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June 4, 2024
Scientific Integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”
Today, npj Natural Hazards, a journal in the Nature family of journals, officially published my new paper, “Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters.” The paper shows — irrefutably in my view — that the “billion dollar disaster” tabulation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fails to meet the agency’s standards for information quality and scientific…
June 3, 2024
Inside Tech’s $2 Trillion Technical Debt
Technical debt, the accumulation of shortcuts and compromises in software systems, is an issue across industries with consequences ranging from system failures and security breaches to hindered innovation. The Wall Street Journal reports it was the cause of 13,000 canceled Southwest Airlines flights during the 2022 holiday season and numerous high-profile cyberattacks on Google, Apple, and Microsoft….
May 31, 2024
Imposing Net-Neutrality Regulations Would Be a Step Backward
Net neutrality is a sometimes well-intentioned, but always misguided attempt to regulate the internet under the guise of fairness and equality. Except for a brief moment during the Obama administration, the U.S. has always embraced light-handed regulation for the internet. This approach has served us well. Today 95% of American adults use the internet and…
May 29, 2024
What the IPCC Says about Drought
Last week, I testified before the Senate Committee on the Budget in a hearing titled, Droughts, Dollars, and Decisions: Water Scarcity in a Changing Climate.1 The hearing was the 18th in the Committee’s series on climate change this Congress, prompting the Wall Street Journal to suggest “the old-fashioned idea that the Budget Committee ought to focus on the budget.” The hearing could…
May 28, 2024
Cambridge Analytica, a Redux
I recently listened to Jacob Siegel’s interview on The Fifth Column podcast and couldn’t help but reflect on the power of stories. I now recognize, some six years later, that the Cambridge Analytica scandal galvanized me—but not like it did so many others. For many, the story concretized the power of political advertising and targeted data, essentially kicking…
May 27, 2024
How Crypto Cuts Through Red Tape
Blockchain technology has revolutionized global finance, playing a crucial role in bypassing traditional intermediaries to facilitate humanitarian aid in conflict zones like Ukraine. This financial transformation paves the way for a more inclusive and transparent global ecosystem, offering new opportunities for the unbanked, underbanked, and displaced populations. Below are the highlights of my conversation with…
May 24, 2024
Healthcare’s Hope in Artificial Intelligence
How much can we trust artificial intelligence (AI)? How much could AI transform an industry as stodgy as healthcare, where other technologies have failed time and time again? These questions were far from mainstream thought until just a few years ago, when the current wave of AI innovation captured the attention of the public, industry,…
May 24, 2024
Who Should Be Responsible for Election Content Authentication?
As forthcoming elections loom large, the question of artificial intelligence (AI) generated deepfakes disseminating misleading messages purportedly from or about political candidates has become pressing. As illustrated in a recently published academic study on the use of election deepfakes in eleven countries in 2023, it’s an international challenge of Herculean proportions that has the potential to threaten democracies across the…
May 21, 2024
What’s Next for the Affordable Connectivity Program?
This month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began formally winding down the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), thus ending a subsidy program that supported 23 million households in paying for internet service. Although a bipartisan push to extend the program failed when the funding wasn’t attached to the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, there’s still…
May 14, 2024
A New Proposed AI Regulation in California
California is the undisputed champion of state data regulation. In 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), making California the first state with a comprehensive data privacy law. CCPA has since been followed by the California Privacy Rights Act ballot measure in 2020, at least nine revisions to fix definitional problems…