2026-01-16 06:50:00
2026年1月13日，美国明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市，联邦执法官员从一辆汽车中将一名女子带走并拘留。| Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
这则新闻出现在《The Logoff》每日通讯中，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不会让政治新闻占据您的生活。欢迎阅读《The Logoff》：明尼苏达州的紧张局势正在加剧，随着特朗普政府继续加强执法行动。
目前，有大约3000名美国国土安全部（DHS）特工，包括移民与海关执法局（ICE）和海关边境保护局（CBP）的人员，正在明尼苏达州，尤其是明尼阿波利斯地区开展行动。自八天前一名名叫Renee Good的女性被ICE特工杀害后，大量视频和报道记录了联邦移民特工对移民和美国公民的暴力行为，这些行为往往毫无理由且未经挑衅。周三晚上，一名联邦特工在一次疑似交通拦截中开枪击伤一名委内瑞拉男子，引发了新的抗议浪潮。周四早上，特朗普总统威胁称，如果明尼苏达州的腐败政客不遵守法律并阻止针对ICE“爱国者”的专业煽动者和叛乱分子的攻击，他将动用《叛乱法》并派遣军队进驻明尼苏达州。
这为何重要？这是过去六年中，明尼苏达州第二次成为局势紧张的焦点。州政府官员，包括州长蒂姆·沃尔兹和明尼阿波利斯市长雅各布·弗莱，呼吁保持冷静并要求抗议者保持和平，但局势似乎越来越像特朗普政府有意挑起的冲突。周三，特朗普高级顾问史蒂芬·米勒表示，逮捕明尼阿波利斯的“叛乱分子”是“国家安全优先事项”。
背景如何？ICE（移民与海关执法局）目前是明尼阿波利斯地区特工的主要组成部分，其规模在过去一年中大幅扩大，同时其执法标准却急剧下降。与此同时，在面临更多移民逮捕的压力下，ICE采取了越来越军事化的执法方式，这与之前政府的执法方式大相径庭。目前明尼阿波利斯的局势正是这些因素的集中体现。
大局如何？目前明尼阿波利斯居民所经历的情况，看起来更像是被占领而非移民执法。如果特朗普真的兑现其动用《叛乱法》的威胁，局势可能会进一步恶化。
好了，是时候结束今天的阅读了。我非常喜欢Defector的一篇报道，您也可能会喜欢：《一周自由对实验鼠意味着什么》（此外还有他们优秀的“Creaturefector”栏目中的其他内容）。一如既往，感谢您的阅读，祝您有一个美好的夜晚，明天我们再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: Tensions are rising in Minneapolis as the Trump administration continues its crackdown.
What’s happening? There are some 3,000 Department of Homeland Security agents — both ICE and Customs and Border Protection, or CBP — in Minnesota this week, largely in the Minneapolis area. Since the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent eight days ago, a huge amount of video and reporting has documented further brutality by federal immigration agents, often indiscriminate and unprovoked, against immigrants and American citizens alike.
On Wednesday night, a federal agent shot and injured a Venezuelan man after an alleged traffic stop, giving fresh fuel to protests. And on Thursday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to Minnesota, “if the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E.”
Why does this matter? For the second time in six years, Minnesota feels like a tinderbox. Officials in the state, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, are urging calm and asking protesters to remain peaceful, but it increasingly feels like this is a fight the Trump administration wants to pick. On Wednesday, senior Trump aide Stephen Miller described arresting “insurrectionists” in Minneapolis as a “national security priority.”
What’s the context? ICE, which makes up the majority of the agents currently in Minneapolis, has grown substantially in the last year, at the same time as its standards have dropped precipitously. At the same time, under pressure to make more immigration arrests, they’re taking an increasingly militarized approach at odds with how ICE operated under previous administrations. All of those factors are on display right now in Minneapolis.
What’s the big picture? What’s happening to Minneapolis residents already looks less like immigration enforcement and more like an occupation. If Trump follows through with his Insurrection Act threat, things could grow far worse.
I really enjoyed this piece from Defector, and you might too: What A Week Of Freedom Can Do For A Lab Mouse. (Plus everything else under their excellent “Creaturefector” tab.)
As always, thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2026-01-16 05:00:00
啊！可怕的黑色平底锅！你可能已经听说过微塑料无处不在——在我们的大脑、心脏，甚至可能在地球上每个男性的睾丸中。一些发表在权威医学期刊上的研究指出，微塑料广泛存在于人体的每个角落，引发了广泛关注。大多数人已经清楚地意识到：这些人工材料对我们并不好，而且我们体内已经充满了它们。这是常识吗？其实不然。我们合作伙伴《卫报》的新报道对一些广受宣传的科学结论提出了质疑。该报道涵盖了多项研究，引用了专家访谈和学术评论，挑战了人体内充满致命分子的叙述。批评者质疑：鉴于在分子层面测量的困难，我们真的能确定体内有多少微塑料吗？这些研究主要关注微塑料在人体样本中的普遍存在；其他研究则关注塑料对健康或人群健康的影响。被质疑的研究试图确定这些物质究竟有多少进入了人体，这正是那些吸引眼球的标题的来源。然而，《卫报》的报道指出，一些研究人员对这些研究的方法论问题提出了质疑。例如，关于大脑中充满微塑料的研究，未参与研究的专家指出，大脑脂肪细胞可能会产生聚乙烯（一种值得关注的微塑料）的假阳性结果。他们还指出，实验室环境中的微塑料可能污染了样本，这是《卫报》报道中其他研究也提到的问题，也是这类研究不可避免的挑战；微塑料无处不在。
订阅《好医学》通讯
我们的政治健康环境已经发生了变化：新领导人、可疑的科学、矛盾的建议、信任破裂以及令人困惑的系统。面对这一切，我们该如何理解？Vox的资深记者Dylan Scott已经从事健康报道超过十年，每周他都会深入探讨争议话题，回答合理的问题，并解释美国医疗政策的最新动态。点击此处订阅。
因此，这项研究可能夸大了人体内实际存在的微塑料数量。其他研究也有各自的缺陷，但批评的核心信息是一致的：让我们相信人体内充满微塑料的研究可能并不像表面看起来那么确定。如果你感到困惑，那也无可厚非。事实上，这种情况在科学界很常见：新研究常常被研究人员或记者过度宣传，导致公众和政策制定者在证据尚不明确的情况下做出反应。这对我们理解微塑料以及如何接受对健康有重大影响的科学发现提供了重要的教训。
让我们从这里开始：媒体在微塑料热潮中也负有一定的责任。我们倾向于夸大和简化研究结果，因为我们的读者是普通大众，我们需要吸引他们的注意力。例如，《卫报》的报道本身：这场学术争论早在11月就在《自然医学》期刊上公开，但本周的报道却被描述为“重磅炸弹”。这里没有人指责研究人员有学术不端行为。这纯粹是关于研究方法和我们能否在分子层面准确测量人体的问题。
我与大脑研究的合著者进行了交流，他们指出，他们确实在论文中提到了脂肪分子可能干扰研究结果的可能性。但他们认为，他们追踪到的效果规模太大，不可能仅由这一因素解释。然而，报道该研究的新闻文章往往忽略了这些细节。而且，微塑料研究本身还处于早期阶段，这本身就非常困难，科学家们正在努力完善研究方法，以便能够更自信地报告研究结果。科学方法本应如此：收集数据，报告结果，接受批评，继续重复和扩展研究发现。“没有人能做得完美，”新墨西哥大学生物化学家Matthew Campen告诉我，“但当我们开始结合最佳实践时，我认为在一年或两年内，我们就能找到一种不可置疑的方法，并获得准确且一致的数据。”
这在医学科学和诊断领域是一个普遍现象：我们已经开发出惊人的精确工具来测量人体中的各种物质，但我们的理解能力仍在追赶。这没有关系。随着我们获得更多数据和改进技术，我们应能更好地解读这些信号。但这需要时间。
我们需要明确一点：这些批评主要针对那些测量人体内微塑料普遍性的研究，例如通过尸检样本分析大脑中的微塑料含量。但这是微塑料研究的一个方面，而整个领域更关注微塑料如何真正影响我们的健康。实验研究表明，塑料中的化学物质对人体是有毒的。人群队列研究发现，例如暴露于邻苯二甲酸盐（一种塑料添加剂）与总体死亡率增加相关，尤其是心血管疾病。自然资源保护委员会的环境健康专家Renee Sharp表示：“我告诉人们，塑料是有毒的，所以尽量避免使用。但这样做可能很困难，因为塑料无处不在，甚至在我们不希望它出现的地方。但你能做的，就尽量去做。”
因此，我们不必对每一个新的科学发现或媒体热点过度反应。还记得那场关于黑色平底锅的恐慌吗？《大西洋》上的一篇文章建议，你的塑料炊具可能正在向食物释放纳米颗粒。啊！我立刻跑去买了些尼龙炊具，以防万一。像《大西洋》的Annie Lowrey这样的作者也曾试图完全摆脱塑料，但后来发现这太难了。随后，有反驳观点认为《大西洋》的文章过度解读了证据。不要陷入这种循环。塑料无处不在，而且对健康不利。但我们也应将其风险置于适当的背景下。Campen，大脑研究的合著者，对我说：“我们不要惊慌。”尽管我们对现代世界中所有人工物质感到担忧，但从历史角度看，我们似乎做得不错：人们的寿命比以往更长，慢性病也变得更容易管理。当然，我们仍需了解微塑料带来的某些特定风险，如早发性癌症。但与此同时，我们正处于医学和长寿的黄金时代，这在一定程度上得益于医疗领域中塑料的使用。（同时，关于如何减少医院和诊所中的塑料使用，也正在展开越来越多的讨论——我们与塑料的关系确实复杂。）
这意味着我们不应该仅仅停止对微塑料的担忧。“不要过度反应”这句话同样适用于其他情况。我们可以将《卫报》的报道解读为：如果我们体内的塑料比想象的少，那么也许我们还能在事情变得更糟之前采取更多措施来降低塑料风险。当人们觉得塑料无处不在且已经进入体内时，很容易变得绝望。但不要这样。相反，当你开始听到这类新科学时，应寻找“低痛苦”的干预措施，即在我们有限的知识基础上，采取一些可以降低风险但又不会完全颠覆你生活的方法。自然资源保护委员会提供了一些实用建议：尽可能饮用自来水而非瓶装水；不要在塑料容器中微波加热食物；如果可能，选择竹制砧板或玻璃搅拌碗而不是塑料制品。你可以检查你的化妆品是否含有聚乙烯或尼龙-12等成分，如果有，考虑换其他产品。每当新的健康恐慌出现时，请记住：我们一直在学习新东西，而这些新发现可能会彻底改变我们对健康的看法。这是一件好事。但好的科学需要时间。你能做的，就去做，不要对每一个新标题感到惊慌，让研究人员继续他们的工作。
You’ve probably heard microplastics are everywhere — in our brains, in our hearts, in possibly every single man on earth’s testicles. Studies published in major medical journals have reported that microplastics are plentiful in seemingly every inch of the human body and they have attracted widespread media attention. Most of us have gotten the message loud and clear: These manmade materials can’t be good for us, and ungodly amounts of them are already lurking inside our bodies.
Settled science, right? Well, hold on a second.
New reporting from our partners at the Guardian has called some of that widely publicized science into question. Covering a range of studies, the report cites both interviews with leading subject matter experts and scholarly reviews to challenge this narrative of human bodies teeming with deadly molecules. The critics ask: How confident can we really be about how much of this stuff is inside us, given the challenges in measuring anything at the molecular level?
These studies were primarily focused on the prevalence of microplastics in samples taken from real people; other research has focused on the ways plastics harm health or the population-level health effects as plastics have become so woven into our lives. The type of research in question attempts to discern exactly how much these substances have penetrated people’s bodies, which was what led to those eye-grabbing headlines.
But, according to the Guardian’s reporting, some researchers are calling foul on a number of methodological problems with these studies.
On the study that inspired headlines of brains soaked in microplastics, researchers who were not involved noted that fatty cells in the brain have a history of throwing up false positives for polyethylene, a microplastic of concern. They also flagged the possibility that microplastics from the lab environment could have contaminated the samples, a concern raised about other studies covered by the Guardian and an unavoidable challenge for this kind of research; microplastics are literally everywhere.
Our political wellness landscape has shifted: new leaders, shady science, contradictory advice, broken trust, and overwhelming systems. How is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Vox’s senior correspondent Dylan Scott has been on the health beat for more than a decade, and every week, he’ll wade into sticky debates, answer fair questions, and contextualize what’s happening in American health care policy. Sign up here.
And as a result, the study could be overstating, perhaps dramatically so, how many microplastics are actually present in people’s brains.
Other studies had their own flaws, but the criticisms tell the same story: The research that led many of us to believe our bodies are swimming in microplastics may not have been as definitive as it seemed.
If your head is spinning, nobody could blame you. The fact is, this is something that happens a lot: New science gets overconfidently reported either by the researchers themselves or by journalists, driving people and policymakers to react even when the underlying evidence is more uncertain than the popular narrative suggests.
There is an important lesson in this story, not only for how we think about these microplastics but for how we should internalize scientific findings that have major implications for our health.
Let’s start here: The media bears some blame for the microplastics mania. We tend to sensationalize and oversimplify findings because we’re writing for a lay audience and we need to capture people’s interest. Take the Guardian story itself: This debate between academics has been playing out in public in the Nature Medicine journal since November, though this week’s story presented itself as “a bombshell.”
No one is accusing researchers of malpractice here. This is purely a question of methodology and our ability to measure the human body at the molecular level.
I spoke with co-authors of the brain study, and they pointed out that they actually did flag in their paper the possibility that fatty molecules could confound their research. But they argued the size of the effect they tracked over time was too significant to be explained by that factor alone. The news stories covering the study often didn’t mention that nuance.
And to be fair, microplastics research is a fairly young space. This is inherently difficult and scientists should be striving to fine-tune their methods so they can report findings with more confidence.
That’s how the scientific method is supposed to work: You collect data, you report it, you get critiqued, you keep working to duplicate and build upon your findings.
“Nobody’s getting it perfect,” Matthew Campen, a biochemist at the University of New Mexico and co-author of the brain study, told me. “But when you start combining the best practices, all of a sudden, I think in a year, maybe two, we’re going to have this unassailable approach, and we’re going to have really accurate and consistent data.”
This is a broader phenomenon across medical science and diagnostics: We have developed shockingly precise tools for measuring things in the human body, but our ability to understand what we are seeing is still catching up
That’s okay. As we gather more information and improve our technology, we should be able to get better at interpreting the signals. But it takes time.
We should be clear about something: These critiques are largely aimed at studies that have measured the prevalence of microplastics in our bodies, taking (in the case of the brain study) samples collected during autopsies and scouring them to come up with a measure of how many microplastics are present. But this is just one lane of microplastics research, and the broader field is focused on piecing together how microplastics might actually impact our health.
Experimental research has shown over and over again that the chemicals present in plastics are toxic to humans. Population cohort studies have found that exposure to, for example, phthalate is associated with a higher risk of death from any cause, but especially cardiovascular disease.
“What I tell people is plastic is toxic, so try to avoid it where you can,” said Renee Sharp, an environmental health expert at the Natural Resource Defense Council. “That can be challenging because it’s everywhere, and it’s even in places that we don’t even necessarily want it. But do what you can.”
With that in mind, we don’t have to overreact to every new scientific finding or media fixation. Remember the black spatula freakout? A popular article published in the Atlantic suggested that your plastic cookware is probably leaching nanoparticles into your food. Ack! I went out and bought some nylon cookware, just to be safe. You had writers like Annie Lowrey at the Atlantic trying to eliminate plastic entirely from their lives (before giving up because it proved too hard). Then, a counter-take argued the Atlantic’s story had overinterpreted the evidence.
Don’t subject yourself to this cycle. Plastics are everywhere, and they aren’t good for your health. But let’s also put the risk in a proper context.
Campen, the co-author of the brain study, put it to me like this: “Let’s not panic.” While there is understandable trepidation about all the artificial substances in our modern world, in the context of history, we seem to be doing ok: people are living longer than ever. Chronic diseases are becoming more, not less, manageable. There are particular concerns associated with microplastics that we are still trying to understand, such as early-onset cancer, but we are also living in a golden age of medicine and longevity — one made possible, in part, by plastics in medical care. (There is, at the same time, a growing conversation about how to decrease plastic use in hospitals and clinics — our relationship to this stuff is complicated.)
And that means we shouldn’t just stop worrying about microplastics either. “Don’t overreact” cuts both ways. One way to interpret the Guardian story is: If we don’t have as much plastic inside of us as we thought, maybe we can do more to mitigate our plastic risk before it’s too late. It’s tempting to get fatalistic about our exposure when it seemed like they were really everywhere and already inside you. Don’t be.
Instead, as you start hearing about new science like this, look for “low pain” interventions, something you can do to try to reduce risk based on our limited knowledge, but without totally upending your life, given the inherent uncertainty. The NRDC has a list of practical tips: Drink tap water, not bottled water, when possible; don’t microwave any food in plastic; when you can, opt for bamboo cutting boards or glass mixing bowls instead of plastic ones. You can check if any of your cosmetics include ingredients like polyethylene or nylon-12: if so, consider something else.
And whenever the next popular health panic starts, remember: We are learning new things all the time, and some of those things could dramatically reshape how we think about our health. This is a good thing. But good science does take time. Do what you can, don’t freak out at every new headline, and let the researchers keep working.
2026-01-16 04:40:00
2026年1月14日，明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市发生了一起涉及联邦执法官员的枪击事件，居民对此进行了抗议。在事件发生后，大量右翼、支持特朗普的内容创作者、记者和影响者涌入该市，并在社交媒体上大量发布相关内容。他们拍摄抗议活动、跟随移民与海关执法局（ICE）和海关与边境保护局（CBP）行动、记录甚至似乎煽动与抗议者的冲突，并传播与ICE和特朗普立场一致的叙事。从地面上传播的内容描绘抗议者为无政府主义者，示威活动为骚乱，反ICE活动者为极端分子或罪犯。在州外，右翼影响者和大型社交媒体账号进一步放大这些视频、帖子和描述，以扩大其影响力。
截至目前，这一努力似乎在一定程度上模糊了关于Good被杀事件以及明尼阿波利斯居民对特朗普ICE政策的反应的讨论，至少在右翼受众中是这样。本周的民意调查显示，大多数美国人并不认为这次枪击是正当的，也不认为ICE官员应被追究刑事责任。
然而，社交媒体分析显示，右翼影响者在内容生产和传播方面占据了主导地位，尽管他们的内容互动量未必与内容数量成正比。Vox分析了推动这一动态的前20名品牌或用户名。右翼创作者在这些榜单中占据主导地位，他们的内容表现良好。例如，Nick Sortor是明尼阿波利斯本地的右翼影响者，而Eric Daugherty是一位亲特朗普的记者，他的账号经常推广共和党或保守派媒体的视频、社交媒体帖子或原始内容。
最近，右翼和左翼在移民和ICE相关内容的互动和观看量上差距有所缩小。但右翼的媒体机器仍然运作良好，且比去年其他美国城市中的ICE行动更为高效。
过去几个月里，关于ICE的病毒式视频和内容生产凸显了批评者在网络上的困境。这种困境可以从个人动机和结构性优势两个方面来解释。
从个人层面来看，右翼内容创作者更有经验出现在行动发生或即将发生的地方。他们可能有经济动机或意识形态驱动力，愿意承担风险，置身于高紧张局势中。例如，Sortor、右翼记者Cam Higby和影响者Nick Shirley等人都在事件发生后进行了直播报道。他们与政府有联系，因此可能不像ICE批评者、传统或独立记者或抗议者那样容易受到副总统、国土安全部长及其发言人等右翼影响者的指责。
从结构性层面来看，右翼影响者、创作者和记者不仅与政府有合作关系，还得到了政府的直接支持，例如鼓励ICE官员充当内容生产者，或资助与亲ICE创作者的合作。此外，他们还获得了与政府合作的“随行”权限，例如在明尼阿波利斯，DHS官员向友好或支持的创作者提供了与边境地区或去年其他美国城市相同的随行机会。而这些机会并未向其他记者开放，因此左翼或独立记者只能通过与社区活动人士合作的方式进行报道，如Zeteo News的Prem Thakker本周所做的那样。
此外，还存在更大的资金和网络不对称问题：左翼在社交媒体和独立媒体上的内容制作和传播资金远不如右翼充足。Ryan Broderick，Garbage Media的创始人，一位独立新媒体公司，专门报道政治和互联网内容，告诉我：“右翼的资金远比左翼多。”他在Good被杀事件后亲临现场，报道了ICE官员、抗议活动以及右翼记者和影响者。他说：“他们要么自己赚钱，要么依靠强大的捐赠者。我关注的一些极右翼直播者已经在那里待了一周，甚至更久，他们拥有更多的资源。”
确实，查看X、YouTube、Threads或TikTok等平台，仍能看到Higbys、Sortors或Shirleys等右翼影响者发布的最新内容。Broderick还指出，左翼或反ICE内容创作者缺乏一个能够分享其视频并从中获利的平台。“目前，左翼内容创作者很难找到一个适合发布视频并从中获利的平台，”他说。“虽然有一些左翼创作者，但像Hasan Piker这样的左翼主播，其影响力和知名度仍无法与右翼的同规模人物相比。”
总体而言，这种现象反映了左翼在美国政治中面临的更大挑战。正如2024年播客的影响以及近年来Charlie Kirk和保守派青年组织的崛起所显示的，左翼和自由派在美国缺乏与右翼相同的资源和影响力。在Good被杀事件后，这种缺乏社交媒体力量的现状使得他们更难对抗特朗普及其盟友试图强加给国家的叙事。因此，新闻机构、独立创作者和活动人士在网络上的影响力被削弱，难以持续关注这一事件并推动问责。直到反特朗普联盟能够筹集足够的资源和人员来与右翼的媒体机器竞争，政治讨论和辩论仍将被混乱、右翼的低质量内容和宣传所笼罩。
In the hours and days after news and videos spread of the ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week, a small army of right-wing, pro-Trump creators, journalists, and influencers descended on the city and flooded social media.
They filmed protests; rode along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection; documented — and at times seemingly instigated — confrontations with protesters; and worked a competing, ICE- and Trump-friendly narrative out of what was happening in Minneapolis. From the ground, they churned out content painting protesters as lawless, demonstrations as riots, and anti-ICE activists as extremists or criminals. Outside of the state, right-wing influencers and large social media accounts amplified these videos, posts, and descriptions to reach much wider audiences.
So far, this effort appears to have muddied the conversation around Good’s killing and Minneapolis residents’ response to President Donald Trump’s ICE surge — at least among right-leaning audiences. (Polling this week shows the videos and shooting have broken through to an overwhelming share of Americans, and majorities of Americans do not believe the shooting was justified, or think the ICE agent who shot Good should be criminally charged.)
But social media analytics show that these right-wing influencers have been effective in flooding the zone — producing large volumes of content and drawing viewers.
To log onto social media platforms now is to not only see the videos and outrage, but also constant counter-narratives, attempts to justify Good’s killing, and arguments that ICE’s presence in Minneapolis is warranted.
And that reveals a deeper imbalance in American politics and media in 2026: While witness video, mainstream and traditional news, and liberal commentators have shaped part of the debate over ICE and Trump’s domestic immigration agenda, these critical voices and activists lack the same kind of distribution machine to push their narrative that those on the right have used to some effect.
In that sense, the Minneapolis shooting’s disjointed online realities fit into a familiar problem for liberals, the American left, and the broader anti-Trump coalition since 2020 — just as they lacked their own version of a Joe Rogan or Charlie Kirk to reach the masses or compete for hearts and minds, they also lack the influencer and social media infrastructure that has been churning out ICE-friendly content since at least the summer 2025.
There are several reasons why.
To understand what’s happening online and measure how effective right-wing creators have been since January 7, the day of Good’s shooting, I turned to data researchers at Magnitude Media, a communications and digital media firm that tracks the spread of right, neutral, and left-leaning posts and videos online. Their findings complicate what many users may be seeing in their own feeds.
Over the last week, left-leaning, ICE-critical posts have made up the largest share of all posts on immigration or ICE as a topic. They’ve received more engagement from social media users (about 110 million interactions compared to 76 million for right-leaning posts) and have dominated on TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky.
“Left-leaning pages have received 29 million more engagements than right-leaning pages on posts related to immigration or ICE according to our tracking, and 37 million more engagements on posts that directly mention Renee Good, Jonathan Ross, or Minneapolis,” Carly Evans, the director of analytics at Magnitude Media, told me. “Right-leaning pages began to close this gap over the weekend and even led on Friday and Saturday, but as of Monday, left-leaning pages were still generating 37 percent more engagement on immigration-related posts than right-leaning pages.”
In other words, the narrative promoted by the Trump administration and its — and reinforced by some algorithms — does not fully match reality.
If you look at trends, you begin to understand why that’s so. This left-leaning domination online only lasted for roughly a day and a half before right-wing content creation began to ramp up. Magnitude’s tracking shows that by January 9, engagements by right-leaning content began to close the gap, while views of right-leaning content began to surge past left-leaning content (Magnitude defines “engagement” as total clicks, likes, or shares, while “views” are the number of times a piece of content was seen, and are not “unique views”).
Before Good’s death, some right-wing creators were already active in Minnesota, for example, by “investigating” cases of alleged fraud in the state that had already attracted media attention before the killing of Good. But many more have arrived over the last week, interviewing ICE agents, boosting the Trump administration’s defense of ICE’s tactics, and documenting intense moments as the city grapples with the federal government’s presence in the region.
The result is a disproportionate volume of content produced and shared across social media by the biggest right-leaning content creators, even if engagement with their content isn’t necessarily keeping pace with that volume.
Vox analyzed the top 20 brands or usernames driving this dynamic. A handful of right-leaning users dominate the top of this chart, and their content performs well: The most effective of these are Nick Sortor, one of the right-wing influencers on the ground in Minneapolis, and Eric Daugherty, a Trump-friendly journalist whose accounts regularly boost Republican or conservative media clips, social media posts, or raw video from Minneapolis from influencers like Sortor.
More recently, the gap between right and left has narrowed for both engagement and views of immigration- and ICE-related content. But the right-wing apparatus is still fully operational, and more advanced than how it was working during ICE operations in other American cities last year.
What the last few months of viral ICE videos and content production reinforces is the uphill battle critics of the administration still face when trying to match the right’s social media presence. You can broadly explain this in two ways: individual incentives and structural advantages.
Individually, right-wing content creators have more experience showing up wherever action is taking place or is about to take place. They may have financial incentives or ideological motivations, and they have a willingness to take risks and put themselves in high intensity situations — as Sortor, right-wing journalist Cam Higby, and influencer Nick Shirley have done and broadcast. With allies in the administration, they may not be as open to physical injury or legal risk as ICE critics, traditional or independent journalists, or protesters themselves. Instead of being vilified by the vice president, the secretary of Homeland Security and her spokespeople, or by other right-wing influencers, these content creators get moral support and boosts online.
But the structural disadvantages are also severe, experts told me. These right-wing influencers, creators, and journalists benefit from not just being partners with the administration, but from the administration itself encouraging ICE agents to function as content producers, or dedicating money to be spent on partnerships with pro-ICE creators.
Then there’s access. In Minneapolis, DHS agents have offered the same kind of ride-along privileges to friendly or allied creators that they’ve offered at the border or in other American cities last year. The same kind of access has not been extended to other reporters in Minneapolis, so independent or left-leaning journalists have instead countered with ride-along style reporting with community activists, as Zeteo News’ Prem Thakker did this week.
Beyond this, there’s also a bigger, financial and network asymmetry at work here: funding for this kind of coverage and reach on social media and independent outlets isn’t comparable on the left to what exists on the right.
“The right is just way better funded,” Ryan Broderick, the founder of Garbage Media, an independent new media company that specializes in covering politics and the internet, told me. He was on the ground last week after the ICE killing of Good, covering ICE agents, protests, and the right-wing journalists and influencers who descended on the city. “They’re making money either on their own or they’re making money from powerful donors,” Broderick said. “The far-right groyper kind of live streamers that I was following around, they were there for at least a week and they’re still there. They have a lot more resources in that way.”
Sure enough, a look at X, YouTube, Threads, or TikTok still shows fresh, newly updated content from the Higbys, Sortors, or Shirleys of the internet.
“There’s also not really a great place for ‘leftist’ or ‘anti-ICE’ content creators to actually share their footage and make money,” Broderick told me.
He mentioned a few outlets that are doing on-the-ground coverage in a style similar to what right-wing content creators are doing, like Minnesota-based Mercado Media or independent journalist Amanda Moore. But these kinds of creators and journalists are limited in their scope or reach on social media platforms, he said.
“If you’re going to film anything, you are putting it on YouTube, you’re putting it on TikTok, you’re putting on X, and those platforms are just not hospitable to that kind of content,” Broderick said. “We were able to go, because we are in a partnership for our podcast with Courier News and they have more resources than we do, but I don’t think I could have bankrolled this myself. It’s not like we’re going to make money off of it the way that a right-wing YouTuber can immediately monetize it.”
Broderick also noted that one other disadvantage is the brazenness and willingness of right-wing social media accounts to take neutral or raw video footage from street scenes and edit or reshare it in a way that “makes people look crazy. So even if you are just a journalist and you’re sharing what’s happening on the ground, your stuff is going to go the most viral when it’s weaponized by the right.”
More broadly, this phenomenon fits into a broader challenge for the left. As was shown by the influence of podcasters in 2024 and Charlie Kirk and conservative youth organizations over the last few years, the left and liberals in America lack a lot of the same resources and reach that the American right has. In moments like this, in the aftermath of Good’s killing, the lack of this kind of social media apparatus makes it harder to contest the narratives that Trump and his allies are trying to force on the nation.
So, newsrooms, independent creators, and activists have the deck stacked against them in trying to stay on this story, keep up attention, and push for accountability. But until the anti-Trump coalition is able to muster the resources and agents to compete with the right’s own apparatus, political debates and discussions will continue to be clouded by mess, right-wing slop, and propaganda.
“Nothing on the left that is the same in size online as the right,” Broderick said. “There’s just not a way right now anymore to create the same amount of content that the right wing can create at the same level and get the same eyeballs because this has been a years in the making process. There are obviously leftist streamers, but even Hasan Piker is not that big compared to anyone of his size or notoriety on the right. You can’t really compare.”
2026-01-16 03:15:00
2026年1月8日，明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市发生了一起致命事件，一名ICE特工乔纳森·罗斯在执法行动中射杀了瑞妮·古德。此后，神职人员、信仰领袖和社区领袖聚集在一起，呼吁ICE离开该社区。当地对联邦移民执法力量的抵制情绪日益高涨，而特朗普政府对古德及其抗议者的言论也愈发激烈。特朗普甚至威胁要援引“叛乱法”并派遣美军镇压抗议者。与此同时，一个关键问题仍然悬而未决：罗斯是否会因杀害古德而面临法律问责？副总统JD·范斯坚持认为罗斯享有“绝对豁免权”，而司法部也拒绝对此进行调查。但一些人质疑，明尼苏达州是否能够起诉罗斯。目前看来，或许可以。今天，Explained节目主持人诺埃尔·金与Vox的高级法律记者伊恩·米利希瑟讨论了关于古德死亡的联邦和州调查现状，最高法院对此问题的立场，以及特朗普政府对ICE官员的豁免权主张是否站得住脚。
关键要点：
总的来说，这起事件引发了关于联邦与州执法权界限、司法独立性以及法律公正性的广泛讨论。
The Twin Cities, and much of the nation, are still reeling from ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting and killing Renee Good last week. The local resistance to the federal immigration forces deployed in and around Minneapolis has grown, and the Trump administration’s rhetoric against Good and the protesters around Minneapolis has heated up. On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the US military to the cities to crush the activists.
Meanwhile, a question still hangs over the crisis: Will Ross face any legal accountability for killing Good? Vice President JD Vance insists that Ross has “absolute immunity” for his actions, and the Justice Department is declining to investigate him. But others wonder if the state of Minnesota can prosecute Ross for the killing. The short answer, at the moment, is maybe.
Today, Explained cohost Noel King spoke with Vox’s senior legal correspondent Ian Millhiser about the state of the competing federal and state investigations into Good’s death, what the Supreme Court has said about this issue, and whether the Trump administration’s immunity claims about ICE officers have any merit.
There’s much more in the full podcast. So listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
A woman in Minnesota is dead and there is video of her killing at the hands of an ICE agent. The first response from many thinking Americans was: There will be a legal way of dealing with what happened here. There will be accountability. Why is that our response?
The whole point of legal accountability is to deter people from doing bad things. This isn’t the only reason I don’t break into my neighbor’s home, but one reason I don’t break into my neighbor’s home is I know that if I do, I will be arrested.
This is a question that the Supreme Court has been wrestling with for quite some time, is when do we want law enforcement officers to feel like if they behave badly, they will fear legal consequences?
All right, let’s talk about the investigation in Minneapolis at this point. What do we know?
We know it’s pretty splintered. Normally the way something like this would work is that federal law enforcement officers would work with the state police in order to determine what happened and if any criminal charges need to be brought. So there’s several reasons why the federal investigation [into the Good shooting] is looking like it’s not serious. One is that they appear to have kicked the state police out of the investigation. The state is no longer allowed to cooperate with the federal government. The federal government apparently is not sharing information with state police. And that’s a big red flag.
On top of that, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that he doesn’t think a civil rights investigation into the shooting itself is warranted. And on top of that, six prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota resigned in protest, because apparently the US attorney wanted the investigation to focus on Becca Good, the wife of the victim.
So, you know, it really looks like this federal investigation is not just a sham, but potentially something worse, because they may be looking to harass the widow here. And that leaves open the question of whether the state government is going to be able to conduct a thorough investigation without federal cooperation.
Minnesota itself seems to be indicating that it wants to conduct an investigation. They have requested that people “who have information or who have video or photos of the event to submit that information.”
But it’s unclear just how effective the state’s investigation is going to be if the feds will not cooperate.
Let’s talk about what we are hearing from the federal government. Vice President JD Vance, who has a law degree from Yale, said an astonishing amount before an investigation had even begun here:
“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe, against our law enforcement officers,” he said. And he has been very clear that he thinks the ICE agent involved, Jonathan Ross, has “absolute immunity.”
What does the vice president mean?
I mean, he needs to go back to law school if he thinks that that’s the appropriate term. “Absolute immunity” is a term that is used in civil lawsuits, not in criminal investigation — like when you have a private party suing another person, typically for money. The Supreme Court has said that three classes of individuals have absolute immunity from those suits. None of them are law enforcement. Those three classes of individuals are the sitting president, judges, and prosecutors. Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot Renee Good, is neither the president of the United States, a judge, nor a prosecutor. So absolute immunity does not apply to him.
There are some doctrines that apply to criminal investigations. Probably the most important one is a doctrine that emerges from a case called In re Neagle. It was an 1890 case, so this is really old, and it involves a federal law enforcement officer who shot a man in the course of duty. The state of California wanted to prosecute him. And Neagle set the rule that in most but not all cases, when a federal law enforcement officer is acting within the scope of their duties, the state cannot prosecute them.
Okay, so even though the vice president was not using the right words, he may have been saying the right thing, because this guy is a federal officer. This precedent that’s been around since 1890 probably protects him, right? Unless somebody on the federal end decides to bring criminal charges?
Well, it’s unclear, because about six months ago, last June, the Supreme Court handed down another case called Martin v. United States. They weakened Neagle somewhat in that decision.
What I get out of Martin is that protections for federal law enforcement officers against state prosecutions are not absolute. So they are not what JD Vance said they are, even though there is still some protection there.
Is there a chance in your mind that this case ends up in some fashion before the Supreme Court?
I think that if the state of Minnesota prosecutes — and that’s a big if here, because first of all, we don’t know if they’re going to be able to conduct a thorough investigation given the federal sabotage. And second of all, we don’t know what the results of that investigation would be. Maybe they determine that they can’t bring a successful prosecution here. Even if Jonathan Ross is guilty, the prosecutors still have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And so they may determine that they just don’t have enough evidence that it’s worth going to a jury.
But if they bring a prosecution, I think that the state of the law governing when a state can bring a prosecution against a federal officer is very unclear right now. And especially given how high-profile this case is, this is the sort of case that I could easily see winding up in front of the Supreme Court.
If Minnesota state prosecutors are able to bring charges against this man, what does that mean for the way that ICE behaves in the streets next month, six months from now, a year from now?
I think it depends a lot on what the courts say. What the Supreme Court said recently in Martin, though, is that, well, we only want Neagle to apply when we know that this officer is actually carrying out federal duties. [The opinion says that] “federal officers may sometimes defeat state prosecutions against them by demonstrating that their actions, though criminal under state law, were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”
If I was a Minnesota state prosecutor, I could argue that shooting someone when they had their wheels turned against you and they weren’t a threat to you is not “necessary and proper” to the discharge of federal law enforcement, and therefore prosecution should be allowed. And if I were Jonathan Ross’s attorney, I could argue the opposite.
That’s really vague language that the Supreme Court handed down in Martin. So I don’t know what the correct answer is to the question of whether or not Ross can be prosecuted at state court, because the only thing I’ve got to work with is this extraordinarily vague line from the Supreme Court about things that are “necessary and proper” to federal responsibilities.
As somebody who is a lawyer and who has covered the law for a long time, what do you make of the fact that a lot of Americans are feeling right now that the law does not work, that a woman is dead, that ICE is dragging people off the streets, in some cases violently, and the law does not seem to apply to those people?
They are correct that there is in fact selective law enforcement in the Trump administration. Trump had a very different reaction to the January 6 offenders, some of which endangered federal law enforcement officers a whole lot more than Renee Good did.
There’s no question here that the Justice Department is behaving in a political manner, and it’s a serious problem. For many, many years, there were very strong norms saying that even though the Justice Department is part of a presidential administration, prosecutorial decisions should be made by civil servants for neutral legal reasons and not for political reasons. And that norm has just completely broken down under this president.
2026-01-15 19:45:00
It looked like one of Zohran Mamdani’s most ambitious promises.
Between a $6 billion price tag and the complexity of hiring and training potentially thousands of educators, the mayoral candidate’s proposal to offer universal child care in New York City drew widespread skepticism during last year’s campaign. Though 71 percent of likely voters supported the proposal in one poll, only about 50 percent thought he could actually get it done. Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic wrote that it “would require a mammoth tax hike that Albany would need to approve, which it has shown no interest in doing.”
But barely a week into Mamdani’s term, he appeared with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at a Brooklyn YMCA to announce a plan to expand care for nearly 100,000 children, backed by a $4.5 billion commitment to fund the program.
“I’ve been working on the issues for a couple of decades, and I can count on one hand the times in which a room and announcement was filled with so much support, and, frankly, optimism,” Raysa Rodriguez, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, a Manhattan-based advocacy group, told me.
It’s perhaps the clearest sign yet that the politics of child care have changed, with taxpayer-funded initiatives, once dismissed as socialist pipe dreams or even assaults on the American family, now finding support across the political spectrum.
“Mamdani caught child care as it is starting to have a real moment,” Elliot Haspel, a family policy expert and senior fellow at the think tank Capita, told me.
It’s not just New York. New Mexico made headlines last year as the first state to announce free, universal child care. Red states from Montana to Kentucky have also expanded their offerings. Even President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill included increased funding for child care, though critics cautioned that the expanded tax credits would do little for lower-income families.
New York City is still years away from anything approaching universal child care. And initiatives around the country will face obstacles from a lack of infrastructure to political fallout from Minnesota’s social-services fraud scandal.
Nonetheless, experts say it’s no accident that Mamdani was able to notch an early win on child care, and that lawmakers around the country may finally be willing to tackle an issue that’s plagued families for too long.
“It is something that is so broadly needed; it is so absurdly expensive, it is so difficult for people, not just who are lower-income, but even middle or upper-middle-income, to be able to afford, that it really resonates,” Haspel said.
Building on New York City’s existing universal preschool program for 4-year-olds, Mamdani’s plan would expand preschool for 3-year-olds to make it truly universal. It would also create a new city program offering free care for 2-year-olds, called 2-Care, beginning with 2,000 children and offering a seat to any family that wants one within four years.
Under the plan, which still needs to be approved by the state legislature, Hochul will also work to offer universal preschool to all 4-year-olds in the state.
One reason Mamdani’s plan gained traction is that New York already has a long history of political organizing around child care. Its program for 4-year-olds, the signature achievement of Mayor Bill de Blasio, launched in 2014 and quickly became popular. A program for 3-year-olds followed, and though it was not yet truly universal, families began counting on it as a lifeline in a city where day care can cost as much as $4,000 a month.
“I knew people who were like, ‘I just have to get to 3-K or pre-K, and then I can stay in New York,’” Rebecca Bailin, executive director of the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Child Care, told me.
When Eric Adams became mayor in 2022, he canceled the efforts to make 3-K universal and began announcing cuts, citing concerns about program quality and unfilled seats in some neighborhoods. Parents revolted. Organizing thousands of families, New Yorkers United for Child Care launched a successful push to beat back the cuts, and in 2024 and 2025, every family who applied to 3-K eventually got a seat. Last year, the group announced a campaign focusing on 2-year-olds; Emmy Liss, who helped develop that campaign, now directs the city’s child care office.
An early leader in universal preschool, New York has more to build on than many areas when it comes to expanding child care; some existing 3-K programs already offer care for 2-year-olds, for example, though they are not yet subsidized. The existence of an organized parent body that already sees the benefits of subsidized care for older children also provides momentum behind Mamdani’s plan.
The early success of the proposal is an example of an approach that can work nationwide, experts and advocates say. As Vox’s Rachel Cohen Booth has reported, voters overwhelmingly support making child care more accessible, but often don’t put a very high priority on the issue. Mamdani, however, made care part of a larger promise to make city life more affordable, a promise that resonated with New Yorkers, whether they had young children or not.
“We are seeing more states take action that acknowledges the current system is not working. The market isn’t capable of solving child care.”
Elliot Haspel, family policy expert and senior fellow at the think tank Capita
“I think that messaging is generalizable,” Haspel said. “You’re very much casting child care as essential to the good life, rather than just this instrumental thing that helps you attach a parent to the labor force.”
Since Mamdani’s victory, other candidates have emerged with similar platforms. Jason Esteves, a former Georgia state senator, has made universal child care part of his campaign for governor. Francesca Hong, a Democratic socialist running for governor of Wisconsin, has proposed universal child care alongside investments in public schools and elder care. “These types of social insurance programs are designed to ensure that working class people can not only get by, but be able to take care of themselves and their families in the ways that they see fit,” Hong told the Wisconsin Examiner.
Republican candidates have been less supportive of subsidized care, often proposing direct payments to families instead, said Elizabeth Palley, a professor of social work at Adelphi University who has studied child care policy. But even some red states are setting aside more public money for care.
Last year, Montana created a trust fund to help pay for child care and other programs. And in Texas, lawmakers added $100 million to the state budget for child care scholarships.
“We are seeing more states take action that acknowledges the current system is not working,” Haspel said. “The market isn’t capable of solving child care.”
Some of these efforts have already run into problems. In Montana, for example, Gov. Greg Gianforte last summer vetoed a bill to expand child care aid, arguing that the state trust fund should be enough — even though the fund only provides a fraction of the money necessary to care for the state’s kids. In New Mexico, promises of universal care have yet to become reality, with a shortage of day care centers calling into question when and whether every child will really get a spot.
New York will face its own challenges. The money Hochul promised last week will only sustain the program for two years, after which it will need new sources of funding. Skeptics are absolutely right that care is expensive, especially for very young children who need low student-to-teacher ratios.
The city will also have to expand on a patchwork infrastructure that includes public schools (some of which house pre-K and 3-K programs), larger day care centers, and smaller in-home providers, as well as a workforce with different skill sets and levels of professionalization. Mamdani hopes to raise wages for child care workers to match those of public school teachers — around $85,000 per year — but some workers now make as little as $25,000. Raising labor costs will also raise the costs of the program.
“It’s paying the workforce, training the workforce, and then finding spaces for that workforce,” said Grace Bonilla, president and CEO of United Way of New York City, a nonprofit that focuses on low-income New Yorkers. “All of those are incredibly complicated infrastructure challenges.”
National headwinds could also put the program at risk. New York is one of five states whose child care funding the Trump administration has frozen in the wake of a viral video making unsubstantiated claims of day care fraud in Minnesota (that freeze has been blocked in court for now). Nick Shirley, the creator of the video, has criticized Mamdani’s child care plan, calling day care centers “a great place to launder money.”
It remains to be seen how much Shirley’s video will influence public opinions on child care nationwide, Haspel said, but “I don’t see it as something that’s going to kneecap Mamdani or Hochul’s efforts.”
And within New York, there’s a new level of optimism and excitement around the potential to solve a problem that for decades seemed intractable. “There’s an opportunity for New York to be a national model of what it looks like when local and state government work together to put children and families first,” Rodriguez said.
2026-01-15 19:30:00
The paper clip problem always seemed too absurd to me. Also known as the paper clip maximizer, this is the thought experiment by philosopher Nick Bostrom that imagines how a superintelligent AI with the goal of maximizing paper clip production could end up destroying the world by directing all available resources to making paper clips.
While it would be irresponsible to say this is happening, we are starting to run low on some resources. And it’s about to affect your life.
You may have heard about the global memory shortage caused, in part, by the rapid buildout of AI data centers. Just as they need semiconductors for data processing and water for cooling, these facilities need memory, or RAM, for short- and long-term data storage. Pretty much all consumer electronics, from desktop computers to smartphones, also require memory to run. The problem is that just three companies — Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics — make almost all of the memory on the market. They can’t make it fast enough right now, and it’s unclear when they’ll be able to catch up with demand.
Normally the shortage of a computer component wouldn’t lead me to reference a thought experiment about the apocalypse, but here we are. Memory is a really important component, and as the AI data center boom sucks up more and more resources, not having enough of it means that virtually every gadget with a chip in it will either get more expensive or less innovative or both. You can think of it along the same lines as the dreaded combination of inflation and stagnation made famous by the 1970s and resurrected by the second Trump administration: stagflation. Things cost more, and they’re basically worse.
Prices are already going up, and manufacturers are already pointing to the memory shortage to explain them. What you can expect in the months, and possibly years, to come is a slowdown in the type of specification bumps you’re used to seeing in new models. (This year’s iPhone Pro 17, for example, has 12GB of RAM versus the 8GB in the iPhone 16 Pro.) You might even see manufacturers picking cheaper options for components like displays or batteries, in ways that may not be immediately obvious.
“They’re looking for anywhere to cut corners just during this timeframe to offset memory costs,” said Ryan Reith, a group vice president at the market intelligence firm IDC. He added that some companies just won’t build the higher-powered devices they’d planned to build in the near future. IDC, meanwhile, predicts smartphone sales will go down in 2026 due to the memory shortage.
There is also hoarding. There’s a veritable alphabet soup of different types of storage, but one that is essential to AI is known as DRAM. You can find DRAM in gadgets big and small — laptops, gaming consoles, TVs, cars — and as the big three memory makers direct more of that supply to AI data centers, less is available to gadget makers. So some companies are stockpiling the memory, which has the tricky effect of both driving up prices and lowering supply.
The other acronym to know here is HBM, which stands for high-bandwidth memory. This is a type of DRAM that’s specifically designed to work with the high-performance processors, like Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, that are filling out AI data centers. The profit margins on this type of memory is roughly double that of the kind of DRAM that goes into consumer gadgets, so naturally memory makers are devoting extra resources to making it, contributing to the backlog of consumer-grade memory.
This situation is going to take a while to resolve. In order to build more memory chips, memory makers need to build more factories, known as fabs, and that process takes years. Micron, for example, will soon start construction on a fab in upstate New York that won’t start producing memory until 2030. The company’s business chief Sumit Sadana told CNBC last week, “We’re sold out for 2026.”
None of this means that, if you go to the smartphone store in six months, you’re not going to be able to buy one — or that it will be twice as expensive. On the contrary, device manufacturers want to avoid sticker shock. What you’ll probably see, however, is that the price of the base model stays the same, but the components inside of it aren’t as good as they would have been. If you want the version with more memory, you’ll pay an even higher premium for those specs than you would have last year.
“It’s not over yet in terms of prices going up,” said Reith.
We don’t yet know how this ends. On one hand, the data center boom that’s gobbling up all the memory is very much tied to the AI industry, which may or may not be a bubble about to pop. On the other, the trend of rising prices spans all industries. While the rate of inflation has held steady, things cost more than they did a year ago, and they’re not getting any cheaper. If smartphone makers or laptop manufacturers realize they can sell a worse product at the same price as the better one, they might want to do that, regardless of any shortages.
When we talk about the affordability crisis, we’re not exactly talking about an expensiveness crisis. Affordable means reasonable. It doesn’t feel reasonable that the average consumer gets saddled with crappier products as the AI industry creates billionaires at a record pace. The world is not ending any time soon, but you’re probably starting to feel the effects of the shift in one way or another.
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