In the race to AI supremacy, few things are as important as having access to advanced computer chips. The United States and China are currently vying for the top spot, so it makes sense to implement rules to prevent China from obtaining these chips. Importantly, these rules must be robust enough to prevent loopholes. With unfettered access to cloud resources from Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon, the Chinese government and the companies under its control can access America’s advanced AI technology despite rules aimed at preventing them from doing so. The AI cloud loophole must be closed immediately.

China is banned under U.S. export controls from buying Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips, but not from renting them from cloud computing companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The Commerce Department designates cloud computing as a service rather than a product, so export rules imposed by the Biden administration on product shipments to China fail to account for this glaring vulnerability.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo vocalized her concerns around this vulnerability back in January, around the same time a proposed rule was released from the Commerce Department focused on requiring providers of cloud services to identify and track foreign customers in order to “deter” malicious cyber activities. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives’s Foreign Affairs Committee, has reiterated the concern in Washington around this “loophole” and says, “[W]e are long overdue to address it.”

This week, legislation sponsored by Rep. Michael Lawler of New York aimed at ending this loophole passed the House with bipartisan support, but so far it has not gained much traction in the Senate. A spokesperson said that the Commerce Department is “seeking additional resources to strengthen our existing controls that restrict PRC companies from accessing advanced AI chips through remote access to cloud computing capability.”

Big Tech is more than happy to accommodate these requests from the Chinese if there is a profit to be made. The founder of a Shenzhen-based AI startup was easily offered access to Nvidia chips in overseas servers from both Google and Microsoft. Google seems to think that these business dealings are permitted under U.S. export controls, as no data centers reside within China proper.

AWS ranks sixth in cloud providers for the Chinese market. Through an intermediary, Shenzhen University was able to use AWS and get access to Nvidia’s chips for an “unspecified project.” Amazon claims it “complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China.” Multiple other organizations linked to the Chinese government were discovered actively seeking access to these chips through cloud services.

When Nvidia modified its advanced chips in order to sell them in China, the Biden administration released new rules that would halt these sales. Through the AI cloud loophole, China is still able to maintain its unauthorized access. China is aware of the United States’ ability to cut off this access, but until the right steps are taken to materialize these threats, America’s greatest adversary will continue to mooch off American technology.

Access to these chips is vital for continued growth of Chinese AI capabilities. At one point before the initial restrictions were put in place on China, Nvidia accounted for 95 percent of the nation’s chip sales. Part of the dominance is explained by the performance of the chips. Another reason is the CUDA software that they run on. This software helps create parallelized software which is key in AI development.

The United States and China are locked in a heated battle for AI supremacy that will greatly impact the future global order. The current restrictions on advanced chip shipments to China that do not account for access to cloud services with those same chips are failing to meet the seriousness of this issue. To close this loophole, legislation such as the Remote Access Security Act should be passed by the Senate, and Commerce Department rulings should be updated to prohibit backdoor Chinese access to these chips. It is time to close the AI cloud loophole.

Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Federalist, where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States.

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The internet is currently controlled through searching, and if Google single-handedly dominates the means through which searching works, then Google effectively controls the internet.

Recently, a judge officially ruled that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” The Big Tech behemoth also engages in rampant censorship, placing “unauthoritative” voices in a digital ghetto. Now that Google is finally recognized as a bad actor in the search engine and ad industries, it is time to make sure that it does not continue to wield unparalleled control over the internet and consumers.

The main point of U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta’s August 5th ruling is that Google unlawfully spent large sums of money to serve as the default search engine for top web browsers. In 2021, Google paid Apple a whopping $18 billion to serve as its default search engine. The judgment also called out Google’s unreasonable ad costs that went above free market pricing.

Google was not only exerting total control over what users could find on the internet, but they were also preventing other companies from reaching these users.

Internet users do not often change the default search engine on their devices and browsers. Additionally, if they do not know the website they want to access at first, they are going straight to their search engine, most of the Google, to find what they are looking for. It makes sense then that Google would want to serve as the default search engine of widely used browsers while also making it more difficult to switch from that default. This strategy has allowed them to facilitate 99,000 search queries a second and obtain 92% of the search engine market.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, says that his company provides a better search engine service for users. However, the experience of many people and companies affected by Google’s antics betrays that claim.

The Internet’s Politics

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall plans to investigate Google for its decision to limit its suggested search autofill functionality from displaying “Trump” after users type “assassination attempt on” into the search field. Video emerged of former Google VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer revealing that Google prioritizes its own product links over its competitors despite the influence of other metrics like popularity.

In the lead up to the national vote in the U.K., Google banned the advertising account of Reform UK only to reinstate it after seeing the public outcry.

Google’s search behavior regarding the U.S. presidential election has been particularly awful. Research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein evaluated the behavior of Google’s algorithm for the last decade, and he found that in 2020 the results were so skewed to promote Biden that they resulted in six million votes shifting towards him.

Google was accused of burying the Rumble exclusive link to the GOP debate live stream by CEO Chris Pavlovski, who says that it put corporate media at the top of search results for the stream. MRC Free Speech America researchers were unable to find any 2024 presidential campaign websites of Republicans on the first page of search results a day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate.

Instead, they saw the websites of Democrat candidates both current and past. The list of ways in which Google fails to provide a superior search experience could go on and on.

Google and AI

Google is now looking to fundamentally change the very nature of internet searching in their favor with AI. The new plan is for “Google [to] do the Googling” and entirely remove the last bit of influence that searchers still have on the results they find. Through summaries compiled through AI rather than traditional links, Google would essentially work as the one providing the answers to search queries. With this final step into their role as truth arbiter, Google has removed any doubt of their ambitions to obtain total control over the internet.

The recent judgment against Google and their monopoly provides a chance to stop this dystopian evolution of the internet into Google’s manipulation tool. Real change to the make-up of the search industry must come from proportionate penalties on Google for their actions.

We must not allow Google to maintain their monopoly over such a powerful tool as internet search. With it, they can silence voices contrary to their corporate agenda, rake in billions of dollars through advertisement pricing manipulation, and unfairly promote their own products and services.

The internet’s viability for promoting America’s wellbeing is directly tied to search engines, and it will never reach its full potential if Google continues to dominate in the current fashion.

Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Federalist where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States.

The post Google Controls the Internet … and Us! appeared first on Internet Accountability Project.

“In its filings with the federal court in Virginia, Google has essentially admitted its illegal monopolization of the multi-billion-dollar market for online advertising. Through its anticompetitive and illegal misconduct, Google has defrauded the American public, small businesses, and federal and state governments by jacking up online advertising prices and misrepresenting the effectiveness of its online advertising business.

“While Google’s settlement number remains hidden from the public, it is hard to imagine it is anything close to reasonable given Google’s $250 billion in ill-gotten gains.

“We commend Jonathan Kanter, the Justice Department’s chief antitrust law-enforcement officer, for his bold vision and leadership in holding accountable trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists, like Google, that have gatekeeping power over information and commerce. We also commend Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for joining this crucial bipartisan effort.

“With Google’s admissions in its filings, the next important step should be the enforcement of the False Claims Act and the debarment of Google from doing business with federal and state governments.”

IAP is a nonprofit conservative advocacy group that holds Big Tech accountable for engaging in egregious business practices like snooping, spying, political bias against conservatives, employee abuses and anticompetitive conduct. Davis previously served as Chief Counsel for Nominations to Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and led the Senate confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and a record number of circuit court judges. More information on Davis and IAP can be found here.

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On Thursday, the Internet Accountability Project’s Mike Davis led a letter calling on Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to do their part in breaking up and reining in Big Tech. Townhall received an exclusive sneak peek at the letter, which begins by calling on the Committee “to hold a markup meeting, pass bipartisan antitrust reforms, and take other crucial steps to break up trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple’s illegal stranglehold over online information and commerce.” The letter also addresses such members for being “leaders in Congress on competition, consumer policy, and antitrust law,” adding “we know you understand the importance of ensuring there is a level playing field.”

Specifically, the letter later goes on to ask for Committee votes on the Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability (AMERICA) Act (S.1073), the Open Apps Market Act from the previous Congress, and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2033). 

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The letter reminds how Big Tech has been able to have a monopoly, a role which has allowed them to have “manipulated elections, COVID guidance, and the news–all without repercussions or checks. Worse, they do China’s bidding.”

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Davis was joined by Aiden Buzzeti and Ziven Havens of the Bull Moose Project, as well as Jon Schweppe of the American Principles Project and bestselling author Geoffrey Cain in his letter.

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Big Tech censorship is also an issue that has affected Townhall directly, as has been covered at length lately, including by Spencer who just did so last week.

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Read the full article HERE.

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Clemson University is using federal funds to create technology meant to track what researchers consider to be patterns of “mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM)” by internet users.

Researchers said they are taking steps to ensure their work is unbiased, but two watchdog groups argued the project could be used to silence speech online.

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“The federal government’s involvement in policing so-called ‘disinformation,’ or what some of us would call inconvenient truths, should send a chill down everyone’s spine,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, told The Fix. “And it’s plainly unconstitutional.”

Davis, former Chief Counsel for Nominations to U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, said censorship is a likely result of such projects.

“Leftists fear free speech and open debate, so they fight through their allies in the Washington bureaucracy to cancel those with whom they disagree,” he told The Fix.

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Read the full article HERE.

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The Biden administration has pursued a more aggressive antitrust approach than previous administrations, filing numerous lawsuits seeking to break up large companies and block mergers with mixed success.

The administration’s antitrust action through either the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been aggressive since the president took office in January 2021, targeting tech companies like Google and Microsoft, but also airlines, e-commerce and more. Some conservatives say the crackdown will increase competition and consumer outcomes, while others say that the action will stymie legitimate business operations, reducing operating viability and harming consumer experiences.

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“Free markets require functioning markets,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the advocacy organization Internet Accountability Project, told the DCNF. “This means enforcement of our century-old antitrust laws to target anti-competitive actors. Trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists have too much power over information and commerce. We need more than extremely expensive, David-versus-Goliath antitrust lawsuits to hold accountable the trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.”

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“Just about the only thing the Biden administration is doing right is bipartisan antitrust law enforcement,” Davis told the DCNF. “At the same time, we can’t let the federal government take control of American industry. Currently, Section 230 and antitrust amnesty protect these Big Tech behemoths. Consumers, conservatives, and small businesses suffer as a result, while Big Tech billionaires profit. We need more bipartisan antitrust actions to keep Big Tech from taking over every facet of American life.”

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Read the full article HERE.

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A State Department-backed “disinformation” tracker under congressional investigation is shielding key details about its operations from the Washington Examiner despite blacklisting conservative media outlets for having “opaque ownership structures.”

The Global Disinformation Index has faced heightened scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the British group’s covert efforts to defund websites it disagrees with, and it is also at the center of a new lawsuit against the State Department over the agency wiring $100,000 to GDI. While GDI brands itself as a “nonpartisan” proponent of transparency, that didn’t stop its two affiliated nonprofit groups in the United States from providing the Washington Examiner with heavily redacted copies of their newly filed 2022 financial disclosures, a maneuver tax experts warn likely violates federal law.

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“The Global Disinformation Index is violating the law by hiding its disclosures, and that’s pretty funny and hypocritical for a group that pretends it cares about transparency in the media,” conservative lawyer Mike Davis, who leads the Internet Accountability Project, a group seeking to rein in the power of Big Tech social media platforms, told the Washington Examiner.

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Read the full article HERE.

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Media Matters for America, the organization that has successfully targeted advertisers on billionaire Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has long been a beneficiary of donations from major institutional liberal donors and organizations connected to the Democratic Party, according to tax documents and grants.

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“Musk shouldn’t allow Media Matters to use his platform to organize advertiser boycotts to destroy his company,” Internet Accountability Project Founder and President Mike Davis told the DCNF.

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Read the full article HERE.

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Billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X’s — formerly Twitter — lawsuit against Media Matters could lead to damages for the left-wing group, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Media Matters alleged that advertisements from major advertisers show up on antisemitic content on X on Thursday, according to a report. While the case is not a slam dunk, there is merit to it and it could lead to financial damages and an injunction, experts told the DCNF.

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Media Matters has received scrutiny for publishing false information and attempting to censor conservatives. “Media Matters consistently gets away with these types of actions, and it’s refreshing to see someone like Musk call their bluff,” Internet Accountability Project Founder and President Mike Davis told the DCNF. “Taking Media Matters to court will air much of the corrupt entity’s dirty laundry.”

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Read the full article HERE.

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Ignoring the warnings of Senate Republicans this week, President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission is pushing forward with its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda to take control of the Internet under the guise of “a fringe left-wing legal theory about discrimination.”

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, denounced FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel voting to enact “Digital Discrimination,” by forcing broadband providers to expansive, indeterminate, and crippling liability under the “disparate impact” standard.

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Conservative legal expert Mike Davis founded the Internet Accountability Project (IAP) to watch over Big Tech and government attempts to tip the scales against conservatives.

“These latest moves shift the balance between governmental oversight and individual freedoms heavily toward the government,” Davis said in a statement this week. “Excessive government control from the Biden administration would curtail the very essence of a free and open digital environment, compromising privacy rights and growing the alliance between Big Tech and the federal government.”

The move will “stifle innovation” and restrict freedoms under the guise of equity, just as Biden Democrats intended, according to Davis.

“President Biden’s pronounced efforts to extend government control over the expansive tech landscape point toward an unprecedented level of government intervention in Americans’ digital lives and basic freedoms,” Davis added. “Consolidation of power over the tech space within the government, working in tandem with its corporate allies in Big Tech, will stifle innovation, freedom of speech, and freedom of association.

“Diversity of ideas and technological advancements will suffer.”

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Read the full article HERE.

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