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NEW YORK (AP) — Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
According to documents published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall covers certain Ford F-150s from the 2025 model year — as well as other Ford “Super Duty” trucks, including 2025-2026 F-550 SD, F-450 SD, F-350 SD and F-250 SDs. A recall report dated Aug. 22 notes that the instrument panel cluster (IPC) can fail at startup, resulting in drivers seeing a blank screen.
As a result, the NHTSA notes, drivers may not be able to read critical “safety-related telltales and gauges,” increasing the risk of crash. The recall report notes that Ford isn’t aware of any accidents or injuries related to this issue — but had received 95 warranty claims as of June 26.
To address the display failure, Ford is offering a free IPC software update to impacted owners. This fix will be available at authorized dealers or through an “over-the-air” update, the NHTSA notes.
In a statement sent to The Associated Press, Ford said that the over-the-air software update is “more convenient for customers compared to an in-person dealer visit.” The Michigan-based auto maker added that owner notification letters will soon be sent out with more information and instructions about the remedy.
A total of 355,656 vehicles are covered by the recall, all of which are estimated to have the defect. Recall documents note that the now-recalled IPC software was introduced into production in June 2024, and was taken out in July 2025.
Ford has rolled out several sizeable recalls this year — including 694,000 Bronco Sport and Escape vehicles recalled over a fuel injector issue last month, as well as a recall covering over 850,000 cars due to potential fuel pump failure.
Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer at Ford, addressed the recent uptick in recalls at Ford earlier this month — writing in a company blog that the increase “reflects our intensive strategy to quickly find and fix hardware and software issues and go the extra mile to help protect customers,” which includes heightened safety testing.
Nvidia reported a 56% increase in second-quarter revenue Wednesday and a 59% rise in net income compared to a year ago. However, sales in its main data center division came in slightly below Wall Street estimates and the stock fell in after-hours trading.
Nvidia and other companies benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence have been a major reason the S&P 500 has set a number of records this year. Their explosion of profits has helped to propel the market despite worries about the U.S. economy being weakened by tariffs and other policies of the Trump administration.
The company’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here’s a look.
$4.429 trillionNvidia’s total market value as of the close of trading Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500.
Microsoft ($3.767 trillion) and Apple ($3.421 trillion) are next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500. Nvidia’s market value in late August 2023 was around $1.150 trillion.
1,143%The approximate gain in Nvidia’s stock price since the start of 2023. The shares are up about 35% so far this year.
$46.74 billionNvidia’s overall revenue in the May-July quarter, 56% above its revenue in the year-ago quarter. However, sales in its core data center division came in slightly below Wall Street estimates
$54 billionNvidia’s forecast for revenue for the fiscal third quarter, “plus or minus 2%.”
$24.3 billionThe amount of money Nvidia says it returned to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividends in the first half of fiscal 2026.
$157.7 billionThe net worth of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Rev. Al Sharpton will lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963.
Sharpton, in a statement, called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation.”
Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has moved to end DEI programswithin the federal government and warned schools to do the same, or risk losing federal money.
In response, Sharpton’s civil rights group, the National Action Network, has encouraged consumers to avoid U.S. retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity among their employees and reducing discrimination against members of minority groups, women and LGBTQ+ people.
Earlier this year, Sharpton met with Target’s CEO as groups called for a boycott of the retail giant, which joined Amazon, Walmart and other major retailers in foregoing DEI initiatives.
The civil rights leader has also called for “buy-cotts” in support of companies such as Costco that have stuck by their DEI principles despite the conservative backlash.
“Corporate America wants to walk away from Black communities, so we are marching to them to bring this fight to their doorstep,” Sharpton said in a statement ahead of Thursday’s march.
The march is expected to start around 10 a.m. in Foley Square, located in downtown Manhattan near the African Burial Ground that’s the largest known resting place of enslaved and freed Africans in the country.
The square is also near 26 Federal Plaza, the federal government building that’s become a symbol of Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been detaining migrants during their routine appearances at the immigration court located there. A federal judge earlier this month also ordered the Trump administration to improve conditions for migrants jailed there.
Marchers are expected to make their way past Wall Street’s famous Charging Bull statue before the event ends with a speaking program.
New York City mayoral candidates, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, are among those expected to join the demonstration.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.
Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.
The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.
The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.
A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.
“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.
“The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.
Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.
Army declines to release contractDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees.
Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre (24-hectare) site is near the U.S.-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.
The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.
The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.
At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.
Three white tents, each about 810 feet (250 meters) long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by The Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.
Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases harkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.
“Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”
Company will be responsible for securityA June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.
The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.
Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51% of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.
One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.
Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.
Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a U.S. federal court in Washington.
Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.
In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.
A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.
___
Goodman reported from Miami. AP reporter Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
___
Contact the AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos often claims he loves movie theaters. He’d love films to have long healthy runs at the box office, but audiences don’t want that. They want to watch movies at home, and he’s going to listen to what the consumer wants. But is that actually what the consumer wants? The answer is, apparently, “not really.”
The latest example of this is “KPop Demon Hunters,” an animated movie musical quietly released on Netflix in June. Since then, it’s become a phenomenon, and just passed “Red Notice” to become Netflix’s most watched movie ever. A one-weekend sing-along special edition of the movie snagged the top spot at the box office. With the film readily available on Netflix at home, people still chose to go out and spend money for the collective experience of the movie theater.
Viewers also pushed Netflix to make “Happy Gilmore 2” available in theaters, but the firm only put it out at very few theaters and with zero publicity. Sold out theatrical showings of “KPop Demon Hunters” and people demanding “Happy Gilmore 2” are only the most recent examples of consumers clamoring for more streaming content on the big screen. They got a one-week theatrical run of “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” in 2022 which generated $15 million in box office.
Fellow streamer Disney granted its audience’s wishes by turning their “Moana” streaming series into a theatrically released film that ended up grossing over $1 billion worldwide. Will Netflix actually listen to its audience and give upcoming films theatrical releases? Despite all the extra millions of dollars it could bring in, all signs point to no because Sarandos says “driving folks to a theater is just not our business.”
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Police arrested seven people Tuesday after they occupied the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith as part of continued protests over the company’s ties to the Israel Defense Forces during the ongoing war in Gaza, organizers said.
Current and former Microsoft employees were among those arrested, said the protest group No Azure for Apartheid. Azure is Microsoft’s primary cloud computing platform, and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets.
The protesters could be seen huddled together on a Twitch livestream as officers moved in to arrest them. The video showed another group assembled outside.
During a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, Smith said two of those arrested were Microsoft employees.
Eighteen people were arrested in a similar protest in a plaza at the headquarters last week. The group has been protesting the company for months. Microsoft in May fired an employee who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella, and in April it fired two others who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration.
The group’s demands include that the company cut ties with Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians.
The British newspaper The Guardian reported this month that the Israel Defense Forces had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to store phone call data obtained through the mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Microsoft has said it hired an outside law firm to investigate the allegations, but that its terms of service would prohibit such use.
“There are many things we can’t do to change the world, but we will do what we can and what we should,” Smith told reporters at a media briefing following Tuesday’s arrests. “That starts with ensuring that our human rights principles and contractual terms of service are upheld everywhere, by all of our customers around the world.”
Earlier this year, The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about Microsoft’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance. The AP reported that the data can be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house, AI-enabled systems to help select targets.
Following The AP’s report, Microsoft said a review found no evidence that its Azure platform and artificial intelligence technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. Microsoft did not share a copy of that review, but the company said it would share factual findings from the further review prompted by The Guardian’s report when complete.
In the statement Tuesday, the protest groups said the disruptions were “to protest Microsoft’s active role in the genocide of Palestinians.”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Chipmaker Nvidia will release a quarterly report Wednesday that could provide a better sense of whether the stock market has been riding an overhyped artificial intelligence bubble or is being propelled by a technological boom that’s still gathering momentum.
Nvidia become the first publicly traded company to surpass a market value of $4 trillion last month, and its stock price has gained another 13% since then to create an additional $500 billion in shareholder wealth.
The latest financial results are due out Wednesday afternoon. They have become a key AI barometer during the past two years because Nvidia makes most of the chips that power the technology in vast data centers at the center of the boom.
This summer’s run-up has continued Nvidia’s jaw-dropping rise from early 2023, when the company’s market value was hovering around $400 billion. That was shortly after OpenAI’s late 2022 release of its ChatGPT chatbot triggered the biggest craze in technology since Apple released the first iPhone in 2007.
While the technology industry has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI frenzy, it’s also been a boon for the overall stock market. The benchmark S&P 500 has gained 68% since the end of 2022, with AI fervor fueling much of the investor optimism.
But even amid the general euphoria, there recently have been murmurs about whether AI mania will prove to be an echo of the late 1990s dot-com boom that culminated in an excruciating stock market meltdown in 2000 that eventually drove the U.S. economy and plunged Silicon Valley into a funk that lasted several years before the tech industry began to thrive again.
Investors were recently spooked by a combination of an MIT report that said 95% of AI pilots fail and comments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman floating the idea that the artificial intelligence market is in a bubble.
And by some metrics, the stock prices of tech companies at the AI are looking frothy. For instance, Nvidia is trading at about 40 times its future earnings, roughly double the rate that investors traditionally believe is a reasonable level. Meanwhile, the market value of Microsoft, another AI leader, is hovering just below $4 trillion, while the values of other fellow pacesetters Amazon, Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Google parent Alphabet currently range from $1.9 trillion to $2.5 trillion.
Nvidia is expected to post another quarter of robust growth for the May-July period of its fiscal year. Analysts surveyed by FactSet research predict Nvidia will earn $1.01 per share, excluding certain items unrelated to its ongoing business, which would be a 49% increase from the same time last year. The analysts anticipated Nvidia’s revenue would rise 53% from a year ago to about $46 billion.
Those gains reflect the financial tsunami flooding the AI market as the biggest players spend heavily to build and expand data centers needed to power the technology. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta are collectively budgeting more than $325 billion for investments in AI this year. With its dominant position in the AI chip market, Nvidia is reaping the benefits of that intense demand.
Even so, the trajectory of Nvidia’s growth has been tapering off. If analyst projections pan out, Nvidia’s revenue growth for its latest quarter will be significantly lower than the 122% increase it posted during the same period last year.
And Nvidia has also been losing business because of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Following a ban on its AI chip sales in China, which resulted in a $4.5 billion blow to its finances during its fiscal first quarter, Nvidia estimated that the restrictions would cost it about approximately $8 billion in sales in this during the past quarter.
Trump took the China handcuffs off of Nvidia earlier this month in return for a 15% cut of the company’s sales in that country — a compromise CEO Jensen Huang is expected to discuss with analysts while he shares his perspective on the state of the AI market on a call with investors.
Cracker Barrel said late Tuesday it’s returning to its old logo after critics — including President Donald Trump — protested the company’s plan to modernize.
In a post on its website, Cracker Barrel said it will retain its old logo, which features an older man in overalls sitting next to a barrel and the words “Old Country Store.”
“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel,” the company said in a statement. “Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain.”
The tempest over the logo began last week, when the company announced plans for a simplified design featuring only the company’s name. Lebanon, Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel, which has 660 restaurants in 43 states, made the change as part of a wider plan to modernize its restaurants and appeal to younger customers.
The chain’s sales have been slipping as it faces growing competition from breakfast chains and others. In its 2024 fiscal year, Cracker Barrel’s same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, dropped 0.1% despite a 4.9% increase in menu prices. Same-store retail sales at its shops fell 5.5%.
But many protested the change. On Monday, Cracker Barrel put out an apologetic statement, saying it “could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”
At that point, Cracker Barrel didn’t say it would change the logo, but said it would listen to its customers and keep many of the things they have come to love about the restaurant, like the rocking chairs on its front porches. The company said it would continue to honor Uncle Herschel — the older man in its logo, who represents the uncle of Cracker Barrel’s founder — on its menu and on items sold in its stores.
But the controversy continued. On Tuesday morning, Trump said via Truth Social that Cracker Barrel “should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before.” Cracker Barrel’s shares rose after more than a week of declines.
By Tuesday evening, Cracker Barrel had made its decision and scrapped the new logo.
“At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family,” the company said. “As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.”
Trump was among those celebrating the move.
“Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!” Trump said via Truth Social.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has a message for critics who think turning the U.S. government into a major stockholder of Intel is a “socialist” move: More is coming.
“I will make deals like that for our Country all day long,” the president posted on Truth Social after critics piled on, adding later about future ownership stakes, “I want to try and get as much as I can.”
One possible target: defense contractors, whom Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC Tuesday were ripe for the picking given the U.S. government is a big customer.
Free-market conservatives were already wary of Trump’s tendency to interfere in corporate decision-making by, for example, telling Apple where it should make iPhones, or even demanding a cut of Nvidia’s sales of chips to China. But the Intel move is a startling defiance of Republican orthodoxy that says governments shouldn’t try to pick corporate winners and losers and risk messing things up as owners by rewarding executives for politically smart but financially stupid decisions.
The U.S. government is getting a 10% stake in Intel through the conversion of billions in previously granted government funds and pledges, making it one of Intel’s largest shareholders.
“If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?” Republican Sen. Rand Paul said in a post on X. “Terrible idea.”
Scott Lincicome, a Cato Institute trade expert, says Intel could end up making decisions now to please Trump even if they’re impractical, say, by going ahead with plans to open a long-promised chipmaking factory in Ohio. And even short-term gains from government ownership, such as more companies buying Intel semiconductors, will hurt business in the end by saddling those companies with inferior chips.
“Intel might simply gain customers from folks that are looking to stay on Trump’s good side,” he said. “But innovation requires ruthless competition, an endless drive for an advantage — and now they might accept a disadvantage because they need the political win.”
Many Republicans remained silent on the issue, prompting others to suggest they are free market hypocrites.
“For so many of my self-described true conservatives, you’re going to have to explain to me how this reconciles with true conservatism and true free-market capitalism,” Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CBS in an interview. “I don’t see it.”
Early last year, the Biden administration agreed to provide Intel with billions of dollars in funding under the CHIPS Act for it to build semiconductor manufacturing factories around the country, part of a plan to produce 20% of the world’s most advanced chips in the U.S. by 2030, up from zero at the time.
Trump argues that he got the Intel stake for free by converting $11.1 billion of funding into the equity stake. He also notes that Intel shares shot higher after he struck the deal Friday, handing a big win to U.S. taxpayers.
“I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER,” Trump posted Monday morning before the stock trading began. “More jobs for America!!! Who would not want to make deals like that?”
The price of Intel stock fell slightly both Monday and Tuesday, and investors have reason to be cautious.
In a filing to its investors after the deal was announced, Intel warned that it may lose overseas customers reluctant to buy from a U.S. government-owned business. The company has lost more than $22 billion since the start of 2023 after largely missing out on the frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence.
James Secreto, a former Biden administration official who helped hammer out the CHIPS Act grants, said a falling stock price is a big danger given Trump’s tendency to measure his success and failure by gyrations in the public market and his willingness to jawbone companies to do things to help him politically.
“The Trump administration now owns Intel’s success or failure,” said Secreto, former Commerce Secretary deputy chief of staff. “The next question is how far will the U.S. government go to defend its equity postion?
He called the Intel stock purchase a “bridge too far” even for Democrats who believe government help is needed occasionally.
“For the sake of national security, we still need Intel to win on performance, not politics,” he said.
That Trump would be labeled a “socialist” by members of his own party is ironic given that he has long wielded that term against his opponents.
Yet in some ways the Intel move fits a pattern.
Trump has erected the highest tariffs in decades, a trading strategy that his party has long rejected, and has tried to influence corporate decisions the GOP used to say were best left to business owners. In addition to telling Apple not to shift production to India, he has gotten Coca-Cola to change ingredients and warned Walmart not to raise prices.
There have also been a series of moves that will directly benefit or hurt the government depending on how businesses perform.
In June, Trump struck a deal approving Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel in exchange for a “ golden share ” that essentially gives the U.S. government veto power to ensure national security interests are protected against cutbacks in steel production. In July, he spent $400 million of taxpayer money on MP Materials stock to make the U.S government the biggest owner in the Las Vegas rare earths miner. Then earlier this month came his deal with Nvidia and AMD to give the U.S. government a 15% cut of revenue from selling certain chips to China.
A White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations said the deals with Intel, Nvidia, and U.S. Steel are seen as one-offs, necessary moves because the companies have outsized importance to the country’s national security. The source likened the deals to the government’s departure from free market principles when it limits American aerospace companies from selling fighter jets to countries like China.
Some conservatives aren’t buying it.
“This isn’t about funding innovation,” said influential conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Friday. “It’s a paradigm shift towards socialism.”
In addition to Lutnick’s comments about targeting defense contractors, Trump’s top economic adviser has also said hinted about what is likely coming next. He said the president is interested in setting up a sovereign wealth fund in which federal government would invest in an array of companies.
“There’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry then other industries,” said Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council.
One prominent politician did voice support for the Intel deal, but it more likely hurts than helps Trump’s cause with Republicans.
“Taxpayers should not be providing billions of dollars in corporate welfare to large, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return,” said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and Trump antagonist. “The taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment.”
———
AP reporter Michelle L. Price contributed from Washington.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A group of book authors has reached a settlement agreement with artificial intelligence company Anthropic after suing the chatbot maker for copyright infringement.
Both sides of the case have “negotiated a proposed class settlement,” according to a federal appeals court filing Tuesday that said the terms will be finalized next week.
Anthropic declined comment Tuesday. A lawyer for the authors, Justin Nelson, said the “historic settlement will benefit all class members.”
In a major test case for the AI industry, a federal judge ruled in June that Anthropic didn’t break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books.
But the company was still on the hook and was scheduled go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online “shadow libraries” of pirated copies.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said in his June ruling that the AI system’s distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as “fair use” under U.S. copyright law because it was “quintessentially transformative.”
“Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s (AI large language models) trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup wrote.
A trio of writers — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — alleged in their lawsuit last year that Anthropic’s practices amounted to “large-scale theft,” and that the San Francisco-based company “seeks to profit from strip-mining the human expression and ingenuity behind each one of those works.”
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