This account is mothballed. You can read my @sciencebusiness.net articles here: sciencebusiness.net/author/david... And a wider selection of my writing here: davidjackmatthews.journoportfolio.com

Hey #polisci: we need more work like Gilman’s new FP piece: plausible scenarios of how world order is reorganized by climate, or more accurately, the shift from fossil to green assets. 🧵 foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/01/e...

The Coming Ecological Cold War

Decarbonization isn’t just about technology and markets—it’s a geopolitical revolution.

foreignpolicy.com

This piece could take the comparison with the Opium Wars even further - in that you could argue, at a stretch, that (some) US digital products are the modern equivalent of opium. Lucrative for the exporter, rather unhealthy for the population on the receiving end.

POLITICO Europe@politico.eu · last yr.

Ursula von der Leyen’s dash to Donald Trump’s golf resort in Scotland last month to seal an unbalanced trade deal has raised fears among politicians and analysts that Europe has lost the leverage that it once thought it had as a leading global trade power.

I still often think about this story. If the US proves to have massively over-invested in LLMs, should we start considering the credulity of the US's tech media ecosystem, so prone to overhyping new products, a strategic weakness? What will China have invented while the US was obsessed with AI?

Michael Pettis@michaelpettis.bsky.social · last yr.

FT: "“We should not only focus on how much GDP has grown and how many major projects have been built, but also on how much debt is owed,” Xi Jinping told the Central Urban Work Conference." www.ft.com/content/9c19...

Today, we've published a feature that asks a fundamental question for anyone involved in science policy: should we focus less on curing individual diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's, and instead try to understand and slow ageing? sciencebusiness.net/news/drug-de...

Anti-ageing therapies: have we got health research funding wrong?

Last year, researchers published an analysis that made grim reading for anyone hoping to live a much longer, healthier life this century.

sciencebusiness.net

Important point in this @nature.com piece about science journalism - too much reporting is just about the outcome, not the process. The question often missing in sci/tech breakthroughs stories is: why now? Why did it take this long to understand/build this? www.nature.com/articles/d44...

As the EU fails to agree on scientific sanctions against Israel, there's one under-reported reason why Berlin might be blocking them - Germany is currently buying a $3.5 billion Arrow 3 missile shield from Israel. sciencebusiness.net/news/interna...

Believe it or not, the EU's new €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund will fund...the Metaverse ("virtual worlds", as Brussels calls it). For how many years does an idea have to be dead before the EU removes it from their policy roster? At least there's no mention of blockchain.

Since writing this feature, I've had a nagging thought. In part, the article describes how metascientists are trying to find good metrics to measure "disruptive" or "novel" science. But do we actually want them to succeed?

Alexandra Witze@alexwitze.bsky.social · last yr.

There's a fascinating feature out in @nature.com today from @davidmjourno.bsky.social, on whether and why scientific breakthroughs are getting harder to achieve. It's a narrative being discussed by some of the most powerful science officials in the world, such as OSTP director Michael Kratsios. 🧪

There's a fascinating feature out in @nature.com today from @davidmjourno.bsky.social, on whether and why scientific breakthroughs are getting harder to achieve. It's a narrative being discussed by some of the most powerful science officials in the world, such as OSTP director Michael Kratsios. 🧪

Are groundbreaking science discoveries becoming harder to find?

Researchers are arguing over whether ‘disruptive’ or ‘novel’ science is waning – and how to remedy the problem.

nature.com

Another very revealing - and perhaps ominous - speech from Michael Kratsios, Trump's appointee as OSTP director. He argues - correctly, in my view - that we're seeing diminishing returns from science spending, and we need new ways of organising research. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...

Great piece arguing scientific incentives have led researchers to predominantly invent new materials that are difficult to scale up into real world use: www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-its-so...

Fascinating speech by the US's new OSTP director, Michael Kratsios, last week. He accepts the Robert Gordon etc argument that sci/tech has slowed down. "Progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century." www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat

THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY Endless Frontiers Retreat, Austin, Texas April 14, 2025 THE DIRECTOR: Thank you for the

whitehouse.gov

In Feb, I criticised Europe for wasting money and attention on over-inflated US tech hype cycles like genAI, the metaverse and blockchain: sciencebusiness.net/viewpoint/ai... Well, Germany's incoming government has gone one further. They're promising a test hyperloop route in their governing plan!

Viewpoint: Europe must stop chasing US technology hype cycles

Three weeks ago, the low-cost Chinese AI tool DeepSeek sent investors into a panic. On a shoestring budget, by AI standards, it managed to create a model that was comparable with the very best US tech...

sciencebusiness.net

It's worth reading the US government's demands to Harvard in full. They want nothing less than the mass hiring of pro-Trump academic and students, on pain of losing $2.2 billion. Seems to go well beyond Columbia demands. No wonder Harvard had to say no. www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

1 in 3 Europeans think a cure for cancer exists, but is being hidden from the public for commercial reasons. A similar number say that “viruses have been produced in government labs to control our freedom.” 23% think early humans lived alongside dinosaurs. sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun...

Data corner: Europeans’ views of science and technology

Europeans have widely divergent views on whether the private sector should be free to exploit new science and technology, or if the government should take firm control, according to a major survey of ...

sciencebusiness.net

We totted up which types of research project the NIH has cancelled under the new Trump administration. Research on transgender people is the biggest target, followed by projects related to diversity, HIV, race/racism, and women. sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun...

My interview with the new Commissioner. What seemed to animate/exasperate her most was the level of inflexibility and red tape for Horizon Europe grants. "We talk about academic freedom, but if our applications and grant contracts are too complicated, there will be no freedom for researchers."

Nature@nature.com · last yr.

The European Union’s new research chief Ekaterina Zaharieva speaks to us about attracting disaffected US scientists and cutting grant bureaucracy https://go.nature.com/3FQQRaM

Generative AI may have contributed to a c.5% dip in the number of developers and a c.15% fall in writers, this @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece estimates. All seems a little meh for a technology the US plans to spend nearly $2 trillion on over the next five years. www.ft.com/content/471b...

Detailed table of the 350-odd projects cancelled by the NIH under the new Trump administration. The best overview I've come across of exactly what kind of science is now verboten under Trump (at least at the NIH)

Brittany Charlton@britshmit.bsky.social · last yr.

🚀 Big reveal! Introducing our interactive table on NIH grant terminations, supercharged from the original Google tracker! 📊👇 Help us uncover which NIH grants are tagged for termination and why! 🕵️🔍 1 / 🧵 #HealthEquity #MedSky #PublicHealth

The most lucid analysis I've read on how the US has bet the house on generative AI. And how difficult it will be to recoup its spending (estimated at close to $2 trillion over the next five years). prospect.org/power/2025-0...

This @wired.com piece now also hearing signs that European business are getting nervous about relying on US cloud services www.wired.com/story/trump-...

David Matthews@davidmjourno.bsky.social · last yr.

The Trump administration is now seen as so erratic and hostile that European businesses worry their own products are uninsurable because they are built on US digital tools. In other words, the US has a "kill switch" over much of the European economy. sciencebusiness.net/news/soverei...

The Trump administration is now seen as so erratic and hostile that European businesses worry their own products are uninsurable because they are built on US digital tools. In other words, the US has a "kill switch" over much of the European economy. sciencebusiness.net/news/soverei...

I leave otter.ai running while trying to stop my toddler from interrupting an interview and this is the AI generated summary. "Confused conversation with mixed topics" - fair

Despite China's continued rise as a science power, it actually seems to be attracting fewer, not more, foreign academics. There seems to have been an exodus during the pandemic - many just couldn't take the often draconian lockdowns. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Foreign researchers in China face tightening restrictions

Data and security laws are affecting scientists who stayed in China after COVID — but for some it’s still a great place to do research.

nature.com

EU to US: please stop messing around European winners of NIH grants, or we might have to reconsider giving your scientists access to Horizon Europe sciencebusiness.net/news/interna...

NIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research funding

A clampdown on diversity-related projects at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is causing uncertainty and fear among European grant recipients, raising questions over whether the EU should co...

sciencebusiness.net

Every time I do a story about high-risk, high-reward research, it seems like most scientists have some potentially world-transforming, crazy-sounding idea tucked away in their brain. But they've just had to forget about it because the money isn't there. sciencebusiness.net/node/59737/p...

Perhaps the most alarming thing in this story about US postdocs hit by Trump administration grant freezes is that several are too fearful to go on record. This is the kind of anonymisation you sometimes need when reporting on, say, science in China. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

David Graeber, 13 years ago.