SpaceX has won a $70 million contract with the US Space Force to provide satellite communications for the US Space Force via its Starshield program, Bloomberg reported. The company will effectively be repurposing its Starlink network for military usage as a way to provide a "secured satellite network for government entities," according to SpaceX's website. The contract has a one-year duration. 

"The SpaceX contract provides for Starshield end-to-end service (via the Starlink constellation), user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related services," a Space Force spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. The initial phase requires the Space Force to pay $15 million to SpaceX by September 30th, and SpaceX will support 54 military "mission partners" across Department of Defence (DoD) branches. 

A group of US senators recently criticized SpaceX's actions in Ukraine, after a biography on Elon Musk revealed that he refused Ukraine's request to extend Starlink coverage to allow a naval attack on Russian-held Crimea. "We are deeply concerned with the ability and willingness of SpaceX to interrupt their service at Mr. Musk’s whim and for the purpose of handcuffing a sovereign country’s self-defense, effectively defending Russian interests," they wrote.

However in a post on his social network X, Musk refuted that sentiment. "Starlink needs to be a civilian network, not a participant to combat. Starshield will be owned by the US government and controlled by DoD Space Force," he said. 

SpaceX is already a key contractor for the Pentagon, providing the military with rocket launches. Last year, the Space Force approved the company's reusable Falcon Heavy to carry US spy satellites into orbit. Earlier this year, SpaceX won a contract to provide an unspecified number of Starlink ground terminals for use in Ukraine. 

The CIA and other US intelligence agencies will soon have an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The program, revealed on Tuesday by Bloomberg, will train on publicly available data and provide sources alongside its answers so agents can confirm their validity. The aim is for US spies to more easily sift through ever-growing troves of information, although the exact nature of what constitutes “public data” could spark some thorny privacy issues.

“We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Randy Nixon, the CIA’s director of Open Source Enterprise, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We have to find the needles in the needle field.” Nixon’s division plans to distribute the AI tool to US intelligence agencies “soon.”

Nixon says the tool will allow agents to look up information, ask follow-up questions and summarize daunting masses of data. “Then you can take it to the next level and start chatting and asking questions of the machines to give you answers, also sourced,” he said. “Our collection can just continue to grow and grow with no limitations other than how much things cost.”

The CIA hasn’t specified which AI tool (if any) it’s using as the foundation for its chatbot. Once the tool is available, the entire 18-agency US intelligence community will have access to it. However, lawmakers and the public won’t be able to use it.

Nixon said the tool would follow US privacy laws. However, he didn’t state how the government would safeguard it from leaking onto the internet or using information that’s sketchily acquired but technically “public.” Federal agencies (including the Secret Service) and police forces have been caught bypassing warrants and using commercial marketplaces to buy troves of data. These have included phones’ locations, which the government can technically describe as open-source.

“The scale of how much we collect and what we collect on has grown astronomically over the last 80-plus years, so much so that this could be daunting and at times unusable for our consumers,” Nixon said. He envisions the tool allowing a scenario “where the machines are pushing you the right information, one where the machine can auto-summarize, group things together.”

The US government’s decision to move forward with the tool could be influenced by China, which has stated that it wants to surpass its rivals and become the world’s de facto AI leader by 2030.

The US has taken steps to counter China’s influence while examining AI’s domestic and economic risks. Last year, the Biden administration launched a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, defining the White House’s generative AI values. It has also pushed for an AI risk management framework and invested $140 million in creating new AI and machine learning research institutes. In July, President Biden met with leaders from AI companies, who agreed to (non-binding) statements that they would develop their products ethically.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to reinstate net neutrality protections that were nixed in 2018 during the Trump administration. Restoring those Obama-era rules has been on President Joe Biden's agenda for years, but a deadlocked FCC has prevented that from happening during his time in the White House so far. Now, one day after Anna Gomez was sworn in as the third Democratic member on the FCC's five-person panel, the agency is pushing forward with an attempt to bring back net neutrality regulations.

When net neutrality rules are enforced, internet service providers are not allowed to block or give preference to any content. They can't throttle access to specific websites or charge the likes of streaming services for faster service. They must provide users with access to every site, content and app at the same speeds and conditions. Advocates tout net neutrality protections as the foundation of an open and equitable internet.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a long-term supporter of net neutrality rules, announced a plan to restore those protections on Tuesday. "This afternoon, I'm sharing with my colleagues a rulemaking that proposes to reinstate net neutrality," Rosenworcel said at an event at the National Press Club. "We will need to develop an updated record to identify the best way to restore these policies and have a uniform national open internet standard."

The aim is to "largely return to the successful rules" that the FCC adopted in 2015 when President Barack Obama was in office. The proposal aims to reclassify both fixed and mobile broadband as an essential service alongside water, power and phone services under Title II of the Communications Act.

Rosenworcel noted that this is a first step in the process of restoring net neutrality. It will likely take quite some time until net neutrality regulations are restored, as Bloomberg notes. The FCC commissioners will likely start with a vote on the issue ahead of a lengthy period of notice, during which time the agency will accept public comments. The commissioners would then take another vote on the rules. While the push to restore net neutrality rules may prove successful, the implementation could be delayed by legal challenges.

"For everyone, everywhere, to enjoy the full benefits of the internet age, internet access should be more than just accessible and affordable," Rosenworcel said. "The internet needs to be open." She added that repealing net neutrality protections "put the FCC on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of the American public."

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has blocked a bill that would have required autonomous trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds (4,536kg) to have human safety drivers on board while operating on public roads. The governor said in a statement that the legislation, which California Senate members passed in a 36-2 vote, was unnecessary. Newsom believes existing laws are sufficient to ensure there's an "appropriate regulatory framework."

The governor noted that, under a 2012 law, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles collaborates with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, California Highway Patrol and other relevant bodies "to determine the regulations necessary for the safe operation of autonomous vehicles on public roads.” Newsom added that the DMV is committed to making sure rules keep up with the pace of evolving autonomous vehicle tech. "DMV continuously monitors the testing and operations of autonomous vehicles on California roads and has the authority to suspend or revoke permits as necessary to protect the public's safety," his veto message reads.

Newsom, who has a reputation for being friendly to the tech industry, reportedly faced pressure within his administration not to sign the bill. The state's Office of Business and Economic Development warned that the proposed law would lead to companies that are working on self-driving tech to move out of California.

On the other hand, as the Associated Press notes, California Labor Federation head Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher estimates that not requiring human drivers in trucks would cost around 250,000 jobs. “We will not sit by as bureaucrats side with tech companies, trading our safety and jobs for increased corporate profits," Fletcher, who called autonomous trucks dangerous, said in a statement. "We will continue to fight to make sure that robots do not replace human drivers and that technology is not used to destroy good jobs.”

Modern tech journalism would likely look far differently today, if not for the efforts of Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson and a host of other trailblazing female reporters who staffed the Science Service throughout the publication's history. These journalists were among the very first science communicators, making sense of the newfangled technological wonders of the 1920s through 1950s and bringing that understanding to their readers — often in spite of the personalities and institutions they were covering. 

In Writing for Their Lives: America's Pioneering Female Science Journalists, historian Marcel Chotkowski Lafollette highlights not just the important work that these women performed but examines how their diverse the excerpt below recounts the hectic days and weeks in the outlets newsroom following America's use of a terrifying new "atom" bomb.

MIT Press

Excerpted from Writing for Their Lives: America's Pioneering Female Science Journalists, by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette. Published by The MIT Press. Copyright © 2023 MIT. All rights reserved.

Team Spirit

In the weeks following the August 1945 dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Science Service staff frequently apologized for their tardy responses to any correspondence that had arrived that month. “Just about the time that your letter arrived here, we were completely showered with debris from the atom bombs,” Martha Morrow wrote somewhat facetiously. “This note of appreciation would have gotten off sooner if we had not had atomic bombs and peace crashing down on us,” Jane Stafford told another scientist. The journalists’ internal memos, however, exuded a sense of accomplishment. They had risen to the challenge of covering extraordinary breaking news; they had collaborated, cooperated, and served their readers well.

Because Watson Davis happened to be traveling in South America during the first week of August 1945, the five editorial writers remaining in Washington worked as a team, with each person applying a different interpretative frame to explaining the development and use of an atomic bomb. Morrow focused on the physics; Stafford looked at radiation and physiology; Marjorie Van de Water concentrated on the psychological and social implications; Helen Davis explored the chemistry of explosions; and Frank Thone focused on the biological impacts. Van de Water later recalled the electric atmosphere:

The telephone ringing all the day interrupted thought and work. Two of these calls summed up neatly the problems of the writer who tries to tell the public about the “findings of scientific research.” One inquiry was concise and practical, easily answered. “What is an atom?” this caller wanted to know. I gave him a convenient definition, but he was not quite satisfied. “That’s fine,” he said, “But now could you add a little something to make this whole thing more com- prehensible?” The other was a preacher. He was alarmed at what he had read in the afternoon papers. “What are the implications of this thing?” he wanted to know. “Where will it end? Is man going to destroy himself utterly? Does it mean the end of the world?”

As she concluded, “It was not possible to think of anything else except one stupendous fact—atomic fission, atomic power, atomic destruction, unlimited except by the unpredictable desires of the human heart.”

The general outlines and mission of the Manhattan Project had not, of course, surprised these reporters. Preliminary discussions about the feasibility of atomic weapons occurred long before the imposition of official secrecy. Helen’s daughter, Charlotte, used her family’s own special code words when she wrote her mother on August 7 from Rhode Island, where she worked in a US Navy laboratory:

The first I saw of the news was on the bus at Providence last night. A small boy came aboard selling the Boston Record which was headlined “Atomic Bomb Terror.” I regret to say that with all my previous knowledge and good guesses about Shangri-La and “that other place in Tennessee” I merely said to myself “Oh well, the Record!” and went to sleep. Not until I saw the Providence Journal and the New York Times did the import of the matter dawn on me.

Helen replied a few days later, apologizing for the delay—“as you can guess, the atomic bomb has us running in circles.” Watson was scheduled to be in Buenos Aires on August 6, yet cables to him at the US embassy in Argentina had gone unanswered. Helen quipped that she wanted to send him a telegram saying, “Having an awful time, wish you were here.” Messages from the office trailed Watson around Latin America, with Stafford’s telegram (“YOUR ATOMIZING STAFF MISSES AND GREETS YOU”) eventually catching up with him in Uruguay. His reply revealed his regret at having missed the action: “WHAT DAYS TO BE AWAY FROM WASHINGTON HOPE WE PLASTERED ATOMIC BOMB.”

Once the official technical report (a document known as the “Smyth Report”) was released, newspaper clients expected succinct technical summaries almost immediately. The news service produced that material in record time. Other than Martha, Helen was the only one on the staff who understood the bomb’s basic physics and chemistry, and she complained that she felt "more like Hamlet every day: ‘Oh, wretched spite, That I was ever born to set them right!'" Helen even quickly wrote an editorial on atomic power for the next issue of Chemistry, which was just going to press. On the afternoon of August 11, having “practically disintegrated along with the atom all this week," Helen wrote a catch-up letter to Charlotte. For the first few days, she explained, they had had only the bare announcement that the weapons had exploded as designed and civilians had been killed. In “the thick of the fight,” during the previous week, she had had doubts about their coverage, but “after seeing what the rest of the world did with the story,” she told Charlotte, she realized “we didn’t do too badly.”

New Questions

Helen’s September 2 letter to Watson (who was by then in Mexico and trying to get home) offered another perspective on the complicated office politics:

So much has happened, I probably can’t do more than hit the highest spots. First and biggest, of course, was the atom bomb. We will probably never be the same again! The story broke . . . with the President’s announcement. We had the War Department releases, but Frank was sitting on them, in a complete dither, but writing like mad. Nobody dared interrupt him. He finally yelled to me to do a piece on the atom and what it is. His story and mine were all that made the DMR [Daily Mail Report] that day.

Cool-headed preparation eventually prevailed. When the writers learned that the War Department planned to release the official technical report at the end of that first week, they decided to start drafting background material yet “not get too far out on a limb.” By the time copies of the Smyth Report arrived on Friday, Thone was already on his way to a meeting in Boston. Martha was racing back from vacation. For a time, “which seemed then just a few minutes short of eternity,” Helen wrote, “there was nobody but Jane, Marjorie, and me to carry on. When we three get together and pool our talents, you’d be surprised what a good physicist we make!” She described the Smyth Report as “amazing”:

It is multilithed, and over an inch thick. We got two copies. One we kept intact, the other we pulled the staples out of, so we could work on parts of it all at once. Jane Stafford, I think, has read all the chapter headings through consecutively, for she set herself that task. The rest of us just pick up any sheet at random and find at least one story that has to be written now, without bothering with anything else.

That report, Helen told Charlotte, made “all physics and chemistry B.A.B. (Before Atom Bomb, of course) completely obsolete,” and “is beautifully written and as exciting as a detective story.” Because the War Department wanted publishers to reprint the report “in whole or in part,” Helen “rear- ranged it and wrote connecting paragraphs,” making it the central focus of the September 1945 Chemistry. That issue was later praised for its clarity. Helen not only understood the technical aspects but also had the ability to explain them, as demonstrated in her revised edition of the “Laws of Matter Up-to-Date” feature in October 1945. During those same busy weeks, Helen even sketched mock-ups and text estimates for a brochure (“Atomic Power”) to advertise the organization’s capability to answer technical questions like, “When you split an atom of uranium, what elements do you have as a result?” And she compiled a three-page list of “important dates in the history of the atom” to share with her colleagues.

The real news story, though, would involve unpacking the weapon’s social, political, and economic consequences, attempting to understand whether and to what extent the awesome power would be “good only for the destruction of cities and of people” as well as how its existence might affect future generations. The implications of that “alchemist’s dream” (Helen’s ironic phrase) intensified public interest in all science. As the editor of the Pittsburgh Press told his staff, “Abstruse science has been popularized by a situation which has made the public read and discuss material it would otherwise never have heard of—because it involved the lives and safety of their own loved ones.” All over the country, adults and students began writing to newspapers, scientists, and public officials, asking for more information about atomic energy. One young woman who planned to major in chemistry and physics at Vassar College wrote directly to Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Bush’s secretary asked Helen to respond. Helen answered each question (e.g., “Exactly what happens within the nucleus of the Uranium atom before it splits? What are the remaining materials after the atom splits? How long will it be before these radioactive materials disintegrate?”) with detailed explanations and references to relevant sections of the Smyth Report, and enclosed the latest issue of Chemistry as added encouragement to a budding young science student.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee is investigating Elon Musk's decision to not extend Starlink satellite internet coverage to enable a Ukraine attack on Russian warship near Crimea, Bloomberg has reported. "The committee is aggressively probing this issue from every angle," said chairman Jack Reed in a statement, adding that the incident exposed "serious national-security liability issues." The panel is still gathering information, and has not yet launched a formal investigation. 

The Ukraine Starlink incident was revealed in an Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, via a disputed excerpt stating that Musk deactivated Starlink access close to the Crimean coast to prevent a Ukrainian attack on the fleet. 

However, Musk said that Starlink was not active in those areas because of US sanctions on Russia, so SpaceX had nothing to disable. In a recent podcast, he said would have extended Starlink to Crimea if President Biden had ordered him to do so — but he didn't receive any such order.

Rather, Musk said he denied Ukraine's request to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation," Musk wrote on X. (The disputed excerpt will be changed in future copies of the book.)

Nevertheless, senators questioned why the decision was made by Musk, rather than government officials. "Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to US national security," Reed said. At the time of Ukraine's request, SpaceX received no US payments for its Ukraine Starlink operations, but it now has Pentagon funding. 

The probe was announced just ahead of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the US and meeting with President Biden, set for next week. On top of Starlink, SpaceX is a major US contractor, launching spy satellites for the Defense Department . 

The Supreme Court has temporarily halted a lower court ruling that prohibited White House officials from communicating with social media companies. The temporary stay, from Justice Samuel Alito, is the latest twist in a controversial attempt by two states to challenge content moderation policies at social media platforms.

The case stems from a lawsuit, brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, that claimed federal officials overreached in their dealings with social media companies — namely Meta, Google and Twitter — as they shaped moderation policies to handle election and COVID-19 misinformation.

A lower court had previously issued an injunction that barred White House and other federal officials from communicating with social media companies. An Appeals Court decision last week eased many of the initial restrictions, but left in place a provision that banned the surgeon general, CDC and White House officials from “pressuring” social media companies into making decisions. That order, as CNN reports, was set to take effect September 18.

That ruling is now on hold, thanks to Alito’s temporary stay, as the two sides continue to argue the case. As Bloomberg points out, the stay will be in effect until September 22, though it could be extended. 

In a filing ahead of the stay, the Solicitor General argued that “the injunction would impose grave harms on the government and the public” and that that government officials had committed no wrongdoing in their interactions with social media companies. “Rather than any pattern of coercive threats backed by sanctions, the record reflects a back-and-forth in which the government and platforms often shared goals and worked together, sometimes disagreed, and occasionally became frustrated with one another, as all parties articulated and pursued their own goals and interests during an unprecedented pandemic.”

While the current hold from Alito is another temporary measure, the case seems to be headed for a longer legal battle. The Justice Department is now laying the groundwork for a Supreme Court appeal, which could drag the case out even more.

Excerpts from Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography are coming to light ahead of its release next week, revealing some new details about the billionaire's decision to provide Ukraine with Starlink access amid the country's war with Russia. According to an excerpt CNN reported on, Musk allegedly told SpaceX workers to shut down Starlink access close to the Crimea coast to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's naval fleet.

Musk, who has reportedly been in contact with Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin, is said to have been worried that the attack would lead to Russia retaliating with nuclear weapons. Ukrainian leaders seemingly begged Musk to reactivate Starlink access but drones that were approaching Russian warships “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” CNN cites Isaacson as stating.

Musk's alleged actions have had significant consequences for Ukraine, according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Podolyak wrote on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter that Musk owns) that in preventing drones from attacking the Russian ships, Musk enabled them to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities. "As a result, civilians, children are being killed," Podolyak claimed. "This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego."

According to Musk, however, Starlink was not active in those areas and so SpaceX had nothing to disable. “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor," he wrote on X. "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Regardless of how he's framing the situation, Musk has admitted to making another decision that has impacted the Ukraine-Russia conflict in one way or another. A report late last year indicated that around 1,300 Starlink terminals Ukraine was using temporarily went offline due to a dispute over payments for the internet service.

For the first time in Joe Biden's presidency, Democrats will have a majority at the Federal Communications Commission and the ability to undo a wave of Trump-era deregulation in the internet and communications industries. The Senate has confirmed Anna Gomez as the agency's third Democratic commissioner, bringing an end to a long-standing partisan split on the panel.

Biden nominated Gomez, who is currently a State Department communications policy adviser, to the FCC in May. The president's previous pick for the FCC's open chair was Gigi Sohn, who withdrew from consideration in March after enduring attacks from politicians and industry lobbyists. Republicans and certain Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin refused to confirm Sohn, who is an advocate for affordable broadband.

However, senators found Gomez a more palatable choice and confirmed her to the panel on Thursday with a 55-43 vote. Gomez worked for the FCC in several positions over a 12-year period before moving into the private sector then onto the State Department earlier this year. She will be the FCC's first Latina commissioner since Gloria Tristani stepped down in 2001.

Industry bodies and figures such as the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association and former FCC chair and Broadland campaign co-chair Mignon Clyburn have welcomed Gomez's appointment. “At long last, at this critical time for the US telecommunications and media industries, we have a full roster of FCC commissioners,” Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. told Engadget in a statement. “Anna Gomez is a dedicated public servant who is highly qualified to serve on the FCC. We are looking forward to working with her to realize the potential of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to bring affordable internet service to all Americans and to reverse the decline of local news that threatens the foundations of our democracy.“

After Gomez is sworn in, the Biden administration will be able to fulfill some of its major communications policy goals after a years-long partisan deadlock at the FCC. The agency has long had two Democratic and two Republican senators, who have often been unable to agree on policy votes since former chair Ajit Pai left the panel in January 2021.

The FCC is now expected to reverse some telecommunications sector deregulation efforts that the agency carried out under Donald Trump. Those include the potential restoration of Obama-era net neutrality rules, which the agency scrapped in 2017. In recent years, Democratic commissioners have had their hands largely tied, preventing them from taking meaningful action on issues such as internet data caps. However, the agency has still taken action on some fronts, including tackling problems such as robocallers and banning telecom equipment made by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE.

The Democratic commissioners may need to act quickly to carry out agenda items on behalf of the Biden administration, however. Biden has nominated Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks for a second term. His initial term expired last year, but he has remained on the panel in an acting capacity. Unless the Senate re-confirms Starks, the FCC may be back in a deadlock scenario in the not-too-distant future.

AI-generated images and audio are already making their way into the 2024 Presidential election cycle. In an effort to staunch the flow of disinformation ahead of what is expected to be a contentious election, Google announced on Wednesday that it will require political advertisers to "prominently disclose" whenever their advertisement contains AI-altered or -generated aspects, "inclusive of AI tools." The new rules will based on the company's existing Manipulated Media Policy and will take effect in November.

“Given the growing prevalence of tools that produce synthetic content, we’re expanding our policies a step further to require advertisers to disclose when their election ads include material that’s been digitally altered or generated,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement obtained by The Hill. Small and inconsequential edits like resizing images, minor cleanup to the background or color correction will all still be allowed — those that depict people or things doing stuff that they never actually did or those that otherwise alter actual footage will be flagged. 

Those ads that do utilize AI aspects will need to label them as such in a "clear and conspicuous" manner that is easily seen by the user, per the Google policy. The ads will be moderated first through Google's own automated screening systems and then reviewed by a human as needed.

Google's actions run counter to other companies in social media. X/Twitter recently announced that it reversed its previous position and will allow political ads on the site, while Meta continues to take heat for its own lackadaisical ad moderation efforts. 

The Federal Election Commission is also beginning to weigh in on the issue. LAst month it sought public comment on amending a standing regulation "that prohibits a candidate or their agent from fraudulently misrepresenting other candidates or political parties" to clarify that the "related statutory prohibition applies to deliberately deceptive Artificial Intelligence campaign advertisements" as well.