TECH POLICY WATCH

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Coordinated by Marietje Schaake

TikTok’s data centers are replete with security failures and oddities, including mystery flash drives and illicit crypto mining. (Forbes)
Iranian hackers reportedly gained access to the 2020 elections website, but Cyber Command and DHS prevented them from muddying results. (WaPo)
Twitter has descended into chaos: news outlets lost their verification, while celebrities, who did not pay for Twitter Blue, kept their checkmarks. (CNN)
Facebook and Twitter will face new EU content rules, mandated by the Digital Services Act, by August 25. (Politico EU)

China is allegedly building weapons to hijack enemy satellites, according to a CIA document from the Pentagon leak. (FT)
Britain has unveiled its digital competition bill, despite big tech’s best lobby efforts to stop the legislation’s advancement. (Politico EU)
The CCP has released draft guardrails on chatbots that will tightly rein the technology in. (NYT)
India faces criticism from the EU and 15 other nations for its imposition of tariffs on information and communications technology. (The Register)

Twitter fueled the run on Silicon Valley Bank, according to new research from finance professors in the U.S. and Europe. (Axios)
Apple is taking on Wall Street with Apple Card and Apple Pay Later, both of which could seriously challenge the traditional financial players. (FT)
Meta is reportedly scrambling to catch up on AI, as the company surveys its computing capacity for AI development. (Reuters)
GM will scrap the Chevy Bolt, its most popular and least expensive EV, a major setback for the EV market. (WaPo)

Senators Schatz and Hawley are cosponsoring a bill to set age limits for social media use, the latest federal effort to accompany many similar state bills. (WaPo)
U.S. law enforcement agencies are partnering to combat AI bias and its potential consequences for market competition and policing. (WSJ)
A Republican political ad in response to Biden’s re-election announcement deploys AI-generated imagery. (VICE)
Schools are major targets of cyberattacks, but a bipartisan Congressional effort may help. (EducationWeek)

The music world is reeling amid the emergence of AI-generated music like Drake and The Weeknd’s new AI release “Heart on My Sleeve.” (NPR)
An Australian Mayor is readying the world’s first defamation lawsuit against ChatGPT because it proliferated false information about him. (Reuters)
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether public officials can block constituents on their social media accounts. (WaPo)
Spotify’s CEO called AI progress both “really cool and scary” on its investor call, highlighting AI's potential risks to creative industries. (TechCrunch)

Hugging Face has released its own open source alternative to ChatGPT, called HuggingChat, but content moderation is still lacking. (TechCrunch)
Parrots are experimenting with video chat in a new study chronicled by The New York Times. (NYT)
Apple is reportedly planning to launch an AI-powered health coaching service. (Bloomberg)
The first babies conceived via robot have been born, another dizzying development in the world of fertility tech. (MTR)

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