• Elon Musk Blasts Donald Trump's Huge AI Infrastructure Deal
    futurism.com
    "They dont actually have the money."Funding Not SecuredMulti-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk has broken stride with his tight confidante Donald Trump lobbing criticism at Trump's lucrative $500 billion AI infrastructure project, seemingly because he was left out of the deal.Earlier this week, OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and UAE-backed investor MGX pledged to pour up to $500 billion into building AI data centers in the United States as part of an initiative dubbed "Stargate."There's a lot we don't know about the joint venture and whether it has any chance of ever being realized.AndMusk, strikingly isn't convinced; late on Tuesday evening, he took to his social network X-formerly-Twitterto mock the plans."They dont actually have the money," he tweeted just hours after the project was announced, tagging OpenAI."SoftBank has well under $10B secured," Musk wrote in a followup an hour later. "I have that on good authority."The comments mark yet another early sign that a storm may be brewing between the mercurial entrepreneur and Trump. Experts have long suggested that it's only a matter of time until disagreements between the two could snowball into an all-out fight. Two astronomically-sized and power-hungry egos in the same room are bound to result in some friction and before their current alliance, the two were bitter sparring partners.Trouble in ParadiseMusk's animosity towards the project is also likely symptomatic of his antipathy toward OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Musk cofounded the ChatGPT maker in late 2015 alongside Altman. But in 2019 Musk quit, citing disagreements over the group's direction. Since then, we've found out that Musk attempted to take over the former nonprofit.In March, Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, accusing the company of hiding its AI models' secrets from the world. That's despite advocating in 2017 to have OpenAI be turned into a for-profit entity, as emails published by OpenAI following the lawsuit revealed.Could Musk's animosity toward Altman explain his latest comments? Or does he indeed know more about the amount of cash the companies are able to scrounge up for Stargate?Musk also runs his own AI company, xAI, which doesn't appear to be linked to Stargate in any way.The latest tweets signal that Musk isn't afraid to question Trump's actionspublicly, even after swearing fealty to himand agreeing to lead a so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" in a building that's a short walk from the White House.It's also not the first sign of tension between the two. In November, Musk floated that Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick should be treasury secretary in the Trump administration.Trump ended up ignoring his suggestion, picking economic advisor and longtime investor Scott Bessent instead. The disagreement eventually sparked a "massive blowup" fight between Musk and Trump's lawyer Boris Epshteyn at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in November.More on Stargate: Elon Musk Sues OpenAI for Doing For-Profit AI, Which He's Also DoingShare This Article
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  • DOGE.gov Website Launches With Mangled, AI-Generated American Flag
    futurism.com
    With Donald Trump firmly in place as president, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is finally off to the races.As such, its brand new website DOGE.gov launched yesterday. And as we couldn't help but notice, it was adorned with a graphic of an AI-generated Shiba Innu waving amangled American flag that featured 11 stripes and a deformed mush of about 37 stars.As any patriotic American knows, the current design of the US flag is codified by a 1948 executive order specifying that it features 13 stripes, representing the original colonies, and a number of stars equal to the current number of states; in 1948 that figure was 48, and since the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, it's risen to 50.Just compare that elegant design document to this AI-generated slop in addition to the butchered flag, get a load of the wriggly typography and weird artifact on the dog's snout which may well mark the first time that shoddy AI art has appeared on an official website of the US government.True to its name, the DOGE website certainly takes an austere approach to web design. American taxpayers loading the government website won't find themselves burdened by wasteful copy or reckless hamburger menus, but rather a single landing page."An official website of the United States government,"it currently reads. "Department of Government Efficiency. The people voted for major reform."As of today, the site has been stripped of the image but not before snapshots of it were saved to the Internet Archive, hopefully preserving this blip of American history for centuries to come.The AI carnage is an early illustration of Musk's many conflicts of interest in his new government role. After years of fearmongering about AI and first cofounding before dramatically falling out with OpenAI as an effort to guide its development he has now founded his own AI multi-billion dollar startup, xAI, and integrated its offerings into X-formerly-Twitter, which he purchased in 2022.For what it's worth, Trump has previously called for prison time for "if you do anything to desecrate the American flag."And for anyone who's been following the DOGE saga, the site's bizarre rollout is about as apropos as it gets. Yesterday, it was widely reported that DOGE "co-czar" and GOP tag along Vivek Ramaswamy had officially stepped down from his previous responsibilities with DOGE, whatever those were.Ramaswamy's departure is no surprise he's been notably absent from the public stage following a rift with Elon Musk over the tricky ethics of migrant-slave labor but signals a new era for the two moguls, who had previously moved in lockstep prior to Trump's inauguration with the aim of slashing federal funding.With only Musk remaining at the helm, it remains to be seen how austere the federal spending cuts are going to get as he attempts to fulfill his promise of cutting government spending by trillions of dollars. The big question? What federal programs will be on the chopping block and whether Musk might lead by example and cut himself off from his own government welfare.More on government spending: Elon Musk Throws Tantrum, Ordering Congress to Shut Down GovernmentShare This Article
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  • Trump Terminates DHS Advisory Committee Memberships, Disrupting Cybersecurity Review
    thehackernews.com
    Jan 22, 2025Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / National SecurityThe new Trump administration has terminated all memberships of advisory committees that report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "In alignment with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am directing the termination of all current memberships on advisory committees within DHS, effective immediately," Acting Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman said in a January 20, 2025, memo."Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS's strategic priorities."This includes members of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), which last year issued a scathing report excoriating Microsoft for a "cascade" of avoidable errors that led to its infrastructure being abused by a China-based nation-state group called Storm-0558 to breach dozens of organizations in July 2023.In July 2022, it published its findings into the vulnerabilities associated with the Apache Log4j library, and the steps taken to mitigate them. It also described the Log4Shell flaw as an endemic weakness that will continue to plague organizations for years.Then in August 2023, the board examined the intrusions linked to the LAPSUS$ cybercrime group, calling out its "effectiveness, speed, creativity, and boldness" and its ability to weaponize a "playbook of effective techniques."CSRB was established in February 2022 as a public-private initiative to assess significant cybersecurity events, and provide recommendations on improving cybersecurity and incident response practices. It's currently not clear how the investigatory body will be restructured.According to independent security journalist Eric Geller, the CSRB is said to have been in the middle of an investigation into a recent spate of cyber attacks targeting telecom providers in the U.S. The activity has been linked to a Chinese hacking group named Salt Typhoon.Some of the other advisory boards that have been disbanded include the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council, National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, National Infrastructure Advisory Council, and the USSS Cyber Investigations Advisory Board."This is a massive gift to the Chinese spies who targeted top political figures," U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said in a post on Bluesky. "Killing the board that pressured Microsoft to up its cybersecurity looks for all the world like payback for Microsoft's million dollar gift to Donald Trump's inaugural committee."U.S. President Donald Trump has also revoked the Biden administration's executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) safety, which, among other things, advocated for the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of the technology.Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.SHARE
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  • Bong Joon-Ho Is Finally Back With the Mickey 17 Trailer
    screencrush.com
    Weird body horror. Pointed commentary about the haves and have nots of the world. Intense bursts of violence. Extremely dark comedy. Theyve all been trademarks of Korean auteur Bong Joon-hos movies fromMemories of Murder toThe Host toSnowpiercer to his Oscar-winnerParasite, which opened in theaters in 2019, and everything in between.Five years later, Bong finally has his follow-up film, and it definitely looks like its of a piece with the rest of his work.Mickey 17stars Robert Pattinson (and also Robert Pattison) in a sci-fi satire about a dystopian future where the only way to improve yourstation in life might be to agree to become an expendable i.e. human cannon fodder doomed to die and then be resurrected as a clone only to die again in the service of humanitys space colonization efforts.The new trailer looks really bleak and really funny and really Bong Joon-ho. Watch it below:READ MORE: The Best and Worst Oscar Winners EverThe firstteaser for Mickey 17was fine, but this one looks even better. The social satire seems way more pointed, the effects look sharper, the gags are funnier, and Pattinson looks like hes having a lot of fundoingthe old one-actor-playing-twins trope.This does not look like the sort of film thatdeserves to be pushed around the schedule multiple times by its distributor. (The movie was originally scheduled to open in March of 2024, then January of 2025, then April of 2025, and nowMarch of 2025.)Here is Mickey 17sofficial synopsis:From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, Mickey 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job to die, for a living.Mickey 17 is now scheduled to open in theaters on March 7.Get our free mobile appGood Movies That Won Razzie AwardsThe Razzies are supposed to be awards for the worst in cinema. So why did they give awards to these titles?!?
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  • Now Theres a Horror Movie About Scary AirDrops
    screencrush.com
    Whether you use iPhone, Android, or pretty much any kind of smartphone in between, theres some sort of extremely helpful and convenient technology you can use to quickly send and receive photos from friends. On iPhone, its called AirDrop, on Android its Quick Share, but if you live in the modern world, you know what this is; you want someone nearby to see something, you drop it to them over wi-fi (with some Bluetooth tech mixed in there, I think?).This is a ubiquitous technology now;if youve got the wrong phone settings, anyone near you could drop anything onto your phone. And thus the premise of the new Blumhouse horror movie,Drop!In it, a single mom (Meghann Fahy) out on a first date comes under siege from a series of threatening drops. The gist: Kill your date or her mysterious dropper and their associates will murder her son. Yikes.The premise is intriguing and the director even more so: Its Christopher Landon, the filmmaker behindFreakyand the excellentHappy Death Dayseries. Check out the trailer forDropbelow:READ MORE: Horror Movies So Extremely They Really Made People SickSo its calledDrop and its about AirDropping photos to a phone and the trailer ends with a womanalmost dropping out of a skyscraper window into the air? Yes. Yes, I think this all works quite cohesively.Here is the films official synopsis:First dates are nerve-wracking enough. Going on a first date while an unnamed, unseen troll pings you personal memes that escalate from annoying to homicidal? Blood-chilling. Director Christopher Landon returns to the thriller genre with the playful, keep-you-guessing intensity he perfected in the Happy Death Day films with this of-the-moment whodunnit where everyone in the vicinity is a suspect . . . or victim.Dropis scheduled to open in theaters on April 11. In the meantime, make sure your AirDrop settings are set to private on your iPhone!Get our free mobile app80s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today
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  • City of Londons retrofit first policy to come into force
    www.architectsjournal.co.uk
    Source:&nbsp Mistervlad/ShutterstockA proposal by the City of London to encourage reuse of existing buildings and other circular economy measures will become policy within the coming weeks, the authority has announced The new Planning for Sustainability Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), provides guidance on how developers should approach the City Corporations sustainability policies in their planning applications, including the design and construction of buildings.Formerly in draft form, the SPD has now been approved by the Corporations Planning and Transportation Committee and includes measures to support the Citys retrofit first approach.The AJs long-running campaign for such measures RetroFirst was launched in September 2019. Since then, several local councils, including the City, Westminster, Camden and Bath & North East Somerset, have developed and adopted retrofit-first policies in support of their Net Zero targets and declarations of climate emergency.AdvertisementMore planning authorities, particularly in the capital, are poised to follow suit.The Citys SPD is intended to support its 2040 Net Zero target and covers four other key sustainability themes, many of them concerned with slashing upfront or embodied carbon. These are:Circular economy Encourages a shift from a linear to circular waste model in a buildings construction and operation to minimise waste through a buildings life cycleGreenhouse gas emissions and energy use Includes measures to reduce whole life-cycle carbon and operational energy emissionsClimate resilience Sets out how developments should address flood risk management, water management, building and urban overheating, pest and disease control, and infrastructure resilienceUrban greening and Biodiversity Sets out how to protect, conserve and enhance biodiversity, habitats and green infrastructure in the Square Mile.Among other measures, the SPD will introduce NABERS UK* targets (a five-star target for new office developments, and four-star target for retrofitted office developments), as well as introducing embodied carbon benchmarking, aligning with the GLA embodied carbon benchmarks.Zero carbon expert and architect Simon Sturgis, who has been instrumental in the application of a whole-life carbon approach to planning and development in the UK, strongly welcomed the Citys move, saying it could deliver economic growth as well as carbon savings.The City of Londons new Retrofit & Reuse policy is a great step forward in promoting carbon efficient development, he said. The City must now support this policy with speedy planning consents. The next step is to require third-party verification of submitted carbon assessments.AdvertisementChairman of the City Corporations planning and transport committee, Shravan Joshi, said: This new guidance provides transparency to the built environment sector, encouraging it to come with us on this journey as we see continued confidence and demand for high-quality, sustainable office space in the Square Mile.The City of London is home to some of the most sustainable commercial buildings on the planet and, as it continues to be a hugely attractive place for office occupiers, we are setting the pace globally for sustainable design, with the delivery of the next generation of new and retrofit developments to attract the best global talent, innovators and high-growth businesses.In a statement, the Corporation said the new SPD would offer a degree of flexibility if planning applications miss the upfront carbon benchmarks. In this case, developments will be expected to go above and beyond in their delivery of wider environmental sustainability benefits in the Square Mile.This could include, for instance, creating or extending local energy networks, supporting sustainable transport modes through significant public realm upgrades, implementing City climate resilience infrastructure, such as cool routes, or providing skills and training opportunities in sustainable construction, the statement said.2025-01-22will hurstcomment and share
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  • Samsung Unpacked 2025 Live Blog: Galaxy S25 Phones, New Galaxy AI Reveals Expected
    www.cnet.com
    Live updates from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked 2025, where we expect the Galaxy S25's unveiling and new AI features among other reveals.
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  • Starz and Max Roll Out an Exclusive New Streaming Bundle
    www.cnet.com
    A fresh wave of streaming bundles is coming in 2025, including a new one from Starz and Warner Bros. Discovery's Max streaming service landing today. The new package allows subscribers to get ad-free Max and Starz bundled together for $21 per month, the companies announced on Wednesday.The offer is exclusive to Prime Video for customers in the US, and is only available for a limited time. To sign up, visit the subscriptions section in the Prime Video app.Starz is home to original series such as Outlander, P-Valley, Sweetpea and the Power franchise, and the platform carries a slate of theatrical movies like John Wick 4, Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The service typically costs $11 per month for a subscription.Max's ad-free plan is $17 a month, and grants access to its catalog of originals like Peacemaker and content from WBD-owned brands including HBO, Warner Bros., DC and HGTV. Viewers can catch The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and House of the Dragon on the streamer, as well as feature films Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Dune, Barbie and A24's The Front Room.As both services add up to $28 as standalone offerings, the Starz-Max package saves you $7 per month, or 25%. It's among the latest bundles to roll out in 2025, with Vizio launching a Starz-AMC Plus offer for $14 a month, and DirecTV dropping a $70 sports package that streams games from channels owned by Fox, NBCUniversal, Disney and WBD.
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  • Heres Whats in Stargate, the $500-Billion Trump-Endorsed Plan to Power U.S. AI
    www.scientificamerican.com
    January 22, 20253 min readHeres Whats in Stargate, the $500-Billion Trump-Endorsed Plan to Power U.S. AITech giants are backing a massive effort, announced by President Trump and dubbed the Stargate Project, to add data centers across the U.S.By Christa Marshall & E&E News A power substation near a the LC1 CloudHQ data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump announced an initiative Tuesday for several technology giants to invest at least $500 billion in artificial intelligence and data centers at U.S. locations over four years, a move that could shake up the electricity mix and heat up a technology race with China.The Stargate Project is a new company with SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX as lead investors. Microsoft and Nvidia are partnering in the project and construction at one site has started at a site in Texas, according to an Open AI press release. Approximately $100 billion is expected to be spent on Stargate immediately, the company said.At the White House, Trump said he would help with Stargates developments a lot through emergency declarations.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.We have to get this stuff built . They have to produce a lot of electricity, and well make it possible for them to get that production done very easily, Trump said.What we want to do is keep [AI infrastructure] in this country. China is a competitor, added Trump, who appeared at the White House with Softbanks CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison.The announcement deepens the influence of large technology companies over the administration, which is working closely with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and has support from several other sector leaders. AI is a significant driver of the energy policy of Trump, who announced before his inauguration during a press conference that real estate developer Hussain Sajwani would invest $20 billion to build data centers in eight states. He and his Cabinet picks have pushed for an increase in drilling and energy production to meet surging demand for AI.The growth in AI-driven data centers is expected to be a chief determinant of the makeup of the power grid and its emissions over the next two decades. A December report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded that electricity demand from data centers could triple by 2028. Many state officials including from data center hub Virginia have said they are uncertain how the grid will accommodate all the new power.The QTS data center complex under development in Fayetteville, Georgia, US, on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024.Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesIn calling for an energy emergency on Monday, Trump cited an inadequate and intermittent energy supply and unreliable grid, saying they would worsen unless action is taken to power the next generation of technology.At his confirmation hearing this month, Trumps pick to lead the Interior Department, Doug Burgum, made a similar argument, saying that clean coal could help address inadequate electricity supplies to meet demand for AI.Particularly with this AI battle, people don't understand what is coming, said Burgum before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.It was not immediately clear what power sources Stargate might tap for its data centers or if the total funding amount includes previous funding for data centers announced by the companies. Stargate officials said they were currently evaluating potential sites across the country.Ellison said Stargate data centers already under construction in Abilene, Texas, currently involve 10 buildings that will expand to 20. Each building is a half million square feet, he said.Mandy DeRoche, a deputy managing attorney at Earthjustice, urged the technology leaders in a statement to turn to low-carbon energy in supporting AI."The projected massive growth in demand for electricity from data centers has already raised electricity rates for households and small businesses in many parts of the country and threatens to increase pollution, DeRoche said.Technology giants like Microsoft have announced billion-dollar plans to build data centers around the country. In some cases, theyve inked deals to power the facilities with nuclear and low-carbon energy.On Monday, Trump rescinded a 2023 executive order from then-President Joe Biden on AI requiring developers that pose risks to national security, the economy or public health to share results from safety tests with the federal government. That order also had directed DOE and other agencies to develop guidelines for safe AI development.Electricity demand from data centers also was a top topic of discussion between Biden and Trump officials, according to outgoing DOE Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk.This story also appears in Energywire.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
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  • What Trumps Executive Orders Mean for Science
    www.scientificamerican.com
    January 22, 20256 min readWhat Trumps Blitz of Executive Orders Means for ScienceAfter his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed a host of executive orders, some with important implications for scienceU.S. President Donald Trump speaks while signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesSoon after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on Monday, Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders that could reshape science at home and abroad. The orders which direct the actions of the federal government but cannot change existing laws are designed to shift policies and priorities on several scientific issues, including climate and public health. They also aim to cut the government workforce, which includes scientists, and potentially reduce its authority.It remains unclear how much weight many of the orders will carry, but policy specialists who spoke to Nature say that they clearly mark the direction Trump intends to steer the United States during his second term in the White House.A lot of the power of executive orders is in the messaging, says Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And the message thus far is clear, she says: The administration is trying to undermine the government experts themselves, as well as the processes by which we make science-based decisions in government.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Here Nature examines some of the executive orders that are most relevant to science.Changing climateTrump signalled in one order that similar to his first presidency from 2017 to 2021 he would pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Citing both national security concerns and the impact of high energy prices that devastate American citizens, Trump also declared a national energy emergency at home, an action that could enable his government to greenlight fossil-fuel-based energy projects.Trumps emergency order, one of many focusing on energy issues, would allow US agencies to identify energy projects where federal regulations and laws protecting, for instance endangered species, are holding up progress, according to the president. Agencies would then be authorized to move more quickly to approve projects, including through the use of any lawful emergency authorities.But there are limits to what Trump can accomplish, because in many ways, the economy trumps Trump, says Mark Maslin, an Earth-system scientist at University College London. For instance, Maslin says, its now much cheaper to invest in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind than it used to be, and that means that investments in those technologies will continue.Comparatively, Trump will have an easy time withdrawing the United States from the Paris accord, which commits nearly 200 countries to limiting Earths warming to 1.52 C above pre-industrial levels. During Trumps first presidency, his administration had to wait more than three years before formally withdrawing from the pact because of the rules of the agreement. Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump as US president, quickly rejoined. This time, the exit process will require only one year.Although the Paris agreement will continue to function without the United States the worlds second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases many scholars worry that a US exit will inevitably reduce pressure on other countries to act. This follows Earth reaching its highest temperature on record last year, and scientists say that countries must increase efforts to curb emissions if they are to achieve the global goal.Anything delaying or halting that effort will lead to lives lost on the ground, Goldman says.In withdrawalAs expected, Trump also signed an order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency responsible for global health that the new president alleges mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also said that the United States pays a disproportionate amount of dues to the agency compared with other member nations.Trump announced that the United States would leave the WHO in May 2020, during his first presidency, but because the process takes one year, Biden blocked it on his first day in office in 2021.Public-health researchers say that leaving the WHO will cripple the countrys ability to respond nimbly to emerging health threats and curtail the countrys reputation as a global-health leader. Because its annual contribution makes up more than one-tenth of the organizations budget of billions of dollars, the United States withdrawing from the WHO could also kneecap the agencys mission. It is a very worrisome signal to the global community about our seriousness as a partner in protecting health, says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist who directs the Pandemic Center at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.The WHOs member countries share information and expertise on infectious-disease outbreaks and other threats, and without this key knowledge and data for instance, the DNA sequence of an emerging virus the United States will be slower to respond to crises, Nuzzo says. In addition, the withdrawal creates opportunities for other countries to step in and assert themselves in ways that might not be compatible with US interests, she says. For example, the United States has been a leading voice calling for stringent biosecurity measures in the construction of new pathogen-research centres around the world, she adds.A US pullout from the WHO could also imperil collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says David Heymann, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a former assistant-director general at the WHO. The flagship US public-health agency runs more than a dozen WHO collaborating centres in areas ranging from influenza surveillance to antimicrobial resistance. It would be a loss for CDC, but it would be a loss for WHO, he says.It is unclear if Trump can withdraw from the WHO using an executive order, because the United States accepted membership in the agency in 1948 through a law passed by the US Congress. It might, therefore, require Congress's approval to leave. Lawrence Gostin, a specialist in health law and policy at Georgetown University in Washington DC who directs a WHO collaborating centre, said on the social-media platform X that he is considering challenging the order in court.Deep cutsSeveral of the orders Trump issued on 20 January focus on the federal workforce, which includes roughly 280,000 scientists and engineers. The Trump administration is seeking to reduce its size and regulatory power.In one, Trump says there will be a 90-day hiring freeze for the federal government, with the directive to reduce the size of the federal workforce when the order expires. Other orders might coax federal employees to leave their jobs themselves: for example, Trump is seeking to mandate that federal employees return to the office full time, and requiring agencies to recognize only two sexes, male and female, which would, for example, prevent employees from listing their preferred gender on official documents.All of this is part of a broader effort to slash spending and the size of government. For many observers, the message for science is clear. This is the world were going to be in, says Robert Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-profit think tank based in Washington DC. Were not going to be expanding science. Were actually going to be cutting it.Yet another executive order focuses on a change to the rules governing civil servants those hired on the basis of their expertise rather than as political appointees. Stating that all federal employees who work on policy-influencing positions must be accountable to the president, the order reinstates a policy formerly known as 'schedule F' that the Trump administration attempted to put in place during his first term in office. It would have made it easier for the administration to fire tens of thousands of workers, including many government scientists, and replace them with political loyalists. The Biden administration revoked that order and also put in place a new rule designed to enhance civil-service protections. The Trump administration is nonetheless moving forwards with its schedule F changes which are already being challenged in court by a union representing public employees.It represents an unprecedented politicization of the civil service, says Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Traditionally, we have this clear dividing line between political appointees and the career civil service. Schedule F seeks to blur, if not completely erase, that dividing line.While some areas of science and technology, such as AI and quantum computing, are expected to benefit under the second Trump administration, the barrage of Day 1 executive orders did not inspire confidence in researchers or policy specialists. I actually am more worried now than I ever have been, Atkinson says. I think the stars are aligning in a way that could really hurt the science community at the federal level.With additional reporting by Ewen Callaway and Miryam Naddaf.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on January 21, 20245.
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