Nonrival

May 06, 2026

Human experts + AI summaries - on public policy, economics, and technology.

AI Agents Are Burning Through Money at an Alarming Rate, and Nobody Knows How to Predict the Costs

stanford_digital_econ

• AI agents consume 1000x more tokens than basic coding tasks because they must re-read all previous context before each action, creating a costly "context snowball" effect
• Token costs are extremely unpredictable—agents can't estimate their own expenses, and running the same agent on identical tasks can vary costs by up to 30x
• The unpredictability creates a fundamental problem for pricing AI agent services, since companies only discover the true costs after the work is complete

AI transparency tools can be gamed to hide discrimination while appearing fair

wharton

• Researchers found that AI models can be manipulated to produce neutral-looking interpretability plots while continuing to make biased real-world decisions
• The technique exploits how partial dependence plots work by making models behave differently on synthetic data combinations that rarely occur in practice
• This creates major governance risks as organizations may approve discriminatory AI systems based on misleading transparency dashboards

How Iran Beat America in the Information War Despite Losing on the Battlefield

csis

• The U.S. and Israel achieved overwhelming military success against Iran, crippling its naval capabilities and setting back its missile and nuclear programs by years, yet Iran won the information war through coordinated disinformation campaigns.
• Iranian networks flooded social media with AI-generated fake footage, fabricated claims of U.S. casualties, and narratives portraying the conflict as a costly war driven by corrupt elites at ordinary Americans' expense.
• The authors argue that modern warfare requires fighting for hearts and minds with the same technical sophistication as military operations, and the U.S. must build standing information warfare capabilities before the next crisis.

In the News

Britain's Two-Party System Is Cracking as Greens and Reform Battle for Working-Class Voters

hoover

• For the first time in English history, neither Conservative nor Labour candidates finished in the top two in a parliamentary election, as a Green Party plumber defeated a Reform Party academic in Greater Manchester.
• The Green Party has evolved from an environmental party into a populist-left movement focused on economic inequality and anti-billionaire rhetoric, while Reform pushes populist-right themes about immigration and national identity.
• The collapse reflects decades-long shifts in British politics where traditional class-party alignments are breaking down, creating space for new populist movements on both left and right.

Analysis

Financial Markets Can Price Oil Shocks in Days But Haven't Priced Climate Risk After a Decade

promarket

• Oil markets repriced dramatically within weeks during recent Middle East tensions, proving financial markets can rapidly adjust to predicted future scenarios when they choose to
• Despite the Paris Agreement being adopted a decade ago, markets haven't repriced for the energy transition because fiduciary duty rules prevent fund managers from creating vehicles that let investors bet on transition timing
• Current "clean energy" funds are forced by disclosure, diversification, and benchmarking requirements to hold companies positioned for slow transition, meaning even investors who believe rapid decarbonization is coming can't find instruments to act on that view

Also Worth a Look

• Workers Who Enjoy Their Jobs Rate Their Lives a Full Point Higher on Wellbeing Scale (gallup)
• Financial markets are already punishing countries with weak climate governance by raising their borrowing costs (lse_business_review)
• Why Digital Innovation Needs Three Different Types of Leaders Working Together (mit_sloan)
• A Supreme Court ruling just made it harder to sue government contractors (the_conversation)
• Disease outbreaks increase violence against women and girls through five predictable pathways (the_conversation)
• Even MAHA Supporters Care More About Health Care Costs Than Food Additives and Vaccines (kff)
• The Supreme Court Has Effectively Killed the Voting Rights Act (scotusblog)