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Trump-Starmer AI Deal Slammed for Putting 'Interests of US Tech Bros' Ahead of the Common Good
"Instead of bending over backwards to appease Trump in an attempt to avoid his tariff bullying, it’s time for Starmer to show real leadership and stand up to him," said one campaigner.
Sep 18, 2025
Critics of the artificial intelligence pact signed Thursday by US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that the deal sacrifices the climate, data privacy, creators' copyrights, and British sovereignty on the altar of Silicon Valley profits.
Speaking at Chequers—the Buckinghamshire country estate of UK prime ministers in Buckinghamshire—Trump said that "we're taking the next logical step with a historic agreement on science and technology partnerships, and this will create new government, academic, and private sector cooperation in areas such as AI, which is taking over the world."
Laughing, Trump turned to tech bosses gathered for the event and—singling out Jensen Huang, CEO of chip-maker Nvidia—said: "And I'm looking at you guys. You're taking over the world, Jensen. I don't know what you're doing here. I hope you're right."
Along with Huang—who heads the world's largest publicly traded company—the CEOs of Apple, and ChatGPT creator OpenAI joined Trump on his UK trip.
Starmer said the deal involves more than $200 billion in total US investments and will create 15,000 jobs over the next decade. The prime minister named US companies including Amazon, Blackstone, Boeing, Citigroup, and Microsoft, and UK firms like AstraZeneca, BP, GSK, and Rolls Royce as being part of the deal.
Other companies involved in the agreement include Google and its AI laboratory DeepMind, OpenAI, Oracle, Salesforce, and ScaleAI in the United States and AI Pathfinder, DataVita, NScale, and Sage in Britain.
DeSmog UK deputy director Sam Bright reported Thursday that the investment bank led by Warren Stephens, Trump's ambassador to London, owns hundreds of millions of dollars in shares of tech companies involved in the AI deal, including Google parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
Like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Nvidia, Stephens—who is a billionaire—made a seven-figure donation to Trump's inauguration fund.
Prominent critics of the agreement include former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who is also Meta's former president of global affairs. Speaking Wednesday at a Royal Television Society conference in Cambridge, Clegg said the deal leaves Britain with "sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley" and "is just another version of the United Kingdom holding on to Uncle Sam’s coattails."
Opposition to the tech deal was also widespread Wednesday at a central London protest against Trump's visit organized by the Stop Trump Coalition.
Nick Dearden, director of the campaign group Global Justice Now and a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition, noted in an interview with Wired senior business editor Natasha Bernal that the details of the pact have not been made public.
"We have not seen the text of the deal. We don’t know what we have given away," Dearden said. "We know that some of the tech barons accompanying Trump want us to drop parts of our regulation, want us to drop the digital services tax, want us to make it easier for them to acquire and merge with each other to become even bigger monopolies, so we are worried about that.”
So Trump swept into the UK to be wined and dined by the King.Big Tech bosses came too, bearing pledges of huge UK investments (mostly for data centres).Our govt, desperate for good economic news, is boosting this as a win for the UK.But the *point* of US Big Tech is to monopolise the data.
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— Critical Takes on Corporate Power (@criticaltakes.bsky.social) September 18, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Gobal Justice Now trade campaigner Seema Syeda said in a statement:
This toxic technology pact that favors the interests of US tech bros and rich corporations over ordinary people must be opposed at all costs. It’s a democratic scandal that the public and Parliament have been left in the dark as to its contents to date, but what we do know should ring alarm bells. Instead of bending over backwards to appease Trump in an attempt to avoid his tariff bullying, it’s time for Starmer to show real leadership and stand up to him. We can’t let an egomaniac like Trump hold our rights and democracy hostage.
Clive Teague—who was at the London rally supporting Extinction Rebellion Waverley and Borders in Surrey—told Bernal that he does not oppose AI if it is powered by renewable energy.
"We can’t keep burning fossil fuels to keep feeding into these data centers, because it’ll swamp the requirements for the rest of the world," Teague said.
Global Justice Now also warned that the tech deal could expose National Health Service (NHS) patient data to exploitation, wweaken digital privacy protections, thwart regulation of AI, and limit the government's taxation options.
Also sounding the alarm on the US-UK AI deal are scores of creators and creative groups including Elton John, Paul McCartney, and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, who decried what they say is the Starmer government's failure to adequately protect copyrighted works from unauthorized use by AI companies.
As the Prime Minister prepares to meet President Trump during the state visit, WGGB has joined over 70 of the UK’s leading creators + creative orgs in signing an open letter demanding the Government explains its failure to protect the rights of UK copyright holderswritersguild.org.uk/creators-ai/
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— Writers' Guild of Great Britain (@writersguildgb.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 2:44 AM
"Artificial intelligence companies have ingested millions of copyright works without permission or payment, in total disregard for the UK’s legal protections," they said in an open letter. "The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens—not to promote corporate interests, particularly where they are primarily based abroad."
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Trump Admin Circulating Plan to Transform Depopulated Gaza Into High-Tech Cash Cow
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
Sep 01, 2025
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.
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'Nightmare Scenario': Watchdog Says AI Cybercrime Shows Vital Need for Regulation
"Countries with lax regulations, like the US, are prime targets for these crimes," said Public Citizen's J.B. Branch.
Aug 28, 2025
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed Wednesday that its technology has been "weaponized" by hackers to commit ransomware crimes, prompting a call by a leading consumer advocacy group for Congress to pass "enforceable safeguards" to protect the public.
Anthropic's latest Threat Intelligence Report details "several recent examples" of its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Claude "being misused, including a large-scale extortion operation using Claude Code, a fraudulent employment scheme from North Korea, and the sale of AI-generated ransomware by a cybercriminal with only basic coding skills."
"The actor targeted at least 17 distinct organizations, including in healthcare, the emergency services, and government and religious institutions," the company said. "Rather than encrypt the stolen information with traditional ransomware, the actor threatened to expose the data publicly in order to attempt to extort victims into paying ransoms that sometimes exceeded $500,000."
Anthropic said the perpetrator "used AI to what we believe is an unprecedented degree" for their extortion scheme, which is being described as "vibe hacking"—the malicious use of artificial intelligence to manipulate human emotions and trust in order to carry out sophisticated cyberattacks.
"Claude Code was used to automate reconnaissance, harvesting victims' credentials and penetrating networks," the report notes. "Claude was allowed to make both tactical and strategic decisions, such as deciding which data to exfiltrate, and how to craft psychologically targeted extortion demands."
"Claude analyzed the exfiltrated financial data to determine appropriate ransom amounts, and generated visually alarming ransom notes that were displayed on victim machines," the company added.
Anthropic continued:
This represents an evolution in AI-assisted cybercrime. Agentic AI tools are now being used to provide both technical advice and active operational support for attacks that would otherwise have required a team of operators. This makes defense and enforcement increasingly difficult, since these tools can adapt to defensive measures, like malware detection systems, in real time. We expect attacks like this to become more common as AI-assisted coding reduces the technical expertise required for cybercrime.
Anthropic said it "banned the accounts in question as soon as we discovered this operation" and "also developed a tailored classifier (an automated screening tool), and introduced a new detection method to help us discover activity like this as quickly as possible in the future."
"To help prevent similar abuse elsewhere, we have also shared technical indicators about the attack with relevant authorities," the company added.
Anthropic's revelation followed last year's announcement by OpenAI that it had terminated ChatGPT accounts allegedly used by cybercriminals linked to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen, said Wednesday in response to Anthropic's announcement: "Every day we face a new nightmare scenario that tech lobbyists told Congress would never happen. One hacker has proven that agentic AI is a viable path to defrauding people of sensitive data worth millions."
"Criminals worldwide now have a playbook to follow—and countries with lax regulations, like the US, are prime targets for these crimes since AI companies are not subject to binding federal standards and rules," Branch added. "With no public protections in place, the next wave of AI-enabled cybercrime is coming, but Congress continues to sit on its hands. Congress must move immediately to put enforceable safeguards in place to protect the American public."
More than 120 congressional bills have been proposed to regulate artificial intelligence. However, not only has the current GOP-controlled Congress has been loath to act, House Republicans recently attempted to sneak a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation into the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Senate subsequently voted 99-1 to remove the measure from the legislation. However, the "AI Action Plan" announced last month by President Donald Trump revived much of the proposal, prompting critics to describe it as a "zombie moratorium."
Meanwhile, tech billionaires including the Winklevoss twins, who founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, are pouring tens of millions of dollars into the Digital Freedom Fund super political action committee, which aims to support right-wing political candidates with pro-crytpo and pro-AI platforms.
"Big Tech learned that throwing money in politics pays off in lax regulations and less oversight," Public Citizen said Thursday. "Money in politics reforms have never been more necessary."
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