They are reshaping the balance between humans and technology in war
Investors at home and abroad no longer trust China’s policymakers
The arsenal of hypocrisy
Their cynicism over Ukraine weakens America and makes the world less safe
As Facebook turns 20, politics is out; impersonal video feeds are in
Britain’s armed forces are stretched perilously thin
What four more years of Joe Biden would mean for America’s economy
The feud between Ukraine’s president and army chief boils over
Artificial intelligence (ai) is one of them. Several books will look at how it might reshape the world: “ai Needs You”, a “humanist manifesto for the age of ai” by Verity Harding, formerly of Google DeepMind; “The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots” by Daniela Rus, director of the ai laboratory at mit; and “Literary Theory for Robots”, an examination of how machine intelligence will influence the way we read, write and think, by Dennis Yi Tenen, a professor of English at Columbia University.
Geopolitics will also dominate publishers’ frontlists. Dale Copeland, a professor of international relations, will chronicle how commerce has shaped America’s foreign policy; Jim Sciutto of cnn will explore “The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China and the Next World War”. Several authors will focus on the war in Europe. Eugene Finkel, who was born in Ukraine, will offer a “deeper history of Russian violence against civilians” in the country; in “Putin and the Return of History” Martin Sixsmith will look back over a thousand years to put the Russian president’s aggression in context. Peter Pomerantsev’s “How to Win an Information War” will apply the perspective of a propagandist during the second world war to the conflict.
For those hoping for a few hours of diversion, there will be plenty of novels to look forward to. Bestselling authors including Percival Everett, Yann Martel, David Nicholls, Kiley Reid, Colm Toibin and Amor Towles will return with new stories in 2024. James Patterson will be completing an unfinished manuscript left behind by Michael Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park”.
An unseen work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died in 2014, will also be released. In “En Agosto Nos Vemos” (“Until August”), a novella of fewer than 150 pages, the late Nobel laureate told the tale of a middle-aged woman’s affair. His children opposed its publication but now say it has the author’s trademark “capacity for invention, his poetic language [and] his captivating storytelling”. True or not, García Marquez will probably enjoy a resurgence, as an adaptation of his most celebrated work, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, is also in production at Netflix. If you want a fantastical tale, who better to turn to than the Colombian master of magical realism?
AI holds tantalising promise for the emerging world
A warming planet threatens the world’s favourite drug
The government has yet another plan for a nuclear renaissance
Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree are not that fulfilling
But it should keep its markets open to cheap, clean vehicles
The war against the Houthis is part of an escalating struggle for the seas
Germany is unable and unwilling to lead Europe
Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:48 How Trash Makes Money In The U.S. (Published July 2021) 15:59 How Amazon, American Airlines And Subaru Burn Waste To Make Energy (Published May 2022) 32:24 How To Clean Up The World’s Most Polluted Rivers (Published August 2022) 46:16 Where Do EV Batteries Go When They Die? (Published March 2023)
Thanks to advancements in modern chemistry and support from municipal governments, landfills have seen astonishing financial success in recent years. Burning waste to make energy is a $10 billion industry in the U.S., and the fastest growing part of the business is waste from big companies like Amazon, Subaru, Quest Diagnostics and American Airlines.
They’re part of a growing corporate movement toward “zero landfill” as pressure mounts to reach sustainability requirements. It’s estimated that every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean through rivers, and as global waste generation increases, the problem is poised to worsen.
But a host of companies from Baltimore, Maryland to Bengaluru, India are working on the issue, developing novel methods to capture trash from rivers before it reaches the ocean. Dozens of electric vehicles are scheduled to debut in the next few years and over 300 million electric vehicles are expected to be on the world’s roads by 2030.
The lifetime for an EV battery is estimated to be 12 to 15 years in moderate climates, but that doesn’t mean the batteries end up in landfills when they die.
In failing to look past Joe Biden, Democrats have shown cowardice and complacency
To be safe, Israel needs new leadership
Israeli officials see Hizbullah as an unacceptable threat
by Dana Mattioli (April 23, 2024)
From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon’s endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary.
In 2017, Lina Khan published a paper that accused Amazon of being a monopoly, having grown so large, and embedded in so many industries, it was akin to a modern-day Standard Oil. Unlike Rockefeller’s empire, however, Bezos’s company had grown voraciously without much scrutiny.
By Casey Michel (August 2024)
A stunning investigation and indictment of the elements in United States’ foreign lobbying industry and the threat they pose to democracy.
For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they’ve not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they’ve secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, journalist Casey Michel contends some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.
By David E. Sanger (April 2024)
Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States finds itself in a volatile rivalry against the other two great nuclear powers–Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia–in a world far more complex and dangerous than that of a half century ago
.New Cold Wars–the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon, David E. Sanger–is a fast-paced account of America’s plunge into simultaneous confrontations against two very different adversaries. For years, the United States was confident that the newly-democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace–so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.
Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping threaten global trade
For the world to prosper, ships must reach their ports. They are most vulnerable when passing through narrow passages, such as the Strait of Malacca or the Panama Canal. So a recent surge of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, the only southern conduit into the Suez Canal, poses a grave threat to global trade. The Houthis, militants in Yemen backed by Iran, have fired over 100 drones and missiles at ships linked to more than 35 countries, ostensibly in support of the Palestinians. Their campaign is an affront to the principle of freedom of navigation, which is already at risk from the Black Sea to the South China Sea. America and its allies must deal firmly with it—without escalating the conflict in the Middle East.
Mistaken recession calls were just part of it
Spare a thought for economists. Last Christmas they were an unusually pessimistic lot: the growth they expected in America over the next calendar year was the fourth-lowest in 55 years of fourth-quarter surveys. Many expected recession; The Economist added to the prognostications of doom and gloom. This year economists must swap figgy pudding for humble pie, because America has probably grown by an above-trend 3%—about the same as in boomy 2005. Adding to the impression of befuddlement, most analysts were caught out on December 13th by a doveish turn by the Federal Reserve, which sent them scrambling to rewrite their outlooks for the new year.
America’s presidential election is a test of that proposition
Journalists should not spend much of their time writing about journalism. The world is more interesting than the inky habits of the people who report on it. But this week we are making an exception, because the discovery and dissemination of information matters a lot to politics. Don’t take our word for it: “A popular government,” wrote James Madison in 1822, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Were Thomas Jefferson offered a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, he said that he would choose the press (though that is probably going a bit far).
America should deter it from escalating the Gaza war, but also engage with it
Twelve months ago Iran was reeling from protests sparked by the death in custody of a young woman who had been arrested for showing too much hair. Its theocratic regime was increasingly isolated, as Arab states forged closer ties with its enemy, Israel. The economy was a mess, adding to popular anger at Iran’s ageing supreme leader and inept president. The Islamic Republic had not seemed so vulnerable in decades.
Boomers Daily 