Google's Compute Empire, Xbox's Identity Crisis, and the Stanford Pipeline

In today's episode: Trump hosted a gala luncheon for leading $TRUMP holders, where he spoke about his pro-crypto policies, but avoided the memecoin's declining value Citizen Lab details two spying campaigns that abuse weaknesses in the SS7 and Diameter protocols across 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks to track people's locations A profile of Strider, an intelligence firm that leverages agentic AI and public records to help the US Air Force, NATO, and others identify foreign state actors An interview with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and EVP Matt Booty on the “Return of Xbox” memo, making Xbox Series X and S the “first-class experience again”, and more Epoch AI: Google controls ~25% of global AI compute, with ~3.8M TPUs and 1.3M GPUs; Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says demand and revenue justify the spend A look at “Stanford inside Stanford”, where VCs pursue 18- and 19-year-old students, offering mentorship and funding in a bid to convert promise into profit