Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping our world.
A piece in Foreign Affairs by Niall Ferguson and Eric Schmidt argues that artificial intelligence is no longer just a technology race — it's the architecture of a new global order. The essay frames American and Chinese AI development as competing imperial projects, with consequences that reach far beyond Silicon Valley or Beijing.
Closer to the developer community, GitHub Gists — a lightweight tool widely used for sharing code snippets and notes — has been flooded with spam content. It's a reminder that any open, low-friction platform eventually becomes a target, and that the trade-off between accessibility and abuse is one the industry keeps revisiting without a clean answer.
And in Lisbon overnight, Portuguese police moved in on a housing protest camp, arresting twenty-five people and drawing criticism after officers used batons to disperse demonstrators. The protesters had been calling on the government to address a deepening housing crisis, and the crackdown has intensified that conversation considerably.
Those are the stories worth watching today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
