In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling. To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) […]
Read more Slate Auto, the buzzy new EV startup that broke stealth this week, is close to locking in a former printing plant located in Warsaw, Indiana as the future production site for its cheap electric truck, a review of public records shows. The company is expected to lease the 1.4 million-square-foot facility for an undisclosed sum. […]
Read more This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound
Despite the geopolitical chaos and market collapses triggered by President Trump’s announcement of broad tariffs on international goods, some supporters still hope the strategy will produce a “golden age” of American industry.
In fact, the high and crudely designed tariffs set out by the administration could damage a recent rebound in US manufacturing. Building factories and the supply chains they run on takes years—even decades—of steady investment. Meanwhile, tariffs have the immediate impact of boosting costs for critical supplies, many of which come from overseas—helping to raise prices and, in turn, slowing demand.
None of that is good for those planning to invest in US manufacturing. The longer-terms effects of the tariffs are, of course, unknown. And it’s that uncertainty, above all else, that could derail a reindustrialization still in the early stages for much of the country. Read the full story.
—David Rotman
AI is pushing the limits of the physical world
Architecture often assumes a binary between built projects and theoretical ones. What physics allows in actual buildings, after all, is vastly different from what architects can imagine and design. That imagination has long been supported and enabled by design technology, but the latest advancements in artificial intelligence have prompted a surge in the theoretical. Read the full story.
—Allison Arieff
This story is from the most recent edition of our print magazine, which is all about how technology is changing creativity. Subscribe now to read it and to receive future print copies once they land.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Donald Trump wants to make AI a national priority
That’s in spite of his plans to axe the agency in charge of implementing the plan. (Ars Technica)
+ The new executive action outlines plans for AI courses and programs. (Bloomberg $)
+ But schools across the US are struggling with their existing curriculums. (Axios)
2 Driverless car makers won’t have to report as much crash data
An overhaul of the US Department of Transport’s rules limits what companies need to declare. (Wired $)
+ Unsurprisingly, the new framework benefits Tesla. (The Verge)
+ Officials claim it will allow US automakers to compete better with China. (AP News)
3 Apple plans to wind down US iPhone production in China
Instead, the handsets will be assembled in India. (FT $)+ It’s switching up its supply chains amid the tariff chaos. (Bloomberg $)
+ The change could come as soon as 2026. (The Guardian)
4 Meta is finally cracking down on spam
The days of multiple hashtags are over. (The Verge)
5 How Elon Musk’s friends control access to his company shares
Most people who hold stakes in SpaceX have no idea how much money it makes. (WSJ $)
6 How Israel used the war in Gaza to deploy new military AI
To a degree that’s never been seen before. (NYT $)
+ Meanwhile, the US is preparing to offer Saudi Arabia a $100 billion arms package. (Reuters)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)
7 The US is facing millions of measles cases in future decades
That’s if falling vaccination rates continue. (WP $)
+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Brazil’s AI welfare app is wrongly rejecting vulnerable applications
Digitizing its complex systems has come at a cost. (Rest of World)
+ An algorithm intended to reduce poverty might disqualify people in need. (MIT Technology Review)
9 How smart glasses can help people with hearing loss
Real-time subtitles for the conversations around you may not be too far away. (New Yorker $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review)
10 What it’s like to read an AI-generated book about yourself 
Extremely uncanny valley vibes. (Slate $)
Quote of the day
“While it is true that an AI has no feelings, my concern is that any sort of nastiness that starts to fill our interactions will not end well.”
—Screenwriter Scott Z Burns reflects on the ethics of not saying please and thank you to chatbots, the New York Times reports.
One more thing
The quest to figure out farming on Mars
Once upon a time, water flowed across the surface of Mars. Waves lapped against shorelines, strong winds gusted and howled, and driving rain fell from thick, cloudy skies. It wasn’t really so different from our own planet 4 billion years ago, except for one crucial detail—its size. Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, and that’s where things went wrong.
The Martian core cooled quickly, soon leaving the planet without a magnetic field. This, in turn, left it vulnerable to the solar wind, which swept away much of its atmosphere. Without a critical shield from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, Mars could not retain its heat. Some of the oceans evaporated, and the subsurface absorbed the rest, with only a bit of water left behind and frozen at its poles. If ever a blade of grass grew on Mars, those days are over.
But could they begin again? And what would it take to grow plants to feed future astronauts on Mars? Read the full story.
—David W. Brown
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Understanding the science behind stress can give us handy tools to cope with it.
+ Rockalina the turtle is enjoying the great outdoors after spending close to 50 years indoors.
+ If you don’t have the greenest of thumbs, don’t panic—these plants are super easy to take care of.
+ Why TikTok wants you to live like a dinosaur. 
Despite the geopolitical chaos and market collapses triggered by President Trump’s announcement of broad tariffs on international goods, some supporters still hope the strategy will produce a “golden age” of American industry. Trump himself insists, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”
While it’s possible that very targeted tariffs could help protect some nascent sectors of domestic manufacturing, the belief in the power of blunt tariffs flies in the face of manufacturing reality. And it’s not just the idea of a speedy return to economic prowess thanks to smoke-belching factories and the sudden ability to cheaply assemble armies of iPhones that strains credulity. The sweeping tariffs ignore the complexities of today’s supply chains and the way technology advances are shifting how and where goods are made.
In fact, the high and crudely designed tariffs set out by the administration could damage a recent rebound in US manufacturing. Building factories and the supply chains they run on takes years—even decades—of steady investment. Meanwhile, tariffs have the immediate impact of boosting costs for critical supplies, many of which come from overseas—helping to raise prices and, in turn, slowing demand.
None of that is good for those planning to invest in US manufacturing.
“Tariffs, in general, as a tool for encouraging the type of manufacturing we want in the US are a terrible instrument,” says Elisabeth Reynolds, a professor of the practice at MIT.
Reynolds, who was an advisor to President Biden on manufacturing and economic development, says the Trump tariffs will raise the costs of US manufacturing without providing incentives for “strategic investments in the technologies we care about for national and economic security.”
Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School, says the tariffs feel like “random acts of violence” in how they hurt manufacturing and supply chains. Because the tariffs proposed so far “are so scattershot and change so often,” he says, “it’s basically freezing up investments. Who is going to make any kind of investment commitment when things are changing so fast?”
There are already indications that the prospect of widespread tariffs could be harming the US manufacturing boom. One closely scrutinized survey called the Purchasing Managers’ Index, or PMI, showed troubling early signs of rising costs for manufacturers due to the tariffs. Other indicators watched carefully by policy wonks, including surveys of manufacturers by the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the Richmond Fed, and the Philadelphia Fed, also show a loss of confidence among US producers and drops in new orders and hiring.
The longer-terms effects of the tariffs are, of course, unknown. For one thing, the specifics—how large, how long, and on what countries—seem to be constantly shifting. And that’s a big part of the problem: For manufacturers and investors, uncertainty is the killer of plans for expansion, new factories, and even the R&D that feeds into new products.
It’s that uncertainty, above all else, that could derail a reindustrialization still in the early stages for much of the country.
In fact, US manufacturing in the years following the covid pandemic has been booming—or at least the groundwork for such a boom is getting built. Until the most recent few months, spending on the construction of factories had been soaring. New facilities to build batteries, solar cells, semiconductors, electric motors, and other new technologies are springing up all around the country—or were until very recently.
“We never had more construction starts in the United States than we’ve had in the past four years,” says Milo Werner, a partner at the venture capital firm DCVC. “We’re at this amazing moment where we could actually rebuild Main Street America and bring back the industrial base.”
The move to bolster US manufacturing was fueled by a sense during the beginning of the pandemic that the country must regain the ability to make critical products and technologies. The decline of US manufacturing had become obvious. Federal support to rebuild the industrial base came in a series of bills passed during the Biden administration, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the climate bill.
At the same time, opportunities offered by artificial intelligence and automation breakthroughs have spurred an appetite for new investments among many manufacturers. Many of those technologies are just starting to be deployed, but they promise a way for US producers to finally become more competitive with those in low-wage economies.
If the Trump tariffs slow or even reverse such progress, the impact on the country’s economic and technological future could be devastating.
There are a lot of reasons to want a stronger US industrial base. But it’s not mainly about whether we have countless well-paying jobs for those with only a high school diploma and little technical training, despite what you will hear from many politicians. Those days are mostly long gone.
Manufacturing jobs account for a little under 10% of total jobs in the US. That percentage hasn’t changed much over the last few decades—nor is it likely to grow much in coming years even if manufacturing output increases, because automation and other advanced digital tools will likely cut into the demand for human workers.
Still, manufacturing is critical to the future of the US economy in other ways. The invention of new stuff and production processes greatly benefits from an intimate connection to manufacturing capabilities and expertise. In short, your chances of successfully creating a new type of battery or AI chip are much greater if you’re familiar with the intricacies of manufacturing such products.
It’s a lesson that was often forgotten in the 2000s as companies, led by such Silicon Valley giants as Apple, focused on design and marketing, leaving the production work to China and other countries. The strategy created huge profits but severely crimped the United States’ ability to move ahead with a next generation of technology. In 2010, Intel cofounder Andy Grove famously warned, “Abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.”
Prompted by such concerns, in 2011 I visited manufacturers across the country, from industrial giants like GE and Dow Chemical to startups with exciting new technologies, and wrote “Can We Build Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs?” Over the next few years, the answer to the headline’s question proved to be no. GE and Dow gave up on their most innovative manufacturing ventures in batteries and solar, while nearly none of the startups survived.
The US was great at inventing new stuff, it turns out, but lousy at making it.
The hope is that this situation is changing as the country builds up its manufacturing muscles. The stakes are particularly high. The value of producing strategic goods and their supply chains domestically—biomedicine, critical minerals, advanced semiconductors—is becoming obvious to both politicians and economists.
If we want to turn today’s scientific breakthroughs in energy, chips, drugs, and key military technologies such as drones into actual products, the US will need to once again be a manufacturing powerhouse.
Limited tariffs could help. That’s especially true, says DCVC’s Werner, in some strategically important areas marked by a history of unfair trade practices. Rare-earth magnets, which are found in everything from electric motors to drones to robots, are one example. “Decades ago, China flooded the US economy with low-cost magnets,” she says. “All our domestic magnet manufacturers went out of business.”
Now, she suggests, tariffs could provide short-term protection to US companies developing advanced manufacturing techniques to make those products, helping them compete with low-cost versions made in China. “You’re not going to be able to rely on tariffs forever, but it’s an example of the important role that tariffs could play,” she says.
Even Harvard’s Shih, who considers the sweeping Trump tariffs “crazy,” says that far more limited versions could be a useful tool in some circumstance to give temporary market protection to domestic manufacturers developing critical early-stage technologies. But, he adds, such tariffs need to be “very targeted” and quickly phased out.
For the successful use of tariffs, “you really have to understand how global trade and supply chains work,” Shih says. “And trust me, there is no evidence that these guys actually understand how it works.”
What’s really at stake when we talk about the country’s reindustrialization is our future pipeline of new technologies. The portfolio of technologies emerging from universities and startups in energy production and storage, materials, computing, and biomedicine has arguably never been richer. Meanwhile, AI and advanced robotics could soon transform our ability to manufacture these technologies and products.
The danger is that backward-looking policy choices geared toward a bygone era of manufacturing could destroy that promising progress.
Regulatory changes could be the catalyst to spark significant adoption of stablecoins and blockchain tech in 2025, according to investment banking giant Citigroup.
“2025 has the potential to be blockchain’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment for adoption in the financial and public sector, driven by regulatory change,” a team of Citigroup financial analysts said in an April 23 report.
A combination of growing regulatory support and adoption by financial institutions has set the stage for the stablecoin market cap to fly as high as $3.7 trillion by 2030, or in a base case, $1.6 trillion.
“The main catalyst for their greater acceptance may be regulatory clarity in the US, which could enable greater integration of stablecoins specifically, and blockchain more widely, into the existing financial system,” Citi said in its report.
“The tailwinds of regulatory support and the increased integration of digital assets into incumbent financial institutions are setting the scene for increased usage of stablecoins.”
On the heels of US President Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly administration assuming power earlier this year, lawmakers are weighing stablecoin legislation, such as the GENIUS Act, which seeks to regulate US stablecoins, ensuring their legal use for payments.
A US regulatory framework for stablecoin would also support demand for dollar risk-free assets inside and outside the US, according to the report.
“The stablecoin issuers will have to buy US Treasuries, or comparable low risk assets, against each stablecoin as a measure of having safe underlying collateral,” Citi said.
“Stablecoin issuers could hold more US Treasuries by 2030 than any single jurisdiction today.”
US will continue to dominate stablecoins
In the future, Citi predicts the stablecoin supply will remain US dollar-denominated, with non-US countries promoting national currency or a central bank digital currency.
In April, the stablecoin market cap had crossed $230 billion, an increase of 54% since last year, with Tether (USDT) and USDC (USDC) dominating 90% of the market.
“While the dollar’s dominance may evolve over time, with the euro or other currencies being promoted by national regulations, stablecoins may be viewed by many non-US policy makers as an instrument of dollar hegemony,” Citi said.
“Geopolitics remain fluid. Should the world continue to drift into a multi-polar system it is likely that policymakers in China and Europe will be keen to promote central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) or stablecoins issued in their own currency.”
Related: Russia finance ministry official floats country making own stablecoins: Report
However, there are still some challenges ahead for the market. The stablecoin market cap could settle around $500 billion if “adoption and integration challenges persist.”
Depegging has also been flagged as a potential issue, with 1,900 instances in 2023, according to Citi, including the major USDC depeg following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
“A major depegging event would likely dampen crypto market liquidity, trigger automated liquidations, impair trading platforms’ ability to meet redemptions, and potentially have broader contagion effects for the financial system,” the firm said.
Magazine: Ridiculous ‘Chinese Mint’ crypto scam, Japan dives into stablecoins: Asia Express
Billion-dollar asset manager ARK Invest has raised its “bull case” Bitcoin price target from $1.5 million to $2.4 million by the end of 2030, driven largely by institutional investors and Bitcoin’s increasing acceptance as “digital gold.”
ARK’s “bear” and “base” case scenarios for the price of Bitcoin (BTC) were also bumped up to $500,000 and $1.2 million, ARK research analyst David Puell said in an April 24 report.
The new bear and base targets were bumped up from ARK’s $300,000 and $710,000 Bitcoin price predictions on Feb. 11.
ARK’s price projections were modeled on Bitcoin’s total addressable market (TAM), penetration rate — the percentage of Bitcoin’s TAM that it could capture in certain cases — and Bitcoin’s supply schedule.
“Institutional investment contributes the most to our bull case,” said Puell, who estimated that Bitcoin would achieve a 6.5% penetration rate into the $200 trillion financial market in a best-case scenario (that figure excludes gold).
Bitcoin’s acceptance as “digital gold” was also a major contributor to the lofty estimate, with Puell estimating that it could capture up to 60% of gold’s $18 trillion market cap (2024 figures) by the end of 2030 in a bull scenario.
Bitcoin becoming a “safe haven” in emerging markets was the third-largest contributor to ARK’s $2.4 million bull case prediction at 13.5%.
“This Bitcoin use case has the greatest potential for capital accrual,” Puell said, pointing to Bitcoin’s ability to protect wealth from inflation and devaluation in developing countries.
Nation-state and corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies and Bitcoin financial services were also factored into ARK’s Bitcoin price projections.
ARK’s Bitcoin predictions are bold
A $2.4 million Bitcoin price tag would send Bitcoin’s market cap to $49.2 trillion, assuming that Bitcoin’s total supply will have reached 20.5 million by the end of 2030.
A $49.2 trillion valuation would be almost larger than the current gross domestic products of the US and China combined.
It would also put Bitcoin in a good position to overtake gold as the world’s largest asset, which currently boasts a market cap of $22.5 trillion.
Related: Cathie Wood to kick off El Salvador’s AI public education program
Even ARK’s bear and base targets of $500,000 and $1.2 million would mean Bitcoin needs to increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 32% and 53% by the end of 2030 — a return that isn’t achieved too often for assets that have already notched trillion-dollar valuations.
Since then, Bitcoin has recovered from a 2025 low of $75,160, soaring back up to the $94,000 range, while the Trump administration established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Magazine: Ethereum maxis should become ‘assholes’ to win TradFi tokenization race
The capital city of Slovenia — Ljubljana — has been named the world’s most crypto-friendly city by migration advisory firm Multipolitan.
The city outranked runners-up Hong Kong and Switzerland’s economic powerhouse Züric, which scored the same in the Crypto-Friendly Cities Index, found in its 2025 Crypto Report.
The index featured 20 cities and ranked their crypto-friendliness based on their regulations, tax environment, lifestyle factors and digital and crypto infrastructure.
Multipolitan said its evaluation included weighing areas such as a city’s licensing frameworks, capital gains tax rates, GDP per capita, housing affordability and internet speeds.
“The presence of crypto ATMs and retail adoption rates were analysed to reflect each city’s embedded cryptocurrency culture,” it explained. “High concentrations of these assets earned the top scores.”
The city-state of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi were respectively ranked fourth and fifth after the second-place tie. Both cities were already attractive to businesses due to offering low or no taxes, but they’ve also worked to attract crypto companies with industry-specific licensing and regulatory regimes.
Madison, the capital city of the US state of Wisconsin, was the only city in the Americas to rank on the index, hitting the same 11th place score as Latvia’s capital of Riga, Qatar’s capital of Doha, and Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh.
Slovenia’s crypto embrace
Slovenia also topped Multipolitan’s Crypto Wealth Concentration Index, combining crypto ownership rates and trading volumes, which reported that the average Slovenian crypto owner held around $240,500 worth of assets.
The figure outranked second-place Cyprus by over $65,000, with the average crypto-holding Cypriot hanging onto around $175,000. Hong Kong came in third with holdings averaging $97,500.
Related: Slovenia’s finance ministry floats 25% tax on crypto transactions
The US ranked at the bottom of the 20-strong list, coming in 17th spot with average crypto holdings of around $23,300, just above Malaysia’s nearly $21,000 average holdings.
Slovenia, being part of the EU, regulates crypto under the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which the industry received as mostly positive.
The advocacy group Blockchain Alliance Europe is based in Ljubljana. The city also houses the blockchain real estate platform Blocksquare, which teamed up with Vera Capital on April 18 to tokenize $1 billion worth of US real estate.
Magazine: Tbilisi Crypto City Guide: Crypto is used for payments in Georgia, not to get rich
The Italian municipality of Fornelli in the Molise region of Italy will be dedicating a monument to pseudonymous Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
In an April 23 Facebook post from the municipality, Fornelli said it plans to unveil the Satoshi artwork on May 1. Details surrounding the monument were unclear in the announcement, but the municipality said it had been designed by artist Mattia Pannoni and financed by the local government.
“It is important, indeed fundamental, as an administration, to take into consideration all the new ideas that come from our young people,” said Fornelli Mayor Giovanni Tedeschi.
According to the local government, Fornelli has the “highest density of Bitcoin adoption in the world” among its roughly 1,800 residents. Other regions have attempted to use BTC or other cryptocurrencies to attract visitors, including the Bitcoin Beach area of El Salvador and the Swiss city of Zug, which accepts crypto payments for many local goods and services.
Portraying a faceless individual through art
The identity of Satoshi, whether a single individual or a group of people, remains one of the biggest mysteries in the crypto space since the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008.
Related: Italy finance minister warns US stablecoins pose bigger threat than tariffs
Many artists, both crypto investors and otherwise, have released artwork attempting to represent the pseudonymous creator through statues and digital images. A common theme in these pieces is showing Satoshi without any clearly defined facial features, sometimes wearing a hoodie or working on a computer.
According to the announcement, the monument will be unveiled in the Piazza Umberto I area of Fornelli on May 1.
Magazine: Former Love Island star’s tips on how to go viral in crypto: Van00sa, X Hall of Flame
Troubled electric vehicle startup Faraday Future’s board of directors has appointed founder Jia Yueting as the company’s co-CEO, three years after he was sidelined following an internal probe into allegations of fraud — a probe that led to a investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that remains ongoing. Jia will serve alongside current CEO […]
Read more It turns out that decentralized social networks can go down, too. On Thursday evening, the decentralized social network Bluesky experienced a significant outage, leaving users unable to load the app on both the web and mobile devices for roughly an hour. According to a message on Bluesky’s status page, the company was aware of the […]
Read more