House Republicans to investigate Big Tech’s communications with Biden administration
U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (R) talks to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) as Representatives cast their votes for Speaker of the House on the first day of the 118th Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 03, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images
House Republicans are planning to launch a new subcommittee this week that will investigate communications between Big Tech companies and the Biden administration, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNBC.
The anticipated launch of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, reported earlier on Monday by Axios, represents one of the many nods newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., gave to the conservative faction of the GOP caucus in his long fight to win the gavel. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section previously reported plans for the panel.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who supported McCarthy in his bid for the speakership, is expected to lead the new subcommittee. The panel will investigate communications between the tech companies and the executive branch and search for signs of pressure leading to conservative censorship online.
Jordan hinted at these plans last month in a series of letters to the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft demanding information on what he called “the nature and extent of your companies’ collusion with the Biden Administration.” Jordan told the companies they should preserve any existing or future records related to his request for communications with the executive branch about “moderation, deletion, suppression, restricting or reduced circulation of content.”
Facebook parent Meta and Microsoft previously declined to comment on Jordan’s letters. The three other companies did not respond to previous requests for comment.
The decision to create the panel comes after Twitter owner Elon Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files” — reporting from a select group of journalists he allowed access to internal files after he took over the company — renewed fervor around the platform’s past content moderation decisions under its previous ownership.
The most scrutinized of those choices was Twitter’s decision to block links to a New York Post article ahead of the 2020 election claiming to find “smoking gun” emails related to then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter. At the time, Twitter said it believed the story violated its hacked materials policy. Twitter later reversed the decision and its then-CEO said the actions the platform took were “wrong,” changing its policies to prevent a recurrence.
The new subcommittee is also expected to look into other areas of potential influence and politicization in the government, including in the intelligence community and public health agencies.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in response to a Politico article last month describing negotiations to create the subcommittee, White House spokesperson Ian Sams wrote on Twitter, “House Republicans continue to make clear that they’re focused on pointless political stunts to get themselves booked on Tucker Carlson, instead of working with @POTUS or congressional Dems to take on the issues Americans care about like tackling inflation and lowering costs.”
WATCH: The messy business of content moderation on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
An Electron rocket launches the Baby Come Back mission from New Zealand on July 17, 2023.
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab stock soared 8% Monday, building on a strong run fueled by space innovation.
Shares of the space infrastructure company have nearly doubled over the last two months following a slew of successful launches and a deal with the European Union.
The stock is up 63% year to date after surging nearly sixfold in 2024.
Last month, Rocket Lab announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch satellites for constellation navigation before December.
Rocket Lab also announced the successful launch of its 66th, 67th and 68th Electron rockets in June. The company successfully deployed two rockets from the same site in 48 hours.
Rocket Lab competes with a growing list of companies in a maturing and increasingly competitive space industry with growing demand. Some of the main competitors in the sector include Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, which filed its prospectus to go public on Friday.
“For Electron, our little rocket, we’ve seen increased demand over the last couple of years and we’re not just launching single spacecraft — these are generally entire constellations for customers,” CEO Peter Beck told CNBC last month.
He said the company is producing a rocket every 15 days.
Beck, a New Zealand-native, founded the company in 2006. Since its debut on the Nasdaq in August 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, the Long Beach, California-based company’s market value has swelled to more than $19 billion.
WATCH: Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck: One thing I don’t worry about at night is demand
Technology
Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department
A view of the Pentagon on December 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. Home to the US Defense Department, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings.
Daniel Slim | Afp | Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it’s granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.
The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of “advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” The companies will work to develop AI agents across several mission areas at the agency.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, the DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, said in a release.
Elon Musk’s xAI also announced Grok for Government on Monday, which is a suite of products that make the company’s models available to U.S. government customers. The products are available through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, which allows federal government departments, agencies, or offices to purchase them, according to a post on X.
OpenAI was previously awarded a year-long $200 million contract from the DoD in 2024, shortly after it said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
In June, the company launched OpenAI for Government for U.S. federal, state, and local government workers.
WATCH: US needs an allied strategy for AI investment in military and defense: Palantir
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said he plans to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into artificial intelligence compute infrastructure, and that Meta plans to bring its first supercluster online next year.
A supercluster is a large, complex computing network that’s designed to train advanced AI models and handle their workloads.
“Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “I’m looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!”
Zuckerberg said Meta’s first supercluster is called Prometheus, and that the company is building several other multi-gigawatt clusters. One cluster, called Hyperion, will be able to scale up to five gigawatts over several years, he said.
Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. He announced a new organization in June called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers.
Zuckerberg had grown frustrated with Meta’s progress in AI, especially after the release of its Llama 4 AI models in April received a lukewarm response from developers. He is revamping Meta’s approach to better compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google.
“For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” Zuckerberg wrote Monday.
WATCH: Meta announces several multi-gigawatt data centers, first planning to come online in 2026
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