Technology & Politics

Quicktake: 2024 Vice Presidential Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 12:00:00 +0000

The only vice presidential debate of the 2024 election was held last tonight. It featured Republican nominee J.D. Vance and Democratic nominee Tim Walz. This debate was a more civilized affair with references and mentions of technology by both candidates. The styles of the two candidates were very different which made for a more stilted debate. Vance came across as a polished debater, and Walz showed that he doesn't come from a profession that emphasizes debating and arguments. This doesn't mean that Walz had a weak debate performance; it was a difference in style.

The main source of references and/or discussion on technology was climate change. It was interesting that Vance was willing to plausible that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change. As far as I know this is the closest a modern Republican vice-presidential candidate has come to admitting climate change exists. Vance then argues that the best plan would be to re-shore jobs to the US, which has the cleanest economy. Since Vance's running mate has been openly in denial of climate change this is quite a change. Unfortunately, Vance does a pivot towards the fact that jobs were off-shored, in particular to China. It is hard to fathom that a Presidential campaign doesn't have a policy for dealing with something that an overwhelming amount of scientists believe is occurring.

Tim Walz responded to Vance's plan by pointing out that the Biden-Harris administration has already on 200,000 jobs from passing the Inflation Reduction Act. He then continued by discussing the Harris plan of continuing oil and gas exploration while transitioning to a green future of solar panels and wind turbines. He mentioned that in Minnesota has the largest solar manufacturer in the US. Electric vehicle batteries are being manufactured in Jeffersonville, Ohio. Walz scored a victory by clearly separating the reality of U.S. manufacturing coming back to America versus the supposed Vance-Trump plan. I was excited as this debate topic was early in the evening, and I had hopes we would hear more about policies in regards to different technologies further in the debate. This would be the last substantial discussion regarding technology in the debate.

Towards the end of the debate as the candidates were discussing January 6th 2021 and whether the candidates would respect the outcome of the election the issue of social media censorship was brought up by Vance. Vance was using this topic, which should have been debated, rather disingenuously to create a he said she said opportunity to lay blame equally on Democrats and thus avoid the blame that Republicans right fully deserve for actions that are no less than despicable. Vance laid out the claim that Hillary Clinton was complaining about Russian interference for Republicans in 2016 preceded, and tried to claim that it was exactly the same as the actions taken by Trump on January 6th to incite a mob to violently attack the Capitol building. He tried to lay the equivalency by using sharp rhetorical language, and with the debate moderators not attempting to fact check the candidates he could land the false equivalency. The issue of foreign interference using social media platforms deserves the voters knowing what the policy solutions each side is proposing. It doesn't deserve to be used as a shield for an a very important topic that one candidate desperately is looking to avoid being exposed for their inability to answer the question.

Quicktake: 2024 September Presidential Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 06:18:00 +0000

Tonight was the only scheduled debate this fall for the Presidential Campaign. It featured the Republican candidate former President Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. This was billed as an opportunity to hear the two candidates discuss the issues affecting the American people. It was supposed to be the royal rumble of a presidential election that has drastically changed in the last two months with Joe Biden's withdrawal and replacement with Kamala Harris, and the addition of Vice-Presidential nominees. As this blog focuses on technology and politics the review will stay on this focus.

There was very little mentioned about technology in the debate tonight. This is not unusual for Donald Trump who as far as I know never discusses technology on his campaign stump speech. Kamala Harris started answering a question on the economy by discussing how she wants to create an opportunity economy and provide $50K for startups. Startups include restaurants, cafes, bakeries, other stores, and technology companies. The large tax break she is proposing could lead to the development of new products, hardware and software apps, that will lead to more people being hired. The tax break amount will not cover the development of many breakthrough technologies that require millions of dollars for several years to achieve the breakthrough to get to commercializing. The $50K tax break should be looked at as a down payment that will allow some startups to continue until they find additional funding.

Kamala Harris was the only candidate who actually mentioned technology. She did so by mentioning that she was focused on winning the technology war, really more of a competition, with China. She mentioned the efforts to stop selling AI chips and other technology that China was using to develop advanced weapons systems. She accused him of allowing the vending of the technology and not protecting America. AI chips, really GPU processor chips used to run algorithms that are trained with large language models, are critical to building these advanced technology systems. In a turn of fate the NVIDIA which is the main manufacturer of such chips is a US based company. This is why the Biden administration has implemented multiple export controls and bans to impact China's abilities to use this new cutting edge technology.

Donald Trump on the other hand could only muster a comment that we don't make chips in America. The vast majority of chip manufacturing is performed in Taiwan which has built specialization in this manufacturing process. It should be noted that over the last few decades new semiconductor plants have been built and are running in the United States in cities like Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Malta and Fishkill New York to name a few. The Biden-Harris administration also passed the CHIPS Act specifically to re-invigorate and build up chip manufacturing capability in the United States. They viewed the issue as one of national security. In response to the above mentioned law Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into building a fab, manufacturing plant, in Arizona. Additionally in Ohio Intel, a major and early chip maker, is investing billions of dollars in a semiconductor fab.

Donald managed to mention several things about abortion that should be addressed. He stated that Democrats supported abortion up to the 9th month, which is the point at which women typically give birth. The Democratic party position is about restoring the protections of Roe, the Roe v. Wade legalization of abortion. The ruling of Roe legalized abortion up to the point of viability which in 1977 was deemed to be 24 weeks. He also stated that the Democrats wanted to perform abortion after birth. An abortion is an action performed on a fetus and thus cannot be performed on already birthed baby. Trump additionally stated that there was support among Democrats for execution of the child after birth. Anybody committing such an act would be guilty of murder, and as far as I know there are extremely few such cases that occur and therefore prosecuted. All these misstatements at best or more likely lies that were spouted without any remorse or caution should ask any voter whether Donald Trump is disconnected from the real world.

We deserve a debate on new technology and what role the government should have in regulating and/or supporting it by candidates who have a deep understanding of the technology. I don't mean that the candidates should be technical experts who can create the algorithm or hardware, but at least be able to accurately understand the broad concept. Unfortunately, there was only one candidate who seemed to have any mastery of policy topics other than immigration on the stage tonight. We cannot have a substantive debate on these topics until the candidates on both sides take care to craft policies with actual substance and have a decent understanding about existing and emerging technology.

Quicktake: 2023 State of the Union

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 06:07:00 +0000

It is the time of the year when the President of the United States takes a short trip down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington to give the State of the Union speech. This speech which may seem like a grand update to Congress really more is more of a list of accomplishments and a policy speech outlining the President's priorities for legislation. Now is a good time to review the technology affecting policies that the President has proposed.

President mentioned the CHIPS Act which was passed last year early in his speech as a major accomplishment of the first half of his presidency. He touted the 3000 high paying jobs that will be created in Ohio by Intel investing in a new chip plant. The law is intended to shore up American manufacturing of semiconductor chips by spending significant sums of money in subsidies and other investments. President Biden may have emphasized the quality jobs from the new chip fab that Intel is building for blue collar workers, but the investments in technology development will allow for the next generation of technologies similar to the cell phone and computer. The CHIPS Act is not only a law intended to invest in minimizing the supply chain disruptions and good paying jobs, but also is going to support an important and often overlooked part of America's national security.

The climate crisis was also brought up in the State of the Union. President Biden declared that America is stepping up to the table for the first time in a while. The Biden administration has reversed Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate agreement. The mention in the speech was a rallying cry for continuing to implement policies that would avoid the worst of climate change. The reality is that the first two years of the Biden administration there have some minor policy changes that will have an impact on climate change. The major legislation that would have greater impacts was stymied. The risk of losing out in the green technology revolution could be significant to the American economy.

The last major topic that President Biden brought up was the Cancer moonshot. This issue is particularly close to him as he was asked by President Obama to lead this effort from it's inception and his family has been deeply affected by cancer. The investment in cancer research by the government has the ability to lead to breakthroughs that will lead to new biotechnology companies. Every American can remember that nearly three years ago there was a mysterious new virus causing an epidemic that would become a pandemic. It is important to remember that a vaccine was able to be created in record time due to mRNA technology. mRNA was only available due to the government research funding that supported this potential new technology. The cancer moonshot poses an opportunity to improve cancer treatments and healthcare in general.

2022 State of Union

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 04:02:00 +0000

The State of the Union is traditionally an opportunity for the President to gloat about the accomplishments of the past year, announce their legislative priorities, and of course announce that the state of the Union is good. The President is required to provide an update to Congress on the State of the Union per the constitution. It is important to remember that in our government framework the President only has to power to approve or reject, veto, legislation that has been approved by both the House of Representatives and Senate. This is a good time to consider the implications to technology that the President's proposed legislative agenda will have.

This year's State of the Union was organized three months after a momentous first year of legislating by a Democratic Senate, House of Representatives, and President Joe Biden. The President started his speech with an extended discussion on the Russian invasion of Ukraine which at the time was a new and pressing issue in America's political discourse. He also mentioned all the legislation in regards to fighting the Coronavirus pandemic.

Beyond the emergency aid provided at the beginning of his administration and the overall success of the vaccination effort, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill was the most consequential legislation that will have an impact on technology. President Biden declared that 1000s of bridges and highways will be repaired or replaced. He declared that the U.S. had started an infrastructure decade. The investments that are going to be made by the bipartisan infrastructure bill will be very important as most of the public infrastructure in the United States has been chronically underfunded with maintenance, repair, and replacement of infrastructure being delayed due to lack of budget.

President Biden then changed from the accomplishments of his administration to his priorities for the year. Immediately he discusses the importance of competing in the area of emerging technologies. To do this he encouraged Congress to pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act. He stated that the government used to spend 2% on research and development spending. He stated that Intel is investing $20 Billion in a chip fab 20 miles from Columbus Ohio. Additionally Ford's $11 Billion investment in electric vehicles that is creating 11,000 jobs.

The next major topic impacting technology that Biden discussed was efforts to counteract climate change. He didn't directly state this as the topic, but instead took a more tactful item by item declaration of interest in certain policies. He discussed increasing solar and wind power incentives. He brought up winterizing homes. This issue was framed as a way to reduce heating costs on working families. In the northeast many people heat their homes using heating oil which is expensive, but also a very high carbon emitting fuel. Winterizing homes to reduce heat losses will result in reducing the home heating bills of many Americans, but it also attacks climate change from a reduction of consumption point of view. It should also be pointed out that this policy if enacted would provide jobs to working class Americans in some of the construction trades. President Biden also proposed incentives for electric vehicle purchases. Electric vehicles provide an opportunity to separate the biggest transportation method from fossil fuel consumption. This policy will be important since currently the cost of electric vehicles is approaching the cost of regular gas and diesel powered cars. The incentives will help support the efforts by the main car producers to convert their vehicles to electric fleets. The net results of the proposed policies is to reduce America's consumption of fossil fuels that are the main source of human greenhouse gas emissions.

I intentionally skipped discussing the COVID-19 earlier as the reference at the beginning was to the fact that Congress could not meet last year for a State of the Union speech due to the high level of community spread last year. In this section of the speech he went about discussing the preparatory steps the government was taking to be prepared for an upswing in infections. He cited mask, anti-viral pills, and test stockpiling. The government taking a proactive role in stockpiling supplies in anticipation of a potential rise in the rates of infection is possibly the best practice that can come from the last two years of pandemic response. He also stated that the vaccine manufacturers can provide a new vaccine formulation that can protect against new variants in 100 days. The ability to generate a vaccine, an mRNA one, in such a quick time sounds fantastic. In many ways it is, but within the 100 days the utility of a vaccine against a new variant may be moot since one of the key factors for needing a new formulation is a variant with increased transmissibility. The vaccines built with omicron variant were due out this month. Unfortunately the rate of infection has already dropped significantly since the variant had already passed peak infection. This ability to get a vaccine for a new variant out to the population so quickly would be great if there is a significant increase in mortality from the new variant.

President Biden also proposed investing in new border technology to find drugs and human smuggling. This makes lots of sense since even though we have been in a pandemic which has reduced the amount of cross border traffic. The major border crossings of Tijuana-San Diego, Juarez-El Paso, and Nogales have significant volumes of traffic both individuals and commercial vehicles. The Tijuana-San Diego border crossing is the busiest in the Western Hemisphere and the 4th busiest in the World. As is quite obvious the large volumes of traffic make it impossible to stop, investigate, and inspect every car and not create a significant impact on the economy. Human smuggling and drug trafficking do impact society and the governments spending. My initial thoughts on the technology that Biden was referencing is continued non-destructive imaging technologies to perform inspections of vehicles without completely disassembly. This technology is very valuable for all the commercial traffic that crosses the border, both truck and rail car. The impact of additional imaging technology at official border crossings will be additional seizures of illegal immigrants and narcotics. The narcotics traffickers will always look for new routes and methods for moving their illegal products into the US. They could move to use more cross-border tunnels or use of small aircraft if those prove successful. The bigger impact from additional border crossing imaging technology will be human smuggling. More human smugglers will move to funnel illegal immigrants thru the wild dangerous paths across the desert southwest to the US border. This will inevitably result in more deaths of illegal immigrants. This may be a good topic for an individual blog post in the future.

The very last topic impacting technology that President Biden brought up is the need to regulate social media companies. Frances Haugen a former Facebook employee testified in Congress last year as a whistle blower about the dangers of social media platforms. Biden extolled on the risks of the natural experiment on children that the social media companies are performing. His proposed solutions are to ban advertising to kids and to stop collecting data on kids. Any discussion of regulating social media companies brings along with it the efforts to eliminate section 230 protections on these companies. Some politicians want to get rid of this protection as part of a vendetta against social media companies and their liberal bias. Another set of politicians want to remove this protection to fight child pornography and other material they deem obscene. I intend to create a post that discusses this topic in more depth in the near future. The end result of Biden's proposed regulations will be either the elimination of services to people under 18 and the repercussions to the remaining users who have been used to free services. I think that any initiative to regulate social media companies will avoid lobbying from these big businesses.

The Blog is back

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sun, 09 May 2021 14:00:00 +0000

The title of this post kind of summarizes it all. For the last four years, the last administration, this blog was in hibernation. This was due to the lack of debate and public discussion about issues with technology. The debate was entirely consumed by xenophobic, racist, and nasty policy decisions. Technology didn't stop being developed and impacting our lives. This blog did review debates as part of the last election. In the last four years we have seen the growth of disinformation campaigns that flourished on Facebook and other social media. This was and continues to be fueled by the algorithms that the social media platforms use. Net neutrality rules implemented during the Obama administration were repealed. Other regulations were repealed that have impacts on multiple sectors of the economy.

This blog could have discussed the implications of policy decisions related to the COVID pandemic. Any discussion or debate that could have been furthered by this platform could have only perpetuated the failures of many to follow the guidance of public health officials. Also most of the discussion would have focused on the crazy idea snake oil solutions being spouted from Donald Trump's press conferences and tweets,. This blog is interested in serious discussions of technology and public policy in regards to technology. The current administration is a breath of fresh air compared to the last four years. There is a real interest in making policy and implementing laws from this administration. There is a real depth to the ideas that are being proposed and executed in the laws that are being proposed and passed by congress. This can be seen in the proposed infrastructure bill, which multiple times the previous administration discussed without any policy proposal being released or implemented. In the next few weeks the reader should expected several new blog posts discussing among other things infrastructure, COVID, and any other topics from policy being proposed or implemented by this administration.

2020 Democratic Primary Debate 2 Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 05:23:00 +0000

In the first primary debate the second night had more discussion of technology than the first night. The same could be expected of tonight's debate. Unfortunately there was even less discussion of technology than last night's candidate slate. Nonetheless this blog will look at what was brought up in the debate.
The topic of climate change brought about the most discussion of technology in tonight's debate. Joe Biden proposed five hundred thousand charging stations would be built in his administration. The development of charging stations is meant to incentivize the changeover to electric vehicles. The problem with this proposal is that it is not the purview of the federal government to install charging stations. Even a proposal that would be within the powers of the federal government would need to be approved upon by a climate change denying Republican arm of congress. He would double the amount of offshore wind. Offshore wind consists of turbines that are built with posts that are set into the seabed. Power cables connect them to the grid back on solid ground.Offshore wind takes advantage of the reduced friction of the sea to get a very consistent quality wind to power the turbines. These wind turbines are typically built far enough offshore that even with diameters approaching 400 feet they are not visible from the coastline. Currently the only offshore wind in the United States is off Cape Cod. There has been interest and initial development of plans to build turbines off Long Island. Most of the regulatory hurdles that are associated with wind turbines are state and local laws. At the state level approval for these turbines typically is associated with regulations and laws controlling the power generation development. States with deregulated power markets may be easier since the power generation and distribution are separate businesses. Most of the opposition comes from people complaining about the view on their property being damaged by the wind turbines. The most likely action that Biden could take to accelerate the development of offshore wind would be to use existing federal laws to override state and local laws. This risks angering residents and there could be real backlash at the ballot box.
He also stated that his climate change plan would produce 10 million jobs. As stated in the last blog post the estimation of job creation is somewhat suspect as automation may end up doing the lion share of the work. In addition very little additional information was provided as to how the jobs will be created.
Kristen Gillibrand proposed putting a price on carbon. Pricing carbon is a very broad statement. Carbon pricing is considered a mechanism for forcing capitalist systems to move away from fossil fuel use. The risks with setting the price of carbon is setting an adequate price. If the price is too high then the economy could suffer from severe shock. This could result in citizens revolting against the governments policies. If the price of carbon is set too low then carbon emissions will not be reduced to the level that is intended. An even bigger problem with carbon pricing is that opponents of climate change will make it exceedingly difficult for the rate to increase to achieve greater reductions. In the current political climate passing a carbon pricing bill will be exceedingly difficult. Mechanisms that would allow for the price to increase would be opposed and firm price would be set and impossible to increase.
She also proposed that we get into a green energy race. We, the U.S., would compete with China and other countries to produce green technologies. The innovation spurred on by this race would achieve the necessary carbon net zero by 2050. The reality is that we are currently in a green energy race. China is currently the leader in solar panel development, electric car manufacturing, and many other green technologies. China's five year plan includes significant investment in developing technologies of the future. This includes electrification of cars, solar panels, and other green technologies. In reality the United States is behind in the green technology race. Gillibrand didn't propose any policy prescriptions for winning or even competing in the green energy race in her answer.
The other big technology point that was referenced during the debate was automation. Andrew Yang mentioned it several times in answers on a multitude of topics. This probably worked really well for a debate held in Detroit. Detroit was and is built primarily on the automotive industry that has suffered from plenty of job losses over the last 30 plus years. Andrew Yang in many ways made automation the bogey-man. He does have his freedom dividend proposal to counter the growth of automation in our economy.

2020 Democratic Primary Debate 2 Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 06:24:00 +0000

The current democratic primary debates are very interesting because of the 10 candidates on stage per night results in very limited amount of time for each candidate to speak. That being said it is important for this blog to report on technology topics that are brought up in these debates.
The only topic where technology was mentioned was about climate change. Climate change was delved into in blog posts about the first primary debate. It is important to note that there was barely a mention of the debate about the existence of climate change as man made, the scientific consensus is nearing absolute on humans impact. John Delaney was asked to explain why he didn't agree with the green new deal. He cited linking so many other issues into a policy that should work to achieve green house gas emissions reductions.
His proposal is to tax carbon, really carbon dioxide emissions, and return the revenue as a dividend. Taxing carbon is an approach that has been proposed multiple times over the years. Carbon taxation is essentially a production based tax on emissions. This may seem rather simple implement and it is at a fundamental level. The issues with carbon taxes arise when trying to calculate what the tax should be. Setting a tax level that would realistically match the impact from CO2 emmissions might kill the economy and cause a backlash from citizens who are sufferring under this policy. If the tax rate is set too low then it will have a negligible impact on our emissions and fail as a policy prescription to resolve climate change. This balancing act is only further going to get muddled by the fact that in order to pass a law other politicians, some who don't believe in climate change, will have an opportunity to impact Delaney's proposal.
Additionallt he wants to increase the research funding in the Department of Energy on alternative energy five fold from current levels. The idea behind this part of Delaney's plan is to spur innovation to provide solutions to climate change. The move to a net carbon zero economy will require innovation by private industry to achieve this goal. A significant increase in funding for research and development money towards new technologies is nice, but the proposed amount of increase may be dwarfed by the scale of the problem. Department of Energy research and development funding is not a large sum such that Delaney's proposed five fold increase will not even come close to current Defense department research funding.
He directly endorsed direct air capture technology. Direct air capture technology is a system that seperates carbon dioxide from the air. Delaney is the first candidate to mention and/or endorse the use of this technology. The technologies end goal would be to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it underground in a carbon capture storage system. This is a system that is currently under development and has been proven at least at a prototype level. There are still questions as to whether it can be an important player in solving climate change. The current scientific knowledge about climate change is that to achieve a one degree celsius global average temperature increase we need carbon dioxide levels to be at 350 parts per billion. The latest readings are at or over 400 parts per billion. Fundamentally this means that not only do we need to achieve a net zero emissions, but we would need to actually reduce the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Direct air capture technology could provide a way to do this. The other key potential benefit of direct air capture technology is that it can counter some of the excess emissions in the transition from our current fossil fuel dependent economy to a green economy, operating on net zero emissions. The transition, or scale up of new technologies, will not be instantaneous and may suffer from friction that will delay expected reductions in our emissions.
Delaney is also interested in a climate corps. Unfortunately due to the time limits in the debate this came across as a sound bite and not a solid policy. It would be nice to get a more concrete information in regards to what this corps would do and how this would tackle climate change.
Elizabeth Warren discussed her two trillion dollar green manufacturing plan. She wants to invest in manufacturing the green technologies of the future in America. This policy proposal is in many ways tailored to the midwest industrial manufacturing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The current state of green manufacturing is that China is the leader in the development of electric cars, solar panels, and other technology which will be the backbone of the zero carbon economy. Warren's plan is ambitious in that she wants to use a significant government investment to spark manufacturing in America of these technologies. The risks are that any attempt to compete with China and other possible Asian countries may turn out to be un-profitable. Solyndra was an infamous attempt by the Obama administration to invest in green manufacturing, and the company would file for bankruptcy within 24 months of receiving a multi-million dollar loan. Solyndra's failure as a business was due to China's significant investment in solar panel production. They flooded the market and drove down the price to a point that Solyndra couldn't make a profit. This risks does exist in Warren's two trillion dollar plan. In addition she has stated that this investment will generate approximately one million jobs. In order for some companies to remain competitive they may decide to use automation and not hire nearly as many employees as expected.
John Hickenlooper stated that we have to work together with other countries to avert the worse of climate change. This is true, but currently the U.S. is the only country that is planning on leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. He did in the previous debate state that he would return the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately this is was also the extent of his remarks. This leaves many Americans who are interested in knowing concrete plans for dealing with climate change disappointed.
Tim Ryan reiterated his desire to dominate electric vehicle production in support of aspects of Elizabeth Warren's plan. He proposed to have a chief manufacturing officer who would help reinvigorate American manufacturing. The chief manufacturing officer position as it was briefly described would help manufacturers grow and partner them with government programs. This is an interesting concept that hopefully Tim Ryan will be able to elucidate for the electorate to make a decision on this proposal. His last proposal to fight climate change was to promote regenerative agriculture whereby carbon is stored in the soil thru practices including cover crops and soil management. This may have been among the strongest moments of the debate for Tim Ryan. He showed a good command of his proposals and didn't repeat what had been stated multiple times by other candidates before him. He managed to link climate change, which has the strongest support in most urban areas, between the urban and industrial cities to the rural agrarian economy.
Steve Bullock was the only candidate to mention the Republican denial of climate change. His stated remedy for this was to fight corruption. It is correct that the oil and gas industry spend significant sums lobbying in congress and also provide large donations to candidates thru political action committees. Unfortunately we didn't hear a plan that touched on how to reduced greenhouse gas emissions from our economy, which according to climate scientists is vital to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Bullock did manage to point to the correlation between an expanded fire season and climate change. He also managed to make a great point about the workers who have spent their entire working life powering America who would stand to lose their jobs. Bullock is the governor of Montana, a state with significant coal mining operations, and it would be expected for him to have a plan to fight climate change that included how to deal with coal miners, coal plant operators, and other fossil fuel workers who could be displaced.

2020 Democratic Primary Debate Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 21:13:00 +0000

Thursday night's debate was quite different from Wednesday's debate. This was the loaded debate with just about all the front runners in the polls. This slate of candidates discussed technology far more than the previous night's candidates. You can get the fact checking here if that is what you are interested in. This post will look into the technology topics that were brought up during the debate.
Andrew Yang was asked about his Universal Basic Income (UBI) plan as the first question directed to him in the debate. He proceeded to describe his proposal and mentioned that part of the reason Donald Trump was elected in 2016 was that 4 million jobs had been automated away. He also stated that the following jobs were going to be eliminated due to automation: fast food workers, truck d rivers, and retail jobs. Automation is the process where by a task that is done by a human is done by an electronic system, often called robots, without error. Automation equipment leverages the ability of small microprocessor systems to control hydraulic actuators, welding tools, conveyor belts, and other automated actions. Early automation focused on creating devices that could do repetitive tasks on assembly lines. The automotive industry has implemented robots that weld car bodies with more reliability than a human. As automation technology developed automation devices could not only perform the operation, but do a visual inspection of work and identify defects. In the last ten years or so automation has begun a new phase of development. Automation had largely been restricted to the plant floor. The capabilities of microprocessors, miniaturization of sensors, and development of advanced identification, tracking, and control algorithms is leading to automation of more advanced tasks. Uber, Lyft, and Tesla are working on developing self driving cars and trucks. Amazon is working on drones that will deliver packages. Home Depot has had self checkout counters and similar systems are popping up in other retail businesses. These are just a sample of the new industry disrupting ideas that will use automation.
Automation in some industries has displaced many blue collar jobs that were based on completing the same task repetitively for hours on end. This is particularly true of the industrial cities in the Midwestern states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The semiconductor industry that is fueling many new technologies is wholly dependent on automated systems to process the die to create the chips running your cell phone, tablet, and computer. The processes for the manufacturer of integrated circuit chips requires the use of clean rooms, areas with extremely low particulate matter in the air. These assembly lines are run with almost no human manufacturing actions required. In many ways automation is typical of many technologies in that it has improved our lives in many ways, but it also has eliminated jobs that people depended on to live. It has been titled creative destruction and has typically resulted in the creation of as many if not more new jobs along the way.These innovations are a threat to the livelihoods of many millions of Americans. This is why Yang would like to impose a value added tax to fund a $1000 a month stipend to help people pay for their living expenses.
The debate moderators immediately posed a question about automation and jobs to Eric Swallwell after Yang had finished explaining his UBI proposal. This had the potential to be very interesting since Swallwell represents a district in the San Francisco Bay area. He briefly mentioned that technology has created more jobs than it destroyed. He was quite clear that it must happen this way. All of this sounds good, but it showed a clear lack of thought about the risks of automation to permanently dislocate workers from the economy. The potential of automation to disrupt such a broad set of industries and eliminate jobs is real. Swallwell did mention that he would modernize schools, invest in communities, and value teachers and including those who work in poor neighborhoods. Unfortunately the debate format did not allow for Swallwell to go more in depth on his policies. I will delve into these broad stroke statements anyways. Modernizing schools and valuing teachers are important for forming the foundation of our future economy. There are notorious problems with teacher retention in this country that are based on pay and burn out due to stress. Improving the pool of teachers and retaining them in our schools will improve the education quality of the future workforce. Improving conditions for teachers is only half the solution. Modernizing our schools is vital so that students have the right skills for our modern economy. There is a massive need to update and add skills to the current K-12 curriculum. Our economy is in many ways being fueled by coding whether it be software or embedded programming that runs a plethora of devices. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, the e-commerce systems that are disrupting traditional industries work on a backbone of people developing code. I would think that the policy wonks on both sides of the political spectrum fully understand this as an important issue, but clearly the current President has taken no overt publicly seen action to endorse this. More can and may be learned in future debates about what Eric Swallwell would like to implement if he is elected President.
Marianne Williamson in her answer to a question on healthcare called the current system sickness-care and then mentioned chronic diseases and chemical regulations. Her response may have sounded kooky and snake oil spiritualist, but it was not. Calling our healthcare system sickness-care is a topic that this blog post doesn't intend to delve into. This really should be discussed by people with real expertise in our current healthcare system. I do want to look at whether chemical and environmental regulations are impacting our rates of chronic disease. In the last ten years the U.S. has suffered from contaminated water in Flint, Hoosick Falls, and Parkersburg. There are chemicals which we know are carcinogens that have contaminated the environment in plenty of locations. These are typically associated with increased rates of cancer. After doing some research I did not find an article that clearly claims an association with chemicals and chronic diseases. There were articles discussing how to look into this issue in research that is being done. This doesn't mean that exposure to man made chemicals doesn't have an impact on chronic diseases. Chemical safety regulation is a complicated series of overlapping authorities in the federal government. Food, drugs, and medicines are regulated by the FDA. Chemicals in our environment are the responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are several other agencies who play minor roles in dealing with chemicals and potential pollution. Both the EPA and the FDA have been under continuous attack by the Trump administration in an effort to reduce and overturn regulations. Technology in general and the chemical industry are focused on developing products that solve a problem or provide a new service to their customer. We, our representative government, have passed laws to protect certain environmental factors that we have defined as important to our well being. The results are that the chemical industry in particular is limited in what it new products by the clean water and clean air act. These laws don't directly ban the production of any specific chemicals, but instead provide legal mechanisms for the government to regulate chemicals that are found to be dangerous in the environment. The relationship between profitable operation of chemical manufacturing and the responsible stewardship of the environment are an adversarial balancing act. Typically the EPA is the entity trying to rein in potential or known hazardous substances and enforce existing regulations. That Marianne Williamson brought up this small lesser issue in the breadth of the healthcare debate is important because the regulations that protect the general public's exposure to known hazards is being unraveled by the current administration's efforts. Additionally the EPA is being weakened by attacks on it's staff of scientists and scientific advisory bodies. This is intended to create the EPA is a weaker adversary to industry. I look forward to hearing the candidates for President elucidating their policies on this issue in future debates.
The issue of Chinese intellectual property theft was brought up in the debate. Intellectual Property, patents and trademarks, is a system that gives companies a limited period monopoly on a technology. This monopoly is what gives technology manufacturers a key advantage against rivals and maintains their profitability. Companies can take two different routes to monetizing their intellectual property. Companies can leverage the intellectual property to manufacture a product that they sell to their customer. The other alternative is that a company will license the intellectual property to other manufacturers for their products. Chinese firms have been known to build products that are the same or nearly equivalent to products that have been developed by American firms. This would be fine if the Chinese manufacturer were paying the American company to use the technology. Unfortunately this is not often the case. Additionally China has required American companies who want to sell their product to partner with Chinese firms in joint-ventures and share the intellectual property which is then stolen and the market for the American product is undercut by a multitude of Chinese manufacturers.
The candidates' responses were interesting in regards to this issue. Andrew Yang mentioned that this was a serious issue, but that the current tariffs levied by the Trump administration were hurting American manufacturers and farmers. Peter Buttiegieg when responding on this issue mentioned that the issue of intellectual property theft goes to a much deeper problem which is that China is developing technology for perfecting dictatorship. This is very interesting since in the second half of the 20th century America was clearly the most dominant player in advanced technology development, and it was used as an advantage in intelligence gathering. Buttiegieg also mentioned that if we don't get our act together they will run circles around us on artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese intellectual property theft are worthy of independent blog posts discussing each issue in more depth. Overall the two candidates who did discuss this issue showed an understanding of the issue, but there ability to articulate clear policies was limited by the debate format.
The one technology related issue that does seem to be on the minds of many voters is climate change. Among the candidates who were asked about this issue there was broad agreement to that re-entering the Paris climate agreement was an action they would take on day one. Kamala Harris specifically called it a climate crisis and mentioned her support of the green new deal. The green new deal is a broad set of plans for reducing emissions of green house gases, racial and social justice programs, and a federal jobs guarantee. The green new deal has been specifically crafted to meet the urgent emissions requirements outlined in recent UN reports on climate change. This set of policies faces many hurdles due to the extreme disruptive nature of the solutions that would be implemented. The governmental imposition of technologies and lifestyle changes will be resented by many who are recalcitrant to that sort of decision making. The most difficult part of the green new deal will be getting all the laws that will be required to pass both the House and Senate. The oil and gas industries that have the most to lose will put up a strong fight to this law which will imperil their future.
Pete Buttiegieg put forth that he has dealt with a 500 year and 1000 year floods in the last few years as mayor of South Bend. He proposed a carbon tax and rebate system to fight climate change. This type of system has been discussed for many years, but has never been implemented to my knowledge. The rebate effect solves the potential risk of angering many working class people who would be subject to the increased taxes, specifically on the gas they use to fuel their cars. One of the big problems with a carbon tax system is what should be the rate of the tax. Defining the price of carbon or a tax rate for carbon is exceedingly difficult without knowing how much carbon dioxide, the biggest green house gas, will cause the most draconian of impacts. Setting a rate that would meet the UN climate reports and the Paris agreement levels would likely lead to major problems for the economy. This is probably best understood by the efforts California has taken using a cap and trade system. I found it particularly interesting that Buttiegieg would mention that soil management by farmers could be part of the solution. Buttiegieg proposed a Pittsburgh summit that would bring in local and state leaders as stakeholders in this issue. The summit proposal is a great tongue and check dig at Trump. The summit itself would be a very good idea since in the Trump administration states and cities have taken the lead in fighting climate change.
John Hickenlooper is proposing to take a more cooperative method to dealing with climate change. He proudly shared the achievements of his time as governor of Colorado. Colorado closed coal plants and replaced them with renewable sources. Coal fueled power plants have been economically unsustainable for the last several years due to the price of renewable sources and natural gas dropping significantly. Colorado also has a favourable renewable energy capabilities that they are now cheaper than coal power plants. Hickenlooper also talked up the electric vehicle recharging network that was created in Colorado. Hickenlooper clearly has a grasp on the biggest players as he stated that the three biggest emitters are U.S., China, and concrete exhalation. His biggest proposal to fight climate change is to bring people together to work on solving the problem. To support his view he discussed his successful effort to impose the first methane emission regulations. In order to achieve this he brought the oil and gas industry and environmentalists together to achieve a compromise. The compromise between stakeholders scenario sounds great but has several potential pitfalls. Gas producers have a vested interest in reducing methane leaks because they can then sell the methane to increase their profits. The latest UN report on climate change states that we need to reduce our emissions by half in the next 12 years and achieve net zero by 2050. I have trouble seeing the oil and gas industry willingly sitting down with environmentalists to discussing climate change regulations when their very existence is in peril. Getting a deal is easy to do when both sides are able to gain from compromise. The latest scientific assessments are telling law makers that we need to eliminate CO2 emissions rapidly. The most likely outcome of an attempt at a grand bargain will obstruction and delay by the fossil fuel industry with the hope of maintaining their profitability as long as possible. I would like to thank Hickenlooper for bringing up the fact that no one is discussing plans to replace the emissions of heavy industries. Unfortunately he left this specific part of climate change as a query rather than proposing a solution.
Joe Biden opted to answer the climate change question by claiming that the Obama-Biden administration drove down the price of wind and solar. This broad statement sounds good, but there was no actual policy or policies that he cited to back up this statement. It should be pointed out that in the Obama administration timeline the cost of solar power did drop, but this was mostly fueled by the investment China made in manufacturing solar panels and their subsequent flooding of the market. Biden did propose building 500000 recharging stations for electric vehicles. This would be a great step as long as there is an equivalent increase in renewable energy to meet the energy demand from each of these stations. At best this will help allow for market penetration of electric vehicles. He also proposed 400 million dollars in research and development money for green technology. More research and development funding will allow the advancement of green technology, but this seems like a low value of funding when compared to Elizabeth Warren's proposal. A good question is to consider how much should we be spending on research and development to avert the worst of climate change.
The second night of debate did discuss technology more often, but the debate format was not conducive to a quality discussion of candidates policies. Hopefully future debates will allow for the voters to learn more about each candidates position. Any links to a candidates website are not an endorsement, but provided for the reader to learn more.

2020 First Democratic Presidential Debate Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:08:00 +0000

After 24 candidates have announced their candidacy since the beginning of the year and multiple candidate forums we have finally gotten to the first primary debate. With so many candidates the Democratic party limited those on the stage to 20 candidates split over two nights. This blog is not a fact checking source, but one that focuses on analyzing policies, policy proposals, and the politics involved. I will leave the fact checking to media organizations with more capabilities than I do. Now let's get to what was actually discussed by the candidates.
The debate was allocated two hours including advertising breaks. If we assume one hour and a half of actual debate time divided by 10 candidates means we have limited opportunities for each candidate to pitch their policy proposals. The debate also is setup with a wide open variety of topics to be discussed limiting the amount of time on each. It also means that candidates are likely to try to get the one sound bite that resonates to break out from the pack. The results of this format showed up Wednesday night.
There was very little in the way of discussion of policies in regards to technology due to the limitations in the debate format previously mentioned. Technology policy also affects everyone in a more subtle way than most people perceive. This leads to other issues, healthcare, economy or jobs, and foreign policy, being more important to average voters. I happen to agree that these are important issues that are most pertinent, but a singular or limited topic debate would allow the viewer to better understand each contenders policies.
The one topic that did come up in the debate was climate change. Elizabeth Warren mentioned that her policy proposal includes a ten fold increase in research and development funding for green technology. This plan would fuel the 23 Trillion market for green products that she claimed. Several other candidates, in particular Tim Ryan, talked about the need to manufacture electric vehicles and other green technologies as part of the economic future they envision. This all sounds good to the average lay person, but the reality is more complicated. We have several companies that have developed technology for electric vehicles and other green technology but since the US is a capitalist economy if there is little consumer interest then the companies go out of business. Tesla has been building electric cars for several years and developed an extensive patent portfolio, but it is suffering from a slowdown in sales that could imperil its sustainability. China is making significant efforts to develop green technology, in particular electric vehicles, as part of its plan to be a dominant player in future technology. The U.S. applies patent protections and patent laws consistently and therefore the promise of the green technology to produce significant jobs and wealth may end up being a pipe dream.
Washington governor Jay Inslee was specifically asked about his climate change plan by the debate moderators. Other than the awkward smiling and hand motions prior to the question he mentioned the need to go to 100% clean electricity. 100% clean electricity is a great sound bite, but most likely will be very difficult to achieve. The idea is that the electric grid can be run without fossil fuel based electricity generation. Jay Inslee is basing his campaign on fighting climate change, or as he calls it the climate crisis, and he has done in depth interviews discussing the issue and his policy proposals. Unfortunately we had very little substance added that makes a true analysis impossible of the policy proposals of the candidates on the stage. To learn more about each candidates climate change policy proposals check out this amazing resume from Vox.
Overall there was very little of the debate that dealt with technology and the political implications of it. The debate did ask some questions about climate change, but there was little digging into the details of the plans proposed by the different candidates. Elizabeth Warren did mention breaking up big technology companies which is a fascinating proposal that should be looked at in a separate blog post in the future, but she mentioned this in her view of the economy that is corrupt and not working for the working class. I hope that night two of the debate will include more debate questions discussing and showing the candidates' knowledge of technology and the political implications related to technology. I am cautiously optimistic that this will occur due to the candidates on the stage tonight, including Andrew Yang.

2019 State of the Union

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 05:41:00 +0000

The State of the Union speech is typically described as an opportunity for the President to present their administrations priorities for the year. This usually means a discussion of the status of the country, typically a positive statement even if far from true. There is a sizable chunk of the speech devoted to foreign policy and administration policies. The last major part of most State of the Union speeches is an enumeration and often times discussion of additional funding requests that the President will have in his budget. This portion of the speech typically has the potential for the most impact on technology and more specifically the intersection of technology and government policy. I will focus on those items that were brought up by the President in his State of the Union speech.
President Trump proudly stated that the United States is a net exporter of energy. The President supported this statement by stating that the U.S. has the most oil and gas production in 65 years. I will not take the time to fact check whether this claim is true, but it should be taken with a grain of salt. The growth of the oil and gas industry in the U.S. to its current state has been fueled by hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing is the use of pressurized water, sand, and chemicals to open cracks in shale to allow trapped natural gas and oil to be released. Hydraulic fracturing has been combined with horizontal drilling to achieve significant oil and gas production in areas like the Bakken and Marcelius shale. The complex advanced technology used to procure unconventional oil and gas deposits have been developed with support from the U.S. government research laboratories. In addition to the subsidies provided directly to the oil and gas industry the research and development done at national research laboratories has supported the countries increased oil and gas production. This is a very clear case of policy directly supporting a specific industry.
Notable absent from the President's speech was any reference to Climate Change. This would seem amazing as just last December the IPCC report in time for the COP 24 climate conference. The analysis was grim in regards to meeting the stated goal of the Paris Agreement. In addition there was the additional report released by climate scientists that stated that in order to avoid a two degree Celsius increase in global average temperature the World needed to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% eleven years.Oil, coal, and gas have relied on direct subsidies to producers in addition to federal funding of research and development activities at national research laboratories. In the face of the obvious looming disaster it would seem that the President would want to present solutions that would lead the United States to a safe and sustainable future. To not mention or tackle climate change would be professional malpractice in my opinion. The President unfortunately continues to act as if climate change is unfounded science or denies the impact of humans on the climate. Climate change may not have been directly mentioned during the state of the Union there were some thinly veiled comments made in regard to it by President Trump's ardent defense of capitalism and attack on socialism. This is probably due to the fear of the Green New Deal becoming popular.
Infrastructure investments seem to be a very popular topic for politicians to discuss in the last few years. The ASCE, American Society of Civil Engineers, has rated in its 2017 report card the state of American infrastructure a D+ so this topic is definitely worthy of action by politicians. President Trump took time to mention that he wants to work on an infrastructure bill. Unfortunately he didn't propose an amount that he envisioned being appropriated and the goals of any such bill should be. I would think that with the number of times the Trump administration has declared that it is infrastructure week there would be an extremely detailed plan to upgrade the deteriorating American infrastructure. It appears that President Trump threw out a line about infrastructure to check off a box rather than to give America, and the citizens listening, a direction to improving our society. This was a great topic which was thin on substance and is normal for the Trump administration.
President Trump followed up his brief remarks on infrastructure by stating that the government is making investments in cutting edge technologies. Unfortunately this was not followed up by any substantive support. As is the Trump administration's motus operandi a big announcement followed by very little to no detail. It is really difficult to understand why this line was even in the State of the Union as it can be easily argued that the Trump administration is not interested in cutting edge technologies based on its regulatory decisions. The FCC repealed net neutrality rules thereby allowing Interent Service Providers, ISPs, to slow down internet data speeds. This action essentially has allowed the ISPs to pick the winners and losers in the battles for users between rival internet based application technology. It can be argued that the repeal of these rules are a major barrier to the development of new technologies. The administration's fervent support for coal, oil, and gas has defined its decisions on regulatory issues. Rolling back the planned increases in vehicle fuel efficiency standards will slow down the development of new fuel efficiency technologies. Technology is typically developed based on a need by the customer or supplier to meet certain requirements. If the fuel efficiency requirements are stalled or slowed down then more efficient engines and electrification of cars will be delayed. The electricity generation sector is still primarily powered by fossil fuels. There has been a significant reduction on coal usage due to the lower price and cleaner emissions of natural gas. The new clean energy technology will be slowed down by the reversal of Obama era policies such as the Clean Power Plan. If as mentioned previously we are going to reduce CO2 emissions to avoid achieving dangerous levels of global temperature rise then a key cog will be new technology that has not been developed or scaled up at this time. Time will only tell if the Trump administration will help spurn new technologies to be developed or continue to support archaic technologies developed in the 19th and early 20th century.
President Trump proposed eliminating the HIV epidemic in the United States. This is a noble goal that I fully endorse, but once again like a broken record Trump was thin on substance. The efforts over the last 30 plus years has turned HIV from an uncontrolled epidemic with a death sentence prognosis to a disease that people can live full lives for decades. The great strides include the development of anti-retro viral medications that enable people to live and Prep. Prep is a medication that reduces dramatically the transmission of HIV when taken. For more information on the HIV epidemic check out this link on the history of HIV . The biotechnology that has developed these life saving medical treatments has not been cheap for the federal government. In this type of research and development typically there is partial funding from the government and private industry due to the risks associated with development of potential solutions. At this point there are currently treatments that are successful for people with HIV/AIDS and to reduce the risk of transmission in people at most risk. It was particularly disappointing to hear the President not articulate a clear plan since from what I can gather we are at a point where the technology, medical treatments, have been developed and they need to implemented. President Trump could have used the bully pulpit of the Presidency to advance the effort.
There have been several different people who have written about what it would take to end the HIV epidemic so I won't repeat their statements again. The history of the Republican party in regards to the key ways to stop the spread of HIV is dubious at best. It is generally accepted that one vein of transmission is the use of dirty needles by illegal drug users. Needle exchange programs have routinely been on the funding cutting block with Republicans in charge. In fact, Vice President Mike Pence while governor of Indiana had an HIV epidemic in his state due to the lack of needle exchange programs. The other major vector for new HIV infections is unprotected sex, particularly in at risk populations. Republican politicians have usually been reticent to implement policies that would encourage protected sex. This is probably due to a fear that the religious right, which is a significant part of their base, would revolt at anything other than abstinence. This is one place where one could hope that President Trump, who is proud to talk about his supposed sexual prowess, could lead by mentioning its importance from the Presidential podium. The two policies that historically Republicans have not backed wholeheartedly would have more impact on the HIV epidemic than any additionally investment in technology in the short run.
President also proposed spending 500 Billion dollars over the next ten years to fight childhood cancer. This line of the speech is very much in line with President Obama's moonshot on cancer. I appreciate the proposal to work on childhood cancer as they are more likely not to receive the publicity and charitable funding other cancers receive. We are in a period where medical research is fundamentally altering the way we treat cancer. This is a lofty statement from President Trump, but the devil will be in the details. I must admit there was an actual budget line value attached to this proposal in the State of the Union. It should be pointed out that human produced carcinogens and neurotoxins are still in our environment. They affect adults and children who ingest them in the food and water that they consume. In children the impacts maybe more acute than adults depending on the toxin. The Trump administration has continued to take a lax approach to environmental and chemical regulation. The fight against cancer in general, and in particular childhood cancer, should include a strong dose of mitigation by strongly enforcing our environmental regulations. This could lead to a boom in toxin removal technology that will provide enhanced benefits to society.
I listened to Stacy Abrams democratic response and she did not mention any items that had an implication on technology. This is understandable since her speech focused on values rather than direct economic or political proposals. She is also a private citizen and therefore not in a decision making role. In general President Trump's State of the Union was light on proposals that would impact technology, and missing substance when mentioned.

First Presidential Debate of 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 04:17:00 +0000

I thought I would listen to last night's debate and see how much technology was referenced. As I expected it was only briefly mentioned by candidates because most of the issues discussed in politics are not related to technology.
The majority of the references to technology was during the first section of the debate that focused on the economy. Hillary Clinton referenced advanced manufacturing at one point as part of her plan to invest in the economy. Unfortunately name dropping without explaining or expanding on the issue doesn't help the average person understand what it is. Advanced manufacturing includes additive manufacturing processes like 3D printing, laser cuttting and welding of materials, and the use of new materials. While advanced manufacturing will not produce the millions of jobs that traditional manufacturing did from the 1920's to the 1970's it has the ability to bring back jobs to the rust belt. The key is that there needs to be an investment in training people who are capable of using and in most instances programming the machine. Unfortunately in a debate this usually gets left off the table.
Hillary Clinton subsequently at another juncture in the debate mentioned solar cells and a new energy grid. These two ideas have a tremendous amount of potiential for the American economy as we completely reshape our electricity delivery production and system. The new electric grid she mentioned is often called smart grid. It should allow us to move from a 19th century system of electric delivery to a 21st century system with many different sources of electricity from many different suppliers. Once again the brief reference is great, but the lack of articulation left many of those who aren't techies feeling like it was over their head. A brief explanation by the candidate would have been beneficial.
To the contrary Donald Trump never mentioned any technologies or technology and spent most of his time talking about trade deals. While I think that discussing trade and free trade deals is a very important topic of political discourse that merits it's own debate, the lack of mention of technology or new sectors of technology that the US economy could invest in showed a lack of complete understanding of the economy. Trade and free trade are significant parts of our economy, but they are not the only policy areas that impact our economy. Technology and investment in new technologies holds the potiential to increase our economy significantly, it did that in the 90's. Many of our most visionary presidents have seen technology as a way to improve and grow our economy and hence supported nascent and new ideas that would mature in the near future.
The last place that technology was mentioned was in the discussion of cyberwarfare under national security. In this instance I found that both candidates decided to take tough stands, which makes sense from a national security stance. The problem is that neither candidate had very strong ideas about countering the threat from a technology standpoint. I, the author, don't have any immediate answers either, but this could have been an opening to discuss the need for more people to learn programming as this is a skill of the future.
It will be interesting to see how much technology is discussed in future debates.

State of the Union: The Takeaway

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:17:00 +0000

The State of the Union is typically an opportunity for both sides of the political spectrum to propose their legislative agenda and also position themselves for the next election. This of course has an impact on technology as their is a strong interaction between government and technology.
President Obama decided to frame his legislative agenda on restoring America's competitiveness. I thought this was a rather refreshing speech compared to the usual listing of programs that fit either the Democratic or Republican agenda. I will just go through a few of the items that were brought up.
One of the major initiatives that President Obama mentioned was the on going research into clean energy. This is a topic that I have not discussed on this blog, but just from the companies and countries investing in this business it should be a major growth area in the next five to ten years. He specifically mentioned biofuels created using algae. This is one of the areas where government interest will help spur on more research and investment into a new technology.
The other area that the president highlighted was infrastructure. It is fairly well known that America's roads, bridges, tunnels, and railroads are in bad shape. The ASCE, American Society of Civil Engineers, has routinely in the last few years rated the status of the infrastructure mentioned above at a D rating. This means that much of it must be repaired and in many cases replaced. He specifically mentioned high speed rail as an initiative that was necessary to maintain America's competitiveness. This area has tremendous engineering challenges on all fronts, but opens up the possibility of some amazing innovations. I hope in the future to write a post about this topic.
There was also the general discussion of legislative issues that indirectly impact technology. Those are education and regulations. Educating scientists and engineers is essential to maintaining the United States as a leader in the innovation economy. Regulations sometimes act as a hinderence to new markets and other times are challenges that even engineers are willing to innovate around. I don't plan to look into these in more depth.

Reviewing Yesterday's results

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:48:00 +0000

In an ideal world technological development is not affected by elections for new representatives. Sadly the influence of government on the growth of certain technology markets has been historically been significant. Thus I think that it is important that this blog look at the results of yesterday's midterm elections and try to understand what impact it will have on technology for the next two years.
Yesterday's results were a massive change in the make up of congress. In both chambers of the U.S. Congress the Democrats took significant losses to their membership. The house of Representatives saw a shift of 60 votes and the Republicans regaining control. In the Senate the Democrats have a razor thin majority with no clear way to defeat a filibuster on their major issues. The key question is what will happen to major political issues that effect technology.
Some issues that I have written about will be completely unchanged because the key decision makers are presidentially nominated and already in place. Net neutrality and Broadband policies of the Obama presidency are not about to change. The broadband iniative may be slowed down due to the necessity of federal legislation that Republicans may oppose and any government spending that is proposed to implement the plan. I think that while there will be initial skepticism this concept will be eventually supported by both parties as it will lead to job creation and many other unintended benefits.
I wrote about the need for spectrum for new and growing technologies a while ago. This is an area where the FCC will be making decisions independent and insulated from congressional interference. This is good since sensible and complicated decisions have to be made in the near future to allow for more growth in the wireless device industry and prevent interference. We can chalk up this essential protection of decisionmaking in the people's best interest to lawmakers with plenty of foresight into the possible battles in the halls of congress.
Climate change legislation in the US Congress is dead for all intensive purposes. The combination of more Republicans and Conservative Democrats from fossil fuel producing states have made politically impossible. This is too bad since the technology sector with the greatest growth is in renewable energy and associated synergistic technologies. This means that technologies like biofuels, solar electricity, wind energy, and smart grid technologies will be delayed in their implementation in the United States economy. The good news is that some significant players which are major industrial multi-nationals will not change their game plan with the changing political landscape. The good news is that California's landmark climate change legislation survived an initiative that would have effectively repealed it for years or more likely permanently. Clearly the voters saw this as an important issue as did both gubernatorial candidates.
The real loser from the outcome of the election was the national laboratories and engineering institutions. There funding is heavily dependent on allocations from the federal budget which is decided in congress. With Republicans in charge of the house spending will be reduced for scientific studies. This is too bad as NASA and several of the national laboratories have led to the development of many technologies we take for granted today. Republicans have promised limited government and reductions in spending so we can expect that too happen.
There are several things that we don't know about the next congress which may change what I am prognosticating. Will innovation be a central theme for the US recovery? Will Republicans see technology as a way to strengthen American national security directly and indirectly? We have two years to find out the answers to these questions.

An update on Net Neutrality

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:16:00 +0000

I wrote about net neutrality two months ago, but new developments have been occurring recently. Verizon and Google have apparently been negotiating a plan to define the page load speeds and the costs. I for one am not to pleased as this is an indirect act of censorship to small out of the mainstream websites like this one. To find out more check this link out.

Smart Grids part 1: The distribution grid

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:51:00 +0000

Smart grids are a hot topic in technology, policy, and political circles. Smart grid technology is a rather complicated set of technologies. Smart grids are the general concept of changing the way we treat the distribution of electricity. The electricity provided to your house currently, 60 Hertz Alternating current, will not change with the implementation of smart grids. The key new technologies will give the grid operators a better understanding and control of the electric distribution grid that provide electricity from the power plant to the consumer.
Among the key parts of this new infrastructure is equipment that would measure the strength of transmission lines. If a transmission line shows instability this could be a sign that either their is insufficient supply or that a fault is about to occur. Both of these situations have devastating effects for consumers in the way of brownouts and service interruptions. The idea being proposed is that the electric grid operators could monitor for dangerous situations similar to those that created the Blackout of 2003. This continuous monitoring could allow system operators to allocate resources to avoid brownouts and to protect expensive transmission equipment like transformers and substations.
This system for one thing will allow companies to know information about use of electricity. The next step might be that electric companies would be able to control what appliances are on in households. The other possible impact is what technology will be used to communicate this data to the control centers. There are two possibilities broadband over power line or wireless using 4G or WiMax. Both of these would require some sacrifices by citizens. In one case power lines could cause interference to other wireless systems because they are not shielded. The later solution would require allocating some of the radio spectrum that is highly sought after in general and more importantly by cellphone providers. The biggest risk is hacking by foreign governments or terrorists. All the most recent studies done by the US military have shown that they can hack into electric grid control centers. If we add technology that can allow better management, we should be worried about the possibility of the equipment being hacked and used against us in some way.

New Technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:52:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I attended the International Microwave Symposium to see and hear the latest cutting edge technology that is being discussed. This conference is about technologies ranging from the high frequencies of the tens of megahertz to greater than one terahertz.
I was able to listen in on some pretty interesting ideas and presentations of technology. Since many radio frequency waves need to be amplified among the many topics discussed was improvement in amplifier efficiencies. Several of the papers presented dealt with microwave amplifiers being used in the tens of gigahertz range. This is good since the more efficient an amplifier is the less energy that will be consumed. This can only help us achieve further energy consumption reduction.
A whole session was devoted to radar techniques and from the topics discussed it seems like a lot of innovative radar applications are being researched and developed. This should bode well for certain commercial applications of radar that can benefit human safety. This also means that there may be more defense research applied to more evasive munitions.
Another major area of discussion was Terahertz technology and projects that might be possible. A Terahertz signal has a wavelength on the order of the thickness of human hair. Light is in this frequency range but is treated differently. Several space projects were discussed as possibilities as this may provide more insight in to the cosmos. This projects are multi-million dollar multi-year efforts that rely solely on a willing government for funding. This is currently very difficult to do as the political climate is very stormy when it comes to government expenditure. The real difficult with terahertz technology is low efficiency components that are hard to produce. This is because we have only begun to start research in this area from an engineering perspective.
The new technology that is supposed to revolutionize many commercial products ar radio frequency minature electrical machines, otherwise known as RF MEMS. MEMS have been discussed as a future breakthrough nanotechnology that could alter medicine and other areas of life. I will discuss these technologies in a blog posting at some point in the near future. RF MEMS show promise since they will be able to allow filtering that can adapt to the demands required from the signal. This technology has the potential to alter much of our wireless life in the connected domain, but some of these designs require materials which are rare. It is only reasonable that any company that wants to commercialize this technology will think about the cost of the resource they are using.

Net Neutrality

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:37:00 +0000

The Internet has by far been the most revolutionary technology of the last twenty years. I remember the first time I interacted with it. It was a time when websites were fairly basic and the Internet was primarily existing at research institutions and universities. Flash forward to today and the Internets is a bustling place with commerce, press, individual spaces, social networks, and even streaming video. All of this has brought us together in many ways that people never thought of.
The problem is that with the increasing amount of applications, websites, blogs, and social networks there is more information that has to be transferred between servers and computers. More information means that more bandwidth is desired per user and when this is coupled with the increasing amount of users there is a problem for the Internet service providers (ISP). They are limited in the amount of bandwidth they can support and are unlikely to upgrade equipment at frequent intervals to increase their bandwidth. All the ISPs must maintain decent speeds in order to maintain their customer base. In order to balance all these factors the ISPs must make some tough decisions.
In the early years of the Internet content didn't need to be filtered as the amount of data was not great. Congress at some point in the 90's passed a law which would lapse in the 2000's. Our reliance on the internet as a forum for information dispersal and communication of ideas has significantly altered our society. Every major institution of politics has a website that displays plenty of information related to their business. In the next election cycle I would expect every candidate to have a facebook page and a twitter account as a requirement and not a luxury. With this increased usage the networks that we use are unable to supply the demand. The ISPs have indicated their interest in seperating the speed at which content would be delivered to the viewer and charging for the faster rate. Some of these companies have conflicts of interest in that they are parts of conglomerates with magazine, film, and television production divisions. These companies may be involved in political activities that they could effectively squash the opposition by drastically slowing their data rate. Comcast which has been caught altering the download rates of peer to peer sharing networks claims that this was done to stop illegal downloading of copyrighted material. The practical elimination of illegal activities is a benefit of the new system providers are proposing.
In my opinion it is generally better to require unfettered and unaltered access to the internet. This is what made it a tool that led to such dynamic growth of technology. Any benefits from the elimination of illegal downloading of copyrighted material and/or the banning of child pornography websites would come at a huge cost to the free and democratic society we live in. We should definitely stay away from any censorship like Australia is proposing as this sets a bad precedent for authoritarian dictatorships.

Cell Phones: The perfect connection of Technology and Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:59:00 +0000

On Thursday I was traveling and saw a roadside billboard advertising making your car a cell free zone. I didn't quite understand the billboard completely as I was driving and needed to pay attention to the road. It was only on Friday that I saw that Oprah was supporting a project to get everyone to agree to not use cell phones in their car, including texting. I strongly support this cause as driving and being on the phone is extremely dangerous. I encourage everyone to sign this pledge.
I am writing about this issue as this is at the nexus of politics and technology. Cell phones originally were big enough to be used as police batons and were very rare. By the early 2000's they were ubiquitous and small enough to be in the palm of your hand. The problem is that more drivers were distracted by cell phone calls which is a safety hazard. New York was the first state to ban cell phone use while driving. The technological capabilities only increased after the law was passed and texting became a very important communication form for many people. Now people are getting into accidents when they are driving and texting. States have had to adjust their laws to deal with the advances in the capabilities of cellphones.
Technology is always progressing forward unless it is explicitly banned. In an ideal world the engineers and designers would consider and warn the consumers as to dangerous or potentially dangerous uses of the new product. The truth is that in the situation of cell phones it takes legislators to decide the issue is a matter of public interest. Sadly this takes longer than it should because a majority of the legislators must be convinced to vote in favor.

The National Broadband Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:34:00 +0000

The FCC led by Julius Genachowski is currently working on a proposal for a national broadband plan. There are many different and important technological,policy,and financial issues related to the possible plan.
Let's begin with a discussion of broadband Internet and the different technology that could be used. Many of the users will remember the early days of the Internet in the mid to late 90's. The first Internet connection I had was based on a 64k modem, that screeched and screamed every time I connected, connected to a phone line. Now we have available technologies that allow us to transfer data at much higher rates. These technologies also don't hog the phone line like the 64k modems did. Among the alternatives are cable, fiber optic, BPL, and DSL. Some cable television providers are providing high speed Internet through their networks. The consumer can purchase Internet service along with their cable television. In this technology the data that is the information on the internet is encoded and decoded by a modem with the client. The data is transferred using a radio wave that travels in the cable losing energy along the way. At certain points along the path the signal must be boosted in strength or else the communications are not discernible. Fiber optic cable shows a lot of promise to distribute broadband Internet. Fiber optic cable is made from glass fibers and acts as a tunnel to transfer light from one point to another. The great advantage is that it can handle more bandwidth since multiple frequencies can be used to carry data. There is still a need to increase the signal a certain points along the transmission line, but this is less often than traditional cable systems due to the very low losses of the glass. Broadband over Power Line has remained an experimental technology that could posibly handle broadband Internet. The main motivation for creating this technology and implementing it is that there would be no need to add the infrastructure since rural electrification was completed in the 1930's. The downside is that every few miles you need to have a repeater that boosts the signal. Ideally however broadband Internet will not interfere with any other application of spectrum. This is a significant problem with amateur radio operators having significant interference from BPL experimental sites. The data is passed at approximately 10MHz over the unshielded power lines. This technology doesn't seem to be effective for rural broadband due to interference issues and the cost of implementation. DSL is a technology that most landline phone companies provide using the existing telephone networks. The copper phone lines are used as the medium to transfer the data. The main office where the Internet connection is truly made must be with a specified distance for the purposes of reliability. In addition with the need for much higher bandwidths that are desired to run interactive website and web video DSL is becoming outdated if not slow.
The last technology that I would like to discuss has not been in the discussion of possible remedies to expand broadband access. The technology is satellite based Internet connections. It has been shown to be resilient to disasters as shown in this article in IEEE Spectrum magazine. The technology does have high initial implementation costs due to launching satellites. The client side would only require a decent sized satellite dish and not the miles of cables. This would allow for implementation in areas with rough terrain and remote areas where houses are separated by many tens of miles.
The current proposal is to alter the rural phone subsidy program to include subsidization of broadband Internet. The main reason we have not seen the implementation of broadband networks in more rural areas of America is that the revenue would not cover the investments required in a reliable manner. If the current proposal being discussed is implemented Internet to rural communities will be subsidized through a fund controlled by the FCC. Everyone should be able to get Internet access whether they be in the most dense cities of America or on rural farmsteads. The important part of this plan is to figure the most effective technology for each part of this nationwide broadband network. If we don't want to spend money endlessly on subsidizing rural broadband networks good solid engineering needs to be done to keep maintenance and replacement costs from being onerous.

Digital Nation

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:48:00 +0000

My first real post is not going to be an extensive article by the author. Instead I am posting a link to an amazing documentary by frontline on the effects of the technologies we have created that are based on the internet backbone. I highly recommend seeing this video.

Raison d'etre

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:45:00 +0000

I created this blog to discuss the issues related to the social impacts, politics, and policies related to technology. My goal is to inform the reader about the technology, the social implications, the policies being proposed and to analyze them in a fair and balanced manner. My focus will be on informing the reader with facts and information about the technology and not tag lines or propaganda from any side. I will make an effort to explain both sides of the political arguments, but I may violate this guideline on issues too important for me to remain impartial. Certain topics are heavily discussed in the blogosphere and main media that I may decide to omit posting on these issues to bring up more exotic topics which have been not properly brought in to the public thought.