Campos: While I want to thank CBS news for funding this generous gift towards my education, I want to acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship.
"For some time, after World War II, it looked like extreme wealth belonged to the past and that we could forget this problem. But as the AI boom is minting billionaires by the day and the first trillionaires are now coming into view, we cannot ignore it anymore." 2/3
"The battle between democracy and oligarchy will be the defining battle of the 21st century." 3/3
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Video
What economist Gabriel Zucman said when I asked about SpaceX's IPO and how the concentration of wealth will affect us:
"There is a fundamental tension in democratic societies between extreme wealth – which is always an extreme power – and the very possibility of a well-functioning democracy." 1/3
just a short list of 62 candidates to choose from for california governor
So much tech money flowing into CA politics.
Crypto boss Chris Larsen spent $1M on the state insurance commissioner primary. Sergey Brin spent $66M to fight the wealth tax. Larsen, Google & Meta have thrown millions to local campaigns in the state legislature.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Dara Kerr
Dara Kerr
Acyn
I looked into whether tech billionaire big spending paid off in the California primaries. And, well, it did.
Despite the Matt Mahan loss, the industry came out ahead in smaller races up and down the ballot -- especially in state legislature races.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Welp, I missed this filing that came in at 6:55pm on Friday night. Brin shells out another $16M to fight the billionaire tax, making his contributions to this Super PAC total $82M.
New: xAI doubled the gas turbines at its data center, even as NAACP sues alleging the turbines violate the Clean Air Act.
This comes as SpaceX IPOs tomorrow, and Anthropic and Google signed deals to use xAI's data center.
Here's a graph showing how much toxic NOx xAI's data center is emitting
This comes as the tech industry is racing to develop AI and doesn't want regulations to get in the way.
“They’re doing a long-term strategy to slowly turn the legislature to become more friendly to them,” said John Bennett, director of the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy.
