The Los Angeles Police Department and its multibillion-dollar budget were under intense public scrutiny in the spring of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had greatly reduced city revenue amid some of the largest and most destructive street protests in decades. The LAPD was being accused of exacerbating the unrest and bungling its response. Activists and politicians were calling for the department's funding to be slashed in favor of social services for the homeless, mentally ill and poor. Behind closed doors, the money from private donors kept coming. "I wanted to share that since May 28th, we have received more than $48,000 in online donations in support of the Department -- a record for our organization and unlike anything we've ever seen," Dana Katz, head of the private Los Angeles Police Foundation, wrote in a June 9, 2020, email to LAPD Chief Michel Moore. Katz wrote to Moore again a couple of weeks later, this time with a list of donors who would be taking part in an exclusive call with him that she had arranged. Katz told Moore it "would be great" if he would brief the philanthropists and corporate bigwigs on the recent protests, the department's plans for reform and the potential negative effects of "defunding" the police.

From March 1 to April 4, 2020, the Illinois Department of Employment Security received 513,173 unemployment claims -- more than the entire number of claims filed in 2019. It was impossible for IDES employees to handle this volume, resulting in many disconnected phone calls and unanswered online queries. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for increased call center capacity, in large part through the implementation of new technologies to help employees handle the volume of queries. Gov. Pritzker wanted to minimize dropped calls and deliver a response to all online queries so citizens could receive the benefits they needed. This new technology, virtual intelligent agents, alleviated overburdened human agents from having to respond to every inquiry that came in.

Today, the Council on Foreign Relations–sponsored Independent Task Force released The Work Ahead, a report on the American workforce in the 21st century. It does not make for comforting reading. The Work Ahead portrays a country where automation and other technological advances have rendered the economy unrecognizable--employment is no longer linked to economic security, the labor market is brutally divided between a prosperous tech-savvy elite and the struggling tech-illiterate, and the educational system is ill-equipped to prepare workers to succeed. And yet The Work Ahead does not blame technology per se, but rather a government and society that have consistently failed to adjust to economic reality--leaving workers to navigate a rapidly changing world without sufficient support or guidance. It doesn't have to be this way.

A battle between the U.S. government and China is now brewing in the market for semiconductors, the foundation of electronics. The U.S. alleges that China is rigging the semiconductor market in its favor by indulging in unfair trade practices. "This unprecedented state-driven interference can distort the market and undermine the innovation ecosystem," Penny Pritzker, U.S. secretary of commerce, said during a Wednesday event organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Chinese government is using its own resources to artificially reduce chip prices, which is hurting global competition, the U.S. alleges. Pritzker called on China to play fair and in accordance with "global trading rules," with healthy competition and free and fair trade, not through state investments aimed at distorting global markets.