When Vice President JD Vance appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, anchor Kristen Welker asked him a simple question: Is the United States now at war with Iran?  In response, Vance said, “We’re not at war with Iran; we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” This is akin to saying that, in attacking […]

For more than half a century, the American right has preached the virtues of free markets and low taxes and deregulation. But a new wave of conservative thinkers are now arguing that Republicans have been wrong — or at the very least misguided — about the economy.  This new economic thinking represents a break from […]

President Donald Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign for president that America had fought “no wars” during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years who could say that.  This was not, strictly speaking, true. In his first term, Trump intensified the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, […]

Lee Kuan Yew, the iron-willed founder of modern Singapore, was once asked what the most important invention of the 20th century was. He didn’t say penicillin, which has saved over 500 million lives, or the nuclear bomb, which has shaped geopolitics like nothing before. He didn’t even say TV!  Instead, Lee had a simple two-word […]

In 2023, one popular perspective on AI went like this: Sure, it can generate lots of impressive text, but it can’t truly reason — it’s all shallow mimicry, just “stochastic parrots” squawking.  At the time, it was easy to see where this perspective was coming from. Artificial intelligence had moments of being impressive and interesting, […]