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This Week on the President's Tech Brief
Iran: Neither War Nor Peace: The ceasefire is holding, but only just — and our analysts think this limbo could stretch deep into the summer. Chip Usher breaks down why a deal is so hard to reach: three leaders, three incompatible needs, very little overlap. He puts odds on each outcome — including why the chance of a return to war is now rising.
OpenAI’s Threat Report: “Data Center Bandwagon”: OpenAI’s Ben Nimmo, who leads the company’s intelligence and investigations work, details a covert influence operation — likely out of China — that used ChatGPT to generate content posted by fake accounts posing as Americans, aimed at one surprising target: America’s own data centers. Ben connects it to a pattern that should worry anyone tracking the AI race, and answers the question— why reach for ChatGPT instead of China’s own DeepSeek?
Taiwan: Caught Between Two Summits: Financial Times correspondent Demetri Sevastopulo joins to discuss his recent piece on U.S. commitments to Taiwan. The worry isn't what was said in Beijing, where the line held. It's what came afterward — in a Fox News interview — calling Taiwan arms sales a "bargaining chip" and echoing one of Xi's own talking points. Demetri explains the quote from his reporting that Xi "won the cognitive war," what's really happening with the stalled $14 billion arms package, and why Taipei is stuck in wait-and-see mode for the rest of the year.
Anthropic's Big Week: Fable 5, Mythos 5 & a Labor Blueprint: Anthropic launched its most powerful model yet — but Rama Elluru argues the real story isn't the model, it's how it was released. Fable and Mythos are the same model; a single set of safeguards is all that separates the public version from the one reserved for vetted cyber defenders. Rama unpacks what that choice means for AI governance — and why it only works if every lab plays along.
Meta's $150M Workforce Bet: Meta's Director of Workforce Strategy, Kate Ross, joins to unpack America's Workforce Academy — a $150 million push to train the skilled-trades workers needed to build AI infrastructure, with a guaranteed job on the other side. The demand signal that prompted it: an earlier Meta fiber-technician program offered 1,000 spots and drew 35,000 applicants in its first week. Ryan Carpenter on what that appetite says about the workforce.
China Watch: The Pentagon's Blacklist: David Lin breaks down the Pentagon's reissued 1260H list, which names major Chinese firms — including EV giants BYD and NIO for the first time — as off-limits for the United States Department of Defense. The list had been quietly pulled ahead of the Beijing summit, so its return sends a signal of its own. David's verdict comes in three parts: the good, the bad, and the ugly — including why a list meant to warn U.S. companies off Chinese tech could end up undercutting its own credibility.
NSF's New Bet: X-Labs: The National Science Foundation is rethinking how America funds breakthroughs. Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, NSF's Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, joins to unpack the new X-Labs initiative — a model that bets on teams instead of proposals, giving researchers a multi-year runway to chase the kind of platform technology that took CRISPR decades to reach. He explains why the old grant model is too slow for the China competition, and which two fields NSF is targeting first.
The Quantum Scorecard: "Barely" Ahead: SCSP released its latest tech net assessment — this time on the U.S.-China quantum race across 36 metrics. Olivia and David give the top line: America leads, but only barely. The U.S. dominates on innovation and deployed hardware; China's edge is its patience — a coordinated national strategy that's been compounding since 1997. Read the full report → Quantifying the Competition
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