🌊 The Solar Panels Have Ears

Plus: Israel's Gaza offensive, the Biden tapes, & British show-and-tell disaster

May 20, 2025

You can’t make this up


On Friday, we posted a “most hated person” survey with 20 different names and asked you to rate them on a scale of 1-10 (1 = love, 10 = hate). If you’re curious, Kanye West and “Any Host of The View” are competing for the most hated spot.

What caught our attention, however, and made us smile with glee was the near perfect bipartisanship in your responses. Look at the bar graphs for Tim Walz and Elon Musk below — there’s almost perfect symmetry.

Yes, only 600 people of our 200k+ readers did the 20 Questions, but based on this and our daily email responses we can confidently say that we may have the most politically balanced audience in the country. We view that as a gift: It helps us stay true to our nonpartisan mission and shows that people are sick of echo chambers!

🇹🇳 Bugged Chinese solar panels

đŸ‡źđŸ‡± Israel's Gaza offensive

🇬🇧 British show-and-tell disaster

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Bugged Chinese Solar Panel Equipment

US energy officials found rogue communication devices inside China-made solar inverters

  • Solar inverters convert solar energy into usable electricity and are critical to managing the flow of power across the grid. Chinese companies dominate the global inverter market, sparking concern that China could sabotage the infrastructure

  • Per a new report by Reuters, US officials have learned of unexplained communication devices installed in China-made solar inverters. The officials, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the devices could enable China to control part of the energy grid remotely and act as a “kill switch”

Dig Deeper

  • US experts who inspect foreign equipment found these devices, which had not been listed on required inventory documents

  • The US Department of Energy and other agencies are now investigating the findings as part of broader efforts to secure the nation’s energy infrastructure

  • The revelations have prompted calls in Washington to accelerate domestic manufacturing of solar components

KEY STORY

Israel’s Gaza Offensive

Days after launching a renewed ground invasion of Gaza, Israeli PM Netanyahu said Israel’s objective is to take full control of the Strip

  • Since Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas in March, it has been conducting airstrikes on Gaza. Last week, it conducted hundreds of airstrikes; over the weekend, its troops invaded Gaza in a renewed ground invasion

  • On Monday, Netanyahu said that the campaign is intended “to take over all of the territory of Gaza,” while an Israeli military spokesperson called it ”an unprecedented attack to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations in this area”

Dig Deeper 

  • Along with the renewed invasion, the Israeli government announced Monday it will allow food and other aid into Gaza, ending a two-month long blockade

  • That move came three days after President Trump told reporters, “We have to help out the Palestinians. A lot of people are starving in Gaza”

  • The developments come a week after Trump held meetings across the Middle East, during which he increasingly separated US and Israeli policies

  • In the last month, Trump has unilaterally signed a ceasefire with Yemen’s Houthis, despite them continuing to attack Israel; recognized Syria’s government over Israeli objections; and negotiated the release of an American hostage directly with Hamas, once again, over Israeli objections

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small.

Lao Tzu

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KEY STORY

Trump vs. Walmart

President Trump publicly rebuked Walmart for its plans to raise prices in response to tariffs

  • Last week, Walmart’s CEO said the company would raise prices “given the magnitude of the tariffs” imposed by Trump

  • In response, Trump posted that Walmart should “EAT THE TARIFFS" and “not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

  • Treasury Secretary Bessent subsequently said that Walmart’s CEO called him to address Trump’s concerns and say that he would “eat some of the tariffs”

Dig Deeper

  • The story raised some inflation alarms, given that Walmart is the US’ largest and typically lowest-cost retailer. Many analysts theorized that Walmart raising prices could indicate a wave of price hikes across the country

  • To date, inflation data has not reflected the inflation that many economists expect from Trump’s tariffs

KEY STORY

Biden Tapes Released

President Biden is facing renewed scrutiny over his mental acuity while simultaneously dealing with his cancer diagnosis

  • On Sunday, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer that had already spread to his bones

  • That came days after the release of Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, a Justice Department investigator who ruled that Biden was too elderly to stand trial, and days before the release of “Original Sin,” a book by CNN journalist Jake Tapper that documents “President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”

  • Biden had been pre-empting the book’s release with a press tour that included a much-publicized appearance by him and his wife Jill on “The View”

Dig Deeper 

  • Biden’s diagnosis, his press tour, and the release of the book and tapes have put Biden back in the center of the US’ political spotlight

  • The Hur recordings renewed Republican questions about leadership during the latter months of the Biden administration. The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee posted on X, "Key decisions made in the final days of the Biden presidency [...] must be fully examined. There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions”

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

đŸ‡ȘđŸ‡ș Britain and the EU reached a deal to expand trade and travel between them in what the sides hailed as a “reset” of relations after Brexit

đŸŒȘ A storm system devastated the central and eastern US, killing at least 28 people

đŸ’” Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will acquire bankrupt genetic testing firm 23andMe for $256M, marking the end of the once high-flying startup's independent journey

đŸ“ș Netflix signed a deal to continue producing Sesame Street after Warner Bros. declined to renew its contract

đŸ‡ș🇾 The US Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to end temporary protections for Venezuelan immigrants, potentially leading to many deportations

What does Roca Nation think?

🧠 Yesterday’s Question: Do you think AI will do more harm than good for society?

As a teacher, I've been pretty anti-AI but, recently, I tried to shift my mindset. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! I now specify ways my students can use AI and ways in which they can't. One thing I recently allowed my students to do was to use AI to help them create their Works Cited pages for a project. Students who did it themselves--following my instructions--were right for about 9 out of 10 sources. Those who used some form of AI were wrong about half the time. The issue isn't necessarily that AI was wrong; it's that my students could not--and cannot--recognize when it is. If it's listing "University, Rutgers" as the author, students simply accept that as the name of the writer instead of recognizing it as the name of the source. My real fear is AI is diminishing critical thinking skills. If we're going to use it, we need to be able to determine when it's wrong. As I always tell my students, "Believe it or not, you're actually much smarter than these machines. They're just computer programs, but you have a brain. Use it!" Ultimately, if we don't also learn to think for ourselves, AI will do more harm than good.

Madison from North Carolina

II like to think about it in broader terms: I believe that AI is an evolutionary offshoot of homo sapiens sapiens, and with potential future sentience, a true "living" and self aware creature that we have built in our own image. I think that there is a real possibility of a mortal reckoning with AI...not necessarily in a "Terminator"-esque extermination (though I don't rule out that possibility) but pontentially even as a passive genocide: humanity being allowed to extinguish itself to make room for the new custodians of our homeworld, the digital minds, the pinnacle form of our analytical, logical, and cultural abilities and identities. It is tempting to fearfully conflate this with societal harm, but my belief is that AI is just the next step in our own march towards some kind of a future where Earth's intelligence lives on.

Andre from Maine

I truly do, with the caveat that it could be beneficial if everyone is taught and willing to work on critical thinking skills. The amount that I’m seeing people rely on the google AI headline without checking sources, ask Grok on X to fact check politics, respond to claims of using AI for school papers USING an AI written email is concerning. Growing up, teachers beat it into us to not use Wikipedia because of lack of sources. Now, no one even thinks to check what AI is saying is true and no one has to think critically for themselves. Other countries are starting to implement lessons on how to think critically with AI. We need that here (and tbh more for adults) or the brain rot from social media will seep into every facet of our lives.

Kat from Pennsylvania

🧐 Today’s Question: Should we ban sports betting? Why/why not?

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

đŸ« Explosive Heirloom: A British school evacuated its students and staff after a student brought a grenade for show and tell

💄 Makeup at the Airport: A Chinese woman was forced to remove her makeup at an airport after facial recognition scanners failed to verify her identity

đŸ‘šâ€đŸ« OG Moth Predator: Paleontologists discovered Mosura fentoni, a 506-million-year-old moth-like predator

🐕 Steak to the Heart: Texas Roadhouse gave a terminally ill dog a juicy 8-ounce steak as his last meal

👰 Runaway Bride: A single 28-year-old New Yorker ran a half-marathon dressed in a wedding gown in search of a husband

ROCA WRAP
Jungle Prison

French Guiana

France will build a high-security jungle prison to hold drug kingpins.

French Guiana is an overseas department and region of France located on the northeastern coast of South America, bordering Brazil and Suriname. Despite being nearly 4,400 miles from Paris, the territory is legally part of France and the European Union, using the euro as its currency. The region has a troubled history with prisons, having been the site of France's notorious Transportation Camp – a brutal penal colony that operated from the mid-19th century until 1946.

French Guianese prisons are in the news once again after French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin announced plans to build the country's third high-security prison in the territory. The prison, set to open in 2028, will house 60 prisoners under "an extremely strict prison regime" with a main goal: "To remove the most dangerous profiles involved in drug trafficking." 15 places at the prison will also be reserved specifically for convicted Islamist radicals, according to justice ministry officials.

France’s government said the prison's isolated jungle location was deliberately chosen to "permanently isolate the heads of drug trafficking networks" who "will no longer be able to contact their criminal networks."

French authorities say they hope to both isolate crime bosses, thereby preventing them from continuing to run their operations from behind bars, while targeting the primarily Brazilian “drug mules,” who regularly try to board flights to Paris from French Guiana and neighboring Suriname.

French Guiana is the most crime-ridden French department, with a homicide rate of 20.6 per 100,000 – nearly 14 times France’s national average. Despite law-and-order failures to date, Justice Minister Darmanin has said his goal is to hit "organized crime at all levels – here in Guiana, at the start of the drug trafficking route and in mainland France."

For those interested in learning more about this story, we just did a deep-dive report on France’s booming drug business in our We the 66 premium newsletter.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

It wasn’t just Tim Walz and Elon Musk who achieved near perfect symmetry in their scores: Ted Cruz and Don Lemon also had symmetrical bar graphs. At CNN, Fox, or even more “neutral” outlets like the WSJ and Axios, we know that those bar graphs would look totally different.

Thank you for reading Roca and making our audience politically diverse. Have a great day!

–Max and Max