🔮 Taiwan's titanic power; Covid's gender shock; AI’s lousy year; flight simulators, the CIA & cephalopods ++ #304

Also we talk about social network policy. It's worth reading.

Hi, I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies.

🎧 In the second part of my discussion with author and activist Cory Doctorow, we discuss the decade of antitrust and how a future wave of antitrust lawsuits could unleash innovation across sectors. Don’t want to take up too much of your time this week, but this is a cracker of a chat.

Dept of the near future

🌎 What’s the most important place in the world for technology? It’s not Silicon Valley but the tiny island of Taiwan. Through savvy (and steady) R&D investments since World War II, Taiwan and South Korea have become the undisputed global leaders in computer chip production. What set Taiwan apart from others was its early investment in local research facilities and the Silicon Valley approach to startups. With the global demand for faster and thinner chips, Taiwan’s position as a kingmaker in geopolitics comes…