🔮 Moore’s law^2; the Trojan horse; Amazon puzzle; North Korean elites, new blood group, bacteria furniture ++ #492
An insider’s guide to AI and exponential technologies
Hi, it’s Azeem. Welcome to the free edition of the Sunday Exponential View. Every week, I help you ask the right questions and think more clearly about technology and the near future. For more, see Speaking | Book | Top posts | Follow me on Notes
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Ideas of the week
Can you trust your iPhone?
Mossad’s alleged detonation of 5,000 Hezbollah pagers reveals a new frontier in digital warfare: the weaponisation of the electronics supply chain. Now that Israel has demonstrated this capability on a large scale, we can expect others to try the same. It marks a dramatic increase in the attack surface. Every electronic device, from smartphones to connected watches, becomes a potential remote-controlled grenade. For the West, consider that 95% of Apple’s products are made in China, a country many see as an adversary. This creates a vast, potentially compromised supply chain. Just this week the FBI announced that they dismantled a Chinese IoT botnet that went undetected for four years. Such scenarios may well have informed America’s recent policy shifts. The CHIPS Act, for instance, aims to purge critical supply chains—particularly in semiconductors—of Chinese firms. Uncle Sam views these companies as potential Trojan horses, offering Beijing a back door to access, manipulate or compromise technologies vital to national security. The world's vectors of vulnerability have just become exponentially more complex.
See also: Meta bans Russia’s state media RT for foreign interference.
Moore’s law ^2
AI is undergoing a virtuous cycle. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang notes that the technology improves computer systems, which in turn trains better AI models…
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Everyday office delivery
What does Amazon know that others don’t? The company’s diktat that all employees must work from the office five days a week puzzles me…
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21st-century incel man
As women gain economic independence and societal norms evolve, traditional marriage incentives are diminishing. Social scientist
argues that stable unions will persist only if one of the following conditions are met: societies remain conservative, women stay economically dependent, or men offer appealing companionship…Only for paying members
Biological bits
The long-awaited convergence of biology and computing is gathering pace on three fronts: brain-computer interfaces, natural computing and synthetic biology. In BCIs, Neuralink has just received FDA approval for a device that allows the blind to see (albeit with Atari-level graphics)…
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Data
60% of open-source maintainers are unpaid hobbyists (and ageing).
Modern high-voltage batteries can outlast a vehicle's time, experiencing a degradation rate of just 1.8% per year, significantly improved from 2.3% in 2019.
X revenues declined 25% in Q2 and 84% compared to Q2 2022.
South Korean companies were the top investors in the US last year, investing a record $21.5 billion.
Today’s edition of Exponential View in full — all five key ideas of the week, all morsels and four additional data points from energy industry, cyber security and AI.
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Short morsels to appear smart at dinner parties
🏃♂️ The number of elite North Korean defectors tripled in 2023.
💡This brutalist lamp is made of bacteria-based concrete.
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Saturday reflections
In this week’s Saturday essay, I ask you to really embrace the exponential curve.
🔥 Feel the exponential
Sometimes a simple observation can be more predictive than a brick-by-brick analysis. This week was such a week.