Free Republic

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

Donald Trump has revealed that Xi Jinping offered to help the US break Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. 'President Xi would like to see a deal made,' Trump told Fox News. 'He said, 'If I can be of any help at all, I would like to be of help.' Anybody that buys that much oil has obviously got some kind of relationship, but he'd like to see the Hormuz Strait open.' Trump did not say what Xi would want in return for China's assistance, but there have been reports that Beijing is seeking tariff relief and access to...

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Oct. 15 that the agency is cracking down on espionage by foreign adversaries, with an increase in arrests as high as 50 percent. “We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran,” he said at a press conference. “In China alone, we’ve had over a 50 percent increase in espionage arrests alone, and prosecutions,” Patel said. “In Iran, we have had a 50 percent increase, again, in espionage cases. And in Russia, we had a 33 percent increase in espionage cases alone.” State Department employee Ashley Tellis, arrested...

A wave of right-wing social media accounts launched near-identical attacks against a little-known Republican-backed bill aimed at restricting the export of advanced AI chips to adversaries, raising questions about whether the effort was coordinated to derail legislation publicly opposed by Nvidia. The AI OVERWATCH Act was introduced on Dec. 18, but seemingly out of nowhere on Thursday, a group of influencers and X accounts — including Laura Loomer, Ryan Fournier, Wall Street Mav and Defiant L’s — launched a barrage of attacks against the bill, ModelRepublic first reported. The timing, language and even shared errors across the posts prompted some...

Most people don’t know that Tesla has had an advanced AI chip and board engineering team for many years. That team has already designed and deployed several million AI chips in our cars and data centers. These chips are what enable Tesla to be the leader in real-world AI. The current version in cars is AI4, we are close to taping out AI5 and are starting work on AI6. Our goal is to bring a new AI chip design to volume production every 12 months. We expect to build chips at higher volumes ultimately than all other AI chips combined....

Psst, wanna buy some innovation?An estimated $1 billion worth of smuggled high-end Nvidia AI processors have reportedly found their way onto the Chinese black market, despite the US government's strict restrictions on exports of the tech. The eyebrow-raising figure, which Nvidia has neither confirmed nor refuted, was revealed by the Financial Times, which claims to have based its reporting on a combination of interviews and analyses of company filings and sales contracts. If accurate, the report sheds light on the limitations of the US trade policy's ability to control the movement of much sought-after AI technology around the world. The...

An "active shooter" situation in Lewiston, Maine...Fox News reporting at least 22 dead and dozens wounded at three locations... The US House led by newly elected speaker Mike Johnson approving a resolution in support of Israel... An Iranian backed militia group says that a US base in northeastern Syria was attacked by rockets... Russian Aerospace Forces striking two jihadist positions in Syria... The Russian military in Syria also saying that US-led coalition warplanes and drones violated Syrian airspace 15 times today... Democrat Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York facing a misdemeanor criminal charge for pulling a fire alarm at the...