Welcome back from the Thanksgiving break. We hope you're well rested and ready to get back into the swing of a busy final session of the year. As Washington snaps back into gear, the tech policy agenda is picking up right where it left off: the Trump White House’s deepening entanglement with Silicon Valley on AI and crypto, DOGE operatives quietly embedding themselves across federal agencies, and Republican infighting over AI preemption and chip exports that’s now threatening the NDAA. Meanwhile, courts and civil society are testing new levers of accountability—from a landmark algorithmic discrimination case against Meta to fresh scrutiny of how Flock builds its surveillance AI with overseas gig workers. On the Hill, lawmakers are turning that same mix of optimism and anxiety into action, with hearings this week on protecting kids and teens online, China’s challenge to U.S. AI leadership, and Beijing’s rapid rise in space. All of that—and what it means for your day job—is unpacked in this week’s newsletter.

In this week’s Nimitz Tech:

• DOGE: It hasn’t disappeared from Washington—it’s just traded the blitzkrieg for a slow, stealthy rewrite of how the federal government runs.

• Discrimination: A little-noticed D.C. lawsuit against Meta could become the playbook for using old-school consumer protection laws to crack down on cutting-edge algorithmic discrimination.

• Surveillance: A company blanketing U.S. streets with surveillance cameras has been quietly paying overseas gig workers to watch, hear, and label what those cameras capture.

WHO’S HAVING EVENTS THIS WEEK?

Tuesday, December 2nd

• House Energy and Commerce: “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online” at 10:15am. Watch here.

• Senate Foreign Relations: “Hearings to examine China's challenge to American AI leadership” at 2:30pm. Watch here.

Thursday, December 4th

• House Science, Space, and Technology: “Assessing China’s Space Rise and the Risks to U.S. Leadership” at 9am. Watch here.

TECH NEWS DRIVING THE WEEK

In Washington

• David Sacks, a longtime Silicon Valley investor and co-host of the “All-In” podcast, has used his dual role as the Trump administration’s unpaid A.I. and crypto czar and as a venture capitalist to shape policies that benefit both his tech allies and his own extensive portfolio. While helping draft an “A.I. Action Plan” and pushing to roll back export restrictions on Nvidia’s chips — including backing a massive deal to send 500,000 A.I. chips to the United Arab Emirates and supporting renewed sales to China — Sacks has maintained hundreds of investments in A.I.-related and crypto companies that stand to gain from these decisions. Ethics waivers and his “special government employee” status have allowed him to remain in government while continuing his private investing, but his disclosures lack key details about when and how he divested from certain holdings, fueling questions about undisclosed profits and conflicts of interest. Policies he championed, such as promoting A.I. for defense and backing the GENIUS Act on stablecoins, align closely with companies in which he or his firm Craft Ventures have stakes, including Anduril and BitGo, the latter now moving toward an IPO. At the same time, his government post has boosted the visibility and business of “All-In,” which has hosted high-level administration guests, expanded its conference revenues and launched new products, even as the White House sought to limit overt branding at a marquee A.I. summit he organized. Supporters in the administration argue that Sacks’s expertise advances U.S. tech dominance, while critics, including Steve Bannon, see him as emblematic of a “technocratic oligarchy” blurring the line between public service and private gain.

• Despite reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fizzled out, the group’s operatives remain deeply embedded across federal agencies, quietly reshaping government in Silicon Valley’s image. Young technologists and Musk-world alumni like Yat Choi, Sam Corcos, and Edward “Big Balls” Coristine still claim roles in or around DOGE while working in places like the IRS, USDA, and new White House ventures. Their ethos—slashing contracts and staff, importing private-sector tools, consolidating data, and prioritizing “efficiency”—now shows up in initiatives such as HackerRank-style coding tests imposed on existing IRS tech staff, AI-driven deregulation efforts at the Office of Management and Budget, and the National Design Studio, led by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, which is redesigning key government websites. Some DOGE figures have migrated to powerful posts with little traditional subject-matter experience, such as Sam Beyda becoming deputy chief of staff at the CDC amid major staff losses, while others have spun back out to Musk’s xAI or major contractors like Leidos. Even as Reuters and officials at the Office of Personnel Management describe DOGE as no longer a centralized entity, internal sources, DOGE’s own social media accounts, and Musk himself insist the project is alive, its methods now diffused and “burrowed” into agencies that continue to cut regulations, contracts, and workers under its guiding principles.

• Republicans are locked in a sharp internal fight over artificial intelligence policy that’s threatening to derail passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, as the Trump White House pushes to use the bill to ban state-level AI regulations and critics in both parties push back. Trump and his allies want a single federal standard to prevent what they see as a “patchwork” of state rules—especially from tech-skeptical states like California—while conservative states’ rights advocates such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, along with more than 200 state lawmakers, argue states must remain free to regulate AI. The proposal faces stiff resistance in the Senate, where Democrats including Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are urging colleagues to block any AI preemption “holiday” for Big Tech, and GOP support is far from unified. A second flash point is the GAIN AI Act, which would require chipmakers to prioritize U.S. buyers over China for advanced AI chips; despite bipartisan backing from figures like Warren, Jim Banks, and Chuck Schumer, the measure is opposed by the White House and industry after Trump reversed earlier curbs and allowed Nvidia to sell certain chips to China in exchange for a revenue cut. Together, the battles highlight deep Republican divisions—and quieter Democratic ones—over how to balance national security, innovation, Big Tech influence, and states’ rights in shaping America’s AI future.

National

• Equal Rights Center v. Meta is a pioneering case in which a D.C. Superior Court allowed claims to proceed that Meta’s ad-delivery algorithms on Facebook and Instagram unlawfully discriminate by steering education and other opportunity ads along racial and gender lines, effectively recreating “separate but equal” digital services. Building on years of research showing Meta’s algorithms disproportionately show certain jobs, schools, housing, and credit ads to specific demographic groups even when advertisers use neutral targeting, the court held that this behavior, if proven, could constitute both intentional discrimination and disparate impact under the D.C. Human Rights Act—and, in turn, per se unfair and deceptive trade practices under the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The decision links modern algorithmic bias to a century-long tradition of using consumer protection law to fight segregation, from the Interstate Commerce Act cases that desegregated trains and buses to FTC actions against discriminatory landlords, emphasizing that failing to disclose discriminatory practices can itself be deception. As federal civil rights enforcement retreats, the article argues that state attorneys general and advocates should increasingly wield state consumer protection statutes to police algorithmic discrimination, making clear that deploying AI and opaque probabilistic systems does not exempt companies from longstanding civil rights and fairness obligations.

International

• Flock, a rapidly growing surveillance company whose automatic license plate reader and AI-powered cameras are deployed in thousands of U.S. communities, has been using overseas gig workers—primarily in the Philippines via Upwork—to review and label sensitive footage in order to train its algorithms, according to internal training materials and an exposed internal tracking panel reviewed by 404 Media. The leaked resources showed annotators handling large volumes of tasks, including classifying vehicles, transcribing license plates, tagging images of people, and labeling audio clips as “car wreck,” “gunshot,” or “reckless driving,” all from footage clearly taken across the United States. While outsourcing annotation is common in AI development, the revelation raises heightened concerns because Flock’s system lets police (and, in past cases, ICE) track drivers’ movements without a warrant, and its tools can identify not just cars but people, clothing, and potentially even race. Training guides instructed workers not to label people inside cars but to tag pedestrians and motorcyclists, and to gauge their confidence when labeling screams—underscoring the granularity and sensitivity of what they see and hear. After reporters contacted Flock, the exposed metrics panel was taken offline, and the company declined to comment, leaving unanswered questions about who can access Americans’ surveillance data and how securely it is handled.

Just for Fun

🇵🇸 Palestinian Food and Identity Workshop at Bold Fork Books (Mt. Pleasant, Wed. 12/03)

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