Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News

Drudge Retort

Menu

Subscriptions

Drudge Retort RSS feed RSS Feed

Links

Recent Comments

Recent comments from all news stories on this site. Users must follow the site's moderation policy. Personal attacks, profanity, abusive conduct and expressions of prejudice are not allowed. If you want to retrieve a comment of yours that was recently deleted, visit your user page and click the Moderation link.

More: Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.

The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang.

But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia's general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.

It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company's representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.

The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler's interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.

It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter's outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang's acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia's role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. The New York Times reported last month that the U.S. government had concluded that Huang Le, or Alice Huang, a top executive at the firm, was a spy working on behalf of the Chinese government.

"Why Historians Are Warning About Trump's Next Eight Weeks"

hartmannreport.com

article version

"Is Trump Entering the Most Dangerous Phase of His Presidency?

Historians and political violence experts warn that weakened strongmen can become more aggressive, purge doubters, and target opponents.

Could the next eight weeks be America's most dangerous?

" Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who's studied strongmen her entire career and wrote a brilliant book about them, calls this "late-stage radicalization," the dangerous phase when a weakened autocrat purges wafflers from his regime, strengthens his loyalists, and lashes out at anybody who may oppose him.

" Obama advisor Robert Pape, who runs the University of Chicago's project on political violence, just said that the next eight weeks until Democrats are sworn will be the most dangerous weeks of our entire lives."

more

hartmannreport.com

Americans haven't forgotten that in 2015 as a Republican US Senator from Florida, vapid Marco Rubio introduced debilitating riders into the Affordable Care Act (ACA; AKA Obamacare'). Now because of the BBB, many Americans lost their ACA subsidies and can't afford to buy health insurance, a problem unheard of in Canada, the Nordic countries, or NATO member states.

Source: Marco Rubella Undermines ACA

After leaving office, Marco Rubio, a supporter of Israel's vicious ethnic cleansing, will enjoy himself quite a comfortable federal pension, combining his utterly useless tenure as a US Senator and USSECSTATE.

Forsooth, one of the world's worst persons, without a molecule of doubt:

...

"FUNNY 2"


"FUNNY 2"

Flock lawsuits test legal limits of license-plate reader networks
www.reuters.com

... Does your right to privacy end when you back out of your driveway?

That question is driving a flurry of lawsuits against Flock Safety and others over cameras that automatically read and record the license plates of passing vehicles.

Plaintiffs' lawyers are united in arguing the technology enables police to conduct unlawful mass surveillance, generating billions of scans each month showing the location and movement of cars on roads across the country.

Where they diverge is in identifying a viable legal theory for their challenges. Are the scans an illegal search in violation of the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment? Do they run afoul of state privacy statutes? Is Flock's network of about 120,000 cameras across 49 states negligently designed and operated? ...


Drudge Retort

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy