1. Peter Thiel is pouring millions into a dystopian new start-up that seeks to discredit journalists reporting on wealthy people with a combination of retired intelligence operatives and a "jury" of AI models The company is even trying to pressure reporters to turn over the IDs of anonymous sources

A Peter Thiel-funded startup launched this month will use an “AI jury” to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgment.”

xAI has boasted about the speed at which it has erected its data centers in Memphis. Now, as xAI attempts to replicate that pace to construct the Colossus 2 data center, it has identified another unnecessary inefficiency: a water recycling plant that it had promised to build for the community.

With health care costs rising and more Americans losing their insurance, the leading AI companies are selling an alternative to the public: chatbots. In January, Elon Musk promoted a video clip that urged his followers on X to “upload your X-rays or MRI images to Grok” for a “medical diagnosis.”

During a 2018 press conference at Kennedy Space Center, Elon Musk called for “a new space race,” one defined not by nations but by rival billionaires scrambling to commercialize and colonize the final frontier. Musk has since launched thousands of satellites and hundreds of rockets.

As Zuckerberg’s profile, wealth, and political power have rapidly increased over the past 10 years, his favorability ratings among Republicans, Democrats, and independents have plummeted. This distrust was on display in 2 trials last week that found Meta liable for putting children in harm’s way.

A misanthropic drift has emerged in the commentary of Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Larry Page. It is also a recurring theme in the social media musings of Elon Musk. “AI bots will be more human than human,” he wrote Saturday.

While Amazon’s artificial intelligence buildout drives its vast carbon emissions to new heights, Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and executive chairman, is using his environmental charity to promote AI as a solution to the climate crisis.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg closed a deal to purchase a $170 million mansion on an island in Miami. It was the clearest sign yet that he is looking to abandon California over a proposed ballot initiative that would tax the ultra-wealthy to cover federal cuts to healthcare and nutrition programs.

With Trump a year into his term, the U.S. is nearing a right-wing cultural transformation — but not from a swing in popular sentiment. Instead, it is one wealthy family that has used its roughly $200 billion fortune in an effort to acquire, consolidate, and control news and entertainment media.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) release of millions of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein included thousands of mentions of prominent billionaires.

Over the last year, Meta’s AI smart glasses have been used by deviant men to surreptitiously record videos of women and children. Such incidents could become more harmful if combined with the vast amounts of personal and biometric data that Meta collects on its billions of users.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk announced a sudden revision to his long-stated dream of building a city on Mars. Instead of prioritizing Mars, he said that SpaceX — which is now competing with Blue Origin over a NASA mission to return astronauts to the moon — would focus on building a lunar “city.”

Newly released emails from and to the late billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein show that he had a far more intimate relationship with Elon Musk than the SpaceX and Tesla chief has sought to portray.

Across America, billionaires and their minions are working to defeat a proposed ballot measure in California that would marginally tax the assets of the ultra-rich. The initiative would use the proceeds to ensure that millions of low-income residents can remain on the state’s Medicaid program.

Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s top political advisor, Chris Young, scheduled a meeting with Red Oak Strategic, a Republican analytics firm known for working with establishment conservative political groups.

Jeff Yass, a right-wing megadonor and the 28th richest person in the world, is buying up large swaths of the town of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. He says that the acquisitions are motivated by benevolence.

To power its sprawling Colossus supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee, xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, has polluted the air of a number of historic Black neighborhoods, which already faced exceptionally high rates of cancer and respiratory diseases.

OpenAI has steadily gained legitimacy among legacy media companies. Last week, Disney agreed to allow 200 of its characters to appear in AI-generated videos on OpenAI’s Sora app. But OpenAI’s next growth opportunity could rely on a more explicit form of content: AI pornography.

Over the last 12 years, Elon Musk and Tesla have secured hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to help grow their business, while making numerous commitments to state and local governments that often failed to materialize.

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was pardoned by Trump earlier this week. While it’s unclear who exactly convinced the president to issue the pardon, Hernández and his associates were heavily involved in an experimental libertarian colony in part funded by Trump donor Peter Thiel.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has built its sprawling data center using more than 2,000 metric tons of Chinese-made transformers, a security risk that could leave it vulnerable to espionage or sabotage.

Should billionaire Jared Isaacman successfully navigate his second nomination process to lead NASA, his top policy priority would be to beat China in a race to send astronauts back to the moon.

During the 2024 election, Elon Musk funneled $19.2 million into congressional elections using America PAC. Almost no one benefited more from this spending than Congressman Tom Kean (R-NJ), who received $1.5 million in backing from America PAC.

On Friday, Elon Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and falsely claimed that the government shutdown was a dispute over blue states diverting billions of dollars in fraudulent federal payments to undocumented immigrants.

With Tesla reporting a 37% quarterly dip in its net income last week, chief executive Elon Musk appeared focused on anything but the automaker’s vehicle sales.

Once a leading liberal voice in tech, billionaire Marc Benioff has shifted his support to President Trump, following the lead of many of his peers in Silicon Valley.

Jeff Bezos is the fourth-wealthiest person on Earth, with a net worth of approximately $240 billion. In 2022, Bezos said he would give away most of his wealth during his lifetime. The process is not going well.

The push to ban TikTok in the U.S. began with allegations that it was undermining the Israeli government. It now seems poised to end with tech oligarch Larry Ellison, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, overseeing the video platform’s powerful algorithm.

Last week, OpenAI presented its plans to build $1 trillion of AI infrastructure, including sprawling data centers across the U.S. that will require immense amounts of power and freshwater. OpenAI’s announcement and a flurry of deals that followed have driven the stock market to record highs.

In August, Skydance Media, a firm funded by Larry Ellison and led by his son David, completed an $8 billion merger with Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS. Now, the elder Ellison also has eyes set on TikTok, the social media app owned by a company based in China.

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company is seeking to expand its work for the government, including securing contracts involving the country's most sensitive national security information.

A think tank with ties to right-wing billionaires Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Charles Koch, the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI), is pushing a radical plan to replace large swaths of the federal government with artificial intelligence.

One of China's largest companies claimed to have purchased a stake in Elon Musk's SpaceX, a vital U.S. defense contractor.

Elon Musk has recently launched a local charm offensive in the Memphis, Tennessee, neighborhoods where his artificial intelligence startup has become a leading polluter through its illicit use of smog-creating gas turbines.

On April 24, Elon Musk's $9 billion neurotechnology company falsely self-certified as a "small disadvantaged business" (SDB) on a federal filing, a designation that qualifies the company for preferential treatment as part of a racial and ethnic diversity initiative.

Following his split with Trump over a deficit-ballooning spending bill, Musk announced that he will form a new political party. The America Party will challenge the incumbent Republicans who failed to produce the spending cuts he had envisaged when he spent nearly $300 million to help elect Trump.

Grok, the "artificial intelligence" chatbot built by Elon Musk's xAI company, praised Adolf Hitler in a series of recent posts on X. On multiple occasions, the chatbot even referred to itself as "MechaHitler" and appeared to call for another holocaust.

In 2023, radio astronomers discovered that satellites from SpaceX's Starlink constellation were emitting signals far outside the frequency bands that the internet service is authorized to use. The company managed to reduce leakage. But the problem returned in full force last year.

Musk claimed last week that Tesla had completed a successful "launch" of its self-driving robotaxi product. But Bryant Walker Smith, a scholar on self-driving technology and regulatory law at the University of South Carolina, disputed the notion that Tesla is operating an autonomous car service.

Soon after Grok's rollout in 2023, conservatives began complaining that the chatbot developed by Elon Musk's xAI startup was infected with left-wing thought. Musk agreed with its critics. But after a year and a half of development, Grok has still not harmonized with its creator's political outlook.

The fallout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk could imperil a missile defense program that is the defining defense priority of Trump's second term.

Elon Musk attributed his departure from the Trump administration last week to unavoidable bureaucratic rules. “My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end, it was a limited-time thing," Musk said on Friday. But that doesn't tell the full story.

Trump scolded South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, falsely claiming that the country is allowing a "genocide" of white people. It is a fictitious narrative that has been brewing in conservative media. But it was Elon Musk who helped shoehorn the theory into official presidential talking points.

DOGE was sold to the American public under the guise of cost-cutting. In this regard it has failed. DOGE has had much more success expanding the executive branch's domestic surveillance capacity.

"Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion." That was the cut to federal spending promised by Elon Musk in late October. But for fiscal year 2026, Musk Watch's DOGE Tracker could verify just $5.02 billion in savings produced by DOGE. $5.02 billion is about 0.25% of the $2 trillion Musk touted.

Not long after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Elon Musk’s $7 billion tunneling company registered as a small business on a government portal for federal contractors. The Boring Company registered with the System for Award Management portal exactly one week after Trump’s victory.

A recent ProPublica report found that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s privately owned rocket company, discreetly allows Chinese investors to purchase its shares through offshore investment schemes. The investments are made through special-purpose vehicles used to conceal investors’ identities.

The largest claimed savings from a contract canceled by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) involves cutting off funds for the legal representation of thousands of unaccompanied minors.

Susan Crawford defeated Musk-backed conservative Brad Schimel on Tuesday, securing a pivotal spot on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Musk spent at least $25 million supporting Schimel, including on a sweepstakes in which he handed out three $1 million checks to voters who signed a petition.