OUR PICKSThe AI Renaissance Cannot Escape Its Power Needs | Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer | Calif. Looming Water Scarcity, and more

Published 14 January 2025

·  Far-Right Extremists Are LARPing as Emergency Workers in Los Angeles

·  US Special Counsel Report Says Prosecutors Had Enough Evidence to Convict Trump in 2020 Election Case

·  Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer

·  New US Rule Aims to Block China’s Access to AI Chips and Models by Restricting the World

·  The AI Renaissance Cannot Escape Its Power Needs

·  An Even Bigger Threat Is Looming Behind California’s Fires

Far-Right Extremists Are LARPing as Emergency Workers in Los Angeles  (David Gilbert, Wired)
White supremacists and MAGA livestreamers are using the wildfires to solicit donations, juice social media engagement, and recruit new followers.

US Special Counsel Report Says Prosecutors Had Enough Evidence to Convict Trump in 2020 Election Case  (VOA News)
In a report to Congress released early Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith said his office had sufficient evidence to “obtain and sustain” a trial conviction of President-elect Donald Trump for efforts to overturn Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Smith said Trump “resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power” after it became clear that he had lost and that legal ways to challenge the results had failed.
“This included attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President, Michael R. Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6 , 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters,” Smith said in his report.

Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer  (Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic)
At today’s confirmation hearing, the defense-secretary nominee looked like a man who understood that the fix was in.
Pete Hegseth, President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, was initially considered one of his most endangered nominees. But after the MAGA movement organized a campaign to threaten Republicans who expressed reservations about Hegseth’s fitness, criticism dried up quickly. “We gave the Senate an attitude adjustment,” Mike Davis, a Republican operative known for his florid threats to lock up Trump’s political targets, told Politico.
That attitude adjustment was on vivid display in Hegseth’s confirmation hearing today before the Armed Services Committee. During the proceedings, the Republican majority displayed no willingness to block or even seriously vet a nominee who resides far outside the former boundaries of acceptability for a position of immense power.

New US Rule Aims to Block China’s Access to AI Chips and Models by Restricting the World  (Will Knight, Wired)
The US government has announced a radical plan to control exports of cutting-edge AI technology to most nations.

The AI Renaissance Cannot Escape Its Power Needs  (John R. Mills and Dave Walsh, National Interest)
An Even Bigger Threat Is Looming Behind California’s Fires  (Umair Irfan, Vox)
The Los Angeles fires cast California’s water scarcity into stark view. It’s going to get worse.