Hi everyone. This is Bob McMahon. The world next week may have ended, but there are many other ways to get foreign policy and global news analysis from CFR.

For the next few weeks, I'll be highlighting some favorite CFR resources and podcasts in our feed, and I hope that you follow and subscribe.

My recommendation for this week is the CFR podcast, Why It Matters. Every two weeks, host Gabriel Sierra speaks to a diverse lineup of guests

with the goal of simplifying a complicated and global topic. There's no prior knowledge

necessary, just a healthy dose of interest. Past episodes of Why It Matters have asked,

who governs the Arctic? Will the development of AI stall the clean energy transition? And

how much global influence does social media influencers actually have?

With a bit of humor and a lot of curiosity, why it matters is here to dig in and find out.

Subscribe today and look out for new episodes in your feed every other Wednesday.

Here's an episode for you to check out now.

Throughout modern history, governments have worked with and invested in privately owned companies

to spur innovation and advance national agendas, from the production of weapons to the development

of communications technology.

These partnerships have proven fruitful, if in some cases

controversial over the years. There's no better example than Washington's partnership with the U.S.

Tech sector. Starting in the 1990s with the help of government funding and a loose approach to

regulation, technology companies produced innovation after innovation.

This boosted U.S. financial markets to unprecedented heights and allowed the U.S. tech sector

to dominate its competitors in other countries. In a break with historical moments like the Manhattan

Project or the space race, the most advanced

tech in the world began coming out of private American companies rather than government-directed

projects.

...