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The Kremlin
Are Russia and China trying to recruit disgruntled US federal employees?
A Naval Criminal Investigative Service document said US intelligence had determined that foreign officers had been instructed to look for possible targets on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote, and Reddit, focusing on employees who indicate that they are “open to work.”
Shooting the messenger. Some in the US intelligence community have reportedly raised these concerns internally, but Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the ones flagging the issue are the problem. She said internal discussions at the CIA about this are a “threat” and questioned the loyalty of those involved.
“They’re exposing themselves essentially by making this indirect threat — using their propaganda arm through CNN that they've used over and over and over again — to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all to America. ... not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves,” Gabbard said.
The ChatGPT logo, a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov
This product launch serves a dual purpose: OpenAI is both advancing its business strategy of becoming a government contractor, and it’s advancing its political strategy of becoming more enmeshed with Washington. In December, OpenAI reversed course on its longstanding prohibition of its tools being used for military purposes and partnered with the drone maker Anduril on defensive systems for the US military.
Announcing the government version of ChatGPT, OpenAI framed its mission as a global one. “We believe the US government’s adoption of artificial intelligence can boost efficiency and productivity and is crucial for maintaining and enhancing America’s global leadership in this technology,” the company wrote. Part of the sales strategy: convincing the government that it needs to use the latest large language models to stay ahead of its rivals, namely China.
Graphic Truth: Where the US government gets its revenue
The US government currently raises about $5 trillion a year in revenue. That plus another $2 trillion in debt are what make up the nearly $7 trillion that Uncle Sam spends annually.
But where does that revenue actually come from? Here’s a look at the breakdown.
Bear in mind, as you look at this, that incoming US president Donald Trump has suggested he wants to replace the income tax with his new tariffs. Would that be possible?
It’s true that until the income tax was implemented in the early 20th century, tariffs provided the lion’s share of US government revenue. But that was a time before social security, medicare, or a modern military when the government spent barely $500,000 a year.
With Trump’s tariffs expected to raise, at best, about $300 billion per year, using them to replace income taxes would entail an unfathomably radical shrinking of the US federal government.
A general view of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) building, in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Antitrust is coming for AI
The US government's two antitrust regulators struck a deal to divvy up major investigations into anti-competitive behavior in the AI industry. The Justice Department will look into Nvidia’s dominance over the chip market, while the Federal Trade Commission will investigate OpenAI and its lead investor, Microsoft.
In December, the FTC opened a preliminary inquiry into Microsoft's $13 billion stake in OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. It’s an non-traditional deal, in which Microsoft receives half of OpenAI’s revenue until the investment is repaid, rather than traditional equity. But Microsoft also flexed its muscles after the sudden ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year, offering to hire him and any defecting OpenAI employees, effectively pressuring the company to rehire him — which it did soon after. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also began probing the relationship between the two firms in December.
Meanwhile, Nvidia has become the undisputed leader of the AI chip industry with their powerful graphics processors powering the training and operation of generative AI models. The company recently disclosed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its pole position and market dominance has attracted regulatory scrutiny from the United Kingdom, though it didn’t specify the nature of the inquiry.
Noah Daponte-Smith, a United States analyst for Eurasia Group, sees this announcement “largely as a messaging exercise intended to show that DOJ [and] FTC will be just as dogged on antitrust issues in the AI space as in the rest of the Big Tech arena.” He sees the decision as more of a continuation of Biden’s aggressive antitrust regime than a policy position on the regulation of AI.
“My sense is that AI regulation will have to occur more through Congress and through executive actions not focused on competition,” he added.
3 themes to watch as US election season begins
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
With the Iowa caucuses coming up, what are the big themes to watch in American politics this year?
Monday of next week is the first day the official kickoff of the US presidential campaign season, even though it feels like it's already been going on for six years. It really only starts on next Monday with the Iowa caucuses begin. Donald Trump has a big lead in the Republican primary. Nobody's challenging President Biden on the Democratic side. And so here are three themes to watch throughout this election year.
The first is, can anyone beat Trump in the Republican primary? Right now, it's down to basically Trump, the top of a field of contenders. And then you have a distant second, former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And in third place, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with some also rans like Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who don't really have a chance. Of that bunch, Haley is probably best positioned to make a deep run into the primaries because of her ability to consolidate the fundraising apparatus behind her in the last several months. DeSantis could still come on strong with a strong showing in Iowa, but it's really going to take a lot of money to last through the March Super Tuesday caucuses. And right now, Haley looks like the best bet. But to get there, she's going to need to win a state. Right now, she's behind in Iowa. She's close, but still behind in New Hampshire. And she’s still behind in her home state of South Carolina. So the thing to watch for is field consolidation in late January, maybe early February, And if Haley can actually get some momentum to beat Trump.
The second thing to pay attention to are Trump's criminal trials. And a major question for 2024 is how much do these things hurt him on the campaign trail? Certainly being prosecuted by the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan and Biden's DOJ has helped Trump consolidate his position on top of the Republican field. But it seems like the conventional wisdom is that it probably hurts Trump in the general election. Now, this may or may not be true. Voters already have been accustomed to the fact that Trump's been accused of various crimes. Trump himself is running on delegitimizing the system that's put him on trial, and that's going to be a continued theme throughout 2024. And the question for the general election is right now, Trump is beating Biden in head to head polling matchups, which are not very reliable this far out. Does that advantage start to erode as Trump's criminal trial stay in the news throughout the summer? And what happens if he's eventually convicted of a crime? And the one to watch is probably the DC election interference case that the federal government has brought in the District of Columbia.
Final thing to watch for in 2024, what happens to the state of the economy? Biden's approval ratings are relatively low for an incumbent seeking reelection in the high thirties. That's a pretty bad sign. The economy's been fairly resilient so far with low unemployment and decent wage growth. But Americans are still saying they're very unhappy about the state of things. Inflation has been a huge part of that. High grocery prices, expensive services are all things that Americans are dealing with on a day to day basis. Does the economy flatline or tank in the first half of 2024, which would be a real disaster for the incumbent President Biden? Or does it continue to muddle along and potentially improve as inflation fades in the rearview mirror, which would be a tailwind for the incumbent? And you'd expect to see that in rising approval ratings throughout the spring and summer.
Thanks for watching. This has been US Politics in (a little over) 60 Seconds.
The U.S. Capitol.
The US government is heading toward a shutdown. What does that mean?
The US government looks set to shut down this Sunday after House Republicans indicated that they would not support a bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the federal government past this weekend’s deadline.
Absent a last-minute agreement, many federal agencies could soon shut down, while millions of federal workers could be placed on furlough without pay due to a lapse in funding from Congress, which controls the purse strings.
What led to the current stalemate and what does it mean?
You might recall that, back in June, House Republicans agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, Republicans and the White House agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this sort of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But that is now up in the air as a number of “tear-it-all-down” Republicans are refusing to fund the government – an annual procedural measure – and are calling for deeper spending cuts. Crucially, they also oppose ongoing funding to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, overseeing one of the slimmest congressional majorities in decades, is hesitant to pass a funding bill with the backing of House Dems that these vocal members of his own caucus oppose, fearing they would call a vote seeking his ouster. What’s more, to appease the right flank of his party, McCarthy gave his caucus the go-ahead to start an impeachment inquiry into President Biden (the hearing will kick off Friday), but that doesn't seem to have gotten the hardliners to back off.
Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters don’t want the government to close.
What happens if the government shuts down? While some government departments – like the military – will continue to function, hundreds of thousands of workers (out of 4 million government employees) will be told to stay home without pay. The last time the government shut down in 2018 for 35 days, it cost the US economy a whopping $11 billion.
Plus: We asked Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, to share his view on how long the shutdown may last. Hear what he had to say here.
Hunter Biden steps off Marine One at Ft. McNair, after spending the night at Camp David, in Washington, U.S., June 25, 2023.
Hunter Biden catches a gun case
Federal prosecutors indicted U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on three federal gun-related charges on Thursday. The indictments come after a plea deal the younger Biden believed he had struck with federal prosecutors dramatically fell apart at the last minute in July. Hunter now faces up to 25 years in prison for allegedly lying about his drug use on a federal form that was required to purchase a handgun in Delaware in 2018.
President Biden is at no legal risk from his son's indictment. But the charges are politically inconvenient to say the least. They come just days after the House GOP began an impeachment inquiry that centers on so-far-unsubstantiated allegations that President Biden used his political position to profit from his son’s business dealings.
On top of that, the trial – which will likely get under way next year – will now serve as counter-programming to the multiple trials in federal and state court of former President Donald Trump which are slated to start in the spring. That’s right, America: as the 2024 campaigns hit the homestretch, the DOJ will simultaneously be prosecuting President Biden’s son as well as his likely election opponent, Donald Trump. What could be better for a bitterly divided nation?
Is the US covering up UFOs?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and we're talking about aliens, a Quick Take. Very exciting, of course.
A Congressional testimony by a whistleblower, a former Air Force intelligence officer. His name is David Grusch, Major David Grusch, who says that the US government has been covering up UFOs.
David Grusch: “I like to use the term non-human, I don't like to denote origin, it keeps the aperture open.”
They come from other galaxies. We have no idea, but it's a coverup, and the fact that it's covered up is clearly evidence of an even deeper state than we had been aware of before. It's one thing when the deep state can fake your elections. It's another when they can actually cover up extraterrestrial species. And we know that, because if you look at all of the sightings of aliens that have happened over the past decades, they've mostly come over the United States, not just continental, Alaska too, a little Hawaii. But still, we should be the ones that find the real ones and then cover up the real ones if that's where the sightings are.
They're blurry. They're usually pretty blurry. And it is true that all the technologies around sensors are improving, and that's why we have great photos of Chinese surveillance balloons when they come over the United States. The UFOs are still blurry, but that's not necessarily because they don't exist. It could be because the alien technology at evading improved surveillance technology in the United States is also improving. It's not like the aliens are just going to stay still while our technology improves.
In all seriousness, I don't believe that he is telling us the truth, even though he is under oath, about the cover-up and the aliens. And Major Grusch, if it turns out that you're actually telling the truth, and this is all a big conspiratorial cover up, the lack of evidence of which is only more proof that the cover-up exists, I will apologize, in person if you like, or certainly on video, but for now I think you're full of crap.
It's good. My mother used to buy the National Enquirer at the Stop & Shop every week, and it was 15 cents, and I enjoyed reading it. It was the articles. It wasn't just the two-headed baby and the she-wolf and all of that stuff. And I learned how to BS people for money from the Enquirer. I stopped. I did not decide to take that on as a profession. You apparently have. I wish you wouldn't do that.
I do believe in aliens. I don't think we're the only intelligent life in the universe. I think it's quite likely we may be the only observable intelligent life in the universe right now, because we only have existed as intelligent life for a cosmological eye-blink. And I might not have said this 30 years ago, but when I look at the acceleration of technology and just how fast we are moving in terms of especially artificial intelligence, this does not seem sustainable. It seems very, very unlikely to me that we are around as an identifiable species in, say, a hundred years. And given that, if you assume that intelligent life is able to develop technologies anywhere in the universe, it's around, it explodes, and then it either becomes something really cool that we don't understand, or it blows itself up. And so, I suspect that the aliens that are around are in the future or in the past, or they're us, but they're not the ones that Grusch is lying about.
That's it from me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.