Fighting Fires in L.A. and Rumors Online
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ADP knows any big thing, any small thing, any trendy thing, even a trendy thing that everyone knows isn't a great idea, but management just wants us to give it a try for a bit can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP designs forward-thinking solutions to take on the next anything. Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Belle Lynn for The Wall Street Journal.

The online rumor mill went into overdrive as fires raged in L.A., making it the newest frontier for public officials to battle. We'll find out how officials are combating these falsehoods and why they're so dangerous. And then the U.S. is imposing some of its strongest measures yet to limit Chinese advances in artificial intelligence.

Our reporter Asa Fitch tells us what these rules entail and why the chipmaker Nvidia is so against them.

But first, new rules out this week are a final push by the Biden administration in a years-long effort to use export controls to stem China's advances in chipmaking and AI. The rules require companies to get government approval to export certain information about their AI models and set up large AI computing facilities overseas.

Strict sales restrictions on these chips are already in place for China, Iran, and other U.S. adversaries, and the new rules carve out exemptions for a group of 18 close U.S. allies and partners. That includes countries like the U.K., France, and Germany. That's according to a senior administration official. For more on this, we're joined by our reporter Asa Fitch.

Asa, why is the government implementing this latest batch of rules? The concern is a national security concern, largely. The U.S. government is worried that if China is allowed to access the most sophisticated AI chips and AI models, they could use those models and chips to develop their military, to develop things like weapons, bioweapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons even. There's a whole range of other potential dangers in the view of the U.S. government at least.

in allowing China to get access to these things. Now, China's already restricted heavily in its ability to just buy AI chips and use AI models.

But the concern that this set of regulations tries to address is that China could go to other countries and set up infrastructure in and develop AI models in. So the U.S. is trying to close that, if you will, loophole where the Chinese government, Chinese companies could get access to this computing power and these powerful AI systems elsewhere.

So the Biden administration has implemented a lot of other rules around chips. How exactly are these different or more significant?

The previous rules that the Biden administration has put in place are really ones that affected the export of, first of all, chips to China directly and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China or to companies that could use that manufacturing equipment to make chips for China. In previous rounds of export controls, largely the focus has really been squarely on what China can do in China and what can be sent to China.

This is much broader because it creates a class of more than 120 countries that are restricted in how many AI chips they can bring in to their facilities, to their data centers, to train up AI models.

And how exactly have the tech companies responded to the rules? Pretty much universal, heavy, strong criticism. The obvious one is NVIDIA. You know, NVIDIA is threatened the most by these things. NVIDIA has a strategy of exporting chips to countries like those in the Middle East that have large pools of capital and want to invest in AI. That revenue could be imperiled. That's billions of dollars per year for NVIDIA. They have criticized this very heavily, saying that

All this does is pushes people to China. Effectively, the argument is that people see that it's harder to obtain American chips and American AI models. People in foreign countries will seek to get those things from China. And they say it'll just stifle innovation and lead to the opposite outcome from the one that they hope to accomplish. When do these rules take effect?

These rules don't take effect immediately. They will only take effect in 120 days, around four months. And that means that they could change. And also there's a new administration coming in Washington. The Trump administration may view these things totally differently than the Biden administration did. That could lead to a lot of changes to the regulations, a lot of watering down of the regulations, or even the withdrawal of the regulations. It's not really clear yet. That was our reporter, Asa Fitch.

Coming up, it's not just the L.A. fires. Online rumors have also spread around the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas and Hurricane Helene last September. Why are these rumors so dangerous? We'll find out after the break. ADP imagines a world of work where smart machines become too smart. Copier, I need 15 copies of this. Printing. By the way, irregardless, not a word, Janet. Yeah, I know.

Page six should be regardless of or irrespective of. Just print them, please. If it were a word, Janet, it would mean without irregard, which is... Copier! Switch to silent mode. Let's put a pin in it. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything.

Fast-moving online falsehoods around the L.A. fires are forcing public officials, like those at the Los Angeles Fire Department, to adopt a new job when crisis strikes their communities, knocking down the inevitable wave of lies, half-truths, and conspiracy theories that spread online. Sometimes, though, the job of public officials is to decide when to address a rumor and when to simply let it lie.

Our reporter Scott Calvert joins us now with more. Scott, tell us, what are the kinds of online falsehoods that have really proliferated around the L.A. fires? There have been a bunch. Some of them fall into the category of reporting about things that burned when they actually hadn't burned. But then as the days wore on, you started hearing more and seeing more that referred to the response issues.

by authorities. And so early on, for instance, there were things about the Getty Villa Museum had gone up in smoke and there were videos that sort of showed flames near the museum, but in fact that it didn't burn. There have been some AI-generated images showing the iconic Hollywood sign supposedly surrounded by flames.

And one of the giveaways was that some of these images misspelled Hollywood. So there were some things like that. But then there have definitely been ones looking at the response. And so one that gained a lot of traction just based on the views was one that Alex Jones put out that alleged that L.A. firefighters were having to douse the flames using, quote, ladies' handbags because the department had donated some supplies to Ukraine a couple years ago. And so they were shorthanded as far as equipment goes.

And according to the L.A. Fire Department, these were actually canvas bags that are standard issue and are often used to douse these small like trash fires simply because it's faster and easier to fill those bags with water than to haul out the hoses and connect them. So there have been some things along those lines that have been circulating. How are public officials in L.A. trying to deal with this online rumor mill?

To some extent, they are trying to bat them away using the same social media platforms that people are using to spread these in the first place. And so I talked with the public information officer for the L.A. Fire Department. And so he's posted several times saying, you know, clearing up misinformation. And one that he posted about was there was a rumor going around that the authorities were asking the public's help to actually help fight the fires. They were seeking volunteers from the public.

And so he put that out saying, no, that's not true. They're trying to minimize the noise because one of the things that he's telling people about are things like evacuation routes and giving them updates on the status of these multiple fires. So they're really trying to cut through a lot of that clutter and avoid adding to the sense of chaos and confusion and panic that a lot of people understandably feel.

Let's talk about the kind of damage that these rumors and false codes can cause. You talk about the virality and the scale of these posts. What is the real risk here? There's a range of risks. I mean, it depends on what it is. But I mean, just the mere fact that people are getting information that's not true could have some impact on decisions that they make. It can undermine trust in the government's ability to respond to this. And it's important to point out that there are a lot of questions about this.

how the fire started. There are questions people will be asking about preparedness and the response. But that can be true at the same time that there are demonstrably untrue things being circulated and coloring people's understanding of what's happening on the ground.

Let's talk about the social media companies like Meta and X. It seems like they have a sort of outsized role here, especially as their platforms are where this misinformation and rumors are spreading. So what role do they have? A lot of these things are spreading on those platforms. And it's interesting, you know, by coincidence,

So the fires started on the same day that Meta said that they were going to be ending the fact checking and removing the speech restrictions for Facebook and Instagram. And so they were citing this goal of restoring free expression. But it happened the same day that the fire started in Los Angeles. And even with whatever mechanisms they had in place, there's a fair amount of misinformation swirling around. And there's definitely a concern that

And we heard from public officials that it's going to make the job that much harder for them. And X is another platform where a lot of these things have been spreading. Since Elon Musk's acquisition of X, then Twitter back in 2022, he has slashed content policy jobs and eased content limits. And he himself, as the journal has reported, has repeatedly amplified inflammatory or conspiratorial content about hot button issues. And let's talk about the

Let's talk about the kind of bigger underlying trends here. One of the things that you talk about in your story is that for several other high profile incidents in recent history, thinking about what happened in New Orleans, other natural disasters, the rumor mill has taken hold too. So what's going on here? I was talking with somebody who's been in policing for a long time, and he said that rumors are nothing new. And this is kind of an obvious thing to say, but it's really the ability for them to start from anywhere and to spread everywhere.

through various social media platforms. And it happened so quickly. There is this traditional response where maybe you would sort of like try to not give oxygen to rumors and just ignore them and hope that things go away, especially the ones that might seem to some people to be on their face just so outlandish as to not merit a comment.

But there's been a shift in the attitude where there's a sense that if you don't counter these things, they will take root. An interesting example was in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene caused all of that terrible flooding in Western North Carolina. The state of North Carolina actually, they felt the need to create a web page to address some of these conspiracy theories that were swirling around. And so they did like an FAQ section on this page where they would raise these questions. There was a really striking comment I heard from a police chief I talked to

who was making the point that, you know, they are just very proactively pushing things out on social media. We all know that there's not a ton of trust maybe in certain segments of society when it comes to the police or government or the news media. But his point was, he said, if the ditch is empty, it's going to get filled up with sewage. So you might as well put fresh water in there.

That was our reporter, Scott Calvert. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop. Logging off, I'm Belle Lin for The Wall Street Journal. We'll sign back in this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

ADP knows any big thing, any small thing, any trendy thing, even a trendy thing that everyone knows isn't a great idea, but management just wants us to give it a try for a bit can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP designs forward-thinking solutions to take on the next anything.