Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a collection of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Trump goes nuclear
Donald Trump’s efforts to strip federal agencies and commissions of their independence took an alarming step Monday, when the president fired one of the five commissioners who sit on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a congressionally authorized entity that exists “to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment.” Christopher T. Hanson was initially appointed by Trump in his first term and reappointed by Joe Biden in 2024.
The White House implied Hanson’s firing was to make this important commission more favorable to Trump’s agenda. “All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction,” deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told NPR. “President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority.”
Read more at NPR.
DOGE dug for dirt in Social Security
A new report by The New York Times highlights how Trump allies working in the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency tried to wield power over bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration and to weaponize misinformation (and conclusions based on their own misunderstandings) about the agency to spread false claims about fraud in the program. (A White House spokesperson told the Times that the agency under Trump “will continue to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse while protecting benefits for eligible Americans.”)
Read more in The New York Times.
Democrats probing Palantir
Ten Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, sent a letter on Tuesday to Palantir CEO Alex Karp over reports that the Trump administration has tapped the company to assist in creating a massive database of Americans’ personal information. The letter demands answers and assurances as to how the project will comply with laws meant to protect Americans’ privacy.
The letter reads, in part:
The unprecedented possibility of a searchable, ‘mega-database’ of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s Administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans.
Palantir has posted multiple responses to social media, framing the New York Times’ reporting about the alleged database as “unfounded speculation” and denying claims it is building a database to enable mass surveillance of Americans.
Read more at FedScoop.
Bad signals on the line for Trump’s phone co.
The Trump sons announced plans to roll out a Trump-branded phone and mobile service this week. In addition to the ethical concerns swirling around a president’s potentially profiting from his position, there are a lot of tech-related questions about the quality of the product and service being offered. With those questions in mind, CNET writer Mike Sorrentino makes a pretty compelling argument as to why “Trump Mobile and the T1 Phone Don’t Make Any Sense, Even for Trump Fans.”
Read his take over at CNET.
Plouffe defects to Coinbase
David Plouffe, a campaign manager for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and adviser to Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, signed on to the global advisory council for the pro-Trump cryptocurrency firm Coinbase. Some progressives who’ve been disgusted by the firm’s financial support for the Trump administration are arguing that a Democrat’s working closely with a MAGA-aligned crypto company is reflective of everything that’s wrong with politics today.
For his part, Plouffe argued at a crypto conference Thursday that “the folks who own crypto are pretty politically competitive” and that “these are not MAGA voters. They are swing voters,” according to the AP.
Read more about the outrage in Common Dreams.
Meta AI mishaps
Some users of Meta’s artificial intelligence platform may have unwittingly shared personal or otherwise embarrassing information in written or spoken prompts that are readily available for other users to read. Recent reports have highlighted how the user interface for Meta’s AI platform may have contributed to users’ confusion over whether they were submitting questions privately or sharing their AI prompts with the masses — a situation that has been described as a “privacy disaster.” (Facebook did not comment on the record for TechCrunch’s story.)
Read more in TechCrunch.
The Resistance ... on Roblox
Users of the popular online game Roblox have been attending in-game protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, continuing a growing tradition of protesters’ using video games to promote their causes.
Read more in Teen Vogue.