I write about AI and Geopolitics
Bill Friend I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something I don’t believe gets enough attention in public discussions of frontier AI. We still tend to talk about AI progress as though it unfolds on a curve we can roughly track. Models improve. Benchmarks rise. Products get better. The line moves upward. Even when the pace feels … Read more
Israel’s AI Revolution — Part 4 NSO’s Reinvention In January 2026, NSO Group released a new transparency report. The company said it was entering “a new phase of accountability.” The document gave away almost nothing: fewer disclosures than in prior years, no customer numbers, no country names, no meaningful account of investigations into misuse. It … Read more
Supporting AI’s development does not mean suspending judgment about its costs. In an age of climate anxiety, societies are being asked to accept a great many things on faith. Build more transmission. Build more batteries. Build more solar. Build more nuclear. Build more cooling. Build more computation. Much of that may in fact be necessary. … Read more
Why Ignorance Isn’t Passive—It’s Political Geopolitics is usually explained through the visible tools of power: armies, sanctions, trade routes, energy supplies, borders, and alliances. Those things matter. But another force at work in world affairs gets far less attention than it should: the social power of looking away. When a population gets used to not … Read more
People throw around the phrase “corporations are people” so often that it has started to sound almost meaningless. But my concern is not the slogan itself. My concern is what follows from it when power begins to concentrate in the executive branch. If the government can treat a corporation as a rights-bearing legal person when … Read more