Media Mentions

Executive Branch Club President and San Francisco real estate businessman Glenn Gilmore is a close business associate of David Sacks, Trump’s crypto and AI czar. Gilmore's role in the endeavor adds to possible ethics questions related to Sacks’ involvement in this operation, according to government ethics experts.

“The real problem,” says John Peliserro, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, “is that no official in a presidential administration should be promoting a business, including that club. It provides an opportunity for business partners and friends of members of the administration to do business out of the public eye.”

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by Mother Jones.

GlobalX, a private Miami-based charter airline, is hired regularly by professional and university athletic teams, and most recently, by ICE to assist in deportation actions.

“They may not have known, but now they do, so now they have a choice to make,” said Ann Skeet, a senior director at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “They need to think about the purpose of their organization and their mission, and whether or not using a charter service that also serves ICE is consistent with their mission.”

Ann Skeet, senior director, leaadership ethics, quoted by The New York Times.

RawStory reports, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sold off nearly two dozen stocks before President Donald Trump's tariff announcement sent the stock market into a tailspin.

“I don’t see anything in the stock sales or his ethics agreement that would suggest that he took advantage of information he received as a cabinet officer in executing the stock sales,” said John Pelissero, director of government ethics.

“To remove the appearance of an ethical issue — that he made individual stock trades while serving as SECDEF and the information that comes with that position — he could have sold those stocks before becoming a cabinet officer.”

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by Raw Story.

The Sacramento Bee reports, Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester routinely flew first class or business class to attend 10 conferences during a one-year period ending in December 2024 when the city’s travel policy specifies employees should travel the most economical way possible.

“Public officials have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers to make good use of the city’s tax dollars, and not be spending them on things like first-class travel,” he said.

“It doesn’t look good, and it particularly does not look appropriate in an environment in which the city has had travel restrictions in place and a $50 million deficit,” Pelissero said.

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Sacramento Bee.

John Pelissero, a government ethics expert at Santa Clara University in California, said her financial ties deserve a closer look.

“What she puts down on her disclosure form for her confirmation is always kind of an important starting point for how transparent she will be,” he said. “Scrutiny should be given to whether she has the capacity to demonstrate that she’ll act in the public interest.” 

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by The 74.

“It just appears to be a ploy to sell access to Trump and the Trump administration through this private club for wealthy donors,” says John Pelissero, a director at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Pelissero, who focuses on government ethics, is concerned that the club could be used for conducting government business in secret.

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Washington Post.

AFP reports that AI-generated videos and audios of Pope Leo XIV are being created at rates and popularity that exceed the ability for social platforms to police and remove them.

Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics, said the moderation difficulties are the result of rapid AI developments inspiring “chaotic uses of the technology.”

The AI-generated sermons not only “corrode the pope’s moral authority” and “make whatever he actually says less believable,” Green said, but could be harnessed “to build up trust around your channel before having the pope say something outrageous or politically expedient.”

“There’s a real crisis here,” Green said. “We’re going to have to figure out some way to know whether things are real or fake.”

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by AFP News Agency, and republished on Digital Journal, Barron's, Yahoo! News, and more.

Communication Intelligence reports the uses for artificial intelligence (AI) in workplaces are expanding and an executive, Moderna chief human-resources officer Tracey Franklin, implemented it in her work to help with communication and conflict exchanges. Franklin uses AI to predict scenarios with coworkers before they happen.

“Practicing difficult conversations by role-playing is a time-tested means of preparing for them,” says Ann Gregg Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics.

“Using a chatbot instead of a person to prepare might reduce an executive’s self-consciousness about role-playing and frees her from having to find someone willing and available to participate, adds Skeet.

But Skeet points out, "There are demonstrated, researched risks and harms of using conversational AI systems to simulate human relationships.” “Such AI systems can lead to the development of emotional dependence on machines or manipulation by them, and can introduce privacy risks and biases.”

“In this example, the executive is feeding sensitive information into an unpredictable AI system, which exposes that data to risk of future access or of being used to train AI systems further,” Skeet argues.

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by Communication Intelligence.