Financial Times: “According to six people who have worked closely with him across Amazon, Blue Origin and The Washington Post, the decisions are part of a marked shift in Bezos’s strategy towards Trump. These people painted a picture of a shrewd capitalist, making practical calculations to protect his businesses.”

“But they also believe Bezos is operating with a dose of fear about Trump, as well as resentment towards what he considers to be the Democrats’ ‘vilification’ of Big Tech during the Biden administration.”

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House’s select committee on countering China, “drew a hard line this morning against any deal for TikTok that keeps control of the app or its underlying technology in the hands of Beijing-based ByteDance,” Politico reports.

Said Moolenaar: “The law is clear: any deal must eliminate Chinese influence and control over the app to safeguard our interests.”

He added: “ByteDance must fully divest its control of TikTok and have no say in its operations; nor can the two share data, content, or algorithms. These are non-negotiable, and any deal that doesn’t meet these requirements simply isn’t legal.”

Politico: “The software company Oracle is accelerating talks with the White House on a deal to run TikTok, though significant concerns remain about what role the app’s Chinese founders will play in its ongoing U.S. operation.”

“Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz … are taking the lead in negotiations, while senators have voiced a desire to be read in on any talks. The deal would essentially require the U.S. government to depend on Oracle to oversee the data of American users and ensure the Chinese government doesn’t have a backdoor to it.’

Vice President JD Vance expressed confidence Friday that a deal to sell TikTok and keep the social media app running in the U.S. would largely be in place by an April deadline, NBC News reports.

“A cyberattack that brought down Elon Musk’s X targeted servers that were insufficiently protected from malicious traffic,” Bloomberg reports.

Elon Musk is asserting his social media site X has been deluged by a “massive cyberattack” Monday following weeks of upheaval about his cost-cutting crusade across the federal government, Politico reports.

Kara Swisher: “Musk’s behavior is emblematic of tech’s most heinous figures, who now feel emboldened to enter the analog world with the same lack of care and arrogance with which they built their sloppy platforms.”

“President Donald Trump said Sunday he was negotiating with four different possible buyers for TikTok’s US business and that a deal for the social video app could come ‘soon,’” Bloomberg reports.

Said Trump: “We’re dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it.”

He didn’t specify the contenders nor say which way he was leaning, instead saying “all four are good.”

“The Commerce Department is examining changes to a $42.5 billion Biden-era program aimed at expanding internet access around the country with new rules that will make it easier for Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite-internet service, to tap in to rural broadband funding,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Republicans have said the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, created by the 2021 infrastructure bill, has moved too slowly and is bogged down by unnecessary rules. Those rules effectively said states could only fund alternative technologies such as satellite in areas where it wasn’t feasible or cost-effective to lay fiber cables.”

Apple said it would fix a “bug” occurring on some iPhones in which its text-to-speech transcription software is sometimes replacing certain words with an “r” consonant—including “racist”—with “Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

The words “rampant” and “rampage” also at times appear to be replaced with “Trump.” 

“When President Joe Biden put $42 billion behind making high-speed internet accessible across the US, he committed to doing it the old-fashioned way – with miles upon miles of fiber-optic lines,” Bloomberg reports.

“That frustrated Elon Musk, who said his Starlink satellite-internet business could get rural areas online faster, at lower cost. Biden’s decision helped drive a wedge between the Democratic president and the world’s richest person, who later used his wealth to help return Donald Trump to the White House.”

“Now, some Republicans want to open the floodgates for Starlink to compete with fiber, potentially shifting billions to Musk.”