The Download: The US Agency Monitoring Foreign Misinformation is Being Disbanded, Along with an Explanation of Vibe Coding

The only office within the US State Department tasked with monitoring foreign disinformation is set to be eliminated, as confirmed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, following reports by MIT Technology Review. The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office located within the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns. The closure of this office leaves the State Department without an active means to combat the increasingly sophisticated disinformation tactics employed by foreign governments such as Russia, Iran, and China.

—Eileen Guo

What is vibe coding, exactly? When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly shared his new hobby on X back in February, he likely had no idea he was about to coin a phrase that would encapsulate a growing movement worldwide. “There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding,’ where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists,” he explained. “I’m building a project or web app, but it’s not really coding—I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.”

If this sounds very different from traditional coding, that’s because Karpathy was referring to a unique style of coding enhanced by AI assistance. His words resonated with software developers and enthusiastic amateurs alike.