Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Substack author. Plain English podcast host. Abundance co-author. Contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Washington, D.C.

derekthompson.substack.com

Born May 18

Replies Reposts Media

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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
Jun 20, 2025
Some personal news. Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack. It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
3h
This is interesting, via @NateSilver538: In 2024, one takeaway was that the Red Wave was especially strong in blue cities. In 2026, the Blue Wave seems especially strong in red states.
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
4h
Unfortunately for Republicans, the situation is very easy to describe: 1. Trump won a cost-of-living election 2. Then he publicly announced a plan to raise the price of imports 3. Then he even-more-publicly started a war that raised the price of gas 4. Meanwhile, he got rich
Kristen Soltis Anderson
@KSoltisAnderson
5h
For the midterms, I think corruption/self-dealing is issue 1b behind cost of living as 1a. It's not just that people feel things are unaffordable for themselves, they think those in power are helping rich friends get richer. From our latest "America in Focus" focus group...
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
5h
New newsletter: WHY WE'RE WRONG ABOUT CHINA AND AI America's frontier AI policy seems to hinge on China. But when you talk to people at or near the frontier, it's astonishing how little we seem to know about how China thinks about AI. So, I talked to several
How China Thinks About AI
From derekthompson.org
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
6h
I’m asking people interested in global coordination to see this story thru China’s POV. The US labs are moving at a breakneck pace while also requesting that China slow down. One does not need to sympathize with the decrepit morals of the CCP to see how, from China’s
Ethan Mollick
@emollick
17h
Stuff is happening quite fast. When asked in September 2025, the best superforecasters put the chance of AI resolving a Millennium Problem by September 2026 at 1.7% and (the more optimistic) industry expert put the chance at 4.6% They also greatly underestimated AI Lab revenue.
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