Will Trump's tech policies propel U.S. success against China?
However, an increasing emphasis on AI development at the expense of regulation raises concerns, given that rules were being strengthened to mitigate national security, human-rights and safety risks.
A rollback that overlooks these issues could have consequences for the U.S. and the world. It may also put America at odds with Europe, which has prioritized regulation, thereby disrupting international cooperation on AI governance.
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Japan Times
9 hours ago
- Japan Times
The AI race has Big Tech spending $344 billion this year
If there's any lesson to take from the spending plans issued by the world's largest technology companies over the past two weeks, it's to never underestimate the fear of missing out. Microsoft, which set a $24.2 billion capital spending record last quarter, plans to drop upward of $30 billion in the current period. similarly spent $31.4 billion last quarter, almost double what it dropped a year ago, and is maintaining that level of investment. Google owner Alphabet raised its capital expenditures guidance this year to $85 billion. Then there's Meta Platforms: The social networking giant lifted the low end of its forecast for 2025 capital expenditures and projected that costs will continue to grow at an even faster pace next year. Altogether, the four companies are expected to spend more than $344 billion for the year, with much of it going to the data centers necessary to run AI models. "We've basically tripled capex investment in cloud due to AI,' Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh said. The emphasis from virtually every company executive during this earnings season was on investing as quickly as possible to get ahead. "We need the teams to execute at their very best to get the capacity in place as quickly and effectively as they can,' Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood told analysts in a call Wednesday. Susan Li, Meta's CFO, said the goal of its own spending is to secure the advantage "in developing the best AI models.' Wall Street's response has been mixed. Meta was rewarded — in large part because the company posted a strong second-quarter sales beat and issued a rosy revenue forecast, signaling that the billions it's spending on AI are paying off. "On advertising, the strong performance this quarter is largely thanks to AI unlocking greater efficiency and gains across our ad system,' Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on an analyst call. Zuckerberg has plans to build several massive data centers and has been luring top AI researchers with compensation packages valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The company recently restructured its internal AI division, now referred to as Meta Superintelligence Labs, in an effort to build human-level AI capabilities and apply that technology across its products. Shares of the company have gained more than 8% since it reported earnings on Wednesday. Amazon, on the other hand, failed to convince investors that its lavish spending has been worth it. The stock was down as much as 8.1% on Friday after the company reported tepid sales from its cloud division. The results were "especially disappointing' given the strong performance from Google's and Microsoft's own cloud services, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during an event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in September 2023. | Reuters And the ongoing capital costs won't help. The operating margin for Amazon's cloud unit will continue to face pressure "through 2026 as capital spending ramps up,' BI analysts Poonam Goyal and Anurag Rana said. Alphabet's shares are essentially unchanged from last week when it reported earnings and issued guidance. The company raised its capital expenditures outlook by $10 billion and expects to ramp up spending even more in 2026. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai explained that the investments are necessary to keep up with customer demand. "Obviously, we are seeing strong momentum across our portfolio, and especially in cloud,' Pichai told analysts in a call on July 23. "It's a tight supply environment, and we are investing more to expand.' Nikhil Lai, an analyst at Forrester, put it another way: If Google wants to keep up with rivals, he said, it has little choice but to follow suit: "Google's hand is forced by OpenAI to spend tremendously on AI's infrastructure and applications.' Microsoft tied its AI investments directly to a 39% jump in sales for its Azure cloud-computing division, which came in ahead of analysts' estimates. "We continue to lead the AI infrastructure wave and took share every quarter this year,' Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in a call with analysts on Wednesday. "In Microsoft's case, the returns are good,' Gil Luria, an analyst with DA Davidson & Co., said in an interview. The only question now is whether Microsoft's customers are in turn seeing a decent return on investment, he said. "That's where the test will be,' he said. "If they don't, they're not going to increase that spend next year.' Apple's capital plans pale in comparison to its Big Tech peers. But the iPhone-maker did raise its spending estimates, tying much of the increase to AI efforts. Apple's property, plant and equipment investments totaled $9.47 billion in the nine months ended June 28, up nearly 45% from a year ago. "You are going to continue to see our capex grow,' Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh told analysts on Thursday. "It's not going to be exponential growth, but it is going to grow, substantially. And a lot of that's a function of the investments we're making in AI.'
Japan Times
11 hours ago
- Japan Times
Europe is breaking its reliance on American science
European governments are taking steps to break their dependence on critical scientific data the United States historically made freely available to the world, and are ramping up their own data collection systems to monitor climate change and weather extremes. The effort marks the most concrete response from the European Union and other European governments so far to the U.S. government's retreat from scientific research under the administration of President Donald Trump. Since his return to the White House, Trump has initiated sweeping budget cuts to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies, dismantling programs conducting climate, weather, geospatial and health research, and taking some public databases offline. As those cuts take effect, European officials have expressed increasing alarm that — without continued access to U.S.-supported weather and climate data — governments and businesses will face challenges in planning for extreme weather events and long-term infrastructure investment. In March, more than a dozen European countries urged the European Commission to move fast to recruit American scientists who lose their jobs to those cuts. Asked for comment on NOAA cuts and the EU's moves to expand its own collection of scientific data, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Trump's proposed cuts to the agency's 2026 budget were aimed at programs that spread "fake Green New Scam 'science,'" a reference to climate change research and policy. "Under President Trump's leadership, the U.S. is funding real science again,' Rachel Cauley, an OMB spokesperson, said via email. European officials said that — beyond the risk of losing access to data that is bedrock to the world's understanding of climate change and marine systems — they were concerned by the general U.S. pullback from research. "The current situation is much worse than we could have expected," said Sweden's State Secretary for Education and Research Maria Nilsson. "My reaction is, quite frankly, shock." The Danish Meteorological Institute described the U.S. government data as "absolutely vital" — and said it relied on several data sets to measure including sea ice in the Arctic and sea surface temperatures. "This isn't just a technical issue, reliable data underpins extreme weather warnings, climate projections, protecting communities and ultimately saves lives," said Adrian Lema, director of the DMI's National Center for Climate Research. Officials from eight European countries, who said their governments were undertaking reviews of their reliance on U.S. marine, climate and weather data, were interviewed. Officials from seven countries — Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden — described joint efforts now in the early stages to safeguard key health and climate data and research programs. Leaning on the U.S. As a priority, the EU is expanding its access to ocean observation data, a senior European Commission official said. Those data sets are seen as critical to the shipping and energy industries as well as early storm warning systems. Over the next two years, the senior official said, the EU plans to expand its own European Marine Observation and Data Network which collects and hosts data on shipping routes, seabed habitats, marine litter and other concerns. The initiative was aimed at "mirroring and possibly replacing U.S.-based services," the senior European Commission official said. Europe is particularly concerned about its vulnerability to U.S. funding cuts to NOAA's research arm that would affect the Global Ocean Observing System, a network of ocean observation programs that supports navigation services, shipping routes and storm forecasting, a second EU official said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center in Miami earlier this year. About 800 of NOAA's 12,000-strong workers have been terminated or taken financial incentives to resign as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency cuts. | Reuters The insurance industry relies on the Global Ocean Observing System's disaster records for risk modelling. Coastal planners use shoreline, sea-level, and hazard data to guide infrastructure investments. The energy industry uses oceanic and seismic datasets to assess offshore drilling or wind farm viability. In addition, the senior EU Commission official said, the EU is considering increasing its funding of the Argo program, a part of the Global Ocean Observing System which operates a global system of floats to monitor the world's oceans and track global warming, extreme weather events and sea-level rise. NOAA last year described the program, in operation for over 25 years, as the "crown jewel" of ocean science. It makes its data freely available to the oil and gas industry, marine tourism and other industries. The United States funds 57% of Argo's $40 million annual operating expenses, while the EU funds 23%. The White House and NOAA did not respond to questions about future support for that program. The European moves to establish independent data collection and play a bigger role in Argo represent a historic break with decades of U.S. leadership in ocean science, said Craig McLean, who retired in 2022 after four decades at the agency. He said U.S. leadership of weather, climate and marine data collection was unmatched, and that through NOAA, the U.S. has paid for more than half of the world's ocean measurements. European scientists acknowledge the outsize role the U.S. government has played in global scientific research and data collection — and that European countries have grown overly dependent on that work. "It's a bit like defense: we rely heavily on the U.S. in that area, too. They're trailblazers and role models — but that also makes us dependent on them," said Katrin Boehning-Gaese, scientific director of Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. 'Guerilla Archivists' A number of European governments are now taking measures to reduce that dependence. Nordic countries met to coordinate data storage efforts in the spring, said Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland. European science ministers also discussed the U.S. science budget cuts at a meeting in Paris in May. Aasland said Norway was setting aside $2 million to back up and store U.S. data to ensure stable access. The Danish Meteorological Institute in February started downloading historical U.S. climate data in case it is deleted by the U.S. It is also preparing to switch from American observations to alternatives, Christina Egelund, minister of higher education and science of Denmark, said in an interview. "The potentially critical issue is when new observations data stop coming in," the Institute's Lema said. While weather models could continue to operate without U.S. data, he said the quality would suffer. Meanwhile, the German government has commissioned scientific organizations, including the center, to review its reliance on U.S. databases. Since Trump returned to the White House, scientists and citizens worldwide have been downloading U.S. databases related to climate, public health or the environment that are slated for decommissioning — calling it "guerrilla archiving." "We actually received requests — or let's say emergency calls — from our colleagues in the U.S., who said, 'We have a problem here... and we will have to abandon some datasets,' said Frank Oliver Gloeckner, head of the digital archive Pangaea, which is operated by publicly funded German research institutions. About 800 of NOAA's 12,000-strong workers have been terminated or taken financial incentives to resign as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency cuts. The White House 2026 budget plan seeks to shrink NOAA even further, proposing a $1.8 billion cut, or 27% of the agency's budget, and a near-20% reduction in staffing, bringing down the NOAA workforce to 10,000. The budget proposal would eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA's main research arm, which is responsible for ocean observatory systems including Argo, coastal observing networks, satellite sensors and climate model labs. It is also reducing its data products. Between April and June, NOAA announced on its website the decommissioning of 20 datasets or products related to earthquakes and marine science. NOAA did not respond to requests for comment. Gloeckner said there were no legal hurdles to storing the U.S. government data as it was already in the public domain. But without significant funds and infrastructure, there are limits to what private scientists can save, said Denice Ross, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit science policy group and the U.S. government's chief data officer during the administration of President Joe Biden. Databases need regular updating — which requires the funding and infrastructure that only governments can provide, Ross said. Over the last few months, the federation and EU officials have held a series of talks with European researchers, U.S. philanthropies and health and environment advocacy groups to discuss how to prioritize what data to save. "There is an opportunity for other nations and institutions and philanthropies to fill in the gaps if U.S. quality starts to falter," she said.
NHK
12 hours ago
- NHK
Germany to provide two more Patriot systems to Ukraine
Germany says its military will deliver two additional Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine in the coming days. Germany's defense ministry made the announcement on Friday, as Russia continues intense attacks on Ukraine using missiles and drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said massive Russian strikes from Wednesday through Thursday have killed at least 31 people. Germany has already delivered three Patriot systems to Ukraine. The defense ministry says it has agreed with the US Department of Defense that Germany will be the first nation to receive newly produced Patriot systems in return from the United States. German defense minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement, "Once again, Germany has shown that it is by far the strongest supporter of Ukraine in the field of air defense." Germany plans to urge other countries to step up their support for strengthening Ukraine's air defense capabilities.
