BRUSSELS — There is “no logic” to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent moves to take Russia’s side in the Ukraine war, and he should remember his true allies lie in Europe, Finland’s prime minister said Thursday. 

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Petteri Orpo summed up the shock and dismay among Ukraine’s allies after Trump announced a diesel deal with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, and reportedly imposed limits on Kyiv’s access to the military intelligence and technology needed to counter Russian attacks.

“My message to him [Trump] is that we are allies,” Orpo said on the sidelines of the European Council summit in Brussels. “We are in NATO. And what is the biggest threat against NATO? It’s Russia — and that is why there is no logic. I don’t have answers. I have many questions.” 

Trump alarmed European leaders and horrified Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week by announcing a deal to release Russian diesel onto the market, apparently in an attempt to lower fuel costs for American consumers. Ukraine’s allies fear the move will boost Russia’s revenue from fuel sales, giving it more money to spend on war. 

Trump also said Ukraine should stop hitting Russian fossil fuel facilities — as part of what he said was a ceasefire on energy infrastructure — and should replace Zelenskyy. 

Finland is an influential voice among Ukraine’s European allies: The country has the EU’s longest land border with Russia, at 1,300 km, and its president, Alexander Stubb — a talented sportsman — won Trump’s respect on the golf course, giving him leeway to try to influence White House policy.

Orpo said if he were in Trump’s position “I would not trust Putin.” Zelenskyy has said he fears Ukraine is losing the U.S. to Russia’s side in the war, warning the Americans and their president are on “the wrong side of history”. Orpo said he agreed: “I think he is, and they are.” 

Ukraine now faces grave danger, he said. “The sky is open for Russia, there are missiles. They need more military support, air defense,” Orpo said. “Also, the situation is dangerous because of the latest deal between Trump and Putin.”

Midterms move

One possible reason Trump turned against Ukraine with that diesel deal is the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3. “I think it is because of domestic reasons — elections are coming,” Orpo said. “But we need to get them back.” Nonetheless, he said the amount of Russian diesel that could be sold to the U.S. is too small to make much of a difference for American consumers. 

Whatever happens, EU leaders must equip Ukraine with weapons and cash, whether or not they can rely on the U.S., he said. “Today, we need to find a solution [on] how to support Ukraine, how to finance Ukraine in this winter, but also in next year,” Orpo said. “It’s crucial.”

Finland and Sweden are among the countries pushing the European Commission to reopen the fractious debate over how to use Russia’s financial assets currently frozen in European banks, especially in Belgium, which blocked a deal to raid the funds last year over legal concerns. 

“The best solution would be that we will have a solution on how to use frozen assets,” he said. “We have to try again,” Orpo said. 

Finland has asked the Commission “to continue work with Belgium, and the other member states, to find a solution.” He said he hoped to hear an update from the Commission during the summit. “It’s a better solution than using our own money.”

Budget blues

European leaders are arguing this week over their long-term budget, which Brussels officials want to finalize by the end of the year. Many diplomats do not expect a deal this year, and some leaders say they’re in no hurry. 

But others want the budget, worth around €2 trillion, signed off by December because they fear next year’s European elections — especially if far-right leader Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency — will derail negotiations. 

The longer budget negotiations last, the “more difficulties we will have,” Orpo said. “So we have to work to find a solution this year. I understand very well that it is difficult, a huge challenge, but I cannot see how it would be easier next year, because in France elections are coming, for example.”

Finland also has an election coming up in April 2027. Orpo’s center-right National Coalition Party is struggling in the polls. “This time has been very difficult,” he said. “But, finally, our economy is growing.”

Orpo’s Swedish sister party, the Moderates, mounted a late surge in last month’s election. Although that seems unlikely to keep them in office, Sweden’s Moderates still have a slim chance, even though many commentators had written them off long before the vote.

“They did excellent campaign work, and in the end of the day, people vote Moderates, not populist or socialist,” Orpo said. “I would like the same in Finland.”

An Israeli surveillance technology firm has run a large-scale operation to infect mobile phones with spyware using online advertisements to hack the devices, researchers said on Thursday.

An investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and cybersecurity firm Confiant Threat Intelligence laid bare an ad-based infection technique developed by an Israeli company that researchers named “AdFection.” The hacks weaponized legitimate online ad systems for espionage purposes, allowing spyware manufacturers to connect to millions of devices and identify, track and target victims.

“Plugging into the online ads ecosystem provides the mercenary spyware industry a stealthy delivery system,” said Bill Marczak, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab. He said the findings were “surely just the tip of the iceberg” of how online ads are abused for espionage.

Researchers discovered critical details of the hacking tools by analyzing devices belonging to journalists and staff at the Al Jazeera media network, finding that 45 devices of journalists and staff were targeted and some infected with Israeli-made spyware known as Candiru.

At the heart of the hacking campaign is the Israeli company Discover-Tech that describes itself as an advertising business. Citizen Lab researchers said the company facilitated surveillance for commercial spyware operators. Its platform, called Controlium, allegedly allowed spyware makers like Candiru — which in 2025 was acquired by Integrity Labs — to identify, track and target devices by loading advertisements on websites and apps.

Discover-Tech and Integrity Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The scale is striking: An analysis of four billion advertising records found that Discover-Tech’s ads appeared across nearly 200,000 websites and mobile apps in dozens of countries over four months. Among the websites that featured the ads were institutional sites of NATO, the United Nations, the European Parliament, European Commission and Council of the EU.

The technique exploits real-time bidding — the automated system used by platforms such as Google to sell advertising space and target users. Rather than persuading victims to click a malicious link, attackers can exploit advertisements to identify and potentially infect devices without any interaction from the user — a technique known as “zero-click” infections.

Discover-Tech’s advertisements directed millions of devices to servers associated with Candiru, potentially enabling large-scale surveillance and reconnaissance, researchers said. That does not mean all those devices were infected.

Citizen Lab, based in Toronto, is a globally recognized research group that previously uncovered spyware scandals targeting Catalan political figures, a member of the European Parliament and the inner circle of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The findings triggered calls for further investigation on Thursday. “The possibility that EU institutions have been exposed should set off alarm bells across Brussels,” said Hannah Neumann, a German European Parliament lawmaker of the Greens group. Neumann herself was the victim of a cyber-espionage operation by an Iranian hacking group.

“Europe cannot claim to defend democracy while leaving its own democratic institutions vulnerable to spyware,” Neumann said.

Earlier this month, three data centers in western Russia suddenly went dark due to a “rapid unplanned disassembly,” to use euphemistic engineering parlance. They exploded, in other words. Operated by Yandex, a Russian technology company often compared to Google that offers many similar services — a search engine, online shopping, cloud computing and the like — the centers were heavily damaged in a series of coordinated drone strikes over four days by Ukraine, which saw them as a valuable target in the country’s military campaign against Russian infrastructure.

As Russia’s war against Ukraine slogs on, both sides are increasingly adopting this strategy. While power plants and oil refineries have been hit, data centers and internet facilities are becoming the latest quarry for drone and missile strikes — and not just in Europe. Data centers operated by Amazon in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have also been targeted in the ongoing Iran war.

Few Americans have probably heard of Yandex, let alone use its services, and most likely didn’t notice when many of its hosted websites became inaccessible. But after Ukraine’s attacks, many people started to claim that social media was seemingly different. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to suggest his country had dealt a massive blow to Russia’s online disinformation machine, saying, “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms. There was less hate, less division and fewer provocations.” Several reports seemed to support his claims, citing data from internet monitoring service Cloudflare, that allegedly showed “Russia’s Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight.” 

But the truth is far more complicated, as some experts have noted. Yandex did experience a crash in bot activity, but at least some of that traffic seems to be legitimate. “When Cloudflare data shows a precipitous drop in ‘bot’ traffic, that does not mean ‘automated social media troll accounts’, it means ‘software that makes automated web requests on a large scale,’” Michał ‘Rysiek’ Woźniak, an internet infrastructure expert, told The Guardian. Others noted that they haven’t seen an actual drop in online disinformation. “Our platforms are still monitoring Russian social networks across the world and there is no discernible change in their posting patterns,” said Amil Khan, the chief executive of Valent, a tech startup that tracks disinformation.

None of that has stopped Reddit and other corners of the web from celebrating and memeing the issue. If those celebrations aren’t quite justified, there’s still something to be learned from the ordeal, which digs into the so-called dead internet theory. The basic premise is that almost nothing we see online is human-generated anymore. In his 2025 book “Market-Oriented Disinformation Research,” business academic Carlos Diaz Ruiz, who has studied how disinformation spreads in social media echo chambers, describes what many of us experience online on a daily basis: “an eerie feeling that the Internet is made up of bots talking to bots, following and liking bots, and posting AI-generated content designed for machine consumption, the algorithm, not humans.”

Indeed, bot traffic makes up an increasingly large share of the internet, surpassing human traffic for the first time in history over the summer, according to a June Cloudflare report. No doubt the surge in generative artificial intelligence use is what tipped the scales, but of course, not all bots are created equal. Many have legitimate, beneficial uses, like archiving web data.

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Some people have wedged dead internet theory into a conspiracy theory that Diaz Ruiz divides into “weak” and “strong.” The weak version of the theory is that the internet is now little more than a hall of mirrors used to manipulate the masses into fighting a culture war instead of a class war. “The Internet drama keeps the population occupied and distracted, preventing them from resisting the elites secretly controlling the world,” as Diaz Ruiz says. “The ‘strong’ version of the dead internet conspiracy theory claims that online activity is entirely disconnected from human activity because our society ceased to exist some time ago. In some versions, a catastrophic event occurred in the past, triggering society’s collapse.”

OK, so we’re basically talking the plot of “The Matrix” here. The argument that humanity peaked in 1999 may be compelling, and I won’t argue against it. If reality truly is nothing more than a hallucination, dream or computer screensaver in the brain, why should we waste time disputing it? Proving a negative with such a lack of evidence is fruitless. The point is, some people may be taking dead internet theory a little too far, but that doesn’t change the fact that within the last week people felt like they got a taste of some version of it.

If we lift the hood on some of these conspiracies, we can understand what people are really afraid of. Last December in the journal Computer, Hal Berghel, a computer science professor at the University of Nevada, argued the dead internet is more than a conspiracy and should not be dismissed, writing, “There’s certainly evidence of the distortion of the internet from the original concept as a liberating, self-healing, packetized purveyor of useful and important information: the original commitment to net neutrality is on life support, the goal of a shared public information repository is constantly compromised by paywalls, the content has moved from valuable scholarship to a sub-cerebral landfill, and the users are subjected to a mind-numbing cacophony of digital threats: spam, phish bait, spyware, malware, online bullying, online fraud, extortion, hacking, VoIP 911-swatting, doxing, slander, pretexting, etc.”

In other words, there’s a good reason so many people find dead internet theory attractive. Once a zone of promise and connection, the web has not only rotted and enshittified, it’s turned into a literal warzone. There really are algorithms out there, unleashed by governments actively dropping bombs on one another, that are designed to infect our minds and prejudice our ability to perceive the truth. It’s one of the many ways modern warfare has become invisible, pervasive and endless. No wonder social media is making so many people depressed — it can be a form of assault.

“In tandem with proxy warfare, cyber operations have become a central pillar of modern statecraft. Cyber warfare enables states to conduct aggressive acts; espionage, sabotage, infrastructure disruption without engaging in kinetic violence,” philosophers Oluyemi Opeoluwa Adisa and Kareem Shwan Adham wrote last year in a study published in the International Journal of Scientific Research and Management. “The strategic advantage of cyber warfare lies in its stealth and ambiguity. Because it blurs the line between war and crime, attribution becomes difficult, enabling perpetrators to operate with minimal consequences.”

How do we even tell how much of the dead internet theory is true? Perhaps through that old tech-support adage: Turn it off and back on again. And no, I don’t mean bombing more data centers, though we’re likely to see more of that, for better or worse. If everything feels fake, maybe we’re better off getting outside and experiencing something real for a minute. Yeah, yeah, we’ve all been told to touch grass so much that such advice is routinely mocked, and anyway, not everyone can easily do that.

But here’s your daily reminder that humans are primates whose still-evolving brains are exponentially outpaced by technological advancement. Being in nature is essential because we are nature. There’s a certain reset available in the presence of trees, birds and clouds. Even more important is connecting with real humans: family, friends, neighbors. Socialization is the essence of the primate brain too. You don’t have to uninstall any apps or delete Facebook, though you could try it too. Off, on again. 

And when you are online, which is unavoidable for many of us, try to remember that you are probably interacting with fewer humans than you might think. So don’t take it so seriously. Temper those outrageous emotions, the ones the algorithms have gotten so good at teasing out of us. Maybe instead we can fortify them into weapons to attack the real problems we face, like widening wealth gaps, destruction of the environment and the rise of authoritarianism. 

The post The internet isn’t dead. It’s even worse appeared first on Salon.com.

Ukraine’s strikes on data centers inside Russia aimed to disrupt military planning and communication services. There were also reports of another kind of disruption: to customers waiting for their dinner from food-delivery apps.

Kyiv’s drone strikes on three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir saw delays and interruptions for thousands of businesses and households that rely on Yandex’s cloud infrastructure, including e-commerce, digital payment platforms and apps of food delivery and car services. Ukrainian drones on Wednesday targeted a major Sberbank data center in Russia’s Saratov region, though a senior company executive said it hadn’t affected operations.

After the strikes on Russian data centers, Kyiv noted that Moscow has already repeatedly targeted its digital infrastructure. “Ukrainians wanted to show Russians that two can play this game,” a senior official familiar with the operation told POLITICO, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The attacks and counter-attacks point to a new frontline in war: the infrastructure powering the digital economy.

The attacks on the buildings that supply compute power are akin to striking a power plant supplying the electricity, heating and fuel that both militaries and civilians depend on. It may weaken an enemy’s war effort but can also bring everyday life to a standstill.

Experts say the cost of rebuilding in Russia will be particularly high as the centers require scarce materials that must be imported. “Obtaining a large amount of equipment to replace what was destroyed is not going to be easy,” said Oleg Shakirov, a cyber policy and international security researcher, noting that most hardware needs to be imported and that is complicated by high global demand and sanctions on Russia.

“To be honest, no one really knows what’s the actual damage. Since two data centers are still offline, we can assume that it’s significant,” said Shakirov.

Joseph Jarnecki, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, warned that normalizing strikes to data centers could have a new set of dangerous consequences.

“These strikes likely breach International Humanitarian Law and it’s a big risk when global populations increasingly rely on digital services,” he told POLITICO.

When servers become targets

Data centers have entered the crosshairs of other recent armed conflicts. During the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran earlier this year, drone strikes hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Since data centers can serve civilian and military purposes simultaneously, the legal status of targeting them is far from straightforward.

Kubo Mačák, an expert on international humanitarian law, said a data center must meet two conditions to qualify as a military objective under the Geneva Conventions: it must make an effective contribution to military operations and destroying it must offer a “definite military advantage.”

“If you know that they are storing military intelligence or that they’re using the data center to power military artificial intelligence tools,” Mačák said, there could be grounds to consider it a military objective.

Following the most recent strikes of the Yandex data centers, users on social media platform X reported a sudden drop in automated bot activity, including from accounts associated with pro-Russian, pro-Trump and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) narratives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized on the reports to boast that the strikes had made social media less toxic, even as independent researchers and national research institutes found no evidence they specifically disrupted any Russian disinformation campaigns.

Mačák said that even if a data center is being used to “let’s say, run some trolls or these bot farms to interfere with elections abroad … that would not be sufficient.” In other words, hosting propaganda bots does not, by itself, make a data center a lawful military target.

The dual-use quandary has often focused on the targeting of energy infrastructure, which has been frequent in the Russia-Ukraine war. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, blaming the attacks for rising fuel prices. He has since called for both sides to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, although the existence of any ceasefire agreement remains disputed.

As data centers become increasingly central to national economies, they will become more consequential targets. A senior NATO official granted anonymity to discuss the matter told POLITICO that data centers are already considered potential targets and that the alliance is factoring their vulnerability into its planning.

NATO allies recognize that their data centers could come under attack in a conflict, the official said: “We would get it in a fight.”

Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — European leaders came for the budget. They’re staying for everything else.

A two-day European Council starting Thursday was supposed to be all about the money. Instead, leaders of the 27 EU member countries are heading into one of their most crowded summits in years, with a succession of geopolitical crises threatening to hijack the EU’s carefully laid plans.

European Council President António Costa originally wanted the gathering to accelerate negotiations on the bloc’s next seven-year budget, hoping to seal a deal before elections in France, Italy and Poland in 2027 make an already difficult agreement even harder.

But the world had other plans. Soaring energy prices, tensions with China, Russia’s war in Ukraine (and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambiguity over it), migration and turmoil in the Middle East have all elbowed their way onto the agenda.

The result is a two-day marathon covering virtually every major challenge facing the EU, from keeping European factories competitive to ensuring the world’s most important shipping lanes stay open.

For anyone trying to follow the action without spending 48 hours glued to Brussels, here’s your guide to what matters.

With the usual warning: EU leaders are notorious for letting discussions drag on or reshuffling the agenda — that’s what our liveblog is for.

Thursday at dawn: The pre-match warm-up

Before the summit even starts, Europe’s political families will gather at the crack of dawn.

The European People’s Party meets from 7:30 a.m. at the Sofitel Brussels Europe — the place to be if you can get in, given how many center-right leaders will be at the summit table.

The Socialists gather from 8:30 a.m. at PES headquarters, with Costa, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen expected.

Renew kicks off at 8 a.m. at the Palais d’Egmont, with French President Emmanuel Macron and top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas among those expected.

Even without leaders in the summit room, the far-right Patriots got a head start Wednesday, with Marine Le Pen delivering a scathing attack on the state of the EU.

Thursday morning: The energy blame game and China

Leaders kick off with discussions on Europe’s struggle for economic competitiveness, starting with energy — potentially the most politically explosive debate.

Governments want immediate relief from soaring energy prices as a result of the war in Iran, and will push the Commission to introduce new measures on top of the wide-ranging but somewhat toothless package it announced back in March.

Expect finger-pointing between capitals and Brussels over who should act, and for climate policies like the upcoming Emissions Trading System on heating and transport to come under fire.

Next comes China. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will brief leaders on efforts to tackle the EU’s enormous trade imbalance with Beijing, following trade chief Maroš Šefčovič’s negotiations with Chinese officials.

Leaders are expected to renew their demand for Brussels to “urgently” tool up with further trade defenses to prevent further deindustrialization of the bloc and to shield further industrial sectors from Chinese competition.

There’s also time for the familiar fight over EU red tape, with calls for Brussels to stop legislating.

Thursday afternoon: Costa’s budget gamble

This was supposed to be the main event. Leaders will discuss Ireland’s negotiating proposal for the EU’s 2028–2034 budget slashed by €159 billion from the Commission’s original proposal.

The positions are well known: The self-styled “modernists” — essentially the old frugals in disguise — want to contain costs, while countries benefiting from EU spending are determined to defend their allocations, under the less glamorous banner of “friends of cohesion.” Positions on new EU-wide taxes are similarly entrenched.

But the real story is timing.

Governments have watered down a commitment to secure an agreement by December, according to draft conclusions seen by POLITICO. Costa wants a deal before a series of high-stakes elections in 2027 complicate negotiations; capitals fear a deadline could weaken their bargaining power.

Most importantly, Costa is moving into the driving seat as budget talks enter their most politically sensitive stage. Watch for clues about a possible extraordinary summit in late November — and whether December remains a credible deadline or leaders quietly start preparing for negotiations to spill into 2027.

Thursday dinner: Making room for new members

Over dinner, leaders will tackle enlargement and the EU reforms needed to accommodate new members — after all, October’s summit has historically been devoted to the bloc’s hopefuls.

Montenegro is edging closer to completing accession negotiations, while progress elsewhere raises questions about whether the bloc is institutionally and financially ready to grow.

The Commission has outlined proposals to prepare the EU for enlargement, and leaders will discuss how internal reforms should accompany the accession process. Watch for a positive signal to Montenegro and commitments on reforming the bloc itself.

Friday morning: Ukraine’s wish list

The second day begins with Ukraine and an expected appearance by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Declarations of European solidarity are all but guaranteed. The more interesting question is what leaders are actually prepared to do.

Kyiv needs air defense systems, interceptors and financing as Russian attacks intensify. Leaders could discuss tougher action against Moscow’s shadow fleet and visa restrictions for Russians. And while EU financing for Ukraine has already been agreed for 2026, the country’s needs beyond that remain an increasingly pressing issue.

Could this mean reopening the debate on using frozen Russian assets to plug future funding gaps? That remains a question mark — although no immediate breakthrough is expected.

Friday pre-lunch: Defense and three dangerous waterways

Before breaking for lunch, leaders will turn to Russian hybrid attacks, maritime security and the Middle East.

In the Black Sea, recent attacks on civilian shipping threaten Ukraine’s crucial grain export route. Turkey has floated new protected shipping corridors, while countries including Romania and Bulgaria are pushing to give the issue more attention.

Will leaders back concrete measures or stop at condemnation? That’s the question.

Discussions then turn to the Middle East and two other critical shipping routes: the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. The fallout from the Iran–U.S. war, increased Iranian attacks around Hormuz and renewed Houthi threats in the Red Sea have disrupted global trade and energy flows.

The EU’s Aspides naval mission is short of vessels, and Kallas wants governments to contribute more. Watch whether leaders put ships behind their promises.

The broader Middle East discussion will also touch on Iran, Yemen, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Friday lunch: The migration showdown

Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen are worth watching as leaders discuss migration over lunch, following the crisis in Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta.

Irregular arrivals have been declining, but disagreements remain over border crises, solidarity and tougher migration controls.

And with an election looming in Spain on Nov. 29, this could be Sánchez’s last tango — and a final chance to defend his government’s handling of the crisis while venting his frustration over the lack of European solidarity.

Watch whether the debate produces agreement or another political clash, as happened last time.

Bonus: Two pressers are better than one

With such a packed agenda, leaders won’t wait until the end of the summit for the usual joint press conference by von der Leyen and Costa. An additional one is planned for Thursday, after the budget debate.

On Thursday, watch Costa’s language on the budget deadline and whether von der Leyen offers any concrete measures on energy prices.

On Friday, look for promises of additional support for Ukraine, whether commitments on maritime security come with actual ships and resources — and commentary on how the migration showdown over lunch went.

Martina Sapio contributed to reporting.

Ukrainian frontline soldiers are alarmed that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service is reportedly being restricted on fast-moving military platforms, warning of severe operational consequences.

“This is comparable to a nuclear strike against us. All operations are on hold. This will cost many of us our lives,” an experienced Ukrainian officer told POLITICO and the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.

The officer commands a medium-range drone strike unit in southeastern Ukraine. The unit relies heavily on Starlink for the operation and navigation of its American-made Hornet drones, used to strike targets at a range of up to 150 kilometers.

“Since last night, all Starlink and Starshield terminals used by our forces have been subject to a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour,” the officer said.

POLITICO talked to three frontline soldiers, who all spoke on condition of being granted anonymity, as well as a Ukrainian defense ministry spokesperson and the EU’s top defense official.

The reported restrictions have revived a question Ukrainian commanders have worried about for years: how much of the country’s battlefield communications can rely on a service controlled by a U.S. company.

Ukrainian soldiers say the restrictions have halted some medium-range drone strikes over Ukraine, disrupting attacks on Russian logistics and leaving frontline Ukrainian troops with less support. The scale of the disruption — and whether it was deliberate — remains unclear.

In a comment on X, Musk said: “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” referring to the Starshield division of Starlink that is used for military purposes.

“Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX,” he added. “Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former defense minister who has good contacts in Silicon Valley, said late Wednesday: “Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h is being restored. Removing Starshield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense.”

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The restrictions have brought “all medium-range strike operations to a complete halt,” the officer said, including those using mesh-based systems. These rely on a single Starlink-equipped UAV to receive and relay signals to other drones connected through a mesh network, allowing them to strike targets deep inside Russian-held territory or in areas heavily protected by Russian electronic warfare systems.

Such targets include the Donetsk region, the strategically important Novorossiya highway linking Russia to Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula itself, the Kerch area and the Black Sea.

“We can no longer fight effectively to support our infantry on the battlefield. We can no longer strike multiple-launch rocket systems, North Korean-supplied heavy self-propelled artillery positioned deep behind enemy lines, ammunition depots, command centers and other targets,” the officer said.

“The Ukrainian frontline is very much dependent on Starlink-operated mid-strike drones,” Iryna Terekh, CEO of Ukrainian missile-maker Fire Point told POLITICO.

Ukraine’s devastating campaign

For months, Ukrainian medium-range strike drones have inflicted significant damage on Russian logistics in frontline regions. They have disrupted the supply of fuel, ammunition and other military equipment, slowing Russia’s advance. 

The officer said he feared that the Starlink restrictions will give Russian troops a critical opportunity to strengthen their positions.

“Starting today, the enemy will build up its logistics routes to Crimea to reinforce its forces there,” he warned.

Two other Ukrainian frontline soldiers operating ground robots and conventional first-person-view drones in the Donbas confirmed to POLITICO that Starlink services for Ukrainian units were abruptly restricted on Wednesday. 

“On the night of October 14, without prior notice to the Defense Forces, SpaceX unilaterally restricted the operation of Starshield terminals while in motion,” a Ukrainian defense ministry official told reporters in Kyiv. 

The official added that the problems occur at speeds varying from 72 kph to 161 kph, “depending on the specific vehicle and unit.”

The slowdown in Starlink terminals comes as U.S. President Donald Trump exerts fierce pressure on Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries. That follows his deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to release diesel onto global markets — part of Trump’s effort to reduce fuel prices ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

“Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is associated with the current political situation,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov said in a Facebook post.

Asked about the rising American pressure on Ukraine, EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said at a POLITICO event on Wednesday: “Political development sometimes makes strange influence. Elections are coming.”

“We are quite dependent on American space capabilities,” Kubilius acknowledged. “The answer to that situation is to develop our own capabilities.”

The Starlink slowdown was condemned by one of Ukraine’s key European allies.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” wrote Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.

Ukraine depends on Starlink

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Starlink has become central to Kyiv’s war effort. In the spring of 2022, Ukrainian defenders trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol used satellites operated by SpaceX to send messages to the outside world. Ukrainian units relied on the system to coordinate operations during the fierce urban fighting around Bakhmut in 2023.

To this day, soldiers use Starlink to rapidly adjust artillery fire and navigate naval drones during attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine’s former army chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, once praised the terminals for their “extraordinary utility.”

That reliance always carried risk. In the early months of the war, Starlink reportedly shut off terminals that were going to be used in a naval attack on the Russian fleet.

But SpaceX has also acted to favor Ukraine. In February, SpaceX shut down access to Starlink terminals being used illegally by Russia, causing immediate chaos. Ukraine then ramped its own use of the terminals.

Kyiv’s armed forces began widely equipping medium-range strike drones with Starlink terminals. Without them, operations would become considerably more complex. The military would, for example, have to calculate terrain elevations and antenna availability itself and install additional communications equipment.

“Starlink allows you not to have to deal with radio physics,” a Ukrainian officer with the call sign Jura said in August. “Starlink allows operators to maintain a live video connection with a drone until shortly before impact.”

Starlink can also provide so-called “synthetic GPS coordinates,” which can help drones navigate when conventional GPS signals are jammed.

But Ukrainian officers feared that decisions made in Washington or in the executive offices of American companies could suddenly weaken Ukraine.

“Many of my colleagues and I myself are very nervous about the question of how we would operate without Starlink,” Jura said. “We have discussed this question several times among our officers: ‘What if Elon Musk or someone at SpaceX switches it off?'”

As Trump has ramped up pressure on Kyiv in recent weeks, Ukrainian officers reported growing problems with Starlink.

One Ukrainian drone pilot, who operates medium-range strike drones, reported severe connectivity problems on Sept. 11 and 12, as well as further disruptions on Sept. 17. He said soldiers from several Ukrainian units had experienced similar problems.

The incidents occurred shortly after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had concluded visits to Kyiv and Moscow. “After few days, the normal work with Starlink come back. But I believe that was the signal,” the pilot said.

He argued that Russian jamming equipment could not plausibly have produced such geographically consistent disruptions across multiple sectors of the front.

“So that was, I guess, administered from some office,” he said. POLITICO could not independently establish whether the disruptions resulted from deliberate restrictions imposed by the American satellite provider or another technical cause.

The incidents have reinforced concerns among Ukrainian military personnel about their dependence on American-controlled technology.

“The reason is politics and the American option to ‘switch off’ or critically decrease” U.S. systems, the pilot said.

Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv. Daniella Cheslow and Audrey Decker contributed reporting.

This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission’s cybersecurity division is rolling out a plan to use artificial intelligence to respond to high-risk cyberattacks, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

The undated document, written by the Commission’s IT department, sets out how to prepare the EU executive’s cyber defenses for “emerging AI-driven threats.” It proposes an action plan to shore up defenses in light of AI, with the most urgent move being the speed of response to attacks.

Governments have rushed to grapple with the rising threat brought by AI’s ability to expose and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Incidents like OpenAI’s accidental intrusion into Hugging Face have prompted calls, including at the highest political level, to be more wary of advanced AI models.

Being able to respond quickly to cyberattacks is most crucial in “high-risk scenarios,” the EU executive’s internal cyber defenders warned, saying that the ability to detect an attack is “not sufficient if containment measures cannot be taken quickly enough.”

Officials at the in-house IT department, DG DIGIT, are planning to use automated “protective measures” in specific high-risk scenarios, it said. Those scenarios were redacted in the document, which was provided to POLITICO in response to a freedom of information request.

The plan does not amount to “uncontrolled automation” and there will be strict controls in place including human oversight, according to the document.

As well as laying out the response plan, the document sets out the cybersecurity challenges the Commission faces from AI.

The most advanced AI models are expected to “significantly increase the speed, scale and adaptability of cyberattacks” and the Commission must therefore have defenses in places for an environment where “attacks are likely to become faster, more frequent and more scalable,” it said.

Risks include situations where “malicious activity occurs outside EC [European Commission] normal working hours, spreads more rapidly across systems, or results in large-scale exfiltration or operational disruption before manual intervention can be organized by EC,” they said.

The Commission’s cyber division has sought approval internally to move ahead with the plans, it said, though it’s not clear whether the plans have yet been put in place.

The Commission didn’t respond to a request for comment.

BRUSSELS — As the U.S. and China compete to train the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, Europe is stepping back.

European politicians and tech executives have in recent weeks shifted their focus away from frontier AI as it becomes clear the bloc has no artificial intelligence models that can compete with top American or Chinese models, and Europe’s leading contender Mistral faces questions over its performance.

Instead, a new mantra has emerged: Europe doesn’t need to own the models as long as it can put them to work.

“Striving to build a competitive frontier lab right now feels like very wishful thinking,” said Max Junestrand, CEO of Swedish AI company Legora, a €6 billion company that provides an AI tool for law firms. “I would rather see us put more thinking cycles into how do we capitalize on the technology rather than how do we try to catch up.”

The suggestion that frontier AI models are now out of reach for European AI labs comes as the most advanced models become a major global security issue.

American leaders OpenAI and Anthropic this summer had to disclose incidents in which AI agents broke out of testing. This led the companies to slow-walk and tread cautiously with the release of their latest models, just as Chinese open-source models are emerging as a credible alternative to U.S. proprietary models.

For Europe, relying on U.S. or Chinese models is not without risk, as the bloc is already dependent on both for all the technology underpinning AI, such as chips and cloud services.

But leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, say Europe should focus more on helping its industrial and corporate base benefit from AI. They argue that building homegrown tech champions that can deliver those tools is a smart strategy that could help Europe win this next phase as America remains focused on staying ahead of China.

As politicians and industry meet Wednesday in Dublin for an international AI summit, the Irish governmental organizers have sought to focus the talks largely on how AI is used.

“It’s the trigger that interests everybody most: how are we going to adopt this new technology that we have … [and] how are we going to encourage business to adopt it,” Niamh Smyth, the Irish minister in charge of AI, said.

Not everyone is on board with the direction of travel.

“The idea that Europe should step back from frontier AI and settle for applications is a strategic mistake,” said a spokesperson from Mistral, Europe’s leading contender in frontier AI development. “A great part of the value is retained by those who build the frontier, not only by those who build on top of it.”

Slow acceptance

A move in Brussels to reorientate the bloc’s leadership has been building gradually throughout the past weeks.

Both the European Commission and the Council of the EU, which represents national governments, have indicated that the focus should shift to how to apply the technology.

“We do not need to be the ones who develop the frontier technology to be the ones who draw the greatest value from it,” von der Leyen said in mid-September during her State of the European Union speech, which sets the agenda in Brussels for the coming year.

That followed a Sept. 4 seminar at which the Commission’s AI envoy, Siemens chair Jim Hagemann Snabe, told 27 commissioners that the EU should focus less on winning the race to build AI and more on how to use it to turn around the bloc’s productivity, two Commission officials said.

The scale of the challenge is clear: At the end of last year, only 1 in 5 European businesses used AI in their activities, with Denmark as the frontrunner (42%) and Romania at the bottom of the pack (5.2%), according to Eurostat.

The bloc’s poor showing is mainly because of small and medium-sized companies that make up the lion’s share of Europe’s economy. Last year, 55% of Europe’s large companies used AI, compared to only 17% among small companies — who, according to a recent OECD report — limit themselves to off-the-shelf AI tools for specific tasks.

Companies that considered using AI but decided against it cited a lack of expertise as their top concern, even before regulatory concerns. American business leaders have also said that regulatory and political uncertainty is holding them back.

Over the next few weeks, the European Commission will make several efforts to boost adoption rates. On Nov. 16, it organizes an “Apply AI summit” to “accelerate AI implementation in strategic industries.” Von der Leyen name-checked health, transport, agrifood, advanced manufacturing, defense and space as areas with the “biggest potential.”

Some in Brussels are quick to push back on the idea that Europe has given up entirely on the underlying models. 

“We haven’t given up frontier AI; we are now accelerating the development of our AI systems,” the Commission’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in an interview when asked about von der Leyen’s stance. “It’s very important for Europe that we have our models … because it’s risky to be totally dependent on other countries.”

Yet Virkkunen pointed to Europe’s lack of compute power as a major bottleneck to building its own frontier AI. 

In the U.K., AI minister Kanishka Narayan said in September that training frontier models is effectively illegal because of the country’s copyright laws. “Britain does not, as a matter of regulation and energy, currently have a position where we can build superintelligence in this country: it is illegal to do so,” he said.

But Narayan has also acknowledged the national security concerns. “We want the world’s leading companies investing here, but we will not accept dependence as the price of that investment,” he said Monday.

U.K. tech companies aren’t counting themselves out of frontier AI just yet. Cosine, a British AI research lab, has pushed back on the idea that American companies dictate the rules of the road. “Britain should not let OpenAI define what a ‘responsible’ frontier lab looks like in a way that just happens to resemble OpenAI,” said Cosine co-founder Yang Li.

Sovereignty fight

French company Mistral released a new model, Large 4, last week, which far-right National Rally President Jordan Bardella said “puts France (and Europe) back in the race for artificial intelligence.”

That came after the CEO of a Berlin-based search engine used by government services said it was dropping Mistral in favor of open-source models, including from China. In an interview, Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll cited poor performance as one of the concerns — as well as sovereignty, given that Mistral has non-European investors.

“With Mistral Large 4, we have significantly narrowed the gap with the best models in the world, using far less compute than our competitors,” the Mistral spokesperson said.

The company’s CEO Arthur Mensch has also pushed back against the idea that Europe should not have its own models, warning the continent could end up with “an extractive economy” dependent on foreign providers.

Yet the state of the race is forcing European companies to accept that is the status quo.

U.S. frontier models have already proven capable of finding and exploiting cyber vulnerabilities. Asked whether it’s a competitive disadvantage not to have access to those, Legora’s Junestread said: “Yes … absolutely.”

Zoya Sheftalovich and Frank Hersey contributed reporting.

Federal authorities arrested a Saudi national employed at OpenAI and charged him with planting a recording device in a company’s executive conference room, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

On or around Sept. 30, OpenAI discovered a sophisticated recording device inserted into the back of a television in an executive conference room located in one of its San Francisco offices. The company determined that the device was installed approximately a couple days prior, concealed in toilet paper. The contents of the device were encrypted, according to the DOJ.

The Department of Justice said in a news release that the employee, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was arrested Friday and appeared in federal court Tuesday. OpenAI confirmed the incident on social media and said that it was supporting the FBI’s investigation.

“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier,” OpenAI said in its statement. “At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data.”

Alfozan used a “productivity tool” to inquire about the company’s meeting rooms, calendars, and “leadership and exec” locations, according to OpenAI’s complaint to the DOJ. A chatbot account associated with his spouse also indicated that the user submitted prompts in September relating to installing and remote accessing a recording device.

The DOJ said that CCTV footage showed Alfozan, who had been employed as an engineer by OpenAI since July 2025, near and inside the conference room on multiple occasions before the device was discovered. Meetings in the conference room “frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities,” according to the complaint.

The company also discovered another recording device in one of Alfozan’s bags left in the office.

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” OpenAI said. “Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.”

The Saudi national, who has since been fired by OpenAI, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release if convicted, according to the DOJ.

“For us it is a matter of national security,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California said in a statement. “This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology, as alleged in the complaint.”

When Maroš Šefčovič set out his strategy for engaging with China to European Union ambassadors in July, he had a warning for governments urging tougher action on trade against Beijing.

“Sometimes, it’s even popular to start a trade war, but it’s very difficult to finish it,” the EU trade chief recalled later in an interview with POLITICO.

Three months on, Šefčovič has secured a first breakthrough, reaching a deal in Beijing last week to sharply reduce imports of Chinese hybrid cars. The symbolic win marks a small step toward stabilizing a trading relationship that Brussels believes has reached a dangerous tipping point.

The agreement, which will initially cap imports at 350,000 vehicles a year, marks a significant concession from Beijing, whose carmakers have been flooding the European market with increasingly competitive vehicles. 

For Šefčovič, who negotiated last year’s tariff truce with Donald Trump, the agreement suggests his strategy of engagement backed by the threat of tougher trade measures may be starting to pay off.

Šefčovič agreed to launch the trade dialogue at a meeting with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Brussels in late June.

By focusing initially on cars — an area where the EU has leverage as one of the few major markets still open to Chinese manufacturers — the Slovak commissioner hoped to secure a confidence-building win before tackling thornier questions, from critical raw materials to China’s vast industrial overcapacity.

At the same time, he worked to coalesce European governments behind a parallel effort to strengthen the bloc’s trade defenses, reinforcing his negotiating position with the threat of tougher action to bring down the EU’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China.

The hybrid deal, however, is only the opening move in a much bigger contest.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday to take stock, weighing the benefits of continued engagement against demands for more aggressive action to protect European industry from a surge in Chinese imports.

The meeting will test whether a commissioner who has made a career of finding compromises with difficult partners can maintain Europe’s support for a strategy whose success is far from assured.

“You have to deal with the same partner across the table,” Šefčovič said of the risks of starting a trade war, in the interview with POLITICO in August. “So if you can avoid this, it would be much better.”

Market power

Šefčovič’s opening move was to focus on an area where Europe still has leverage: access to its market of 450 million people.

China’s fiercely competitive manufacturers have become global powerhouses, but they are struggling with weak demand at home. A prolonged property slump has weighed on consumer spending, while cutthroat competition has triggered price wars. Domestic sales of passenger vehicles fell 28% in September from a year earlier.

That makes overseas markets increasingly important. With the U.S. shutting out Chinese imports, Europe remains one of the most lucrative markets still open to Chinese manufacturers.

Šefčovič gambled that Beijing would prefer to accept limits on exports rather than risk losing access to the European market altogether.

He set his sights on the automotive sector, where Chinese manufacturers have been making rapid inroads. Chinese carmakers accounted for just 2% of both the European hybrid and plug-in hybrid markets in 2024; by the first half of 2026, their respective shares had risen to 14% and 25%, industry figures show.

The Commission was preparing to restrict hybrid imports even without an agreement. But a negotiated settlement also offered Šefčovič something valuable politically: evidence that engagement with Beijing could deliver tangible results.

The negotiations were intense, according to a person familiar with the talks on the Chinese side.

“It was very, very tough,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. “Both sides hadn’t seen such intensity in a long time. No summer break, no holidays. They worked around the clock even one, two days prior to Šefčovič’s trip to Beijing.”

While pursuing dialogue, Brussels also wanted to convince Beijing that it was prepared to take tougher action if the negotiations failed.

Šefčovič had earlier flagged plans for a new “diversification instrument” that would require businesses in critical sectors to source essential inputs from at least three suppliers — a move to reduce China’s ability to exploit Europe’s dependence on its critical raw materials.

Then, just three days before Šefčovič’s trip to Beijing, France and Germany raised the stakes.

President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for a powerful new trade weapon that would allow Brussels to restrict — or even shut off — access to the European market within days for countries deemed to have severely distorted the bloc’s single market.

The proposal did not explicitly name China, but Beijing was its obvious target. 

Keeping it together

EU leaders are expected to welcome the agreement but also press the Commission to act quickly to strengthen the bloc’s trade defenses, according to several diplomats. The understanding reached in Beijing has bought time, but hasn’t settled how far Brussels should go if Chinese exports keep rising or negotiations stall.

“We’re losing thousands of jobs in industry; olive oil and ice cream won’t solve the core issue,” said one EU diplomat after Šefčovič briefed ambassadors on Sunday, referring to reported deliverables from the talks.

A senior German official welcomed the Beijing deal as a first step in the right direction. “It’s a positive sign — which, of course, doesn’t fully solve the problem of the trade deficit with China,” the official said.

But Berlin’s support for a tougher line might prove short-lived.

Alicia García-Herrero, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, argued that Beijing’s concessions had been calculated to assuage Berlin, given the importance of the automotive industry to the German economy.

“I’m just hoping Merz doesn’t turn away from the letter he sent to the Commission,” she said. With the German chancellor politically weakened at home, García-Herrero fears he may be reluctant to risk a prolonged confrontation: “I worry Merz will take this quick win and run.”

That leaves Šefčovič facing a balancing act: keeping EU governments on board with continued engagement with China while maintaining a credible threat of tougher action if the talks break down. 

“I expect [leaders] to give the Commission a nod to move ahead with other trade defense measures. China may see this as a betrayal. If that is the case, we could return to conflict very quickly,” said Noah Barkin, a senior adviser at the Rhodium Group’s China practice.

The battle ahead

For Šefčovič, the challenge now is to turn a limited breakthrough on cars into a broader rebalancing of trade with China — while buying Europe time to strengthen its defenses should the negotiations fail.

“There is an argument for doing to China what China had done to Europe for years — bogging Beijing down in dialogue and process while Europe gets its tools in place. But the EU needs to make full use of the time that these talks provide,” said Rhodium’s Barkin. 

The trade chief is expected to hold a video call with Wang in January, before the two meet again next March. Those talks will test whether Beijing is prepared to make further concessions in sectors where European industry is increasingly on the defensive, including chemicals.

Another priority is critical raw materials, where China has agreed to continue issuing export licenses for rare earths. Beijing’s grip on their supply gives it considerable leverage over European manufacturers, underscoring the limits of Šefčovič’s negotiating position.

The Commission is also preparing two proposals for December: the diversification instrument, aimed at reducing dependence on Chinese supplies, and a mechanism to shield European industries and regions from retaliation.

The scale of the challenge is daunting. Chinese hybrid imports were worth €6.7 billion in the first half of 2026, against an EU-China trade deficit of €360 billion last year. The agreement offers some relief to European automakers but does little to address the underlying imbalance.

Brussels hopes the hybrid safeguard can serve as a blueprint for protecting other industries facing a surge in Chinese imports.

“We hear our industry. That includes the chemical industry, the wind industry, the furniture industry. We know where there’s a surge, and we know what hits the hardest in terms of our deindustrialization,” a senior Commission official said on Monday.

Šefčovič acknowledged the limits of dialogue in his August interview, warning that negotiations would become harder to sustain without tangible progress.

“What would be very important is to come back to say there is acknowledgment of the issue and there are already some pilot schemes which we want to test and to see if they are working,” he said.

“But if simply there will be no action, then of course it will be much more difficult for us just to talk about these issues.”

Jordyn Dahl in Brussels and Hans von der Burchard in Berlin contributed reporting. 

BRUSSELS — Privacy regulators want people wearing smart glasses in public to look and sound like a truck backing down a road.

Europe’s powerful data regulators have made stringent new recommendations on how smart glasses should alert people that the wearable devices are filming, including a combination of flashing lights, audio alerts and notifications sent to the phones of people nearby.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), made up of national privacy regulators across Europe, issued a statement about smart glasses on Tuesday, following a meeting in Brussels.

Privacy regulators are putting forward a united front on smart glasses, as privacy concerns about the wearable technology have multiplied since videos made with them have begun spreading online without the knowledge or consent of those being filmed.

The statement is not legally binding but will guide how privacy regulators in Europe assess whether smart glasses users and manufacturers are complying with EU privacy rules like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The regulators said smart glasses manufacturers should implement a combination of transparency measures to make other people aware that they are being recorded.

The measures may include lights or sounds when users are recording, requiring smart glasses users to activate them with an audible voice command, sending notifications to the smartphones of people nearby and other design “clues” to help people spot smart glasses.

The group of privacy regulators said that not only should users of smart glasses respect other people’s privacy but that the devices’ manufacturers and people providing connected apps or services may also be responsible for making sure they comply with privacy rules.

The GDPR applies to companies and organizations, and doesn’t apply when people process personal data in a household context. The regulators said this household exemption should be “narrowly interpreted” when it comes to smart glasses, and would not apply when someone shares photos or videos of others “to an indefinite number of persons on a public social media account.”

Tech firms like Meta have pitched their smart glasses to consumers on the basis that they are sleek and discreet. Meta has included an LED light in its smart glasses, which activates while recording, which it has said is a key privacy safeguard.

Samsung and Google have also recently announced that they’re collaborating on a new line of “intelligent eyewear” set to launch later this year, and Apple is reportedly aiming to hit the market with its own smart glasses by the end of 2027. 

The regulators’ statement could now force smart glasses manufacturers to reassess whether and how they sell smart glasses to European consumers. The EDPB called for industry-wide standards to be developed to make sure people are able to spot smart glasses and understand how they process data.

The European group of privacy regulators also commissioned a study into the social acceptability of smart glasses, published today.

LONDON — Britain’s spies will have a leading role in Britain’s preparation for AI threats, the head of MI5 announced on Tuesday, after warning the technology could enable terrorists to access bioweapons.

Ken McCallum, director general of the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency has established the AI Threat Assessment Centre to help determine how the government views potential threats.

Giving his annual threat update from MI5 headquarters in London, McCallum said: “Human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are, is capable of outthinking us.”

He stressed the “real” risks of AI, saying MI5 has caught terrorists seeking to use AI to “improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies,” in addition to the danger of AI-enabled drones.

Though it has not yet been “realized,” he said he attaches “the greatest weight” to AI’s potential to “change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons.”

He said “low-capability” terrorists may get a “capability” uplift if the safety guardrails in AI models don’t work as intended. 

He added that for a long time “many terrorists would dearly love” access to chemical, biological or radiological weapons, but that it has been hard for them to achieve.

“One risk is that AI could enable dangerous knowledge to get into the hands of people who […] didn’t have that knowledge.”

McCallum added that “sober attention” must be given to the risk that “AI could generate novel pathogens not previously seen.” He noted that the government is taking “additional steps” on bioweapons. 

One thing that “does trouble me”, McCallum said, is the pace at which the world is evolving. He noted that the “weird bits inside MI5” that focus on how Britain’s adversaries will act in five years from now are seeing those timelines shortening due to AI.

He said it is now his responsibility to “drag my organization forwards at a faster pace than human beings generally want to be dragged.”

Sifting threats from hype

The new threat assessment centre, known as AITAC, will bring together expertise from bodies including Britain’s AI Security Institute, National Crime Agency, and the National Cyber Security Centre to “separate the bluster from the realities” of AI’s threat to the British public.

This is the third center of its kind MI5 has set up, after creating similar units dedicated to analyzing terrorism and state threats.

Asked how the agency would work, McCallum said it would look at emerging trends and how the U.K. can best think about and prioritize the various manifestations of AI threats. 

Though the government, rather than AITAC, will decide the response to AI, McCallum said it was partly set up to avoid “competitive analysis, slightly conflicting and confusing messages that otherwise might exist, where you have different departments offering their own opinion” on the issue.

He said that it would enable everyone to have “a single version of the truth, a single understanding, a single lexicon, typography.”

McCallum also said MI5 will now give national resilience — such as protecting critical infrastructure, countering cognitive warfare, and addressing technology threats — “front-rank mission status” alongside its twin roles of countering state threats and terrorism.

He noted that MI5 is now devoting more resources to countering state threats than it was during the Cold War, noting an uptick in anti-immigration cases tipping into terrorist intent, while Iran has shifted its ambitions to hit harder targets such as military sites.

PARIS — French center-right presidential candidate Edouard Philippe accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen of trying to force a Frexit in disguise with her euroskeptic campaign promises.

“There is something in Marine Le Pen’s proposals that has the potential to blow Europe up, or let’s say to crack it open,” Philippe said at POLITICO’s Paris Competitiveness Summit on Tuesday.

The former prime minister — who is currently the best-placed centrist candidate to challenge the front-running Le Pen, according to recent polls — said Le Pen’s plan to unilaterally demand a drastic cut to France’s contribution to the EU budget was akin to “saying you want out of Europe” without openly advocating for leaving the bloc. Le Pen had previously called for a referendum in France on leaving the EU but dropped the proposal after her crushing defeat to Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election. Her party, the National Rally, now says it wants to change the EU from within.

Philippe, a fiscal conservative who has been pitching himself as the voice of reason in a campaign dominated by populist rivals, also slammed budget plans Le Pen unveiled last week as “grotesque,” accusing her of pitching “fantasy” savings.

Le Pen’s fiscal plans have faced serious scrutiny since being presented, with many observers saying they either lack key details or overestimate savings on major proposals like immigration. Progressive think tank Terra Nova wrote in a note out Tuesday that Le Pen’s budget presentation was “riddled with errors and contradictions” as well as “botched estimates.”

“She isn’t even able to estimate the cost of the pension reform she is proposing,” Philippe said.

Le Pen said in August that her plan to bring France’s legal retirement age back down to 62 for most workers would cost €9 billion a year, and last week she said she would lay out at a later stage how she intends to fund her flagship pledge. However, the Institut Montaigne, a fiscally conservative think tank, estimated the proposal would cost €34.7 billion a year.

Philippe is hoping to convince voters that his fiscally conservative agenda is the right path in a country burdened by a ballooning public debt and a budget deficit still above 5% of gross domestic product, in breach of EU rules.

Philippe said France needed to get its finances back on track to regain credibility on the European stage after a “loss of influence” over the past few years.

Though he currently leads a crowded field of centrist candidates, Philippe’s campaign has struggled in recent weeks to gain momentum — and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is now challenging the former PM for second place in the polls. France’s presidential election goes to a runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, and Le Pen’s strong poll numbers all but guarantee her a spot in the second round.

Tough on China

The former prime minister pitched a pragmatic European agenda with less regulatory burden, more focus on investment and a tougher approach to China.

Philippe had some harsh criticism for an already embattled flagship measure of the EU’s green deal, saying the 2035 combustion engine ban has been “disastrous.”

There was “a great naiveté toward China,” which ultimately benefited from Europe’s push on electric vehicles, Philippe said.

“We need to much better protect our market,” he added. “If one wants access to the European market, one has to manufacture in Europe. If a carmaker doesn’t manufacture here, then we have to slap high tariffs.”

The EU is in the process of drawing up new “Made in Europe” rules that would favor European producers over those outside the bloc, in response to trade practices by competitors like China and the United States.

Shortly before Philippe took the stage, European Commissioner for Industry Stéphane Séjourné said at the POLITICO event that a Franco-German deal trading stronger protections on the definition of Made in Europe in exchange for a loosening of combustion engine rules should be finalized “in the next few hours or in the next few days.”

On artificial intelligence, Philippe aligned himself with Macron, advocating for European sovereignty in the field and the need to regulate what he described as “an instrument of power.”

“What I see is an AI world making money for the U.S. with European savings and European data, and that bugs me,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday pitched using artificial intelligence to streamline administrative procedures for European businesses as part of a broader push to simplify commerce and boost the EU’s competitiveness.

Speaking at a behind-closed-doors meeting of the European People’s Party in Taormina, Sicily, on Oct. 12, von der Leyen said the Commission would introduce an “only once” approach to business reporting. This would let companies submit information once, with AI helping public administrations use the data.

Von der Leyen argued that European companies repeatedly have to report the same information to public authorities, wasting time that businesses — and Europe — cannot afford, according to a copy of her speech seen by POLITICO.

“And this is why we will introduce ‘Only Once’, to report data only once – and with the help of AI the administration will ensure efficient use,” she said.

The speech marks the first time von der Leyen has explicitly pitched using AI specifically to reduce businesses’ administrative workload.

The “only once” principle itself is not new. The Commission already included it in its EU Inc. proposal presented in March 2026, which aims to create a harmonized corporate framework allowing companies to establish and operate businesses more easily across the bloc.

Under the EU Inc. proposal, companies could submit information once through an EU-level digital interface, with relevant data automatically transmitted between authorities. However, the proposal does not specifically envisage using AI to carry out that process.

Von der Leyen did not provide details on how the AI-supported system would operate, whether it would apply to all businesses or when the Commission intends to introduce it.

In her speech, the Commission president also encouraged governments to get on board with simplification efforts by signing a pact not to add extra requirements when transposing EU-mandated legislation into national regulations.

The central principle, von der Leyen wrote in a letter to EU leaders sent Oct. 12, is that “a rule agreed at European level cannot become more complex when transposed or implemented nationally.”

Under the proposed pact, capitals would have to identify and justify additional national requirements that go beyond EU legislation, including assessing their impact on businesses and the single market.

Zoya Shefatlovich contributed to reporting

In the 1987 Nintendo game “Zelda II: The Adventure of Link,” there is a village you can visit and a home you can enter and a man in a purple shirt you can speak with. But the only thing he says is “I am Error.” I was unexpectedly delighted by this dialogue when I first encountered it on a Gamecube emulator in 2009 (I’m not that old). It felt both meta and existential, or just an amusing bug. It turned out that Error was actually the character’s name, a sort of in-joke slash translation mistake that has since become a meme akin to “Your princess is in another castle” or “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this” from the original “Legend of Zelda.”

Error is a non-player character (NPC), meaning one that the player can’t control but is usually more than just video game wallpaper. Nearly 40 years later, NPCs have come a long way, with increasingly complex behaviors and conversational dialogue that span far more than just three words. The upcoming game “Grand Theft Auto VI” is rumored to feature unprecedented complex NPCs with rich, fleshed-out personalities and backstories, while video game companies explore using artificial intelligence to let players train NPCs as they interact.

In many ways, NPCs are how many people were first introduced to AI, although in a relatively simplistic form compared to the chatbots and massive data center hogs that we have come to either love or loathe, with little room in between. Years ago, NPCs became an insult spun out of 4Chan, the anonymous online forum, to describe real people who don’t think for themselves and follow a set of cultural programming, usually illustrated by an expressionless gray cartoon avatar. The meme became popularized by chronically online cohorts of Donald Trump supporters during his first presidential term, adjacent to the idea of “Trump derangement syndrome,” both implying that people oppose the MAGA movement out of reflexive mindlessness and not, you know, because they’d looked under the hood and seen it for what it is.

It might just sound like a new way to call someone an idiot, but the NPC label has much deeper, scarier implications. On the surface, it seems like harmless video game humor, and I’m sure we’ve all had encounters with actual humans that resembled interacting with tautological machines programmed with limited responses. “There is weather today. Did you hear about celebrity? Sports.” And certainly social media, now overrun by bots, increasingly feels as if every conversation is between different viruses. These realities don’t map to every experience yet following the NPC slander to its logical conclusion can be dangerous: declaring that a person’s alleged lack of inner thinking is justification for dismissing their humanity. After all, they’re just mindless characters in a video game (and maybe reality is just The Matrix, so whatever), so it’s fine to ignore them, disenfranchise them or abandon them to a grim fate.

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Solipsism, the philosophical position that you can only experience your own consciousness, and therefore other people might not exist or have souls, is not a new idea. René Descartes believed animals were soulless, unthinking automatons, though modern neuroscience has repeatedly disproven that one. (On some level, “I am Error” echoes Descartes’ famous quip about thinking and therefore am-ing.) But now that complex AI has spilled from video games into the mainstream, it’s especially dangerous to see the NPC label has become embedded in mainstream politics, whether explicitly or not.

All this is rooted in Donald Trump’s recent campaign to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” via executive order, posting on social media Thursday that “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” The idea has quickly been embraced by tech leaders, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk saying this week that AI is “no more” and promising to change the name of his AI company, SpaceXAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX, to SpaceXSI. More recently, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos shared his approval in a Wednesday interview with Fox News. “I do like SI, because ‘artificial’ is not a very flattering thing. Like, nobody wants an artificial sweetener, artificial flavoring,” Bezos said. “Artificial sort of means fake.”

Yeah, most of us are going to roll our eyes hard at AI being “super,” but if these attempts at normalization gain ground and get pushed to their absurd conclusion, it might end in providing AI more rights than humans. (It’s worth noting Musk invokes the NPC meme often.) It’s right there in the name: “Super intelligence” is better than the old, human kind, so why shouldn’t we give these computer programs rights and defend them from regulation? That’s why stories about AI bots being put into virtual torture chambers aren’t just silly, but foregrounds the false notion that AI is capable of suffering. (Maybe don’t put bots in rooms like that anyway — at the very least, it’s a waste of energy.)

After all, AI will either become the savior of humanity or make humans obsolete, depending on what day of the week it is. Sure, this technology is nifty, even as it comes with an enormous environmental destruction. But we are still a long way from elevating the technology above regular human intelligence. But as in a two-for-one, if you can be sold on the myth that AI is superhuman, it travels along with the idea that regular humans are disposable. In other words, the tech bros are trying to turn us all into NPCs, into Errors, not least through the mass surveillance programs being used to hunt migrants and spy on protesters.

Yes, thankfully, granting above-human rights to supposedly sentient AI sentience is still a fringe idea, but we can see that changing before our eyes, not to mention we already kind of did that with corporations. Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told POLITICO that the “world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.” To further consolidate its power — or at least keep the economy from crashing — Silicon Valley wants us to believe their latest technological invention can think, reason and moralize. It’s no surprise that tech bros were recently exposed trying to convince none other than the pope that AI is conscious, but to his credit, Leo XIV has rejected this idea, saying “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity” and elsewhere warning against “losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines.’”

Spending time with large language models like ChatGPT and knowing a little about how they work, it becomes clear that it’s just a really good computer program that can mirror human expression, sometimes terribly and sometimes surprisingly well. There remains zero hard evidence that AI algorithms are sentient.

Yet an increasing number of people are convinced otherwise, as seen in the controversial AI psychosis phenomenon, which makes me wonder how so many people have persuaded themselves a souped-up version of “I am Error” is a conscious being. It can feel like human interaction typing back and forth with these things, but there are always gaps where you can sense the uncanny valley, where you know it’s just a lot of math and nothing more. Perhaps, if you want to be really cynical about it, you could boil down all of human nature and biology and the emergence of consciousness into “a lot of math” as well. But our brains aren’t computers and physics has yet to fully explain consciousness — that’s why they call it a hard problem. Instead of stewing in this mystery, tech bros have gotten the metaphor backward, assigning personhood to bots while denying it to living humans. Talk about soulless.

The post Billionaires love Trump’s AI rebrand appeared first on Salon.com.

European organizations have to reckon with how to keep up with the modern world without sacrificing sovereignty. Geopolitical instability, tightening regulatory expectations and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) mean that, for many organizations, sovereignty now sits alongside resilience and business continuity in board-level risk discussions. The question they can no longer defer is how to harness the opportunities of the modern cloud without surrendering control over their own data. Answering it requires honesty about what sovereignty means, and about where it can actually be found.

A definition Europe can trust

The European Commission’s forthcoming Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) is the right vehicle for that honesty: giving Europe a shared, enforceable definition of what “sovereign” actually means. Without such a definition, the market is filled with commercial offerings that claim the sovereignty label without delivering the substance, a practice described as “sovereignty washing.” This gap has led some organizations to treat open source as the answer. But open source software is a licensing model, not an operating model, and it doesn’t settle questions about infrastructure or jurisdiction or even reliability and access. It’s not a route out of dependency, it’s a different dependency on project sponsors and code maintainers. A definition gives policymakers a way to properly assess claims of sovereignty against a consistent standard rather than taking marketing at face value.

Europe should not wait for CADA to take effect before acting, though. European cloud service providers (CSPs) have been partnering with established technology providers to deliver real sovereign capability, without rebuilding the entire technology stack from scratch.

The best time to plant the sovereign tree was 10 years ago

If Europe wants to grow its industrial base, it has to support the ecosystem as it is now, not as it may in 10 years’ time. CADA’s own roadmap assumes roughly five to seven years to triple the EU’s data-center capacity. Providers who have already built capacity by blending EU capabilities with proven non-EU technologies would have to spend the intervening years relinquishing their growth. It is scale, not a shortage of skills or innovation, that is the biggest practical obstacle facing a stronger European cloud market. This is precisely why partnership with proven technology sources deserves a central place in the sovereignty debate rather than being treated as a second-best option.

Partnership shortens that timeline considerably, letting European CSPs deliver sovereign, scaled services now instead of waiting for domestic capacity to catch up organically. In Italy, IPZS, owned by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, is using this model to build a modern Digital Application Platform for the Italian EUDI wallet, a foundational EU digital identity initiative. It provides a live example of that model working in Europe today, at the scale and speed the policy window demands.

It is through scale that the local industrial base can deliver sovereign capabilities, compete, capture market share, and invest in developing and integrating home-grown technologies. Hoping for the alternative to happen, that is for a European technological stack to fully emerge and be adopted, is the equivalent of putting the cart before the horse.

The rules need to allow for a model that’s already working

Providers, such as evoila, are now operating well beyond Europe’s borders, alongside Uniserver. This shows the model working at a broader scale, combining local operational and jurisdictional control with proven technology. Sovereignty spans jurisdictional, technological, operational and supply-chain dimensions, and a partnership model can address all four while drawing on technology already proven at scale, rather than asking every layer to be rebuilt from first principles by a single European provider.

Alongside its cloud platform, developed in-house and operated from data centers in Europe under EU jurisdiction, IONOS also offers customers a dedicated VMware-based private cloud. It is also operated within the EU and designed to provide European data sovereignty and operational control.

Broadcom’s role in that model is deliberately narrow. It supplies the VMware cloud software layer to the CSP, while the CSP itself runs the infrastructure and holds the customer relationship, so that no European customer data passes through Broadcom or is subject to its access. Trust, in this model, follows the architecture rather than the brand. If CADA’s tiers implicitly assume that sovereignty can only be delivered by a fully European-built stack, CADA would shut out precisely the route that is already allowing Europe to scale fastest: partnership between local operators and proven technology providers.

The path forward

Europe does not have to choose between moving quickly and building sovereignty. The two are compatible, provided the legislation is calibrated to recognize it. As the European Parliament and European Council work on CADA, the priority should be for it to recognize and reward the partnership models already delivering sovereign capability across Europe today.

The above column is sponsor-generated content.

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BRUSSELS — The EU’s idea of getting social media influencers to cover leaders’ summits has not gone according to plan, as no content creators have been invited to this week’s European Council.

Earlier this year, POLITICO reported that the Council had suggested influencers be invited to EU leaders’ summits in Brussels as well as certain ministerial meetings in a bid to “reach new audiences to inform about Council activities.” The influencers were to be chosen and invited by the EU countries, rather than by the Council.

However, six EU diplomats told POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter that their countries hadn’t put forward any names for the European Council on Oct. 15 and 16.

Why? Seems they just haven’t got around to it. “Mainly logistical problems and budget constraints,” said one of the diplomats, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, as were others quoted in this piece. Another said they’d not had a chance to discuss it with their capital, but hadn’t ruled out the idea for future summits.

“There is no appetite for this,” said a third diplomat. “If my leader wants an influencer [they] would take one” with them, the diplomat said, adding that countries “don’t need the Council for that.”

Council spokesperson Romain Sadet confirmed that  “we won’t be having content creators at the upcoming European Council.”

When the plan was unveiled, a Council official said the influencers would be granted access to areas of the Council’s Brussels HQ that are currently open only to journalists accredited by the EU institutions — though they would be banned from asking ministers and leaders questions. 

“Content creators will be accompanied at all times and will not be treated as media,” the Council official continued. “We are working on the basis of about 10 content creators per event max, accompanied by Council staff.”

In June, the Council sent guidance for choosing influencers to national governments, seen by POLITICO.

It is up to member countries to decide which YouTubers and TikTokers should attend, but the Council’s guidance says they should not pick anyone who has “published views against EU values.”

The content creators should also not have any “significant or long-standing commercial collaborations” to avoid associations with large brands, the guidance continues.

It added that the influencers will not be paid as part of the scheme.

The idea has not gone down well with many journalists.

“Clicks, views and impressions are great on TikTok and Instagram. But the basic fact remains: influencers in press conferences and at summits will not have to disclose who pays them,” the International Press Association, which represents reporters covering European institutions, said in a statement at the time. “By contrast, EU-accredited journalists are not expected to accept payment in return for writing nice stories. It’s sort of called journalistic ethics.”

The Wisconsin gubernatorial race was one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries in the country this year, pitting a democratic socialist, state Rep. Francesca Hong, against Milwaukee Democrat David Crowley, who received the endorsement of the state’s sitting Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Hong lost the race, setting up Crowley to face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in the general election this fall. But she’s already back on the campaign trail, this time trying to help Democrats win a trifecta in the state: the governor’s race and both legislative chambers.

Unifying the state’s voters to achieve that won’t be easy, though. Hong spoke with America, Actually host Astead Herndon about her own loss, Evers’s role in it, and whether or not the voters who felt so passionate about her own campaign would find enough to love in Crowley’s campaign — in particular on the increasingly important issue of data centers. 

Astead and Hong also talked about what Wisconsin means for the Democrats nationally, and what lessons the party should take from her race, including her loss.

“I said this, and I will continue to say it — the person who is most electable is the person who ended up getting the most votes, and that was Crowley this time around,” Hong said. “But I think there’s a disservice when you have the most powerful Democrat in the state choosing to ignore a lot of voters and people who were inspired and energized and coming out to participate in politics for the first time through our campaign. I think it was shortsighted to use electability almost as a fear tactic.”

Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Hong, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

Part of the reason we wanted to come here was because we saw you were getting back on the campaign trail, and specifically around that idea of energizing Wisconsin toward a trifecta.

Now, just tell me the difference in terms of the importance of Democrats winning it all — not only the governor’s mansion, but both houses of the state legislature — versus just the governor’s mansion. How does that change the possibilities of what the party could do?

For the last 16 years, a Republican majority in the state legislature has meant that passing the types of policies that we know can drastically improve the lives of everyday folks here in Wisconsin stalled. And we have a historic opportunity to flip the assembly and the state Senate and hold the governor’s mansion and the entire executive branch to a Democratic majority, meaning the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports — things like increasing minimum wage, things like legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion. 

We also need to repeal Act 10 [which dramatically restricted collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees]. Wisconsin is where workers’ rights, things like unemployment insurance, Social Security were born, and we moved backwards with the Republican majority. That’s all on the table with the Democratic trifecta.

It also, though, raises the political standard of what Democrats would have to do to achieve that, and some of it goes through these more rural communities.

Why do we think the party has fallen behind in more rural communities, and what could be done to reverse that?

I think it’s important to look at what’s happened in the rural communities when we’ve seen manufacturing jobs leave the state, when we’ve seen fewer and fewer supports for our small farmers.

And so much of this — what connects it — is actually the growth of massive wealth and corporate control and corporate greed, and more people feeling the impacts of that. There’s an opportunity right now to say, ‘Hey, Republicans have been in the legislature, they’ve been in power, and things have not improved for you or your community … Now’s the opportunity to make sure that we’re actually able to see our shared Wisconsin values of working hard and taking care of our kids be reflected back in Madison through laws.’

So much of your campaign was focused on data centers, stopping data centers. Should I think of that as a rural issue?

I think the issue around data centers is an everyone issue. It’s a democracy issue. It’s people wanting to feel like there are folks who care about what happens to communities, and that they have control and an actual say in what happens in their communities.

To that point, is it a mistake for David Crowley, the Democratic nominee, to have not gone as far as you did and say, “We won’t be building more data centers for a period of time”?

He’s fighting for communities and community control when it comes to data centers.

But it’s not a moratorium.

But it’s not a moratorium. It isn’t, but he’s also committed to 100 percent renewable energy, clean energy to power data centers.

And achieving that is going to be incredibly difficult, and it is going to be the developers having to pay their own way, and these are things that he’s committed to that we know can slow down the growth and development of data centers. 

Have you had time to reflect on your primary loss? If you had to diagnose, why do you think you lost?

I’m still doing a lot of reflection. But I think that I want to continue to look forward. And what I’ve learned from our election is that it’s so important to continue to stay grounded in becoming accessible to people. I think that as an organizer and an elected official, it’s my responsibility to continue to go to the people and remain very in touch with what’s going on on the ground.

I have a couple more questions about the nature of the loss. Evers’s endorsement changed that race, so much so that your opponent David Crowley was able even to win in some smaller communities, like places where you were pitching yourself as the voice of more rural communities.

Does that disprove any of this thesis around, say, data centers? If that was the top priority for Wisconsin voters, wouldn’t you be the nominee?

I think it wasn’t all rural communities. It wasn’t all suburban communities. We saw certain demographics but also ZIP codes where we outperformed David significantly.

And I think that where the governor’s endorsement played a bigger role was areas where he was also more popular. 

Did it surprise you when Evers endorsed Crowley?

I was disappointed.

Why?

I was disappointed because I was getting a lot of feedback from folks who hadn’t committed to any candidate yet that this felt like the governor was putting his thumb on the scale.

I wanted to ask about electability, because it seemed as if Evers’s endorsement was about a fear that maybe you couldn’t win in November.

So much of the primary concern was around the DSA label, even campaigning with folks like Hasan Piker. In retrospect, was any of that a mistake?

We knew going in that we would have to encourage new voters to come out, folks who typically do not come out for primaries, quote-unquote low-propensity voters. And we knew that we would have to campaign in places where folks weren’t expecting to see a gubernatorial candidate. And those included Twitch streams.

Those also included going to dive bars and bowling alleys and making sure that we were accessible and shaping our policies based on what the people were telling us they wanted to see happen and also what they wanted to see out of their governor. I think electability… I said this, and I will continue to say it — the person who is most electable is the person who ended up getting the most votes, and that was Crowley this time around.

But I think there’s a disservice when you have the most powerful Democrat in the state choosing to ignore a lot of voters and people who were inspired and energized and coming out to participate in politics for the first time through our campaign.

I think it was shortsighted to use electability almost as a fear tactic, when Democrats need to be inspiring and project a vision where everyone can see themselves in it as everyday working-class folks.

When you’ve got a party that has struggled with elitism to then cave to an establishment narrative … being more afraid of labels when I’m hearing from people on the ground that they’re interested in solutions and solving problems, maybe somebody who knows the hustle of the service industry and running restaurants and has worked across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation. There are ways that we can maneuver around labels and what the loudest narrative might be.

I wish our governor hadn’t fed into that.

To be fair, to your point, the establishment label doesn’t fully fit even someone like Crowley, who comes from a working-class background. But am I hearing that you think Evers’s move made your life in the general election more difficult?

Is it harder to re-inspire if young people who are invested in the Hong campaign think that the establishment squashed them out?

We still had over 300,000 votes. We lost by fewer than 4,000 votes. I had more votes than Evers did during his primary. That’s not squashing our voices.

We’re still here, and it’s so important that people find avenues to continue to exercise their voice and their new organizing power. And I’m definitely going to continue to work to make sure that we get results and that we win the trifecta, and that’s the most important thing we should be focusing on right now.

I hear why a trifecta matters in the state context, particularly the state policy.

If I’m someone, though, who’s not in Wisconsin, who’s just worried about Donald Trump running amok in Washington, why should I care if Democrats win the governor’s mansion and the state legislature? Does that matter for folks outside of the state?

Because we will start to see that when you feel government actually working and you see change happening in your lives, these are then voters who are going to continue to come out and vote for Democrats.

We’re a pivotal state when it comes to the federal elections as well. We’re actually in a swing district right now. 

We have an opportunity, through Wisconsin, to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. And if we do that here, this trickles out to the rest of the country.

The premise being that delivering creates a connection for Democrats that is helpful in the presidential election, and it’s helpful in all these other ways too.

Yeah. We’re not going to be fighting every single midterm and presidential for our lives based on what’s happening in just one state.

But I think if we can start showing durable power for Democrats in a state like ours because of the policies that we’re prioritizing, and you have more folks coming out to vote for Democrats, that’s good for the health of democracy.

The government of Turkey on Saturday formally banned access to social media platform for children under the age of 15.

The law was published today following the Turkish Parliament’s adoption of the bill last April. The ban will come into force on Nov. 1.

Social media platforms will have to “take the necessary technical and administrative measures, including age verification,” to implement the new rules, the law states. The age verification system would work with a government-issued “token”, according to the law’s Article 7.

The law also includes provisions for minors over 15, stating that platforms cannot offer them services that could have “an addictive effect.”

Turkey has often implemented tough restrictions on social media services, frequently banning individual accounts from media outlets or activists, and at times banning access to entire platforms. Ankara banned Instagram for a week in 2024 amid claims the Meta-owned platform censored users mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Last week Turkey blocked a news website and its social media accounts over what a court deemed to be “LGBT propaganda,” sparking outrage from human rights and media freedom groups.

A 2025 report from the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House described Turkey’s internet as “not free.”

Turkey joins a growing group of states, including Australia and Indonesia, that are introducing or exploring tougher age restrictions on social media access.

In September the European Union presented a legal proposal to restrict children’s access to social media and video-sharing platforms until they turn 15, following months of intense pressure from EU leaders on the issue.

Austria, Denmark, France, Greece and Spain are all pushing ahead with national laws to restrict kids’ access to social media. The United Kingdom is also expected to introduce a ban next year.

Canada has also presented a bill to restrict access to social media platforms for children under 16.

One of the few things AI and vibe coding have done that I find genuinely hysterical is quickly rendering meaningless, paywalled, highly restrictive software. You know, like, Adobe Creative Suite, a useful set of tools artists of all kinds rely on for both work and play. It’s also a set of software from a company notorious for nickel-and-diming people to death and locking them into a predatory subscription service for something that used to be a traditional one-time payment.

Thanks to some vibe-coded AI wizardry, someone created a clone of Adobe Creative Suite and has made it totally open source. And yes, it works. Well, sort of.

According to Ars Technica, developer Brandon Thomas used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 and Rust to reverse-engineer Adobe’s core software suite into an open-source clone called ArtCraft. Instead of paying an obnoxious monthly subscription fee for Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and Lightroom, artists can now use free clones called PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, FilmCraft, and LightCraft.

Someone Used AI to Clone Adobe’s Creative Apps. Here’s Everything We Know.

Thomas, who admits he launched the project after feeling the sting of Adobe’s predatory cancellation fees one too many times, claims he “one-shotted Photoshop.” As you can imagine from a vibe-coded, hastily thrown-together piece of legally dubious software, it’s incredibly glitchy, since it’s still in early alpha.

According to those who’ve tried the programs, the tools actually feel like their Adobe counterparts. Adobe’s legal team is probably performing some stretches and warm-up exercises as it gears up to sue the ever-loving s—t out of anyone who so much as glances at the cloned software.

But for now, at least, it is pretty fun to see someone taking a technology built on and powered by theft and pointing the barrel of AI’s gun in the direction of the predatory corporate overlords instead of at us.

The post Everything We Know About the Free Adobe Clones Built With AI. Do They Actually Work? appeared first on VICE.

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