Dilemmas

President Trump’s leadership skills, and mental and physical fitness score reasonably well on a survey of Americans published by Pew Research Center. However, his ability to pick good advisers, respect democratic values and act ethically  are viewed less favourably.

It looks as if there could be a very big volte-face about to occur in the AI industry. It is being widely said that Open AI will not build any datacentres of its own and will rely for computing resource on getting deals with companies which do have data centres like AWS, Oracle, Google and Microsoft. This is a huge ...

International shipping has almost come to a halt at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. Last Sunday, German ⁠shipping group Hapag-Lloyd said it had suspended all ⁠vessel transit through the strait until further ⁠notice. Close  to 27% of all maritime oil trade transited through the strait in the first quarter of 2025, making it one of the world’s most ...

Nvidia’s results followed the usual pattern: superb figures, bullish forecasts, rousing comments about the future of AI from the CEO and a fall in the share price. No one can be sure if this is going on forever or even till the end of the month and  no one can be sure it won’t. The hyperscalers talk about spending $600 ...

There seems to be a pattern here: In July 2025, in a filing with the SEC. Intel stated: “We are focused on the continued development of Intel 14A and on securing a significant external customer for such node. However, if we are unable to secure a significant external customer and meet important customer milestones for Intel 14A, we face the ...

A Statista Consumer Insights survey conducted in January 2026 shows that, when people are asked what matters most in life, the headline is strikingly consistent: family life and health dominate across the U.K., Germany and the United States. However, the differences observed for the other priorities cited by the respondents reflect different ideas of what a good life should be ...

The US and UK are among 12 countries opposing a global ban on autonomous weapons, joined by Australia, Belarus, Estonia, India, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Poland, Russia and South Korea. Data compiled by Automated Decision Research, the monitoring and research team of Stop Killer Robots, finds that another 53 nations have yet to take a clear stance, while 127 countries, ...

The U.S. Department of War has launched a new AI acceleration strategy, aimed at securing military AI dominance. The new strategy will “unleash experimentation, eliminate legacy bureaucratic blockers and integrate the bleeding edge of frontier AI capabilities across every mission area”, according to the Department. Scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warn that applications of AI in weapons ...

In a new age of brutal reality we are being asked whether the ‘rules-based international order’ or ‘digital sovereignty’ are abstractions. China and Russia show they don’t give a fig for the  ‘rules-based international order’ and now the US says it regards the concept as an  abstraction.  If the great powers  don’t believe in it, are the others being naive ...

Only around one third of Americans have a high level of trust in AI search  results, says a Statista Consumer Insights survey. Depending on the topic, there was a slight variation in trust, with Americans trusting AI a little more on health on wellness topics (35 percent showing a high level of trust and only 19 percent showing a low ...