Source: Axios, Holly Otterbein, Andrew Solender, Stef W. Kight
Photo: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Members of Congress and governors are under increasing pressure to regulate AI, but more than two dozen of them who spoke with Axios said they don’t use the technology or have rarely done so.

Why it matters: That striking admission — particularly among older, influential lawmakers — comes amid calls for an AI slowdown and warnings within the industry that it could end humanity if left unchecked.

Critics argue that it’s impossible for politicians to grasp how rapidly the technology is changing — and the threats or scientific breakthroughs it might unleash — if they don’t use it or even dismiss it.

One House Democrat called it “f*cking absurd,” arguing, “Anyone who’s overseeing this has to be someone who’s a regular user.”

“That’s a real problem,” said Rob Flaherty, a 35-year-old Democratic digital strategist who co-founded a group to push his party to move faster in confronting AI. “Understanding what it can do is essential to figuring out what we ought to do about it.”

“As we begin to legislate on issues related to AI, it helps to have experience using it,” said Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who’s 47.

Zoom in: Several lawmakers, including those steeped in seniority and in charge of key committees, told Axios they simply haven’t tried AI.

“Heavens no,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), 75, chair of the Armed Services Committee, when asked if he uses AI.

“Personally? I don’t think I’ve ever used it,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), 74, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“No,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai’i), 78, said when asked if she uses AI, but that “doesn’t mean I won’t.” She added, “I don’t think we in Congress have gotten quite our handle on what we should do and how much AI we should be regulating.”

“I do not personally use it,” said Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), 83, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair.

On a personal level, “no,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), 83. The House Appropriations Committee ranking member added that she needs a “primer on AI, and now with the scare that we have out there, it’s much more important to be engaged.”

A GOP senator, speaking anonymously to offer candid remarks about their colleagues, told Axios that the number who use AI is “not very high.”

That’s helped lead to a knee-jerk negative reaction toward AI among several lawmakers, the senator added, as polls show growing numbers of voters turning against it.

Some elected officials said they don’t utilize AI much personally, though some on their teams employ the technology.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), who’s 48, said he uses AI “on the Google, when you can get a little bit of that search summarized for you. But otherwise no. I do not use it in research. We do not use it in our writing.” He said that he supports robust regulation and though some in his state government use AI, final decisions must be made by humans.

Other politicians were unsure if they’ve ever used AI — or said they’ve only done so by accident.

“I don’t think I do,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), 70, when asked if he utilizes it. “If I Google something, it kicks off an AI thing, but that’s about as far as I go.”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), 88.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), 73, said she doesn’t seek out AI on her own, but that “it pops up on my phone occasionally.”

“Not intentionally,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), 68. “The only AI use that I’m kind of familiar with is an AI tool attempting to summarize email chains, and they often get it wrong.”

What they’re saying: Some lawmakers such as Kaine argued that they don’t need to use AI to write legislation about it. He said he has read a lot about it and trusts his judgment more than AI.

After we spoke with him, Pallone shared a statement through a spokesperson that said: “You don’t need to do drugs like heroin to know they should be regulated. Members of Congress don’t need to spend their time talking to AI chatbots all day to know we need to rein in this dangerous technology.”

Friction point: But some members of Congress were irked or surprised that colleagues don’t use a technology they’re seeking to regulate.

“Are you serious?” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), 74, said in response to our question. “I use it for everything! I can’t believe there’s a senator that doesn’t use AI.”

Yes, but: There are members of Congress who are frequent AI users, including some in Hickenlooper’s age range.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), 79, the ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, told Axios he uses AI “every day.”

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), 76, went back to school to get a master’s degree in machine learning and said he prefers Claude.

Catch up quick: Some of the most powerful elected officials in the country have told other media outlets in the recent past that they don’t use AI.

In late 2025, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), 54, said in an interview that he didn’t think he’d ever used AI. About the same time, Karoline Leavitt, then press secretary to President Trump, 80, said that she didn’t think Trump personally uses AI, though his social media account regularly posts AI-made content.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/16/lawmakers-regulate-ai-without-using-it

Source: The 19th, Jenae Barnes
Photo: ChatGPT

Under pressure from anti-abortion advocates and officials, the EPA has agreed to study whether mifepristone and misoprostol are in the water supply in multiple cities.

After pressure from anti-abortion advocates, Republican lawmakers and state officials, the Environmental Protection Agency announced this month that it will launch a study to test for trace amounts of abortion pills as a water contaminant in multiple cities. Scientists say there’s no evidence that mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-drug regimen that is highly effective in ending a pregnancy, harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

“What if I were to tell you that every time you fill up a glass of water at your kitchen sink from the tap, you were actually *drinking* someone else’s abortion,” influencer Isabel Brown wrote in an Instagram post in May. In the accompanying video, the Gen Z conservative content creator, who has more than 1 million followers on her platform, talks to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a national anti-abortion organization, and contends that anti-abortion medication is “poisoning” the water.

The claim isn’t new. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have argued that abortion medications, primarily mifepristone, pollute the environment and put pregnant people’s health at risk. But the argument has now become part of a widespread and often coordinated effort to create federal and state policy that further suppresses abortion access.

On June 5, 14 Republican state attorneys general and 19 GOP lawmakers in Congress urged the EPA to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant. In two concurrent letters, officials argued that the abortion medication, part of a safe and effective two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies, is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways” and violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

One letter was signed by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. The other letter, led by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, made similar claims and was signed by 18 other GOP lawmakers.

Environmental health experts have consistently said there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication causes harm to the environment — or to humans. Both reproductive rights advocates and environmental scientists have said that the argument co-opts environmental policy as a pathway to weaponize and stigmatize health care.

“This is really part of a broader effort to restrict access to medication abortion,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights. She said anti-abortion activists are increasingly turning to “every lever they can” as medication abortion has become the largest share of abortion care nationwide. Medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023, according to Guttmacher Institute data.

Does oral abortion medication really end up in drinking water?

Anti-abortion advocates contend that over 50 tons of medical waste “including blood, placental tissue, and human remains” are flushed into water systems each year as a result of these drugs. They argue high concentration of the elements of mifepristone in water, specifically a hormone called progesterone, disrupts and reduces fertility in women. They also say that previous results of federal testing of mifepristone’s environmental impact are outdated.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant. Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that mifepristone is used by a small fraction of the population and is typically taken as a one-time dose. By comparison, many pharmaceuticals taken daily by tens of millions of Americans enter wastewater systems in far greater quantities. He also noted that mifepristone was not included among nearly 700 pharmaceutical compounds the EPA previously screened for potential water contamination concerns.

Instead, Donley described the effort as an attempt to use environmental concerns as a pretext for limiting reproductive rights. He noted that while proponents are seeking to add mifepristone to the EPA’s 6th Contaminant Candidate List (CCL6), a preliminary list of substances that could potentially be considered for future drinking water regulation, placement on the list would not itself regulate the drug but could begin a lengthy review process.

Donley added that focusing on mifepristone distracts from well-documented water quality threats, including PFAS — known as forever chemicals — pesticides, lead and nitrate contamination.

“There are legitimate water quality threats that we need to attack and rectify in a regulatory manner. And then there are things that are out in the left field that just distract people,” Donley said.

Where did this argument come from and why is it gaining traction again now?

In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested for the environmental effects of mifepristone and found “no significant impact.” In the June letter, lawmakers cite the FDA study, and urge “reconsideration” of potential harm to the environment.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, opponents have increasingly focused on limiting access to abortion medication and prescribing it through telehealth, which has become a critical pathway for people living in states with abortion bans.

But anti-abortion groups have ramped up efforts during the second Trump administration to advocate for the official classification of mifepristone as a water contaminant.

Last November, Students for Life of America (SFLA), a national anti-abortion group, met with the EPA to advocate for adding mifepristone to the CCL6 as the agency carried out a routine update to a separate list of health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals that must be tracked in drinking water.

The coordinated letters in June were timed toward the EPA’s 60-day comment period, which began in April and allowed members of the public to submit their thoughts on draft proposals to be reviewed by the agency.

“SFLA asks that mifepristone be tracked, given the reasonable cause for concern that regular and ongoing exposure to a progesterone blocker is impacting public health, endangered species, and the environment,” the anti-abortion group said in a statement on their website, adding that the group plans to take on the issue in every state. “You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water. You don’t have to be pro-life to be concerned that we are being ‘microdosed’ by progesterone blockers, which are a factor in rising infertility.”

The SFLA said it collected over 1,700 public comments to send to the EPA, and helped spearhead the 14-state campaign of letters from attorneys general to the EPA ahead of its public comment period for the CCL6.

The draft for the CCL6 received nearly 22,000 public comments before closing on June 5, public records show.

How are lawmakers trying to change environmental abortion policies?

In 2025, anti-abortion policymakers introduced nine bills in seven states tying medication abortion to water pollution, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That same year, 25 members of Congress sent a similar letter asking the EPA to monitor for environmental harms of mifepristone. This March, U.S. Rep Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois, introduced a Clean Water for All Life Act, citing similar claims of environmental degradation from abortion medication.

According to Bernstein and Guttmacher state policy adviser Kimya Forouzan, some proposals would require state agencies to test wastewater for abortion medications. Others would require patients to use so-called “catch kits” and medical waste bags to collect and return pregnancy tissue after taking abortion medication. Some bills would create liability for drug manufacturers if abortion medications were detected in wastewater.

While the bills vary, abortion rights advocates say they share a common goal: creating additional barriers to medication abortion access.

“The CCL is one part of a broad regulatory process. This draft list is then used to inform another list, which determines which contaminants are monitored and regulated, but the surveillance really does happen at a municipality and then state level,” Bernstein said, adding: “So this would be setting federal benchmarks for localities to monitor in their wastewater.”

To date, neither President Donald Trump nor EPA chief Lee Zeldin have explicitly spoken to any health risks of mifepristone in water. But the president and leading administration officials’ decision to stay silent on the issue may increase pressure from anti-abortion advocates, according to Bernstein.

“We anticipate that disinformation campaigns surrounding mifepristone, including these false claims on the environmental impact, will continue to escalate — particularly as abortion opponents are frustrated at a perceived lack of action by the Trump administration,” Bernstein told The 19th. “We know, however, that restricting access to abortion is politically unfavorable, and candidates may be hesitant to focus on these efforts before the midterm elections.

What are the stakes for pregnant people?

As abortion rights and access have shrunk, Forouzan said that medication abortion has become a “lifeline” for many people seeking care after Dobbs, particularly through telehealth providers operating under shield laws, which are state-by-state legal protections to safeguard practitioners from being sued by states with abortion bans. As a result, anti-abortion officials at the state and federal level have increasingly focused on restricting the remaining ways people can access abortion care.

Forouzan said the push to monitor abortion medication in wastewater contributes to a broader “culture of surveillance” surrounding abortion. She said proposals to test wastewater for mifepristone raise concerns about how such monitoring data could eventually be used and whether it could increase scrutiny of people who obtain medication abortions.

Do these claims have the potential to impact federal policy?

The potential of environmental harms continues to shape policy for abortion and anti-abortion advocates. On the anniversary of Dobbs, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat from Colorado, submitted a resolution to address the disinformation campaign, saying that water systems should “not be weaponized for the purposes of surveilling, tracking, or detecting use of, stigmatizing, and further restricting access to medication abortion care.”

Advocates also point to what they see as a contradiction in the campaign. Many of the same advocates and elected officials who support mifepristone monitoring have opposed other environmental hazard regulations. For example, in Indiana, where the state’s attorney general co-signed the letter, state lawmakers recently passed legislation to deregulate the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, an agency in charge of limiting pollution in the state’s air, water and soil.

The EPA has already taken action to recommend states begin testing drinking water for abortion medications. In April, the agency released a list of 374 drugs that states should monitor. While it does not include mifepristone, it does include other medications used in abortions such as misoprostol and methotrexate, commonly used in daily birth control and the NuvaRing contraceptive. It’s the first time the agency has designated pharmaceuticals as a contaminant group, according to an April press release.

The EPA did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment.

The EPA’s comment period allowed 60 days for the public to weigh in on the list before agency staff began reviewing the feedback and finalizing. Now that the June comment period has closed, whether the agency will ultimately add the medication to the list remains uncertain. However, when federal regulators previously reviewed environmental concerns related to mifepristone, they found no evidence warranting restrictions, according to Bernstein.

Bernstein and Forouzan said that anti-abortion states and lawmakers often learn from each other in order to pass bills in their respective states. Forouzan added these efforts work “parallel” to federal bill proposals, both with the same goal: to restrict further access.

“Its really just to restrict access to mifepristone and specifically to roll back requirements to force in-person dispensation, which would really limit access to a lot of folks.”

Four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, reproductive advocates say the evolution of anti-abortion campaigns continue to “severely restrict” access to care across the country. Thirteen states currently enforce total bans, and 6 explicitly prohibit telehealth use to provide abortion pills, according to Guttmacher Institute.

“It’s contributing to this culture of surveillance around medication abortion at a time when that is already increasing, and folks, especially in banned states, are facing increasing fear of criminalization,” Bernstein said. “There are concerns whether it will be eventually used for the criminalization of patients, in addition to creating a broader restriction of mifepristone and perpetuating these myths.”

https://19thnews.org/2026/06/drinking-water-abortion-pills-environmental-policy

Source: ExtremeTech, Jon Martindale
Photo: Anton Petrus/Getty Images

We’re not recommending you do it, but in this economy? There are worse ideas.

A lucky and determined dumpster diver on Reddit has showcased their haul of various functioning desktops and laptop systems, as well as standalone SSDs, RAM, and even graphics cards. Considering how expensive consumer electronics are here in late 2026, this haul represents hundreds to thousands of dollars of valuable hardware.

None of its super current, but it’s all very functional, and some of it is worth some real money.

The thread appeared on the r/HomeLab subreddit a few days ago, with user u/Tsuto showcasing a range of hardware they’d picked up from the electronics bin at their local landfill site over the past few months. They’ve pulled a few desktop systems and a range of components, allowing them to piece together a system with a pair of 256GB SSDs (one of them a Samsung 850 Evo, too), two 2TB hard drives, and a 1TB SSD. They then upgraded it with 64GB of RAM and a newer i7 7700 from Amazon.

In another instance, u/Tsuto was able to get a Core i7 Asus gaming laptop up and running just by replacing the battery for $25. Sure, it’s only a 4710HQ, but its got 16GB of RAM and a basic 860M GPU—plenty for basic esports play.

Other great finds include an MSI Radeon RX 580, a couple sticks of Crucial Ballistix Sport memory, and a $60 soundbar. The desktops’ cables, coolers, and system fans are all worthy saves, too. As long as they work well enough, it represents serious savings on trying to build or buy anything new.

Some commenters in the thread question whether u/Tsuto is allowed to grab these kinds of electronics, as their own landfills have strict “no scavenging” policies. But u/Tsuto said that while their local landfill technically prohibits scavenging, the staff there are happy to look the other way when they’re rummaging around.

ExtremeTech in no way encourages you to go dumpster diving or look for loot at your local landfill. It could be dangerous, and you could face fines, arrest, and/or trespassing charges.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/dumpster-diving-diyer-secures-working-ssds-ram-laptops-from-their-local

Source: The Atlantic Daily, Will Gottsegen
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty

Donald Trump blamed the global diesel shortage on Ukraine’s strikes in Russia. He’s ignoring a far more obvious cause: the war he started.

Gasoline prices have been up all summer, as have jet-fuel prices, as have home-heating-oil prices—but nothing has jumped quite like diesel. The average price for a gallon of diesel in the United States just hit an all-time high of $6.27, almost double what it was in late February. It’s no secret that the Iran war is largely responsible for America’s energy woes. So far, Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay these increases as temporary side effects (a “little glitch,” he said in March) and remind everyone that oil prices were higher under Joe Biden (which is true). Lately, though, the president has been telling us to look away from Iran and toward a different war.

Over the weekend, he called on Ukraine’s president to stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he said was “causing a shortage of diesel.” And yesterday morning, he announced a partial energy cease-fire between the two countries, claiming that the “World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.” (Although both Ukraine and Russia have signaled that they’d be open to such an agreement, they continued attacking each other last night.) Focusing on Eastern Europe may be a convenient distraction tactic, but the reality is that this war is ultimately less important for U.S. diesel than the one that Trump is waging in the Middle East.

Diesel’s rally has to do with how it’s distilled. Diesel, like gasoline, primarily comes from crude oil, which has been in short supply since the Strait of Hormuz was effectively shut down in February. Middle Eastern crude, which is sludgy and sulphurous, is particularly conducive to producing diesel. Making matters worse, many local refineries have been attacked or have preemptively gone offline, leaving the region less equipped to handle the crude that remains. Yemen’s Houthis attacked a major Saudi facility last week as a prelude to a broader offensive.

The refinery problem is global. At their summer peak, the world’s facilities were producing 4.2 million fewer barrels a day than they were last year. As Trump has pointed out, Ukrainian attacks on refineries in Russia—usually the world’s second-largest diesel exporter—have only compounded the issue. With Moscow maintaining its ban on diesel exports (meant to protect domestic supply), more countries are turning to the U.S. to make up the difference. American plants are now “running all-out,” per the American Petroleum Institute, using almost all of their processing power, and the U.S. is exporting more refined-oil products on average than it was last year. U.S. refineries typically shut down for at least a couple of weeks for maintenance around this time of year, too, which could potentially squeeze supply even more.

Still, Matt Smith, the director of commodity research at the data firm Kpler, told me that Ukrainian aggression “isn’t equally to blame, let alone the leading factor,” in America’s rising diesel prices. Even if Russia and Ukraine agreed to a cease-fire today, global refining capacity wouldn’t magically return right away. As I wrote in May, damaged facilities take time to repair and come back online once they’ve been shut down. Gregory Brew, an energy historian and a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, told me that for any détente to have an effect on diesel prices, “it would likely need to last several weeks at least.” Meanwhile, the situation in the Middle East remains unstable. The Saudi Arabian government recently shut down a crucial pipeline that was damaged in a strike by Iran-aligned militias in Iraq (the pipeline had been moving 4 to 5 percent of the global oil supply—several million barrels a day). Combine these risks with elevated seasonal demand for diesel, which in the U.S. tends to peak around the harvest season, and it’s clear that the European conflict is only one force among many behind this price spike.

Americans are feeling the effects. One gas station in San Diego has been selling diesel for $9.99 a gallon, which is as high as its three-digit physical display will permit. Groceries may become more expensive because farm equipment and refrigerated 18-wheelers tend to run on diesel. Trains predominantly use diesel, too, and railroads’ fuel surcharges on grain shipments have more than doubled over the past year. Nearly 5 million homes could be paying more for heating oil (which is chemically similar to diesel and subject to some of the same economic pressures) as well.

As everyday costs continue to climb, voters are growing more and more dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of the economy. And over the past few months, the president has been looking for someone—anyone—to share the blame. A speedy Trump-negotiated end to the Ukraine war is unlikely for many reasons. But even in the fantasy world where he pulls that off, it wouldn’t save him from a diesel spike of his own creation.

Source: The Information (The Briefing), Martin Peers
Photo: ChatGPT

When it comes to product names, companies tend to move in packs. In video streaming, almost every company included a plus sign in the name brands of their services (Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+—you get the picture). In tech, we’ve got Apple One, Google One and now Meta One (we used to have Amazon One, but that has been dropped). Does no one have any imagination?

Aside from Amazon One, which was a palm-reader system for retail stores, all the other Ones are subscription services for various add-on offerings from the tech firms. Some of these have been around for years—Google One and Apple One have long offered extra amounts of digital storage, along with other perks—but AI is making subscriptions a far more important business model than it has ever been for tech. Google has added extra use of its AI service to its Google One offering. Meta One—unveiled on Tuesday—also offers extra AI usage, as well as some additional tools for using Meta’s social media apps.

Can these subscriptions help offset the hundreds of billions tech companies are spending on AI? That’s very hard to say. Beyond entertainment, the big consumer tech firms haven’t typically put much effort into selling subscriptions—they make so much money from other things—and the bottom-line importance of subscriptions varies a lot. Apple, for instance, has a bunch of them, available individually or bundled together in the Apple One offering, that are part of its services segment (along with advertising and AppleCare). Services generated 28% of Apple’s revenue in the June quarter and likely more of its profits, as services’ gross margin is nearly twice that of hardware.

It’s a similar story at Snap, a small social media firm, which has a bunch of different subscriptions, including Snapchat+ and Lens+. Dollars flowing from those offerings enabled Snap to report 11% growth last year, even though advertising grew only 5.8%. Google’s results, though, tell a different story. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in April that its users were then paying for 350 million subscriptions, mostly due to Google One and YouTube offerings. And yet subscription revenue was mixed in with other businesses in a line item producing $12.9 billion in the second quarter, just 11% of the total.

What complicates the picture further is that in AI, every company offers a free tier of service. And there are lots of AI options, including from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and SpaceX’s Grok. If you don’t want to spend money, you can jump around. Of course, you get more value by sticking with one chatbot, which remembers your past queries, so habits will change. But as the news business has learned, persuading people to pay for your service isn’t easy.

The Wonder of Food Dealmaking

You have to hand it to Marc Lore—he’s good at raising money. The entrepreneur has raised some fresh cash for his Wonder restaurant- and food-delivery business by selling a campus dining service it inherited from a previous acquisition to DoorDash for $300 million in cash. At the same time, DoorDash is kicking in $125 million to expand Wonder’s recent Series D fundraising round, which had already raised $650 million.

This deal is remarkable in a number of respects. Wonder got the campus dining business when it bought Grubhub at the start of last year, for $650 million. So Wonder has got back nearly half what it paid for Grubhub through this deal. As Grubhub itself paid $150 million for the campus business back in 2018, Wonder seems to be doing well out of the acquisition.

Whether Wonder itself is making money is a whole different question. The fact that Lore keeps raising money suggests it’s not. Before today’s deal, Wonder had raised $3 billion, at a valuation most recently of $9.65 billion, according to PitchBook. Contrast that with DoorDash, which raised $2.5 billion before it went public in 2020 (and it had more than $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet at the time of its IPO). The biggest wonder about Lore’s company is how he manages to persuade more investors to put up more capital. (Lore also did well selling a controlling stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves just over a year after buying it.)

In Other News

• Elon Musk on Monday once again teased the potential of a merger between Tesla and SpaceX, saying it was a “great question” why Tesla and SpaceX were separate companies. “With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas?” Musk added during a virtual appearance at the All-In Summit.

• Salesforce unveiled a new AI model, Koa, which it developed with Nvidia and is based on one of the chipmaker’s Nemotron open-source models.

• Chinese AI chip designer Shanghai Biren Technology is considering raising around $1 billion through a stock offering, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

• OpenAI is considering raising money at a $1.2 trillion valuation, the Financial Times reported.

Welcome to The Weekly Spill—Silicon Bay Partners’ regularly scheduled download of thoughts, takes, and the occasional side-eye at the world as it actually is (not just as it’s pitched in a deck). Each week, we sift through the noise across current events, politics, startups, and financial markets to bring you what matters—and what’s just pretending to. 

We aim to keep things light, even when the topics aren’t. That means a bit of satire where it’s earned, a bit of skepticism where it’s called for, and a commitment to staying grounded in facts even when opinions sneak in through the side door. We won’t always be non-judgmental—but we will always try to be clear-eyed.

Think of this as your informed, occasionally irreverent briefing for the week ahead. Read it for insight, stay for perspective, and feel free to disagree—that’s o.k. too. Fair warning: Sometimes we spill more than once a week!

Scan Your Iris For A First Date

Dating apps are increasingly asking hopeless romantics to prove they’re human through biometric verification like face scans, iris scans, and liveness checks. Romance scams across the industry topped $4B between 2015 and 2025, according to the FBI, and nearly half of current online daters in the US have been targeted by one. But cybersecurity experts warn it’s mostly smoke and mirrors: a verified face doesn’t equate to trustworthiness, just like saying you like “hiking” in your bio doesn’t mean you’ve ever left your couch.

The Man Who Ate Paris

He wears wigs, trashes legendary pâtissiers, and terrifies the city’s top chefs. Meet Yann, the viral critic rattling France’s culinary establishment.

“The food is so disgusting that you’d be better off getting sodomized than eating here,” the 44-year-old Paris food critic once said, according to author Alexander Lobrano.

Sixteen months after his savage takedown of L’Avenue, the fashion-world canteen on swanky Avenue Montaigne, Yann has become a major thorn in the side of Paris chefs and restaurant owners. At Brasserie Lipp, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he pronounced its lauded veal chop “burned and ruined,” adding, “Rats have been running around inside this place. Just awful!”

Make Robots Fun Again

That’s the mission of Dynamic Creatures, which emerged from stealth this week to ditch industrial bots in favor of something more… huggable. The company, founded by two Boston Dynamics alums, is building robotic characters for theme parks, casinos, and cruise ships, starting with a purple poodle named Danielle. The startup plans to launch its first pilots in 2027, with puppeteers in place to operate the fuzzy creatures while the AI learns what makes humans laugh.

A Status Symbol, Really?

When was the last time you touched a real, cloth handkerchief? Before disposable tissues became ubiquitous, these pieces of cloth dried our tears, wiped our sweat, and kept our noses clean. For a time, they even did something no ordinary Kleenex could ever do: signal elite social status.

Among the European aristocracy in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in France and England, handkerchiefs were meant for display, whether in a pocket, a hand, or as part of an elaborate social ritual.

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: VIP+ Adobe Stock

The great cable escape has turned into a monthly subscription scavenger hunt

Remember when streaming was supposed to save us from cable? The pitch was simple: Cut the cord. Forget the $100-plus cable bill. Pay Netflix a few bucks a month, grab some popcorn and enjoy television on your terms. It was practically revolutionary. Then everybody else showed up.

Disney launched Disney+. HBO became Max, then HBO Max became Max, then eventually became HBO Max again—because apparently even streaming services need identity therapy. Paramount launched Paramount+. Peacock arrived. Apple joined the party. Hulu kept going. Amazon turned Prime Video into part of a much larger subscription machine.

And suddenly, the cable bundle we had escaped was back. Only now we’re assembling it ourselves.

According to a recent analysis, subscribing to all of the major U.S. streaming services without advertising can now cost more than $137 a month. Even choosing cheaper ad-supported versions can push the combined bill toward $60 or more. So much for cutting the cord.

Netflix still wears the crown

If streaming were a presidential election, Netflix would still be the incumbent.

Netflix had roughly 325 million subscribers worldwide at the end of 2025, putting it comfortably ahead of most traditional subscription streaming competitors.

But there is an important wrinkle when comparing subscriber numbers.

Amazon Prime is estimated to have roughly 200 million subscribers, but Prime isn’t simply a television subscription. It includes shipping benefits, music, shopping perks and other services. Prime Video is part of that larger ecosystem.

Disney+ has more than 130 million subscribers, while Paramount+, Hulu and Peacock trail behind.

In other words, Netflix remains the clearest answer to the question, “Which traditional global streaming service has the most paying subscribers?”

But there’s another contender worth mentioning. YouTube.

If we’re talking about sheer video viewers rather than paid streaming subscriptions, YouTube is a monster. It operates under an entirely different business model, however, so comparing its audience directly with Netflix subscribers is a little like comparing McDonald’s customers with Costco members.

Both are enormous. They’re just counting different things. What does streaming actually cost? Here is where things get interesting.

And therein lies the dirty little secret of streaming: You’re not necessarily paying less than cable anymore. You’re just paying differently. Instead of one large bill, you’ve got six smaller ones quietly nibbling away at your checking account. It’s death by subscription.

And then there are the ads

This was perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch of the streaming era. We left cable because we hated commercials. Now we’re paying companies to show us commercials.

The difference is that the commercial comes with a lower subscription price and, presumably, the comforting knowledge that someone has calculated exactly which commercial you’re most likely to tolerate. Advertising has become increasingly important to streaming companies because subscriptions alone aren’t producing enough growth.

In 2026, advertising loads have been increasing across major streaming platforms. One recent analysis found that the amount of advertising per hour on streaming services rose 18% between January and August. Netflix still has one of the lighter ad loads, while Paramount+, Disney+ and Hulu are considerably heavier.

Netflix expects its advertising revenue to reach roughly $3 billion in 2026. That’s not pocket change. It’s a second business model.

And it explains why your supposedly inexpensive streaming service suddenly knows that you’re interested in automobiles, prescription drugs and mattresses.

So how can Tubi be free? Now we get to the really interesting question. How can somebody give you television for nothing?

Services such as Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel operate primarily under what’s known as the FAST model—Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television. The basic business equation is remarkably similar to old-fashioned television:

You watch. They sell advertising. You don’t pay with money. You pay with attention. That’s actually a pretty good deal for the streaming company.

Suppose a service has 50 million people watching free programming. Advertisers pay the service to reach those viewers. The streaming company uses some of that advertising revenue to license programming, operate its technology and make a profit.

You get The Big Lebowski or an old episode of Law & Order. The advertiser gets your eyeballs. The streaming service gets paid. Everybody wins. Well, except perhaps the person who just sat through a commercial for a product they absolutely do not need.

Free doesn’t mean worthless

There’s another reason free streaming services can offer surprisingly good programming. They don’t have to produce everything themselves.

Netflix spends enormous sums creating original movies and television shows. A free service can acquire older movies, television programs and library content for licensing fees that are generally far less expensive than producing a new blockbuster series.

Think of it as the difference between owning a restaurant and running a very successful buffet. You don’t have to cook everything from scratch. You just need enough people walking through the door. And with streaming, the “door” is free.

The strange economics of streaming

This is where streaming gets fascinating. A company can have millions of users and still struggle to make money. Why? Because subscribers aren’t cheap. There are licensing costs. Production costs. Actors. Writers. Directors. Servers. Bandwidth. Marketing. Technology. Customer support. And increasingly, expensive sports rights.

A company can spend hundreds of millions of dollars producing a show that attracts millions of viewers—and still have to produce another show next month to keep those viewers from leaving. That’s why streaming companies increasingly care about something called churn.

Churn is simply the percentage of customers who cancel. And consumers have become very good at it.

Why pay $19.99 for Peacock all year when you can subscribe for two months, binge everything you want, cancel and move on? Streaming companies have noticed. Consumers call it saving money. The industry calls it a problem.

Recent research shows that roughly 40% of subscribers canceled at least one streaming service during a six-month period, with many later returning.

The modern consumer has become a streaming nomad. Subscribe. Binge. Cancel. Repeat.

Who actually gives you the most for your money? That depends on what you watch.

Netflix remains the best all-around service for people who want a massive selection and lots of original programming.

Disney+ is difficult to beat for families and fans of Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars.

HBO Max may have the strongest combination of premium television, movies and established classics. In a recent 2026 comparison, it was ranked the strongest overall service, while Disney+/Hulu scored particularly well for variety and value.

Peacock is increasingly interesting for sports fans and NBC programming.

Apple TV+ has a relatively small library but has developed a reputation for expensive, high-quality original programming.

Prime Video is a different animal because you’re buying into the broader Amazon ecosystem.

And then there’s the free stuff.

Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel can be surprisingly good if you’re willing to trade some control—and tolerate commercials—for a $0 monthly bill.

The new streaming strategy: Stop subscribing to everything

Perhaps the smartest approach isn’t choosing one streaming service. It’s choosing two or three at a time. Subscribe to Netflix when there’s something you want to watch.

Add HBO Max when the new season of your favorite show arrives. Grab Peacock when the sports schedule gets interesting. Then cancel one. This is essentially streaming rotation. And it makes perfect economic sense.

Why pay $137 a month for eight services when you’re probably watching three of them? The streaming companies would prefer that you forget you’re subscribed. Your bank account would prefer that you remember. The irony of it all

Streaming began as the antidote to cable. No contracts. No giant bundles. No paying $9.99 for 400 channels you never watch just to get the three you actually wanted. And for a while, it worked. But the entertainment industry discovered something cable companies had known for decades:

People will pay for convenience. Then they discovered something even better:

People will pay more for the same convenience if you give them a cheaper option first. That’s why today’s streaming menu increasingly looks like this:

$8.99 with commercials. $13.99 with fewer commercials. $19.99 without commercials. $29.99 with everything. And somewhere underneath it all is a marketing executive whispering:

“They’ll never notice another $2.” They notice. They just haven’t canceled yet.

The bottom line

The streaming revolution isn’t dead. It simply grew up.

Netflix isn’t the new cable company. Disney isn’t the new cable company. Amazon isn’t the new cable company. Together, they are becoming cable. The difference is that instead of somebody else deciding which bundle you need, you get to build your own.

And if you’re smart, you won’t build the whole thing. Pick what you actually watch. Use the free services when they make sense. Rotate subscriptions. Embrace the occasional commercial. And remember the most important rule of modern television:

If you’re paying for eight streaming services, you didn’t cut the cord. You just turned the cord into Wi-Fi.

Source: The Information, The Information Partnerships
Photo: Google Gemini

In almost any organization, there are practically infinite content ideas hiding in memos, emails, presentation decks, and meeting notes. But too often, this material mostly sits idle. Ideas that sparked excitement in the moment get ignored in favor of the countless little emergencies of office life, and eventually they are forgotten entirely.

Even with many companies actively encouraging their executives to post organic thought leadership on professional networking sites, social media, and company channels, there are countless missed opportunities to turn off-the-cuff insights into valuable content.

Google Gemini can help you transform your meeting notes into content plans, on-brand slogan ideas, and even booth mock-ups for your events team.

Step 1: Brainstorm Blog Ideas

Imagine you’ve just stepped out of a meeting with your social media team leads. You have a document full of notes (or maybe even a transcript) about what resonates with your audience, trending topics in your industry, target audience data, and keywords that are effective at driving engagement with your brand.

Instead of letting this wealth of information stay locked inside your notes, open up a new Gemini chat and brainstorm how to turn your team’s sprawling strategy session into a series of relevant, focused blog posts. Here’s a prompt you can try:

Generate a list of four relevant and engaging thought leadership blog post ideas for [company] based on trending topics, target audience analysis, and brand keywords.

Gemini will return ideas for blog posts with catchy, clickable titles, along with information about target audience, keywords, angle, and tone. For example, if your meeting notes talk about how your customers are worried about their employees using unauthorized IT tools, Gemini might suggest a blog post titled “The Anatomy of a Zombie Subscription: How to Audit and Kill Shadow IT Instantly.”

Step 2: Develop the Material

The initial output will just be kernels of potential blog posts, but you can go back and forth with Gemini to develop them into real content. Take the “Zombie Subscription” blog, for example. You might ask Gemini to give you options for a “four tips” article structure, or to identify specific ideas from your meeting notes that merit extra attention.

Use your own judgment—and your own language—during this process, rather than having Gemini write your entire blog post for you. Gemini can help with brainstorming, outlining, drafting, and revision, but your audience is ultimately reading the content to hear your own expert insights.

Step 3: Distill the Main Message

Maybe during your meeting, your team also discussed launching a new brand campaign. You know that your customers value your reliable and unique services, and your company has a long history of delivering for its customers.

But sometimes, it can feel impossible to condense these big ideas into a few words that really communicate why customers come back to your company over and over.

If you need help getting started with ideas for a new campaign tagline, open a new chat in Gemini and prompt something like: Generate three options for a new slogan emphasizing reliability, innovation, and a long history of popularity for [company].

For a B2B fintech company, Gemini might offer options like “Innovating Beyond the Bank. Trusted with Billions.” Or: “Built for Tomorrow. Proven by $10 Billion Today.”

You may not hit the mark exactly on your first prompt. Maybe you want more (or less) alliteration, for example. Maybe you want it to be five words or fewer, unbroken by punctuation. You can keep asking Gemini for new variations until the new tagline is just right.

Step 4: Mock Up Visuals for Events

Often, one successful creative project sparks ideas for another. After you create your blog campaign and craft your new slogan, you might turn your attention to upcoming events.

Try mocking up booth graphics ideas for your events team. Here’s a sample prompt:

Create an image of a trade show booth using orange and blue colors. The booth should be modern and showcase interactive computer stations.

Gemini will generate an image that you can sketch on in-app, giving you a quick, no-risk way to play with your potential trade show setup. And between the blog posts, the tagline, and the event visuals, you will have turned a couple of pages of messy meeting notes into the bones of an entire marketing campaign.

Source: Dezeen, Nat Barker
Photo: Courtesy of Dyson

As Dyson seeks to disrupt the toothbrush market with its CameraJet, we look back at how the technology company has fared in its attempts to transform other product categories over the years.

Founded in Britain but now controversially headquartered in Singapore, Dyson is one of the world’s most innovative companies.

Its mission-statement is to identify product categories overdue for a shake-up and leverage its extensive engineering and design capabilities to deliver something that works better for consumers.

Dyson CameraJet electric toothbrush

The Dyson CameraJet electric toothbrush squirts mouthwash at the gaps between teeth. Photo courtesy of Dyson
The firm has had a string of enormous successes, as well as projects that have crashed and burned. Company founder James Dyson often casts failure as an occupational hazard of innovation, and a valuable source of learning.

Dyson’s latest product – a toothbrush that flosses your teeth with mouthwash while you brush – has been met with some scepticism. Much of the criticism comes down to its hefty price tag, though the company has an undeniable track record of making high-end everyday appliances mainstream.

So, while we wait to see if Dyson can do it again with the CameraJet, here are four product types the company has previously revolutionised, as well as four it hasn’t.

Four it did:

Dyson DC01
Vacuum cleaners

The story of James Dyson’s invention of the bagless vacuum cleaner in 1978 is well-known.

His cyclone-based design was first licensed by the Japanese company Apex in 1986 and after some success, Dyson was able to start manufacturing through his own company in the UK.

The DC01 (pictured) launched in 1993, and looked completely different to anything else on the market. Despite the high price-point it became a runaway bestseller, and bagless vacuums are now the norm.

Dyson has continued to innovate in the years since across nearly 100 vacuum models, notably with cordless technology and a ball system for steering.

Its most recent release in the category is the PencilVac, which the company claims is the world’s slimmest vacuum cleaner.

Dyson Airblade hand dryer
Hand dryers

Until around the turn of the millennium, the only hand dryers available in public bathrooms left a lot to be desired.

In theory, they worked by blowing warm air onto the user’s hands to evaporate moisture. In practice, they seemed to do barely any drying at all, and were highly unreliable – often blasting at scorching temperatures or failing to operate entirely.

The Dyson Airblade, released in 2006, used a different system. Powered by a compact digital motor, it fired a sheet of filtered cool air at more than 400 miles per hour over hands inserted into its maw, gently stripping water off the skin.

It was not the first high-speed hand dryer – Mitsubishi’s Jet Towel had become common in Japan during the 1990s, for example – but the Dyson’s futuristic design and clever marketing helped it and subsequent versions to become a common fixture in restrooms across the world.

Not everyone is a fan, however. Design critic Mark Lamster even declared the Airblade “the most abhorrent work of design in recent memory”.

And, as detailed in a Guardian long-read in 2019, the paper towel industry has backed a series of studies claiming that jet hand dryers like the Airblade spread more germs, which Dyson contests.

Dyson Air Multiplier fan
Fans

Having tackled vacuum cleaners and hand dryers, Dyson turned its attention to electric fans. It decided that the spinning blades on conventional fans – technology that dates back to 1880 – produce an unsatisfactorily uneven airflow, are tricky to clean, and dangerous to fingers.

In response, in 2009 the company unveiled the Air Multiplier, which it declared the world’s first bladeless fan. With a cylindrical base containing a motor and a ring perched on top, it used a similar system to the Airblade to smoothly blow 405 litres of air per second.

Subsequent models have incorporated heating, cooling, humidifying and purifying capabilities and are a significant part of Dyson’s product lineup – but have not had the same industry-wide impact as some of its other innovations, with bladed fans still a more common choice for consumers.

Dyson Supersonic
Hair care

With the launch of its Supersonic hair dryer in 2016, Dyson triggered a transformation of the hair-care industry.

Like the DC01, the Airblade and the Air Multiplier, the Supersonic looked markedly different to other products in its category, with a large hole in the middle.

The Supersonic is significantly lighter, quieter, quicker and gentler on hair than conventional dryers, thanks to a series of innovations developed over four years with £100 million of investment. The process even involved sending engineers to beauty school to learn how to blow-dry like professionals.

As with other Dyson products, the Supersonic was much more expensive than many competitors, but that didn’t stop it from becoming the best-selling hair dryer in the UK within a month of launching.

Dyson has since followed up with multiple other hair-styling tools, while other brands have raced to develop high-performance products marketed as beneficial for hair and scalp health.

In 2020, British Vogue called the Supersonic “an industry game-changer that has sent a shockwave through the hair industry”.

Dyson washing machine
Washing machines

Dyson’s first failure came in the early 2000s. After its engineers discovered that a two-hour cycle in a conventional washing machine removed less dirt than 15 minutes of hand-washing, they set about developing a new kind of mechanism.

Released in 2000, the CR01 Contrarotator used two counter-rotating drums designed to replicate hand-washing, and was followed by a second model in 2004.

Dyson maintains that its washing machines were more energy efficient than competitors and capable of dealing with bigger loads, but in 2005 the line was discontinued due to high manufacturing costs, which meant they were selling at a loss. Dyson himself would later tell Bloomberg he should have set a higher price point for the product.

Dyson Zone
Headphones

Towards the back end of the Covid pandemic, Dyson unveiled a product that was met with widespread bemusement.

The Dyson Zone combined a set of noise-cancelling headphones with a detachable air-filtering visor. The company said its first wearable product had been six years in the making, but in the context of the global health crisis, the marketing images of people wearing the device on the London Underground carried unhappy connotations.

Dyson withdrew the Zone from sale in mid-2025, with Dyson chief engineer Jake Dyson (James’s son) telling Wired the product was “completely ahead of its time”.

“We have sold thousands,” he said. “And we still have the tooling – but we’ve stopped manufacturing it. We haven’t thrown the tools away. It’s something we believe will come around in the future. It’s a brilliant product.”

The company hasn’t abandoned the headphones category entirely, releasing the much more conventional OnTrac in 2024. The product received favourable reviews and has reportedly had some commercial success, although it hasn’t triggered a significant shift in a crowded market.

Dyson CoVent ventilator
Ventilators

Dyson had another disappointing episode early in the pandemic, though in very different circumstances.

As the coronavirus spread across Europe in March 2020, demand for ventilators exploded, leading to widespread shortages of the mechanical breathing aids.

Over just 30 days, Dyson worked with medical device company The Technology Partnership to develop the CoVent ventilator, having been called on to help bolster supplies by then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson.

The design utilised Dyson’s proprietary digital motor and air-filtration technology, and was portable and easy to mount on a patient’s bed. It was also designed to be simple to manufacture at volume, with plans to produce 15,000 units including 10,000 for the UK’s National Health Service.

However, in late April the government told Dyson its ventilators were no longer required amid a realisation that the country’s need was less than previously estimated. James Dyson said at the time that the company “don’t regret our contribution to the national effort for one moment”.

At the public inquiry into the UK Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, former minister Michael Gove said that the CoVent failed to pass regulatory tests.

James Dyson and the N265
Electric cars

In 2017, Dyson announced that it was developing an electric car. But two years and £500 million later, the project was ultimately scrapped before the first prototype could be road-tested.

“The Dyson automotive team has developed a fantastic electric car, but unfortunately it is not commercially viable,” the company said at the time.

Details of the N526, as it was called, were later revealed to the Times. The car was a sporty-looking seven-seater SUV with an aluminium body, huge wheels and a sharply raking windscreen. Dashboard information would have been projected like a hologram in front of the driver, while the seats were reminiscent of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s MR Chaise.

Each car would have had to sell for £150,000 to break even, James Dyson told the paper. He said it would have been impossible to compete with other electric cars, claiming that car companies were selling electric vehicles at a loss subsidised by combustion-engine models.

“There’s huge sadness and disappointment,” he said. “Ours is a life of risk and of failure. We try things and they fail. Life isn’t easy.”

https://www.dezeen.com/2026/09/12/dyson-products-roundup

Source: The Atlantic Daily, David A. Graham
Photo: Trump speaking at Republican midterm convention (Joseph Rushmore for The Atlantic)

The president’s big challenge is rising prices. Unfortunately, all of his big policy ideas are likely to make it worse.

Just call it the Five-Grand Old Party. This week, at the Republican Party’s midterm faux-convention, President Trump announced something called (inevitably) the “Trump Dividend.” The premise is simple. “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

Problems abound. First, this is wildly inappropriate, for obvious reasons: It’s an attempt at using taxpayer money to bribe voters into supporting the president’s party. Because Trump is not premising the supposed payout on individuals’ votes, it might be legal, though the White House would presumably require congressional approval for the estimated $1.3 trillion cost. A Republican Congress might sign off; a Democratic one might be more inclined to start impeachment proceedings.

Second, the payments almost certainly won’t happen. (If you disagree, I’d be happy to sell you a nice bridge in Brooklyn if you sign your Trump Dividend over to me.) Trump has promised to cut checks to Americans before and not followed through, and this proposal appeared to catch many of Trump’s advisers, as well as Republican lawmakers, by surprise. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, quickly criticized the pledge.

Third, injecting more than $1 trillion into the economy wouldn’t just blow up the deficit and national debt—it would also drive up prices. Giving every American $5,000 to spend would create demand that couldn’t immediately be met, encouraging sellers to raise prices. I could quote lots of economists from left, right, and center who have already said that the payouts would be inflationary, but you could also just take it from Trump himself, who has repeatedly blamed inflation on high spending during the Biden administration—including in the same speech where he floated the dividend.

A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump’s cratering approval and his party’s sinking odds in the midterm elections, but nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary. The basic challenge is not novel to this president—voters hate inflation, yet most anti-inflation measures the government can take will hurt the economy, which voters also hate. But Trump’s strategy seems to be to commit to new proposals that would drive up costs.

In some cases, inflation is incidental to the president’s goal. When Trump launched the war in Iran, he apparently believed that it would end quickly—and might even result in the United States gaining control over Iran’s huge oil reserves. Instead, the war is dragging on into its seventh month, with no end in sight. The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have strangled shipping of oil as well as other goods, driving prices higher. The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel in the U.S. topped $6 today for the first time, and because so many goods move via diesel trucks, the rise drives further inflation.

Trump’s efforts to crack down on immigration also have the collateral effect of pushing prices up. The administration has not only tried to secure borders and deport unauthorized immigrants; it has also revoked legal status from more than 1 million people who were permitted to live and work in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. Many of these people were employed in industries such as construction and health care that are difficult and low-paid; for example, more than 20,000 Haitians with TPS worked in caregiving last year. Housing shortages plague many parts of the country, and more building could alleviate them. Perhaps Americans will be willing to take these difficult jobs, but with unemployment rates already low, that will likely require higher salaries—which will mean higher costs, and therefore higher prices.

Other Trump policy ideas are directly and explicitly inflationary. For decades, Trump has espoused protectionism, saying that the United States should impose tariffs in order to close trade deficits with some partners. Regardless of the other merits of this plan (and they are dubious at best), tariffs are by definition inflationary. The goal is to raise prices on certain products. A tariff is a tax on goods, and someone has to pay it.

Faced with economic headwinds and voter dissatisfaction, Trump has at many times dismissed voter concerns, but he has also pressured the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Trump attempted to oust former Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the board member Lisa Cook, and made clear that he expects his newly appointed chair, Kevin Warsh, to lower rates. By law, the Fed is required to promote maximum employment and stable prices. (It aims for 2 percent inflation.) Trump wants lower interest rates because they encourage economic growth, but they drive inflation for the same reasons: Lower rates encourage borrowing, which produces spending, which has a similar effect on prices as sending every American adult a $5,000 check.

Writing off Trump’s pursuit of inflationary ideas as cynical is tempting, if only because so much of what he does is cynical, but years of evidence suggest that Trump actually has little idea how economics works, as the journalist Steve Benen recently noted. The president’s obsession with trade deficits is nonsensical; Senator Rand Paul memorably quipped that because he gives money to his grocer and gets food in return, he’s running a trade deficit with the supermarket. Last week, Trump perplexingly suggested that the United States could simply cut off commerce entirely: “We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries.”

Perhaps Trump doesn’t understand that his ideas will drive up prices. Perhaps he does, but concludes that dangling free money in front of voters is worth the hit. Either way, new numbers released today show that inflation rose 3.4 percent from one year ago. Trump’s policies are working.