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šµ Chinese AI Rocks World
Citizen Frank
January 27, 2025
Good morning. Itās Monday, January 27.
Important note: cf.org is rebranding to thefrank.com. Soon youāll find us under our new name.
Global investors dumped tech stocks on Monday as they worried that the emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model would threaten the dominance of AI leaders like Nvidia, evaporating $593 billion of the chipmakerās market value, a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street.
Last week, Chinese startup DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant that it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent services. By Monday, the assistant had overtaken U.S. rival ChatGPT in downloads from Appleās app store.
This led the tech-heavy Nasdaq to fall 3.1% on Monday. Nvidia was the Nasdaqās biggest drag, with its shares tumbling just under 17% and marking a record one-day loss in market capitalization for a Wall Street stock, according to LSEG data.
President Trump is expected to sign two executive orders Monday booting transgender service members and eliminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs from the military, The Post has reported.
Trump had signed an order on his first day in office revoking the Biden administrationās 2021 directive that allowed trans people to serve openly in the military, but the incoming EOs will go further.
The Monday order will directly prohibit any service member who identifies as a gender other than their birth sex from serving or enlisting, on grounds of mental unfitness.
The U.S. Senate confirmed billionaire investor Scott Bessent on Monday to serve as President Donald Trumpās treasury secretary, giving him the delicate balancing act of cutting taxes and curbing deficits while putting forward a plan on tariffs that doesnāt jeopardize growth.
He cleared the Senate roll call with bipartisan support, in a 68 to 29 vote ā with 16 Democrats voting in favor of the Republican nominee.
The South Carolina resident will be the first openly gay individual in the role, a historic first as Trump seeks novel ways to implement a policy agenda driven by both billionaire business leaders with concerns over regulations and a populist base that wants government leaders to fight for them.
Selena Gomez posted ā and then deleted ā a video of herself crying on Monday.
The āEmilia PĆ©rezā actress, 32, sobbed on Instagram seemingly about President Donald Trumpās program of mass deportations.
āAll my people are getting attacked, the children,ā said Gomez, whose family is from Mexico. āI donāt understand. Iām so sorry. I wish I could do something but I canāt.ā
Vice President JD Vance on Sunday gave his first media interview days after being sworn into office and defended the Trump administrationās recent activity.
In the interview, Vance sparred with CBS Newsā anchor Margaret Brennan on a range of topics, including illegal immigration, the U.S. economy, Jan. 6 pardons, Big Tech companies, and more.
Lowering Prices
At one point in the interview, Vance was pressed on how President Donald Trumpās administration will lower prices of groceries, which was a 2024 campaign promise. The vice president, in response, said that getting prices down would take time, noting that Trump only took office less than a week ago.
The CIAās decision to release a Biden-era assessment favoring the once widely-dismissed COVID-19 lab-leak origin story marks a step toward transparency with the American people, newly-confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Fox News on Sunday.
Speaking in his first interview since being confirmed as the agencyās director last Thursday, Ratcliffe spelled out the insights he made public shortly after taking over the post and affirmed the importance of restoring trust in American institutions.
āI had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it canāt be accused of being political, and the CIA has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan, so weāll continue to investigate that moving forward,ā he told āSunday Morning Futuresā host Maria Bartiromo.
President Donald Trump has reinstated over 8,000 members of the military who were discharged for not taking the Covid-19 vaccine and is going to be providing full back pay for each servicemember that was discharged.
According to Fox News, a Fact Sheet from the White House obtained by the outlet stated, āThe Executive Order directs the Secretary of Defense to reinstate all members of the military (active and reserve) who were discharged for refusing the COVID vaccine and who request to be reinstated.ā
Those who are reinstated will have their prior rank restored in full as well as receive back pay for the time that they have been out of the military.
The State Department has scrapped the third sex option, X, on passport application forms, declaring that there are only two recognisable sexes.
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio has directed the Department to remove the option, an internal State Department cable obtained by The Guardian revealed.
In the communication, Rubio noted āThe policy of the United States is that an individualās sex is not changeable.ā
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