Elon Musk has stepped away from Doge with very little "efficiency" to show for it. While it may have been more of a showpiece than real policy, this brutal and short experiment in Silicon Valley governance reveals a long-simmering battle between digital utopians and the institutional infrastructures critical to functioning democracies. Doge's website dubiously claims 190bn in savings. The receipts show that they are less about efficiency than they are aimed at effective dissolution, a fate met by USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign assistance. These brash new reductions are not just your garden-variety small-government crusades or culture-war skirmishes.

The humanoid robot'Sophia' made quite an impression back in 2017 when it was unveiled for the first time at the innovation conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Built by a Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics in 2015, the humanoid robot can mimic 62 human facial expressions. However, the highlight of the conference was not the unveiling of the AI-enabled entity or its onstage interview but the Kingdom's decision to grant citizenship to Sophia. Ironic for a country where women were not allowed to drive till last year! However, the intention was clear -- to adopt technology in modernizing the heavily Oil-dependent economy.