This story appears in the March 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. America Isn't Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs Does anyone have a plan for what happens next? In 1869, a group of Massachusetts reformers persuaded the state to try a simple idea: counting. The Second Industrial Revolution was belching its way through New England, teaching mill and factory owners a lesson most M.B.A. students now learn in their first semester: that efficiency gains tend to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually somebody else. They were operating at speeds that the human body--an elegant piece of engineering designed over millions of years for entirely different purposes--simply wasn't built to match. The owners knew this, just as they knew that there's a limit to how much misery people are willing to tolerate before they start setting fire to things. Still, the machines pressed on. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. So Massachusetts created the nation's first Bureau of Statistics of Labor, hoping that data might accomplish what conscience could not. By measuring work hours, conditions, wages, and what economists now call "negative externalities" but were then called "children's arms torn off," policy makers figured they might be able to produce reasonably fair outcomes for everyone. A few years later, with federal troops shooting at striking railroad workers and wealthy citizens funding private armories--leading indicators that things in your society aren't going great--Congress decided that this idea might be worth trying at scale and created the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Measurement doesn't abolish injustice; it rarely even settles arguments. But the act of counting--of trying to see clearly, of committing the government to a shared set of facts--signals an intention to be fair, or at least to be caught trying. It's one way a republic earns the right to be believed in. The BLS remains a small miracle of civilization.

Alan Estevez was sitting at his dining room table wearing a t-shirt when Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called on Zoom to ask if he wanted to be the Biden administration's top export control official. "You're going to have to sell me on this," Estevez recalls telling her. It was 2021, and the outspoken New Jersey native thought he had finally left public service behind. After more than three decades at the Pentagon, he had left and taken a job in consulting. He wasn't sure if he was ready to go back.

The outgoing administration of United States President Joe Biden is proposing a new framework for the export of advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence, an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries. But the framework proposed Monday also raised concerns of chip industry executives who said the rules would limit access to existing chips used for video games and restrict in 120 countries the chips used for data centres and AI products. Mexico, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland are among the nations that could have limited access. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters previewing the framework that it's "critical" to preserve America's leadership in AI and the development of AI-related computer chips. Fast-evolving AI technology enables computers to produce novels, make scientific research breakthroughs, automate driving and foster a range of other transformations that could reshape economies and warfare.

The Biden administration is proposing a new framework for the exporting of the advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence, an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries. But the framework proposed Monday also raised concerns of chip industry executives who say the rules would limit access to existing chips used for video games and restrict in 120 countries the chips used for data centers and AI products. Mexico, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland are among the nations that could have limited access. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters previewing the framework that it's "critical" to preserve America's leadership in AI and the development of AI-related computer chips. The fast-evolving AI technology enables computers to produce novels, make scientific research breakthroughs, automate driving and foster a range of other transformations that could reshape economies and warfare.

The Biden administration announced a bold and controversial new export control scheme today, designed to prevent the advanced chips and artificial intelligence models themselves from ending up in the hands of adversaries such as China. The administration's new "AI Diffusion rule" divides the world into nations that are allowed relatively unfettered access to America's most advanced AI silicon and algorithms, and those that will require special licenses to access the technology. The rule, which will be enforced by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, also seeks to restrict the movement of the most powerful AI models for the first time. "The US leads the world in AI now, both AI development and AI chip design, and it's critical that we keep it that way," the US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said ahead of today's announcement. The list of trusted nations are the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan.

AI is a technology like no other in human history,

The Biden administration has proposed new rules that would in effect prohibit Chinese-made vehicles from US roads after a months-long investigation into software and digital connections that could be used to spy on Americans or sabotage the vehicles. The proposed rules come as Chinese automakers become more powerful in global markets, exporting a flood of high-tech vehicles and posing new challenges to western manufacturers, with governments fearing that installed sensors, cameras and software could be used for espionage or other data collection purposes. Chinese-made vehicles aren't yet widespread on US roads but are becoming more common in Europe, Asia and other markets. The new rules, described as a national security action coming out of the US chamber of commerce, focus on Vehicle Connectivity System (VCS) and software integrated into the Automated Driving System (ADS). "Malicious access to these systems could allow adversaries to access and collect our most sensitive data and remotely manipulate cars on American roads," the department said in a statement on Sunday.

Commerce and trade ministers from the United States, Japan and South Korea vowed on Wednesday to cooperate on strategic issues including artificial intelligence safety, export controls, clean energy and semiconductor supply chains. "We're doubling down our efforts to work together," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at the start of the meeting in Washington. "As we three are leading economies in manufacturing, services, technology and innovation and we have to work together to the benefit not just for our countries, but the safety and security of the world," Raimondo said.

Until mid-2023, artificial intelligence was something of a niche topic in Washington, largely confined to small circles of tech-policy wonks. That all changed when, nearly two years into Gina Raimondo's tenure as Secretary of Commerce, ChatGPT's explosive popularity catapulted AI into the spotlight. Raimondo, however, was ahead of the curve. "I make it my business to stay on top of all of this," she says during an interview in her wood-paneled office overlooking the National Mall on May 21. "None of it was shocking to me." But in the year since, even she has been startled by the pace of progress.

The US is widely seen as the global leader in artificial intelligence, thanks to companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. But the US government says it needs help from other nations to manage the risks posed by AI technology. At an international summit on AI Safety in Seoul on Tuesday, the US delivered a message from Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announcing that a global network of AI safety institutes spanning the US, UK, Japan, Canada, and other allies will collaborate to contain the technology's risks. She also urged other countries to join up. "Recent advances in AI carry exciting, life-changing potential for our society, but only if we do the hard work to mitigate the very real dangers," Secretary Raimondo said in a statement released ahead of the announcement.