Content Marketing, Journalist, Chicanx Entrepreneur, #ResponsibleAI Nerd, Social Justice Advocate, Chicana Cali Native. #FreePalestine 🍉
Los Angeles
Joined October 2009
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This should be good 🍿 I expect Congressional hearings coming that will be as intriguing and watched as Watergate.
The Trump administration reportedly knew about Alice Huang for over a year. Congress is going to want to know why.
@KevinRoose and @CaseyNewton on the next chapter of the Nvidia spy story @AnaSwanson and @nytimes broke. New Machine Gods with @NPR.
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Kimberly Owens retweeted
.@SenWarren and I are demanding that the Trump Administration preserve all records related to NVIDIA’s AI chip exports to China and the reported Chinese spy operation.
We need answers. wsj.com/politics/policy/top-…
Kimberly Owens retweeted
"I'm not that interested in the salacious details of the private life of the CEO of Nvidia," said Sen. Chris Coons. "I'm very interested in why credible reports of a national security threat were not acted on, and Jensen Huang was allowed to continue advocating for the export to China of some of his most advanced chips." to.pbs.org/3VltpdJ
Great to see BAAJA trending! And love that people are speaking out nitter.cf/ClimateDefiance/status…. Let's keep it up people!
"...many environmental organizations have panned the deal because they say it would lock in fossil fuel development, weaken environmental safeguards and make it harder for communities to challenge energy project approvals."
theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
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These midterms voters send a resounding message on data centers, which led to almost 50 measures pausing or banning them all together. Rising utility bills, noise, pollution, water, and tax breaks for they hyperscalers were all factors. This week the Senate disregarded it all.
ALT Picture of Guardian article, "Senate advances bill to speed up permit reviews for infrastructure projects" showing a picture of an arial view of the Meta data centers near Social Circle, Georgia. Photo by Mike Steward/AP
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"Midterm results could complicate bill’s passage in lame-duck sessions." Which is why the Senate, Dems and Republicans, voted on Monday to move the "BAAJA" S.5653 bill forward while they can. Read the details of the bill here congress.gov/bill/119th-cong…
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See how your Senator voted here: open.pluralpolicy.com/vote/1…
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So the rebranding to compute campuses and a pinky promise to do better didn't keep people from suing OpenAI? Huh...
🦔People in Effingham County, Georgia found out about a giant OpenAI data center months after their county leaders did. Now some of them have sued OpenAI and those leaders under Georgia’s racketeering law. They say officials signed a secrecy agreement with OpenAI in October 2025, then approved the project through closed-door meetings and a quiet zoning change. The site would draw 3.2 gigawatts of power, about what a couple million homes use. It also comes with roughly $900 million in tax breaks.
My Take
A town’s yes is now harder to get than the chips. So AI companies cut quiet deals with a few local officials and count on residents finding out once it’s too late to stop. Elected officials have no business signing secrecy agreements like that. Their voters live next to the result, and Georgia Power sets rates for the whole state, so families hours away could help pay for the new grid capacity.
The secrecy also backfires, because every project pushed through quietly gives the next town a reason to fight harder. A few states will probably ban these deals for public officials next year. Lenders feel it too, since data center loans usually get paid back from rent once the building opens, and every lawsuit pushes that date further out.
Hedgie🤗
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Kimberly Owens retweeted
Rogue AI agents are accessing bank accounts and colluding with one another to defy their human-given instructions. We MUST act on regulation as soon as we possibly can before more disasters strike.
Anthropic has already gone public...in Australia as of Wed 11/10. Goal is to raise $64.4b + $26b private placement = $90.4b. "Shares are expected to be priced between $70 to $78 each." cnbc.com/2026/11/11/anthopic…
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US Congress should keep an eye on: "Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that the government would introduce mandatory reporting for certain AI-related incidents and establish an AI safety regulator with powers to enforce penalties."
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And, "...never in modern U.S. history has the office intersected so broadly and deeply with the financial interests of the commerce secretary’s own family, according to interviews with ethics lawyers and historians." nytimes.com/2025/11/20/us/po…
SCOOP: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was sent a highly classified memo warning about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang.
Lutnick oversees the agency charged with keeping sensitive U.S. technology out of the hands of American adversaries. The warning raises questions about how the department weighed potential security risks as it cleared advanced Nvidia chip sales to China-affiliated entities.
W/@MarcACaputo
axios.com/2026/11/10/lutnick…
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Kimberly Owens retweeted
It is both cool and a bummer that Dean and I are in such strenuous agreement about this issue (preventing AI from controlling the development of its successors with little or no practical oversight) as an urgent policy priority in the year 2026. I did not expect this would be the case when we first crossed paths two years ago debating on the Cognitive Revolution
Extremely based @deanwball (note to be clear this is in the context of clarifying that other forms of RSI opposition are indeed poorly parameterized and over-scoped!)
TX Rep. Greg Casar and CA @RepLiccardo appeared on "On with Kara Swisher" podcast discussing the opportunity for federal AI legislation since Dems have a majority in both houses. Preventing RSI tied to existential risk was a priority. Can they get there in time?
They now predict that 95% of Anthropic's R&D will be fully automated by November 2027. This is what Anthropic describes as AL5, fully autonomous RSI. This would have many implications for policy, as this will eventually happen at every lab, not just Anthropic
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Anthropic was shooting for $2tn valuation. Now it's at $1.4tn. “The market needed an excuse to correct itself a little bit in terms of valuations,” Brian Hopkins, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. “The US election spook is what has caused it.”
theguardian.com/technology/2…
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Kimberly Owens retweeted
More evidence that Commerce’s refusal to implement or enforce export controls may not be a directive coming from the White House.
The White House is reportedly pushing to close the remote access loophole—potentially the single most important thing we could do right now to secure U.S. AI advantages over China—while Commerce leadership refuses to block companies literally run by Chinese spies from receiving AI chips, is not enforcing controls already on the books that are designed to prevent Chinese cutouts like Megaspeed from getting chips, and is actively interfering with ongoing law enforcement investigations involving Megaspeed and Nvidia.
It’s stunning that the White House and Commerce could be on such different pages on export control policy. If the White House can’t get Commerce under control, then Congress has no choice but to launch an investigation into Commerce’s handling of these issues.
New: As lawmakers clamor for action after the Nvidia revelations, we have inside details into the Trump administration's thinking on AI export controls.
- There have been renewed pushes in recent weeks within the Commerce Department for rule-making on both the remote access loophole and controls around lithography tooling, an essential chokepoint in the AI chip manufacturing process, though current and former Commerce officials are skeptical the efforts will advance
- In late October, the White House sent feedback to Congressional staff on two export control bills attached to the NDAA. (h/t @Dareasmunhoz, who had this first)
- Interestingly, the feedback called for a provision attached to the Overwatch Act that would order Commerce to close the remote access loophole on chips covered by the bill, effectively forcing the department to take action on an issue it has dragged its feet on
- Especially with skepticism growing on the Hill toward Nvidia, substantial export control policy could pass through Congress, even as the Commerce Department remains paralyzed
Lots of new information here, w/ the great @QianerLiu
theinformation.com/articles/…
Saw this coming. Coons is the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
"I want to investigate them because I suspect they've put our national security at risk, they've been breaking the law and lying to the American people."
npr.org/2026/11/09/nx-s1-603…
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