Tag: private companies
The New AI Panic – The Atlantic
For decades, the Department of Commerce has maintained a little-known list of technologies that, on grounds of national security, are prohibited from being sold freely to foreign countries. Any company that wants to sell such a technology overseas must apply for permission, giving the department oversight and control over what is being exported and to whom.
These export controls are now inflaming tensions between the United States and China. They have become the primary way for the U.S. to throttle
Our Strange New Era of Space Travel
In December of 1972, astronaut Eugene Cernan left his footprints and daughter’s initials in the lunar dust. In doing so, he became the last man to set foot on the moon. Now, after 50 years, humanity is going back. But in the half-century since Apollo 17, a lot has changed in how we explore space—and how we see our place in it.
While those early missions were all run by governments, much of modern spaceflight is the domain of billionaires
Why the Age of American Progress Ended
The Scourge of All Humankind
If you were, for whatever macabre reason, seeking the most catastrophic moment in the history of humankind, you might well settle on this: About 10,000 years ago, as people first began to domesticate animals and farm the land in Mesopotamia, India, and northern Africa, a peculiar virus leaped across the species barrier. Little is known about its early years. But the virus spread and, whether sooner or later, became virulent. It ransacked internal organs
The Contradiction of Republicans’ Rhetoric of Freedom
For decades Republicans have marketed themselves as the party of freedom. During the 1990s and early 2000s, conservative activists took up the description of the GOP coined by the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist as the “leave us alone” coalition, so named because it consisted of voters whose stated aspiration was to live without government interference. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Republican governors led by Ron DeSantis in Florida gravitated toward unbending opposition to business and school shutdowns,
Elon Musk Is Right About Free Speech on Twitter
Elon Musk, in his effort to buy Twitter, signaled that under his ownership, the company would allow all speech that the First Amendment protects. “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law,” he tweeted on April 26. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”
Many commentators were quick to point out that, as a private company, Twitter is not required to follow the First Amendment, which applies only to federal and state governments.
Xi Jinping’s Terrifying New China
China’s social media was briefly aflutter this fall about an impressive feat in the popular online fantasy game Honor of Kings. A player had completed a “pentakill,” or five kills in a row, but something just smelled wrong: The user in question was 60 years old, according to the verified account information—hardly the type to be an expert gamer. Even more mysterious, why was this person brandishing digital weaponry at 3 a.m.? Was the player in fact a teenager