Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

It’s pretty clear that the only numbers this administration are interested in are ones that support the narrative that the great leader is infallible.

They just fired the commissioner of Labour Statistics. The great thing about autocrats is that they neuter their own country pretty quickly. When you make it risky for people to give you bad news, you end up with missiles that don't work and capital ships that sink.

Yep. It’s odd to see classic third world dictator antics in the most powerful country in the world, but not at all unexpected given who’s running it.

> but not at all unexpected given who’s running it

To be fair, this has felt like the natural consequence of the "maximize capitalism without regarding the downsides" maxim the US seems to have been operated under for a long time. Corporations have been (indirectly) running the country for some decades at this point, it's just way more obvious and in the face now when a "businessman" sits as president.

While I would agree with you generally, in this case we’re talking about decisions that are precisely not desired by either business or investors. Which is to say, I think the American people and institutions are in a much worse place than at the whims of business alone: caught between an evangelical cultural coup and unrestrained capitalism. It’s actually surprising to me that the evangelicals appear to be dominating the concerns of business and investment — I don’t have a great explanation of why it has turned out like this. It leads to such a manifestly contradictory situation in which the government is betting the future on US AI global dominance and yet gutting the institutions that would enable it.