The U.S. government faces a dilemma. Starlink, a private satellite venture devised and controlled by Elon Musk, offers capabilities that no government or other company can match. Its innovations are the fruit of Musk’s drive and ambitions. But they have become enmeshed with American foreign and national-security policy, and Musk is widely seen as an erratic leader who can’t be trusted with the country’s security needs. In other words, the United States has urgent uses for Starlink’s technology—but not for the freewheeling foreign-policy impulses of its creator.

The conundrum is substantially new for Washington. During World War I, wealthy industrialists, such as Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan, poured considerable resources into the American war effort: Ford’s factories produced boats, trucks, and artillery for military use; Morgan lent money. After the war, John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded the League of Nations. But Musk is doing something different. He supplies his product directly to foreign countries, and he retains personal control over which countries can obtain his equipment and how they can use it. That discretion has military and political implications. As one U.S. defense official admitted to The New Yorker, “Living in the world we live in, in which Elon runs this company and it is a private business under his control, we are living off his good graces.”

The dilemma is currently clearest in Ukraine. Starlink satellites, which Musk generously supplied at the start of the conflict so that Ukrainians would not lose internet access, have allowed for satellite-guided drones to help the Ukrainian military observe battlefield movements and target precision missiles. Experts describe Starlink’s military advantage as akin to providing an “Uber for howitzers.” But its disadvantage is Musk’s outsize role in determining the conduct of the war. That influence has come under scrutiny in recent days, with the release of excerpts from a forthcoming biography that highlight Musk’s mercurial decision making in Ukraine.

[Read: Demon mode activated]

Musk’s assent is required to maintain satellite internet connectivity in the country, and for reasons of his own, he has refused it near Crimea and imposed other restrictions that limit where Starlink services are available to Ukrainian forces. He told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he felt responsible for the offensive operations Starlink might enable, and that he had spoken with the Russian ambassador about how Moscow might react to them. At significant junctures during Ukrainian offensive operations, Starlink communication devices have experienced mysterious “outages.” The outages became enough of a problem that in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin specially negotiated the purchase of 400 to 500 new Starlink terminals that the Defense Department would directly control for use by Ukrainian forces.

The concerns about relying on Musk don’t end with Ukraine or even with questions of temperament. Musk’s commercial holdings could expose Washington to unwanted entanglements. Take, for example, his ownership of Tesla, which has a large factory and market presence in China. In the event of an invasion of Taiwan, would Musk willingly provide Starlink terminals to Taiwanese forces—at the behest of the United States—and take huge financial losses as a result? Last October, Musk told the Financial Times that China had already pressured him about Starlink, seeking “assurances” that he will not give satellite internet to Chinese citizens. He did not make clear in the interview how he responded, but Starlink was then and remains unavailable in China.

So what is the U.S. government to do about its own entanglement with Musk? One idea that experts have floated is to invoke the Defense Production Act, which authorizes the president to direct private companies to prioritize fulfilling orders from the federal government. The Pentagon estimates that it already uses DPA authority to place roughly 300,000 orders a year for various equipment items. Using it to regularize deliveries from Starlink would be relatively straightforward and could ensure a continuous flow of devices and connectivity for Ukraine’s forces. The U.S. government could even add language to the contract mandating that decisions to turn connectivity on or off would reside with public officials and not Musk.

But what if Musk decided to contest the terms of the contract? What if his factories suddenly faced supply “shortages” affecting delivery rates of crucial devices? The DPA could serve as a hedge against Musk’s impulses, but it would not be a full guarantee against disruptions.

If the government wanted to get really aggressive, it could nationalize Starlink, taking effective control over the company’s operations and removing Musk as its head. As extreme as this scenario sounds, the U.S. government has actually nationalized corporations many times in its history: During World Wars I and II, the government nationalized railways, coal mines, trucking operators, telegraph lines, and even the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States nationalized the airport-security industry.

But past government takeovers nearly all took place under conditions of war or financial crisis. Today, no national crisis equivalent to the 9/11 attacks can provide political cover for such a move. And Musk would be sure to fight back: He built Starlink from scratch, and the company is deeply personal to him. A government takeover would be acrimonious, politically messy, and not necessarily successful.

More likely, it would be counterproductive: As a private company, Starlink can provide products that assist Ukrainian forces even while claiming that it’s simply offering a service and not taking sides. That posture hasn’t prevented Moscow from testing weapons to sabotage Starlink, nor has it stopped Beijing from developing an alternate satellite network. But the company’s independence has likely deterred U.S. rivals from targeting its infrastructure for destruction. Nationalization would change this equation and send the message that Starlink is an instrument of American power and should be treated as such.

[Read: What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk]

So if Starlink has to remain independent—but needs to be less of a wild card for national security—the government’s best bet may be to negotiate one or several agreements with Starlink to ensure its compliance with U.S. interests. Starlink could then act as something more like a traditional military-contracting company. The contracts could build in provisions stipulating that in the event of a crisis, Starlink’s regular operations would be suspended, and all manufacturing and distribution decisions would run through U.S. regulators.

Musk might find such a deal attractive. His company would get long-term government funding and a reputational boost. But government contracts also come with restrictions that would likely irk him over time—limitations on which other clients Starlink could sell to, for example. He might also balk at the implications for his other businesses, such as Tesla, in foreign markets. If he soured on the arrangement, he could terminate the contract or undermine the effectiveness of his product—for example, by slow-walking software updates or declining to invest in upgrades.

The only sustainable solution to the problem of Elon Musk is for the American market to produce alternatives to Starlink. But even here, the obstacles are legion. Musk was able to turbocharge Starlink in part because he used rockets from his adjoining company, SpaceX, to deliver thousands of satellites into space. A competitor would have to not only match Starlink’s technical innovation but also secure enough rockets to get masses of satellites into orbit. And because satellite-based networks work better the more devices come online, a rival company’s service would lag behind Starlink’s for a long period of time. So far, the efforts of would-be competitors have been underwhelming. Amazon was reportedly preparing to launch its very first satellites in May but had to put the effort on hold because of rocket testing problems.

A viable Starlink competitor may be a long way off, but U.S. national security requires the pursuit of one. The government should encourage competition in the satellite market by offering subsidies and commercial tax breaks, among other incentives, because in the long run, only diversification will alleviate pressure on the United States and its allies to conform to Musk’s whims. With a choice of providers, the United States—or Ukraine, for that matter—could choose which company it wished to contract with, and redundancies could fill the gap in the case of an unexpected supply shortage or a snag in one company’s production line.

Elon Musk’s monopoly on satellite internet technology is the product of an original idea—launching a great many low-orbiting satellites in place of a distant, high-orbiting few— and a big gamble he made with his own capital. The venture has brought him undue influence over national-security affairs that the U.S. government can’t possibly tolerate. The surest way to curtail it is to make sure he isn’t the only one innovating or launching satellites into space.

In 2023, digital privacy is, in many ways, a fiction: Knowingly or not, we are all constantly streaming, beaming, being surveilled, scattering data wherever we go. Companies, governments, and our fellow citizens know more than we could ever imagine about our body, our shopping habits, even our kids. The question now isn’t how to protect your privacy altogether—it’s how to make choices that help you reclaim boundaries around what you most care about. Read on for our simple rules for managing your privacy, or get a list of personalized recommendations.

Three simple rules for managing your privacyThink concretely.

The more you conceptualize the internet as a real place, the more intuitive it becomes. Consider physical analogues to your online behavior as much as possible: You may be perfectly comfortable reading a newspaper or watching a movie in public, but you’d probably think twice before sharing your private medical information or details about your love life with a stranger. By that same logic, you may want to focus on protecting health and dating data more than on safeguarding less intimate information.

Share narrowly.

Much of your online privacy is out of your control. But you do have power over how much personal information you willingly share with companies and the world. Don’t share anything publicly on social media that you wouldn’t want being seen by your boss, your parents, or your children. Think twice about giving online retailers your zip code or birth date in exchange for a onetime discount. Your personal information is valuable to other people; don’t give it away for cheap.

Don’t panic.

“Not all hope is lost,” William Budington, a senior staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. “There are things you can do to protect your privacy by 85, 90, 95 percent that will not add much friction to your life.” Much of the discourse about privacy and personal security can be quite extreme, suggesting that if you don’t take certain steps, you’re asking to be hacked; that anyone who doesn’t buy X or do Y is an idiot; that the only way to live responsibly online is to apply so many restrictions that any benefit new technologies offer is outweighed by all that self-imposed inconvenience. This isn’t just alienating; it’s incorrect.

As experts I spoke with repeatedly told me, privacy is not a product. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s not binary: safe or unsafe, exposed or protected. It’s a lifestyle, a process, a series of decisions—the particular set of trade-offs (of time, of money, of inconvenience) you are willing to make based on your own circumstances, needs, desires, fears, and resources. Before you read on, think through how much friction you’re willing to introduce into your life in the name of privacy and security, and think about what you want technology to do for you. In 2023, it’s impossible to protect yourself from every conceivable threat, so focus on the likely ones.

Want to take action? Read on for situation-specific tips.

I just want to cover my bases. Search yourself You may be surprised by what you see when you type your (or your child’s) name into a search engine—a three-year-old wedding registry full of photos and identifying details, a professional website you’d forgotten you made, marathon results with your name and birthday, a public-school directory with your kid’s photo. Where possible, update these pages to remove or password-protect information that you don’t want to be public. If the page allows a login but you’ve forgotten your password, try resetting it; if that doesn’t work, or someone else maintains the site, look for a contact page and try emailing the site administrator or customer support. Assess the damage. If you’ve ever filled out an online form or made an account on a website, chances are good that data have been exposed in a hack. Have I Been Pwned? is a database of these breaches, searchable by phone number and email address. Once your information has been taken, you can’t get it back—but you should definitely search your results page for the word “password” and update the compromised ones everywhere they were used. Yes, that means resetting your login credentials on any site where you might have used the same password: You wouldn’t want someone getting into your bank account just because it shares a password with some fly-by-night website you made an account on years ago. Use private browsing—or, better yet, a trackless browser. Most desktop and mobile internet browsers offer private browsing—sometimes called “incognito” or “private” mode—which essentially scrubs your history from the device itself. This is a great tool when using a shared or public computer. But it doesn’t hide your browsing or search history from websites, internet service providers, advertisers, system administrators (like your employer), or subpoena-empowered authorities. A privacy-focused browser—such as DuckDuckGo, Ghostery, Brave Browser, or Tor—prevents your activity from being stored locally and minimizes this second type of tracking. Audit your apps. Many browser extensions and phone apps are designed to suck up your data. The information absorbed can include the ads you click or your precise location while using the app, but it can also mean your photo roll, contacts, microphone and camera use, keystrokes, private messages, IP address, device type, and even your behavior (such as sites visited) outside the app. This information can be used to make the service work better—for example, a food-delivery app might use your location to tell you what’s available nearby—but some apps, especially free ones, also make money by selling your data to advertisers, data brokers, or the government. The good news is that you can manage access to your data by going to your phone’s privacy and security menu and looking for “Safety Check” (on an iPhone) or “Permissions Manager” (on Android). Go through app by app and disable any permissions that seem overreaching. (You may decide that you’re happy manually entering your address when you want takeout.) Pay special attention to what you’ve allowed apps to do “in the background” (that’s a slightly obfuscatory way of describing apps’ tracking you even when you’re not using them) and anything that makes reference to “third parties” (that can be another term for data brokers). Then do the same with your browser extensions. And if you’re not using an app or extension regularly, just delete your account and remove it from your device entirely. Consider a burner email address Use a free service to set up a second email address and use it every time you set up a new social-media account, shop online, or otherwise interact with brands, not people. Your primary inbox will be clearer of junk, and companies will have a harder time tracking you. Protect your devices. Any device that can be protected—your computer, phone, tablet, router—should be. On your phone, face or fingerprint ID is good enough for most people, though, of course, using either means turning over your biometric information to a tech giant. A PIN or password is even more secure—the more characters the better. Start changing your online passwords. You’ve heard this one before because it’s really true: The single most important thing you can do for your security is use strong passwords everywhere—even on sites you think you’ll use only once, even if you’re not sharing personal information. Two things can make this easier.

Get a password manager. If strong passwords are the key to online security, a password manager is the key to keeping track of all those strong passwords without losing your mind. These work by storing all of your passwords in a single password-protected vault that connects with your phone and computer browser—so as long as you know that one master password, every other username and password will autofill as you travel around the web.

Be NICE: The best passwords are New (not reused between sites), Impersonal (don’t include birthdays, addresses, names, etc.), Complex (contain lots of special characters and mixed-case letters), and Extensive (at least eight characters). From now on, whenever you enter a password, check to see if it meets these requirements—and if it doesn’t, change it. Do the same with your security questions: The answer to “Where were you born?” (which is easy to figure out based on public information) should be gibberish, as though it were another password field.

Enable two-factor authentication Two-factor is an extra layer of security standing between you and bad actors. It works by sending a unique, instantly generated code (or other prompt) to your phone or email when you try to log into an account, which you then enter in addition to a password. The result is that if, say, someone has your password but doesn’t have access to your phone itself, they won’t be able to get into your bank account. Turn this on wherever you can, and when possible use an app like Authy or Google Authenticator to do it (instead of text messages, which are more vulnerable to hackers). Focus on what matters most. Remember: The internet is real life. Think about what information you’re most protective of—not so you can panic, but so you can prioritize. Now think about which websites, gadgets, and apps have that information, look at their privacy policies, and see what permissions you can revoke. Privacy Not Included, a project by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, offers plain-English assessments of the privacy policies for hundreds of companies, focusing especially on high-stakes arenas such as wearables; dating, prayer, fertility, and mental-health apps; and kids’ products. Make a date with digital privacy. You’re already in a much better position than you were before—congratulations! But policies and regulations change, so after you’ve done all this, set a reminder for a year or so from now to update your devices and spin through the preferences in your apps. Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it shouldn’t take long. I’m worried about protecting my childrens’ online privacy. Don’t post photos of your kids. If you are worried about your children’s online privacy, the best thing you can do is not post photos of them publicly—especially in “permanent” spaces like your Facebook feed and Instagram grid, as opposed to Stories—and ask the other adults in their life to do the same. If you’re looking for a more private way to share with far-flung friends and family, Google’s and Apple’s photo apps both support invitation-only group albums. Look at their permissions. Kids’ products are subject to different regulations than those aimed at adults, but those regulations are poorly enforced—and besides, older kids may be using apps not subject to those regulations in the first place. Check Privacy Not Included for summaries of the privacy policies of many popular toys and games. Teach your children digital literacy. Walling your kids off from technology entirely is a lost cause—if they’re not playing Minecraft and Roblox at home, they’re probably using ed-tech products at school. So in the same way you’d teach them how to manage their finances or their hygiene, talk to your kids (in an age-appropriate way!) about what happens to the information they put online. Younger kids should understand the difference between public and private, and older ones should be aware that as soon as they share a photo or send a message, it can be disseminated without their permission and seen by people beyond their intended recipient. The app Do Not Track Kids blocks tracking and offers cartoon-assisted lessons about privacy, and the National Cybersecurity Alliance has tips for parents on its website. I message a lot and am worried about my private communications getting leaked. Download an encrypted messaging app and enable disappearing messages. Not all messaging apps are truly private. Look for a service that is end-to-end encrypted (such as Signal, Whatsapp, and iMessage), meaning unreadable to cell carriers, hackers, and the messaging companies themselves. Additionally, many messaging services, including Slack and Signal, allow you to set messages in specific conversations to disappear after a certain amount of time. Note that just because an app offers “disappearing” messages doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily actually disappear from the app’s servers—they may be invisible to users, but might still remain unencrypted and vulnerable to subpoena or hackers.   I’m an early adopter. Think twice before doing direct-to-consumer genetic testing. The entire premise of these companies is, after all, to collect personal health information—and all information is theoretically vulnerable to hackers as soon as it leaves your possession. (Many of these companies also comply with subpoenas, meaning law enforcement agencies could also theoretically get access to your information in the service of solving crimes.) have also used data gleaned from these companies to solve crimes.) If you do use one of these services, make sure to spin through the privacy permissions and see what you’re giving away. Rethink your smart speaker. And your smart lightbulbs, and your smart toothbrush, and your smart security camera, and so on. Internet-connected “smart” devices work by constantly collecting and storing highly intimate data, and that information is not always private by default. Some security-camera companies share information with police departments; depending on your settings, your smart speaker may use your voice data—including coughs, snores, baby gurgles, and barks—to sell you more products. You may want to consider exchanging some of your devices for analog versions, or just selectively unplugging the ones you have. Don’t fixate too much on TikTok. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech conglomerate that is theoretically subject to the country’s draconian surveillance infrastructure, and that stores some U.S. user  data on Chinese servers. But its data-collection policies are largely in line with those of its American counterparts, and in congressional testimony, its leadership has denied sharing user information with the Chinese government. So, in other words, there are good reasons to delete TikTok—and there’s also evidence that, despite its country of origin, it’s not much worse than other social-media apps, which also collect a mountain of data about you. This is an area where you should employ what information technologists call your “threat model”: a holistic consideration of who might realistically benefit from your data, and how they might realistically get it. If you have reason to believe Beijing is particularly interested in you, your work, or what you do on your phone—say, you’re a dissident, journalist, or U.S. government employee—you may want to delete TikTok out of an abundance of caution. But if you’re none of these things, given what we currently know, it’s probably fine to opt out of this particular category of anxiety. Treat AI chatbots like social media. That is, keep in mind that companies have access to whatever you type into their programs, even if it’s not being posted anywhere publicly. Turn off tracking on your TV. These days most TVs are “smart”: internet-enabled in order to link up with streaming services. That means they collect all kinds of data about your viewing habits for the purposes of targeting ads. You can learn how to disable this by searching online for the name of your TV with “turn off automatic content recognition.” And if you don’t need to use voice commands, you can also disable (or cover) the microphone. Beware the no-name device. As a general rule of thumb, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Budington, companies you’ve never heard of have less of a reputational risk when it comes to compromising your privacy or security—so when buying tech devices, it’s best to stick to well-known brands. I really don’t like the idea of my likeness being publicly available. Be careful who you share intimate photos with. Disappearing messages and encrypted apps are useful tools, but the truth is that once a photo or video leaves your phone, there’s no failsafe way to stop it from being shared. So be very careful about who you send sensitive material to—if it gets out, the person you sent it to could be why. Cover your webcam It’s rare, but if your computer has been compromised, hackers may be able to remotely turn your camera on and surveil you. You can buy covers online, but a Post-it works just fine. I want to limit how much advertisers can track me.

In addition to using a trackless browser, keeping an eye on your app permissions, and being judicious about smart-home devices (see “I just want to cover my bases” and “I’m an early adopter” above, you can …

Disable personalized ad tracking. If you’ve ever gotten an eerily specific ad, you probably have personalized ad tracking to thank. This is the means by which companies assign a specific profile to your device and use it to amass a dossier of all your online behavior. You can limit this tracking by making sure your mobile ad ID is disabled—find directions by typing the name of your device’s operating system followed by “disable mobile ad ID” into a search engine—and by installing a tracker-blocking browser extension such as Disconnect or Privacy Badger on your computer. You can also change how some individual websites decide which advertisements to serve you—here are instructions in Facebook, Google, and X; elsewhere, look for terms like interest-based advertising in a site’s privacy and/or preferences section. Reject cookies (within reason). Cookies are site-specific tracking: Some are necessary to make the website work better, for example by saving your login credentials, shipping information, or cart content. Other cookies don’t do much beyond observing your online behavior to help advertisers target you. Recent legislation has led websites to ask for your permission to store cookies—you’ve probably seen one of these fine-print-laden pop-ups before. Note that this is an area where privacy is pretty much directly in tension with usability, so consider the costs and benefits: If you click “Accept all,” you’re giving the site permission to collect as much information as it likes—but if you accept none, you may experience glitches. Accepting only essential cookies allows you to consent to much more limited data collection. Clear your cookies every once in a while. Despite this recent legislation, “cookies are still the No. 1 way people are tracked,” according to the EFF’s Budington. If you allow cookies even occasionally, make a point of deleting them regularly—think of it like rinsing off all the privacy dirt you accumulate via a life lived online. You can search for browser-specific instructions online, and even set a calendar reminder to do this on a regular basis. Opt out of tracking across sites. Visualize your personal information like a chain. The goal of data collection is to build a robust and detailed profile of your habits and interests, which means information gathered from an individual website or app becomes more valuable when it’s pieced together with similar data from other apps or websites. Recent versions of Apple’s and Google’s operating systems require apps to ask for your permission to do this; saying no breaks the chain with minimal effects on your experience. (On Apple, you can universally reject app tracking by turning off “allow apps to request to track” in the tracking subsection of your privacy settings.) Opt out of data sharing from companies. Many companies’ privacy policies allow them to share your information with third parties for marketing purposes; for example, a streaming service might sell your viewing habits to a company that will then serve you ads based on your interests. Simple Opt Out summarizes these policies for many major companies, and directs you to where you can opt out. Otherwise, you can scan a company’s privacy policies for words such as partner, affiliate, third party, advertising, and personalization. Avoid linking services. Remember, your information is more useful when it’s part of a chain. For example, if you use your Amazon Prime account to get discounts at Whole Foods, the company now knows not just what you buy online, but when and where and how you shop offline. Similarly, connecting to services using your Google account allows them to request access to your calendar or Drive. Unlinking your accounts (or not linking them in the first place) breaks the chain. I want to protect my location data. Manage your phone’s location services. Your mobile phone is with you at all times, and may be beaming your location to your phone’s manufacturer as well as third parties. Some amount of location tracking is manifestly helpful—for example, for weather and delivery apps—but it’s unlikely you’ll want every app tracking your location all the time, even when you’re not using it. You can manage these permissions in your phone’s privacy settings. Be careful about location-based fitness apps Apps such as Strava and Nike Run Club use your precise location to track workouts. Check your settings to make sure you’re not sharing more than you mean to. If you want to be really careful, use paper maps. Of course, mapping apps work by tracking your location—but depending on what settings you’ve enabled, they may also store it. You can manage Google’s ability to store your location here, and if you’re going to a particularly sensitive location—say, a hospital, Army base, health clinic, or shelter—you can always use a paper map (or one accessed in incognito mode and printed out). Don’t share your location on social media. Apps such as Instagram, X, and BeReal allow you to share your location when you post. In some cases, this is something you opt into with each new post; in others, it’s a setting you can toggle. In either case, be thoughtful about sharing your precise location, and bear in mind that even private social-media posts can and do get screenshotted. I’m a big social-media user. Make your social-media accounts private. Look at all of your accounts—including the ones you’re no longer active on!—and make sure that your sharing settings are set to friends only. Audit your friends lists. Run through your friends lists on social media and defriend anyone who you wouldn’t want knowing your updates. Don’t worry, most apps don’t notify people when they’re unfriended. Delete old posts. At this point, many of us have been on social media for well over a decade—long enough to share a lot. One night when you’re feeling nostalgic, go through from the beginning and delete any posts you wouldn’t want showing up at the top of your feed today. If you still want access, you can always download or screenshot posts before you delete them. Change up your usernames on social media. If you reuse the same usernames, or a version of them, on multiple sites, hackers or curious people can daisy-chain them together to find accounts you may not want surfaced. Define “social media” expansively. Many apps that we might not consider social networks have social functions—and all the attendant privacy considerations. For example, if your Venmo account is set to public, anyone can see who you’re paying and what you’re paying them for. Depending on how you’ve configured your settings, your Spotify followers may be able to see what you’re listening to. Many fitness apps allow users to broadcast their stats and location. If an app’s settings menu includes words like sharing or activity, you may be revealing more than you intend to. I’m worried about hackers.

In addition to the basic steps outlined in the first section, you can …

Consider deleting yourself. Search databases collect data from public records and sell it to users, typically for a subscription fee. Many of these sites contain highly personal information, including home address, age, and family members’ names, which can be used by hackers to sneak past security questions, and by regular creeps to be creepy. Companies such as DeleteMe scrub these databases, for a fee. Install HTTPS everywhere. This browser extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation encrypts—scrambles, basically—your communication with major websites, so people can’t eavesdrop on what you do and where you go online. Actually update your software. Yes, this is annoying! But software updates tend to include security fixes and bug patches. Make sure you have automatic updates enabled on your phone, laptop, and smart-home devices, and make sure to reboot your devices every once in awhile if you tend to keep them on. Make sure to also enable automatic app updates on your phone and computer. Securely back your computer up. This is especially important for people who store photos and other priceless personal information—backing your computer up won’t prevent other people from getting their hands on your data, but it will mean you won’t lose it forever if your computer is stolen, wiped, or lost. The easiest way to do this is with an online backup service like BackBlaze or IDrive that automatically backs up your files to a password-protected website (just make sure that password’s really, really good). I want to help create a more private world. Think about paying more for your internet. Targeted advertising is why so much of the internet is free. When you pay—for apps, for news (ahem), for streaming— you are in some small way lessening these companies’ dependence on tracking you to pay the bills. Fight for better privacy laws. Mihir Kshirsagar, who runs a clinic at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, likens privacy incursions to air pollution: “Of course, we should all be thinking about what kinds of cars we drive and how we live, but we need infrastructure to help protect us.” Privacy shouldn’t be merely a personal responsibility. If anything you’ve read here has you particularly concerned, read up on the law and contact the people or groups who have power to change it. Note that this may be your state senator. According to Kshirsagar, states have been more active on privacy matters than the federal government.

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Sam Bankman-Fried won people over through his reputation as a civically minded progressive. Last week, an FTX executive who cut a different figure—that of a “budding Republican mega-donor”—pleaded guilty to two charges ahead of his former boss’s trial.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

The 9/11 speech that was never delivered Will anyone ever make sense of Elon Musk? Beware the false prophets of war. Never acquire clothes the same way again.

A Contrasting Figure

Last May, Sam Bankman-Fried said that he could spend up to a billion dollars supporting candidates and causes through the 2024 presidential election. He later walked back the claim, calling it “a dumb quote,” but the suggestion, and the flurry of press around it, captured a key part of the image that Bankman-Fried had cultivated. SBF made himself known as a political heavyweight—he was a known donor on the political left—and as an avatar of the effective-altruism philanthropic movement, to which he also donated millions. Central to FTX’s growth, and Bankman-Fried’s popularity, was his public face, and the ideals he said he stood for.

But last week’s guilty plea from Ryan Salame, a lesser-known FTX executive, is a reminder of one of the many truths that have since come out about Bankman-Fried: His donations were likely not based solely on the best interests of humanity but also on the best interests of crypto. In addition to his publicized donations to Democrats, he also marshaled millions of dollars to boost Republican candidates who seemed sympathetic to crypto-related causes. He has admitted, since the collapse of FTX, that most of his Republican donations were not linked to him, for cynical reputational reasons: “Reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans,” he told the crypto content creator Tiffany Fong in November. Bankman-Fried’s fingerprints weren’t always apparent on Republican donations, but his lieutenant Salame’s often were. Salame, whose name is pronounced “Salem,” last week became the fourth top FTX executive to plead guilty, including to a charge of violating campaign-finance law. Prosecutors alleged that he made millions of dollars of political donations—many of which were to Republicans—under the direction of Bankman-Fried.

Salame was public about his Republican affiliations. While Bankman-Fried hobnobbed on the left, Salame leaned into his identity as a “budding Republican mega-donor,” as the Washington Examiner called him last September. He donated millions of dollars under his own name, and even helped his girlfriend run as a Republican for a congressional seat on Long Island (she lost in the primary).

It’s not totally clear whether Salame is truly passionate about Republican political causes or if he was simply emerging as a Republican donor out of loyalty to his boss (and his girlfriend). He has reportedly said that he was not especially interested in politics, and that he was getting more involved at the encouragement of others at FTX. In a charging document, prosecutors surfaced messages that Salame wrote, saying that the purpose of donations was to “weed out anti crypto dems for pro crypto dems and anti crypto repubs for pro crypto repubs” In other words, it seems that he and his involved colleagues hoped to use donations to elevate politicians sympathetic to the crypto business, regardless of party. (Jason Linder, a lawyer for Salame, did not immediately respond to my request for comment, though he said in a statement last week that “Ryan looks forward to putting this chapter behind him and moving forward with his life.”)

In contrast to his compatriots, who claimed to be getting rich in order to give back and who were involved with effective altruism, Salame reportedly spoke about working in crypto simply to get rich. Salame clearly enjoyed the trappings that the wealth he gained in his 20s (he is now 30) afforded him. He has a reputation for enjoying fancy cars and private planes. His taste is apparent in his accessories: I noticed that in a widely circulated portrait, he is wearing what looks like a Cartier Juste un Clou nail bracelet in white gold. These status-symbol bracelets start around $8,500. Last week, Salame arrived in court to plead guilty wearing orange-and-blue socks emblazoned with bitcoin logos. Those may not have been pricey, but they certainly showed confidence.

In what feels like a poignant—or maybe self-aggrandizing—touch, Salame invested some of his wealth in the restaurants of his home region, the Berkshires. (He grew up in Western Massachusetts and attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.) Salame swooped in with millions during the early days of the pandemic, and by the time he was 28, he owned nearly half of the full-service restaurants in the small town of Lenox, according to The Berkshire Eagle. He was a local boy done good—until FTX cratered. Now Salame must forfeit his interest in one of his key restaurant holdings (along with assets including millions of dollars and a 2021 Porsche) as part of a plea deal.

Whether Salame’s heart is truly in Republican politics or in restaurants or just in socks and personal advancement, he cuts a contrasting figure to those of his fellow former FTX executives, and he may continue on that path. The others who have pleaded guilty—Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang—have all also agreed to cooperate with the government and to testify against their former boss. Salame has not. (Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges brought against him so far.) This time last year, those executives—Bankman-Fried most of all—were widely seen as responsible adults in a cowboy industry. That the walls have closed in this fast, and that their noble public personas have fully crumbled, remains stunning. Maybe Salame was frankest about his motives all along.

Related:

Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto-Republican? Sam Bankman-Fried pushed one boundary too many.

Today’s News

Kim Jong Un has reportedly departed the North Korean capital for a meeting with Vladimir Putin in his first international trip since the pandemic. The FDA has approved new COVID boosters from Pfizer and Moderna. Rollout is expected to begin later this week. Vietnam has formally raised its diplomatic relationship with the United States to the highest tier, alongside its ties with Russia and China.

Evening Read

‘I Was Responsible for These People’

By Tim Alberta

On the evening of September 4, 2021, one week before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Glenn Vogt stood at the footprint of the North Tower and gazed at the names stamped in bronze. The sun was diving below the buildings across the Hudson River in New Jersey, and though we didn’t realize it, the memorial was shut off to the public. Tourists had been herded behind a rope line some 20 feet away, but we’d walked right past them. As we looked on silently, a security guard approached. “I’m sorry, but the site is closed for tonight,” the man said.

Glenn studied the guard. Then he folded his hands as if in prayer. “Please,” he said. “I was the general manager of Windows on the World, the restaurant that was at the top of this building. These were my employees.”

The man glanced over Glenn’s shoulder. “Which ones?”

Glenn didn’t say anything. Slowly, he turned and swept his open palm across the air, demonstrating the scale of the devastation: All 79 names were grouped together. The guard closed his eyes. “Take as much time as you need,” he said softly.

Read the full article.

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Photos

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Culture Break

Photo-illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Randy Beacham / Alamy.

Read. “The Origin Revisited,” a new poem by Ada Limón.

“To enter here is to enter / magnitude, to feel an ecstatic somethingness, / a nothingness of your own name.”

Watch. Daisy Jones and the Six, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is an absolute joy.

P.S.

I’ll leave you with a completely unrelated recommendation: I read the most fascinating article in T magazine yesterday about vanilla. Ligaya Mishan explores how the flavor, produced by beans that are actually incredibly rich and pungent, became synonymous with blandness. This story of vanilla spans continents, biosynthesis, and taste buds—and it’s beautifully written. Describing a stalk of the plant, Mishan writes, “It lies on my desk, skinny as a twig, with a little curling hook at one end, like a fossilized crochet needle, rough yet pliant to the touch. I am trying to write but the room is possessed by that scent, a summons of honeysuckle, sun-fat figs and red wine, of the dank sweetness of soil when the rain has soaked through it.”

— Lora

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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