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Politico
4 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
5 questions for Sen. Todd Young
Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of the Senate's leading voices on tech policy and a key architect of 2022's CHIPS and Science Act. Young, who earlier this year published an essay in The National Interest proposing a 'Tech Power Playbook for Donald Trump 2.0,' discusses his skepticism about the value of social media, the insight of Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' and why America risks falling behind China on biotech. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? Using our tech diplomats at the State Department to accrue more geopolitical power as a country. We saw in the CHIPS and Science Act that this group of individuals, which I characterized as our special teams — it was football season when I put this together — they can help shape norms of use, develop standards and even help us gain market share. To the extent we advance our tech in different geographies, we're advancing our values, because our values around privacy, consumer protection, transparency and many other things are embedded within the standards of our different technologies. If the Trump administration and others adopt this approach, I think we can force our adversaries, most obviously the People's Republic of China, to have to produce in a bifurcated way. They produce one set of standards and embedded technologies for their domestic economy, where they'd spy on their own people, and then they'd have to produce for another set of standards for export. Because they have an export oriented economy, they couldn't sustain two different streams of production and they'd have to choose. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? Social media, without any question. I'm the father of four young children, and I don't think it is meaningfully, or on balance constructively, enhancing their lives. Actual social connection in person with people, or even by phone, is preferable to the sort of clickbait culture and abbreviated means of communication that we've all become accustomed to. I think it has diminished our attention span, I think it has coarsened our culture and I think it's made us dumber collectively than we would have thought in a universe in which we have instant access to all kinds of information. As I talk about this topic with regular citizens — that is, those who don't own major social media companies or work at Washington, D.C., think tanks — there is an appetite for certain smart regulatory approaches. However, in the last few years I think there's been a heightened awareness of the potential when you regulate to constrain speech, and a general skepticism of regulators' intentions and ideologies and good faith in trying to intermediate conversations. When I entered the public fray, I think there was an appetite — or maybe a missed window of opportunity — to come up with a better model through law. It's really challenging right now, because we've become, in many ways, a nation of distinct tribes not just in terms of our political identification but our belief system. There's a distrust of efforts to sort out fact from fiction and to referee the public square, and private actors have seized control of the public square through these social media outlets. We haven't figured out how to address that in a pluralistic, highly populous and dynamic democracy, and we're going to have to come up with answers at some point. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? Unleashing the power of biomanufacturing, which is something I've been deeply immersed in for the last couple of years as chairman of a national security commission on emerging biotechnology. Other countries have invested heavily in this. Notably, China is more advanced than the United States in some of these areas. The epicenter of this biomanufacturing revolution could be in heartland states like Indiana, using agricultural feedstocks to put into tanks and manufacture many of the components and products that are made through conventional manufacturing right now. McKinsey estimates that today, the technological capabilities exist to biomanufacture 60 percent of items that are conventionally manufactured. What we need is scale in order to make these things cost-competitive, and we offer recommendations for Congress to achieve this sort of scale. What book most shaped your conception of the future? Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' had a big impact on me. It talked about something that is now familiar to every American: the disjunction between technological change and human adaptation to those changes. We are essentially living the anxieties that Alvin Toffler predicted from a world upended by increasingly rapid technological change. It impacts our psyche. It impacts our relationships. It impacts our professions; it profoundly impacts every facet of our lives and is therefore unsettling and disorienting. Toffler labeled this whole gamut of effects and emotions 'future shock,' and I don't believe he gets frequent enough mention or credit for identifying this profound change that was underway. The other one is Alexis de Tocqueville. In 'Democracy in America' he talks about how democracy shapes our way of thinking about ourselves in such profound ways, and how it permeates everything in our culture. In this time of tectonic political shifts we are — unless we discipline ourselves against it — inclined to ascertain what is right and true based on what our neighbors think rather than conviction, or trenchant analysis. If any person who lives in a small-'d' democratic culture thinks that they're not susceptible to this, they're wrong. That cultural milieu is put on steroids in an era of social media and, more generally, a fractured media environment in which people live in tribal echo chambers. We all are hardwired in our DNA to want to be part of the crowd. None of us wants to be lonely, and we look to others for guidance about what is right. So you can think again about how in this populist political age, members of the different parties have fundamentally changed their views over the past few years on some pretty foundational political issues. Setting aside some calculation from politicians here and there, there is a sincerity to it because people are persuaded by the popular opinions of people within their tribe. So you've seen a swapping of policy positions across parties on some really foundational things, and some have genuinely arrived at those new positions through analysism but others are more impacted by democratic culture than is typically realized. What has surprised you the most this year? Well, if we're going 365 days back, it would be Indiana University football's No. 5 ranking in the College Football Playoff era. But in this year, it's the Pacers' deep run in the playoffs, and it ain't over. doge rolls on Although Elon Musk is personally stepping back from government, DOGE remains at furious work. POLITICO's Robin Bravender, Danny Nguyen and Sophia Cai reported Thursday on how Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is quietly directing lasting changes to the federal bureaucracy, which one anonymous White House official described as the 'true DNA of DOGE': The staffers made political appointees at various agencies who can remain at their posts indefinitely. DOGE staffers are also taking a quieter approach to cutting programs and staff by going to lesser-known departments and agencies, even as courts often stymie their changes. During the last two weeks, DOGE has tried to access the Government Publishing Office, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, and sent teams to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Government Accountability Office. 'Everyone's more nervous about [Vought] than Elon actually, especially because he knows government a little bit better,' an anonymous federal worker told POLITICO. 'While people are excited that Elon is gone, this doesn't change much.' a new berkeley supercomputer The Department of Energy announced a new supercomputer project, teaming with Nvidia and Dell on a system to support physics, artificial intelligence and other types of research. POLITICO's Chase DiFeliciantonio reported for Pro subscribers Thursday on the announcement of a computer based at Berkeley, California's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which has around 11,000 researchers. Scheduled for completion in 2026, the computer will be named after Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR scientist Jennifer Doudna. 'AI is the Manhattan Project of our time, and Doudna will help ensure America's scientists have the tools they need to win the global race for AI dominance,' said Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a statement. In response to a question from reporters, Wright defended the administration's broader science cuts. 'Politics and bureaucracy are the antithesis of science,' he said, adding that 'this administration is 100 percent aligned with speeding up and energizing American science, removing the shackles, removing the bureaucracy, cleaning out the politics, and focused on science and progress.' post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
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First Post
21-04-2025
- Science
- First Post
Death of distance and rise of tribalism: Inside the disruptive world of ‘GeoTechnoGraphy'
Authored by Samir Saran and Anirban Sarma, 'GeoTechnoGraphy' is a pertinent and thought-provoking book that explores how digital technology has become both a catalyst for progress and a cause of intense societal disruptions read more Change is the only constant. We are often reminded about this age-old adage. But with each passing decade, year, month, day and even moment, one is facing an accelerated rate of change. Alvin Toffler wrote more than five decades ago in his milestone book, Future Shock, 'If the last 50,000 years of man's existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves.' He decoded this accelerated rate of transformation further when he wrote how 'only during the last six lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th, lifetime.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD When Toffler wrote his seminal book, the digital revolution, as we see it today, was still a few decades away. And if the changes in the 1950s and '60s made him believe that 'most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it', one wonders what he would have said today when a seismic technological change, led by the digital revolution, is underway. The digital revolution has created new cloud-based communities that transcend national and geographical barriers, providing new opportunities as well as opening up new challenges. So, while the Internet is seen to be blurring, and often challenging too, geographical distances and national boundaries, one equally witnesses intense battles being fought for land, territories and so-called homelands. What makes the era both interesting and enigmatic is the two tendencies getting stronger at the one and the same time. To map these new changes, a new book, GeoTechnoGraphy, written by Samir Saran and Anirban Sarma, has come out, exploring how digital technology has as much become the catalyst for progress as much as a cause of intense societal disruptions. Geotechnography: Mapping Power and Identity in the Digital Age (Hardcover) – 31 March 2025. Image: The authors write, 'Our rootedness in land is now contending and conflicting – with a new sense of self built by engaging with social media and other global digital platforms. The agendas and aspirations of citizens, governments and tech businesses aren't necessarily congruent though. The friction between them is the greatest defining phenomenon of our time.' The 'death of geography' has led to the 'mushrooming' of 'new sites for agreement and discord'. Saran and Sarma write, 'Throughout our book, we use the terms 'clouds' or 'cloud societies' to refer to virtual communities that are anchored in particular geographies but use the Internet and social media to share views, exchange opinions, band together with like-minded peers or interest groups or engage in online political action. Cloud societies influence land-based debates and often assault offline consensuses. On the other hand, they amplify real-world movements, and the momentum they generate online could cross back into the offline realm in the form of new campaigns.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Interestingly, the 'death of geography', led primarily by the massive spread of cyberspace, has resulted in a borderless world, but at the same time one is witnessing the rise of 'new tribalism', wherein 'walls could spring up between those who fall foul of code or community guidelines and suffer a form of digital excommunication and those who don't'. The authors also highlight how 'a wedge is also driven between inhabitants of the world's various splinternets'. Giving the example of Chinese citizens being 'exposed only to online news and views curated by the Chinese Communist Party will form a vastly different worldview from Indians who experience an open, broad-based Internet'. This way 'alternate ideas' become 'invisible' (to Chinese), and 'one-sided perspectives become our universe'. Thus emerges what the authors call 'a new tribalism'. What further makes the situation dicey, difficult and also dangerous is the mushrooming of fake news outlets in the digital space. This phenomenon is worrying because for most people across the globe, social media has become the primary source of news—what makes this even deadlier is the fact that fake news travels faster than the truth! STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The book also looks at the growing malaise of cyber-attacks and cybercrime. The global cost of financial cybercrime is expected to skyrocket from $9.22 trillion in 2024 to $13.83 trillion in 2028. And by the end of 2024, cyber-attacks may cost the global economy more than $10.5 trillion. The number is only going to spread. Today, 65 per cent of the world's population use the internet, which was first introduced among the masses just three decades ago—and as the number of internet users further increases, especially in the Global South, the cases of cyber-attacks and cybercrime would go up too. Then there is the big issue of artificial intelligence, whose development and usage have divided humanity, with many projecting and predicting a doomsday-kind of scenario for human beings. The authors find four fundamental design flaws underlying today's geotechnographical landscape. One, the ideologies of Silicon Valley—the production centres of these technologies—are 'being made to force-fit local markets with a wholly different provenance'. Two, the contract between citizens and the state is 'increasingly mediated by private players' such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Often these companies care little about local laws, as was witnessed in 2023 when the Government of India called out Twitter for repeatedly violating national laws. The third flaw is the dichotomy between sites of innovation and those of regulation. The fourth flaw is the 'capabilities asymmetry' between geographies that impacts their response to technology and shapes trajectories of tech adoption. The last chapter, 'Rebooting History: A Rules-Based Order for the Digital Age', is the high point of the book, as it seeks to find a way out of the digital morass the world finds itself in. In the end, the authors come up with their verdict: 'Technology has been left for too long now to market forces. The speed at which technological breakthroughs are occurring has no historical precedent. They have disrupted almost every industry in every country, and the changes they introduce are already transforming existing systems of management and governance. The tail is wagging the dog. We elect governments, and digital tribes then try to dictate what the elected government should do.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It is, therefore, not surprising that trust in technology is declining and 'techlash' is becoming obvious. 'The digital age, with its dizzying ascent and all-encompassing impact on societies, may be on thinner ice than it knows. The disruption of truth and reality, the interference with borders both political and cultural, the weaponisation of technology, and the greed for global supremacy could make the fourth industrial revolution the shortest of all tech revolutions,' write the two authors as they ask governments and tech giants to pause and look for answers: 'How do we reboot the present to ensure that the future doesn't repeat the errors of the past? And if we don't, will the history of our digital societies be all too brief?' GeoTechnoGraphy is a pertinent, thought-provoking book. Given the time we live in, the book remains essential reading for all Indians. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Associated Press
18-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
TheLotter CEO Advocates for Clear Regulation During ECGC Panel on Gaming's Future
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., April 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- TheLotter Group CEO Yael Hertz was a featured panelist at the 28th Annual East Coast Gaming Conference (ECGC). Yael Hertz brings over a decade of expertise at the intersection of online gaming, financial services, and regulatory strategy. Hertz brought a unique perspective to the ECGC panel, 'Future Shock: Confronting Unprecedented Changes in Gaming', which explored how regulators, operators and suppliers in the gaming industry are adapting to transformative shifts impacting everything from licensing to market share and beyond. During the ECGC panel discussion, Hertz expressed the importance of regulatory framework and guidelines for lottery couriers being set forth by each state. She highlighted how having a clear regulatory framework helps everyone move forward with confidence — pointing to New Jersey and New York as a great example of effective collaboration between operators and regulators. As a leader in the lottery courier industry, TheLotter believes that real innovation starts with truly understanding the customers. Or as Hertz put it: 'When you understand the pain points and solve them in a way that builds trust, that's how you create meaningful, competitive offerings.' 'I'm excited to have been part of a panel that pushes the conversation forward in an industry that's constantly evolving,' said Hertz. 'Events like ECGC create invaluable opportunities for regulators, operators, and suppliers alike to come together and shape the future of gaming.' Since taking the helm at TheLotter Group in 2023, Hertz has spearheaded a strategic transformation within the company, with a strong focus on penetrating the U.S. market. Under her leadership, The Lotter Group secured its first U.S. licenses in New Jersey and New York and is actively pursuing additional state licenses as part of its expansion roadmap. Lloyd Levenson, co-founder of the ECGC, felt that it was essential to include TheLotter Group at this year's East Coast Gaming Conference, stating: 'Their insights offer a fresh and dynamic perspective on the evolving gaming landscape —from navigating complex regulatory hurdles to identifying new opportunities for growth in the Lottery Courier space.' TheLotter offers a modern solution to the lottery experience while also dedicating significant effort to upholding responsible gaming standards, such as self-exclusion and spend limits, which are difficult to implement in the retail environment. In addition, TheLotter collaborates with local retailers to fulfill online ticket orders, generating increased revenue for local businesses. At the same time, they make substantial marketing investments which help to raise awareness and drive engagement with state lotteries. By integrating technology, responsible gaming, and community partnership, TheLotter is helping strengthen the state lottery's ecosystem and increase funding for essential state-supported programs, such as education, veterans' services, and public infrastructure. TheLotter has been, and will continue to be active in lobbying each state to establish the regulatory framework necessary to promote transparency, responsibility, and growth—benefiting both customers and the state. About theLotter US: TheLotter US is a lottery courier service that provides US residents the opportunity to order official lottery tickets online, offering a secure and convenient way to participate in state lotteries. Lottery draw game tickets are purchased on a customer's behalf at a fully vetted and licensed lottery retailer. All prizes are paid out by the official state lotteries. Must be 18+ (21+ in AZ). GAMBLING PROBLEM? Call 800-GAMBLER®. Residents of NY call HOPEline at 877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369) or text HOPENY (467369). OR call 877-MYLIMIT. View original content: SOURCE TheLotter US
