We are a little more than a year away from Election Day, and voters have probably heard something about candidates’ views on the economy, foreign policy and other issues in the media daily. But today, “Marketplace Tech” is looking at what candidates are telling voters about their plans for the future of technology in the United States. How are they framing issues related to artificial intelligence, social media and the power of Big Tech? If you scroll through the websites of the leading candidates, tech might not seem very high on their priority list so far. But tech is definitely on the agenda — you just have to know where to look and what to listen for. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Dave Weigel, politics reporter for the news website Semafor, about how the contenders are defining and spinning tech to influence voters.

There was a time when the unveiling of the next-generation Apple iPhone was a very big deal. Today, there are still plenty of fans keeping tabs on the latest releases from Apple and competitors like Samsung and Google. But if you didn’t hear much about Apple’s hardware showcase in Cupertino, California, last week, it wasn’t just you. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Lauren Goode, senior writer at Wired and the co-host of Wired’s “Gadget Lab” and “Have a Nice Future” podcasts, about the event and what it revealed about the state of smartphones.

Saturday marks one year since the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating its strict dress code for women. She died in custody. Protests that started at Amini’s funeral quickly spread across the country. Iranians have depended on messaging apps and social media to share information and try to stay safe. But staying connected hasn’t been easy, according to Shaghayegh Norouzi and Reza Ghazinouri with the U.S.-based nonprofit United for Iran. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Norouzi and Ghazinouri about the online resources United for Iran has developed and the technology used by activists across the country.

Here on Earth, the satellites that make up Starlink look like a string of stars travelling across the night sky. More than 4,000 of them are circling the Earth in low orbit right now. They’re part of the private venture that’s the brainchild of billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals there so Ukraine could stay connected to the internet. But turns out Musk controls both the on and the off switch on that technology, giving him an outsized role in the conflict, according to Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s out with a story in The Atlantic on how that happened and what can be done about it.

If you’re a kitchen tech fanatic, the odds are good you’ve purchased or been gifted an Instant Pot. But Instant Brands, the maker of the Instant Pot, filed for bankruptcy in June. Susan Orlean, who writes Afterword, an obituary column in The New Yorker, said it seemed fitting to write an obit for the Instant Pot.

The European Commission has designated six of the largest tech companies on the planet as the “gatekeepers” of online services. You’ll know these names: Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Facebook parent Meta. Google and YouTube parent Alphabet. And, maybe you’re less familiar with this one: ByteDance, which owns TikTok. They’ve all got until March to comply with the continent’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to give users more choice. For more, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Sumit Sharma, a competition and antitrust senior researcher at Consumer Reports, who explained what the term “gatekeeper” refers to.

States across the country are considering “right to repair” laws. These laws require most electronics and appliance manufacturers to provide instructions and tools to consumers wanting to repair their products instead of paying company technicians for the service or, worst case, buying a replacement. It’s something that iPhone maker Apple has long been against, until last month, when the company suddenly announced its support for California’s bill. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Brian Heater, hardware editor at TechCrunch, about Apple’s change of heart and what it means for consumers.

When’s the last time you used Microsoft Bing or Duck Duck Go to search the internet? Yeah, that’s no accident, say the U.S. government and several states. Next week, an antitrust case they filed against Google goes to trial. The original complaint notes Google accounted for almost 90% of all search queries in the U.S. And Googling only got us so far on this one, so Marketplace’s Lily Jamali called on Rebecca Allensworth, an antitrust lawyer and law professor at Vanderbilt.

When Mustafa Suleyman co-founded the AI research company DeepMind more than a decade ago, his goal felt ambitious, even a bit far-fetched: to build a machine that could replicate human intelligence. Now, he says, rapid progress in the development of AI means that goal could be met within the next three years, and the implications of that milestone are huge. Suleyman explores those implications in his new book, “The Coming Wave,” which came out this week. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Suleyman, now CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, about a core theme of the book: the question of containment.

Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey banned them in 2019. Now, owner and Chair Elon Musk is officially bringing back political ads from parties and candidates to the company he renamed X, expanding its push into cause-based advertising. The move could boost revenue; some big brands have been less than eager to buy ads on the platform since Musk took over. X didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of taping, but it has said it plans to expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 elections in the United States. That, of course, would come after deep staff cuts. For analysis, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali had a chat with Jonathan Lemire, host of “Way Too Early” on MSNBC and the White House bureau chief at Politico, and Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.