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January 29, 2025
China’s AI ambitions have long been hamstrung by a critical weakness: access to high-end computing hardware. US export controls have effectively cut Beijing off from the most advanced AI chips, putting a hard ceiling on its ability to compete at the highest level. But that hasn’t stopped China from trying to work around these limitations….
January 29, 2025
Ahead of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings, New York Times Opinion invited experts and leaders across disciplines and ideologies to share questions they believe Mr. Kennedy must answer before serving in a role that oversees a $1.7 trillion budget and wields enormous influence over drug approvals, public health and the nation’s research agenda. M….
January 28, 2025
It’s a no-brainer that American public policy should aim to significantly increase both government and private-sector R&D investment to boost innovation-driven productivity and economic growth. During the 1960s Space Race, total US R&D spending reached just under three percent of GDP, with government leading at two percent and business at one percent, basically. Today’s R&D is over…
January 28, 2025
If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike. That’s seemingly the strategy of some lawmakers frustrated that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free expression and editorial autonomy have repeatedly stymied their paternalistic efforts to restrict minors’ platform access to lawful, presumptively protected…
January 27, 2025
Last year the world experienced the most major hurricane landfalls since records are available, tying only 2015, with 11 storms. Does last year indicate that we have reached a new climate-fueled normal? Let’s have a look. More than a decade ago, Jessica Weinkle, Ryan Maue, and I published the first long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology….
January 27, 2025
While the presidential transition commanded headlines this week, equally significant shifts were occurring in AI technology. Just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, DeepSeek released its latest model, achieving a breakthrough in AI reasoning that matches the best models of OpenAI and Anthropic but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek, which is backed by a Chinese…
January 27, 2025
Last year the world experienced the most major hurricane landfalls since records are available, tying only 2015, with 11 storms. Does last year indicate that we have reached a new climate-fueled normal? Let’s have a look. More than a decade ago, Jessica Weinkle, Ryan Maue, and I published the first long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology….
January 24, 2025
Whether it’s rising electricity bills, reliability concerns, an impetus for decarbonization, or the related importance of grid modernization, power systems in the U.S. and around the world are struggling with change. In this series on regional transmission organizations (RTOs), I’m digging in to the institutional aspects of these challenges. Last time I started with history….
January 24, 2025
What a difference a week makes. As others and I have predicted, newly-inaugurated President Trump rolled back much of his predecessor’s policy approach to artificial intelligence (AI). But few forecasted just how stark the contrast has been. Last week, before the inauguration, I argued that Trump should reverse outgoing President Biden’s ill-considered Executive Order on AI. As…
January 24, 2025
The Trump “Day One” executive orders on energy and environment policies are worthy of applause because they implement a shift toward market forces in place of central planning as the dominant institution driving resource allocation in the various energy sectors. At the same time, two of the executive orders are problematic: the exit from the Paris climate agreement, and…