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Leading AI companies commit to outside testing of AI systems and other safety commitments | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Microsoft, Google and other leading artificial intelligence companies committed Friday to put new AI systems through outside testing before they are publicly released and to clearly label AI-generated content, the White House announced.

The pledges are part of a series of voluntary commitments agreed to by the White House and seven leading AI companies – which also include Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic and Inflection – aimed at making AI systems and products safer and more trustworthy while Congress and the White House develop more comprehensive regulations to govern the rapidly growing industry. President Joe Biden met with top executives from all seven companies at the White House on Friday.

In a speech Friday, Biden called the companies commitments “real and concrete,” adding they will help fulfill their “fundamental obligations to Americans to develop safe, secure and trustworthy technologies that benefit society and uphold our values and our shared values.”

“We’ll see more technology change in the next 10 years, or even in the next few years, than we’ve seen in the last 50 years. That has been an astounding revelation,” Biden said.

White House officials acknowledge that some of the companies have already enacted some of the commitments but argue they will as a whole raise “the standards for safety, security and trust of AI” and will serve as a “bridge to regulation.”

“It’s a first step, it’s a bridge to where we need to go,” White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, who has been managing the AI policy process, said in an interview. “It will help industry and government develop the capacities to make sure that AI is safe and secure. And we pushed to move so quickly because this technology is moving farther and faster than anything we’ve seen before.”

While most of the companies already conduct internal “red-teaming” exercises, the commitments will mark the first time they have all committed to allow outside experts to test their systems before they are released to the public. A red team exercise is designed to simulate what could go wrong with a given technology – such as a cyberattack or its potential to be used by malicious actors – and allows companies to proactively identify shortcomings and prevent negative outcomes.

Reed said the external red-teaming “will help pave the way for government oversight and regulation,” potentially laying the groundwork for that outside testing to be carried out by a government regulator or licenser.

The commitments could also lead to widespread watermarking of AI-generated audio and visual content with the aim of combating fraud and misinformation.

The companies also committed to investing in cybersecurity and “insider threat safeguards,” in particular to protect AI model weights, which are essentially the knowledge base upon which AI systems rely; creating a robust mechanism for third parties to report system vulnerabilities; prioritizing research on the societal risks of AI; and developing and deploying AI systems “to help address society’s greatest challenges,” according to the White House.

Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday about worries he has when it comes to AI, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith pointed to “what people, bad actors, individuals or countries will do” with the technology.

“That they’ll use it to undermine our elections, that they will use it to seek to break in to our computer networks. You know, that they’ll use it in ways that will undermine the security of our jobs,” he said.

But, Smith argued, “the best way to solve these problems is to focus on them, to understand them, to bring people together, and to solve them. And the interesting thing about AI, in my opinion, is that when we do that, and we are determined to do that, we can use AI to defend against these problems far more effectively than we can today.”

Pressed by Tapper about AI and compensation concerns listed in a recent letter signed by thousands of authors, Smith said: “I don’t want it to undermine anybody’s ability to make a living by creating, by writing. That is the balance that we should all want to strike.”

All of the commitments are voluntary and White House officials acknowledged that there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure the companies stick to the commitments, some of which also lack specificity.

Common Sense Media, a child internet-safety organization, commended the White House for taking steps to establish AI guardrails, but warned that “history would indicate that many tech companies do not actually walk the walk on a voluntary pledge to act responsibly and support strong regulations.”

“If we’ve learned anything from the last decade and the complete mismanagement of social media governance, it’s that many companies offer a lot of lip service,” Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer said in a statement. “And then they prioritize their profits to such an extent that they will not hold themselves accountable for how their products impact the American people, particularly children and families.”

The federal government’s failure to regulate social media companies at their inception – and the resistance from those companies – has loomed large for White House officials as they have begun crafting potential AI regulations and executive actions in recent months.

“The main thing we stressed throughout the discussions with the companies was that we should make this as robust as possible,” Reed said. “The tech industry made a mistake in warding off any kind of oversight, legislation and regulation a decade ago and I think that AI is progressing even more rapidly than that and it’s important for this bridge to regulation to be a sturdy one.”

The commitments were crafted during a monthslong back-and-forth between the AI companies and the White House that began in May when a group of AI executives came to the White House to meet with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and White House officials. The White House also sought input from non-industry AI safety and ethics experts.

White House officials are working to move beyond voluntary commitments, readying a series of executive actions, the first of which is expected to be unveiled later this summer. Officials are also working closely with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to develop more comprehensive legislation to regulate AI.

“This is a serious responsibility. We have to get it right. There’s an enormous, enormous potential upside as well,” Biden said.

In the meantime, White House officials say the companies will “immediately” begin implementing the voluntary commitments and hope other companies sign on in the future.

“We expect that other companies will see how they also have an obligation to live up to the standards of safety, security and trust. And they may choose – and we would welcome them choosing – joining these commitments,” a White House official said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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April 12, 2021
Blinken says US is ‘working to put some stability’ into relationship with China | CNN Politics

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CNN
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that the US is attempting to strengthen “lines of communication” with China to avoid conflict between the two superpowers.

“We are working to put some stability into the relationship, to put a floor under the relationship, to make sure that the competition that we’re in doesn’t veer into conflict,” Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday. A conflict, the secretary added, “would not be in our interest, their interest, or anyone else’s.”

Blinken, who was speaking on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, made a highly anticipated trip to China last month, becoming the first secretary of state to travel to the country in five years and the most senior US official to make such a mission since President Joe Biden took office in 2021. His visit was followed by similar trips by other high-level Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US climate envoy John Kerry.

“We weren’t doing a lot of talking before. Now we are. We have different groups that are engaged, or about to engage, on discrete issues … that are problems … in the relationship where I believe we can, I think, get to a resolution,” Blinken said. “Now these are early days. The proof will be in the results.”

After days of talks with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, Blinken touted that “progress” had been made toward steering relations back on track.

The two global powers have been increasingly at loggerheads over a host of issues ranging from Beijing’s close ties with Moscow to American efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.

Earlier this year, a Chinese surveillance balloon that was detected floating across the US and hovering over sensitive military sites before ultimately being shot down by an American fighter plane sent relations plunging to a new low and resulted in Blinken scrapping an earlier Beijing visit.

“I was very clear with my Chinese counterparts,” Blinken told Zakaria, referring to his trip last month. “We will continue to do and say things that China will not like just as they’re going to continue to do and say things we won’t like.”

“The test for us is whether we can manage our way through that, to make sure that we sustain these lines of communication, that we continue to talk, and that we work on, as I said, both dealing with the differences and seeing if we can cooperate,” the secretary said.

CNN previously reported that one of the key issues that did not get resolved during Blinken’s trip was the restoration of military-to-military communications between US and China. Contacts between the countries’ top military officials remain frozen, and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu continues to be under US sanction dating back to 2018 over the purchase of Russian weapons by China’s Equipment Development Department, which Li was in charge of at the time.

Asked by Zakaria whether the US should lift the penalty to alleviate tensions, Blinken said, “Those sanctions don’t prevent the minister from engaging or us engaging with him,” adding that “it is a political decision, in effect, for China to decide whether or not he should be engaging.”

China rejected a meeting between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Shangfu during a security forum in Singapore earlier this year, although the two did speak briefly.

“We’ve made very clear that we think it’s a responsibility to have these military-to-military contacts, to have this dialogue, especially to avoid any miscalculations, any misperceptions of what we’re each doing,” Blinken said. “So, we’ll see where China comes out on this.”

On the Ukraine front, Blinken told Zakaria that Russia has “already lost” the war “in terms of what Russia sought to achieve and what (Vladimir) Putin sought to achieve.”

“The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago,” the secretary said.

Blinken acknowledged that Ukraine’s mission to regain territory captured by Moscow would be “a very hard fight.” He predicted that the counteroffensive against Russia would continue for “several months.”

However, he said, along with the aid, military equipment and training Ukraine is receiving from various countries, Kyiv’s cause represents “the decisive element.”

“Unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom,” Blinken said.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that Blinken’s prediction about a conflict continuing for “several months” was a reference to the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

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April 12, 2021
Iran helping Russia build drone stockpile that is expected to be ‘orders of magnitude larger’ than previous arsenal, US says | CNN Politics

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CNN
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US intelligence officials have warned that Russia is building a drone-manufacturing facility in country with Iran’s help that could have a significant impact on the war in Ukraine once it is completed.

Analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency told a small group of reporters during a briefing on Friday that the drone-manufacturing facility now under construction is expected to provide Russia with a new drone stockpile that is “orders of magnitude larger” than what it has been able to procure from Iran to date.

When the facility is completed, likely by early next year, the new drones could have a significant impact on the conflict, the analysts warned. In April, the US released a satellite image of the planned location of the purported drone manufacturing plant, inside Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone about 600 miles east of Moscow. The analysts said Iran has regularly been ferrying equipment to Russia to help with the facility’s construction.

They added that to date, it is believed that Iran has provided Russia with over 400 Shahed 131, 136 and Mohajer drones – a stockpile that Russia has almost completely depleted, they said.

Russia is primarily using the drones to attack critical Ukrainian infrastructure and stretch Ukraine’s air defenses, a senior DIA official said. Iran has been using the Caspian Sea to move drones, bullets and mortar shells to Russia, often using vessels that are “dark,” or have turned off their tracking data to disguise their movements, CNN has reported.

The US obtained and analyzed several of the drones downed in Ukraine, and officials say there is “undeniable evidence” that the drones are Iranian, despite repeated denials from Tehran that it is providing the equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine.

The DIA analysts showcased debris from drones recovered in Ukraine in 2022 during the briefing on Friday, comparing them side-by-side with Iranian-made drones found in Iraq last year.

One of the drones recovered in Ukraine had only its wings and engine partially intact. But judging by its shape and size, it appeared to be a Shahed-131, the same model as an Iranian-made drone found in Iraq. The analysts removed components from one and easily slid them onto the other, showing that they are virtually “indistinguishable” in their design.

Other drone components found downed in Ukraine were nearly identical to Iranian-made components found in Iraq, the only apparent difference being that the components found in Ukraine featured cyrillic lettering. A phrase written on one component roughly translated to “for grandfather” in Russian, a reference to Russia’s fight against the Nazis in World War II.

The analysts said they were allowing journalists to see the drones in person because they want to give policy makers and the public “undeniable evidence” that Iranian-made drones are being used by Russia in Ukraine.

The US also wants to raise awareness so that western companies begin to better monitor their supply chains for signs that their components are being illegally diverted to help manufacture the drones. The  Biden administration launched an expansive task force last year to investigate how US and western components, including American-made microelectronics, were ending up in the Iranian-made drones being used in Russia.

Tehran, for its part, has flatly denied providing the drones for Russia during the war.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in October. In November, Amir-Abdollahian acknowledged that Iran had supplied drones to Russia, but said they had been delivered to Russia months before the war began.

A senior DIA official said on Friday that analysts first saw signs of a growing Russian-Iranian military partnership in April 2022. The White House revealed in July 2022 that Iran was preparing to provide Russia with the drones.

The DIA also showcased an Iranian-made Shahed-101 drone recovered in Iraq, which is smaller and lighter than the Shahed-131 and has not previously been shown to the public, the analysts said. There is a possibility that Iran could begin providing the Shahed-101 to Russia, particularly because they are more compact and easier to ship, they added.

The US had intelligence late last year that Iran was considering providing ballistic missiles to Iran, but that plan appears to have been “put on hold” for now, one of the analysts said.

Iran benefits from providing Russia with military equipment because it can showcase its weapons to international buyers and gets money and support from Russia for its space and missile programs in return, the analysts said. But providing ballistic missiles would represent a “monumental” escalation in Iranian support for Russia’s war, the analysts said, and it is not clear that Tehran is willing to take that risk at this point in the conflict.

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April 12, 2021
Same old story with aging politicians | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Whenever a lawmaker who is advancing in years appears infirm or confused in public, or takes some time to convalesce, there are questions about their fitness for office.

This week, it’s Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, who froze and appeared confused during a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday. After recovering off camera, McConnell returned to take questions and later left smiling, telling reporters that he was doing just fine and had just been “sandbagged” when he was unable to speak.

Earlier this year, McConnell could not hear reporters at a different news conference. Plus, McConnell is known to have fallen at least three times in the past year, according to CNN’s Manu Raju.

He slipped on ice before a meeting in Finland.

He fell getting off a plane at Reagan National Airport in Washington.

His fall at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington led to a concussion and broken ribs that sidelined him for weeks.

A fall several years ago at home in Kentucky caused a shoulder fracture.

Writes Raju of the way McConnell walks on Capitol Hill:

McConnell, 81, was a survivor of polio as a child and has long walked with a slight limp. He walks on stairs one at a time, and at times rests his hand on an aide to assist him through the Capitol.

It’s notable that fellow Republicans are not concerned about McConnell’s ability to continue to do his job. At least not openly.

Democrats have increasingly turned on Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who at 90 is a shadow of the imposing figure she once cut on Capitol Hill. A long absence while she recovered from shingles gummed up their ability to move judicial nominees and some legislation and led some of her California colleagues to call for her to step down.

At a hearing Thursday, she had to be prodded, repeatedly, by fellow Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, to vote “aye” on a procedural vote.

Difficulties communicating are not exclusively the milieu of older lawmakers. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania won his seat despite suffering a stroke during last year’s campaign. He sought hospital care for depression this year. He now conducts interviews with the help of an iPad that transcribes questions in real time.

There’s an awkward gray area between legitimate questions about a person’s health and ageism.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got some early attention for her presidential campaign when she suggested a mental competency test for politicians over 75.

It was ageist, constitutionally dubious and savvy politics all at the same time.

Democrats are perpetually on defense about President Joe Biden’s age and acuity. Republicans have turned attacks against Biden, 80, into an art form, with viral videos to highlight his frequent verbal miscues.

Haley’s proposal highlighted that these attacks on Biden occur without a whiff of irony that Republicans’ own current presidential primary frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is 77.

That neither Haley nor any of the other much younger Republicans challenging Trump in the 2024 primary field have so far caught fire is an indication that voters, who often skew older than the general population, don’t seem to care. They like a young and exciting candidate like, say, Barack Obama. They also like an older candidate, like, say, Ronald Reagan or Biden.

The most powerful force in American politics isn’t age or ideas, but rather incumbency.

As CNN’s Harry Enten wrote, the most shocking result out of the 2022 midterms was not that Democrats held the Senate or that Republicans only narrowly captured the House. It was that every single Senate incumbent who ran won. Only one incumbent governor running for reelection lost.

I tried and failed to find a comprehensive look at whether younger or older candidates generally win congressional elections. But CNN recently published an interesting look at which generations are serving as lawmakers.

Millennials are America’s largest generation by population, but they’re one of the smallest groups that make up Congress. That suggests baby boomers, despite reaching retirement age, are holding onto their seats.

McConnell’s age of 81 might seem old to the average American, but it’s far from out of the ordinary on Capitol Hill, where the average age for a sitting senator, 64, is eligible for Social Security.

McConnell has been a senator since 1985, which makes him the 12th longest-serving senator ever. He hasn’t said if he will run for reelection in 2026 or if he will continue to be the GOP leader when the next Congress begins in 2025. The only other longer-serving senator is Sen. Charles Grassley, who is 89, and who won an eighth term last November.

Biden had more than 36 years logged as a senator when he left to become vice president in 2009. If he had stayed in the Senate, he’d now have a full half-century tenure and be about a year away from eclipsing West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd’s Senate record of 51 years, five months and 26 days.

Byrd died while in office in 2010, and for the final years of his time as senator, he was frequently absent or had to use double canes or a wheelchair.

American life expectancy, despite advances in medical care, was 77.4 in 2020. It has declined in recent years, and not just because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Researchers point to poor average diet, lack of universal health care and access to guns as factors that keep the Americans from living longer when compared with other countries.

But the dwindling financial security of retirement programs like Social Security and Medicare means that future generations will likely have to work longer. Their lawmakers will be right there with them.

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April 12, 2021
Bidens publicly acknowledge their seventh grandchild for the first time | CNN Politics

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CNN
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President Joe Biden on Friday publicly acknowledged a daughter of his son Hunter for the first time, breaking a long-held silence on the matter by describing the situation as a “family matter.”

“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement that was first reported by People.

The statement went on to read: “This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter.”

“Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy,” read the statement.

The statement amounts to the Bidens’ first acknowledgment of their seventh grandchild.

The president spoke to his son and family about the overall situation with his grandchild, Navy, and wants what’s best for her, including possibly meeting her at some point, according to a source familiar.

The matter has grown politically sensitive in recent months as Hunter Biden’s legal predicament entered the spotlight.

Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman, gave birth to a girl and claimed Hunter Biden was the father in 2019. He denied paternity, but after a DNA test confirmed that he was the father, he eventually agreed in 2020 to pay $20,000 a month in child support.

Hunter Biden sought to reduce the monthly payments, and last month settled a child support case. As part of the deal, Hunter Biden will give some of his paintings to his daughter, who can either keep some of her choosing or keep the money from any sales of those paintings.

Roberts is also dropping her bid to change the girl’s last name to “Biden,” according to the court filing.

In court filings in April, Roberts said Hunter Biden “has never seen or contacted” his 4-year-old daughter and that President Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden “remain estranged” from their grandchild.

A source familiar with the situation pointed to the contentious legal proceedings for reasoning as to why the Bidens are now acknowledging their seventh grandchild.

“You have to remember there were some fairly contentious legal proceedings between Navy’s parents happening until just a few weeks ago. As grandparents, the Bidens are following Hunter’s lead. They are – and have been – giving Hunter and Lunden the space and time to figure things out,” the source said.

Now that much of the legal matter has been sorted, “Navy’s parents are working on a way forward that’s best for her,” the source said.

“Thousands of families have faced similar circumstances, working it out in private, versus the spotlight. At the center is a 4-year-old girl and everyone wants what is best for her, including all of her grandparents,” said the source familiar.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
The chance of Trump winning another term is very real | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Donald Trump is facing two indictments, with the potential for more. Political wisdom may have once suggested the former president’s bid for a second White House term would be nothing but a pipe dream. But most of us know better by now.

Trump is not only in a historically strong position for a nonincumbent to win the Republican nomination, but he is in a better position to win the general election than at any point during the 2020 cycle and almost at any point during the 2016 cycle.

No one in Trump’s current polling position in the modern era has lost an open presidential primary that didn’t feature an incumbent. He’s pulling in more than 50% of support in the national primary polls, i.e., more than all his competitors combined.

Three prior candidates in open primaries were pulling in more than half the vote in primary surveys in the second half of the calendar year before the election: Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Gore remains the only nonincumbent to win every single presidential nominating contest, while Bush and Clinton never lost their national polling advantage in their primaries.

Today, Trump’s closest primary competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has fallen below 20% nationally. No other contender is at or above 10%. This makes the margin between Trump and the rest of the field north of 30 points on average.

A look back at past polls does show candidates coming back from deficits greater than 10 points to win the nomination, but none greater than 30 points at this point. In fact, the biggest comebacks when you average all the polls in the second half of the year before the election top out at about 20 points (Democrats George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).

Obama did fall nearly 30 points behind for a brief period in the fall of 2007, though his comeback the following year and that of Republican John McCain (another eventual nominee who trailed by over 10 points nationally) points to another reason why Trump is so strong right now.

Trump is leading not just nationally but in the early-voting states as well. He’s up by double digits in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Obama was within single digits of Clinton and Iowa poll leader John Edwards at this point in the 2008 cycle. Similarly, Clinton’s edge was in the single digits over Obama in South Carolina at this stage of the campaign.

On the Republican side in 2008, the primary deck was much more unsettled than the national numbers indicated at this point. Rudy Giuliani was up nationally, but he lagged behind Mitt Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire. Romney couldn’t get much above 30% in either state, unlike Trump right now.

McCain (whose candidacy is often held up as an example of how DeSantis might come back) was always considerably closer to the national and state front-runners than anyone is to Trump at this moment.

Of course, winning the primary is one thing for Trump, who has led in almost every single Republican primary poll published in the past eight years.

What should arguably be more amazing is that despite most Americans agreeing that Trump’s two indictments thus far were warranted, he remains competitive in a potential rematch with President Joe Biden. A poll out last week from Marquette University Law School had Biden and Trump tied percentage-wise (with a statistically insignificant few more respondents choosing Trump).

The Marquette poll is one of a number of surveys showing Trump either tied or ahead of Biden. The ABC News/Washington Post poll has published three surveys of the matchup between the two, and Trump has come out ahead – albeit within the margin of error – every time. Other pollsters have shown Biden only narrowly ahead.

To put that in perspective, Trump never led in a single national poll that met CNN’s standards for publication for the entirety of the 2020 campaign. Biden was up by high single digits in the late summer of 2019. Biden is up by maybe a point in the average of all 2024 polls today.

Surveys in the late summer of 2015 told the same story: Clinton was up by double digits over Trump in late July and up by mid-to-high single digits by the end of August 2015.

The fact that the polling between Biden and Trump is so close shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Elections are a choice between two candidates. Trump isn’t popular, but neither is Biden. The two, in tandem, would be the most disliked presidential nominees in polling history, if their numbers hold through the election.

All that being said, the 2024 election will probably come down to a few swing states. Polling in swing states has been limited because we’re still over a year from the election.

One giant warning sign for Democrats was a late June Quinnipiac University poll from Pennsylvania, a pivotal state for the past few election cycles where Trump rallied base supporters in Erie on Saturday. The state barely voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020.

Trump was up on Biden by 1 point in the Quinnipiac poll – a result within the margin of error, but nevertheless a remarkable achievement for the former president.

Why? It was only the second Pennsylvania poll that met CNN standards for publication since 2015 that had Trump ahead of either Biden (for 2020 and 2024) or Clinton (for 2016).

The good news for Democrats is that general election polling, unlike primary polling, is not predictive at this point. Things can most certainly change.

But for now, the chance that Trump is president in less than two years time is a very real possibility.

This story has been updated.

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April 12, 2021
Meta begins blocking news access on its platforms in Canada | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
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Meta has begun to remove news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada, the social media giant said Tuesday, in response to recently passed legislation in the country that requires tech companies to negotiate payments to news organizations for hosting their content.

As a result of the move — which Meta had previously said would occur before the law takes effect — Meta’s Canadian users will no longer be able to click on links to news articles posted to Facebook and Instagram.

The changes began Tuesday and will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.

The decision comes amid a global debate over the relationship between news organizations and social media companies about the value of news content, and who gets to benefit from it.

Google has also announced that it plans to remove news content from its platforms in Canada when the law takes effect, which could happen by December.

The Canadian legislation, known as Bill C-18, was given final approval in June. It aims to support the sustainability of news organizations by regulating “digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace.”

It comes after the passage of a 2021 Australian law that the tech platforms initially opposed by warning it would similarly force them to remove news content. Since then, the platforms have reached voluntary agreements with a range of news outlets in that country.

Like-minded proposals have been introduced around the world amid allegations that the tech industry has decimated local journalism by sucking away billions in online advertising revenues.

In May, Meta also threatened to remove news content from California if the state moved ahead with a revenue-sharing bill. The legislation was put on hold last month.

And at the federal level, the US Senate in June advanced a bill that would grant news organizations the ability to jointly negotiate for a greater share of advertising revenues against online platforms, thanks to a proposed antitrust exemption for publishers and broadcasters.

In a blog post Tuesday, Meta said the Canadian legislation “misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms.”

“The legislation is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true,” the blog post said. “News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line.”

Canadian users of Meta’s platforms will still be able to access news content online by visiting news outlets’ websites directly or by signing up for their subscriptions and apps.

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April 12, 2021
How Kyrsten Sinema’s decision makes Democrats’ 2024 Senate map tighter | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema decided to shake up the political world on Friday by becoming an independent. The former Democrat is still caucusing with the party in the Senate, so the Democratic caucus still has 51 members. Now, instead of 49 Democrats and two independents within their ranks, the caucus has 48 Democrats and three independents.

But that simple math hides a more clouded picture for Democrats and for Sinema herself. Sinema’s interests are no longer necessarily the Democrats’ best interests in the next Congress, and the 2024 Senate map became even more complicated for Democrats with Sinema’s decision.

To be clear, Sinema has always been a thorn in the Democrats side during her time in Congress. Over the last two years, Democrats have had to almost always make sure that any bill or nomination had Sinema’s support to have any chance of passing. That’s the math when you have only 50 Senate seats in a 100-seat chamber. A lot of bills and nominations were never voted on without Sinema and Manchin’s backing.

From 2013 (Sinema’s first term in Congress) to 2020, Sinema voted against her party more than almost any other member of Congress. She stayed with the party about 69% of the time on votes where at least one half of the Democrats voted differently than half of Republicans. The average Democrat voted with their party about 90% of the time on these votes.

It’s quite possible that Sinema’s percentage of sticking with the party will lower now that she is an independent. Consider the example of former Sen. Joe Lieberman. The longtime Democrat won reelection as a third-party candidate in 2006, after losing the Democratic primary to a left-wing challenger (the now fairly moderate Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont)

Relative to the average Senate Democrat, Lieberman voted with the party 10 points less of the time after becoming an independent than he had in his last term as a Democrat. If that happens with Sinema, she’ll become even more conservative than West Virginia’s Joe Manchin (the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus).

This would make sense because the incentive structure is now very different for Sinema. Ahead of a 2024 reelection campaign, she no longer has to worry about winning a Democratic primary. Sinema has to worry about building a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans. That is far more difficult to do if you’re seen as too liberal.

Indeed, the big reason Sinema became an independent is because it would have been very difficult to win a Democratic primary. Her approval rating among Arizona Democrats in an autumn 2022 CES poll stood at just 25%. A number of Democrats (e.g. Rep. Ruben Gallego and Rep. Greg Stanton) were already lining up to potentially challenge her in a primary.

A question now is whether Sinema’s decision to become an independent will dissuade some of those Democrats from running. The idea being that Sinema still caucuses with the Democrats, and Democrats wouldn’t want to split the Democratic vote in a general election allowing a Republican to win in a purple state like Arizona.

It’s an interesting bet from Sinema. After all, Democrats usually don’t run a candidate against independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in Vermont. The Democrats who run against independent Sen. Angus King in Maine have not gained traction in recent elections. Don’t forget the aforementioned Lieberman won as a third-party candidate.

The electoral math structure was and is totally different in these circumstances, however. Sanders wouldn’t attract a left-wing Democratic challenger because he is already so progressive. Lieberman declared his third-party candidacy after the primary, so Republicans didn’t have time to find a well-known challenger. Republicans also knew that Lieberman, who was an ardent supporter of the Iraq War, was probably the best they could hope for in the deeply Democratic state of Connecticut.

This leaves the King example. King, like Sinema, is a moderate from not a deeply blue or red state. There’s just one problem for Sinema in this analogy: King is popular. He had previously won the governorship twice as an independent and has almost always sported high favorables.

Sinema is not popular at all. The CES poll had her approval rating below her disapproval rating with Democrats, independents and Republicans in Arizona. Sinema’s overall approval stood at 25% to a disapproval rating of 58%. Other polling isn’t nearly as dire for Sinema, but the average of it all has her firmly being more unpopular than popular.

Put another way, Sinema’s current numbers are probably not going to scare off many challengers from either the Democratic or Republican side. Additionally, there’s zero reason for Democrats to cede the ground to Sinema because it would keep a Republican from winning. It isn’t clear at all that Sinema can win as an independent.

What Sinema’s move did accomplish is that it made the electoral math a lot more complicated in Arizona and therefore nationally. Having two people in the race who are going to caucus with the Democratic Party likely makes it more difficult for the Democrats to win.

One potential worrisome example for Democrats in a purple state (at least then) was the 2010 Florida Senate race. Then Republican Gov. Charlie Crist decided to run as an independent after it became clear he wouldn’t beat the more conservative Republican Marco Rubio in a Republican primary. Crist, who said he would caucus with the Democrats, split the Democratic vote with then Rep. Kendrick Meek, and Rubio cruised to a win.

I should point out that Democrats certainly have a chance. The 1968 Alaska Senate race, for example, featured two Democrats (Mike Gravel and then Sen. Ernest Gruening as write-in). Gravel won in the state which Republican Richard Nixon carried, too, by a few points.

In 2024, Arizona Republicans could nominate an extreme candidate that flames out. They just lost every major statewide race in 2022 because of who they nominated.

Don’t dismiss the possibility too that Sinema could win like Harry Byrd did in the 1970 Virginia Senate election when both parties nominated candidates. Maybe voters will like Sinema’s new independent registration.

Sinema also could find herself flaming out when running in the general election without a major party backing her like Gruening did in 1968 or then Sen. Jacob Javits in the 1980 New York Senate race.

We just don’t know.

All that said, the Democrats already have a difficult map heading into 2024. Depending on whether the Democrats win the presidency (and have a Democratic vice president who can break Senate ties), they can afford to lose zero to one Senate seats and maintain a majority.

The vast majority, 23 of the 34, senators up for reelection in 2024 caucus with the Democrats. An abnormally large number (7) represent states Republican Donald Trump won at least once. This includes Arizona.

With Sinema’s break from the Democratic party, the road is, if nothing else, curvier for Democrats.

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December 31, 1969
Hot box detectors didn’t stop the East Palestine derailment. Research shows another technology might have | CNN

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A failing, flaming wheel bearing doomed the rail car that derailed and created a catastrophe in East Palestine earlier this month, but researchers have offered a solution to the faulty detectors that experts say could have averted the disaster unfolding in the small Ohio town.

These wayside hot box detectors, stationed on rail tracks every 20 miles or so, use infrared sensors to record the temperatures of railroad bearings as trains pass by. If they sense an overheated bearing, the detectors trigger an alarm, which notifies the train crew they should stop and inspect the rail car for a potential failure.

So why did these detectors miss a bearing failure before the catastrophe?

An investigation into hot box detectors published in 2019 and funded by the Department of Transportation found that one “major shortcoming” of these detectors is that they can’t distinguish between healthy and defective bearings, and temperature alone is not a good indicator of bearing health.

“Temperature is reactive in nature, meaning by the time you’re sensing a high temperature in a bearing, it’s too late, the bearing is already in its final stages of failure,” Constantine Tarawneh, director of the University Transportation Center for Railways Safety (UTCRS) and lead investigator of the study, told CNN.

As part of the investigation, the UTCRS researchers developed a new system to better detect a bearing issue long before a catastrophic failure. The key: measuring the bearing’s vibration in addition to its temperature and load.

The vibration of a failing bearing, Tarawneh says, often begins intensifying thousands of miles before a catastrophic failure. So his team created sensors that can be placed on board each rail car, near the bearing, to continuously monitor its vibration throughout its travels.

“If you put an accelerometer on a bearing and you’re monitoring the vibration levels, the minute a defect happens in the bearing, the accelerometer will sense an increase in vibration, and that could be, in many cases, up to 100,000 miles before the bearing actually fails,” he said.

Tarawneh, who argues the technology should be federally mandated, says had it been on board Norfolk Southern’s line it would have prevented the derailment in East Palestine.

“It would have detected the problem months before this happened,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been a derailment.”

A preliminary report from the East Palestine derailment, released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, found hot box sensors detected that a wheel bearing was heating up miles before it eventually failed and caused the train to derail. But the detectors didn’t alert the crew until it was too late.

The bearing, according to the report, was 38 degrees above ambient temperature when it passed through a hot box 30 miles outside East Palestine. No alert went out, the NTSB said.

Ten miles later, the next hot box detected that the bearing had reached 103 degrees above ambient. Video of the train recorded in that area shows sparks and flames around the rail car. Still, no alert went to the crew.

It wasn’t until a further 20 miles down the tracks, as the train reached East Palestine, that a hot box detector recorded the bearing’s temperature at 253 degrees above ambient and sent an alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle, the report said.

The crew slowed the train, the report added, leading to an automatic emergency brake application. After the train stopped, the crew observed the derailment.

The reason those first two hot box readings didn’t trigger an alert, the report said, is because Norfolk Southern’s policy is to only stop and inspect a bearing after it has reached 170 degrees above ambient temperature. The NTSB is planning to review Norfolk Southern’s use of wayside hot box detectors, including spacing and the temperature threshold that determines when crews are alerted.

“Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy at a Thursday press conference.

In a statement responding to the NTSB report, Norfolk Southern stressed that its hot box detectors were operating as designed, and that those detectors trigger an alarm at a temperature threshold that is “among the lowest in the rail industry.” CNN has reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment on vibration sensor technology.

Hot box detectors are unregulated, so companies like Norfolk Southern can turn them on and off at their own discretion and choose the temperature threshold at which crews receive an alert.

There are several causes for overheated roller bearings, including fatigue cracking, water damage, mechanical damaging, a loose bearing or a wheel defect, according to the NTSB, and the agency says they’re investigating what caused the failure in East Palestine.

“Roller bearings fail, but it is absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure,” Homendy said. “You cannot wait until they’ve failed. Problems need to be identified early, so something catastrophic like this does not occur again.”

Hum Industrial Technology, a rail car telematics company, has licensed the vibration sensor technology created by Tarawneh and his team. And it has launched pilot programs with several rail companies. But at this point, those sensors are on very few trains operating in the United States, which Tarawneh largely blames on the cost of retrofitting and monitoring cars and what he sees as companies prioritizing profit.

It’s not clear exactly what it would cost to retrofit every train car in operation with sensors today, but Hum Industrial Technology stressed that it would cost less to put a sensor on a bearing than to replace a bearing.

“They see it as, well, why should we do it if it’s not mandated?” Tarawneh said. “It’s like a lot of people are saying, ‘well, I’m willing to take the risk. It’s not that many derailments per year.’”

But Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official, says equipping every rail car with on board sensors may not be financially feasible.

“What they’re proposing will work, but it’s very, very expensive,” Ditmeyer told CNN. “And one does have to take cost into consideration.”

It would take more than 12 million on board sensors, according to Tarawneh, to fully equip the roughly 1.6 million rail cars in service across North America.

Ditmeyer says railroads should invest more heavily in wayside acoustic bearing detectors, which sit along the tracks – much like hot box detectors – and monitor the sound of passing trains. They listen for noise that indicates a bearing failure well before a potential catastrophe.

As of 2019, only 39 acoustic bearing detectors were in use across North America compared to more than 6,000 hot box detectors, according to a 2019 DOT report.

“They are the only way that I can think of that would have prevented the accident by having caught a failing bearing earlier,” Ditmeyer said.

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December 31, 1969