Massive AI Infrastructure Planned in the E.U. and U.S.: A Synergistic Opportunity

The relationship between human and artificial intelligence is a tantalizing but formidable investigative topic requiring much more intelligence than I can proffer. The likelihood of interlarding emotion and desire to warp the former under the gravitational pull of selfishness may render us the weaker party even though, at least as of 2026, we humans still held the strings. That the human mind is not far-reaching enough in its intellectual gaze may be why we are so afraid of the potential of AI as being able at some point to displease our desire to control it (and just about everything else under the Sun). The advent of planned AI gigafactories in the E.U. and giant data centers in the U.S. presented American and European elected officials in 2026 with a synergistic opportunity that, if successfully achieved, could cause a leap in AI while paradoxically showcasing the human mind and thus possibly increasing our confidence in ourselves while decreasing our corresponding fear of AI.

The full essay is at "Massive AI Infrastructure Planned in the E.U. and U.S."

A Strong State vs. The Market Mechanism in China

Under Marxist ideology, the Chinese economy was a command-and-control economy eschewing the market mechanism. Mao's collective farms provide us with a good example. The economy of the U.S.S.R., also Marxist, was based on production quotas and fixed prices. They changed by fiat rather than by changes in demand. State owned, or socialist, productive enterprises were given quotas based on the prior year's production (plus more). This push replaced that of producing more to sell more. Any hint of a market brought with it the stench of Capitalism. So one would suppose that China marked a significant departure when the government announced in 2013 that it would expand the range in which the yuan currency would float. Yet in 2019 in the midst of a trade tussle with the United States, the Chinese state demonstrated just how dominant the state still was relative to any market system.  

The full essay is at "Strong State vs. The Market Mechanism."

Google Executives Evaded Jail Time in Brazil: Is Business Too Powerful?

In late September 2012, the Brazilian state police detained the head of Google’s operations in the state after the company’s management failed to act on an electoral judge’s order to remove videos from its YouTube site criticizing a candidate in a rural county election. Separately, a judge ordered Google to remove a religiously-offensive video, which had sparked riots in the Middle East, within ten days or face fines. Google’s lawyers claim that the company is not responsible for what users upload. Earlier in the year, Brazil’s government threatened the head of Chevron’s operations there with arrest and passport-confiscation after a small leak occurred in the company.

The full essay is at "Are people in international business above national laws?"

Non-Tariff Barriers to Trans-Atlantic Trade

Karel De Gucht, the E.U. trade commissioner, said in late November 2012, “There is now, for the first time in years, a serious drive towards an E.U.-U.S. free-trade agreement.” The office of his counterpart, Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, indicated that a high-level working-group consisting of Europeans and Americans was working on “how best to increase U.S.-E.U. trade and investment.” The sticking point concerned non-tariff barriers, such as different regulatory standards.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

Karel De Gucht, the E.U. Trade Commissioner, advocating a free-trade pact with the U.S.  (Reuters).