July 1, 2025 • 6 mins
ABC News tech reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Today, Mike speaks on all the tech stuff in the Republican bill and shares an update on Trump’s smartphones.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mike Dubuski, who is the ABC News Technology reporter, is
with us and Mike, let's talk about the big, beautiful
bill of what's going on in terms of the world
of technology and good morning. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
As always, Yeah, good morning to you. And this is
a pretty interesting bill with regard to the technology sector.
A number of provisions in this bill would or would
have if they had kind of gone through, impacted both
the AI sectors, the electric vehicle sectors, the energy sectors.
The big one that got the most attention in recent
(00:34):
days is known as the AI moratorium. This was a
provision in the Senate bill written by Marsha Blackburn of
Texas and Ted Cruz of or excuse me, marsh Blackburn
of Tennessee and Ted Cruz of Texas, and they essentially
this measure would have instituted a temporary pause on state
level AI regulation, basically saying, hey, yes, if you're a
(00:55):
state government and you want to pass any sort of
rule or legislation related to artificial intelligence, that's going to
be on hold. We're going to withhold some federal funding
related to broadband access if you end up passing that law.
In addition, a number of already passed laws at the
state level would be preempted, would be essentially taken off
the books, including a number in California, you know, more
(01:18):
than two dozen, it appears, have already been passed. A
number are you know, also sort of in the conversation
waiting to be passed. So this was going to have
really big implications. The argument, of course, being that the
AI sector and many lawmakers wanted to prevent this patchwork
of state level legislation from emerging. This is going to
be really difficult for companies like open ai and Google
(01:41):
to navigate, in addition to some of their smaller competitors
that maybe don't have the legions of lawyers to figure
all that out. And the advocates for this piece of legislation,
we're saying that this was going to effectively hinder AI
development at exactly the wrong moment. We don't want to
take our foot off the gas when we're in this
AI race with China. However, there were a lot of
(02:03):
opposition to this particular measure, many Democrats but also Republicans
pushing back on it. Seventeen Republican governors writing to the
Majority leader and to the House Speaker calling for this
AI moratorium to be stripped out of the bill even
within the AI space. Dario Amidae, who is the head
of Anthropic, wrote in an op ed that this was
a blunt instrument that gave us the worst of both worlds,
(02:25):
both no ability for states to act on this fast
advancing technology and no federal policy to backstop it. And
in recent hours bill we've seen that this has now
been stripped out of the bill completely, with Marsha Blackburn,
who again was one of the co authors of this
piece of legislation, saying, until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation,
(02:47):
we can't block states for making laws that protect their citizens.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Okay, fair enough, And it's kind of interesting because federal
government can't block AI development, and so they do it
sideways and say, if you don't do what we want,
we control the bandwidth and we can get in that.
So it's always the federal government either regulating where it
(03:13):
can or paying for like in the world of education,
you don't do what we want, you're not going to
get the federal money. Read what's going on with Harvard
and the federal grants, the electric vehicle tax credit, which
is going to disappear, and that seems to be more
anti California than anything else. There are a lot of
laws that are put up by the Trump administration that
(03:35):
are straight at us. Is that going to disappear.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
As it stands right now in the text of the bill, Yes,
so after a one hundred and eighty day period, the
federal EV tax credit would essentially disappear. That is the
tax credit that is designed to incentivize the purchase of
a new electric vehicle by basically kicking you a little
bit of money depending on where your car is built,
where the batteries come from. On a new electric vehicle,
(04:01):
you can get up to seventy five hundred dollars off
the cost of a new car up to four thousand
dollars off the cost of a used EV. And then
there are various sort of leasing incentives involved there as well.
Those leasing incentives would go away immediately if the bill
is passed as it stands right now, and again that
one hundred and eighty day period. It really sets up
an interesting moment in the car space as consumers sort
(04:23):
of are expected to rush to market to take advantage
of this additional federal tax credit. While it's still in place.
You mentioned California. New York as well have state incentives
for buying an electric car about two thousand dollars. Here
in New York, it's almost ten thousand dollars off the
cost of a new car. You can expect people would
want to take advantage of that before it goes away,
and that's going to create a real pressure point for
(04:44):
dealers and for manufacturers as well.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, So there'll be a bump and a healthy one
as people buy. And then as soon as the wawed disappears,
as soon as the money that one is getting in
rebates disappears, then the the number of evs are going
to go south. Just in general the technology. One of
the things about evs. I have an EV and I
(05:09):
regret buying a pure electric car. What I should have
done is bought a hybrid. Yeah, and I'm not alone,
am I.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah. This is a really interesting thing to view in
the AI, in the EV space that you know, electric
vehicle adoption we saw through sort of twenty twenty twenty
twenty two really took off, right. We saw this huge
amount of adoption, and in the last few years or
so we've seen that start to level off. The amount
of evs that people are buying is still growing. More
evs are sold every year than they were the year prior.
(05:40):
But we have seen people start to move over into
the hybrid space because they say it kind of splits
the difference. Right in the commuting space. You can operate
on pure electric power, save yourself some money, and then
when it comes time to, you know, do those longer
road trips that people occasionally do, you still have that
gas motor to bank you up and for what it's worth,
depending on the size of the battery in your hybrid,
specifically plug in hybrids. There's also some federal incentives attached
(06:03):
to those which would be going away under the text
of the bill as it stands right now.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
All right, Mike, I know you've got plenty to do.
When we have a hard out, we'll talk again. Thanks
for your information.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
As always, of course, guys, take care,
Mike Dubuski, who is the ABC News Technology reporter, is
with us and Mike, let's talk about the big, beautiful
bill of what's going on in terms of the world
of technology and good morning. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
As always, Yeah, good morning to you. And this is
a pretty interesting bill with regard to the technology sector.
A number of provisions in this bill would or would
have if they had kind of gone through, impacted both
the AI sectors, the electric vehicle sectors, the energy sectors.
The big one that got the most attention in recent
(00:34):
days is known as the AI moratorium. This was a
provision in the Senate bill written by Marsha Blackburn of
Texas and Ted Cruz of or excuse me, marsh Blackburn
of Tennessee and Ted Cruz of Texas, and they essentially
this measure would have instituted a temporary pause on state
level AI regulation, basically saying, hey, yes, if you're a
(00:55):
state government and you want to pass any sort of
rule or legislation related to artificial intelligence, that's going to
be on hold. We're going to withhold some federal funding
related to broadband access if you end up passing that law.
In addition, a number of already passed laws at the
state level would be preempted, would be essentially taken off
the books, including a number in California, you know, more
(01:18):
than two dozen, it appears, have already been passed. A
number are you know, also sort of in the conversation
waiting to be passed. So this was going to have
really big implications. The argument, of course, being that the
AI sector and many lawmakers wanted to prevent this patchwork
of state level legislation from emerging. This is going to
be really difficult for companies like open ai and Google
(01:41):
to navigate, in addition to some of their smaller competitors
that maybe don't have the legions of lawyers to figure
all that out. And the advocates for this piece of legislation,
we're saying that this was going to effectively hinder AI
development at exactly the wrong moment. We don't want to
take our foot off the gas when we're in this
AI race with China. However, there were a lot of
(02:03):
opposition to this particular measure, many Democrats but also Republicans
pushing back on it. Seventeen Republican governors writing to the
Majority leader and to the House Speaker calling for this
AI moratorium to be stripped out of the bill even
within the AI space. Dario Amidae, who is the head
of Anthropic, wrote in an op ed that this was
a blunt instrument that gave us the worst of both worlds,
(02:25):
both no ability for states to act on this fast
advancing technology and no federal policy to backstop it. And
in recent hours bill we've seen that this has now
been stripped out of the bill completely, with Marsha Blackburn,
who again was one of the co authors of this
piece of legislation, saying, until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation,
(02:47):
we can't block states for making laws that protect their citizens.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Okay, fair enough, And it's kind of interesting because federal
government can't block AI development, and so they do it
sideways and say, if you don't do what we want,
we control the bandwidth and we can get in that.
So it's always the federal government either regulating where it
(03:13):
can or paying for like in the world of education,
you don't do what we want, you're not going to
get the federal money. Read what's going on with Harvard
and the federal grants, the electric vehicle tax credit, which
is going to disappear, and that seems to be more
anti California than anything else. There are a lot of
laws that are put up by the Trump administration that
(03:35):
are straight at us. Is that going to disappear.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
As it stands right now in the text of the bill, Yes,
so after a one hundred and eighty day period, the
federal EV tax credit would essentially disappear. That is the
tax credit that is designed to incentivize the purchase of
a new electric vehicle by basically kicking you a little
bit of money depending on where your car is built,
where the batteries come from. On a new electric vehicle,
(04:01):
you can get up to seventy five hundred dollars off
the cost of a new car up to four thousand
dollars off the cost of a used EV. And then
there are various sort of leasing incentives involved there as well.
Those leasing incentives would go away immediately if the bill
is passed as it stands right now, and again that
one hundred and eighty day period. It really sets up
an interesting moment in the car space as consumers sort
(04:23):
of are expected to rush to market to take advantage
of this additional federal tax credit. While it's still in place.
You mentioned California. New York as well have state incentives
for buying an electric car about two thousand dollars. Here
in New York, it's almost ten thousand dollars off the
cost of a new car. You can expect people would
want to take advantage of that before it goes away,
and that's going to create a real pressure point for
(04:44):
dealers and for manufacturers as well.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, So there'll be a bump and a healthy one
as people buy. And then as soon as the wawed disappears,
as soon as the money that one is getting in
rebates disappears, then the the number of evs are going
to go south. Just in general the technology. One of
the things about evs. I have an EV and I
(05:09):
regret buying a pure electric car. What I should have
done is bought a hybrid. Yeah, and I'm not alone,
am I.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah. This is a really interesting thing to view in
the AI, in the EV space that you know, electric
vehicle adoption we saw through sort of twenty twenty twenty
twenty two really took off, right. We saw this huge
amount of adoption, and in the last few years or
so we've seen that start to level off. The amount
of evs that people are buying is still growing. More
evs are sold every year than they were the year prior.
(05:40):
But we have seen people start to move over into
the hybrid space because they say it kind of splits
the difference. Right in the commuting space. You can operate
on pure electric power, save yourself some money, and then
when it comes time to, you know, do those longer
road trips that people occasionally do, you still have that
gas motor to bank you up and for what it's worth,
depending on the size of the battery in your hybrid,
specifically plug in hybrids. There's also some federal incentives attached
(06:03):
to those which would be going away under the text
of the bill as it stands right now.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
All right, Mike, I know you've got plenty to do.
When we have a hard out, we'll talk again. Thanks
for your information.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
As always, of course, guys, take care,
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com