Philippa Kaur

INTEL, AMERICA’S semiconductor giant, has had some notable bosses. Robert Noyce, its first, invented the silicon chip that gave Silicon Valley its name. Gordon Moore, who came next, etched his place in tech lore with a prediction—Moore’s Law—that processing power would double every two years at the same cost. Andy Grove, the third boss, turned Intel into a semiconductor juggernaut, driven by the mantra that “only the paranoid survive.” The latest to join this lineage is Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in March. More

“This is where people of today’s world hang out,” explained Bill Preston, a student, to Socrates. Mr Preston was not your typical member of the Socratic circle. The year was 1988 and they were riding the escalator at a mall. That the makers behind “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, a film about two high-schoolers transporting historical figures to their present day, chose this setting is unsurprising. Since America’s first fully enclosed mall opened in Minnesota in 1956, thousands had sprung up across the country. Malls were the new agora where the demos came to eat, shop and, indeed, “hang out”. More

Volkswagen’s days of producing a “global icon” may have seemed behind it. But last month Gunnar Kilian, who sits on the management board of Europe’s biggest carmaker, gushed on LinkedIn that vw had done just that. Mr Kilian was not raving about a fancy new car model, though. VW’s very own currywurst—a German sausage with spicy tomato sauce—has become, he declared, a “cult” product, with “international bestseller status”. More

Times are bleak in Toyland. So bleak that Bratz dolls’ flowing locks are at risk. “There is no American factory anywhere that can make hair for dolls,” fumes Isaac Larian, boss of MGA Entertainment, the Los Angeles company that makes the fashion figurines. “What am I supposed to do? Sell bald dolls?” More

AND THEY’RE off! Well, some of them. One weak-kneed participant collapsed before the starting line. Another did so a few steps later. A third quickly ran into a railing. Still, the remaining 18 humanoid robots taking part in a Beijing half-marathon on April 19th leapt, skipped or trundled glitchlessly onto a special track in a technology park on the outskirts of the Chinese capital—and into the future. The winner crossed the finishing line in a stately two hours and 40 minutes; five more completed the 21.1km course. Some of the 12,000 human runners (the best of whom covered the distance in just over an hour) looked on, bemusedly. More

“The future of Tesla is brighter than ever.” So declared Elon Musk during an earnings call on April 22nd. According to the carmaker’s boss, Tesla remains on course to become the world’s most valuable firm, worth as much as the next five companies combined, as it churns out fleets of autonomous taxis and armies of humanoid robots. More

For countries worried that their trade surpluses with America put them in the firing line for tariffs, Donald Trump has a solution: buy American fuel. This month Mr Trump declared that his country’s deficit with the European Union would “disappear easily and quickly” if the bloc did only that. He and his cabinet have pressed other allies, including India and the Philippines, to increase their purchases of American liquefied natural gas (LNG). Scott Bessent, Mr Trump’s treasury secretary, has sought to persuade Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to invest in a vast LNG project in Alaska and commit themselves to purchasing a “substantial portion” of its output. More

Peter Thiel is obsessed with atoms. The prescient venture capitalist has said that the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb, epitomised how America’s government used to “get things done”. He has long argued that an excessive focus on “bits” (software) at the expense of “atoms” (hardware) has helped produce economic stagnation in America. In 2015 he wrote that the country needed “a new atomic age” to produce clean, abundant energy. A decade later he has friends at the top of President Donald Trump’s administration who share his vision. It is starting to fall into place. More