“President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to neuter state laws that limit the artificial intelligence industry, a win for tech companies that have lobbied against regulation of the booming technology,” the New York Times reports.

Paul Krugman: “Imagine what would happen if the United States were to legalize the distribution and sale of heroin — and do so without any restrictions or regulations on how the drug is marketed and who can buy it.”

“Heroin distribution and sales would quickly become a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. They would become a significant part of GDP, even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it. Given the increasingly naked corruption of U.S. politics, the heroin industry would be able to purchase massive political influence, enough to block any attempts to limit the harm it does — the harm it knows it does, because heroin industry executives would surely be aware of the damage their products inflict.”

“Through massive political donations — enabled by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling – and de facto bribery enabled via cryptocurrency deals, the industry would be able to enlist the U.S. government as an ally in its efforts to block regulation in other countries…”

“If this story strikes you as extreme and implausible, here’s what you should know: replace ‘heroin’ with ‘social media,’ and this is a description of actual events.”

“President Trump said in a social media post Monday that he will issue an executive order this week to curb state laws on artificial intelligence, the latest win for a tech industry lobbying for deregulation,” the New York Times reports.

“For six months, Apple distributed an app called ICEBlock that allowed users to alert people when they saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But after the Trump administration complained that the app endangered officers, Apple removed it,” the New York Times reports.

“On Monday, the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron, sued top Trump administration officials, accusing them of pressuring Apple to stifle his free speech and his right to create, distribute and promote ICEBlock.”

MIT Technology Review: “A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party.”

“The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate—in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things.”

“The Trump administration has agreed to inject up to $150 million into a startup trying to develop more advanced semiconductor manufacturing techniques in the U.S., its latest bid to support strategically important domestic industries with government incentives,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

The New York Times profiles Trump adviser David Sacks and his massive conflicts of interest:

“No event better illustrates Mr. Sacks’s ethical complexities and how his intertwined interests have come together than the July A.I. summit. Mr. Sacks initially planned for the forum to be hosted by ‘All-In,’ which he leads with other tech investors. ‘All-In’ asked potential sponsors to each pay it $1 million for access to a private reception and other events at the summit ‘bringing together President Donald Trump and leading A.I. innovators.'”

“The plan so worried some officials that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, intervened to prevent ‘All-In’ from serving as the sole host of the forum.”

“A new feature on X is making people suddenly realize that some large portion of the divisive, hateful, and spammy content designed to inflame tensions or, at the very least, is designed to get lots of engagement on social media, is being published by accounts that are pretending to be based in the United States but are actually being run by people in countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Russia, and other countries,” 404 Media reports.

“Inauthentic viral accounts on X are just the tip of the iceberg, though, as we have reported. A huge amount of the viral content about American politics and American news on social media is from sock puppet and bot accounts monetized by people in other countries.”

“It’s no secret that Elon Musk shapes the X social platform and X’s ‘maximally truth-seeking’ Grok AI chatbot to his preferences. But it’s possible Musk may have needed a bit of an extra ego boost this week, because Grok’s worship of its creator seems, shall we say, more noticeable than usual,” The Verge reports.

“As a number of people have pointed out on social media over the past day, Grok’s public-facing chatbot is currently prone to insisting on Musk’s prowess at absolutely anything, no matter how unlikely — or conversely, embarrassing — a given feat is.”

“Meta did not break the law when it acquired nascent rivals, a federal judge said on Tuesday, handing a major win to the $1.51 trillion company and dealing a blow to the government’s efforts to rein in the power of tech giants,” the New York Times reports.

President Trump said in an interview that H-1B skilled worker visas are necessary because “you don’t have certain talents” in the U.S., Axios reports.

“The Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan bookkeeper, was hacked by a suspected foreign actor, potentially exposing the key financial research data Congress uses to craft legislation,” the Washington Post reports.