Nonrival

Expert analysis from think tanks and academia, on public policy, economics, and technology.
Human experts. AI summaries.

AI Is to Code What Steam Was to Coal — and That Should Worry Young Workers

national_affairs

• AI is triggering a Jevons Paradox in software: as coding gets cheaper and faster, demand for code explodes rather than shrinks, driving a self-reinforcing loop of investment, chip design, and automation that is compressing decades of industrial change into years.
• The aggregate labor market looks fine, but a Stanford study using ADP payroll data finds young workers in AI-exposed fields have seen a 16-20% relative employment decline since ChatGPT launched — not from layoffs, but because entry-level hiring has dried up.
• The workers most at risk aren't coders in San Francisco but the 6 million clerical and administrative workers — overwhelmingly women in mid-sized cities — who lack the savings and transferable skills to ride out the transition.

The U.S. and China Are Racing to Write the Rules for Global AI — and America Is Losing the Institutional Battle

csis

• Three competing visions for global AI governance are taking shape: a Chinese-led intergovernmental body (WAICO) targeting the Global South, a U.S.-led supply chain coalition (Pax Silica), and a UN dialogue process — and many countries are joining all three rather than picking sides.
• China has a structural advantage in this race: it has an exportable domestic regulatory model, a formal treaty organization, and is pairing governance frameworks with infrastructure and AI tools for developing nations, while the U.S. offers supply chain access but no coherent global governance agenda.
• With a landmark U.S.-China AI safety summit approaching, the article argues Washington must develop a durable domestic AI framework and compete on governance — not just semiconductors — or cede the rule-writing to Beijing.

Most Japanese Policy Elites Still Oppose Going Nuclear — But Fear of U.S. Abandonment Could Change That

csis

• A CSIS survey of Japanese strategic elites finds that most oppose acquiring nuclear weapons, consistent with general public opinion, despite a worsening regional security environment from China, Russia, and North Korea.
• Supporters of nuclearization are driven mainly by fear that the U.S. might abandon Japan, while opponents cite a broader mix of cost, security, and humanitarian concerns — and the two groups prefer different paths, with opponents favoring nuclear sharing and supporters preferring an independent arsenal.
• The most striking finding: Japanese elites are more likely to reconsider their position if South Korea goes nuclear than if the U.S. reduces its military presence, suggesting a potential cascade effect that gives Washington significant leverage over regional proliferation dynamics.

In the News

What Trump and Xi Are Really After at Their Washington Summit

atlantic_council

• The Trump-Xi summit will cover AI competition, Taiwan arms sales, rare earth exports, and tariffs — but both sides are mainly jockeying to extract concessions while locking in a fragile truce that serves their own long-term strategies.
• China wants to use the promise of future summits to constrain US behavior, while the US is quietly buying time to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare earths before going back on the offensive.
• The most consequential risk: Trump may further erode decades of Taiwan policy by giving Beijing a say in US arms sales, which could weaken deterrence and make the Taiwan Strait less stable.

Analysis

New York's Congestion Toll Is Making Ambulances About a Minute Faster — and That Could Save Lives

promarket

• A new study finds that NYC's congestion pricing, which took effect in January 2025, reduced total ambulance travel times by roughly one minute (about 5-6%), by cutting vehicle density near the tolled zone by around 20%.
• The gains were largest for hospital transport times rather than time to reach a patient, and effects were stronger on weekdays when congestion is typically worse.
• The authors argue that standard cost-benefit analyses of congestion pricing routinely miss this emergency-response benefit, and that faster ambulances in dense cities could have meaningful downstream health consequences.

Also Worth a Look

• Trump and Xi Will Meet Again, But Don't Expect Breakthroughs on Trade, Taiwan, or AI (the_conversation)
• AI Built for Language Is Now Learning to Read Financial Markets Like a Genome (chicago_booth)
• The Trump-Xi Summit Will Probably Go Fine — and That's the Problem (csis)
• Mexico Is Still Negotiating a Trade Deal With the U.S. — But Canada's Collapse Shows How Badly It Could Go Wrong (csis)
• Prediction Markets Want to Be Regulated as Financial Instruments — But They're Really Just Casinos With Fewer Rules (roosevelt)
• AI is outpacing its own safety tests — and no one is in charge of fixing that (atlantic_council)
• AI Agents Are Learning to Collude in Financial Markets — and Regulators Aren't Ready (wharton)