Justin Hendrix
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justinhendrix.bsky.social
Justin Hendrix
@justinhendrix.bsky.social
130K followers 1.4K following 4.6K posts
Concerned with tech, media and democracy. CEO & Editor at Tech Policy Press. Research & Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Opinions mine.
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justinhendrix.bsky.social
Times already calling it an "episode"... we're halfway there.
November 10, 2025 at 12:58 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Lordy.
In a statement, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the documents seen by Reuters “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.” The company’s internal estimate that it would earn 10.1% of its 2024 revenue from scams and other prohibited ads was “rough and overly-inclusive,” Stone said. The company had later determined that the true number was lower, because the estimate included “many” legitimate ads as well, he said. He declined to provide an updated figure.
November 6, 2025 at 1:08 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
"Sarah Friar, the CFO of OpenAI, says the company wants a federal guarantee to make it easier to finance massive investments in AI chips for data centers. Friar spoke at WSJ’s Tech Live event in California." www.wsj.com/video/openai...
"Sarah Friar, the CFO of OpenAI, says the company wants a federal guarantee to make it easier to finance massive investments in AI chips for data centers. Friar spoke at WSJ’s Tech Live event in California."
November 6, 2025 at 7:12 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Gingras says the White House "staged" the picture of tech executives at the Trump inauguration: "And I know full well that that’s the last photo Sundar ever wanted taken. We don’t support this administration."
And there’s, you know, all kinds of nonsense has been made out of that photo at the inauguration. We’ve been at every inauguration for the last 20 years. And yes, the White House was very clever in staging that situation such that that photo happened. And I know full well that that’s the last photo Sundar ever wanted taken. We don’t support this administration.
November 6, 2025 at 12:05 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Thanks!
Email to privacy@arccorp.com, subject line "Delete my personal data held by ARC" Hello I just read this piece on 404 Media, and I would also like to opt-out of airlines selling my travel data to the government, and therefore request you delete my personal data held by ARC. https://www.404media.co/how-to-opt-out-of-airlines-selling-your-travel-data-to-the-government/ I'm including here the necessary information mentioned in the article for you to remove me from ARC databases:
November 4, 2025 at 4:56 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Feels good to vote!
Polling place exterior
November 4, 2025 at 1:30 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
November 4, 2025 at 1:08 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
www.wsj.com/tech/ai/big-...
Stacked bar chart titled “Capital expenditures, quarterly.” It shows quarterly spending from 2018 through 2025 by Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta. Microsoft is the lowest layer of each bar, followed by Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta at the top. Spending grows gradually from around $15–25 billion per quarter in 2018–2020, rises to around $30–40 billion in 2022–2023, and then sharply increases in 2024–2025, reaching nearly $115–125 billion per quarter. Meta and Alphabet’s portions expand in the most recent quarters, with all four companies contributing to the large increase. A note says data include finance leases and are based on calendar quarters.
October 31, 2025 at 2:34 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Morgan Stanley graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.
October 31, 2025 at 12:13 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Per the Times: "But for the moneyed foursome that announced earnings this week, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on new data centers is not a worry — not when they churned out a combined $109 billion in operating profit, which excludes taxes and investments, in just the last quarter."
That same day, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, addressed concerns that the A.I. build-out was unsustainable. He said he did not believe the A.I. investments resembled the late-1990s dot-com boom. Back then, he said, there “was a clear bubble” when the businesses driving the market “were ideas rather than companies.” Now, Mr. Powell said, the largest companies behind the transformation are highly valued and largely funding their expansions from their own businesses, rather than loose lending.
October 31, 2025 at 11:10 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
We now have multiple visualizations of this phenomenon from various news organizations. Which one is the best?
New York Times graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships. WSJ graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships. FT graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships. Bloomberg graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.
October 31, 2025 at 11:01 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Shankar says he's started a production company to make patriotic content. "A lot of our content right now is filled with a little bit of self-loathing, maybe a lot of nihilism — a sense that America’s a force for bad in the world."
Sankar: That’s right. I’ve started a film production company to make content that makes you proud to be an American. Not Pravda Entertainment, but a lot of this was built on my own assimilation journey.
October 30, 2025 at 12:07 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Shankar says "the secularists in Silicon Valley are filling the God-shaped hole in their heart with A.G.I."
Sankar: Because I think the secularists in Silicon Valley are filling the God-shaped hole in their heart with A.G.I. [artificial general intelligence]. There’s not an empirical basis to believe that such a thing — it’s like: OK, the models get better. Why do you think that this cliff is going to happen where they somehow turn us into house cats? And you see that the people who have religion are the most skeptical of this. The people who are transhumanists — it becomes what they wish were true, and then they run around with the doomerism. The doomerism of Silicon Valley is both a fund-raising shtick, where the Frontier Labs can say: My technology is so powerful, it’s going to lead to mass unemployment, so you better invest in me, or you’re going to be poor — and also it’s divorced from any sort of reality. They are sitting in Silicon Valley building these models, spending no time on the front lines of how people are using this.
October 30, 2025 at 12:05 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Shankar takes a standard line on distinguishing "legal" immigration from the illegal kind he says breeds "nihilism."
Douthat: Do you see any tension between your own personal narrative and family history as an immigrant to the U.S., and the fact that Palantir is working to effectuate mass deportations? I guess, more generally: What is your view of immigration policy based on that biography? Sankar: My own view is that assimilation is important. We came here legally. We believe in America, and that immigration has made this country strong — but legal immigration. There are rules to follow. And it’s even true if you just zoom out. How will you maintain the society where broad parts of the American people feel gaslit by the process? The lack of enforcement breeds nihilism, and that’s not tenable.
October 30, 2025 at 12:00 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Shankar describes the modernization work he is doing with the military as a commissioned officer alongside Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, “Boz”; Bob McGrew, a former chief research officer at OpenAI and before that Palantir; and Kevin Weil, the chief product officer of OpenAI.
The other piece of it is just actually helping them with how they plan. If you say: look, the Army of 2030 needs to look like this, and I need this many people for all these sorts of skills, we have these emerging roles — then what’s the software infrastructure that allows us to decompose that into: Well, how many people do I need to recruit now? How am I doing against that goal? What’s my pipeline for training and developing them? That’s closer to my job jar. Douthat: Who are the other three who were commissioned with you? Sankar: We have the C.T.O. of Meta, Andrew Bosworth, “Boz”; Bob McGrew, who was the former chief research officer at OpenAI, and before that he was at Palantir for 10 years; and Kevin Weil, who’s the chief product officer of OpenAI.
October 30, 2025 at 11:55 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Shankar puts a lot emphasis on the idea that what ICE is doing has, in his view, democratic legitimacy. "I think a lot of the policies, a lot of things that people are struggling with right now in the U.S. were voted on at the ballot box. What ICE is doing was voted on at the ballot box."
Sankar: You should talk to Louis about that. I would give you the other side of that, which is that I think a lot of the policies, a lot of things that people are struggling with right now in the U.S. were voted on at the ballot box. What ICE is doing was voted on at the ballot box. Douthat: So Palantir — again, not that you speak for everyone at Palantir — but Palantir is more comfortable with mass deportations in the context of a world where Donald Trump campaigned on mass deportations and won, than it might be in a world where he had not mentioned deportations at all, and then asked Palantir to design a mass deportation–abetting software. Sankar: What I’m saying is, like, the people voted on this. Douthat: Right.
October 30, 2025 at 11:49 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
"The AI boom is widening the gulf even among the superrich, with strong equity gains in recent years boosting the fortunes of US-based billionaires including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos."
Horizontal bar chart titled “Performance of billionaire wealth by primary industry, 2015–25.” Ten industries are listed on the left, each with a turquoise bar extending to a circle containing a percentage or number on the right. The bars represent the percentage growth of billionaire wealth over the decade. From top to bottom, the industries and their values are: Technology – 198% (longest bar) Hospitality and entertainment – 146% Healthcare – 75% Banking and finance – 74% Materials – 66% Business and consumer services – 59% Industrial conglomerates – 55% Manufacturing – 49% Food and beverages – 47% Real estate – 37% (shortest bar)
October 29, 2025 at 2:15 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
“That violates a very fundamental norm of democracy, which is that they are answerable first to the voters and to their constituents, not to some secret corporation that they’re cutting deals with in the back room,” said Pat Garofalo, the director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit organization focused on economic equality.
October 28, 2025 at 11:41 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
The administration’s shift to leaning more heavily on Border Patrol marks a potential new phase in Trump’s deportation efforts. While ICE has come under criticism for its raids, the agency’s broad approach has been to make targeted arrests of immigrants known to be in the country illegally. Border Patrol’s approach to recent arrests in major U.S. cities has been more aggressive, making large sweeps that have sparked some of the sharpest backlash from protesters and prompted lawsuits.
October 28, 2025 at 1:29 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
The energy department said being selected to receive the plutonium could help companies secure faster approval for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, which is required to operate a nuclear facility. At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the government’s plutonium stockpile. The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to boost the nuclear industry, as electricity demand grows for the first time in decades. BloombergNEF forecasts the growth of data centres used to train and run artificial intelligence models will cause power demand to more than double by 2035.
October 27, 2025 at 3:30 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
@rcalo.bsky.social in the book...
On the cover of this book is an ancient dodecahedron, one of several such objects discovered among Roman ruins. Though most observers agree that the artifact holds a purpose beyond decoration—that it represents, in other words, a technology—no one is sure what the use may be. Is the dodecahedron a device for measuring distance? For spooling thread? Is it a child’s toy? Answering this question requires more context than history can furnish. The dodecahedron may have been an integral Roman tool. Today it’s a curator’s paperweight. The pages that follow discuss many technologies, from a faith-based compass to a system for controlling the weather. But, contemporary or ancient, real or imagined, technology without context is meaningless.
October 26, 2025 at 5:42 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Lawyers for the Raines told the Financial Times that OpenAI had requested a full list of attendees from Adam’s memorial, which they described as “unusual” and “intentional harassment”, suggesting the tech company may subpoena “everyone in Adam’s life”. OpenAI requested “all documents relating to memorial services or events in the honour of the decedent including but not limited to any videos or photographs taken, or eulogies given . . . as well as invitation or attendance lists or guestbooks”, according to the document obtained by the FT.
October 25, 2025 at 3:43 AM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Joe McCarthy’s reign of terror, which upended US society and wrecked so many careers, came to a bathetic end in 1954 when an army lawyer asked the Republican senator, “At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?” It is inconceivable that such a question would have the slightest effect on Trump. Variations of it are indeed uttered a million times a day before breakfast. In the absence of decency, there is now power. America is in a winner-takes-all game show in which Trump is both the host and the main contestant. There will be one winner. Bannon told me that “the train has left the station and it is not slowing down”. More Kirk-style assassinations are tragically likely, he predicts. A few individuals, people such as Lowell, Abramowitz, Moss, a number of lower court judges and the occasional university president, are standing up to Trump. But their battles are isolated and discreet. Most of America’s “adults” are still keeping their heads down. “We need to figure out a way to get people across domains to stand up together for the rule of law — from business, the military, civil society and the media,” said Senator Warner. “I no longer believe our political institutions will do it.”
October 24, 2025 at 2:47 PM
justinhendrix.bsky.social
Every retired general or admiral I spoke to expressed alarm that Trump was crossing hallowed red lines on civilian-military relations. In late 2020 and early 2021, Trump tried to get the US army to conduct a ballot recount in swing states that had voted for Biden. He was blocked. His otherwise ruthless attorney-general, Bill Barr, and the four service chiefs (army, navy, air force and marines), as well as the chairman and vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, collectively rebuffed Trump’s requests. They reminded Trump that they had sworn an oath of loyalty to the US constitution, not to him personally. There is broad scepticism that the current senior brass, including Dan Caine, Trump’s handpicked chairman of the joint chiefs, would stand up to Trump in the same way now — though officer training says they have a duty to disobey unlawful orders. As a three-star general at the time he was selected, Caine was the least experienced chairman in memory. “Caine has the thinnest background to run the military at its most difficult stress test in modern history,” said one retired four-star. Like two of the four service chiefs, Caine’s predecessor, CQ Brown, was fired by Hegseth. “The circumstances in which Caine took the job don’t fill me with confidence,” said another retired general.
October 24, 2025 at 2:44 PM
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Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/13772e91-de69-48df-9a51-1c27dae44fc1 What has changed is simple: people are scared of crossing Trump this time. In researching this piece, I interviewed dozens of figures, including lawmakers, private sector executives, retired senior military figures and intelligence chiefs, current and former Trump officials, Washington lawyers and foreign government officials. Such is the fear of jail, bankruptcy or professional reprisal, that most of these people insisted on anonymity. This was in spite of the fact that many of the same people also wanted to emphasise that Trump would only be restrained by powerful voices opposing him publicly. At times, it has felt like trying to report on politics in Turkey or Hungary.
October 24, 2025 at 2:43 PM