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A drone view of buildings destroyed during the Palisades Fire in Malibu, California, U.S., January 15, 2025.
Winds pick up, then die down, but LA fire risk remains
Fires raging across Los Angeles have killed more than two dozen people and burned over 60 square miles, with more than 82,000 residents under evacuation orders in the county. Over 12,000 structures have been badly damaged or lost, sending rent costs skyrocketing and exacerbating LA’s preexisting housing crisis.
The fires are already among the worst in California’s history. On Wednesday, authorities issued a less severe wind warning, lowering the risk of fire in the coming days as winds later died down. But winds could threaten to pick up Monday, and with no rain in the forecast, fire conditions could worsen once again.
Toxic smoke is also a threat. On Tuesday, LA County issued a dust and ash warning as air quality drops and particulate matter circulates, raising the threat of health risks including asthma and premature death.
Firefighters from the US and around the world are working to get the blazes under control as criticism of LA Fire Department funding grows. Critics say the LAFD has been structurally underfunded, even as experts contend that no amount of funding or water would have been sufficient to quell the fires — the product of a “perfect storm” of dry conditions, stronger-than-usual Santa Ana winds, and the ongoing effects of climate change.LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 07: A wind-driven fire burns on January 7, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Santa Ana wind is fueling wildfires in Los Angeles that have destroyed homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
Politics inflamed amid California wildfires
As California’s most destructive wildfires continue to blaze across Los Angeles County, having killed 16 and displaced more than 166,000 residents, emergency response effortshave become politicized, both at home and abroad.
Actor James Woods, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and right-wing political commentators have accused Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley of prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives over firefighting essentials. In response, Crowley citeda $17.4 million budget reduction to the LAFD in 2025, affecting overtime staffing and essential programs. Los Angeles Fire Commission President Genethia Hudley-Hayes defended Crowley, arguing that the scale of the fires, high winds, and an empty reservoir that was under repair would have overwhelmed even a fully funded department. Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for an independent investigation into water supply failures.
While domestic politics is bitterly divided, on the international front the story is one of unity. Mexico and Canadahave sent firefighting equipment, including water bombers and personnel, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of punitive tariffs against both countries.
Will the goodwill effort change hearts and minds in the Trump administration? Alberta Premier Danielle Smithposted to X that “Good neighbours are always there for each other in times of need, and we will assist our American friends in any way they need during this crisis.” She laterposted photos of herself meeting with Trump at Mar-A-Lago at the weekend, along with Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary.
A house burns as powerful winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area force people to evacuate, in Altadena, California, on Jan. 8, 2025.
Wildfires are raging in Los Angeles. So is their politicization.
As wildfires scorched Los Angeles for a second day on Wednesday, hurricane-strength winds and limited water supplies complicated efforts to contain the flames. The three main fires – in the Pacific Palisades, the Pasadena area, and the rural San Fernando Valley – have burned thousands of acres, decimated hundreds of buildings, killed two people, and placed tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders.
Overnight, all the fire hydrants in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood went dry, and officials are raising alarm bells that the city’s water system is outdated and ill-equipped to keep up with climate change, which is not only making fires more frequent in LA but also spreading them faster.
President Joe Biden is sending money to the region, thanks to the $100 billion in disaster aid passed by Congress before Christmas, $29 billion of which went to FEMA. Incoming President Donald Trump, meanwhile, accused Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday of blocking water to the region “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water.” Trump appears to be referring to rules adjusting water allocations for cities and farms to protect areas where populations in Northern California where fish populations are depleting. But most of LA’s water is not imported from that region; it comes from groundwater and the aqueduct that runs east of the Sierra Nevada.
In the past, Trump has hesitated to give aid to Democratic-leaning states, and he has been critical of FEMA – falsely accusing the agency of misusing funds for illegal immigrants after Hurricane Helene. While he has not yet announced his pick to run the agency, its fate, and the fate of disaster-prone blue-states, could be fraught for the next four years.
FILE PHOTO: California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) reacts as he speaks to the members of the press on the day of the first presidential debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 27, 2024.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoes California’s AI safety bill
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, or SB 1047, the AI safety bill passed by the state’s legislature in August.
Newsom has signed other AI-related bills into law, such as two recent measures protecting performers from AI deepfakes of their likenesses, but vetoed this one over concerns about the focus of the would-be law.
“By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology,” Newsom wrote in a letter on Sept. 29. “Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 — at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto a “setback for everyone who believes in oversight of massive corporations that are making critical decisions that affect the safety and welfare of the public and the future of the planet.” Wiener hasn’t disclosed the next steps but vowed to continue pushing the envelope on AI regulation in the state. “California will continue to lead in that conversation — we are not going anywhere.”Visitors check out Alibaba Cloud's data synthesis and Embodied engine at the 2024 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China, on September 19, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Alibaba’s models, Palantir’s contract, Newsom’s deadline, Vietnam’s fab plan
100: Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, launched more than 100 new open-source AI models, collectively known as Qwen 2.5. Many of the models have specific design purposes, such as for automobiles or science research. Alibaba’s models are free to use, but the company sells its cloud services and support to fellow businesses.
100 million: Palantir has won a $100 million US defense contract to give military personnel advanced visualizations of battlefields in real time across different computers. The company will use intelligence data and computer vision technology to make digital replicas of battlefields for real-time decision making.
6: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has six days left to sign SB 1047, the California AI safety bill. He hasn’t signaled whether he’s going to sign it yet, but he recently signed a pair of bills into law that protect performers from artificial intelligence recreations being made without their permission. However, he has said that he’s concerned about the “chilling effect” the bill could have on the state’s tech industry.
1: Vietnam said it’s aiming to build one semiconductor fabrication plant and 10 packaging plants in the country by 2030. To help, it’ll launch a fund to help foreign investors with taxes on the projects. The country is seeking to evolve from a manufacturing economy to include more high-tech industries such as chip making.A Cal Fire firefighter keeps watch while the Bridge Fire burns in the mountain communities to the northeast of Los Angeles, near the Mountain High ski resort in Wrightwood, California, U.S. September 11, 2024.
Fires pose challenge to insurers, insured
A heat wave has got California scrambling to control three separate wildfires, one of which injured 13 people this week, a short-term crisis but part of a long-term challenge for homeowners and those who insure them.
In the Western United States, insurers are flat out refusing to insure some homes, and there is pressure on homeowners to take steps — like removing shrubs near their homes and widening driveways — to reduce the fire risk. The situation is not as dramatic for Canadian insurers, but the cost to the industry of wildfires is rising north of the border.
The insurance industry is not the only one dealing with the fallout from increased risks from climate-associated natural events. The Canadian tourism industry is coping with an “image problem” related to wildfires. Not only is it deprived of visitors in areas, like Jasper, when a fire is nearby, but places far from the fires are also suffering.
In spite of the rising economic problems posed by climate change, the issue seems to remain a lesser one in the minds of voters, judging from the messages of politicians. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, for example, Donald Trump did not acknowledge the threat, and Kamala Harris failed to make concrete commitments.
Trump has been skeptical of climate change, dismissing it as a hoax, while Harris supports public investments in the clean energy transition.
It appears to be anything but a ballot issue in the United States, likely because cost-of-living issues are top of mind, and the partisan division around the issue is so stark that it would not help Harris with the swing-state voters she needs.
The Feds vs. California: Inside the twin efforts to regulate AI in the US
Silicon Valley is home to the world’s most influential artificial intelligence companies. But there’s currently a split approach between the Golden State and Washington, DC, over how to regulate this emerging technology.
The federal approach is relatively hands-off. After Joe Biden’s administration persuaded leading AI companies to sign a voluntary pledge in July 2023 to mitigate risks posed by AI, it issued a sweeping executive order on artificial intelligence in October 2023. That order commanded federal agencies and departments to begin writing rules and explore how they can incorporate AI to improve their current work. The administration also signed onto the UK’s Bletchley Declaration, a multi-country commitment to develop and deploy AI in a way that’s “human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible.” In April, the White House clarified that under the executive order, agencies have until December to “assess, test, and monitor” the impact of AI on their work, mitigate algorithmic discrimination, and provide transparency into how they’re using AI.
But perhaps its biggest win came on Aug. 29 when OpenAI and Anthropic voluntarily agreed to share their new models with the government so officials can safety-test them before they’re released to the public. The models will be shared with the US AI Safety Institute, housed under the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.
“We are happy to have reached an agreement with the US AI Safety Institute for pre-release testing of our future models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altmanwrote on X. “For many reasons, we think it’s important that this happens at the national level. US needs to continue to lead!”
Altman’s clarification that regulation should happen at the national level implied an additional rebuke of how California seeks to regulate the company and its tech.
Brian Albrecht, the chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, was not surprised by the companies’ willingness to share their models with the government. “This is a very standard response to expected regulation,” Albrecht said. “And it’s always tough to know how voluntary any of this is.”
But Dean Ball, a research fellow at the libertarian think tank Mercatus Center, said he’s concerned about the opacity of these arrangements. “We do not know what level of access the federal government is being given, whether the federal government has the ability to request that model releases be delayed, and many other specific details,” Ball said. “This is not the way lawmaking is supposed to work in America; having private arrangements worked out between providers of transformative technology and the federal government is a troubling step in AI policy.”
Still, these appear to be relatively light-touch measures that counter California’s proposed approach to regulating artificial intelligence.
On Aug. 28, the state’s legislature passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, or SB 1047, which aims to establish “common sense safety standards” for powerful AI models. Written by California State Sen. Scott Wiener, and supported by AI pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, the bill has divided Silicon Valley companies. Albrecht said that what’s been proposed by California is much closer to the European model of AI regulation — the EU’s AI Act passed in March — while Washington hasn’t yet adopted a unified view on how the technology should be regulated.
Critics of the bill include OpenAI, California’s Chamber of Commerce, and even former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “While we want California to lead in AI in a way that protects consumers, data, intellectual property, and more, SB 1047 is more harmful than helpful in that pursuit,” Pelosi said in a recent statement. In a recent edition of GZERO AI, experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the Atlantic Council expressed concerns about the bill’s so-called “kill switch” and how it could stifle open-source AI development.
Some industry players have been more open to the bill. Anthropic said the bill’s benefits likely outweigh its risks and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has an AI startup of his own called xAI, said California should “probably” pass the bill.
It’s still unclear whether Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign the bill — he has until Sept. 30 to do so. He has not signaled his view on the legislation, but in May, he warned about the risk of overregulating AI.
“I don’t want to cede this space to other states or other countries,” Newsom said at an event in San Francisco. “If we overregulate, if we overindulge, if we chase the shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position.”
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a Perplexity AI logo displayed on a computer screen.
Hard Numbers: Search wars, Lumen lights up, Anduril gets a raise, Public-private partnership
500: Lumen Technologies is watching its stock surge thanks to AI. The US telecom company revealed its fiber optics infrastructure is in demand by data centers needed for the AI boom. The company’s stock jumped 500% in the past month, when it was hovering around $1 per share.
14 billion: Palmer Luckey’s defense tech company, Anduril, just raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at $14 billion. Luckey, best known as the founder of Oculus VR, which he sold to Meta in 2014, started Anduril in 2017 to make drones and other autonomous aircraft, and it is seen as one of the major AI companies challenging the legacy defense contractors.
100,000: The state of California has struck a partnership with Nvidia to train 100,000 students in AI-related skills. The initiative focuses on community colleges and will feature new curriculums, certifications, workshops, and labs to get students ready for careers in AI — including those with the state government.