Trump Urges Iran and Israel to Respect Ceasefire After Deadly Attack
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire had now begun between Iran and Israel and he called for it to be respected.
"THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!," he posted on Truth Social.
A deadly Iranian missile attack on Israel around the time a ceasefire was due to take effect had raised doubts over whether it was effective.
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USA Today
21 minutes ago
- USA Today
We're creating AI that could surveil US citizens. And the government is in on it.
Tech companies' lack of transparency and accountability in developing surveillance tools that governments can use is unacceptable. President Donald Trump recently gathered CEOs for a summit about renewing the United States 'spiritually and financially.' At the top of the agenda was a closer look at 'American values' such as faith and freedom. There is cause for alarm, however. Centuries after Americans declared independence from the British monarchy, our freedom and liberty are under threat − not only from foreign governments like China, but potentially our own. America's surveillance state is spreading as the federal government collects personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans. In the age of artificial intelligence, with data collection accelerating at an unprecedented rate, our privacy has never been more vulnerable. Who is the culprit? The data collectors range from the National Security Agency to Silicon Valley's cadre of data-hungry technology companies. Add to that list a new organization: Palantir. While it is not a household name like Google or Netflix, it is soon to be a common domestic concern. The technology company's surveillance operation has exploded in recent months, raising the possibility of creating a full-fledged surveillance state. Opinion: AI knows we shouldn't trust it for everything. I know because I asked it. Since January, Palantir has received more than $113 million in federal funds, according to The New York Times, not including a $795 million Defense Department contract awarded in May. While the federal government increased data sharing across agencies (with Palantir's help), the company continues to shop its technology to the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. AI technology could be repurposed for sinister uses We are talking about technology that can be weaponized. While Palantir's current focus is to identify people in the United States illegally, tracking movements in real time, the company is also building the infrastructure that could be used for a massive surveillance state. Former Palantir employees have warned about the potential for the company's AI tools to surveil American citizens with a disregard for personal privacy. It is not so far-fetched. Palantir's AI software is used by the Israeli Defense Forces to strike targets in Gaza. It is used to assist the U.S. Defense Department in analyzing drone footage. And it has been used by the Los Angeles Police Department to forecast crime patterns. This is called 'predictive policing.' If "Minority Report"was not a horror movie before, it is now. Given the government's penchant for abusing power (see: COVID-19 censorship or the NSA spying scandal), does this not seem like an obvious move against our civil liberties? For years, the NSA engaged in the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, as was exposed in 2013. Between 2001 and 2007, government wiretapping − executed without warrants − affected millions of U.S. citizens. Now, the same agencies are tapping into the power of AI to expand government surveillance in once unimaginable ways. Opinion: AI is changing our world. At what point will it change our reality? Of course, the federal government can already access a wide range of our personal data, but it is often separated by agency. Washington, DC, can create exponentially more detailed profiles on all of us by sharing data with the help of Palantir's AI tools. Even when surveilling noncitizens, the government's data collection inevitably tracks individual Americans based on their own interactions with these noncitizens. The government's data collection is based on information from police departments, financial institutions and other entities, like Palantir. Big government and big tech partnership raises concerns Even if the alliance between the government and Palantir works as intended, it is a potential threat to our civil liberties. Political dissidents could become targets. Not even those with limited public personas are safe from the state's detailed profiling machine. These systems are not perfect, and neither are our leaders. What happens when AI systems fail? What happens when data collection goes haywire? Palantir is hardly alone. OpenAI recently launched OpenAI for Government, which aims to equip federal, state and local leaders with advanced AI tools. OpenAI claims to serve the 'public good' and 'bolster national security readiness,' but why would private citizens take that at face value? What does 'readiness' actually mean, in practice? At the moment, many of our elected officials do not have answers to these questions, or they are just ignoring them. The same goes for OpenAI and Palantir, which are all too comfortable amassing ever-larger federal contracts and greater market share. This lack of transparency or accountability is unacceptable. The only thing worse than the overreach of Big Government is Big Tech in bed with Big Government. For those who care about freedom and liberty, now is the time to speak up, before it is too late. Peyton Hornberger serves as communications director at The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the implications of advanced artificial intelligence.
USA Today
21 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump wins again: Columbia's $200 million fine will reshape higher education
Liberals have howled for months over President Trump's targeting of Ivy League universities. I doubt they'll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole. But it is. In an agreement ripped from the pages of President Donald Trump's "The Art of the Deal," Columbia University has agreed to pay $200 million fine to the federal government to settle accusations that the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus. The move is a capitulation to Trump's harsh rebuke of elite universities because of the rampant antisemitism unleashed on campuses after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is a win for Trump, a scathing reprimand of higher education and a message of hope for American Jews. Jewish students were told to flee campus Columbia agreed to pay the $200 million fine to resolve multiple civil rights investigations centering on its failure to stop antisemitic protests on campus. The threats were so severe that a rabbi warned Jewish students to flee campus a day before the start of Passover in April 2024. Columbia also has agreed to appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with civil rights laws and to pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These are mind-boggling agreements by one of the country's most elite universities. Opinion: Liberals claimed Trump would end democracy. They were wrong again. In March, Trump cut off $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and launched investigations into 59 other colleges and universities because of their admissions policies and the antisemitic protests on their campuses. If you had told me then that Columbia would bow the knee to Trump just four months later, I'd have laughed. Trump is reshaping higher education Columbia's agreement to pay a $200 million fine is a strong indication that Trump was right about widespread antisemitism on campus. Even so, liberals have howled for months over Trump's targeting of Ivy League universities, and I doubt they'll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole. It is, though, and they should. Trump also froze Harvard University's funding over hiring policies that elevated diversity, equity and inclusion ideology over merit-based appointments. Progressives called Trump a "despot in the making" and an enemy of free speech. But Trump was in reality standing against a culture on university campuses that promoted progressive values to the exclusion of dissenting opinions. Conservative students were shunned. And Jewish students were targeted because of Israel's defense of its citizens. Columbia is now paying the price for that intolerance. Opinion: In-N-Out owner places order to go − out of California I hope the Columbia settlement helps reshape higher education in the Ivy League and beyond. Institutions that accept taxpayer dollars must be held accountable for antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. Because Trump took a stand − and took the heat from progressives and the news media − things may finally change for the better at Columbia. Ball to you, Harvard. You next? Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
Newsweek
22 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Saving the World's Rainforests Isn't Rocket Science. Here's How to Do It
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. As diplomats and activists scramble to secure hotel rooms in Belém, Brazil for the next U.N. COP30 in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the biggest problems our planet faces is how to protect the world's last remaining rainforests—nature's most powerful climate solution. Despite the 29 previous COPs, attended by thousands of scientists, politicians, and activists, forests are still being destroyed at an ever-increasing rate, lost to massive cattle ranching, palm oil, illegal logging, mining, land-grabs, and man-made fires, which are ravaging the Amazon, Congo, and everywhere in-between. A rainforest in Darien province, Panama is pictured. A rainforest in Darien province, Panama is pictured. Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images Tropical rainforests are the cradle of life on Earth—and the world's lungs. By converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on a massive scale, rainforest conservation should be at the forefront of action to save our planet from climate change and ecological collapse. While international conservation groups can play a supporting role, it is national governments who must take responsibility for protecting our last pristine forests and marine ecosystems. Fancy billion-dollar carbon capture machines, or "breakthrough" technologies for climate mitigation, or reforestation with billions of young trees, will never come close to the power of old-growth tropical rainforests to protect biodiversity and simultaneously provide the oxygen the planet and humans need to survive. The destruction of the Amazon and Congo, this year at its highest level in decades, and the rapid loss of Southeast Asia's rainforests, is pushing the limits of our planet's ability to survive in the face of rising oceans, global warming, catastrophic extinction events, desertification, and unsustainable urban development and land use. Very few developing countries are fighting back successfully, and showing us that we can indeed save our rainforests. Despite supposedly unstoppable global forces—such as demand for hamburgers or chocolate spread—a few nations have stopped the burning, protected their rainforests, and are now busy increasing their size. One small but proud nation, Panama, shows how it can be done. It starts, inevitably, with political will. In Panama's case, this is the recently elected government of President José Raúl Mulino. 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Global Conservation is assisting Panama by supporting advanced protection systems and training for the country's largest national parks—Darien, La Amistad, and Coiba—and the Naso indigenous territory, some of the most important forests and marine ecosystems in Mesoamerica. This year, Global Conservation assisted Darien National Park to train 25 new rangers and helped 28 rangers at Coiba National Marine Park to inaugurate and deploy a powerful Marine Radar system, installed to identify and interdict illegal fishing within the marine reserve. While Panama still faces tremendous conservation challenges, it's well on its way to meeting these challenges head-on, and solving them. Taking concrete steps to protect the forest and securing real budgets for enforcement is something akin to a revolution in nature protection. In most developing countries in which Global Conservation works, the typical story involves a handful of rangers, with little more than a broken-down truck or boat, struggling heroically but in vain to protect the parks from unscrupulous logging syndicates and thousands of miners, without any training, zero political support, and no resources. As diplomats and officials prepare to travel to Belém and spend two weeks arguing over climate, making, as is typical of COPs, progress at glacial speed, other nations must show how to get things done now. The Panama Solution is an example of the way forward for immediate, effective, and much needed rainforest and marine protection by a small developing nation, which is replicable in almost any country in the world. The time is now to be bold and to protect our forests and seas—our greatest nature-based solution to solve the climate crisis. Juan Carlos Navarro is minister of Environment of Panama. Jeff Morgan is executive director of Global Conservation. The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
