‘America’s AI is futuristic. China is just making it work.’
Jacob Dreyer at The New York Times
“Many American leaders believe the United States cannot overcome its adversary China unless it beats the country in the AI race,” says Jacob Dreyer. But the “two countries conceptualize AI very differently. Americans want to create the most powerful technology humans have ever known,” while China aims to advance a “government-directed strategy” that “treats AI as if it were infrastructure. This includes government-coordinated plans, local subsidies and national computing-power programs to diffuse cheap, capable AI tools into every public service.”
‘Spencer Pratt and the temptations of populism’
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic
Spencer Pratt, the former reality star candidate for Los Angeles mayor, is a “registered Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, and he has zero experience in government,” says Conor Friedersdorf. “Yet last week he was one of just three candidates to qualify for a televised debate,” which “could hardly have gone better for him.” While current Mayor Karen Bass and LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman highlighted “each other’s failures to remedy the city’s problems,” Pratt was the “only option onstage for voters seeking change.”
‘Hantavirus anxiety reveals America never left Covid crisis mode’
Holland Haynie at Newsweek
A “virus outbreak on a cruise ship should not instantly make Americans wonder whether ordinary life is about to unravel again,” says Holland Haynie. However, “social media quickly filled with quarantine imagery, speculation and emotional rehearsal of another global disruption.” Human beings are “remarkably good at adapting to prolonged uncertainty” but “adaptation has consequences.” Covid “did not simply disrupt American life temporarily. It changed many Americans psychologically in ways we still do not fully acknowledge.”
‘Trump, Republicans know how they’re hurting LGBTQ+ kids’
Sara Pequeño at USA Today
“The kids aren’t all right” and the “political landscape created” by Trump is “at least partly to blame,” says Sara Pequeño. According to a 2025 survey from The Trevor Project, “10% of LGBTQ+ youth attempted suicide in the past year, and 36% considered” it. 90% said “recent laws and debates over their existence have caused them stress or anxiety.” The “more you decry something as wrong or evil, the more young people will internalize that to mean that they are wrong or evil.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
