Peter Yared's Musings

Dedicated I-5 lanes and a midroute vehicle swap could move riders between Los Angeles and San Francisco years before the planned train is available. This post was also published in Inc. Much has been written about the travails of California high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with an initial projected cost of $33 billion and estimated completion by 2020. That original estimate from 2008 has now expanded to a projected cost of up to $231 billion and an estimated start of operations in 2040. What if there’s a better way to achieve high-speed transport with technology that’s already been deployed? Transportation and AI technology have accelerated in the eighteen years since the 2008 California Proposition that approved the high-speed rail project. In the last six months, both Tesla Robotaxis and Waymo self-driving taxis have started operating on highways. Combined with innovations in battery range, self-driving vehicles now present a viable public transport...

This time, the great leap forward had Washington’s help. This post was also published in National Review What made the Soviets’ successful launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 a major crisis for America was our realization that Soviet technology had leapt ahead of the West in the space race. Nearly 70 years later, a new Chinese AI model should sound similar alarm bells across the West — not least because this time, U.S. policy is partly to blame. The release of China’s free, open-source DeepSeek R1 in January 2025 showed China was closing the gap with American AI faster than Western analysts expected. Still, it was not quite a Sputnik moment, because R1 was optimized for Nvidia chips. Consequently, even if you wanted to run advanced Chinese AI models, you still needed American-made chips and developer tools. That advantage has now vanished. DeepSeek V4, released in April 2026, took the world by surprise because it was optimized for Huawei chips. Even before DeepSeek V4,...

We're excited to be at the Oslo Freedom Forum today! Layer3.Press is launching ResumosBrasil.com , a News Hub that uses AI to present the most current political stories in Brazil and ensure that dissident voices are heard. Brazil is labelled as problematic by the Reporters Without Borders 2026 World Press Freedom Index after years of digital censorship led by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Layer3.Press’ publishing system builds news hubs by using AI to aggregate content directly from news sites, RSS feeds, and X/Twitter accounts. Layer3.Press’ AI is tuned to cut through AI slop and AI influence campaigns and present differing viewpoints fairly and accurately. It delivers news hubs as a polished website and mobile site. To bypass blocking, Layer3.Press also publishes directly onto the Nostr censorship-resistant network across multiple global relays and Nostr clients. The ResumosBrasil.com news hub was built in collaboration with leading Brazilian dissidents who now...

Export controls undermine America’s long-term technological edge. This post was also published in National Review For years, the United States has tried to slow China’s progress in artificial intelligence by restricting exports of advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. That strategy may have bought time, but it is now backfiring. China has become self-sufficient in AI and is getting ready to export its technology everywhere. Controls that limit America’s ability to compete could hand the global AI market to China on a silver platter and will eventually put even America’s superpower status at risk. Export controls are motivated by fear of enhancing China’s military capability, but that case is weaker than it seems. Many military AI applications run on smaller models and specialized hardware, not only on the most advanced data center GPUs. And where large-scale compute capacity does matter, China has developed qualitatively comparable domestic alternativ...

This post was also published in Inc. Everyone talks about AI, but getting your own organization to meaningfully use it can be frustratingly difficult. Until now, specialized personnel have handled tasks like SEO keyword identification, content writing, and image editing. If you expect to consolidate those responsibilities to a single person or project lead using AI tools , you’re dramatically increasing mental load. Instead of collaborating with and delegating to a team of specialists, they now have to conceptualize the deliverable, precisely prompt the AI, and refine the output. But why can’t agents or automations just replace the specialists? Well they can . But understand that automating multi-step organizational tasks, such as generating outbound sales messages, requires a structured approach, not just a simple directive to “start using AI.” Here are four practical and proven approaches to getting through implementation blocks: Get an AI Guy Automating business process...

This post was also published in Refresh Miami There was a moment after the pandemic where some thought that Miami could become a contender for tech dominance against the San Francisco Bay Area. AI has re-established the Bay Area as the epicenter of technology, and dislodging the entire Bay Area as the technology epicenter was always a stretch. Miami should have a different goal in mind: New York City, the world’s second largest technology hub. Only fifteen years ago, the technology scene in New York was still nascent. During his tenure as mayor, Michael Bloomberg helped drive the technology ecosystem with the help of early players like DoubleClick’s Kevin Ryan and Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson. Today, New York attracts 14% of venture-backed deals , a solid number 2 beyond the Bay Area’s 25% share. South Florida has catapulted to a top ten US tech hub and ranks seventh for deal volume and is already a peer with traditional tech hubs like Austin and Seattle. Miami Mayor Fra...

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is dropping censorship in the U.S. for Facebook and Instagram was accompanied by a comment that he is going to work with the U.S. government to encourage other countries to not censor content. Upon acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk dropped censorship and soon learned that government mandates from across the world censor content. In 2024, Brazil blocked Twitter until it complied with censorship demands, France arrested Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov, the EU censored additional Russian outlets and wrote letters to Twitter mandating more content moderation, and Australia announced it will fine platforms for misinformation. The current U.S. administration had a heavy censorship hand and had threatened to revoke Section 230 which protects Internet sites from liability about their users’ content. Zuck indicated in his announcement and a letter to Congress in November that Meta felt coerced to comply. Twitter under Jack Dorsey was also coerced to censor, as ...

This post was also published with the Industry Association of Privacy Professionals. It seems like every day there is a new report of a major personal data breach. In just the past few months, Neiman Marcus , Ticketmaster , Evolve Bank , TeamViewer , Hubspot , and even the IRS have been affected. The core issue is that user data is commonly spread across multiple systems that are increasingly difficult to fully secure, including database user tables, data warehouses and unstructured documents. Most enterprises are already running an incredibly secure and hardened identity system to manage customer login and authorization, commonly referred to as a customer identity access management system. Since identity systems manage customer sign-up and sign-in, they typically contain customer names, email addresses, and phone numbers for multifactor authentication. Commercial CIAMs provide extensive logging, threat detection, availability and patch management. Identity systems are highly sec...

This post was also published in Refresh Miami Dubai reopened aggressively during the pandemic with extensive testing and vaccination programs. It has since outpaced its primary competitor, Singapore, as the key destination for the wealthy seeking sunshine, lifestyle, and lower taxes. Dubai now stands alone in the Eastern hemisphere as the nexus point for the wealthy of the Middle East, Asia, Russia, and many Europeans. Similarly, Miami became a top destination for the wealthy through the pandemic and has now emerged as the Dubai of the Western hemisphere. Already considered the “capital of Latin America,” Miami has become the nexus point for the wealthy of the U.S., Canada, and Europe for the same reasons as Dubai: sunshine, lifestyle, and lower taxes. Very much like Dubai, the culture of Miami encourages emigration, success, capitalism, and wealth. The city government, led by Mayor Francis Suarez, actively seeks to expand the city and attract new business. The new people Fo...

I’m excited to soft launch Summary.News , an AI news aggregator that helps news readers know what's really happening by summarizing perspectives such as liberal, mainstream, and conservative. We aim to restore trust in the news with a more holistic view of stories. Many people were shocked when inflation was not transitory, Kyle Rittenhouse was declared not guilty, a miracle vaccine did not stop spread, and the Ukrainian counter-offensive quickly ground to a halt. A select few newshounds were not surprised by these outcomes, but it takes a lot of time and energy to hunt, peck, and distill through various news sites to triangulate on what’s really happening. Trust in the news has unfortunately dropped to only 11% for newspapers, which to be clear are primarily mainstream publications and does not include Fox News. Popular news media typically operates from a factual basis but often omits vital facts. Articles about the Supreme Court Dobbs decision will include opinion polls about...