- How Intelligent Drones Are Shaping the Future of Warfare (Rolling Stone) "Perdix drones, on the other hand, communicate autonomously with each other and use collective decision making to coordinate movements, finding the best way to get to a target, even flying in formation and healing themselves – all without a human telling them how. While a single person gives them a task – for example, 'go to the local hospital' or 'encircle the blue pickup truck' – the drones decide autonomously what the best way to carry it out is, without human direction. ...the Navy successfully tested autonomous swarm boats, with their technology allowing unmanned vehicles to 'not only protect Navy ships, but also, for the first time, autonomously 'swarm' offensively on hostile vessels.' ...with these technologies, 'the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms. As retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in an interview with Foreign Affairs, 'To the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain. At the receiving end, it feels like war. Americans have got to understand that.' This technology will change the human cost of warfare, pushing us to use drones for an increasing number of tasks the world may have once solely considered the purview of humans. In doing so it not only changes what the battlefield looks like, but also the calculation about whether to go to war in the first place."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Trump’s Tax Plan Would Benefit Trump — So What? (National Review) "Let me make a confession: I want to pay less taxes. And I want to pay less taxes not just because I believe the government is swollen, bloated, and often irresponsible and destructive in the way that it spends money (though I believe all those things). I want to pay less taxes because I want my family to have more money. There is nothing at all inherently wrong with wanting to keep the money that you make, or with believing that you can make better decisions spending your hard-earned dollars than the government can. Is it somehow selfish to advocate tax cuts? Maybe. But that doesn’t make it wrong."
LONG READS:
- Right-wing fringe group building multimedia empire near Detroit (USA Today) "Church Militant, a fringe group claiming to be Catholic but denounced by the church, broadcasts pro-life, anti-gay, anti-feminist, Islam-fearing content on its website, churchmiltant.com, and through social media using production studios that rival those at local TV news stations. It has 35 full-time employees who publish about 10 stories and three videos every weekday. Many of Church Militant's headlines are similar to those on Breitbart News, the far-right news organization that White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon previously ran. Many of Breitbart's articles are cited on the Church Militant website. But unlike Breitbart, Church Militant is under a Christian, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization."
NEWS:
- Openly Testy, Republicans Reject the President’s Wiretap Claims (NYT) "'We don’t have any evidence that that took place,' Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. 'In fact, I don’t believe — in the last week of time, people we’ve talked to, I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.' If Mr. Trump’s Twitter claim is to be taken literally, Mr. Nunes said, 'then clearly the president is wrong.' Even a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, raised questions about the claim. In Richmond, Va., he told reporters that he had never given Mr. Trump any reason to believe he had been wiretapped." and Members of Congress demand cooperation from administration on Trump-Russia probe (WaPo) "Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that he will subpoena the Trump administration for evidence supporting the president’s claim he was wiretapped and could soon join efforts to hold up the deputy attorney general nominee. Graham made the statements on NBC’s 'Today' show Wednesday morning, warning that 'Congress is going to flex its muscle' with the Trump administration if it does not start to provide lawmakers with answers regarding Russia."
- Military brass like what they hear from White House — but worry about becoming props (WaPo) "'You want those in uniform . . . to trust the president,' one retired four-star officer said. 'They don’t have to like him, but they have to trust him. Right now, there is an uncertain fabric of trust between them.' The uncertainty extends to the president’s over-the-top praise. Do his frequent encomiums reflect a respect for the military’s discipline and expertise, or could he be using the uniform as a backdrop to bolster his popularity? Military commanders have welcomed Trump’s moves to delegate decisions to commanders, but unfilled senior civilian positions and turmoil in the White House have led some officers to ask whether the latitude is a sign of trust or a product of chaos at the highest levels of government."
- Why I’m Moving Home (NYT) "It’s jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse."
TECHNOLOGY:
- How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It (NYT) "In just about every cultural medium, whether movies or music or books or the visual arts, digital technology is letting in new voices, creating new formats for exploration, and allowing fans and other creators to participate in a glorious remixing of the work. This isn’t new; from blogs to podcasts to YouTube, the last 20 years have been marked by a succession of formats that have led to ever-lower barriers for new and off-the-wall creators. Yet for much of that time, the business side of culture looked under assault. The internet taught a whole generation that content was not something you really had to pay for. But now something surprising has happened. In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are subscribing to podcasters, comedians, zany YouTube stars, novelists and comic book artists. They are even paying for news. It’s difficult to overstate how big a deal this is. If subscriptions keep taking off, it won’t just mean that some of your favorite creators will survive the internet. It could also make for a profound shift in the way we find and support new cultural talent. It could lead to a wider variety of artists and art, and forge closer connections between the people who make art and those who enjoy it."
- Now We Know Why Microsoft Bought LinkedIn (Backchannel) "Microsoft revealed that LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has joined its board. It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of this move for Microsoft. The importance of reputation to a successful turnaround cannot be understated. As evidenced by Uber’s recent debacles, reputations are stubbornly difficult to dislodge. Even if a business has a sound foundation, how people view it will have a strong impact on whether it can succeed. And when Reid Hoffman calls an entrepreneur or an engineer on behalf of Microsoft, you can bet they will take it more positively."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A quarter of US beer drinkers have switched to marijuana, or would if it was legal (Quartz) "A 2016 report from the investment research group Cowen and Company noted that cannabis consumption seems to be leading to lower beer sales in Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, the three states where weed is recreationally legal. The shift in consumption habits was apparently most dramatic in Denver, where people bought 6% less beer post-legalization. Analysts said too that higher-income consumers and men in general have been drinking less alcohol in the past five years, while weed use rose among those groups."
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BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Trump’s Tax Plan Would Benefit Trump — So What? (National Review) "Let me make a confession: I want to pay less taxes. And I want to pay less taxes not just because I believe the government is swollen, bloated, and often irresponsible and destructive in the way that it spends money (though I believe all those things). I want to pay less taxes because I want my family to have more money. There is nothing at all inherently wrong with wanting to keep the money that you make, or with believing that you can make better decisions spending your hard-earned dollars than the government can. Is it somehow selfish to advocate tax cuts? Maybe. But that doesn’t make it wrong."
LONG READS:
- Right-wing fringe group building multimedia empire near Detroit (USA Today) "Church Militant, a fringe group claiming to be Catholic but denounced by the church, broadcasts pro-life, anti-gay, anti-feminist, Islam-fearing content on its website, churchmiltant.com, and through social media using production studios that rival those at local TV news stations. It has 35 full-time employees who publish about 10 stories and three videos every weekday. Many of Church Militant's headlines are similar to those on Breitbart News, the far-right news organization that White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon previously ran. Many of Breitbart's articles are cited on the Church Militant website. But unlike Breitbart, Church Militant is under a Christian, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization."
NEWS:
- Openly Testy, Republicans Reject the President’s Wiretap Claims (NYT) "'We don’t have any evidence that that took place,' Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. 'In fact, I don’t believe — in the last week of time, people we’ve talked to, I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.' If Mr. Trump’s Twitter claim is to be taken literally, Mr. Nunes said, 'then clearly the president is wrong.' Even a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, raised questions about the claim. In Richmond, Va., he told reporters that he had never given Mr. Trump any reason to believe he had been wiretapped." and Members of Congress demand cooperation from administration on Trump-Russia probe (WaPo) "Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that he will subpoena the Trump administration for evidence supporting the president’s claim he was wiretapped and could soon join efforts to hold up the deputy attorney general nominee. Graham made the statements on NBC’s 'Today' show Wednesday morning, warning that 'Congress is going to flex its muscle' with the Trump administration if it does not start to provide lawmakers with answers regarding Russia."
- Military brass like what they hear from White House — but worry about becoming props (WaPo) "'You want those in uniform . . . to trust the president,' one retired four-star officer said. 'They don’t have to like him, but they have to trust him. Right now, there is an uncertain fabric of trust between them.' The uncertainty extends to the president’s over-the-top praise. Do his frequent encomiums reflect a respect for the military’s discipline and expertise, or could he be using the uniform as a backdrop to bolster his popularity? Military commanders have welcomed Trump’s moves to delegate decisions to commanders, but unfilled senior civilian positions and turmoil in the White House have led some officers to ask whether the latitude is a sign of trust or a product of chaos at the highest levels of government."
- Why I’m Moving Home (NYT) "It’s jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse."
TECHNOLOGY:
- How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It (NYT) "In just about every cultural medium, whether movies or music or books or the visual arts, digital technology is letting in new voices, creating new formats for exploration, and allowing fans and other creators to participate in a glorious remixing of the work. This isn’t new; from blogs to podcasts to YouTube, the last 20 years have been marked by a succession of formats that have led to ever-lower barriers for new and off-the-wall creators. Yet for much of that time, the business side of culture looked under assault. The internet taught a whole generation that content was not something you really had to pay for. But now something surprising has happened. In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are subscribing to podcasters, comedians, zany YouTube stars, novelists and comic book artists. They are even paying for news. It’s difficult to overstate how big a deal this is. If subscriptions keep taking off, it won’t just mean that some of your favorite creators will survive the internet. It could also make for a profound shift in the way we find and support new cultural talent. It could lead to a wider variety of artists and art, and forge closer connections between the people who make art and those who enjoy it."
- Now We Know Why Microsoft Bought LinkedIn (Backchannel) "Microsoft revealed that LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has joined its board. It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of this move for Microsoft. The importance of reputation to a successful turnaround cannot be understated. As evidenced by Uber’s recent debacles, reputations are stubbornly difficult to dislodge. Even if a business has a sound foundation, how people view it will have a strong impact on whether it can succeed. And when Reid Hoffman calls an entrepreneur or an engineer on behalf of Microsoft, you can bet they will take it more positively."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A quarter of US beer drinkers have switched to marijuana, or would if it was legal (Quartz) "A 2016 report from the investment research group Cowen and Company noted that cannabis consumption seems to be leading to lower beer sales in Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, the three states where weed is recreationally legal. The shift in consumption habits was apparently most dramatic in Denver, where people bought 6% less beer post-legalization. Analysts said too that higher-income consumers and men in general have been drinking less alcohol in the past five years, while weed use rose among those groups."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
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