'Reminiscent of the Manhattan Project': Trump administration launches massive next-gen AI program



As the AI arms race continues at breakneck pace, the United States is stepping up its game to stay on the cutting edge of information technology. To that end, the Trump administration is launching a new initiative: the Genesis Mission.

On Monday, the White House announced the creation of the Genesis Mission under the purview of the Department of Energy.

'The Genesis Mission marks a defining moment for the next era of American science.'

The Genesis Mission is described as a "national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing challenges."

RELATED: Trump’s AI plan prioritizes innovation over regulation

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

More concretely, the Department of Energy has been ordered to "build an integrated AI platform to harness federal scientific datasets."

In its announcement on X, the Department of Energy said the Genesis Mission will be "reminiscent of the Manhattan Project and Apollo programs."

In the promotional video, the DOE suggested that this initiative is not unlike what visionaries such as G.W. Liebniz, Claude Shannon, and Alan Turing could have only dreamed of in their scientific endeavors to understand the world.

Dr. Dario Gil, undersecretary for science and Genesis Mission director, said in a press release: "The Genesis Mission marks a defining moment for the next era of American science. We are linking the nation's most advanced facilities, data, and computing into one closed-loop system to create a scientific instrument for the ages, an engine for discovery that doubles R&D productivity and solves challenges once thought impossible."

Energy Secretary Chris Wright explained the scope and goal of the project: "This Genesis Mission is going to bring together industry, the national labs, data sets all tied together in a closed-loop system to just rapidly advance the pace of scientific and engineering progress."

"It will be transformative," Wright added.

This announcement comes just months after the Trump administration's AI Action Plan, a comprehensive plan to win the global AI race.

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Silicon Valley’s new gold rush is built on stolen work



Lawmakers and the public have long grown tired of Silicon Valley’s "move fast and break things" ethos. But Big Tech hasn’t learned its lesson.

In the mad rush to roll out artificial intelligence, companies have cast aside basic corporate responsibility. Meta’s chatbots allowed children to engage in sexual conversations. OpenAI’s ChatGPT helped a child plan and commit suicide. And mounting evidence shows AI chatbots harming mental health, particularly for children.

OpenAI has created a copyright infringement factory.

The latest example of Silicon Valley’s negligence? Mass copyright infringement.

The wild digital west

When AI products like ChatGPT were new, copyright infringement — while potentially common in AI training — was more opaque. The early versions of today’s large language models weren't really capable of producing realistic copies of original copyrighted works that could compete with the originals. Moreover, training data was hidden from public view.

But new releases, particularly OpenAI’s Sora 2, have smashed that paradigm. This past week, X and other social media platforms have been flooded with Sora 2 users’ reproductions of TV shows like “Family Guy,” “South Park,” “SpongeBob,” and more. While these clips are not yet perfect replicas, they are extremely close, and it is likely a matter of years — if not months — before users can produce copyright-infringing content that is essentially indistinguishable from the originals.

Flipping the script

OpenAI initially put the onus on copyright holders to “opt out” of their creations from being used in Sora 2. But this simply is not how copyright law works. In fact, it violates the express purpose of copyright law: to ensure that your work stays yours. Others have to ask you for permission to opt in to using your work; reversing that would render copyright law toothless.

After the understandable outcry from copyright holders and actors’ guilds, OpenAI changed its copyright policies, switching from the opt-out model to opt-in. Rights holders now choose whether to have their creations included in Sora 2.

CEO Sam Altman seemed to imply that he was surprised at the backlash. “I think the theory of what it was going to feel like to people, and then actually seeing the thing, people had different responses,” he told the Verge. “It felt more different to images than people expected.”

This dubious claim is not an excuse to violate copyright laws wantonly. In waiting days to change course, Altman has also opened a Pandora’s box: the idea that AI can create entire seasons of your favorite shows. Altman knows that users will want it and may hope that the pressure will force copyright holders to take a deal that doesn’t fully represent the value of their intellectual property.

Altman has said as much. “We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rights holders who want their characters generated by users,” he wrote recently. His questionable usage of “try” notwithstanding, the game he is playing is clear: Audiences are going to want this. You either give us permission — after which we will “try” to compensate you — or people will likely use AI to violate your copyright anyway.

RELATED: Does anyone think we’re up to the task of controlling AI?

Mininyx Doodle via iStock/Getty Images

Congress must act

None of this will eliminate AI’s chilling ability to generate lifelike images of people. While the Trump administration cracked down on some of the worst offenders with the Take It Down Act — which bans involuntarily created AI porn — you can still easily create false images of people doing all sorts of things.

For now, the predominant use case may be “funny” videos of SpongeBob fleeing from police. But it would be a simple task, for example, to replace SpongeBob with realistic videos of innocent people committing crimes.

OpenAI and other AI companies have, in essence, created a copyright infringement factory that puts the onus on copyright holders to vindicate their rights, while signaling that they may leverage a rabid user base if copyright holders don’t get in line. This isn’t right, and it shouldn’t be how the law works. Given how flippantly OpenAI and other Big Tech companies have treated the law, Congress needs to consider legal clarifications that force these firms to change their behavior.

Data Doesn’t Lie: Political Violence Is An Overwhelmingly Left-Wing Problem

The rot in the so-called data pushed by leftist scholars studying political violence gets worse the deeper you dig.

Analysis: Phony crime data won't stop Trump's troop deployments



President Donald Trump began his battle against urban crime when he federalized police and deployed National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., in August.

As if on cue, leftists pulled out statistics saying that crime in the nation's capital already had been decreasing, and they criticized Trump, calling his move dictatorial, a power grab, and overkill.

'Stay out of DC.'

After all, what's the point when Metropolitan Police Department stats say that, as of Friday, violent crime in D.C. is down 28% compared to 2024?

But those numbers essentially are meaningless. There are several reasons why.

RELATED: Democrats gloss over anti-ICE violence in Portland ahead of Trump's crackdown on 'domestic terrorists'

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

First, Blaze News recently published a fact-check noting that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has been accused by its own union of manipulating crime data. D.C. Police Commander Michael Pulliam reportedly was placed on paid administrative leave in May following the union's allegations.

What's more, Gregg Pemberton, chairman of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police, told WRC-TV that higher-ups instructed officers to fudge data: "Instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification."

Pemberton noted that felony assaults aren't listed on the MPD's daily crime stats and aren't a requirement of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — and that there's "absolutely no way" crime in D.C. has declined as much as the department claims.

'Not a very livable place'

While violent crime in the nation's capital has received much of the attention of late, what about the far more frequent "petty" property crimes such as burglary, theft, and shoplifting?

The latest numbers from the FBI — which only account for reported crimes (and the less violent the offense, the more likely it will go unreported) — show only a marginal drop in property crimes in D.C. in 2024 compared to 2023.

For example, the FBI said larcenies dropped to 18,260 in 2024 from 19,752 in 2023, and motor vehicle thefts dropped to 5,328 in 2024 from 6,861 in 2023. Burglaries actually increased to 1,675 in 2024 from 1,666 in 2023.

The other factor is that overall crime in D.C. exploded in 2023. A compilation of the FBI numbers shows that violent crime in the nation's capital that year was a whopping 207.4% higher than the 50-state average, and property crime was 124.7% higher.

Yet, even the federal government's count shows that property crime didn't drop much in 2024 compared to 2023's historically bad numbers. So how much better have the D.C. streets really been of late when rampant theft and other property crimes still occur, and an untold number of incidents aren't even reported?

Even when crooks are arrested for 'petty' property crimes, in most cases — unless they involve high dollar amounts — they're misdemeanors that often aren't subject to bail, and the criminals are right back out on the streets.

Jeffrey H. Anderson — who served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics during Trump's first term — told Blaze News that the effects of not policing property crimes in D.C. "has only gotten worse" in the post-George Floyd and pandemic era.

In fact, Anderson said D.C. has been doing the "opposite" of broken-windows policing, which hits lower-level crime harder so more serious crime is less likely to get a foothold. But he said when items in stores in the nation's capital are "under lock and key" to prevent shoplifting and "lifestyle crimes" like turnstile jumping run rampant, it gives the impression that "nobody's in charge here" and sends a stark message: "Stay out of D.C."

Anderson added that it's all a "constant reminder that it's not a very livable place."

John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and former senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department, told Blaze News about another disheartening factor: People overall seem "less confident" in the possibility of criminal convictions, and indeed citizens are "less likely to report crimes" as a result.

Lott added that it's more difficult these days to report crimes in some places, noting that often those who tell police about crimes after the fact are instructed to "come down to the station" to fill out police reports, which means they're less likely to go to the trouble — and thus fewer crimes are reported.

Anderson also noted that in regard to unreported crimes, people simply "don't trust police," and the National Crime Victimization Survey — which annually asks U.S. residents if they've been crime victims and explores related details and is far more reliable than FBI stats, he said — suggests that only half of the crimes that take place actually are reported to police.

RELATED: DC Dems are furious at Mayor Bowser for admitting Trump's troops are lowering crime

Photo by Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Fewer arrests, more crime

Anderson last September argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that "crime rates haven't been falling, and urban crime is far worse than it was in the pre-George Floyd era." And as far as the urban property-crime rate goes nationally, Anderson contended it's also getting worse. Property crimes "rose from 176.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022 to 192.3 in 2023. That's part of a 26% increase in the urban property-crime rate since 2019. These numbers exclude rampant shoplifting, since the NCVS is a survey of households and not of businesses."

The result is easy to discern. In D.C. — and everywhere else — crooks commit property crimes significantly more often than violent crimes. And even when property crimes are reported, they're more likely to go unsolved, as stretched-thin law enforcement resources are more focused elsewhere.

In that vein, the Manhattan Institute published "Doing Less with Less: Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC" a little over a year ago, and part of it examines arrest numbers in the district in 2019 compared to a significant decline in certain arrests in 2023 — which, as noted, was a year in which D.C. crime exploded.

Yet, the study found that the steepest arrest declines were for "minor or quality-of-life crimes. Levels of arrests for prostitution, traffic violations, narcotics, disorderly conduct, liquor law violations, release violations, and driving while intoxicated, for example, have all collapsed." The study adds that such numbers indicate the "MPD has not only reduced its activity but focused the activity that remains on gun crimes (i.e., homicide and weapon violations)." In addition, the study notes that "the city has also experienced a decline in its capacity to investigate."

Plus, even when crooks are arrested for "petty" property crimes, in most cases — unless they involve high dollar amounts — they're misdemeanors that often aren't subject to bail, and the criminals are right back out on the streets. Then we'll soon see them once again ripping off stores with impunity.

In D.C., the consequences have been front and center. A few examples:

Trump's plan is working

In the meantime, Trump's federalization of D.C. police and infusion of National Guard troops appears to be working. Even Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser — who's no Trump fan — acknowledged in August that the federal surge has helped drive down crime significantly. In fact, Bowser said carjackings fell by 87% during August's surge period, compared to the same period the previous year. Indeed, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stopped a D.C. carjacking.

But what about other cities to which Trump has been directing his attention? The president noted in August that he received calls from Democrats across the country asking him to clean up their cities like he's done in D.C.

Early on, Trump hinted that Chicago would be next, and predictably, leftist leaders like Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have been opposed to Trump's federal intervention. While the National Guard hasn't made an appearance there yet, the Associated Press said that "dozens of armed federal agents, in full tactical gear, walked the streets of some of the city's most prominent tourist and shopping areas" on Sunday.

RELATED: Pritzker and other libs melt down over Trump's 'Chipocalypse Now' meme, prompting a badly needed reality check

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Left-wing pushback in Chicago mirrors the left-wing pushback in D.C. when it comes to crime stats.

NewsNation noted that Johnson and Pritzker said troops aren't necessary in Chicago "where homicides are down by 31%, shooting incidents have been reduced by 36% and crimes like robbery, burglary and car thefts are all down by between 21 and 36%, according to the Chicago Police Department." But tell that to residents of the Windy City who favor Trump's troops and federal agents.

NewsNation reported that even as leaders tout falling violent crime, Chicago faces a rash of smash-and-grab burglaries, store break-ins, and home invasions targeting the elderly. Sound familiar?

On to Portland and Memphis

National Guard troops are on their way to Memphis and Portland, and while the deployment in Portland is centered on violent anti-ICE activity, the move on Memphis looks to be a crackdown on overall crime.

But again, those same overtures in regard to crime stats have been ringing out loud and clear in regard to both cities. Reuters pointed out Monday that "violent crime in Portland has dropped in the first six months of 2025, according to preliminary data released by the Major Cities Chiefs Association in its Midyear Violent Crime Report." Memphis police in early September reported "historic crime reductions, with decreases across all major categories in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in previous years."

No city seems to want Trump's federal deployments to help fight crime, despite his success in D.C.

Perhaps this thought-provoking TikTok message that user “thinkingnotsosimple2.0” posted in late August can help spell things out. The TikTok user — a black female — praised Trump's efforts in D.C., noting that she has gathered "video after video showing D.C., specifically Union Station, and how clean and safe it is" since Trump federalized police in the nation's capital.

"People don't understand how big of a deal this is, because the Capitol is right there within, like, a six- or seven-minute walk," she said, before adding that local residents "did not like walking there, whether in the daytime or the evening. Some people would take taxis just to avoid any type of encounters" with drug users and dealers.

She concluded: "People have been talking about cleaning this up for a decade. And you mean to tell me President Trump hasn't even had control for 30 days, and he cleaned it all up."

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EXCLUSIVE: SSA Rejects Whistleblower Claims, Slams Alleged Release Of Sensitive Data As ‘Highly Irresponsible’

'Actively mitigating the risk'

FDA Commissioner Faces Pressure To Limit Abortion Pill After Study Finds Increased Risks

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-29-at-9.01.30 AM-e1745938254545-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-29-at-9.01.30%5Cu202fAM-e1745938254545-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]This isn’t the first time Makary has encountered questions about the status of mifepristone under his leadership.

Trump’s FBI Reforms Need To Include Ending Its Data Distortions On Crime

The FBI doesn't just have a transparency problem. They're actually distorting data to skew important crime statistics.

Ford's plan to turn the inside of your car into one big eavesdropping, ad-spewing smartphone



Be careful what you say while driving — your car may be listening.

Automaker Ford has recently applied for a patent for what it calls the“In-Vehicle Advertisement Presentation System.”

If this doesn’t anger you, wait till you're bombarded with texts, messages on your center screen, and more garbage emails.

This technology uses in-car microphones to listen to passengers’ conversations and display targeted advertisements. It can also analyze voice commands and navigation data to serve relevant ads, like promoting local businesses or services.

This is no doubt welcome news for those of us who can't get enough of billboards — or those of us who've always wished our vehicles could invade our privacy as much as our smartphones do.

The Ford patent is just one of the ways automakers are exploring ways to monetize user data — a sign that the days of the automobile as a sanctuary for private conversations are coming to a close.

But the Ford Global Technologies patent is particularly invasive, demonstrating insidious “systems and methods” to bombard you with personalized ads.

Not only would the new technology be able to listen to conversations, it would also capture and analyze data such as vehicle location, speed, and traffic conditions.

The system would also use information on the driver’s destination and location history to predict what kind and what length ads to show them.

Listening to passengers' conversations would also help the company learn how they react to the ads and the best times to run them through audio and human-machine interface systems installed in the car.

The application also mentions using historical user data and third-party app information to refine ad targeting.

Ford has shrugged off any privacy concerns.

"Submitting patent applications is a normal part of any strong business as the process protects new ideas and helps us build a robust portfolio of intellectual property," a Ford spokesperson told the Record. "The ideas described within a patent application should not be viewed as an indication of our business or product plans."

In other words: We're not really doing it ... and it's good that we're doing it.

In a follow-up statement, Ford said it "will always put the customer first in the decision-making behind the development and marketing of new products and services."

The patent application does not offer specifics regarding data-protection measures, likely adding to the unease expressed by privacy advocates.

While such a system would rely heavily on data, the patent doesn’t show the collected data would be protected. Nevertheless, as with many issued patents, the released document doesn’t guarantee that the invention will be implemented in the future.

It also should be noted that auto manufacturers have been found to sell data about drivers' habits behind the wheel to auto insurance companies, which is then used to set insurance rates. This suggests that they view user data as another revenue stream to market to interested parties other than advertisers.

If this doesn’t anger you, wait till you're bombarded with texts, messages on your center screen, and more garbage emails.

Ford has filed other patent applications that have raised privacy concerns. One recent example is a patent for "Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violations." We have covered this on our channel.

And another controversial patent, which Ford later abandoned after widespread criticism, proposed a system for repossessing vehicles from owners who had missed payments. The system would either direct self-driving cars to repossession lots or disable standard vehicles by locking their steering wheels, brakes, and air conditioning.

For more on this, see the video below:

Drive carefully — your car is watching



It's coming from inside the car!

I've told you about the AI-enabled cameras that can tell if you're speeding — or on your phone. Now, car manufacturers are joining the assault on your privacy.

'Our investigation revealed that General Motors has engaged in egregious business practices that violated Texans’ privacy and broke the law. We will hold them accountable.'

Take Ford, for example. The iconic American company recently filed a not-so-American patent for technology that would allow a car to snitch on drivers.

Entitled "Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violations" — not quite as catchy as "Built Ford Tough" — the patent filing details a system that would use vehicles' cameras and sensors to detect speeding motorists and report them to authorities.

The filing includes basic sketches and flowcharts illustrating how this technology senses speed violations, activates cameras to capture images, and transmits data to nearby "pursuit vehicles" or logs it to a server. The captured data, including speed, GPS location, and clear imagery or video, can then be sent to authorities for potential action.

According to Ford, it is developing this technology for police cars. In other words, don't worry: This invasive surveillance tech will be exclusively in the hands of the state.

And I'm sure the company would never think of adapting it so your own car can inform any nearby police that they should pull you over.

Then there's GM.

Did you know the company's so concerned about empowering you to keep your data secure that it just consolidated five different lengthy privacy statements into one disclosure document?

Talk about putting the customer first! Yeah, a massive lawsuit and widespread public backlash have a way of encouraging that.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit on behalf of the state against GM, accusing the automaker of installing technology on more than 14 million vehicles to collect data about drivers, which it then sold to insurers and other companies without drivers’ consent.

The suit contends that the data was used to compile “Driving Scores” assessing whether more than 1.8 million Texas drivers had “bad” habits such as speeding, braking too fast, steering too sharply into turns, not using seatbelts, and driving late at night. Insurers could then use the data when deciding whether to raise premiums, cancel policies, or deny coverage.

The technology was allegedly installed on most GM vehicles starting with the 2015 model year. Paxton said GM’s practice was for dealers to make unwitting consumers who had just completed the stressful buying and leasing process believe that enrolling in its OnStar diagnostic products, which collected the data, was mandatory.

“Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways,” Paxton said in a statement. “Our investigation revealed that General Motors has engaged in egregious business practices that violated Texans’ privacy and broke the law. We will hold them accountable.”

This isn't the first time Texas has stood up for its drivers. In 2019 Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill to ban red-light cameras, two years after KXAN-NBC in Austin, Texas, reported that almost all cities with red-light cameras had illegally issued traffic tickets.

Their investigation also found that drivers paid the city of Austin over $7 million in fines since the cameras were installed, and cities in Texas made over $500 million from the cameras since 2007.

Blue Cities Like Philadelphia Feeds Citizens’ Private Data To Democrat Vote-Harvesting Outfit

Philadelphia has collected personal citizen information for years through a company now instructing Democrat get-out-the-vote foot soldiers.