Business

Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread

Published

1 year ago

January 13, 2025

Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread

The Biden administration issued sweeping rules on Monday governing how A.I. chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, in an attempt to set up a global framework that will guide how artificial intelligence spreads around the world in the years to come.

With the power of A.I. rapidly growing, the Biden administration said the rules were necessary to keep a transformational technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries that could use it to augment their militaries, carry out cyberattacks and otherwise threaten the United States.

Tech companies have protested the new rules, saying they threaten their sales and the future prospects of the American tech industry.

The rules put various limitations on the number of A.I. chips that companies can send to different countries, essentially dividing the world into three categories. The United States and 18 of its closest partners — including Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — are exempted from any restrictions and can buy A.I. chips freely.

Countries that are already subject to U.S. arms embargoes, like China and Russia, will continue to face a previously existing ban on A.I. chip purchases.

All other nations — most of the world — will be subject to caps restricting the number of A.I. chips that can be imported, though countries and companies are able to increase that number by entering into special agreements with the U.S. government. The rules could rankle some foreign governments: Even countries that are close trading partners or military allies of the United States, such as Mexico, Switzerland, Poland or Israel, will face restrictions on their ability to purchase larger amounts of American A.I. products.

The rules are aimed at stopping China from obtaining from other countries the technology it needs to produce artificial intelligence, after the United States banned such sales to China in recent years.

But the regulations also have broader goals: having allied countries be the location of choice for companies to build the world’s biggest data centers, in an effort to keep the most advanced A.I. models within the borders of the United States and its partners.

Governments around the world, particularly in the Middle East, have been pumping money into attracting and building enormous data centers, in a bid to become the next center for A.I. development.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters on Sunday that the rule would ensure that the infrastructure for training the most advanced artificial intelligence would be in the United States or in the jurisdiction of close allies, and “that capacity does not get offshored like chips and batteries and other industries that we’ve had to invest hundreds of billion dollars to bring back onshore.”

Mr. Sullivan said the rule would provide “greater clarity to our international partners and to industry,” while countering national security threats from malicious actors that could use “American technologies against us.”

It will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether to keep the new rules or how to enforce them. In a call with reporters on Sunday, Biden administration officials said that the rules had bipartisan support and that they had been in consultations with the incoming administration about them.

Though companies in China have begun to develop their own A.I. chips, the global market for such semiconductors is dominated by U.S. companies, particularly Nvidia. That dominance has given the U.S. government the ability to regulate the flow of A.I. technology worldwide, by restricting U.S. company exports.

Companies have protested those limitations, saying the restrictions could hamper innocuous or even beneficial types of computing, anger U.S. allies and ultimately push global buyers into buying non-American products, like those made by China.

In a statement, Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice president for government affairs, called the rule “unprecedented and misguided” and said it “threatens to derail innovation and economic growth worldwide.”

“Rather than mitigate any threat, the new Biden rules would only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept the U.S. ahead,” he said. Nvidia’s stock dipped nearly 3 percent in premarket trading on Monday.

Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said in a statement that the company was confident it could “comply fully with this rule’s high security standards and meet the technology needs of countries and customers around the world that rely on us.”

In a letter to Congressional leadership on Sunday that was viewed by The New York Times, Jason Oxman, the president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a group representing tech companies, asked Congress to step in and use its authority to overturn the action if the Trump administration did not.

John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said his group was “deeply disappointed that a policy shift of this magnitude and impact is being rushed out the door days before a presidential transition and without any meaningful input from industry.”

“The stakes are high, and the timing is fraught,” Mr. Neuffer added.

The rules, which run more than 200 pages, also set up a system in which companies that operate data centers, like Microsoft and Google, can apply for special government accreditations.

In return for following certain security standards, these companies can then trade in A.I. chips more freely around the globe. The companies will still have to agree to keep 75 percent of their total A.I. computing power within the United States or allied countries, and to locate no more than 7 percent of their computing power in any single other nation.

The rules also set up the first controls on weights for A.I. models, the parameters unique to each model that determine how artificial intelligence makes its predictions. Companies setting up data centers abroad will be required to adopt security standards to protect this intellectual property and prevent adversaries from gaining access to them.

Governments facing restrictions can raise the number of A.I. chips they can import freely by signing agreements with the U.S. government, in which they would agree to align with U.S. goals for protecting A.I.

Under the guidance of the U.S. government, Microsoft struck an agreement to partner with an Emirati firm, G42, last year, in return for G42 eliminating Huawei equipment from its systems and taking other steps.

The Biden administration could issue more rules related to chips and A.I. in the coming days, including an executive order to encourage domestic energy generation for data centers, and new rules that aim to keep the most cutting-edge chips out of China, people familiar with the deliberations said.

The latter rule comes in response to an incident last year in which U.S. officials discovered that Huawei, the sanctioned Chinese telecom firm, had been obtaining components for its A.I. chips that were manufactured by a leading Taiwanese chip firm, in violation of U.S. export controls.

The announcements are among a flurry of new regulations that the Biden administration is rushing to issue ahead of the presidential turnover as it tries to close loopholes and cement its legacy on countering China’s technological development. The administration has issued new limits on exports of chip-making equipment to China and other countries, proposed new restrictions on Chinese drones, added new Chinese companies to a military blacklist, and hurried to finalize new subsidies for U.S. chip manufacturing.

But the A.I. regulations issued Monday appear to be among the most sweeping and consequential of these actions. Artificial intelligence is quickly transforming how scientists carry out research, how companies allocate tasks between their employees and how militaries operate. While A.I. has many beneficial uses, U.S. officials have grown more concerned that it could enable the development of new weapons, help countries surveil dissidents and otherwise upend the global balance of power.

Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis at the RAND Corporation, said the rules would create a framework for protecting U.S. security interests while still allowing firms to compete abroad. “They are also forward-looking, trying to preserve U.S. and allied-led supply chains before they are offshored to the highest subsidy bidder,” he said.

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Business

Sweeping California law on single-use plastic meets with outrage from all sides as it goes live

Published

36 seconds ago

May 11, 2026

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Sweeping California law on single-use plastic meets with outrage from all sides as it goes live

Within days of California’s long-anticipated single-use plastic law going into effect, environmentalists, anti-waste activists and the packaging industry reacted with anger and frustration.

Anti-plastic activists say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and CalRecycle inserted exemptions favoring the plastic industry into the law’s regulations that weaken it and undermine legislative intent.

“These new rules create huge loopholes for plastic packaging that violate the law,” said Avinash Kar, senior director of the toxics program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

On the other side, the packaging industry has sued over similar laws in other states. “Our members have real concerns about cost, compliance, and constitutionality,” said Matt Clarke, spokesman for the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors, which sued Oregon earlier this year over a similar waste law.

CalRecycle, the state’s waste agency, did not respond in time for publication. The final regulations putting the law into effect were released May 1 and posted for review Tuesday.

The environmental organizations say the law’s new final regulations open the door to what is known as “chemical recycling,” which produces large amounts of hazardous waste. The law also contains problematic exemptions for certain categories of plastic foodware, they say.

The language of the law forbids any kind of recycling that would produce significant amounts of hazardous waste. The new regulations allow for these recycling methods if the facilities are properly permitted.

The new regulations also exempt certain products if they are already covered by federal law. For instance, a packaging company, retailer or distributor can claim that they have such a preemption, Kar said, and CalRecycle might not immediately review that claim. “And as long as they don’t review it, they’ll get the exemption for as long as CalRecycle doesn’t review it,” creating a potential “forever loophole.”

“Californians were promised a system where producers take real responsibility for the waste they create,” said Nick Lapis, advocacy director for Californians Against Waste. “When regulations introduce broad exemptions and redefine key terms, that promise starts to erode. The details matter here, and right now they don’t line up with the intent of the law.”

Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed by Newsom in 2022. It was considered landmark legislation because it addressed the scourge of single-use plastics, requiring plastic and packaging companies to use less of them and ensuring that by 2032, all food packaging is either recyclable or compostable.

Accumulating plastic waste is overwhelming waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.

The law’s intent was not only to reduce it, but also to put the onus and cost of dealing with it on packaging producers and manufacturers, not consumers and local governments. It was supposed to incentivize companies to consider the fate of their products and spur innovation in material redesign.

According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale, or distributed during 2023 in California.

Similar laws have been passed in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. Oregon’s law, however, is on hold while a lawsuit by the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors works its way through the courts.

“We see a lot of the same problems in California that we flagged in Oregon,” said Clarke, the trade group spokesman. “Given California’s scale, the cost implications are going to be even larger. Our legal counsel has noted that California’s proposed fees are already higher than what other states have put forward.”

Jan Dell of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic waste group based in Laguna Beach, doesn’t believe the law will work — irrespective of the final regulations — and said the “exorbitant” cost of its implementation will either spur producers to sue, or they’ll end up passing the higher costs on to consumers.

She referred to a report from the Circular Action Alliance, the state-sanctioned group established to represent and oversee the implementation of the law on behalf of the plastic and packaging industry. It finds the law will increase the cost of disposal between six and 14 times for common products, such as Windex bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate.

“If the producers don’t successfully sue to stop the fees, this will certainly add to product inflation for CA consumers,” she said in an email. “Californians already have to pay exorbitantly high curbside collection fees for trash, recycling, and organics … so, starting in 2027, our groceries will cost a LOT more but we won’t see a reduction in our waste bills.”

Christopher “Smitty” Smith, a partner at law firm Saul Ewing in Los Angeles, who councils companies and interest groups on SB 54 and other Extended Producer Liability laws, said that although he could see areas of the law that “could be sharper and avoid the legal challenges … you can’t stop people from suing.” Environmentalists and anti-waste activists say they are preparing a lawsuit.

Smith said the law already has sparked changes in how companies think and respond to concerns about waste.

One of his national fast-food chain clients has realized that if its brand name is on plastic packaging, it’s that company’s responsibility, he said, so “they’ve spent the past year mapping out their franchise agreements, their supply chain agreements, their producer agreements, to figure out” what it needs to do to comply.

He said in the past, companies have paid little attention to these details and just let their franchisees figure this kind of thing out. Now, they’re spending a lot of time and money “to wrap their arms around what their supply chain looks like and like, what post consumer use of their plastic products looks like and what their regulatory obligations are.”

It’s bringing a new dialogue within companies. And that, Smith said, is what could make this law so powerful.

Times staff writer Meg Tanaka contributed to this report.

Business

Sales Are Up. Celebrities Are In. Is Gap Officially Back?

Published

11 hours ago

May 10, 2026

Press Room

Sales Are Up. Celebrities Are In. Is Gap Officially Back?

At Gap’s headquarters in San Francisco, an archive dedicated to the apparel company’s 57-year history features nearly 6,000 boxes of memorabilia documenting the retailer’s brands, which also include Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta.

There are prints from photographers like Annie Leibovitz and material related to many celebrity ad campaigns, like Missy Elliott and Madonna for Gap and Cindy Crawford for Old Navy. Those dated back to the retailer’s heyday, when malls were full, celebrities wore the brand on red carpets and Gap stores were plot points in sitcoms like “Seinfeld.”

When Richard Dickson started as Gap’s chief executive nearly three years ago, he was awed by those archives and set out to change the conversation about the company.

Gap had spent years closing hundreds of stores across the United States, as sales flagged and profits were patchy. Its stock, which peaked in 2000, was languishing. The company took more than a year to fill the C.E.O. position.

Mr. Dickson, who spent nearly 20 years at Mattel, brought with him a playbook that had helped revitalize the toymaker’s brands like Hot Wheels and Barbie. He got Barbie to the big screen, with star power and a marketing machine that produced blockbuster financial results.

The native New Yorker speaks excitedly about the ways that fashion, entertainment and music are intertwined. He went to Coachella last month and has been to the Oscars in recent years. He often mentions how Gap’s first store, which opened in 1969 in San Francisco, sold records, tapes and jeans.

Mr. Dickson’s culture-focused strategy is taking root. For his creative director, he hired Zac Posen, who dressed Kendall Jenner in a Gap gown for the recent Met Gala. Gap has made toe-tapping ads featuring Katseye and Parker Posey. Mr. Dickson even hired another C.E.O. — a chief entertainment officer — to oversee the company’s push into content, licensing and Hollywood.

Gap’s comparable sales have risen for eight straight quarters, and its market value has increased to $8.5 billion, from $3.6 billion when Mr. Dickson started. Last year, Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic posted sales increases, with only Athleta recording a decline. Gap’s namesake brand showed the strongest growth.

Mr. Dickson, 58, credits the turnaround to “being aware of pop culture, content, art, theater, music, entertainment.” If a brand makes sure that those themes come through, “you become more relevant,” he said.

This interview was edited and condensed.

As you try to bring Gap back into the cultural conversation, how are you managing your time? Are you spending more time in Hollywood?

As our business evolves, my allocated time also changes.

When I first got to the company, we were in “fix mode.” It’s no secret. My time was 100 percent spent on the operations, the financial rigor, setting up strategic priorities and editing a lot of the noise in the system that can be very distracting for a turnaround.

Over the course of three years, we’ve emerged a better company. Now we move into the next phase, which is to build momentum. My focus, while not taking my eye off the operational discipline, moves more into how to accelerate our growth.

I have a multitude of meetings and time spent with the entertainment community, which I’m very familiar with from previous roles.

When you were hired from Mattel, the chatter was that you would try to recreate the Barbie magic. Is that true, or is there a different strategy for Gap?

It’s actually the same playbook. It is not so much that the playbook is unique; it’s the methodology and the execution that’s unique.

The playbook is, first, identifying what’s our reason for being.

You could put me on any brand in the world. Why do you exist? What is our purpose? What’s our point of difference? Those simple questions have very complicated answers when you’re in a turnaround. If you can’t answer it in a sentence or two, or one or two words, you’ve got a problem.

Old Navy is different from Gap. Gap is different from Banana. Banana is different from Athleta.

So let’s focus on Gap. What makes it distinctive?

When I look at the history of every one of our brands — it wasn’t dissimilar to the Barbie conversation — what was it that broke through? What was that single thing that made it so incredibly relevant?

In our case, it was a store that was all-inclusive before inclusivity became a word, because we sold jeans for all races, all sizes, all sexes. We bridged the generation gap in the experience through music. Music was the connective tissue in the context of the store experience.

Let’s get back into that music narrative with great product storytelling and amplify it in a way that is relevant for today’s consumer. We started with Jungle with our linen campaign. We moved to Troye Sivan with a great music video around the baggy and loose trend. Then, of course, the blowout with Katseye.

These aren’t ads. Yes, you see the fleece because it looks incredible. But nobody’s saying, “Oh, my God, it’s a great deal with a great price.” They’re saying: “Did you see this? Did you feel this?” That is when you get emotional connection to a brand.

We had become more about price than product. More about stuff, not storytelling.

If you’re focusing on entertainment, how do you measure success?

We have dashboards everywhere. I think we just turned one off when you walked in because our business flashes on an hourly basis on my screens.

We have dashboards that measure brand love, people searching more for our brand and brand attributes that we test and roll out to see how consumers are feeling.

Does the focus on entertainment hedge against all of the uncertainty in the world?

To some extent, in the world that we live in, we should be that great distraction in some cases, that pleasant place that you love to go to. That ultimately makes a brand stronger, to essentially navigate more complex times. There’s always something that we have to worry about.

How worried are you about consumer spending? We’re in California right now. I passed a gas station where it was about $6 per gallon.

That was a good deal.

Most retailers say that consumers remain resilient, but are you prepared for spending levels to drop?

We have a fantastic portfolio that addresses all income cohorts.

We have quality products that should last, in some cases, for generations. You’re buying it for the long haul. But we do recognize that we need frequency: We need to stay fresh. We need to stay new.

There are a lot of businesses that will start to pull back on quality, right? We’re not.

You’re from New York City, right? Tell me about your upbringing.

My parents were both in retail, real estate and fashion. My mom was more on the creative side, and my dad was more on the financial and operations side.

My grandparents were also in fashion and retail. They were Holocaust survivors. My grandmother sewed and had her own line in department stores. My grandfather ran the factory, so they had a small business that did very well. I remember growing up and running around the factory floor.

What’s a piece of advice that you received that you still reflect on today?

Retail is detail. There’s not a single day where everything goes right, but at the end of that day you could still say that it was a great day.

Ultimately you’re firefighting on a minute-to-minute basis. You’re constantly in motion. That sense of detail orientation is probably an attribute that’s carried with me from my earliest days in the industry.

It’s time for the lightning round. What’s on heavy rotation on your music playlist right now?

Who I really like right now is Sombr. I saw him at Coachella.

What’s the last thing you asked A.I.?

To decipher an object that somebody sent me from a museum and I wanted to know which museum it was from.

How often do you check Gap’s stock price?

I probably check it twice a day. I do a morning check and at the end of the day.

When you need to feel most confident, what are you wearing?

I love our hoodies, and not only our fleece hoodies at Gap but Banana Republic’s cashmere hoodie. Depending on the vibe, I would go with a fleece or cashmere hoodie. Then I usually throw on a Banana Republic trucker jacket.

I wear all of our brands. I have worn a few sweatshirts from Athleta.

If you had to explain each of your brands in exactly one word, what would it be? Let’s start with Old Navy.

Family.

Gap?

Individuality.

Banana Republic?

Adventure.

Athleta?

I’m going to go with empowerment.

Business

Pressure grows on California attorney general to try to block Paramount’s deal for Warner Bros.

Published

12 hours ago

May 10, 2026

Press Room

Pressure grows on California attorney general to try to block Paramount’s deal for Warner Bros.

California Democrats in Congress are raising concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — a $111-billion deal that would dramatically reshape Hollywood by consolidating two historic film studios.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 33 other members of Congress on Thursday urged California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize potential antitrust harms that would come from billionaire David Ellison’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — and possibly bring a legal challenge. The lawmakers’ campaign comes after more than 4,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller and J.J. Abrams, signed an open letter calling for the deal to be blocked.

“We remain concerned that the proposed merger could harm California workers and consumers,” the 34 lawmakers wrote in their letter to Bonta. “We therefore respectfully urge you to closely analyze the potential effects of this merger, and, if you determine that this merger would have anticompetitive effects, use your best judgment to pursue the appropriate course of action.”

The deal, the largest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade, would bring together Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, streaming services HBO Max, Discovery+ and Paramount+, more than two dozen cable channels as well as CBS News and CNN. Paramount has said it expects the combination would bring at least $6 billion in cost savings, raising fears among the Democrats about widespread job losses.

Pressure is growing on Bonta to try to thwart Ellison’s proposed merger.

Bonta has previously told The Times his office is reviewing the proposed combination to determine whether it would harm consumers and industry competition. On Thursday, a spokesperson confirmed there was still “an active investigation,” into the proposed merger, but Bonta’s office had no “updates to share at this time.”

Bonta separately has brought a lawsuit with a bipartisan group of 13 state attorneys general to halt another merger — a massive consolidation of television stations by Nexstar Media Group — favored by President Trump.

The president wants to give more power to Nexstar, which owns network affiliate TV stations, to weaken ABC and NBC. In that case, a federal judge in Sacramento has issued a temporary injunction to freeze the merger until a trial to determine whether that deal violates century-old antitrust laws. Irving, Texas-based Nexstar is appealing the ruling.

Critics of the Warner Bros. deal are nudging Bonta to separately bring a lawsuit to block Paramount’s proposed takeover of its rival.

“Writers have seen merger after merger leave fewer and fewer companies in control of what our members can get paid to write,” Writers Guild of America West President Michele Mulroney said to make a case against the merger during a press briefing last month.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Paramount transaction that would pay them $31 a share.

Several U.S. senators, including Cory Booker (D-N.J.), also have sounded alarms, including about plans to bring sovereign wealth funds representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi into the deal as minority investors. Those Middle Eastern investors would hold a nearly 50% equity stake of the new company, although Paramount has said the wealth funds would not have board seats.

The Paramount-Warner Bros. transaction is expected to fly through its antitrust review at the U.S. Justice Department, in part, because billionaire Larry Ellison, who has agreed to backstop the financing for the deal, maintains close ties with Trump. Paramount has said it expects the deal to be completed before the end of September.

Rep. Laura Friedman at APLA Health, Michael Gottlieb Health Center in West Hollywood June 28, 2025.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Trump has agitated for changes at CNN, one of Warner’s most prominent properties. Ellison’s son David, who is chairman and chief executive of Paramount, hosted a party in Washington two weeks ago to honor Trump and other high-level cabinet officials, including some who have expressed a desire to see Ellison in charge of CNN.

“The proposed merger does not occur in a vacuum,” the lawmakers wrote. “Decades of consolidation in this industry have already resulted in reduced output, higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation, while merged studios face few consequences for breaking their pre-merger promises.”

Paramount representatives, who did not immediately comment Thursday, have previously defended the proposed takeover.

David Ellison has also promised to maintain the two studios’ current release schedules of 15 movies a year — for a total of 30 films a year — following the merger.

“This is also a moment when the industry has been facing significant disruption — and the need for strong, creative-first and well-capitalized companies that can continue to invest in storytelling has never been greater,” Paramount has said, adding that it will follow through on its commitments to ensure that “creators have more avenues for their work, not fewer.”

The Congress members’ letter also called into question the Trump administration’s oversight, alleging there has been “unprecedented politicization of antitrust enforcement.”

“Given that we cannot have confidence that the Trump administration review of the merger will be conducted according to the law, and with the best interests of American workers and consumers in mind, it is even more vital that you conduct a thorough, independent review,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Bonta.

Federal regulators agreed to approve the Ellison family’s acquisition of Paramount last summer after Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he brought over edits to a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 election.

The proposed merger would saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, stoking fears that Paramount would be forced to make steep cost cuts to balance such a large debt load. In the last three months, Paramount lined up banks and other institutional investors to provide bridge financing to help pull off the transaction, the company said.

The letter from Friedman and the others noted that the film industry in Los Angeles already is almost on the ropes. Last summer, on-location production in the Los Angeles area declined by 13%. More than 42,000 film industry jobs were lost between 2022 and 2024, a period that included two labor strikes.

David Ellison at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Friedman was joined by a group of prominent Democrats that includes Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) , Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and George Whitesides (D-Santa Clarita).