Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
Sources: ByteDance has made preliminary plans to spend ~$23B in AI capex in 2026, up from ~$20B in 2025, and has budgeted ~$12B for AI processors (Financial Times)
Financial Times:
Sources: ByteDance has made preliminary plans to spend ~$23B in AI capex in 2026, up from ~$20B in 2025, and has budgeted ~$12B for AI processors — ByteDance set to increase capital expenditure next year in effort to further build AI infrastructure — TikTok owner ByteDance is set …
The FCC’s foreign drone ban is here
Kargo, which uses cameras and sensors to inspect pallets in a warehouse and provide accurate inventory data, raised a $42M Series B led by Avenir (Colin Campbell/Axios)
Colin Campbell / Axios:
Kargo, which uses cameras and sensors to inspect pallets in a warehouse and provide accurate inventory data, raised a $42M Series B led by Avenir — Kargo, a San Francisco-based warehouse inventory tech startup, closed a $42 million Series B led by Avenir, the company announced Monday.
The ‘60 Minutes’ Report on CECOT That Bari Weiss Censored Is Now Internet Contraband
Elizabeth Lopatto, writing at The Verge:
60 Minutes had already begun promoting the now-censored segment online. Because it was pulled so late, it seems that CBS missed at least one platform for distribution: Canada’s Global TV. Some people used a VPN to watch it; at least one person recorded it, distributing it through an iCloud account.
The segment, which has been reviewed by The Verge, is a little shy of 14 minutes long. It features video of men, chained and bent double, being “paraded in front of cameras, pushed onto buses, and delivered to CECOT,” according to the segment’s narration. One former detainee, who CBS met in Colombia, said he was told he was “the living dead” at CECOT. After trying to seek asylum in the US, he says he was detained by customs and held for 6 months before being deported. He described horrific conditions at the prison, saying he was beaten until he bled and that he was thrown into a wall so hard he broke one of his teeth. He also described sexual assault by the guards. Another interviewed former detainee described what can only be called torture: being forced to kneel for 24 hours, and being put in a dark room, where they were beaten if they moved from the stress position. [...]
Anyway, best of luck to Weiss in playing DMCA whack-a-mole with the video of the story. The segment lives as online samizdat now. Thanks to Weiss’ censorship, it may very well wind up being the most-talked-about CBS News story this year.
There are a bunch of copies on social media, but most are video of the TV broadcast in Canada shot from an iPhone. The Internet Archive, however, has a clean copy that’s a direct screen recording. Watch for yourself.
In addition to being the most-talked-about CBS News story of the year, it’ll almost certainly be the most-watched. But CBS will get none of the views or ad revenue. There’s no better way to make people want to watch something than to tell them they shouldn’t watch it. The Streisand effect is very real.
CBS News Chief Bari Weiss Pulls ‘60 Minutes’ Story on Trump’s CECOT Gulag in El Salvador
David Folkenflik, reporting for NPR:
Just a day and a half before it was set to be broadcast, new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled a planned 60 Minutes investigative segment centering on allegations of abuses at an El Salvador detention center where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants last March.
Weiss told colleagues this weekend the piece — planned for Sunday night’s show — could not run without an on-the-record comment from an administration official. She pushed for 60 Minutes to interview Stephen Miller, senior advisor to President Trump, or someone of his stature. That’s according to two people with knowledge of events at the network who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing job security.
The correspondent on the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, condemned the decision in an email to 60 Minutes colleagues on Sunday evening, saying she believed it was “not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” [...] Alfonsi wrote that she and her colleagues on the story had sought comments and interviews from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and the State Department.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote in the email. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
It is not surprising in the least bit that Weiss tried to censor a jarring report on Trump’s illegal torture prison in El Salvador. It is, perhaps, slightly surprising how dumb this attempt is. Of course it’s a good principle of journalism to allow the other side of a story to comment or be interviewed. But the idea that the other side can just decline to participate and that means you can’t run the story is like fingers-in-your-ears “I can’t hear you!” playground nonsense. You run the story and say that they declined to comment.
It’s not just that Weiss kiboshed a solid piece of reporting from 60 Minutes. It’s that the editor-in-chief of CBS News is now on the record as saying that the entire staff of 60 Minutes wanted to run an unfair hit piece on the Trump administration. The decline of CBS as an institution continues.