Bits of stuff: Transformable nanoelectronics; Debt ceiling update; Regarding power and wealth

Just when a person thinks the Transformers was fiction, science nerds come along and start to 'chip' away at the fiction. Science Advances reports that some physical components in nanoelectronic chips can be intentionally physically changed. UCI News reports:   

UC Irvine physicists discover first transformable nano-scale electronic devices

The nano-scale electronic parts in devices like smartphones are solid, static objects that once designed and built cannot transform into anything else. But University of California, Irvine physicists have reported the discovery of nano-scale devices that can transform into many different shapes and sizes even though they exist in solid states.

It’s a finding that could fundamentally change the nature of electronic devices, as well as the way scientists research atomic-scale quantum materials.

The electronic devices are modifiable much like refrigerator door magnets – stuck on but can be reconfigured into any pattern you like.

If it sounds like science fiction, said Sanchez-Yamagishi, that’s because until now scientists did not think such a thing was possible.

Indeed, Sanchez-Yamagishi and his team, which also includes UCI Ph.D. student Andrew Barabas, weren’t even looking for what they ultimately discovered.

What they saw specifically was that tiny nano-scale gold wires could slide with very low friction on top of special crystals called “van der Waals materials.”

Taking advantage of these slippery interfaces, they made electronic devices made of single-atom thick sheets of a substance called graphene attached to gold wires that can be transformed into a variety of different configurations on the fly.

Because it conducts electricity so well, gold is a common part of electronic components.

It's not clear what the ramifications of this will turn out to be. That ought to become clear in a few years as people think about this and how it can be used in electronic devices. This works because the surface of van der Waals materials are low friction, sort of like teflon coating objects to make them slippery.

Moving tiny stuff around on a chip

Scale bars, 3 μm. (A and B) Optical images of ~170-nm-tall gold squares on hBN 

before and after manipulation with an AFM tip. (C) AFM height image of a 

3-μm-wide gold square on atomically flat hBN surface with contaminants 

swept aside by sliding.

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The debt ceiling will be probably be reached sometime in June or early July. House Republicans continue to demand spending cuts and deregulation of businesses or they will let the US default on its debt. Biden continues to say the debt is not negotiable and he won't negotiate. Up to this point, radial right Republicans have refused to say what they will cut or deregulate, because we all know most people probably won't like most of it. But sooner or later, the radicals will have to show their hand. The time bomb continues to tick. The NYT reports: 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday proposed a one-year debt ceiling increase paired with a set of spending cuts and policy changes, backing down substantially from earlier demands but making clear that Republicans would not raise the borrowing limit to avert a catastrophic debt default without conditions.

In a speech delivered from the New York Stock Exchange, Mr. McCarthy said House Republicans would vote “in the coming weeks” on a measure that would lift the debt ceiling into the next year in exchange for freezing spending at last year’s levels while enacting stricter work requirements for social programs and a host of regulatory rollbacks.

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An interesting NYT opinion by Paul Krugman comments on concentrated wealth and power, plutocracy and current political events:

Plutocratic Power and Its Perils

The rich are different from you and me: They have immensely more power. But when they try to exercise that power they can trap themselves — supporting politicians who will, if they can, create a society the rich themselves wouldn’t want to live in.

This, I’d argue, is the common theme running through four major stories that have been playing out over the past few months. They are: the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and the billionaire Harlan Crow; the rise and seeming decline of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign; the trials (literally) of Fox News; and the Muskopalypse at Twitter.

People on the right often insist that expressing any concern about highly concentrated wealth is “un-American.” The truth, however, is that worrying about the dangers great wealth poses for democracy is very much part of the American tradition. And our nation basically invented progressive taxation, which was traditionally seen not just as a source of revenue but also as a way to limit excessive wealth.

Theodore Roosevelt warned against “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Woodrow Wilson declared, “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

How does great wealth translate into great power? Campaign finance is dominated by a tiny number of extremely rich donors. But there are several other channels of influence.

Until recently I would have said that outright corruption — direct purchase of favors from policymakers — was rare. ProPublica’s revelation that Justice Thomas enjoyed many lavish, undisclosed vacations at Crow’s expense suggests that I may have been insufficiently cynical [insufficiently realistic?].

Beyond that, there’s the revolving door: Former politicians and officials who supported the interests of the wealthy find comfortable sinecures at billionaire-supported lobbying firms, think tanks and media organizations. These organizations also help shape what military analysts call the “information space,” defining public discourse in ways that favor the interests of the superrich [the role of dark free speech].

Despite all that, however, there’s only so much you can achieve in America, imperfect and gerrymandered as our democracy may be, unless you can win over large numbers of voters who don’t support a pro-billionaire economic agenda.

It’s a simplification, but I think fundamentally true, to say that the U.S. right has won many elections, despite an inherently unpopular economic agenda, by appealing to intolerance — racism, homophobia and these days anti-“wokeness.” Yet there’s a risk in that strategy: Plutocrats who imagine that the forces of intolerance are working for them can wake up and discover that it’s the other way around.

But some of those donors are now bailing, because it looks increasingly as if DeSantis’s intolerance and conspiracy theorizing weren’t a political show — they’re who he really is. And the big money was looking for a charlatan, not a genuine fanatic.

Among the forces pushing a DeSantis candidacy has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox was essentially founded to carry out the right-wing strategy of pushing plutocratic policy while winning over working-class whites with intolerance and conspiracy theories.

And does anyone doubt that if the Republican primary goes the way it seems to be heading, Fox will soon be back in Trump’s corner?

Rupert Murdoch’s organization, then, has effectively been taken hostage by the very forces he helped conjure up.

But Elon Musk’s story is, if anything, even sadder. As Kara Swisher recently noted for Time magazine, he’s become “the world’s richest online troll.” The crazy he helped foment hasn’t taken over his organization — it has taken over his mind.

I still believe that the concentration of wealth at the top is undermining democracy. But it isn’t a simple story of plutocratic rule. It is, instead, a story in which the attempts of the superrich to get what they want have unleashed forces that may destroy America as we know it. And it’s terrifying.

Q: Is Krugman's assessment unreasonably cynical, mostly wrong or mostly right?

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A WaPo opinion by Perry Bacon comments on Biden's ineffective responses to increasing radical right aggression:

An increasingly radical Republican Party is using its power, particularly at the state level and on the judiciary, to attack women seeking reproductive care, transgender Americans, Black politicians and activists, unions, colleges and professors, Democratic-led cities, public libraries, and a vast array of other people, groups and institutions with liberal values.

And President Biden is doing little about this right-wing assault.

The result is a one-sided conflict. Republican officials are acting like they’re in a war, while Biden and many powerful Democratic officials not only don’t defend their own side but also largely refuse to acknowledge the fight.

Watch closely, and you can see a pattern: When Republican officials do something outrageous, the Biden White House follows a three-step playbook. First comes a written statement from Biden condemning the Republican action. That’s often followed by public criticism from Vice President Harris or White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Biden will occasionally have a phone call or virtual meeting on the issue, such as his recent conversation with the Tennessee lawmakers expelled by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

Then it’s on to the next speech or event. The president seems to be trying to do just enough to avoid being criticized for doing nothing. Biden is, at times, literally phoning in his response to growing Republican extremism.  

So why is he doing so little?

First of all, the president seems to be conflict-averse. When he ran the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s, Biden didn’t investigate allegations of sexual harassment against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas as hard as he could have.  

Second, while Biden has moved left in recent years, I am not sure he is fully comfortable with strongly defending, say, abortion rights or the right to gender-affirming care. These are not positions Biden has held for much of his life.  

Third, Biden is deeply entrenched in the center-left establishment wing of the Democratic Party, which has spent much of the past seven years trying to duck a full-on confrontation with Trumpism.  

So instead of Biden giving speeches at factories that no one remembers 12 hours later, he could show up in states like Kentucky and Tennessee to stand with Democrats struggling against ultra-right-wing legislators. He could also defend Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other prosecutors against Republican attempts to undermine their investigations, forcefully criticize GOP-appointed judges who are writing Trumpism into law, and speak out for honest teaching about race and sexual identity.

In my opinion, that criticism of Biden and the Democratic Party is spot on. Both are undeniably failing to reasonably at least try to vigorously defend democracy. Backing down from confrontation has failed.

Since Biden is a staunch Catholic, he probably is quite uncomfortable with abortion and gender fluidity. He really does seem to be conflict- and Trumpism-averse, e.g., no DoJ prosecution of Trump's crimes. Those Democratic Party and leadership failures could wind up being catastrophic for democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. But, those failures could be wonderful for corrupt plutocrats and radical Christian theocrats. Maybe Biden and the Dem Party are grudgingly OK with that compared to where secularism and democracy has taken America.