WELCOME
Thanks for coming to visit my website. I write about science, technology, foreign affairs, and other subjects.
Follow me on Twitter: @kkakaesDrones and Aerial Observation
I edited and wrote part of a short book published by New America in July 2015 and freely available online, about how drones are being used in new ways around the world. It's meant to be useful to people who want to fly drones.The Pioneer Detectives
I published a short book with The Millions.
It's the story of the Pioneer Anomaly, a long-standing mystery. The book is short and fun—the length of a novella—but also, in the words of Amazon's reviewer, "powerful and sad". If you've got any curiosity about how NASA works behind the scenes or why scientists believe what they do, I think you'll enjoy the book.
It is available on Amazon as a Kindle Single and also on Apple's iBooks.Drone Wars
I wrote a chapter on the long history of drone technology going back to the early 20th century in this edited Cambridge University Press volume.
The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived [Podcast]
26 May 2026
A conversation with Quanta’s Editor-in-Chief, Samir Patel, about how artificial intelligence is changing math.
Two Researchers Are Rebuilding Mathematics From the Ground Up
20 May 2026
By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far bigger program to understand why numbers behave the way they do.
[Quanta Magazine]
How Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
20 May 2026
Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his unusual life, if he’s known at all. But what were his actual mathematical contributions?
[Quanta Magazine]
The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived
13 April 2026
AI is being used to prove new results at a rapid pace. Mathematicians think this is just the beginning.
[Quanta Magazine]
‘Open Space’ Review: Orbiting the Problem
20 March 2026
Our dependence on satellite technology means that private citizens now wield enormous power over communications, transportation and war.
[Wall Street Journal]
‘The Tower and the Ruin’ Review: Seeking Tolkien’s Past
12 December 2025
Was a real privilege to review a moving analysis of some of my favorite books which shows how literary criticism can be a way to show your family how much you love them.
[Wall Street Journal]
Book Reviews, clips, Essays
tags: Wall Street Journal
Artificial Intelligence Didn’t Deserve the Physics Nobel Prize
11 October 2024
Why the 2024 Physics Nobel shouldn’t have gone to computer science research, however impactful it has been.
[Nomial]
The Year In Math 2023
24 December 2023
A retrospective of 2023’s mathematical discoveries.
[Quanta Magazine]
The Year in Math 2022
24 December 2022
A retrospective of 2022’s mathematical discoveries.
[Quanta Magazine]
How Elon Musk sped up the future
19 July 2022
An interview with Lori Garver, former deputy administrator of NASA.
“Time and time again, things that came up that typically would take an organization weeks or months to work through that SpaceX could do in hours or days,” she said.
[POLITICO]
clips, Science and Technology
tags: POLITICO
Elon Musk’s Biggest Worry
26 April 2022
‘Don’t Leave the Space Open’ — How the West Can Defeat Putin
26 March 2022
An interview with Molly McKew, a former adviser to the Georgian government.
She lays out an argument for aggressively combatting Russian disinformation without compromising free speech.
[POLITICO]
A brief history of artificial intelligence
30 August 2021
In the summer of 1956, a group of researchers set out to try to reproduce human intelligence in a machine. More than sixty years later and despite enormous progress, that goal is still out of reach. Just how far, nobody knows.
An introduction to artificial intelligence for a new publication series put out by Aventine, a non-profit research institute that studies how rapid technological advancements and disruptive change will affect life in the decades to come.
[Aventine]
Room-temperature superconductivity has been achieved for the first time
15 October 2020
It was in a tiny sample under extremely high pressure, so don’t start dismantling the world’s energy infrastructure quite yet.
Room-temperature superconductors—materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance without needing special cooling—are the sort of technological miracle that would upend daily life. This is a short news story about the first announcement of their fabrication.
[MIT Technology Review]
The limits of Chinese Military Power
24 October 2019
The US military is without peer in its ability to project power around the world, and that’s not about to change.
The United States spends more money on the military than any other nation on Earth—far more. This enormous budget— $649 billion—pays for the only global fighting force in the history of the world. But in the last 30 years, China has gone from spending about $20 billion each year on its military to spending about $250 billion each year.
[MIT Technology Review]