Democrats launching congressional investigations into SpaceXAI, META and Apple
washingtonpost.comI just hope that the congressional panelists do their homework. Especially in the televised bits in which C-suite reps testify in front of Congress.
Every time I come away thinking that the investigators themselves have not spend much (or any) time understanding the basics of these businesses.
And so they resort to what they know: speeches/lectures to let their constituents hear and see them on the record standing for anything.
No Palantir?
What are the allegations against Palantir?
Well there's the securities fraud in California... Also the stock inflation
https://www.courthousenews.com/investors-tell-10th-circuit-p...
They sold more than $2.2bil in fraudulent stock.
That's the stuff we're allowed to talk about on HN. Ofc we're made fun of if we bring up any ethical concerns. Palantir's Maven is the system the US used to determine targets (using Claude as the integrated LLM), including the target that led to a double tap strike on a girls elementary school. Their CEO is strongly pushing AI weapons in warfare and mass surveillance. He's put out multiple cringe "manifestos". They also provided AI targeting tools to support the genocide in Gaza. And ofc they're critical to ICE's operations. They've centralized phone numbers, addresses, health data, social media data, etc all used to target immigrants and activists that oppose them.
I know it invites backlash on HN to give a shit about stuff like that but I'll continue to repeat it as much as I can. Fuck surveillance, fuck fascism, fuck the boot.
Mostly war crimes- shocking, multiple and well documented. https://www.business-humanrights.org/de/latest-news/palantir...
Aren't they the company that is run by that antichrist guy?
It's not illegal to be antichrist. Especially a rich one
I hope they find time to address healthcare and Social Security once their new majorities are sworn in.
If they make good faith efforts to solve these ( not partisan pork filled non-starter efforts ) I will be deeply grateful.
The Republicans had a chance and failed to even act. If the Democrats do the same I’ll be deeply disappointed.
Thanks for this.
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you make these links?
Go to the main domain, setup browser block for the domain of the guy getting DDoSed (https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-...), paste the link for the article.
Or just use wallhop.io, Archive.org, or any other site that doesn't draft your browser into an ongoing harassment campaign against its enemies.
I wish other services were as good. Yeah, start with those. But unfortunately this one has the widest support for various sites.
Go to archive.is (or one of the other archive sites), paste in the URL you want to get an archive copy of, then copy the resulting URL and paste it here.
I have a bookmark of
javascript:void(open('http://archive.ph/?run=1&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location)))
Good.
Congress has to start working for the people it represents again, so I really hope the Democrats start pushing lots of legislation that addresses the real needs of the people. Even if every bill gets vetoed, make sure Trump and the Republicans around him own the lack of progress in a very visible way to ensure 2028 is an easy-mode Democratic win.
But... they also have to undo the damage to the rule of law that has been supercharged by the Trump administration.
Letting bygones be bygones and trying to move back to the old status quo without addressing actual wrongdoing is how you end up with Trump getting reelected even after January 6th.
If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
Precisely. No bygones this time.
Where just and applicable.
Not "where it will score political points" or "where we really want to get that guy". Where just and applicable.
So, in any of 100 blatant and obvious places that Republicans will nevertheless whine relentlessly about.
> If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
Actually Ro Khanna is one of the highest traders
https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Ro%20...
> the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
If Todd Blanche weren't busy pursuing Trump's political enemies with frivolous lawsuits, maybe he could have gotten around to this.
How about something much larger, like investigating Biden's second largest donor and throwing him in jail for 25 years for fraud?
Wait, SBF is already in jail.
It makes sense to start with the biggest offenders though? Pelosi’s net worth is peanuts compared to what Mango Mussolini and his friends and family made in the last couple of years.
POTUS graduated from pumping and dumping crypto shitcoins to pumping and dumping the American Economy with Iran announcements and then lining up his billionaire friends to brag about how much money they made insider trading it on public television.
Against this backdrop, it takes some truly extraordinary selective attention to be scandalized by the Pelosis managing to beat QQQ by one percentage point last time I checked.
One percentage point? Her own party lampposted her over the corruption and hundreds of millions. They’re both corrupt
> So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
I'd support it.
By the same token, if Bill Clinton gets damaged by a full release of the Epstein files? Good. Fuck 'em then. I'm not a team booster. Investigate likely wrongdoing and punish the guilty, regardless of their politics.
Though of course... Nancy Pelosi isn't remotely the only one who likely benefited from insider knowledge, there are long lists of people from both parties who are in the same boat. Pelosi just gets elevated as a figurehead here because of her high profile (and despite not being a big Pelosi fan myself I still think, if we're being honest, at least a smidge of misogyny)
We should also just ban trading for all elected officials during their terms in office.
they'd better keep it laser focused on stuff like bribery that is easy to demonstrate, and not stuff like "enabled ICE by hosting apps" etc. which is much less understood by the American people and harder to nail down as a crime
Paywall for me. Link anyone? Curious to read this. Thanks.
Not sure about the others but here is information on the SpaceX investigation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/11/05/what-de...
archive.is is your friend bro
WallHop doesn't disable its site based on geography: https://wallhop.io/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology...
> “We’ve been telling clients all year that winter is coming,” he said. “Now winter has arrived.”
I'm pretty skeptical that the political and legal system in America is capable of the kind of radical change needed to stave off the control of the big tech oligarchs that have aligned themselves with the Republican party. There's a lot of entrenched powers in the Democratic party who lack the foresight and desire to make the kinds of moves necessary to do so and are mostly just riding it out until they can retire and/or die.
But on the other hand I'm really surprised by the lack of foresight and intention displayed by big tech oligarchs and to be honest I'm troubled by it. Like there's a lot of seemingly unforced errors from these guys and I'm not sure why.
For instance Sam Altman didn't have that stupid thing that he recently said about the allocation of RAM and Elon Musk doesn't have to say the stupid stuff that he says all the time in social media, so what makes them say these things? These are small things, admittedly, but they are also kind of big things, or hint at big things, you know?
Is it simply a lack of immediate negative consequences for their actions that slowly reshapes their brain into not being able to foresee negative consequences in general?
Or is there some deeper plan there? It doesn't seem like it. And if that's the case, that there is no deeper plan, how are the organizations that these people command able to continue functioning, are the CEOs really so unnecessary that the people around them just smile, nod, tell them what they want to hear and work around whatever damage they cause when they spout off some hare-brained ideas? Like who is running the show here?
> For instance Sam Altman didn't have that stupid thing that he recently said about the allocation of RAM and Elon Musk doesn't have to say the stupid stuff that he says all the time in social media, so what makes them say these things? These are small things, admittedly, but they are also kind of big things, or hint at big things, you know?
The reason is simple: arrogance and being out-of-touch.
Good. Either the state controls the oligarchs or oligarchs control the state.
Or, get this, no oligarchs.
First you need to control the ones that are there.
> First you need to control the ones that are there
No, you don't. In fact that's exactly the wrong approach because it recognizes them as institutions.
Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
Note that I'm using the term oligarch precisely. Not just rich people. Rich people holding direct political power. You don't control that without empowering it, you remove the direct political power.
> Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
This is controlling them.
>> Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
> This is controlling them.
I think it's meant to remove them from that class.
Controlling: telling them what to do, implementing policy through their power.
Eliminating: removing their power until they're not oligarchs.
> This is controlling them
It's really not. Putin controls his oligarchs. Denmark doesn't have oligarchs. (It does have nobility and billionaires.)
Putin is an oligarch.
And for US it's too late, it already has oligarchs.
> Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
That's how you control them, yes. I don't understand what you are disagreeing with?
Long overdue.
> Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
This is bizarre. ICE is an (enforcement) arm of the government. So the government is investigating Apple for hosting tracking apps used by the government?
“Just following orders” is not necessarily a legitimate defence if the government was doing something illegal in the first place.
Having immigration enforcement is legitimate and not illegal. Hosting an app related to legitimate government function in an app store is so far removed from any possible element of a real crime...
Calling what ICE is doing "immigration enforcement" is beyond the pale. Administrative warrant are made up take-my-word-for-it notes ICE writes for themselves. Putting kids in cage immoral by any measure. Detaining citizen for days at a time is against the law. Constantly lying about why your summarily executed anyone is a power no law can grant.
Having immigration enforcement is legitimate and not illegal. The way the government was doing it was, at times, illegitimate and illegal.
The app... I don't at all understand what the role of the app is, so I really can't comment on that aspect of the situation.
Which US statute was broken by Apple?
...That's what these investigations intend to establish. That's how investigations work.
Am I seriously being led to believe that the government was not doing this long before ICE? This seems performative at best. Come back to me when they decide to break the massive loophole where government has been buying private citizen data for over a decade now.
Arresting Tim Cook for bribery would send a message. Why else would Apple Pay for an inauguration ceremony or for a white house ballroom or a golden plaque gift?
Did these guys think Republicans would be in power forever?
> "That statement is very simple, I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again,’” Trump told Ingraham. “It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.” [^0]
[^0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
They possibly thought that the democrats might go for the "all forgotten, we're all friends now, right?" approach. Which wouldn't be a _crazy_ thing to think, because it's pretty much what happened in 2020.
Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it. Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally. So you've got to make it so that law enforcement cannot be criminal. Own goals all over.
Both are crimes, and it's made pretty clear by the compliance training I have to retake every year at my corp job. If a corporation has to train employees to not give bribes because we can go to jail, and the corp will be on the hook as well, then they will likely also be prosecuted.
Both sides are wrong on this, giving or accepting.
No, giving a bribe is not "working with law enforcement." These are two different things.
Giving bribes is "definitionally" a crime.
But more than that - giving bribes is fucking over people who cannot afford to give bribes so they are treated unfairly.
So not only it's a crime - it's also morally evil.
Obviously you have to prosecute the ones giving bribes as well. What a ludicrously entitled position
> Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it.
... Wait, what? You prosecute _both_.
> Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally.
The "just following orders" defence is, fairly, notoriously, weak. "Just following requests" is presumably even weaker. If you assist law enforcement in doing something illegal, you shouldn't assume that you're magically in the clear.
This is kind of insane when you realize 80% of their employees are democrats even if their executives pal around with trump. I am crying tears of joy for this overall.
"If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations."
Good luck with that Mr. Jordan. The House minority leader doesn't have the power to issue congressional summons, and there is a 0% chance that the Democrats will allow him to take any committee assignment that would put him in such a position (and even his own party didn't trust him enough to put him in charge of anything important after it was revealed that as a coach at OSU he knew about the sexual abuse of minors and student athletes for decades and did nothing about it).
The pivot from "we just want single payer healthcare" sure happened a lot quicker than I expected.
You'd think the Party of Law and Order would be OK with holding their elected representatives to the most basic of laws. Things like "don't solicit, accept, and brag about taking bribes on public TV." But I guess not.
You had every chance to fix this yourself. In Trump's first term, in between terms, and again in his second term. But it appears you are incapable of self-imposed accountability. Now it's our turn to enforce the law.
I think lawfare is bad on both sides.
Will you have the consistency to say it's good on both sides? Will you support deporting Ilhan Omar, for example? I highly doubt it. You're just another partisan, and we all live in Brazil now where an election means locking up your opponents.
No, you don't think lawfare is bad on both sides, you think the most blatant fraudsters in history should be above the law.
You may be right about some people but are wrong about me. Trump is shameful and should have been held to account by Republicans, long long ago.
No treatment of him by Democrats will be seen as remotely fair (and be honest, it won't be remotely fair), and only makes us progressively into more of a shithole country.
Not to mention, half of the lawfare that's being proposed is against Elon, who is abrasive but legally a far cry from Trump. It's just lawfare.
Edit: and it's too bad to see I was right about you!
> and be honest, it won't be remotely fair
No, you're not being honest. The consistent failing of Democratic attempts to enforce the law is having too limp a wrist. Being too meticulous, forming too much bipartisan consensus, giving too much opportunity for "delay until it goes away." All the way from Jerome Powell through the Epstein investigation to the Jan 6 prosecution.
If that changes -- and to be clear, I hope it does -- it will be a dramatic departure from trend.
I literally laughed out loud.
You live in a dream world.