Jeff Jarvis: ‘Elon Musk’s investment in Twitter seemed insane, but it gave him this power’

Jeff Jarvis was born in 1954 and studied journalism at Illinois’s Northwestern University. He worked as a TV critic and created the magazine Entertainment Weekly, later leading the online arm of US media company Advance Publications. Since 2001, he has been blogging at Buzzmachine.com and in 2005 he became an associate professor at City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, directing its new media programme before retiring last year. Jarvis, who lives in New York, is the co-host of the podcasts This Week in Google and AI Inside

Wire cutters: how the world’s vital undersea data cables are being targeted

The lead-clad telegraphic cable seemed to weigh tons, according to Lt Cameron Winslow of the US navy, and the weather wasn’t helping their attempts to lift it up from the seabed and sever it. “The rough water knocked the heavy boats together, breaking and almost crushing in their planking,” he wrote.Eventually, Winslow’s men managed to cut the cable with hacksaws and disrupt the enemy’s communications by slicing off a 46-metre (150ft) section.This was in 1898 off the cost of Cuba during the Spanish-American war. More than a century later, subsea communications cables remain a target during times of geopolitical tension

Tesla’s path in China clears as Musk courts both Trump and Xi

Billionaire CEO is well connected in the US and China, something that could smooth the road ahead for the electric vehicle maker amid a looming tariff warIf it pays to have friends in high places, few among us can claim to be better placed than Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the only people to have cosy relationships with both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. His commercial and political connections to both may prove pivotal as the feud between the US and China plays out over the next four years, particularly as Trump promises steep tariffs.Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, once supported Joe Biden. But his relationship with the current US president soured over the past four years as, among other insults, Musk felt that the White House gave Telsa, his car and green energy company, “the cold shoulder”. Trump, meanwhile, has described Tesla as “incredible” even while pledging to do away with subsidies for electric vehicles

What does the US Department of Justice want Google to do?

The US Department of Justice has proposed a range of punchy remedies to address Google’s dominance of the internet search market, including the forced divestment of its Chrome browser.Google said the proposals represented a “radical interventionist agenda” that would harm America’s standing as a tech superpower.Big tech’s power, and whether and how it should be tamed, has become a political and regulatory talking point on both sides of the Atlantic. This will be one of the defining confrontations of that debate.The DoJ has asked a federal judge to consider several remedies after a ruling in August that found Google was operating an illegal monopoly in the search market

Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus

The small, unadorned church has long ranked as the oldest in the Swiss city of Lucerne. But Peter’s chapel has become synonymous with all that is new after it installed an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of dialoguing in 100 different languages.“It was really an experiment,” said Marco Schmid, a theologian with the Peterskapelle church. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would they talk with him about? Would there be interest in talking to him? We’re probably pioneers in this

Elon Musk to ‘summon MPs to US to explain threats to American citizens’

Elon Musk has said UK MPs “will be summoned to the United States of America to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens” in a fresh escalation of tensions between the world’s richest man and Labour.Musk, who has been a fixture at the side of Donald Trump since his re-election as US president, was responding to a Guardian report on Wednesday that the Commons’ science and technology select committee would call him to give evidence in the new year in its inquiry into the spread of harmful content on social media after the August riots.The committee’s chair, Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP, said she wanted to see how Musk, who owns the X social media platform, “reconciles his promotion of freedom of expression with his promotion of pure disinformation”.X hosts accounts by figures including Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, who were accused of inciting people to join Islamophobic protests.Musk, who has more than 205 million followers on X, responded by saying the MPs would be summoned to the US