By Debbie Gregory.

Silicon Valley and the U.S. military have built their successes on completely different cultures: tech companies have a culture of rapid innovation, while the Pentagon is slow-moving. And recently, a wave of anti-government sentiment has driven several prominent technology firms to cancel major Washington contracts. But much to the disappointment of many of their employees, there are still many Silicon Valley companies that are eager to sell artificial intelligence (AI) products to the U.S. military.

Despite pressure from many in the tech world to keep their products off the battlefield, there is a less vocal but still sizable group of companies that argue that working with the government can help save lives.

The concept of lethal AI is just one area where hundreds of tech workers are trying to influence corporate behavior and ethics by signing a pledge not to work on lethal autonomous weapons. A group of Google employees protested the company’s involvement in Project Maven, the Defense Department’s flagship AI program, which uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze drone footage. Microsoft has pledged to have a dialogue with the Defense Department and policymakers about ethical issues surrounding AI, including autonomous weapons.

But companies such as Intel, IBM, GE, Oracle and Raytheon have expressed interest in providing AI for the military.

The Pentagon has spent the last few years trying to cultivate deeper ties with firms in Silicon Valley that are building the technologies needed to maintain its battlefield edge.

“If big tech companies are going to turn their back on U.S. Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Bezos’ eagerness to cooperate with the Pentagon stems from his desire to keep America safe. “I know everybody is very conflicted about the current politics and so on,” he said, and added, “This country is a gem.”

By Debbie Gregory.

Since 2001, California has lost more jobs to China than any other state. Approximately 562,500 of the state’s jobs, a 3.34% share of California’s 16.8 million jobs in 2017, were outsourced.

The main losses are due to technical outsourcing by Northern Californian Silicon Valley companies, as well as Southern California’s apparel industry.

According to a recently released report entitled “The China Toll Deepens,” the trade deficit in the computer and electronic parts industry grew the most.

This comes as President Trump’s trade war with China continues to escalate, with the administration imposing $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods.

The report, coauthored by Economist Robert Scott and Research Assistant Zane Mokhiber states that the growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China, which has increased by more than $100 billion since the beginning of the Great Recession, almost entirely explains why manufacturing employment has not fully recovered along with the rest of the economy. And the growing trade deficit with China isn’t just a post-recession phenomenon hitting manufacturing: it has cost the U.S. millions of jobs throughout the economy since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a finding validated by numerous studies.

Scott said that Republican-supported tax cuts and spending increases will turbocharge the U.S. budget deficit with “a sugar-high that pushes up interest rates, attracting capital from abroad and strengthening the dollar.” He added, “Hitting China with 25% tariffs is not the solution.”

Los Angeles economist Sung Won Sohn said that even as much of California’s computer and electronics hardware manufacturing moved to Asia, “a lot of software jobs were created in Silicon Valley, and a lot of the hardware we import from China and Korea uses software manufactured in the U.S.”

Sohn cautioned that the numbers in the institute report may be “overstated,” but he added, “the conclusions are correct: We are losing jobs as a result of the huge trade deficit, and I blame much of it on unfair trade practices by China.”

After California, the states with the highest losses were Texas (314,000) New York (183,500), Illinois (148,200) and Pennsylvania (136,100).

By Debbie Gregory.

If California was an independent country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world.

The tech sector in Silicon Valley, combined with the entertainment industry and agricultural are the main contributors to the state’s economy of $2.7 trillion, just behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany.

California has 12% of the U.S. population, but has contributed 16% of total job growth between 2012 and 2017. California’s gross domestic product also went up by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, helping to push the state into the fifth spot.

Of course, California’s economic success comes at a price. Paralyzing gridlocked traffic is one symptom; the increasingly absurd price of housing is another. Partially due to the unaffordability of housing in the state, California saw the fastest growth in its homeless population of any state (14 percent), and also had the highest proportion of them unsheltered: 68 percent of the state’s 134,000 homeless people sleep outdoors.

California also has strict environmental protections, but the state has a progressive tax system and an ascendant minimum wage (now $10.50 an hour) that is set to rise in stages to $15 in 2023.

The state also welcomes immigrants, celebrates ethnic and linguistic diversity, and actively tries to combat climate change.

And with all that, its economy continues to soar.

When current Governor Jerry Brown returned to office in 2011, he faced a budget deficit of $27 billion. Now, after eight years of economic expansion, the state has a surplus of $6 billion, and its tax revenues are running well ahead of projections