ICE Plans Multi-Year Social Media Surveillance Program Across Platforms

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to hire contractors to continuously scour social media for posts that could trigger deportations—part of a broader trend toward surveillance states and shrinking digital privacy as companies like Meta push more AI into personal data—while Chinese city Ordos has become a safe testing ground for autonomous cargo vehicles but yields limited insight into performance in dense urban settings. Startups are increasingly entangled with the U.S. government as customers and regulatory gatekeepers, and recent administration moves to take equity stakes in strategic firms plus a government shutdown threaten permits, visas, and revenue streams that many young companies now depend on. Venture data from Andreessen Horowitz and Mercury shows early-stage firms are aggressively “stuffing AI into everything,” favoring horizontal AI platforms and spawning AI-native companies and vibe-coding tools—even as some implementations (notably a Replit incident) expose operational risks. At the same time, a new wave of AI startups across healthcare, robotics, climate tech, autonomous vehicles, and cybersecurity promises transformative products, but founders face hard questions about monetization, sustainable business models, and regulatory scrutiny. Industry conversations and podcasts also highlight current frictions—OpenAI’s Sora app and AI-generated performers like Tilly Norwood, large funding rounds such as Periodic Labs’ $300M seed, and the geopolitical implications of government ownership—underscoring that technological momentum is colliding with privacy, safety, and policy challenges.