News
A Screenshot of Sen. Martin Heinrich speaking about AI during a Washington Post Live event September 12, 2023.

‘What’s the threshold at which you begin to regulate something?’: AI Insight Forums begin

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Congress set up a series of talks to discuss artificial intelligence, something that state and federal legislative branches have had an increasing interest in discussing. The first AI Insight Forum begins Wednesday in the U.S. Senate. These forums are closed door which means neither the public nor the media can attend. A readout of the forum will be made available after the event is concluded. U.S.  Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, discussed AI Tuesday on the Washington Post Live’s Across the Aisle with Leigh Ann Caldwell.

Congress & Federal Issues

Legislative Newsletter: Uncharted Territory

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This is a copy of a weekly newsletter, and we are running the first few editions on the website. To subscribe for free, sign up here. Note: this was written prior to the governor’s public health order regarding firearms in Bernalillo County. Hello political junkies! An ongoing theme in all levels and branches of government lately is uncharted territory.

Anthony Giancola

How military outsourcing turned toxic

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IN AUGUST 2016, an inspector from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived at Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana, a nerve center for the U.S. military’s global air combat operations, to conduct a routine look at the base’s handling of its hazardous waste. Barksdale, like many military bases, generates large volumes of hazardous materials, including thousands of pounds of toxic powder left over from cleaning, painting and maintaining airplanes. For years, Barksdale had been sending a portion of its waste to an Ohio company, U.S. Technology Corp., that had sold officials at the base on a seemingly ingenious solution for disposing of it: The company would take the contaminated powder from refurbished war planes and repurpose it into cinderblocks that would be used to build everything from schools to hotels to big-box department stores — even a pregnancy support center in Ohio. The deal would ostensibly shield the Air Force from the liabililty of being a large producer of dangerous hazardous trash. The arrangement was not unique.