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September 18, 2025

Trump’s TikTok Deal Is Lose-Lose Diplomacy

The Trump White House is about to claim a major win on TikTok. Don’t be fooled. The deal on the table is not a victory for U.S. national security – it is a face-saving compromise that leaves the most egregious threat unresolved. Since TikTok entered U.S. app stores in 2017, U.S. national security officials have…

May 7, 2025

Surprise! Ice is Rebounding at BOTH Poles — Climate is More Complex Than We Know

When it comes to climate change, to invoke one of Al Gore’s favorite sayings, the biggest challenge is not what we don’t know, but what we know for sure but just isn’t so. Two new studies show that the Earth’s climate is far more complex than often acknowledged, reminding us of the importance of pragmatic…

April 28, 2025

Why the AI Revolution Will Require Massive Energy Resources

The rapid rise of generative AI has triggered a sharp escalation in data center electricity consumption, with profound implications for national energy use, system planning, and climate goals. Data centers have long been critical infrastructure for digital services, but their energy demand is now accelerating due to the emergence of compute-intensive AI workloads. Data center…

April 23, 2025

What Would a US Tariff on Chips Look Like?

The US government will be “taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN”, President Donald Trump recently declared. Given his repeated promises to impose a tariff on imported chips, we must assume some action is coming. But what type, and to what end? According to trade data, the US imports around $30bn…

April 21, 2025

Silicon Valley’s Consumer Eugenics

The orchid was once an expensive, highly cultivated symbol of refinement; now, cheaper cultivars can be found in almost any grocery store. Perhaps that makes it a fitting image for a new fertility company, Orchid Health, that seeks to encourage parents to breed better children.  Orchid Health is one of several Silicon Valley start-ups that…

April 15, 2025

Making DOGE Constitutional

The “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has been hard to pin down. In the wake of last year’s election, Elon Musk and his erstwhile partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, gestured toward some of the effort’s contradictory impulses in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” they insisted. But “unlike government…

April 8, 2025

Does Testosterone Make Men?

Does biology determine destiny, or is society the dominant cause of masculine and feminine traits? In this spirited exchange, the psychologist Cordelia Fine and the evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven unpack the complex relationship between testosterone and human behaviour. Fine emphasises variability, flexibility and context – seeing gender as shaped by social forces as much as…

February 27, 2025

Don’t Let Anyone Confuse You: There Really Are Only Two Sexes

”It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” Those are statements from President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal…

February 19, 2025

Trump’s Tariffs Would Prime Prices at the Gas Pump

Donald Trump promised tariffs, and he delivered, imposing by executive fiat tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada (10 percent on Canadian energy) and Mexico and 10 percent on imports from China. His justifications are “the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl,” and our “major trade deficits with those countries.” According…

February 19, 2025

Global Encryption Under Siege: How UK’s Apple Backdoor Demand Threatens International Security

The recent U.K. government directive mandating Apple to establish encryption backdoors underscores a vital debate surrounding digital privacy and security. While law enforcement contends that these backdoors are crucial for crime investigations, the reality is that any deliberate weakness in encryption introduces vulnerabilities that endanger all users. Encryption serves as the foundation of digital security,…