December 19, 2025

The Download: China’s dying EV batteries, and why AI doomers are doubling down

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. China figured out how to sell EVs. Now it has to bury their batteries. In the past decade, China has seen an EV boom, thanks in part to government support. Buying an electric…

Technology

Why US federal health agencies are abandoning mRNA vaccines

August 15, 2025
This time five years ago, we were in the throes of the covid-19 pandemic. By August 2020, we’d seen school closures, national lockdowns, and widespread panic. That year, the coronavirus was responsible for around 3 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Then came the vaccines. The first mRNA vaccines for covid were authorized for…

The Download: affordable EV trucks, and Russia’s latest internet block

August 14, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US could really use an affordable electric truck On Monday, Ford announced plans for an affordable electric truck with a 2027 delivery date and an expected price tag of about $30,000, thanks…

The US could really use an affordable electric truck

August 14, 2025
On Monday, Ford announced plans for an affordable electric truck with a 2027 delivery date and an expected price tag of about $30,000, thanks in part to a new manufacturing process that it says will help cut costs. This could be the shot in the arm that the slowing US EV market needs. Sales are…

The road to artificial general intelligence

August 13, 2025
Artificial intelligence models that can discover drugs and write code still fail at puzzles a lay person can master in minutes. This phenomenon sits at the heart of the challenge of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Can today’s AI revolution produce models that rival or surpass human intelligence across all domains? If so, what underlying enablers—whether…

The Download: Trump’s golden dome, and fueling AI with nuclear power

August 13, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why Trump’s “golden dome” missile defense idea is another ripped straight from the movies Within a week of his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order to develop “The Iron Dome for America”…

The Download: meet the judges using AI, and GPT-5’s health promises

August 12, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the early-adopter judges using AI The propensity for AI systems to make mistakes that humans miss has been on full display in the US legal system as of late. The follies began…

What you may have missed about GPT-5

August 12, 2025
Before OpenAI released GPT-5 last Thursday, CEO Sam Altman said its capabilities made him feel “useless relative to the AI.” He said working on it carries a weight he imagines the developers of the atom bomb must have felt. As tech giants converge on models that do more or less the same thing, OpenAI’s new…