The Doomscroll News Report
This week, Amanda is joined again by guest co-host Joey Chou to sew up loose ends from last week's episode into conspiracy theories and the Epstein Files case happening in the United States. Then, Amanda and Joey bond over shared shock and concern at the news that xAI, the parent company for X's infamous chatbot Grok, has recieved a heafty contract with the U.S. military just a week after that chatbot went on multiple hateful antisemetic rants on the platform.
Read along with us:
The U.S. House adjourning: 1. Epstein Saga hangs over Congress’s race to summer recess (Mychael Schnell, the Hill), 2. Republicans shut down house floor to avoid Epstein vote (Martha McHardy, Newsweek), 3. Mike Johnson under pressure over shutting down House to stop Epstein vote (Kate Plummer, Newsweek)
xAi's deal with the DOD and Grok: 1. Musk's Grok signs $200m deal with Pentagon days after antisemitism row (Lily Jamali and Nadine Yousif, BBC), 2. Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself 'MechaHitler' (Lisa Hagen, Huo Jingnan, and Audrey Nguyen, NPR), 3. Pentagon will start using Musk’s Grok (Cheyanne M. Daniels, Politico), 4. xAI announces $200m US military deal after Grok chatbot had Nazi meltdown (Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian), 5. Exclusive: Musk’s DOGE expanding his Grok AI in US government, raising conflict concerns (Marisa Taylor and Alexandra Ulmer, Reuters)