Only $20bn? ;)

Mr Patel has made specific promises to deliver something within a precise timescale and can be held accountable for doing so. Politicians pretend to do this but in fact their weasel words provide them with a cop out. We need to start asking politicians to promise not to stand for re-election if they don't achieve their promises.

Note that the units already existed in the DOD but have been unified into this new group - allowing someone to get promoted to head the new unit. And for the career bureaucrat gaining status - and the perks that go with it - is what their life is all about.

However we shouldn't be too surprised by this revelation. When New York City introduced a single phone number for all its services, it began to discover that it has units in very different bits of the organisation doing exactly the same job. The disease goes with organisational structures!

The average person doesn't want to change their lifestyle as a result of the threat of climate change. So when politicians come along who deny its reality, they get voted for. There is no easy solution to this problem; humans are selfish, a belief long asserted by Christianity but denied by foolish idealists.

It's on days like this that I'm grateful that I'm in my sixties and probably won't suffer much as a result of this mess.

Your interpretation of my post is that I'm concerned at the jobs being created? Wow!

To be clearer: I'm denying that the state should create and enforce these rules because it's not something the state should bother with. Why? Because as a matter of respecting the freedom of individuals, it is inevitable that it will be possible for people to do stupid things. The fact that introducing new rules creates jobs, and once created those post holders have an interest in those rules being kept in place, is a detail.

Yes, those things are desirable. That doesn't create a duty on the state to enforce them, which, of course, generates lots of lovely jobs enforcing them...

Good to know you exist. As to the downvoter of your comment - is he on contract to the State of California? ;)

He'll get to you soon... ;)

The freedom to do stupid things would appear to be a part of what freedom means.

What aren't they admitting? Of course this applies to both Chinese and US AI firms...

The NSA takes it badly when their people are identified, let alone charged.

'That barrel you're scraping probably has a hole in the bottom by now.'

I'll try to remember that one and use it elsewhere

If Mathematicians are made redundant by AI, then a source of VERY intelligent people will be available to use to benefit the rest of us - or at least our corporate masters. This might prove to be a good thing...