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

The Download: four (still) big breakthroughs, and how our bodies fare in extreme heat

December 8, 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. 4 technologies that didn’t make our 2026 breakthroughs list If you’re a longtime reader, you probably know that our newsroom selects 10 breakthroughs every year that we think will define the future. This group…

4 technologies that didn’t make our 2026 breakthroughs list

December 8, 2025
If you’re a longtime reader, you probably know that our newsroom selects 10 breakthroughs every year that we think will define the future. This group exercise is mostly fun and always engrossing, but at times it can also be quite difficult.  We collectively pitch dozens of ideas, and the editors meticulously review and debate the…

eSIM adoption is on the rise thanks to travel and device compatibility

December 5, 2025
eSIM as a technology has been around for a decade now. However, global eSIM adoption was around 3% last year and will only cross 5% this year. Despite these figures, analysts, eSIM-providing startups, and investors are bullish about eSIM’s upward trajectory, largely thanks to travel. Device compatibility One of the key factors for that is […]

Harnessing human-AI collaboration for an AI roadmap that moves beyond pilots

December 5, 2025
The past year has marked a turning point in the corporate AI conversation. After a period of eager experimentation, organizations are now confronting a more complex reality: While investment in AI has never been higher, the path from pilot to production remains elusive. Three-quarters of enterprises remain stuck in experimentation mode, despite mounting pressure to…

The Download: political chatbot persuasion, and gene editing adverts

December 5, 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. AI chatbots can sway voters better than political advertisements The news: Chatting with a politically biased AI model is more effective than political ads at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates…

Selling the sizzle of trait discrimination

December 5, 2025
One day this fall, I watched an electronic sign outside the Broadway-Lafayette subway station in Manhattan switch seamlessly between an ad for makeup and one promoting the website Pickyourbaby.com, which promises a way for potential parents to use genetic tests to influence their baby’s traits, including eye color, hair color, and IQ. Inside the station,…

The era of AI persuasion in elections is about to begin

December 5, 2025
In January 2024, the phone rang in homes all around New Hampshire. On the other end was Joe Biden’s voice, urging Democrats to “save your vote” by skipping the primary. It sounded authentic, but it wasn’t. The call was a fake, generated by artificial intelligence. Today, the technology behind that hoax looks quaint. Tools like…

Delivering securely on data and AI strategy 

December 4, 2025
Most organizations feel the imperative to keep pace with continuing advances in AI capabilities, as highlighted in a recent MIT Technology Review Insights report. That clearly has security implications, particularly as organizations navigate a surge in the volume, velocity, and variety of security data. This explosion of data, coupled with fragmented toolchains, is making it…

The Download: LLM confessions, and tapping into geothermal hot spots

December 4, 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. OpenAI has trained its LLM to confess to bad behavior What’s new: OpenAI is testing a new way to expose the complicated processes at work inside large language models. Researchers at the company…