Hey folks! In this issue, some pretty significant regulatory shifts lately, recent research on accelerator architectures and "BasedAI" (not joking), with some notable ideas from Susskind and Sloterdijk.
News
- House Judiciary Chair Targets Alphabet in Social Media Inquiry. Jim Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet demanding internal communications and correspondence with federal officials, alleging collusion with the Biden administration to censor conservative speech. The move marks Jordan's latest push to craft legislation limiting government interaction with Big Tech content moderation, while Alphabet maintains its content policies are independently enforced.
- Coast Guard Faces Infrastructure Crisis. The Coast Guard's infrastructure maintenance backlog has ballooned to at least $7 billion, nearly doubling in three years (the Government Accountability Office warns this figure is probably understated due to incomplete project estimates). Deferred maintenance is impairing service readiness and posing safety risks, as current funding covers only urgent repairs, leaving critical facilities steadily deteriorating.
- SEC's Crypto Task Force Prepares "Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity." The SEC's newly formed Crypto Task Force, led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, launches public roundtables this month aiming to define digital assets' security status and develop a workable regulatory framework. Following Trump's pledge to reduce heavy-handed crypto enforcement, the agency appointed former crypto-industry counsel Michael Selig as chief counsel and scaled back litigation against crypto firms such as Kraken.
- Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Withhold Foreign Aid Payments. In a narrow 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court upheld Judge Amir Ali's order compelling the Trump administration to pay foreign aid groups nearly $2 billion for completed work, dealing a setback to Trump's "America First" stance. Justice Samuel Alito's dissent questioned the power of an unchecked district judge.
- US Senate Votes to Overturn IRS DeFi Broker Rule. The US Senate voted 70-27 on Tuesday to repeal an IRS regulation classifying DeFi platforms as brokers obligated to report tax information, arguing that the rule is impractical due to DeFi's decentralized structure. The repeal, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz, will now proceed to the House and likely gain President Trump's support, signaling a significant pro-crypto regulatory shift.
- Trump Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The decision to focus on Bitcoin is interesting given that he initially floated the possibility of multiple cryptocurrencies. Trump seems like to Proof of Work (so do we).
Research
- SZKP: A Scalable Accelerator Architecture for Zero-Knowledge Proofs (2024). Daftardar et al. propose a specialized hardware chip called SZKP to speed up Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Their design coordinates complex math routines, primarily the Multi-scalar Multiplication (MSM) step, using a method called Pippenger's algorithm, and the Number Theoretic Transform (NTT). SZKP achieves significant performance gains—up to 400× faster than traditional CPU methods and about 12× faster than the best existing special-purpose chips (ASICs) for this task.
- BasedAI: A Decentralized P2P Network for Zero Knowledge Large Language Models (2024). Popular LLMs like ChatGPT sacrifice user privacy since sensitive information is exposed to the AI provider. Wellington introduces a decentralized network that combines powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) with a technique called "Cerberus Squeezing" to efficiently process encrypted questions and answers. Cerberus Squeezing reduces the amount of computing power required to use Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) by combining several encryptions into fewer, more efficient steps.
Perspectives
- Western Europe Is Falling to Authoritarianism. France's proposed "Narcotraffic" bill mandates that tech providers like Signal, WhatsApp, and ProtonMail grant police decrypted data within 72 hours, sparking widespread condemnation from security specialists who say this would inevitably create backdoors exploitable by cybercrime and state actors. The French proposal also permits spyware usage by law enforcement and internet content censorship without judicial oversight, putting France on a direct collision course with EU and German privacy laws.
- Quantum Mechanics Could Be Realized in the Lab. Leonard Susskind argues in a speculative but rigorous note that quantum mechanics inevitably entails gravity, proposing experimental verification of holographic quantum gravity within quantum computer simulations. If quantum entanglement directly generates spacetime geometry, quantum computer experiments could teleport information via quantum wormholes. Though it sounds like Sci-Fi, Susskind is legit and thinks this could be feasible within decades.
- A Conversation Between Sloterdijk and Žižek. Sloterdijk opens by discussing Rousseau's concept of philosophy and Nietzsche's understanding of truth as requiring self-sacrifice. For Nietzsche, truth demands absolute honesty, even at the expense of life. Žižek responds by arguing that humans naturally resist truth rather than seek it. Most of us live in sincere convictions which are lies, he says, challenging Lincoln's famous axiom by asserting that "all the people can be deceived all the time."
That’s all for this week. Hit reply if you have any comments, feedback, or want to share what you’re working on!
