On any given day, US media will offer an abundance of reports on the sometimes strange workings of its justice system. This first week of January has proved to be rich in examples, with the high-profile cases of Ghislaine Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes complemented by a host of stories about smaller...
In her recent testimony in front of a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” former data scientist at Facebook Frances Haugen revealed that her former employer is knowingly harmful to children, promotes...
Elon Musk has of course been getting richer by the hour. His net worth was quoted this past week at a figure north of $300 billion. Not bad for someone who had to eke out an existence less than two years ago on a net worth estimated at a mere $20 billion. Yes, he’s brazenly touted some things...
When it comes to soft power, culture plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes and behavior, delivering more efficient and lasting results than other tools in the influence arsenal. American values were not enough to turn the course of the war in Afghanistan. All the science that supports COVID-19...
Associated Press reporter Nomaan Merchant has been listening to the latest warnings from the US intelligence community that wants the public to understand it is time to be seriously afraid of China. It’s not just about Beijing’s military might. The real problem is that the Chinese are thieves,...
Regionally organized clouds (ROCs) can be the answer to a series of problems public policy is currently struggling with. Global cloud companies, including Google, Amazon and Microsoft, provide valuable services. But societal concerns are being raised about the control of data and the concentration...
As we saw in the case of Bernie Madoff, when Harry Markopolos, the man who blew the whistle on the $65-billion Ponzi scheme, admitted to living in fear of his life, whistleblower protections are not enough to ensure that internal reporting continues in order for issues to be resolved efficiently....
Today’s technology-oriented, media manipulated civilization has succeeded in imposing a degree of hyperreality capable of obscuring whatever remnants of reality still remain within the average person’s field of perception. This requires a permanent effort to deviate attention from hyperreality...
The Republican Party is facing an existential crisis. Will their traditional base of small-government, low-tax party members endure, especially as they come under increasing attacks from, anti-immigrant, anti-science MAGA fundamentalists? Democrats face challenges of their own trying to figure...
A news story that falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine caused the death of an American doctor was the most viewed article on Facebook in the US for the first three months of 2021. Instead of going public about the platform promoting such misinformation, Facebook held back on publishing the...
As the pandemic progressed, more and more workers shifted to working remotely. At the height of lockdown, more than 70% of the US workforce was toiling from home. It began to look as if remote working arrangements would become the new normal. Headlines proclaimed that COVID-19 would result in the...
