Axios

Additional screening will soon be required before personal electronic devices (PEDs) larger than cell phones can be carried on to U.S.-bound flights, senior Department of Homeland Security officials announced Wednesday. The TSA and the State Department will also be involved in implementation.

The need for more security comes from the fact that terrorists continue to look at attacking commercial airlines as the "crown jewel," and are exploring new ways to conceal devices, DHS Secretary John Kelly said at the CNAS conference.

Why it matters: This move could have major commercial implications, but Kelly is pressing ahead because he places aviation in general, and the ability of terrorists to turn laptops into explosive devices in particular, at the top of his list of security concerns.

The Democratic National Committee has hired Raffi Krikorian, who previously worked on Uber's self-driving car efforts, as its new chief technology officer, as Recode first reported and Axios has confirmed through a source.

Krikorian's new job won't be easy — the organization was infamously hacked during the presidential election, with internal communications leaked to the public. He'll also have to help the DNC keep up with the latest tools for campaigning as technology has become increasingly important to winning.

Resume: Krikorian helped Uber launch its first fleet of autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, and worked most recently director of engineering for public interest technology at the New America Foundation. He previously led Twitter's Platform unit, which included both the main service's infrastructure as well as its tools for third-parties.

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said Wednesday that her agency should avoid "unnecessary" regulations when it comes to connected cars, including the self-driving models that Google and Uber have bet big on. She noted the thousands of fatalities occur every year on America's roads, adding:

"Connected cars promise to significantly reduce such fatalities, and we regulators must keep that benefit in mind to ensure that our approach to connected cars do not hinder such a positive outcome. And at the FTC, it means we must continue to work with our sister agencies like [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] to avoid unnecessary or duplicative regulation that could slow or stop innovation and ultimately leave American consumers worse off."

Why it matters: Consumer privacy and data security are huge outstanding questions for self-driving cars, even as companies in both Silicon Valley and Detroit forge ahead with their plans to get the vehicles on the roads.

Salesforce today released a suite of tools for its product developers with artificial intelligence features that, among other things, recognize sarcasm in an email and understand that it is a product complaint.

Richard Soucher, Salesforce's chief scientist, tells Axios that the new tools, part of the company's Einstein platform, will allow clients, without having to write their own AI code, to build out products with a greater ability to read the sentiment in an email, and route it to the right place. A company — such as an airline — could understand much more quickly that passengers are angry on Twitter, and generally why. Customers often use nuanced expressions to convey their unhappiness — such as sarcasm — and the tool is meant to understand such indirect speech.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is giving Travis Kalanick, who recently resigned as CEO of Uber, a pass on his company's workplace issues.

"I just don't think he knew," she said on Tuesday, speaking at the Stanford Directors' College, according to the SF Chronicle. "When your company scales that quickly, it's hard," she added, also mentioning that she's friends with Kalanick. In March, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky also offered words of support for Kalanick.

Our thought bubble: Kalanick may not have been completely ignorant of his company's culture:

• He sent a memo in 2013 ahead of a company retreat bemoaning his inability to have sexual relations with his employees.
• At similar company trip to Vegas in 2015 a manager groped female employees, resulting in his firing.
• On a trip to South Korea in 2014 a group of employees, including Kalanick, went to an escort bar, prompting a female employee to tell HR it made her uncomfortable.

Members of Congress said Tuesday that they hope to move forward with a package of self-driving car legislation by the end of July. "We've got to keep moving, because again, this technology is moving away from us, you might say," said Republican Bob Latta, who is helping to lead the effort. That would move the bills out of the relevant committee — but not out of the House entirely.

But, but, but: At a hearing on Tuesday, Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the committee, said he feels the role of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn't get enough attention in the legislation, which could open the door to more industry testing.

Sound smart: Self-driving car makers from the Valley to Detroit want the federal government to provide a national framework to avoid a patchwork of laws that differ from state to state. But whether enough members of Congress have the bandwidth or willingness to act remains an open question.

Social networking behemoth Facebook said it has reached a new milestone: 2 billion monthly active users.

Notable: Just last year, there were no Internet services or platforms with this many users, as VentureBeat's Emil Protalinski points out.

To put the number in context, 2 billion is:

• The same number of users as Android
• About two thirds of the world's internet-connected population
• More than a quarter of the world's population
• More than six times the U.S. population

Why it matters: Facebook users are very engaged, particularly on mobile, giving the platform major dominance (along with Google) in online advertising. But as companies grow in size and power, targets are often painted on their backs. In Europe, regulators are increasing scrutiny, and today hit Google with a record fine for what they see as anticompetitive behavior.

Twitter has hired Candi Castleberry Singleton as VP of diversity and inclusion, filling a spot that has been vacant since Jeffrey Siminoff left earlier this year.

In her past work, Castleberry Singleton has worked with a range of companies on inclusion efforts, including Walgreens, University Pittsburgh Medical Center, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems.

The backstory: Twitter had been criticized by some for having Siminoff, a white male, as head of its diversity efforts. Twitter, like most big tech companies, has struggled to hire and retain women and people of color.

Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup founded by former Stanford artificial intelligence researchers, has raised $50 million in Series B funding.

A.I. celeb: The company is also adding Andrew Ng, one of the best known deep learning experts in the world, to its board of directors. Ng founded the Google Brain division, online education company Coursera, and most recently worked at Chinese Internet giant Baidu as its chief scientist. Ng is married to Drive.ai co-founder and president Carol Reiley.

Approach: Drive.ai is banking on the application of deep learning—a subset of artificial intelligence—to all parts of autonomous driving software. Instead of simply teaching the car's software sets of "if/then" rules, the company is using techniques to teach it how to recognize objects, what's right and what's wrong, what's safe, and so on.