CDW Executive SummIT: 3 Ways Platform Engineering Boosts Business Velocity

Business News

Digital velocity isn’t just about moving fast, it’s about moving smart. To meet this challenge, IT leaders are turning to platform engineering because it’s a way to align infrastructure, development, security and operations teams around one automated and resilient platform.
At the CDW Executive SummIT, hosted April 1-3 in Chicago, experts said embracing this model isn’t just a technical decision, it’s a strategic one that allows any business to grow faster.
Here are three ways platform engineering boosts digital velocity by aligning with NetOps, SecOps and AIOps:
RELATED: How artificial intelligence solutions are transforming the workplace.
1. Integrated NetOps Automation Speeds Up Connectivity
Traditionally, network operations have been a bottleneck in the software delivery lifecycle. Too often, manual network provisions, static configurations, and siloed teams slow down the deployment of new apps and services. However, platform engineering flips the script by incorporating NetOps capabilities directly into the developer platform.
Using Infrastructure as Code, policy-based automation and API-driven networking, teams can now provision secure network connectivity on demand. For example, instead of submitting tickets for firewall changes or VLAN provisioning, developers can request these services through a self-service portal, with preapproved templates that fit governance policies.
This level of automation not only accelerates delivery but also reduces misconfiguration errors across hybrid and multicloud environments. Research shows that “by 2026, 30% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities,” according to a Gartner press release.

2. Use SecOps to Achieve a Security-by-Design Approach
Rather than apply security as a post-deployment layer, embed SecOps capabilities directly into the platform. Experts said this ensures that security controls are built into every step of the pipeline, including automated security scanning in continuous integration/continuous delivery workflows, role-based access controls and runtime policy enforcement.
Developers work within a framework that ensures all deployments meet enterprise security and compliance requirements by default. Abbott also noted that with a security-first design, there are fewer audit delays and less back-and-forth between development and security teams.
And since security breaches frequently occur along networking endpoints, Cisco has brought the two together with its new XDR Security and Network Operations Center, which integrates with Meraki MX appliances. The platform unifies security and networking operations under one roof for faster threat detection and greater visibility across the entire network.
“The SNOC brings these teams together. I can take Meraki networks flows, send them into XDR, and now I’m able to see the different types of security events in Meraki again. The network team sees this, and the security team can take action immediately,” said Dave Abbott, security engineering leader at Cisco.
This speed makes a difference, especially since it only takes an adversary “51 seconds from initial access to lateral movement,” to move deeper into the network, noted Todd Felker, executive healthcare strategist at CrowdStrike.
It also improves overall cyber resilience. A unified, role-based approach helps teams operate from a central command center and adapt to adversaries’ tactics in real time. Compare this with the fact that “55% of security teams say critical alerts are missed,” due to managing more than 76 disparate security tools that lack context and direction, according to a Cisco infographic.
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3. AI-Driven Operations (AIOps) Keep Teams Productive
As platforms scale, traditional monitoring and incident management tools can’t keep up with the volume, velocity and variety of telemetry data. That’s where AIOps comes in. By integrating AIOps, organizations gain real-time intelligence into system behavior.
“So many customers tell us, I’m not sure that I need hyperconverged in order to achieve the automated and orchestrated environment,” said Ryan Shullaw, vice president of Americas presales at Dell Technologies. But often, he said, that convergence is useful. “AI has fundamentally changed where my data lives and how close I want those applications to be to that data.”
In the case of the AIOps, having data close to operational systems means that insights can be implemented that much faster.  Platform-native observability feeds these artificial intelligence and machine learning models with logs, metrics and traces so that they can detect anomalies, predict outages and automate remediation. For example, if an application experiences performance degradation, AIOps can trigger autoscaling, rollbacks or network rerouting before end users even notice.
This automation reduces mean time to resolution, increases uptime and frees up IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
Combining NetOps, SecOps and AIOps successfully requires that businesses consider how the people, process and technology will work together. Make sure that any unified platform works with your team and organizational structure.
To begin that process, Abbott said, decision-makers must evaluate how and why their NetOps and SecOps teams operate currently. Ask what needs to change for them to collaborate more closely. What infrastructure and cloud security tools work for convergence? And consider when NetOps and SecOps must be triaged for certain incidents.
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Scientists urge Stein to stop Duke Energy’s fossil fuel expansion

Science and Health

More than 60 research scientists signed an open letter Thursday urging North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein to halt Duke Energy’s fossil fuel expansion and what they called the “suppression of renewable energy solutions” with his executive authority, according to a press release.
Four public health and climate scientists, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and solar nonprofit advocacy group NC WARN, organized the letter. It’s signed by a total of 61 scientists from universities and agencies across the country, some of which are at Duke University or the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
The letter asks Stein to prevent Duke Energy, what the letter authors termed “the third-largest corporate climate polluter in the United States,” from delaying transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The town of Carrboro, N.C. sued Duke Energy at the end of last year, alleging the company’s top executives have misled the public about climate science and its harms for decades.
“Duke Energy executives are brushing aside scientists’ warnings and Gov. Stein needs to step in for the sake of people and our planet,” Drew Shindell, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Duke University and lead author on two U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, said in a statement. “The science is clear that as long as we keep burning fossil fuels, climate disasters like Helene and extreme heat waves will keep getting worse. These disasters will cost lives, drive species extinct and obliterate many of the places we call home. This is urgent and Gov. Stein has a responsibility to use all the tools at his disposal to force mega-polluters like Duke Energy to do what’s best for North Carolinians.”
The company possesses one of the biggest planned gas buildouts of any utility for the decade. Duke Energy recently announced its intent to consider delaying retiring its coal fleet as a result of the Trump administration’s climate protection rollbacks.
Historically, Duke Energy has not invested into local renewable energy solutions, like rooftop and community solar, according to the press release. The company generates only 1.4% of its power from solar energy.
“Duke Energy’s reckless expansion of fossil gas is costing lives and saddling North Carolinians with skyrocketing utility bills and deadlier extreme weather. Trump and his billionaire buddies are throwing communities and our climate under the bus, so we desperately need Gov. Stein to step up and challenge the polluters putting our planet in peril,” Gaby Sarri-Tobar, senior energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
In response, a spokesperson for Duke Energy declined to address the scientists’ contention directly. “We are committed to our customers and communities and will continue working with policymakers, regulators and other state leaders to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible,” Duke Energy lead communications manager Garrett Poorman told NC Newsline.

Saluda Grade hires Jim Boothby to lead business development efforts

Business News

“I’m excited to join Saluda Grade, as the firm has proven it can offer innovative and compelling alternative investment solutions,” Boothby said in a statement. “While I’ve seen the broader private credit boom firsthand, investor demand for asset-based credit strategies, specifically, has grown significantly in recent years.

“Saluda Grade has already established itself as a premier destination for residential asset-based finance, and this area of the market still has tremendous potential for additional growth. Above all else, I’m excited to apply my experience to help our firm continue capitalizing on that opportunity and generating attractive opportunities for our clients.”

Boothby’s role is a new one created by Saluda Grade as it seeks to grow business development strategies under Dan Hoinacki, its head of client solutions. In 2024, the firm expanded its leadership team by hiring Rick Hanna as chief operating officer, Jennifer Babsin as head of marketing, and Roger Ashworth as head of research and data.

Saluda Grade added two commingled funds and two separate managed accounts to its credit business last year, while also launching a third growth equity fund. It grew its assets under management from $1.2 billion at the end of 2023 to $1.7 billion at the end of 2024.

Among the firm’s growth equity portfolios, Builders Capital raised $500 million in a new partnership with InterVest Capital Partners. Figure spun out its lending business and became the nation’s largest nonbank originator of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Saluda Grade also finalized its exit from Spring EQ with its acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management.

Saluda Grade, which is headquartered in New York City and has an office in Aspen, Colorado, sponsored and issued 10 new securitizations with a total value of $2.5 billion in 2024.

“I’m humbled by the success we had in 2024, and our firm is motivated to continue building on our momentum,” said Ryan Craft, founder and CEO of Saluda Grade. “We have tremendous opportunities ahead in 2025 and beyond as institutional demand for asset-based strategies continues to grow, and the expansion of our senior team serves as our latest commitment to our investors.”

Book Public: ‘Brother Brontë’ by Fernando A. Flores

Arts & Culture, Books

The setting is Three Rivers, Texas. The year is 2038. An industrialist named Pablo Henry Crick is the mayor of the town that’s become a surreal wasteland where reading books is against the law and the women work as indentured laborers at a fish cannery. The atmosphere is poisoned. The people are poor and under the thumb of Crick—who only gets rich in all of this.Neftalí is the last of the literate citizens in the town. She hides books and she reads books. She and her best friend, Proserpina try to outwit Crick after a series of violent atrocities. Will they be able to rise up and reclaim their city? Can they do away with Crick’s “book shredders” and help preserve books—including the ones by a mysterious renegade author named Jazzmin Monelle Rivas?Brother Brontë is hard to define. But it is full of adventure, profound themes and unforgettable characters. It’s an electric look at a future that is somehow plausible and resonant.

Steven Ray Martinez

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MCD/FSG Fernando A. Flores

Guest: Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. He is the author of the short story collections Valleyesque and Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas and the novel Tears of the Trufflepig, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was named Best Book of 2019 by Tor.com. His fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, frieze, Porter House Review and other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.

How To Build A Business Case To Promote Accessibility In Your B2B Products

Business News

When passion for accessibility meets business indifference, what bridges the gap? Gloria Diaz Alonso shares how she turned frustration into strategy — by learning to speak the language of business.When I started working on promoting accessibility, I was fully convinced of its value and was determined to bring it to the business stakeholders. I thought that the moment I started pushing for it inside the company, my key stakeholders would be convinced, committed, and enlightened, and everyone would start working to make it possible.I prepared a lovely presentation about the benefits of accessibility. I made sure my presentation reflected that accessibility is the right thing to do: it is good for everyone, including those who don’t have a disability; it improves usability, makes the code more robust, and, of course, promotes inclusivity. I confidently shared it with my stakeholders. I was so excited. Aaaaaand BOOM… I hit a wall. They didn’t show much interest. I repetitively got comments, such as:It doesn’t bring much value to us.It doesn’t impact the revenue.The regulation doesn’t apply to us, so there is no reason.Accessibility is just for a few people with disabilities.It would cost too much.“People don’t manage to understand the real value. How can they say it has no impact?” I thought. After some time of processing my frustration and thinking about it, I realized that maybe I was not communicating the value correctly. I was not speaking the same language, and I was just approaching it from my perspective. It was just a presentation, not a business case.If there is something I had to learn when working that I didn’t in university, it is that if you want to move things forward in a company, you have to have a business case. I never thought that being a UX Designer would imply building so many of them. The thing with business cases, and that I neglected on my first attempts, is that they put the focus on, well, “the business”.The ultimate goal is to build a powerful response to the question “Why should WE spend money and resources on this and not on something else?” not “Why is it good?” in general.After some trial and error, I understood a bit better how to tackle the main comments and answer this question to move the conversation forward. Of course, the business case and strategy you build will depend a lot on the specific situation of your company and your product, but here is my contribution, hoping it can help.In this article, I will focus on two of the most common situations: pushing for accessibility in a new product or feature and starting to bring accessibility to existing products that didn’t consider it before.Implementing accessibility has a cost. Everything in a project has a cost. If developers are solving accessibility issues, they are not working on new features, so at the very least, you have to consider the opportunity cost. You have to make sure that you transform that cost into an investment and that that investment provides good results. You need to provide some more details on how you do it, so here are the key questions that help me to build my case:Why should we spend money and resources on this and not on something else?What exactly do we want to do?What are the expected results?How much would it cost?How can I make a decision?Why Should We Spend Money And Resources On This And Not On Something Else?Risk PreventionThere is a good chance that your stakeholders have heard about accessibility due to the regulations. In the past years, accessibility has become a hot topic, mainly motivated by the European Accessibility Act (EAA), the Web Accessibility Directive (WAD) in Europe or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the US and equivalent regulations on other countries. They should definitely be aware of them. However, unless they are from the legal department, they may not need to know every detail; just having an overview should be enough to understand the landscape. You can simplify it a bit, so no one panics.One of the most useful slides I use is a summary table of the regulations with some key information:What is the goal of the regulation?Who is it targeting?Relevant deadlines.How does it affect us?This is essential information that you have to adapt to your business context. If you have some B2C or supply to the government, you may be affected. Even if you are pure private B2B, you will be partly affected, as more and more clients may include accessibility as a requirement for all the software they purchase.If your company operates only in one country, it would be a good idea to include a summary of your country-specific regulations.A simplified version of the regulation helps stakeholders to feel more comfortable and understand better how they are impacted by it. (Large preview)In addition, explain how the WCAG relates to the regulation. In the end, it is a third-party international standard used as the baseline for most official laws and directives and comes up in conversations quite often.Keep in mind that using the regulation to motivate your case can work, but only to some point. We are aware that the regulation about accessibility is getting stronger and the requirements are affecting a good number of companies, especially big companies, but still not everyone. If you only base your case on it, the easy answer is, “Yeah, well, but we are not required to do it”.If we start working now we will have time to prepare. If we consider accessibility for all the new features and projects, the cost won’t be affected much, and we will be prepared for the future.However, many companies still don’t see the urgency of working on it if they are not directly required to do so by the regulation yet, and it is not certain that they will need to do it in the future. They prefer not to focus on it until that moment arrives. It is not necessarily a problem to be prioritized now, and there may be more urgent matters.They should be aware of the regulations and the situation. We should show them how they could be affected, but if we don’t show the real value that accessibility brings to the products and the company, the conversation may end there.Explore If It Can Be A Competitive AdvantageBig companies are starting to consider accessibility as part of their procurement process, which means that it is a hard requirement to become a provider, a checkbox in the selection process. You can try reaching out to your sales department to see if any clients are asking about your plans regarding accessibility compliance. If so, make sure you document them in the business case. Include some rough background research about those clients:Are they strategic clients?Are they clients who already have one of our products and want to expand?How much revenue can they potentially bring?Are they important companies in the industry that others may use as a reference?Was it a one-time question?Did they try to push for it?The potential revenue and interest from important clients can be a good motivation.In addition, try to find out if your competitors care about accessibility or are compliant. You can go to their website and see if they have an accessibility statement, if they have any certification by external parties (normally on the footer), if they include their accessibility level on their sales materials, or just try basic keyboard navigation and run an automatic checker to see what their situation is. If none of them are compliant or their accessibility level is really low, becoming compliant or implementing accessibility may be a competitive advantage for you, a differentiator. On the other hand, if they are compliant and you are not, you may lose some deals because of it.To sum up, check clients’ interest in the topic, compare the situation of different competitors, and see if accessibility could be a potential revenue generator.Showcase The Value It Brings To Your UsersDepending on the industries your product focuses on, the assumption may be that you don’t have a big user base of people with disabilities, and therefore, your users won’t benefit much from accessibility.Accessibility helps everyone, and if you are reading this article, it is probably because you agree with it. But that statement sounds too generic and a bit theoretical, so it is important to provide specific and accurate examples around your users, in particular, that help people visualize it.Think of your user base. What characteristics do they have? In which situations do they use your software? Maybe most of your users don’t have a disability, or you don’t even have the data about it, but they are office workers who use your software a lot, and having good keyboard navigation would help them to be more efficient. Maybe most of them are over fifty years old and can benefit from adapting the font size. They might have to use the software in the open air and are affected by sun glare, so they need high contrast between elements, or they have to wear gloves and prefer larger target sizes.And I would say you always have to account for neurodiversity. The idea is to identify in which everyday situations your users face they can benefit from accessibility, even if they don’t have a disability.Another key thing is to look for specific feedback from your users and customers on accessibility. If you are lucky enough to have an insight repository, look for anything related. Keep in mind that people can be asking about accessibility without knowing that they are asking for accessibility, so don’t expect to find all the insights directly with an “accessibility” tag, but rather search for related keywords in the “user’s vocabulary” (colors, hard to click, mobile devices, zoom, keyboard, error, and so on).If you don’t have access to a repository, you can contact customer service and try to find out help requests or feedback about it with them. Anything you find is evidence that your users, your specific users, benefit from accessibility.Highlight The Overlap With Good PracticesAccessibility overlaps heavily with best practices for usability, design, and development. Working on it helps us improve the overall product quality without, in some cases, adding extra effort.In terms of design, the overlap between accessibility improvements and usability improvements is really huge. Things like writing precise error messages, having a clear page structure, relying on consistency, including clear labels and instructions, or keeping the user in control are some examples of the intersection. To visualize it, I like taking the 10 usability heuristics of Nielsen Norman and relating them to design-related success criteria from the WCAG.There is a big overlap between the usability heuristics and the accessibility success criteria that highlights the positive impact of accessibility on general usability. (Large preview)For the developers, the work on accessibility creates a more structured code that is easier to understand. Some of the key aspects are the use of markup and the proper order of the code. In addition, the use of landmarks is key for managing responsive interfaces and, of course, choosing the most adequate component for the specific functionality needed and identifying it correctly with unique labels prevents the product from having unexpected behaviors.As for the QA team, the test that they perform can vary a lot based on the product, but testing the responsiveness is normally a must, as well as keyboard navigation since it increases the efficiency of repetitive tasks.Considering accessibility implies having clear guidelines that help you to work in the correct direction and overlap with things that we should already be doing.What Exactly Do We Want To Do?As we said, we are going to focus on two of the most common situations: pushing for accessibility in a new product or feature and starting to incorporate accessibility into existing products that didn’t consider it before.New Products Or FeaturesIf you are about to build a product from scratch, you have a wonderful opportunity to apply an accessibility-first approach and consider accessibility by default from the very beginning. This approach allows you to minimize the number of accessibility issues that end up reaching the user and reduces the cost of rework when trying to fix them or when looking for compliance.One of the key things you need to successfully apply this approach is considering accessibility as a shared responsibility. The opposite of an accessibility-first approach is the retroactive consideration of accessibility. When you only care for accessibility after the implementation and run an audit on the released product, you will find all the issues that accumulated. Plenty of them could have been easily solvable if you knew them when you were designing or coding, but solving them afterward becomes complicated.For example, if you only considered drag and drop for rearranging a list of items, now you have to rethink the interaction process and make sure it works in all the cases, devices, and so on. If single-point interactions were a requirement from the beginning, you would just implement them naturally and save time.Applying an accessibility-first approach means that everyone has to contribute.The POs have to make sure that accessibility is included as a requirement and that people have the time and resources to cover it.Designers have to follow best practices and guidelines to make sure the design itself is accessible.The devs should do the same, include markup and proper semantics, and follow the guidelines for accessible code.QAs are the final filter before the product reaches the user. They should try to pick as much as possible so it can get fixed.If everyone shares the ownership and spends a bit more time on including accessibility in their task, the overall result will have a good base. Of course, you may still need to tackle some specific issues with an expert, and when auditing the final product, you will probably still find some issues that escaped the process, but the number will be drastically lower.Sharing the ownership of accessibility helps to make the topic more approachable. (Large preview)In addition, the process of auditing your product can get much lighter. Running an accessibility audit means first defining who will do it: is it internal or external? If it is external, which providers? How long would it take to negotiate the contract?Afterward, you have to set the scope of the audit. It is impossible to check the full product, so you start by checking the most important workflows and key pages. Then, you will do the analysis. The result is normally a list of issues prioritized based on the user impact and some recommendations for remediating it.Once you have the issues, you have to plan the remediation and figure out how much capacity from the teams we have to allocate to it based on when we want to have the fixes ready. You also have to group similar issues together to prevent the change of context during remediation, increase efficiency, and eliminate all duplicated issues (the auditors may not know the architecture of the product, so you may find several issues documented that, in reality, are just one because you are using the same component).Considering this full process, for a large product, you can easily spend three months just before you start the actual remediation of the issues. Applying an accessibility-first approach means that the number of issues that reach the audit of the released product is much lower, so the process of auditing and fixing goes much faster.Identifying and solving possible issues along the product cycle prevents them from accumulating and minimizes the rework. (Large preview)If you can apply this approach, you should definitely consider the need for educational resources and their impact. You don’t want people just to work on accessibility but to understand the value they are creating when doing it (I am preparing another article that focuses on this). You want them to feel comfortable with the topic and understand what their responsibilities are and which things they have to pay attention to. Check if you already have accessibility resources inside the company that you can use. The important thing for the business is that those resources are going to contribute to reducing the effort.The implementation of an accessibility-first approach has a very clear learning curve. In the beginning, people will take a bit of extra time to consider accessibility as part of their task, but after they have done it for several tasks, it comes naturally, and the effort needed to implement it really drops.Think of “not relying on color only for conveying information”, as a designer, the first two times you have to figure something out instead of just changing the color of a text or icon to convey a status, you spend some time looking for solutions, afterward, you already have in mind a bunch of strategies that allow you to directly chose a valid option almost automatically.Using an accessibility-first approach for new products is a clear strategy, but it is also valid for new features in an existing product. If you include it by default in anything new you create, you are preventing new issues from accumulating.To sum up, applying an accessibility-first approach is really beneficial.Considering accessibility from the beginning can help you to largely reduce the number of issues that may appear in audits after the release since it prevents the issues from accumulating, distributes the effort across the full product team, and substantially reduces the cost, as there will be less need for retroactive remediation of the issues that appear.If you can implement an accessibility-first approach, do it.Existing Products Or FeaturesIf you try to bring accessibility to legacy products that have been running for many years, an accessibility-first approach may not be enough. In these cases, there are a million topics competing for priority and resources. Accessibility may be perceived as a massive effort that brings reduced value.You may face a product that can have a big technical debt, that may not have a big user base of people with disabilities, or in which the number of existing accessibility issues is so overwhelming that you would need five years to solve them. You won´t be able to move forward if you try to solve all the problems at once. Here are some of the strategies that have worked for me to kick off the work on accessibility.Start by checking the Design System. If the Design System has accessibility issues, they are going to be inherited by all the products that use them, so it is better to solve them at a higher level than to have each product team solving the exact same issue in all their products. You can begin by taking a quick look at it:Does it consider color contrast?And target size?Does the documentation include any accessibility considerations or guidelines?Are there color-dependent components?If you have a dedicated team for the Design System, you can also reach out to them. You can find out what is their level of awareness on the topic. If they don’t have much knowledge, you can give them an introduction or help them identify and fix the knowledge gaps they have.If you notice some issues, you can organize a proper audit of the design system from the design and development perspective and pair up with them to fix as much as you can. It is a good way of getting some extra hands to help you while tackling strategic issues.When working on the Design System, you can also spot which components or areas are more complex and create guidelines and documentation together with them to help the teams reuse those components and patterns, leveraging accessibility.Error messages are a typical example in which you can prevent accessibility issues from appearing with a simple guideline while promoting consistency and usability across the products. (Large preview)If the Design System is in good shape, you don’t have one, or you prefer to focus only on the product, you need to start by analyzing and fixing the most relevant part. You have to set a manageable scope. I recommend taking the most relevant workflows and the ones the users use the most. Two or three of them could be a good start. Inside the workflows, try picking the pages that have different structures so you can have a representative sample, for instance, one with a form, a table, plain text, lots of images, and so on. In many cases, the pages that share the same structure share the same problems, so having more variety in the sample helps you to pick more critical issues.Picking pages with different structures can help you to identify a more representative sample of critical issues and blockers. (Large preview)Once you have chosen the workflows and screens, you can audit them, but with a reduced scope. If your product has never considered accessibility, it is likely to have way too many issues. When doing an audit, you normally test compliance with all the success criteria (59 if we consider levels A and AA) and do manual testing with different browsers, screen readers, and devices. Then, document each of the issues, prioritize them, and include the remediation in the planning.It takes a lot of time, and you may get hundreds of issues, or even thousands, which makes you feel like “I will never get this done” and if you even get there like “I am finally done with this I don’t want to hear about it for a long time”. If this is the situation you are forecasting for the business, most likely, you will not get the green light for the project. It is too much of an investment. So unless they have hard requirements for compliance coming from some really strategic customers, you are going to get stuck.As we said, ideally, we would do a complete audit and fix everything, but delivering some value is better than delivering nothing, so instead, you can propose a reduced first audit to get you on the move. Rather than doing a detailed audit of all 59 criteria, I normally focus on these three things:Running an automatic check. It is very fast and prepares the report by itself. Though it is only capable of finding around 30% of the issues, it is a good start.Doing basic manual keyboard testing, checking that all the interactive elements are focusable, in the logical order, and following the expected keyboard command interactions.Doing a quick responsive test. Basically, what breaks when I change the viewport? Do I have information on top of each other when I zoom in? Can I still use the functionalities?With these three tests, you will already have a large number of critical issues and blockers to solve while staying close to the overlapping area between accessibility and good design and development practices and not taking too much time.Running a simplified audit helps you find many critical issues to kick off the project in a reduced time. (Large preview)Remember, the goal of this first audit is to get easy-to-identify critical issues to have a starting point, not to solve all the problems. In this way, you can start delivering value while building the idea that accessibility is not a one-time fix but a continuous process. In addition, it gives you a lot of insights into the aspects in which the teams need guidelines and training, as well as defining the minimum things that the different roles have to consider when working to reduce the number of future accessibility issues. You want to take it as a learning opportunity.Note: Accessibility insights is a good tool for auditing by yourself as it includes explanations and visual helpers and guides you through the process.Screen reader testing should be added to the audit scope if you can, but it can be hard to do it if you have never done it before, and some of the issues will already be highlighted during the automatic check and the keyboard testing.The results you want to achieve are going to have a huge impact on the strategy.Are you aiming for compliance or bringing value to the users and preparing for the future?This is a key question you have to ask yourself.Compliance with the regulation is pretty much a binary option. To be compliant with the WCAG at a certain level, let’s say AA, you should pass all the success criteria for that level and the previous ones. Each success criterion intends to help people with a specific disability. If you try to be compliant only with some of them, you would be leaving people out. Of course, in reality, there are always going to be some minor issues and violations of a success criterion that reach the user. But the idea is that you are either compliant or not. With this in mind, you have to make sure that you consider several audits, ideally by a certified external party that can reassure your compliance.Trying to become compliant with a product that has never considered accessibility can become quite a large task, so it may not be the best first step. But, in general, if you are aiming for full compliance, it may be because you have strong motivations coming from the risk reduction and competitive advantage categories.On the other hand, if your goal is to start including accessibility in the product to prepare for the future and help users, you will probably target a lighter result. Rather than looking for perfection, you want to start to have a level that is good enough as soon as possible.Compliance is binary, but accessibility is a spectrum. You can have a pretty good level of accessibility even if you are not fully compliant.You can focus on identifying and solving the most critical issues for the users and on applying an accessibility-first approach to new developments. The result is probably not compliant and not perfect, but it eliminates critical barriers without a huge effort. It will have basic accessibility to help users, and you can apply an iterative approach to improve the level.While accessibility compliance has a binary result, accessibility is a spectrum, and there is great value in working on accessibility even if you don’t reach compliance. (Large preview)Keep in mind that it is impossible to have a 100% accessible product. As the product evolves, there are always going to be some issues that escape the test and reach the user. The important thing is to work to ensure that these issues are minor ones and not blockers or critical ones. If you can get the resources to fix the most important problems, you are already bringing value, even if you don’t reach compliance.How Much Would It Cost?An accessibility-first approach typically means you have to assign 5 to 10% of the product capacity to apply it (the number goes down to 5% due to the learning curve). The underlying risk, though, is that the business still considers these percentages to be too high. To prevent this from happening, you have to highlight strongly the side value of accessibility and the huge overlap it has with the design and development best practices we mentioned above.In addition, to help justify the cost, you can look for examples inside your company that allow you to compare it with the cost of retroactive fitting accessibility. If there are not any, you can look for some basic issue, such as the lack of structure of a page, and use it to illustrate that in order to add the structure afterward, once the product is released you would need to do a substantial rework or ask a developer to help you to estimate the effort of adding a heading structure to 40 different pages after released.As for introducing accessibility in existing products, the cost can be quite hard to estimate. Having a rough audit can help you understand how many critical issues you have at the start, and you can ask developers to help you estimate some of the changes to get a rough idea.The most interesting approach that helps you to reduce the “cost of accessibility” is exploiting the overlap between accessibility and usability or product features.If you attach accessibility improvements to usability or UX ones, then it doesn’t really need dedicated capacity. For example, if some of the inputs are lacking labels or instructions and your users get confused, it is a usability problem that overlaps with accessibility. Normally, accessibility issues related to the Reflow criteria are quite time-consuming, as they rely on a proper responsive design. But isn’t it just good design?I recommend checking the list of features in the product backlog and the feedback from the users to find out which accessibility improvements can you combine with them, especially with features that have priority according to the product strategy (such us, enabling the product on mobile devices, or improving efficiency by promoting keyboard navigation).The bigger the overlap, the more you can reduce the effort. This said, I would say it is better not to make it too ambitious when you are starting. It is better to start moving, even if it is slowly, than to hit a wall. When you manage to start with it, you will spark curiosity in other people, gain allies, and have results that can help you to expand the project and the scope.You can also consider an alternative approach, define an affordable capacity that you could dedicate based on your product situation (maybe 10 or 15%), and set the scope to match it.Finally, it is also important to gather the existing resources you have access to, internal or external. If there are guidelines, if the Design System is accessible, if there are related company goals, educational sessions… Whatever is there already is something you can use, and that doesn’t add to the total cost of the project. If the Design System is accessible, it would be a waste if we don’t leverage it and make sure we implement the components in an accessible way. You can put together an overview to show the support you have.How Can I Make A Decision?Business stakeholders are short on time and have many things in mind. If you want them to make a decision and consider all the factors when making it, you have to help them visualize them together in an executive summary.If there is a single direction that you are trying to promote, for example, implementing an accessibility-first approach for new products and features, you can put on a slide the three key questions we mentioned above and the answers to those questions:What exactly do we want to do?What are the expected results?How much would it cost?The executive summary shall contain all the key information on what you are trying to achieve. In addition to answers to three main questions, you can include metrics, an expected timeline, or other relevant information. (Large preview)If there are different directions you can take, for example, you want to start to incorporate accessibility into products that meet certain conditions, or you can afford different capacities dedicated to accessibility for different products, you can use a decision-making diagram or a decision-making matrix. The idea is to visualize the different criteria that can affect the strategy and the adapted result for each of them.For example,Do I have clients inquiring about accessibility?Is the product already using an accessible design system?Are we considering opening part of the product to B2C?Is the product going to take responsiveness and mobile interactions as a priority?Do we want to expand the product target market to governmental institutions?Mapping out the factors and possible directions can help you and decision-makers understand which products can be a better starting point for accessibility, where it makes sense to allocate more capacity, and which possibilities are open. This becomes especially relevant when you are trying to bring accessibility to several products at the same time.The decision-making diagram provides a good overview of the different options in the strategy while illustrating the reasoning. (Large preview)Whatever representation you choose for your conditions, make sure it visualizes the answers to those questions to facilitate the decision-making process and get approval. I generally include it at the end of the presentation, or even at the beginning and the end.Keep It Up!Even if your business case is really good, sometimes you don’t get to have a big impact due to circumstances. It may be that there is a big shift in priorities, that the stakeholders change, that your contract ends (if you are a consultant), or that the company just doesn’t have the resources to work on it at that moment, and it gets postponed.I know it can be very frustrating, but don´t lose the motivation. Change can move quite slowly, especially in big companies, but if you have put the topic into people’s minds, it will be back on the table. In the meantime, you can try organizing evangelization sessions for the teams to find new allies and share your passion. You may need to wait a bit more, but there will be more opportunities to push the topic again, and since people already know about it, you will probably get more support. You have initiated the change, and your effort will not be lost.Key PointsHighlight the specific impact of accessibility on your specific products and users.Check if accessibility could be a competitive differentiator.Leverage the overlap between accessibility and good practices or product features to reduce the effort.Include the existing resources and how you can benefit from them.Clarify the expected result based on the effort.Visualize the key points of the strategy to help the decision-making and approval process.It is better to start with a small scope and iterate than not start at all.
(yk)

Op-Ed: Defunding Science, Is At Our Peril

Science and Health

By MARTIN LAWLERSanta Fe
Modern medicine saved my life, what about yours? From polio to COVID vaccines to surgery at a famous medical center to our local New Mexico hospital, I owe my life to medical researchers and doctors.
Europe used to be the genesis of modern medicine: Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization and vaccines, Marie Curie discovered x-rays. Then American scientist took over. Under the leadership of President Roosevelt, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation were created. Our government has funded important cancer, heart, and HIV research. In the past decade or so, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved over 350 new medicines and medical devices.
One is the continuous blood monitor in my arm that allows me to check blood glucose levels and adjust my food, medicine and insulin, like regulating the speed of an automobile with the accelerator or break.
The dreaded Alzheimer brain disease (RIP Gene Hackman), cancer and heart disease afflicts many in New Mexico. Our federal government provides over $48 billion for fundamental medical research grants annually to universities, government agencies, and private laboratories. Some people prefer to ignore these diseases, while others read about clinical trials of medicines that may cure their or their families’ diseases. But now a fringe minority of science deniers is influencing medical and other research, which will impact us all.
The new administration is firing research scientist and doctors and killing funding for fundamental research for cures for common deadly diseases. It proposes to slash the NIH budget and staff by two thirds. The Health and Human Services budget for grants to states has been cut by $12 billion for tracking disease and other health matters. Ending these programs seems to be a trial balloon before cuts to health care programs such as Medicaid, the Veterans Administration and even Social Security, which Elon Musk calls a “Ponzi” scheme.
Cutting the FDA’s funding will delay approval and increase the costs of new drugs and medical devices, which already can take years. Federal funds for research for breast, pancreatic and lung cancer cannot be replaced. Government support for medical and scientific research, as well as drug development has been so successful many people take it for granted. And this has given the science deniers a foothold in the media.
Many of our neighbors work on cutting edge science at our nearby labs. I take my hat off to them while certain media and politicians vilify scientists and government workers. As a small businessman, I understand cost control. We all want efficient government, but we need to maintain, if not expand needed medical services for veterans and make progress on a cures for Alzheimer and other diseases.
Many veterinary researchers and epidemiologists (who study patterns of diseases) are recommending programs for dealing with a possible bird flu (also called H5N1) pandemic. Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is touting a wild idea to allow the virus run free in some flocks. Veterinarians say this is a recipe for disaster, as it would allow for possible mutations for the virus to spread easily among people.
Kennedy just forced the FDA’s top authority on vaccine safety to quit. The doctor said Kennedy is spreading “misinformation and lies” about vaccines. If medical experts are fired and research is defunded, who will protect us against drug resistant tuberculous, antibiotic resistant sepsis or the next pandemic pathogen?
Government medical research may once again, save my and your life. Or without adequate expert scientists and funding, maybe not.

Trump Skips Return Of Dead U.S. Soldiers To Play Golf And Boost His Business Instead

Business News

LOADINGERROR LOADINGWASHINGTON – President Donald Trump skipped the return of the remains of four soldiers who died in a training exercise to Dover Air Force Base on Friday and instead spent millions of taxpayer dollars to attend a dinner for one of his business interests and to play golf.The bodies of the four members of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division — Sgt. Jose Duenez Jr., 25, of Joliet, Illinois; Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, 25, of Glendale, California; Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28, of Battle Creek, Michigan; and Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, 21, of Dededo, Guam ― were returned to Delaware for their “dignified transfer” ceremony Friday morning. They died when their 70-ton armored M88 towing vehicle sank in a bog in Lithuania last week.Advertisement

While the ceremony took place on the Air Force base tarmac, Trump was 900 miles south at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, across the Intracoastal Waterway from his Palm Beach country club.A Trump administration official, on condition of anonymity, said that “the families requested no media at the transfer” and that the “White House is respecting their request for privacy today and has been working on correspondence to the families.”However, presidents in the past have attended dignified transfers while their accompanying press pools have been held in a location away from the ceremony. The White House did not respond to a query about why that did not happen in this case.Advertisement

President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump drive in a golf cart after he arrived on Marine One at the LIV Golf tournament being held at his Trump National Doral Golf Club on Thursday in Doral, Florida.Joe Raedle via Getty ImagesWhile Trump typically goes to Florida for his $3.4 million golf weekends on Fridays, he traveled a day early this week to attend a closed-door dinner at his Doral golf resort for the Saudi LIV tour, one of his business partners that holds events at his courses.This trip, though, will cost taxpayers at least $4.2 million because of the detour to Miami International Airport, which is located just two miles east of Trump’s Doral resort. Trump nevertheless took a Marine helicopter to fly to the golf course and back rather than ride in his motorcade.Advertisement

Friday was Trump’s 16th day of golf at the West Palm course and his 20th day at one of his courses since taking office Jan. 20, meaning that as of Friday, he has played golf on 27% of his days in office in his second term. The total cost to taxpayers for transporting him and his security apparatus to and from those venues these past 11 weeks is now $30.4 million, according to a HuffPost analysis.Trump, who under the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” is not permitted to accept payments except for his official salary, has nevertheless been using his official position to help the LIV tour. In February, days after returning to office, he hosted the head of the Professional Golf Association in the Oval Office, from where he participated on a conference call with the head of the LIV tour. Trump has been open about trying to get the two rival golf organizations to merge, which, if it happens, would boost LIV and therefore himself.We Don’t Work For Billionaires. We Work For You.Big money interests are running the government — and influencing the news you read. While other outlets are retreating behind paywalls and bending the knee to political pressure, HuffPost is proud to be unbought and unfiltered. Will you help us keep it that way? You can even access our stories ad-free.You’ve supported HuffPost before, and we’ll be honest — we could use your help again. We won’t back down from our mission of providing free, fair news during this critical moment. But we can’t do it without you.For the first time, we’re offering an ad-free experience to qualifying contributors who support our fearless journalism. We hope you’ll join us.You’ve supported HuffPost before, and we’ll be honest — we could use your help again. We won’t back down from our mission of providing free, fair news during this critical moment. But we can’t do it without you.For the first time, we’re offering an ad-free experience to qualifying contributors who support our fearless journalism. We hope you’ll join us.Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.LIV has since its inception used Trump’s courses for its tournaments and is holding its fourth such tournament at Doral this weekend. The Trump Organization, the umbrella company for Trump’s various business interests, did not respond to HuffPost queries about how much LIV has paid for the use of the golf courses.Advertisement

That Trump would put his personal finances and his golf hobby ahead of honoring U.S. service members, while unusual for a president, is in character with his previous treatment of the military. Trump famously refused to go out in the rain for a ceremony honoring U.S. Marines who died in WWI during the 100-year anniversary of Armistice Day in France. His own chief of staff at the time confirmed that Trump called service members who died for the United States “suckers” and “losers.”

“I LOVE this company!” Looking back on 50 years of tech giant Microsoft

Technology

When you hear the phrase “Dance like nobody is watching…” what immediately springs to mind? Although it’s been reused many times in modern music, it’s believed that it originates from Mark Twain. Regardless of its true origin, I always think back to some of my earliest memories. That of being in nursery school, hearing some music, and it just taking control of my body, causing me to sway my hips, wobble around, and generally enjoy myself. It wasn’t just limited to being at nursery. Indeed, the need to move to the music knew no bounds. Anywhere and everywhere, there I would be like a snake being charmed. It did not matter who else was there, I did not care. Excuse my preamble as I make my point. I am thrown back to that innocent time of toddler-dancing when I think about the launch event for Microsoft Windows 95. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and others took to the stage, dancing like no one was watching The Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up. Boy, what a party it was. Those guys were having the time of their lives. Back in full-on toddler mode just enjoying a good dance to a great tune. That was back in 1995, and as we fast-forward to 2025, Microsoft itself is now 50 years old. Age is but a numberWe humans, as we grow older, become more self-aware and awkward and no longer allow ourselves that freedom to just move with the groove as if it is the only thing that matters and we are the only person in the room. We, generally speaking, become fairly inhibited. Companies, however, (at least those that want to remain successful and thrive, not just survive) have to have a more open mindset and be prepared to evolve and try new things, pushing the envelope and innovating to differentiate themselves.Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report – the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executivesTech giant Microsoft is a good example of this. Founded in 1975 by friends since childhood, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who wanted to turn their programming skills into a business endeavor. Allen and Gates back at the beginning(Image credit: Microsoft)Their first commercial success was the Altair BASIC at which point the company’s suggested name was ‘Micro-Soft’ given its focus on software for micro computers. As we know, that evolved into Microsoft, with the company going public in 1986. It has been on quite a journey ever since. While I may often feel as old as Microsoft is, I’m not quite there. Yet! That said, I can look back and remember the four key eras that the tech giant has been a big part of. Bringing computing to the massesIt started with Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) for x86-based PCs, but soon evolved into much, much more. The first version of Windows arrived on the scene in 1985, and the launch of Windows 3.0 felt like a massive step forward in 1990. It was the creation of Windows 95 that was an even bigger step-change for all computer users. “We really want to thank our customers and partners for such great support over the last year,” Bill Gates, then chairman and CEO, said to mark the OS’ one-year anniversary. “Windows 95 has helped millions of users get more out of personal computing, and we owe a big thank you to the entire PC community.”Let’s also not forget the much-beloved Office, which powers the productivity of many businesses globally. Launched in 1990 with just three applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) it was another pivotal moment for Microsoft and the industry alike. The launch of Office XP and Windows XP in 2001 marked another key milestone for Microsoft and consumer and business users alike. “These breakthrough versions of Windows and Office will give people the most powerful end-to-end computing experiences ever available,” Gates said at the time. “The coming generation of Windows XP and Office XP will enable customers to communicate and collaborate more effectively, be more creative and productive, and have more fun with technology.”We then had WIndows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, which all brought new bells and whistles to the table. (You can see our head-to-head comparison of all three here)That brings us to the modern day, where the story ends – at least for now – with Windows 11. End-of-life support for ageing versions of the OS is well publicised and flagged far in advance, but still catches many organizations by surprise and becomes another headache for IT management to resolve. Windows remains firmly in the top spot for OS use around the world, with almost 72% market share as of March 2025, according to StatCounter. The gaming revolutionWhile not a solution to business problems, the launch of Xbox in 2001 was a big deal.As well as offering something new and innovative for gamers, it also demonstrated Microsoft’s determination to enter new markets and take on established players. “On Nov. 8, Xbox will hit the market and redefine how people think about and play video games,” Robbie Bach, chief Xbox officer at Microsoft said in a 2001 press release. “Xbox is going to change video games the way MTV changed music. Your games are never going to be the same.”A cloudy outlookWindows Azure, launched 2008, was a key moment for Microsoft and developers. “We have introduced a game-changing set of technologies that will bring new opportunities to Web developers and business developers alike. The Azure Services Platform, built from the ground up to be consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to openness and interoperability, promises to transform the way businesses operate and how consumers access their information and experience the Web,” Rat Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect said at the firm’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008.  He added: “Most important, it gives our customers the power of choice to deploy applications in cloud-based Internet services or through on-premises servers, or to combine them in any way that makes the most sense for the needs of their business.”The advent and mainstream take-up of cloud computing marked a new era for us all, both at home and work. It opened up the concept of more flexible approaches to where people work and changed cost dynamics completely. Cloud today is a no-brainer and is a core tenet not just of digital transformation but of BAU operation for any modern business. Office 365 was announced in October 2010 and really levelled the playing field in terms of business productivity. “Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. “With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.”AI dominatesTapping into the AI era, Copilot launched in 2023, and Microsoft later announced that 70% of Fortune 500 companies are using Microsoft 365 Copilot. “Copilot combines the power of large language models with your data and apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Modern Work and Business Applications, Microsoft, back in March 2023.  “By grounding in your business content and context, Copilot delivers results that are relevant and actionable. It’s enterprise-ready, built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy and responsible AI. Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work.”In January 2025, the firm announced that AI investment was a big focus for its fiscal year. In FY 2025, Microsoft is on track to invest approximately $80 billion to build out AI-enabled datacenters to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post. “More than half of this total investment will be in the United States, reflecting our commitment to this country and our confidence in the American economy.” Other erasMicrosoft has also had its fair share of acquisitions along the way. Some that stand out are Hotmail in 1997, Skype in 2011, Minecraft in 2014, LinkedIn in 2016, Nuance in 2022. Each leadership change – from Gates to Ballmer to Nadella – has also ushered in new ways of thinking and doing things, some resulting in rave reviews and others leading to rants. While there have been many hits, there have also been some misses along the way. Bing is unlikely to steal users away from other browsers, for example. And many will remember Tay and the antitrust sagas. Although it’s fair to say that any firm that has longevity in this industry will make mistakes along the way, so in that sense Microsoft is in good company here. For me, the key thing is what they learn from the experience and what they do next/how they get back up rather than the fall itself. Around half its lifetime ago, in a September 2000 event to celebrate Microsoft’s 25th anniversary, then-CEO Steve Ballmer worked up quite a sweat, energetically bouncing around the stage shouting about how much he loved the company. 

Steve Ballmer Going Crazy on Stage – YouTube

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Apparently, when Steve left the business in 2014, he sent a company-wide email once again reiterating his love for Microsoft. Looking forwardWhat’s in store for the next 50+ years, then? Quite a lot. Indeed, in writing this piece to mark the first 50 years, it became apparent that I couldn’t possibly fit everything in. These have certainly been a very busy five decades for the tech giant for sure. One thing Microsoft has publicly stated and I absolutely agree with is the fact that partnerships with industry and government will remain key to its strategy and success. As such, we can expect to see more alliances, acquisitions, and innovation on the horizon. While I have many more thoughts on what may come next, I feel it’s only right to also let Microsoft have its say on this one. Current chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, said: “I’ve found myself reflecting on how Microsoft has remained a consequential company decade after decade in an industry with no franchise value. And I realize that it’s because –  time and time again, when paradigms have shifted – we have seized the opportunity to reinvent ourselves to stay relevant to our customers, our partners, and our employees. And that’s what we’re doing again today.”Happy Birthday, Microsoft. Here’s to another 50 years!

Why the Tech Giant Nvidia May Own the Future. Plus, Joshua Rothman on Taking A.I. Seriously

Technology

The New Yorker Radio HourWhy the Tech Giant Nvidia May Own the Future. Plus, Joshua Rothman on Taking A.I. SeriouslyIllustration by Diego MalloSave this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyListen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You ListenSign up for our daily newsletter to get the best of The New Yorker in your inbox.The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware revolution.” In The New Yorker, Witt profiled Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s brilliant and idiosyncratic co-founder and C.E.O. His new book is “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip.” Until recently, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world, but its stock price has been volatile, posting the largest single-day loss in history in January. However, the company’s story is only partially a business story; it’s also one about global superpowers, and who will decide the future. If China takes military action against Taiwan, as it has indicated it might, the move could wrest control of the manufacturing of Nvidia microchips from a Taiwanese firm, which is now investing in a massive production facility in the U.S. “Maybe what’s happening,” Witt speculates, is that “this kind of labor advantage that Asia had over the United States for a long time, maybe in the age of robots that labor advantage is going to go away. And then it doesn’t matter where we put the factory. The only thing that matters is, you know, is there enough power to supply it?”Plus, the staff writer Joshua Rothman has long been fascinated with A.I.—he even interviewed its “godfather,” Geoffrey Hinton, for The New Yorker Radio Hour. But Rothman has become increasingly concerned about a lack of public and political debate over A.I.—and about how thoroughly it may transform our lives. “Often, if you talk to people who are really close to the technology, the timelines they quote for really reaching transformative levels of intelligence are, like, shockingly soon,” he tells Remnick. “If we’re worried about the incompetence of government, on whatever side of that you situate yourself, we should worry about automated government. For example, an A.I. decides the length of a sentence in a criminal conviction, or an A.I. decides whether you qualify for Medicaid. Basically, we’ll have less of a say in how things go and computers will have more of a say.”Rothman’s essay “Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough?” appears in his weekly column, Open Questions.New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.