.jpg "Trae Stephens Has Built AI Weapons and Worked for Donald Trump. As He Sees It, Jesus Would Approve")
When I wrote about Anduril in 2018, the company explicitly said it wouldn’t build lethal weapons. Now you are building fighter planes, underwater drones, and other deadly weapons of war. Why did you make that pivot? We responded to what we saw, not only inside our military but also across the world. We want to … Read more
What do you mean by that? Because your insurance company, whoever it may be, uses a PBM, a pharmacy benefit manager. The PBM has negotiated with a pharmacy what the reimbursement rate is. Except they basically said, “Here’s what we’re going to reimburse you.” [His Apple Watch buzzes.] You can go ahead and check that. … Read more
The previous October, Sawicky organized a weeklong protest alongside environmental activist group Greenpeace and brandished various anti-bitcoin signs at anyone who entered the Riot facility. Only a few other people turned out in support, leaving Sawicky dejected: “I could not have been more disappointed and disgusted by my fellow humans,” she said, when we first … Read more
.jpg "The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper—and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It")
Moqadi Mokoena had been feeling uneasy all day. When he’d left his home on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, for his job as a security guard, he’d had to turn around twice, having forgotten first his watch and then his cigarettes. He had reason to be nervous. His supervisor had assigned him to join … Read more
By the time I arrive in Lezay my clothes are damp with sweat, my head foggy. I find hundreds of Les Soulèvements de la Terre’s supporters in a field on the outskirts of town in a victorious, yet cautious, mood. People carry flags that read: “We are all Les Soulèvements de la Terre.” The police … Read more
There’s a term of art for this whole system: reverse logistics. For the first 100 years of the plastics revolution, companies essentially sprayed products at customers—it was a one-way movement of atoms. Successful recycling requires doing this process in reverse, an entirely new set of skills. How do you get stuff back? What new economics, … Read more
It was questionable how much credit they could take. They had arrived in Texas right at the start of the rainy season, and the precipitation that fell before the experiment had been forecast by the US Weather Bureau. As for Powers’ notion that rain came after battles—well, battles tended to start in dry weather, so … Read more
What triggered the jumps? As Broecker guessed in the late ’80s and (after 30-some years of debate) many scientists now agree: abrupt, dramatic changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. That the climate could change violently had huge implications. As more carbon was being released into the atmosphere, Broecker and other scientists were getting increasingly … Read more
On January 29, in testimony before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee, Hunt-Blackwell urged lawmakers to scrap the bill’s criminal penalties and to add carve-outs for news media organizations wishing to republish deepfakes as part of their reporting. Georgia’s legislative session ended before the bill could proceed. Federal deepfake legislation is also set to encounter resistance. … Read more
“People make fun of me about the fridges,” said Tassos Stassopoulos. “I am fridge-obsessed.” As the founder and managing partner of Trinetra, a London-based investment firm, Stassopoulos has pioneered an unusual strategy: peeking inside refrigerators in homes around the world in order to predict the future—and monetize those insights. By the time of his refrigeration … Read more
