| Ever since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer, the Department of Homeland Security has been acting like a kid in a candy store with an extra $170 billion in its pocket. And what's it buying? Warehouses. Lots and lots of warehouses. At the rate it's snapping up real estate, the DHS might end up rivaling Amazon in the warehouse market. As Mary Ellen Klas detailed earlier this week, Social Circle, Georgia, will soon be home to a 1-million-square-foot holding center (roughly the size of 10 Walmart stores) that will house as many as 10,000 immigrants. The facility is just one part of what will soon be a $38 billion network of government-owned immigration jails. "With a deep well of money supplied by a complicit and irresponsible Congress, Trump's project aims to normalize the illegal detention of millions of immigrants," she writes. How are they going to fill up all those beds? Well, agents arrest a lot of people — just this morning, DHS agents detained a Columbia student after allegedly misrepresenting themselves to enter her dorm room — and AI will play a role, too. As it stands, the DHS relies on a lot of surveillance technologies, including mobile facial recognition, license plate readers and mobile cell-site simulators, which collect location data from all mobile devices within an eight-block radius. In a new guest op-ed, Third Way's Ruth Whittaker, Sarah Pierce and Mike Sexton explain how Donald Trump's administration is paying private data brokers for vast databases of consumer coordinates. "In the six months leading up to the surge in Minneapolis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's data storage needs reportedly tripled," they write. "It's unclear how much of this activity aligns with the Fourth Amendment or Supreme Court precedents requiring law enforcement agencies to get a warrant before accessing the contents of a cell phone or mobile location data. In fact, DHS's deployment of these tools may not even align with its own policies." The Department of Defense, meanwhile, is equally keen to harness the power of AI: There's just one small snag: The Pentagon's partnership with Anthropic has blown up spectacularly because the AI company doesn't want Claude to be used for "mass surveillance" or fully autonomous weapons systems. Now, the White House is calling Anthropic — gasp! — "woke," and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the company's chief, Dario Amodei, until tomorrow to make amends. The Bloomberg editorial board says both sides are at fault: "Differing expectations between the Defense Department and its contractors are a recipe for chaos and dysfunction, especially with a tool like AI," they write. But it's also worth asking whether the Pentagon's ethical principles and Responsible AI Strategy are enough to constrain the technology. "As AI evolves, lawmakers should clarify the definitions used in such policies, bolster their oversight of AI use and consider additional reporting requirements, with a view toward updating law or policy as needed." Bonus AI Reading: One of the biggest stereotypes about autistic children is that they LOVE trains. Sure, there's plenty of truth behind all the social media memes, but Thomas the Tank Engine is far from the only thing capturing the hearts of those with atypical sensory processing. Neurodivergent girls, for instance, might be obsessed with Taylor Swift. Or Barbie dolls. Or cute animals. All are hobbies that Lisa Jarvis says neurotypical girls are into as well. It's just one of the reasons that autism remains under-diagnosed in young women. "Some of the traits of autism are expressed differently in girls than in boys," she explains. "They often are milder — for example, girls with autism are more likely to hold eye contact and have an easier time with communication. Those subtle differences make autistic traits easy to miss, even by pediatricians and therapists." In elementary school, girls with autism are amazing at camouflaging their behavior in front of teachers and peers, thanks to the predictability of a steady routine. "But the tactic starts to fall apart around middle school," Lisa says. That's when they might start to be diagnosed with other things — ADHD, depression, anorexia or self-harm — that can make life even harder. One study found that an ADHD diagnosis can delay an autism diagnosis by an average of nearly three years. That lag is unacceptable, Lisa writes: "Too many girls are missing out on early supports that could help them navigate life — not to mention missing out on the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of who they are and how their brain works." Fresh data from Sweden bears that out. Researchers scoured more than 35 years of health records for nearly 2.8 million people and found that boys under 10 were three to four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls. By the time both cohorts reached adulthood, the gap had nearly disappeared. Tl;dr: It's not just trains! And it's not just boys! If you read anything today, let it be this. | 
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