Max von Thun

Starlink blocking Russia’s drones has given ‘enormous’ boost to Ukraine, says general Sam Kiley reports from Ukraine’s fortress belt in Pavlohrad, and Izium in eastern Ukraine, on the dramatic effect of switching off the Starlink satellite network used by Russian forces

While it's great for Ukraine that Musk has decided (for now) to sever Russia's Starlink access, the fact remains that that no private individual should have the power – through their control of critical infrastructure – to unilaterally shape the course of wars.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/e...

We're at a potential slowly then suddenly collapse of all the structural feedback and information dissemination mechanisms that provided the global economic system whatever residual stability it still had

83 years ago, Hans and Sophie Scholl were executed by the Nazis for their acts of resistance against Hitler, together with their friend Christoph Probst. Sophie was 22 years old.

Only an army — and true integration — will solve Europe’s defence problem Atlanticists fear this would hasten America’s departure from the continent, but what is the alternative?

This piece by @adamtooze.bsky.social makes a critical point that isn’t discussed enough.

We need an EU army not only because it would be more efficient, but also because lots of heavily armed European states - some led by nationalist parties - is a recipe for disaster.

www.ft.com/content/2445...

How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence Insufficient details about the US data intelligence company’s recent contract have been made public

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

How Palantir captured the UK Ministry of Defence

Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot Tech giant blames ‘user error, not AI error’ for incident in December involving its Kiro tool

Amazon’s cloud service suffered outages after engineers let AI assistants make key decisions.

The combination of highly concentrated digital infrastructure and a rushed rollout of unreliable AI technologies is going to create many more incidents like this, and worse.

www.ft.com/content/00c2...

ChatGPT ads spotted and they are quite aggressive ChatGPT ads are spotted by U.S. users — and they're appearing on the very first prompt, not after lengthy conversations as some predicted.

“Early speculation suggested ads would only surface after extended back-and-forth conversations. That’s not what’s happening. When a user asked “What’s the best way to book a weekend away?”, sponsored placements appeared immediately”

searchengineland.com/chatgpt-ads-...

This is also how every call to "slash red tape" or "deregulate" should be handled.

Regulations can always work better or be streamlined, but 98% of the time their purpose is still valid and the right wing clowns bloviating about it are the last people on earth you'd trust to iterate implementation.

British scientist raising $1bn for new AI lab in Europe’s biggest seed round Sequoia Capital leading funding deal for David Silver’s start-up Ineffable Intelligence at $4bn valuation

"Half of the $469bn invested by venture capitalists globally last year went to AI groups, according to CB Insights".- www.ft.com/content/dffe...

I don't doubt there will be some incredible revenues and VC successes. But how can so many companies be secure from their competitors?

Germany news: Government mulls social media ban for children Germany is joining the list of nations considering a ban on social media for children, with both coalition partners drawing up plans. Meanwhile, figures show German industry cut around 124,000 jobs in...

The most interesting thing about this is not that the German government (like several others) is mulling an underage ban, but that it is considering turning off (for everyone, not just kids) the algorithmic manipulation machines that underpin Big Tech's power and profits.

www.dw.com/en/germany-n...

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Enforced effectively, the Data Act, DMA, competition law and the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act could restrict the ability of cloud incumbents to abuse their power over customers and rivals, while creating new opportunities for alternative providers to emerge, innovate and scale.

The European ☁️ debate has focused on promoting local alternatives to Amazon, Microsoft and Google. While critical, these efforts will fail if not paired with a comprehensive plan to tackle the anti-competitive practices the hyperscalers use to defend their chokehold on the 🇪🇺 cloud market.

Report - Taming the Hyperscalers — Open Markets Institute The Open Markets Institute published a blueprint for Europe’s transition towards an open, competitive, and sovereign cloud market, co-authored by Europe director Max von Thun and EU tech policy fell...

‼️ New publication: Taming the Hyperscalers ‼️

In our latest policy brief, @georgecolville.bsky.social and I lay out a blueprint for how Europe can rein in the “hyperscalers” that dominate its cloud market using existing competition and digital laws.

www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications...

European Commission’s Preliminary Finding Against TikTok Is a Landmark Moment for Platform Accountability — Open Markets Institute The Open Markets Institute released a statement led by Max von Thun , Director of Europe & Transatlantic Partnership a preliminary finding that TikTok’s platform design contributes to addictive u...

“TikTok is far from the only platform that profits from online addiction, and the Commission should move swiftly to impose similar measures on other dominant – and equally dangerous – social media giants.” @maxvonthun.bsky.social www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications...

The use of interim measures in particular – almost never used in EU competition enforcement – is an encouraging sign that after years of failing to curb concentration in digital markets, the Commission is ready to intervene early to stop tech giants from leveraging their dominance into new markets.

Commission notifies Meta of possible interim measures to reverse exclusion of third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Meta, setting out its preliminary view that Meta breached EU antitrust rules by excluding third party Artificial Intelligence (‘AI\') assi...

Big news: the European Commission has told Meta that its exclusion of rival AI assistants from WhatsApp is anti-competitive, and ordered it to reverse the policy.

This is very fast by the EC's standards; the original investigation was only opened in December.

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Europe’s Tech Firms Need Regulation to Grow Max von Thun explains why watering down legislation like the GDPR and the AI Act will only undermine digital sovereignty.

Europe’s failure to produce globally competitive tech firms should be attributed not to excessive regulation, but rather to weak enforcement, writes @maxvonthun.bsky.social. bit.ly/3Meln1z

Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to Fight AI Regulation Some are battling state AI laws and threatening to punish candidates who oppose rapid deployment of the technology.

"Billionaires, tech titans and their opponents are amassing multimillion-dollar war chests for a chaotic, bruising battle over AI regulation ahead of the 2026 midterm elections."

Large Language Models Will Never Be Intelligent, Expert Says The AI industry is staking its future on language models. But LLMs, an expert argues, are fundamentally incapable of being intelligent.

“Yes, an AI system might remix and recycle our knowledge in interesting ways,” Riley writes. “But that’s all it will be able to do. It will be forever trapped in the vocabulary we’ve encoded in our data and trained it upon — a dead-metaphor machine.”

futurism.com/artificial-i...

same

Cabinet rankings: Mahmood sees sharp drop in approval among Labour members – LabourList Shabana Mahmood’s approval among Labour members has plummeted since her announcement on reform of asylum policy, exclusive polling for LabourList has revealed. The poll, conducted…

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has seen her favourability drop 32 points among Labour members since her plans for asylum policy reform were announced

Hear me out… is there a way Ukraine can make Mamdani their ambassador to the United States?

Oh my god

was already feeling insane from the Trump/Mamdani meeting but I now worry that my brain chemistry will simply never be the same

I just think Trump understands Mamdani is not someone he wants to tangle with. Too smart, too charismatic, too New York, too straightforward, too young. Easier targets elsewhere, like everyone who works for him and most of Congress. (1/2)

1/ What a Russian breaking of the ceasefire will look like, step by step.

There are far better experts on this, but I was an Australian diplomat in Ukraine in 2014 so I've seen this play out up close.

So join me, brothers and sisters, as we count down to a fullscale re-invasion.

Judge rules Meta doesn't have a social media monopoly It's the latest decision against the government's push to limit the size of Big Tech.

A judge ruled Meta does not have a monopoly, solidifying the tech giant’s $1.5 trillion future.

Commission launches market investigations on cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act The European Commission opened three market investigations on cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

And here's the announcement itself from the Commission, published just a few minutes ago:

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...