Innovation On Sale.

Bomb Cyclone.

1. If you read just one thing today, read this: Seven technologies to watch in 2022. (via nature.com)

2. Better “just in case” than “just in time.” The United States is facing an “alarming” shortage of semiconductors, a government survey of more than 150 companies that make and buy chips found; the situation is threatening American factory production and helping to fuel inflation, Gina M. Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said in an interview on Monday. She said the findings showed a critical need to support domestic manufacturing and called on Congress to pass legislation aimed at bolstering U.S. competitiveness with China by enabling more American production. “It’s alarming, really, the situation we’re in as a country, and how urgently we need to move to increase our domestic capacity,” Ms. Raimondo said. (Source: nytimes.com)

3. Imports are tumbling at the nation’s busiest container port complex even as the backup of ships waiting to unload there breaks records. Shipping industry officials say the factors that triggered big bottlenecks earlier in 2021 persisted through December and have continued into 2022. Ships can’t unload quickly because terminals are full of containers. Truckers can’t pick up loads due to a shortage of drivers and the steel trailers used to pull boxes. Warehouses near the ports and at nearby logistics hubs are short workers and don’t have space for more deliveries. Port congestion is a major worry for the Biden administration. The backups are exacerbating supply-chain delays and driving up shipping costs that are contributing to inflation reaching its highest level in decades.

4. Combined with the zero-Covid strategy, the paradoxical result of (China’s) ineffective vaccination effort has been to make the Chinese population more vulnerable to Covid-19 than almost any other population on earth. A rough estimate of clinical data, for example, suggests that no more than a small fraction of one percent of the Chinese population has acquired natural immunity through a prior infection. In India, by contrast, already by July 2021--well before the Omicron surge began—an estimated 67 percent of the population had been exposed to the virus and were carrying antibodies. Such a large “virgin” population in China means the Omicron variant could potentially multiply and spread unhindered. Unless China abandons the zero-Covid mentality, it may have to adopt ever more draconian social controls until the virus completely disappears or face an Omicron tsunami of almost unimaginable proportions. More on this here. (Sources: foreignaffairs.com, nytimes.com)