iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

(5/5) But as these AI tools enable more rapid killing, potentially with less opportunity to catch errors, it's worth knowing about the stakes.

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(4/ 5) I saw strikes go wrong with deadly consequences during my State Department days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pentagon hasn't answered questions about how far along they are in designating Maven as a program of record. They could push back the timeline.

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(3/5) A Pentagon official made assurances that a human will always be involved in the decisions. But humans working at superhuman speeds may be especially prone to errors, including the lethal kind. On the first day of the Iran war, a U.S. missile killed at least 150 people, many of them children.

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(2/5)The military already relies on Maven more than any other AI system to select targets for strikes. The Army says it intends to use Maven to meet a goal of making 1,000 targeting decisions an hour, averaging out to one to every 3.6 seconds.

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(1/5) Pentagon leadership has said that by the end of this month, Palantir's Maven artificial intelligence system will become a line item with stable, long-term funding in the defense budget (a "program of record"). #News #Palantir #AI

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

(2/4) The military already relies on Maven more than any other AI system to select targets for strikes. The Army says it intends to use Maven to meet a goal of making 1,000 targeting decisions an hour—averaging out to one to every 3.6 seconds.

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Bloomberg analyzed seven regional power grids across the country last year and found that wholesale prices near data centers have risen as much as 267% since 2020. Around Washington DC, near the world's largest cluster of data centers, power bills rose about $20 a month last summer.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It's not clear whether all that money the state waived was needed to attract the construction: in Georgia's case, by the state's own estimate, 70% of the data center construction would have happened anyway.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Georgia audited its own data center tax breaks and found that the state gave up $474 million in sales taxes in one year—and got back just $41 million from the industry. At least 38 states have deals like this. #AI #News #US

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

The Census Bureau also asked families what those 2021 payments were going toward: Food, 51 percent. Clothing, 30 percent. Utilities, 29 percent. School supplies, 25 percent. The lower the household income, the more likely the money went to those four things.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Nearly 10M American kids live below the poverty line. There is a proven fix—the expanded Child Tax Credit, which in 2021 helped cut child poverty nearly in half. But Congress let the expansion expire, and the bill to bring it back has been stalled. #Affordability #CostOfLiving #News #Politics

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Do you find this explainer informative or useful? Please share it and save it, it’ll help us get the information to others. Have you, or has a loved one, had an experience with private-equity-owned healthcare? Share in the comments if so.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Private equity is buying America's hospitals and nursing homes. The playbook: pile on debt, sell the building, cut staff. The result, one landmark study found: patient deaths up about 11%. #news #information #privateequity

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The government has a formula that decides whether safety rules are worth passing. And that formula was rewritten to put a new price on your life: zero dollars. #PublicHealth #EPA #News #Trump #climatechange

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Tonight, June 10th, at Tribeca Festival. Join me for a sneak preview of my next two HBO investigative series: The Palladino Files and Not a Very Good Murderer, back-to-back. I’ll be there to take your questions after. Would love to see you there. A few tickets left: tribecafilm.com/films/not-a-...

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Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

(14/14) Some board members told us that ongoing questions about the integrity of the report could prompt, as one put it, "a need for another investigation." Much more in the full story: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

newyorker.com

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI.

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(13/14) The absence of a written report can make it harder for directors to demonstrate they met their fiduciary duties. If OpenAI IPOs, shareholders could invoke corporate law in Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, to demand underlying records.

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(12/14) Given OpenAI’s 501(c)(3) status at the time and the high-profile nature of the firing, many executives there expected there would be a written report. An "oral-only" report can actually create legal exposure.

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(11/14) Corporate investigations generally aim to confer legitimacy. At private companies, their findings are sometimes not written down—this can be a way to limit liability. But in cases involving public scandals there’s often a greater expectation of transparency.

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(10/14) So what was found, and kept kept out of writing, on the question of trustworthiness that had motivated the firing? One person close to the inquiry said: "The review did not conclude that Sam was a George Washington cherry tree of integrity."

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(9/14) Instead, findings were limited to oral briefings, which were shared with Summers and Taylor, the two new board members Altman had helped to pick. The decision to keep things out of writing was made in part on the advice of Summers’s and Taylor’s personal attorneys.

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(8/14) When OpenAI announced that Altman would be returning to the company board, it released only some 800 words acknowledging a "breakdown in trust"—and no report detailing what it had found. People involved said no report was even written.

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(7/14) One emailed Summers and Taylor to complain. "They were just interested in the narrow range of what happened during the board drama, and not the history of his integrity," the employee recalled of his interview with investigators.

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(6/14) "Everything pointed to the fact that they wanted to find the outcome, which is to acquit him," an OpenAI employee said. Some employees said that investigators didn't initially contact important figures at the company.

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(5/14) Summers and Taylor brought in WilmerHale, the law firm behind the Enron and WorldCom investigations. But six people close to the inquiry alleged that it seemed designed to limit transparency.

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(4/14) But the two new board members who controlled the review—Larry Summers and Bret Taylor—were selected in close consultation with Altman. He texted Satya Nadella: "bret, larry summers, adam as the board and me as ceo and then bret handles the investigation."

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(3/14) When Altman sought the removal of board members who had fired him over an alleged pattern of deception and manipulation, they made an independent third party investigation a condition of their exit. Altman initially resisted any inquiry, but eventually acceded to a review.

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Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

(2/14) One new disclosure in our @NewYorker investigation: there was no written report, and findings were kept deliberately out of writing. Full story here: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202... And a thread below.

newyorker.com

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI.

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Ronan Farrow @ronanfarrow.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

(🧵1/14) When OpenAI board members hired the law firm WilmerHale to investigate Sam Altman's firing over two years ago, many executives at the company expected to see extensive findings. Instead, OpenAI released a brief announcement with few details.

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As always, if you have a tip on this subject, I'm at ronan_farrow@newyorker.com.

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The Post’s slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness." That isn't a metaphor: there is more darkness now.

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Does Local News Reduce Polarization? | Carnegie Reporter Summer 2024 | Carnegie Corporation of New York

Research shows that when communities switch from local to national news, it measurably increases partisan voting. This is part of what's polarizing America. When newspapers close, we only see partisan labels. Split-ticket voting drops nearly 2%. www.carnegie.org/our-work/art...

carnegie.org

More than half of American counties are without access or have very limited access to local news. Political scientist and Andrew Carnegie Fellow Joshua P. Darr has been studying what the loss of local...

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When a local paper closes, residents switch to national news—which is trending away from costly general reporting, while cheaper opinion-driven (and often partisan) content booms. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/journalism-m...

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Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Separate research on California mayoral races found that when newsrooms shrink, elections grow less competitive: fewer candidates run, margins widen, and more incumbents go unopposed. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.com

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Do Newspapers Matter? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence From the Closure of The Cincinnati Post

The death of newspapers harms democratic participation. Research on the closure of the Cincinnati Post found that voter turnout fell—and stayed down years later—after the paper shut its doors. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

tandfonline.com

The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on New Year's Eve 2007, leaving the Cincinnati Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in the market. The next year, fewer candidates ran...

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Press and leaks: Do newspapers reduce toxic emissions?

Newspaper closures even affect public health. Plants located near more newspaper headquarters tend to produce fewer toxic emissions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... And—you guessed it—when newspapers close, emissions tend to go up. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

sciencedirect.com

This study investigates the effects of media on corporate environmental decisions. Using data on plant-level toxic emissions from 1996 to 2009 from th…

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How the lack of newspapers feeds a rise in local corruption.

One large study found that when a major daily newspaper covering a federal judicial district disappears, corruption cases there—bribery, embezzlement, fraud—rise by more than 7%. The researchers suggest officials feel emboldened when no one's looking. www.cjr.org/analysis/loc...

cjr.org

Our study also found that digital media sites didn’t make much of a difference.

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It also drives up borrowing costs. When no one is watching the public ledger, investors treat cities as higher risk and demand higher yields. Municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points—roughly $650,000 in added cost per bond issue. Taxpayers absorb this.

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Financing dies in darkness? The impact of newspaper closures on public finance

Studies show that when local news outlets stop scrutinizing government, efficiency drops. Public payrolls bloat. Waste increases. The cost gets passed to you—roughly $85 in added taxes per person after a county loses one of its last few papers. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

We examine how local newspaper closures affect public finance outcomes for local governments. Following a newspaper closure, municipal borrowing costs…

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U.S. newsroom employment has fallen 26% since 2008

Between 2008 and 2020, U.S. newspaper newsroom employment fell 57%. More than 200 counties are now "news deserts"—no local outlet at all. In another 1,500+ counties, only one remains. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

pewresearch.org

While newspapers have seen steep job losses from 2008 to 2020, digital-native news organizations have seen considerable gains.

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Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post offering “financial runway." This month it gutted its newsroom—more than 300 layoffs. Whatever you think of legacy news, the hard data shows us that newspaper closures hurt Americans. Here's how: 🧵

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(11/11) In this new normal, costs are individually adjusted to a consumer’s maximum threshold and wages to a worker’s minimum floor. The next time you see a price, know that it may not reflect what the item is worth—but what the algorithm believes *you* are worth.

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ON ALGORITHMIC WAGE DISCRIMINATION - Columbia Law Review

(10/11) Dubal’s research showed that dynamic rates are coming for wages too, with Uber drivers with identical workloads and performance getting different pay based on the lowest amount the algorithm calculated they’d accept. www.columbialawreview.org/content/on-a...

columbialawreview.org

INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, technological developments have ushered in extreme levels of workplace monitoring and surveillance across many sectors. These automated systems record and quant...

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(9/11) This trend has its defenders—Wharton’s Z. John Zhang calls it "efficiency," and says it will lower prices. But legal scholar Veena Dubal has called it “discrimination.”

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(8/11) Now, we’re going back to the Bazaar. But this time you’re not up against a shopkeeper. You’re up against a massive digital infrastructure calculating your personal price tolerance.

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(7/11)This individualized targeting marks a departure from a 150-year old retail standard. Since John Wanamaker popularized the price tag in 1861, fixed prices have functioned as a de facto social contract. It ensured a market standard: the same cost for every customer, regardless of background

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This Is Your Brain On Uber

(6/11) Uber tracks battery life. Former exec Keith Chen noted in 2016 that users with low battery are statistically more likely to accept surge pricing. Uber says it doesn’t use that data to set prices, but the correlation remains a point of regulatory scrutiny. www.npr.org/transcripts/...

npr.org

This week we feature Keith Chen, a behavioral economist at UCLA and the head of economic research at Uber. Keith explains why surge pricing makes us nuts and discusses our weird economic choices.

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