OUR PICKSIs the Arizona Tech Oasis a Mirage? | The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World | Strategic Minerals and the False Promise of Seabed Mining, and more

Is the Arizona Tech Oasis a Mirage?  (Alejandro Reyes, Foreign Policy)
Taiwan’s pushback on chip production underscores continued U.S. dependency.

This Startup Wants to Spark a US DeepSeek Moment  (Will Knight, Wired)
With the US falling behind on open source models, one startup has a bold idea for democratizing AI: Let anyone run reinforcement learning.

The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World  (Stephen Witt, New York Times)
I’ve heard many arguments about what A.I. may or may not be able to do, but the data has outpaced the debate, and it shows the following facts clearly: A.I. is highly capable. Its capabilities are accelerating. And the risks those capabilities present are real. Biological life on this planet is, in fact, vulnerable to these systems. On this threat, even OpenAI seems to agree.
In this sense, we have passed the threshold that nuclear fission passed in 1939. The point of disagreement is no longer whether A.I. could wipe us out. It could. Give it a pathogen research lab, the wrong safety guidelines and enough intelligence, and it definitely could. A destructive A.I., like a nuclear bomb, is now a concrete possibility. The question is whether anyone will be reckless enough to build one.

Mass CDC Cuts Hit Staff Dealing with Measles, Ebola and Disease Forecasting  (Lena H. Sun, Washington Post))
The agency had already been cut during a reorganization this year, and more employees are now being shed amid the government shutdown.

Cybercrime Is Afflicting Big Business. How to Lessen the Pain  (Economist)
Banning the payment of ransoms would be a start.

Trump Administration Says Immigration Enforcement Threatens Higher Food Prices  (Lauren Kaori Gurley, Washington Post))
In an unusual acknowledgement, the Labor Department said that tougher immigration enforcement is hurting farmers and the food supply.

Reframing Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Policy  (Kenneth Luongo, National Interest)
After decades of hesitation, the United States is reconsidering nuclear fuel reprocessing—reviving the debate about proliferation risks, cost, technology competitiveness, and energy security.

Strategic Minerals and the False Promise of Seabed Mining  (Drake Long, CIMSEC)
There is no firm classification for what counts as a critical mineral. The Energy Act of 2020 defined critical minerals as “minerals, elements, substances, or materials” that were necessary for national or economic security of the United States, and if supply of said material were disrupted in some way, it would have dire implications for the U.S. manufacturing of defense goods or a negative effect on the overall U.S. economy. Nebulous as this category is, critical minerals have taken on new significance as of late due to the overwhelming dominance of China in the extraction and processing of them. As of 2025, China has the outsized ability to cut off, or severely constrain, the supply of 46 out of 84 different materials on the critical mineral list to the United States. Not coincidentally, China has also shown the willingness to use this dominant position in the commodity market, such as by restricting the sale of seven critical minerals to the U.S. back in April.
The seabed mining industry has stepped in and offered themselves as one of several proposed solutions to this problem. Unfortunately, these firms are mostly pitching false promises.