Top 5 US news stories
October 31 2025
Big Tech's $400B AI Spending Spree Still Not Enough, Stoking Bubble Fears
Trump Urges Senate GOP to 'Go Nuclear,' End Filibuster to Reopen Government
SpaceX to Receive $2B Pentagon Deal for 'Golden Dome' Missile-Tracking Satellites
Disney Channels, Including ESPN and ABC, Go Dark on YouTube TV Amid Contract Dispute
Ukraine Deploys 'Brutal Game' Rewarding Soldiers With Points for Drone Strikes
…US GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN ENTERS 31st DAY…
Big Tech's $400B AI Spending Spree Still Not Enough, Stoking Bubble Fears
A. Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are already planning to pour $400 billion into artificial intelligence efforts this year. They all say it’s nowhere near enough. Meta Platforms says it is still running up against capacity constraints as it tries to train new AI models and power its existing products at the same time. Microsoft says it is seeing so much customer demand for its data-center-driven services that it plans to double its data-center footprint in the next two years. And Amazon.com says it is racing to bring more cloud capacity online as soon as it can. “We’ve been short [on computing power] now for many quarters. I thought we were going to catch up. We are not. Demand is increasing,” said Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer. “When you see these kinds of demand signals and we know we’re behind, we do need to spend.” Meta, Alphabet , Microsoft and Amazon have all told investors over the past 48 hours that they will increase spending in 2026. Investors gave their blessing to plans laid out by Google and Amazon, with some worrying about those set forth by Meta and Microsoft.
B. Four of the tech industry’s wealthiest companies made it clear this week that their spending on artificial intelligence was not about to slow down. But the outlays from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — which all raised their spending by billions of dollars, saying they needed to meet demand for A.I. — are increasingly feeding concerns that the tech industry is heading toward a dangerous bubble. Artificial intelligence remains an unproven and expensive technology that could take years to fully develop. How much companies will ultimately get back in return from A.I. products like chatbots is unclear. And smaller companies pursuing A.I. gold, financial analysts pointed out, are not nearly as wealthy. Last week, the Bank of England wrote that while the building of data centers, which provide computing power for A.I., had so far largely come from the cash produced by the biggest companies, it would increasingly involve more debt. If A.I. underwhelms — or the systems ultimately require far less computing — there could be growing risk.
WSJ / NYT
Trump Urges Senate GOP to 'Go Nuclear,' End Filibuster to Reopen Government
WASHINGTON—President Trump urged Senate Republicans to end the filibuster, the longstanding rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, in order to reopen the government without the support of Democrats. “It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” he wrote on Truth Social, while criticizing Democrats’ healthcare demands at the center of the current impasse. Trump said that Democrats would end the filibuster if they ever won back the Senate, so Republicans should go ahead and do it now. “If we did what we should be doing, it would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous, Country destroying ‘SHUT DOWN,’ ” he wrote. Government funding lapsed on Oct. 1 after a stopgap spending bill passed by the Republican-led House fell five votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate. Since then, Democrats have blocked the bill more than a dozen times, saying they won’t provide the votes to reopen until Republicans negotiate a deal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act health-insurance subsidies.
WSJ
SpaceX to Receive $2B Pentagon Deal for 'Golden Dome' Missile-Tracking Satellites
SpaceX is set to receive $2 billion to develop satellites that can track missiles and aircraft under President Trump’s Golden Dome project, people familiar with the matter said. The funding was included in the tax-and-spending bill that Trump signed in July, but wasn’t publicly linked to a contractor. The planned “air moving target indicator” system could eventually field as many as 600 satellites, some of the people said. The Elon Musk-led company is expected to play a major role in two other Pentagon satellite networks, according to people familiar with the situation. One, called Milnet, would relay sensitive military communications, while the other involves satellites capable of tracking vehicles on the ground, the people said. The traction that SpaceX has gained with the coming satellite fleets is another sign of the company’s growing influence in U.S. national security. Government officials have described Golden Dome as a complex system of satellites and other technologies that are capable of destroying missiles before they hit their targets. The Pentagon has released few specifics about how the missile shield would work.
WSJ
Disney Channels, Including ESPN and ABC, Go Dark on YouTube TV Amid Contract Dispute
Disney channels including ESPN, ABC and FX vanished from Google’s YouTube TV platform after the two sides failed to come to terms on a new distribution agreement. The channels went dark in roughly 10 million homes shortly before midnight Eastern time. Disney and YouTube TV had held contentious negotiations leading up to the channels being removed. The deadline to reach a deal was 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday. There are several issues dividing the two companies, but the primary fight is over the fees Disney is seeking from YouTube TV to carry its channels. ESPN and its sister networks are among the most expensive channels in the industry because of their pricey sports content. YouTube said in a statement that Disney’s actions are aimed at benefitting its own rival pay-TV distributors Hulu + Live TV and Fubo. Combined, those two services have roughly six million subscribers. Disney said YouTube TV, which is owned by Alphabet’s Google, balked at paying what other similarly sized distributors fork over for its content. The entertainment giant has said it expects its partners, including YouTube, to pay rates that recognize the value of its programming.
WSJ
Ukraine Deploys 'Brutal Game' Rewarding Soldiers With Points for Drone Strikes
The Ukrainian drone zeroed in on the two Russian soldiers riding a motorcycle just after 9 a.m. on July 19, closer and closer, until it swooped down to hit its mark and the camera went dark. It was a high-value target for the drone operator’s regiment: worth as many as 24 points, to be exact. In a real-world game run by the Ukrainian government, regiments are being rewarded with points for successful attacks. Wound a Russian soldier? Eight points. Kill one? That is good for 12. A Russian drone pilot is worth more: 15 points for wounding one, and 25 points for a kill. Capturing a Russian soldier alive with the help of a drone is the jackpot: 120 points. “It’s a brutal game — human lives turned into points,” said Stun, 33, a drone commander for the Ukrainian unmanned systems regiment known as Achilles. In keeping with military protocol, he goes by only his call sign. The Ukrainian government set up the competition in August 2024, although that was more of a soft launch, a beta version. Teams compete for points to acquire Ukrainian-made gear, including basic surveillance drones and larger drones carrying powerful explosives, through an internal Amazon-style weapons store called Brave1 Market. The store first went online in April of this year and was expanded in August. The more points a unit gets, the better stuff it can buy, ensuring that resources are directed to the teams that best use them. It is a digital-age, instant-gratification twist on time-honored rewards for soldiers like medals and promotions, with the winnings plowed back into the war effort. Drone teams submit videos of their successful strikes to a central office in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, where experts review them to decide who gets points based on time stamps and verified destruction, said Mykhailo Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, who helped devise the program.
NYT
October 31 1517: Martin Luther posts 95 theses
On October 31, 1517, German monk and theologian Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, challenging the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences—payments promising forgiveness of sins. Luther’s arguments went far beyond financial corruption; they questioned papal authority and emphasized personal faith and scripture over Church hierarchy. His defiance quickly escalated into a theological revolution, drawing support from scholars and princes who saw in his movement both spiritual renewal and political opportunity.
The resulting split within Western Christianity—known as the Protestant Reformation—shattered the unity of the Catholic Church and sparked a century of religious wars across Europe, most notably the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). The recently invented printing press magnified Luther’s impact, allowing his ideas to spread rapidly across the continent in vernacular languages rather than Latin. Pamphlets, sermons, and translated Bibles empowered ordinary people to engage with faith directly, eroding the Church’s monopoly on religious knowledge and setting the stage for the modern age of religious freedom, literacy, and reform.
We are temporarily pausing our podcasts as we revamp our app so any article can be read as audio
Found a mistake? Have a news tip or feedback to share? Contact our newsroom using the button below:
citizen journal offers three flagship products: a daily national news summary, a daily Kansas news summary, and local news and school board summaries from 29 cities across 5 states. Use the links in the header to navigate to national, kansas, and local coverage. Subscribe to each, some, or all to get an email when new issues are published for FREE!
Brought to you by (click me!)
Sources
- https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/big-tech-is-spending-more-than-ever-on-ai-and-its-still-not-enough-f2398cfe?mod=hp_lead_pos1
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/technology/ai-spending-accelerating.html
- https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-urges-republicans-to-end-the-filibuster-to-reopen-government-8bcc1deb?mod=hp_lead_pos5
- https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/elon-musks-spacex-set-to-win-2-billion-pentagon-satellite-deal-c0a51325?mod=hp_lead_pos8
- https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disney-channels-go-dark-on-youtube-tv-c48d8b2c?mod=hp_lead_pos6
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/world/europe/ukraine-war-drone-game.html
