39 JACK GAINES they're pretty good. And they know what they need to do, and they're getting better. For some things like carrier operations, they're not at our level yet. But if you look at the speed at which they have developed, they're in pretty good shape. But let's just say the South China Sea, which is one and a half times the size of the Mediterranean. 00:02:00 JACK GAINES and we do publicize our transits and operations and exercises, for every ship we put in there, For every ship we put in, the Chinese can match it with at least 10. And that doesn't include ground -based and air -launched anti -ship missiles, for example. 00:02:16 SPEAKER_02 if the Chinese pick their spot, pick their timing, I wouldn't want to be the destroyer skipper who's got 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. And he's got eight seconds to figure out what to do. The point is they have had de facto control of the South China Sea since about seven, eight years ago. And yes, we can go in there. But once we're gone, the Chinese close back up and they've pretty much got it. Beyond that, it's harder for them, but they're steadily expanding their capability to conduct operations. It's a military that has its problems, like every military, but they are trying to correct them. They are building a military which they want to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers, which is us. In many respects, they are our equals. Have you ever heard a Korean War veteran who said he wanted to fight the Chinese again? And these were Chinese. These was the Chinese of 1950s. It's a very different place today. And I'm not saying that they can't be defeated, but I'm not saying that they can't be defeated. An adversary that could give us a lot of trouble. When their intentions are to first dominate regionally and locally, and then push that farther afield to all the Pacific and beyond. And they're setting up the infrastructure worldwide with ports and airfields to do that. They're investing in long -range transports, these naval replenishment ships that you need to be able to operate the way we do, and that's their mission. And we have pretended until about 2017 that this wasn't the case. In fact, you couldn't even say China was an adversary. And guys who did, like Captain James Fennell, who was the head of intelligence at Pack Fleet. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. The then administration hated him and got rid of him. And that's how bad it was. And I saw this all firsthand. Experience some of it, not as bad as Captain Fennell did. So we've allowed them to build up into a military that we had better take very seriously. And the Chinese do see this as a tool for their... 00:02:16 JACK GAINES if the 00:02:17 SPEAKER_03 Chinese pick their spot, pick their timing, I wouldn't want to be the destroyer skipper who's got 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 20 anti -ship missiles coming at him. 00:02:28 JACK GAINES figure out what to do. The point is they have had de facto control of the South China Sea since about seven, eight years ago. 00:02:39 JACK GAINES we're gone, the Chinese close back up and they've pretty much got it. Beyond that, it's 00:02:45 SPEAKER_03 but they're steadily expanding their capability to conduct operations. It's a military that has its problems, like every military, but they are trying to correct them. They are 00:02:55 JACK GAINES a military which they want to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers, which is us. In many respects, 00:03:03 JACK GAINES our equals. Have you ever heard a Korean War veteran who said he wanted to fight the Chinese again? And these were Chinese. These was the Chinese of 1950s. It's a very different place today. And I'm not saying that they can't be defeated, but I'm not saying that they can't 00:03:22 JACK GAINES a lot of trouble. When their intentions are to first dominate regionally and locally, and then push that farther afield to all the Pacific and beyond. And they're setting up the infrastructure worldwide with ports and airfields to do that. They're investing in long -range transports, these naval replenishment ships that you need to be able to operate the way we do, and that's their mission. And we have pretended 00:03:50 SPEAKER_03 until about 2017 00:03:51 GRANT NEWSHAM that this wasn't the case. In fact, you couldn't even say China was an adversary. And guys who did, like Captain James Fennell, 00:04:01 JACK GAINES who was the head of intelligence at Pack Fleet. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. He was cashier. He was forced to retire. The then administration hated him and got rid of him. And that's how bad it was. And I saw this all firsthand. Experience some of it, not as bad as Captain Fennell did. So we've allowed them to build up into a military that we had better take very seriously. And the Chinese do see this as a tool for 00:04:30 SPEAKER_02 The idea is if you have a powerful military, well, that's when you can lean on people. That's when you can intimidate people. You can dominate them. And they're happy with the psychological domination, political domination. It doesn't have to be occupying, but dominating. And they're in every field, from outer space, long -range missiles, undersea warfare, really putting a lot of effort into it. And there is a certain sort of ingenuity that goes into their operations. Well, they can't invent things. They don't develop things on their own. They just steal things. So they reverse engineer things. So they reverse engineer. 00:04:32 SPEAKER_03 well, that's when you can lean on people. That's when 00:04:39 JACK GAINES And they're happy with the psychological domination, political domination. It doesn't have to be occupying, but dominating. And they're in every field, from outer space, long -range missiles, undersea warfare, really putting a lot of effort into it. And there is a certain sort of ingenuity that goes into their operations. Well, they can't invent things. They don't develop things on their own. They just steal things. So they reverse engineer things. 00:05:09 SPEAKER_02 Well, it... You know, it's kind of true up to a point, but look at us. The Yankee ingenuity was taking stolen British technology and making it better. And so the fact they may not be as innovative as us, well, sometimes it just has to be good enough. So they've got now a military to combine with this desire for political domination as well as considering their economic power as just as important as the military. And you see how successful that has been. When you have U .S. business leaders giving Xi Jinping two standing ovations last November in San Francisco, that tells you how successful they've been on the economic front. And the Japanese know they have a huge problem. You would often hear the Japanese military saying, one thing Taiwan's defense is Japan's defense. But I've even seen the calculations they did, like at which point the Japanese Navy would be outmatched by the Chinese Navy. And they had the date almost down to when it was. And our side, we were late recognizing this. We refused to. We refused to. 00:05:11 GRANT NEWSHAM kind of true up to a point, but look at us. The Yankee ingenuity was taking stolen British technology and making it better. And so the fact 00:05:20 SPEAKER_03 be as innovative as us, well, sometimes it just 00:05:23 JACK GAINES has to be good enough. So they've got now a military to combine with this desire for political domination as well as considering their economic power as just as important as the military. And you see how successful that has been. When you have U .S. business leaders giving Xi Jinping two standing 00:05:45 JACK GAINES San Francisco, that tells you how successful they've been on the economic front. And the Japanese know they have a huge problem. You 00:05:53 SPEAKER_03 would often hear the Japanese military saying, one thing Taiwan's defense is Japan's defense. But I've even seen the calculations they did, like at which 00:06:03 JACK GAINES point the 00:06:06 JACK GAINES be outmatched by the Chinese Navy. And they had the date almost down to when it was. And our side, we were late recognizing this. We refused 00:07:18 SPEAKER_02 Yeah, as he described it well. Ultimately, the military part of the fight is extremely important. But it's almost a sideshow. But it's almost a sideshow to the other activities, the other fight that China's been waging for the last 30, 40 years, almost ever since we opened up to them. And that has been generally referred to as political warfare, with components being economic warfare, financial warfare, drug warfare, which is the word the Chinese use. So all this fentanyl that's been pumped into America for the last decade that's killed up towards a million Americans, almost all of it comes from China. And they know exactly what they're doing. And so every year they're taking like the equivalent of two or three divisions off the battlefield. You've destroyed neighborhoods. You've destroyed successful economic warfare. Drive 30 miles up the road to Baltimore. Go to Sparrows, Baltimore. Where there used to be steel mills. And now you have Amazon fulfillment sectors at best. But you've seen just the gutting of American society, the so -called working class, the Rust Belt. And this was done intentionally. And this was done intentionally. In large part, Chinese economic warfare directed at the United States. And then you have cyber warfare as well. You have cyber espionage. Well beyond what countries normally do. But they have used it very effectively. And the Chinese just... Recently put out their new fighter. That's called the J -35. That is a dig at the Americans. Because it is based on stolen blueprints for the F -35. I don't know. 00:07:20 SPEAKER_03 Ultimately, the military part of the 00:07:26 SPEAKER_03 it's almost a sideshow. 00:07:29 JACK GAINES sideshow to the other activities, the other fight that China's been waging for the last 30, 40 years, almost ever since we opened up to them. And that has been generally referred to as political warfare, with components being economic warfare, financial warfare, drug warfare, which is the word the Chinese use. So all this fentanyl that's been pumped into America for the last decade that's killed up towards a million Americans, almost all of it comes from China. And they know exactly what they're doing. And so every year they're taking like the equivalent of two or three divisions off the battlefield. You've destroyed neighborhoods. You've destroyed successful economic warfare. Drive 30 miles up the road to Baltimore. Go to Sparrows, Baltimore. Where there used to be steel mills. And now you have Amazon fulfillment sectors at best. But you've seen just the gutting of American society, the so -called working class, the Rust Belt. And this was done intentionally. 00:08:26 JACK GAINES warfare directed at the United States. And then you have cyber warfare as well. You have cyber espionage. 00:08:34 SPEAKER_03 Well beyond what countries normally do. But they have used it very effectively. And the Chinese just... Recently put out their new fighter. That's called the J -35. That is a dig at 00:08:47 GRANT NEWSHAM it is based on stolen blueprints for the F -35. 00:08:55 GRANT NEWSHAM know. It's been a while. I don't know. It's been a while. 00:09:02 SPEAKER_02 Unfortunately, Copperfish is leapfrogging over stages. Yes, it may take them a little longer, but they will popscotch through it. And so... So I take it pretty seriously. Their Y -20, their long -range transport, is basically the C -17. And they've just been immensely successful at this sort of espionage. And at the same time, we've done nothing to push back on them. Then there's the propaganda angle of this, which really good old Jesuit meaning of the word just means to explain yourself or articulate your position. So people understand that they've been very successful in getting Americans to buy the Chinese line. China's rise is peaceful. China's rise is peaceful. China's never attacked anybody. China's never attacked anybody. It's not true. All great nations do this. So who are we to complain? America has its problems, too. America has its problems, too. Who are we to complain about the Chinese taking live organs out of Uyghurs and prisoners of conscience? And we've been able to convince ourselves that we've been able to convince ourselves that we've not only can we not do anything, we shouldn't do anything. This is changing. But you can see we were very late getting started. And this has all been done without firing a shot. Chinese economic inroads, Chinese economic inroads, which leads to political influence, is in, for example, South America and Africa. Just immense how fast that has come, how solid it is. Pacific Island, something similar is going on, something similar is going on. Look at the difficulties the Germans have had, weaning themselves off of this Chinese addiction. And as a result, 00:09:03 GRANT NEWSHAM is leapfrogging over stages. Yes, it may take them 00:09:07 SPEAKER_03 but they will 00:09:09 GRANT NEWSHAM popscotch through it. And so... So I take it pretty seriously. Their Y -20, 00:09:16 JACK GAINES their long -range transport, is basically the C -17. And they've just been immensely successful at this sort of espionage. And at the same time, we've done nothing to push back on them. Then there's the propaganda angle of this, which really good old Jesuit meaning of the word just means to explain yourself or articulate your position. So people understand that they've been very successful in getting Americans to buy the Chinese line. China's rise is peaceful. China's rise is peaceful. China's never attacked anybody. China's never attacked anybody. It's not true. All great nations do this. So who are we to complain? 00:09:49 SPEAKER_03 America has its problems, too. America has its problems, too. Who are we to complain about the Chinese taking live organs out of Uyghurs and prisoners of conscience? And we've been able to 00:10:00 JACK GAINES that we've been able 00:10:00 SPEAKER_03 to convince ourselves that we've not only can we not do anything, we shouldn't do anything. This is changing. But you can see we were very late getting started. And this has all been done without firing a shot. 00:10:10 JACK GAINES Chinese economic inroads, Chinese economic inroads, which leads to political influence, is in, for example, South America and Africa. Just immense how fast that has come, how solid it is. Pacific Island, something similar is going on, something similar is going on. 00:10:27 SPEAKER_03 Look at the difficulties the Germans have had, weaning themselves off of this Chinese addiction. 00:10:34 SPEAKER_02 as a result, they have been able to improve their position politically, psychologically, economically, and they've been able to do this globally without having to use their military. 00:10:36 SPEAKER_03 their position 00:10:40 GRANT NEWSHAM and they've been able to do this globally without having to use their military. 00:10:51 SPEAKER_02 Yeah, that's the idea. Is you don't want to. So our view of warfare is like a hundred -yard dash. Wherever the two sides come to the line, shake loose, and then someone fires a gun, and then someone fires a gun, and then it's game on. To the Chinese, the war has started long ago. And you're wearing down your opponent. You're weakening his ability to resist. You're creating chaos in his own country. There's a word called entropy. Which is just breaking down. Entropic warfare is a word that sometimes gets used. For you're breaking down his ability to resist. And at the same time, of course, the Chinese are building up a military, which is very serious. Yes, it's not showing up off of San Diego just yet. But places closer to China, it's much more of an issue. Japan knows the problem they have with the People's Liberation Army. Pacific Island, Southeast Asia. You are seeing more of a Chinese presence. And the point is, when the time comes, you may not even be able to resist if the Chinese have done this other sort of warfare. 00:10:53 JACK GAINES want to. So our view of warfare is like a hundred -yard dash. Wherever the two sides come to the line, shake loose, and then someone fires a gun, and then someone fires a gun, and then it's game on. To the Chinese, the war has started long ago. And you're wearing down your opponent. You're weakening his ability to resist. You're creating chaos in his own country. There's a word called entropy. Which is just breaking down. Entropic warfare is a word that 00:11:19 SPEAKER_03 sometimes gets used. For you're breaking down his ability to resist. And at the same time, of course, the Chinese are building up a military, which is very serious. 00:11:28 JACK GAINES Yes, it's not showing 00:11:33 JACK GAINES places closer to China, it's much more of an issue. Japan knows the problem they have with the People's Liberation Army. Pacific Island, Southeast Asia. You are seeing more 00:11:46 JACK GAINES Chinese presence. And the point is, when the time comes, you may not even be able to resist if the Chinese have 00:11:52 SPEAKER_03 this other 00:12:31 SPEAKER_02 That's exactly what it is. It's mental warfare. You're attacking the mind. You're attacking how people think about things. Some people use the word cognitive warfare. You're the popular word. Yeah, you're attacking the mind. And so you can see how well it worked. And the Russians had a much poorer hand to play than the Chinese do. Because we do so much business with China. And you see how hard it is to do things like ban TikTok. We can't even get that done. 00:12:33 JACK GAINES mental warfare. You're attacking the mind. You're attacking how people think about things. Some people use the 00:12:42 JACK GAINES You're the popular word. Yeah, you're attacking the mind. And so you can see how well it worked. And the Russians had a much poorer hand to play than 00:12:50 GRANT NEWSHAM the Chinese do. Because we do so much business with China. And you see how hard it is to do things like ban TikTok. We can't even get that done. 00:12:59 SPEAKER_02 We can't even get that done. 00:13:03 SPEAKER_02 Look, 72 hours, if that for the Indians do, we can do it. And you see how Chinese successfully use what they call lawfare, which is using our own legal system. And the idea is that you get proxies, influential foreigners in your target country to actually do your bidding for you. The Chinese have like five aces to play. The Russians might have won, but you can see how successful the Russians have been just with that. 00:13:04 JACK GAINES for the Indians do, we can do it. And you see how Chinese successfully use what they call lawfare, which 00:13:13 JACK GAINES the idea is that you get proxies, influential foreigners in your target country to actually do your bidding for you. The Chinese have like five aces to play. The Russians might have won, but you can see how successful the Russians have 00:13:41 SPEAKER_02 Uh -huh. Uh -huh. 00:13:46 SPEAKER_02 Well, you're right about the Russians, but the Chinese understand that the term gray zone paralyzes Americans. We have no idea what to do because of our view of warfare being until the shooting starts. That it is we're not really at war. There's still hope of working something out. 00:13:51 GRANT NEWSHAM paralyzes Americans. We have no idea what to do because of our view of warfare being until the shooting starts. That it is we're not really at war. There's still hope of working 00:14:03 SPEAKER_03 something out. 00:14:05 SPEAKER_02 That has been our rote response for all these years, is to not get the Chinese mad, don't provoke them, and we have convinced ourselves that we have to have Chinese help with fill -in -the -blank, North Korea transnational crime, nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change, and therefore we cannot challenge the PRC because we won't get their cooperation. That's what we've effectively handcuffed ourselves, but when it comes to that so -called hybrid warfare, it's not all that It's not all that complicated if you recognize what it is and how it fits into China's behavior, its strategy. But you also would do well to attract from other directions where they're particularly vulnerable. And that is where you take advantage of the fact, for example, the Chinese currency is not freely convertible, which means that outside of China, nobody really wants Chinese money. It's like the script at a... It's like the script where you can use it to buy caramel corn and go on the rides. 00:14:05 SPEAKER_03 has been our rote response for all these years, is to not get the Chinese mad, don't provoke them, and we have convinced ourselves that 00:14:14 JACK GAINES have Chinese help with fill -in -the -blank, North Korea transnational crime, nuclear weapons 00:14:22 JACK GAINES climate change, and therefore we cannot challenge the PRC because we won't get their cooperation. That's what we've effectively handcuffed ourselves, but when it comes to that so -called hybrid warfare, it's not all that It's not all that complicated if you recognize what it is and how it fits into 00:14:42 JACK GAINES its strategy. But you also would do well to attract from other directions where they're particularly vulnerable. And that is where you take advantage of the fact, for example, the Chinese currency is not freely convertible, which means that outside of China, nobody really wants Chinese money. It's like the script at a... It's like the script where you can use it to buy caramel corn and 00:15:06 SPEAKER_02 That's it. Nobody wants it. So choke that off and China's got some real problems. Another is the just thoroughgoing corruption of China's ruling class. And most of them have wealth overseas, foreign bank accounts. foreign bank accounts, relatives with green cards, relatives with green cards, some operate businesses overseas. And this is illegal. And this is illegal. 00:15:08 JACK GAINES it. So choke that off and China's got some real problems. Another is the just thoroughgoing corruption of China's ruling class. And most 00:15:19 GRANT NEWSHAM overseas, foreign bank accounts. foreign bank accounts, relatives with green cards, relatives with green cards, some operate businesses overseas. And this 00:15:31 SPEAKER_02 And this is where that really scares them. Because in 2011 or 2012, New York Times and Bloomberg actually put out some good stories about the overseas wealth of China's top people, including Xi Jinping's family. I've never seen a reaction from the Chinese like that one. This bothered them. 00:15:33 JACK GAINES scares them. Because in 2011 or 2012, New 00:15:37 SPEAKER_03 York Times and Bloomberg actually put out some good stories about the overseas wealth of China's top people, including Xi Jinping's family. 00:15:46 GRANT NEWSHAM I've never seen a reaction from the Chinese like that one. 00:15:53 SPEAKER_02 More than anything else we've ever done. That's... 00:15:53 GRANT NEWSHAM than anything 00:16:14 SPEAKER_02 One way to do it. Another way to do it. That would be a tactical thing. Say you were to release, say, every Friday. Say at 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 00:16:16 JACK GAINES way to do it. That would be a tactical thing. Say you were to 00:16:19 SPEAKER_03 release, say, every Friday. Say at 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 1 a .m. 1 o 'clock or whenever. 00:16:25 SPEAKER_02 Which of the top 50 Chinese Communist Party officials? And make sure it reached everywhere in China. The thing that the public really hates is this corruption. And by the top dogs. And that is something that really bothers them. And you note that the Chinese leadership is very willing to have the average Chinese citizen absorb any amount of punishment. And they even talk about it. 00:16:27 SPEAKER_03 Chinese Communist Party officials? And make sure it 00:16:29 GRANT NEWSHAM reached everywhere in China. The thing that the public really hates is this corruption. And by the top dogs. 00:16:38 JACK GAINES is something that really bothers them. And you note that the Chinese leadership is very willing to have the average Chinese citizen 00:16:49 JACK GAINES they even talk about it. 00:16:51 SPEAKER_02 But when it's personal, then they see it very differently. And this is one of the few ways to really make it personal for them is to capitalize on this corruption. So when we talk about... Dealing with Gray's own operations, we're probably not going to be all that successful. Because they have more ships, they can be in more places. 00:16:51 JACK GAINES when it's personal, then they see it very differently. And this is one of the few ways to really make it personal for them is to capitalize on this corruption. So when we talk about... Dealing with Gray's own operations, we're probably not going to be all that successful. Because they have more ships, they can be in more places. 00:17:14 SPEAKER_02 But expose that. They can do that. Have we made a concerted effort to expose Chinese bribery, the illicit payments, the corruption that they put into everywhere they go? Everywhere there's a Chinese presence, you have corruption of the society, the political class as well. And do we ever target that? Do we consider it a priority effort? I don't even think we consider it an effort at all. Exposure is the one thing that has a huge effect. This is why investigative journalists get big. It's why like Irish. gangsters try to murder them in Malta they get blown up because they're effective because they're effective which is the thing that makes it very hard for corruption to work and that's where I think 00:17:15 JACK GAINES can do that. Have we made a concerted effort to expose Chinese bribery, the illicit payments, the corruption that they put into everywhere they go? Everywhere there's a Chinese presence, you have corruption of the society, the political class as well. And do we ever target that? Do we consider it a priority effort? I don't even think we consider it an effort at all. Exposure is the one thing that has a huge effect. This is why investigative journalists 00:17:44 SPEAKER_03 get big. It's why like Irish. gangsters try to murder them in Malta they get blown up because they're effective because they're effective which 00:17:52 SPEAKER_02 is the thing that makes it very hard for corruption to work and that's where I think We have some real opportunities to make it very clear what's being done. And this is something that, if you expose it, you can really capitalize on it. Just make it too hard to do this. And it also gives oxygen to the honest people in a country. It gives them something to work with. It gives them something to work with. To take on these repressive regimes, these corrupt regimes, these corrupt regimes, administrations. And get rid of them and replace them with honest people. I've never met anywhere, anywhere I've been. Over the years. Where people like to be cheaters. Where people like to be cheaters. Where they like their leaders to be corrupt. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. It's just nothing you can do. But it's just nothing you can do. It really has an effect. And that's where I think government for sources could be effectively devoted. And particularly once you get local reporters in on it. Once you get the local. Honest locals in on it. Honest locals in on it. And that's where I think we could be very effective. Corruption, as you've mentioned, that really is the grease to everything the Chinese communists do globally. Take it away and then take away their access to dollars, convertible currency. And they've really got some problems. But they have played their hand very well today. But in some ways it's a house of cards. I don't think it's that hard to take on. But the longer you wait, the harder it gets. 00:17:52 SPEAKER_03 is the thing that makes it 00:17:54 JACK GAINES corruption to work and that's where I think We have some real opportunities to make it very clear what's being done. And this is something that, if you expose it, you can really capitalize on it. Just make it too hard to do this. And it also gives oxygen to the honest people in a country. It 00:18:16 JACK GAINES to work with. To take on these repressive regimes, these corrupt regimes, these corrupt regimes, 00:18:23 JACK GAINES them with honest people. I've never met anywhere, anywhere I've been. Over the years. Where 00:18:32 JACK GAINES I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. I just haven't met it. I've been anywhere. It's just nothing you can do. But it's just nothing you can do. It really has an effect. And that's where I think government for sources could be effectively devoted. And particularly once you 00:18:46 GRANT NEWSHAM reporters in on it. Once you get the local. Honest locals in on it. Honest locals in on it. And that's where I think we could be very effective. 00:18:56 JACK GAINES Corruption, as you've mentioned, that really is the grease to everything the Chinese communists do globally. Take it away and then take away their access to dollars, convertible currency. And they've really got some 00:19:12 JACK GAINES today. But in some ways it's a house of cards. I don't think it's that hard to take on. But the longer you wait, the harder it 00:19:28 SPEAKER_02 In regards to U .S. policy, in policy, there really is a... a desire that the United States stays around in Asia, that maintains its military might, and is able to effectively safeguard what you call freedom consensual government. Because if you go around the region, nobody wants to be dominated by the PRC. But they do have a huge advantage, particularly economically, that they're seen by leaders and business people in a lot of these countries. That's really the source of... some wealth, some prosperity. And we would do well, for example, to see the fight as just as much an economic one as a military one. Because we could build up our military, rebuild it, and we could have 800 ships in the Navy, and still lose. If we don't fight on these other fronts, we don't want you here because we're doing too much business with China. And that's where the U .S., along with its friends, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indians, the Australians, we would do well to operate together more and to see the economic front and the political warfare fronts as a priority effort as much, if not more, than the military. 00:19:30 SPEAKER_03 in policy, there 00:19:31 JACK GAINES really is a... a desire that the United States stays around in Asia, that maintains its military might, and is able to 00:19:45 JACK GAINES Because if you go around the region, nobody wants to be dominated by the PRC. But they do have a huge advantage, particularly economically, that they're seen by leaders and business people in a lot of these countries. That's really the source of... some wealth, some prosperity. And we would do well, for example, to see the fight as just as much an economic 00:20:09 GRANT NEWSHAM one as a military one. Because we could build up our military, rebuild it, and we could have 800 ships in the Navy, and still lose. If we don't 00:20:19 JACK GAINES on these other fronts, we don't want you here because we're doing too much business with China. And that's where the U .S., along with its friends, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indians, the Australians, 00:20:30 GRANT NEWSHAM we would do well to operate together more and to see the economic front and the political warfare fronts as a priority effort as much, if not 00:20:40 JACK GAINES more, than the 00:20:45 SPEAKER_02 They have a role to play if they're properly harnessed. But you do know that these days you don't see the Yankee trader that used to exist. You'd run to Americans everywhere trying to sell something to do business. Not so much these days. And we've almost ceded the far -flung part to the world. Because, well, the return on investment isn't enough. That's not an attractive enough proposition. Well, then let's make it one. Plus, you do have, say, the Japanese, the Indians, who are much better at operating in these places, to put it together into a coherent plan. Understand what it is, political warfare, and not just block the Chinese political warfare effort, but actually have our own campaign. And it really is worth doing some homework, I think, for a lot of people into what political warfare is. One sees the opportunities, but it takes a certain type of person who's good at it. versus a civil affairs guy. Versus a civil affairs guy. He's going to see different... He's going to see parts of the battlefield in a different way. Yes, sometimes you want the tank. But then there's this other part of it all. That is almost like a liberal arts test. Here you have to figure out the motivations for things. You have to figure out how a society works. And then how do you appeal to it using the things that are parts of political warfare? And this is where you can really make some mileage. You've got to have both. Make no mistake. If you're not able to destroy things and kill people, the civil affairs part isn't going to get you very far. But combine the two, and then you've really got something that's very hard to take on if you're the bad guys. We talk about defending Taiwan, and how important it is, and it is, I think, indispensable, that China does not take Taiwan and enslave 23 million people. If they did that... 00:20:47 JACK GAINES they're properly harnessed. But you do know that these days you don't see the Yankee trader that used to exist. You'd run to Americans everywhere trying to sell something to do business. Not 00:20:59 SPEAKER_03 so much these days. And we've almost ceded the far -flung part to the world. Because, well, the return on investment isn't enough. That's not an attractive enough proposition. Well, then let's 00:21:10 GRANT NEWSHAM make it one. Plus, you do have, say, the Japanese, the Indians, who are much better at operating in these places, to put it together into a coherent plan. Understand what it 00:21:20 JACK GAINES is, political warfare, and not just block the Chinese political warfare effort, but actually have our own campaign. And it really is worth doing some homework, I think, for a lot of people into what political warfare is. One sees the opportunities, but it takes a certain type of person who's good at it. versus a civil affairs guy. Versus a civil affairs guy. He's going to see different... He's going to see parts of the battlefield in a different way. 00:21:50 SPEAKER_03 Yes, sometimes you want the tank. But then there's this other part of it all. That is almost like a liberal arts test. Here you have to figure 00:22:00 JACK GAINES for things. You have to figure out how a society works. And then how do you appeal to it using the things that are parts of political warfare? 00:22:10 JACK GAINES make some mileage. You've got to have both. Make no mistake. If you're not able to destroy things and kill people, the civil affairs part isn't going to get you very far. But combine the two, and then you've really got something that's very hard to take on if you're the bad guys. We talk about defending Taiwan, and how important it is, and it is, I think, indispensable, 00:22:32 GRANT NEWSHAM that China does not take Taiwan and enslave 23 million people. If they did that... 00:22:39 SPEAKER_02 Asia would turn red overnight, as every country tried to cut the best deal they could. No country anywhere on Earth would have much confidence in American promises that will protect them. But one of the ways to actually defend Taiwan is, yes, they could maybe use F -35s and long -range missiles and smart pines, etc. You do have to have all of this stuff. Is it enough, 00:22:39 GRANT NEWSHAM would turn red overnight, as every country tried 00:22:42 SPEAKER_03 to cut the best deal they could. No country anywhere 00:22:46 JACK GAINES on Earth would have much confidence in American promises that will protect them. But one of the ways to actually defend 00:22:51 GRANT NEWSHAM Taiwan is, yes, they could maybe use F -35s and long -range missiles and smart pines, etc. You do have to have all of this stuff. Is it enough, even? Particularly if the other side says, okay, we'll absorb whatever you can send at us, but you're finished. But one of the ways that... But one of the ways is to give them a free trade agreement to improve their economy to the point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. 00:23:02 SPEAKER_02 Particularly if the other side says, okay, we'll absorb whatever you can send at us, but you're finished. But one of the ways that... But one of the ways is to give them a free trade agreement to improve their economy to the point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. You get a certain confidence in the entire society when they're more prosperous. Salaries are very low in Taiwan. Make it so people feel like they've got more money. Can they can buy a house? Can they can buy a condominium? build up the economy and that has a ripple effect throughout the society and on their military itself. And yet we didn't do that. And I think that's where we should apply some effort. 00:23:11 JACK GAINES give them a free trade agreement to 00:23:16 JACK GAINES point that the government felt like it had money to spend on defense. You get a certain confidence in the entire society when they're more prosperous. Salaries are very low in Taiwan. Make it so people feel like they've got more money. Can they can buy a house? Can they can buy a condominium? 00:23:35 JACK GAINES the economy and that has a ripple effect throughout the society and on their military itself. And yet we didn't do that. And I think that's where we should apply some 00:24:25 SPEAKER_02 I think you're right. And it's essential that we start to understand. You look at much of the debate about us in China. What happens when the two forces go at each other? And that's almost like... Going up behind the Waffle House. Going up behind the Waffle House. To see who's the toughest guy in Prince William County. To see who's the toughest guy in Prince William County. Out back. But think of all the things that go into whether or not the two hoodlums. There's all sorts of reasons why. No, there may

The last time Mamta Kafle spoke to anyone outside of her home was the evening July 29, 2024, when she had a video call with her mother in Nepal. When her mom called Mamta back the next morning at around 11 am, her call went unanswered. According to prosecutors in Prince William County, Virginia, that is because Mamta was dead. Mamta's husband, Naresh Bhatt, claimed she had taken off, leaving both him and their 11-month-old daughter behind. After weeks of public outcry, and multiple search warrants, Naresh Bhatt was arrested on August 22, 2024 on the charge of concealing a dead body.Over the next several months, there were hearings in which the prosecution detailed a horrific case against Bhatt: one that involved him killing his 28-year-old wife in their Manassas Park home and disposing of her body. Then, on December 2, new evidence led prosecutors to charge Bhatt with two more crimes: Defiling a Dead Body and First Degree Murder. Now Naresh awaits trial, while the community wonders if he'll ever reveal where Mamta is.If you have any information regarding Mamta Kafle's disappearance, you are asked to contact the Manassas Park Police Department at 703-361-1136. This phone number is monitored 24 hours a day. If you wish to remain anonymous you can contact the Manassas/Manassas Park Crime Solvers at 703-330-0330.Buy the ebook! - And Then They Were Gone: True Stories of Those Who Went Missing and Never Came HomeSubmit a caseFind us everywhereGet episodes early and ad-free on PatreonMerch storeFor a full list of our sources, please visit our blogBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/and-then-they-were-gone--5360779/support.

Changing mindsets is essential for driving progress in any organization. Without setting aside something that does not serve you anymore, you cannot achieve real impact. Diving deep into this topic with Penny Zenker is Lisa Madrone, Chief Transformation Officer for Prince William County. Together, they discuss how mindset shifts can lead to profound innovation and enhance customer service. Lisa discusses how their organization experienced growth by adapting to new challenges dynamically and encouraging collaboration among their employees. She also talks about the importance of putting beliefs into question and fostering a culture of creativity to better serve the community.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://pennyzenker360.com/positive-productivity-podcast/

In the 6 AM Hour: Larry O'Connor and Julie Gunlock discussed: BYRON YORK: So many don't want to know so much about Kamala Harris WMAL GUEST: 6:35 AM - INTERVIEW - MATTHEW HURTT - Chair of the Arlington GOP – discussed the unhinged Karens caught stealing Trump signs in Arlington  SOCIAL MEDIA: https://x.com/matthewhurtt Arlington GOP on X: "CAUGHT RED HANDED! This Arlington liberal was caught pulling Trump-Vance yard signs up from the Courthouse Early Voting location and throwing them away on Saturday. Help us identify her. https://t.co/dUFplNrshq" / X Merianne Jensen on X: "At a local high school in Prince William County, VA, two m*rderers were prominently displayed for students to admire during Heritage Month. Thankfully, concerned parents spoke up, and the school took them down.  Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock, @patricepinkfile, and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Tuesday, September 24, 2024 / 6 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Violent crime rates in the District have dropped by more than a third compared to this time last year. We asked the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves about the reasons driving this drop. Plus, he talked about the ongoing investigation into the bribery allegations against D.C. Councilmember Trayon White and the U.S. Attorney's role in police-officer-involved shootings, like the one that took place earlier this month.We also asked about his office's responsibility when it comes to going after dangerous drivers. The STEER Act goes into effect next month and is aimed at stopping reckless drivers. But tougher new laws may not mean criminal prosecutions for traffic fatalities. U.S. Attorney Graves said there's a high standard for charging someone criminally in a traffic fatality.“What you need to prove in a criminal prosecution is that not only the person was reckless that they knew or should have known when they were engaging in the act that they were either likely to kill someone or seriously hurt them,” he said.In most cases, this standard is not met, Graves said, and called the majority of traffic fatalities a “tragic mistake.”Friday marks the first day of early voting in Virginia. WAMU's Northern Virginia reporter Margaret Barthel joins us from the polls in Prince William County. Plus, the latest in the competitive congressional races in Northern Virginia.Become a member of WAMU: wamu.org/donateSend us questions and comments for guests: kojo@wamu.orgFollow us on Instagram: instagram.com/wamu885Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/thepoliticshour

Also, Democrat Eugene Vindman and Republican Derrick Anderson participated in a Prince William County forum for 7th Congressional District candidates; GRTC wants public input on a proposed new route; Powhatan County is the latest locality to join Dolly Parton's Imagination Library; and other stories.

Welcome to another gripping episode of the 911 Delta Tethered4Life podcast. This week, Anna sits down with Mitch Nason, president of Prince William County's Local 2598, to discuss the intricate world of collective bargaining and how it benefits not just firefighters, but also policemen, dispatchers, and non-public safety employees. Mitch's extensive career in public safety and his personal insights provide an enriching narrative that is both informative and inspiring. This podcast may not be suitable to all listeners due to language and subject matters. Please listen with care. Send us your comments and suggestions podcast911delta@yahoo.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/911Delta     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/911deltatethered4life TikTok: @911deltatethered4life

In the 7 AM Hour: Larry O'Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: WMAL GUEST: 7:05 AM - INTERVIEW - STEVEN SUND - chief of the United States Capitol Police from 2019 to 2021 and author of book "Courage Under Fire: Under Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6" Discuss the anniversary of the Alexandria baseball shooting (today) Pelosi admitting in a new tape this week that she claimed responsibility BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Under-Fire-Outnumbered-January/dp/B0BGJHNBSK WMAL GUEST: 7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - MIKE CLANCY - Republican candidate running for Congress in Virginia's 10th District WEBSITE: https://www.mikeclancyforcongress.com/ VA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY: JUNE 18, 2024 (NEXT WEEK!) Early voting for the June 18 primary elections began May 3. The last day to vote early is June 15. Virginia's 10th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives is represented by Jennifer Wexton (D). In September 2023, Wexton announced that she would not seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives after she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Wexton was elected to the office on November 6, 2018. She won 56 percent of votes to defeat incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) and win her first term in the office. VA-10: The district includes all of Rappahannock County, Fauquier County, and Loudoun County, parts of Fairfax County and Prince William County, as well as the independent cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. BIO: Mike is a husband, dad, lawyer, business executive, national media commentator and devoted to his community. He is an exemplary leader with substantial experience in national security, cybersecurity, healthcare and federal legislation; and served on Governor-Elect Youngkin's Technology & Cybersecurity Transition Team. CNBC Host Presses Janet Yellen On Polls Showing Americans Believe Trump Was ‘Better For The Economy' Yellen tries to make the case that people ‘are better off now' Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, June 14, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 6 AM Hour: Larry O'Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: James Carville sounds off on Dems hemorrhaging support of Latino male voters: 'We're gonna f---in lose 'em!' WMAL GUEST: 6:15 AM - INTERVIEW - MIKE VAN METER - running for Congress in the 11th Congressional District against Rep. Gerry Connolly https://www.vanmeterforvirginia.com/ https://ballotpedia.org/Michael_Van_Meter VA-11: The district is anchored in Fairfax County, an affluent suburban county west of Washington, D.C. It includes all of Fairfax City and part of Prince William County. WMAL GUEST: 6:35 AM - INTERVIEW - CHUCK SMITH - Republican running for U.S. Senate in Virginia WEBSITE: https://chucksmithva.com/ VA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY: JUNE 18, 2024 (NEXT WEEK!) Early voting for the June 18 primary elections began May 3. The last day to vote early is June 15. Nathan Wade's team disrupts CNN interview after he's asked about timeline of Fani Willis relationship Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, June 14, 2024 / 6 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WMAL GUEST: 7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - MIKE CLANCY - Republican candidate running for Congress in Virginia's 10th District WEBSITE: https://www.mikeclancyforcongress.com/ VA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY: JUNE 18, 2024 (NEXT WEEK!) Early voting for the June 18 primary elections began May 3. The last day to vote early is June 15. Virginia's 10th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives is represented by Jennifer Wexton (D). In September 2023, Wexton announced that she would not seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives after she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Wexton was elected to the office on November 6, 2018. She won 56 percent of votes to defeat incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) and win her first term in the office. VA-10: The district includes all of Rappahannock County, Fauquier County, and Loudoun County, parts of Fairfax County and Prince William County, as well as the independent cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. BIO: Mike is a husband, dad, lawyer, business executive, national media commentator and devoted to his community. He is an exemplary leader with substantial experience in national security, cybersecurity, healthcare and federal legislation; and served on Governor-Elect Youngkin's Technology & Cybersecurity Transition Team. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, June 14, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WMAL GUEST: 6:15 AM - INTERVIEW - MIKE VAN METER - running for Congress in the 11th Congressional District against Rep. Gerry Connolly https://www.vanmeterforvirginia.com/ https://ballotpedia.org/Michael_Van_Meter VA-11: The district is anchored in Fairfax County, an affluent suburban county west of Washington, D.C. It includes all of Fairfax City and part of Prince William County. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, June 14, 2024 / 6 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 7 AM Hour: Larry O'Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: WMAL GUEST: 7:05 AM - INTERVIEW - SHAWN CARNEY - CEO and President of 40 Days for Life – discussed the latest developments in Mark Houck's case against the DOJ.  The lawsuit, backed by 40 Days for Life's newly launched Institute of Law & Justice (ILJ), aims to challenge the unjust treatment of pro-life advocates and ensure their right to peacefully protest and advocate for the unborn. Washington Examiner: Anti-abortion activist Mark Houck sues DOJ over ‘retaliatory' arrest  TRUMP TRIAL CONTINUES TODAY: Trump trial live updates: Marathon closing arguments come to an end; jury to receive instructions at 10 a.m. ‘F*ck You!': Trump Supporters, Robert De Niro Get Into Shouting Match Outside Courthouse WMAL GUEST: 7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - ANDREW MORRIS - Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) - discussed the unconstitutional Securities and Exchange Commission's “Consolidated Audit Trail” (CAT) – which is the largest government-mandated mass collection of personal financial data in American history. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is illegally collecting data of every citizen who invests in the stock market, according to a new lawsuit. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed a lawsuit against the SEC claiming that the agency, through its "Consolidated Audit Trail," or "CAT," program, is collecting mass amounts of personally identifiable data by forcing brokers, exchanges, clearing agencies and alternative trading systems to capture and send detailed information on every investor's trades in U.S. markets to a centralized database. The agency is doing so, NCLA says, without authorization from Congress and in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government search and seizure of private information. NCLA Asks Court to Halt SEC's Unauthorized and Unlawful Mass Data Collection Regime A parent sent us a picture of the high school yearbook for Gainesville High School in Gainesville, Virginia (in Prince William County) and …oh look, this year's yearbook celebrates student activism with photos of students holding anti-Israel protests. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Wednesday, May 29, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From digital inclusion to AI innovation, we take a closer look at Government Technology's honorees in the 23rd year of its annual awards. In conversation with editorial staff, we focus on the work of five particular leaders. The editors of Government Technology recently released their annual Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for this year. The class of 2024 is noteworthy for continuing a multiyear trend toward gender equity among recipients, with women making up 44 percent of the group. The cross section of public leaders is recognized for their work on digital inclusion, government modernization, innovative application of generative AI, and a collective commitment to improving government services.The episode focuses on five recipients, emphasizing their dedication and humility and underscoring their role in driving positive change at the local, state and national levels. The hosts are joined by Government Technology Managing Editor Lauren Kinkade, Associate Editor Zack Quaintance, Senior Staff Writer Thad Rueter and Data Reporter Nikki Davidson. SHOW NOTES Amy Huffman, policy director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), stands as a crucial adviser to localities in vying for slices of the federal government's historic investment of $65 billion in broadband and $2.75 billion in digital equity. The funds are now trickling down to states, where the monumental task of allocation lies. Huffman is helping to guide states in effectively utilizing the funds, facilitating coordination through NDIA's toolkit and state cohorts. Rob Mancini leads Prince William County, Va.'s IT department, which topped the 2023 Digital Counties Survey, following strong placements in previous years. He helmed the county's modernization efforts and fostered an inclusive work environment. Mancini's focus is now on enhancing government services, including the implementation of a new AI-powered 311 platform, as part of ongoing efforts to transform the county's IT infrastructure. Sam Orth, chief technology officer and director of technology in Columbus, Ohio, owes his career trajectory to an early interest in personal computers and a stint at a local computer store in the 1980s. His private-sector sales background informs his current role, emphasizing customer-centricity and the understanding that technology drives change and business outcomes. Orth's approach, rooted in intrinsic motivation and a focus on trust and authentic communication, shapes initiatives like deploying body cameras for police and establishing the city's data analytics program, highlighting the importance of people alongside technological tools in building successful IT programs. Kenyatta Powers-Rucker, Maryland Department of Human Services CIO, highlights the absence of mentorship as a significant hurdle in her tech journey — emphasizing the importance of support, particularly for underrepresented groups. With more than 12 years in leadership, Powers-Rucker's commitment lies in facilitating access to tech resources for those in need while advocating for greater diversity in the industry through speaking engagements, networking and mentorship initiatives. Katy Ruckle, Washington's chief privacy officer, has spearheaded the state's privacy initiatives, establishing foundational principles and training programs while leveraging grants for workforce upskilling. In her role since January 2020, Ruckle aims to navigate the evolving landscape of technology, particularly AI, by fostering responsible data usage through collaborative partnerships and community engagement — ensuring Washington remains at the forefront of privacy standards. Related Links to items referenced in the episode: GovTech's Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers 2024 Video Overview of the GT Top 25 Our editors used ChatGPT 4.0 to summarize the episode in bullet form to help create the show notes. The main image for this story was created using DALL-E 3. Subscribe to TFIC for free on YouTube or the podcast app of your choice — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audacy and Audible.[Placeholder for audio player embed.]

Victoria Guido hosts Robbie Holmes, the founder and CEO of Holmes Consulting Group. The conversation kicks off with Robbie recounting his initial foray into the tech world at a small web hosting company named A1 Terabit.net, chosen for its alphabetical advantage in the white pages. This job was a stepping stone to a more significant role at Unisys, working for the state of New York's Department of Social Services, where Robbie inadvertently ventured into civic tech and public interest technology. Robbie shares his career progression from supporting welfare systems in New York to becoming a technological liaison between the city and state, leading to a deeper involvement in open-source solutions. His journey through tech spaces includes developing websites, diving into the Drupal community, and eventually establishing his consulting business. Robbie emphasizes the serendipitous nature of his career path, influenced significantly by community involvement and networking rather than a planned trajectory. Additionally, Robbie gives insights on the impact of technology in public services and his stint with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), where he contributed to significant projects like vets.gov. Robbie promotes the value of community engagement in shaping one's career, stressing how connections and being in the right place at the right time can lead to unexpected opportunities and career pivots. Follow Robbie Holmes on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbiethegeek/), X (https://twitter.com/RobbieTheGeek), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/robbiethegeek), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/robbiethegeek), or GitHub (https://github.com/robbiethegeek). Check out his website at robbiethegeek (https://about.me/robbiethegeek). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Robbie Holmes, Founder and CEO of Holmes Consulting Group. Robbie, thank you for joining me. ROBBIE: I'm so happy to be here. It's great to talk to you, Victoria. VICTORIA: Yes. I have known you for a long time now, but I don't know everything about you. So, I thought I would start with the question: What was your first job that you ever had? ROBBIE: My first technical job, I ended up working for an internet web hosting company called A1 Terabit.net. And note the A1 because it came first in the white pages. It was a really small web hosting company run by a man named [SP] Maxim Avrutsky. I worked there for about six months before I submitted my resume to an online job forum. That's how old I am. And it ended up in the hands of Unisys, where I eventually worked for the state of New York. VICTORIA: Wow [laughs]. So, what a journey that you've been on to get from starting there, and what a marketing ploy back in the day with the white pages. So, tell me a little bit more about how you went from that first job to where you are today with having your own business in consulting. ROBBIE: Yeah, I wasn't even aware that I was jumping into the sort of civic tech space and public interest technology because the job I ended up with was working for New York State in the Department of Social Services. And welfare is federally funded and distributed to states and then states to localities. And New York City and New York State have a weird parasymbiotic relationship because over 50% of the welfare in New York State goes to the five boroughs in New York City. So, so much of my job was supporting the welfare system within the city, which was run by the human resources administration. So, that just led to this cascade of me, like, getting invested in supporting that, and then eventually jumping over to the other side where I worked for the City of New York. And at that point, I ended up becoming sort of a technology project manager and almost a tech liaison between the city and state. And I was out in the welfare centers, helping get the job centers up to a new application called the Paperless Office System, which was a client-server app that was a wrapper around welfare. All of that ended up leading to me finally making it to the network operation center for the City of New York, where I started replacing expensive solutions like HP OpenView with open-source solutions like Nagios and another open-source solution that provided an interface. And it really opened my eyes to the idea of open source. And I had really paid attention to a lot of open-source operating systems. So, I was kind of just a general tech nerd. And eventually, I started building websites, and that led me to the Drupal community in New York City, which was sort of this cascade that led me to communities. And I think that's sort of a through line for my entire career is I don't really think I ever had a plan. I think my entire career has been this sort of a lucky happenstance of being prepared when an opportunity arose and sometimes being in the right place because of my connections and community. VICTORIA: That's interesting about being involved with the people around you and seeing what problems are out there to solve and letting that lead you to where your interests lie. And then, following that, naturally led you to, like, this really long career and these really interesting, big projects and problems that you get to solve. ROBBIE: Yeah. And I think one interesting aspect is like, I feel I spent a lot of time worried about what I was going to do and where I was going to do it. I don't have a bachelor's degree. I don't have an advanced degree. I have a high school diploma and a couple of years in college. Well, 137 credits, not the right 125 or 124 to have a bachelor's degree. I have enough credits for a couple of minors though, definitely Greek art history, I think mathematics, maybe one more. I just never got it together and actually got my degree. But that was so interesting because it was limiting to what jobs I could find. So, I was in the tech space as an IT person and specifically doing networking. So, I was running the network operation center. I helped, like, create a whole process for how we track tickets, and how we created tickets, and how things were moved along. And, in the process, I started building websites for family and friends. And I built a website for our network operation center, so that way we could have photos to go with our diagrams of the network. So that way, when we were troubleshooting remotely, we could actually pull up images and say, "The cable that's in port six goes off to the router. I think that port is dead. Can we move it to the port two to its right, and I'll activate it?" And that made a really interesting solution for something we weren't even aware we had, which was lack of visibility. So many of the people in the fields were newer or were trying to figure it out. And some of us had really deep knowledge of what was going on in those network rooms and hubs. It led me to this solution of like, well, why don't we just start documenting it and making it easier for us to help when they're in the field? That led me to, like, the Drupal community because I started building sites in the Drupal CMS. And I went to, like, my first Drupal meetup in 2007, and there was, like, five of us around the table. That led to eventually me working for Sony Music and all these other things. But the year before I found my way to the Drupal community, I probably sent out, like, 400 resumes for jobs in the tech space, didn't really get any callbacks. And then, I met the community, and I started attending events, and then eventually, I started organizing events. And then, Sony I interviewed and talked to them a couple of times. And then, a friend of mine became the boss. And she contacted me and was like, "Hey, are you in the market?" And I was like, "I don't know. Why? What's up?" And she's like, "I became Doug." And I was like, "What?" And she was like, "I'm now replacing Doug at Sony. I'm running the team." And I was like, "Yeah, I'm happy to talk." And that was the big transition in my career from IT to sort of development and to delivery, right? Like, when it comes right down to it, is I became the manager of interactive media at Sony Music, which was really a job I landed because I was connected to the community, and running events, and getting to know everyone. VICTORIA: Yeah. And I think it's really cool that you had this exposure early on to what you called civic tech, which we'll get into a little bit, and then you went from the community into a commercial technology space and really getting into engineering with Drupal. ROBBIE: Yeah, it was an interesting transition because what they needed at Sony was sort of somebody who could ride the line between systems engineer, database administrator, and Drupal engineer, and also probably pre-DevOps DevOps person. So, I was responsible for all deployments and all tickets that came in. I was sort of both the technical arm of the help desk. When I joined, there was 24 websites on the Drupal platform, and when I left, there was over 200. And we upgraded it from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 while I was there. So, I was heavily involved in all of those updates, and all those upgrades, and all of the deployments of all the new themes, and all the changes to all these sites. So, what was great was they, I believe, if I understand it correctly, they actually created a role for me out of, like, two or three jobs because they needed a me, and they didn't have a role that existed. So, all of a sudden, they made a manager of interactive media role. And I was able to work there for two years, sort of being what I jokingly say, like, a digital janitor. I used to say that I had, like, an eight-bit key ring in a push broom. And I was always mad at your kids for trying to break my stuff. VICTORIA: [laughs] That's so good. A digital service janitor [laughs]? The connection for me between that and where I met you in the U.S. digital service space [laughs] I feel like there's a lot of parallels between that and where your career evolved later on in life. ROBBIE: Yeah. What's amazing is I did all this early work in my career in civic tech and didn't realize it was civic tech at the time. I just realized what I was doing was providing this huge impact and was value. You know, I spent a couple of years in the welfare centers, and I used to say all the time that the two hardest jobs in the welfare center are the person applying for welfare and the person deciding whether or not that person gets welfare. So, being a technologist and trying to help make that as simple as possible or easier and smooth the edges off of that process was really important. And it really taught me how important technology is to delivering service. And I really never thought about it before. And then, when I was working for Phase2 technologies, I was a director of Digital Services. And I read in a blog post, I believe that was written by Mikey Dickerson, who was the original administrator for USDS, and he talked about HealthCare.gov. And he walked in the door, and he said, "How do you know HealthCare.gov is down?" And I think there was some allusion to the fact that we were like, we turn on the television and if they're yelling at us, we know it's down. And Mikey was like, "We know how to monitor things." So, like, if you don't know Mikey Dickerson, he's the person who sort of created the web application hierarchy of needs in Google. He was an SRE. And his pyramid, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, was all over Google when I was there. I was so impressed with the idea that, like, we aren't talking about how do we solve this problem? We're talking about knowing when there's a problem. And then, if we know there's a problem, we can put some messaging around that. We can say, like, "We're aware," right? Like if the president calls the secretary, the secretary can say, "We know it's down. We're working on it," which is building up political capital. It's a really amazing process that I kept reading this blog post, and I was like, God, that's how I would approach it. And then, I was like, wow, I wonder if I could use my skills to help America, and very shortly submitted an application and was like, well, we'll see what happens. And about six months later, I walked in the door at the VA and was the eighth employee of the Digital Service team at the VA. That was a franchise team of the USDS model. VICTORIA: And can you say a little bit more about what is the U.S. Digital Service and expand upon your early experience there? ROBBIE: Yeah. So, the United States Digital Service was created after HealthCare.gov had its issues. Todd Park had convinced President Obama to reach out to get support from the private industry. And the few of the people who were there, Todd convinced to stick around and start creating a team that could support if there was this kind of issue in the future. I believe the team that was there on the ground was Mikey Dickerson, Erie Meyer, Haley Van Dyck, and Todd. And there was a few other people who came back or were very close at the beginning, including the current administrator of USDS. She has been around a long time and really helped with HealthCare.gov. It's amazing that Mina is back in government. We're very lucky to have her. But what came out of that was what if we were able to stand up a team that was here in case agencies needed support or could vet solutions before these types of problems could exist? So, USDS was what they called the startup inside the White House that was created during the 2014 administration of President Obama. The team started that year, and I joined in May of 2016. So, I would be, like, sort of the beginning of the second team of the VA U.S. Digital Service team. So, USDS supported this idea of tours of duty, where you're a schedule A employee, which meant you were a full-time government employee, but you were term-limited. You could do up to two years of duty and work, and then you could theoretically stick around and do two more years. That was how these roles were envisioned. I think there's lots of reasons why that was the case. But what's nice is it meant that you would come in with fresh eyes and would never become part of the entrenched IT ecosystem. There are people that transition from USDS into government, and I think that's a huge value prop nowadays. It's something that I don't know they were thinking about when the original United States Digital Service was stood up, but it was hugely impactful. Like, I was part of the team at the VA that helped digitize the first form on vets.gov and all the work that was done. When the VA team started, there was a team that was helping with veteran benefits, and they worked on the appeals process for veteran benefits. And I joined. And there was a team that was...eventually, it became dubbed the veteran-facing tools team. And we worked on vets.gov, which was a new front door to expose and let veterans interact with the VA digitally. And over time, all the work that went into the tools and the solutions that were built there, everything was user-researched. And all of that work eventually got brought into VA.gov in what they called a brand merger. So, we took, like, the sixth most trafficked front door of the VA and took all the modern solutioning that that was and brought it into VA.gov, the main front door. So, all of a sudden, there was an identity, a login provided on VA.gov for the first time. So big, impactful work that many people were a part of and is still ongoing today. Surprisingly, so much of this work has now fallen under OCTO, which is the Office of the CTO in the VA. And the CTO is Charles Worthington, who was a USDSer who's the epitome of a person who goes where the work is. Charles was a Presidential Innovation Fellow who helped out in the times of HealthCare.gov and, joined USDS and did anything and everything that was necessary. He interviewed engineers. He was a product person. Charles is one of the most unique technologists and civic tech people I've ever met in my life. But Charles, at the end of the Obama administration and in this transition, realized that the VA was in need of someone to fill the CTO role. So, he came over to become the interim CTO because one of the values of USDS is to go where the work is. And he realized, with the transition, that Marina Nitze, who was the CTO who was transitioning out, there was going to be a need for continuity. So, he came in to provide that continuity and eventually became the full-time CTO and has been there ever since. So, he has helped shape the vision of what the VA is working towards digitally and is now...he was just named the Chief AI Officer for the agency. Charles is a great person. He has successfully, you know, shepherded the work that was being done early by some of us into what is now becoming a sort of enterprise-wide solution, and it's really impressive. VICTORIA: I appreciate you sharing that. And, you know, I think there's a perception about working for public service or for government, state or federal agencies, that they are bureaucratic, difficult to work with, very slow. And I think that the USDS was a great example of trying to really create a massive change. And there's been this ripple effect of how the government acquires products and services to support public needs, right? ROBBIE: Yeah, I would say there's a couple of arms of the government that were sort of modernization approaches, so you have the Presidential Innovation Fellows, which are the equivalent of, like, entrepreneurs and residents in government. And they run out of...I think they're out of the TTS, the Technology Transformation Service over at GSA, which is the General Services Administration. But the PIFs are this really interesting group of people that get a chance to go in and try to dig in and use their entrepreneurial mindset and approach to try to solve problems in government. And a lot of PIFS work in offices. Like, Charles' early team when he first became the CTO included a lot of Presidential Innovation Fellows. It was basically like, "Hey, the VA could use some support," and these people were available and were able to be convinced to come and do this work. And then, you have the Presidential Management Fellows, which I think is a little bit more on the administration side. And then, we have 18F and USDS. The United States Digital Service is a funded agency with an OMB. And we were created as a way to provide the government with support either by detailing people over or dropping in when there was a problem. And then, 18F is an organization that is named because the offices of GSA and TTS (Technology Transformation Service), where it's housed, are on the corner of 18th Street and F in DC. And 18F is sort of like having a technology or a digital agency for hire within the government. So, they are full-time employees of the government, sort of like USDS, except government agencies can procure the support of that 18F team, just like they would procure the support of your company. And it was a really interesting play. They are fully cost-recoupable subcomponent of TTS, which means they have to basically make back all the money that they spend, whereas USDS is different. It's congressionally funded for what it does. But they're all similar sibling organizations that are all trying to change how government works or to bring a more modern idea or parlance into the government. I used to say to people all the time that at USDS, you know, we would set a broken bone say, and then we would come back around and say, like, "Hey, does your arm hurt anymore?" The idea being like, no. Be like, "Cool, cool. Maybe you should go to the gym, and you should eat better." And that would be, like, procurement change. That would be, like, changing for the long term. So, all the work I was doing was building political capital so we could do better work in changing how procurement was done and then changing how the government delivered these things. So, what was awesome was, like, we used to have these fights at USDS about whether or not we were a culture change or we were firefighters. And I think the reality is once we're involved, culture changes happen. The bigger question is, are we going to be there for the long haul, or are we only there for a shorter period of time? And I think there are reasons why USDS teams had both plays. And I think it really is just two different plays for the same outcome. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes sense. And to pivot a little bit, I think, you know, our audience, we have clients and listeners who are founders of products that are aimed at making these, like, public service needs, or to give some examples, like, maybe they're trying to track Congressional voting patterns or contact information for different state representatives, and they're trying to navigate this space [laughs]. So, maybe you can give some advice for founders interested in selling their products to government agencies. What can they do to make it more appealing and less painful for themselves? ROBBIE: I wouldn't consider myself a procurement expert, but at USDS, the procurement team called themselves the [SP] procurementati. And I was a secret member of the procurementati. I often was the engineer they would call to evaluate statements of work or sometimes be on technology evaluation panels. And it was fun to be a part of that. Things that most companies don't realize is government agencies will put out things like request for information or sources sought in the government space. And this is a way for industry to influence how government tries to solve problems. If you are trying to go after government work and you're only responding to an RFP, you're probably behind in your influence that you could have on the type of work. So, you'll see if a procurement seems to be, like, specifically focused on an approach, or a technology, or a framework, it's probably because some companies have come through and said, "I think this would probably solve your problem," and they gave examples. So, that's one way to be more connected to what's going on is to follow those types of requests. Another is to follow the money. My wife is this amazing woman who helped write The Data Act and get it passed through government. And The Data Act is the Data and Transparency Act. And that led to her heading over to treasury and leading up a team that built USAspending.gov. So, there is a website that tracks every dollar, with some exceptions, of the funding that comes out of Congress every year. And what's great is you can track it down to where it's spent, and how it's spent, and things like that. For education purposes, I think that is a really good thing that business and growth people can focus on is try to see and target where competitors or where solutions that you've looked at have gone in the past. It's just a good set of data for you to take a look at. The other piece is if you're creating a solution that is a delivery or a deliverable, like a SaaS solution, in order for something to be utilized in the government, it probably needs to be FedRAMP-approved, which is a process by which security approvals have been given so that government agencies have the green light to utilize your solution. So, there's tons of documentation out there about FedRAMP and the FedRAMP approval process. But that is one of those things that becomes a very big stopping point for product companies that are trying to work in the government. The easiest way to work your way through that is to read up on it a bunch, but also find an agency that was probably willing to sponsor you getting FedRAMP approval. Most companies start working with a government agency, get an exemption for them to utilize your product, and then you get to shape what that FedRAMP process looks like. You start applying for it, and then you have to have some sort of person who's helping shepherd it for you internally in the government and accepting any issues that come along in the process. So, I guess FedRAMP approval is one that's a little complicated but would be worth looking into if you were planning on delivering a product in government. VICTORIA: Right. And does that apply to state governments as well? ROBBIE: So, lots of state-related and city and locality-related governments will actually adopt federal solutions or federal paradigms. So, I think in the state of California, I think FedRAMP as one of the guiding principles for accepting work into the state of California, so it's not consistent. There's not a one-to-one that every state, or every city, or every locality will pull this in. But if you are already approved to be a federal contractor, or a federal business, or a federal product, it's probably going to be easier to make your way into the local spaces also. VICTORIA: Right. And as you said, there's plenty of resources, and tools, and everything to help you go along that journey if that's the group you're going for [laughs]. Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. VICTORIA: So, kind of bringing it back to you, like, you're saying you want those partnerships within the government. You want someone advocating for you or for your product or your service. Drawing that back to what you said earlier about community, like, how do you form a community with this group of people who are in the state, or federal government, or civic tech spaces? ROBBIE: Yeah, I think it's an interesting problem because so much of it feels impenetrable from the outside. Most people don't even know where to start. There are organizations out there that are pretty good community connections, an example I would give is ACT-IAC. It is a public-private partnership where people from within the government, experts in their fields, and people in the private industry who are experts in their fields will be together on community boards and engaging in panels. And so, it's a really nice way to start connecting those dots. I have no direct affiliation with ACT-IAC. But if they'd like to give me my own account, that would be great. But it is one of those organizations I've seen be successful for people trying to find their way into a community that is a little harder to find. I think, also, so much of the community engagement happens at conferences and around...so, like, if you're in the healthcare space, this last month, you've had multiple conferences that I think were really great for people to get to know one another, you know, an example is ViVE. It just happened out in LA, which is a little more on the private sector health space, but still, government agencies were there. I know that the Department of Veterans Affairs had people there and were on panels. And then, HIMSS is another conference that takes place, and that just took place down in Miami. And in Miami, HIMSS happened and a whole bunch of other social community events took place. So, I'm close with a thing called the Digital Services Coalition, which is 47 companies that all try to deliver good government based on the Digital Services Playbook that was created by USDS that lives at playbook.cio.gov and the way that they try to accomplish this work. And that organization, while they were in Miami, hosted a happy hour. So, there's a lot of connections that can be made once you start seeing the players and getting to know who's around. So, it's a little bit about trying to find your way to that first event, and I think that will really open up everything for you. Within a week or two, I was at an International Women's Day event at MetroStar, which is a really great company that I've gotten a chance to spend some time with. And then, I was at an event for the Digital Services Coalition talking about open source in government. So, there's a lot of stuff out there for you to be a part of that isn't super cost-prohibitive and also doesn't take a lot once you start to open the door. You know, once you peek around that corner and you find some people, there's a lot more to be done. VICTORIA: Yeah. And you touched on something at the end there that wants me to bring up some of the advantages you can have being a small business, a minority-owned business, or woman-owned business, or veteran-owned business, so thinking about how you can form those connections, especially if you have one of those socio and economic set-asides that you might want to consider if they're looking to work with the government as well. ROBBIE: Yeah. Those socioeconomic set-asides include small businesses, woman-owned small business. I think it's Native and Alaskan 8(a), which is historically underrepresented and service-disabled veteran-owned. So, there are also sub-communities of associations, like there's the Digital WOSB, the digital Women-Owned Small Business alliance that was founded by Jess Morris from Pluribus Digital, and a bunch of other companies in the Digital Services Coalition. I believe she's the president of the Digital WOSB right now. That is a sub-community of women-owned small businesses that are trying to connect and create a community that they can support one another. And that's just one example of the type of connection you can make through those types of socioeconomic set-asides. But once you have those official socioeconomic set-asides, it will allow you to get specific contracts engagements in the government that are not allowed or available for others. So, the government procurement process will have some amount of these specific socioeconomic set-asides that need to be hit. Like, 8% of all procurements need to go to this and 10% of all procurements need to go to this. So, I think the VA is probably one of the most effective at hitting any of the socioeconomic set-asides, specifically related to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. So, if you happen to be a person of color and you found a business and you are female presenting, right? You may have 8(a) woman-owned small business. If you also happen to be a veteran and you're service-disabled, all of those things stack. You don't just get to have one of them. And they can be really effective in helping a business get a leg up and starting out and trying to help even the playing field for those communities. VICTORIA: Yeah. What I really appreciated about my experience working with Pluribus Digital, and you, and people who had had that experience in the U.S. Digital Services, that there is this community and desire to help each other out and that you can have access to people who know how to move your product forward, get you the connections that you need to be competitive, and to go after the work. So, I love encouraging people to consider civic tech options. And maybe even say more about just how impactful some of it can be. And what kind of missions are you solving in these spaces? ROBBIE: Yeah, I often try to remind people, especially those who are heading towards or considering civic tech, there are very few places in this world that you can work on something that can impact millions of people. Sure, I was lucky enough. I have tons of privilege. I worked at a lot of wacky places that have given me the access to do the type of work that I think is impactful, but very little has the kind of impact. Like, when I was interviewed by Marina Nitze as, my last interview when I joined USDS, she sent me an email at the end of it and said like, "Everything was great. I look forward to working with you. And remember, every time you commit code into our GitHub, you'll be helping 8 million veterans." And then, she cc'd Todd Park. And Todd was the CTO of the U.S., and he responded back within a minute. Todd is one of the most busy people. It was amazing to me how fast he responded. But he was like, "Lemme tell you, as somebody who can talk on behalf of our president, our country needs you." And those kinds of things they're hard to comprehend. And then, I joined the Digital Service team at the VA. And one of the first things that I got to support was the 10-10EZ. It's the healthcare application for veterans. And before I got there, it was a hosted PDF that we were trying to replace. And the team had been working for months to try to build a new, modern solution. What it was is it was, like, less than six submissions were happening a day because it only worked in Adobe Acrobat, I think it was 6.5 and below, and Internet Explorer 8.5 and below. And if you think about the people that could submit utilizing that limited set of technologies, it was slowly becoming homeless veterans who were using library computers that had not been upgraded. So, there was a diminishing amount of value that it was providing. And then, on top of it, it was sort of lying to veterans. If the version of the Adobe Acrobat was out of date, or wrong, or too new, it would tell them to upgrade their browser. So, like, it was effectively not providing any value over time. We were able to create a new version of that and that was already well on its way when I joined, but we were able to get it out the door. And it was a React frontend using a Node backend to talk to that SOAP API endpoint. Within the first week, we went from 6 submissions a day to 60 submissions a day. It's a joke, right? We were all 10x developers. We were like, "Look at us. We're killing it." But about three years later, Matt Cutts came to a staff meeting of USDS, and he was the second administrator of the USDS. And he brought the cake that had the actual 10-10EZ form on it, and it said, "500,000." And he had checked with the analytics team, and there were over 500,000 submissions of that form, which means there are 500,000 possible veterans that now may or may not have access to healthcare benefits. Those are big problems. All of that was done by changing out one form. It opened up the world. It opened up to a group of veterans that no one else was able to do. They would have had to go into a veteran's office, and they would have had to fill it out in paper. And some veterans just don't have the ability to do that, or don't have an address, or don't have a...so, there are so many reasons why having a digital form that worked for veterans was so important. But this one form that we digitized and we helped make modern has been submitted so many times and has helped so many veterans and their families. And that's just one example. That's just one form that we helped digitize. But now the team, I mean, I'm back in the VA ecosystem. There's, like, 2,500 people in the general channel in the office of the CTO Slack organization. That's amazing. There's people there that are working all day, every day, trying to solve the same problems that I was trying to solve when I got here. And there's so much work being done to help veterans. But that's just one example, right? Like, at USDS, I know that the digital filing for the free version of your tax form, the IRS e-file Direct, just went live. That was something that USDS had been working on for a very long time behind the scenes. And that's going to impact everybody who submits their taxes. These are the kind of problems that you get to work on or the scope of some of the problems if you work in these types of organizations, and that's really powerful. It's the thing that keeps drawing me back. I'm back supporting the VA again through some contracts in my business. But it's funny, like, I was working for another agency. I was over working at DHS on an asylum project. And a friend of mine kept telling people to tell me, "Man, veterans need you. If only there was another one of you to help us over here, that would be great." And eventually, it led to me being like, well, veterans need me. I'm going to go back to the VA. And that was my second tour at USDS at the Department of Veteran Affairs. And now I'm back there again. So, it's a very impactful place to work. There's tons of value you can provide to veterans. And, to me, it's the kind of work that keeps bringing me back. I didn't realize just how much I was a, like, impact junkie until I joined USDS, and then it really came to a head. I cannot believe how much work I've gotten to be a part of that has affected and supported those who get benefits and services from the federal government. VICTORIA: [inaudible 33:47] impact junkie. That's funny. But yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. That's really interesting. Let me see if you could go back in time to when you first started in this journey; if you could give yourself any advice, what would you say? ROBBIE: Yeah, I think I spent so much time being nervous about not having my degree that I was worried it was going to hinder me forever. And it's pretty amazing the career I've been able to thread together, right? Like, you know, I've hit on a few of them already. But, like, I started with a small web hosting company, and then New York State in the Department of Social Services, then New York City in the Human Resources Administration, Sony Music, Zagat Survey, Google, Johnson & Johnson, IDT telecommunications, Phase2 technologies, where I got to work on an awful lot of problems in lots of awesome places like NBA.com, and Major League Soccer, and Bassmaster. And then, the United States Digital Service where I got to work on things supporting the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security over at ADA.gov in DOJ. I helped them out. And I worked over at USDA helping get Farmers.gov off the ground. So, everything on my left leg, tattoo-wise, is something that changed my life from my perspective. And I have a Drupal tattoo on the back of my leg. I have a DrupalCon. So, anytime somebody said "Drupal" anywhere near a USDS person, I would magically appear because they would just be like, "Oh, Robbie has that Drupal tattoo." So, I got to work on a lot of dot govs that eventually landed or were being built in Drupal. So, I got to support a lot of work. And it meant that I got to, like, float around in government and do a lot of things that others didn't get to do. When CISA stood up, which is the office of security inside of DHS, it's one of the newest sub-communities or subcomponents, they built DHS SchoolSafety.gov, which is a cross-MOU'd site. And I got to sit in and help at the beginning of that because of my Drupal background. But it was really fun to be the person who helped them work with the vendors and make sure that they understood what they were trying to accomplish and be a sort of voice of reason in the room. So, I did all of that work, and then after that, I went and worked at Pluribus Digital, where I got a chance to work side by side with you. And then, that led to other things, like, I was able to apply and become the director of Digital Services and software engineering for my local county. So, I worked for Prince William County, where I bought a house during the pandemic. And then, after that contract ended, I had already started my own business. So, that's led to me having multiple individual contracts with companies and so many people. I've gotten to work on so many different things. And I feel very lucky. If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it's just, take a breath. Everything's going to be okay. And focus on the things that matter. Focus on the things that are going to help you. Focus on community. Focus on delivering value. Everything else will work itself out. You know, I joke all the time that I'm really good at providing impact. If you can measure my life in impact and value, I would be a very rich man. If you can measure it in money, I'm doing all right, but I'm never going to be yacht Robbie, you know, but I'm going to do okay. VICTORIA: Oh my god, yacht Robbie. That's great. So, just to recap, everything's going to be okay. You never know where it's going to take you. And don't be limited by the things that you think, you know, make you not enough. Like, there's a lot of things that you can do out there. I really like that advice. ROBBIE: And I think one last piece is, like, community matters, if you are a part of communities and you do it genuinely, how much that will impact your career. I gave a talk from Drupal NYC to the White House and beyond. And I talked through my entire resume and how everything changed when I started doing community engagement. When I went to the Drupal community in New York City and how that led to Sony, and that led to Zagat, which led to me getting acquired by Google, like, these things all cascaded. And then, when I moved to the DMV, I was able to join here and continue supporting communities, which allowed me to bring people into the local civic tech community from the local DC tech community. So, so many of the best USDS engineers, and designers, and product people I was able to help influence to come to government were people I met in the community or the communities I helped support. You know, I was an early revivalist of Alexandria Code and Coffee. It was a community that was started and then wavered. And then, Sean McBeth reached out to the community and said, "Do we want to help and support getting it off the ground again?" And I immediately said, "Yes." And then, that led to my friends at BLACK CODE COLLECTIVE wanting to create a community where they could feel safe and connected and create a community of their own. And then DC Code & Coffee started. And from there, Baltimore Code & Coffee kicked off. And it's just really nice that, like, it doesn't matter where I've been. All these things keep coming back to be a part of community and help support others. And you will be surprised at how much you get back in return. I wouldn't be the person I am today in my community. I wouldn't have my career if it wasn't for the people who started and helped shepherd me when I was starting out. And I feel like I've been trying to do the same for people for a really long time. VICTORIA: I love that. That's what I say, too, when people ask me for advice on careers and how to grow. And my biggest piece is always to go out and meet people. And go to your community, like, look and see what's happening. Like, find people you like hanging out with and learning from. And just that should be the majority of your time probably if you're trying to figure out where to go with your career or even just, like, expand as a person sometimes [laughs]. Robbie, I was going to ask; you mentioned that you had bought a house in Virginia. One of my other warmup questions was going to be, what's your favorite thing to put on the grill? ROBBIE: My house in Virginia definitely gets a lot of use, especially in the spring and the fall. I'm a big fan of team no extreme when it comes to temperature. But during those time periods, my grill is often fired up. My favorite is probably to make skirt steak on the grill. I'm a huge fan of tacos, especially made out of skirt steak. I'm in all day. That's one of my favorites. I also love to smoke. I have a smoker because I'm a caricature-esque suburban dude. I'm going to live into all of the possible things I could have. But I've had a smoker for a long time, and I love making sort of poor man's burnt ends. It's one of my favorite things to make. But you got to have some time. That's the kind of thing that takes, you know, 14 hours or 16 hours, but it's really fun to take advantage of it. A quick thing I love to make is actually smoked salmon. It takes longer to brine it than it usually does to smoke it. But it is one of the nicest things I've made on my smoker, you know, fresh pesto on a piece of salmon is pretty awesome, or everything bagel. Everything with the bagel seasoning is a pretty fun way to smoke some salmon. VICTORIA: Wow, that sounds so good. I'm going to have to stop in next time I'm in Virginia and get some [laughs] and hang out. Do you have any questions for me? ROBBIE: I'm excited to see where you've gone and how you've gotten here. I think this is such a cool job for you. Knowing who you are as a person and seeing you land in a company like this is really exciting. And I think you getting to be a part of this podcast, which we were joking about earlier, is I've been listening to probably since it started. I've been a big fan for a long time. So, it's cool to be here on this podcast. But it's also cool that my friend is a part of this and gets to be a part of this legacy. I'm really excited to see where you go over time. I know my career has been changing, right? I worked in government. Before that, I did all kinds of other stuff. Nowadays I have my own business where I often joke I have sort of, like, three things I offer, which is, like, consigliere services. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Robbie on your executive team without having to pay them an executive salary? You know, another one is like, you know, strategy and mentoring, but these are all things I know you do also, which I think is cool. But I've been working on contracts where I support companies trying to figure out how they modernize, or how their CTO can be more hands-off keyboard, or how their new director of business development can be more of a technical leader and taking on their first direct reports. So, I just enjoy all those aspects, and I just think it's something that I've watched you do in the company where we worked together. And it's always fun to see what you're working on and getting a chance to catch up with you. I feel like you're one of those people that does a really great job of staying connected. Every once in a while, I'll get a random text message like, "Hey, how you doing?" It always makes me smile. I'm like, Victoria is a really good connector, and I feel like I am, but you're even better at it on the being proactive side. That's how this all came about, right? We caught up, and you were like, "Why don't you come on the podcast?" So, that's really exciting. VICTORIA: Well, thank you, Robbie. Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about community is you meet people. You're like, "Oh, you're really cool. And you're doing cool stuff all the time. Like, how can I support you in your journey [laughs]? Like, what's up?" Yeah, for me, it was hard to actually leave DC. I didn't, you know, really think about the impact of leaving behind my tech community, like, that network of people. It was pretty emotional for me, actually, especially when we finally, like, stopped doing the digital version [laughs]. And I, like, kind of gave up managing it from California, which was kind of funny anyways [laughs]. Yeah, so no, I'm grateful that we stayed in touch and that you made time to be here with us today. Is there anything else that you would like to promote? ROBBIE: You know, just to remind you, you've done a great job of transitioning into where you are today, but anybody can do that, right? Like, before I moved to the DC area, I was in New York, and I was helping to organize JavaScript events. And I started looking at the DC area before I moved down here. And I found the DC Tech Community. And I found the Node School DC GitHub organization and reached out to the person who had ownership of it and said I wanted to help and support. I looked at this the other day. I think I moved on May 8th, and then, like, May 11th, when I walked in the door, somebody was like, "Are you new?" And I was like, "Yeah, I just moved here." And they were like, "Oh, from where?" And I was like, "New York." And they were like, "Are you that guy who's been bugging Josh about running Node school events?" I was like, "Yeah." And like, they were planning an unconference at the end of the month. And they were like, "Would you like to run a Node school at that unconference?" Like, 27 days later. So, it was amazing that, like, I immediately, like, fell from the New York Community where I was super connected, but I went out of my way to try to, like, see what the community looked like before I got there. And I was lucky enough to find the right people, and immediately I joked...I think I wrote a blog post that said like, "I found my new friends. By, like, going from one community to another, gave a person who was in his 40s a chance to meet new people very quickly." And it was pretty amazing, and I felt very lucky. But I did spend a little bit of energy and capital to try to figure it out because I knew it was going to be important to me. So, I think you've done a really good job. You've helped launch and relaunch things that were going on in San Diego and becoming a part of this connection to more people. I think you and I have a very similar spirit, which is like, let's find a way to connect with humans, and we do it pretty effectively. VICTORIA: Well, thank you. That really boosts my confidence, Robbie [laughs]. Sometimes, you show up to an event you've never been to before by yourself, and it's like a deer in headlights kind of moment. Like, oh God, what have I done [laughs]? ROBBIE: Oh, and the last thing I need to mention is I also have a podcast. I have my podcast about film. It's called Geek on Film. I used to record it with my friend, Jon. He's a little busy right now. But I used to pitch it as a conversation show about the current films that were going on. Now, it's one lone geek's ramblings about what he just saw. It's a great podcast for me because it gives me an opportunity to think a little more critically about film, which is one of the things that I probably have almost enough credits to get a minor in. But I absolutely love cinema and film in general. And it's given me an opportunity to connect with a lot more people about this subject and also to scratch the itch of me being able to create something around a community and around a thing I really love. VICTORIA: That's super cool. Yeah. You're top of mind because I also like films. I'm like, what's Robbie up to? Like, what's the recommendations, you know [laughs]? Do you have a top film recommendation from the Oscars? Is that too big of a question? ROBBIE: So, the one I will say that didn't get enough spotlight shined on it was Nimona. So, I'm a huge fan of the Spider-Man movies. I think Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse are both masterpieces. But Nimona is an animated film that was picked up by Netflix, and it is amazing. I don't know that I laughed or cried or was more moved by a film last year. And I don't know that it gets enough credit for what it was. But it did get nominated for best-animated film, but I don't know that enough people paid attention to it. Like it may have gotten lost in the algorithm. So, if you get a chance, check out Nimona. It's one of those beautiful, little gems that, if you travel down its story, there's all these twists and turns. It was based on a webcomic that became a graphic novel. One of the production companies picked it up, and it wasn't going to see the light of day. And then, Netflix bought its distribution rights. There's going to be a great documentary someday about, like, Inside Nimona. But I think the movie itself is really charming and moving, and I was really impressed with it. So, that was the one that got me, like, just before the Oscars this year, where I was like, this is the little animated movie that could, in my opinion. It's so charming. VICTORIA: I will definitely have to check that out. Thank you for giving us that recommendation. ROBBIE: Totally. VICTORIA: Final question. I just wanted to see if you had anything to share about being an advisory board member for Gray and for Hutch Studio. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? ROBBIE: Yeah. So, Gray Digital was founded by a friend of mine. We met through United States Digital Service. And his organization...I had been supporting him for a while and just being behind the scenes, talking to him and talking through business-related issues. And it was really nice. He offered to make me an official advisory board member. It was a great acknowledgment, and I really felt moved. There's some great people that are supporting him and have supported him. They've done really great work. Gray is out there delivering digital services in this space. And I think I was really lucky to be a part of it and to support my friend, Randall. Hutch is different. Hutch is an organization that's kind of like if you think about it, it almost is a way to support entrepreneurs of color who are trying to make their way into the digital service delivery space. Being an advisory board member there has been really interesting because it's shaping how Hutch provides services and what their approach is to how to support these companies. But over the last year, I've convinced the person who's running it, Stephanie, with a couple of other people, to open the door up or crack the door so we could talk directly and support the individual companies. So, it's been really great to be a Hutch advisory member to help shape how Hutch is approaching things. But I've also been a part of, like, many interview processes. I've reviewed a lot of, like, [inaudible 48:01] who want to join the organization. And I've also created personal relationships with many of the people who are part of Hutch. And, you know, like, you know me personally, so you know I run a Day of the Dead party. We'll just party at my house every year. I have a huge amount of affection for Mexican culture and, in general, the approach of how to remember people who are a part of your life. So, this is, like, the perfect way for me to bring people together at my house is to say, like, "Hey, my dad was awesome. What about your family? Who are your people?" What's really nice is that has given me an opportunity to host people at my house. And I've had Hutch company owners at my house the last couple of years and the person who runs Hutch. So, it's a really great community that I look at that is trying to shape the next emergent companies that are helping deliver digital services across the government. And it's really fun to be early on in their career and help them grow. Again, it seems silly, but it's the thing I care a lot about. How do I connect with people and provide the most value that I can? And this is a way I can provide that value to companies that may also go off and provide that value. It's a little bit of an amplifier. So, I'm a huge fan of what we've been able to accomplish and being a part of it in any way, shape, or form. VICTORIA: Well, I think that's a really beautiful way to wrap it up. ROBBIE: Really glad to catch up with you and be a part of this amazing podcast. VICTORIA: Yeah, so much fun. Thank you again so much. It was great to be here with you today. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on thoughtbotsocial@vguido. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.

WMAL GUEST: 7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - EDEN GAFNER - survivor of Oct 7th in Israel WEBSITE to get more info: www.ChabadGainesville.com She is sharing her story experiencing Oct. 7th in Israel and will be at an event in HAYMARKET THIS WEEKEND Eden Gafner (28) was in Kibbutz Re'im, the same Kibbutz that hosted the NOVA festival, on October 7th. She was visiting her parents home when terrorists entered the kibbutz and broke into their home. After 26 hours under fire, the family was rescued by the IDF and was evacuated from the Kibbutz. Her family survived but many of her neighbors and 400+ festival goers trying to escape from their surrounding fields did not. Eden will be sharing her story for the wider community at a Shabbat Lunch at 12:45 pm TOMORROW SATURDAY MAY 11THThe event is hosted by Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Greater Gainesville & Manassas (servicing the Jewish Community in Gainesville, Haymarket, Bristow, Manassas and Prince William County) : www.ChabadGainesville.com Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, May 10, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 7 AM Hour: Larry O'Connor and Patrice Onwuka discussed: WMAL GUEST: 7:05 AM - INTERVIEW - JONNA SPILBOR - - attorney and legal analyst Website: https://jonnaspilbor.com/ Stormy Daniels under fire: 5 takeaways from Day 14 of the Trump trial Greta Thunberg was just in Malmo, Sweden wearing a Keffiyeh while protesting Jews outside the Eurovision venue. Greta is merging antisemitism with her environmentalism.  John Ondrasik on X: "Eden Golan, our fellow artist, cannot leave her hotel room in fear for her life because she is Jewish. This is 2024. I call on every artist to join me in condemning publicly this despicable act of hate. This is a time for choosing. Your silence is complicit. @Eurovision WMAL GUEST: 7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - EDEN GAFNER - survivor of Oct 7th in Israel WEBSITE to get more info: www.ChabadGainesville.com She is sharing her story experiencing Oct. 7th in Israel and will be at an event in HAYMARKET THIS WEEKEND Eden Gafner (28) was in Kibbutz Re'im, the same Kibbutz that hosted the NOVA festival, on October 7th. She was visiting her parents home when terrorists entered the kibbutz and broke into their home. Together with her family they hid in an attic for 26 hrs, while under fire, until they were rescued by the IDF. After 26 hours under fire, the family was rescued by the IDF and was evacuated from the Kibbutz. Her family survived but many of her neighbors and 400+ festival goers trying to escape from their surrounding fields did not. Eden will be sharing her story for the wider community at a Shabbat Lunch at 12:45 pm TOMORROW SATURDAY MAY 11THThe event is hosted by Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Greater Gainesville & Manassas (servicing the Jewish Community in Gainesville, Haymarket, Bristow, Manassas and Prince William County) : www.ChabadGainesville.com World told to brace for 'severe geomagnetic storm' today - the first in nearly 20 years - which could bring chaos to mobile phone networks, GPS satellites and power grids Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Friday, May 10, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas AcademySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SPONSOR:Burn the PageLINKS:Pod Virginia | PatreonLearn more about Jackleg MediaCheck out Black Virginia NewsIN THE NEWS:Forget public hearings and committee meetings--Virginia's next budget will be crafted in secret behind closed doors with no input from the public and no transparency after lawmakers couldn't come to an agreement this week.One of the most contentious debates in the General Assembly this year was the debate over what happens with slot-machine style gaming machines in convenience stores and truck stops. The governor's amendment limiting where the machines can be located was overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate.Schools across Virginia are crumbling, which is why Senator Jeremy McPike of Prince William County introduced a bill to allow local governments to impose a sales tax to finance school construction.  Some Republicans supported the original bill. But McPike was unable to persuade enough of them to get a supermajority vote to override the governor's veto.TRIVIA: How many budget amendments were lawmakers considering last week?At the Watercooler:- Congresswoman Spanberger has made her first endorsement--Leslie Mehta, an ACLU lawyerwho represented Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler - Even Tennessee's legislature has open conference committees! Why can't Virginia? Learn more at http://linktr.ee/JacklegMedia

SPONSOR:Burn the PageLINKS:Pod Virginia | PatreonLearn more about Jackleg MediaCheck out Black Virginia NewsIN THE NEWS:Forget public hearings and committee meetings--Virginia's next budget will be crafted in secret behind closed doors with no input from the public and no transparency after lawmakers couldn't come to an agreement this week.One of the most contentious debates in the General Assembly this year was the debate over what happens with slot-machine style gaming machines in convenience stores and truck stops. The governor's amendment limiting where the machines can be located was overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate.Schools across Virginia are crumbling, which is why Senator Jeremy McPike of Prince William County introduced a bill to allow local governments to impose a sales tax to finance school construction.  Some Republicans supported the original bill. But McPike was unable to persuade enough of them to get a supermajority vote to override the governor's veto.TRIVIA: How many budget amendments were lawmakers considering last week?At the Watercooler:- Uri Berliner's article criticizing NPR for a liberal bias causing a lack of public trust- Alexandria City Council debates--another will be held on May 4th, then a mayoral debate on June 8th. Learn more at http://linktr.ee/JacklegMedia

Hey guys!  This is not an actual episode, sorry for any confusion, we are looking for any information on a missing person, he was last seen in 2010, and he is a close friend to one of our amazing listeners.  Shane Donahue was 23 years old when he went missing.  Shane was last seen on March 22, 2010He is from Nokesville Virginia5 ft 11 inchesBrown hair and brown eyesI will post a picture to our instagram.If you have any information, please contact Prince William County tipline at703-792-7000Support the showIf you're interested in receiving bonus episodes, early release dates, an everything scary sticker and ‘thank you' as well as a shout out on our regular feed! Please join at Patreon//everythingscarypod571

Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia protects one of the defining battlefields of the Civil War. It was there that the first battle of the war was waged, in 1861, it was the scene of a second battle a year later, and it was where Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson got his Stonewall nickname. Despite the significance of Manassas, the Prince William County supervisors in December agreed to rezone 2,100 acres adjacent to the battlefield to allow for the world's largest data processing center to be built there. A lawsuit recently was filed in a bid to stop the development. Among the plaintiffs is the American Battlefield Trust, a non-profit organization that works to protect American battlefields from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. David Duncan, president of that organization, joins us today to explain why the Trust thinks it is wrong to build the data processing center next to Manassas National Battlefield Park. 

7:35 AM - INTERVIEW - ALISCIA ANDREWS on running for VA-10, she just announced yesterday  WEBSITE: andrewsva.com Virginia veteran aims to be 1st female Marine elected to Congress, joins race to flip coveted Dem-held seat ABOUT VA-10:  Virginia's 10th congressional district is a U.S. congressional district in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is represented by Democrat Jennifer Wexton, who was first elected in 2018. The district includes all of Rappahannock County, Fauquier County, and Loudoun County, parts of Fairfax County and Prince William County, as well as the independent cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Thursday, January 18, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas Academy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tuesday, January 16th, 2024Today, the White House threatens Texas after their refusal to stand down the state guard to allow Federal Border Patrol Agents to do their job; Tim Ballard faces four new sexual assault charges; Prince William County found 4,000 votes not counted in the 2020 election for Joe Biden; E. Jean Carroll's second defamation trial begins today; Joey Taco Pants has filed a motion to withdraw as Trump's lawyer. Plus Allison and Dana deliver your good news.Promo CodeGet 30% off your first order, plus free shipping today at Microdose.com, promo code DAILYBEANS.From the Good NewsBest Costume Design of a Play or Musical by BroadwayWorld DenverExakay.comGerman Shepherd Puppieshttps://www.maedayrescue.com/ Have some good news; a confession; or a correction?Good News & Confessions - The Daily BeansHow We Win The House 2024!https://swingleft.org/fundraise/howwewin2024Want some sweet Daily Beans Merchhttps://shop.dailybeanspod.com/products/fani-t-willis-tee Subscribe to Lawyers, Guns, And MoneyAd-free premium feed: https://lawyersgunsandmoney.supercast.com Subscribe for free everywhere else:https://lawyersgunsandmoney.simplecast.com/episodes/1-miami-1985Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodhttps://www.tiktok.com/@muellershewrotehttps://instagram.com/muellershewrote

WMAL GUEST: 7:05 AM - INTERVIEW - LT. COL. JEFF SACKS -  twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Army and a Republican running for the 7th District congressional seat in Virginia TOPIC: Sacks on his run for office and his rally today with Riley Gaines ABOUT VA-7 DISTRICT: Virginia's seventh congressional district is a United States congressional district in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The district is currently represented by Democrat Abigail Spanberger, first elected in 2018. She won reelection in 2020 and 2022. In November 2023 Spanberger announced that she would be retiring from the House in order to run for governor of Virginia. The district spans across much of Central and Northern Virginia including all of Orange, Culpeper, Spotsylvania, Greene County, Madison County, Fredericksburg, Caroline County, King George County, Stafford County, and the eastern half of Prince William County, and a small sliver of Albemarle County. WEBSITE: www.jeffsacksforcongress.com Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Thursday, January 4, 2024 / 7 AM Hour  O'Connor and Company is proudly presented by Veritas Academy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.