ALL SMALL BUSINESSES ARE CRIMINALS ACCORDING TO THE GOVERNMENT!

Get this, our nasty Senators and Congressmen have now activated a LAW that considers all businesses with less than $5 million in revenue and 20 employees or less to be FIRST considered as financial criminals.

LUCKILY PRESIDENT TRUMP STOPPED THIS FARCE!

On March 21, 2025, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that, consistent with the Department of the Treasury’s March 2, 2025, announcement it was issuing an interim final rule that removes the requirement for U.S. companies and U.S. persons to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act. FinCEN published this interim final rule on March 26, 2025.

In the interim final rule, FinCEN revises the regulatory definition of “reporting company” to mean only those entities that are formed under the law of a foreign country and that have registered to do business in any U.S. State or Tribal jurisdiction by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or similar office (formerly known as “foreign reporting companies”). FinCEN also exempts entities previously known as “domestic reporting companies” from BOI reporting requirements. Thus, through this interim final rule, all entities created in the United States — including those previously known as “domestic reporting companies” — and their beneficial owners will be exempt from the requirement to report BOI to FinCEN.

The law now mandates reporting of the BENEFICIAL OWNERS of ALL companies and businesses operating in the USA FINANCIAL CRIMES ENFORCEMENT NETWORK (FInCEN) or face fines and JAIL!

AS SMALL BUSINESS YOU ARE ALL SUSPECTED CRIMINALS1

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule implementing the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act’s (CTA) beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting provisions. The rule will enhance the ability of FinCEN and other agencies to protect U.S. national security and the U.S. financial system from illicit use and provide essential information to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies; state, local, and Tribal officials; and financial institutions to help prevent drug traffickers, fraudsters, corrupt actors such as oligarchs, and proliferators from laundering or hiding money and other assets in the United States.

Illicit actors frequently use corporate structures such as shell and front companies to obfuscate their identities and launder their ill-gotten gains through the United States. Not only do such acts undermine U.S. national security, they also threaten U.S. economic prosperity: shell and front companies can shield beneficial owners’ identities and allow criminals to illegally access and transact in the U.S. economy, while disadvantaging small U.S. businesses who are playing by the rules. This rule will strengthen the integrity of the U.S. financial system by making it harder for illicit actors to use shell companies to launder their money or hide assets.

Recent geopolitical events have reinforced the point that abuse of corporate entities, including shell or front companies, by illicit actors and corrupt officials presents a direct threat to the U.S. national security and the U.S. and international financial systems. For example, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 further underscored that Russian elites, state-owned enterprises, and organized crime, as well as Russian government proxies have attempted to use U.S. and non-U.S. shell companies to evade sanctions imposed on Russia. This rule will enhance U.S national security by making it more difficult for criminals to exploit opaque legal structures to launder money, traffic humans and drugs, and commit serious tax fraud and other crimes that harm the American taxpayer.

At the same time, the rule aims to minimize burdens on small businesses and other reporting companies. Millions of businesses are formed in the United States each year. These businesses play an essential and important economic role. In particular, small businesses are a backbone of the U.S. economy, accounting for a large share of U.S. economic activity and driving U.S. innovation and competitiveness. U.S. small businesses also generate millions of jobs, and in 2021, created jobs at the highest rate on record. It is anticipated that it will cost reporting companies with simple management and ownership structures—which FinCEN expects to be the majority of reporting companies—approximately $85 apiece to prepare and submit an initial BOI report. In comparison, the state formation fee for creating a limited liability company (LLC) can cost between $40 and $500, depending on the state.

Beyond the direct benefits to law enforcement and other authorized users, the collection of BOI will help to shed light on criminals who evade taxes, hide their illicit wealth, and defraud employees and customers and hurt honest U.S. businesses through their misuse of shell companies.

The rule describes who must file a BOI report, what information must be reported, and when a report is due. Specifically, the rule requires reporting companies to file reports with FinCEN that identify two categories of individuals: (1) the beneficial owners of the entity; and (2) the company applicants of the entity.

The final rule reflects FinCEN’s careful consideration of detailed public comments received in response to its December 8, 2021 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the same topic, and extensive interagency consultations. FinCEN received comments from a broad array of individuals and organizations, including Members of Congress, government officials, groups representing small business interests, corporate transparency advocacy groups, the financial industry and trade associations representing its members, law enforcement representatives, and other interested groups and individuals.

Balancing both benefits and burden, the following are the key elements of the BOI reporting rule:

Reporting Companies

The rule identifies two types of reporting companies: domestic and foreign. A domestic reporting company is a corporation, limited liability company (LLC), or any entity created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office under the law of a state or Indian tribe. A foreign reporting company is a corporation, LLC, or other entity formed under the law of a foreign country that is registered to do business in any state or tribal jurisdiction by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office. Under the rule, and in keeping with the CTA, twenty-three types of entities are exempt from the definition of “reporting company.”
FinCEN expects that these definitions mean that reporting companies will include (subject to the applicability of specific exemptions) limited liability partnerships, limited liability limited partnerships, business trusts, and most limited partnerships, in addition to corporations and LLCs, because such entities are generally created by a filing with a secretary of state or similar office.
Other types of legal entities, including certain trusts, are excluded from the definitions to the extent that they are not created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or similar office. FinCEN recognizes that in many states the creation of most trusts typically does not involve the filing of such a formation document.

Beneficial Owners

Under the rule, a beneficial owner includes any individual who, directly or indirectly, either (1) exercises substantial control over a reporting company, or (2) owns or controls at least 25 percent of the ownership interests of a reporting company. The rule defines the terms “substantial control” and “ownership interest.” In keeping with the CTA, the rule exempts five types of individuals from the definition of “beneficial owner.”
In defining the contours of who has substantial control, the rule sets forth a range of activities that could constitute substantial control of a reporting company. This list captures anyone who is able to make important decisions on behalf of the entity. FinCEN’s approach is designed to close loopholes that allow corporate structuring that obscures owners or decision-makers. This is crucial to unmasking anonymous shell companies.
The rule provides standards and mechanisms for determining whether an individual owns or controls 25 percent of the ownership interests of a reporting company. Among other things, these standards and mechanisms address how a reporting company should handle a situation in which ownership interests are held in trust.
These definitions have been drafted to account for the various ownership or control structures reporting companies may adopt. However, for reporting companies that have simple organizational structures it should be a straightforward process to identify and report their beneficial owners. FinCEN expects the majority of reporting companies will have simple ownership structures.

Company Applicants

The rule defines a company applicant to be only two persons:
1. the individual who directly files the document that creates the entity, or in the case of a foreign reporting company, the document that first registers the entity to do business in the United States.
2. the individual who is primarily responsible for directing or controlling the filing of the relevant document by another.
The rule, however, does not require reporting companies existing or registered at the time of the effective date of the rule to identify and report on their company applicants. In addition, reporting companies formed or registered after the effective date of the rule also do not need to update company applicant information.

Beneficial Ownership Information Reports

When filing BOI reports with FinCEN, the rule requires a reporting company to identify itself and report four pieces of information about each of its beneficial owners: name, birthdate, address, and a unique identifying number and issuing jurisdiction from an acceptable identification document (and the image of such document). Additionally, the rule requires that reporting companies created after January 1, 2024, provide the four pieces of information and document image for company applicants.
If an individual provides their four pieces of information to FinCEN directly, the individual may obtain a “FinCEN identifier,” which can then be provided to FinCEN on a BOI report in lieu of the required information about the individual.

Timing

The effective date for the rule is January 1, 2024.
Reporting companies created or registered before January 1, 2024 will have one year (until January 1, 2025) to file their initial reports, while reporting companies created or registered after January 1, 2024, will have 30 days after receiving notice of their creation or registration to file their initial reports.
Reporting companies have 30 days to report changes to the information in their previously filed reports and must correct inaccurate information in previously filed reports within 30 days of when the reporting company becomes aware or has reason to know of the inaccuracy of information in earlier reports.

Next Steps

The BOI reporting rule is one of three rulemakings planned to implement the CTA. FinCEN will engage in additional rulemakings to (1) establish rules for who may access BOI, for what purposes, and what safeguards will be required to ensure that the information is secured and protected; and (2) revise FinCEN’s customer due diligence rule following the promulgation of the BOI reporting final rule.
In addition, FinCEN continues to develop the infrastructure to administer these requirements in accordance with the strict security and confidentiality requirements of the CTA, including the information technology system that will be used to store beneficial ownership information: the Beneficial Ownership Secure System (BOSS).
Consistent with its obligations under the Paperwork Reduction Act, FinCEN will publish in the Federal Register for public comment the reporting forms that persons will use to comply with their obligations under the BOI reporting rule. FinCEN will publish these forms well in advance of the effective date of the BOI reporting rule.
FinCEN will develop compliance and guidance documents to assist reporting companies in complying with this rule. Some of these materials will be aimed directly at, and made available to, reporting companies themselves. FinCEN will issue a Small Entity Compliance Guide, pursuant to section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, in order to inform small entities about their responsibilities under the rule. Other materials will be aimed at a wide range of stakeholders that are likely to receive questions about the rule, such as secretaries of state and similar offices. FinCEN also intends to conduct extensive outreach to all stakeholders, including industry associations as well as secretaries of state and similar offices to ensure the effective implementation of the rule.
THIS RULE HAS BEEN STAYED FOR NOW:

jansen@sterlingcooper.us sent you this article.

Comment:

Benficial owmersip rul

Monday, January 13, 2025

The law aims to curtail the use of anonymous shells and track illicit money.

Ownership-Reporting Law’s Return Sought

Supreme Court is asked to stay an injunction pausing its implementation

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the national injunction issued by a lower court that paused the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act, a law requiring companies to disclose their true ownership.

The Justice Department, on behalf of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, in an application filed on New Year’s Eve asked the Supreme Court to stay the injunction issued by a Texas district judge in early December.

The attorneys representing FinCEN said the government is likely to succeed in defending the constitutionality of the law and that the district court’s injunction was “vastly overbroad,” according to the filing.

The lawyers said the Supreme Court, at a minimum, should narrow the injunction to the plaintiffs in the case.

ROBOTS REPLACE HOTEL WORKERS, AND THE TREND IS ONLY BEGINNING

The hotels hiring robots to cut their wage bills

Hospitality bosses are reconsidering automation as laborr costs surge – but will it work?

Robots at the front desk of the Henn na Hotel — Robots at the Henn na Hotel carry out front-of-house tasks such as greetings, check-in and tourist information Credit: Oleksandr Rupeta/NurPhoto via Getty Images

blished 05 September 2026 12:00pm BST

The reception workers at the Henn na – or “Weird” – Hotel gaze blankly at guests.

Some of the uncanny staff members look like Japanese women. Others are talking Velociraptors. All of them are robots.

In fact, the novelty Tokyo hotel is known for being the first in the world to be “run by” machines. They speak different languages and carry out front-of-house tasks such as greetings, check-in and tourist information.

Bosses have claimed the robots could eventually yield savings of 75 percent on labor costs.

One time cost of a robot, $2,000, versus $30,000 for a human annually.

Tellingly, however, the hotel still relies on a small army of human “stagehands” for the important jobs that require the most manpower. They take care of mishaps, tidy up bedrooms, water the plants and keep hard-to-reach areas free of cobwebs.

Until now, deploying robots has seemed more like a gimmick than a serious strategy to hospitality bosses, who aren’t interested in using machines that will only slow them down.

Yet with the technology improving rapidly, many are now re-examining how automation could shake up the industry.

One veteran executive says this is primarily being driven by labour costs, which have surged in Europe and the US.

Travelodge said last year that it aimed to partly mitigate £21m of higher costs – resulting from a rising minimum wage and increasing employer National Insurance contributions – by ramping up its use of robot vacuum cleaners across its estate.

Technology also allows hotels to provide a more personalised offering and experiences focused on “wellness”.

“Sleep and wellbeing are also becoming more mainstream consumer priorities,” the executive says. “Fundamentally, what hotels are selling is a good night’s sleep.”

Along with devices such as self-service kiosks, more futuristic gadgets are starting to appear.

In Newcastle, the Maldron Hotel claims to have doubled room service revenues by introducing a wheeled “ButlerBot” that delivers food and other treats directly to a guest’s door.

One start-up riding the wave towards high-tech personalisation is Nook, founded by Piers Millar, a young British entrepreneur.

He argues that the modern hotel room should follow the example of Waymo’s driverless taxis in San Francisco, California, which allow passengers to set the car’s temperature and play their own music – with these preferences automatically remembered when they next hail a vehicle.

“We really want to drive efficiency through technology but it’s also about giving people a much more personalised experience,” Millar says.

His company’s big idea is to repeat the trick in the hotel business. Since the start of August, it has been trialling a concept room at the Superhero Hotel, formerly the Commodore, in San Francisco and it has signed a deal to open in London as well.

Guests can select their preferred lighting, music and temperatures of their room and mattress before they check in, so it’s all set up when they arrive.

The bed also collects data on your heart rate and sleep quality and will optimize itself over time to ensure a better rest.

Millar ultimately wants to build a new hotel chain where automation will allow staff to ditch the drudgery and focus more on guests.

The company’s next frontier, housekeeping, remains largely untouched by automation. It is also the biggest labour cost for hotel owners.

In major hotel chains, a housekeeper will spend anywhere between 20 and 45 minutes turning around a room once a guest has checked out.

The prize from any time savings here could be substantial, with even a few minutes per room adding up to potentially major cost savings.

Nook bed-changing robot — Nook is developing a ‘self-changing’ bed that will be able to strip itself Credit: John Nguyen/JNVisualsHowever, there are still some basic obstacles to an automated cleaning revolution. For instance, robot vacuum cleaners must still be let into rooms manually by humans.

Likewise, cleaning a hotel-room bathroom is a tricky task for robots. But options for automation do exist.

For instance, self-cleaning toilet cubicles are now commonplace in some European cities such as Paris.

These “superloos” function similarly to dishwashers, with the door locking automatically after a person exits and a wash cycle cleaning and drying the entire toilet fixture and floor.

Millar believes they could be the best solution for hotels, although the significant plumbing means they cannot easily be retrofitted to older hotels.

Another area with potential is bedding. In budget hotels, it takes about 20 minutes to clean a room, with changing the bed taking up up to half of this time.

But Millar and his team at Nook are developing a “self-changing” bed that will be able to strip itself, with a housekeeper then only required to clip on new sheets.

Similar shifts towards robots are starting to happen in other parts of the hospitality industry as well.

British start-up Kaikaku has been pioneering industrial kitchen appliances and software that speed up the production of food.

It has started out with a conveyor-belt system that makes fresh salad bowls but in future will target other products such as burgers.

Josef Chen, its chief executive, says: “You want to target restaurants where the bulk of revenue is coming from a single product that is made through a very repetitive process.

“The idea is that eventually, everything could be so automated that there’s nothing left for staff to focus on except the customers.”

Kaikaku was recently acquired by Reef, an American tech firm backed by Japanese giant SoftBank.

The company says its machines can cut labour costs by 70pc and make 360 salad bowls an hour – equivalent to one every 10 seconds.

This sort of technology is particularly attractive to hotels and restaurants that have faced significant tax rises under Labour, says Allen Simpson, the chief executive of UKHospitality.

However, he fears the sector is under such strain that many venues will end up laying off humans.

“You want to be in a situation where the robots take out the lower-productivity work,” he says. “But we’re actually in a position where the robots just take the job and the person isn’t redeployed because the employer can’t afford it.”

However, while there are clearly jobs that robots can handle that don’t require a human touch – such as the robo-butlers in Newcastle – many guests still expect a human face in hospitality.

Simpson points to two cocktail bars that recently opened in south London. One was run by two passionate bartenders who made their drinks the usual way, while the other was automated and sold canned cocktails.

“The canned bar went bust really quickly because – even though a Negroni is just three ingredients mixed together – people still want a human to have mixed their drink.”

NEW YORK CITY OWNED GROCERY STORES ARE A TAXPAYER MIRAGE!MIRAGE

Ibn Khaldun Warned New York About Mamdani Grocery Stores in 1377

Six hundred forty-nine years before Zohran Mamdani decided City Hall should sell eggs, a Muslim scholar in North Africa wrote down why that idea wrecks a city.

Ibn Khaldun finished the Muqaddimah in 1377. He had watched dynasties rise on light taxes and private trade, then rot when the ruler started buying and selling for himself. Chuck DeVore walked through that warning at Fox News this morning and pointed it straight at New York’s first Muslim mayor.

The coincidence is almost too clean. The son of a postcolonial scholar is running the late-stage version of the cycle Khaldun described.

Khaldun’s observation was simple. Early in a dynasty, taxes stay modest. Merchants work. Revenue grows. Civilization thickens. Later the palace wants more luxury and more soldiers. Taxes climb. Profits shrink. Then the ruler does the fatal thing. He enters commerce. He sets prices. He subsidizes. He competes with the men who actually generate the tax base. Those men leave, or they quit. Production falls. The treasury hollows out. The empire follows.

Six centuries later economists would call the tax half of that story the Laffer Curve. Khaldun already had the second half. Government as grocer is not compassion. It is the late-dynasty move.

It should be known that the finances of a ruler can be increased, and his financial resources improved, only through the revenue from taxes. (The revenue from taxes) can be improved only through the equitable treatment of people with property and regard for them. … Other (measures) taken by the ruler, such as engaging in commerce or agriculture, soon turn out to be harmful to the subjects, to be ruinous to the revenues, and to decrease cultural activity.

That is not a Heritage Foundation memo. That is a 14th-century Maghrebi historian watching kingdoms eat themselves.

City Hall as Competing Grocer

Mamdani is building five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough. The first is slated for Hunts Point in the Bronx in 2027, inside the old Spofford juvenile jail site now branded The Peninsula. East Harlem’s La Marqueta store is supposed to follow by 2029.

The city owns the land, pays construction, waives rent and property taxes, and then orders a private operator to sell a “core basket” of staples roughly 30 percent below ordinary retail. Capital cost on paper is $70 million. A Republican comptroller candidate already put the first few years closer to $206 million once operating subsidies and lost sales at neighboring stores are counted.

Supporters talk about cheaper eggs. They do not talk about who pays for the 30 percent. Manhattan Institute analyst Adam Lehodey told Fox the discount is an illusion. Taxpayers cover the subsidies. The stores sit on public land with the meter off. New Yorkers still pay full freight.

They just pay it on the tax bill instead of at the register. Heritage economist E.J. Antoni added the obvious math. Grocery margins already sit near 2 percent. A mandated 30 percent haircut is a loss the city will keep writing checks to cover.

Ohio Rep. Mike Rulli grew up in a family grocery chain. He told Fox those stores will bleed from the day the key turns. They may not last a year. City officials have already admitted the shops will skip butchers and hot food, which is another way of saying they will skim the politically useful items and leave the hard parts to the private operators they claim not to be competing with.

Mamdani insists he is not trying to kill bodegas. He just wants government to “set the terms.” That is the whole trick. Private grocers pay rent, property tax, insurance, union rules, and New York’s regulatory army. The municipal store does not. Then DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo shrugs that if a subsidized city store puts a neighbor out of business, maybe that neighbor should not have been in business.

Khaldun would have recognized the tone. It is the voice of a court that has decided merchants exist at the ruler’s pleasure.

Harlem is not even a food desert. The New York Post walked the blocks around La Marqueta and found City Fresh, Fine Fare, and Cherry Valley already selling milk and soda below the prices in richer neighborhoods. The $30 million Harlem box is not filling a vacuum. It is undercutting stores that already serve the same customers without a tax waiver.

The Irony Sitting at the Family Table

DeVore noted the personal twist. Mamdani is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, the Columbia postcolonial theorist. The elder Mamdani even published a 2017 essay titled “Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala.” The family has every reason to know the text. The son is governing as if the warning were a museum piece.

That is the pattern. Academic familiarity with decline is not the same as refusing to repeat it. Khaldun was not writing a diversity seminar. He was writing an autopsy. When the state moves from keeping order to stocking shelves, the productive class withdraws. Civilization does not expand. It contracts.

New York already knows the first half of his cycle. Taxes are high. Businesses have left. Regulation is a second rent. Layering municipal groceries on that stack does not reverse the incentives. It speeds them up. Shortages follow artificial prices. Quality slips.

The political win of cheaper bread is purchased with a thinner commercial city, and the city is what pays the pensions.

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

America’s great cities got rich because independent men and women created abundance. Not because a mayor decided to become a grocer with a printing press. Khaldun saw the ending in 1377. New York is volunteering for a rerun.

ONLY FANS OWNER RECEIVED $700 MILLION IN DIVIDENDS BEFORE DEATH

OnlyFans owner received $700mn in dividends before his death this year

Streaming platform used by sex workers has 5mn creator accounts according to latest annual results

OnlyFans is highly cash-generative and employs only 47 people © Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images

OnlyFans paid out more than $700mn in dividends to its owner before his death earlier this year, according to annual accounts for the British streaming platform to be filed in the UK this week.

Results for Fenix International — which owns the UK-based streaming platform used by sex workers — show revenue increasing a tenth to $1.6bn in the year to November 2025, and pre-tax profit up 5 per cent to $715mn. The business, which is highly cash-generative, employs only 47 people.

The majority of profits in its 2025 accounts went in dividends to its owner, Ukrainian-American entrepreneur Leonid Radvinsky, who died from cancer in the spring. His death preceded the sale of a 16 per cent stake in the business to San Francisco-based private equity firm Architect Capital in April for $535mn, giving the company a $3.2bn valuation.

The company’s accounts show $535mn was paid to Radvinsky in dividends in its 2025 financial year, up from $497mn the year before. However, a further $174mn was paid in several tranches since the end of the financial year, according to the accounts.

The sale valuation was seen as low for such a profitable company by some Wall Street advisers, explained by a reluctance among investors to be involved in a business that has become notorious for connecting porn performers directly with paying fans.

In 2025, the total number of OnlyFans creator accounts rose 9 per cent to 5mn, with the number of fan accounts increasing 16 per cent to 437mn globally.

Of the 5mn creator accounts, 2.5mn were classed as “active”, having been used in the financial year to November 30 2025, while there were 132mn active fan accounts.

About $6.2bn was paid out to its creators last year — after OnlyFans took its 20 per cent cut of their proceeds.

The overall amount paid to creators now totals $30bn since the platform was established in 2016.

The site also hosts other creators such as actors, musicians and sports stars seeking to generate money directly from fans, often in exchange for accepting requests for specific types of content.

The accounts — which will be filed this week in Companies House — confirm that the group is now controlled by the family trust led by Katie Chudnovsky, Radvinsky’s widow.

OnlyFans is marking its tenth anniversary, having been set up in 2016 by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely and his father, Guy, and then sold in 2018 to Radvinsky. It remains based in the UK.

Keily Blair, chief executive of OnlyFans, said: “In the 10 years since the platform launched in 2016, OnlyFans has paid out over $30bn to creators around the world, including over $1mn to more than 5,000 creators. As a UK-based business, we have also made a significant contribution to the UK economy, paying over £600mn in corporate taxes from 2016 to date.”

The group’s largest market is the US, where it generated $965mn of revenue in its last financial year. The UK and Europe contributed $347mn and the rest of the world $241mn.

LEBRON BORROWS $300 MILLION FROM INSURANCE COMPANIES

LeBron James Borrowed $300 Million From Insurers Arranged by Guggenheim

When LeBron James signed up to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to NBA glory with a $154 million contract in 2018, it wasn’t the biggest deal he did that year.

Just months before he joined, a limited liability company he controls borrowed almost $300 million from a pair of Midwestern life insurers advised by an arm of Guggenheim Partners, according to insurance industry records reviewed by Bloomberg.

The previously unreported bonds, which are due in 2049, were structured to provide immediate cash to James and backed by a stream of future revenue tied to his earnings outside basketball such as a lifetime Nike Inc. sponsorship, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The burst of lending began before Guggenheim leader Mark Walter started acquiring the storied basketball team. In an abrupt turn this month, the billionaire mogul agreed to sell the Lakers amid a federal probe into parts of his business empire. There’s no indication that the loans to James have anything to do with those inquiries.

Athletes and artists are increasingly using future earnings like royalties and licensing deals to structure deals that help them unlock immediate capital. David Bowie was famously the first recording artist to go to Wall Street to tap the future earnings of his music, paving the way for a thriving market for esoteric securities.

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But James’ deal offers another look at how Walter and fellow Wall Street money managers have tectonically shifted the once-boring business of life insurance, steering policyholder premiums into more unusual investments. Guggenheim has moved insurers’ money deeper into private credit, sports franchises and — with James — financing for a star player. That’s far outside the industry’s traditional focus on plain-vanilla assets to reliably pay out future claims.

The two insurers — North American Company for Life and Health Insurance and Midland National Life Insurance Co. — are both owned by Sammons Financial Group. During a call with investors this week, Sammons said Guggenheim was the sole manager in charge of picking assets for the firm’s portfolios until 2021, according to people who heard the remarks and, like others in this story, asked not to be identified describing confidential dealings.

Sammons has been distancing itself from Guggenheim recently. Walter’s firm had long counted Sammons’ parent company among its biggest investors. During the call, though, Sammons’ representatives said it has been selling down that stake, the people said.

The “transactions were a securitization done by Mr. James with his personal, non-NBA salary, assets and income which is a very common financial structure for an individual with this level of earnings and assets,” a spokesperson for James said.

Spokespeople for Sammons and Guggenheim declined to comment.

The scrutiny of Walter’s empire by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission has turned up the spotlight on the intermingling of asset managers and insurers.

Wall Street power players have used insurance balance sheets to pursue their quest for higher returns, steering the savings of everyday Americans into more opaque and complex investments. The approach lets asset managers originate and structure deals, and then find uncomplaining buyers by parking such investments on the balance sheets of insurers they influence.

King James Funding

James’ borrowing from the two Midwestern insurers — structured as sales of asset-backed bonds — began when he was at the Cleveland Cavaliers and his career was poised for new heights.

The two companies bought almost $300 million bonds issued by an LLC he controlled called King James Funding, the records show. Within a few years, the LLC paid down some of that debt, then sold more bonds to the insurers, leaving them with about $245 million on their books by the end of last year, the records show.

The initial bonds from 2018 had a 4.8% interest rate and aren’t due until late 2049, the industry filings show. Terms are otherwise scant in the records reviewed by Bloomberg.

A few months after the deal, James started looking for another team as a free agent, ultimately picking the Lakers. In an oft-retold moment, he received a visit at home from Walter’s longtime business partner Magic Johnson, then a top executive for the Lakers. James ultimately signed a four-year contract.

Then in mid-August 2022, James signed a $97 million contract extension with the Lakers. Around that same time, the same Midwestern insurers provided his LLC with more cash, buying almost $60 million of 34-year bonds with a 5.75% interest rate, the insurers’ records show.

“Both transactions were independently credit rated by a third party and the 2022 transaction was fully approved by NBA,” James’ spokesperson said, noting the athlete had no affiliation with Guggenheim, Sammons, North American Co. or Midland National beyond their participation in the transactions.

Guggenheim also got involved in some of James’ other personal ventures. As the Covid pandemic took hold in 2020, he and his childhood friend and business partner, Maverick Carter, announced that they had raised $100 million for their media venture called SpringHill Co. Guggenheim was listed among investors in that company.

Leaving the Lakers

For more than a decade, Walter has mixed money from insurers with investments in sports. His 2012 acquisition of the Los Angeles Dodgers with business partners including Johnson relied heavily on the insurance industry.

Afterward, the new team’s owners ramped up spending on players to turn the franchise into a jewel of professional baseball, appearing in five of the past nine World Series. But that playbook isn’t as feasible in the NBA, which has stricter caps on team salaries.

Walter’s acquisition of the Lakers began in 2021 when he purchased a minority stake, granting him rights that paved the way for him to take a majority stake last year.

The sale of the team came as Walter has been reshaping his empire to unwind more than $20 billion of loans on his insurers’ books that should have been marked as funding affiliated businesses, but weren’t. While regulations allow insurers to lend money to such parties, they require that the dealings be disclosed.

James, meanwhile, announced that he’s leaving the Lakers and he signed a two-year deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. His new team is co-owned by Josh Harris, whose 26North Partners invests across middle-market private equity, credit and insurance.

ROBOT BEATS WORLD TIME IN A RUN, ROBOTS WILL DOMINATE ALL SPORTS SOON?

Chinese robot runs 100m sprint quicker than Usain Bolt’s world record

Lightning the humanoid ⁠robot clocks 9.32sec in Beijing
Quicker than 9.58sec men’s world record set 17 years ago

A ⁠robot named Lightning ⁠has run the 100m in 9.32 seconds, ⁠beating the human world ⁠record, China’s state broadcaster ‌has reported.

The humanoid, developed by the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, ‌reached a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second during ‌a test event for the second World Humanoid Robot Games, which ⁠began on Saturday. The performance surpassed the 9.58sec men’s 100m world record set by Usain Bolt 17 years ago at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

China has been promoting humanoid robots as an emerging industry, with policymakers and companies ‌betting that advances in AI and hardware will accelerate their deployment in manufacturing, logistics and consumer applications.

A robot holding a tennis racket dives for the ball. — A robot dives for the ball during a tennis match with a human player in Beijing. Photograph: Florence Lo/Reuters

Lightning also won the Beijing half marathon in April in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, faster than the men’s world record. The robot stood 169cm tall and had 95cm-long legs at the half marathon. Researchers have since lengthened its legs ‌by 10cm for these Games.

More than 2,000 humanoid robots were participating in the five-day games, now in its second year, a spectacle intended to demonstrate China’s rapid progress in advanced robotics as the technology race with the US heats up. There are 51 events and more than 1,000 competitions taking place including running, table tennis and football.

The games, which are taking place in the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, opened the same week as Beijing held the 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies showcased around 3,000 products, including humanoid robots. China makes the majority of the world’s humanoid robots.

Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots. The FCC cited national security reasons in a move that targeted China. The Pentagon recently also added Unitree, one of China’s leading humanoid robot makers, to its list of companies that it deemed have ties with the Chinese military. Beijing has hit back at the accusations.

At Saturday’s opening of the robot games, the organisers and robot makers said that Chinese humanoid robots defeated human world records, as hundreds of humanoid robots marched in formation on to the field in a massive display of synchronised coordination.

In a standing high jump, a humanoid robot was able to reach 2.88m, well above the 0.95m best result by a humanoid in last year’s first edition of the games . It surpassed the human high jump record of 2.45m set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993. Both robots were from Beijing-based X-Humanoid.

Humanoid robots are “evolving rapidly”, said Li Yanfeng, an education worker and a Beijing resident. “At first, I wasn’t very accepting of artificial intelligence. I was even a bit resistant to it, because of the possibility that it might replace or displace humans,” she said. “But now that I see this development is unstoppable, I decided to come and take a look.”

Yang Shangzheng, another spectator, said: “These sports are perfectly normal for humans, but now robots can do them. I find it amazing.” Liu Tao, who was watching the games with his son, said he was hoping to see “the best robots China currently has to offer”.

This year’s robot games – which the organisers say has 16 countries participating, among them Germany, Japan and the US – also includes other events such as weightlifting and tug of war.

DRONE DELIVERIES FROM AMAZON ARE COMING!!!

Amazon ‘Prime Air’ to Expand Drone Delivery to Nearly 500 US Cities This Year

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service, first teased by Jeff Bezos in a 2013 60 Minutes interview as a way to get packages under 5lbs to customers in 30 minutes or less, represents the broader push toward autonomous aerial last-mile logistics that could bypass traffic and cut delivery times dramatically.

After years of regulatory hurdles with the FAA, technical iterations, and limited trials, the service has matured into a commercial offering using the MK30 drone, which hovers to drop packages.

A major breakthrough came in 2024, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Amazon a waiver allowing its drones to fly beyond the visual line of sight of their operators, and has already completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries in 2026 across 11 sites in seven states.

Today Amazon announced plans to expand it to nearly 500 US cities and towns by year-end – a roughly sixfold increase – bringing ultrafast options (as quick as 30 minutes) to tens of millions more customers in places like the Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Syracuse, and Boise metro areas.

The drones will primarily operate in suburban areas, away from skyscrapers and major airports that could complicate operations.

Amazon describes the aircraft as “highly autonomous,” with onboard cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection, and safe delivery.

The cameras do not transmit a live video feed, according to the company.

The company also sought to address the potential concern about noise.

“During drop-off, the sound level is below that of an idling delivery truck parked curbside and lasts about 30 seconds,” Amazon said.

Someone standing outside may hear a sound “comparable to a window fan on low” as the drone arrives, while people indoors may not hear it at all, the company added.

Prime Air delivery is free for Prime members on orders of at least $50, but orders below that threshold carry a $2.99 delivery fee, while customers without a Prime membership are charged $4.99.

The plan will intensify the battle between Amazon and Walmart to provide consumers with the fastest delivery times.

Both giants rely on a mix of drones and drivers to deliver everything consumers have ordered.

The goal is not necessarily about cutting costs by replacing drivers and trucks – and drones that can only carry one package at a time would have a hard time doing that. But instead, these companies are using drones as one tool to help keep customers happy with quicker deliveries, banking on a faster delivery system attracting more shoppers.

“It’s still an experiment. It’s still in test and learn mode,” said Sucharita Kodali, who is a retail analyst with Forrester.

However, it’s not all instant utopian dreams as The Epoch Times reports that the program also faces safety scrutiny following recent incidents.

In October 2025, two Amazon drones collided with a crane in Tolleson, Arizona, prompting separate investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA.

Another FAA investigation was opened last November after an Amazon drone struck and severed an internet cable while ascending from a customer’s yard in Waco, Texas.

ROBOTS WILL REPLACE 65 MILLION HUMANS IN USA BY 2050

Coffee shop run by robots operates 24-hours a day and makes 200 cups an hour

The creepy humanoid has set a Guinness World Record for the most cups of coffee served by a robot-operated store in one hour.

A robot serving up coffee in a dystopian future... no, wait - Modern day Beijing

Barista bot, at your service(Image: CNS)

A 24-hour coffee shop has been open for one day in Beijing, China, and it has already blown the rest of the barista game out of the park by immediately setting a world record of most cups of coffee served.

How did they manage it? Well, the entire staff are made up of coffee making robots.

Robot barista in action on Sunday showed the creepy coffee maker clad in a grey-and-white jumper as a sort of uniform. It had accessorised the look with a grey cap, headphones – as if it had anyone to talk to – and silver chains around its neck. Most concerningly, it wasn’t wearing any trousers.

The robot served an eye-watering 202 cups prepared and served in 60 minutes, setting a Guinness World Record for the most cups of coffee served by a robot-operated store in one hour.

Customers place their orders through a self-service system, allowing them to tailor the sweetness and/or intensity of their coffee.

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And all of that with an average wait time of less than 30 seconds per cup. One customer said her coffee was “pretty well-balanced” while her partner marvelled at how it took no time at all to get his cuppa despite a massive throng of people vying for a cup.

“When I first saw the place, I thought it would take a while to get a cup. But I walked in and got it almost right away,” he said.

Barista bot: Coffee maker extraordinaire? Herald of a dystopian future? Trouserless weirdo? You decide(Image: CNS)

Bonkers footage shows the chain-laden robot racking up the cups and putting them in cute little pigeon holes for customers to collect.

According to Australian economist Dr Leonora Risse, from the Queensland University of Technology, the only sticking point could be the lack the human connection that so many of us crave in an ever-saturated, tech-filled world.

She said that humanoid bots and AI were well-suited for routine and repetitive tasks – like making a recipe or, dare we say it, coffee. They do offer productivity gains, but, overall, if variety is needed then things tend to fall to bits.

Locals were keen to get a brew from barista-bot on Sunday (August 16)(Image: CNS)

“This shows how the essence of hospitality jobs is about human interactions,” the academic said, as per news.com.au.

“The jobs at highest risk of being replaced by AI are clerical and administrative jobs, as these involve routine processes, which can increasingly be done by digital tools. Telemarketers and call centre workers are top on the list, but clerks, bookkeepers, secretaries, receptionists and personal assistants are also in this mix.

“This places women more at risk of losing their job to AI, given that most of these are mostly female-concentrated occupations.”

Your female-gendered author is thrilled on that one, by the way. But we digress.

As per a recent article penned by Dr Risse and the Australian National University’s Elise Stephenson, clerical and administrative jobs made up more than 70per cent of women and provide almost one in five jobs for all women in the Australian workforce.

Barista-bot pops the coffee cup in a cute ‘lil pigeon hole for the customer to collect, ruining things for women(Image: CNS)

Dr Risse said we need to be ready to assist these displaced workers to transfer their skills to other roles.

“I expect that AI will make the ‘human’ side of our jobs even more important and valuable. “These skills that make us human – like empathy, care and emotional intelligence – are the skills we don’t want to outsource to robots and automation.

“Critical Judgement is also a skill that we’ll need to focus on more strongly. AI can perform the mechanics of a task. But how will it navigate complex decision-making processes where there is not a clear answer? This is where human ethics, morals and experience matter.

“As for the record-breaking coffee-serving robot, Australians love their coffee shops. There might be some novel exceptions, but I can’t see a huge wave of robots replacing Aussie baristas.”

In the US, Morgan Stanley predicted 62.7m American jobs could be replaced with humanoid robots by 2050. The bank stressed this was not a forecast of mass joblessness.

Looks like barista-bot can make all sorts of fancy pants bevvys(Image: CNS)

In the UK, analysis from the Office for National Statistics indicates that about 1.5 million jobs in England face a high risk of having specific tasks automated. Whereas the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that a worst-case “full displacement” scenario could eliminate up to 7.9 million UK jobs.

So should we be afraid of barista-bot? Yes. The inevitable, probably Terminator-filled future ahead of us is bleak and jobless. But, hey – coffee!

U.S. HAS LOST 25% OF ITS $30-$50 MILLION (EACH COST) REAPER DRONES

U.S. military has lost roughly 25% of its Reaper drones as Iran war depletes arsenal

The aircraft, which cost up to $50 million each, have seen heavy use around the Strait of Hormuz — but they are relatively easy targets for Iran and its proxies.

A U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, in December. (Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP/Getty

The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25 percent of its fleet, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The Reaper is used to conduct surveillance and targeted strikes, and it can cost between $30 million and $50 million depending on the type of sensors and weapons it carries, according to the Air Force. The potential taxpayer cost of recent losses is over $1.3 billion for that weapon system alone.

The aircraft have seen heavy use around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route that has become a major flash point in the conflict — and a key obstacle to negotiating a lasting peace deal. But the drones fly slowly and often at low altitudes, making them relatively easy targets for Iran’s military and its regional proxies in Yemen and Iraq.

A fourth U.S. official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Pentagon data, said that not all of the lost Reapers were shot down. An unspecified number crashed after their operators’ communications link to the drones failed, the official said.

The Reaper joins a growing list of U.S. weapons and munitions that have been drained by the Iran war and years of American military support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

In the Iran campaign’s first month, U.S. forces fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, significantly cutting into stockpiles of a key long-range strike capability and the military’s most in-demand air-defense systems, The Post reported previously.

Such shortages have constrained President Donald Trump’s military options as tensions with Tehran remain high and forced U.S. commanders in the region to change defensive tactics and hold missiles in reserve if they determine that an incoming Iranian missile is unlikely to harm anyone.

The Pentagon, which declined to comment for this article, has consistently denied reports that its weapons stockpiles are running low. At the same time, the Trump administration has asked Congress for tens of billions of dollars in funding to offset costs incurred by the Iran war and to replenish supplies.

As The Post reported last week, Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the state of the U.S. stockpile. The encounter occurred July 31, on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

The shortages have appeared to embolden Iran, which has intensified its demands for control of the Strait of Hormuz and reparations for damage the country has sustained since Trump ordered the start of hostilities on Feb. 28.

There were approximately 185 Reapers in the U.S. military fleet — 165 in the Air Force and 20 in the Marine Corps — before the conflict began, according to public budget data and the services. That figure does not include Reapers operated by U.S. intelligence agencies. To date, none of the Marines’ Reapers have been lost, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Joshua Benson, said in a statement. Those operate primarily in the Asia-Pacific.

In May, Lt. Gen. David Tabor, a senior Air Force officer at the Pentagon, told the Senate that the number of remaining drones had fallen to about 135. At the time, Tabor told lawmakers he was “concerned” about the losses and that the Air Force was exploring how to quickly replenish its fleet.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a White House event with President Donald Trump on Aug. 3. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Pentagon is phasing out the General Atomics-produced Reaper and envisions a replacement fleet of less expensive armed surveillance drones that can swarm their targets.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to shore up lawmaker support for a $67 billion Iran war supplemental budget that it says is vital to restocking the Pentagon’s arsenal. Even if Congress approves the funding, it will be years before stockpiles depleted by the conflict in Iran and the munitions sent to Ukraine are reconstituted.

Hegseth told the Senate in July that the Pentagon would have to curtail military trainings without a quick infusion of additional funding as the Iran war strains the defense budget. He estimated that the conflict would cost $37.5 billion through the end of September, though that total does not include the cost of rebuilding U.S. bases in the Middle East damaged by Iranian strikes.

Republicans in Congress are divided on the best strategy to secure the war-related funding and have left Washington for their August recess.

CONGRESS IS NOW ALL IN ON USING AI, CHATBOTS AND ALLOWING IT TO WRITE SPEECHES AND MORE!

Chatbots are doing the work of Congress with little oversight

From writing speeches to sorting constituent mail, AI is spreading through Congress faster than the rules governing its use.

Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT

(Illustration by Natalie Vineberg/The Washington Post)

PoliticsChevron right

The amendment was one of hundreds filed this summer to an annual defense bill making its way through Congress. Along with her proposed change, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s office had sent a summary of what it would do.

But the first line made no sense.

One of Luna’s staffers had copied a chatbot’s answer — time-stamp and all — and pasted it into the public record of the National Defense Authorization Act.

As a screenshot of the garbled text circulated on social media, the Florida Republican was nonchalant.

“Not a shocker,” she wrote. “Most staff use it.”

Asked later about the incident, Luna went further. “A lot of staff will use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. I personally like Grok better, but my staffer prefers Claude,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m not gonna knock him for that. There’s nothing illegal about him doing a summary.”

Across the Capitol, lawmakers and staffers are using artificial intelligence to write speeches and news releases, sort constituent mail, prepare questions for congressional hearings and draft amendments.

Even as politicians are debating how to govern AI for the rest of America, Congress has already settled how it will use the technology: quickly, broadly and with little oversight.

Both chambers have cleared members and staff to use chatbots — Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini and, in the House, Claude — for official work, with more under review. The House bought 6,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses last year and encouraged staff to use them.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) looks at her phone during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in February 2025. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Having someone else put words in a lawmaker’s mouth is nothing new. For almost as long as Congress has existed, staffers have been ghostwriting speeches for their bosses. But a speechwriter can be summoned or fired. Chatbots are products built by the tech companies lawmakers are in charge of regulating.

Amid the rapid adoption of AI on the Hill, lawmakers face a key question: How much of their responsibilities are they willing to hand over?

Interviews with more than two dozen lawmakers and staffers — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations — along with internal House and Senate policies obtained by The Post, show that the institution has left that question largely unanswered. The few House and Senate rules that exist are poorly understood and seldom enforced. In practice, AI use is left up to the hundreds of individual congressional offices to settle for themselves. It’s not clear how many offices have internal written policies on AI.

And no one The Post asked knew of any instance where a staffer was formally disciplined by the House or Senate for breaking its rules.

Luna was right. There was nothing illegal about having AI edit, spell-check — or even write — legislative materials. It wasn’t against House rules, either.

Her staffer’s only mistake was letting Claude sign its work for others to see.

Congress’s newest staffer

(Illustration by Natalie Vineberg/The Washington Post)

Sen. Tommy Tuberville has found a new way to pass the long drives across Alabama: talking to ChatGPT.

He asks it about Medicare and Medicaid, and listens as the machine’s voice talks back.

“It’s kind of like you can sit there and talk to an expert,” said the Alabama Republican. “You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct. But they put you on the right path.”

Rep. Mike Flood (R-Nebraska) said he consulted a chatbot while working on a bipartisan housing bill that passed this year, asking it where private equity was buying up single-family homes. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), who has proposed stricter legislation on tech companies, uses ChatGPT to look up demographic information.

One GOP staffer’s boss uses chatbots to generate the occasional cartoon of himself, she said with a laugh. Her explanation: “He’s a boomer.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) heads for a federal government funding vote at the Capitol in January. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

But the real power users are the thousands of staffers who do most of Congress’s work.

Earlier this year, Rep. Cleo Fields (D-Louisiana) had a town hall coming up in Natchitoches, a city in his district that his press secretary didn’t know well.

So that aide, Sydney Broome, asked Claude for a list of TV stations in town, its newspapers, and reporters’ names and contacts. Then, she started calling each one.

At 22, Broome is the youngest full-time staffer and only press secretary for Fields. AI saves her three or four hours of work a week, she said. Her boss does not use it at all.

ChatGPT first emerged when Broome was still in college. Her professors, unable to stop students from using AI, urged restraint and ran their assignments through AI detection. Students could use it for research, they warned, but never to write from scratch.

Congress has no such checks. So Broome has imposed them herself.

She’ll use Claude to find a reporter’s email, but not to write to them. She doesn’t use it to produce anything in her boss’s name. “That’s just kind of a bit of a gray area,” she said.

Many staffers say they are aware of AI’s limitations. The tools occasionally invent nonexistent bills. Other times, the writing is formulaic and clunky. Still, chatbots help speed up their work.

A GOP aide in another office said he uses Copilot to write appropriations amendments. The subcommittee he works for used AI to suggest witnesses for a hearing and to help generate the questions lawmakers should ask them.

Another Republican aide has taken AI even further. He exported all his phone contacts and text messages — years of conversations — into a personal Claude account and told it to build a database of every reporter he has ever dealt with: what he pitched them, which ones they accepted, which exchanges went badly. The chatbot auto-updates itself with each new conversation.

Recently, his boss wanted to do a TV interview about surveillance law. The aide asked Claude whether he had ever pitched a TV booker on that topic and how it went. It came back instantly with a contact.

Claude also runs that staffer’s office’s communications budget — the taxpayer-funded mail and ads sent to constituents. “I don’t really have to touch the data in Excel much anymore,” he said.

The aide said he’s not sure what exactly is permitted by congressional rules. “You’re still not supposed to put constituent data into AI,” he said. “There are weird things around where the rules are. I don’t know all of them.”

When nobody’s looking

In 2024, the House Administration Committee convened a private, bipartisan meeting with House officers and outside AI experts to talk through how far to let AI into the legislative process. About 150 chiefs of staff attended.

Out of it came the first AI guidance for Capitol Hill.

Internal House and Senate policies obtained by The Post and interviews with people familiar with them show how Congress has embraced the use of AI.

Last summer, the House bought 6,000 Copilot licenses. The tool was a natural fit for a chamber that already ran on Microsoft and a more secure way to keep congressional work inside a single system, officials believed. Starting in January, offices could sign up for access.

They came with a major guardrail built into the system: Copilot is designed to refuse political requests. Ask it to criticize a party, politician or political group, and the machine declines.

AI & Tech Brief: Dem caucuses to meet on AI

March 23, 2026

June 4, 2026

“I can’t create content that criticizes or condemns political parties, politicians, or political groups,” read one Copilot response shared by a staffer. “That includes writing tweets that attack Democrats, Republicans.”

Roughly half the licenses are now in use, and House officials have extended the deal.

From left: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Advanced Micro Devices chair and CEO Lisa Su; CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator; and Microsoft President Brad Smith attend a Senate committee hearing in May 2025. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

The rules Congress wrote for itself are loose. Off limits under current House guidance: putting sensitive material such as constituent information into a chatbot, generating deepfakes, making personnel decisions and finalizing legislation.

A machine may help write a bill but may not be the last hand on it. It may draft a reply to a constituent but can’t be told who the constituent is.

In theory, a staffer breaking those rules can be stripped of access to AI tools, suspended, fired, even fined and imprisoned.

But no one could name a single case of that happening. People familiar with House operations said they’re not aware of any enforcement action by the chief administrative officer. A spokesperson for the CAO said the office can’t comment on potential enforcement actions. A spokesperson for the Senate sergeant at arms didn’t respond.

Catching violations largely falls on staffers, who would have to report a colleague, or themselves.

Most said in interviews that they don’t know the rules. A former senior Republican House staffer said that his office subscribed to both ChatGPT and Claude and that staff used them however they liked. He wasn’t sure what the rules were, or whether his team followed them. “We just had a free-for-all,” he said.

The House and Senate encourage individual offices to implement their own written AI policies. If a House office wants Copilot, in theory, it must have a policy in place.

One reason Congress has moved so quickly to adopt AI tools is to keep pace with the executive branch, said people familiar with internal House operations. The Trump administration has spent the past year and a half pushing AI into every corner of the government.

“If we are not keeping pace with how the executive branch is functioning,” one person said, “then we’re not performing effective oversight.”

AI for everything

The new frontier has left some lawmakers pondering how to proceed.

“We want to make sure we’re using AI, and AI isn’t using us,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Maryland), a constitutional law professor and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) recently worked with her staff on a new policy for her office. They can use AI to “enhance and streamline” work but not to generate “final products” — like floor speeches or public remarks. They have to take AI training. Nothing with personal information about constituents or the senator can be uploaded. And her office is holding unannounced “spot check” inspections.

“We didn’t want to prohibit the use of the newest tools, but we also didn’t want absolute schlock showing up in my memos,” Slotkin said. “What I’m not willing to do is put my head in the sand and pretend that my young staff aren’t going to find new and interesting ways of doing this.”

In recent months, one Democratic staffer said his office has been exploring something new: feeding AI his boss’s past statements so the tool can write in the lawmaker’s voice. He heard another office was pulling it off and wanted to try himself.

In the same building, a GOP press secretary whose office has stricter AI limits said it’s unfair other offices get an advantage. “We could churn out so many op-eds if we were more comfortable with AI,” she said.

Recently, she found her own press assistant using AI in violation of their office’s policy. “We had to have a very robust conversation about how not to use AI for things in [the boss’s] voice,” she said.

A preview of what more rampant AI use could look like already exists in state legislatures — many of which have no rules or policies at all.

Amber Hulse serves in the South Dakota state Senate, where money is tight and lawmakers have no full-time staff. Hulse, a Republican, uses AI for almost everything — policy research, constituent email, speeches, writing legislation.

Lately, she said, the signs of AI’s effects are getting easier to spot.

“It’s funny,” Hulse said, “how your ears will start to pick up on the floor someone who’s giving a speech that was very clearly written by AI.”

IRAN BOUGHT KILO CLASS SUBMARINES FROM RUSSIA..U.S. SUNK ONE ALREADY

Kilo-Class Submarines All Together

Iran’s quest for the Kilo-class ‘black hole’ submarines was clearly a long-time coming, even before the mighty USSR fell. Tehran signed the contract in 1988, while the Soviet Union still existed, and then received three Project 877EKM boats from post-Soviet Russia between 1992 and 1996. IRIS Taregh entered service on November 21, 1992, IRIS Nooh followed on June 6, 1993; and IRIS Yunes was commissioned on November 25, 1996. The three boats gave Iran its first modern, ocean-going submarine force.

The Kilo-Class Was a Big Deal for Iran

Kilo-Class Submarine

Polish Navy submarine, Kilo-Class.

The timing mattered for Tehran, for sure. Iran could not match the United States ship for ship, but a quiet diesel-electric submarine offered a different form of power.

The possibility of one hidden boat near the Strait of Hormuz required an opponent to plan around patrol aircraft, helicopters, sonar-equipped warships, and attack submarines. Tehran bought only three Kilos, yet their presence created a much larger anti-submarine warfare problem.

The arrival of the third boat showed Washington’s concern. A Defense Department photograph and caption recorded the submarine being towed across the Mediterranean in late December 1995 before transiting the Suez Canal. Ships and aircraft from the U.S. Sixth Fleet tracked it on the surface before it reached Iran.And, in fact, the very first article I ever wrote, way back in 1995, when I was in High School, was about that very event.

The Black Hole?

“Black Hole” became the class’s famous nickname, though Iran received the older Project 877EKM export design, not the later Project 636.3 Improved Kilo. The Rubin Design Bureau highlights the single-shaft propulsion system, low-noise machinery, and anechoic hull coating.

Running on batteries, a Kilo was difficult to hear. It was never invisible, and without air-independent propulsion, it eventually had to snorkel and run diesel engines to recharge.

Iran’s Kilo Submarines Carried 18 Torpedoes but Faced Persian Gulf Geography

Each Iranian Kilo displaced about 3,000 tons submerged, measured roughly 74 meters long, and reached about 17 knots underwater.

Six 533-millimeter bow tubes supported 18 torpedoes or 24 mines, while published design figures placed total endurance near 45 days. Those numbers made Iran’s upgraded Kilo fleet its heaviest conventional undersea force.

They did not mean the boat remained submerged for 45 days; battery endurance was far shorter.

Geography reduced the advantage for sure. The Nuclear Threat Initiative estimates the boats needed at least 164 feet of water and therefore had access to only about one-third of the Persian Gulf. Strong currents, salinity, and shallow water complicated operations.

The deeper Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea suited them better, while Iran’s smaller Ghadir boats were intended for confined coastal waters.

The public record before 2026 shows exercises and patrols, not combat. Iran sent Kilos into the Gulf of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean and used them to test torpedoes and rehearse mine warfare. No verified account credits Taregh, Nooh, or Yunes with sinking a ship, firing a cruise missile in wartime, or launching a combat torpedo.

Age and Sanctions Turned Iran’s Stealth Submarines Into Maintenance Projects

Keeping the boats operational became harder than buying them. That much seems clear

Iran relaunched Taregh in 2012 after an overhaul that reportedly replaced about 18,000 components, including propellers and radar equipment. By January 2021, satellite imagery showed all three Kilos out of the water, with one having remained in dry dock since 2019. The long repair periods pointed to shortages of parts, facilities and experienced labor.

Kilo-class Submarine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The fleet’s condition was worse on the eve of war than its “Black Hole” reputation suggested. Commercial imagery from February 26, 2026, showed two Kilos undergoing repairs and one apparently idle at Bandar Abbas.

A submarine in a dock is a fixed target, which helps explain why the boats were described as out of action during the opening strikes.

The United States Sunk at Least One Iranian Kilo at Bandar Abbas

Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026. CENTCOM confirmed strikes on Iranian submarines on March 1 without identifying their classes. The strongest public evidence came from commercial satellite imagery. A review of Planet Labs images showed one of Iran’s three Kilos apparently intact on March 2 and sunk at its berth by March 4. On March 13, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Army ATACMS missiles had sunk multiple ships, including a submarine. He did not name it.

Adm. Brad Cooper separately said Iran’s “most operational” submarine had a hole in its side. The wording fits the Kilo visible at Bandar Abbas, though the United States never publicly identified the hull as Taregh, Nooh, or Yunes. Reports that the remaining Kilos had gone missing captured the unresolved point: one wreck was visible, while the other two boats lacked a public, name-by-name damage assessment.

The White House later claimed Iran had “zero submarine vessels” left, covering a fleet that also included Fateh and Ghadir boats. Public reporting on the gap between the aggregate claim and identified losses did not produce separate wreck locations for Nooh and Yunes. On July 12, CENTCOM used three Corsair unmanned surface vessels to strike a submarine and a ship-maintenance facility at Bandar Abbas. The released video showed the sea drones hitting the facility where Iran had spent years trying to keep its submarine force operational.