In that role, Mr. Lutnick has twisted the arms of American allies, dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects. At times, these tactics have created opportunities for his family's clients to gain access to much-needed foreign capital, The Times found. Mr. Lutnick, for example, demanded that the South Korean government invest billions of dollars in U.S. industry to reduce tariffs. Mr. Neugebauer is vying for a share of those investment dollars to build the data center that Mr. Lutnick's family is also helping to finance. The job of commerce secretary has always been to promote American industry through deal-making at home and abroad, and the position has traditionally been populated with titans of industry who were expected to bring a business sensibility to meetings filled with career government workers.

Over the weekend at the D23 Expo, Disney announced that it planned to create two new 14-acre "Star Wars" theme lands as part of its Disneyland and Disney World parks. The news, predictably, met with approval from the ranks of "Star Wars" supporters at the event. But the news of Disney's new theme parks has a far larger significance: it shows the extent to which science fiction is eating the world. And that's good news -- science fiction's growing mind share of the nation's youth is creating a stable base of future innovators. Think about it -- the generation that grew up on the Disney animation classics of the post-War era -- "Alice in Wonderland" (1951), "Peter Pan" (1953), and "Sleeping Beauty" (1959) -- has been replaced by a generation that grew up with "Star Wars" and all the other classic science fiction films of the 1970s and early 1980s.