This Week in Tech (Audio)

Podbit · This Week in Tech (Audio)

TWiT 1093: California Sober - Kimi K3, Qwen3.8, & China's Open-Weight AI Gambit

Explore episode Jul 20, 2026
Government
Project Golden Eagle: The White House Now Decides Who Gets AI

TWiT 1093: California Sober - Kimi K3, Qwen3.8, & China's O… · Jul 20, 2026 Government

The US government is positioning itself to greenlight which companies can access frontier AI models before release, under the voluntary Project Golden Eagle. The panel sees this as driven less by safety and more by political and financial interests — a Faustian deal the frontier labs are embracing.

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Shane attended a White House event, where decorated Medal of Honor recipients approached him as fans. The night also featured dirt bike flips on the lawn and a terrifying stealth bomber flyover. He hung out exclusively with troops and avoided the politicians.

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Hunter Biden Could Bridge the Political Divide

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Trump's Election Security Claims vs. Georgia's Own Data

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Trump released declassified documents at a White House speech claiming U.S. elections are vulnerable — but offered no new evidence of fraudulent votes. Georgia's own election chief fired back with a data point so stark it stops the argument cold: exactly one noncitizen vote found going all the way back to 1996.

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Social Media Age Limits Are Really Just Mass Internet Surveillance Bills

TWiT 1093: California Sober - Kimi K3, Qwen3.8, & China's O… · Jul 20, 2026 Government

Requiring age verification to access social media sounds protective. But it requires building a database with the real name and birthday of every internet user. History shows that database will be breached, misused, or weaponized. Harper Reed calls it what it is: a surveillance bill with a child-safety label.

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Declassified: China Considered Leaking Dirt on Trump

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Documents Trump declassified contain an intelligence assessment that China evaluated leaking damaging information about Trump to thwart his reelection if US-China relations became threatening to Beijing's rise. The specifics of what China held are entirely redacted — but the structure of the document makes clear something was there.

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MSNBC Panel: Ratcliffe's Own Dissent Disproves Trump's China Claims

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Russia Ran a Biden Smear Campaign in 2020 — Confirmed by Trump's Own Documents

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Documents released in Trump's own declassification batch confirm that Russia spread false claims about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden through Burisma, planned a high-profile corruption scandal timed to the 2020 election, and advanced those narratives with US officials and people close to Trump himself. The receipts came from Trump's own document dump.

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Saudi Arabia's Secret Nuclear Deal: A Path to Weapons-Grade Uranium?

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The Trump regime tentatively agreed to a draft nuclear deal allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium without adopting IAEA Enhanced Safeguard Protocols — a condition nuclear experts say could give Riyadh a path to weapons-grade material. The deal was negotiated in October 2025 and lawmakers have not received it for mandatory congressional review.