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Saturday, February 21, 2026
Friday, February 20, 2026
The Beast of Bentonville
Who needs the state, when Walmart provides?
In retrospect, the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration was an inopportune time for Walmart to hold the grand opening of its new corporate campus. Conceptualized in 2017 and under construction since 2019, the January 2025 opening of the 350-acre mini-city filled with mixed-use office buildings, food halls, hiking trails, and retail storefronts was meant to make Walmart modern––to keep it in the mix of companies that could attract top corporate and tech talent to Bentonville, Arkansas in an era when it all seemed headed to Silicon Valley.
Glittering office buildings now line Walmart-owned streets with names like Excellence and Integrity. The “Maverick” building sits at the corner of 10th and Customer; the Moon Pie and Ol’ Roy buildings are between Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway and Respect Drive. To the south of campus is Bud’s Preserve, a large park which houses the headquarters’ utility buildings and a “lake” that supplies water to the campus. Walmart’s new home feels much more urban than the town it’s in, and it’s meant to. It’s a massive corporate footprint in a city that’s become synonymous with the company, populated by Walmart corporate executives, employees, and the executive teams of Walmart’s suppliers and vendors.
Walmart—still the country’s largest private employer, the world’s largest retailer, and the world’s largest company by revenue—was founded in the 1960s in this small corner of Arkansas by Sam Walton and his brother Bud when they opened their first discount store in my hometown, Rogers, immediately south of Bentonville. Starting in one rural locale and rapidly expanding to others across the Midwest and South, Walmart (then Wal-Mart, its hyphen since lost to the 21st century) grew quickly by tapping into consumer markets other chains had written off. By 1984, the New York Times wrote that Walton was “gyrating awkwardly to a hula” on Wall Street in celebration of record profit margins. Walmart’s workers were “happy and productive” and Walton a “wiry bundle of energy, company boosterism, and general enthusiasm,” a “folksy, down-home businessman who just happened to be one of the richest people in the country.” By the 2000s, Walmart had expanded successfully into grocery, wholesaling, and international markets, cornering not just rural but suburban and even some urban retail markets, dominating supply chains, able to bend manufacturers and even governments to its will. “Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?” Businessweek asked in a 2003 cover story. “In business, there is big and there is Wal-Mart.”
The Beast of Bentonville, as the press took to calling it, was foundational in ushering in a new era of the globalized economy. It kept prices murderously and profitably low by strong-arming its suppliers into ever-cheaper modes of production. It capitalized on and pushed forward the liberalization of global trade, sourcing goods ever more cheaply from suppliers reliant on exploited labor in China, Mexico, India, and elsewhere around the globe. As retail and service-sector corporations captured the domestic economy, Walmart’s claim to market dominance helped mark the end of the American industrial economy. And its old corporate headquarters were a relic of the cost-cutting era it helped usher into being. The previous iteration of Walmart’s home office was stark, windowless, and fluorescently lit. A former Procter & Gamble executive recalled his Walmart counterpart by comparing the headquarters to a bus station. At the time, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, the company’s executives were proud of their “ostentatiously shabby surroundings,” which gave credibility to its slogan of “Always Low Prices—Always”: everything in service of the customer’s wallet, even if it meant employees working in the dark, dank cave of the unassuming brick building.
Walmart has always been more of a tech and data company than it gets credit for, but with the onslaught of online retail, it’s had to pivot more aggressively, in search both of higher-income customers and of alternatives to Amazon Prime. Also, it was looking for labor. Walmart today employs twenty thousand tech workers—about a third of its corporate workforce. Its ideal white-collar worker is no longer the homegrown son of the rural South who had to choose between the farm, the factory, and the office. Now, it seeks out employees whose other options may be tech companies in the San Franciscos and New Yorks of the world—urban metropoles that outstrip Bentonville in vibes, opportunity, and work environment. As the political and cultural zeitgeist has bent toward firms like Amazon and the tech giants of Silicon Valley, Walmart’s spot on top of the Fortune 500 began to feel unstable. (It’s soon expected to lose its status as the world’s largest retailer to Amazon.) Something new seemed in order as the retailer moved increasingly into ecommerce and the “omnichannel” space. Tech company or retail giant? Walmart is trying to be both.
It’s only a testament to Walmart’s business savvy that the new corporate campus pays homage to the brand of decadent, neoliberal, tech sector-infused capitalism that seemed to have supplanted the era of cheap. Its physical transformation was self-consciously in the model of Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest’s corporate campuses: Walmart hired the SWA Group (which counts among its other projects the campuses of Apple, PayPal, Google, and Stanford) to do landscape design, and the architecture firm Gensler (Meta, Airbnb, Salesforce, etc.) as the design architect. The Palo Alto wish-casting is evident.
Like its tech-world models, the new campus is a small city replete with childcare (“Little Squiggles Children Enrichment Center” is now the largest childcare provider in the northwest Arkansas region), a health and fitness center (“Walton Family Whole Health and Fitness,” a 360,000 square foot facility featuring gyms, pickleball courts, meditation spaces, and cryotherapy), and a food hall (“8th and Plate”). It contains seven miles of walking and biking trails, three hundred EV charging stations, and its own rentable bike fleet. Storefronts throughout the campus hold local outdoor retailers, breweries, and barbecue joints. But for all the expense, ambition, and decadence, the Walmart play-city feels like a copy of a Silicon Valley gone by, the company playing catch-up to a tech economy that no longer exists. In his recent book The Technological Republic, Palantir founder Alex Karp writes (notably, in the past tense):
These are the kinds of things you build when you need to lure people away from cities, which has been the motivation for northwest Arkansas’s (or “Oz,” as recent efforts have tried to rebrand it) economic development machine that also includes other local corporate powerhouses like meat giant Tyson Foods and logistics behemoth J. B. Hunt Transportation. It’s part of Walmart’s transparent effort to make the region a desirable place to live not just for its own workforce, but for those of its suppliers too, which it unofficially requires to maintain an office and executive team within the region. As parts of the tech world—SpaceX, Hewlett Packard, Oracle—make lots of noise about moving their headquarters off the coasts, the region’s boosters are making an explicit play for tech workers, and maybe companies too, to move here. In recent years the Northwest Arkansas Council has placed billboards in places like Austin and Seattle that read, “Go South, young tech workers” and “It’s like Austin, but affordable.”
The Walton dynasty presides in the background of Arkansas politics, but the family has largely stayed out of the culture wars, at least in public. The Walton Family Foundation has put millions of dollars into funding climate projects and environmental journalism, with recent grants to NPR and PBS. After much pressure, in 2021, the Foundation issued a statement opposing the Arkansas legislature’s attacks on trans rights; later that year, it established a special “Arkansas LGBTQ+ Advancement Fund” to “improve the quality of life for LGBTQ+ Arkansans.” But the fund made just one round of grants, in 2022, and its promotional webpage was pulled down last year. More recently, the foundation seems to be tacking to the center: It commissioned a cross-partisan study of nonprofits (“The problems our nation faces are too big for any one sector or political party to solve on its own. They require people with a range of beliefs and experiences to come together to find answers”) and is framing its climate work in similar terms (“Support for Clean, Safe, and Secure Water Supplies Transcends Partisan Politics”).
In order to keep up with the Walton’s benevolent stewardship of Bentonville, and its presumed-to-be-liberal workforce, the Walmart of the 2010s had combined its historic commitment to anti-unionism and conservative economics with a more liberal outlook on identity and inclusion, like its corporate peers. Recently, however, spurred on by Trump’s second term, Walmart’s DEI initiatives have hit the chopping block: Pride merchandise has been pulled, and inclusion and diversity have been renamed “belonging,” even as the company tries desperately to convince its employees to make the move to Arkansas.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to international trade has taken straight aim at these economic interests through its protectionism—or, at least, heavy-handed and chaotic attempts at it. [...]
As Trump’s trade war dawdles along, the cracks between business conservatism and Trump conservatism have been showing in earnest. CEO Doug McMillon, who will retire at the end of this month, sat down with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before his inauguration and reportedly told him, “We’re here long term. We’re a large employer. We serve a lot of people. We want the country to thrive. How can we be helpful?” Just a few months later, he was at an Oval Office meeting in April where, alongside the heads of Home Depot and Target, he tried to impress upon the chief executive that broad-based tariffs would mean an uptick in prices. A Walmart spokesperson called the meeting “productive.” But nothing changed; a few weeks after this meeting, at the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Walmart told investors that its prices would soon start to rise. “The magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history,” its chief financial officer told the Wall Street Journal. Trump reacted quickly (and characteristically) on Truth Social:
American companies eating tariffs imposed by a Republican president, a conservative chain up against a conservative president; this can’t have been the future Sam Walton envisioned, nor can it have been what his offspring or his corporate successors thought was coming when they dumped millions of dollars into their new corporate playground.
The world the Walmart campus was built to accommodate is slipping away. As the new HQ fills with workers pedaling to any number of its fully windowed buildings, soaking up the sun in its outdoor spaces, playing pickleball in its associate-use courts, these same workers are no longer a fought-over commodity. To an industry enhanced with layoffs and firings, they’re a dime a dozen. Even if the AI bubble collapses in spectacular fashion, it will have transformed the tech and e-commerce sector. Palantir, Meta, Google, Amazon are falling in line with the Trump circus, having determined that their owners’ interests (and government contracts) are better served by playing nice with the administration than by pissing it off. In a way, Walmart seems adrift, a Spark flag waving in the wind, once at the forefront of changes in global capitalism and now something of a dinosaur figuring out how to respond, economically and politically, to them.
by Olivia Paschal, N+1 | Read more:
Walmart—still the country’s largest private employer, the world’s largest retailer, and the world’s largest company by revenue—was founded in the 1960s in this small corner of Arkansas by Sam Walton and his brother Bud when they opened their first discount store in my hometown, Rogers, immediately south of Bentonville. Starting in one rural locale and rapidly expanding to others across the Midwest and South, Walmart (then Wal-Mart, its hyphen since lost to the 21st century) grew quickly by tapping into consumer markets other chains had written off. By 1984, the New York Times wrote that Walton was “gyrating awkwardly to a hula” on Wall Street in celebration of record profit margins. Walmart’s workers were “happy and productive” and Walton a “wiry bundle of energy, company boosterism, and general enthusiasm,” a “folksy, down-home businessman who just happened to be one of the richest people in the country.” By the 2000s, Walmart had expanded successfully into grocery, wholesaling, and international markets, cornering not just rural but suburban and even some urban retail markets, dominating supply chains, able to bend manufacturers and even governments to its will. “Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?” Businessweek asked in a 2003 cover story. “In business, there is big and there is Wal-Mart.”
The Beast of Bentonville, as the press took to calling it, was foundational in ushering in a new era of the globalized economy. It kept prices murderously and profitably low by strong-arming its suppliers into ever-cheaper modes of production. It capitalized on and pushed forward the liberalization of global trade, sourcing goods ever more cheaply from suppliers reliant on exploited labor in China, Mexico, India, and elsewhere around the globe. As retail and service-sector corporations captured the domestic economy, Walmart’s claim to market dominance helped mark the end of the American industrial economy. And its old corporate headquarters were a relic of the cost-cutting era it helped usher into being. The previous iteration of Walmart’s home office was stark, windowless, and fluorescently lit. A former Procter & Gamble executive recalled his Walmart counterpart by comparing the headquarters to a bus station. At the time, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, the company’s executives were proud of their “ostentatiously shabby surroundings,” which gave credibility to its slogan of “Always Low Prices—Always”: everything in service of the customer’s wallet, even if it meant employees working in the dark, dank cave of the unassuming brick building.
Walmart has always been more of a tech and data company than it gets credit for, but with the onslaught of online retail, it’s had to pivot more aggressively, in search both of higher-income customers and of alternatives to Amazon Prime. Also, it was looking for labor. Walmart today employs twenty thousand tech workers—about a third of its corporate workforce. Its ideal white-collar worker is no longer the homegrown son of the rural South who had to choose between the farm, the factory, and the office. Now, it seeks out employees whose other options may be tech companies in the San Franciscos and New Yorks of the world—urban metropoles that outstrip Bentonville in vibes, opportunity, and work environment. As the political and cultural zeitgeist has bent toward firms like Amazon and the tech giants of Silicon Valley, Walmart’s spot on top of the Fortune 500 began to feel unstable. (It’s soon expected to lose its status as the world’s largest retailer to Amazon.) Something new seemed in order as the retailer moved increasingly into ecommerce and the “omnichannel” space. Tech company or retail giant? Walmart is trying to be both.
It’s only a testament to Walmart’s business savvy that the new corporate campus pays homage to the brand of decadent, neoliberal, tech sector-infused capitalism that seemed to have supplanted the era of cheap. Its physical transformation was self-consciously in the model of Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest’s corporate campuses: Walmart hired the SWA Group (which counts among its other projects the campuses of Apple, PayPal, Google, and Stanford) to do landscape design, and the architecture firm Gensler (Meta, Airbnb, Salesforce, etc.) as the design architect. The Palo Alto wish-casting is evident.
Like its tech-world models, the new campus is a small city replete with childcare (“Little Squiggles Children Enrichment Center” is now the largest childcare provider in the northwest Arkansas region), a health and fitness center (“Walton Family Whole Health and Fitness,” a 360,000 square foot facility featuring gyms, pickleball courts, meditation spaces, and cryotherapy), and a food hall (“8th and Plate”). It contains seven miles of walking and biking trails, three hundred EV charging stations, and its own rentable bike fleet. Storefronts throughout the campus hold local outdoor retailers, breweries, and barbecue joints. But for all the expense, ambition, and decadence, the Walmart play-city feels like a copy of a Silicon Valley gone by, the company playing catch-up to a tech economy that no longer exists. In his recent book The Technological Republic, Palantir founder Alex Karp writes (notably, in the past tense):
The Sunnyvales, Palo Altos, and Mountain Views of the world were company towns and city-states, walled off from society and offering something that the national project could no longer provide. Technology companies formed internally coherent communities whose corporate campuses attempted to provide for all the wants and needs of daily life.It’s a company city within a company town. Walmart needed something like this bizarro-world place, straight out of HBO’s Silicon Valley title sequence, to solidify its own future in a shifting economic terrain. But its weirdness reveals the anachronisms of the retail giant’s political and economic legacy, and of its future—not quite conservative enough, not quite liberal enough, not quite a tech company, not just a brick-and-mortar retailer, either. [...]
These are the kinds of things you build when you need to lure people away from cities, which has been the motivation for northwest Arkansas’s (or “Oz,” as recent efforts have tried to rebrand it) economic development machine that also includes other local corporate powerhouses like meat giant Tyson Foods and logistics behemoth J. B. Hunt Transportation. It’s part of Walmart’s transparent effort to make the region a desirable place to live not just for its own workforce, but for those of its suppliers too, which it unofficially requires to maintain an office and executive team within the region. As parts of the tech world—SpaceX, Hewlett Packard, Oracle—make lots of noise about moving their headquarters off the coasts, the region’s boosters are making an explicit play for tech workers, and maybe companies too, to move here. In recent years the Northwest Arkansas Council has placed billboards in places like Austin and Seattle that read, “Go South, young tech workers” and “It’s like Austin, but affordable.”
The Walton dynasty presides in the background of Arkansas politics, but the family has largely stayed out of the culture wars, at least in public. The Walton Family Foundation has put millions of dollars into funding climate projects and environmental journalism, with recent grants to NPR and PBS. After much pressure, in 2021, the Foundation issued a statement opposing the Arkansas legislature’s attacks on trans rights; later that year, it established a special “Arkansas LGBTQ+ Advancement Fund” to “improve the quality of life for LGBTQ+ Arkansans.” But the fund made just one round of grants, in 2022, and its promotional webpage was pulled down last year. More recently, the foundation seems to be tacking to the center: It commissioned a cross-partisan study of nonprofits (“The problems our nation faces are too big for any one sector or political party to solve on its own. They require people with a range of beliefs and experiences to come together to find answers”) and is framing its climate work in similar terms (“Support for Clean, Safe, and Secure Water Supplies Transcends Partisan Politics”).
In order to keep up with the Walton’s benevolent stewardship of Bentonville, and its presumed-to-be-liberal workforce, the Walmart of the 2010s had combined its historic commitment to anti-unionism and conservative economics with a more liberal outlook on identity and inclusion, like its corporate peers. Recently, however, spurred on by Trump’s second term, Walmart’s DEI initiatives have hit the chopping block: Pride merchandise has been pulled, and inclusion and diversity have been renamed “belonging,” even as the company tries desperately to convince its employees to make the move to Arkansas.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to international trade has taken straight aim at these economic interests through its protectionism—or, at least, heavy-handed and chaotic attempts at it. [...]
As Trump’s trade war dawdles along, the cracks between business conservatism and Trump conservatism have been showing in earnest. CEO Doug McMillon, who will retire at the end of this month, sat down with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before his inauguration and reportedly told him, “We’re here long term. We’re a large employer. We serve a lot of people. We want the country to thrive. How can we be helpful?” Just a few months later, he was at an Oval Office meeting in April where, alongside the heads of Home Depot and Target, he tried to impress upon the chief executive that broad-based tariffs would mean an uptick in prices. A Walmart spokesperson called the meeting “productive.” But nothing changed; a few weeks after this meeting, at the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Walmart told investors that its prices would soon start to rise. “The magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history,” its chief financial officer told the Wall Street Journal. Trump reacted quickly (and characteristically) on Truth Social:
“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”In the months since then, Walmart’s prices have been rising, some slightly and some by more than 50 percent; still, the company claims that the trade war has not affected prices. “Costs increase each week,” McMillon said, but also that the company has been “keeping our prices as low as we can for as long as we can,” crediting a recent increase in high-income shoppers for keeping sales high. It’s no stretch to imagine overseas suppliers are taking the brunt of this trade showmanship.
American companies eating tariffs imposed by a Republican president, a conservative chain up against a conservative president; this can’t have been the future Sam Walton envisioned, nor can it have been what his offspring or his corporate successors thought was coming when they dumped millions of dollars into their new corporate playground.
The world the Walmart campus was built to accommodate is slipping away. As the new HQ fills with workers pedaling to any number of its fully windowed buildings, soaking up the sun in its outdoor spaces, playing pickleball in its associate-use courts, these same workers are no longer a fought-over commodity. To an industry enhanced with layoffs and firings, they’re a dime a dozen. Even if the AI bubble collapses in spectacular fashion, it will have transformed the tech and e-commerce sector. Palantir, Meta, Google, Amazon are falling in line with the Trump circus, having determined that their owners’ interests (and government contracts) are better served by playing nice with the administration than by pissing it off. In a way, Walmart seems adrift, a Spark flag waving in the wind, once at the forefront of changes in global capitalism and now something of a dinosaur figuring out how to respond, economically and politically, to them.
by Olivia Paschal, N+1 | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Kung Fu Robots Steal the Show
Dozens of G1 robots from Unitree Robotics delivered the world's first fully autonomous humanoid robot kung fu performance, featuring rapid position changes. The show pushed the limits of robotic movement and set multiple global records.
[ed. Not your mom's old roomba anymore. Robotics + AI the next frontier.]
Proposed AI Policy Framework for Congress
Sam Altman (Open AI): "The world may need something like an IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] for international coordination on AI". (source)
Alex Bores proposes his AI policy framework for Congress.
1. Protect kids and students: Parental visibility. Age verification for risky AI services. Require scanning for self-harm. Teach kids about AI. Clear guidelines for AI use in schools, explore best uses. Ban AI CSAM.
2. Take back control of your data. Privacy laws, data ownership, no sale of personal data, disclosure of AI interactions and data collections and training data.
3. Stop deepfakes. Metadata standards, origin tracing, penalties for distribution.
4. Make datacenters work for people. No rate hikes, enforce agreements, expedite data centers using green energy, repair the grid with private funds, monitor water use, close property tax loopholes.
5. Protect and support workers. Require large companies to report AI-related workforce changes. Tax incentives for upskilling, invest in retraining, ban AI as sole decider for hiring and firing, transitional period where AI needs same licensing as a human, tax large companies for an ‘AI dividend.’
6. Nationalize the Raise Act for Frontier AI. Require independent safety testing, mandate cybersecurity incident reporting, restrict government use of foreign AI tools, create accountability mechanisms for AI systems that harm, engage in diplomacy on AI issues.
7. Build Government Capacity to Oversee AI. Fund CAISI, expand technical expertise, require developers to disclose key facts to regulators, develop contingency plans for catastrophic risks.
8. Keep America Competitive. Federal funding for academic research, support for private development of safe, beneficial applications, ‘reasonable regulation that protects people without strangling innovation,’ work with allies to establish safety standards, strategic export controls, keep the door open for international agreements.
Alex Bores proposes his AI policy framework for Congress.
1. Protect kids and students: Parental visibility. Age verification for risky AI services. Require scanning for self-harm. Teach kids about AI. Clear guidelines for AI use in schools, explore best uses. Ban AI CSAM.
2. Take back control of your data. Privacy laws, data ownership, no sale of personal data, disclosure of AI interactions and data collections and training data.
3. Stop deepfakes. Metadata standards, origin tracing, penalties for distribution.
4. Make datacenters work for people. No rate hikes, enforce agreements, expedite data centers using green energy, repair the grid with private funds, monitor water use, close property tax loopholes.
5. Protect and support workers. Require large companies to report AI-related workforce changes. Tax incentives for upskilling, invest in retraining, ban AI as sole decider for hiring and firing, transitional period where AI needs same licensing as a human, tax large companies for an ‘AI dividend.’
6. Nationalize the Raise Act for Frontier AI. Require independent safety testing, mandate cybersecurity incident reporting, restrict government use of foreign AI tools, create accountability mechanisms for AI systems that harm, engage in diplomacy on AI issues.
7. Build Government Capacity to Oversee AI. Fund CAISI, expand technical expertise, require developers to disclose key facts to regulators, develop contingency plans for catastrophic risks.
8. Keep America Competitive. Federal funding for academic research, support for private development of safe, beneficial applications, ‘reasonable regulation that protects people without strangling innovation,’ work with allies to establish safety standards, strategic export controls, keep the door open for international agreements.
[ed. Given the pace of AI development, the federal government needs to get its act together soon or anything they do will be irrelevant and way too late. Bores is a NY State Assemblyman running for Congress. A former data scientist and project lead for Palantir Technologies - one of the leading defense and security companies in the world - he joined in 2014 and left in 2019 when Palantir renewed its contract with ICE. Wikipedia entry here. His official Framework policy can be found here (pdf). The proposed goals, which seem well thought out and easily understandable, should, with minor tweaks, gain bi-partisian support (in a saner world anyway...who knows now). Better than 50 states proposing 50 different versions. Dean Ball (former White House technology advisor) has proposed something similar called the AI Action Plan (pdf). Both are thoughtful efforts that provide ample talking points for querying your congressperson about what they're doing at this critical inflection point (if anything).] [See also: The AI-Panic Cycle—And What’s Actually Different Now (Atlantic).]
Bored of Peace
In Washington, D.C., today, President Donald J. Trump held the first meeting of his so-called Board of Peace at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), newly renamed the “Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace,” a change being legally challenged. Last year, officials from the Trump administration seized the USIP building, which housed an independent entity created by Congress in 1984, and fired nearly all the employees.
Trump has made it clear he wants his new board to replace the United Nations. Twenty-seven countries have said they will participate, but so far none appear to have tossed in the $1 billion that would give them permanent status. The countries participating include Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Trump extended invitations to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, both of whom have been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Trump withdrew an invitation to the board from Canada after Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced Trump’s foreign policy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, so Canada is out. Rejecting Trump’s invitation are Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the Vatican. They cite their continuing support for the United Nations, concerns about Russian influence in Trump’s board, and concerns about the board’s organization, which gives Trump final say in all decisions, including how to spend the board’s money.
Today, Trump announced that the U.S. will put $10 billion into the Board of Peace, although since Congress is the only body that can legally appropriate money in our system, it’s unclear how he intends to do this.
The event at the board appeared to be the Trump Show. Representatives from the countries who had accepted Trump’s invitation stood awkwardly on stage waiting for him while his favorite songs blared. Once he arrived, he rambled for an hour and then appeared to fall asleep at points in the meeting as dignitaries spoke. [...]
Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.
According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.
Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.
On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”
Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”
In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.
When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”
Trump withdrew an invitation to the board from Canada after Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced Trump’s foreign policy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, so Canada is out. Rejecting Trump’s invitation are Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the Vatican. They cite their continuing support for the United Nations, concerns about Russian influence in Trump’s board, and concerns about the board’s organization, which gives Trump final say in all decisions, including how to spend the board’s money.
Today, Trump announced that the U.S. will put $10 billion into the Board of Peace, although since Congress is the only body that can legally appropriate money in our system, it’s unclear how he intends to do this.
The event at the board appeared to be the Trump Show. Representatives from the countries who had accepted Trump’s invitation stood awkwardly on stage waiting for him while his favorite songs blared. Once he arrived, he rambled for an hour and then appeared to fall asleep at points in the meeting as dignitaries spoke. [...]
Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.
According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.
Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.
On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”
Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”
In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.
When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”
by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American | Read more:
Image: Getty/via
[We should just get it over with and skip all the preliminaries - the Donald J. Trump States of America. I'm sure many Republicans would be thrilled. Isn't it ominous that during two civilizational threats, Covid and AI, this is the guy in charge? We get what (at least half of us) deserve, I guess.]
February 18, 2026: J.B. Pritzker State of the State Address
Today Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker delivered the State of the State address. The underlying purpose of the address is to explain the state budget, but Pritzker, a Democrat, used the occasion to talk far more broadly about the state of Illinois and the nation.
Pritzker anchored his speech by reaching back to the days of John Peter Altgeld, a German-born American who helped to lead the Progressive movement and served as governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. Altgeld oversaw passage of some of the strongest laws in the country for workplace safety and protection of child workers, invested heavily in education, and appointed women to important positions in state government despite the fact that women could not yet vote.
Pritzker anchored his speech by reaching back to the days of John Peter Altgeld, a German-born American who helped to lead the Progressive movement and served as governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. Altgeld oversaw passage of some of the strongest laws in the country for workplace safety and protection of child workers, invested heavily in education, and appointed women to important positions in state government despite the fact that women could not yet vote.
Pritzker noted that in his State of the State speech in January 1895, Altgeld talked about “the need to ensure that science would govern the practice of medicine in Illinois; the high cost of insurance; the condition of Illinois prisons; the funding of state universities; a needed revision of election laws; the concentration of wealth in large businesses.” Altgeld expressed pride for appointing women to office and his statement that “[j]ustice requires that the same rewards and honors that encourage and incite men should be equally in reach of women in every field and activity.”
Pritzker said he brought up Altgeld’s defense of equal rights “to highlight one enduring human truth—injustice can become a genetic condition we bequeath on future generations if we fail to face it forthrightly.”
Pritzker then turned to the year that has passed since President Donald J. Trump took office. “To be perfectly candid,” Pritzker said, “as Illinois is one of the states whose taxpayers send more dollars to the federal government than we receive back in services, I was hoping that his threats to gut programs that support working families [were] the kind of unrealistic hyperbole that fuels a presidential campaign but then is abandoned when cooler heads prevail.” But, he said, “Unfortunately, there are no cooler heads at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days.”
The Trump administration has cost Illinois $8.4 billion, Pritzker said, “illegally confiscating money that has already been promised and appropriated by the Congress to the people of Illinois.” Pritzker was clear that this money is not handouts but “dollars that real Illinoisans paid in federal taxes and that have been constitutionally approved by our elected Democratic and Republican representatives in Washington.”
Unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets every year. Trump’s billions in illegally withheld funds inflict a cost on the state’s residents, while Illinois has been “forced to spend enormous time and taxpayer money going to court and fighting to get what is rightfully ours.” Pritzker said: “It is impossible to tally the hours, days, and weeks our state government has spent chasing news of Presidential executive orders, letters, and edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop Guild.” [...]
He noted the growth of Illinois’s economy and economic stability over the past eight years even as the state had balanced its budget every year and made historic investments in education, child welfare, disability services, and job creation in the private sector. In the past year, Illinois’s gross domestic product was more than $1.2 trillion, up from $881 billion when Pritzker took office.
Looking forward, Pritzker outlined plans to address the top three economic issues on the mind of most Americans: the cost of housing, electricity, and healthcare. He promised to reduce the cost of housing by cutting local regulations and providing more options for financing. He promised to address the skyrocketing cost of electricity first by pausing the authorization of new data center tax credits and then by investing in renewable energy and nuclear power. Finally, he announced that, as of this week, the state had eliminated $1 billion in medical debt for more than 500,000 people in the state by purchasing and erasing it for pennies on the dollar...
“I’m committed to doing everything government can to rein in the worst of the price gouging and profiteering we are seeing,” Pritzker said. “But I implore the titans of industry who regularly ask government to make their lives easier—what are you doing to make your employers’ and your customers’ lives easier?”
Then Pritzker turned to the crisis federal agents created on the streets of Chicago. “A year ago, I stood before you and asked a provocative question: After we have discriminated against, disparaged, and deported all our immigrant neighbors—and the problems we started with still remained—what comes next?” Pritzker said. He recalled that when he asked that question, some people walked out.
“But a year later, we have an answer—don’t we?” he said. “Masked, unaccountable federal agents—with little training—occupied our streets, brutalized our people, tear-gassed kids and cops, kidnapped parents in front of their children, detained and arrested and at times attempted to deport U.S. citizens, and killed innocent Americans in the streets.”
Pritzker identified Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the architects of that plan to “drip authoritarianism…into our veins.”
But, he noted, people in Illinois did not accept that authoritarianism.
Pritzker reminded the audience that President Grover Cleveland had similarly tried to “subdue the Illinois population with hired thugs” during the 1894 Pullman strike after the Pullman Company, which made railroad cars, cut workers’ wages by about 25%. When workers struck, Cleveland deputized U.S. Marshals to end the strike. They fired into crowds of bystanders and, according to a Chicago paper, “seemed to be hunting trouble.” Twenty-five people died and more were wounded before the strike ended.
Altgeld had opposed the arrival of federal troops, and his fury at their intrusion still smoldered when he gave his State of the State speech almost six months later. “If the President can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet…whenever and wherever he pleases, under pretense of enforcing some law,” Altgeld wrote, “his judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion—then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the President and those of...the Czar of Russia.”
Pritzker joked that he wished he “could spend just one year of my governorship presiding over precedented times. I yearn for normal problems,” he said. But these are not normal times.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about love—about loving people and loving your country and the power involved in both,” the governor said. “I know, right now, there are a lot of people out there who love their country and feel like their country is not loving them back. I know that.” But he told those people that “your country is loving you back—just not in the way you are used to hearing.”
“It’s not speaking in anthems or flags or ostentatious displays of patriotism. It will never come from the people who say the only way to love America is to hate Americans. Love is found in every act of courage—large and small—taken to preserve the country we once knew. You will find it in homes and schools and churches and art. It is there; it has not been squashed.”
Pritzker said he brought up Altgeld’s defense of equal rights “to highlight one enduring human truth—injustice can become a genetic condition we bequeath on future generations if we fail to face it forthrightly.”
Pritzker then turned to the year that has passed since President Donald J. Trump took office. “To be perfectly candid,” Pritzker said, “as Illinois is one of the states whose taxpayers send more dollars to the federal government than we receive back in services, I was hoping that his threats to gut programs that support working families [were] the kind of unrealistic hyperbole that fuels a presidential campaign but then is abandoned when cooler heads prevail.” But, he said, “Unfortunately, there are no cooler heads at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days.”
The Trump administration has cost Illinois $8.4 billion, Pritzker said, “illegally confiscating money that has already been promised and appropriated by the Congress to the people of Illinois.” Pritzker was clear that this money is not handouts but “dollars that real Illinoisans paid in federal taxes and that have been constitutionally approved by our elected Democratic and Republican representatives in Washington.”
Unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets every year. Trump’s billions in illegally withheld funds inflict a cost on the state’s residents, while Illinois has been “forced to spend enormous time and taxpayer money going to court and fighting to get what is rightfully ours.” Pritzker said: “It is impossible to tally the hours, days, and weeks our state government has spent chasing news of Presidential executive orders, letters, and edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop Guild.” [...]
He noted the growth of Illinois’s economy and economic stability over the past eight years even as the state had balanced its budget every year and made historic investments in education, child welfare, disability services, and job creation in the private sector. In the past year, Illinois’s gross domestic product was more than $1.2 trillion, up from $881 billion when Pritzker took office.
Looking forward, Pritzker outlined plans to address the top three economic issues on the mind of most Americans: the cost of housing, electricity, and healthcare. He promised to reduce the cost of housing by cutting local regulations and providing more options for financing. He promised to address the skyrocketing cost of electricity first by pausing the authorization of new data center tax credits and then by investing in renewable energy and nuclear power. Finally, he announced that, as of this week, the state had eliminated $1 billion in medical debt for more than 500,000 people in the state by purchasing and erasing it for pennies on the dollar...
“I’m committed to doing everything government can to rein in the worst of the price gouging and profiteering we are seeing,” Pritzker said. “But I implore the titans of industry who regularly ask government to make their lives easier—what are you doing to make your employers’ and your customers’ lives easier?”
Then Pritzker turned to the crisis federal agents created on the streets of Chicago. “A year ago, I stood before you and asked a provocative question: After we have discriminated against, disparaged, and deported all our immigrant neighbors—and the problems we started with still remained—what comes next?” Pritzker said. He recalled that when he asked that question, some people walked out.
“But a year later, we have an answer—don’t we?” he said. “Masked, unaccountable federal agents—with little training—occupied our streets, brutalized our people, tear-gassed kids and cops, kidnapped parents in front of their children, detained and arrested and at times attempted to deport U.S. citizens, and killed innocent Americans in the streets.”
Pritzker identified Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the architects of that plan to “drip authoritarianism…into our veins.”
But, he noted, people in Illinois did not accept that authoritarianism.
Pritzker reminded the audience that President Grover Cleveland had similarly tried to “subdue the Illinois population with hired thugs” during the 1894 Pullman strike after the Pullman Company, which made railroad cars, cut workers’ wages by about 25%. When workers struck, Cleveland deputized U.S. Marshals to end the strike. They fired into crowds of bystanders and, according to a Chicago paper, “seemed to be hunting trouble.” Twenty-five people died and more were wounded before the strike ended.
Altgeld had opposed the arrival of federal troops, and his fury at their intrusion still smoldered when he gave his State of the State speech almost six months later. “If the President can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet…whenever and wherever he pleases, under pretense of enforcing some law,” Altgeld wrote, “his judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion—then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the President and those of...the Czar of Russia.”
Pritzker joked that he wished he “could spend just one year of my governorship presiding over precedented times. I yearn for normal problems,” he said. But these are not normal times.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about love—about loving people and loving your country and the power involved in both,” the governor said. “I know, right now, there are a lot of people out there who love their country and feel like their country is not loving them back. I know that.” But he told those people that “your country is loving you back—just not in the way you are used to hearing.”
“It’s not speaking in anthems or flags or ostentatious displays of patriotism. It will never come from the people who say the only way to love America is to hate Americans. Love is found in every act of courage—large and small—taken to preserve the country we once knew. You will find it in homes and schools and churches and art. It is there; it has not been squashed.”
by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American | Read more:
Image: via
[ed. Sounds good to me. The entire text of Governor Pritzker's speech can be found here. Really worth a full read.]
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Seattle Seahawks Begin Sale Process
Less than 2 weeks after winning the Super Bowl.
The Athletic reported last month that the team would be put up for sale following the Super Bowl, though the exact timing was unclear.
Because the Seahawks are held in a trust, as the Broncos were, it’s Jody Allen’s fiduciary duty as executor of the estate to maximize the franchise’s value in a sale. [...]
Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, purchased the Seahawks from Ken Behring for around $200 million in 1997, saving the franchise from leaving Seattle. Nearly 17 years after taking control of the team, he hoisted its first Lombardi Trophy after the Seahawks’ lopsided win over the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. Allen died four years later from complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma at 65, and his sister took over as chair of the Seahawks and trustee of her brother’s estate.
During the Allen family’s near three decades of control, the Seahawks have won two Super Bowls, four NFC championships and 11 division titles.
The NFL’s ownership policy differs from those of other sports leagues, mandating that an individual controlling owner must own at least 30 percent of the team and the number of minority investors cannot top 24 people (for family ownerships, the individual in control needs only 1 percent so long as the family as a whole has 30 percent).
Because of that policy, along with the ballooning cost of franchises — the Broncos’ sale price more than doubled the previous NFL high ($2.3 billion for the Carolina Panthers in 2018) — and the prospect of new media rights deals soon, the pool of potential buyers for NFL franchises is limited to the ultra-rich.
Rob Walton, the controlling owner of the Broncos after the sale, is worth around $144.8 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. (The Broncos’ controlling owner designation was later transferred from Rob Walton to his son-in-law, Greg Penner.) Forbes estimates that Harris’ wealth is around $11 billion.
Sportico estimated last year that the Seahawks are worth around $6.59 billion, the 14th-highest in the NFL and up 18 percent from the team’s estimated value in 2024. Should the team sell for $8 billion and set a new record for an NFL franchise, the prospective buyer would need to put down at least $2.4 billion for control and fundraise the other $5.6 billion.
by Nicki Jhabvala, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: Dean Rutz. Seattle Times
[ed. It's a rich man (and woman's) game for sure. You have to be ultra-wealthy just to have a seat at the table. Paul Allen was really an amazing guy (and a mean guitar player). Wikipedia bio: here
Defense Dept. and Anthropic Square Off in Dispute Over A.I. Safety
For months, the Department of Defense and the artificial intelligence company Anthropic have been negotiating a contract over the use of A.I. on classified systems by the Pentagon.
This week, those discussions erupted in a war of words.
On Monday, a person close to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Axios that the Pentagon was “close” to declaring the start-up a “supply chain risk,” a move that would sever ties between the company and the U.S. military. Anthropic was caught off guard and internally scrambled to pinpoint what had set off the department, two people with knowledge of the company said.
At the heart of the fight is how A.I. will be used in future battlefields. Anthropic told defense officials that it did not want its A.I. used for mass surveillance of Americans or deployed in autonomous weapons that had no humans in the loop, two people involved in the discussions said.
But Mr. Hegseth and others in the Pentagon were furious that Anthropic would resist the military’s using A.I. as it saw fit, current and former officials briefed on the discussions said. As tensions escalated, the Department of Defense accused the San Francisco-based company of catering to an elite, liberal work force by demanding additional protections.
The disagreement underlines how political the issue of A.I. has become in the Trump administration. President Trump and his advisers want to expand technology’s use, reducing export restrictions on A.I. chips and criticizing state regulations that could be perceived as inhibitors to A.I. development. But Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, has long said A.I. needs strict limits around it to prevent it from potentially wrecking the world.
Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said it was important that the relationship between the Pentagon and Anthropic not be doomed.
“There are war fighters using Anthropic for good and legitimate purposes, and ripping this out of their hands seems like a total disservice,” she said. “What the nation needs is both sides at the table discussing what can we do with this technology to make us safer.” [...]
The Defense Department has used Anthropic’s technology for more than a year as part of a $200 million A.I. pilot program to analyze imagery and other intelligence data and conduct research. Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI are also part of the program. But Anthropic’s A.I. chatbot, Claude, was the most widely used by the agency — and the only one on classified systems — thanks to its integration with technology from Palantir, a data analytics company that works with the federal government, according to defense officials with knowledge of the technology...
On Jan. 9, Mr. Hegseth released a memo calling on A.I. companies to remove restrictions on their technology. The memo led A.I. companies including Anthropic to renegotiate their contracts. Anthropic asked for limits to how its A.I. tools could be deployed.
Anthropic has long been more vocal than other A.I. companies on safety issues. In a podcast interview in 2023, Dr. Amodei said there was a 10 to 25 percent chance that A.I. could destroy humanity. Internally, the company has strict guidelines that bar its technology from being used to facilitate violence.
In January, Dr. Amodei wrote in an essay on his personal website that “using A.I. for domestic mass surveillance and mass propaganda” seemed “entirely illegitimate” to him. He added that A.I.-automated weapons could greatly increase the risks “of democratic governments turning them against their own people to seize power.”
In contract negotiations, the Defense Department pushed back against Anthropic, saying it would use A.I. in accordance with the law, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
by Sheera Frenkel and Julian E. Barnes, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
[ed. The baby's having a tantrum. So, Anthropic is now a company "catering to an elite, liberal work force"? I can't even connect the dots. Somebody (Big Daddy? Congress? ha) needs to take him out of the loop on these critical issues (AI safety) or we're all, in technical terms, 'toast'. The military should not be dictating AI safety. It's also important that other AI companies show support and solidarity on this issue or face the same dilemma.]
This week, those discussions erupted in a war of words.
On Monday, a person close to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Axios that the Pentagon was “close” to declaring the start-up a “supply chain risk,” a move that would sever ties between the company and the U.S. military. Anthropic was caught off guard and internally scrambled to pinpoint what had set off the department, two people with knowledge of the company said.
But Mr. Hegseth and others in the Pentagon were furious that Anthropic would resist the military’s using A.I. as it saw fit, current and former officials briefed on the discussions said. As tensions escalated, the Department of Defense accused the San Francisco-based company of catering to an elite, liberal work force by demanding additional protections.
The disagreement underlines how political the issue of A.I. has become in the Trump administration. President Trump and his advisers want to expand technology’s use, reducing export restrictions on A.I. chips and criticizing state regulations that could be perceived as inhibitors to A.I. development. But Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, has long said A.I. needs strict limits around it to prevent it from potentially wrecking the world.
Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said it was important that the relationship between the Pentagon and Anthropic not be doomed.
“There are war fighters using Anthropic for good and legitimate purposes, and ripping this out of their hands seems like a total disservice,” she said. “What the nation needs is both sides at the table discussing what can we do with this technology to make us safer.” [...]
The Defense Department has used Anthropic’s technology for more than a year as part of a $200 million A.I. pilot program to analyze imagery and other intelligence data and conduct research. Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI are also part of the program. But Anthropic’s A.I. chatbot, Claude, was the most widely used by the agency — and the only one on classified systems — thanks to its integration with technology from Palantir, a data analytics company that works with the federal government, according to defense officials with knowledge of the technology...
On Jan. 9, Mr. Hegseth released a memo calling on A.I. companies to remove restrictions on their technology. The memo led A.I. companies including Anthropic to renegotiate their contracts. Anthropic asked for limits to how its A.I. tools could be deployed.
Anthropic has long been more vocal than other A.I. companies on safety issues. In a podcast interview in 2023, Dr. Amodei said there was a 10 to 25 percent chance that A.I. could destroy humanity. Internally, the company has strict guidelines that bar its technology from being used to facilitate violence.
In January, Dr. Amodei wrote in an essay on his personal website that “using A.I. for domestic mass surveillance and mass propaganda” seemed “entirely illegitimate” to him. He added that A.I.-automated weapons could greatly increase the risks “of democratic governments turning them against their own people to seize power.”
In contract negotiations, the Defense Department pushed back against Anthropic, saying it would use A.I. in accordance with the law, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
Image: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
[ed. The baby's having a tantrum. So, Anthropic is now a company "catering to an elite, liberal work force"? I can't even connect the dots. Somebody (Big Daddy? Congress? ha) needs to take him out of the loop on these critical issues (AI safety) or we're all, in technical terms, 'toast'. The military should not be dictating AI safety. It's also important that other AI companies show support and solidarity on this issue or face the same dilemma.]
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Seattle Times - Pictures of the Year 2025
Seattle Times - Pictures of the Year 2025
‘Millionaires Tax’ Finds Seattle is Far Richer Than Anyone Knew
Seattle’s new mayor was speaking to a roomful of supporters the other day when she dropped a rather blunt assessment of our city.
“You know what?” Katie Wilson said. “This city is filthy rich.”
The crowd laughed a bit. Can you say that when you’re mayor? Should you say that?
It bears some examination, because of what was announced next.
The city’s new social housing tax, levied on lofty pay packages to pay for public housing, was due Jan. 31. The startling news was that it blew the projections out of the water.
When the 5% tax on salaries and compensation above $1 million passed a year ago, its backers estimated it would bring in $50 million annually. Later the city’s finance department used state employment data for a more rigorous finding, and came up with $65.8 million.
But it looked precarious.
“The increase to the payroll expense tax … could cause businesses to change their hiring behavior to avoid taxation — such as moving existing employees to locations outside Seattle,” a report to the City Council said.
Conclusion: There’s “a large amount of uncertainty,” said the office of economic and revenue forecasts. The tax could collect anywhere from $39.2 million to $80 million, “but even larger variance cannot be ruled out.”
“Larger variance” is once again the story of just how rich we are. Because tax collections came in at $115 million — 75% higher than the estimate. And 44% over the top of the range.
It means several things about our city — all of which inform the debates currently raging about tax-the-rich efforts in our state.
One is that Seattle’s plutocrats are wealthier than anyone imagines. This keeps getting revealed, where a scheme is developed to tax wealth, and then the amounts the tax brings in wildly overshoot even the most optimistic forecasts...
Another thing is that Seattle businesses obviously did not flee.
This is interesting because the social housing tax should be one of the easier taxes to avoid. You only have to work at least half the time outside the city — in an office across the lake in Bellevue, for example.
If you make, say, $1.1 million, the social housing tax paid by your company would be $5,000 (5% of the $100,000 above $1 million). It’s probably not worth moving an executive due to five grand.
But one making $10 million? The tax on that is $450,000. $30 million? The tax hits $1.45 million.
As I wrote last year, it’d be cheaper for Amazon to fly its top execs to Bellevue in a helicopter three days a week.
They did not take me up on this strategic advice, apparently. In fact, the 5% tax is being paid by 170 Seattle companies, according to the social housing agency. (The tax is paid by companies, not individual workers.)
So are the rich set to bolt the city or the state to get away from tax-the-rich schemes? Last week at a hearing on a proposed state “millionaires income tax,” Redmond hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, who himself fled California’s taxes, testified he knows of “about 50 couples who are already in the process of, or soon to be changing, their domicile, out of this state.”
That is a lot. I’m not sure I know 50 couples period, let alone 50 couples capable of taking such decisive action. Another way the rich are different than you or me.
The press has been filled with anecdotes of wealthy people decamping. Yet someone’s got to be hanging on here paying all these taxes — the totals of which keep racking up dramatically higher than expected.
One tech exec finally emerged to argue the fleeing-from-Seattle talk is bogus.
“The math doesn’t math,” wrote Jacob Colker, a Seattle AI venture capitalist. “Should we be thoughtful about tax policy? Heck yeah. Should it be tied to better stewardship of spending? Darn right. But the breathless narrative that Seattle is one bill from collapse is not serious analysis.”
My sense is taxes work when rates are reasonable. Single digits, like the 5% social housing tax, are not killer rates. Maybe the rich say “ugh, I don’t like it but oh well, it’s not worth uprooting my life.” So far, it hasn’t been worth even driving across the bridge.
On the other hand, Democrats last year jacked the top estate tax rate for the super-wealthy, to a gouging 35% for wealth north of $12 million. Some of those are said to be fleeing Washington, and who can blame them? There’s no good to come from fleecing people. This extreme rate situation has set off enough alarms that state Democrats now have a “tail between their legs” bill to unwind that rate back to where it was set for years, 20%.
Point is, keep it cool, lawmakers, and the rich can abide.
“What people I think are failing to recognize is that tipping-point scenario,” he said, which would lead the state to lose the entrepreneurial advantages that have led to the growth of companies like Amazon, T-Mobile and Starbucks.
“You know what?” Katie Wilson said. “This city is filthy rich.”
The crowd laughed a bit. Can you say that when you’re mayor? Should you say that?
The city’s new social housing tax, levied on lofty pay packages to pay for public housing, was due Jan. 31. The startling news was that it blew the projections out of the water.
When the 5% tax on salaries and compensation above $1 million passed a year ago, its backers estimated it would bring in $50 million annually. Later the city’s finance department used state employment data for a more rigorous finding, and came up with $65.8 million.
But it looked precarious.
“The increase to the payroll expense tax … could cause businesses to change their hiring behavior to avoid taxation — such as moving existing employees to locations outside Seattle,” a report to the City Council said.
Conclusion: There’s “a large amount of uncertainty,” said the office of economic and revenue forecasts. The tax could collect anywhere from $39.2 million to $80 million, “but even larger variance cannot be ruled out.”
“Larger variance” is once again the story of just how rich we are. Because tax collections came in at $115 million — 75% higher than the estimate. And 44% over the top of the range.
It means several things about our city — all of which inform the debates currently raging about tax-the-rich efforts in our state.
One is that Seattle’s plutocrats are wealthier than anyone imagines. This keeps getting revealed, where a scheme is developed to tax wealth, and then the amounts the tax brings in wildly overshoot even the most optimistic forecasts...
Another thing is that Seattle businesses obviously did not flee.
This is interesting because the social housing tax should be one of the easier taxes to avoid. You only have to work at least half the time outside the city — in an office across the lake in Bellevue, for example.
If you make, say, $1.1 million, the social housing tax paid by your company would be $5,000 (5% of the $100,000 above $1 million). It’s probably not worth moving an executive due to five grand.
But one making $10 million? The tax on that is $450,000. $30 million? The tax hits $1.45 million.
As I wrote last year, it’d be cheaper for Amazon to fly its top execs to Bellevue in a helicopter three days a week.
They did not take me up on this strategic advice, apparently. In fact, the 5% tax is being paid by 170 Seattle companies, according to the social housing agency. (The tax is paid by companies, not individual workers.)
So are the rich set to bolt the city or the state to get away from tax-the-rich schemes? Last week at a hearing on a proposed state “millionaires income tax,” Redmond hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, who himself fled California’s taxes, testified he knows of “about 50 couples who are already in the process of, or soon to be changing, their domicile, out of this state.”
That is a lot. I’m not sure I know 50 couples period, let alone 50 couples capable of taking such decisive action. Another way the rich are different than you or me.
The press has been filled with anecdotes of wealthy people decamping. Yet someone’s got to be hanging on here paying all these taxes — the totals of which keep racking up dramatically higher than expected.
One tech exec finally emerged to argue the fleeing-from-Seattle talk is bogus.
“The math doesn’t math,” wrote Jacob Colker, a Seattle AI venture capitalist. “Should we be thoughtful about tax policy? Heck yeah. Should it be tied to better stewardship of spending? Darn right. But the breathless narrative that Seattle is one bill from collapse is not serious analysis.”
My sense is taxes work when rates are reasonable. Single digits, like the 5% social housing tax, are not killer rates. Maybe the rich say “ugh, I don’t like it but oh well, it’s not worth uprooting my life.” So far, it hasn’t been worth even driving across the bridge.
On the other hand, Democrats last year jacked the top estate tax rate for the super-wealthy, to a gouging 35% for wealth north of $12 million. Some of those are said to be fleeing Washington, and who can blame them? There’s no good to come from fleecing people. This extreme rate situation has set off enough alarms that state Democrats now have a “tail between their legs” bill to unwind that rate back to where it was set for years, 20%.
Point is, keep it cool, lawmakers, and the rich can abide.
by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Dean Rutz
[ed. I'm all for taxing the super rich, but c'mon, get serious liberals. The solution to every problem is not taxing everyone and everything in sight (or immediately jumping to extremes on public issues, like 'Defund the Police' - one of the dumbest initiatives imaginable). Washington is one of the taxingest states in country, mitigated only by the fact that there's no state income tax (although there's continual chattering about 'fixing' that), with some of the most regressive sales taxes in the country as well. Fortunately, some people seem to be coming to their senses - see also: WA Democrats consider retreat on estate tax, fearing wealth exodus (ST):]
Democrats in the state Legislature have generally dismissed warnings that new taxes on the very wealthy might lead multimillionaires to flee to lower-tax states.
But some are now acknowledging that one tax-the-rich policy they approved last year — a big increase in Washington’s top estate tax rates — may have backfired...
The problem for Washington isn’t just a single shift like the estate tax, Carlyle said, but an “aggregation of taxes” adopted swiftly in recent years, including new business and payroll taxes.
Democrats in the state Legislature have generally dismissed warnings that new taxes on the very wealthy might lead multimillionaires to flee to lower-tax states.
But some are now acknowledging that one tax-the-rich policy they approved last year — a big increase in Washington’s top estate tax rates — may have backfired...
The problem for Washington isn’t just a single shift like the estate tax, Carlyle said, but an “aggregation of taxes” adopted swiftly in recent years, including new business and payroll taxes.
“What people I think are failing to recognize is that tipping-point scenario,” he said, which would lead the state to lose the entrepreneurial advantages that have led to the growth of companies like Amazon, T-Mobile and Starbucks.
The NFL Franchise Tag: What It Is and Isn't
Tuesday morning’s news that the Seahawks are “unlikely” to use the franchise tag on running back Kenneth Walker III might sound ominous for the team’s chances to keep the reigning Super Bowl MVP.
It’s not.
That same report could basically be written about the Seahawks in every year — and increasingly about every NFL team.
The Seahawks have applied the franchise tag on a player only twice since general manager John Schneider arrived in 2010, and they actually used it only once. Just two NFL teams applied the tag last year.
In other words, the news says more about how players don’t like the franchise tag and how it comes with complications and unhappy consequences, compelling teams to avoid using it.
How franchise tags work
That may you leave wondering: just how does a franchise tag work?
At the most basic, it’s a designation (introduced in 1993) that an NFL team can place on one player per year who is set to become an unrestricted free agent, essentially keeping him for the upcoming season at a predetermined salary. Walker can become an unrestricted free agent when the new league year begins March 11.
There is a set period each season when teams can enact the franchise tag before free agency hits.
This year’s period began Tuesday and runs through March 3. If the tag is applied, the sides can continue to negotiate a long-term deal until July 15.
If no deal is reached, the tag takes effect for that season (some negotiating of amounts or incentives is allowed, but the length cannot be changed).
There are two types of franchise tags — exclusive and nonexclusive.
A nonexclusive tag is the most commonly used.
As described on the league’s website, a nonexclusive tag “is a one-year tender of the average of the top five salaries at the player’s position over the last five years, or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater. The tagged player can negotiate with other teams, but the current club owns the right to match any offer or receive two first-round draft picks as compensation if he signs with another team.”
The exclusive tag differs in that the tender “averages the top five salaries at the player’s position for the current year or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater,” and prevents the player from negotiation with other teams.
Official figures won’t be set until the NFL releases the final salary-cap number for 2026 (that number arrived last year on March 1).
The website OvertheCap.com, which tracks NFL financial issues, estimates that the tag number for running backs will be $14.536 million.
That would be a hefty raise for Walker, who made $8.4 million total over the past four seasons on his original rookie contract.
But the tag presents a few issues:
The team
One drawback for the team is that the entire salary counts toward the cap for that season. A tag for Walker would take up almost a quarter of the roughly $60 million in effective cap space that Seattle has, via OvertheCap.com.
A more amenable conclusion for each side is something along the lines of what Pro Football Focus recently estimated as his value — a three-year deal worth up to $27 million with $20 million guaranteed.
Such a deal would surely be structured to have a far lower cap hit than the overall $9 million average — say $6 million or so — and then increase steadily the final two years when the cap itself will also increase.
That would create more room for the Seahawks as they navigate what will be a challenging offseason.
While Seattle has ample cap space, there are also plenty of objectives on the to-do list. Other potential unrestricted free agents include cornerbacks Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen, safety Coby Bryant, receiver Rashid Shaheed and edge rusher Boye Mafe.
The Seahawks also can now offer extensions to every member of the 2023 draft class, which includes receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, cornerback Devon Witherspoon and edge rusher Derick Hall.
The Seahawks are likely to try to lock up JSN and Witherspoon for the long haul and avoid them entering the final year of their rookie contracts with some uncertainty about their future.
But both will likely command deals at the top of their positional wage scale, potentially taking a large chunk of cap space (and immediate cash in the form of big bonuses, as well).
The drawbacks of the tag are why they are often viewed as a “lose-lose” scenario. [...]
There is also what’s called a transition tag, which is a one-year tender for the average of the top 10 salaries at the position as opposed to the top five, which for Walker this year is estimated at $11.72 million.
But that tag guarantees teams only the right to match any offer the player receives and no potential compensation if he signs elsewhere. It’s been used only six times in the past 10 years throughout the league.
To be sure, Seattle faces a challenge in re-signing Walker. He’s rightfully going to want to get the best deal possible at a time when his market is the most heated — PFF rates him as the No. 6 free agent available overall and the top running back...
But Tuesday’s news does nothing to change the basics of the situation — that Seattle hopes to re-sign Walker to a long-term deal, and that Walker hopes to get life-changing security.
by Bob Condotta, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner/Seattle Times
[ed. I've never understood the franchise tag, just figured it was a way to keep a valuable player from being lost to free agency. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but still not sure I understand all the finer details (and don't even start with cap space decisions).]
It’s not.
That same report could basically be written about the Seahawks in every year — and increasingly about every NFL team.
In other words, the news says more about how players don’t like the franchise tag and how it comes with complications and unhappy consequences, compelling teams to avoid using it.
How franchise tags work
That may you leave wondering: just how does a franchise tag work?
At the most basic, it’s a designation (introduced in 1993) that an NFL team can place on one player per year who is set to become an unrestricted free agent, essentially keeping him for the upcoming season at a predetermined salary. Walker can become an unrestricted free agent when the new league year begins March 11.
There is a set period each season when teams can enact the franchise tag before free agency hits.
This year’s period began Tuesday and runs through March 3. If the tag is applied, the sides can continue to negotiate a long-term deal until July 15.
If no deal is reached, the tag takes effect for that season (some negotiating of amounts or incentives is allowed, but the length cannot be changed).
There are two types of franchise tags — exclusive and nonexclusive.
A nonexclusive tag is the most commonly used.
As described on the league’s website, a nonexclusive tag “is a one-year tender of the average of the top five salaries at the player’s position over the last five years, or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater. The tagged player can negotiate with other teams, but the current club owns the right to match any offer or receive two first-round draft picks as compensation if he signs with another team.”
The exclusive tag differs in that the tender “averages the top five salaries at the player’s position for the current year or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater,” and prevents the player from negotiation with other teams.
Official figures won’t be set until the NFL releases the final salary-cap number for 2026 (that number arrived last year on March 1).
The website OvertheCap.com, which tracks NFL financial issues, estimates that the tag number for running backs will be $14.536 million.
That would be a hefty raise for Walker, who made $8.4 million total over the past four seasons on his original rookie contract.
But the tag presents a few issues:
The player
Though the above number would be a good one-year salary for Walker, it doesn’t give him long-term security and means he would again face the same situation next year along with uncertainty all season about his future.
If there was already a lot of conjecture about his future this season, there would be even more in 2026 given Walker’s higher visibility as a Super Bowl MVP.
The one-year nature of the tag also has led to players feeling as if they are walking a tightrope through that season to avoid injury, or to avoid simply having a down season, before they can hit free agency again.
The tag can be rescinded at any time before the player signs it, putting both sides back at square one, and it could mean the player missed his best window to negotiate with other teams.
Though the above number would be a good one-year salary for Walker, it doesn’t give him long-term security and means he would again face the same situation next year along with uncertainty all season about his future.
If there was already a lot of conjecture about his future this season, there would be even more in 2026 given Walker’s higher visibility as a Super Bowl MVP.
The one-year nature of the tag also has led to players feeling as if they are walking a tightrope through that season to avoid injury, or to avoid simply having a down season, before they can hit free agency again.
The tag can be rescinded at any time before the player signs it, putting both sides back at square one, and it could mean the player missed his best window to negotiate with other teams.
The team
One drawback for the team is that the entire salary counts toward the cap for that season. A tag for Walker would take up almost a quarter of the roughly $60 million in effective cap space that Seattle has, via OvertheCap.com.
A more amenable conclusion for each side is something along the lines of what Pro Football Focus recently estimated as his value — a three-year deal worth up to $27 million with $20 million guaranteed.
Such a deal would surely be structured to have a far lower cap hit than the overall $9 million average — say $6 million or so — and then increase steadily the final two years when the cap itself will also increase.
That would create more room for the Seahawks as they navigate what will be a challenging offseason.
While Seattle has ample cap space, there are also plenty of objectives on the to-do list. Other potential unrestricted free agents include cornerbacks Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen, safety Coby Bryant, receiver Rashid Shaheed and edge rusher Boye Mafe.
The Seahawks also can now offer extensions to every member of the 2023 draft class, which includes receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, cornerback Devon Witherspoon and edge rusher Derick Hall.
The Seahawks are likely to try to lock up JSN and Witherspoon for the long haul and avoid them entering the final year of their rookie contracts with some uncertainty about their future.
But both will likely command deals at the top of their positional wage scale, potentially taking a large chunk of cap space (and immediate cash in the form of big bonuses, as well).
The drawbacks of the tag are why they are often viewed as a “lose-lose” scenario. [...]
But that tag guarantees teams only the right to match any offer the player receives and no potential compensation if he signs elsewhere. It’s been used only six times in the past 10 years throughout the league.
To be sure, Seattle faces a challenge in re-signing Walker. He’s rightfully going to want to get the best deal possible at a time when his market is the most heated — PFF rates him as the No. 6 free agent available overall and the top running back...
But Tuesday’s news does nothing to change the basics of the situation — that Seattle hopes to re-sign Walker to a long-term deal, and that Walker hopes to get life-changing security.
by Bob Condotta, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner/Seattle Times
[ed. I've never understood the franchise tag, just figured it was a way to keep a valuable player from being lost to free agency. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but still not sure I understand all the finer details (and don't even start with cap space decisions).]
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
The Crisis, No. 5: On the Hollowing of Apple
[ed. No.5 of 17 Crisis Papers.]
And I think Steve would be disgusted by what has become of his company.
This is not hagiography. Jobs was not a saint. He was cruel to people who loved him. He denied paternity of his daughter for years. He drove employees to breakdowns. He was vain, tyrannical, and capable of extraordinary pettiness. I am not unaware of his failings, of the terrible way he treated people needlessly along the way.
That is a lot more than can be said for this lot of corporate leaders.
It is this Steve Jobs—the morally serious man underneath the mythology—who would be so angry at what Tim Cook has made of Apple.
⁂
I know this sounds like a distinction without a difference. The man built the most valuable company in the world. He died a billionaire many times over. He negotiated hard, fought for his compensation, wanted Apple to be profitable. He was not indifferent to money.
But he never treated money as the goal. Money was what let him make the things he wanted to make. It was freedom—the freedom to say no to investors, to kill products that weren’t good enough, to spend years on details that no spreadsheet could justify. Money was the instrument. The thing it purchased was the ability to do what he believed was right.
This is how he acted.
Jobs got fired from his own company because he refused to compromise his vision for what the board considered financial prudence. He spent years in the wilderness, building NeXT—a company that made beautiful machines almost no one bought—because he believed in what he was making. He acquired Pixar when it was bleeding cash and kept it alive through sheer stubbornness until it revolutionized animation.
When he returned to Apple, he killed products that were profitable because they were mediocre. He could have milked the existing lines, played it safe, optimized for margin. Instead, he burned it down and rebuilt from scratch. The iMac. The iPod. The iPhone. Each one a bet that could have destroyed the company. Each one made because he believed it was right, not because a spreadsheet said it was safe...
This essay is not really about Steve Jobs or Tim Cook. It is about what happens when efficiency becomes a substitute for freedom. Jobs and Cook are case studies in a larger question: can a company—can an economy—optimize its way out of moral responsibility? The answer, I will argue, is yes. And we are living with the consequences.
⁂
He did not tweet. He did not issue press releases about social issues. He did not perform his values for an audience. He was not interested in shibboleths of the left or the right. [...]
This is how Jobs approached politics: through art, film, music, and design. Through the quiet curation of what got made. Through the understanding that the products we live with shape who we become.
If Jobs were alive today, I do not believe he would be posting on Twitter about fascism. That was never his mode. [...]
⁂
I do not say this as an insult. It is simply what he is. It is what he was hired to be. When Jobs brought Cook to Apple in 1998, he brought him to fix operations—to make the trains run on time, to optimize inventory, to build the manufacturing relationships that would let Apple scale.
Cook was extraordinary at this job. He is, by all accounts, one of the greatest operations executives in the history of American business. The margins, the logistics, the global supply chain that can produce millions of iPhones in weeks—that is Cook’s cathedral. He built it.
But operations is not vision. Optimization is not creation. And a supply chain manager who inherits a visionary’s company is not thereby transformed into a visionary.
Under Cook, Apple has become very good at making more of what Jobs created. The iPhone gets better cameras, faster chips, new colors. The ecosystem tightens. The services revenue grows. The stock price rises. By every metric that Wall Street cares about, Cook has been a success.
But what has Apple created under Cook that Jobs did not originate? What new thing has emerged from Cupertino that reflects a vision of the future, rather than an optimization of the past?
The Vision Pro is an expensive curiosity. The car project was canceled after a decade of drift. The television set never materialized. Apple under Cook has become a company that perfects what exists rather than inventing what doesn’t.
This is what happens when an optimizer inherits a creator’s legacy. The cathedral still stands. But no one is building new rooms.
⁂
The supply chain that Cook constructed—his great achievement, his life’s work—runs through China. Not partially. Not incidentally. Fundamentally. The factories that build Apple‘s products are in China. The engineers who refine the manufacturing processes are in China. The workers who assemble the devices, who test the components, who pack the boxes—they are in Shenzhen and Zhengzhou and a dozen other cities that most Americans cannot find on a map.
This was a choice. It was Cook’s choice. And once made, it ceased to be a choice at all. Supply chains, like empires, do not forgive hesitation. For twenty years, it looked like genius. Chinese manufacturing was cheap, fast, and scalable. Apple could design in California and build in China, and the margins were extraordinary.
But dependency is not partnership. And Cook built a dependency so complete that Apple cannot escape it.
When Hong Kong’s democracy movement rose, Apple was silent. When the Uyghur genocide became undeniable, Apple was silent. When Beijing pressured Apple to remove apps, to store Chinese user data on Chinese servers, to make the iPhone a tool of state surveillance for Chinese citizens—Apple complied. Silently. Efficiently. As Cook’s supply chain required.
This is not a company that can stand up to authoritarianism. This is a company that has made itself a instrument of authoritarianism, because the alternative is losing access to the factories that build its products.
⁂
Apple did not merely use Chinese manufacturing. Apple trained it. Cook’s operations team—the best in the world—went to China and taught Chinese companies how to do what Apple does. The manufacturing techniques. The materials science. The logistics systems. The quality control processes.
This was the price of access. This was what China demanded in exchange for letting Apple build its empire in Shenzhen. And Cook paid it.
Now look at the result.
BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle company, learned battery manufacturing and supply chain management from its work with Apple. It is now the largest EV manufacturer in the world, threatening Tesla and every Western automaker.
DJI dominates the global drone market with technology and manufacturing processes refined through the Apple relationship.
Dozens of other Chinese companies—in components, in assembly, in materials—were trained by Apple‘s experts and now compete against Western firms with the skills Apple taught them.
Cook built a supply chain. And in building it, he handed the Chinese Communist Party the industrial capabilities it needed to challenge American technological supremacy. [...]
⁂
When I see him at the White House on January 25th, 2026—attending a private screening of Melania, a vanity documentary about the First Lady, directed by Brett Ratner, a man credibly accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women—I understand what I am seeing.
I understand what I am seeing when I learn that this screening took place on the same night that federal agents shot Alex Pretti ten times in the back in Minneapolis. That while a nurse lay dying in the street for the crime of trying to help a woman being pepper-sprayed, Tim Cook was eating canapés and watching a film about the president’s wife.
Tim Cook’s Twitter bio contains a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
What was Tim Cook doing for others on the night of January 25th?
He was doing what efficiency requires. He was maintaining relationships with power. He was protecting the supply chain, the margins, the tariff exemptions. He was being a good middleman.
I am seeing a man who cannot say no.
This is what efficiency looks like when it runs out of room to hide.
He cannot say no to Beijing, because his supply chain depends on Beijing’s favor. He cannot say no to Trump, because his company needs regulatory forbearance and tariff exemptions. He is trapped between two authoritarian powers, serving both, challenging neither.
This is not leadership. This is middleman management. This is a man whose great achievement—the supply chain, the operations excellence, the margins—has become the very thing that prevents him from acting with moral courage.
Cook has more money than Jobs ever had. Apple has more cash, more leverage, more market power than at any point in its history. If anyone in American business could afford to say no—to Trump, to Xi, to anyone—it is Tim Cook.
And he says yes. To everyone. To anything. Because he built a company that cannot afford to say no. [...]
⁂
Tim Cook has betrayed that vision—not through malice, but by excelling in a system that rewards efficiency over freedom and calls it leadership. Through the replacement of values with optimization. Through the construction of a machine so efficient that it cannot afford to be moral.
Apple is not unique in this. It is exemplary.
This is what happens to institutions that mistake scale for strength, efficiency for freedom, optimization for wisdom. They become powerful enough to dominate markets—and too constrained to resist power. Look at Google, training AI for Beijing while preaching openness. Look at Amazon, building surveillance infrastructure for any government that pays. Look at every Fortune 500 company that issued statements about democracy while writing checks to the politicians dismantling it.
Apple is simply the cleanest case, because it once knew the difference. Because Jobs built it to know the difference. And because we can see, with unusual clarity, the precise moment when knowing the difference stopped mattering.
by Mike Brock, Notes From the Circus | Read more:
Image: Steve Jobs/uncredited
[ed. Part seventeen of a series titled The Crisis Papers. Check them all out and jump in anywhere. A+ effort.]
Monday, February 16, 2026
Do I Like Being Single Too Much to Fall in Love?
Dear Abigail,
I am a 30-year-old single woman. I am happily single—I have a successful career, make good money, live in a desirable neighborhood with my cute and companionable dog, and have best friends who are also single. I travel, enjoy sporting events, go to exercise classes, drink cosmos, run marathons, and spend lots of time out in the city with friends.
After ending a four-year relationship last year, I see my singledom as a complete gift. To be free, happy, and independent after years of being unsure or unhappy is a blessing. I eat exactly what I want for dinner, play Joni Mitchell at full volume in the car, FaceTime my mom for hours in the evenings. I never have to explain my choices in home decor or get annoyed at how someone cleans the bathroom.
You ask if most of the women in my generation “settled” to beat a biological clock. No, we didn’t. We didn’t go around thinking that any man we met would be unaccountably lucky to have us.
We found a guy we thought was cute who made us laugh. We gave him a shot and let him surprise us. We fell in love and let our hearts get pummeled and stretched. We had all kinds of great sex with him and got married (in either order), had a bunch of kids, and built a home.
And it never once occurred to us that we were “settling.” Half the time, we look over at our boyfriends-turned-husbands, with their graying hair and gorgeous eyes, the reassuring heft of them, which deters intruders and quiets our fears and calms the kids, and wonder what they’re still doing with us.
Any time you give blood, you offer up a vein and suffer the pinch. Only then can you attempt something truly extraordinary: saving someone else’s life. Love entails this sort of reckless surrender.
You’ve been chasing a feeling. But needing and being needed—the bottomless empathy and vulnerability they require—are exquisite not because the feeling of love is so special but because the person you love is, to you.
I am a 30-year-old single woman. I am happily single—I have a successful career, make good money, live in a desirable neighborhood with my cute and companionable dog, and have best friends who are also single. I travel, enjoy sporting events, go to exercise classes, drink cosmos, run marathons, and spend lots of time out in the city with friends.
Yet I know that I dream of a partnership and being a parent. When I venture into the dating scene, I struggle with the ups and downs: the instant hit I get from male validation, the blow to my self-esteem when I’m ghosted, the anticipation before a date, the fixation on wondering what I did wrong, disappointment with lack of connection, and guilt when they pursue me but I’m not interested.
I don’t think I was in love with my last boyfriend, and I’m starting to worry I will never feel that transcendent feeling that so many people talk about. Am I just too cold? Too practical or realistic? Too critical? Too protective of my own world?
My mom tells me it will find me when I am not looking. I feel so fulfilled by my other relationships, but I want to experience real, all-consuming, romantic love. Do most people settle to beat a biological clock, or do you think we all get a chance to feel it?
Trying to remain optimistic,
Jenny
I don’t think I was in love with my last boyfriend, and I’m starting to worry I will never feel that transcendent feeling that so many people talk about. Am I just too cold? Too practical or realistic? Too critical? Too protective of my own world?
My mom tells me it will find me when I am not looking. I feel so fulfilled by my other relationships, but I want to experience real, all-consuming, romantic love. Do most people settle to beat a biological clock, or do you think we all get a chance to feel it?
Trying to remain optimistic,
Jenny
------------------
Jenny,
Here is what you’ve brought me: a successful career, a good income, a little dog, weekend marathons. Uber Eats when you need it, SoulCycle when you want it. Cosmos with friends just because. Spotify cued to your bespoke playlist, set to the volume that feels right to you. Nightly hours-long FaceTime sessions with Mom.
A whole life, furnished with extensions of yourself. Nothing messy or unpleasant or personally demanding. You peer into the world on your screen like Narcissus into the pond, and think: I’m obsessed.
And I get it. You spent four years dating a guy you never loved. Now you’re experiencing a kind of singlehood euphoria. But singlehood euphoria has no natural end date in our world of engineered distractions. You could easily go on this way for another decade or more, by which time your desire to have children may have been subverted by biological fiat.
You ask me whether you should remain optimistic about getting the chance to feel in love, but lack of optimism isn’t your problem. You’re not tempted by the male offerings around you because you’re brimming with delight at your table for one.
And so, you haven’t asked the most relevant question: Why would a man want to enter your world? You’ve made no room for him in your life. You don’t seem to have one patch of bare wall on which he might hang a poster.
You enjoy your life, as you should. It’s admirable that you’re successful and self-sufficient—you can buy yourself flowers, as Miley Cyrus would have it. The deal you offer a man is essentially this: I’m awesome and totally self-sufficient, looking for a man who’s awesome and totally self-sufficient so that we can be awesome and independently self-sufficient, together. That’s the prevailing ideal today, and there’s nothing sinister about it, per se.
Except that it isn’t the stuff of love.
It is, instead, an ideal designed to eliminate dependence and inconvenience. But love, dear Jenny, is built of exactly those things.
You say you want to “experience real, all-consuming, romantic love”—but it’s the experience you say you’re after—something you hope to feel, not a man you might come to need. In your description, romantic love becomes just another bucket-list item, like Machu Picchu. You don’t mention the sort of man you’re seeking, perhaps because any man is just a vehicle for emotional rush. In so many ways, you’ve told me not only that you don’t need a man, but that you don’t particularly want one.
When Aristophanes—over 2,000 years ago—described one soul in two bodies, each half yearning for wholeness, he had it right. Love is two people who want each other very much and come to need each other—for comfort and counsel and joy and even to share pain.
Not a roommate to clean the bathroom to your satisfaction or earn half the income or even yank luggage off the baggage carousel, but someone who makes your life whole, someone you ultimately can’t bear to be without. A life of love isn’t one that minimizes dependence, but one that risks it. [...]
Your life is so full already. You’re not actually missing anything.Now that we’ve regurgitated the prevailing pablum, maybe we can clear the decks for some truth.
Being with some guy is totally not worth upending your life over.
You don’t need a man to “complete” you.
If the right partner comes along to join you in this journey, great. If not, who cares?
You’re so awesome—don’t even think about settling!
Here is what you’ve brought me: a successful career, a good income, a little dog, weekend marathons. Uber Eats when you need it, SoulCycle when you want it. Cosmos with friends just because. Spotify cued to your bespoke playlist, set to the volume that feels right to you. Nightly hours-long FaceTime sessions with Mom.
A whole life, furnished with extensions of yourself. Nothing messy or unpleasant or personally demanding. You peer into the world on your screen like Narcissus into the pond, and think: I’m obsessed.
And I get it. You spent four years dating a guy you never loved. Now you’re experiencing a kind of singlehood euphoria. But singlehood euphoria has no natural end date in our world of engineered distractions. You could easily go on this way for another decade or more, by which time your desire to have children may have been subverted by biological fiat.
You ask me whether you should remain optimistic about getting the chance to feel in love, but lack of optimism isn’t your problem. You’re not tempted by the male offerings around you because you’re brimming with delight at your table for one.
And so, you haven’t asked the most relevant question: Why would a man want to enter your world? You’ve made no room for him in your life. You don’t seem to have one patch of bare wall on which he might hang a poster.
You enjoy your life, as you should. It’s admirable that you’re successful and self-sufficient—you can buy yourself flowers, as Miley Cyrus would have it. The deal you offer a man is essentially this: I’m awesome and totally self-sufficient, looking for a man who’s awesome and totally self-sufficient so that we can be awesome and independently self-sufficient, together. That’s the prevailing ideal today, and there’s nothing sinister about it, per se.
Except that it isn’t the stuff of love.
It is, instead, an ideal designed to eliminate dependence and inconvenience. But love, dear Jenny, is built of exactly those things.
You say you want to “experience real, all-consuming, romantic love”—but it’s the experience you say you’re after—something you hope to feel, not a man you might come to need. In your description, romantic love becomes just another bucket-list item, like Machu Picchu. You don’t mention the sort of man you’re seeking, perhaps because any man is just a vehicle for emotional rush. In so many ways, you’ve told me not only that you don’t need a man, but that you don’t particularly want one.
When Aristophanes—over 2,000 years ago—described one soul in two bodies, each half yearning for wholeness, he had it right. Love is two people who want each other very much and come to need each other—for comfort and counsel and joy and even to share pain.
Not a roommate to clean the bathroom to your satisfaction or earn half the income or even yank luggage off the baggage carousel, but someone who makes your life whole, someone you ultimately can’t bear to be without. A life of love isn’t one that minimizes dependence, but one that risks it. [...]
We found a guy we thought was cute who made us laugh. We gave him a shot and let him surprise us. We fell in love and let our hearts get pummeled and stretched. We had all kinds of great sex with him and got married (in either order), had a bunch of kids, and built a home.
And it never once occurred to us that we were “settling.” Half the time, we look over at our boyfriends-turned-husbands, with their graying hair and gorgeous eyes, the reassuring heft of them, which deters intruders and quiets our fears and calms the kids, and wonder what they’re still doing with us.
Any time you give blood, you offer up a vein and suffer the pinch. Only then can you attempt something truly extraordinary: saving someone else’s life. Love entails this sort of reckless surrender.
You’ve been chasing a feeling. But needing and being needed—the bottomless empathy and vulnerability they require—are exquisite not because the feeling of love is so special but because the person you love is, to you.
by Abigail Shrier, Free Press | Read more:
Image: uncredited; Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images
[ed. Someone who sees and fully knows you, more than you know yourself. See also: Most People Don’t Have a ‘Type’ (Atlantic).]
Life at the Frontlines of Demographic Collapse
Nagoro, a depopulated village in Japan where residents are replaced by dolls.
In 1960, Yubari, a former coal-mining city on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, had roughly 110,000 residents. Today, fewer than 7,000 remain. The share of those over 65 is 54%. The local train stopped running in 2019. Seven elementary schools and four junior high schools have been consolidated into just two buildings. Public swimming pools have closed. Parks are not maintained. Even the public toilets at the train station were shut down to save money.
Much has been written about the economic consequences of aging and shrinking populations. Fewer workers supporting more retirees will make pension systems buckle. Living standards will decline. Healthcare will get harder to provide. But that’s dry theory. A numbers game. It doesn’t tell you what life actually looks like at ground zero.
Germany took a similar approach with its Stadtumbau Ost, a federal program launched after reunification to address the exodus from East to West, as young people moved west for work, leaving behind more than a million vacant apartments. It paid to demolish nearly 300,000 housing units. The idea was not to lure people back but to stabilize what was left: reduce the housing surplus, concentrate investment in viable neighborhoods, and stop the downward spiral of vacancy breeding more vacancy. It was not a happy solution, but it was a workable one.
Yet this approach is politically toxic. Try campaigning not on an optimistic message of turning the tide and making the future as bright as it once used to be, but rather by telling voters that their neighborhood is going to be abandoned, that the bus won’t run anymore and that all the investment is going to go to a different district. Try telling the few remaining inhabitants of a valley that you can’t justify spending money on their flood defenses. [...]
*** So what is being done about these problems?
Take the case of infrastructure and services degradation. The solution is obvious: manage the decline by concentrating the population.
In 2014, the Japanese government initiated Location Normalization Plans to designate areas for concentrating hospitals, government offices, and commerce in walkable downtown cores. Tax incentives and housing subsidies were offered to attract residents. By 2020, dozens of Tokyo-area municipalities had adopted these plans.
Cities like Toyama built light rail transit and tried to concentrate development along the line, offering housing subsidies within 500 meters of stations. The results are modest: between 2005 and 2013, the percentage of Toyama residents living in the city center increased from 28% to 32%. Meanwhile, the city’s overall population continued to decline, and suburban sprawl persisted beyond the plan’s reach.
What about the water pipes? In theory, they can be decommissioned and consolidated, when people move out of some neighborhoods. At places, they can possibly be replaced with smaller-diameter pipes. Engineers can even open hydrants periodically to keep water flowing. But the most efficient of these measures were probably easier to implement in the recently post-totalitarian East Germany, with its still-docile population accustomed to state directives, than in democratic Japan.
In 1960, Yubari, a former coal-mining city on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, had roughly 110,000 residents. Today, fewer than 7,000 remain. The share of those over 65 is 54%. The local train stopped running in 2019. Seven elementary schools and four junior high schools have been consolidated into just two buildings. Public swimming pools have closed. Parks are not maintained. Even the public toilets at the train station were shut down to save money.
And it’s not all straightforward. Consider water pipes. Abandoned houses are photogenic. It’s the first image that comes to mind when you picture a shrinking city. But as the population declines, ever fewer people live in the same housing stock and water consumption declines. The water sits in oversized pipes. It stagnates and chlorine dissipates. Bacteria move in, creating health risks. You can tear down an abandoned house in a week. But you cannot easily downsize a city’s pipe network. The infrastructure is buried under streets and buildings. The cost of ripping it out and replacing it with smaller pipes would bankrupt a city that is already bleeding residents and tax revenue. As the population shrinks, problems like this become ubiquitous.
The common instinct is to fight decline with growth. Launch a tourism campaign. Build a theme park or a tech incubator. Offer subsidies and tax breaks to young families willing to move in. Subsidize childcare. Sell houses for €1, as some Italian towns do.
Well, Yubari tried this. After the coal mines closed, the city pivoted to tourism, opening a coal-themed amusement park, a fossil museum, and a ski resort. They organized a film festival. Celebrities came and left. None of it worked. By 2007 the city went bankrupt. The festival was canceled and the winners from years past never got their prize money.
Or, to get a different perspective, consider someone who moved to a shrinking Italian town, lured by a €1 house offer: They are about to retire. They want to live in the country. So they buy the house, go through all the paperwork. Then they renovate it. More paperwork. They don't speak Italian. That sucks. But finally everything works out. They move in. The house is nice. There's grapevine climbing the front wall. Out of the window they see the rolling hills of Sicily. In the evenings, they hears dogs barking in the distance. It looks exactly like the paradise they'd imagined. But then they start noticing their elderly neighbors getting sick and being taken away to hospital, never to return. They see them dying alone in their half-abandoned houses. And as the night closes in, they can't escape the thought: "When's my turn?" Maybe they shouldn't have come at all.
The instinctive approach, that vain attempt to grow and repopulate, is often counterproductive. It leads to building infrastructure, literal bridges to nowhere, waiting for people that will never come. Subsidies quietly fizzle out, leaving behind nothing but dilapidated billboards advertising the amazing attractions of the town, attractions that closed their gates a decade ago.
The alternative is not to fight the decline, but to manage it. To accept that the population is not coming back and ask a different question: how do you make a smaller city livable for those who remain? In Yubari, the current mayor has stopped talking about attracting new residents. The new goal is consolidation. Relocating the remaining population closer to the city center, where services can be still delivered, where the pipes are still the right size, where neighbors are close enough to check on each other.
The common instinct is to fight decline with growth. Launch a tourism campaign. Build a theme park or a tech incubator. Offer subsidies and tax breaks to young families willing to move in. Subsidize childcare. Sell houses for €1, as some Italian towns do.
Well, Yubari tried this. After the coal mines closed, the city pivoted to tourism, opening a coal-themed amusement park, a fossil museum, and a ski resort. They organized a film festival. Celebrities came and left. None of it worked. By 2007 the city went bankrupt. The festival was canceled and the winners from years past never got their prize money.
Or, to get a different perspective, consider someone who moved to a shrinking Italian town, lured by a €1 house offer: They are about to retire. They want to live in the country. So they buy the house, go through all the paperwork. Then they renovate it. More paperwork. They don't speak Italian. That sucks. But finally everything works out. They move in. The house is nice. There's grapevine climbing the front wall. Out of the window they see the rolling hills of Sicily. In the evenings, they hears dogs barking in the distance. It looks exactly like the paradise they'd imagined. But then they start noticing their elderly neighbors getting sick and being taken away to hospital, never to return. They see them dying alone in their half-abandoned houses. And as the night closes in, they can't escape the thought: "When's my turn?" Maybe they shouldn't have come at all.
***
The alternative is not to fight the decline, but to manage it. To accept that the population is not coming back and ask a different question: how do you make a smaller city livable for those who remain? In Yubari, the current mayor has stopped talking about attracting new residents. The new goal is consolidation. Relocating the remaining population closer to the city center, where services can be still delivered, where the pipes are still the right size, where neighbors are close enough to check on each other.
Yet this approach is politically toxic. Try campaigning not on an optimistic message of turning the tide and making the future as bright as it once used to be, but rather by telling voters that their neighborhood is going to be abandoned, that the bus won’t run anymore and that all the investment is going to go to a different district. Try telling the few remaining inhabitants of a valley that you can’t justify spending money on their flood defenses. [...]
*** So what is being done about these problems?
Take the case of infrastructure and services degradation. The solution is obvious: manage the decline by concentrating the population.
In 2014, the Japanese government initiated Location Normalization Plans to designate areas for concentrating hospitals, government offices, and commerce in walkable downtown cores. Tax incentives and housing subsidies were offered to attract residents. By 2020, dozens of Tokyo-area municipalities had adopted these plans.
Cities like Toyama built light rail transit and tried to concentrate development along the line, offering housing subsidies within 500 meters of stations. The results are modest: between 2005 and 2013, the percentage of Toyama residents living in the city center increased from 28% to 32%. Meanwhile, the city’s overall population continued to decline, and suburban sprawl persisted beyond the plan’s reach.
What about the water pipes? In theory, they can be decommissioned and consolidated, when people move out of some neighborhoods. At places, they can possibly be replaced with smaller-diameter pipes. Engineers can even open hydrants periodically to keep water flowing. But the most efficient of these measures were probably easier to implement in the recently post-totalitarian East Germany, with its still-docile population accustomed to state directives, than in democratic Japan.
***
And then there’s the problem of abandoned houses.
The arithmetic is brutal: you inherit a rural house valued at ¥5 million on the cadastral registry and pay inheritance tax of 55%, only to discover that the actual market value is ¥0. Nobody wants property in a village hemorrhaging population. But wait! If the municipality formally designates it a “vacant house,” your property tax increases sixfold. Now you face half a million yen in fines for non-compliance, and administrative demolition costs that average ¥2 million. You are now over ¥5 million in debt for a property you never wanted and cannot sell.
It gets more bizarre: When you renounce the inheritance, it passes to the next tier of relatives. If children renounce, it goes to parents. If parents renounce, it goes to siblings. If siblings renounce, it goes to nieces and nephews. By renouncing a property, you create an unpleasant surprise for your relatives.
Finally, when every possible relative renounces, the family court appoints an administrator to manage the estate. Their task is to search for other potential heirs, such as "persons with special connection," i.e. those who cared for the deceased, worked closely with them and so on. Lucky them, the friends and colleagues!
Obviously, this gets tricky and that’s exactly the reason why a new system was introduced to allows a property to be passed to the state. But there are many limitations placed on the property — essentially, the state will only accept land that has some value.
In the end, it's a hot potato problem. The legal system was designed in the era when all property had value and implicitly assumed that people wanted it. Now that many properties have negative value, the framework misfires, creates misaligned incentives and recent fixes all too often make the problem worse.
The arithmetic is brutal: you inherit a rural house valued at ¥5 million on the cadastral registry and pay inheritance tax of 55%, only to discover that the actual market value is ¥0. Nobody wants property in a village hemorrhaging population. But wait! If the municipality formally designates it a “vacant house,” your property tax increases sixfold. Now you face half a million yen in fines for non-compliance, and administrative demolition costs that average ¥2 million. You are now over ¥5 million in debt for a property you never wanted and cannot sell.
It gets more bizarre: When you renounce the inheritance, it passes to the next tier of relatives. If children renounce, it goes to parents. If parents renounce, it goes to siblings. If siblings renounce, it goes to nieces and nephews. By renouncing a property, you create an unpleasant surprise for your relatives.
Finally, when every possible relative renounces, the family court appoints an administrator to manage the estate. Their task is to search for other potential heirs, such as "persons with special connection," i.e. those who cared for the deceased, worked closely with them and so on. Lucky them, the friends and colleagues!
Obviously, this gets tricky and that’s exactly the reason why a new system was introduced to allows a property to be passed to the state. But there are many limitations placed on the property — essentially, the state will only accept land that has some value.
In the end, it's a hot potato problem. The legal system was designed in the era when all property had value and implicitly assumed that people wanted it. Now that many properties have negative value, the framework misfires, creates misaligned incentives and recent fixes all too often make the problem worse.
by Martin Sustrik, Less Wrong | Read more:
Image:Vimeo/uncredited
Image:Vimeo/uncredited
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