December 13 2024

1. Legal Battles Over AI Poised to Shape Trillions in Future Value
2. Shortage of Development-Ready Sites Jeopardizes U.S. Manufacturing Ambitions
3. Financialization of Medicine Linked to Patient Deaths as Private Equity Expands
4. 2024 U.S. Housing Market Sees Slowest Sales in Three Decades Amid Supply Crisis
5. Battle for Eurasia: Russian Advances in Ukraine and the Fallout of Assad's Collapse
December 13, 2000: Al Gore concedes presidential election

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1. Legal Battles Over AI Poised to Shape Trillions in Future Value

The legal battles over AI currently playing out—and the large number still to come—may profoundly impact the balance of wealth and power in countless democracies in the decades ahead. For an idea of the scale of the prize, it’s worth remembering that 90 percent of recent U.S. economic growth, and 65 percent of the value of its largest 500 companies, is already accounted for by intellectual property. By any estimate, AI will vastly increase the speed and scale at which new intellectual products can be minted. The provision of AI services themselves is estimated to become a trillion-dollar market by 2032, but the value of the intellectual property created by those services—all the drug and technology patents; all the images, films, stories, virtual personalities—will eclipse that sum. It is possible that the products of AI may, within my lifetime, come to represent a substantial portion of all the world’s financial value. In this light, the question of ownership takes on its true scale, revealing itself as a version of Bertolt Brecht’s famous query: To whom does the world belong?

Article Source: Boston Review

2. Shortage of Development-Ready Sites Jeopardizes U.S. Manufacturing Ambitions

The US bid to lead the world in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing is facing a critical hurdle: a shortage of development-ready industrial sites. Nearly two-thirds of the people involved in securing US industrial sites cited their scarcity as the top factor impeding new projects, in a 2024 survey by the Site Selector’s Guild. And 87 per cent of respondents said resource shortages — including a lack of land, labour and utilities — had affected or compromised project timelines. “It’s absolutely crazy,” says Josh Bays, a principal at Site Selection Group, which helps companies find US locations. “Most of the low-hanging fruit’s been picked over.”

Article Source: FT

3. Financialization of Medicine Linked to Patient Deaths as Private Equity Expands

2024 was arguably the year that the mortal dangers of corporate medicine finally became undeniable and inescapable. A study published in JAMA found that, after hospitals were acquired by private-equity firms, Medicare patients were more likely to suffer falls and contract bloodstream infections; another study found that if private equity acquired a nursing home its residents became eleven per cent more likely to die. Although private-equity firms often argue that they infuse hospitals with capital, a recent analysis found that hospital assets tend to decrease after acquisition. Yet P.E. now oversees nearly a third of staffing in U.S. emergency departments and owns more than four hundred and fifty hospitals. In some of them, patients were “forced to sleep in hallways, and doctors who spoke out were threatened with termination,” according to Jonathan Jones, a former president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.

Article Source: New Yorker

4. 2024 U.S. Housing Market Sees Slowest Sales in Three Decades Amid Supply Crisis

The story of the 2024 housing market has been one of a nation frozen in place, with millions of people unable to move amid rising home prices, stubbornly high mortgage rates and a drastic shortage of inventory. The year is on track to have the slowest housing market in three decades, with a projected four million home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors — making 2024 the second straight year of historically anemic sales. The last time sales dipped that low was in 1995, when the U.S. population was 22 percent smaller than it is today. “This is just an incredibly low figure considering how many people we have in America, and Americans’ general view that as their situation improves, they move,” said Lawrence Yun, N.A.R.’s chief economist. “I simply don’t think that you can remain at this low level.” This housing crisis is largely a supply crisis, and not just because people aren’t selling their homes. The country simply hasn’t built enough new homes to keep pace with a growing population: Zillow puts the shortage at 4.5 million homes, Freddie Mac at 3.7 million.

Article Source: NYT

5. Battle for Eurasia: Russian Advances in Ukraine and the Fallout of Assad's Collapse

Editors note: This ongoing conflict pits the West, led by the United States, against an axis of adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. At stake is dominance over the vast and strategically critical landmass of Eurasia. The conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and rising tensions with China in East Asia are all interconnected, forming part of a larger struggle: the Battle for Eurasia. To dive deeper into my framework for understanding the Battle for Eurasia, see my article.

A. In an effort to flank Pokrovsk, Russian troops have pushed south of the city in recent days and are now less than three miles from its outskirts, according to battlefield maps based on satellite images and publicly available footage of the fighting. They are also steadily advancing through villages and settlements several dozen miles to the south, threatening to seize the last two Ukrainian strongholds in the southern part of the Donetsk region. Moscow is advancing in Donetsk at its fastest pace since 2022, capturing hundreds of square miles each month as it leverages its overwhelming manpower advantage by breaking through Ukrainian positions weakened by troop shortages.  

B. A team of soldiers sat inside a nondescript red bus with their eyes glued to a bank of screens blinking with yellow dots. The shapes represented Russian drones, missiles and planes cutting into Ukrainian skies. Soldiers from Ukraine’s 164th Radiotechnical Brigade were trying to quickly identify targets and intercept them before they could sow destruction in towns and cities. In recent months, the number of dots on the screens has mushroomed, with Russia’s stocks bolstered by a new drone factory and North Korean ordnance. Russia fired more than 6,000 explosive drones and missiles against Ukraine over September, October and November, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of daily data from the Ukrainian Air Force Command. That was over three times the number it fired over the previous three months, and more than four times the number fired during the same fall months in 2023. Russia is using an unprecedented number of Iranian-designed Shahed drones, and it is using more ballistic missiles, which are harder to intercept. One of Moscow’s new tactics is to fly fleets of cheap decoy drones to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses. It is using thermobaric warheads and radar-evading missiles. “The point is to exhaust the air defense capabilities,” said Maj. Anton Yanovych, a commander of the 164th. He said there are days when he sleeps less than two hours. His bus is equipped with a shower, a kitchen, bunk beds and a fridge to make operators comfortable as they keep constant watch.

C. Russia will likely manage the political blow of the Assad regime's collapse by redirecting resources to Ukraine, but in the long run, Moscow will struggle to replace its military facilities in Syria, which could eventually impede Russia's ability to project power in the region. After fleeing Damascus as rebels captured the capital city, longtime Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his family arrived in Moscow on Dec. 8, where he was granted political asylum in what the Kremlin said was a personal decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin. By later that night, the new flag of the Syrian opposition government was already flying over Syria's diplomatic facilities in Russia. Russian state media outlets had also stopped referring to anti-Assad forces as terrorists, instead calling them Syria's “armed opposition.” Russia's apparent shift toward accepting Syria's new authorities is likely part of Moscow's efforts to secure its diplomatic and military facilities in Syria, most importantly its naval base in Tartus and its airbase in Khmeimim, where Russian forces are still present. As of Dec. 10, President Putin had yet to publicly comment on the collapse of Assad's government, of which Russia had likely been the largest foreign backer in terms of total financial and military support since 2015, when Russian troops began deploying to Syria at Assad's request to help defend his regime amid the civil war that broke out in 2011.

Article Source: NYT, WSJ, Rane

December 13, 2000: Al Gore concedes presidential election

Sources

1. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/to-whom-does-the-world-belong/

2. https://on.ft.com/3Vw8BNC

3. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2024-in-review/the-gilded-age-of-medicine-is-here

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/realestate/housing-market-2024-2025.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

5. A https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-pokrovsk.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
B https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-russia-war-skies-winter-35aa1fb5?st=LDwdPp&reflink=article_copyURL_share
C worldview.ranenetwork.com