Washington’s push against AI theft. The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy accused Chinese and other foreign entities of attempting “industrial-scale” theft of U.S. AI technology—and pledged to help companies fight back—in a memo [PDF] yesterday. The memo said foreign firms had conducted distillation, or training small models on outputs of large ones, a practice that U.S. companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI have accused Chinese firms of doing. The Chinese embassy in Washington called the accusations in the memo “slander.”
Pentagon suggests Spain NATO suspension. Senior Pentagon officials are considering responses to NATO countries’ reluctance to participate in the Iran war that include suspending Spain from the alliance, according to an internal Pentagon email seen by Reuters. An unnamed NATO official told the BBC there was no provision for suspending alliance members. The email does not propose withdrawing the United States from NATO or shutting down bases in Europe.
Potential East African refinery. The richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote, pledged yesterday to help East African nations build a new oil refinery in Tanzania to increase the continent’s self-sufficiency amid the current global energy shock. He has already backed a major refinery in Nigeria. The new facility would include a Kenyan pipeline and would process crude oil from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, Dangote said.
Military betting charge. U.S. prosecutors charged a U.S. Army soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, with multiple crimes related to his alleged use of classified information to bet on prediction market platform Polymarket about the timing of a military operation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to an indictment unsealed yesterday. Polymarket said it had flagged the case and referred it to the Justice Department.
Plan for Putin at G20. The United States plans to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Group of Twenty (G20) conference that will be hosted this December at Trump’s golf course in Florida, unnamed officials told the Washington Post. The State Department said that Russia is welcome at G20 meetings. Trump said he was not aware of an invitation, but that it would “probably be very helpful” if Putin were there. Putin has not attended a summit since 2019. Some host countries are members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant against him, though the United States is not.
Kuwaiti-American journalist acquitted. A Kuwaiti court cleared journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin of all charges after fifty-two days in detention, his sisters’ lawyer said yesterday. He was detained after posting on social media about the war in Iran. The Committee to Protect Journalists characterized the charges as “vague and overly broad” and said such charges are often used against journalists. Kuwaiti authorities did not immediately comment.
Tanzania’s post-protest autopsy. A government-appointed commission blamed outside agitators for deaths of an estimated 518 people in post-election protests last year, according to their report issued yesterday. It wrote that government forces had used restraint. The report’s conclusion stood at odds with a Human Rights Watch report last month that said security forces killed innocent bystanders; other rights groups have estimated that the total number of people who died could be in the thousands.
Turkey’s youth social media ban. Turkish legislators passed a law blocking people under the age of fifteen from creating social media accounts and introducing parental controls, according to state media. The move comes after a fourteen-year-old Turkish boy killed ten people in a school shooting last week. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said afterward that “digital sharing applications are corrupting our children’s minds.” Meanwhile, some Turkish opposition politicians called for “rights-based policies” instead of a ban; Turkey’s government has a record of restricting social media during moments of political dissent.
