Trump Is Selling a Phone + The Start-Up Trying to Automate Every Job + Allison Williams Talks ‘M3GAN 2.0’

What It Covers

The Trump family launches Trump Mobile cellular service and a $499 gold smartphone claiming US manufacturing. AI startup Mechanize raises funding to automate all jobs using reinforcement learning. Actress Allison Williams discusses AI themes in Megan 2.0.

Key Questions Answered

• •Presidential conflicts of interest: Trump Mobile creates regulatory conflicts as the FCC head appointed by Trump oversees telecommunications while the president's family operates an MVNO. Tech companies could pay to pre-install apps on Trump phones as indirect bribes to curry favor with the administration on regulatory matters.
• •MVNO business model: Mobile Virtual Network Operators buy unused capacity from carriers like Verizon at wholesale prices and resell at lower rates with slower service during peak times. Mint Mobile sold to T-Mobile for over $1 billion after eight years, netting Ryan Reynolds approximately $300 million without building infrastructure.
• •Manufacturing economics reality: No credible path exists to build modern Android 15 smartphones in the US for $500. The Liberty phone, currently the only US-assembled smartphone, costs $1,999. Trump's $499 price point for US-made phones defies supply chain economics that established manufacturers cannot achieve.
• •AI automation timeline divergence: Mechanize founders predict AI will automate software engineering tasks within five years but full job replacement across all professions will take twenty to thirty years. They expect initial productivity gains and wage increases before eventual mass displacement, rejecting need for immediate government intervention.
• •Reinforcement learning training environments: Mechanize builds simulated work environments resembling boring video games where AI agents practice professional tasks like using spreadsheets, GitHub, and Slack. Models receive scoring feedback to learn skills, with software engineering as the first target before expanding to adjacent fields like data science.