Trump’s chaos blitz; Econ data isn’t fake; China’s tech cluster; Abundance ideas; AI and antitrust; AI in science

1. Trump moves fast and breaks things

In Trump’s first term, lots of people liked to say that his blizzard of inflammatory statements represented a DDoS attack on the media — he just kept saying new things so fast that the media didn’t have time to correct or push back on the previous set.

2. No, the economic data isn’t fake (sigh)

Every once in a while, someone writes a long screed claiming that the government’s economic data are all wrong, that you’ve been tricked, and that actually the economy is terrible when everyone is telling you it’s good. This inevitably results in a bunch of people who are sort of perma-mad about wokeness or Palestine or whatever yelling “See, I told you so!”, and declaring that actually the economy is horrible after all.

3. China’s 21st century tech cluster

In recent years, Chinese companies have become extremely competitive in consumer products like electric cars, phones, and drones. At the same time, they’ve also become competitive in various high-value component and machinery products like computer chips, robots, lidar, and batteries. How did they suddenly get good in all of these things at once? One common explanation is that these are the industries Xi Jinping has chosen to subsidize. But Kyle Chan has a different theory — two different theories, actually.