, California
What do the leaks of unflattering emails from the Democratic National Committee's hacked servers during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and the deafening hour-long emergency-warning siren in Dallas have in common? It's the same thing that links the North Korean nuclear threat and terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States: All represent the downsides of tremendously beneficial technologies — risks that increasingly demand a robust policy response.
The growing contentiousness of technology is exemplified in debates over so-called net neutrality and disputes between Apple and the FBI over unlocking suspected terrorists' iPhones. This is hardly surprising: As technology has become increasingly consequential — affecting everything from our security (nuclear weapons and cyberwar) to our jobs (labor market disruptions from advanced software and robotics) — its impact has been good, bad and potentially ugly.