Graham Webster

@gwbstr.com

3.1K followers 590 following 1.4K posts

Chinese tech policy and US-China relations at Stanford
Newsletter: herecomes.transpacifica.net
Basics: gwbstr.com
Also: #filmphotography

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Graham Alexander Webster OBE was a British archaeologist, one of the pre-eminent figures of Roman-British archaeology in the late 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia

History 61%

Art 11%

Posts Replies Media Videos

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Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · Nov 10

Photography (especially film) has been a source of peace and joy these last few years. For now I mostly post it on ig at @grahamophoto (more independent site coming eventually). Come check out what I've caught in the emulsions. www.instagram.com/grahamophoto/

Reposted by Graham Webster

Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 8h

I wanted to see how some of the smaller and newer entrants in the LLM space were faring over H2 2025, so I added a new plot to the ATOM Project.

In this time, OpenAI and DeepSeek have logged over 50M downloads, and Qwen over 400M, so we have a long way to go.

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 9h

I keep explaining to people both older and younger what that event occurring during a person’s early political awareness does to their sense of the U.S. regime type.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Janet Murray, Aaron Sojourner , and 3 more Will Jennings, Janet Murray, Aaron Sojourner, Michael Zimmer, Graham Webster, Greg Linden

Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 1d

I'm glad to see this pressure on Google and Apple. If any other company was running an active CSAM generator in public you better believe it would have been removed from their app stores by now www.wired.com/story/x-grok...

Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores?

Elon Musk’s chatbot has been used to generate thousands of sexualized images of adults and apparent minors. Apple and Google have removed other “nudify” apps—but continue to host X and Grok.

www.wired.com

Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Graham Webster

404 Media @404media.co · 1d

404 Media has obtained material that explains how two surveillance systems ICE recently purchased, work. One can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or to their employer. @evystadium.bsky.social has more.

Scoop by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

Reposted by Graham Webster

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 2d

The attacks are the latest element of a massive cyber espionage campaign, known as Salt Typhoon, by Beijing’s intelligence service. ft.trib.al/7RyrXh1

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Graham Webster

Kyle Lo @kylelo.bsky.social · 4d

some citation graphs data pipelines will create new "paper" nodes based on extracted bibstrings from PDFs

so in 2026 the papers we hallucinated in 2025 might end up being "real" papers on gscholar or sthn lol

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 4d

J.G.G. v. Trump is a key case on invoking the Alien Enemies Act to send people to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador. www.aclu.org/cases/j-g-g-...

Reposted by Graham Webster

Riana @riana.bsky.social · 4d

wild that "your body, my choice" is now the governing policy for both women, children, and foreign heads of state

Reposted by Peter Thorne, Benjamin I. Cook, Graham Webster

Scott St. George @scottstgeorge.paleohydrology.com · 4d

Unbelievable. The National Weather Service issued a wind warning supported by a hazard map showing places that **do not exist***.

Chris Vagasky @coweatherman.bsky.social · 4d

Wait a minute...why is NWS throwing out genAI generated slop on their socials?

This is a horrible look and doesn't help keep people safe or aware of the forecast.

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 6d

How big is the signal group chat discussing how doing the right thing might play

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 6d

decades of “national security” people treating those concerned about US imperialism as wacko commies while intoning gravely about a supposed liberal/rules-based order under threat by a rotating cast of someone else.

Reposted by Graham Webster, Daniel Kuehn

David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · 6d

you think this is a one-off? don’t be deluded. we are firmly in the zone of lawlessness & impunity. repression at home and aggression abroad. and a sleeping congress.

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 11d

Once, as a child in an elevator, I encountered the tallest person I had ever seen. Say hello to Mr Mutombo, my mother said. I did. Hello boy, he said, and shook my tiny hand.

Frey @bolt451.bsky.social · Jun 13

Right folks. Feeling rather down at the moment so bringing back an oldie

Please Quote this with your most minor celebrity interaction

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 11d

this at least is great material for the day in class when we discuss whether a nation vs nation race in “ai” makes sense

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 11d

You can pick your friends and your guitar but not your nose

Reposted by Graham Webster

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 11d

If the U.S.-China artificial-intelligence rivalry were a football game, America would be leading at halftime—but it just made a risky trade.

The AI Scorecard: How the U.S. Built a Lead—and Could Lose It to China

If the U.S.-China artificial-intelligence rivalry were a football game, America would be leading at halftime—but it just made a risky trade.

on.wsj.com

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 13d

If an “order” existed that expected some to follow rules and others to ignore them, it was not “rules-based,” no matter how genuinely some people wished it might be.

Reposted by Graham Webster

Matthew Guariglia @mguariglia.bsky.social · 13d

Start putting on Democratic radars: Section 702 expires in April 2026 and we NEED to drastically limit its ability to spy in the US or used for immigration. It uses collected digital communications intended for overseas national security purposes to watch the US side of those communications & more.

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 13d

pieces of this are straight ont the syllabus (or recommended background). still reading. mitpress.mit.edu/978191302999...

Machine Decision Is Not Final

Historians, media theorists, science-fiction writers, philosophers, and artists from China and elsewhere reexamine the nation's intense engagement with AI, m...

mitpress.mit.edu

Reposted by Graham Webster, James A. Benn

China Law Translate / Jeremy Daum @chinalawtranslate.bsky.social · 13d

China has put out draft measures on human-like interactive AI services (chatbots etc.)
We'll get a working translation and some analysis soon, but these rules will set the standard of responsibility for inducing user suicidal ideation, dependancy, etc.
www.chinalawtranslate.com/chatbot-meas...

www.chinalawtranslate.com

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 14d

For your New Year’s resolution, consider abolishing ICE and its concentration camps.

Steve Herman @newsguy.bsky.social · 16d

WaPo - ICE plans to speed up deportations by funneling new detainees to large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, located in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri. Sixteen smaller warehouses would hold up to 1,500 people each. www.washingtonpost.com/busine...

Reposted by Graham Webster

Steve Herman @newsguy.bsky.social · 16d

Reposted by Graham Webster

El Tímpano @eltimpano.bsky.social · 17d

In Feb, Fabiana A. and her family were deported from Oakland to their hometown in rural Guatemala, where they are now struggling to rebuild. Their story, as told to @ehellerstein.bsky.social, reveals the erasure Indigenous immigrants face in the U.S. and back home.

www.eltimpano.org/english/immi...

Invisible in the data: A Maya family struggles to rebuild in Guatemala after being deported

A Maya Mam family’s deportation reveals the erasure Indigenous immigrants face in the U.S. and back home.

www.eltimpano.org

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 19d

On the longest night of
the year,

the days get brighter
from here.

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 21d

also worse off: freedom of expression, rule of law

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 21d

Democrats really scored an own goal with the TikTok ban. The company has gone from being owned by China to being owned by China and Trump allies.

If the concern was TikTok pushing problematic politics, Dems are actually worse off.

TikTok Deal Done And It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse

There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it’s somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticis…

www.techdirt.com

Reposted by Graham Webster

Victor Shih @vicshih.bsky.social · 21d

MIIT's priority AI techs 2025 "complex reasoning models, embodied intelligence models, edge-side models; large-scale computing center, multi-cluster computing power scheduling and coordination, computing center energy consumption management 1/n

Reposted by Michael E. Mann, Graham Webster

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 21d

TikTok Deal Done And It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse

There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it’s somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticis…

www.techdirt.com

Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 21d

- Gives a new inflection to the flexibly used term “agent“

- Seems like the type of thing one might try to use open-weight (and for now likely Chinese) models for, lest a closed vendor decide to cut off the gestapo‘s API key.

404 Media @404media.co · 22d

NEW: ICE has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets.

AI Solutions 87 did not respond to a request for comment on how its AI agents work.

ICE Contracts Company Making Bounty Hunter AI Agents

AI Solutions 87 says on its website its AI agents “deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network.”

www.404media.co

Reposted by Scott L. Greer, Graham Webster

QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 21d

i recognize it's just a performance arts center and we've all collectively stopped giving a shit but changing the signage of the kennedy center is explicitly prohibited by law

Reposted by Graham Webster, Aleksandra Urman

404 Media @404media.co · 22d

ICE Contracts Company Making Bounty Hunter AI Agents

AI Solutions 87 says on its website its AI agents “deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network.”

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