New York — Wall Street is tumbling Monday on fears the big U.S. companies that have feasted on the artificial-intelligence frenzy are under threat from a competitor in China that can do similar things for much cheaper.

The S&P 500 was down 1.9% in early trading. Big Tech stocks that have been the market’s biggest stars took the heaviest losses, with Nvidia down 11.5%, and they dragged the Nasdaq composite down 3.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has less of an emphasis on tech, was holding up a bit better with a dip of 160 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.

The shock to financial markets came from China, where a company called DeepSeek said it had developed a large language model that can compete with U.S. giants but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek’s app had already hit the top of Apple’s App Store chart by early Monday morning, and analysts said such a feat would be particularly impressive given how the U.S. government has restricted Chinese access to top AI chips.

Skepticism, though, remains about how much DeepSeek’s announcement will ultimately shake the AI supply chain, from the chip makers making semiconductors to the utilities hoping to electrify vast data centers running those chips.

“It remains to be seen if DeepSeek found a way to work around these chip restrictions rules and what chips they ultimately used as there will be many skeptics around this issue given the information is coming from China,” according to Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

DeepSeek’s disruption nevertheless rocked stock markets worldwide.

In Amsterdam, Dutch chip company ASML slid 8.9%. In Tokyo, Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. lost 8.3% and is nearly back to where it was before spurting on an announcement that it was joining a partnership trumpeted by the White House that would invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure.

And on Wall Street, shares of Constellation Energy sank 16.9%. The company has said it would restart the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to supply power for Microsoft’s data centers.

All the worries sent a gauge of nervousness among investors holding U.S. stocks toward its biggest jump since August. They also sent investors toward bonds, which can be safer investments than any stock. The rush sent the yield of the 10-year Treasury down to 4.53% from 4.62% late Friday.

It’s a sharp turnaround for the AI winners, which had soared in recent years on hopes that all the investment pouring into the industry would lead to a possible remaking of the global economy.

Nvidia’s stock had soared from less than $20 to more than $140 in less than two years before Monday’s drop, for example.

Other Big Tech companies had also joined in the frenzy, and their stock prices had benefited too. It was just on Friday that Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg was saying he expects to invest up to $65 billion this year, while talking up a massive data center it would build in Manhattan.

In stock markets abroad, movements for indexes across Europe and Asia weren’t as forceful as for the big U.S. tech stocks. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.6%, and Germany’s DAX lost 0.8%.

In Asia, stocks edged 0.1% lower in Shanghai after a survey of manufacturers showed export orders in China dropping to a five-month low.

The Federal Reserve holds its latest policy meeting later this week. Traders don’t expect recent weak data to push the Fed to cut its main interest rate. They’re virtually certain the central bank will hold steady, according to data from CME Group.
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Plastic waste accounts for 10 to 12 percent of all solid waste in Kenya, according to the United Nations Environmental Program. A Kenyan tech company is using plastic waste to print 3D models that help college students with their learning while reducing damage to the environment. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Nairobi.
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ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was in talks with multiple people over buying TikTok and would likely have a decision on the popular app’s future in the next 30 days.

“I have spoken to many people about TikTok and there is great interest in TikTok,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight to Florida.

Earlier in the day, Reuters reported two people with knowledge of the discussions said Trump’s administration is working on a plan to save TikTok that involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors to effectively take control of the app’s operations.

Under the deal being negotiated by the White House, TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, would retain a stake in the company, but data collection and software updates would be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok’s Web infrastructure, one of the sources told Reuters.

However, in his comments to reporters on the flight, Trump said he had not spoken to Oracle’s Larry Ellison about buying the app.

Asked if he was putting together a deal with Oracle and other investors to save TikTok, Trump said: “No, not with Oracle. Numerous people are talking to me, very substantial people, about buying it and I will make that decision probably over the next 30 days. Congress has given 90 days. If we can save TikTok, I think it would be a good thing.”

The sources did say the terms of any potential deal with Oracle were fluid and likely to change. One source said the full scope of the discussions was not yet set and could include the U.S. operations as well as other regions.

National Public Radio on Saturday reported the deal talks for TikTok’s global operations, citing two people with knowledge of the negotiations. Oracle had no immediate comment.

The deal being negotiated anticipates participation from ByteDance’s current U.S. investors, according to the sources. Jeff Yass’s Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Sequoia Capital are among ByteDance’s U.S. backers.

Representatives for TikTok, ByteDance investors General Atlantic, KKR, Sequoia and Susquehanna could not immediately be reached for comment.

Others vying to acquire TikTok, including the investor group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and another involving Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the YouTube star Mr. Beast, are not part of the Oracle negotiation, one of the sources said.

Oracle responsible

Under the terms of the deal, Oracle would be responsible for addressing national security issues. TikTok initially struck a deal with Oracle in 2022 to store U.S. users’ information to alleviate Washington’s worries about Chinese government interference.

TikTok’s management would remain in place, to operate the short video app, according to one of the sources.

The app, which is used by 170 million Americans, was taken offline temporarily for users shortly before a law that said it must be sold by ByteDance on national security grounds, or be banned, took effect on Jan. 19.

Trump, after taking office a day later, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after U.S. officials warned that under ByteDance, there was a risk of Americans’ data being misused.

Officials from Oracle and the White House held a meeting on Friday about a potential deal, and another meeting has been scheduled for next week, NPR reported.

Oracle was interested in a TikTok stake “in the tens of billions,” but the rest of the deal is in flux, the NPR report cited the source as saying.

Trump has said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” in TikTok.

NPR cited another source as saying that appeasing Congress is seen as a key hurdle by the White House.

Free speech advocates have opposed TikTok’s ban under a law passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by former President Joe Biden.

The company has said U.S. officials have misstated its ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect American users are also made in the U.S. 
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HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA — Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else. 

It’s raising questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it’s fair to excuse big power users from paying for the grid. Federal regulators are trying to figure out what to do about it, and quickly. 

Front and center is the data center that Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, is building next to the Susquehanna nuclear plant in eastern Pennsylvania. 

The arrangement between the plant’s owners and AWS — called a “behind the meter” connection — is the first to come before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. For now, FERC has rejected a deal that could eventually send 960 megawatts — about 40% of the plant’s capacity — to the data center. That’s enough to power more than 500,000 homes. 

That leaves the deal and others that likely would follow in limbo. It’s not clear when FERC, which blocked the deal on procedural grounds, will take up the matter again or how the change in presidential administrations might affect things. 

“The companies, they’re very frustrated because they have a business opportunity now that’s really big,” said Bill Green, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative. “And if they’re delayed five years in the queue, for example — I don’t know if it would be five years, but years anyway — they might completely miss the business opportunity.” 

Driving demand for energy-hungry data centers 

The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has fueled demand for data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. 

That’s spurred proposals to bring nuclear power plants out of retirement, develop small modular nuclear reactors, and build utility-scale renewable installations or new natural gas plants. In December, California-based Oklo announced an agreement to provide 12 gigawatts to data center developer Switch from small nuclear reactors powered by nuclear waste. 

Federal officials say fast development of data centers is vital to the economy and national security, including to keep pace with China in the artificial intelligence race. 

For AWS, the deal with Susquehanna satisfies its need for reliable power that meets its internal requirements for sources that don’t emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, such as coal, oil or gas-fueled plants. 

Big Tech also wants to stand up their centers fast. But tech’s voracious appetite for energy comes at a time when the power supply is already strained by efforts to shift away from planet-warming fossil fuels. 

They can build data centers in a couple years, said Aaron Tinjum of the Data Center Coalition. But in some areas, getting connected to the congested electricity grid can take four years, and sometimes much more, he said. 

Plugging directly into a power plant would take years off their development timelines. 

What’s in it for power providers 

In theory, the AWS deal would let Susquehanna sell power for more than they get by selling into the grid. Talen Energy, Susquehanna’s majority owner, projected the deal would bring as much as $140 million in electricity sales in 2028, though it didn’t disclose exactly how much AWS will pay for the power. 

The profit potential is one that other nuclear plant operators are embracing after years of financial distress and frustration with how they are paid in the broader electricity markets. Many say they’ve been forced to compete in some markets flooded with cheap natural gas and state-subsidized solar and wind energy. 

Power plant owners also say the arrangement benefits the wider public, by bypassing the costly buildout of long power lines and leaving more transmission capacity on the grid for everyone else. 

FERC’s big decision 

A favorable ruling from FERC could open the door to many more huge data centers and other massive power users like hydrogen plants and bitcoin miners, analysts say. 

FERC’s 2-1 rejection in November was procedural. Recent comments by commissioners suggest they weren’t ready to decide how to regulate such a novel matter without more study. 

In the meantime, the agency is hearing arguments for and against the Susquehanna-AWS deal. 

Monitoring Analytics, the market watchdog in the mid-Atlantic grid, wrote in a filing to FERC that the impact would be “extreme” if the Susquehanna-AWS model were extended to all nuclear power plants in the territory. 

Energy prices would increase significantly and there’s no explanation for how rising demand for power will be met even before big power plants drop out of the supply mix, it said. 

Separately, two electric utility owners — which make money in deregulated states from building out the grid and delivering power — have protested that the Susquehanna-AWS arrangement amounts to freeloading off a grid that ordinary customers pay to build and maintain. Chicago-based Exelon and Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power say the Susquehanna-AWS arrangement would allow AWS to avoid $140 million a year that it would otherwise owe. 

Susquehanna’s owners say the data center won’t be on the grid and question why it should have to pay to maintain it. But critics contend that the power plant itself is benefiting from taxpayer subsidies and ratepayer-subsidized services — and shouldn’t be able to strike deals with private customers that could increase costs for others. 

FERC’s decision will have “massive repercussions for the entire country” because it will set a precedent for how FERC and grid operators will handle the waiting avalanche of similar requests from data center companies and nuclear plants, said Jackson Morris of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Stacey Burbure, a vice president for American Electric Power, told FERC at a hearing in November that it needs to move quickly. 

“The timing of this issue is before us,” she said, “and if we take our typical five years to get this perfect, it will be too late.” 
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OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — From his home in northern California, Nick Russell, a former farm manager, is monitoring the Los Angeles-area fires.

He knows that about 600 kilometers south, people in Los Angeles are relying on his team’s live neighborhood-by-neighborhood updates on fire outbreaks, smoke direction, surface wind predictions and evacuation routes.

Russell is vice president of operations at Watch Duty, a free app that tracks fires and other natural disasters. It relies on a variety of data sources such as cameras and sensors throughout the state, government agencies, first responders, a core of volunteers, and its own team of reporters.

An emergency at his house, for example, would be “much different” from one at his neighbor’s house .4 kilometers away, Russell said. “That is true for communities everywhere, and that’s where technology really comes in.”

Watch Duty’s delivery of detailed localized information is one reason for its success with its 7 million users, many of whom downloaded the app in recent weeks.

It acts as a virtual emergency operations center, culling and verifying data points.

Watch Duty’s success points to the promise that technologies such as artificial intelligence and sensors will give residents and first responders the real-time information they need to survive and fight natural disasters.

Google and other firms have invested in technology to track fires. Several startup firms are also looking for ways to use AI, sensors and other technologies in natural disasters.

Utility firms work with Gridware, a company that places AI-enhanced sensors on power lines to detect a tree branch touching the line or any other vibrations that could indicate a problem.

Among Watch Duty’s technology partners is ALERTCalifornia, run by the University of San Diego, which has a network of more than 1,000 AI-enhanced cameras throughout the state looking for smoke. The cameras often detect fires before people call emergency lines, Russell said.

Together with ALERTCalifornia’s information, Russell said, “we have become the eyes and ears” of fires.

Another Watch Duty partner is N-5 Sensors, a Maryland-based firm. Its sensors, which are placed in the ground, detect smoke, heat and other signs of fire.

“They’re like a nose, if you will, so they detect smoke anomalies and different chemical patterns in the air,” Russell said.

Watch Duty is available in 22 states, mostly in the western U.S., and plans to expand to all states.

While fire has been its focus, Watch Duty also plans to track other natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, Russell said.

“Fire is not in the name,” he said. “We want to be that one-stop shop where people can go in those times of duress, to have a source that makes it clear and concise what’s happening.” 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order related to AI to “make America the world capital in artificial intelligence,” his aide told reporters in the White House’s Oval Office.

The order sets a 180-day deadline for an Artificial Intelligence Action Plan to create a policy “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”

Trump also told his AI adviser and national security assistant to work to remove policies and regulations put in place by former President Joe Biden.

Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.

Biden’s order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they were released to the public.

Trump also signed an executive order creating a cryptocurrency working group tasked with proposing a new regulatory framework for digital assets and exploring the creation of a cryptocurrency stockpile.

The much-anticipated action also ordered that banking services for crypto companies be protected, and banned the creation of central bank digital currencies that could compete with existing cryptocurrencies.

The order sees Trump fulfill a campaign trail pledge to be a “crypto president and promote the adoption of digital assets.”

That is in stark contrast to Biden’s regulators that, in a bid to protect Americans from fraud and money laundering, cracked down on crypto companies, suing exchanges Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and dozens more in federal court, alleging they were flouting U.S. laws.

The working group will be made up of the Treasury secretary, attorney general and chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with other agency heads. The group is tasked with developing a regulatory framework for digital assets, including stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The group is also set to “evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile … potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.”

In December, Trump named venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks as the crypto and artificial intelligence czar. He will chair the group, the order said.

Finally, Trump signed pardons for 23 anti-abortion protesters on Thursday in the Oval Office of the White House.

The pardons came a day before anti-abortion protesters were due to descend on Washington for the annual March for Life.
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London — Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS are facing fresh scrutiny from Britain’s competition watchdog, which announced investigations Thursday targeting the two tech giants’ mobile phone ecosystems under new powers to crack down on digital market abuses. 

The Competition and Markets Authority said it launched separate investigations to determine whether the mobile ecosystems controlled by Apple and Google should be given “strategic market status” that would mandate changes in the companies’ practices. 

The watchdog is flexing its newly acquired regulatory muscles again after the new digital market rules took effect at the start of the year. The CMA has already used the new rules, designed to protect consumers and businesses from unfair practices by Big Tech companies, to open an investigation into Google’s search ads business. 

The new investigations will examine whether Apple or Google’s mobile operating systems, app stores and browsers give either company a strategic position in the market. The watchdog said it’s interested in the level of competition and any barriers preventing rivals from offering competing products and services. 

The CMA will also look into whether Apple or Google are favoring their own apps and services, which it said “often come pre-installed and prominently placed on iOS and Android devices.” Google’s YouTube and Apple’s Safari browser are two examples of apps that come bundled with Android and iOS, respectively. 

And it will investigate “exploitative conduct,” such as whether Apple or Google forces app makers to agree to “unfair terms and conditions” as condition for distributing apps on their app stores. 

The regulator has until October to wrap up the investigation. It said it could force either company to, for example, open up access to key functions other apps need to operate on mobile devices. Or it could force them to allow users to download apps outside of their own app stores. 

Both Google and Apple said the work “constructively” with the U.K. regulator on the investigation. 

Google said “Android’s openness has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps. It’s the only example of a successful and viable open source mobile operating system.” 

The company said it favors “a way forward that avoids stifling choice and opportunities for U.K. consumers and businesses alike, and without risk to U.K. growth prospects.” 

Apple said it “believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish. We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users.”
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Before he had been in office for 48 hours, President Donald Trump sent a clear signal that to outpace China, his administration will be pursuing an aggressive agenda when it comes to pushing the United States forward on the development of artificial intelligence and the infrastructure that powers it.

On his first day in office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed in 2023 by former President Joe Biden that sought to place some guardrails around the development of more and more powerful generative AI tools and to create other protections for privacy, civil rights and national security.

The following day, Trump met with the leaders of several leading technology firms, including Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI; Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle; and Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, to announce a $500 billion private sector investment in AI infrastructure known as Stargate.

“Beginning immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI, and this will include the construction of colossal data centers,” Trump said in a media event at the White House on Tuesday.

Specifically, Stargate will invest in the creation of as many as 10 huge data centers in the United States that will provide the computing for artificial intelligence systems. The first data center is already under construction in Texas. The massive private sector investment will create up to 100,000 U.S. jobs, the executives said.

Keeping AI in the US

“What we want to do is, we want to keep it in this country,” Trump said. “China is a competitor, and others are competitors. We want it to be in this country, and we’re making it available. I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built.”

The assembled tech leaders took the opportunity to praise the new president.

“I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.”

Janet Egan, a senior fellow in the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, said that all the signals Trump is sending indicate he is serious about maintaining the United States’ current advantages in the development of advanced AI.

“I think this shows that he’s going to have a really clear mind as to how to partner closely with the private sector to enable them to speed up and run fast,” Egan said. “We’ve also seen him take direct action on some of the bottlenecks that are impeding the development of AI infrastructure in the U.S., and a particular focus is energy.”

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has relied on Microsoft data centers for its computing. The firm reportedly discussed with the Biden administration the regulatory hurdles of planning and permitting when building data centers.

In a policy paper released earlier this month, OpenAI cited the competition with China, laying out its policy proposals to “extending America’s global leadership in AI innovation.”

“Chips, data, energy and talent are the keys to winning on AI — and this is a race America can and must win,” the paper said. “There’s an estimated $175 billion sitting in global funds awaiting investment in AI projects, and if the U.S. doesn’t attract those funds, they will flow to China-backed projects — strengthening the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence.”

Patrick Hedger, director of policy at NetChoice, a technology trade association, told VOA that the Stargate announcement “immediately signaled to me that private capital is more than willing to come off the sidelines these days with the new Trump administration.”

As part of his flurry of executive actions on Monday, Trump eliminated several preexisting executive orders placing limits on fossil fuel extraction and power generation. In the White House event on Monday, Trump also noted that AI data centers consume vast amounts of electricity and said he would be clearing the way for Stargate and other private companies to invest in new energy generation projects.

China competition

While Trump eliminated many of Biden’s executive orders immediately on Monday, he does not appear to have taken action against some of the former president’s other AI-related initiatives. Last year, Biden took several steps to restrict China’s access to cutting-edge technology related to AI, specifically, restricting the ability of companies that sell advanced semiconductors and the machinery used to produce them to Chinese firms.

On that issue, Egan said, Trump and Biden appear to be on the same page.

“I think it’s important to also note the continuity in how Trump’s approaching AI,” she said. “He, too, sees it as a national security risk and national security imperative. … So, I think we should expect to see this run-fast approach to AI complemented by continued efforts to understand and manage emerging risks. Particularly cyber, nuclear, biological risks, as well as a more muscular approach to export controls and enforcement.”

Speed and safety

Louis Rosenberg, CEO and chief scientist at Unanimous AI and a prominent figure in the field for decades, told VOA he thinks there is a bipartisan consensus that AI needs to be developed speedily but also responsibly.

“At the highest level, the accelerating risks around frontier AI is not a partisan issue,” he wrote in an email exchange. “Both parties realize that significant safeguards will be needed as AI gets increasingly intelligent and flexible, especially as autonomous AI agents get released at large scale.”

Rosenberg said the most significant question is how the U.S. can remain the global leader in AI development while making sure the systems that are deployed are safe and reliable.

“I suspect the Trump administration will address AI risks by deploying its own targeted policies that are not as broad as the Biden executive order was but can address real threats much faster,” he wrote. “The Biden executive order was very useful in raising the alarm about AI, but from a practical perspective it did not provide meaningful protections from the important emerging risks.

“Ultimately we need to find a way to move fast on AI development and move fast on AI protection. We need speed on both fronts,” Rosenberg said.

VOA Silicon Valley bureau chief Michelle Quinn contributed to this report.
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Singapore — TikTok’s short-lived shutdown in the United States has opened a wider debate in other countries regarding access to popular social media platforms by children.

TikTok went dark temporarily Sunday in the U.S. after a new law banning it went into effect. The law required TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance to sell the app’s U.S. operation due to national security concerns over its ties to Beijing.

After his inauguration on Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting the ban for 75 days, giving ByteDance additional time to find a buyer.

The order provides relief to the app’s 170 million American users, many of them young adults. More than 60% of teenagers in the U.S. ages 13 to 17 use TikTok, with most of them accessing the platform daily, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

The U.S. is not the only country looking to regulate social media and other platforms such as online gaming. While the reasons behind the restrictions vary, a growing number of countries already regulate technology or are proposing legislation to restrict its use.

In Australia, a high-profile social media ban for young adults under the age of 16 will take effect at the end of the year, prohibiting them from creating accounts on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat. The government said the ban was a necessary measure to protect children.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids, and I’m calling time on it,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters last November.

Websites like YouTube that do not require an account to view content will likely be excluded from the ban.

The Australian government said the onus will be on the social media companies to “take reasonable steps” to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on their platforms. Companies that do not comply could face fines of more than $30 million. Details of how the law will be enforced remain scarce, with age verification technologies currently being trialed.

Some young Australian users of the platforms remain skeptical about how effective a ban will be.

“I think people will manage to find ways around it, maybe by lying about their age,” 15-year-old Theodore Cagé told VOA.

While Cagé concedes that social media can be a “big distraction from school,” he is against a blanket ban, favoring more measured approaches such as limiting screen time or blocking specific content.

“I reckon it definitely should be more targeted, not just a total ban on everything, because there’s a lot of good stuff out there. It’s not all bad,” he said.

The impending ban has also raised concerns that some children will be left isolated.  

“Social media serves as a lifeline for those youth who do not have supportive homes or local environments. They can find supportive communities on social media”, Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne, told VOA.

Australia’s ban will be closely watched, especially by countries in Asia that are considering their own restrictions for young users.

Indonesia’s communications minister said the Southeast Asian nation is planning a minimum age for social media use and discussed plans last week with President Prabowo Subianto. 

In neighboring Singapore, teenagers under 18 will be moved to a more restrictive Teen Accounts on Instagram starting January 21.

The city-state also issued guidelines in schools to limit screen time for children. Starting March 31, app stores in Singapore will block children under 12 from downloading apps, including TikTok and Instagram.

But in the Southeast Asian financial hub, which prides itself on technological advancements and connectivity, social media still plays a significant role in the daily lives of young people.

Platforms like Snapchat and Instagram “are pretty important for engaging in new relationships or finding new friendships,” 17-year-old Pablo Lane of Singapore told VOA. “It [social media] has had big benefits for me, just broadening the scope of people I can contact.”

China has gone further than other countries in Asia to control children’s access to online networks. In 2021, Beijing introduced new measures restricting children under 18 to just three hours a week.  

 

And in late 2024, new guidelines from China’s cybersecurity regulator called for mobile devices to be equipped with a “minors mode” that would limit screen time for children under 18, including an overnight curfew.

The setting, which parents can turn off, restricts 16 to 18-year-olds to two hours of phone use a day, with eight to 16-year-olds allowed just one hour.

Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said China is also focused on protecting children from harmful content online rather than implementing blanket bans.

“They’re really trying, from a number of different angles, to make a safe web for kids,” he Daum.

Questions remain over whether China’s model could apply elsewhere. 
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Millions of U.S. TikTok users are looking to newly sworn-in President Donald Trump, who has given the app’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, 75 days to strike a deal with a U.S. buyer.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. 

The new entity, Stargate, will start building data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum. 

“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration. 

Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has started and the project goes back to 2024. 

“This will be the most important project of this era,” said Altman, CEO of OpenAI. 

Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine. 

“This is the beginning of golden age,” said Son, referencing Trump’s statement that the U.S. would be in a “golden age” with him back in the White House. 

Son, a billionaire based in Japan, committed in December to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years. He previously committed to $50 billion in new investments ahead of Trump’s first term, which included a large stake in the troubled office-sharing company WeWork. 

While Trump has seized on similar announcements to show that his presidency is boosting the economy, there were already expectations of a massive buildout in data centers and electricity plants needed for the development of AI, which holds the promise of increasing productivity by automating work but also the risk of displacing jobs if poorly implemented. 

The initial plans for Stargate go back to the Biden administration. Tech news outlet The Information first reported on the project in March 2024. OpenAI has long relied on Microsoft data centers to build its AI systems, but it has increasingly signaled an interest in building its own data centers. 

OpenAI wrote in a letter to the Biden administration’s Commerce Department last fall that planning and permitting for such projects “can be lengthy and complex, particularly for energy infrastructure.” 

The push to build data centers also predates Trump’s presidency. Last October, the financial company Blackstone estimated that the U.S. would see $1 trillion invested in data centers over five years, with another $1 trillion being committed internationally. 

Those estimates for investments suggest that much of the new capital will go through Stargate as OpenAI has established itself as a sector leader with the 2022 launch of its ChaptGPT, a chatbot that captivated the public imagination with its ability to answer complex questions and perform basic business tasks. 

The White House has put an emphasis on making it easier to build out new electricity generation in anticipation of AI’s expansion, knowing that the United States is in a competitive race against China to develop a technology increasingly being adopted by businesses. 

Still, the regulatory outlook for AI remains somewhat uncertain as Trump on Monday overturned the 2023 order signed by then-President Joe Biden to create safety standards and watermarking of AI-generated content, among other goals, in hopes of putting guardrails on the technology’s possible risks to national security and economic well-being. 

Trump supporter Elon Musk, worth more than $400 billion, was an early investor in OpenAI but has since challenged its move to for-profit status and has started his own AI company, xAI. Musk is also in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency” created formally on Monday by Trump with the goal of reducing government spending. 

Trump previously in January announced a $20 billion investment by DAMAC Properties in the United Arab Emirates to build data centers tied to AI. 
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Washington — TikTok restored services to users in the United States on Sunday after briefly blocking access due to a U.S. law banning the social media platform based on national security concerns. 

The situation played out amid the change in U.S. administrations as President-elect Donald Trump said he would seek to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect.” 

He also proposed, in a post on his Truth Social platform, for the United States to take a 50% ownership stake in TikTok. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld legislation passed by Congress that called for banning TikTok unless its China-based parent company sold it by Sunday. 

The Biden administration had said it would not seek to enforce the ban in its final days in office, leaving the issue to Trump after he took office on Monday. 

TikTok credited Trump as it announced the restoration of its services, saying Sunday on X that he provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.” 

Trump’s actions marked a reversal from his first term in office when he sought to ban TikTok in connection with concerns that the service was sharing the personal information of U.S. users with the Chinese government. 

At a briefing Monday in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China believes companies should “decide independently” about their operations and agreements. 

“TikTok has operated in the U.S. for many years and is deeply loved by American users,” she said. “We hope that the U.S. can earnestly listen to the voice of reason and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for firms operating there.” 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Bengaluru, India — Within five hours, while sitting at home in India, retired professor Kamta Prasad Singh handed over his hard-earned savings to online fraudsters impersonating police.

The cybercrime known as “digital arrest” — where fraudsters pose online as law enforcement officials and order people to transfer huge amounts of money — has become so rampant that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has issued warnings.

Singh told AFP that money was his life savings.

“Over the years, I have skipped having tea outside, walked to avoid spending on public transport,” the 62-year-old said, his voice breaking.

“Only I know, how I saved my money.”

Police say scammers have exploited the vast gap between the breakneck speed of India’s data digitalization, from personal details to online banking, and the lagging awareness of many of basic internet safety.

Fraudsters are using technology for data breaches, targeting information their victims believe is only available to government authorities, and making otherwise unlikely demands appear credible.

Indians have emptied their bank accounts “out of sheer fear,” Modi said in an October radio broadcast, adding fraudsters “create so much psychological pressure on the victim.”

‘Ruined’

Mobile phones, and especially video calling, have allowed fraudsters to reach straight into people’s homes.

India runs the world’s largest biometric digital identity program — called “Aadhaar,” or foundation in Hindi — a unique card issued to India’s more than one billion people, and increasingly required for financial transactions.

Scammers often claim they are police investigating questionable payments, quoting their target’s Aadhaar number to appear genuine.

They then request their victim make a “temporary” bank transfer to validate their accounts, before stealing the cash.

Singh, from India’s eastern state of Bihar, said the web of lies began when he received a call in December, seemingly from the telecom regulatory authority.

“They said… police were on their way to arrest me,” Singh said.

The fraudsters told Singh that his Aadhaar ID was being misused for illegal payments.

Terrified, Singh agreed to prove he had control of his bank account, and after spiraling threats, transferred over $16,100.

“I have lost sleep; don’t feel like eating,” he said. “I have been ruined.”

‘Rot in proverbial hell’

The surge of online scams is worrying because of “how valid they make it look and sound,” said police officer Sushil Kumar, who handled cybercrimes for half a decade.

The perpetrators range from school dropouts to highly educated individuals.

“They know what to search for on the internet to find out basic details of how government agencies work,” Kumar added.

India registered 17,470 cybercrimes in 2022, including 6,491 cases of online bank fraud, according to the latest government data.

Tricks vary. Kaveri, 71, told AFP her story, on condition her name was changed.

She said fraudsters posed as officials from the U.S. courier FedEx, claiming she had sent a package containing drugs, passports and credit cards.

They offered her full name and Aadhaar ID details as “proof,” followed by well-forged letters from the Central Bank of India and Central Bureau of Investigation, the country’s top investigative agency.

“They wanted me to send money, which would be returned in 30 minutes,” she said, adding she was convinced when they sent a “properly signed letter.”

She transferred savings from a house sale, totaling around $120,000, in four instalments over six days, before the fraudsters vanished.

Kaveri says those days felt “like a tunnel.”

Meeta, 35, a private health professional from Bengaluru, who also did not want to be identified, was conned by fake police via a video call.

“It seemed like a proper police station, with walkie-talkie noises,” she said.

The scammers told her to prove she controlled her bank account by taking out a loan of 200,000 rupees, or $2,300, via her bank’s phone app, before demanding she make a “temporary” transfer.

Despite making it clear to the bank that she had been scammed, Meeta continues to be asked to pay back the loan.

“My trust in banks has mostly gone,” she said, before cursing the thieves.

“I hope they rot in proverbial hell.”
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