Paris raid raises stakes for X

PLUS: Bezos’s $3B bet to live forever

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. This week, French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices — an enforcement move that instantly lit up headlines and set off a fresh wave of scrutiny.

Spain is doubling down too, floating a ban on social media for under-16s and criminal liability for executives when illegal content spreads. Washington is pushing back, and it looks like the transatlantic fallout is only just beginning.

In today’s tech rundown:

  • Paris raid turns up the heat on X

  • Bezos’ $3B bet that cells can age backward

  • Boring Company lands first deal outside U.S.

  • Big Tech spends millions on data center rebrand

  • Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

X

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: A police raid on X’s Paris offices and a Spanish proposal to target tech chiefs for illegal content on their platforms have jolted a simmering trans‑Atlantic fight over what “free speech” means online, reports The New York Times.

The details:

  • French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices, targeting alleged failures to curb child sexual abuse images and content denying crimes against humanity.

  • The raid escalates a months‑long trans‑Atlantic rift over how far governments can go in forcing platforms to police speech and harmful content.

  • Spain’s prime minister has proposed banning social media for under‑16s and making tech execs criminally liable if illegal content spreads on their platforms.

  • The E.U. has already fined X roughly €120M (~$142M) and opened new probes into Grok-generated sexualized deepfakes of women and children.

Why it matters: The Trump administration has cast Europe’s tougher social‑media rules as an attempt to export censorship and has imposed visa bans on several E.U. digital officials. The dispute over child safety has become a broader test of whether the U.S. or European approach to online speech shapes global platforms.

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BIOTECH

Image source: Daniel Oberhaus / Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Jeff Bezos and a billionaire brain‑trust are pouring roughly $3B into Altos Labs, a stealthy longevity startup betting that cellular rejuvenation and epigenetic reprogramming could one day make age‑reversal gene therapy real.

The details:

  • Bezos and his backers have made Altos one of the most lavishly funded longevity ventures ever, leapfrogging rivals overnight.

  • The company is chasing epigenetic reprogramming — using Yamanaka factors to rewind cells' biological clocks without scrambling their identity.

  • The moonshot: turn reprogramming breakthroughs into therapies that could actually repair age-damaged tissues across the body.

  • Altos has recruited a dream team with pharma vets, stem-cell pioneers, and gene-editing luminaries who’ve traded academia for the startup game.

Why it matters: Altos’ $3B  launch crystallizes Silicon Valley’s push to turn longevity science into a serious biotech business rather than a fringe obsession. With Bezos backing and a star-studded research team, it's one of the boldest — and most expensive — bets yet that aging can be hacked, delayed, or maybe even reversed.

BORING COMPANY

Image source: The Boring Company

The Rundown: Dubai just approved its first international Loop project with Elon Musk’s Boring Company: a $154M, 4-mile EV-only tunnel with four underground stations linking the Dubai International Financial Centre to Dubai Mall.

The details:

  • The Loop will run as an EV-only public shuttle using Tesla vehicles operated by Boring Company staff — riders can’t drive their own cars through the tunnels.

  • Dubai plans to start construction immediately, with the first phase targeted for completion within about one to two years.

  • The route is projected to move roughly 13K passengers per day at launch, with the wider network eventually handling up to 30K daily.

  • A full buildout could expand the Loop into a roughly 15-mile network with 19 stations, estimated at $545 million.

Why it matters: Dubai’s Loop is the first international deployment of Musk’s “Teslas in tunnels” transit model and the biggest test yet of whether smaller-bore tunnels can actually compete with conventional metro systems in a major city. Success could validate the still-contentious Music City Loop in Nashville.

AI

Image source: Meta

The Rundown: Big tech is spending millions on ads, mailers, and lobbying campaigns to rebrand data centers as job creators and clean‑energy partners as communities across the U.S. push back against their water use, power demand, and subsidies.

The details:

  • Tech and utility companies are spending millions on PR to rebrand data centers as clean‑energy assets amid growing local backlash over AI‑driven build‑outs.

  • Residents in states like Virginia and Delaware are protesting new projects over concerns about huge electricity demand, water use, and taxpayer subsidies.

  • Industry coalitions such as Virginia Connects are funding glossy mailers, billboards, and door‑knocking campaigns touting data centers as job creators.

  • Meta has run national TV spots positioning its data‑center work as supporting “American jobs” and clean energy, even as facilities are often highly automated.

Why it matters: Critics note that data centers bring relatively few long‑term jobs for the hefty tax breaks and infrastructure they receive. The fight over new projects is now a live state‑level issue, forcing lawmakers to balance AI-powered growth against mounting community concerns.

QUICK HITS

Apple is reportedly winding down its “Mulberry” AI health coach project and will instead fold a pared-back set of features into the existing Health app over time.

Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post is slashing more than 300 newsroom jobs, including its Amazon reporter.

Substack said a security breach discovered this week allowed an intruder to access users’ email addresses, phone numbers, and internal metadata in October.

Peloton’s latest earnings show revenue slipping as its pricey new Cross Training hardware and AI features have yet to spur the upgrade boom the company hoped for.

NASA will let astronauts on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions bring personal smartphones for the first time.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company town of Starbase in South Texas is setting up its own municipal police department.

Uber has been ordered by a federal jury in Phoenix to pay $8.5M to a passenger who said her driver raped her.

Y Combinator reversed course and will again back Canada‑incorporated startups, restoring Canada to its approved list after founder backlash.

Scientists built a new scanner that fuses ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging to create fast, radiation‑free 3D color views of blood vessels and soft tissue.

Google says its Quick Share feature, which already lets Pixel 10 phones send files directly to Apple’s AirDrop, will roll out to “many more” Android devices this year.

COMMUNITY

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

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