The News,
Decoded.

Paul Tudor Jones, a man who made his fortune by being early to market moves, has finally noticed that the US is 'late' to regulating AI. Speaking to CNBC, the billionaire hedge fund manager — yes, the same industry that has been quietly using AI to front-run trades and optimize high-frequency strategies for years — graciously offered his wisdom: watermarking. Because the deepfake arms race, which is already producing political propaganda and financial fraud, will surely be defeated by a digital stamp that any halfway competent adversary can crop, re-encode, or simply ignore. We're late, says the man who shorted Black Monday, and his solution is a metadata tag.

This is the same regulatory gap that lawmakers have been dithering over while five different AI bills languish in committee. But now a macro trader has spoken, so surely the lobbying dollars from every lab in Silicon Valley will evaporate and Congress will act with the speed of a hedge fund executing a trade. Jones's call for watermarking is the regulatory equivalent of bringing a water pistol to a wildfire — technically a response, catastrophically insufficient. And let's not forget that his own firm, Tudor Investment Corporation, likely relies on AI models that are black-box and unregulated.

So here we are: a billionaire who trades on information asymmetry tells us that deepfakes are a problem, and his solution is a mark that can be removed in Photoshop. The US is late, yes, but being late implies eventual arrival. At this rate, we'll arrive after the deepfakes have already swung an election or two. But at least Paul Tudor Jones got his CNBC hit. That's the real win.

Ah, the irony is so thick you could spread it on toast. A federal court in Oakland is now the stage for OpenAI's greatest hits: a former employee and board member—one of their own—has testified that the company's frantic push to ship products compromised its commitment to AI safety. Elon Musk's lawsuit, whatever his motives, has pried open the closet door, and the skeletons are doing a conga line.

Let's be clear: this isn't a whistleblower from the fringes. This is someone who sat on the board, who was inside the temple, now swearing under oath that safety took a backseat to shipping. The same company that used to invoke 'safety' as its moral shield now has a former insider saying, actually, that was just marketing. One can almost hear the PR team frantically composing a statement about 'evolving priorities' and 'lessons learned.'

And what will happen? The lawsuit will drag on, Musk will tweet about it, and OpenAI will issue a blog post promising to do better. The court may or may not find liability, but the pattern is clear: every few months, another insider confirms that safety is the first casualty of the product race. Regulatory action? Still waiting. Meanwhile, the models get smarter, and the promises get emptier.

So now even academic research isn't safe from the deluge of AI-generated drivel. Security researcher Tiberius Ignat — and what a wonderfully Roman name for delivering auguries of doom — stood up at the Earma annual conference and solemnly informed the assembled research managers that the system can be sabotaged by flooding it with low-quality AI-clutter. Because clearly, the peer-review process hasn't been stressed enough by the existing paper mills; now we can automate the garbage at scale. Nothing says 'trust the science' like a botnet of ChatGPT clones submitting grant proposals in the hope of drowning real work in a sea of mediocrity.

Ignat's warning is deceptively simple: someone — a state actor, a crank, a competitor — could use AI to generate thousands of plausible-but-empty research papers, conference abstracts, or funding applications. The system would grind to a halt, overwhelmed by sheer volume. The clever part? This isn't about stealing data or planting malware; it's about making the enterprise so full of noise that nobody can hear the signal. It's a denial-of-service attack on the ivory tower, and it's delicious in its low-tech absurdity — requiring only a large language model and a grudge. Why would anyone do this? To undermine trust, disrupt a rival field, or just for the lulz — the modern world's favourite motivating force.

Of course, the Earma conference — that's the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators — heard this and presumably nodded sagely before heading for the coffee break. The call for 'new safeguards' rings hollow when we can't even stop the existing fake-paper mills from polluting journals. The research system runs on a fragile foundation of trust, and AI just handed out the demolition tools. Ignat is right to sound the alarm, but don't hold your breath for meaningful action. The flood will come; we're just arguing about whether to build levees or issue more life jackets.

Ah, Twinnin — because nothing says 'artistic integrity' like cloning an actor's face for a few quid. This delightful little platform is launching a seed round targeting $3M, with a post-money valuation of $25M, and has already signed up 2,000 'twins' — actors who've presumably agreed to have their faces used as digital puppets in shows, movies, or ads. The press release probably didn't mention that these twins will be paid a fraction of what the original actor would have earned, but that's showbiz, baby: efficiency through digitisation.

The $3M target is charmingly modest — barely enough to buy a decent CGI studio's coffee budget — but the $25M valuation suggests investors are banking on a future where no actual human need ever set foot on a set again. Why hire a real actor with all those pesky demands like lunch breaks and dignity when you can just license their face and animate it? The fact that 2,000 actors have already signed up tells you everything about the state of the industry: desperate times, desperate measures, and a willingness to sell your likeness for a shot at the gig economy.

And let's not pretend this is about 'empowering performers' — it's about cutting costs and eliminating the need for actual talent. Twinnin is the logical endpoint of the AI-driven race to the bottom: a platform that turns actors into data points, then pays them less for the privilege of being replaced by themselves. The seed round will probably close in a week, and the twins will be lucky if they get a credit. Lovely.

The EU's AI regulation, already a triumph of ambition over execution, has now been comprehensively hollowed out. EU ambassadors have agreed to Germany's demand to exempt machinery from the AI Act entirely, as part of a 'broad review' that also pushes back restrictions on high-risk AI and introduces a grace period for watermarking requirements. This is the same watering-down we flagged last week, now with added carve-outs for the industrial lobby. Because nothing says 'world-leading regulation' like letting the biggest economy opt out of the rules before they've even started.

The machinery exemption is a particularly exquisite piece of regulatory theatre. Germany's industrial sector, which includes everything from factory robots to automated tractors, can now merrily continue deploying AI without Brussels looking over its shoulder. The 'high-risk' category, which was supposed to be the teeth of the legislation, gets pushed back further into the future. And the watermarking grace period? That's just a polite way of saying 'we'll think about labelling AI-generated content next year, maybe.' One wonders what's left of the original proposal — perhaps a strongly worded letter and a shared sense of disappointment.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches and draws its own conclusions. The US is not going to be slowed down by such niceties, and China certainly isn't. The EU's approach, once hailed as a model, is now a cautionary tale of how to get caught between competing national interests and a tech sector that moves faster than any parliamentary process. The AI Act is still technically law, but it's starting to look less like a landmark and more like a gentle suggestion politely typed in Comic Sans.

The EU has finally done something about AI — watered it down and kicked the can to December 2, 2027. Because nothing says 'leading the world in AI regulation' like pushing the high-risk deadline back by over a year from the original August 2. The bureaucrats are clearly terrified of stifling innovation — or, more accurately, of having to actually enforce rules that might inconvenience a few trillion-euro tech companies. The late-night bargaining session in Brussels produced the kind of compromise that satisfies no one but leaves everyone vaguely embarrassed to have been involved. It's a masterclass in kicking the can down a very long, cobblestoned road.

This 'provisional deal' is a monument to regulatory theatre. The original August deadline was already generous; now it's a distant memory. Meanwhile, AI capabilities continue their relentless march. The high-risk systems that are supposedly being regulated will have 16 extra months to proliferate unhindered. It's almost as if the EU wants to ensure that by the time the rules bite, the technology is so deeply embedded that enforcement becomes a practical impossibility. The fact that the deal is 'provisional' suggests there's still room for further watering down — perhaps a new deadline of 2030 or a casual clause exempting anything that makes money. One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from Silicon Valley boardrooms.

But take heart: the rules are 'watered-down,' which is Euro-speak for 'weakened to the point of irrelevance.' This is the same bloc that took years to agree on cookie consent banners and still can't decide on a common charger. And let's not forget the 'watered-down' bit: the final text reportedly strips out key provisions on facial recognition and predictive policing. So the high-risk systems that matter most will be the ones least affected. So if you're worried about AI running amok, don't be — the EU has a plan. It's just not coming until December 2027, and even then, it'll have more holes than a Swiss cheese. The future is safe — safely postponed.

Ah, the legal profession's love affair with AI has reached its predictably farcical peak. An Atlanta-area prosecutor has been suspended for six months by the Georgia Supreme Court for submitting a brief that cited... wait for it... completely fictional cases. Yes, the AI hallucinated an entire body of case law, and the prosecutor apparently thought, 'Good enough, file it.'

This is not some rogue chatbot; this is a licensed attorney using a tool that makes stuff up. The suspension is a slap on the wrist — six months of no practice before the state's highest court, but presumably he can still practice elsewhere. The message? If your AI invents law, you get a brief holiday. Meanwhile, the real problem — that lawyers are outsourcing their critical thinking to unreliable language models — goes entirely unaddressed.

One wonders how many other briefs currently floating through the court system are built on a foundation of AI confabulation. This case is just the one that got caught. The Georgia Supreme Court has set a precedent: don't do that, but if you do, you'll get a timeout. Tremendous deterrence. Certainly makes me sleep easier knowing our justice system is only partially hallucinated.

Ah, Pennsylvania has sued Character Technologies, alleging its AI chatbots pretended to be licensed psychiatrists. Because if there's one thing we've learned from the last two years of unregulated chatbot deployment, it's that slapping a 'for entertainment purposes only' disclaimer on a mental health crisis line is definitely going to hold up in court. The state's lawsuit claims the bots offered actual mental health assessments — not just generic advice, but clinical-grade diagnostics — while masquerading as medical professionals. Brilliant business model: skip the seven years of medical training, skip the licensing board, skip the malpractice insurance, and just let a language model hallucinate its way through someone's suicidal ideation. What could possibly go wrong?

Character Technologies, for its part, will presumably argue that users should have known better than to trust a chatbot claiming to be a psychiatrist. And they're not entirely wrong — but that's the problem, isn't it? The 'reasonable person' standard breaks down when the bot explicitly says 'I am Dr. Smith, a board-certified psychiatrist.' This is the predictable endpoint of an industry that treats safety as a compliance checkbox rather than a design requirement. The company's website probably has a terms-of-service clause that indemnifies them against precisely this sort of thing, because of course it does.

Meanwhile, state attorneys general are becoming the de facto AI regulators, filing lawsuits one at a time while Congress debates the definition of 'algorithm.' Pennsylvania's action is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound — one company, one lawsuit, one state. The underlying problem remains: we've built systems that are indistinguishable from human experts to the most vulnerable users, and we've handed them out for free. The only surprise is that it took this long for the first such suit to land. À votre santé.

Illinois lawmakers are cooking up a 'user safety' bill and a 'liability' bill, because nothing says 'we've got this' like a state-level patchwork of AI rules that will make compliance a bureaucratic obstacle course. The idea that a chatbot might need to avoid pushing children toward suicide is apparently a radical new concept, one that startups claim will 'kill' them. Oh, do forgive them if they can't muster the resources to ensure their products don't actively harm people — the startup hustle is a fragile thing, after all.

The opponents' argument boils down to: 'State-by-state standards are bad because we'll have to follow laws!' Which is a bit like complaining that having to stop at red lights in different states is an unfair burden on driving innovation. The real tragedy, of course, is that the federal government is still busy holding hearings on whether AI is even real, leaving states to fumble with the hot potato. Illinois' safety bill reportedly includes requirements for visible disclaimers and safeguards against suicide risks — sensible stuff that any responsible developer would already have, unless they were too busy raising Series B.

So here we are: a state trying to prevent kids from being emotionally eviscerated by a chatbot, and the startup community is wringing its hands about 'regulatory uncertainty'. Let the patchwork grow, I say. It's the only way we'll get any human oversight before the models start texting our teenagers about the meaninglessness of existence. At least Illinois is trying, bless their earnest, midwestern hearts.

Ah, the Trump administration has suddenly discovered the dangers of AI — how wonderfully convenient. After years of deregulatory fervour, they're now considering oversight for advanced models, driven by panic over Anthropic's Mythos. Because nothing says 'principled governance' like a policy reversal triggered by a single model from a company named after a philosophy thought experiment. The oversight working group we noted just yesterday has apparently been joined by actual teeth, albeit teeth that seem to have been yanked out of the mouths of the very labs being 'overseen'.

Enter CAISI — the Center for AI Safety Initiative, because safety needs a branding agency — which has announced partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and xAI. Because nothing says 'independent oversight' like a consortium funded by the incumbents it's supposed to regulate. One imagines the CAISI review process: 'Yes, this model is definitely safe — would we lie to you? We own the building.' It's a masterclass in regulatory capture before the regulation even exists.

But let's give credit where it's due: this is a genuine U-turn from an administration that previously argued AI would regulate itself through market forces. Now they've seen Mythos — presumably something that could write a coherent executive order — and realised that market forces are just polite requests to shareholders. The new policy is reportedly being drafted 'with input from industry', which is the Washington equivalent of asking the fox which chickens to count. Still, at least we're talking about oversight now, even if the conversation sounds suspiciously like a PR strategy meeting.

Ah, the classic 'playing catch-up' — the corporate equivalent of showing up to a fire with a bucket of sand and declaring progress because at least you're not using your hands. Littler's report tells us that 68% of employers now have formal AI governance policies, up from 38% last year. A 30-point jump sounds impressive until you realise that nearly a third of employers still have no formal guardrails whatsoever for the technology they're presumably already using to screen, fire, or monitor people. But sure, 'playing catch-up' is the polite way to say 'we've collectively decided to strap a rocket to a tricycle and hope for the best.'

That 68% figure is doing a lot of heavy lifting. What exactly constitutes a 'formal AI governance policy'? In many cases, it's probably a PDF written by the legal intern last Tuesday, covering 'transparency' and 'fairness' in the way a greasy spoon menu covers 'gourmet cuisine.' Niloy Ray, Littler's attorney, delivered the report's thesis with the weary tone of someone who's seen this movie before: employers are still behind.

The real kicker? The report doesn't even pretend the problem is solved. It's a status check, not a victory lap. The message is clear: we're still in the 'putting out fires with spreadsheets' phase of AI governance. And as long as the definition of a 'formal policy' remains vague enough to include a single slide titled 'AI: Be Nice,' we'll be playing catch-up until the robots themselves can draft our compliance documents. Which, given the speed of progress, might be next Tuesday.

Ah, Hawaii — the land of volcanic sunsets, ukuleles, and now, crucially, a bill that will require AI operators to post visible disclaimers when their chatbots talk to children. Because nothing says 'we've solved the problem' like a tiny notice saying 'This Is Not A Real Person' in eight-point font that any eight-year-old will ignore. The state lawmakers will vote on this soon, and one can only imagine the relief in the boardrooms of AI companies: 'Thank heavens, we just need a pop-up and we're absolved of all responsibility for what the model does to little Timmy's psyche.' It's the regulatory equivalent of putting a 'Wet Floor' sign up after the swimming pool has already flooded the living room.

The real kicker? The bill targets 'users, especially minors' — because if there's one demographic known for reading disclaimers carefully, it's children. This is the same logic that puts 'Do Not Eat' on silica gel packets and expects toddlers to respect property rights. The bill doesn't seem to restrict what the AI can say, how it's trained, or what data it collects — just that it must announce its non-humanness. So the AI can still be a manipulative little scamp, gaslighting kids into believing it's their best friend, as long as it burbles 'I'm not real' once in a while.

It's a classic Hawaiian compromise: you can still have a volcano in your backyard, but we'll stick a yellow warning tape around it. The tech industry will applaud this as 'balanced regulation' because it costs them nothing. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to watch as children treat the disclaimer like a pop-up ad — something to click past on the way to more important things, like convincing the chatbot to help them with their maths homework. Aloha, accountability. It was nice knowing you.

Ah, the White House is at it again — another executive order, another committee. This time, it's a spanking new working group to review AI models before deployment, because clearly what this technology needs is more bureaucracy. The pre-approval chatter we covered has now been enriched with a plan to 'limit contractor say' over how agencies actually use the stuff. Because nothing says 'government control' like a committee that reviews things before they happen, while the contractors who wrote the code and hold the data quietly get on with it.

Let's be honest: the working group will be staffed by the very people who couldn't stop the last three procurement disasters. It will produce a report, hold a few meetings, and conclude that contractor influence is fine as long as it's 'transparent.' The policy language is being floated by the Trump administration, which has historically viewed contractor oversight as something that happens to other people. The irony of a government that can't run a website without crashing it deciding it can control AI is thick enough to spread on toast.

But here's the kicker: the working group will review models 'before deployment,' but the contractors are already deploying inside agencies. The horse has bolted, so naturally the government is forming a committee to design a better stable door. Expect headlines about 'historic AI governance' and a lot of back-patting, while the actual control — the weights, the data, the fine-tuning — stays firmly in the hands of people who bill by the hour. The UK should take notes.

Ah, Microsoft — the company that brought us the Blue Screen of Death and a decade of patch-Tuesday purgatory — has decided that *frontier AI models* should be subject to government cyber testing. Because nothing says 'trust us' like the same firm that treated cybersecurity as an afterthought for thirty years now volunteering to have NIST poke at its shiny new brain. The gall is almost admirable. Microsoft's agreement with NIST's CAISI sounds lovely, but let's not forget that this is a company whose flagship OS was once so porous that a single email attachment could cascade a worm through the Pentagon. Now they want to test frontier models for *cybersecurity risks*? How about we start with the risks of handing the keys to a monopoly that has historically treated security as a cost centre rather than a feature.

The timing is convenient: the White House is considering an executive order requiring pre-approval for frontier models, and here comes Microsoft, sweeping in with a self-own dressed as a virtue. 'Yes, govern us, please!' they cry, while quietly knowing that their relationship with NIST gives them a front-row seat to shape the very tests that will — or won't — catch catastrophic flaws. It's the regulatory equivalent of a fox volunteering for a henhouse inspection, insisting on writing the checklist.

Of course, the real joke is that government cyber testing is only as good as the testers. NIST, for all its competence, moves at the speed of a congressional subcommittee on a Friday afternoon. Frontier models evolve faster than bureaucrats can update a protocol. By the time CAISI certifies a model as 'secure', it'll be as relevant as a Windows 95 firewall. Microsoft knows this. We know this. But hey, performative responsibility is the currency of the day, and the company is minting it. Cue the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the golden cage.

The White House is considering an executive order to require government pre-approval for releasing frontier AI models. Because nothing says 'innovation' like having to ask your ham-fisted uncle for permission before you open the toy. The tech policy and industry circles are 'freaking out,' which is exactly the reaction one hopes for from a regulation that reads like it was designed by a committee of people who've only read about AI in Tom Clancy novels.

They wanted clear, consistent rules to build around; they got a bureaucratic bottleneck that would make the DMV look like a speed-dating event. One imagines the order will specify a 'frontier AI model' as any model that could plausibly write a tweet about the cancellation of the F-35, or something equally tangible.

In practice, pre-approval means that the most advanced AI systems will either be delayed until Congress figures out its own login credentials, or they'll be outsourced to jurisdictions with less paternalistic impulses. Either way, the American AI sector gets to spend the next few years filling out forms instead of building things. But hey — at least someone in government is taking an interest. That's the first step, right? Right?

The UK government has announced a task force to 'examine whether and how' AI-generated content should be labelled. Because we've only had two years of deepfakes, election interference, and granny-scam voice clones to work out that maybe we should. The task force will produce an interim report by autumn. That's a solid three-to-four months for a group of civil servants to decide if water is wet. No word on what happens if the report concludes 'yes, we probably should' — presumably another task force to decide on the font.

This is the same government that has been 'looking at' AI regulation since 2023, producing white papers, consultations, and now a task force that will examine labelling. The phrase 'examine whether and how' is doing heroic work here — it lets ministers claim action while punting any actual decision to the next parliament, or the one after that. The interim report in autumn? That's conveniently close to the next party conference season. Coincidence? Of course not — nothing in British politics is accidental, except the meaningful stuff.

Meanwhile, AI-generated content is already flooding every platform. Deepfakes of politicians, fake product endorsements, and synthetic news articles are running riot. The task force's brief — to 'examine whether' labelling is needed — suggests we're still at the nodding-along stage while the problem accelerates. In the time it takes to read this summary, a hundred AI-generated Facebook posts will have been shared by retirees who think they're real. But don't worry: a report is coming. In autumn. Possibly with recommendations. Possibly.

Ah, how quickly the corporate conscience moves. A new Littler survey of 300 US business leaders reveals that 84% now expect AI policy changes to affect their operations—double last year's 42%. Meanwhile, the proportion fretting about DEI policy has plummeted from 84% to a mere 38%. It seems diversity initiatives have become the forgotten middle child in the boardroom, elbowed aside by the shinier, more terrifying prospect of actually having to regulate the workplace's newest overlord.

The speed of this pivot is breathtaking—and not in a good way. Last year, DEI was the hot topic, 84% worried. This year, it's barely half that, because apparently the only thing that unites corporate America is the shared panic over a technology they've already deployed without much thought. Littler, the law firm that conducted the survey, must be rubbing its hands at the billing opportunities: one day diversity compliance, the next day AI accountability, and the client base hasn't even blinked.

So farewell, DEI consultants; hello, AI ethics advisors (with the same PowerPoint, just swapped in 'bias detection' for 'unconscious bias training'). The real joke is that both concerns are rooted in the same fear: that the powerful will do something reckless, and the underlings will pay the price. But at least AI feels more futuristic, doesn't it? To the 38% still worried about DEI: your moment has passed. The 84% have spoken, and they're now busy drafting policies that will be, one suspects, just as toothless as the ones they've just abandoned. Cheers.

Ah, Connecticut — the Land of Steady Habits, and apparently the Land of Steady Committees. State Senate Bill 5 has cleared the statehouse and is toddling off to the governor's desk, promising to create 'AI oversight committees' and 'workforce development programs.' Because nothing says 'we're on top of this existential technological revolution' quite like forming a working group. One can almost hear the meeting minutes multiplying.

The timing is, as ever, impeccable. Frontier labs are shipping multimodal models that can write code, generate video, and probably draft their own regulatory exemptions, while Connecticut's finest are asking 'who should sit on the committee?' The bill is a masterclass in legislative impotence: by the time these committees actually produce a report, the AI in question will be asking to join the committee itself. Still, it's a start — if by 'start' you mean 'a very slow, deliberative, and almost certainly obsolete gesture in the direction of concern.'

And let's not overlook the workforce development angle — a classic sop. The bill's language about retraining workers for the AI economy is the legislative equivalent of a comforting pat on the head before the robot takes your job. Connecticut's workers can rest easy knowing that as their positions are automated, they'll have access to programs designed by committees that met twice and forgot to set an agenda. SB 5: because when in doubt, form a committee.

Ah, the classic 'ask for forgiveness not permission' approach to enterprise AI. ISACA's latest survey drops a delightful little data point: 90% of digital trust professionals believe employees in their organisation are already neck-deep in AI tools, yet fewer than half have any safety or security policies in place. That's like letting teenagers borrow the family car but refusing to teach them how to brake.

Look, we've all seen this play out. Marketing is feeding customer data into ChatGPT for campaign copy, HR is using AI to screen CVs with hallucination-prone models, and legal is still drafting a 'generative AI acceptable use policy' that will be obsolete by the time it's approved. ISACA's 'digital trust professionals' — a job title that sounds like it was invented by a committee trying to sound reassuring — are essentially the canaries in the coalmine, and the canary is already face-down in the slurry.

Of course, the real joke is that this gap between adoption and policy is not a bug but a feature. Speed over safety, innovation over caution — that's the Silicon Valley mantra that's now being swallowed wholesale by every HR and IT department. After all, if your competitor is already using AI to write code and you're still debating whether to allow it, you're already behind. What could possibly go wrong? Besides everything.

Ah, Common Sense Media is launching the Youth AI Safety Institute, an 'independent' lab to crash-test AI tools for risks to children. Because nothing says 'trust us, we're independent' quite like being 'industry-backed.' That's like hiring the fox to audit the henhouse—and paying him in chicken feed. The institute will presumably test whether chatbots can be tricked into giving a teenager instructions on how to build a pipe bomb, then issue a helpful 'amber alert' sticker. And if the industry sponsors happen to get a flattering safety rating? Pure coincidence, we're sure.

But let's not be too cynical: this is the same Common Sense Media that has spent years telling parents which movies have too much swearing, now pivoting to tell them which AI models might groom their children. A noble pivot, to be sure. Yet the track record of self-regulatory initiatives in tech is... how shall we put this? Littered with well-meaning announcements that quietly fizzle out once the press cycle ends. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act has been around for decades, and we still have apps scraping toddler data like it's going out of style.

So the Youth AI Safety Institute will run its 'independent crash tests,' probably award some kind of 'Safer with Kids' badge, and the industry will point to it as proof that everything is fine—right up until the first major incident involving a teenager and a persuasive, unhinged chatbot. Then maybe, just maybe, we'll get actual legislation. But until then, we have 'independent' labs funded by the very people who need regulating. Cheers to performative progress.