When I first saw the photos of all of the tech broligarchy lined up behind Donald Trump on his inauguration day something struck me as off. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me until now. I realised they didn't just look like very powerful attendees, they looked much more like very powerful shareholders in government - and unelected ones at that. We can see today where that power translates directly into US government policymaking with the reductions on certain tech tariffs from China. Let's look at what that means for Apple alone. With 90% of iPhones manufactured in China, Apple faced potential price increases of up to $3,500 per phone under the proposed 145% tariff. In 2024, US imports of smartphones from China were valued at $41.7bn while laptops were valued at $33.1bn. The tariff exemption therefore translates into avoided costs of approximately $60bn annually for these two categories alone. And while Apple will have only a share of that benefit, it's a staggering return for Tim Cook's donation of $1m to Trump’s inaugural committee - which also marked Cook’s first time attending a presidential inauguration, despite his political views often differing from Trump’s policies. But it's not only tech’s influence in policymaking areas such as tariffs that directly affect their bottom line, we need to think about their broader reach in the realm of geopolitics. Where did the ideas of making Canada the 51st State, or annexing Greenland actually emerge from? If there was a policy vacuum here it was neatly filled by none other than Elon Musk drawing on the ideas of his maternal grandfather Joshua Norman Haldeman. Haldeman was a key proponent of the Technocracy movement which started in the early 1930s in the US and then spread to Canada. It proposed the creation of the Technate of America. This would do away with borders, merging the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America and Greenland into a single nation under a regime of engineers and technicians. Sounds familiar, right? Its essential argument was that there was no room for politics in society and that engineers and scientists were best placed to decide what was best for citizens in terms of organising resources and society. In 2019 Musk tweeted on X, “Accelerating Starship development to build the Martian Technocracy”. Except now it looks like he is not waiting to do it on Mars, he's doing it here in real time. The idea of the futility of the nation state and of politics in favour of new technological frontiers is echoed in The sovereign individual published in 1997. This book examined the social, economic and political implications of the coming technology on society and particularly politics and governments. Authors James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg - father of Jacob Rees-Mogg - wrote, “Representative democracy as it is now known will fade away to be replaced by the new democracy of choice in the cybermarketplace. If our deductions are correct the politics of the next century will be much more varied and less important than that to which we have become accustomed. The 20th century nation-state will starve to death as its tax revenues decline,” Or, as Mark Zuckerberg puts it, “Companies not countries”. The authors also predicted the impact of coming technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) when they wrote, “Lifetime employment will disappear as jobs increasingly become tasks or piece work rather than positions within an organisation. New survival strategies will evolve involving greater concentration on the development of leisure skills, sports abilities as well as providing services to the growing numbers of sovereign individuals as income inequality within jurisdictions rises.”  The tome has had a substantial impact in Silicon Valley with Rees-Mogg travelling there more than a decade after the book's publication to discuss it with students at Stanford University. In 2014, PayPal founder and Trump advisor Peter Thiel told Forbes magazine that The sovereign individual had influenced him more than any other book. Indeed, in recently republished versions of the book Thiel has provided a new foreword. And Thiel’s investments align with these principles where he believes that cryptocurrency ventures will bypass traditional monetary systems. Expect further policy reach in the future in the provision of universal basic income (UBI), which many of these tech bros are very keen on. They understand more than most how many professions are under threat and how many people will be left without work. What are people to do when their labour is no longer required? Perhaps they will spend their time in the fantasy worlds created by technologists, doomscrolling endlessly on Insta and other platforms while being paid by the government via UBI. This is what the author Jonathan Taplin tackles in his book The end of reality when he says “That is my greatest fear: that enchanted by the magic of the Technocrats’ immutable money, infinite frontiers, eternal life we will sleep through a right-wing revolution and wake up to find our democracy gone and our children being turned into Meta cyborgs”. And if you think having Trump as President of the United States with Elon Musk as his sidekick is a nightmare, ponder if you will the dystopian prospect of Mark Zuckerberg running for the highest office. Can you imagine the data he has amassed that could be used to further his political ambitions? What opponents might be suppressed or compromised? Yet as described in Sarah Wynn-Williams recent book Careless people, Zuckerberg has already paved the way for his political ambitions from as far back as 2017 when he finally realised how important Facebook was in the election of Donald Trump. In her insider account, Wynn-Williams wrote, “He also had Facebook’s board approve a new stock structure that would allow him to run for office. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission expressly allows Mark Zuckerberg to leave Facebook for up to two years without losing control of the company if his absence is ‘in connection with his serving in a government position or office’.” These are not benign actors, scrappy startup founders who move fast and break things - they share world views that are destroying our democracies as we know it. Yet politicians are in thrall to the power that these men yield. We may already be existing in the new technocracy for our times. They already decide how and when we should use their products, removing our choice and agency – consider the recent inclusion of Meta AI into WhatsApp, which you cannot turn off. Ronald Reagan once said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” So if you hear, “I’m from the technocracy and I’m here to help,” you won't be surprised if it's our new form of government. Read more about Trump and tech EU looks to ramp up sovereign tech as Trump trade war begins - Trump’s trade war is now looking at the EU, with tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. Could US tech be in the firing line? Trump has won - but he cannot defeat the inevitability of digital change - After Donald Trump’s first presidential election victory in 2016, Computer Weekly wrote about how the technology sector had contributed to and enabled the controversial reality TV star’s political ascent. How will Trump’s tariffs hit tech? We examine the potential impact of additional US tariffs on the global tech supply chain.

Beats announces another foray into mobile accessories, releasing a collection of charging cords full of color, style, and compatibility with almost any mobile device.

As threat intelligence shows ransomware attacks surging by up to 1,400%, do not ignore this critical FBI warning.

Recap: TechTuber Necroware recently completed repairs on two Creative Sound Blaster cards from the 1990s. These repairs come at a time when dedicated sound cards are increasingly rare. Modern motherboards offer high-quality onboard audio, and many users – especially those on laptops – opt for USB-connected DACs for enhanced sound. Still, for enthusiasts like Necroware, restoring vintage hardware is as much about the journey as the result. The first project focused on a 1994 Creative Sound Blaster 16 (CT2230), a card that had seen better days. "It looked a bit scruffy," Necroware admitted, noting the missing bracket and visible abrasions on the PCB – remnants of previous repair attempts. A post-it note served as a reminder of a broken trace, the card's central issue. With a digital microscope, Necroware quickly located the fault and used his soldering station to bridge the gap with a wire. The repair was straightforward, and DOS Unisound drivers soon recognized the card. Testing the card in Descent II, Necroware reported that the Yamaha OPL3 FM synthesizer "played the music track nicely," and the stereo digital audio was clear. He turned to modern technology to address the missing bracket, fashioning a sturdy 3D-printed replacement. "The plastic bracket was thick, but this was necessary for strength, and it still fit OK," he explained. The second card, a Creative Sound Blaster 16 IDE (CT2290), presented a far more significant challenge. Having languished in Necroware's to-do pile and served as a donor for other repairs, the CT2290 was in rough shape. When first installed, the system failed to detect it, showing "no signs of life at all." Necroware recalled previous issues with the data bus transceiver and buffer, which are common trouble spots for this model. Still, initial attempts to fix a line of faulty resistors yielded no results. Shifting focus, he probed the larger integrated circuits and decided to replace a misbehaving bus transceiver. This move paid off: the Unisound driver finally recognized the card. // Related Stories However, the victory was short-lived. While Wolfenstein 3D's menu played sound, in-game audio samples were missing, and Descent II produced similar results – music but no sound effects. Stumped, Necroware consulted a Sound Blaster 16 hardware programming guide, which pointed him toward a missing CT1748A chip. The chip, previously removed for another project, was a rare find. To ease future repairs, Necroware installed a socket in its place. With the chip reinstalled, the card finally functioned as intended. "Necroware now has two working Sound Blaster 16 cards for projects," the video concluded. The story didn't end there. A viewer pointed out that the elaborate CT1748A chip replacement might have been unnecessary. "Setting a jumper on the PCB (or bridging two pads) could route digital audio to avoid this digital signal processor chip," the commenter noted, suggesting a more straightforward solution was available all along.

If you have ever rented a car from Hertz, you might want to check your credit reports and keep an eye out for any unusual activity. The car rental giant sent a notice to customers warning of a data breach that took place between October and December 2024. According to the notice, Hertz confirmed on February 10 that “data was acquired by an unauthorized third party.” Its analysis of the at-risk data concluded on April 2, 2025. In other words, your personal data, including your name, contact information, date of birth, credit card information, driver’s license information, and even worker’s compensation claims could have been exposed. Further, “a very small number of individuals may have had their Social Security or other government identification numbers, passport information, Medicare or Medicaid ID” information leaked as well. Recommended Videos The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that more than $12.5 billion was lost to fraud in 2024. Hertz is a national company with locations in all 50 states, so customers across the country are potentially at risk. The leaked information is potentially enough for a bad actor to steal the identity of those affected, so be wary of suspicious purchases or credit cards opened in your name. Hertz That said, Hertz hasn’t received any reports of damages caused by the leak. “While Hertz is not aware of any misuse of personal information for fraudulent purposes in connection with the event, we encourage potentially impacted individuals, as a best practice, to remain vigilant to the possibility of fraud or errors by reviewing account statements and monitoring free credit reports for any unauthorized activity and reporting any such activity,” the company writes. Related Protecting your personal data is difficult in today’s digital world, especially when exploits like the one used to target Hertz are difficult to detect in real time. While you can’t do much about your data once it’s in the hands of a company, you can protect yourself while browsing the web by using a VPN and applying smart safety practices. Editors’ Recommendations

The real long-term bogey FCC head Brendan Carr tells Europe to get on board with Starlink Author of Project 2025 chapter says EU regulators have “bias” against US tech firms. Kieran Smith and Peggy Hollinger, Financial Times – Apr 15, 2025 9:27 am | 59 A Starlink satellite dish in Oriximiná, Brazil on August 9, 2023. Credit: Getty Images | Tarcisio Schnaider A Starlink satellite dish in Oriximiná, Brazil on August 9, 2023. Credit: Getty Images | Tarcisio Schnaider Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more One of President Donald Trump’s top officials has warned European allies hesitant about working with Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company that they needed to choose between US and Chinese technology. Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told the Financial Times that “allied western democracies” needed to “focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party.” His comments come as European governments and some European companies consider whether Starlink—which is owned by Musk’s SpaceX and provides satellite broadband and limited mobile services—is a reliable partner after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine. Carr, a longtime ally of Musk who Trump tapped to run the agency after his re-election as president, said it was “unfortunate” that politics appeared to be influencing long-term decisions. “If you’re concerned about Starlink, just wait for the CCP’s version, then you’ll be really worried,” he said. UK telecoms companies BT and Virgin Media 02 are among the companies trialling Starlink’s technology for mobile or broadband services—although neither has yet signed a full agreement with the provider. Carr has previously argued in favor of Musk’s businesses in the US, claiming they had been targets of “regulatory harassment” ever since the billionaire took over Twitter in 2022. He has also repeatedly suggested that Joe Biden’s administration discriminated against Starlink by denying it US government subsidies for rural broadband. Carr told the FT that he believed Europe was “caught” between Washington and Beijing and warned of a “great divide” opening up between “CCP-aligned countries and others” in artificial intelligence and satellite technology. The FCC chair—who authored a chapter of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a Republican presidency published by the rightwing Heritage Foundation—said European regulators had a “bias” against US technological companies. He also accused the European Commission of “protectionism” and an “anti-American” attitude. “If Europe has its own satellite constellation then great, I think the more the better. But more broadly, I think Europe is caught a little bit between the US and China. And it’s sort of time for choosing,” he said. The European Commission said it had “always enforced and would continue to enforce laws fairly and without discrimination to all companies operating in the EU, in full compliance with global rules.” Shares in European satellite providers such as Eutelsat and SES soared in recent weeks despite the companies’ heavy debts, in response to the commission saying that Brussels “should fund Ukrainian [military] access to services that can be provided by EU-based commercial providers.” Industry experts warned that despite the positivity, no single European network could yet compete with Starlink’s offering. Carr said that European telecoms companies Nokia and Ericsson should move more of their manufacturing to the US as both face being hit with Trump’s import tariffs. The two companies are the largest vendors of mobile network infrastructure equipment in the US. Carr said there had been a historic “mistake” in US industrial policy, which meant there was no significant American company competing in the telecom vendor market. “I don’t love that current situation we’re in,” he said. Carr added that he would “look at” granting the companies faster regulatory clearances on new technology if they moved to the US. Last month, Ericsson chief executive Börje Ekholm told the FT the company would consider expanding manufacturing in the US depending on how potential tariffs affected it. The Swedish telecoms equipment maker first opened an American factory in Lewisville, Texas, in 2020. “We’ve been ramping up [production in the US] already. Do we need bigger changes? We will have to see,” Ekholm added. Nokia said that the US was the company’s “second home.” “Around 90 percent of all US communications utilizes Nokia equipment at some point. We have five manufacturing sites and five R&D hubs in the US including Nokia Bell Labs,” they added. Ericsson declined to comment. © 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way. Kieran Smith and Peggy Hollinger, Financial Times Kieran Smith and Peggy Hollinger, Financial Times 59 Comments

John Edwards, Technology Journalist & AuthorApril 15, 20255 Min Readeverything possible via Alamy Stock PhotoFew IT leaders dispute the fact that AI is this decade's breakthrough technology. Yet this wasn't always the case. In fact, until relatively recently, many AI cynics failed to recognize the technology's potential and, therefore, fell behind more astute competitors. As they begin to make up for lost time, business and technology leaders should focus on key readiness areas: data infrastructure, governance, regulatory compliance, risk management, and workforce training, says Jim Rowan, head of AI at Deloitte Consulting. "These foundational steps are essential for success in an AI-driven future," he notes in an email interview. Rowan cites Deloitte's most recent State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report, in which 78% of respondents stated they expect to increase their overall AI spending in the next fiscal year. However, the majority of organizations anticipate it will take at least a year to overcome adoption challenges. "These findings underscore the importance of a deliberate yet agile approach to AI readiness that addresses both regulation and talent challenges to AI adoption." Getting Ready The key to getting up to speed in AI lies in hiring the best advisor you can find, someone who has expertise in your company's area, advises Melissa Ruzzi, AI director at SaaS security firm AppOmni. "Some companies think the best way is to hire grad students fresh out of college," she notes via email. Yet nothing beats domain expertise and implementation experience. "This is the fastest way to catch up." Related:Many organizations underestimate the amount of cultural change needed to help team members adopt and effectively use AI technologies, Rowan says. Workforce training and education early in the AI journey is essential. To foster familiarity and innovation, team members need access to AI tools as well as hands-on experience. "Talent and training gaps can't be overlooked if organizations aim to achieve sustained growth and maximize ROI," he says. Every company has multiple projects that can benefit from AI, Ruzzi says. "It's best to have an in-house AI expert who understands the technology and its applications," she advises. "If not, hire consultants and contractors with domain experience to help decide where to get started." Many new AI adopters begin by focusing on internal projects tied to customer delivery timelines, Ruzzi says. Others decide to start with a small customer-facing project so they can prove AI's added value. The decision depends very much on the ROI goal, she notes. "Small projects of short duration can be a good starting point, so the success can be more quickly measured." Related:Security Matters AI security must always be addressed and ensured, regardless of the project's size or scope, Ruzzi advises. View developing an initial AI project as being similar to installing a new SaaS application, she suggests. "It's crucial to make sure that configurations, such as accessibility and access to data aren't posing a risk of public data exposure or, worse yet, are vulnerable to data injection that could poison your models." To minimize the security risk created by novice AI teams, start with simple implementations and proofs of concepts, such as internal chatbots, recommends David Brauchler, technical director and head of AI and ML security at cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group. "Starting slow enables application architects and developers to consider the intricacies AI introduces to application threat models," he explains in an email interview. AI also creates new data risk concerns, including the technology's inability to reliably distinguish between trusted and untrusted content. "Application designers need to consider risks that they might not be used to addressing in traditional software stacks," Brauchler says. Related:Organizations should already be training their employees on the risks associated with AI as part of their standard security training, Brauchler advises. "Training programs help address common pitfalls organizations encounter that lead to shadow AI and data leakage," he says. Organizations that aren't already providing guidance on security issues should incorporate these risks into their training programs as quickly as they can. "For employees who contribute to the software development lifecycle, technical training should begin before developing AI applications." Final Thoughts As organizations gain experience with GenAI, they will begin to understand both the rewards and challenges of deploying the technology at scale, Rowan says. "The need for disciplined action has grown," he observes. As technical preparedness has improved, regulatory uncertainty and risk management have emerged as significant barriers to AI progress, particularly for newcomers, Rowan says. "Talent and workforce issues remain important, yet access to specialized technical talent no longer seems to be a dire emergency." Although tempting, Brauchler warns against rushing into AI. "AI will still be here in a few years [and] taking a thoughtful, measured approach to AI business strategy and security is the best way to avoid unnecessary risks," he concludes.About the AuthorJohn EdwardsTechnology Journalist & AuthorJohn Edwards is a veteran business technology journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous business and technology publications, including Computerworld, CFO Magazine, IBM Data Management Magazine, RFID Journal, and Electronic Design. He has also written columns for The Economist's Business Intelligence Unit and PricewaterhouseCoopers' Communications Direct. John has authored several books on business technology topics. His work began appearing online as early as 1983. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, he wrote daily news and feature articles for both the CompuServe and Prodigy online services. His "Behind the Screens" commentaries made him the world's first known professional blogger.See more from John EdwardsWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

Last week, I spoke with two US Marines who spent much of last year deployed in the Pacific, conducting training exercises from South Korea to the Philippines. Both were responsible for analyzing surveillance to warn their superiors about possible threats to the unit. But this deployment was unique: For the first time, they were using generative AI to scour intelligence, through a chatbot interface similar to ChatGPT.  As I wrote in my new story, this experiment is the latest evidence of the Pentagon’s push to use generative AI—tools that can engage in humanlike conversation—throughout its ranks, for tasks including surveillance. Consider this phase two of the US military’s AI push, where phase one began back in 2017 with older types of AI, like computer vision to analyze drone imagery. Though this newest phase began under the Biden administration, there’s fresh urgency as Elon Musk’s DOGE and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth push loudly for AI-fueled efficiency.  As I also write in my story, this push raises alarms from some AI safety experts about whether large language models are fit to analyze subtle pieces of intelligence in situations with high geopolitical stakes. It also accelerates the US toward a world where AI is not just analyzing military data but suggesting actions—for example, generating lists of targets. Proponents say this promises greater accuracy and fewer civilian deaths, but many human rights groups argue the opposite.  With that in mind, here are three open questions to keep your eye on as the US military, and others around the world, bring generative AI to more parts of the so-called “kill chain.” What are the limits of “human in the loop”? Talk to as many defense-tech companies as I have and you’ll hear one phrase repeated quite often: “human in the loop.” It means that the AI is responsible for particular tasks, and humans are there to check its work. It’s meant to be a safeguard against the most dismal scenarios—AI wrongfully ordering a deadly strike, for example—but also against more trivial mishaps. Implicit in this idea is an admission that AI will make mistakes, and a promise that humans will catch them. But the complexity of AI systems, which pull from thousands of pieces of data, make that a herculean task for humans, says Heidy Khlaaf, who is chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a research organization, and previously led safety audits for AI-powered systems. “‘Human in the loop’ is not always a meaningful mitigation,” she says. When an AI model relies on thousands of data points to draw conclusions, “it wouldn’t really be possible for a human to sift through that amount of information to determine if the AI output was erroneous.” As AI systems rely on more and more data, this problem scales up.  Is AI making it easier or harder to know what should be classified? In the Cold War era of US military intelligence, information was captured through covert means, written up into reports by experts in Washington, and then stamped “Top Secret,” with access restricted to those with proper clearances. The age of big data, and now the advent of generative AI to analyze that data, is upending the old paradigm in lots of ways. One specific problem is called classification by compilation. Imagine that hundreds of unclassified documents all contain separate details of a military system. Someone who managed to piece those together could reveal important information that on its own would be classified. For years, it was reasonable to assume that no human could connect the dots, but this is exactly the sort of thing that large language models excel at.  With the mountain of data growing each day, and then AI constantly creating new analyses, “I don’t think anyone’s come up with great answers for what the appropriate classification of all these products should be,” says Chris Mouton, a senior engineer for RAND, who recently tested how well suited generative AI is for intelligence and analysis. Underclassifying is a US security concern, but lawmakers have also criticized the Pentagon for overclassifying information.  The defense giant Palantir is positioning itself to help, by offering its AI tools to determine whether a piece of data should be classified or not. It’s also working with Microsoft on AI models that would train on classified data.  How high up the decision chain should AI go? Zooming out for a moment, it’s worth noting that the US military’s adoption of AI has in many ways followed consumer patterns. Back in 2017, when apps on our phones were getting good at recognizing our friends in photos, the Pentagon launched its own computer vision effort, called Project Maven, to analyze drone footage and identify targets. Now, as large language models enter our work and personal lives through interfaces such as ChatGPT, the Pentagon is tapping some of these models to analyze surveillance.  So what’s next? For consumers, it’s agentic AI, or models that can not just converse with you and analyze information but go out onto the internet and perform actions on your behalf. It’s also personalized AI, or models that learn from your private data to be more helpful.  All signs point to the prospect that military AI models will follow this trajectory as well. A report published in March from Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology found a surge in military adoption of AI to assist in decision-making. “Military commanders are interested in AI’s potential to improve decision-making, especially at the operational level of war,” the authors wrote. In October, the Biden administration released its national security memorandum on AI, which provided some safeguards for these scenarios. This memo hasn’t been formally repealed by the Trump administration, but President Trump has indicated that the race for competitive AI in the US needs more innovation and less oversight. Regardless, it’s clear that AI is quickly moving up the chain not just to handle administrative grunt work, but to assist in the most high-stakes, time-sensitive decisions.  I’ll be following these three questions closely. If you have information on how the Pentagon might be handling these questions, please reach out via Signal at jamesodonnell.22.  This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub, believes AI "democratizes" access to software development. GitHub 2025-04-15T14:20:46Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke believes coding should be taught as a core subject in schools. In a recent podcast interview, he said AI "democratizes" access to software development. Current developers should every tool available to keep sharpening their skills, the CEO added. You should still learn to code, says GitHub's CEO. And you should start as soon as possible."I strongly believe that every kid, every child, should learn coding," Thomas Dohmke said in a recent podcast interview with EO. "We should actually teach them coding in school, in the same way that we teach them physics and geography and literacy and math and what-not."Coding, he added, is one such fundamental skill — and the only reason it's not part of the curriculum is because it took "us too long to actually realize that."Dohmke, who's been a programmer since the 90s, said he's never seen "anything more exciting" than the current moment in engineering — the advent of AI, he believes, has made the field that much easier to break into, and is poised to make software more ubiquitous than ever."It's so much easier to get into software development. You can just write a prompt into Copilot or ChatGPT or similar tools, and it will likely write you a basic webpage, or a small application, a game in Python," Dohmke said. "And so, AI makes software development so much more accessible for anyone who wants to learn coding."AI, Dohmke said, helps to "realize the dream" of bringing an idea to life, meaning that fewer projects will end up dead in the water, and smaller teams of developers will be enabled to tackle larger-scale projects. Dohmke said he believes it makes the overall process of creation more efficient."You see some of the early signs of that, where very small startups — sometimes five developers and some of them actually only one developer — believe they can become million, if not billion dollar businesses by leveraging all the AI agents that are available to them," he added.Dohmke isn't the only tech leader to have identified the potential for leaner workforces — Garry Tan, CEO and president of famed Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, previously said he believes AI-assisted coding, or "vibe coding," now allows 10 or so engineers to build what would've once required the efforts of "50 or 100." Shrinking tech teams, however, could mean even fewer openings in software development, leading to anxiety around job replacement."The anxiety is understandable, but time and again, developers have discovered how to channel the new capabilities into entire domains of innovation that didn't exist before," Dohmke wrote in a January blog post. "They have always used automation to make their life easier."Though the tools are new, the mindset that GitHub's CEO said will best allow programmers to take advantage of them is anything but. For those already in the industry, Dohmke advises retaining a sense of curiosity and using everything on hand to continually sharpen their skills."You got to keep rehearsing. You got to keep training. You got to keep learning. You're never done with learning," he said. "If I look back 30 years of what development looked like back then and what it looks like now, I would have been very behind if I hadn't constantly read blogposts, literature, and tried out things myself." Recommended video

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policy, in which he declared trade war on the entire world simultaneously, was a bizarre and nonsensical undertaking, seemingly shaped only by the president’s own whims.But since that initial announcement, the policy has been modified to bear at least a little bit more of a resemblance to what Trump’s more sophisticated advisers wanted.That is: Now, the toughest tariffs by far are on China, and they’re paired with relatively much lower (but still significant) tariffs on the rest of the world while the administration seeks trade deals with various countries in hopes of forming a trade coalition against China.Trump’s advisers hope that this policy will achieve several things at once: bring manufacturing (and manufacturing jobs) back to the US, address national security concerns about dependence on China, boost US exports, raise revenue to help address the US national debt — and maybe even pave the way toward a restructuring of the global currency system.If all that sounds fanciful, that’s because it’s extremely fanciful. Many of those hoped-for benefits are quite implausible and extremely difficult to achieve. Tariffs, meanwhile, bring extremely significant costs and downsides that could very easily wreck his team’s hopes of trying to achieve those lofty aims.Furthermore, even Trump’s revised tariff policy isn’t at all well-tailored to achieve those aims — it’s still beating up allies we’d need against China, and targeting goods and industries it would make little sense to produce in the US. And his erratic implementation gets in the way even more by ruining businesses’ attempts to plan.In practice, the only thing Trump is really doing is economic damage – by making things more expensive, chilling investment in the US, reducing confidence in the US’s stability, and casting a pall of uncertainty over everything.What Trump’s relatively more sophisticated advisers say they’re trying to doIt’s hard to find any defenses of Trump’s actual “Liberation Day” as implemented that pass the laugh test, since the policy was so obviously incoherent and the repudiation by the markets was so scathing.But there’s been much bipartisan agreement in recent years that something has gone awry in the global trading system, and that the US needs to do something about it.Trump has his own peculiar instincts on what exactly the problem is (he is fixated on the US’s bilateral trade deficits with other countries, believing they signify other countries are beating us). However, some of his advisers and outside defenders — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Council of Economic Advisers chair Stephen Miran, and ubiquitous pro-tariff conservative commentator Oren Cass — have tried to put forward a more intellectually sophisticated plan for tariff and trade reform.They believe that the US needs to revitalize manufacturing at home, for a variety of reasons. There’s the “making things” argument: that being a global leader in manufacturing advanced technologies would be strategically and economically beneficial. There’s the jobs argument: that new manufacturing jobs would be good for Americans “left behind’ by globalization. There’s also a national security argument: that the US’s dependence on China for critical goods, materials, and supply chains would be quite dangerous if the two nations come into serious conflict. The anti-China security case intertwines with the belief that they’re undercutting (or outcompeting) us economically. The argument goes that tariffs, by making foreign goods newly expensive, will help incentivize a new US manufacturing boom that provides jobs for Americans and puts critical industries back under our control. But to some Trump advisers, tariffs are just phase one in the plan. Truly revitalizing US manufacturing and exports, they say, requires much more sweeping change — and the key to unlocking this change is revaluing the US dollar.In recent years, the dollar has been strong, which makes it more expensive for foreigners to purchase US-made goods. They argue that the ultimate endgame of the trade war should be to bring countries to the table to forge a global accord to weaken the dollar. This, they believe, could truly help US exports compete on a global playing field again. And a weaker dollar would have the added benefit of making the federal government’s sizable interest payments on its debt more affordable.What could go wrong?Will new high tariffs bring sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows to the American economy?To put it mildly, completely restructuring the global economy is easier said than done. But trying to do so mainly through tariffs seems extremely risky and likely to backfire.In practice, the main thing tariffs do is make imports more expensive. That applies to imports that US consumers buy. But it also applies to imported parts and materials that US manufacturers use. So the price of US-made products will go up too.Generally, when a lot of things suddenly get more expensive, people and businesses cut back their spending. Economic activity drops: growth and investment slow down. The stock market selloffs starting the day after “Liberation Day” — and the rally when Trump announced a 90-day pause on many tariffs the following week — show that investors are very scared about the impact on businesses.The more sweeping and severe the tariffs, the more painful the economic damage will be. And it will be quite hard to conjure up a new US manufacturing boom if both investors and consumers are cutting back their spending due to recession fears.The flipside to that is that the weaker the tariffs are and the more temporary they appear to be, the less likely they are to achieve the Trump’s team’s ambitious aims of revitalizing US manufacturing and reducing dependence on China. It is quite difficult for the US to compete with poorer countries on manufacturing labor costs — exorbitantly high tariffs would be necessary to change this basic math. (That’s not even getting into the problem of who is going to take all these American manufacturing jobs.)Furthermore, every time Trump blinks — with his 90-day pause, and with this weekend’s exemption of electronics from his incredibly high China tariffs — he feeds investors’ hopes that many of his tariffs are simply negotiating ploys and unlikely to be permanent. And if they’re not permanent, businesses won’t make permanent changes to their business models.There are many other problems. If the US was all along hoping to build a global trade coalition against China, as Bessent claims, it is quite odd that Trump spent the first few months of his term making belligerent attacks on Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. If the goal is to reshore advanced manufacturing to the US, it seems odd that we’ve slapped tariffs on heavily imported foods like coffee and avocados, or on Canadian building materials like steel and lumber, or that Trump advisers are talking about reshoring clothing and shoe manufacturing.Just about the only thing that’s been going according to Trump advisers’ plan is that the value of the US dollar has indeed dropped. But it’s not dropping as the result of a new global agreement — it’s dropping because investors (accurately) view the US president as erratic and view the country as a less stable place for investment.Terrifying investors and wrecking business confidence can indeed have a major impact on the global economy — just not in the way the Trump team wanted.See More: