Issue 34
January 23, 2024
FLASH US conducts more major strikes on Houthis in Red Sea region
1 Supreme Court sides 5-4 with Biden Administration on border policy dispute
2 OPINION Elite Davos Big Brains shift slightly Right
3 Elon Musk’s AI Startup Secures $500m
4 Humans Still Cheaper Than AI in Jobs…for now: MIT study
5 Meanwhile in China…
1/23/2020 China locks down the city of Wuhan
Sports
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 In win for federal power over states, Supreme Court sides 5-4 with Biden Administration on border policy dispute
The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration on Monday, allowing federal officials to cut or remove parts of a concertina-wire barrier along the Mexican border that Texas erected to keep migrants from crossing into the state. The ruling, by a 5-to-4 vote, was a victory for the administration in the increasingly bitter dispute between the White House and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, an outspoken critic of President Biden’s border policy who has shipped busloads of migrants to northern cities. Since 2021, Mr. Abbott, a third-term Republican, has mounted a multibillion-dollar campaign to impose stringent measures at the border to deter migrants. Those include erecting concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, installing a barrier of buoys in the river and enacting a sweeping law that allows state and local law enforcement to arrest migrants crossing from Mexico. In lifting an appeals court ruling that had generally prohibited the administration from removing the wire while the court considers the case, the justices gave no reasons, which is typical when they act on emergency applications. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal members to form a majority.
NYT
2 OPINION Elite Davos Big Brains shift slightly Right
Something unexpected happened at Davos this year. The conventional wisdom took some tentative steps toward the right. Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, the “global conversations” that take place among business, political and social leaders at the World Economic Forum each year have trended left. Elite Western opinion seemed destined to move toward more faith in state planning and less in the power of markets.
The Davos consensus remains strongly anti-Trump, but there is real doubt about whether left-liberal governance can keep him out of the White House—or stop the global drift toward disorder and great-power war. Davos Man is becoming uncomfortably aware of how dependent the global system is on the leadership that only a prosperous and self-confident America can provide. We aren’t there by a long shot, but if the pendulum of Davos conventional wisdom continues to swing, Reagan nostalgia may yet find a home in the Swiss Alps.
WSJ
3 Elon Musk’s AI Startup Secures $500m
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has secured $500 million in commitments from investors toward a $1 billion goal, according to people with knowledge of the talks. The company is discussing a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion, though terms could still change in the coming weeks, the people said, declining to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investment. Musk said on X, the network formerly called Twitter, that the report was “fake news.”
Bloomberg
4 Humans Still Cheaper Than AI in Jobs…for now: MIT study
Artificial intelligence can’t replace the majority of jobs right now in cost-effective ways, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a study that sought to address fears about AI replacing humans in a swath of industries. In one of the first in-depth probes of the viability of AI displacing labor, researchers modeled the cost attractiveness of automating various tasks in the US, concentrating on jobs where computer vision was employed — for instance, teachers and property appraisers. They found only 23% of workers, measured in terms of dollar wages, could be effectively supplanted. In other cases, because AI-assisted visual recognition is expensive to install and operate, humans did the job more economically.
Bloomberg
5 Meanwhile in China…
American export controls on AI tech are failing
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/01/21/why-americas-controls-on-sales-of-ai-tech-to-china-are-so-leaky
from The Economist
China Buys Near-Record $40 Billion of Chip Gear to Beat US Curbs
Chinese scientists claim to develop hypersonic, GPS-guided artillery shells
Russia Becomes Top China Oil Supplier
BlackRock to Sell Shanghai Office Towers at 30% Discount
Chinese missile range
https://x.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1748910909697994970?s=20
This day in history
1/23/2020 China locks down the city of Wuhan to control the city's COVID-19 epidemic
Thanks for reading!
Sports
Collegiate golfer wins on PGA tour, shoots 29-under par
Nick Dunlap, 20, won the American Express stop on the PGA Tour, making history.
With an incredible score of 29-under, Dunlap won the tournament in La Quinta, Calif. by one stroke with a gritty par save on the final hole—making him the first amateur to win on the Tour since 1991. That’s when a young lefty named Phil Mickelson won his first PGA Tour event.
That Dunlap would perform feats not seen since Mickelson or Tiger Woods is hardly a fluke. The 20-year-old, who plays for the University of Alabama, is one of the brightest young talents in the sport. He has power, touch on the greens and the mettle to handle big moments.
WSJ
