The US lives in China’s world. Stealing secrets from the US government has never been easier. When AI’s power grows, so does our workday. The new travel warnings are for the US. 5 hard truths about marriage (and relationships).

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“In the war over who gets to define the rules of the road, the battle is over, at least for now. And China won.” (Michael Froman)

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

Michael Froman, China Has Already Remade the International System
(Foreign Affairs, 25 March 2025)
An interesting US ‘ultimate’ insider’s view. For years, the US lectured China about not using protectionism, barriers to foreign investment, and industrial policy, hoping it would converge with the American model. As Froman observes, there has indeed been a fair degree of convergence, but instead of China coming to resemble the US, it is the US that is now behaving more like China. In effect, China’s nationalist state capitalism dominates the international economic order, and “Washington is already living in Beijing’s world.”
But it is not yet clear whether the US can outmaneuver China with its own playbook (metered paywall that may require prior registration).
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Noah Schachtman, Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥
(The New York Times, 26 March 2024)
This article says it as it is: “If you’re running the security directorate of a hostile nation, savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government.” But what shall we expect when the Trump administration “makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, (and) puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I.”? It’s hard to comprehend what’s going on, and concerning – at best (gifted article, reads in 5-6 min).
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Wei Jiang, Junyoung Park, Rachel Xiao, Shen Zhang, As AI’s power grows, so does our workday
(CEPR, 28 March 2025)
Very counter-intuitive! We would expect technological progress to lighten the burden of work, but as the four economists show, the opposite happens. They look at the relationship between AI exposure, the length of the workday, time allocation, and worker satisfaction, and conclude that, although AI-driven automation and delegation allow workers to complete the same tasks more efficiently, employees in AI-exposed occupations are working longer hours and spending less time on socialization and leisure (metered paywall, 6-8 min).
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Ed Kilgore, Now the Travel Warnings Are for America
(The Intelligencer, 23 March 2025)
Who would have thought, just a few weeks ago, that this stuff could happen one day? Some
European countries have now begun warning their citizens about the risks of travel to the US after a few incidents showing that even a minor problem with papers not being fully in order can entail extreme consequences. Read on to grasp the madness of it all. And this is already having a dampening effect on tourism, particularly from Canada (metered paywall, 3-4 min).
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Mark Travers, I’m a psychologist who studies couples—5 ‘hard truths’ about marriage most people learn too late in life
(CNBC, 23 March 2025)
At a time when many women around the world are giving up on marriages (one of the reasons why fertility rates are declining so precipitously), this may be worth reading! According to the psychotherapist, if we accept these five hard truths about marriage, we’re more likely to have a happy and successful relationship: (1) Love alone isn’t enough to hold a marriage together. (2) You’re going to fight … a lot. (3) Your partner won’t — and can’t — meet all of your needs. (4) Without constant maintenance, your marriage will crumble. (5) You are both going to change individually (metered paywall, 4-5 min).
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