For many Russian students, the academic year started last Friday with tips on planetary domination from President Vladimir Putin. “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the […]
The legacy of 2007 is still with us. Its most devastating and destructive effect was to put a premium on unconventional monetary measures. Unfortunately, when policymakers scrambled in search of “big bazookas” ten years ago, they set the stage for the return of an old character: a strongman willing to pull the trigger. Read Here […]
Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the rest of Silicon Valley are on top of the world. They’ve never enjoyed more success or influence. Yet at the peak of their power, they are stepping on the political accelerator in a way that could backfire spectacularly. Read Here – Entropy Economics
When a ransomware outbreak exploded from Ukraine across Europe yesterday, disrupting companies, government agencies, and critical infrastructure, it at first appeared to be just another profit-focused cybercriminal scheme—albeit a particularly vicious and damaging one. But its origins in Ukraine raised deeper questions. After all, shadowy hackers have waged a cyberwar there for years, likely at […]
Behind a lot of the technology we take for granted in our lives—the satellite mapping behind Google Maps, or the voice recognition software behind your iPhone’s Siri—lie not just inventive tech companies, but the sclerotic old federal government. Across the country, Washington funds a network of advanced—sometimes secret, often underappreciated—government laboratories dedicated to blue-sky, “what-the-hell” […]
Delaney is part of a 27-person unit that comprises the Defense Digital Service, a sort of tech SWAT team within the Department of Defense. Engineers and data experts from across the country leave their jobs at companies like Netflix, IDEO, Palantir, and, yes, Dropbox and join DDS for tours of duty that typically last about […]
Orwell could not see that with the dawn of the Information Age several decades later, efficiency would become far less economically significant than innovation and adaptiveness. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and myriad other late-twentieth-century companies did not offer faster typewriters. They created entirely new products, such as handheld computers and applications for them. Read Here – […]
A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, […]
If President Trump’s rhetoric really is pushing companies to alter their practices, it wouldn’t be the first time he has used the bully pulpit to literally bully businesses into change. In that way, H-1B reform may be playing out in a way not unlike the deal president-elect Trump struck with Carrier, a manufacturer that was […]
Over the past decade or more, autocratic regimes—and illiberal elected governments with authoritarian ambitions—have deterred independent reporting and online criticism through familiar tools like physical intimidation, censorship on moral or religious grounds, and prosecution under draconian laws on defamation or national security. Read Here – World Affairs Journal
looking beyond borders 