An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Defense Department said on Monday it has added Chinese tech giants including gaming and social media leader Tencent Holdings and battery maker CATL to a list of firms it says work with China's military. The list also included chip maker Changxin Memory Technologies, Quectel Wireless and drone maker Autel Robotics, according to a document published on Monday. The annually updated list (PDF) of Chinese military companies, formally mandated under U.S. law as the "Section 1260H list," designated 134 companies, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register.

U.S.-traded shares of Tencent, which is also the parent of Chinese instant messaging app WeChat, fell 8% in over-the-counter trading. Tencent said in a statement that its inclusion on the list was "clearly a mistake." It added: "We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business." CATL called the designation a mistake, saying it "is not engaged in any military related activities." A Quectel spokesperson said the company "does not work with the military in any country and will ask the Pentagon to reconsider its designation, which clearly has been made in error."

While the designation does not involve immediate bans, it can be a blow to the reputations of affected companies and represents a stark warning to U.S. entities and firms about the risks of conducting business with them. It could also add pressure on the Treasury Department to sanction the companies. Two previously listed companies, drone maker DJI and Lidar-maker Hesai Technologies, both sued the Pentagon last year over their previous designations, but remain on the updated list. The Pentagon also removed six companies it said no longer met the requirements for the designation, including AI firm Beijing Megvii Technology, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited, China State Construction Group Co and China Telecommunications Corporation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After ditching the traditional Dell XPS laptop look in favor of the polarizing design of the XPS 13 Plus released in 2022, Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC. This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS clamshell ultralight laptops, 2-in-1 laptops, or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding, it announced today. Moving forward, Dell computers will have either just Dell branding, which Dell's announcement today described as "designed for play, school, and work," Dell Pro branding "for professional-grade productivity," or be Dell Pro Max products, which are "designed for maximum performance." Dell will release Dell and Dell Pro-branded displays, accessories, and "services," it said. The Pro Max line will feature laptops and desktop workstations with professional-grade GPU capabilities as well as a new thermal design.

Dell claims its mid-tier Pro line emphasizes durability, "withstanding three times as many hinge cycles, drops, and bumps from regular use as competitor devices." The statement is based on "internal analysis of multiple durability tests performed" on the Dell Pro 14 Plus (released today) and HP EliteBook 640 G11 laptops conducted in November. Also based on internal testing conducted in November, Dell claims its Pro PCs boost "airflow by 20 percent, making these Dell's quietest commercial laptops ever." Within each line are base models, Plus models, and Premium models. In a blog post, Kevin Terwilliger, VP and GM of commercial, consumer, and gaming PCs at Dell, explained that Plus models offer "the most scalable performance" and Premium models offer "the ultimate in mobility and design." By those naming conventions, old-time Dell users could roughly equate XPS laptops with new Dell Premium products. [...] Dell will maintain its Alienware line of gaming PCs and peripherals (Dell acquired Alienware in 2006). The changes were made to create more "unified branding" that will make it "easier and faster to find the right PCs, accessories, and services," said Dell in a press release. It also serves to push the company's "AI PCs" onto consumers.

Dell notes that it will maintain its Alienware line of gaming PCs and peripherals "that's been service PC gamers for nearly 30 years."

Communities across the U.S. experienced unprecedented warmth in 2024, with numerous cities breaking temperature records set just a year earlier. Phoenix recorded an average temperature of 90.5F and endured 70 days with highs at or above 110F, surpassing its previous record of 55 days.

Major metropolitan areas including Chicago, Nashville, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Burlington, Vermont, all registered their warmest year. Even northern Maine cities like Caribou and Houlton saw record-breaking temperatures, reflecting broader global warming trends that made 2024 the hottest year on record worldwide.

More than 1.6 million Americans have been jobless for at least six months, up 50% since late 2022, despite the economy adding over two million jobs last year, Labor Department data shows.

The average job search now takes six months, primarily affecting high-paying sectors like tech, law, and media. While the 4.2% unemployment rate remains below pre-pandemic averages, job postings have dropped to one per unemployed worker from two in early 2022.

Software development, data science, and marketing roles are 20% below pre-pandemic levels, while healthcare and government sectors account for half of recent job creation. The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits reached 1.8 million in late December, approaching post-pandemic highs, as wage growth declined to 4% from 6% during the early 2020s hiring peak.

As America begins a six-day state funeral for former president Jimmy Carter, Microsoft co-founder/philanthropist Bill Gates shared "my fondest memory" this week. "He and Rosalynn were among my first and most inspiring role models in global health." They played a pretty profound role in the early days of the Gates Foundation. I'm especially grateful that they introduced us to Dr. Bill Foege, who once helped eradicate smallpox and was a key advisor for our global health work.

Jimmy and Rosalynn were also good friends to my dad. One of my favorite photographs of all time shows Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my dad in South Africa holding babies at a medical clinic. I remember my dad coming back from that trip with a whole new appreciation for Jimmy's passion for helping people with HIV. At the time, then-President Thabo Mbeki was refusing to let people with HIV get treatment, and my dad watched Jimmy almost get into a fist fight with Mbeki over the issue. As Jimmy said in a 2012 conversation at the Gates Foundation hosted by my dad, "He was claiming there was no relationship between HIV and AIDS and that the medicines that we were sending in, the antiretroviral medicines, were a white person's plot to help kill black babies." At a time when a quarter of all people in South Africa were HIV positive, Jimmy just couldn't accept Mbeki's obstructionism.
Ars Technica reported it was also Jimmy Carter who saved America's space shuttle program.

And Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House (which "were later removed by his successor, Ronald Reagan," according to Boiling Point, an environmental newsletter from the Los Angeles Times): He tried and largely failed to block construction of more than a dozen expensive, environmentally destructive water infrastructure projects such as dams, canals and reservoirs. He also tried to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, implementing the first vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and tasking researchers with bringing down the cost of solar panels — an effort he predicted could be "a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people...." And although he was largely thinking about how to free Americans from geopolitical crises that could wreak havoc on oil supplies and gasoline prices, he also had heat-trapping greenhouse gases in mind... The final report from the White House Council on Environmental Quality warned that fossil fuel combustion could cause "widespread and pervasive changes in global climatic, economic, social, and agricultural patterns." It advised that to avoid such risks, we should limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the goal eventually agreed to by nearly 200 nations, 35 years later.

Even if Carter's actions were targeted more at reducing oil imports than at cutting planet-warming pollution — he was willing to increase domestic coal production if it meant less dependence on foreign crude — the political battles he fought, particularly those he lost, have lessons for those of us who care about the climate today. The historian Kai Bird, for instance, notes that after struggling to pass a tax on gas-guzzling cars, Carter wrote in his diary, "The influence of the oil and gas industry is unbelievable, and it's impossible to arouse the public to protect themselves." Indeed, oil and gas companies still wield huge influence. SUVs are more popular than ever.
The newsletter argues the story of Carter's life can be an inspiration, since Carter saw a lot of changes in his 100 years.

"We need to see more changes to survive. May we all be as lucky as Carter was."

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled this week that net neutrality couldn't be reinstated by America's Federal Communications Commission. But "Despite the dismantling of the FCC's efforts to regulate broadband internet service, state laws in California, New York and elsewhere remain intact," notes the Los Angeles Times: This week's decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down the FCC's open internet rules, has little bearing on state laws enacted during the years-long tug-of-war over the government's power to regulate internet service providers, telecommunications experts said. In fact, some suggested that the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit's decision — along with other rulings and the U.S. Supreme Court's posture on a separate New York case — has effectively fortified state regulators' efforts to fill the gap. "Absent an act of Congress, the FCC has virtually no role in broadband any more," Ernesto Falcon, a program manager for the California Public Utilities Commission, said in an interview. "The result of this decision is that states like California, New York and others will have to govern and regulate broadband carriers on our own."

California has one of the nation's strongest laws on net neutrality, the principle that internet traffic must be treated equally to ensure a free and open network. Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law in 2018, months after federal regulators in President elect-Donald Trump's first administration repealed the net neutrality rules put in place under President Obama. Colorado, Oregon and other states also adopted their own standards.

The Golden State's law has already survived legal challenges. It also prompted changes in the way internet service providers offered plans and services. "California's net neutrality law, which is seen as the gold standard by consumer advocates, carries national impact," Falcon said.... "The state's authority and role in broadband access has grown dramatically now," Falcon said.
California's net neutrality rules prohibit "throttling" data speeds, according to the article.

Remember that massive botnet run by Chinese government hackers? Flax Typhoon "compromised computer networks in North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia, with a particular focus on Taiwan," according to the U.S. Treasury Department. (The group's botnet breaching this autumn affected "at least 260,000 internet-connected devices," reports the Washington Post, "roughly half of which were located in the United States.")

Friday America's Treasury Department sanctioned "a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its role in multiple computer intrusion incidents against U.S. victims..." according to an announcement from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Between summer 2022 and fall 2023, Flax Typhoon actors used infrastructure tied to Integrity Tech during their computer network exploitation activities against multiple victims. During that time, Flax Typhoon routinely sent and received information from Integrity Tech infrastructure."

From the Washington Post: The group behind the attacks was active since at least 2021, but U.S. authorities only managed to wrest control of the devices from the hackers in September, after the FBI won a court order that allowed the agency to send commands to the infected devices...

Treasury's designation follows sanctions announced last month on Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company, in which U.S. officials accused the company of exploiting technology flaws to install malware in more than 80,000 firewalls, including those protecting U.S. critical infrastructure. The new sanctions on Beijing Integrity Technology are notable due to the company's public profile and outsize role in servicing China's police and intelligence services via state-run hacking competitions. The company, which is listed in Shanghai and has a market capitalization of more than $327 million, plays a central role in providing state agencies "cyber ranges" — technology that allows them to simulate cyberattacks and defenses...

In September, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the Flax Typhoon attack successfully infiltrated universities, media organizations, corporations and government agencies, and in some cases caused significant financial losses as groups raced to replace the infected hardware. He said at the time that the operation to shut down the network was "one round in a much longer fight...." A 2024 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said China is the most "active and persistent" cyberthreat and that actors under Beijing's direction have made efforts to breach U.S. critical infrastructure with the intention of lying in wait to be able to launch attacks in the event of major conflict.
"The Treasury sanctions bar Beijing Integrity Technology from access to U.S. financial systems and freeze any assets the company might hold in the United States," according to the article, "but the moves are unlikely to have a significant effect on the company," (according to Dakota Cary, a fellow at the Atlantic Council who has studied the company's role in state-sponsored hacking).

Windows 11 24H2 continues to experience issues with multifunction devices using the eSCL scan protocol, despite Microsoft marking the problem as resolved. According to a Register reader, "It works on a Windows 10 machine, but not on Windows 11, unless both the computer and the scanner are on wired Ethernet." From the report: Microsoft issued a compatibility safeguard hold on USB-connected devices using the Scanner Communication Language (eSCL) protocol in November after users who installed the Windows update experienced glitches with device discovery. The issue was reported resolved by Microsoft in December. However, it seems that KB5048667 might not have fixed all the problems for Canon owners. According to our reader: "Canon support tells me that the 24H2 eSCL issue still is not fixed." We asked Microsoft about the situation, but despite telling us it was looking into the problem on Friday, December 20, the company has yet to provide any further details. Canon was more forthcoming. A spokesperson told The Register it was aware of a problem impacting devices using ScanGear MF.

ScanGear MF is a scanner driver provided by Canon and allows customers to configure advanced settings for scanning. Canon does not appear to be changing its code to rectify whatever problems had been brought on by the Windows 11 update. The spokesperson said: "Microsoft is currently working on an OS amendment to resolve this and we are keeping in close contact with them. The timing for resolving this is yet to be confirmed by Microsoft, however we expect to receive the plan to fix in January 2025." Customers affected by the issue, which manifests itself with a communications error message, according to Canon's support forum, are advised to use either native Microsoft software solutions or go fully wired via USB.

The U.S. surgeon general has issued an advisory calling for a warning about the risk of cancer to be included on alcoholic beverages. From a report: "Given the conclusive evidence on the cancer risk from alcohol consumption and the Office of the Surgeon General's responsibility to inform the American public of the best available scientific evidence, the Surgeon General recommends an update to the Surgeon General's warning label for alcohol-containing beverages to include a cancer risk warning," Dr. Vivek Murthy said in the advisory Friday.

The advisory notes that alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the country, after tobacco and obesity. "Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States -- greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. -- yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk," Murthy said in a news release. The advisory also says more than 740,000 cancer cases globally could be attributed to alcohol use in 2020.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Constellation Energy has been awarded a record $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear power to the U.S. government over the next decade, the company said on Thursday. Constellation, the country's largest operator of nuclear power plants, will deliver electricity to more than 13 federal agencies as part of the agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration. The deal is the biggest energy purchase in the history of the GSA, which constructs and manages federal buildings, and is among the first major climate-focused energy agreement by the U.S. government to include electricity generated from existing nuclear reactors.

The GSA estimated that the contracts, set to begin on April 25, will comprise over 10 million megawatt-hours over 10 years and provide electricity equivalent to powering more than 1 million homes annually. The procurement will deliver electricity to 80 federal facilities located throughout the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission operator with service covering more than 65 million people. The U.S. Department of Transportation, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Army Corps of Engineers are some of the facilities that will receive the power. [...] Constellation said the deal will enable it to extend the licenses of existing nuclear plants and invest in new equipment and technology that will increase output by about 135 megawatts. "The investments we make as a result of this contract will keep these plants operating reliably for decades to come and put new, clean nuclear energy on the grid while making the best use of taxpayer dollars," Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said in a release.

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday the Federal Communications Commission did not have legal authority to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules. From a report: The decision is a blow to the outgoing Biden administration that had made restoring the open internet rules a priority. President Joe Biden signed a 2021 executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate the rules.

A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FCC lacked authority to reinstate the rules initially implemented in 2015 by the agency under Democratic former President Barack Obama, but then repealed by the commission in 2017 under Republican former President Donald Trump.

The rules also forbid special arrangements in which ISPs give improved network speeds or access to favored users. The court cited the Supreme Court's June decision in a case known as Loper Bright to overturn a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, in the latest decision to curb the authority of federal agencies. "Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC's vacillations," the court ruled.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Thursday it is considering new rules that would impose restrictions on Chinese drones that would restrict or ban them in the United States citing national security concerns. From a report: The department said it was seeking public comments by March 4 on potential rules to safeguard the supply chain for drones, saying threats from China and Russia "may offer our adversaries the ability to remotely access and manipulate these devices, exposing sensitive U.S. data."

China accounts for the vast majority of U.S. commercial drone sales. In September, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the department could impose restrictions similar to those that would effectively ban Chinese vehicles from the United States and the focus will be on drones with Chinese and Russian equipment, chips and software. She told Reuters in November she hopes to finalize the rules on Chinese vehicles by Jan. 20. A decision to write new rules restricting or banning Chinese drones will be made by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes over on Jan. 20.

The Securities and Exchange Commission wrote off nearly $10 billion in uncollected fines over the past decade, with $1.4 billion written off in 2023 alone, WSJ reported, citing internal data.

While the agency reported $4.9 billion in sanctions last year, it typically collects only two-thirds of imposed penalties. The SEC stopped disclosing collection rates in 2019. In fiscal 2024, it collected just 23% of $8.2 billion in reported sanctions, including a $4.4 billion judgment against cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs that will likely go unpaid due to bankruptcy proceedings.

Food prices continue climbing, posing challenges for U.S. consumers and policymakers, with average food-at-home prices recording their largest annual increase in November. While some commodities like wheat and corn have seen price drops, key breakfast staples remain expensive due to global supply disruptions from disease, weather, and reduced production.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: Insurance companies that stopped providing home coverage to hundreds of thousands of Californians in recent years as wildfires became more destructive will have to again provide policies in fire-prone areas if they want to keep doing business in California under a state regulation announced Monday. The rule will require home insurers to offer coverage in high-risk areas, something the state has never done, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara's office said in a statement. Insurers will have to start increasing their coverage by 5% every two years until they hit the equivalent of 85% of their market share. That means if an insurer writes 20 out of every 100 state policies, they'd need to write 17 in a high-risk area, Lara's office said.

Major insurers like State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing new policies in California due to fears of massive losses from wildfires and other natural disasters. In exchange for increasing coverage, the state will let insurance companies pass on the costs of reinsurance to California consumers. Insurance companies typically buy reinsurance to avoid huge payouts in case of natural disasters or catastrophic loss. California is the only state that doesn't already allow the cost of reinsurance to be borne by policy holders, according to Lara's office. [...] The requirement is under review by the Office of Administrative Law before it takes effect within 30 days. "Californians deserve a reliable insurance market that doesn't retreat from communities most vulnerable to wildfires and climate change," Lara said in a statement. "This is a historic moment for California."

Opponents of the rule say that could hike premiums by 40% and doesn't require new policies to be written at a fast enough pace. The state did not provide a cost analysis for potential impact on consumers. "This plan is of the insurance industry, by the insurance industry, and for the industry," Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced plans to retire its iconic R46 subway cars, triggering nostalgia among New Yorkers who cherished their distinctive seating arrangement. The fleet -- which has served A, C, N, R, Q, and W lines for five decades -- will be replaced by R211 cars expected for delivery in 2027.

The R46's perpendicular seating configuration, designed for comfort during long trips to destinations like Coney Island, encouraged social interaction among passengers, according to New York Transit Museum director Concetta Bencivenga. The new R211 cars will feature longitudinal seating to improve passenger flow and reduce platform waiting times. Currently, 696 of the original 754 R46 cars remain in service. The replacement R211 cars will include security cameras, wider seats, improved signage, and better lighting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. Cameron John Wagenius was arrested near the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Dec. 20, after being indicted on two criminal counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records. The sparse, two-page indictment (PDF) doesn't reference specific victims or hacking activity, nor does it include any personal details about the accused. But a conversation with Wagenius' mother -- Minnesota native Alicia Roen -- filled in the gaps.

Roen said that prior to her son's arrest he'd acknowledged being associated with Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. "Judische," a prolific cybercriminal from Canada who was arrested in late October for stealing data from and extorting dozens of companies that stored data at the cloud service Snowflake. In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Judische said he had no interest in selling the data he'd stolen from Snowflake customers and telecom providers, and that he preferred to outsource that to Kiberphant0m and others. Meanwhile, Kiberphant0m claimed in posts on Telegram that he was responsible for hacking into at least 15 telecommunications firms, including AT&T and Verizon. On November 26, KrebsOnSecurity published a story that followed a trail of clues left behind by Kiberphantom indicating he was a U.S. Army soldier stationed in South Korea.

[...] Immediately after news broke of Moucka's arrest, Kiberphant0m posted on the hacker community BreachForums what they claimed were the AT&T call logs for President-elect Donald J. Trump and for Vice President Kamala Harris. [...] On that same day, Kiberphant0m posted what they claimed was the "data schema" from the U.S. National Security Agency. On Nov. 5, Kiberphant0m offered call logs stolen from Verizon's push-to-talk (PTT) customers -- mainly U.S. government agencies and emergency first responders. On Nov. 9, Kiberphant0m posted a sales thread on BreachForums offering a "SIM-swapping" service targeting Verizon PTT customers. In a SIM-swap, fraudsters use credentials that are phished or stolen from mobile phone company employees to divert a target's phone calls and text messages to a device they control.

The Arbor Day Foundation will plant 10 million trees across six U.S. states over four years to replace those destroyed during the devastating 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, the non-profit organization announced.

The restoration program, targeting Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, marks the group's largest undertaking in its 50-year history. The initiative will involve state and local governments, corporate sponsors and community volunteers. The 2024 hurricane season claimed 375 lives and caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, making it the deadliest mainland U.S. season since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a complaint and announced a civil enforcement action against financial technology company Dave and its CEO Jason Wilk for alleged violations of federal law. From a report: The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission alleged the company lured users to its personal finance app by advertising cash advances of up to $500 that many never receive.

The complaint, filed by the Justice Department, seeks unspecified amounts of consumer redress and monetary civil penalties from the defendants and a permanent injunction to prohibit them from engaging in future violations, the Justice Department said. The government alleges that Dave misled consumers by deceptively advertising its cash advances, charging hidden fees, misrepresenting how Dave uses customers' tips and charging recurring monthly fees without providing a simple mechanism to cancel them.

theodp writes: In 2012, now-Microsoft President Brad Smith unveiled Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, a two-pronged strategy that called for tech visa restrictions to be loosened to allow tech companies to hire non-U.S. citizens to fill jobs until more American schoolchildren could be made tech-savvy enough to pass hiring standards. Shortly thereafter, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org emerged (led by Smith's next-door neighbor Hadi Partovi with Smith as a founding Board member) with a mission to ensure that U.S. schoolchildren started receiving 'rigorous' computer science education instruction. Around the same time, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC launched (with support from Smith, Partovi, and other tech leaders) with a mission to reform tech visa policy to meet tech's need for talent.

Fast forward to 2024, and Newsweek reports the debate over tech immigration policy has been revived, spurred by the recent appointment of Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for AI at the Trump White House. Comments by far-right political activist Laura Loomer on Twitter about Krishnan's call for loosening Green Card restrictions were met with rebuttals from prominent tech leaders who are also serving as members of the Trump transition team. Entrepreneur David Sacks, who Trump has tapped as his cryptocurrency and AI czar, took to social media to clarify that Krishnan advocates for removing country caps on green cards, not eliminating caps entirely, aiming to create a more merit-based system. However, the NY Times reported that Sacks discussed a much broader visa reform proposal with Trump during a June podcast ("What I will do is," Trump told Sacks, "you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country"). Elon Musk, the recently appointed co-head of Trump's new Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had Sacks' and Krishnan's backs (not unexpected -- both were close Musk advisors on his Twitter purchase), tweeting out "Makes sense" to his 209 million followers, lamenting that "the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low," reposting claims crediting immigrants for 36% of the innovation in the U.S., and taking USCIS to task for failing to immediately recognize his own genius with an Exceptional Ability Green Card (for his long-defunct Zip2 startup).

Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has tapped to co-lead DOGE with Musk, agreed and fanned the Twitter flames with a pinned Tweet of his own explaining, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born -- first-generation engineers over "native" Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy -- wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture." (Colorado Governor Jared Polis also took to Twitter to agree with Musk and Ramaswamy on the need to import 'elite engineers'). And Code.org CEO Partovi joined the Twitter fray, echoing the old we-need-H1B-visas-to-make-US-schoolchildren-CS-savvy argument of Microsoft's 2012 National Talent Strategy. "Did you know 2/3 of H1B visas are for computer scientists?" Partovi wrote in reply to Musk, Loomer, and Sachs. "The H1B program raises $500M/year (from its corporate sponsors) and all that money is funneled into programs at Labor and NSF without focus to grow local CS talent. Let's fund CS education." The NYT also cited Zuckerberg's earlier efforts to influence immigration policy with FWD.us (which also counted Sacks and Musk as early supporters), taking note of Zuck's recent visit to Mar-a-Lago and Meta's $1 million donation to Trump's upcoming inauguration.

So, who is to be believed? Musk, who attributes any tech visa qualms to "a 'fixed pie' fallacy that is at the heart of much wrong-headed economic thinking" and argues that "there is essentially infinite potential for job and company creation ['We should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States,' Musk has said]"? Or economists who have found that immigration and globalization is not quite the rising-tide-that-raises-all-boats it's been cracked up to be?