MagazinesMIT Technology Review
AI professors are negotiating the new realities of academic research
Grace Huckins
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week, I headed 30 miles south of San Francisco to a hotel in Mountain View, California, to join some of the most accomplished, and some…
USS Theodore Roosevelt becomes first carrier with built-in Unmanned Air Warfare Center
Claire Barrett
The USS Theodore Roosevelt is now the first Navy carrier to be equipped with an Unmanned Air Warfare Center that will support the unmanned MQ-25A Stingray.
US Army exploring 50mm cannon to destroy drones
Michael Peck
The U.S. Army is looking for companies that can provide a 50mm cannon and ammunition capable of destroying a broad range of drones.
US Army general in Europe suddenly removed from command
Eve Sampson
The Army abruptly removed Lt. Gen Charles Costanza from command of V Corps.
US not disengaging from Asia, seeks ‘partners, not protectorates,’ says Pentagon official
Karen Lema, Reuters
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby reaffirmed the U.S. interest in the region as he called for greater burden-sharing and partnership.
US Navy tests AI-powered submarine hunter
Michael Peck
The U.S. Navy tested artificial intelligence-powered sonar to target submarines during the multinational Rim of the Pacific exercise.
Pentagon launches online marketplace for counter-UAS technology
Daniel Terrill
It’s like Amazon but only for defense agencies needing equipment for destroying commercial drones.
MagazinesMIT Technology Review
The Download: AI agents for science, and the “censorship-industrial complex”
Thomas Macaulay
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI for science needs reasoning, not just data —Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and the cofounder of Schmidt Sciences, and…
The Rise of the Fraud Economy
Christian Parenti
Fraud is an ancient practice, but these days its prevalence and scale seems to be increasing. The latest evidence for this comes from How to Rule the World, by the recent Stanford graduate Theo Baker.
MagazinesMIT Technology Review
AI for science needs reasoning, not just data
Eric Schmidt, Suhas Mahesh
Every few decades, someone announces that science has reached its end. In 1903, the revered physicist Albert Michelson wrote that the “facts of physical science have all been discovered.” In the 1980s, Stephen Hawking predicted that theoretical physics might be finished by the e…
MagazinesMIT Technology Review
These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs
Will Douglas Heaven
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Way back in the summer of 2017, AI researchers at Google put out a paper called “Attention Is All You Nee…
Navigating the Pivot From Tech Expert to Organizational Leader
Prachi Jain
The transition from a purely technical expert or individual contributor position to a broader leadership role is one of the most challenging phases in a STEM career. It requires moving away from relying solely on technical excellence toward mastering systems thinking, adaptive l…
MagazinesMIT Technology Review
The Download: a censorship conspiracy theory and the first virus created by AI
Thomas Macaulay
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy For years, narratives about a “censorship-ind…
MagazinesMIT Technology Review
How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy
Eileen Guo, Gisela Perez de Acha, Martin Sona
This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project. One morning in April 2025, employees of a small office in the US State Department got the email many of them had been dreading.  For months, Elon Musk’s Departmen…
The Folly of Burrito Populism
Darel E. Paul
No issue encapsulates Americans’ current political ennui more than grocery prices. A recent poll found they were the most common complaint of American consumers, more than housing, transportation, or health care.
The Statistics Behind the Jason Arday Scandal
Jukka Savolainen
In 2023, Jason Arday became the youngest black professor in Cambridge University’s history at age thirty-seven, when he was appointed to a chair in the sociology of education.
Why We Should Fight
Kori Schake
And where Trump went wrong.
America Must Let Go of the Middle East
Michael Fuchs
The Failed Iran war should spur a long-overdue withdrawal.
IEEE Course Teaches How to Use AI to Modernize Power Grids
Pauleth Jaramillo
Today’s U.S. electrical grid, among the largest, most complex systems ever built, is operating at its limit. The combination of rapid industrial growth, more frequent extreme weather, and a record surge in electricity use has pushed the grid to its breaking point , according to…
Why Democrats Can’t Stop the DSA
Alex Hogan
The Democratic Socialists of America’s hot socialist summer continues. Although the election remains too close to call as of this writing, Abdul El-Sayed looks likely to prevail in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, adding to a momentum that has been building for months.
The Right Way to Balance Trade
Lori Wallach
What Comes after the neoliberal order.
America’s Superintelligence Dilemma
Hal Brands
How to avoid an AI catastrophe.
Why R&D Waste Persists Despite Widespread AI Adoption
Patsnap
This report examines R&D waste and how AI adoption has outpaced the intelligence needed to make consequential decisions well. What Attendees will Learn Where R&D budget is lost. More than a third of organizations spend 25 to 40 percent of their R&D budget on projects that never…
Welcome to the Insane Clown Party
David Azerrad
There was a time, not too long ago, when the great threat to the right came from its left flank.
The New Forever Wars
Dafna H. Rand
How America gets stuck in its allies’ fights.
The System That Turned Paper Charts Into Digital Medical Records
Joanna Goodrich
Most hospitals and health care providers use electronic health records instead of paper charts to note patient vaccinations, diagnoses, and procedures. AthenaOne , Epic , and Oracle Health are some of the systems employed around the world. Many patients can access their electron…
Identifying the Root Cause of Electronics Failures With Simulation Apps
Joseph Carew
This article is brought to you by COMSOL . In pursuit of improved range, greater reliability, and faster charging, electric vehicles are driving the demand for high-voltage electronics. Other applications driving this demand include wind farms, data centers, and server farms, to…
The Racial Crossroads
Helen Andrews
American race relations are at a crossroads. In the years since our current racial bargain was struck in the 1960s, our country has coped with its contradictions and imperfections by the very American method of muddling through.
Fridays With Bob
Harry Goldstein
When I started at Spectrum 25 years ago, a senior editor suggested that I find a “rabbi,” by which he meant someone who could mentor me in how EEs approach problems and evaluate potential solutions. I didn’t find one right away. Then in 2005 we decided to do a special report, fo…
The New Old Middle East
F. Gregory Gause III
Wars of sound and fury.
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
How Finitude Makes Us Happy — My Final Post
Brendan Foht
She looked her age — 27, startlingly close to my own age. Did we share acquaintances or friends of friends? She fixed her hair in a ponytail and wore jeans and a collared shirt with a sweater, a preppy and youthful fashion statement consistent with her budding career as an archi…
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
The Art of Prognostication
Brendan Foht
Her oncologist sent her in to the emergency room. The diagnosis was metastatic gallbladder cancer aggressively invading her liver, resulting in liver failure. I went down to the emergency room to see her. She only spoke Bengali, so every conversation required a phone interpreter…
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
Death in the Young
Brendan Foht
In war, those with their lives yet to be lived are also those most urgently needed to fight. It is one of the tragic ironies of conflict. In the U.S. Civil War, the average soldier was 26 and approximately 620,000 soldiers died. In World War I, over 2 million German soldiers die…
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
Let Them Visit
Brendan Foht
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, hospital administrators behaved as cautiously as possible to avoid transmission and dissemination of the virus. They strictly limited or eliminated hospital visitors. This was one of the most devastating policies enacted by healthcare i…
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
The Other Victims of Covid-19
Samuel Matlack
“I just want to run this case by you,” the emergency room doctor at the other hospital told me on the phone. We frequently get these calls from other hospitals. Smaller emergency rooms with fewer resources often don’t know what to do in complex situations. After all, scientific…
MagazinesThe New Atlantis
The Absent Oncologist
Aaron Rothstein
We admitted the patient to our service from the emergency room to treat her for thrombocytopenia (an abnormally low platelet count) and spontaneous bruising. The patient, in her fifties, was otherwise healthy. True, she had been treated for stomach cancer nearly seven years ago,…