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Washington is getting ready to run a wild experiment, testing what happens when one of Silicon Valley’s signature “disruptors” meets the world’s biggest bureaucracy. Elon Musk showed up in person in the capita the day after Donald Trump named him to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency”—an initiative to slash government waste, fraud, and inefficiency, wherever the tech mogul might decide he finds it. Musk will co-lead the project with Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech investor and MAGA cheerleader who ran against Trump in the GOP primary. Trump unveiled the idea with his usual lavish promises in a statement from his transition team shared on Truth Social. “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” he wrote, and “will send shockwaves through the system.”

Cox Communications owns two companies that provide fiber broadband for enterprises—Unite Private Networks (UPN) and Segra. And Cox just cleaned up the portfolio of these companies by selling the Pacific Northwest assets of UPN to Ziply Fiber. Both UPN and Segra provide fiber optic communications services to commercial enterprises as well as organizations such as schools, governments, service providers and hyperscalers. Ziply will acquire UPN’s fiber assets, network and customers in Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. The acquisition will add more than 7,000 fiber miles in these states, allowing Ziply to provide both lit and dark fiber services to its commercial customers.

With artificial intelligence (AI) technologies becoming increasingly prevalent in educational settings and beyond, it is crucial to examine how paid AI services will increase disparities in digital access and literacy. GenAI resources can be valuable educational tools, but their cost may exacerbate the digital divide between wealthy and low-income students. By offering free access to the paid version of their products to financially struggling students, AI companies can help level the playing field. This would give financially disadvantaged students equal opportunity to benefit from AI-assisted research, writing support, and personalized tutoring. Reducing the digital divide in this way could lead to improved academic outcomes and career prospects for low-income students. It may also foster innovation by enabling a more diverse group of future professionals to gain early experience with GenAI technologies.