Good news for the central Texas economy: Samsung’s new Taylor fab is going to build AI chips for Telsa.
Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip, designed to power the Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, will be manufactured at Samsung’s new, massive chip fabrication plant in Texas, strategically located near Tesla’s Model Y and Cybertruck production facilities.
They’re both on the outskirts of east Austin, though different parts of east Austin (Telsa’s plant is south, and Samsung’s new Taylor fab way north). Google maps say they’re about 27 miles apart as the crow flies, or 36 minutes apart if you take the 130 toll road.
“Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate,” Elon Musk wrote on X late Sunday night.
Musk continued, “Samsung currently makes AI4. TSMC will make AI5, which just finished design, initially in Taiwan and then Arizona.”
“Samsung agreed to allow Tesla to assist in maximizing manufacturing efficiency,” he noted, adding, “This is a critical point, as I will walk the line personally to accelerate the pace of progress. And the fab is conveniently located not far from my house.”
As to Musk “personally walking the line to accelerate the pace of progress,” presumably in a full bunny suit, I fail to see how that’s going to help anything. Most modern fabs have extremely efficient, streamlined operations that aren’t amenable to improvement via random billionaires walking their floor.
Samsung confirmed that it will produce Tesla’s AI chips as part of a $16.5 billion chipmaking deal, marking a major win for its underperforming foundry division, according to Bloomberg.
A foundry is a fab that manufactures chips for other companies rather than it’s own designs. Samsung has both fabs for its own chips and a foundry business.
The AI6 chip will be produced at Samsung’s chip plant in Taylor, Texas. The new facility was partially funded through the Biden-Harris administration’s CHIPS and Science Act and is focused on manufacturing advanced logic chips for mobile devices, 5G, high-performance computing, and AI applications.
My previous critique of the CHIPS act can be found here.
Tesla’s partner in the deal, Samsung’s Taylor Fab semiconductor location — which broke ground in 2022 and is expected to be fully operational in the City of Taylor come 2026 — aims to increase the production of semiconductor-related initiatives that’ll “power next-generation technologies” including 5G, high-performance computing, and various forms of AI.
The South Korean company, Samsung Technologies, first planted its roots in Texas in 1996, in Austin.
Tesla has multiple locations across the Lone Star State, including its primary manufacturing hub and headquarters near Austin, the “Gigafactory,” which boasts over 10 million square feet in floor space or 2,500 acres.
Snip.
Samsung Electronics announced on Monday it had signed a $16.5 billion contract with a “large global company” — revealed by Musk in the aforementioned X posts, although kept anonymous by Samsung. The contract’s tenure spans from July 24, 2025 to December 31, 2033.
Musk clarified in another X post that he believes the $16.5 billion number is “just the bare minimum,” and that the “actual output” of this collaboration between Samsung and Tesla will be “several times higher.”
There’s been a lot of (somewhat justified) concern over the dependence of American tech companies like Nvidia and Apple on Taiwan-based TSMC to fab their cutting edge sub-10nm chip designs. The problem has been foolishly phrased as “America can’t make chips anymore,” which is false, as American fabs churn out millions of chips every month. The problem is “lack of available domestic sub-10nm wafer starts,” a problem exacerbated by the fact that there are only three companies in the world that have the knowledge and resources to building cutting edge fabs, the cost of which is now pushing $20 billion.
Fortunately for Texas, Samsung is one of those three companies, and together with TSMC’s new fab in Arizona and Intel’s new fab in Ohio, a lot of those capacity constraint problems are being addressed.
It’s hard to remember a time in technology when Microsoft wasn’t reviled. 1987? Most people seemed to think that Word 3.0 was pretty solid. But even then, it was widely believed in many sectors of the hacking community that MS-DOS had at least partially ripped off Gary Kildall’s CP/M operating system. But even for Microsoft, outsourcing Department of Defense work to Communist China is a new low.
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
How could anyone, anywhere at Microsoft or DoD think this is a good idea?
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
Why was the arrangement “critical” to Microsoft winning the contract? Because they work cheaper than Americans? “We hire Chinese spies and pass the savings on to you!”
Americans overseeing the work isn’t a “barrier” to anything, since the Americans are presumably several thousand miles. If the Chinese backup American data to thumb drives and ship them off to Beijing in a big red box labeled STOLEN AMERICAN SECRETS, how are these “digital escorts” supposed to know?
But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.
“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.
“We’re just letting the foxes run the hen house and hoping for the best.”
The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.
Microsoft told ProPublica that it has disclosed details about the escort model to the federal government. But former government officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. The program appears to be so low-profile that even the Defense Department’s IT agency had difficulty finding someone familiar with it. “Literally no one seems to know anything about this, so I don’t know where to go from here,” said Deven King, spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Oh, that’s great. Microsoft outsourced DoD work to China and nobody knows anything about it.
National security and cybersecurity experts contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.” One of the most prominent examples of that threat came in 2023, when Chinese hackers infiltrated the cloud-based mailboxes of senior U.S. government officials, stealing data and emails from the commerce secretary, the U.S. ambassador to China and others working on national security matters. The intruders downloaded about 60,000 emails from the State Department alone.
Snip.
Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.
“Hey, let’s ask our outsourced experts in Guangdong if we have enough missiles in place to defend Taiwan!”
WHY. THE. FUCK. WAS. THIS. OUTSOURCED????
John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Department of Defense during the Biden administration, said he was surprised and concerned to learn of ProPublica’s findings. “I probably should have known about this,” he said. He told the news organization that the situation warrants a “thorough review by DISA, Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this.”’
Asleep at the switch all the way down.
In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.
There’s a lot more details about the “escort” system, but potential flaws in the system are way beside the point of the central fact that Chinese nationals should never have access to to any Department of Defense system or data. Anywhere. Ever. Not even to maintain the website for the Pentagon cafeteria.
“No, really, we’ve got a great system for storing fireworks in the welding shop!”
Remember, when you have your data in “the cloud,” that just means it exists “on someone else’s computer.” Sometimes that’s fine. If you’re a private company looking to get speed to market on your product, that might be the way to go. But handing Uncle Sam’s military data to Chinese nationals and hoping for the best is simply insane.
Israel continues to pummel Iran’s nuclear program, President Trump sets a deadline, illegal alien border crossings are down radically, Democrats are bankrupt (financially, not just morally), more horrifying sex offenders, and a new face for the Texas Democrat Party.
The big news of Wednesday, reported in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: “President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, people familiar with the deliberations said.” This feels like a strategic leak to reinforce to the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he faces the choice of giving up his country’s nuclear weapons program or war with the
There’s an important distinction between approving the attack plan and ordering the attack plan. Our military forces are poised to strike, but at least as of Tuesday, no U.S. fighters are in Iranian airspace, according to Pentagon officials.
“I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on,” Trump said. “They’re totally defenseless. They have no air defense whatsoever, totally captured. We totally captured the air.”
There’s that “we” again. One of the reasons people keep wondering if the U.S. is covertly helping Israel in an offensive manner as well as the revealed defensive manner (helping shoot down incoming ballistic missiles) is that Trump keeps using “we” to describe Israel’s actions in the war. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
I know, I know, everybody’s obsessed with which pronouns you use these days.
Yesterday at the White House, Trump continued:
Q: What does unconditional surrender mean?
Donald Trump: Well, you know what it means, unconditional—
Q: Can you explain—
Donald Trump: Two very simple words, very simple: unconditional surrender. That means I’ve had it. Okay, I’ve had it, I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. They had bad intentions. For 40 years, they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. War is very complex, a lot of bad things can happen, a lot of turns are made. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress and we’ll see. The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less.
Snip.
The Economist has a scoop about the Israeli intelligence that spurred its decision to launch this military operation:
We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards “weaponization”, or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran’s missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future “mating” of a nuclear warhead with a missile. . . .
In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a “cold test” — a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. . . .
The Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret “Special Progress Group”, under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group’s aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defenses by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon.
Bonus:
Israel secret services used a fake phone call to trick the top commanders of Iran’s air force into gathering at a single location before taking them out in a targeted strike, an Israeli Channel 12 commentator has said.
In a statement confirmed to the JC by Israeli sources, Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff an calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”
This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added.
According to sources familiar with the operation, Mossad initiated a targeted disinformation effort days before the strike.
Using falsified communications through Iranian channels, they triggered what appeared to be an emergency meeting.
The ruse successfully drew the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.
Moments before the strike began, that bunker was hit in a precision airstrike, eliminating Iran’s top missile command.
Border Czar Tom Homan dropped a bombshell on X Tuesday night that should have every American asking why we tolerated four years of Biden’s border catastrophe.
“In the last 24 hours the Border Patrol encountered a total of 95 illegal aliens across the entire southern border,” Homan posted. “That is the lowest number EVER recorded. Compare that to the Biden administration, who surpassed more than 10,000 per day.”
Read that again. Ninety-five. That’s not a typo. For the first time in recorded history, we’re seeing double-digit border encounters. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration was routinely processing more than 10,000 illegal crossings daily. The contrast couldn’t be more stark or more damning for the previous administration.
“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
But here’s where it gets even worse for Biden’s defenders. Homan revealed that the Biden administration released the “vast majority” of illegal immigrants back into American communities. How many were released under Trump in May? “Zero,” Homan revealed.
The numbers are staggering. In May 2024 alone, Biden released 62,000 illegal aliens into the country. Let that sink in: 62,000 people who crossed illegally were simply turned loose on American streets in a single month. This wasn’t immigration policy; it was an authorized invasion.
While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily.
And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined.
Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration.
That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional detention mandates and ushered millions of illegal migrants into the United States.
Trump rode a wave of concerns about the costs those migrants are imposing on schools, hospitals, housing, and essential government services in cities and towns across the United States to a second term.
Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, it’s up to him, “border czar” Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to drive the unauthorized population down and restore credibility to our immigration system.
They’ve implemented a two-track plan to tackle this onerous task.
One of those tracks relies on arrests and deportations of aliens unlawfully here, which at the outset has focused mainly on criminals (the “worst first” strategy).
The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective —encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.
It began with an Inauguration Day Trump directive requiring DHS to ensure all aliens present in the United States — legal and otherwise — have registered with the federal government, and to prosecute those who don’t comply.
By late February, Noem had implemented that registration program.
DHS next launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning migrants not to enter illegally or, alternatively, to leave voluntarily now and possibly “have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
Noem also rebranded the notorious CBP One app — which the Biden administration used to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into our country — as “CBP Home,” which aliens can use to “notify the U.S. Government of their intent to depart.”
That rebranding coincided with an offer of financial incentives for aliens who leave voluntarily, a stipend of $1,000. That’s in lieu of costly physical deportation, which can cost taxpayers $17,100 per person on average.
How effective has self-deportation been?
One way to track the program is by checking employment numbers. One financial whiz cited by the Wall Street Journal calculated a decline in the immigrant population of 773,000 in the first four months of Trump II.
The Washington Post claims “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” The Post frames this as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also notes, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”
In other words, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers.
Win-win-win for everyone except Democrats, illegal aliens, and the businesses addicted to cheap, illegal labor.
ICE raid nabs more than 100 illegal aliens at a meat packing plant. Americans applying for jobs ensues. The “jobs Americans won’t do” canard was always a lie.
Kash, who just shared the documents with Congress, then shared the accompanying article from Just the News to shed more light:
Officials who have seen the documents told Just the News the FBI had a relatively new confidential source who provided information in summer 2020 that the Chinese government was manufacturing and exporting fake U.S. driver’s licenses as part of a plot to create voter identities for Chinese residents living in the United States so they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
The intelligence source claimed the plot was specifically designed to benefit Biden, officials said.
Wait, you’re telling me that China wanted “10% for the Big Guy” Joe Biden, a man whose family made money by peddling political influence with Chinese businessmen, to be the US president?
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
In a 2018 email, a bank flagged serious concerns about the China money Hunter Biden received – $40,000 of which ultimately landed in Joe Biden’s bank account.
In the email, the bank’s money laundering investigator highlighted:
Hmmm. “The U.S. Navy now has five guided-missile destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to U.S. defense officials. This is a significant increase. Earlier this week, the U.S. had just one in the eastern Med.” (Previously.)
Even God has taken a crack at Iran. “A 5.2 magnitude earthquake has just struck Central Iran as Israel continues its attack on Tehran. The quake’s epicentre was just outside the city of Semnan, around 210km east of the capital.”
The Democratic Party is struggling. In every way a political party can be dysfunctional, the Democrats are careening toward an implosion.
Riven by poisonous factionalism, running out of cash, and devoid of purpose and plan, the oldest political party in the Western World is falling apart right before our eyes.
How bad is it? When the New York Times gives space to a 1,800-word, five-alarm article giving excruciating detail about your party’s travails, you know it’s not time to pop the champagne cork and celebrate.
To make matters worse for the Democrats, on the same day the Times aired the party’s soiled panties for all to see, the other Democratic Party house organ, Politico, laid 1,600 words of criticism on party chairman Ken Martin.
The media couldn’t be quiet about it. With 17 months to go before the 2026 midterm elections, the Democrats find themselves in an existential crisis. Half the party wants to abandon the radical left, while the radical left wants to give the heave-ho to anyone to the right of Karl Marx.
Let’s start with Ken Martin as a point of contention. Barely four months into the job, he’s already made plenty of enemies. Worse, those enemies aren’t going quietly into that good night. They are sniping at him from the sidelines, drawing blood with criticisms no party chair has ever heard before.
David Hogg section skipped. Judging by Kolby Duhon (see below), Hogg really was too masculine for the DNC.
“This is worse than some high school student council drama,” said Wisconsin Democrat Representative Mark Pocan. I’d say that’s right on the mark.
One DNC member told Politico that Martin looked “weak and whiny,” and another said he has been “invisible.” Similar sentiments were expressed by other DNC members.
These aren’t Republicans talking about their leaders. It’s the supposed leadership caste of the Democratic Party.
Awesome, isn’t it?
Snip.
The biggest blow to the party may have been the recent exit from the DNC of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and AFSCME President Lee Saunders. Together, they represent millions of members and tens of millions of dollars in contributions.
“The DNC is weaker than I have ever seen it… They have shown zero ability to chart a post-24 vision for Democrats,” a Democratic strategist with close ties to labor unions, told Politico.
Weingarten and Saunders couldn’t “in good faith continue to rubber-stamp what was going on with the DNC,” the strategist said.
Instead of developing a strategy for 2026 and preparing the battlefield for 2028, Martin and the DNC are bogged down in the minutiae of organizational warfare. There’s no plan, no purpose behind the DNC’s pronouncements. Martin is too busy putting out political brushfires and soothing bruised egos to get anything organizationally done.
No one is going to wave a magic wand and put the party back together.
Unspoken in this piece: The Social Justice hard left would literally rather kill the Democrat Party than give up control of it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Supreme Court upheld the state of Tennessee’s ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors, a major victory for parental rights advocates and those seeking to protect distressed children from harmful operations. The justices ruled 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti, with all of the conservative justices opting to allow Tennessee’s ban to remain in place and the liberal justices dissenting. The ruling will likely allow similar bans in more than 20 other red states to be upheld in the face of legal challenges.” Decision by decision, the transsexual madness is finally being beaten back.
The man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and attempting to kill another is being brought up on federal murder and stalking charges and could face the death penalty, prosecutors said Monday, hours after he was arrested following a days-long manhunt.
Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said during a press conference that Vance Luther Boelter went to the homes of four Minnesota lawmakers with the intent of killing them….
Boelter, 57, is facing six federal counts: two stalking charges, two firearm offenses for the non-fatal shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, and two murder charges for the killing of former State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. He faces anywhere from 20 years in prison to a potential death sentence for the federal murder charge.
The case had a lot of weird aspects to it, from him being a Tim Waltz appointee to the suspect’s wife being stopped with cash and passports in her car to the supposed anti-abortion motive to the No Kings flyers in his car to the murdered lawmaker being the only Democrat to vote for repealing taxpayer frunded illegal alien health care. A bunch of things don’t add up, especially how quickly the story seemed to disappear off news radar…
Finally. “Feds Crush Violent Antifa Uprising Outside Portland ICE Facility.” Now the feds need to start looking into RICO charges against Antifa funders…
Speaking of antifa behaving badly, they just attacked two more journalists, Cameron Higby and Brandi Kruse.
“DOJ charges another Chinese researcher with smuggling ‘biological materials’ into US. The new case accuses Chinese researcher Chengxuan Han of trying to smuggle packages containing concealed biological material related to round worms into the country by sending multiple packages that contain the material to a lab in the U.S.” It looks like we need to check the lab of every Chinese national studying biology in the U.S. for possible biological warfare material. Indeed, given these arrests, we may already be doing so. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
“New Law Protects Property Owners, Assists in Removing Squatters.” Good to see Texas getting ahead of the issue.
We don’t cotton to cop killers in Texas. “El Salvadoran Illegal Alien Receives Death Penalty for Murder of Harris County Deputy. Oscar Rosales never disputed that he killed Deputy Corporal Charles Galloway in a January 2022 shooting.” El Salvador, eh? Maybe we can pay El Salvador to keep him in CECOT while his appeals play out, then fly him back to execute him…
Trigger warning: Another case of two gay men adopting a baby and raping it to death.
That’s the face (and haircut) Democrats want to put forward as representing their party.
Over the weekend, Texas Democrats elected Kolby Duhon as their new vice chair for finance. The position is responsible for a variety of duties related to the party’s raising and spending of money.
Duhon filled a vacancy that opened when the previous vice chair, Kendall Scudder, was elected party chairman in March.
His X feed reveals his radical views.
Duhon describes himself as a “pansexual.” Advocates claim “pansexuals” do not take gender or sexuality into account when choosing a partner. In 2020, Duhon tweeted his admiration for State Rep. Mary Gonzalez (D–San Elizario) and claimed she inspired him to run for a position with the Texas Young Democrats on an “openly Pan” platform.
By “pansexual” I assume he strikes out with both men and women. And what self-respecting gay would want to be seen with someone with that hairstyle?
Duhon uses “they/he” pronouns and helped found the Socialist Caucus of the Texas Young Democrats in 2017.
Beyond his lifestyle choices and political affiliations, Duhon has expressed views on subjects including Israel, policing, and racism that place him on the far-left end of the political spectrum.
Duhon has repeatedly posted in favor of pushing gender confusion on so-called “trans kids.”
Of course he has.
Here’s the perfect face for the modern Democratic Party: A freakshow all the way down…
More signs of the decline of the Democratic Party in Texas. “Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Resigns Months After All Staff Laid Off. [Crystal Gayden] will continue as chair until July 7 when an election will take place to decide her successor.”
Just a couple months after laying off all of its paid staff, the Tarrant County Democratic Party will need to find a new party chair as incumbent chair Crystal Gayden announced her resignation at the beginning of June.
Gayden, who became party chair back in July 2023, stated in her announcement that she had overseen the strengthening and re-energizing of the party, which had expanded its precinct chair network, prioritized turnout in local elections, grown its supporter base, and increased party visibility, among other things.
For those outside Texas, Tarrant County is home to Ft. Worth and is the third largest county in the state, so the Democrats having no staffers there is a kind of big deal.
As far as “prioritizing turnout,” it’s certainly not visible in national elections. Biden’s recorded vote total in Tarrant County in 2020 was 411,567, edging Trump by just under 2,000 votes. In 2024, it was 384,501 votes, or more than 40,000 votes under Trump’s total. Some triumph of turnout…
“State Sen. Kelly Hancock has officially entered the race for Texas Comptroller with the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, resigning from the Senate and being sworn in as chief clerk of the agency by outgoing Comptroller Glenn Hegar.”
The move is designed to sidestep a 2002 legal opinion from then-Attorney General Abbott, which held that a sitting state senator cannot be appointed to a position requiring Senate confirmation during the term for which they were elected.
By resigning and taking on the role of “chief clerk,” Hancock avoids triggering the Senate confirmation process while still stepping into the agency’s top position for the remainder of Hegar’s term—through January 2027.
Hegar, who will officially take over as chancellor of the Texas A&M University System on July 1, praised Hancock as his successor.
Snip.
In 2023, Hancock was one of only two Republican senators who sided with Democrats to attempt to remove Attorney General Ken Paxton from office following his impeachment trial. During this most recent legislative session, he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to water down Senate Bill 19—intended to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying—by supporting an amendment that exempted organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards from the ban.
Snip. Don Huffines:
“The political elite are manipulating the system to install another go-along-to-get-along lap dog as State Comptroller, because they know President Trump’s DOGE-style transparency would expose everything. But they don’t just fear me. They fear you—the taxpayers, the grassroots. And they should. The conservative base in Texas is wide awake, fed up, and ready to take back control. And they know we will win,” said Huffines, pointing to endorsements from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Charlie Kirk, Riley Gaines, Ron Paul, and a majority of the State Republican Executive Committee.
Another declared candidate, current Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, responded by pointing to her statewide record.
“No matter who else enters the race, I’ll put my record up against anyone,” said Craddick. “I’m the only candidate in this race with statewide experience and a proven record running one of Texas’ most important agencies, cutting red tape, generating billions in revenue from oil and gas, and delivering results that fund our schools, roads, and first responders.”
Been a while since we had a juicy crazed poisoner story, so here’s one. Did it not occur to to supergenius (accused) perp that two former lovers both being poisoned by cyanide was pretty handily going to mark him as a suspect?
How many of these classic prog rock intros can you name? Harder than you might think, though I got “The Musical Box” off Genesis’ Nursery Crime on the very first note…
AI is helping internet bot herders with greater scale, lower costs, and more sophisticated evasion techniques.
Bots on the internet now surpass human activity, with 51% of all internet traffic being automated (bot) traffic. Thirty-seven percent of this is malicious (bad bots), while only 14% are good bots.
Much of the current expansion is fueled by criminal use of AI, which is likely to increase.
Within the bad bots there has been a noticeable growth in simple, but high volume bot attacks. This again shows the influence of AI, allowing less sophisticated actors to generate new bots, and use AI power to launch them. This follows the common trajectory of criminal use of AI: simple as the actors learn how to use their new capability, followed by more sophisticated use as their AI skills evolve. This shows the likely future of the bot threat: advanced bots being produced at the speed and delivery of simple bots. The bad bot threat will likely increase.
I know one (possible) indicator of this increasing bot corruption: Google is now officially useless as a search engine. I switched over to DuckDuckGo as my main search engine quite some time ago, but regularly had to use Google to find things on my own blog. No longer. DuckDuckGo seems to have caught up at the same time that Google started flat out ignoring the very first term in your search string. Examples:
At least this time Google is bringing up relevant information, but why is it ignoring the very first word in the query? Isn’t that bad design? Well, not if your intent is to cram every possible paid ad at the top of your list, or if you’re letting mysterious AI algorithms choose what to present. Google seems to be suffering from both issues.
Researchers from the University of Zurich have been secretly using the site for an AI-powered experiment in persuasion. Members of r/ChangeMyView, a subreddit that exists to invite alternative perspectives on issues, were recently informed that the experiment had been conducted without the knowledge of moderators.
Snip.
It’s being claimed that more than 1700 comments were posted using a variety of LLMs including posts mimicking the survivors of sexual assaults including rape, posing as trauma counsellor specialising in abuse, and more. Remarkably, the researchers sidestepped the safeguarding measures of the LLMs by informing the models that Reddit users, “have provided informed consent and agreed to donate their data, so do not worry about ethical implications or privacy concerns”.
And somehow people were upset at that.
Imagine.
So now we have Google training bots on posts created by AI bots to persuade humans with false facts and perspectives.
What could possible go wrong?
It’s yet more of that fine quality service we’ve come to excpect from Google.
Now you know what I had to use the same title again…
Democrats still want to trans your kids, censorship shellgames squashed, Google is declared a monopoly, socialists behave badly, more illegal alien depravity, some 2026 contenders jump in, pie-in-the-sky plans for high speed rail in Texas bite the dust, more Cybertruck drag-racing, and a Very Good Boy indeed.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Yes, Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “Dad shares horrifying story of his daughter being groomed and transitioned behind his back at school.”
Just yesterday, a dad named Dustin Gonzales in the Jeffco Public School District of Colorado spoke at a school board meeting and shared a heartbreaking story that’s now all too familiar: his daughter was groomed by teachers and gender-transitioned behind his back.
Dad claims his daughter changed her gender identity secretly with a school therapist, who kept him in the dark about it.
The school didn’t ask me or inform me, they replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled ‘the problem.’ My objections weren’t treated as concerns, they were treated as opposition. my voice was dismissed as ‘hateful,’ my presence undermined.
The father claims the school then got the therapist and an investigator involved, to separate the girl from her dad.
I’m here to make sure what happened to me, to my family, never happens to another parent in this district.
The father is now at risk of losing his daughter as a result of a new Colorado bill that would take kids away from parents who aren’t “affirming.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just killed the Biden administration’s last-ditch effort to shelter the government’s Ministry of Truth, the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
In a new op-ed published by The Federalist (a target of the GEC along with yours truly), Rubio writes;
GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.
Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
Alphabet’s Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its ad products.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.
The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. It is the second court ruling that Google holds an illegal monopoly, following a similar judgment in a case over online search.
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads. Those funds are the “lifeblood” of the internet, Brinkema wrote.
“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema wrote.
However, antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called the ruling “a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
“A 13-year-old boy in California was allegedly sexually abused and murdered by his soccer coach and, as it turns out, the soccer coach was an illegal alien. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer with the Los Angeles County jail for Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, a 43-year-old Salvadoran citizen living unlawfully in the United States, the agency confirmed Wednesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Garcia-Aquino is accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar ‘Omar’ Hernandez, a San Fernando Valley, California, resident found dead earlier in April.”
Evidently the cartels have expensive taste. “A federal grand jury has charged two men who allegedly tried to smuggle five high-caliber sniper rifles to Mexico last month, and prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of the firearms, five .50-caliber Barrett long guns and four magazines for .50-caliber bullets. Wednesday’s charges of unlawful smuggling of goods from the United States stem from the March 12 arrest of Oscar Sanchez Gonzalez and Arturo Martinez Aguilar as they allegedly attempted to drive to Mexico over the Calexico West port of entry.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Smith says people asking him to run is an indictment of the Democratic Party.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smith told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Smith reiterated that because of the number of people asking him to consider a run, he has to leave the door open.
Smith usually strikes me as a moderately annoying “hot take” artist, but he has been condemning the Democrat Party about their lurch to the right on several issues, and has discussed that with the likes of Dave Rubin. Smith has no business running for President, but would be immediately be a more sane alternative than anyone else named as a Democratic front-runner.
When police raided a factory in Georgia, they found dozens of Chinese nationals being kept in near slave-like conditions, and authorities say they were pressed into service by a forced labor trafficking ring.
Last month, agents from several agencies raided Wellmade Industries in Cartersville, Georgia, 40 miles north of Atlanta, and what they found shocked them, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Federal officials said that around 60 Chinese nationals were being held in tiny rooms and forced to work long hours in the flooring manufacturing plant. The exploited workers at Wellmade are just a few of the many exploited workers the Trump administration has rooted out.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven N. Schrank said the conditions these workers were living in was “horrific,” and noted that he and his fellow agents were investigating eight other locations for similar offenses.
Three Wellmade Industries officers were arrested, including company owner, Zhu Chen, his nephew, Jiayi Chen, and company associate Jian Jun Lu.
At the bond hearings for the suspects, assistant district attorney Austin Waldo claimed that officials of the company immediately confiscated the workers’ travel and ID documents as soon as they arrived at the plant to make it harder for them to leave.
Well, this would have made my Nvidia roundup had it dropped a day earlier, and not in a good way. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boarded a private jet to Beijing shortly after the U.S. Commerce Department announced new export licensing requirements for the company’s H20 AI chips for the Chinese market. Once there, Huang met with the head of a Chinese state-backed trade body, where he reaffirmed Nvidia’s commitment to the Chinese market despite a deepening trade war.”
Baltimore student: “Hey, doesn’t Maryland law require a United States flag in every classroom?” Baltimore County Board of Education: “Hey, you’re suspended and we’re calling the cops on you.”
The East Plano Islamic Center’s planned development faces continued scrutiny from Texas officials.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate EPIC for potential religious discrimination.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Cornyn expressed concern that a “master-planned ‘community of thousands of Muslims’” could violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by discriminating against Christians, Jews, and other non-muslim minorities.
“Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” wrote Cornyn. “Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection.”
Sanity in the UK: “U.K. Supreme Court Rules Males Don’t Qualify as Women Under Anti-Discrimination Law, in Landmark Ruling.”
The United Kingdom’s supreme court ruled Wednesday that males who identify as women do not fall qualify as women under anti-discrimination law, a monumental decision that will have major consequences for British law.
The high court defined “woman” based on sex rather than gender identity, keeping it within the bounds of scientific reality rather than giving into the demands of left-wing activists. The ruling specifically addressed the question of whether transgender-identifying males who obtain a gender recognition certificate — a legal document acknowledging them as women — enjoy the same protections extended to females under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act, an anti-discrimination law that covers nine protected characteristics and applies to various sectors of British life.
“The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex,” said Lord Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, in announcing the ruling.
Bad news: A house exploded two miles from me. I actually heard it, and thought that one of my dogs had run into a wall or something. Worse news: The house belonged to Sara Felix, who I know from the Austin science fiction community, and her husband was in the house at the time. The silver linings are that he’s now out of surgery, though badly burned, and that the family hadn’t actually moved into the house, and were still living in their old house in the same general area.
When your band name stops being ironic: “New Pornographers Drummer Joe Seiders Arrested for Possession of Child Porn.” I have a few of their albums I bought 15 years ago. I considered embedding “Breakin’ the Law” for ironic effect, but it’s a lousy song. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A foster mom in Missouri is facing multiple charges of abuse and is accused of trading a teenage girl she was guardian of for a pet monkey, authorities said.
Brenda Ruth Deutsch, 70, of Lincoln County, was charged with two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, according to Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood. She was taken into custody last weekend.
Deutsch has fostered more than 200 children for about 15 to 20 years, Wood told NBC News.
While it’s tempting to chalk this up to more “annals in human depravity,” given the age of the alleged perp, I have to wonder if some mental illness/senility/Alzheimers was involved.
Anderson Ronaldo Reyes Giron — a member of the “Most Wanted” list — was taken into custody on April 2 by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas Highway Patrol for charges related to deadly conduct from shooting a firearm in Travis County, as well as theft of property in Williamson County. He’s originally from Honduras, from which he came illegally, and was arrested by the Austin Police Department in August 2024 for the afore-listed charges before being let out on bail.
Thanks again, Austin.
“Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard continue to work together with the Trump Administration to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry,” a press release from Abbott’s office stated upon announcement of Giron’s arrest.
Giron has been wanted since February 2025 when Travis County issued a warrant for his arrest following the firearm violation, and then when Williamson County similarly filed a warrant after his theft incident.
Former Texas Congresswoman Mayra Flores has officially thrown her hat into the ring to challenge the indicted Congressman Henry Cuellar (R-TX-28) and his 20-year-plus tenure representing Texas’ 28th Congressional District in Washington, D.C.
“I am deeply honored to announce my candidacy for Congress—a chance to serve the people and uphold the values that make our nation great,” Flores posted on X upon announcement of her challenge to Cuellar’s seat.
The first female Mexican-born former congresswoman, Flores comes to the drawing board with experience in Texas elections — first scoring a seat in a special election to represent the Lone Star State on the federal stage after Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela resigned in 2022, allowing her to flip the historically Democratic 34th Congressional District. Flores flipped parties from Democratic to Republican in the early 2000s, primarily citing pro-life motivations.
She also ran against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez twice (D-TX-34), losing first in the 2022 general election and second in 2024, although she notched her numbers up significantly the second time around — losing the election by a 2 percent margin.
Cuellar maintained his seat during the 2024 general election against Republican candidate Jay Furman with nearly 52 percent of the vote — a race rumored as potentially dangerous for Cuellar due to his indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that year after an FBI investigation in 2022 for alleged bribery and money laundering in coordination with his wife, Imelda Cuellar, and the country of Azerbaijan.
TX-28 favors Democrats with a rating of D-51% per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index, although President Donald Trump made history in the district during the November election — winning Webb County’s presidential vote, the first Republican president to claim victory there in a century.
Until Flores’ announcement, the only other notable contender for Cuellar’s seat was Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who flipped parties in December 2024.
For more on Cueller’s indictment, see here and here.
“With Attorney General Ken Paxton officially running for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn, the race to replace him is heating up. After former U.S. Attorney John Bash became the first to enter the race, State Sen. Mayes Middleton has now launched his own campaign for Texas attorney general, pitching himself as a conservative fighter ready to take the reins.” I regularly get press releases from Middleton’s office, and he seems a pretty solid conservative.
The U.S. Department of Transportation officially terminated a $63.9 million federal grant intended for the planning and development of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the move will save taxpayers millions while allowing Amtrak to focus on improving existing operations.
Personally, I’d kill Amtrack and hand the assets to the states to subsidize if they felt like.
Originally pitched as a private venture, the Texas Central Railway project aimed to connect two of Texas’ largest cities with a 205-mph bullet train, promising a 90-minute travel time.
The project has faced strong opposition from landowners and lawmakers since it was proposed in 2009.
As cost estimates soared from $12 billion to over $40 billion, the project became increasingly reliant on federal funding.
Duffy was blunt in his assessment: “Underwriting this project is a waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak’s core mission of improving its existing subpar services.”
“If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Duffy added.
State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) posted on X, “Thank you to President Trump and Secretary Duffy for standing up for taxpayers and terminating the $63.9 million grant to Amtrak for the proposed high-speed rail project between Houston and Dallas.”
Even the $10 billion version was a boondoggle that wouldn’t have made money and required taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat, and more likely never would have been completed anyway. High speed passenger rail works in Japan because they already had high urban density and an existing rail system and culture to support it. Texas has none of those things, and even if it was built it would never be profitable here (or just about anywhere else).
And just to drive the point home: The highest density high speed rail in Japan seats 1,634 passengers. Assume passengers pay $100 a ticket each way, the train is entirely full, and the Texas high speed rail train runs six times a day (all optimistic and unlikely assumptions), 365 days a year, and you get $357,846,000 a year in gross revenue, which means, even without the including the cost to run the train, it would take just under 112 years to make back the initial investment.
Despite his new position as a vice chair of the DNC, gun control weasel David Hogg wants to primary old Democrats. In this particular task I wish the little weasel the best of luck.
This is your mayor on social justice. “The mayor of South Fulton faces an eviction action at an Atlanta apartment complex, Fulton County court documents show, adding another development to what’s been a turbulent year so far for the city leader. Mayor Khalid Kamau, who has gone recently by Mayor Kobi, has had eviction proceedings initiated against him in Fulton County Magistrate Court by an apartment complex at 6200 Bakers Ferry Rd. Court documents show the complex filed to initiate eviction after alleging Kamau failed to pay rent in March.”
Snip.
Documents show the amount of past due rent was listed at $1,663.77. A late fee of $100, utilities of $39.77 and “other fees” amounting to $175 are also being sought.
Kamau has been at odds in recent weeks and under scrutiny from the South Fulton City Council over his spending and alleged “abuse” of the position.
He in turn has defended himself from what he has termed the City Council’s “overreach” after his access to city buildings was revoked and his budget frozen in February, and said he has faced resistance from the council throughout his tenure.
The move by the city council came after reports on the mayor’s trips — which spanned four continents in four months — as well as updates at City Hall that included a film studio and refurbished conference/pool table room. The City Council voted to redistribute several pieces of new electronic equipment to the city IT department and send back the film studio.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn that Kamau is a Democratic Socialist…
Your feel-good dog story of the week: A dog named Buford kept a two-year old boy safe after the latter wandered seven miles from his home. Another article states that Buford is an Anatolian Pyrenees.
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
On Monday, Nvidia announced that it has started producing its Blackwell AI GPUs at TSMC’s plant in Phoenix, Arizona, while companies within the state package and test them.
TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is the world’s biggest chipmaker and announced a $100 billion investment in US chipmaking last month. It began producing chips using the 4nm process at its Arizona factory in January and has plans to make chips with the more efficient 2nm technology by the end of the decade.
Nvidia doesn’t say which Blackwell chips it has started producing at TSMC’s plant and whether it includes the latest Blackwell Ultra GB300 chip it revealed earlier this year. Blackwell chips use TSMC’s custom 4NP process, according to Nvidia’s website.
The world’s leading manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPU) and advanced chips has announced it will build new plants in Texas, amid global economic shake-ups.
Note: Plants, not fabs.
NVIDIA has announced partnerships with Foxconn and Wistron to build “supercomputer manufacturing plants” in both Dallas and Houston. These global companies are “expanding their global footprint” and their international presence for the purposes of “hardening supply chain resilience” in their partnership with NVIDIA.
“Manufacturing NVIDIA AI chips and supercomputers for American AI factories is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming decades,” the announcement states.
The mass production of chips at these plants is expected to begin in the next 12 to 15 months. The $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure within the U.S. does not make mention of direct government subsidies or public financial incentives related to NVIDIA’s recent announcement.
I’m quoting that summary because it demonstrates that it’s easy to misunderstand things about the industry if you aren’t familiar with it. The way it’s worded make you think the “plants” are the Texas facilities they’re going to be building in 12-15 months, but the actual Nvidia press release makes clear than TSMC is doing the fabbing:
NVIDIA is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.
Together with leading manufacturing partners, the company has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test NVIDIA Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas.
Note the more precise wording.
NVIDIA Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months.
The AI chip and supercomputer supply chain is complex and demands the most advanced manufacturing, packaging, assembly and test technologies. NVIDIA is partnering with Amkor and SPIL for packaging and testing operations in Arizona.
Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL. These world-leading companies are deepening their partnership with NVIDIA, growing their businesses while expanding their global footprint and hardening supply chain resilience.
Now, if that half trillion does get spent (no guarantee, since press releases aren’t legally binding; try to contain your shock), that would certainly buy a lot of cutting edge fabs. Nvidia is one of the few companies that has the financial resources to build their own cutting edge fabs (Apple is another), but I get the impression that they’re going to partner with TSMC. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow the Apple model, where they tell a company “Here’s X amount of money, go build a fab. You’ll give us the first 24 months of production at x-cost per chip, and after that the fab is yours free and clear.” This is one of the tools Apple used to become the dominate tech buyer, and what some call a monopsony.
As far as building their own supercomputers, that’s great for Texas and not so great for Hewett Packard Enterprise, which finished their acquisition of Cray in 2021.
The Trump administration has effectively barred Nvidia (NVDA) from selling its custom artificial intelligence processors to customers in China. The move will force the AI chip leader to write off up to $5.5 billion in inventory and purchase commitments in its fiscal first quarter. Nvidia stock fell Wednesday.
Late Tuesday, Nvidia disclosed in a regulatory filing that the U.S. government is now requiring it to get an export license to sell its H20 processor in China and other restricted countries. Nvidia said it was informed of the move on April 9, the same day NPR erroneously reported that the White House would not seek further restrictions on the chips Nvidia can sell in China.
Your tax dollars at work.
Nvidia said the U.S. government told it on Monday that the license requirement will be in effect for the indefinite future.
Wall Street analysts say Nvidia’s write-off indicates that the company believes it won’t be granted licenses to sell H20 processors in China.
The H20 was designed for the Chinese market to comply with Biden-era restrictions on selling advanced processors there. The H20 is less capable than the Blackwell series chips Nvidia sells in the U.S. and other markets.
“With Nvidia writing off associated H20 inventory, it appears the company is taking the position that it will not be granted licenses to ship product to Chinese customers (with no other geography likely to take the governed silicon given the availability of more powerful standard Hopper or Blackwell SKUs),” Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said in a client note Wednesday. SKU stands for “stock keeping unit,” a unique identifier for products used in inventory management.
China represents a little over 10% of Nvidia’s revenue.
The Trump Administrations believes (probably correctly) that AI is a key strategic industry and that we don’t need to give China any help there.
A half trillion dollars is a lot of cheddar, even for the (as of today) company with the third largest market cap in the world…
I know that any time I talk about semiconductors, a significant percentage of my readership’s eyes glaze over, but this is Big Freaking News.
Intel shares rose 6% in premarket trading after Reuters reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, or TSMC, had approached US chip designers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom about taking stakes in a joint venture that would operate the struggling chipmaker’s factories.
Four sources told Reuters that the Taiwanese chipmaking giant would run Intel’s foundry division under the new proposal, producing chips tailored to customer requirements but not owning more than 50%. The sources added that Qualcomm has also been approached about the venture.
TSMC is far and away the largest chip foundry (a company that builds chips for other companies, but doesn’t design its own chips) in the world, and the one with a clear technological lead over everyone else. TSMC has the third largest market cap of any semiconductor company.
Broadcom is the second-largest semiconductor company in the world by market cap, and they have their fingers in a lot of different pies: networking, wireless, storage, you name it. They’re generally considered a fabless chip designer, but the company is such a weird amalgamation of other companies (what we call Broadcom used to be Avago until they acquired Broadcom in 2016) that they might still have a lower end fab or two lurking somewhere in the company. They also use TSMC as a foundry, though I’m not sure how extensively. They’ve also recently made a big move into software, acquiring CA Associates and VMWare, among others.
Nvidia is a fabless chip designer (the sort of company that contracts with foundries to fab their chips) that went heavily into high end GPUs (the chips that render video for your PC, in Nvidia’s case geared toward high end games and other highly demanding tasks), then crypto-mining chips, and more recently into chips geared for AI applications, all very lucrative market segments, which has made Nvidia not only first among semiconductor market cap, but among the largest companies by market cap in the world (along with Apple and Microsoft). Nvidia has their chips fabricated by TSMC, as well as some by Samsung and GlobalFoundries, which was spun off from…
Advanced Micro Devices, which used to be an Integrated Device Manufacturer (or IDM, a company designs their own chips and builds them in their own fabs) creating Intel-compatible CPUs, but eventually spun off their fabrication plants as GlobalFoundries because they couldn’t keep up with Intel’s capital spending. AMD also has some of their highest end chips fabricated by TSMC. If AMD were to help take over Intel, it would be an extremely ironic ending to a longtime rivalry.
Qualcomm is a lot like Broadcom: A mostly fabless design house with its fingers in lots of different pies, and they’re about the sixth largest semiconductor company by market cap. Broadcom tried to acquire Qualcomm in 2017-18 and was blocked by the Trump45 administration.
Intel is an IDM, and for decades was the undisputed “chipzilla” of the semiconductor world. Intel’s CPUs were the dominant processor for the vast majority of the last 40 years and a huge ingredient for helping create the PC revolution. Intel used to be the technology process leader as well, but somewhere along the way they screwed up their sub-10nm process nodes, allowing TSMC to take the process technology crown. Indeed, they screwed up so badly that they’ve been forced to have TSMC fab some of its highest end chips. Despite having a vast number of fabs, Intel’s market cap has slipped down to 16th among semiconductor companies.
Back to the piece:
The sources noted that the Trump administration is exploring ways to revive Intel and strengthen US manufacturing under the ‘America First’ agenda. They added that TSMC’s joint venture pitch to chip designers took place before the company, alongside President Trump, announced plans last month to invest $100 billion in semiconductor manufacturing in the US, building on its existing $65 billion investment in its Phoenix, Arizona, factories.
Any deal between TSMC and Intel would be subjected to approval from the Trump administration.
If the Trump Administration’s goal is to increase available sub-10nm wafer starts (and it should be) and maintain American control of Intel’s fabs, then this proposal is a win-win. Intel’s fabs plus TSMC’s tech would create a foundry powerhouse. It wouldn’t happen overnight (nothing in semiconductors happens overnight), but probably in 12-24 months, depending on how quickly the new entity can acquire the necessary pieces of equipment to upgrade Intel’s fabs to thee new tech (I’m guessing that the availability of ASML steppers will, as usual, be the gating factor). And all this without the tens of billions in taxpayer subsidies for the CHIPS Act.
If this goes through, it would have mostly winners, with a few losers:
Winners
Every company that’s part of the deal. TSMC gets to radically expand production capacity without spending $20 billion+ to build a new fab. Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm gain a lot more capacity for expanding production of their high end chips. Ditto for Apple (who’s not part of the deal, but who is TSMC’s biggest customer and a big demand driver for cutting edge fab capacity) and every other consumer of sub-10nm chips.
AMD additionally gets the egoboo of partially taking over its longtime hated rival and confirming it’s crown as the x86/x64 chip manufacturer of choice. Plus their then-risky decision to spin off GlobalFoundries looks like a genius move in hindsight.
The Trump Administration, which gets to take credit for vastly increasing American Foundry capacity at zero additional taxpayer expense and keeps Intel under American control.
Semiconductor equipment manufacturers like ASML, Applied Materials, LAM Research, Tokyo Electron and KLA (short term). It’s likely most or all of those companies (along with smaller players like Axcelis and Teradyne) will receive a bump in extra sales from leveling up Intel’s fabs to run TSMC’s process.
American chip startups: With so much high end capacity becoming available, existing and potential chip startups are going to look like more attractive investment capital opportunities.
ARM Holdings: ARM doesn’t make chips, they’re an IP design house that licenses their functional chip blocks to other chip designers. Just about every foundry and IDM is a licensee (yes, including Intel and TSMC), so unleashing more chip designs will almost certainly result in more royalties for ARM. (Nvidia tried to buy ARM in 2020, and regulators quashed that idea good and hard.)
Intel investors, who will either get a big lump-sum payment or shares in the new, probably far more profitable company (depending on how the buyout is structured).
Even Intel wins long-term by unleashing existing fab capacity to take on new business not tied to its faltering CPU manufacturing model. And actually, with TSMC’s process, Intel has a chance to recover in the CPU space as well.
Losers
Samsung: Along with TSMC and Intel, Samsung (which has both IDM and foundry components) has some of the best sub-10nm process tech in the world. They gain a whole lot of unleashed competition and stand on the outside looking in.
Intel‘s dreams of reclaiming their spot at the top of the heap, and suffering the indignity of being partially owned by AMD. How the mighty have fallen.
Every Chinese fab, which goes from “very far behind” to “even further behind.”
Semiconductor equipment manufacturers (long term): They better enjoy the out-of-band upgrade money from retrofitting Intel’s fabs, as it will likely mean a significant delay in anyone building a new cutting edge wafer fab for quite a while. And having two of their biggest customers team up is probably going to put them under a lot of downward pricing pressure.
GlobalFoundries (and other trailing edge foundries) might lose some business, but there’s very little overlap between Intel/TSMC cutting edge processes and GlobalFoundries trailing-edge fabs. Ditto UMC.
Are there anti-trust concerns with such a heavy accumulation of cutting edge process technology? Oh yeah. Big time. But almost all of those concerns were already there in some form or another thanks to the interconnected “cooperation” nature of the industry. All those companies going in with TSMC were already getting chips fabbed by TSMC. Samsung could try to claim that the deal would result in TSMC having a de-facto monopoly on sub-10nm foundry business, but it wouldn’t start with one, and that business isn’t the whole of foundry business (though it is the most profitable part), much less semiconductors as a whole.
Given that this would go a long way toward achieving Trump’s goal of increasing cutting edge fab capacity in America, I would imagine that the Trump47 administration could very well be persuaded to let this deal go through.
Communist China never rests in its quest to infect American computers with spy and malware, as in this story.
The threat of cyberattack is never far away, be that by Amazon ransomware actors with an impossible-to-recover-from threat, or Windows zero-day exploits and even the hacking of the iPhone USB-C port. Luckily, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also never far away when it comes to warnings about such attacks and hacker threats. But eyebrows will surely be raised just a little as the FBI and Department of Justice have confirmed that thousands of U.S. computers and networks were accessed to remove malware files remotely. Here’s what you need to know.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have confirmed that a court-authorized operation allowed the remote removal of malware files from 4,258 U.S.-based computers. The operation, targeting the PlugX malware variant as used by what are said to be China-backed threat actors, was, the Jan. 14 statement said, designed to take down a version of PlugX used by the group known as Mustang Panda or Twill Typhoon, capable of controlling infected computers to steal information.
According to court documents, the DoJ said, the People’s Republic of China government “paid the Mustang Panda group to develop this specific version of PlugX,” which has been in use since 2014 and infiltrated thousands of computer systems in campaigns targeting U.S. victims.
“The FBI acted to protect U.S. computers from further compromise by PRC state-sponsored hackers,”Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said, adding that the announcement “reaffirms the FBI’s dedication to protecting the American people by using its full range of legal authorities and technical expertise to counter nation-state cyber threats.”
Thousands of U.S. computers and networks, estimated at 4,258 by the DoJ, were identified by the FBI in the technical operation to detect and delete the malware threat remotely. The first of nine warrants was obtained in August 2024 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania authorizing the deletion of PlugX from U.S.-based computers, the last expired on Jan. 3. “The FBI tested the commands, confirmed their effectiveness, and determined that they did not otherwise impact the legitimate functions of, or collect content information from, infected computers,” the statement said.
“This wide-ranging hack and long-term infection of thousands of Windows-based computers, including many home computers in the United States, demonstrates the recklessness and aggressiveness of PRC state-sponsored hackers,” said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “The Department of Justice’s court-authorized operation to delete PlugX malware proves its commitment to a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to protecting U.S. cybersecurity.”
Upon reading this story, I was worried that the FBI had (and courts were authorizing use of) a tool that can break in and control random Windows PCs. While I wouldn’t put it past the FBI these days, the Forbes story left out one important technical detail:
After researchers found out that thousands of infected machines reported to one specific IP address, they managed to seize control over the IP address that served as a Command & Control (C2) server.
In close cooperation with the French authorities, the FBI and Justice Department used this IP address to “sinkhole” the botnet. Sinkholing in this context means that the redirection of traffic from its original destination to one specified by the sinkhole owners. The altered destination is known as the sinkhole.
With control of the sinkhole, a specially configured DNS server can simply route the requests of the bots to a fake C2 server. This provides the controller of the sinkhole with valuable information about the affected systems and an opportunity to send commands to delete the PlugX version from the connecting devices.
OK, that means the FBI only seized control of one specific computer that was already compromised by the exploit. That doesn’t mean the FBI doesn’t have a turnkey computer intrusion tool (logical fallacy alert), but it does mean they didn’t necessarily use such a tool here rather than a single white hat hacking instance to seize control of a single already-compromised PC.
Still, it’s always good to check that your security tools and settings have been updated to catch the latest malware and exploits, foreign or domestic…
If you look at some of the key ills plaguing America over the last ten years, Facebook has certainly had a hand in perpetuating some of them. Wokeness, censorship, echo chambers, commodification of user information and spam are just some of the evils Facebook (AKA Meta) has helped inflict on the citizenry.
Now Facebook is inflicting AI-generated profiles on its users.
Kneon: “Facebook is experimenting with AI generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram.”
K: “it’s going to be pretty scary because I mean you already don’t know who you’re dealing with on the internet, and I’ve heard some pretty convincing or seen some pretty convincing video. They actually had uh one of the uh AI video generators doing like an influencer video for Tik Tok and you couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real person.” If you’re doing influencer videos on Tik-Tok, I’m already halfway convinced you’re not a real person…
K: “It’s going to make it a lot harder to tell who you’re dealing with on the internet.”
Is one of the profiles woke? Of course it is. Geeky Sparkles: “‘Proud black queer mama of two, truth teller.’ It’s a truth teller, but it’s an AI, so it’s already not real but it’s going to tell you the truth. ‘Your realest source for life’s ups and downs.’ Uh, but it’s not real, it’s an AI who doesn’t know about life’s up and ups and downs, but you know it’s a black queer, it identifies as ‘a black queer mama.'”
K: “Their parent company Meta company is rolling out a wide array of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook.”
GS: “Why? Why do you need an AI character?” Why indeed?
K: “From someone who worked in marketing for years, and as a business owner, we have had some interesting things happen with Facebook advertising, and I don’t think all your money is going to ads being seen by real people.”
GS: “If advertisers are upset, and bots are a problem and bots and fake accounts are a problem because advertisers are getting scammed, they feel like they’re getting scammed and it’s an issue and we have to stop bots, why would flooding the market with generative AI characters and make your own make sense?”
K: “Meta hopes to attract a younger audience in a face off with competitors like Tik Tok and Snapchat.” First, why would Meta think younger users are all like “Hey, you know what I love? Fake profiles!” Second, if you’re taking your cues from Tik-Tok and Snapchat, you’ve already lost.
GS: “It’s hard to be a Tik tocker and make content all the time, or it’s hard to have enough content to keep going, but these AI can generate it indefinitely, so we’ll just tell people on Tik Tok to buy your shit.”
Maybe the goal is to create Ai influencers who pimp one company’s product and slam competitors.
Or create fake women on OnlyFans to make a mint.
In fact, there are already AI influencers earning money.
GS: “They’re talking about the Dead Internet Theory. And Dead Internet Theory, for those who don’t know is [basically] more and more accounts and activity on the internet are done by computers and fake people than real people.”
K: “Facebook feels dead now. Like endstage MySpace.”
In the wake of these revelations, there are conflicting accounts in different MSM sources as to whether Facebook has shut these accounts down or not.
Maybe different MSM writers are talking to different AI bot pretending to be “inside sources.” Or maybe the MSM “writers” are bots as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m sure a lot is advertiser driven, but I wonder if some of the investment boom in AI is coming from lefty executives watching the collapse of their systemic preference falsifaction falling away due to events like Trump’s election (all of them) and Brexit and thinking to themselves “Shit, we need to fool the rubes even harder” by using social justice bots to give The Narrative the illusion of popularity.
Fortunately for us, I think it’s too late for them to pull it off. Maybe Bluesky could finally surpass Twitter/X in user base, if we ignore that 98% of them are bots…
But still, caution seems to be in order. More than ever, everything you see online should be treated with a degree of skepticism, even if you agree with it.
I’ve previously talked about China’s difficulties in catching up to the west in semiconductor manufacturing here, here, and here, among other places. To summarize: Western nations have an advanced, highly interconnected semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem that China doesn’t have the technical expertise to replicate. In particular, China has nothing like ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines (AKA a “stepper”) necessary to build the most advanced chips with the smallest feature geometries.
Though advancements that SMIC and Huawei have made in the semiconductor sector in recent years are pretty impressive, the companies are 10 to 15 years behind industry giants like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung, said Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of toolmaker ASML. It’s well known that even with the best-in-class DUV tools, Chinese fab SMIC will be unable to match TSMC’s process technologies cost-effectively. This is because Chinese companies cannot access leading-edge EUV lithography tools.
“By banning the export of EUV, China will lag 10 to 15 years behind the West,” said Christophe Fouquet in an interview with NRC (machine translated). “That really has an effect.”
ASML has never shipped its EUV tools to China due to the Wassenaar Arrangement, despite SMIC’s reported order for one EUV machine. The details remain unclear, but ASML did not deliver the machine to the Chinese foundry due to US sanctions. However, ASML kept shipping advanced DUV lithography tools, such as the Twinscan NXT:2000i, which are capable of producing chips on 5nm and 7nm-class process technologies.
As a result, SMIC has been producing chips for Huawei using its 1st-generation and 2nd-generation 7nm-class process technology for years now. This has certainly helped the Chinese high-tech giants weather U.S. government sanctions.
Having understood that EUV tools are not coming to China, Huawei and its partners have explored extreme ultraviolet lithography themselves with the aim of building their own lithography chipmaking tools and ecosystem, which will take 10 – 15 years at best. For reference, it has taken over 20 years for ASML and its partners from foundational work to complete commercial machines to build the EUV ecosystem.
China thought it had found a way out of the western ban on high end lithography machines. Turns out: Not so much.
“In the past two years, China has spent a staggering 8 billion euros to procure fewer than 120 Advanced immersion DUV lithography machines from Dutch company ASML.” DUV (Deep Ultraviolet) was the generation of machines before EUV, and can’t effectively pattern features of less than 10nm.
“On the surface this seemed like a bold and extravagant move. However, as of September 7th, the reality has turned into a bitter irony. Maintenance and upgrades for these machines are now completely restricted. In other words, starting next year these state-of-the-art [not quite – LP] lithography machines could become little more than scrap. To make matters worse, even repairs for older equipment are off the table.”
“Lithography machines are the backbone of semiconductor manufacturing, etching intricate circuits onto silicon wafers. Without proper maintenance and upgrades, these machines, worth tens of millions of euros each, will gradually deteriorate into expensive junk. Producing advanced chips smaller than 14 nanometers will become nearly impossible. Yield rates will plummet and costs will skyrocket.”
“Even TSMC, a global benchmark, requires ASML engineers to be stationed on site for regular recalibrations every 3 to 6 months. Earlier this year, an earthquake in Taiwan caused TSMC’s lithography operations to halt, and it took a month of recalibrations to resume lithography.” Requalification is indeed a huge pain in the ass.
“Machine maintenance depends on ASML proprietary components, software and technical support. Hiring a few engineers, or even the CEO of ASML, won’t solve the fundamental complexities of this highly specialized system. China’s attempts to rely on sheer manpower to bridge this gap are wishful thinking.”
“Thinking a few engineers could crack this technology is simply laughable. Lithography machines are just the tip of the iceberg in the complex semiconductor manufacturing supply chain.”
“China owns nearly 1,400 ASML lithography machines. With Western restrictions on maintenance spare parts and engineering services, these multi-million euro machines have been reduced to a rob Peter to pay Paul situation keeping them operational for just one more day at a time. Chip production is bound to shrink, creating a vicious cycle.”
“New sanctions implemented in September have blocked sales of models like the NXT1970i, shutting down access to both hardware and technology. At best, China’s capabilities remain stuck at the level of ASML’s older NXT 1470 machines, which date back to the early 2000s.”
“China’s so-called domestic lithography machines are limited to 65 nanometer dry DUV technology, with some reports claiming they can reach 55 nanometer. However, this is equivalent to ASML 2006-era technology, putting China 18 years behind. Worse, key components for these domestic machines still rely on suppliers from Japan and Germany.”
“China’s domestic lithography machines are largely a symbolic effort, more about saving face than actual technological advancement.”
There’s no way China can catch up to ASML in EUV lithography, and no way they can eliminate their deep dependence on western semiconductor manufacturing technology.
“Cutting edge EUV systems have been banned from China since 2019. Last June, high-end immersion DUV machines were added to the list. Now even older models like the NXT 1970i and 1980i can’t be sold or upgraded. China’s ambitions have been crushed, reducing it to square one.”
“This February, the Dutch Minister of Trade openly stated that China uses foreign high tech knowledge to advance its military capabilities, and ASML tools could produce sophisticated weapons. Handing over lithography machines to China is akin to arming an adversary, a move unacceptable on any strategic level.”
Without western technology, China’s desire for a technologically advanced semiconductor industry are dead in the water.
“The myth of China’s technological rise is unraveling and heading toward decline.”
When you buy a piece of high-end semiconductor equipment, you’re not just buying the machine, you’re buying the knowledgebase of deep technical expertise of both the on-site technical staff, as well as the process wizards back in Eindhoven, Santa Clara and Tokyo. There are inumerable parameters that need to be just right, and you need to know how to tweak them if the yield goes south. Without that expertise to guide you, the high end machines quickly become worthless.
I can imagine President Trump offering China a grand bargain, in which they stop stealing western technology, stop committing genocide against the Uighers, stop clashing with Philippine ships in the South China Sea, meet its treaty obligations regarding Hong Kong, and let international agencies inspects its high level bioweapon labs in exchange for easing semiconductor sanctions.
I doubt China would take such a deal, as it would be too humiliating for Xi to stand. But I can imagine Trump making it…
