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The internet economy has produced digital platforms of enormous economic and social significance. These platforms—specifically, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple—now play central roles in how millions of Americans obtain information, spend their money, communicate with fellow citizens, and earn their livelihoods. Their reach is also felt globally, extending to many countries around the world. They have amassed the economic, social, and political influence that very few private entities have ever obtained previously.
ANTITRUST AND PRIVACY CONCERNS are two of the most high-profile topics on the tech policy agenda. Checks and balances to counteract the power of companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook are under consideration in Congress, though a polarized political environment is a hindrance. But a domestic approach to tech policy will be insufficient, as the users of the large American tech companies are predominantly outside the United States.
Yong Suk Lee and Charles Eesley examine how university entrepreneurship programs affect entrepreneurial activity using a unique entrepreneurship‐focused survey of Stanford alumni. OLS regressions find a positive relationship between program participation and entrepreneurship activities. However, endogeneity hinders causal interpretation. They utilize the fact that the entrepreneurship programs were implemented at the school level.
POPULAR CULTURE HAS ENVISIONED SOCIETIES of intelligent machines for generations, with Alan Turing notably foreseeing the need for a test to distinguish machines from humans in 1950. Now, advances in artificial intelligence that promise to make creating convincing fake multimedia content like video, images, or audio relatively easy for many. Unfortunately, this will include sophisticated bots with supercharged self-improvement abilities that are capable of generating more dynamic fakes than anything seen before.
IN 2016 WE LEARNED ABOUT EFFORTS BY FOREIGN ACTORS to interfere in the U.S. election by injecting misinformation and disinformation into public discourse on social media. False events and personas added to the polarization and manipulation of voters.
Few issues in the policy response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have inspired as impassioned debate as school reopening. There is broad agreement that school closures involve heavy burdens on students, parents, and the economy, with profound equity implications, but also that the risk of outbreaks cannot be eliminated even in a partial reopening scenario with in-school precautions. Consensus largely ends there, however: the approaches states and localities have taken to integrating these concerns into school reopening plans are highly variable.
VOTERS ARE BEING INUNDATED WITH POLITICAL ADVERTISING on social media and online platforms during the 2020 election season. Campaigns, PACs and third parties have added new tools and tactics for gathering data on voters and targeting them with advertising, and now they can pinpoint niches of potential voters on social media in ways unknown in prior election cycles.
On August 17, 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District launched a program to test more than 700,000 students and staff for SARS-CoV-2. The district is paying a private contractor to provide next-day, early-morning results for as many as 40,000 tests daily. As of October 4, a total of 34,833 people had been tested at 42 sites. The program is notable not only because it’s ambitious, but also because it’s unusual: testing is conspicuously absent from school reopening plans in many other districts.
On August 17, 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District launched a program to test more than 700,000 students and staff for SARS-CoV-2. The district is paying a private contractor to provide next-day, early-morning results for as many as 40,000 tests daily. As of October 4, a total of 34,833 people had been tested at 42 sites. The program is notable not only because it’s ambitious, but also because it’s unusual: testing is conspicuously absent from school reopening plans in many other districts.
Even before the covid-19 pandemic, virtual consultations (also called telemedicine consultations) were on the rise, with many healthcare systems advocating a digital-first approach. At the start of the pandemic, many GPs and specialists turned to video consultations to reduce patient flow through healthcare facilities and limit infectious exposures. Video and telephone consultations also enable clinicians who are well but have to self-isolate, or who fall into high risk groups and require shielding, to continue providing medical care. The scope for video consultations for long term conditio
AS WE APPROACH THE 2020 ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES, content moderation on social media platforms is taking center stage. From speech issues on Facebook and Twitter to YouTube videos and TikTok brigands, the current election season is being reshaped by curation concerns about what’s allowed online, what’s not, upranking and downranking, and who’s deciding.
Our 2015 survey experiment—reported in the 2017 International Security article “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran”—asked a representative sample of Americans to choose between continuing a ground invasion of Iran that would kill an estimated 20,000 U.S. soldiers or launching a nuclear attack on an Iranian city that would kill an estimated 100,000 civilians.1 Fifty-six percent of the respondents preferred the nuclear strike.
In late January 2020, China’s government initiated its first aggressive measures to combat COVID-19 by forbidding individuals from leaving their homes, radically limiting public transportation, cancelling or postponing large public events, and closing schools across the country. The rollout of these measures coincided with China’s Lunar New Year holiday, during which more than 280 million people had returned from their places of work to their home villages in rural areas. The disease control policies remained in place until late February and early March, when they were gradually loosened to
Why did Russia's relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Some explanations focus narrowly on changes in the balance of power in the international system, or trace historic parallels and cultural continuities in Russian international behavior. For a complete understanding of Russian foreign policy today, individuals, ideas, and institutions—President Vladimir Putin, Putinism, and autocracy—must be added to the analysis.
When an experienced provider opts to leave a healthcare workforce (attrition), there are significant costs, both direct and indirect. Turnover of healthcare providers is underreported and understudied, despite evidence that it negatively impacts care delivery and negatively impacts working conditions for remaining providers. In the Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system, attrition of women’s health primary care providers (WH-PCPs) threatens a specially trained workforce; it is unknown what factors contribute to, or protect against, their attrition.
THE EMERGENCE OF A DIGITAL SPHERE where public debate takes place raises profound questions about the connection between online information and polarization, echo chambers, and filter bubbles. Does the information ecosystem created by social media companies support the conditions necessary for a healthy democracy? Is it different from other media? These are particularly urgent questions as the United States approaches a contentious 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic.