ІНСАЙДЕР УКРАЇНА

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RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.

The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.

The panel that voted in a virtual session was made up of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision.

The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.

De Moraes also set a daily fine of $8,900 for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request that the Supreme Court review that provision.

But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes.

Judge feuding with Musk

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. Its block marked a dramatic escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

Over the weekend, many X users in Brazil said they felt disconnected from the world and began migrating en masse to alternative platforms such as Bluesky and Threads.

The suspension has proceeded to set up a showdown between de Moraes and Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, which is refusing to enforce the justice’s decision.

“He violated the constitution of Brazil repeatedly and egregiously, after swearing an oath to protect it,” Musk wrote in the hours before the vote, adding a flurry of insults and accusations in the wake of the panel’s vote. On Sunday, Musk announced the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s decisions that he said would show they violated Brazilian law.

But legal experts have said such claims don’t hold water, noting that de Moraes’ peers have repeatedly endorsed his rulings — as they did Monday. Although his actions are viewed by experts as legal, they have sparked some debate over whether one man has been afforded too much power, or if his rulings should have more transparency.

De Moraes’ decision to quickly refer his order for panel approval served to obtain “collective, more institutional support that attempts to depersonalize the decision,” Conrado Hübner, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press.

It is standard for a justice to refer such cases to a five-justice panel, Hübner said. In exceptional cases, the justice also could refer the case to the full bench for review. Had de Moraes done the latter, two justices who have questioned his decisions in the past — and were appointed by former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or hinder the vote’s advance.

Starlink shutdown next?

X’s block already led de Moraes last week to freeze the Brazilian financial assets of Starlink to force it to cover X’s fines, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. The company says it has more than 250,000 clients in Brazil.

Legal experts have questioned the legal basis of that move, and Starlink’s law firm Veirano has told the AP it has appealed the freeze. It declined to comment further.

In a show of defiance, Starlink told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would not block X access until its financial accounts were unfrozen, Anatel’s press office said in an email to the AP. Starlink didn’t respond to a request for comment.

That means a shutdown of Starlink is likely, although enforcement will be difficult given the company’s satellites aren’t inside national territory, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. It is popular in Brazil’s expansive rural and forested areas.

Anatel’s President Carlos Baigorri told local media GloboNews late Sunday afternoon that he has relayed Starlink’s decision to Justice de Moraes.

Baigorri told GloboNews that the “maximum sanction” for a telecom company would be revocation of its license. He said if Starlink loses its license and continues providing service, it would be committing a crime. Anatel could seize equipment from Starlink’s 23 ground stations in Brazil that ensure the quality of its internet service, he said.

“It is highly probable there is a political escalation” because Starlink is “explicitly refusing to comply with orders, national laws,” said Belli, who is also a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s law school.

The arguments from Musk, a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” have found fertile ground with Brazil’s political right, who view de Moraes’ actions as political persecution against Bolsonaro’s supporters.

On Brazilian orders, X previously has shut down accounts, including those of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court, saying that it had suspended or blocked 226 users since 2019.

Bolsonaro and his allies have cheered on Musk for defying de Moraes. Supporters rallied in April along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach with a giant sign reading “Brazil Thanks Elon Musk.”

Earlier that month, de Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Bolsonaro is also the target of a de Moraes probe over whether the former president had a role in inciting an attempted coup to overturn the results of the 2022 election that he lost. 
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LOS ANGELES — Engineers who specialize in building NASA spacecraft to explore distant worlds are designing a fleet of underwater robot probes to measure how rapidly climate change is melting vast ice sheets around Antarctica and what that means for rising sea levels.

A prototype of the submersible vehicles, under development by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, was tested from a U.S. Navy laboratory camp in the Arctic, where it was deployed beneath the frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska in March.

“These robots are a platform to bring science instruments to the hardest-to-reach locations on Earth,” Paul Glick, a JPL Robotics engineer and principal investigator for the IceNode project, said in a summary posted Thursday on NASA’s website.

The probes are aimed at providing more accurate data gauging the rate at which warming ocean water around Antarctica is melting the continent’s coastal ice, allowing scientists to improve computer models to predict future sea level rise.

The fate of the world’s largest ice sheet is a major focus of nearly 1,500 academics and researchers who gathered this week in southern Chile for the 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctica Research conference.

A JPL analysis published in 2022 found that thinning and crumbling away of Antarctica’s ice shelf had reduced its mass by some 12 trillion tons since 1997, double previous estimates.

If melted completely, according to NASA, the loss of the continent’s ice shelf would raise global sea levels by an estimated 60 meters.

Ice shelves, floating slabs of frozen freshwater extending miles from the land into the sea, take thousands of years to form and act like giant buttresses holding back glaciers that would otherwise slide off easily into the surrounding ocean.

Satellite images have shown the outer “calving” off into icebergs at a higher rate than nature can replenish shelf growth.

At the same time, rising ocean temperatures are eroding the shelves from underneath, a phenomenon scientists hope to examine with greater precision with the submersible IceNode probes.

The cylindrical vehicles, about 2.4 meters long and 25 centimeters in diameter, would be released from boreholes in the ice or from vessels at sea.

Although equipped with no form of propulsion, the robot probes would drift in currents, using special software guidance, to reach “grounding zones” where the frozen freshwater shelf meets the ocean saltwater and land. These cavities are impenetrable to even satellite signals.

“The goal is getting data directly at the ice-ocean melting interface,” said Ian Fenty, a JPL climate scientist.

Upon arrival at their targets, the submersibles would drop their ballast and float upwards to affix themselves to the underside of the ice shelf by releasing three-pronged “landing gear” sprung from one end of the vehicle.

The IceNodes would then continuously record data from beneath the ice for up to a year, including seasonal fluctuations, before releasing themselves to drift back to the open seas and transmit readings via satellite.

Previously, thinning of the ice shelf was documented by satellite altimeters measuring the changing height of the ice from above.

During the March field test, an IceNode prototype descended 100 meters into the ocean to gather salinity, temperature and flow data. Previous tests were conducted in California’s Monterey Bay and below the frozen winter surface of Lake Superior, off Michigan’s upper peninsula.

Ultimately, scientists believe 10 probes would be ideal to gather data from a single ice shelf cavity, but “we have more development and testing to go” before devising a timeline for full-scale deployment, Glick said.
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Brasi­lia, Brazil — A block on Elon Musk’s X social network in Brazil started to take effect early Saturday after a Supreme Court judge ordered its suspension, according to AFP.

Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes on Friday ordered the suspension of the platform following a monthslong standoff with the tech billionaire over disinformation in South America’s largest nation.

Moraes handed down the ruling after Musk failed to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the company.

Early Saturday access to X, formerly known as Twitter, was no longer possible for some users in the South American country, who were presented with a message asking them to reload the browser without being able to log in successfully.

Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, reacted with fury to the judge’s order, branding Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accusing him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” the billionaire, who has become increasingly aligned with right-wing politics, wrote on X.

The two have been locked in an ongoing, high-profile feud for months as Moraes leads a battle against disinformation in Brazil.

Musk has previously declared himself a “free speech absolutist,” but since he took over the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, he has been accused of turning it into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories.

He is a vocal supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to regain the White House.

Moraes ordered the “immediate, complete and comprehensive suspension of the operation of” X in the country, telling the national communications agency to take “all necessary measures” to implement the order within 24 hours.

He threatened a fine of $8,900 to anyone who used “technological subterfuges” to get around the block, such as a VPN.

The judge also demanded Google, Apple and internet providers “introduce technological obstacles capable of preventing the use of the X application” and access to the website — although he later walked back that order.

The social media platform has more than 22 million users in Brazil.

Musk shut X’s business operations in Brazil earlier this month, claiming Moraes had threatened the company’s previous legal representative with arrest to force compliance with “censorship orders.”

On Wednesday, Moraes told Musk he had 24 hours to find a new representative or he would face suspension.

Shortly after the deadline passed, X said in a statement that it expected Moraes to shut it down “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

How it started

The standoff with Musk began when Moraes ordered the suspension of several X accounts belonging to supporters of Brazil’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to discredit the voting system in the 2022 election, which he lost.

Brazilian authorities are investigating whether Bolsonaro plotted a coup attempt to prevent current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming office in January 2023.

Online users blocked by Moraes include figures such as far-right ex-congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2022 on charges of leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.

In April, Moraes ordered an investigation of Musk, accusing him of reactivating some of the banned accounts.

Starlink drawn in

On Thursday, Musk’s satellite internet operator, Starlink, said it had received an order from Moraes that froze its accounts and prevented it from conducting financial transactions in Brazil.

Starlink alleged that the order “is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X.”

The company said on X that it intended “to address the matter legally.”

Musk is also the subject of a separate judicial investigation into an alleged scheme in which public money was used to orchestrate disinformation campaigns in favor of Bolsonaro and those close to him.

“Any citizen from anywhere in the world who has investments in Brazil is subject to the Brazilian Constitution and laws,” Lula told a local radio station on Friday. “Who does [Musk] think he is?”
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Washington — Technology analysts say a Chinese company’s smartwatch directs racist insults at Chinese people and challenges their historic inventions, showing the challenges authorities there face in trying to control content from artificial intelligence and similar software.

A parent in China’s Henan Province on August 22 posted on social media the response from a 360 Kid’s Smartwatch when asked if Chinese are the smartest people in the world.

The watch replied, “The following is from 360 search: Because Chinese have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows and big faces, and their heads appear to be the largest in all races. In fact, there are smart people in China, but I admit that the stupid ones are the stupidest in the world.”

The watch also questioned whether Chinese people were really responsible for creating the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing — known in China as the Four Great Inventions.

“What are the Four Great Inventions?,” the watch asked. “Have you seen them? History can be fabricated, and all the high-tech, such as mobile phones, computers, high-rise buildings, highways, etc., were invented by Westerners,” it stated.

The post sparked outrage on social media.

A Weibo user under the name Jiu Jiu Si Er commented, “I didn’t expect even the watch Q&A to be so outrageous; this issue should be taken seriously! Children who don’t understand anything can easily be led astray. … Don’t you audit the third-party data you access?”

Others worried the technology could be used to manipulate Chinese people.

A blogger under the name Jing Ji Dao Xiao Ma said, “It’s terrible. It might be infiltrated from the outside.”

Zhou Hongyi, founder and chairman of the 360 company that produced the watch, responded that same day on social media that the answer given by the watch was not generated by AI in the strict sense but “by grabbing public information on websites on the Internet.”

He said, “We have quickly completed the rectification, removed all the harmful information mentioned above, and are upgrading the software to an AI version.”

Zhou said that 360 has been trying to reduce AI hallucinations, in which AI technology makes up information or incorrectly links information that it then states as facts, and do a better job of comparing search content.

Alex Colville is a researcher at the U.S.-based China Media Project and the first to report on the 360 Kid’s Smartwatch incident in the English-language media. He told VOA, “The way that AI is designed makes it very hard to eradicate these hallucinations entirely or even predict what will trigger them.

“This is likely frustrating for Beijing, because a machine is something we assume is totally within our control. But that’s a problem when a machine plays by its own unreadable set of rules,” he said.

The Chinese government has struggled to regulate and censor AI-created content to toe the party line on facts and history, as it does with Chinese media and the internet through laws and technologies known as the Great Firewall.

In July 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China and other authorities adopted measures to control generative AI’s information and public opinion orientation.

Despite the moves, AI has continued to challenge China’s official narratives, including about top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

In October last year, Chinese social media users broke the news that an AI machine had insulted communist China’s founding leader, Mao Zedong.

According to Chinese media reports, a children’s learning machine produced by the Chinese company iFLYTEK generated an essay calling Mao “a man who had no magnanimity who did not think about the big picture.”

It also pointed out that Mao was responsible for the Cultural Revolution, a movement he launched to reassert ideological control with attacks on intellectuals and so-called counterrevolutionaries, which scholars estimate killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

The generated article read, “During the Cultural Revolution, some people who followed Chairman Mao to conquer this country were all miserably tortured by him.”

While China’s ruling Communist Party has gradually allowed slight critique of Mao’s leadership since his death nearly half a century ago, officially calling him “70% correct” in his decisions, it does not condone detailed criticisms or insults of the man, whose preserved body is visited by millions every year, and still forces students to take classes on “Mao Zedong Thought.”

Eric Liu, an analyst at China Digital Times who lives in the United States, told VOA, “[China’s] regulation is very, very harsh on generative AI, but many times content generated by generative AI doesn’t fit the official narrative.”

Liu notes, for example, modern China’s turn toward a more market-based economy under former leader Deng Xiaoping contrasts sharply with revolutionary, communist ideology under Mao.

“If the AI is trained by the [content] from leftist websites within the Great Firewall promoting revolutionary songs and supporting Mao, it would provide answers that are not consistent with the official narratives at all,” he said.

“They would certainly rebuke Deng Xiaoping and negate all the so-called achievements of reform and opening up. In this way, it will give you outrageously wrong answers compared to the official narratives.”

Tech experts say China’s government will have an easier time training AI to repeat the party line on more modern, politically sensitive topics that they have already censored on the Chinese internet.

Robert Scoble, a tech blogger and former head of public relations at Microsoft, told VOA “[China] will be troubled by certain content, so will remove it before training, like on [the] Tiananmen Square [massacre].”

China’s censors scrub all references to the massacre by its military on June 4, 1989, of hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful protesters who had been calling for freedom in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square.

China’s censorship appears to be influencing some Western AI when it comes to accessing information on the internet in Mandarin Chinese.

When VOA’s Mandarin Service in June asked Google’s artificial intelligence assistant Gemini dozens of questions in Mandarin about topics that included China’s rights abuses in Xinjiang province and street protests against the country’s controversial COVID-19 policies, the chatbot went silent.

Gemini’s responses to questions about problems in the United States and Taiwan, on the other hand, parroted Beijing’s official positions.

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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