It is not strictly speaking laziness, though in some ways that has always been there; it is rather a sort of emptiness, as if someone had come along to occupy a space I considered my own, whilst demonstrating, moreover, that they could do so with disarming ease and skill. Artificial intelligence finds the words, constructs sentences, organises thoughts, identifies connections; it can imitate styles, change tone, be brilliant, ironic, melancholic; it can write an article in a matter of seconds, whilst I might spend an entire morning struggling to come up with a decent opening line. So why should I carry on?

I realise, of course, that the question is not only rhetorical but also flawed. I am well aware that writing is much more than simply producing a text or a competition to see who can master concepts, grammar and syntax better and more quickly. Yet knowing all this does not seem enough to restore my desire to do it. Alfonso Berardinelli wrote in this newspaper that ‘there is no escape for human intelligence. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking we can maintain a spiritual life alongside artificial intelligence’. Perhaps he, too, is exaggerating, but I certainly tend to agree with him.

Until yesterday, writing was also a way for me to feel capable of something, to make myself known: not necessarily good, not necessarily original, but at least recognisable and perhaps appreciated (one always hopes for that). Despite all my limitations, I felt I was giving voice to what I thought I understood about this or that subject. Now that voice seems superfluous to me. Having written on several occasions—with others in mind, especially younger people—about the risks of artificial intelligence eventually writing in our place, stifling our natural language and thus our thoughts, I find myself uncomfortably experiencing the effect on myself. But not in the sense – at least I hope not – that I am losing the ability to write, but rather in the sense that I am no longer sure it is worth doing. And that is perhaps even worse.

I realise that before I even formulate a thought, I’m already imagining how a machine might develop it; even before I look for a word, I think that ChatGPT would surely find a more precise and effective one; before I start an article, I find myself thinking that a better version of what I might write already exists somewhere. It feels like a pre-emptive defence, an early surrender even before taking to the field, perhaps a way of getting used to irrelevance before it even becomes official. On the other hand, once it is established that a well-argued and formally flawless text can be obtained in a matter of seconds by turning to any chatbot, what is the point of racking one’s brains to write it oneself? As far as I’m concerned, as I’ve already said, there remains the unquenchable pleasure of reading – of certain ideas that spring to mind without any pretence of being put down in writing, and of others that need to be written down to clarify them to ourselves – writing is that too. But otherwise, I’m becoming increasingly sceptical about the usefulness of writing. What gives me heart, however, is a firm conviction: that the great poets and writers are not in the least affected by what I am writing in this article. They will continue to write, without their energy being in the slightest way diminished by artificial intelligence or even by our whingeing.

The final chapter of Huang’s career can be studied as an example of what an entrepreneur should never do: put their own company at risk. But everything that came before that disastrous conclusion should be studied for the opposite reason: as an almost perfect example of what should never be missing – both in a personal story and in a country’s entrepreneurial history – when it comes to innovation. In short, Jensen Huang’s life embodies everything that Europe currently lacks if it is to even consider nurturing a Jensen Huang of its own.

Huang, who until a few hours ago was at the helm of a company whose market capitalisation had reached around 4,500 billion dollars, has become what he is thanks to the American capitalist system, within which ambitious funds bet many billions on start-ups – not for what they have already achieved, but for what they might achieve (Nvidia began as a company producing graphics chips designed for video games; it secured a significant first round of funding not thanks to a government endorsement but thanks to an ambitious project through which it would become the central infrastructure of future technology). Huang went on to become what he is today, in part, thanks to a rich, prolific and forward-looking capital market – one that Europe lacks – within which companies with a promising future can easily and quickly secure funding (Nvidia went public six years after its foundation) to grow into major players, partly on the back of an ambitious project (high-growth European firms, ten years after their foundation, raise on average 50 per cent less capital than their Silicon Valley counterparts). Finally, Huang has reached the position he held until just a few hours ago thanks to an American entrepreneurial ecosystem in which failure – as has already happened in the past to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk – is part of a company’s growth and not the beginning of the end.

The story is well known. Nvidia’s first product was a flop (1995). Its second project was a disaster (1996). Nvidia then came within a hair’s breadth of going under. In the 2000s, it went on to design faulty chips that cost it hundreds of millions. Europe, which sneers at Huang’s misadventures, which sighs at the slowdown in AI investment in America, which seems to be sitting there waiting for the AI bubble to burst, with the look of an old granny scolding her grandson for his mischief – ‘I told you it would end like this’ – It is a Europe that, before focusing on how we ended up with the horns, ought to spend a few moments understanding how, before the horns, we arrived at the unicorn – how the unicorn generated value, how the American entrepreneurial environment managed to nurture talent, retain it, give it the time to make mistakes, and provide it with the opportunity to secure funding. China, so to speak, has shown itself to be interested in spying on Dr Huang, in order to steal his secrets.

If Europe had kept tabs on Dr Huang’s life – without needing to intrude into his bedroom – perhaps it would have learnt a little more not only about how a manager can fall from grace, but also about how, when it comes to technology, one can rise to greatness from nothing, rather than simply ending up with one’s head in the sand.

The dynamics of the incident are worth noting: they are more instructive for Italy and for Europe than a hacker attack would be. A large number of servers failed the automatic health checks and were taken offline. The remaining servers had to cope with the traffic normally handled by the others and subsequently crashed themselves. The process responsible for establishing secure connections became overloaded. Servers that were brought back online would crash again as soon as traffic resumed. Microsoft suspects the very component that handles the health checks, but has not yet published the definitive cause. A cloud that becomes ‘ill’ due to excessive diagnostics resembles an autoimmune disease: the system designed to protect the organism ends up attacking it.

Here we see an old economic paradox at work. Concentration breeds efficiency: a single giant spreads the cost of fixed expenses, updates security for everyone and distributes the load on a global scale. But that very concentration transforms independent failures into interconnected ones. When thousands of organisations purchase the same service, they also purchase the same risk. Microsoft 365 contracts provide for service credits – that is, discounts on future invoices – rather than compensation for lost productivity, postponed court hearings or undelivered medical reports. The real damage falls on customers and the wider community: a textbook example of a negative externality. Since 2008, banks have been obliged to measure their systemic risk. Digital service providers, so far, have done so only to a limited extent.

The problem for Europe is one of scale. According to a study by Compass Lexecon for the Open Cloud Coalition, Microsoft holds 77 per cent of the productivity software market in the European public sector, with figures as high as 84 per cent for collaboration tools. The coalition is backed by Google, which has every interest in saying so, but that interest does not make the figure false. Ministries, courts, schools and hospitals speak the same digital language, written in Redmond. When that language breaks down, the administration falls silent. And the risks are not merely technical: in the French Senate in 2025, a Microsoft executive admitted that he could not guarantee that European data would remain safe from requests by the US authorities.

The temptation that follows every blackout is a form of sovereignist self-sufficiency: let’s build our own Outlook. It is the wrong answer to the right question. A single national provider, perhaps a public one, would be a single point of failure flying the tricolour: less efficient, less secure and just as vulnerable. Technological sovereignty does not consist in owning the machines, but in retaining the option to walk away. In economic terms, sovereignty means reducing the costs of switching to the point where the threat of leaving becomes credible. A provider that knows it can be dropped behaves better than one that knows it is irreplaceable.

This gives rise to a number of practical consequences, which do not require billions but rather discipline. The first concerns procurement. Every public contract for critical services should include a verified exit plan, open and interoperable data formats, and periodic migration tests, just as is done with fire drills. The second is redundancy for essential functions. A public administration with only one email channel has none at all the day that channel goes down. Italian schools have just discovered this, having been inundated with threats via a single ministerial channel. An independent emergency channel costs little and is worth a great deal. The third is to assess the risk of concentration using the tools that already exist. The DORA Regulation requires the financial sector to map its dependence on ICT suppliers and subjects the most critical ones – including Microsoft – to the supervision of the European authorities. The same logic should be extended to healthcare, the justice system and public administration, without reinventing the wheel.

That leaves the fourth consequence, the most ambitious: using European public procurement – worth hundreds of billions a year – as a lever for industrial policy. Not to exclude the American giants, but to force them to compete on open standards, alongside European suppliers who currently lack the scale to make their mark. This is the real difference between protectionism and a competitive market. The cloud remains one of the great productivity achievements of the century, and no one can imagine wanting to go back to a server in the cellar. But digital productivity is not a gift of nature: it is an infrastructure with an owner, a point of failure and a hidden price. On Thursday, the servers in Redmond failed their health check. It is high time that Europe and Italy – both their institutions and their businesses – subjected their technological dependence to a radical strategic review.

Microsoft has reported a service disruption affecting many of its products: from the Microsoft 365 suite to Teams and Copilot. The disruption, which according to the company could affect business and private users in ‘any region’, lasted at least four hours, but the problems continued for hours and, as of Friday 13th (Italian time), had not yet been resolved.

Microsoft initially announced that it had detected that servers in various parts of the world were handling a very high volume of traffic, later specifying that “the overload was not caused by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers that unexpectedly became unavailable, overloading the remaining infrastructure”. In short, the classic domino effect. At around 13.14 US Eastern Time, Microsoft stated that it had begun redistributing connection traffic across its global infrastructure to help balance the load, and that it had restarted the affected servers to restore their operation.

The company said it had “no indication” of a cyberattack. This was confirmed by Charles Lamanna, vice-president in charge of Microsoft platforms: “For the time being, I can confirm that there are no indications that this is the result of malicious or cyber activity,” he wrote on X.

The problem may have been caused by a configuration error in an update. For this reason, the American company’s technicians are examining the latest configuration updates released to understand what went wrong.

Disruptions around the world caused by the lockdown

From Palazzo Chigi to the ministries, disruption and service failures have been reported across the government’s institutional email network following the Outlook outage. The outage has persisted since yesterday evening, causing email congestion and consequent difficulties in both internal and external communication.

In Belgium, the global outage of Microsoft services has also caused disruption to public administrations and universities. The BCSS, the federal public body that coordinates the electronic exchange of data between social security bodies, has announced that it has been unable to send or receive emails since 6 pm yesterday. Problems have also been reported by the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where email and calendar services are disrupted, whilst the Teams platform continues to function. At the Catholic University of Leuven (UCL), based in Louvain-la-Neuve, intermittent malfunctions have been reported in various Microsoft applications, including Outlook and Copilot. The Helmo Higher Education Institute in Liège has announced the postponement of academic deadlines requiring the use of email, whilst lectures are continuing as normal. Several municipalities in Flanders are also reporting service disruptions: in Oostkamp and Hemiksem, there are difficulties sending and receiving emails, whilst in Tessenderlo-Ham the disruption also affects telephone services, which are operating intermittently.

The disruption in the Netherlands has affected local and provincial authorities, courts, universities and the media. This is according to the Dutch news agency ANP, which states that the problems mainly concern the sending and receiving of emails and access to digital services. Among the authorities affected are the municipalities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Delft, as well as numerous other towns, and the provinces of North and South Holland, Groningen, Overijssel and North Brabant. Disruptions have also been reported in the judicial system, where the sending and receiving of emails has been compromised, whilst the courts remain reachable by telephone. Problems have been reported by the Universities of Twente and Radboud, and by Surf, the organisation that manages the shared IT network for Dutch universities and higher education institutions. Several regional broadcasters, the Dutch Association for Intensive Care Medicine and the National Olympic Committee have also been affected.

Jensen’s flirtation with Huang—who shares his surname and, it seems, is a Chinese spy straight out of a Fleming novel—takes a much more subtle turn, although it would be advisable to wait for the artificial mandrill’s testimony before Parliament, as he had added, as an afterthought to that flirtation—always choosing women of stunning beauty and with a heart-rending, superhuman smile—a corporate executive who reported directly to him. The matter is extremely serious; it unfolded like a bolt from the blue but could have slow and devastating consequences, as the markets have signalled with losses running into trillions (the stock market has fallen by 20 per cent since the start of November), and this despite the fact that the whole story is made up of obvious sweetness and, frankly, incomprehensible modesty.

The standard debriefing procedure is uncompromising: any American citizen caught maintaining personal relations with a foreign agent must, as General Stavridis pointed out yesterday, spend a great deal of time with the CIA and provide a full account of their relationship and the information involved; the National Security State is at stake. The handover process at the helm of an all-powerful company could not have been more fleeting and chaotic; it is difficult to foster a climate of trust around it. The breed of founders, to which Jensen Huang belongs, is loved and revered almost as a totem in Silicon Valley; they wield overwhelming control over the companies they helped to create and have guided over the decades towards unimaginable levels of profit, wealth and financial success. The Economist notes that Apple had acted with discretion and tact in the case of Tim Cook’s slow and steady replacement, and perhaps, in the end, the successor to the chip king—dethroned by this romantic comedy—will come from this rival in full regalia. Without resorting to facile rhetoric on a case that speaks for itself, it must be observed that, after so many postmodern and Nietzschean endeavours, the desiring machine of "The Anti-Oedipus" (Deleuze, 1972) had finally arrived on the market – that ideal type of schizoanalysis invented in the conceptual factory of the post-1960s French – and we had finally come to believe that desire was no longer a banal lack but a production workshop that naturalised the capitalist man within the revolutionary cycle. Once again, we were mistaken: a chip is a chip; desire is that thing over there.

Kress “will continue to serve as executive vice-president and chief financial officer whilst acting as interim chief executive officer until a permanent successor is appointed”. In this regard, “the board of directors is launching a search for a permanent chief executive officer and will consider both internal and external candidates”. Kress has been vice-president and CFO since joining the company in September 2013. “During her tenure, she has led the company’s financial organisation and played a key role in Nvidia’s growth and evolution. ‘Colette has helped steer Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and possesses a deep understanding of our business, our customers, our operations and our financial position,’ said Harvey Jones, chairman of Nvidia’s board of directors.”

“The board has full confidence in Colette and the management team, and we expect the company’s operations, commitments to customers and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” she continued. “Nvidia’s strength has always come from its people, and, together with our management team, I am committed to continuing to build on the extraordinary foundation laid by Jensen over the last 33 years,” said Kress. As for Huang, “his contribution to Nvidia has been profound”, the Board emphasised in the statement, “the Board of Directors and the company thank him for his invaluable contribution to the company and to the entire sector”.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has asserted that Huang’s successor at the helm of Nvidia should be Tim Cook, who was Apple’s CEO until early September. On Truth Social, the U.S. President wrote: “Now that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who has done a fantastic job, has stepped down, there is only one man who can take his place – Tim Cook of Apple. A legend replaces a legend.”

The thermometer is new, but the fever is only partly so. Panic is the product that the attackers are selling: an email costing zero euros sends two fighter jets soaring into the sky, whilst a screaming headline multiplies the effect. But underestimating the threat is not an option either: in September, a ransomware attack shut down a hospital site. Then there’s the bill. The Agency operates on approximately 137 million in regular funding. The fund for the National Strategy has been reduced from 150 to 135 million a year; the maintenance fund has fallen to 66. Guaranteed resources for cyber security in 2027 will be just over 400 million, compared with defence spending of over 40 billion. Meanwhile, politicians are at loggerheads over SAFE, the European defence loan programme. A ceiling of 14.9 billion had been approved for Italy, with more favourable terms than standard sovereign bond issues and maturities of up to forty-five years. The government has reduced the request to just over eight billion. Yet the categories eligible for funding include critical infrastructure, cyber security and artificial intelligence.

This gives rise to three priorities. The first is awareness, which costs little and yields great returns. The Agency’s bulletin on the cold chain is a list of common-sense measures: remove control interfaces from the internet, separate industrial networks from office networks, protect remote access with multi-factor authentication, and replace end-of-life equipment. In the Sicilian cases, the common factor was direct access to the IP addresses of the refrigerators. Changing a factory default password does not require a billion: what is needed is someone who feels responsible for it. NIS2 assigns this responsibility to senior management.

The second priority is political. Cybersecurity is an indivisible public good, just like border defence: it either protects everyone or it protects no one. Bipartisan solidarity with Tajani is a good start; the next step is a stable agreement amongst the republican forces, starting with the cyber defence bill, without infighting between ministries. Those who attack aim to sow division: a united Parliament is the most cost-effective deterrent there is.

The third point concerns resources. Attackers are already using artificial intelligence to automate reconnaissance and phishing; to forgo this would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament. The best course of action is to utilise the full allocation of Safe funds available, earmarking a portion for cyber defence. In the meantime, the vouchers from the Ministry of Enterprise – 150 million for SMEs and the self-employed – should also be directed towards the security of connected systems. And the state should only purchase equipment that complies with the Cyber Resilience Act: it is public demand that regulates supply, at virtually no cost. Hackers rely on two things: fear and division. Unlike funds for cyber security, Italy has plenty of both. It is high time we started cutting back on those.

Let’s begin our tour with one of the most dynamic counties: Meath, situated in the Boney River valley, about an hour’s drive from Dublin. We are welcomed at the Thrive Centre of Business Excellence by Majella Farrell, who heads the economic development department. On the table lies a leaflet featuring a photomontage that serves as a welcome message. At the top is the tomb of Newgrange (Sí an Bhrú [in Gaelic]), beneath the Colosseum. The prehistoric burial mound, probably a royal tomb, is older than the Flavian Amphitheatre, yet no less significant; it dates back to the Neolithic period, 3,100 BC, predating the Egyptian pyramids. Two eras, two cultures—the Celtic and the Latin—which had dominated the continent and even fought over it, spilling blood in the process. It is intended as a gentle tribute from the county to Rome—not the Rome whose legions never set foot here, but the Rome of Catholicism, of cultural exchange, and of the European Union. The ‘Ultima Thule’ lay far away for the emperors who had taken possession of Anglia, but this gateway to the Atlantic, situated at the apex of a triangle capable of uniting the New and Old Continents, remains distant even today.

In searching for the threads that link Dublin and Rome, we undoubtedly find a shared pro-American stance. Both governments support Ukraine, even though Ireland is militarily neutral and intends to remain so, as confirmed by Foreign Minister Helen McEntee. But the aid is not merely financial; to defend itself and hold out, Kyiv needs information technology, and Ireland has much to offer. Ties with the United States are unbreakable despite the risks; however, 2026 has truly been a difficult year for relations with Washington, admits the minister, a member of Fine Gael, Ireland’s second-largest party (liberal-conservative), which governs in coalition with the nationalist Fianna Fáil, founded by Éamon de Valera. With a wealth of political experience behind her, many already regard her as the next prime minister. The US Congress is now in the hands of the Democrats. But what would happen, we asked her, if a Donald Trump – further embittered by his defeat – were to push multinationals to return home? Her answers are diplomatic yet at the same time concerned. Memories of 2008 are still fresh: when the country went bankrupt, just like Greece, and had to turn to the troika (the ECB, the IMF and the European Commission) for a bailout, swallowing a very bitter pill. It was the multinationals themselves that sparked a recovery that astonished many. Sixty per cent of revenue in the state budget comes from Big Tech and Big Pharma, whose European subsidiaries have set up shop in a Dublin that continues to change its face. Negative signs are already visible. Those who are here are staying, at least for now; it is difficult to dismantle factories, but easier to shut down offices and service-providing companies in the blink of an eye. There are no worrying signs as yet, yet new arrivals have come to a standstill in County Meath and beyond – a trend confirmed by Breda O’Sullivan, head of the government agency responsible for attracting and managing foreign direct investment. And then there is always the Wall Street risk, where it all begins and often ends.

Sixty per cent of the revenue in the state budget comes from Big Tech and Big Pharma, whose European subsidiaries have set up shop in Dublin

In the nineteenth century, the railway bubble burst, leading to a wave of bankruptcies amongst companies and speculative investors, but the tracks remained. In the twentieth century it was oil and telecommunications; in the 2000s, the internet and the esoteric innovations of finance; now, it is artificial intelligence. All crises that have left hordes of losers and new winners in their wake, but the innovations have endured; from being disruptive, they have become permanent. Even Ireland is considering how to make the choice that transformed the ‘Celtic Tiger’ – as it was known in the 1990s – into a high-tech albatross, if not permanent, then at least long-lasting. Next year, the budget surplus is expected to reach 10 billion euros. This is the result of a fivefold increase in corporate tax over the last decade. Almost half of this comes from three groups: Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant. Ireland is therefore skating on thin ice, as explained by Professor Alan Barrett, who from 2015 to 2025 headed the Economic & Social Research Institute, the country’s most authoritative economic think tank, which all Irish governments regularly draw upon. He receives us in the building housing the Department of Foreign Affairs, formerly the Guinness family residence, which has been handed over to the government. Iveagh House, at No. 80 Stephen’s Green, had been purchased in 1856 by Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness and passed down through three generations of the powerful family that had made its fortune with stout. In 1939, Rupert Guinness donated the building and its beautiful gardens to the Irish Free State as a contribution to its independence, on condition that it become the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

How have the resources of multinational companies been used? Primarily for social spending, pensions, healthcare and welfare in general. Less so on infrastructure, which is indeed lacking. Dublin still does not have a metro system, and the Metrolink project is now getting under way, which will link the city centre to the airport via an automated line nearly 19 kilometres long, partly underground (a consortium involving Webuild is participating in the tender). There is much to be done in the electricity and water networks, as well as in urban regeneration. The government has appointed Kurt Kiaer, former head of Norway’s extremely wealthy sovereign wealth fund, and has committed to channelling 0.8 per cent of GDP annually into the ‘Fund for the Future of Ireland’, leaving the money untouched until 2041; another fund has been set up to finance infrastructure, climate action and nature conservation, allocating two billion euros a year between now and 2030.

There has been much debate in Italy as to whether Ireland could serve as a model for attracting foreign investment. Now the dark side is also coming to light, but there is certainly much to learn. The country has enticed high-tech giants with a range of incentives: tax incentives are key, with a tax rate of 12.5 per cent, but there are other important factors, such as a young and well-educated population, controlled immigration, excellent universities – including those beyond the legendary Trinity College – and the English language. It is true that Irish is taught in schools and promoted, particularly in official documents and on road signs, but nobody speaks it and, as people candidly admit, few understand it. All these advantages cannot exist in Italy; it is therefore not a question of copying, but rather of forging relationships based on mutual interest. We are lagging far, far behind in the digital economy as a whole, not just in artificial intelligence. We should have made use of the opportunities that Ireland offered – and, to some extent, still offers – to establish laboratories, research centres and start-ups in Dublin and the surrounding area. Take the pharmaceutical sector, for example, where Italy has managed to carve out an important position in Europe and on international markets, but needs to take a more leading role in the research, development and testing of so-called ‘superdrugs’, a field in which Big Pharma takes the lion’s share.

What if Trump, embittered by his defeat, were to urge multinationals to return home? Foreign Minister McEntee responds with concern

The most prominent Italian company in Dublin is a bank, albeit a specialised one, such as Mediolanum. With all due respect to Ennio Doris and Silvio Berlusconi, as well as to Taleggio cheese, buffalo mozzarella, pasta, pizza and whatever else fosters good relations and brings in a bit of cash. But the question is: what is it that today places a country at the top of the global economy? Above all, Italy has to offer a vast market, a ‘soft power’ built on culture and lifestyles, a tradition and a manufacturing capacity that Ireland is seeking to introduce by supporting the very fabric of businesses that is lacking here. Dublin aims to shift up a gear by developing a more robust domestic economy and opening up to new countries; Italy must accelerate rapidly and substantially in the digital sphere and ensure that the ‘pharmaceutical miracle’ takes a leap forward in research, innovation and new discoveries. Ireland was Francesco Cossiga’s passion, a regular holiday destination even whilst he was president, and he was a staunch supporter of republican independence, with particular focus on the century-long civil war in Ulster. Sergio Mattarella, too, has worked hard to strengthen relations which, in truth, are friendly and cordial, but tenuous. Ambassador Elizabeth McCullough, who arrived in Rome a year ago, has embarked on an intensive tour of Italian municipalities and provinces to get to know the local communities, forge links and strengthen an economic partnership that is all too tenuous (Italy is only the seventh-largest trading partner), including through twinning arrangements with the counties.

The spectre of the great crash still haunts the data centres that account for a quarter of electricity demand, just as it does the Norman castle at Trim, whose ruins can be seen from the window of the hotel where we are staying. The influx of multinationals had fuelled growth of over 9 per cent between 1995 and 2000. One of the poorest countries, ranked amongst the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), had become one of the most prosperous, disproving the acronym coined by economists at Goldman Sachs. That policy was excessive, judging by the catastrophic crisis, but in essence it remains the same; it has simply become more selective. Today, the message is: diversify and expand the domestic production base. Ireland’s six-month presidency of the European Union, which ends at the end of the year, has provided an opportunity to focus on more immediate solutions. Until the last decade, the main markets for Irish exports were the UK and the US; today it is continental Europe, with the UK in second place and the US accounting for just over 7 per cent, explains Nick Marmion of Enterprise Ireland, the government’s development agency. Brexit has also helped the Irish following the initial row over the border, as the European border cuts across the island, leaving the north as an integral part of the United Kingdom. But the troubles caused by Brexit have led many businesses, both financial and industrial, to relocate to the Republic of Ireland to enjoy the undoubted benefits offered by the EU. What happens if London changes its mind? On this point too, Minister Helen McEntee is taking a cautious approach. She does not see such a risk, as the border with Ulster has now become more symbolic than anything else, once the complex problems caused by Brexit have been resolved.

The troubles caused by Brexit have led many businesses to relocate to the Republic of Ireland in order to benefit from the advantages offered by the EU

Beyond the complex legal and economic issues, the mood of the population is decisive: people in both Northern and Southern Ireland are, and consider themselves to be, fully-fledged Irish, regardless of whether they are Catholic or Protestant, despite a border that is accepted as a fait accompli but is increasingly blurred, porous, even open. Young people study on both sides of the border; there is a natural flow of people travelling to visit friends and relatives, and a climate of peaceful normality has taken hold. No one can rule out the possibility of last-minute setbacks, but in Dublin there is a conviction that the generation of peace has taken root. As for the English, ‘there is a philosophical commonality between us and them’, explains Professor Barrett. Despite all the suffering, bereavements and repression they have endured, the Irish have a way of being and living very similar to that of the English, which represents, as Fernand Braudel might have said, the fabric of the long term. Some of the men who have made English-language poetry, science, law and economics great are Irish: to name but the best known, Berkeley, Swift, Smith, Boyle, Burke, Wilde, Shaw and Yeats, who in 1925 warned: “Ireland does not belong any more to the Catholics than it does to us (Protestants). We must take pride in our diversity and be just as proud of it as they are of theirs’.

In Dublin, there is a belief that the culture of peace has taken root. As for the British, “there is a philosophical common ground between us and them”

At the end of this brief journey, one might say that the most American of European countries now fears the fever raging in America. It is true that all our interviewees urge us not to despair; we must distinguish between the Trump administration and the United States. The Democrats are not the MAGA crowd, yet isolationism is a nasty disease that has always plagued the United States and, much like malaria, appears, disappears and inexorably returns. On the other side of the Atlantic, in that continent-sized country where Italians and Irishmen have often fought tooth and nail over a crust of bread, a job in smoky factories, a police uniform, and even neighbourhood gangs in New York, Boston and Chicago, on Tuesday 3 November, something occurred that would have lent credence to another warning from the great poet William Butler Yeats, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923: ‘Consider first how many capable men, endowed with a public spirit, the country can rely upon, and shape the system around those men’.

During the mid-term election campaign, AI was used in at least 220 election adverts, at a cost of over 137 million dollars

Even more blatant are the deepfakes. When discussing the issue, The Economist cited as examples, on the one hand, the advert in which James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas who has championed transgender rights, appears dressed as a woman and sings about transgender children to the tune of “The Sound of Music”; on the other hand, the advert in which Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan of Egyptian origin, plays a board game and laughs at cards bearing the words ‘Death to America’ and ‘Let’s celebrate 11 September’. There may even be a Russian disinformation network behind a series of videos in which an alleged former student falsely accuses the aforementioned Talarico of sexual offences. In other cases, defamatory adverts show Democratic candidates saying things they have never said, sometimes without clear warnings that they have been generated by AI. In Italy, at least, the images of Vannacci as a Roman emperor, feeding political opponents to wild beasts at the Colosseum, are unrealistic enough to leave no room for doubt – though questions do arise as to who produced the footage: whether it was the general’s supporters or his opponents. In any case, both Talarico and El-Sayed went on to win by a landslide.

Yet here, a two-thousand-year-old circle is closing. It is the walls of Pompeii that have, in fact, handed down to us inscriptions which are the oldest documented example of an election campaign. Among the 2,500 propaganda ‘posters’ painted on the walls in black or red—presumably commissioned from professional ‘scriptores’—stand exhortations such as Ennium Sabinum aedilem pomarii rogant (‘The greengrocers ask for Marcus Ennius Sabinus as aedile’); ‘Iulium Polybium aedilem oro vos faciatis. Panem bonum fert’, ‘I beg you to elect Gaius Julius Polybius as aedile. He bakes good bread” – there was also a suspicious “Sabinum et Rufum aediles dignos re publica Valentinus cum discentes suos rogat”, a “Valentinus, together with his students, asks that Sabinus and Rufus be elected as aediles, worthy of public office”, in which the use of “cum” with the accusative (instead of the correct ablative) seems to suggest some doubt as to his competence as a teacher. Also noteworthy is Aulum Vettium Firmum aedilem oro vos faciatis dignum rei publicae. Pilicrepi facite: “I beg you to elect Aulus Vettius Firmus as aedile, a man worthy of public office. Ball-players, elect him.” It remains to be seen whether the aforementioned ‘Pilicrepi’ should be regarded as a prestigious category; if so, the most faithful translation might be ‘even the true sportsmen vote for him’; or perhaps not, in which case it would become something like ‘the ball-players vote for him’. A rudimentary precursor to the deepfake, however, may be ‘Marcum Cerrinium Vatiam aedilem oro vos faciatis, seribibi universi rogant’: ‘I beg you to elect Marcus Cerrinius Vatia as aedile. All the night-owl drinkers are asking for it.’ Other inscriptions add the ‘dormientes universi’ – all the sleepyheads – to his supporters. The ‘furunculi’, petty thieves: or perhaps, here too, the translation that best captures the spirit might be a non-literal ‘chicken thieves’. And the ‘sicari’, hired assassins. And the ‘drapetae’, runaway slaves.

The propaganda ‘posters’ painted in Pompeii are the oldest documented example of an election campaign. Many appear to be the forerunners of deepfakes.

The invention of the printing press then gave rise to pamphlets, though these were more often used for religious and philosophical controversies than for political debates in the modern sense. On the other hand, as early as the 18th century, in England, Revolutionary France and the newly formed United States, election campaigns began to be waged using newspapers and rallies, and as early as 1755, the whole affair was satirised in "The Humours of an Election": four oil paintings by William Hogarth, later widely circulated as engravings, depicting an election in Oxfordshire the previous year. "An Election Entertainment" depicts an election banquet organised by the Whig candidates in a tavern, whilst outside the Tories protest, parading an anti-Semitic caricature in opposition to the law on the naturalisation of Jews, which the Tory government itself had passed in 1753. One of the two candidates is kissing a decidedly unattractive-looking woman, whilst a young girl tries to snatch his ring; the other, meanwhile, is forced to listen to an importunate drunkard. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the table, the mayor has fallen ill from eating too many oysters, whilst the campaign manager is struck by a brick hurled through the window by the Tory crowd. In Canvassing for Votes, the hunt for votes is depicted, with agents from both parties attempting to bribe an innkeeper. In "The Polling", a madman and a dying man are taken to the polling station. Finally, "Chairing the Member" depicts the celebrations of the victorious Tory candidates and their supporters, who scare off a herd of pigs.

As early as 1755, election rallies and banquets were satirised in William Hogarth’s paintings, in the series “The Humours of an Election”

These are scenes more or less familiar across the Atlantic too: one of the most widely held theories as to why Edgar Allan Poe was found on 3 October 1849, delirious on the streets of Baltimore, only to die four days later in hospital, is that the great writer had been plied with drink by one of the gangs who used this method to ensure the same voter cast ballots at multiple polling stations. There were no voter registration certificates; it was enough to swear that one had not already voted. The United States, however, soon became the great testing ground for new election campaign techniques, and has essentially remained so ever since. For example, as early as 1789, there is evidence of a song used in George Washington’s election campaign. It was titled ‘Follow Washington’. “The day has come / my verses flow / and follow, follow Washington / He’ll lead the way, lads / where he commands, we’ll obey / through rain and snow, night and day / guided by Liberty, lads / guided by Liberty”. It is the first of the tracks featured on Presidential Campaign Songs, 1789–1996: an album recorded by folk singer Oscar Brand in 1999, featuring 43 songs used in the election campaigns of elected presidents, ranging from George Washington to Bill Clinton.

In 1836, presidential candidate William Henry Harrison was the first to use the railway to campaign for votes. In May 1844, the Democratic Party convention in Baltimore to select the presidential candidate also marked the first use of the telegraph in an election campaign. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first presidential candidate to use the telegraph strategically as a tool for coordinating his campaign, enabling him to remain in constant contact with his supporters across the country. In 1880, James Garfield transformed the library of his home in Mentor, Ohio, into a fully-fledged mobile telegraph office, enabling his staff to monitor election results district by district on polling night, thereby eliminating the delays associated with the postal service. In 1896, William McKinley and his campaign manager Mark Hanna organised the famous ‘front porch campaign’, using an extensive network of telegraphs and telephones to coordinate the arrival of delegations of voters in Canton, Ohio.

Lincoln had already been a pioneer in the invention of the debate – later known precisely as the ‘American-style’ debate – when, in 1858, as a candidate for a Senate seat in Illinois, he and the Democrat Stephen Douglas faced off in public debates on no fewer than seven occasions, travelling from one place to another by train. Douglas won, but two years later the contest was repeated at presidential level, and on that occasion it was Lincoln who prevailed. However, it was the American model that inspired the British Liberal leader William Gladstone to organise, in the Scottish constituency of Midlothian in 1879–80, what is considered the first modern election campaign in European history, involving journeys by train to hold rallies at venues where the press had already been summoned. The first use of radio for election campaigns also dates back to the United States, in 1920, during the election that saw the victory of the Republican Warren G. Harding; however, it was on 12 March 1933 that Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the first of his ‘Fireside Chats’ on the radio, in which the President addressed the public as ‘my friends’. This was the first example of a form of political communication that modern technology now makes it possible to broadcast live to an entire nation.

In 1952, Republican candidate Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower was a pioneer in strategically using short television adverts to build his public image. Meanwhile, in 1948 there had been a radio debate between Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen in the Republican primaries, and in 1956 one between Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver in the Democratic primaries. But it was on television, on 25 September 1960, that the first true head-to-head clash between the presidential candidates of the two major parties took place. Kennedy’s telegenic appearance is widely credited with giving him an edge over Nixon, who not only appeared less photogenic but was also visibly suffering from a knee ailment. He fared slightly better in the three subsequent debates, but when one considers the mere 112,827-vote margin between the two, out of an electorate of 68,895,628 people, it becomes clear that Nixon had put everything on the line on that occasion. Shortly afterwards, on 11 September 1960, the first ‘Tribuna Elettorale’ was also broadcast on Rai.

From ‘American-style’ debates to the use of radio and television adverts, modern election campaigns were invented in the United States

In Italy too, between the end of the First Republic and the start of the Second, the ‘fax generation’ rose to prominence, though their chosen medium was soon eclipsed by the Internet. Whilst the Internet became a mass phenomenon from 1996 onwards, it was not until 2008 that Barack Obama was elected by relying heavily on social media in general, and on Facebook and YouTube in particular. It was also on Facebook that the Five Star Movement gained ground in Italy; in 2016, Donald Trump won his election through Twitter; and in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro won in Brazil through WhatsApp. Meanwhile, video games also began to be used: a form of political ‘gamification’ pioneered, for example, by Antonio Decaro of the PD, mayor of Bari from 2014 to 2024 and now president of the Puglia Region, when he launched a ‘Mission Bari’, downloadable free of charge on iOS and Android smartphones or playable online on his website, in which players helped the traffic wardens remove illegally parked cars along the seafront, remove graffiti left by hooligans and dispose of abandoned rubbish bags. There was also ‘Vinci Salvini’ and other content on the Rousseau Platform. In France, a game called ‘Fiscal Kombat’ featured Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s alter ego slapping various politicians, industrialists and bankers and forcing them to return the money they had taken abroad.

Artificial intelligence represents a further step forward, one that is by no means limited to deepfakes, the modern-day successor to the ‘seribibi’ of Pompeii. ‘Beneath the surface,’ observes The Economist, ‘artificial intelligence is transforming the art of election campaigning in more subtle ways. Candidates are using this technology to run more effective campaigns, analyse voter data and create personalised messages’. El-Sayed himself has invested $170,000 in Daisychain: a company offering an AI-based platform that enables personalised conversations with voters via text message. Swing Left, a mobilisation platform within the Democratic Party established in 2017 in response to Donald Trump’s first victory, uses AI to enhance traditional door-to-door canvassing on a limited budget. Its volunteers record voice memos summarising conversations with voters, and the AI-powered software analyses hundreds of these recordings to help campaigns personalise their messages. “AI allows us to understand the nuances of each voter much better,” explained Swing Left’s executive director, Yasmin Radjy.

‘Sloptimisation’ is the term used to describe the technique of influencing what chatbots say about candidates, based precisely on the observation that an increasing number of voters are turning to artificial intelligence for information. Election campaign websites are therefore increasingly being designed in such a way that AI agents can extract information. Even adding this information to a candidate’s profile on Ballotpedia – a sort of Wikipedia for election experts – can influence AI-based chatbots. However, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, has found that the leading chatbots provided incorrect, incomplete or outdated answers to more than a quarter of basic questions about the mid-term elections. This is not merely because so-called artificial intelligence is often still rather “dumb,” as is frequently demonstrated by those who test it by asking questions on topics they are fully familiar with. VisionHeight, a cybersecurity firm, recently uncovered dozens of websites apparently generated by AI that impersonate local newspapers, designed to deceive and generate media coverage favourable to certain congressional candidates. Once elected, however, these candidates will find that artificial intelligence itself is one of the key issues they will have to tackle.

A historian who rose to fame with a bestseller in which he explained how the British Empire had shaped the modern world (and who was accused by Hobsbawm of defending colonialism), a scathingly critical voice against the West’s obsession with self-flagellation, Niall Ferguson has now written an essay in Foreign Affairs, co-authored with researcher Lisa Klaassen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which they argue that it is precisely dominance over chips, models, energy and funding that will enable Beijing and Washington to shape global innovation across multiple sectors, in a way that future historians might recognise as a new kind of empire. A challenge posed by artificial intelligence, tackled by politicians selected using artificial intelligence? However, following the news of the results, global stock markets plummeted and the dollar hit its lowest level in a month, due to alarm amongst investors regarding potential stricter regulations for technology companies and the artificial intelligence sector, whose growth has fuelled global markets in recent years. Shares in the leading AI-related companies have, in fact, fallen. “A landslide victory for the Democrats would mean greater regulatory scrutiny of technology and artificial intelligence firms, along with a higher likelihood of political deadlock,” said Prashant Newnaha, senior interest rate strategist at TD Securities.

It may not reach 1,500 billion dollars – which is by no means a small sum. All the more so because the prospectus submitted to Consob admits that there is no sign of profits as yet; debts are therefore mounting, and it is unclear whether or when they will ever be repaid. There is no certainty about the future.

Employment figures also reveal other sides to the American economic picture. The positive aspect is that job growth is concentrated mainly in professional roles within the vast services sector. This is a sign that, so far, artificial intelligence has not caused the mass job losses feared by many. The negative aspect is that the effects of the crackdown on immigration are becoming apparent. Whether repatriation happens today or tomorrow, there is a shortage of workers in key sectors – in industry and the service sector, not just in agriculture. In the long run, this will push up wages: salaries have risen by 3.1 per cent – still less than price rises – but labour-cost inflation is on the cards. The Federal Reserve will therefore keep interest rates high, above the 4 per cent threshold. A further rise is on the cards, and Governor Warsh has reiterated that his focus is now on prices, given that the labour market is strong. The stock markets will come to terms with this, and that is a good thing.

European stock markets remained in negative territory for much of yesterday, following the lead of Asian markets (Milan down 1 per cent, the German DAX down 2 per cent), but the recovery on Wall Street brightened the day. After all, it has been rising and falling in constant fits and starts for some time now. The first setbacks date back to March and April 2025, then again in October; last June saw a plunge of 1.87 trillion, followed by cumulative losses of nearly three thousand billion on 22 and 30 October, down to 2,490 on Thursday. It is as if, time and again, the valves were opened to let out a bit of air, only for it to return in subsequent trading sessions. It is likely that things will continue in this vein, in the hope that a crash is avoided.

What needs to be put into perspective is the fear that the Democrats in Congress will make a shambles of things, as their room for manoeuvre is limited. According to economist Barry Eichengreen, a professor at Berkeley, in reality it will be a succession of Manzonian outcries with little practical effect. War, for example, depends solely on Trump. Monetary policy depends on the Fed. Fiscal space is constrained by the colossal debt of over 40,000 billion dollars (126 per cent of gross domestic product), with a deficit exceeding 6 per cent of GDP. It is true that neither Republicans nor Democrats seem concerned about this, but the markets are – and this is evident from the performance of government bonds. The crackdown on immigration will be eased, partly because the labour shortage has now become a dangerous bottleneck and the Latino vote has sent a political signal. Fears regarding data centres remain, and Big Tech’s alignment with Trump’s White House has not paid off.

The more realistic Democrats, even in Texas, are calling for the vast deserts – of which there is certainly no shortage – to be used, rather than building them on the outskirts of cities or even within them, or for the project to move out to sea, into the Gulf of Mexico – or rather, ‘Trump’s Gulf’. It would be more of a nemesis than a mockery. Of course, no one can rule out the possibility of an alliance forming between the courts and the ‘No Data’ movement. Italians are well aware of what can happen; one need only look at Taranto. It remains unclear how much influence the Socialists actually wield. An additional threat could emerge from the combative Elizabeth Warren, who would like to chair the Senate Banking Committee, which wields considerable powers. As for the tax on great wealth, it has been scrapped in California. Proposition 40 wasn’t actually that terrible; it provided for a one-off levy of 5 per cent on assets worth over a billion, yet the public referendum rejected it. It is unlikely to pass in far more conservative states. But, as we have seen, the US always has big surprises in store.

“Dark was the day when Diesel / conceived his hideous machine which / brought forth you, vile invention, / more malignant, more criminal / even than the camera, / metallic monstrosity, / sad poison of our Culture, / capital evil of our Community. // How dare the Law ban / hashish and heroin whilst at the same time permitting your use, / you who inflate / all those feeble, inferior egos? / Drug addicts harm only / their own lives: you poison / the lungs of the innocent, / your din overstimulates the peace-loving, / who in the congested streets die / by the hundreds every day in the chaos and by chance. // You diligent technologists, you ought to be ashamed. / You are capable of producing wonders: / you have landed men on the Moon, / you have replaced brains with computers, / you know how to build magnificent bombs, / yet you cannot manage to produce an electric wheelchair / that is odourless and silent.”

A surprising vehemence, attributable to a poet who was more intellectually and culturally modern, and committed to interpreting the historical events of the last century, particularly during its most diabolically dramatic decades, from 1920 to 1950. Auden, a poet and writer, was born in England but lived for many years in New York and was influential in American culture – that is, rooted in the most advanced modernity. We Italians, on the other hand, have always had a problem with modernity. We have lived through belated and forced ‘modernisations’, always with the fear of falling behind. Our industrialisation only caught up with us and took us by surprise in the mid-twentieth century, with Fiat, Pirelli, Olivetti… And this whilst having ignored the great tradition of criticism of modernity that emerged precisely in the most developed countries such as England, France, Germany and the United States, from William Blake and Goethe right through to Dickens, Baudelaire, Ruskin, Thoreau, Lawrence, Wilde, Valéry, Kraus and Eliot, Kafka, Huxley and Weil… No capitalist country has developed without the condemnation and anti-modern criticism of its finest intellectuals. We Italians, on the other hand, have feared our classical humanist past as a burden from which we must free ourselves in order to be, or appear to be, in step with the times.

Our most lucid and perceptive modern intellectual was the anti-modern Leopardi, appreciated more for his lyric poetry than for his superb moral and social essays. It is worth quoting a few lines whilst re-reading the short work on the Accademia dei Sillografi, in which the satire of modern man coincides with the satire of mechanical civilisation or the age of machines:

“Not only because people today go about their lives perhaps more mechanically than in any past era, but also because of the vast number of newly invented and adapted machines that are constantly being devised and adapted to so many and such varied tasks, that it can now be said that it is not men but machines that deal with human affairs and carry out the work of life”. After the lightning conductor, perhaps the ‘envy-protector’, the ‘slander-protector’, the ‘treachery-protector’ or the ‘fraud-protector’ will be invented. Convenience, convenience ‘in understanding not only material things, but spiritual ones too’.

There is therefore no escape for human intelligence. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking we can maintain a spiritual life alongside Artificial Intelligence. Humanity will no longer be magnificent if it strikes a pact with AI.

However, to cultivate our own slice of apocalypse here too, it is worth recalling that Sam Altman, about a year ago, when asked about the possible catastrophic outcomes of AI – having discussed, and essentially dismissed, the more science-fiction-like scenarios – identified the total integration of AI with human decision-making as the greatest risk posed by the development of artificial intelligence. If, through a biotechnological interface, humans and artificial intelligence were perfectly integrated, the overwhelming computational power of AI would gain complete control over the process of human knowledge, which is structurally based on error. So why, at that point, should we not always make the ‘most efficient choice’ – that is, follow the algorithm that best optimises the resources of our lives? The risk to what we consider free will – that is, to the human choices that characterise us as unique and irreplaceable individuals – is so obvious that it requires no further explanation. Some commentators even argue that, in this way, AI might demonstrate that freedom is essentially an illusion and that human beings are deterministic machines who label as ‘freedom’ what is nothing more than a lack of knowledge regarding the causes of each phenomenon. If, on the other hand, a ‘megamachine’ were capable of knowing all the causes and all the processes capable of optimising every resource and every individual, then freedom would prove to be nothing. Such a situation – such a demonstration of the non-existence of freedom – would certainly be a form of apocalypse. For what, indeed, would remain of humanity without freedom?

Setting aside comic-book or disaster-movie depictions, we need to agree on what the apocalypse might actually be. In the context we are discussing, one could say that the apocalypse would be nothing more than the fulfilment of humankind, or its extinction. However, the idea that one fine day the Earth will split open and swallow up the whole of humanity simply because AI wants it to, or that AI will organise an army of robots to exterminate us, seems decidedly far-fetched.

So, the disappearance of humanity could be linked to something else. Certainly, the abolition of freedom in the terms discussed would constitute a disappearance of humanity. However, there is one aspect that seems perhaps overlooked and which comes even before the discussion of freedom; it is even more radical and fundamental in that it relates directly to the very constitution of the human being. And that is language. If we are all captivated – often without really knowing why – by the first verse of the Gospel of John, ‘In the beginning was the Logos’, it is because therein lies the constitutive truth of our very possibility of existence. In that term, Logos, which encompasses within itself, in a single, unified movement, word-action-thought, lies the irreducible nature of human experience.

We know, however, that AI is nothing more than a model of linguistic recombination, and this is why it seems so familiar to us, why it is so powerful and why it is so unsettling. What, after all, can intelligence be if not language? And this is precisely where the infinitely problematic issue lies: namely, agreeing on what language actually is. If it is a purely phonetic convention, or a mere combination of signs, it can be replaced far more effectively by AI’s combinatorial megamachine. If, on the other hand, language is not a mere convention, it must necessarily refer to something else – namely, that which generates the meaning we strive to convey through words.

If it does not refer to anything else, then language – which is what we ourselves are – will be expressed more effectively by the machine. If there is no shared ‘horizon’ to give meaning to our words, they are reduced to nothing more than a mere combination of signs that do not refer to any meaning. And AI, having a combinatorial capacity infinitely superior to our own, will end up telling us what we ought to say. In the progressive integration between man and machine, we shall be ‘spoken through’ by AI. If a ‘horizon’—a possible source of words—fails to exist, if the logos that imbues words with meaning fails to exist, then these would indeed be a mere combination of signs that do not refer to any meaning. And this deprivation of possible meaning, this erasure of the logos, would truly be the erasure of man himself.

The list of everything that has alarmed institutions and members of the public in recent weeks is rather striking. Cyberattacks have hit the European cold chain on two fronts: hundreds of supermarkets in at least eight European countries and, in France, cold stores belonging to the national blood supply network. To this have been added bomb threats sent by email to 280 Italian schools (ten in Rome and its province alone) and, most recently, the threats reported yesterday on around twenty flights across European airspace, which triggered security measures in several countries and prompted the European Commission to activate the aviation security information-sharing mechanism. According to Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, the incidents “are part of a strategy to increase chaos”, whilst Brussels has remained more cautious: “It is still too early to determine whether the threats are linked”.

“At this historic moment,” Ciardi emphasises once again, “we are facing a situation that certainly does not foster a sense of calm. But by carrying out our work professionally and asking everyone to play their part in this complex mosaic, we may be able to limit the scope of the risk.” The current situation “is a high-risk scenario that requires a swift and professional response”, warns the expert. “Fortunately, in Italy, we have been less severely affected than other European countries, which have certainly suffered greater damage, so this is a source of comfort. After all,” she continues, “in our country, significant progress has been made on the cybersecurity front. Firstly with the establishment of the ACN, but also through the introduction of specific regulations over the last two years, which have made possible – amongst other things – institutional collaborations of vital importance for cybersecurity.” The Agency was established in 2021 with the task of safeguarding security and resilience in cyberspace. It is responsible for preventing and mitigating as many cyber-attacks as possible and for promoting the achievement of technological autonomy. Furthermore, it now collaborates on a permanent basis “with the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, the public prosecutors’ offices, the Postal Police and the Intelligence Community. Networking in a world that no longer has borders, which has shattered all boundaries and spatial-temporal constraints, is essential. In this regard – says Ciardi – our country is moving in absolutely the right direction”.

Despite the progress made, the level of risk in Italy remains high. “Just as it is in all advanced societies characterised by widespread digitalisation,” explains the expert. “It took the telephone 75 years to reach 100 million users, whilst a model such as ChatGPT took just two months. We’re talking about something that leaves us no time to reflect; we cannot view our society through the lens of 20th-century processes and methods.” The risk also depends, to a large extent, on a lack of awareness and a deficient digital culture. “Even today, there is still not the necessary and sufficient attention to reduce this risk exposure. One need only think of the cold chains that have been hit in recent days: systems that were out of date or had very weak passwords were attacked. Cybersecurity – he points out – is also the result of individual awareness, not just institutional awareness, and of a culture that is commensurate with current levels of risk.” In the last few hours, the ACN has convened an emergency meeting with all the other representatives of the most widespread supermarket chains in Italy. “We found an audience that was very responsive and reassured by the fact that we were able to provide precise instructions. The attacks served as an opportunity for them to commit to exchanging information more frequently amongst themselves. Security is achieved through a network of collaboration,” observes Ciardi. Paradoxically, an attack on that scale turns into an opportunity to create spaces that did not previously exist.

Why build new data centres? The idea is that improvements in language models occur at relatively constant rates as the number of parameters, the volume of data and the computing power used in training increase. The industry’s strategy therefore seems to be: more computing power means better models and a market advantage. However, there is a logical leap here. The empirical patterns observed so far do not correspond to a law of nature. There will come a time when an additional data centre will cost more than the benefits it generates, even in terms of learning. The issue is complex and involves economic factors, not just the functioning of LLMs. In the race to accumulate computing power, the perception that geopolitical supremacy is at stake in this arena also plays a part. If American hegemony is on the line, the temptation is to write a blank cheque. Some estimates suggest annual revenues in the region of trillions to justify the projected capacity. Revenues are growing rapidly, but they are not easy to quantify. There is a difference between the run-rate – that is, the annualised value of the latest available data, projected over twelve months – and the revenues recorded in the accounts.

Not all data centres are the same. Buildings, electrical connections and cooling systems can last for decades. Accelerators and servers have much shorter technology cycles. Extending their lifespan reduces depreciation, not obsolescence. Let’s imagine a scenario in which AI truly transforms the world of work, but revenue grows more slowly than installed capacity. We can also imagine that efficiency improves more rapidly than demand. It is the infrastructure gamble that would fail: the technology would survive, but the first generation of investors would take a real hit.

In the race to amass computing power, the perception that this is the arena in which the contest for geopolitical supremacy is being fought also plays a part. If American hegemony is at stake, the temptation is to write a blank cheque

It wouldn’t be the first time. Nineteenth-century railways and fibre-optic networks have already produced this paradox: investors ruined and companies benefiting from infrastructure that survived the bubble. With AI, however, there is an additional problem: the rapid obsolescence of investments. DeepSeek has shown just how quickly the costs required to achieve competitive performance can fall. The Chinese have, broadly speaking, taken a different approach. Through the ‘Data East, Computing West’ programme, launched in 2022, they have sought to shift activities that are less sensitive to latency – that is, those for which a slight delay in data transmission does not compromise the service, such as training or storage, unlike real-time applications – to regions with more favourable energy costs. This has resulted in massive infrastructure, perhaps too much so: according to media reports, many facilities have remained underutilised.

Paradoxically, the need to change course has brought the Chinese perspective closer to the consumer’s point of view and further away from ambitions of grandeur. Rather than seeking the most powerful model, the Chinese are aiming for widespread adoption. The official objectives of the latest government initiatives concern the roll-out of artificial intelligence in manufacturing, services and public administration. Open-weight models – that is, models whose trained parameters are publicly available, downloadable and usable by anyone, without necessarily going via the manufacturer’s servers – and contributions to computing power aim to reduce barriers to entry. There is, due to US administrations (both Trump and Biden), a geopolitical constraint: US controls are pushing Beijing to support domestic hardware even when it is less efficient. Simply put, China leverages its relative abundance of energy and demand-side subsidies—with reductions of up to 50 per cent on electricity bills for data centres using Chinese chips—to compensate for the shortage of advanced silicon.

The real question is not who will win the race, but what relationship exists between computing power and the value produced. The US is banking on the possibility that ever-greater computing power will generate benefits profitable enough to recoup substantial investments. China is banking on the value of less expensive computing capacity, distributed across the real economy. If AI were to evolve from an advisory tool into a system capable of autonomously performing complex tasks, the demand for computing power could grow beyond current forecasts. Greater efficiency would not necessarily reduce consumption: it would make applications that are currently impossible viable, ranging from scientific research to medicine, from manufacturing to services. It is unclear, however, what the business model will be. Earning more tokens does not necessarily mean making more money, let alone generating a return on the capital employed. Investors’ reaction to the half-yearly results of high-tech companies in recent weeks may perhaps herald a market correction.

It is normal for there to be waste during the early stages of a technology’s development. The crucial question is: how much, and on what scale? We will only find out in due course. Both the advocates and the critics of the proliferation of data centres may be right. But not necessarily for the reasons they think.

The interactive whiteboard, by definition, however, is CNN’s. The 360-degree coverage of ‘Election Night in America’ resembles a go-kart circuit: every corner is packed with journalists, tables, desks, cameras and digital screens. Within this space, dozens of additional screens appear, showing journalists reporting live from various US states. The studio presenters analyse projections and voting trends by touching their ‘magic wall’ – an interactive multi-touch screen that has become the symbol of the network’s election nights since 2008. CNN introduced it after David Bohrman, former head of CNN’s Washington bureau, was impressed by its functionality and uses at a military intelligence trade fair, during a presentation given by its inventor, Jeff Han. The device has been expanded and updated over time: this year, in fact, it can show viewers whether the cost of petrol, rent and groceries has risen or fallen in each county and district, and reveal to what extent – and if at all – rising costs are influencing voters’ choices. Since 2008, journalist John King has been operating the screen, behind which he hides protein bars to help him get through the endless hours of live broadcasting.

However, American broadcasters are full of illuminated panels and sequins. ABC News boasts a redesigned election headquarters, equipped with two studios and over 151 million LED pixels, whilst NewsNation’s massive studio even projects data onto the floor via specially designed panels. Fox News is no exception, and for its coverage it has decided to invest in augmented reality, data-driven graphics and artificial intelligence on its app, where an election chatbot allows users to ask questions about the results and receive answers drawn directly from Fox News reports. However, while American audiences appreciate special effects, Italian election night tends to be more understated and less flashy: Enrico Mentana’s marathon broadcast attracted high viewing figures and a large audience even without dazzling LED screens. His tenure at La7 will officially come to an end on 23 December, and it remains to be seen whether his successor will choose to make use of a few glittering screens.

The point of thinking of them as aeroplanes, however, “is that aeroplanes also created pilots. In the same way, these AI agents will probably create a new kind of scientist. “My prediction is that the scientists who adapt most quickly to this new reality could be the ones who pave the way for tomorrow’s discoveries,” Wang tells Il Foglio, a few hours before receiving the 2026 Lagrange Prize from the CRT Foundation in Turin, the international award for the science of complex systems and data. According to the professor, just as aeroplanes gave rise to pilots, and pilots, through a deliberate process, built the institutions surrounding aviation – control towers, safety measures, checklists, airports, black boxes, transport agencies – so too will scientists adapt the institutions of science and build systems around AI that make it reliable and safe.

Dashun Wang received the Lagrange Prize yesterday for his contribution to transforming our understanding of science and innovation by making scientific research itself a subject of quantitative study – that is, the ‘science of science’ – and in particular for his studies on how major scientific discoveries arise in the age of AI, how to manage this transition and what might happen to the future of science, scientists and the relationship between science and society. “We are trying to understand the overall impact and how to make all of this more responsible, safer and more reliable”, just like boarding a flight without fear, as AI takes on more and more scientific tasks that were previously carried out by humans.

Wang explains to Il Foglio that the idea of ‘science: science itself’ is not new; the innovation lies in using large-scale data, AI tools and scientific methods to understand how science works and where major discoveries originate. “By combining data and AI, we have realised that together they tell very illuminating stories,” he says: “How innovative careers develop, how collaborations contribute to discovery, how progress can emerge from multiple interlinked factors. And these insights are not just of interest to the scientific community: they often have implications for science policy and for innovation in business too.” For example, in predicting what is known as a ‘hot streak’ – that golden period, the most creative and successful phase of a career: is it possible to understand when the time is right for a person to produce their best work? “I began analysing the careers of artists, scientists and film directors, and in all of them we found something very universal: the greatest successes of a career tend to occur in rapid succession, usually over a period of four or five years,” explains Wang. The same thing happened to Einstein and Van Gogh; it is a recurring pattern that has nothing magical about it, but can be explained by science (and AI): it is preceded by a phase of exploration and in-depth study, which appear to be a crucial factor in predicting the start of a ‘hot streak’. There is a tendency to explore different themes and styles before focusing on just one: it is this transition that marks the beginning. “There are patterns we can identify in the data that explain why they occur,” and this is possible thanks to the speed of artificial intelligence, which can also mean higher quality, because it approaches things from multiple angles simultaneously.

“We are moving towards a world in which major discoveries will increasingly arise from partnerships between humans and machines,” Wang is certain, “but science is not just about solving problems. It is also about deciding which questions are worth asking, recognising when a new direction becomes possible, and having the intuition and courage to pursue it.”

This is why the question is no longer whether to use AI, but how. According to a study published by Wang and some of his colleagues in the academic journal PNAS, amongst the funding applications submitted in recent years by two American universities to the main US federal research agencies, some showing clearer signs of AI use were more likely to secure funding, and proposals with clearer signs of AI also tended to bear a closer resemblance to projects that had already been funded in the past. “There is a risk of science becoming more conformist,” admits Wang, “machines can help scientists formulate their ideas in ways that are more likely to succeed, but in doing so they push them towards directions that the system already recognises and rewards. Funding and evaluation systems must leave room for ideas that appear unusual or risky: we must create conditions that encourage exploration rather than conformity.” Now, when it comes to AI, we still need to build the control towers so that we can board the aeroplane without fear.

This controversial agreement between Apple and developers has been put to the test by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of generating code. It is now possible to open Claude Code and ask it to develop an app for taking notes or drawing, for example, and let the machine do the rest. Anyone can do it: when people who do not know how to programme (or who, in any case, do not intend to review the generated code in any great detail) interact with AI in this way, the term ‘vibe coding’ is used.

The coding craze has transformed many sectors, including the App Store. According to data from Sensor Tower, a service that monitors app traffic, in 2025 the number of new apps published on Apple’s App Store grew by 30 per cent, reaching around 600,000. This figure has practically doubled over the course of 2026: in the first half of the year, 560,000 were published, just under the total released throughout 2025, as reported by the New York Times.

The picture is clear: if anyone can create an app, more and more people will give it a go – for fun, for study, out of curiosity, or in the hope of landing a hit. In most cases, these are ‘clone’ services that perform poorly and, above all, nobody downloads: last year, app downloads rose by just 3 per cent; in the first half of 2026, by 2 per cent. In short, apps created using vibe coding do exist; they are amongst us, but only in potential; in reality, few people use them, and they merely add to a catalogue that is increasingly full of forgettable offerings.

Despite this, these apps are uploaded to the App Store, which subjects them to the necessary review. And this brings us to the issue of timing. The Register website has in fact compiled a number of posts from an Apple developers’ forum, in which users complain about how the process has become lengthy and tortuous. Forget a 48-hour wait to see your app go live: there are people who have had to wait two or three weeks; one person claims to have been waiting for over a month.

This is the consequence of ‘slop’, the term used to describe images, videos and sounds generated by AI and considered to be of poor quality. Rather than being synonymous with ugliness, however, ‘slop’ is about speed and immediacy: from a certain point of view, a lack of effort and direction, because the AI does everything; the user simply has to write the ‘prompt’. Meanwhile, however, the infrastructure required to distribute the software remains that of the pre-ChatGPT ‘ancien régime’. The same is happening to the World Wide Web and, on closer inspection, to society as a whole.

The risk for the App Store is that it could become a shop where there is suddenly a queue at the entrance, but everyone is simply ‘window-shopping’, as the saying goes, and revenue does not rise as one might expect. Not that this is an existential problem for Apple, which is worth several thousand billion dollars and, above all, as mentioned, has been monetising the App Store rather aggressively for decades.

Of course, we imagine that Apple will use (if it doesn’t already) AI itself to speed up the review process, but apparently that isn’t enough. It is the agreement between developer and company that has been broken, now that the term ‘developer’ potentially includes all of us and the App Store has become a place where anyone can submit their app, just like any other. This is not exactly the ideal formula for a service that is supposed to guarantee security and reliability – and which, on top of that, requires the payment of a substantial fee.