David Holtzman

Retired founder of HITprivacy LLC. Commentator on intersection of health information privacy & information security. Opinions & views expressed are my own.

[Chris McGuire @ChrisRMcGuire]

I actually think targeted export controls on model access are prudent. But across the board controls on all countries on a single model, without any warning, is highly questionable. Imposing equally broad deemed export controls, which also restrict access to foreign nationals, is just absurd—and obviously will result in the model being pulled from distribution, as just happened.

Export controls are a critical tool, and an extremely powerful one. Used correctly, they have the potential to massively extend the US lead in AI. Used incorrectly, they will stifle AI development. The Department of Commerce’s export control strategy has been completely incoherent and sabotaging. It is sending powerful AI chips to China, not enforcing controls that would prevent Chinese smuggling, creating massive loopholes that allow AI chips to be sent to China, and preventing US AI companies from releasing their own models.

This has to stop. We urgently need a smart export control strategy that applies robust export controls to deny our adversaries access to advanced technology, while advantaging US companies. Commerce and BIS are consistently doing the opposite. If BIS doesn’t understand how to use its authorities or what the implications are of its actions, then it needs to find some new personnel who can actually execute a competent export control strategy. The current one is incoherent and self-defeating.

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

@chrissyfarr @levie Strongly disagree with statement. In my experience as a regulator and consultant in #healthcare payers and larger provider organizations have directly employed or contracted software engineers.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

When I fell asleep at the Garden, the Knicks were Winning. Then when I wake up, I see the Spurs have "won." It seems that in the 4th Quarter, the so-called referees kept "finding" Points for the Spurs. Rigged! Fake Game!

by Donald J. Trump

[Meriwether Farms @MeriwetherFarms]

People who continue to blame New World Screwworm crisis on the Biden Administration need to stop

The Secretary has had 15 months to prepare a competent response, and despite what some are saying, the response has been lackluster and unserious

Let’s go over some facts:

In order to eradicate the NWS, we need somewhere between 500M-600M sterile flies produced WEEKLY, and we currently produce 100M weekly

There are current mechanisms and technologies that could be deployed IMMEDIATELY in order to produce those numbers that have been ignored by the USDA for the past 6 months

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) which oversees the NWS response is a disaster. There were some competent veterinarians interviewed during the transition willing to serve and reform the bureau who were blocked by the Secretary and her team. Instead they decided to retain the same director from the Biden Administration (ironic) who botched the response to the Avian flu

The tick rider program (people on horseback looking at wildlife and livestock in desolate areas) is completely disorganized, so the “surveillance” mechanisms that continue to be touted are not sufficient enough to detect these infestations in extremely rural areas in the timely manner required to combat this

On top of all this, producers in Texas are being pressured NOT TO REPORT potential cases, and if it wasn’t for some brave people reporting on this current case in LaPryor, it’s possible it would have been covered up

NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARATION NOW

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

@amyewalter And they voted for Mills when she was on the ballot.

[Angry Staffer @Angry_Staffer]

I’m 95% done with dinner

I just have to decide what I’m eating, how I’m cooking it, and what store I want to shop at

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

HOLY CRAP Trump actually accomplished a miracle. Here is what he got out of Iran:

- Reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98%

- Limit uranium enrichment to 3.67% purity (far below weapons-grade)

- Cut the number of installed centrifuges by roughly two-thirds

- Only enrich uranium at one declared site (Natanz)

- Stop enrichment activities at Fordow and convert it into a research facility

- Redesign the Arak heavy-water reactor so it could not easily produce weapons-grade plutonium

- Ship out or dilute excess enriched uranium
Allow extensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Permit continuous monitoring of nuclear facilities and supply chains

- Accept “snap” inspections under expanded monitoring rules

- Avoid building new heavy-water reactors for years

- Stay within strict limits on uranium stockpile size and centrifuge development for set periods ranging from 10–25 years

Ooops, sorry!

That was the JCPOA that Obama signed with Iran, only to have him tear it up, kill 140 kids, get hundreds of Americans injured, 13 killed, and gas prices to surge 50%.

[Vince Mpls @vincempls]

June 1, 1933: The "Fund of German Trade and Industry" is created, a huge slush fund administered by Martin Bormann in the Führer's name. The regime used the funds to compensate SA Stormtroopers who committed street violence, subsize the SS, and enrich Nazi party officials.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

Read @EggerDC on the utter foulness of the Trump IRS settlement fund. Truly the type of rank corruption we have not really witnessed before. Plundering at its finest

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

A Maryland tax scofflaw owing thousands of $. Paid off last month. District 39 voters prioritize personal integrity in their leaders. You are the progressive Robin Ficker. A serial candidate with serious ethics problems. @BaltimoreBanner

[Destiny Drake West @MsDrakeWest]

@HITPrivacy Let’s be clear. I’m not privileged. I’m blessed. Like so many families across District 39, my family has endured many hardships. So, I’ll say it again: WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT PRIORITIES.

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

Your level of comfort & privilege is found in your $1 million+ home in Germantown. And there is a HOA lien for unpaid assessments. How can you lecture anyone about privilege?

[Destiny Drake West @MsDrakeWest]

@HITPrivacy The level of comfort and privilege it takes to worry about a “202” area code while working households are worried about rising costs, healthcare, voting rights, and attacks on immigrant communities is remarkable.

District 39 has more important priorities.

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

@MsDrakeWest Hey Destiny a pro tip from a MD District 39 voter. Don't use a telephone number from DC 202 area code when texting me about how you want to make my life better in Montgomery County. Probably plays better in DC.

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

@chelsea_janes Today would have been Willie Mays' 95th birthday. The Say Hey Kid played a number of years in New York with the baseball Giants. He ended his storied career with the Mets. How do today's players remember him?

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The MAGA crowd in Washington has decided that since Europeans don’t sufficiently appreciate Trump, the American bases on the continent must go. This is the strategic reasoning of a man who burns down his own kitchen.

American bases in Europe were never a favour. They are the logistical spine of every war the United States fights east of Gibraltar. Ramstein moves the cargo, Aviano launches the jets, Rota services the ships. Without them the Pentagon does not project power into the Middle East. It projects PowerPoint.

The fantasy assumes the alternative is aircraft carriers gliding majestically into the Persian Gulf. That era is ending. A modern carrier is a thirteen-billion-dollar trophy that can be reduced to scrap by a couple of hundred cheap missiles fired from the Iranian coast. China noticed.

The other fantasy is that America simply fights from home. Picture the alternative: twenty thousand transatlantic sorties shuttling spare parts, munitions, fuel bladders, mechanics and replacement pilots from Norfolk and Dover to wherever the war happens to be. A C-17 burns through roughly 35,000 dollars of fuel every hour it flies, and the round trip from the American east coast to the Gulf is the better part of a day. Multiply that by every bolt, every missile, every spare engine. The war becomes a sustained airborne traffic jam with the bill arriving by the second.

So you need land, specifically land near the war. Modern combat aircraft are not Spitfires you fuel up and send off with a wave. An F-35 demands an entire Walmart of spare parts, a small city of technicians, climate-controlled hangars and a supply chain stretching halfway round the planet. Drones need operators, networks, satellites and a steady diet of components no carrier can store. Modern war arrives by container ship and lives in a warehouse.

Close the bases, and Washington loses the warehouses. Lose the warehouses, and the next confrontation with Iran is either fought by phone or fought from Kansas with a flight schedule that bankrupts the Treasury before the first missile lands.

MAGA thinks shutting Ramstein punishes Europe. It punishes America. Europe will be inconvenienced. America will be unarmed.

And so, after a thousand insults, a thousand sneers, a thousand late-night posts about freeloading allies, Europe is quietly drafting the politest letter in diplomatic history. It thanks America for its service. It wishes the troops a safe journey home. It suggests, with great warmth, that Washington might now turn its attention to its neighbours in Latin America, where a fading superpower can busy itself with whatever a fading superpower busies itself with.

Spain had its century. Britain had its empire. The Soviets had their parades. Each ended the same way: as a shadow of itself, with the historians left to argue, volume after volume, about precisely when the rot set in and why nobody noticed in time. America is welcome to join them on the shelf.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you like what you read, please follow Gandalv on Substack:
https://t.co/2TO5x2O8nI

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

Page 8647 Jan 31 2025 Federal Register is publication of the #Trump Crypto EO. https://t.co/b34kD8ZV62
Are we to read into this a Deep State plot?
@dojphofficial has jumped down the rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland asserting arranging seashells in the sand is a threat.

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

Next thing you know #doj and #fbi will investigate Americans who play the numbers 8647 in the daily #win4 lottery.

[Acyn @Acyn]

FBI Director Kash Patel explains how the criminal investigation into James Comey’s seashell post wasn’t a simple one: This has been a case that's been investigated over the past 9, 10, 11 months. These cases take time. Our investigators work methodically

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

It's a disgrace when @SecWar mess serves lobster and steak. Warfighters on extended deployment get short rations. And no care packages from home. @ChrisVanHollen @AlsobrooksForMD @MarkWarner

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

New photos from the USS Abraham Lincoln show service members receiving minimal food portions as reports grow that some troops have lost significant weight and aren’t receiving care packages—while the Pentagon denies any shortages. (Newsweek)

[David Holtzman @HITPrivacy]

@Milbank @NOTUSreports Welcome back @Milbank. While you have been missed, your essay adroitly points out that you have not missed a thing. Can you please convince @IgnatiusPost to join you?

[Ibraheem 🇵🇰 @ibraheemch333]

@BarakRavid