CIA nominee John Ratcliffe is telling senators on Wednesday about how he’ll reshape the intelligence community in what he calls "the most challenging national security environment in our nation’s history." 

Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during President-elect Trump's first term, is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee will then vote on his nomination before a full Senate vote to confirm him as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Ratcliffe ticked off the nation’s biggest threats – China, the border, the Russia-Ukraine war and risk of nuclear fallout, Iran, North Korea and "increasing coordination among America’s rivals."

At a time when intelligence and law enforcement agencies have found themselves front and center in the political realm, a source familiar with Ratcliffe told Fox News Digital he’s focused on "depoliticizing" the agency, and "eliminating any distractions" to its core mission of obtaining intelligence. 

TOP 5 MOMENTS FROM PETE HEGSETH'S SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING

Ratcliffe is also expected to push for more aggressive spying operations, particularly on Beijing, where CCP operatives have been spying on the U.S. for years. 

"With Trump and Ratcliffe, the days of China pillaging American companies, infecting American infrastructure, and otherwise targeting and abusing the American people are over. The jackals can only scavenge in the lion's domain for so long before they get their heads ripped off," the source said. 

Ratcliffe signaled plans in his opening statement to increase the agency’s capacity to obtain human intelligence "in every corner of the globe, no matter how dark or difficult."

"We will produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our product," Ratcliffe will say in his opening statement. 

"We will conduct covert action at the direction of the president, going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do. To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of this sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work."

RUBIO TO PITCH FOREIGN POLICY CREDENTIALS TO SENATE AS HE VIES TO BECOME AMERICA'S TOP DIPLOMAT

Ratcliffe said he would try to recruit agents that could be described as "a Ph.D. who could win a bar fight," but promised to fully investigate anomalous health incidents like Havana Syndrome. 

Ratcliffe also hopes to increase coordination with the CIA and the private sector – potentially through rotations that allow CIA agents to do a stint in the private sector or allowing private employees at AI and tech companies to join the CIA in mid-career appointments, according to the source. 

Ratcliffe's hearing is expected to have a more policy-heavy focus than some of Trump's more controversial nominees like Pete Hegseth, picked to lead the Defense Department. Hegseth faced senators on the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday where he was questioned on his drinking, sexual assault allegations and reports of financial mismanagement. 

Trump's choice to oversee all intelligence agencies, Tulsi Gabbard, has also been met with skepticism by some in the Senate over her past opposition to U.S. surveillance laws and seeming closeness to U.S. adversaries, in particular a meeting she took with former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. She's since walked back her opposition to a surveillance program known as Section 702.

Gabbard's hearing is not yet on the books, neither is Trump's nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel. 

Trump's national security nominees are in lockstep on at least one thing – the threat of China – and the need to update technologies and defenses to thwart the CCP's chronic attacks on U.S. infrastructure. 

"We have to stop trying to just play better and better defense," Mike Waltz, Trump's national security adviser pick, recently told FOX Business. "We need to start going on offense."

Less than a year after unveiling its AI avatars that convey human emotions using user text inputs, Nvidia-backed AI startup Synthesia announced on Wednesday that it has secured $180 million in a Series D funding round to advance its AI-powered […]

The post Nvidia-backed AI startup Synthesia raises $180M Series D to revolutionize AI-powered video communications; now valued at $2.1 billion first appeared on Tech Startups.

• Donald Trump champions the working class but his policies are bad news for them, Paul Krugman says.
• The Nobel-winning economist says tariffs and deportations will hurt instead of help the poor.
• "A lot of people are going to get brutally scammed," Krugman said.

Donald Trump rode to victory in the US presidential race by pledging to put America first and fight for blue-collar workers. Paul Krugman says he'll only make their lives harder.

The economist, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008, criticized the president-elect's plans to raise tariffs and cut taxes during Tuesday's episode of "The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent" podcast.

He told The New Republic show that those and other policies would lead to the working class paying higher prices while high earners keep more of their money.

"Even more than usual for a Republican, he appears to have an extremely regressive economic program in mind, one that really will effectively redistribute income away from working-class voters to the top," Krugman said.

American households are already being pinched by inflation, which spiked to a 40-year high of more than 9% in the summer of 2022 and remains above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.

On top of higher prices for food, fuel, rent, and other basics, many consumers are also paying more toward their credit cards, car loans, and mortgages.

That's because the Fed, in a bid to curb inflation, increased its benchmark rate from zero to north of 5.25% in under 17 months, and has kept it as high as 4.5% for now.

The battle over groceries

Krugman, a former MIT and Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist, zeroed in on grocery prices. Trump said during his campaign that he would reduce them, but he's walked that claim back in recent weeks.

Yet recent surveys show that his supporters still expect him to do so, Krugman said, despite the fact that broader prices are still rising and deflation is almost universally regarded as undesirable for an economy.

A CBS News/YouGov survey, conducted in late December with a nationally representative group of 2,244 US adults, found that 40% of Americans expect Trump to make food and grocery prices go down, exceeding the 36% who expect him to make them increase.

"A lot of people are going to get brutally scammed," Krugman said. Trump isn't just misleading people by saying they'll be better off once he's in office, he also doesn't appear to know how he'll deliver on his promises, Krugman continued. "So the scam is there is no plan."

Trump said last year that lowering grocery prices would be tricky, but improving supply chains and boosting domestic energy production could lower costs for farmers, who could then pass those savings onto consumers.

Tariffs and immigration

Separately, Krugman nodded to the fact that tariffs are a tax on imports, and businesses usually pass on their increased costs by charging higher prices to consumers.

He described their impact as "really bad," and said the fallout from Trump's proposed mass deportations would be "much, much worse." They'd be hugely disruptive and drive up prices in industries like agriculture, food processing, and construction, Krugman said, leaving the US with a shortage of workers for large-scale programs like rebuilding Florida after a hurricane.

The author and blogger also rang the alarm on Trump and his allies' fierce criticism of colleges and skepticism of higher education.

"We've been pulling ahead on technology, but an administration that's extremely hostile to universities and education is going to undermine that source of advantage as well," Krugman said.

"Trump wants to turn the clock back to 1896, and that's not good for the US economy."

• A Stanford law professor dropped Meta as a client in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg's recent changes.
• Mark Lemley represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case involving comedian Sarah Silverman and others.
• Zuckerberg's recent changes at Meta more closely align with Elon Musk's opinions and strategies.

Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor and lawyer who represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case, says he has dropped the company as a client because of what he described as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness."

"I have fired Meta as a client. While I think they are on the right side in the generative AI copyright dispute in which I represented them, and I hope they win, I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer," Lemley, a partner at the law firm Lex Lumina, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

Lemley and Lex Lumina represented Meta when comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors sued the Facebook owner in 2023, saying it violated copyright by training the Llama AI model on books they had written.

At the time, Meta's lawyers argued the claims should fail because the authors could not prove Llama generated text that closely resembled their books. The case is ongoing.

In the LinkedIn post, Lemley also said he was changing how he used some Meta products.

He has deactivated his Threads account as he did not want to "support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe."

The lawyer also said he will no longer buy anything from ads he encounters on Facebook or Instagram.

"While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here," Lemley wrote.

Lemley is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. At Lex Lumina, he works with clients on cases pertaining to intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law.

Lemley, Lex Lumina, Sarah Silverman and Meta did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Changes at Meta

Since the start of the year, Zuckerberg has made sweeping changes to Meta. They include eliminating third-party fact-checking on the platform in the US in favor of community notes.

Meta also planned to reduce diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Zuckerberg recently said Meta needs more "masculine energy."

"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he told the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.

Zuckerberg's changes at Meta resemble those made by Tesla and X owner Elon Musk.

Musk has spoken out against DEI and content moderation. Politically, Musk has thrown his support behind right-leaning political parties and figures in Europe and the US.

He's a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, and is joined lead of a commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In politics and relationship-building with Trump, too, Zuckerberg's actions are starting to mirror Musk's. Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Zuckerberg also declined to endorse any candidate during the 2024 election campaign.

These moves mark a distinct change in how Zuckerberg approaches Trump.

In 2020, after Facebook was criticized over the then-president's violent remarks on the platform, Zuckerberg said he was "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric."

Trump was barred from Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for what Meta called praising "people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6." Meta reversed the decision two years later.

The Colts have been designated as the home team next season for the NFL's first regular-season game in Berlin.

Swedish football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, the first foreigner to lead the England national team, died with debts of over £3.8 million ($4.64 million) following years of financial mismanagement.

Ruben Amorim said he will learn more about his players when they face Southampton than during the performances against Liverpool and Arsenal.

Bayern Munich have signed 18-year-old American attacking midfielder Bajung Darboe from LAFC.

Carlo Ancelotti has refused to enter into "a debate" with critics over why Real Madrid crashed to a 5-2 defeat to Barcelona in Sunday's Spanish Supercopa final.

Palmeiras have not registered Vitor Reis for the 2025 Campeonato Paulista with the teenage defender expected to join Manchester City.

Apple recently made a donation to assist with LA wildfire recovery efforts, and is now inviting customers to do the same.

Those based in the US can make a donation to the American Red Cross’s Southern California Wildfires Relief fund though the App Store or Apple Music apps …

more…

Several Meta properties including Facebook are reportedly down for users within the last few minutes. Downdetector shows a spike of more than 10,000 reports and climbing for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

more…

"Look at all your bills, and figure out what can be cut down or cut out," Lauren Savalle told Newsweek.

To add one more left-handed starter, the Boston Red Sox may target former No. 9 overall draft pick Andrew Heaney, the top lefty remaining on the market.

Coyote sightings and interactions in Chicago are increasing as the breeding season, lasting from January to March, gets underway.

We Live in Time starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield is heading to streaming.

Boston Red Sox fans surely hope top Red Sox Roman Anthony will become a better player than the one Alex Cora compared him to.

Winnie was small, skinny, in need of a bath and had never had a haircut in her life, but everything changed after she was adopted.

The list of players making it to Team of the Year in EA Sports FC 25 may have been leaked early.

New polling in the U.K. shows Musk with a net approval rating of minus 51, with 71 percent feeling negatively toward the billionaire businessman.