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Lucas Laursen

@lucaslaursen.bsky.social
76 followers 20 following 155 posts

Tech policy editor @spectrum.ieee.org. How has tech changed your day?

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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Lots of hardware makers have been navigating stricter U.S. limits on foreign supply chains. Asus recently joined Netgear on the list of router makers that have won permission to sell their routers in the U.S., but @theverge.com found an interesting wrinkle:
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you're wondering why so much Flock, Axon, and other license plate data end up in central, easily searchable databases, 404 Media have a new wrinkle to the story: local agencies are beholden to federal agencies via an anti drug trafficking program called HIDTA. More juicy details:
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Social media bans "don’t address the real problems. Instead, we should be paying more attention to the systems that generate harm in the first place—namely, recommender algorithms, engagement-maximizing design, opaque moderation, and extractive data practices." says @danicaradovanovic.bsky.social
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Europe's rush to build more of its own computing hardware requires lasers. In particular, ultrafast lasers that fire in tiny bursts. That's because these lasers allow manufacturers to accurately drill components without heating up the surrounding material.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Arizona is helping lead a U.S. chip revival spectrum.ieee.org/tsmc-arizona, but faces tough choices about who gets water at what price, as @justcalma.bsky.social reports for @theverge.com. @spectrum.ieee.org wrote a while ago about AI helping share Colorado water spectrum.ieee.org/colorado-riv...
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
NSF seeks X-Lab proposals for AI in physical systems. The X-Lab funding format favors startup-like entities outside universities, we reported at @spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org/nsf-x-labs. NSF also says it will next fund protein research and high-efficiency computing. More below:
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Deepfake images and videos undermine social and institutional trust. Fighting them requires a different kind of trust: do we believe standards-setters such as C2PA, or hardware makers such as Apple, which recently launched a service it calls Apple Reference Image?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Things weren’t looking great for Taiwanese drone makers when we reported earlier this year on combat drone production (spectrum.ieee.org/taiwan-drone...), because of internal political opposition. This week @chinatalk.skystack.xyz has a pair of posts that answered a lot of my questions:
spectrum.ieee.org
Taiwan’s Drone Surge Is Quietly Rewiring Global Supply Chains
Taiwan emerges as alternative to Chinese drone supply chain
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I approached 25 U.S. tech companies to learn how they were responding to immigration barriers including a proposed $103,625 charge on new H-1B visas and I learned...nothing. Nobody would talk.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Today Spain returns from its August vacation. In the middle of that vacation period, the government announced it would delay the shutdown of its 2 GW nuclear turbines at Almaraz by three years, a reversal of its governing pact with a minority partner.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
How long can you be a manufacturing leader if you don't invest in R&D? Some folks in the U.S. semiconductor industry are asking that same question, given a recent report by a government watchdog agency on CHIPS Act manufacturing incentives and R&D funding.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
The tech world used to talk a lot about Big Data, but soon moved on Data Science, then AI. Today I'd like to point to a story showing Big Data is still with us, and poor oversight makes it easier than ever for people we should be able to trust to instead invade people's privacy.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Judge's dockets are backed up everywhere, but Pakistan may have one of the most overloaded systems: less than a tenth the judges per capita as the EU, and only a quarter as many as Brazil.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I spent around $1000 on my last laptop, but I sure hope the big hardware makers don't planned-obsolescence me into buying a quantum computer anytime soon, because I recently learned that quantum computers cost tens of millions of dollars PER COMPUTER.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I've been shocked by the number of recent e-bike/e-moto collisions, including fatalities, in Southern California. Willie Jones has a story for @spectrum.ieee.org on how U.S. states are trying to fit these emerging, powerful vehicles into their traffic regulations.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
The U.S. is banning foreign technology in fits and starts on the grounds of national security. Last week the FCC targeted mobile robots and power inverters so robotics editor Evan Ackerman and I gathered reactions from companies in the robotics industry for a story for @spectrum.ieee.org.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Engineers with their noses to the slide rule--or AI agent interface--may not often think about how to pay for their projects, but their bosses and the people who finance major engineering projects sure do.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Here's a big feature story by my friend and colleague Rachel Berkowitz, crack reporter on physics, Canada, and more. It's about how an Indigenous, rural community built their own fiber optic network to replace the sub-standard Internet offering from Canada's telecom oligopoly.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
For most countries, AI development is not just technologically, but commercially and geopolitically outsourced and out of their control, writes @danicaradovanovic.bsky.social, for @spectrum.ieee.org.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
There's a lot going on with the U.S. federal government's attempted reforms of science and technology. Grant rule reform, publication fees, international collaborations, the role of universities, and more are seem up for grabs right now. Handy analysis here:
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Back when I got my private pilot's certificate, civil aviation still used terrestrial radio beacons called VOR and ADB, not the GPS satellite navigation system everyone now uses in your phones and aircraft.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
When @andrewmoseman.bsky.social told me about balcony solar rules loosening up in the U.S. he sent me down a rabbit hole. I wanted to figure out whether it was worth getting panels for my home, in Southern California.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Sneaking a fishing vessel into the wrong waters is getting trickier thanks to a mix of satellites, required beacons, databases, and emerging analytics. Authorities have ways of remotely tracking and analyzing far more fishing vessels than ever, and can be smarter about enforcement.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Nigeria needs more Internet bandwidth, as do many African countries. It has had fiber optic undersea cables for more than two decades, as IEEE Spectrum reported in 2004: spectrum.ieee.org/surf-africa
spectrum.ieee.org
Surf Africa
Africa lit a shiny new fiber-optic undersea cable almost two years ago—so why are so few Africans using it?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The semiconductor industry is reaching into universities to speed up product cycles. In an industry that typically built new products on stable timetables, the astounding demand from AI is motivating a nimbler approach and building bridges from early-stage innovation to manufacturing-ready ideas.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
As public pressure builds to do something about the harms of social media, regulators are scrambling to figure out what they can do. A former official at the UK's communications regulator has a thoughtful piece in Tech Policy Press this week on what's realistic and what's not.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
250 years after 13 British colonies declared independence, Guru Madhavan analyzes how they actually engineered their breakaway and sustained it with investments in technology, a crucial alliance, and strategic trade.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I moved back to the U.S. recently after nearly two decades living in Spain and the U.K. The last few months have been an education in American attitudes towards technology, especially given the scale of this AI boom.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
The EU is trying to figure out how much independence its tech supply chains need from the U.S. Earlier this month the European Commission proposed a couple of laws and some accompanying policies to promote more tech autonomy there.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Data centers are queuing up around the U.S. to access the electrical grid. Yet the costs of plugging them in often fall on existing grid users. Now the federal government wants grid operators to find a way to plug in data centers faster without driving up everyone's costs.
spectrum.ieee.org
U.S. Regulator Aims to Cut Data Center Queues and Electricity Bills
But not by shifting costs to electricity customers, FERC says
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
The business of music has changed a lot since the surge of digital formats, but one thing is constant: people will fight over royalties. Now that AI is in the mix, training on human music and generating new hybrid music, the industry has a whole new set of intellectual property problems to sort out.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Computers in space are nothing new, but data centers in space are rousing all kinds of debates. IEEE Spectrum's own Glenn Zorpette created a data page a while back asking, “How Stupid Would It Be to Put Data Centers in Space?” (spectrum.ieee.org/orbital-data...)
spectrum.ieee.org
How Stupid Would It Be to Put Data Centers in Space?
Could AI data centers in space become a reality with backing from tech moguls like Musk and Bezos?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
We are crowdsourcing the Panopticon. Facial recognition tools are changing the longer-term effects of recording police misconduct or other misbehavior in public.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
There's a loud debate in the U.S. science world about research budget cuts, larger threatened cuts, slow-walking certain projects, legal fights, and more.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Anyone who's ever tried using a GPS in a dense city, a big building, or underground understands that we might need a more universal navigation technology. Hidonix Industries, AstraNav, and others told me all about their answers, which rely on the Earth's magnetic field instead of satellites.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
South Africa is an AI consumer for now but Nathan-Ross Adams argues it should be an AI industry shaper, given its leverage in the form of mines and continent-leading market power.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Not long after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission effectively banned foreign-made network routers, it gave a pass to Netgear, as I wrote for @spectrum.ieee.org last month spectrum.ieee.org/chinese-robo...
spectrum.ieee.org
Ground Robots Become the New Front In US China Tech Decoupling
The catch: American robot makers still need Chinese-made components
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Electric vehicles may seem to be going mainstream, but it's been a tougher haul to get them into the enormous cargo vehicle market. Benjamin Skuse tells @spectrum.ieee.org readers how a few European companies are approaching the problem. It will definitely require connected thinking.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
The hunt for Red October and other submarines the world over may be getting easier. @wmdgirl.bsky.social had a feature on it for IEEE Spectrum a few years back spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-subm...
spectrum.ieee.org
Will AI Steal Submarines’ Stealth?
That may bode ill for nuclear deterrence and the peace of the world
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Taiwan is investing in offering an alternative drone supply chain for the United States and other countries. Its efforts are paying off, writes Yu-Tzu Chiu for @spectrum.ieee.org, as the country's exports boom and it learns from intensive clients, such as Ukraine: spectrum.ieee.org/taiwan-drone...
spectrum.ieee.org
Taiwan’s Drone Surge Is Quietly Rewiring Global Supply Chains
Taiwan emerges as alternative to Chinese drone supply chain
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Are robotics engineers listening to the people who will actually use humanoid robots at home? The ISO's latest draft standards may neglect real-world user input on how messy domestic life and human behavior are. Here's my interview with Jae-Seong Lee for IEEE Spectrum readers:
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
AI chatbots aren't therapists, but since people insist on using them for that anyway, Stephen Cousins has this story for @spectrum.ieee.org on the sort of safeguards mental health experts think we need: spectrum.ieee.org/mental-healt...
spectrum.ieee.org
Guardrails for Chatbots Aim to Protect Hearts And Minds
Design, testing, and functionality could protect vulnerable users
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
America is wrestling with how much Chinese tech to allow into sensitive supply chains. Ground robots? Drones? Uncle Sam says no. What about their components? That's where things get tricky, I write in my latest story for @spectrum.ieee.org.
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Engineering isn't science, but Guru Madhavan delved into their conjoined history, and tells @spectrum.ieee.org readers that Francis Bacon, who sketched out today's scientific method, put a premium on engineering as a way of knowing. Maybe we should, too:
spectrum.ieee.org
How Engineers Kick-Started the Scientific Method
Francis Bacon was inspired by the inventors of his day
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
I've declined facial recognition recently out of curiosity and because of what I learnt reporting a data column for @spectrum.ieee.org. In higher-stakes settings, we might all re-consider the right role for this tech. Here's the column: spectrum.ieee.org/facial-recog...
spectrum.ieee.org
Facial Recognition Errors Affect Millions Globally
How does facial recognition handle the pressure of real-world applications?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
A Los Angeles jury just found Meta and Alphabet responsible for knowingly harming a young person with addictive social media design. Psychotherapist Daniel Katz writes for @spectrum.ieee.org about what future social media platforms can do to be healthier: spectrum.ieee.org/social-media...
spectrum.ieee.org
Redesigning Platforms In Wake of Social Media Trial
Jury found tech firms treated addictiveness as a feature, not a bug
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Got your data on a U.S.-owned server? European countries worry about the geopolitical risks. Rahul Rao reports for @spectrum.ieee.org on the challenges European clouds face as they square off against Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. spectrum.ieee.org/europe-cloud...
spectrum.ieee.org
EU’s Sovereign Cloud Ambitions Face Major Hurdles
How will the EU's new cloud framework impact the dominance of US tech giants in Europe?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Do inventive engineers need to be lone geniuses or orchestra conductors? Guru Madhavan reflects on Robert Goddard and what Madhavan calls "The Alpha Trap" in this piece for @spectrum.ieee.org: spectrum.ieee.org/robert-godda...
spectrum.ieee.org
Robert Goddard's Leadership: From Innovation to Isolation
Goddard's rocket defied gravity, but his self-reliance trapped him. How can visionaries transition from lone genius to team leaders?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Anthropic and the US Dept. of War disagree on military AI policy. Should either of them really get to decide? @danielcastro.bsky.social writes that it's time elected reps weighed in, in this cross-post from @techpolicypress.bsky.social for @spectrum.ieee.org: spectrum.ieee.org/military-ai-...
spectrum.ieee.org
You Should Have a Say in Military AI Policy
The DOD and Anthropic clash over AI use in military operations. Who should decide?
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Lucas Laursen @lucaslaursen.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Spain wants to ban social media for under-16s. You may be able to tell from my profile that I'm older, but how can online platforms make the same call without violating data protection laws? Waydell D. Carvalho has a guest post for @spectrum.ieee.org on the issue: spectrum.ieee.org/age-verifica...
spectrum.ieee.org
The Age Verification Trap
Platforms are caught in a dilemma: enforce age restrictions or protect user privacy. How are they navigating this tricky terrain?
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