• Nonprofit empire: Claims nonprofit organizations control $14.1 trillion in assets, exceeding major national economies and the federal budget.
• Invisible power: Argues nonprofits act as a fourth branch of government with no elections, confirmations, or accountability mechanisms.
• Arabella network: Details Arabella Advisors and affiliated funds allegedly funneling dark money to progressive causes and vanishing organizational fingerprints.
• Open borders industry: States faith-based NGOs allegedly funded largely by taxpayers that lobby for looser immigration policies.
• Summer of fire: Notes 2020 unrest costs, BLM fundraising, and large foundation grants to build permanent political infrastructure.
• Green funding grift: Describes $27 billion in EPA green grants overseen by a nonprofit veteran, including billions to nascent organizations.
• Election infrastructure: Claims Zuckerberg-funded nonprofits favored Democratic areas and that legal groups supported by foundations challenge election-security laws.
• Reform agenda: Calls for transparency, lobbying bans, stricter FARA enforcement, sunset tax exemptions, and limits on sue-and-settle settlements.

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The Fourth Branch: $14.1 Trillion. Zero Votes. How America Lost Its Republic to an Unelected Empire.

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I love this country.

I love it the way you love something you're terrified of losing with eyes wide open, hands trembling, and a heart full of both gratitude and grief. I love it the way every American loves it who has ever watched their child recite the Pledge of Allegiance and felt their throat tighten with pride. I love it the way I love Fourth of July and fireworks and hot dogs and apple pie.

And I'm writing this because I believe we are losing it.

Not to a foreign enemy. Not to a political party. But to a structure of power that the Constitution never anticipated, that "We the People" never approved, and that operates in plain sight while remaining almost entirely invisible.

I'm talking about the Fourth Branch of government: the one you were never taught about in civics class. The one that doesn't appear in any founding document. The one that now controls more wealth than most nations on Earth.

According to the Federal Reserve's own data, nonprofit organizations in the United States now control $14.1 trillion in total assets.

Let that number wash over you.

$14.1 trillion.

That's $4.0 trillion in real estate. $3.1 trillion in corporate equities. And here's the part that should make your blood run cold: $3.6 trillion in assets that the Federal Reserve doesn't even categorize. Three-point-six trillion dollars in something, and nobody is required to tell you what.

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This nonprofit empire is larger than the combined GDP of Japan, Germany, and India. It exceeds the entire federal budget. It has grown from under $2 trillion in the 1990s to a force that now rivals nation-states.

And not one penny of it answers to a single American voter.

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF INVISIBILITY

The genius of this system is its invisibility. When you think of power in America, you think of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court. You think of elections and votes and the peaceful transfer of authority that has defined our republic for nearly 250 years.

But while you were watching C-SPAN, a parallel structure was being built. A structure that writes the laws our legislators pass. That sues federal agencies into submission. That funds the election offices that count your votes. That trains the journalists who shape your perception of reality. That organizes the protests that fill your streets. That staffs the government agencies that regulate your life.

This structure has a name. We call it the "nonprofit sector." We treat it as charity. We subsidize it with tax exemptions. We celebrate it as civil society.

But what it has become is something else entirely: an unaccountable apparatus of political power that operates outside the constitutional framework the Founders so carefully designed.

The Founders understood something profound about human nature: power corrupts. That's why they built accountability into every branch of government. The President faces the voters every four years. Members of Congress face them every two or six. Even federal judges, appointed for life, must first survive Senate confirmation: a public vetting by elected representatives.

But the $14.1 trillion nonprofit infrastructure faces nothing.

No elections. No confirmation hearings. No term limits. No recall mechanisms. No impeachment proceedings. Just permanent, perpetual, unaccountable power.

THE LEFT PERFECTED THIS MACHINE

Let me be direct about something: while both sides of the political spectrum use nonprofit organizations, the progressive left has built this into an art form. They have constructed a permanent infrastructure designed to win policy battles they cannot win at the ballot box.

Consider the Arabella Advisors network.

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If you've never heard of Arabella Advisors, that's by design. This single consulting firm manages a constellation of nonprofits that function as a dark money ATM for progressive causes. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, one of Arabella's flagship organizations, spent $410 million in 2020, more than the Democratic National Committee itself.

The network includes the New Venture Fund ($959 million in revenue), the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund, and the North Fund. Together, they form a financial architecture of stunning sophistication.

Here's how it works: Organizations can pop up under Arabella's fiscal sponsorship, spend tens of millions of dollars on political causes, and then disappear without ever filing their own tax returns. The money flows through. The fingerprints vanish. It's organizational money laundering with a 501(c)(3) stamp of approval.

And the scale is breathtaking.

After a decade spent attacking undisclosed political spending by conservatives, the progressive left embraced dark money with what the New York Times called "fresh zeal." In the 2020 election cycle, left-leaning dark money groups outspent their right-leaning counterparts by nearly two to one, pouring more than $1.5 billion in undisclosed cash into American politics.

By 2024, total dark money in elections hit $1.9 billion, a record. The Brennan Center for Justice, itself a nonprofit that shapes the very narrative around money in politics, documented this explosion while advocating for rules that would primarily constrain their opponents.

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This is not hypocrisy. It's strategy. Build the infrastructure. Capture the referees. Write the rules. Win.

But Arabella is just the architecture. Now let's look at the operations.

THE OPEN BORDERS INDUSTRY

Nowhere is the NGO-government merger more complete than at the southern border.

The organizations facilitating mass migration into the United States present themselves as faith-based charities: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (now rebranded as "Global Refuge"), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Church World Service. The names evoke images of nuns ladling soup and pastors offering prayers.

The reality is an industrial operation funded almost entirely by American taxpayers.

Consider the numbers from fiscal year 2024:

• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service received over $340 million from the federal government. According to their own tax filings, they receive 95 percent of their funding from government sources.

• Church World Service received over $315 million from the Departments of State, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. Government grants constitute 85 percent of their budget.

• HIAS received $113 million in federal funds, 65 percent of their total revenue.

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These are not charities in any meaningful sense. They are government contractors wearing clerical collars.

And here's the part that should enrage you: these same organizations use their non-government funds to lobby for more permissive immigration policies, policies that will increase the flow of migrants and, consequently, increase their future government contracts.

You are paying them to resettle migrants. And you are paying them to lobby for policies that will ensure they resettle more migrants. You are funding both sides of a policy debate in which you have no voice.

When Texas or Arizona attempts to enforce border security, these "charities" fund the lawsuits to stop them. When states pass legislation to crack down on illegal immigration, these organizations deploy their legal teams to block implementation.

The Heritage Foundation has called it a "corrupt money-changing circle" in which taxpayers fund "migration weaponization used against America's interests."

They're not wrong.

THE SUMMER OF FIRE: 2020

In the summer of 2020, American cities burned.

Following the death of George Floyd, protests erupted in 140 cities across the nation. Many were peaceful. But the riots, looting, and arson that accompanied them produced something unprecedented: the most expensive civil unrest in American insurance history.

According to Property Claim Services, which has tracked insurance claims related to civil disorder since 1950, the destruction caused between $1 billion and $2 billion in insured losses. That figure eclipsed the previous record (the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict) by a substantial margin, even adjusted for inflation.

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The 1992 riots cost insurers $775 million, or about $1.4 billion in today's dollars. The 2020 riots exceeded that in raw numbers and matched or surpassed it in real terms.

But here's what makes 2020 different: it was the first civil disorder catastrophe in American history to affect more than one state. The damage spread across 20 states, shattering the previous model of localized urban unrest.

Dozens of people were killed. Thousands of businesses (many of them minority-owned) were looted, torched, or vandalized. Communities that had struggled for decades to build wealth watched it go up in flames.

And what happened to the money that poured in to support "the movement"?

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raised approximately $90 million in 2020. Co-founder Patrisse Cullors purchased a $1.4 million home in a predominantly white Los Angeles neighborhood. The organization acquired a $6 million mansion in Southern California, ostensibly for "influencer housing."

When donors and even local BLM chapters demanded financial transparency, the organization went dark. State attorneys general in California, Washington, and elsewhere opened investigations for failure to file proper nonprofit disclosures.

This is what a $90 million "movement" looks like when there's no accountability.

But the real money came from elsewhere.

The Ford Foundation (one of the largest philanthropies in America, with $16 billion in assets) announced it would lead a six-year effort to raise $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives. The foundation's announcement spoke of wanting to "nurture bold experiments" and help the movement "build the solid infrastructure that will enable it to flourish."

George Soros's Open Society Foundations went further. In July 2020, as cities smoldered, Open Society announced $220 million in new funding for organizations aligned with the movement. Foundation president Patrick Gaspard (a former Obama administration official) declared it "inspiring and powerful to experience this transformational moment."

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The foundation was explicit about its goals: "We want to nurture bold experiments and help the movement build the solid infrastructure that will enable it to flourish."

Infrastructure. That word keeps appearing. Not charity. Not relief. Not healing. Infrastructure. The permanent architecture of political power.

THE GREEN NEW DEAL GRIFT

If you want to understand how the NGO-government merger actually functions, look no further than the Biden administration's distribution of climate funds.

Congressional testimony from 2025 laid bare the machinery.

The Inflation Reduction Act set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for green initiatives. The Environmental Protection Agency received tens of billions to distribute as grants. And a staffer named Jahi Wise, who came to the EPA from an environmental nonprofit called The Coalition for Green Capital, was placed in charge of directing $27 billion in green funding.

Pause on that number. That's more than the combined budgets of the Departments of Treasury, Interior, and Commerce, controlled by an unconfirmed staffer who faced no Senate confirmation and received no Congressional oversight.

And what happened?

• Under his tenure, $5 billion was granted to his former organization, The Coalition for Green Capital.

• Power Forward Communities (an organization that was only a few months old when it applied) received nearly $9 billion to distribute at its own discretion.

• One recipient was an organization affiliated with Stacey Abrams, the two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate. According to testimony, this organization had approximately $100 in the bank when it received $2 billion in federal grants.

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One hundred dollars. Two billion dollars.

This is not government. This is not charity. This is a machine for converting taxpayer money into political infrastructure, operating beyond the reach of democratic accountability.

THE ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE TAKEOVER

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $419 million to American election administration through two nonprofits: the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

The money went to local election offices to help them manage the unprecedented challenges of conducting an election during a pandemic. That was the stated purpose.

The reality was more targeted.

In Wisconsin, a battleground state decided by roughly 20,000 votes, CTCL funding to the five largest cities (all Democratic strongholds) worked out to $38.17 per voter. Rural areas, which lean Republican, received as little as $0.00 per voter.

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The money funded ballot drop box installations, poll worker recruitment and training, voter outreach programs, and election office operations, all selectively distributed to jurisdictions that favored one party.

At least 24 states have since passed laws banning or restricting private funding of election administration. But they did so after 2020, after the money had already flowed, after the infrastructure had already been built.

Meanwhile, a network of well-funded legal organizations exists specifically to challenge any law that tightens election security. The ACLU. The Brennan Center. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Marc Elias's Democracy Docket.

They call voter ID laws "suppression." They call signature matching requirements "disenfranchisement." They call citizenship verification "discrimination."

And they have unlimited resources to sue, and sue, and sue again, funded by the same foundation complex that shapes every other aspect of this infrastructure.

The Brennan Center for Justice has become the go-to "expert" source for virtually every mainstream media story about voting rights. They produce the studies. They train the journalists. They file the lawsuits. They write the talking points.

It's a closed loop. A self-reinforcing system. An infrastructure of influence that operates in plain sight while remaining almost entirely invisible.

THE MEDIA-NGO PIPELINE

You cannot understand American media without understanding its nonprofit funding.

ProPublica, the investigative journalism outfit whose work shapes national narratives, operates on a $45 million annual budget funded primarily by the Sandler Foundation and other progressive donors. Their investigations (invariably) advance progressive policy priorities.

The Marshall Project covers criminal justice with funding from progressive foundations. Every story, somehow, points toward decarceration and police reform.

NPR and PBS receive federal funding and major foundation support simultaneously. Their coverage reflects their funders' priorities with remarkable consistency.

The "fact-checking" infrastructure is even more compromised. The Poynter Institute runs the International Fact-Checking Network, which certifies fact-checkers used by social media platforms to police information. Poynter is funded by the Gates Foundation, Google, and the Open Society Foundations.

When progressive foundations fund the newsrooms AND the fact-checkers, who checks the checkers?

The answer is: no one. That's the point.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION

What I've described is not a conspiracy. It's not hidden. It operates in broad daylight, documented in tax filings and press releases and foundation annual reports.

But it represents something profound: the circumvention of the constitutional order.

The Founders designed a system in which power would be accountable to the people. They separated powers precisely because they understood that concentrated, unaccountable power (regardless of the intentions of those who wield it) inevitably becomes tyrannical.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The entire architecture of the Constitution rests on the assumption that power must be checked, balanced, and ultimately answerable to the sovereign people.

The $14.1 trillion nonprofit infrastructure answers to no one.

It writes model legislation that state legislators pass without reading. It sues federal agencies into adopting regulations that Congress never authorized. It funds the election offices that count your votes. It trains the journalists who shape your understanding of reality. It staffs the government agencies that regulate your daily life. It organizes the protests that pressure elected officials. It finances the lawsuits that block the laws those officials pass.

This is not democracy. This is not a republic. This is oligarchy wearing the mask of civil society.

And the defense (always) is that these organizations are doing good work. Fighting for justice. Advancing worthy causes.

But that defense misses the point entirely.

The question is not whether the causes are worthy. The question is whether unelected, unaccountable organizations should wield this kind of power in a constitutional republic, regardless of how righteous they believe themselves to be.

The answer, if we still believe in self-government, must be no.

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THE PATH BACK

The system I've described did not emerge overnight, and it will not be dismantled overnight. But if we still believe in the American experiment (if we still believe that government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed) then we must begin.

First: Radical transparency. Every nonprofit with annual revenue above $1 million should be required to disclose every donor who gives more than $1,000, in real time. The donor-advised fund loophole (which allows unlimited anonymous giving through intermediaries) must be closed. Foreign funding of American nonprofits should be illegal without complete disclosure.

Second: End the funding-lobbying double-dip. Organizations that receive federal grants should be absolutely prohibited from lobbying the government that funds them. You can take taxpayer money or you can try to influence policy, but not both. Ever.

Third: Enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA is toothless. Only about 5% of FARA registrants are nonprofits. The law must be expanded and aggressively enforced to ensure that American policy debates are not being shaped by foreign interests operating through domestic proxies.

Fourth: Sunset tax exemptions. Tax-exempt status should not be permanent. Every nonprofit should be required to reapply for 501(c)(3) status every ten years, with full audits and public disclosure. Organizations that have drifted from their charitable purposes into political activism should lose their subsidies.

Fifth: Close the sue-and-settle loophole. When advocacy organizations sue federal agencies and then "settle" for consent decrees that impose new regulations, they are legislating from outside the legislative process. These settlements should require Congressional approval, or they should be prohibited entirely.

None of this will be easy. The organizations that benefit from the current system have vast resources and powerful allies. They will fight every reform with every tool at their disposal.

But the alternative is to accept that American self-government is over. That "We the People" has become a pleasant fiction. That the real decisions will be made by those who control the $14.1 trillion, and the rest of us will simply live with the consequences.

A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman reportedly asked him what kind of government the delegates had created.

"A republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it."

That answer haunts me now.

The Founders gave us something precious: a system of self-government built on the radical premise that ordinary people could govern themselves. That power should flow from the bottom up, not the top down. That every American, regardless of wealth or status or connection, should have an equal voice in the decisions that shape their lives.

We have allowed that system to be hollowed out from within.

We have permitted an unelected, unaccountable infrastructure to grow so vast, so wealthy, so powerful that it now rivals the government itself. We have watched as constitutional processes were circumvented, as accountability was evaded, as power was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

And we have called it charity.

The $14.1 trillion question before us is simple: Do we still believe in self-government? Do we still believe that power should be accountable to the people? Do we still believe that the American experiment is worth preserving?

If the answer is yes, then the work begins now.

If the answer is no, then we should at least have the honesty to admit what we have lost.

I believe the answer is yes. I believe it because I know this country, not the country of cable news and Twitter wars, but the country of Little League games and church potlucks and neighbors helping neighbors after storms. I believe it because I've seen what Americans can do when they decide something matters.

The question is not whether we can reclaim our republic.

The question is whether we still have the will, and whether we'll find it before the $14.1 trillion finds a way to make the question irrelevant.

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• Policy Update: YouTube now allows videos about specified controversial issues to earn full ad revenue if the content avoids graphic depiction.
• Official Announcement: Conor from the monetization policy team shared the change on the Creator Insider channel.
• Sensitive Topics: The eligible topics include abortion, self-harm, suicide, and domestic and sexual abuse when handled non-drastically.
• Historical Context: Post-2017 Adpocalypse restrictions had tightened monetization, impacting LGBTQ+ and gun-related videos.
• Moderation Shift: Moderators were advised to ease enforcement on divisive political, social, and cultural content.
• Automation Reduction: YouTube is limiting automated demonetization, aiming for more effective human rule enforcement.
• Advertiser Environment: Brands that previously avoided contentious content, including MyPillow, now appear in top branded videos.
• Parental Controls: Additional controls, like blocking Shorts for youth accounts, underscore parental responsibility alongside existing ad-friendly guidelines.

YouTube‘s guidelines for ad-friendly content are changing, and creators who cover controversial topics are in line for increased revenue. Videos that touch on certain sensitive issues will now be eligible for full monetization so long as they avoid graphic depictions of those subjects.

Conor, a mononymous member of YouTube’s monetization policy team, conveyed the update through a video on the Creator Insider channel. “This week, we’re updating the advertiser-friendly guidelines to allow content focusing on what advertisers define as controversial issues — specifically abortion, self-harm, suicide and domestic and sexual abuse — to earn full ad revenue when the content is dramatized or discussed in a non-drastic manner,” Conor said.

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The original restrictions on sensitive content were tightly enforced during the 2017 Adpocalypse, when advertiser qualms about inappropriate pre-roll placements led YouTube to strengthen its grip. In the years since, creators on both sides of the political aisle have complained about perceived censorship on their videos. In particular, content related to subjects like LGBTQ+ rights and guns has been hard to monetize consistently, even in cases where those topics are merely mentioned and are not depicted in a graphic manner.

In recent months, however, YouTube’s approach to sensitive content has gone through a noticeable evolution. The platform’s moderators were reportedly told to ease up on videos that touch on divisive political, social, and cultural issues, and YouTube has also attempted to limit the role automated technology plays in demonetization decisions. In theory, enabling full monetization on a wider range of videos makes it easier for human moderators to effectively enforce platform rules and guidelines.

The current state of YouTube ads is relevant to the discussion as well. Some brands have indicated that they’re comfortable running ads on videos that could be considered “advertiser-unfriendly.” Recent editions of our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report have included more companies with ties to misinformation. For example, MAGA-aligned MyPillow sponsored five of the top 1,700 branded YouTube videos of the week.

Ultimately, this change isn’t really about slackening the rules — it’s about shifting responsibility for sensitive content. Another recent YouTube update added more parental controls, including the ability to prevent youth accounts from watching Shorts. YouTube still has clear guidelines for what it considers to be ad-friendly, but it also wants parents to be the moderators within their families.

• Strategic_Vision: Newsom portrayed as remarkably adept politically despite California’s struggles with affordability, homelessness, energy, regulation, and public trust.
• Performance_Matters: Current politics reward perceived strength, dominance, and media savvy more than policy records, aligning with Newsom’s style.
• Profile_Themes: Major profiles emphasize his deep network, digital fluency, and ideological ambiguity as assets for winning modern primaries.
• Trump_Parallel: Similar to Trump, Newsom recasts failures as pragmatism, leverages masculinity and spectacle, and controls narratives via short-form media.
• Online_Appeal: Some right-wing internet subcultures view him as a confident “chad,” enhancing his cultural power despite ideological differences.
• Democratic_Demand: Resistance liberals now seek fighters willing to absorb scandal, so attacking Newsom’s record may strengthen rather than weaken him.
• Opponent_Contrast: Governors like Shapiro or figures like Emanuel appear competent but lack Newsom’s dominance and willingness to generate conflict.
• Attention_Economy: Continuous podcasting, controversy courting, targeted books, and tech-friendly positioning boost familiarity, making charisma a payoff over governance.

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Courtesy Michael M. Santiago/Getty.

To those of us who dislike him, it is irritating that Gavin Newsom keeps making us concede that he might be the most strategically adept Democrat in American politics.

By all accounts, he should be flailing. As Republican political consultant Luke Thompson explained in City Journal a few years ago, Newsom is not a misunderstood technocrat or a victim of circumstance. He is the product, and now the steward, of a political machine that has grown self-satisfied and increasingly detached from the demands of everyday governance.

This machine and its leader are failing their constituents. By most conventional measures—housing affordability, homelessness, energy reliability, regulatory competence, public trust, lawlessness, and disorder—Newsom’s governorship is a case study in liberal dysfunction.

If politics still worked the way it was supposed to work, this would be disqualifying. And yet the uncomfortable truth—one that has become harder to ignore amid whispers about 2028—is that Newsom may be better positioned than any other Democrat to take the White House.

This is true not despite his record, but because that record doesn’t matter in the way it once did. American politics is drifting away from accountability, becoming more performative and aesthetic. Voters increasingly judge politicians by what they seem to represent: strength or weakness, dominance or deference. That’s an environment for which Newsom was made, and on which he has relentlessly capitalized.

This is the insight leaking through in the recent spate of Newsom profiles. Jonathan Martin’s Politico treatment argued not that Newsom was beloved, or even broadly trusted, but that his combination of deep political network, digital fluency, and deliberate ideological ambiguity is what’s needed to win the nomination today. Helen Lewis’s long essay in the Atlantic, though more skeptical, shows Newsom as a politician who has internalized an old Clinton-era lesson Democrats once understood instinctively and later forgot: voters tend to prefer strong and wrong to weak and right. Both pieces imply that Newsom’s disastrous governing record just doesn’t matter against these facts.

The parallel here is obvious, but worth stating carefully. Donald Trump did not win the presidency in 2016 because voters concluded that he had an impeccable business record, but because they saw his business dealings as evidence that he understood how to fight, and how to dominate attention. His inconsistencies were not hidden; they were reframed as authenticity and street smarts. Even his long habit of donating to both political parties became evidence that he knew how the system functioned and how to bend it to his advantage.

Newsom is attempting something similar on the left, trying to retroactively recast California’s recent history into a success story. When confronted with failures, he does not concede error. Instead he reinterprets his time in office as evidence of pragmatism, learning, and responsiveness to changing conditions. He changes the story, a strategy uniquely suited to a media environment saturated with short clips, viral moments, and perpetual conflict.

Newsom mirrors Trump too in his relationship to masculinity, media, and cultural power. For years, Democrats have struggled to articulate a positive vision of masculinity, and in the process, alienated voters—particularly young men. But Newsom offers a solution to their problem. His approach is neither the feminized style favored by progressive nonprofits and HR departments, nor the trad-Catholic identity increasingly in vogue in right-wing corners of Washington. Instead, Newsom, who describes himself as more spiritual than religious, projects a masculinity that is aesthetic, performative, and unapologetic.

The strategy is working, even among some of the internet’s more unsavory subcultures. Within corners of the online right populated by “groypers” and “looksmaxxing” obsessives—many of whom harbor open hostility toward liberalism writ large—Newsom is seen as superior to figures like JD Vance. To them, Newsom comes across as confident, dominant, and unembarrassed by power. In the strange vernacular of that world, he is a “chad” who “mogs” Vance and others.

In post-Trump politics, masculinity could work for the left, too. Rather than a “return to normalcy,” many Democrats now want a Trump-like figure: someone willing to break rules, absorb scandal, and bare-knuckle brawl. As a result, attacking Newsom’s past controversies or California’s problems—as some of his intra-party critics have already begun to do—may well backfire, hardening his appeal instead of weakening it.

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By contrast, candidates with more sterling records often feel oddly inert. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is more competent than Newsom and oversees a state Democrats need to win in 2028. But Shapiro lacks what Newsom has: dominance, confidence, and a willingness to pick fights. He folds when confronted by progressive activists on school choice or energy policy, and strains to maintain cordial relations with the antisemites in his party who will never truly accept him.

The dynamic recalls the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Ron DeSantis was disciplined, competent, and nerdy. Trump was unpredictable, brazen, and singularly attuned to the psychology of his base. Trump won, because of the vibes. Newsom may well do the same to Shapiro, and candidates like him.

Or take another likely 2028 contender, Rahm Emanuel, who has framed the Democratic primary as a contest between resistance theatrics (Newsom) and policy pragmatism (himself). Emanuel’s recent forays into early-primary states, framed heavily around education reform and a willingness to challenge Democratic orthodoxies, are designed with that narrative in mind.

To anyone who isn’t a Marxist, it is an appealing story. But 2028 is unlikely to be a two-pole contest between center-left competence and liberal spectacle. Instead, we may see a strange inversion of the 2020 primary.

Then, most candidates raced left, while Joe Biden benefited from standing still. This time, as Democrats compete on pseudo-moderation and “electability,” someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could benefit by refusing to budge.

Newsom, though, is positioned to survive both dynamics at once. He is neither a stylized centrist nor a militant progressive. He’s something more slippery.

Resistance liberals see a fighter eager to antagonize Trump. Tech-aligned moderates see an executive skeptical of heavy-handed regulation. Labor sees selective concessions. Woke culture warriors see symbolic validation. And Newsom, more aesthetic than substance, can’t be pinned down to any one group.

Part of the reason is that Newsom has gotten good at knowing when to play the moderate. His aggressive push for partisan redistricting was framed not as escalation but as proportional response—a necessary counter to Republican hardball elsewhere. He has also broken with Democrats on destructive proposals like a wealth tax, flirted with Abundance-style housing reforms, and leaned into relatively tech-friendly positioning on AI and autonomous vehicles.

None of this means a Newsom nomination is inevitable. Other figures—including the other Californian heavyweight who just ran on the Democratic national ticket in 2024—are being written off far too early. But it does suggest that the center of gravity in Democratic politics has shifted toward candidates in the new, Newsom mold.

At the same time, Newsom’s unabashed celebrity politics could outpace him. Unlike some potential dark horses—figures like Jon Stewart, Mark Cuban, or Stephen A. Smith—Newsom does not possess deep, long-running fame that extends beyond political notoriety. As Trump demonstrated, you can win with a more intimate form of familiarity that TV stars often command.

By the time he ran, voters had spent years with Trump, watching him judge, argue, bluster, and perform. That intimacy breeds a strange kind of trust—or at least tolerance—even among people who do not particularly like you.

Trump achieved that intimacy through The Apprentice. For the generation below the one that came to know Trump that way, similar bonds exist with Stewart from The Daily Show, Cuban from Shark Tank, or Smith from ESPN.

These are not universally beloved figures. In fact, they are actively polarizing. But they are known. In a country run on the attention economy, that kind of visibility confers a form of credibility that political insiders often underestimate.

Newsom, acutely aware of this dynamic, has been working to narrow that gap. His constant podcasting, his willingness to court controversy, and his decision to write a book aimed explicitly at young men are all of a piece.

As resistance politics becomes less woke and more masculine, Republicans should take notice and prepare accordingly. It is no longer sufficient to dismiss Gavin Newsom as a smug governor with a bad record. That critique, while accurate, risks misunderstanding the moment.

American politics increasingly rewards those who command attention, project confidence, and refuse to be pinned down by their own history. In that environment, the ability to narrate and perform often matters more than the ability to govern well—and Newsom has shown an unusually clear-eyed understanding of that reality.

You do not have to admire Gavin Newsom. You do not have to forgive his record. But you may, sooner than you would like, have to hand it to him. Because everyone is talking about him. And nowadays, that is half the battle.

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• Dual Identity: The Ralph Wiggum plugin for Claude Code is simultaneously described as a meme and an AGI-adjacent tool that automates economically valuable work via relentless iteration.
• Origin: Geoffrey Huntley, frustrated by human-in-the-loop bottlenecks, created a humble Bash loop on his Australian goat farm to force Claude to confront its own failures until success.
• Philosophy: The methodology hinges on context engineering, piping raw outputs—including errors—back into Claude so the model repeatedly faces its mistakes and seeks a correct solution.
• Sanitization Shift: Anthropic’s official plugin, formalized by Boris Cherny, reframes the hack with the mantra “Failures Are Data,” adding structured feedback and safety mechanisms.
• Stop Hook: Claude receives a completion promise and the hook blocks exits lacking it, feeding failures back into the session to create self-referential loops that demand passing tests or linters.
• Night Shift Gains: Users report massive efficiency wins—from $297 API contracts to overnight multi-repo generation and autonomous long maintenance runs—by letting Ralph run while they sleep.
• Caveats: Infinite loops can burn valid budgets, so experts recommend `--max-iterations` escape hatches, sandboxed environments, and cautious use of `--dangerously-skip-permissions`.
• Availability: Claude Code users can invoke the official plugin via `/plugin ralph` while community forks and Huntley’s original scripts remain on GitHub.

In the fast-moving world of AI development, it is rare for a tool to be described as both "a meme" and AGI, artificial generalized intelligence, the "holy grail" of a model or system that can reliably outperform humans on economically valuable work.

Yet, that is exactly where the Ralph Wiggum plugin for Claude Code now sits.

Named after the infamously high-pitched, hapless yet persistent character on The Simpsons, this newish tool (released in summer 2025) — and the philosophy behind it — has set the developer community on X (formerly Twitter) into a tizzy of excitement over the last few weeks.

For power users of Anthropic’s hit agentic, quasi-autonomous coding platform Claude Code, Wiggum represents a shift from "chatting" with AI to managing autonomous "night shifts."

It is a crude but effective step toward agentic coding, transforming the AI from a pair programmer into a relentless worker that doesn’t stop until the job is done.

Origin Story: A Tale of Two Ralphs

To understand the "Ralph" tool is to understand a new approach toward improving autonomous AI coding performance — one that relies on brute force, failure, and repetition as much as it does on raw intelligence and reasoning.

Because Ralph Wiggum is not merely a Simpsons character anymore; it is a methodology born on a goat farm and refined in a San Francisco research lab, a divergence best documented in the conversations between its creator and the broader developer community.

The story begins in roughly May 2025 with Geoffrey Huntley, a longtime open source software developer who pivoted to raising goats in rural Australia.

Huntley was frustrated by a fundamental limitation in the agentic coding workflow: the "human-in-the-loop" bottleneck.

He realized that while models were capable, they were hamstrung by the user’s need to manually review and re-prompt every error.

Huntley’s solution was elegantly brutish. He wrote a 5-line Bash script that he jokingly named after Ralph Wiggum, the dim-witted but relentlessly optimistic and undeterred character from The Simpsons.

As Huntley explained in his initial release blog post "Ralph Wiggum as a 'software engineer,'" the idea relied on Context Engineering.

By piping the model’s entire output—failures, stack traces, and hallucinations—back into its own input stream for the next iteration, Huntley created a "contextual pressure cooker."

This philosophy was further dissected in a recent conversation with Dexter Horthy, co-founder and CEO of the enterprise AI engineering firm HumanLayer, posted on YouTube.

Horthy and Huntley argue that the power of the original Ralph wasn't just in the looping, but in its "naive persistence" — the unsanitized feedback, in which the LLM isn't protected from its own mess; it is forced to confront it.

It embodies the philosophy that if you press the model hard enough against its own failures without a safety net, it will eventually "dream" a correct solution just to escape the loop.

By late 2025, Boris Cherny, Anthropic's Head of Claude Code* formalized the hack into the official ralph-wiggum plugin.

However, as noted by critics in the Horthy/Huntley discussion, the official release marked a shift in philosophy—a "sterilization" of the original chaotic concept.

While Huntley’s script was about brute force, the official Anthropic plugin was designed around the principle that "Failures Are Data."

In the official documentation, the distinction is clear. The Anthropic implementation utilizes a specialized "Stop Hook"—a mechanism that intercepts the AI's attempt to exit the CLI.

1. Intercept the Exit: When Claude thinks it is done, the plugin pauses execution.

2. Verify Promise: It checks for a specific "Completion Promise" (e.g., "All tests passed").

3. Feedback Injection: If the promise isn't met, the failure is formatted as a structured data object.

The "Tale of Two Ralphs" offers a critical choice for modern power users:

• The "Huntley Ralph" (Bash Script/Community Forks): Best for chaotic, creative exploration where you want the AI to solve problems through sheer, unbridled persistence.

• The "Official Ralph" (Anthropic Plugin): The standard for enterprise workflows, strictly bound by token limits and safety hooks, designed to fix broken builds reliably without the risk of an infinite hallucination loop.

In short: Huntley proved the loop was possible; Anthropic proved it could be safe.

What It Offers: The Night Shift for Coders

The documentation is clear on where Ralph shines: new projects and tasks with automatic verification (like tests or linters).

But for the "boring stuff," the efficiency gains are becoming the stuff of legend. According to the official plugin documentation on GitHub, the technique has already logged some eye-watering wins.

In one case, a developer reportedly completed a $50,000 contract for just $297 in API costs—essentially arbitraging the difference between an expensive human lawyer/coder and a relentless AI loop.

The repository also highlights a Y Combinator hackathon stress test where the tool "successfully generated 6 repositories overnight," effectively allowing a single developer to output a small team's worth of boilerplate while asleep.

Meanwhile, on X, community members like ynkzlk have shared screenshots of Ralph handling the kind of maintenance work engineers dread, such as a 14-hour autonomous session that upgraded a stale codebase from React v16 to v19 entirely without human input.

To make this work safely, power users rely on a specific architecture. Matt Pocock, a prominent developer and educator who posted a recent YouTube video overview of why Ralph Wiggum is so powerful.

As he states: "One of the dreams of coding agents is that you can wake up in the morning to working code, that your coding agent has worked through your backlog and has just spit out a whole bunch of code for you to review and it works."

In Pocock's view, Wiggum (the plugin) is about as close as you can come to this dream. It's "a vast improvement over any other AI coding orchestration setup I've ever tried and allows you to actually ship working stuff with longrunning coding agents," he states.

He advises using strong feedback loops like TypeScript and unit tests.

If the code compiles and passes tests, the AI emits the completion promise; if not, the Stop Hook forces it to try again.

The Core Innovation: The Stop Hook

At its heart, the Ralph Wiggum technique is deceptively simple. As Huntley put it: "Ralph is a Bash loop."

However, the official plugin implements this in a clever, technically distinct way. Instead of just running a script on the outside, the plugin installs a "Stop Hook" inside your Claude session.

1. You give Claude a task and a "completion promise" (e.g., <promise>COMPLETE</promise>).

2. Claude works on the task and tries to exit when it thinks it's done.

3. The hook blocks the exit if the promise isn't found, feeding the same prompt back into the system.

4. This forces a "self-referential feedback loop" where Claude sees its previous work, reads the error logs or git history, and tries again.

Pocock describes this as a shift from "Waterfall" planning to true "Agile" for AI. Instead of forcing the AI to follow a brittle, multi-step plan, Ralph allows the agent to simply "grab a ticket off the board," finish it, and look for the next one.

Community Reactions: 'The Closest Thing to AGI'

The reception among the AI builder and developer community on social media has been effusive.

Dennison Bertram, CEO and founder of custom cryptocurrency and blockchain token creation platform Tally, posted on X on December 15:

"No joke, this might be the closest thing I've seen to AGI: This prompt is an absolute beast with Claude."

Arvid Kahl, founder and CEO of automated podcast business intelligence extraction and brand detection tool Podscan, persuasively covered the benefits of Ralph's persistent approach in his own X post yesterday:

And as Chicago entrepreneur Hunter Hammonds put it:

Opus 4.5 + Ralph Wiggum with XcodeBuild and playwright is going to mint millionaires. Mark my words. You’re not ready

In a meta-twist characteristic of the 2025 AI scene, the "Ralph" phenomenon didn't just generate code—it generated a market.

And earlier this week, someone — not Huntley, he says — launched a new $RALPH cryptocurrency token on the Solana blockchain to capitalize on the hype surrounding the plugin.

The Catch: Costs and Safety

The excitement comes with significant caveats. Software firm Better Stack warned users on X about the economic reality of infinite loops:

"The Ralph Wiggum plugin runs Claude Code in autonomous loops... But will those nonstop API calls break your token budget?"

Because the loop runs until success, the documentation advises using "Escape Hatches."

Users should always set a --max-iterations flag (e.g., 20 or 50) to prevent the AI from burning through cash on an impossible task.There is also a security dimension.

To work effectively, Ralph often requires the --dangerously-skip-permissions flag, granting the AI full control over the terminal.

Security experts strictly advise running Ralph sessions in sandboxed environments (like disposable cloud VMs) to prevent the AI from accidentally deleting local files.

Availability

The Ralph Wiggum technique is available now for Claude Code users:

• Official Plugin: Accessible inside Claude Code via /plugin ralph.

• Original Method: The "OG" bash scripts and community forks are available on GitHub.

As 2026 begins, Ralph Wiggum has evolved from a Simpsons joke into a defining archetype for software development: Iteration > Perfection.

*Correction: This article mistakenly characterized Boris Cherney's title. The article has since been updated and corrected, and we regret the error.

• Data source: Analysis pooled responses from 56,892 individuals across three large online datasets to examine sexual attraction patterns.
• Methodology: Combined self-reported attraction ratings, fantasy frequency, implicit association tests, and questionnaire-based IATs for a multilayered approach.
• Gender specificity: Men reported high attraction to preferred gender and low attraction to non-preferred gender, creating a wide specificity gap.
• Female profile: Women showed somewhat lower attraction to their preferred gender but higher attraction to their non-preferred gender, indicating broader potential attractions.
• Straight group nuance: Straight women still preferred men but with less exclusivity; straight men displayed uniquely strong gender specificity.
• Sexual orientation variation: Gay and lesbian participants often exhibited smaller, absent, or reversed specificity gaps, with lesbians sometimes matching gay men.
• Social and cultural factors: Results challenge sex-drive explanations, suggesting societal norms and sexual objectification influence specificity, especially toward women.
• Orientation granularity: “Mostly” straight or gay identities, more common among women, drove much of the flexibility, while men favored “exclusive” categories.

A new analysis of data from over 50,000 individuals indicates that men exhibit a more exclusive pattern of sexual attraction than women do. The research shows that while men strongly prefer one gender over the other, women tend to display a wider range of potential attractions. These results appear in The Journal of Sex Research.

For decades, researchers have attempted to map the differences in how men and women experience sexual desire. Older investigations often relied on measuring physical signs of arousal in a laboratory setting. Those experiments frequently suggested that men are “gender-specific.” This means men typically show physical arousal only when viewing the gender they prefer.

In contrast, those same historical studies often found that straight women displayed physical arousal when viewing images of both men and women. This led to a prevailing theory that female sexuality is inherently less specific than male sexuality. However, it remained unclear if this pattern applied to psychological feelings of attraction or fantasies.

Sapir Keinan-Bar, Yoav Bar-Anan, and Daphna Joel conducted the current investigation to answer this question. They are researchers affiliated with the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University. They sought to determine if the gender gap in specificity exists when measuring self-reported feelings and subconscious associations. They also aimed to see how these patterns manifest across different sexual orientations.

The team aggregated data from three separate large-scale online datasets. The total pool of participants included 56,892 individuals. The datasets contained information from volunteers who had visited research websites or utilized paid survey platforms.

The researchers analyzed responses to direct questions regarding sexual identity. Participants rated their level of attraction to men and women on numerical scales. They also reported the frequency of their erotic fantasies involving men or women. This allowed the authors to compare conscious reports of desire.

In addition to direct questions, the study utilized indirect measures of attraction. One primary tool used was the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This computerized task measures the strength of mental links between concepts.

During an IAT, a participant might sort words or images into categories like “Men” or “Women” and “I am sexually attracted” or “I am not sexually attracted.” The speed at which a participant sorts these items reveals their automatic associations. A faster response time suggests a stronger underlying mental connection.

The researchers also used a variation called the Questionnaire-Based Implicit Association Test (qIAT). This version uses statements rather than single words or images. It assesses attraction to men and women separately rather than comparing them directly.

The analysis of this massive dataset revealed a consistent pattern. Men generally exhibited greater gender-specificity than women. This trend appeared across self-reported attraction, fantasy frequency, and the indirect association measures.

The data provided a detailed look at why this gap exists. Men reported very high levels of attraction toward their preferred gender. At the same time, they reported very low levels of attraction toward their non-preferred gender. This created a large statistical gap between their likes and dislikes.

Women showed a different profile. They reported slightly lower levels of attraction to their preferred gender compared to men. More importantly, they reported higher levels of attraction to their non-preferred gender than men did. This finding suggests that women are psychologically more open to their non-preferred gender.

The study clarified the nature of attraction among heterosexual women. Contrary to some interpretations of older physiological studies, straight women were not completely non-specific. They clearly preferred men over women in both self-reports and indirect measures.

However, the intensity of this preference was not as exclusive as the preference straight men held for women. Straight women demonstrated a distinct preference, but the separation was less extreme. The researchers noted that this pattern was robust across the different samples.

The study also examined individuals who identified as gay or lesbian. The researchers found that the gender gap in specificity was different in these groups. The large difference seen between straight men and women was often smaller, absent, or reversed among gay and lesbian participants.

For example, lesbian women showed levels of specificity that were sometimes similar to, or even higher than, gay men. This suggests that the high degree of exclusivity observed in straight men might be a unique characteristic of that specific group. It may not be a universal trait of male sexuality.

The analysis of sexual fantasies reinforced the findings regarding attraction. Men reported fantasies almost exclusively about their preferred gender. Women reported fantasies primarily about their preferred gender, but with more frequent exceptions than men.

The authors evaluated several theoretical explanations for these results. One common theory posits that men simply have a higher sex drive than women. The data presented a challenge to this idea.

If men simply had a higher sex drive, they should report higher attraction to everyone. Instead, women reported higher attraction to their non-preferred gender than men did. This indicates that the difference is not just about the total amount of sexual desire.

Another theory considers the impact of social norms. Society often imposes strict expectations on heterosexual masculinity. Men face social penalties for showing interest in other men.

This social pressure might encourage men to report extreme attraction to women and deny any attraction to men. This would create the highly specific pattern observed in the data. Women generally face less social stigma for expressing flexibility in their attractions.

The authors also discussed the theory of sexual objectification. Western culture frequently portrays women as sexual objects. This cultural conditioning might cause individuals of all genders to develop some degree of attraction toward women.

The results offered some support for this objectification hypothesis. Across the board, attraction to the non-preferred gender was higher when that gender was female. For instance, straight women reported more attraction to women than straight men reported to men.

The researchers pointed out the benefits of using detailed categories for sexual orientation. The study allowed participants to identify as “mostly straight” or “mostly gay” rather than just using three rigid categories. This nuance revealed that people in the “mostly” categories drove much of the flexibility seen in the data.

Women were more likely than men to identify with these “mostly” categories. Men were more likely to identify as “exclusively” straight or gay. This difference in self-identification aligns with the finding that men are more gender-specific in their attractions.

There are limitations to this research. The data came from online samples, which may not perfectly represent the general population. The participants were primarily English speakers and likely skewed younger and more liberal.

The measures relied on honesty in self-reporting and the assumption that reaction times reflect attraction. These are proxies for real-world experience. The study did not measure physiological arousal, so it cannot be directly compared to the older laboratory studies on that metric.

Future research could explore these patterns in different cultures. Examining societies with different gender norms could help separate biological tendencies from social conditioning. It would be useful to see if the high specificity of straight men persists in cultures with different concepts of masculinity.

The study, “Gender-Specificity in Sexual Attraction and Fantasies: Evidence from Self-Report and Indirect Measures,” was authored by Sapir Keinan-Bar, Yoav Bar-Anan, and Daphna Joel.

• Competition goal: South Korea launched a contest to develop an independent AI model using Korean technology for national self-reliance.
• Foreign code use: Three of five finalists were found to incorporate open-source code from foreign, including Chinese, AI models, prompting scrutiny.
• Expert perspectives: Some experts argue that excluding open-source software is impractical and wasteful, while others cite security risks and national ownership concerns.
• Sovereign AI push: The government seeks two winners by 2027 achieving at least 95% parity with top models, offering funding, talent access, and government-procured chips.
• Upstage controversy: Rivals alleged Upstage’s model mirrored Chinese Zhipu AI and retained copyright markers; Upstage shared logs showing scratch training but acknowledged open-source inference code usage.
• Naver and SK Telecom scrutiny: Naver admitted to using external encoders similar to Alibaba/OpenAI, and SK Telecom faced claims of inference code resembling China’s DeepSeek, while both stress their core engines are independently developed.
• Rules unclear: Competition guidelines didn’t ban foreign open-source use, the science ministry has issued no new rules, and it plans to cut one finalist while the minister welcomes debate.
• Core training stance: Seoul National University’s AI Institute director affirmed that finalists trained their models from scratch without relying on foreign tools for internal numerical tuning.

By

Jiyoung Sohn

Jan. 13, 2026 11:00 pm ET

2

The SK Telecom pavilion at an information-technology show in Seoul. Jeon Heon-Kyun/Shutterstock

SEOUL—Last June, the South Korean government launched a competition to create a new independent AI model developed with Korean technology. A homegrown tool like that was critical to ensuring Korea’s technological self-reliance in a world already dominated by U.S. and Chinese artificial intelligence.

It is proving to be easier said than done.

Of five finalist companies in the three-year competition, three have been found to use at least some open-source codes from foreign AI models, including Chinese ones.

The companies and AI experts argue it makes little sense to shun existing AI models and attempt to build everything from scratch. But others say that any use of foreign tools creates potential security risks and undercuts hopes of cultivating an AI model undeniably a nation’s own.

It isn’t realistic to require every single piece of code be written entirely in-house when pursuing AI-model development, said Gu-Yeon Wei, an electrical-engineering professor at Harvard University, who is familiar with the Korean competition but not directly involved with any of the competitors.

“To forgo open-source software,” Wei said, “you’re leaving on the table this huge amount of benefit.”

Countries worldwide are increasingly looking to reduce foreign reliance and hone their own capabilities in a technology that could profoundly affect their economic competitiveness and national security.

A chip from Nvidia’s Quantum-X platform. Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg News

South Korea, with a bevy of chip giants, software firms and political backing, represents one of the most aggressive proponents of so-called sovereign AI.

The race seeks to identify two homegrown winners by 2027 able to achieve 95% or higher parity in performance with leading AI models from the likes of OpenAI or Google. Winners get access to state funding for data and hiring talent, as well as access to government-procured chips essential for AI computing.

Controversy over one of the finalists, Upstage, erupted in recent days. Some components of its AI model bore resemblance to an open-source model from China-based Zhipu AI, according to the chief executive of Sionic AI, a local rival. In addition, Zhipu AI copyright markers were left within some of Upstage’s code, he claimed.

“It’s deeply regrettable that a model suspected to be a fine-tuned copy of a Chinese model was submitted to a project funded by taxpayers’ money,” Ko Suk-hyun, the Sionic CEO, wrote on LinkedIn. Sionic had also entered the South Korean competition, though failed to make the finalist list.

In response, Upstage held a livestreamed verification session that shared its development logs to prove its model was developed and trained from a blank state using its own methods. But the inference code used to make the model run had used open-source elements that originated from Zhipu AI, which is widely used globally. Sionic’s CEO apologized.

The scrutiny prompted closer looks of the other finalists. Naver’s AI model was accused of bearing similarities to offerings from China’s Alibaba and OpenAI in its visual and audio encoders that translate images and sounds into a format that a machine can understand.

Naver’s headquarters in Seongnam, south of Seoul. Yonhap News/ZUMA Press

SK Telecom faced criticism that the inference codes for running its AI model bore similarities with those of China’s DeepSeek.

Naver admitted to using external encoders, but said it was a strategic decision to use a standardized technology. It stressed that the model’s core engine—which determines how it learns and is trained—were developed entirely by the company. SK Telecom made a similar argument, stressing the independence of its model’s core.

The competition’s rules didn’t explicitly state whether open-source code from foreign firms could be used or not. South Korea’s science ministry, which is overseeing the competition, hasn’t given out any new guidelines since the controversy. The country’s science minister, Bae Kyung-hoon, welcomed the robust debate.

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Do the benefits of using open-source code from Chinese AI models outweigh the potential security risks? Join the conversation below.

“As I watched the technological debates currently stirring our AI industry, I actually saw a bright future for South Korean AI,” Bae wrote in a social-media post earlier this month.

The ministry declined to comment when asked by The Wall Street Journal. It plans to eliminate one of the five finalists from the competition this week as scheduled.

AI models are developed by setting and fine-tuning internal numerical values to get an output, and those core tasks don’t appear to have relied on foreign tools in the models of the finalists that have faced questions, said Jae W. Lee, director of Seoul National University’s AI Institute.

“They trained from scratch,” he said.

Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com

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