US has already lost to China in AI fight, says ex-Pentagon software chief
“Beijing is heading for global dominance because of its advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and cyber capabilities, he said. Compared to China’s advancement, US cyber defences in some government departments were at the kindergarten level.
Chaillan blamed the reluctance of Goggle to work with the US defence department on AI. Chinese companies, on the other hand, are obliged to work with Beijing, and were making “massive investment” into AI without regard to ethics, he said to Financial Times.”
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Until the Very End, the Generals Wanted Biden to Leave 2,500 Troops in Afghanistan
“In response to a question from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), Austin acknowledged that while there were “a range of possibilities” for what could have happened with a theoretical continued presence, “if you stayed there at force posture of 2,500, certainly, you’d be in a fight with the Taliban. And you’d have to reinforce yourself.”
This is the crux of the matter: There is no plausible scenario in which the U.S. could leave behind a permanent, or even indefinite, force of soldiers without incurring further casualties. The Doha Agreement negotiated under Trump set an end date by which all American forces would have left Afghanistan, barring any future Taliban violence; a new administration reneging on that deal would certainly have invited renewed bloodshed. And a force of 2,500 facing the entirety of a renewed Taliban would have necessitated further reinforcement. At that point, we would be right back to October 2001, facing an uncertain future and an even more uncertain end goal.”
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Americans Paid $7.6 Billion in Tariffs During August, a New Monthly Record
“Former President Donald Trump hiked tariffs on a wide range of imported goods, President Joe Biden has refused to cut them, and that bipartisan opposition to free trade means Americans are now paying higher import taxes than ever.
The federal government collected more than $7.6 billion in tariffs during the month of August, according to recently released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks economic data. That’s an amount that exceeds even the highest single-month total during the Trump administration and one that dwarves monthly tariff revenue from earlier years.”
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“It can be a mistake to make too much out of a single month’s economic data, but these numbers provide some small insight into the failures of the Trump administration’s trade policies. Higher tariffs did not reduce Americans’ desire to buy imported goods. They did not reduce the trade deficit (quite the opposite, in fact). They were not paid for by China or other foreign nations, but by American companies importing those goods (and the costs are passed along to other buyers and consumers down the supply chain).”
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“Revenue extracted by the federal government is not the only cost imposed by tariffs, of course. They also warp supply chains, change investment decisions, and encourage more spending on lobbyists and lawyers.”
Good News: The World Finally Has a Malaria Vaccine
“Malaria cases annually number nearly 230 million, and the disease kills more than 400,000 people—mostly children—each year. Until now, the search for an effective vaccine against the parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes has been fruitless. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it is recommending the approval of the Mosquirix malaria vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline. The research on this vaccine began in 1987 and was earlier this year shown to be 50 percent effective in preventing malaria infections in the first year of Phase III clinical trials in children in three African countries.
Compared to the 95 percent efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, 50 percent may not sound like much, but a 2020 modeling study estimated that rolling out the vaccine in the areas with the higher prevalence of the illness could prevent 5.3 million cases and 24,000 deaths annually.”