The US now has more covid-19 tests than it knows what to do with

Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise

The Download

Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology

06.29.20

Good morning! What the US should do with its glut of covid-19 tests, and Trump's visa freeze could threaten US dominance in AI. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.

The US now has more covid-19 tests than it knows what to do with

The situation: The US has successfully run over 27 million tests, more than any other country. But it can’t be considered the “best in the world.” It’s run 83 tests per thousand people, while Russia, which is also being hit hard by the virus, has run 120 tests per thousand.

Why? It’s not because the US can’t test more people: the country’s testing capacity has significantly improved since the pandemic began. While places with spikes in infections—like Arizona—are facing shortages, large swaths of the country are actually reporting underutilized availability. The US needs to be doing millions of tests a day, say public health experts (although they don’t agree on the precise figure.) But it’s still operating on a “mindset of a testing scarcity.”

So how do we use this untapped reservoir? Some say we need mass testing programs, as they do in countries where the virus has been managed well: South Korea, Iceland, Taiwan and so on. Others prefer to limit testing to people with symptoms. As workplaces reopen, employers are looking into mandatory regular testing for employees. Read the full story.

—Neel V. Patel

Trump’s freeze on new visas could threaten US dominance in AI

Closed doors: Even before president Trump’s executive order to suspend a variety of work visas on June 22, the US was already bucking global tech immigration trends by restricting immigration policies, creating a bottleneck for meeting domestic demand for tech talent.

The worry: Policy analysts say it could be bad news for US innovation long-term. In particular, the suspension of the H-1B (a three-year work visa granted to foreign workers in specialty fields) and one of the primary channels for highly skilled tech workers to join the US workforce, could impact US dominance in AI. The administration is assuming that for every foreign worker turned away, an American worker is capable of taking their place. That’s not true for AI. In fact, the majority of the US’s AI talent comes from abroad. And the new restrictions will make an existing shortage even worse.

Where would they go instead? Canada, the UK, France, and Australia are the US’s main competitors for AI talent. All four have declared an intent to build their national AI capacity and adopted or proposed major immigration reforms to attract more AI workers in the last five years. Read the full story.

—Karen Hao

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)

+ Watch this fantastic performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream (I saw this live last summer and cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a joyous riot).
+ A gymnastics routine that requires some serious coordination.
+ A university in Japan has awarded its first ever degree in ninja studies.
+ This guy can do all the men’s voices from Star Wars.
+ Sambal is delicious. Here’s an ode to it and instructions on how to make your own.
+ The importance of silliness and laughter.
+ It’s time for the people of New Zealand to become Lord of the Rings extras again.

Sponsor Message

Don’t-miss sessions for small and mid-sized businesses at HPE Discover Virtual Experience

How do you steer back to financial sustainability? How do you connect with customers in a virtual world? What are the hottest trends and best moves right now in your specific vertical?

Join HPE Discover Virtual Experience to hear tech experts and business leaders share the latest technology, expertise, and financing solutions to keep your business moving forward.

Tune in to President & CEO Antonio Neri’s keynote, and join us on June 30th for special programming dedicated to helping small to mid-sized businesses regain financial and workforce sustainability, monetize a digital business, and innovate at the edge with new technologies.

Register for free today.

The top ten must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Over 500,000 people have now died of coronavirus
There have been more than 10 million cases worldwide, with a quarter of those in the US. (BBC)
+ Cases in Florida are up fivefold in just two weeks. (NYT $)
+ States should have learned from hotspots like New York. They didn’t. (Axios)

2 Starbucks will stop advertising on social media until 2021
Household names like Coca-Cola and Unilever have also joined a growing Facebook boycott. (CNBC)
  + The boycott’s organisers want to expand it beyond the US. (Reuters)
  + But this could all just be an empty gesture. (Gizmodo)
  + Facebook has bent over backwards to accommodate Trump. (WP $)

3 We have a “men refusing to wear masks” problem
Toxic mask-ulinity. (WP $)
+ Why wearing masks really should not be controversial. (Science News)

4 How the world missed the silent spread of covid-19
For months, health officials were convinced symptomless spreading was not important. (NYT $)
+ Coronavirus has some eerie parallels with HIV in how it short-circuits the immune system. (NYT $)

5 The FDA allowed the US to be flooded with flawed antibody tests
What is the point in a regulator unless they, you know, actually regulate things? (CBS)

6 The UK is planning to spend hundreds of millions on the wrong type of satellites 🛰️
Nothing about this makes any sense. (The Guardian)

7 Microsoft is going to permanently close all of its stores
It says no layoffs will result from the decision. (The Verge)

8 A glimpse at our ghost kitchen future 🥡
Delivery-only restaurants are here to stay. (New Yorker $)

9 There’s an unexplained radioactivity hike in Northern Europe
It looks like it’s blowing over from Russia’s direction. (AP)

10 NASA wants YOUR ideas for a moon toilet 🚽🌑
Let’s not have a repeat of the messy horror the Apollo astronauts had to put up with. (The Verge)

Our world has hit an inflection point.

Now is the time to reset, rethink, and rebuild. Join us online at EmTech MIT, our annual flagship event on emerging technologies and trends that you can leverage to help you lead with innovation. Register now.

Quote of the Day

“I have this awful feeling of déjà vu, like it’s March all over again.”

—William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard, warns of deadly parallels during an even more widespread surge of covid-19 cases than before.

Top image credit: KEVIN WINTER | GETTY IMAGES

Please send sambal to hi@technologyreview.com.

Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading!

—Charlotte