Latest news with #ButterflyEffect
The Star
4 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Opinion: Hiding weather data harms more than hurricane forecasts
The Butterfly Effect is the chaos-theory idea that the flapping of an insect's tiny wings can influence massive weather events far removed from it in distance and time. It may overstate the importance of butterflies, but it is a reminder of how small actions can have larger, unforeseen consequences. An even clearer example is the Trump administration's recent decision to stop sharing military satellite data with weather forecasters just ahead of what will be a busy hurricane season. The effects will reverberate far beyond weather forecasting, threatening lives and livelihoods and even accelerating the nation's growing home-insurance crisis. Late last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, said it would stop receiving weather data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, including readings that have long helped forecasters peer inside hurricanes to predict whether they will intensify rapidly. This information is especially useful at night, when some other observational tools aren't available and communities in a storm's path are at their most vulnerable to an unexpected strengthening. After an outcry, the Defense Department delayed the cutoff date to the end of July. But that still means forecasters will be missing key information in the busiest part of a hurricane season that was already expected to be busier than usual. Asked for an explanation, the Defense Department basically mumbled, 'Something something cybersecurity.' It's worth noting that NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which is run by Howard Lutnick, who is the former chief executive officer of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP. In that role, Lutnick helped raise funding for and sat on the board of Satellogic Inc, a company that 'bills itself as an emerging federal contractor that can offer crisp images of natural disasters and weather events in real time,' the Associated Press reported earlier this month. Cantor had a 13% stake in Satellogic as of March, the AP noted, when Lutnick was still selling his investments to comply with government ethics standards. Maybe the plan is for a future in which cash-strapped local officials and forecasters have to pay Satellogic (or Elon Musk's Starlink, or some other private satellite provider) for life-saving hurricane data in lieu of free, time-tested government products. In the meantime, NOAA insists it still has plenty of tools to track hurricanes. Professional hurricane trackers disagree. In early June, weeks before the satellite news, longtime South Florida meteorologist John Morales went viral for warning viewers that NWS staffing cuts had already undermined his ability to predict the strength and path of hurricanes. Government weather offices in central and south Florida were 20% to 40% understaffed, and launches of weather balloons carrying instruments to study hurricanes at high altitudes were down 17%, he said. 'The quality of these forecasts is becoming degraded,' Morales said. 'We may be flying blind, and we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline.' This is an obvious threat to the lives and properties of people in the paths of hurricanes, especially in an era when a hotter climate is making rapid storm intensification more common. Average maximum intensification rates were up to 29% higher in 2001-20 than in 1971-90, according to a 2023 study in Nature Scientific Reports. Last October, Hurricane Milton exploded from a tropical storm to a Category 5 monster in less than two days (causing Morales to break down on-air), fueled by record-warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. It's never been more critical for weather forecasters to give people as much time as possible to evacuate and board up their homes and stores. Somewhat less obvious is the impact a hurricane-information gap could have on home insurance. If those houses and stores aren't boarded up in time, then they suffer more damage. If disaster-relief services (which these days may or may not include the Federal Emergency Management Agency) aren't in the right place when a storm hits, then damage could increase as properties sit in water and are open to the elements. Meanwhile, insurers and reinsurers are increasingly selling catastrophe bonds to help pass their rising disaster costs on to investors. Issuance is up to US$18.1bil (RM76.4bil) so far this year, the Financial Times reported recently, already topping the full-year record of US$17.7bil (RM75bil) set in 2024. Some of those bonds have parametric triggers, meaning they pay insurers when certain weather measurements are recorded. In the case of hurricanes, those could be wind speed and barometric pressure. Spotty weather data could mean those triggers never get triggered, leaving insurers unpaid. 'This could ripple across the entire property-insurance ecosystem,' Anthony Lopez, CEO of the Miami-based Your Insurance Attorney, told me. 'Less-reliable forecasting means more surprise losses, which will impact how insurers model risk, which will lead to premium hikes, tighter underwriting and more insurance exits in high-risk states like Florida.' The gap between US home values and their insurance coverage against climate-fueled disasters may already be US$2.7 trillion (RM11.4 trillion), by one estimate, invoking memories of the subprime mortgage crisis. Every fresh blow that makes insurance more expensive and harder to get widens that gap a little more and makes the eventual day of reckoning even more painful. Like that theoretical butterfly, the Trump administration's decision to deprive weather forecasters of a little satellite data – whether motivated by Project 2025-brand ideology, a desire to enrich private companies or a mere love of watching the world burn – will have far-reaching consequences. But we can't say they were unforeseen. – Bloomberg Opinion/Tribune News Service
Gulf Today
5 days ago
- Business
- Gulf Today
Hiding weather data harms more than hurricane forecasts
Mark Gongloff, Tribune News Service The Butterfly Effect is the chaos-theory idea that the flapping of an insect's tiny wings can influence massive weather events far removed from it in distance and time. It may overstate the importance of butterflies, but it is a reminder of how small actions can have larger, unforeseen consequences. An even clearer example is the Trump administration's recent decision to stop sharing military satellite data with weather forecasters just ahead of what will be a busy hurricane season. The effects will reverberate far beyond weather forecasting, threatening lives and livelihoods and even accelerating the nation's growing home-insurance crisis. Late last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, said it would stop receiving weather data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, including readings that have long helped forecasters peer inside hurricanes to predict whether they will intensify rapidly. This information is especially useful at night, when some other observational tools aren't available and communities in a storm's path are at their most vulnerable to an unexpected strengthening. After an outcry, the Defense Department delayed the cutoff date to the end of July. But that still means forecasters will be missing key information in the busiest part of a hurricane season that was already expected to be busier than usual. Asked for an explanation, the Defense Department basically mumbled, 'Something something cybersecurity.' It's worth noting that NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which is run by Howard Lutnick, who is the former chief executive officer of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP. In that role, Lutnick helped raise funding for and sat on the board of Satellogic Inc., a company that 'bills itself as an emerging federal contractor that can offer crisp images of natural disasters and weather events in real time,' the Associated Press reported earlier this month. Cantor had a 13% stake in Satellogic as of March, the AP noted, when Lutnick was still selling his investments to comply with government ethics standards. Maybe the plan is for a future in which cash-strapped local officials and forecasters have to pay Satellogic (or Elon Musk's Starlink, or some other private satellite provider) for life-saving hurricane data in lieu of free, time-tested government products. In the meantime, NOAA insists it still has plenty of tools to track hurricanes. Professional hurricane trackers disagree. In early June, weeks before the satellite news, longtime South Florida meteorologist John Morales went viral for warning viewers that NWS staffing cuts had already undermined his ability to predict the strength and path of hurricanes. Government weather offices in central and south Florida were 20% to 40% understaffed, and launches of weather balloons carrying instruments to study hurricanes at high altitudes were down 17%, he said. 'The quality of these forecasts is becoming degraded,' Morales said. 'We may be flying blind, and we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline.' This is an obvious threat to the lives and properties of people in the paths of hurricanes, especially in an era when a hotter climate is making rapid storm intensification more common. Average maximum intensification rates were up to 29% higher in 2001-20 than in 1971-90, according to a 2023 study in Nature Scientific Reports. Last October, Hurricane Milton exploded from a tropical storm to a Category 5 monster in less than two days (causing Morales to break down on-air), fueled by record-warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. It's never been more critical for weather forecasters to give people as much time as possible to evacuate and board up their homes and stores. Somewhat less obvious is the impact a hurricane-information gap could have on home insurance. If those houses and stores aren't boarded up in time, then they suffer more damage. If disaster-relief services (which these days may or may not include the Federal Emergency Management Agency) aren't in the right place when a storm hits, then damage could increase as properties sit in water and are open to the elements. Meanwhile, insurers and reinsurers are increasingly selling catastrophe bonds to help pass their rising disaster costs on to investors. Issuance is up to $18.1 billion so far this year, the Financial Times reported recently, already topping the full-year record of $17.7 billion set in 2024. Some of those bonds have parametric triggers, meaning they pay insurers when certain weather measurements are recorded. In the case of hurricanes, those could be wind speed and barometric pressure. Spotty weather data could mean those triggers never get triggered, leaving insurers unpaid. 'This could ripple across the entire property-insurance ecosystem,' Anthony Lopez, CEO of the Miami-based Your Insurance Attorney, told me. 'Less-reliable forecasting means more surprise losses, which will impact how insurers model risk, which will lead to premium hikes, tighter underwriting and more insurance exits in high-risk states like Florida.' The gap between US home values and their insurance coverage against climate-fueled disasters may already be $2.7 trillion, by one estimate, invoking memories of the subprime mortgage crisis. Every fresh blow that makes insurance more expensive and harder to get widens that gap a little more and makes the eventual day of reckoning even more painful. Like that theoretical butterfly, the Trump administration's decision to deprive weather forecasters of a little satellite data — whether motivated by Project 2025-brand ideology, a desire to enrich private companies or a mere love of watching the world burn — will have far-reaching consequences. But we can't say they were unforeseen.
Bloomberg
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Hiding Weather Data Harms More Than Hurricane Forecasts
The Butterfly Effect is the chaos-theory idea that the flapping of an insect's tiny wings can influence massive weather events far removed from it in distance and time. It may overstate the importance of butterflies, but it is a reminder of how small actions can have larger, unforeseen consequences. An even clearer example is the Trump administration's recent decision to stop sharing military satellite data with weather forecasters just ahead of what will be a busy hurricane season. The effects will reverberate far beyond weather forecasting, threatening lives and livelihoods and even accelerating the nation's growing home-insurance crisis.
The Star
18-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Manus AI's ‘de-China' playbook is a trap
WHEN Chinese startup Manus previewed an artificial intelligence (AI) agent earlier this year, it went mega-viral. It came on the heels of DeepSeek, when global excitement over China's AI breakthroughs was at a fever pitch, and nobody wanted to miss out on the next surprise hit. Now, Manus is doing everything it can to sever any ties to the mainland. It relocated its headquarters to Singapore, and its three co-founders have made the move abroad as well. Butterfly Effect, the company behind Manus, reportedly eliminated all its China-based jobs last week. It has also scrubbed content from domestic social media platforms Weibo and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), despite maintaining an active presence on X. Users in China trying to access the site this week were met with the message that it's 'not available in your region,' a departure from a previous memo stating that the Chinese version was under development. It's the choice these tech firms are forced to make in the current geopolitical climate: stay in the hyper-competitive domestic market or go for more lucrative growth overseas. You can't have both. Moving abroad means going through the arduous process of trying to 'de-China' the company's origins. It's a shame given this background is what drove so much hype about Manus in the first place. Chinese firms have also traditionally had an edge in consumer tech, with access to a vast pool of affordable engineering talent and a hardworking culture. Plus, dubious identity rebrands almost never work. Manus' decision to recast as a Singapore company follows the furore that emerged in the United States after prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist (VC) firm Benchmark (an early backer of the likes of eBay Inc and Uber Technologies Inc) announced it was leading a US$75mil funding round in Butterfly Effect. Fellow VCs accused Benchmark of 'investing in your enemy' and equated it to backing Russian efforts during the space race. The plans have also come under US Treasury Department scrutiny over new rules related to investments in certain Chinese technology. It will be very hard for Manus to ever rid the China label from its story, especially after all the attention it received. Co-founder Ji Yichao was on the cover of Forbes China more than a decade ago, as one of the 30 under 30 entrepreneurs in the country. State-backed mouthpieces have also celebrated Manus's rise, so trying to cleanse its Chinese-ness risks domestic backlash. It's not the first time this has happened. ByteDance Ltd's TikTok has gone to great pains to rebrand as an American and Singaporean company and assuage Washington's fears about its Beijing origins. But none of this stopped the United States from passing a law last year requiring the parent company to divest from the app that doesn't even operate in the mainland, or be banned due to perceived national security concerns. This doesn't bode well for Manus. The AI sector has become a lightning rod for China hawks in the United States, who view any consumer-facing application using the tech from its geopolitical nemesis as a threat. AI video startup HeyGen Inc garnered investment and a raft of US customers after making the move from China, yet was still singled out by lawmakers over potential ties to the Communist Party. Its co-founder said it's been 'disappointing' to see his heritage treated as something he should 'be ashamed of.' Wrapped up in national security worries is more than a hint of xenophobia. Targeting consumer tech firms based on the national origins of their founders is an ineffective strategy. US concerns about potential threats that data could leak to China or that the CCP could influence algorithms should implement more comprehensive rules to mitigate these risks. When it comes to buzzy new technology like the Manus AI agent, industry-wide standards are overdue. Tools that are designed to allow software to take on increasingly complex tasks on their own carry unique risks, including who is liable when things go awry and how much control should be ceded to machines. Global policymakers should address these concerns regardless of where the AI agent comes from. Icing out the best and brightest tech minds risks leaving Silicon Valley blind to innovation happening elsewhere. It's in America's interest to do more to support these founders by bringing their talents and breakthroughs to the United States. —Bloomberg Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. The views expressed here are the writer's own.
Bloomberg
16-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Manus AI's ‘De-China' Playbook Is a Trap
When Chinese startup Manus previewed an artificial intelligence agent earlier this year, it went mega-viral. It came on the heels of DeepSeek, when global excitement over China's AI breakthroughs was at a fever pitch, and nobody wanted to miss out on the next surprise hit. Now, Manus is doing everything it can to sever any ties to the mainland. It relocated its headquarters to Singapore, and its three co-founders have made the move abroad as well. Butterfly Effect, the company behind Manus, reportedly eliminated all its China-based jobs last week. It has also scrubbed content from domestic social media platforms Weibo and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), despite maintaining an active presence on X. Users in China trying to access the site this week were met with the message that it's 'not available in your region,' a departure from a previous memo stating that the Chinese version was under development.
