Search headlines

WATCH: Rubio delivers keynote address at Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention

Rubio gave a sweeping speech to fellow conservatives on Friday evening acknowledging that Americans are struggling in the current economy, while also railing against what he called the “weaponization” of international law to constrain the U.S. from acting in its own interests.

Nov 14 • 11:56 AM EST • Politics • pbs.org

Communist Party Politics, Rockets and Komsomol Business in Soviet Dnipropetrovsk

This is an excerpt from Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War (2022). Free to download from E-International Relations. The Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk (in 2016 the city was renamed Dnipro) was shown on a movie screen in the Soviet Union for the first time in 1981 as a ‘Russian-speaking’ city in Nikita Mikhalkov’s feature film Rodnia. A story of a Russian peasant woman who visited her daughter in the big industrial city was used by Mikhalkov in his movie to emphasise a growing crisis in Soviet family life during the Brezhnev era when former Russian peasants lost their Orthodox Christian identity during the process of socialist industrialisation and modernisation. Paradoxically, Mikhalkov completely ignored the real social and national problems of the city; instead choosing as the setting for his movie Russian peasants’ adjustment to Soviet modernisation. Even now many Russians use this film as evidence of the ‘Russian character’ of Dnipropetrovsk ignoring the real demographic and social history of this Ukrainian region (Elberg-Wilson 2016).[1] Despite Mikhalkov’s picture, the city of Dnipro and the Dnipropetrovsk region had a multi-national and multi-cultural character coupled with the strong influence of Ukrainian and Jewish culture. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work. Subscribe Using various archival and published documents, this chapter will cover the social, economic and cultural development of the city and the region of Dnipropetrovsk through the period of late socialism after Stalin, showing the ties between the multi-national Komsomol members and business ventures during perestroika and how this influenced the rise of oligarchic clans in post-Soviet Ukraine. Emergence of Soviet Dnipropetrovsk Paradoxically, from the early beginning, the founding of the ‘city of Catherine’s glory’ (Ekaterinoslav in Russian) and its province in 1776 by the Russian imperial administration of the Catherine the Second involved non-Russian ethnic groups, which shaped a historical demography of this region in Southern Ukraine. These ethnic groups included the local Ukrainian Orthodox Christian peasants and Cossacks, Jewish traders and artisans, Armenian Christians, and Tatar Muslim settlers. By the middle of the nineteenth century, thousands of German Protestant and Mennonite colonists also settled in the province. Moreover, by attracting foreign capital, the Russian imperial administration transformed this multi-ethnic and multi-religious region in the booming industrial centre of the Russian Empire by the beginning of twentieth century (Zhuk 2004, 33–96). After the Russian Revolution and civil war, the province of Ekaterinoslav continued to play an important role in the industrial development of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1926 the Soviet administration decided to change the name of Ekaterinoslav which sounded too ‘old fashioned’ and ‘imperial Russian.’ The new name was a combination of the name of the Dnipro River with the last name of Grigorii Petrovskii, head of the All-Ukrainian Executive Committee of the Soviets, and well-known organiser of the working-class movement in the region of Ekaterinoslav before the Revolution. ‘Dnipro-Petrovske’ was later transformed into ‘Dnipropetrovsk’ (Bolebrukh 2001, 156). Both the city and region of Dnipropetrovsk lived through the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), industrialisation and the Stakhanovite movement. The region lost millions of human lives during collectivisation and the dekulakisation campaign, and especially during the Holodomor of 1932–33. During industrialisation, the Soviet government restored the industrial base of the region. Former metallurgical giants such as the Petrovskii (formerly Brianskii)plant, the Chodoir (formerly Vladimir Lenin) plant and others resumed production of pig iron and steel. During the 1930s, Dnipropetrovsk became an important centre for Soviet heavy industry. In 1932, Dnipropetrovsk regional metallurgical plants produced 20 per cent of the entire cast iron and 25 per cent of the steel manufactured in the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. After the beginning of the campaign of ‘Ukrainianisation’ in 1923, the number of those who spoke Ukrainian grew, reaching 38.5 per cent in the city by the end of the 1920s. Between 1932 and 1939, the number of city dwellers in Dnipropetrovsk increased to over 500,662. The Dnipropetrovsk region became the most urbanised of Soviet Ukraine with more than 2,273,000 people living in the region (Vasiliev 1977, 55; Bolebrukh 2001, 159–164). Dnipropetrovsk also became the cultural and educational centre of Soviet Ukraine. There were ten colleges, including the State University, 97 secondary schools and 19 vocational schools. The Soviet administration restored local drama and music theatres. During the 1930s, Dnipropetrovsk had 120 libraries, five museums, six movie-theatres, 30 clubs and palaces of culture (Bolebrukh 2001_,_159–164). The Leonid Brezhnev Clan Post-war Soviet modernisation influenced the careers of many young and ambitious Komsomol members in the region. One of them, Leonid Brezhnev, was born in 1906 in Kamenskoe, joined the Kommunystycheskaya Partyya Sovetskoho Soyuza (Communist party of the Soviet Union - KPSS) in 1931 and, after graduation from Dniprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Institute was elected as a council deputy of the city of Dniprodzerzhinsk. The Stalinist purges of the 1930s removed many old Soviet and Communist officials from government positions who perished in prisons and the labour camps of GULAG. Young people such as Brezhnev filled the void created by Stalinist repressions in the region. In 1938, the young Brezhnev was elected as a member of the regional committee of the Soviet Communist party of Ukraine (KPU) and head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda. By the young age of 32, Brezhnev had become secretary of the KPU committee of the most important industrial region of Soviet Ukraine. His career was interrupted by the Great Patriotic War when Brezhnev joined the army as an ideological officer (see Mlechin 2005). From August 1941 to October 1943, the Dnipropetrovsk region was occupied by the Nazis, and Soviet troops liberated the entire region by February 1944 (Berkhoff 2004, 11, 36, 49, 149–150, 152–153, 248–249). The Soviet administration restored the industrial base of Dnipropetrovsk, and by 1950 the main metallurgical and machine-building factories had reached their pre-war levels of industrial production and productivity. During this period, Brezhnev began his political career as a talented and ambitious organizer of the industrial re-birth of Dnipropetrovsk. He was an experienced young army ideologist who had proved his loyalty to the Stalinist leadership during the war and was familiar with Dnipropetrovsk before 1941. The Central Committee of the KPSS sent Brezhnev to Dnipropetrovsk in November 1947 when he was elected first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk regional committee of the KPU, and he ruled the oblast until June 1950 (Vosstanovlenie). His successors were Andrei Kirilenko and Volodymyr Shcherbitskyy, both close friends. Two other young comrades of Brezhnev, Oleksiy Vatchenko and Yevhen Kachalovskii led the region respectively in 1965–1976 and 1976–1983 (Vasiliev 1977, 72; Bolebrukh 2001_,_ 233; Mlechin 2005). Brezhnev promoted the political career of his old friends, many of whom became prominent political figures in Kyiv and Moscow during his leadership of the KPSS. Both contemporaries and scholars who study the ‘Brezhnev period’ call this phenomenon the ‘Dnipropetrovsk mafia’ or rule of the ‘Dnipropetrovsk Family’ (Nahaylo 1999, 36, 69; Wilson 2000, 162). Since the rise of Brezhnev to the pinnacle of Soviet power, the ruling elites of Dnipropetrovsk influenced not only regional, but also republican and All-Union politics. Dnipropetrovsk’s transformation into an important centre of the Soviet military industrial complex was directly related to the sudden rise of Brezhnev to the pinnacle of Soviet power in October of 1964. Brezhnev promoted the political career of his compatriots from the Dnipropetrovsk military industrial complex. Brezhnev’s friends and close colleagues from his post-war years in the Dnipropetrovsk region went to Moscow and became prominent political figures in the Soviet nomenklatura hierarchy during the 1960s and 1970s. Two main industries of the Soviet military industrial complex – metallurgy and missile-building – had important factories in Dnipropetrovsk and therefore provided the Brezhnev clan with new members from 1964 until 1982. Even after the downfall of the Brezhnev clan in Moscow in 1983, when Yurii Andropov began his struggle ‘against corruption and nepotism’ in the Soviet nomenklatura, members of this clan continued to play a prominent role in the political life of Soviet Ukraine. Besides the Physical-Technical Department of Dnipropetrovsk State University, the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute also assisted the political careers of many of Brezhnev’s close friends who in the 1970s and 1980s became important members of the Kremlin nomenklatura. Nikolai Tikhonov, former head of Dnipropetrovsk Sovnarkhoz during the 1950s, was one of the deputies of the Soviet Prime Minister between 1966 and 1976, First Deputy of the Prime Minister from 1976 to 1980 and head of the USSR Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985.[2] Nikolai Shcholokov was the Soviet Minister of Public Order in 1966–1968 and from 1968 to 1982 he was Soviet Minister of Interior. Georgii Tsynev was during 1971–1976 a member of the Central Revision Committee of the KPSS and a deputy head of the KGB from 1970 to 1982. In the KGB he was the 1st Deputy Chairman in 1982–1985 as well as he was a Candidate Member of CPSU Central Committee in 1976–1981 and accordingly was a full Member of the said body in 1981–1986. Victor Chebrikov, who graduated from Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1950, was one of the leaders of the city party organisation in Dnipropetrovsk from 1961 to 1971. In 1971 he became the head of the personnel department of the USSR KGB, First Deputy of the Head of this organization and from 1982 to 1988 a chairman of the KGB (Pikhovshek 1996, 11–12, 272–274). Another of Brezhnev’s close friends, Volodymyr Shcherbytskyy, promoted the careers of other people from the region of Dnipropetrovsk. With his support, Oleksii Vatchenko became the head of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Soviet Supreme Soviet from 1976 until 1984 with the assistance of another politician from Dnipropetrovsk, Valentyna Shevchenko. Aleksandr Kapto, who worked as a secretary of both the Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol organization and the Soviet Ukrainian Komsomol in Kyiv in the 1960s, oversaw the Department of Culture in the Central Committee of the KPU; in 1979–1986 he was a Secretary of the Central Committee and accordingly was the main ideologist of the Soviet Ukraine. Many other members of the ‘Kyiv ruling class’ under Shcherbytskyy were also linked to the Dnipropetrovsk metallurgical and military lobby. Shcherbytskyy’s assistant from 1972 to 1984 was Konstantin Prodan who began his career in the Komsomol organisation of the city of Dnipropetrovsk (Pikhovshek 1996, 48–103). As a contemporary political analyst noted, ‘Officially Prodan was put in charge of industrial production, though, according to insiders of the former KPU Central Committee, his principal function was ‘maintaining’ contact with Brezhnev’s assistant Georgii Tsukanov in Moscow’ (Pikhovshek 1996, 33–34). Another important reason for the rise of the ‘Brezhnev Clan’ was the relative independence of Dnipropetrovsk’s local administration from Kyiv. Because of the status of Dnipropetrovsk as a ‘strategically important centre for military industry,’ different branches of the local administration were under the direct supervision of Moscow, rather than Kyiv (Interviews with Tihipko, Markov and Bocharova). The Military Industrial Complex and Ruling Elite of Dnipropetrovsk The city of Dnipropetrovsk was the location of famous metallurgical and machine-building factories in pre-revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union. Before 1941, Dnipropetrovsk became the most urbanised region of the Soviet Ukraine. Almost 53 per cent of this region’s population lived in 16 cities and towns of the region (Vasiliev 1977, 55; Bolebrukh 2001, 159–164). In 1980, the industrial enterprises of Dnipropetrovsk manufactured a significant part of the industrial products and customer goods for the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. A total of 5.4 per cent of steel, 9 per cent of rolled iron, 28 per cent of pipes, 62 per cent of combine beet-harvesters, 27.9 per cent of television sets, and 8.5 per cent of knitted wear in Ukraine were produced in the city of Dnipropetrovsk (Bolebrukh 2001, 219). After 1945, the main centre of economic and financial activities of the region and the city of Dnipropetrovsk became neither metallurgy nor mining. The new centre which changed the status of the region and of the city was a secret military factory in Dnipropetrovsk. The entire ideological and cultural situation in the region, and especially the city, depended on this one industrial plant which became the most important part of the Soviet military industrial complex. In July 1944, the State Committee of Defence in Moscow decided to build a large military machine-building factory in Dnipropetrovsk on the location of the pre-war aircraft plant. In December 1945, thousands of German prisoners of war began construction and built the first sections and shops of the new Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory (Markov, 1995). In 1947–1948 this factory produced its first cars and special military vehicles. However, on 9 May 1951 the USSR Council of Ministers decided to transform the main shops and sectors of this factory into ‘secret production’ which included not only special military vehicles, but also powerful rocket engines and different types of modern military aircraft. The former Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory was transferred to the Ministry of Armament of the USSR and received a new name – the State Union Plant #586 (Lukanov 1996, 12). Stalin introduced the organisation of special secret training of highly qualified engineers and scientists who were to become rocket construction specialists. He recommended the introduction of a new college degree at Dnipropetrovsk State University which would be a Master of Sciences in rocket construction. In 1952 the university administration formed a new department with the name ‘physical-technical faculty’ which was the largest department at the university, admitting on average four hundred students each year. These students received better accommodation and a higher stipend payment than students from other departments and colleges; the lowest stipend for this department was 450 roubles, while the highest stipend at another prestigious school, the Dnipropetrovsk Medical Institute, was only 180 roubles. A special commission from Moscow selected talented undergraduate students studying physics from engineering schools all over the USSR and sent them to the physical-technical department at Dnipropetrovsk State University, where they resumed their studies as rocket engineers. Simultaneously, the university administration announced the admission of new freshmen students in this department. The promise of a good stipend and a ‘romantic’ career of rocket engineer attracted thousands of talented young people to this ‘secret’ department, which provided training specialists for only the Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory (Horbulin 1998, 9, 62–63). In accordance with another decision of the Soviet government, in 1954 the administration of this automobile factory opened a secret design office with the name ‘Southern Construction Bureau’ (konstruktorskoe biuro Yuzhnoe). The main assignment of this office was to construct military missiles and rocket engines. Hundreds of talented physicists, engineers and machine designers moved from Moscow and other big cities in the Soviet Union to Dnipropetrovsk where they joined the konstruktorskoe biuro Yuzhnoe (KBYu). In 1965, the secret Plant #586 was transferred to the Ministry of General Machine-Building of the USSR and the next year it changed its name into the ‘Southern Machine-building Factory’ (Yuzhnyi mashino-stroitelnyi zavod) or simply Yuzhmash (in Ukrainian Pivdenmash). The first ‘General Constructor’ and head of the ‘Southern’ design office was Mikhail Yangel, a prominent scientist and outstanding designer of space rockets who led the design office and factory from 1954 to 1971. Yangel designed the first powerful rockets and space military equipment for the Soviet Ministry of Defence. Yangel worked with talented engineers who later became the leaders of military production in Dnipropetrovsk and the official directors of Pivdenmash. Two close collaborators of Yangel were the Pivdenmash directors Leonid Smirnov (1952–1961) and Aleksandr Makarov (1961–1986). Makarov’s successor was Leonid Kuchma, the Director General of the Pivdenmash in 1986–1992, who later became one of the most prominent political leaders in independent Ukraine and was and still is the only President of Ukraine (1994–2005) elected twice (Strazheva; Platonov and Horbulin; Romanov and Gubarev; Baikonur; Baikonur, Korolev, Yangel). In 1951 the Southern Machine-building Factory began manufacturing and testing new military rockets with an initial range of only 270 kilometres. By 1959 Soviet scientists and engineers developed new technologies, and as a result, the KBYu launched a new machine-building project producing ballistic missiles. Under Yangel, KBYu produced very powerful rocket engines which dramatically increased the range of ballistic missiles and from the 1960s, began to be used as launch vehicles for Soviet spaceships. Pivdenmash designed and manufactured four generations of missile complexes which included space launch vehicles Kosmos, Interkosmos, Tsyklon-2, Tsyklon-3 and Zenith. The KBYu created a unique space-rocket system called Energia-Buran and manufactured 400 technical devices which were launched as artificial satellites (Sputniks). For the first time in the world space industry, the Dnipropetrovsk missile plant produced space Sputniks. By the 1980s, Pivdenmash manufactured 67 different types of spaceships, 12 space research complexes and four defence space rocket systems. These systems were used not only for purely military purposes by the Ministry of Defence, but also for astronomical research, for global radio and television and for environmental monitoring. Pivdenmash initiated and sponsored the international space programme of Eastern European socialist countries, called Interkosmos. Twenty-two of the 25 automatic space Sputniks of this programme were designed, manufactured, and launched by engineers and workers from Dnipropetrovsk. Pivdenmash and KBYu became not only an important centre of the Soviet space industry and Soviet military industrial complex, but also the main rocket producer for the entire Soviet bloc. (Hall and Shayler 2001, 316ff; Siddiqi 2003, 97, 113, 114, 164, 177, 285) The military rocket systems manufactured in Dnipropetrovsk created the base for the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces (Dnepropetrovskii raketno 1994; Bolebrukh 2001_,_ 209–211, 229; Lukanov 1996, 13). On the eve of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, KBYu had nine regular and corresponding members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 33 full professors and 290 scientists holding a Ph.D. More than 50,000 people worked at Pivdenmash. Pivdenmash was ‘a state’ inside the Soviet state. In 1969, after a long competition with Moscow’s V. Chelomei Centre of Rocket Construction, Pivdenmash rocket designs won, and from then leaders of the Soviet military industrial complex preferred only Pivdenmash models. The Soviet state provided billions of Soviet roubles to finance Pivdenmash projects (Horbulin 1998, 6, 24–31). Officially, Pivdenmash also manufactured agricultural tractors and special kitchen equipment for everyday needs, such as mincing machines or juicers for Soviet households. In official reports and public information there were no details given about its production of rockets or spaceships. However, hundreds of thousands of workers and engineers in the city of Dnipropetrovsk were employees of this plant, and members of their families and therefore most local people knew about the ‘real production’ of Pivdenmash. Dnipropetrovsk as a KGB “Testing Ground” The Soviet government approved the KGB’s proposal to introduce the highest level of secrecy over Pivdenmash and its products. According to the Soviet government’s decision, the city of Dnipropetrovsk was officially closed to foreign visitors in 1959. No citizen of a foreign country (even Eastern European socialist) was allowed to visit the city or district of Dnipropetrovsk. From the late 1950s, Soviet people called Dnipropetrovsk ‘the rocket city’ or ‘closed city.’ (Bolebrukh 2001, 211). Members of the Brezhnev clan in the Moscow offices of the KGB and Ministry of Interior also contributed to centralised ideological control in Dnipropetrovsk, which especially influenced the KGB and security operations in the closed city. The local KGB office was always more Moscow-oriented, ignoring the interests of the authorities in Kyiv. At the same time, for Moscow officials who began their careers in Dnipropetrovsk, the city became the testing ground for many All-Union KGB campaigns which they attempted to initiate. Dnipropetrovsk KGB officers were ‘pioneers’ in the organisation of ideological campaigns which became ‘models’ for other ‘closed’ industrial Soviet cities. [This phrase – ‘pioneers of ideological campaigns’ – belongs to a local retired KGB officer. According to the KGB documents, Moscow’s representatives in the Dnipropetrovsk clan always interfered in local KGB business, imposing their own practices on the local officers.] (Igor T.; DADO, f. 19, op. 52, spr. 72, ark. 1–18) As a result, the inhabitants of Dnipropetrovsk experienced more ideological limitations and more brutal anti-Western campaigns than people in many other Soviet cities. Facing direct Kremlin supervision, the local KGB and KPSS ideologists sought to prove their ideological reliability and occasionally exaggerated the ‘threat from the capitalist West.’ KGB officers transformed one building in the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital (psikhushka), located in a town of Ihren (now a suburban district of Dnipro), into a special police facility for ‘political dissidents.’ All over the Soviet Union, Ihren psikhushka (especially its Section 9) became notorious and known as the worst incarceration for political prisoners. The Dnipropetrovsk KGB tested various drugs on prisoners and performed different medical experiments, treating the most ‘opinionated’ political dissidents as mentally sick patients. Many religious and civil rights activists and ‘bourgeois nationalists,’ such as national communist dissident Leonid Plyushch, described the Dnipropetrovsk Psychiatric Hospital as ‘mental hell’ because of its police system of harsh treatment and everyday humiliation (Plyushch 1979, 304–326, 340–349). Meanwhile, local KGB officers explained their harsh treatment of dissidents such as Plyushch as an ideological necessity to protect a strategically important centre of the Soviet military industrial complex (Igor T). Growth of the Population and Standards of Living in the Region The new status of the city brought more state investments and contributed to the overall improvement of the standard of living of its inhabitants. During the 1950s, the main sponsor of city improvements and renovations was the metallurgical industry. During the 1960s and 1970s, the space rocket industry and its biggest factory, Pivdenmash, sponsored all major city programmes, renovations and new architectural projects which included the sports palace Meteor with a large indoor pool, football team Dnipro, city airport, city theatre of opera and ballet, historical museum of Yavornitskii, department store ‘Children’s World,’ construction of thousands of modern apartments, libraries and movie-theatres, and celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the city of Dnipropetrovsk in 1976. (Bolebrukh 2001_,_ 211–212). Even the expansion and renovation of the Dnipropetrovsk Central Farmer Market (known as Oziorka) was supported by Pivdenmash as part of its improvement of the city’s life, and a reflection of the growth and strategic importance of the city. From 1958 to 1965 the city administration invested money in building a new covered location for the market and by 1970 they had re-built the entire neighbourhood transforming it into a modern and convenient place for the ‘socialist consumption of goods and services.’ (Lazebnik 2001, 167–185) As a result, the missile factory, the centre of the Soviet military industrial complex, contributed to a new level of cultural consumption among not only the city’s dwellers, but also among all guests of Dnipropetrovsk. Consequently, the pioneering efforts in the popularisation of new modern forms of Western music such as jazz and rock-n-roll also began among engineers and workers of Pivdenmash who contributed to the spread of new cultural forms and activities among those who lived in the city and region of Dnipropetrovsk. The improving living conditions in Dnipropetrovsk led to an increase of the regional population from 2,339,800 people (with a 56 per cent urban population) in 1951 to 2,850,700 (with a 72 per cent urban population) in 1961. The larger salaries and better distribution of food and industrial goods also attracted young people from other regions of the Soviet Union to Dnipropetrovsk. From the 1950s onward, most of the Dnipropetrovsk population were people younger than 30 years old. In 1970 there were 3,343,000 people in the region (76 per cent of who lived in cities) which by 1984 had increased to 3,771,200 people (with 83 per cent urban population). The population of the city of Dnipropetrovsk grew from 660,800 people in 1959 to 1,066,000 in 1979 and more than 1,153,400 people in 1985 when Gorbachev came to power (Glushkina 1985, 10, 11). The Dnipropetrovsk region had a young multinational, predominantly Russian speaking population. Three major ethnic groups shaped the cultural development of the region – Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews. During the peak of ‘international harmony and prosperity of developed socialism’ in 1979, Ukrainians made up the overwhelming majority of the regional (72.8 per cent) and urban (68.5 per cent) population. Due to massive emigration from the Soviet Union, the Jewish population decreased from 2.7 per cent in 1959 to 1.7 per cent in 1979 and 1.3 per cent in 1989. The number of Russians in the region’s population grew rapidly from 17.2 per cent in 1959, 20.9 per cent in 1970, 23 per cent in 1979 and 24.2 per cent in 1989 (O vozrastnoi structure 1971; Goskomstat USSR 1991, 100, 102). By 1985, more than a third of the population in the city of Dnipropetrovsk was ethnically Russian. If we add to this number the 3.2 per cent of Russian-speaking Jews and more than 33 per cent of Ukrainians who considered Russian their native language, we will have more than two thirds of the city’s population who associated themselves with Russian rather than with Ukrainian culture. According to contemporaries, the high salaries and better conditions of living attracted representatives of various nationalities from different republics who also spoke Russian rather than the Ukrainian language in Dnipropetrovsk (Goskomstat USSR 1991, 106, 108, 119, 122; Prudchenko and Smolenska 2007). Komsomol ‘Business’ During the Late Soviet Era The regional economic activities of local ‘businessmen and women’ from the Komsomol during perestroika had their roots in the pre-perestroika era. They also strengthened trends for independence from Moscow which had earlier existed in Dnipropetrovsk. All the elements of their initial business had already been developed during the Brezhnev era when the cultural consumption of late socialism combined the structures of Soviet international tourism with the ideological efforts of Komsomol activists into one business network. Mass rock and discotheque music consumption among Soviet youth was delivered by Komsomol and trade union apparatchiks. International tourism and discotheque enthusiasts provided these apparatchiks with music and video material for their entertainment business. Without these relations it would be impossible to imagine the development of post-Soviet capitalism. The first pioneers of organizing Komsomol business in the region were two graduates of Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute, the Ukrainian-Moldovan Sergiy Tihipko, the First Secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol regional organization in 1986–91, and the Ukrainian Oleksandr Turchynov, who worked with Tihipko as head of the agitation and propaganda division in the same Komsomol regional organisation in 1987–90. Tihipko and Turchynov initiated and ‘ideologically justified’ the first Komsomol businesses in the region. Two other Komsomol members, who also graduated from the same institute as Tihipko and Turchynov, Kolomoyskyy and Viktor Pinchuk, both of Jewish origin, started their careers not in the official Komsomol business, but on the black market of Dnipropetrovsk, trading various goods, and using their financial and engineering skills for their own survival in the conditions of economic collapse of late socialism. Kolomoyskyy used his financial skills and connections with Tihipko to organize its own financial corporation Privatbank, which became the most successful bank in post-Soviet Ukraine. Pinchuk, using his engineering and managerial skills, founded his own metallurgical venture, entitled Interpipe Company. It is noteworthy that all four of those Komsomol members, two Ukrainian and two Jewish, used their personal connections through their friends and partners from Pivdenmash, including through its last director Leonid Kuchma, to start their first businesses in Dnipropetrovsk (see Golovko 2012). In the mid-1980s, when perestroika created favourable conditions for the managerial skills of Komsomol activists, this system produced new activities for cultural consumption, such as video salons which brought their organisers more profits than traditional discotheque clubs. The video business used the same infrastructure and network of the discotheque movement; namely international tourism, Komsomol activists, trade union leaders and the ‘discotheque mafia.’ This network contributed to the business career of two fans of Western popular music, Yulia Tymoshenko and her husband, Oleksandr (Popov, Milshtein, 55; Ponamarchuk). Yulia Grigian (Telegina) was the daughter of Armenian taxi-driver Grigian and Russian technical worker Telegina, a fan of British rock music. Yulia Grigian married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, son of a member of the city KPU committee in the Pivdenmash administration. In 1978, Yulia Tymoshenko joined the student Komsomol organization in the Department of Economy at Dnipropetrovsk State University. This department was opened on the initiative of the Pivdenmash administration in 1977 to provide training for qualified economists in Dnipropetrovsk’s growing military industrial complex. Yulia Tymoshenko graduated with honours from the Department of Economy in 1984 and began her first job as an engineer-economist through the connections of her father-in-law, Hennadii Tymoshenko. For five years, she worked at the Lenin machine building plant, another factory which belonged to the Soviet military industrial complex. In 1979, she gave birth to her daughter Yevhenia, and until 1988 she and her husband enjoyed a typical Soviet upper-middle class life in their one-bedroom cooperative apartment. They continued to watch movies, listen to Western pop music, and occasionally visited and danced in well-known discotheque clubs in downtown Dnipropetrovsk (Popov and Milshtein 2006, 64–67; Suvorov 1991). Perestroika changed the young Tymoshenko family. Hennadii Tymoshenko recommended his son and daughter-in-law to join the co-operative movement and promised his support through the city’s KPU and Soviet administration. In 1988, the young Tymoshenkos used their old connections in the Komsomol discothèque world to open a public service enterprise, a video-rental shop in Dnipropetrovsk, with 5,000 borrowed Soviet roubles. The profits made from this first venture were used to open a chain of video rental stores. They used the experience of Komsomol apparatchiks, who brought their first VCRs in Dnipropetrovsk through Sputnik. Contacts in the discotheque movement helped provide these apparatchiks with Western video tapes and an audience which was ready to consume new Western cultural products. Former discotheque enthusiasts tested these new business practices and proposed the idea of video salons, which had already become the most popular and fashionable form of entertainment Moscow and the three Baltic republics. As a result, during perestroika both the Komsomol and ‘discotheque mafia’ provided infrastructure for these salons in Dnipropetrovsk. When in 1987the KGB opened the city of Dnipropetrovsk to foreigners, Pivdenmash imported thousands of VCRs using barter agreements with South Korean businessmen. As a regional KPU apparatchik who oversaw the distribution of movies throughout the Dnipropetrovsk region (kinoprokat), Yulia Tymoshenko’s father-in-law had access not only to these Korean VCRs but also to local movie theatres which provided the first mass audience for video films. The main base of a Tymoshenko’s ‘video enterprise’ was the location of the former central Komsomol discotheque club of Dnipropetrovsk oblast– the Student Palace in the Taras Shevchenko Park of Culture and Relaxation in downtown Dnipropetrovsk (Popov and Milshtein 2006, 52–89; Ponamarchuk 2007). In 1989, she quit her old engineer-economist job and became the head of the Terminal co-operative. The same year, another participant in the ‘discotheque mafia,’ Serhiy Tihipko, was elected as the first secretary of the Komsomol organization of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. He not only supported Tymoshenko’s enterprise, but also brought his additional discotheque and Sputnik connections into Terminal. In this way, discotheque activists and Komsomol apparatchiks contributed to the growth and popularity of Tymoshenko’s business (Tihipko). In 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Soviet state tourism, the representatives of the Brezhnev era Komsomol elite, such as Tymoshenko demonstrated again that a skilful adjustment of this network to the new economic situation was an important foundation for success in post-Soviet business activities. The initial capital of Terminal, the music and video Komsomol enterprise which Tymoshenko had launched during ‘the discotheque era’ of late socialism, became the foundation of her business and political career in post-Soviet Ukraine. Epilogue: Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol Entrepreneurs and the Formation of Post-Soviet Oligarchs Political corruption in the post-Soviet geopolitical space is rooted in cultural consumption during the Brezhnev era, especially in the so-called ‘discotheque effect’ on society during the era of ‘mature socialism.’ During this period of late socialism in the USSR, millions of Soviet young people, loyal members of Komsomol, fell in love with the catchy sound of ‘beat music’ by the Beatles and hard rock by Deep Purple. Even ten years after dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet space was ruled by former Soviet hard rock fans, representatives of the so-called ‘Deep Purple generation,’ new post-Soviet politicians, such as Russian Prime-Minister Dmitri Medvedev, twice Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, President Petro Poroshenko and former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Paradoxically, détente in the 1970s led to the influx of Western cultural products into the USSR, such as popular music and feature films. As a result, Soviet ideologists, including the Komsomol, attempted to control Soviet consumption of cultural products from the West using ‘Komsomol discothèques’ where Soviet young people could dance to ‘ideologically permitted’ Soviet and Western music. Contemporaries called these organizers ‘disco mafia’ in the industrial cities of Eastern Ukraine. By the end of perestroika in 1991, more than 100 Komsomol businesses had emerged in industrial cities in Eastern Soviet Ukraine, of which more than ninety originated in the city of Dnipropetrovsk (Zhuk 2010, 301). Only a few of the most successful enterprises survived post-Soviet competition during the 1990s and created ‘new business corporations’ such as Yulia Tymoshenko’s ‘Gas Empire,’ Kolomoyskyy’s and Tihipko’s Privatbank, Aleksandr Balashov’s ‘Trade Corporation’ and Rinat Akhmetov’s Liuks. The overwhelming majority of these post-Soviet successful businesses were organised by or directly connected to the ‘disco mafia.’ At the same time, the first Dnipropetrovsk ‘capitalists’ demonstrated a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, from the Ukrainian Tihipko, Armenian-Russian Tymoshenko, Russian Balashov and Jewish Kolomoyskyy contributing to the multi-national identity of the city of Dnipropetrovsk and Dnipro. Some contemporaries noted how the business activities of Komsomol ‘entrepreneurs’ in the 1980s contributed to regional identity in Eastern Ukraine. Many of these ‘entrepreneurs’ who were not ethnic Ukrainians became active participants in the Ukrainian independence movement in 1988–1991 to protect their regional business interests rather than defending Ukrainian culture and language. In the 1990s, former members of the Soviet ‘discotheque mafia’ and their former KPU supervisors became an integral part of the business and political life of independent Ukraine. As leaders of oligarchic clans in Ukraine they have resisted Russian expansion into their ‘spheres of influence.’ The case of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, elected in April 2019, whose entire career was generated inside the Soviet-based system of television entertainment, continues to demonstrate the connection between ‘post-Komsomol‘ business and political careers. Zelenskyy began his acting career in 95-yi Kvartal, which was a reference to a neighbourhood in Kryvyy Rih, where he had grown up and was inspired by the 1960s Soviet television show KVN. As we see, the Dnipropetrovsk and Dnipro elites, who are still rooted in their Soviet past, play a significant role in the development of independent Ukraine. References Berkhoff, Karel C., (2004). Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bolebrukh, Anatolii G. et al., eds., (2001). Dnipropetrovsk: vikhy istorii. Dnipropetrovsk: Grani. Derzhavnyy arkhiv Dnipropetrovskoyi oblasti (hereafter – DADO), f. 19, op. 52, spr. 72. Dnepropetrovskii raketno-kosmicheskii tsentr: Kratkii ocherk stanovlenia i razvitia. (1994). DAZ-YuMZ-KBYu: Khronika dat i sobytii. Dnipropetrovsk: YUMZ. Glushkina, Liudmila G. ed. (1985). Tsentral’noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti. Dnepropetrovshchina v tsifrakh. (K 40-letiu pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine). Dnipropetrovsk: Gosstat. Golovko, Volodymyr. (2012). Ukrainski finasovo-promyslovi grupy v modernizatsiinykh protsesakh 1991-2009. Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NAN Ukrainy. Goskomstat USSR. Dnepropetrovskoe oblatnoe upravlenie statistiki. (1991). Naselenie Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti po dannym Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda. Dnepropetrovsk: Gosstat. Hall, Rex, Shayler, David J. (2001). The Rocket Men: Vostok and Voskhod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights. Chichester, NJ: Springer. Horbulin, Volodymyr P. et al. eds. (1998). Zemni shlyakhy i zoryani orbity. Shtrykhy do portreta Leonida Kuchmy. Kyiv: DrUk. Kuznetskii, Mikhail I., Stazheva, Irina V. eds. (1995). Baikonur – chudo XX veka: Vospominania vevteranov Baikonura ob akademike Mikhaile Kuzmiche Yangele. Moscow: Kosmos. Kuznetskii, Mikhail I. ed. (1997). Baikonur, Korolev, Yangel. Voronezh: Kosmos. Lazebnik, Valentina I. (2001). G. A. Efimenko ed., Oziorka nasha: Istoricheskii ocherk o Dnepropetrovskom Tsentralnom rynke. Dnipropetrovsk: Grani. Lukanov, Yuriy. (1996). Tretii president: Politychnyi portret Leonida Kuchmy. Kyiv: Taki Spravy. Markov, Karlo A. (1995). Uchastie nemetskikh voennoplennykh i internirovannykh v vosstanovlenii narodnogo khoziaistva Dnepropetrovskoi oblastiv pervye polevoennye gody. Voprosy Germanskoi istorii: Ukrainsko-nemetskie sviazi v novoe i noveishee vremia. Mezhvuzovskii sbornik nauchnykh trudov, In: Svetlana Bobyliova, ed., Dnipropetrovsk: DDU, 158–172. Mlechin, Leonid M. (2005). Brezhnev. Moscow: Molodaia gvardia. Nahaylo, Bohdan. (1999). The Ukrainian Resurgence. Toronto: Hurst. O vozrastnoi structure, urovne obrazovania, natsional’nom sostave, iazykakh i istochnikakh sredstv sushchestvovania naselenia Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti po dannym Vsessoiuznoi perepisis naselenia na 15 ianvaria 1970 goda. (1971). Dneprovskaia Pravda, June 26. Pikhovshek, Vyacheslav, et al., eds. (1996). ‘Dnipropetrovska simya’: Informatsia stanom na 25 lystopada 1996 roku. Kyiv: Ukrainian Centre for Independent Political Research. Pikhovshek, Vyacheslav et al. Eds. (1996). Dnipropetrovsk vs. Security Service. Kyiv: Lybed. Platonov, Vitalii P. and Horbulin, Volodymyr.P. (1979). Mykhaylo K. Yangel. Kyiv: Nauka. Plyushch, Leonid. (1979). History’s Carnival: A Dissident’s Autobiography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ponamarchuk, Dmytro. (2007). Prosto Yulia. Izvestia, September 20. Popov, Dmitrii, and Milshtein, Ilia. (2006). Oranzhevaia printsessa. Zagadka Yulii Timoshenko. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Ol’gi Morozovoi. Romanov, Aleksandr P., Gubarev, Vladimir S. (1989). Konstruktory. Moscow: Molodaia gvardia. Siddiqi, Asif A. (2003). Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Elberg-Wilson, Eliot. (2016). ‘Eduard Artem’iev and the Sonics of National Identity,’ Slovo, 28, 2: 2–25. Strazheva, Irina V. (1978). Tiulpany s kosmodroma. Moscow: Molodaia gvardia. Vasiliev, I. V. et al. eds. (1977). Istoria gorodov i siol Ukrainskoi SSR v 26-ti tomakh: Dnepropetrovskaia oblast. Kyiv: Glavnaia redaktsia Ukrainskoi Sovestskoi Entsiklopedii. Vosstanovlenie Pridneprovia (1946–1950). (1980). Dokumenty i materially. Kyiv: Nauka. Wilson, Andrew. (2000). The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Zhuk, Sergei. (2004). Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830–1917. Baltimore, MD & Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Centre Press. Zhuk, Sergei (2010). Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985. Baltimore, MD & Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Centre Press. **Interviews**Igor T., KGB officer, 15 May 1991, Dnipropetrovsk. Karlo A. Markov, 12 April 1992, Dnipropetrovsk State University. Mikhail Suvorov, 1 June 1991, Dnipropetrovsk. Natalia V. Bocharova, 15 March 1993, Dnipropetrovsk State University. Sergiy Tihipko, director of Privatbank in Dnipropetrovsk, 12 October 1993, Dnipropetrovsk. Yevhen D. Prudchenko and Halyna V. Smolenska, 18 July 2007, Central Library of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Dnipropetrovsk. Notes [1] I used also numerous interviews conducted with my relatives, who are ethnic Ukrainians, but live in Moscow, Russia, who still support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-Ukrainian politics. [2] Sovnarkhoz is abbreviated from Russian Sovet narodnogo khoziaistva, an economic department in the Soviet government during the early Stalin era and during Khrushchev’s reforms.

Nov 14 • 7:58 AM EST • Politics • e-ir.org

Iran’s President Vows to Root Out Corruption, Bribery

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reaffirmed his administration’s determination to combat corruption, bribery and rent-seeking in the country’s economy, vowing firm and uncompromising action to eliminate corrupt practices and prevent their recurrence.

Nov 14 • 6:23 AM EST • Politics • tasnimnews.ir

Music majors score work in Fort Wayne's growing scene

Fort Wayne's music economy offers various career opportunities for students who studied music, but not all graduates opt to stay.

Nov 13 • 7:00 PM EST • Entertainment • journalgazette.net

Wholesale inflation rises again

Welcome to The Hill’s Business & Economy newsletter{beacon} Business & Economy Business & Economy The Big Story Wholesale inflation hit nearly four-year high: BLS…

Nov 13 • 6:09 PM EST • Business • thehill.com

JB Smoove Talks Creativity and Fighting AI Fears, Evan Shapiro Breaks Down the Digital Entertainment Economy at Variety’s Business Managers Breakfast

JB Smoove brought his signature creative swagger and Evan Shapiro broke down the digital entertainment economy during lively conversations held as part of Variety‘s annual Business Managers Breakfast ...

Nov 13 • 5:58 PM EST • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Gamers granted vacation days to play GTA 6: 'Five-day business trip in Vice City'

As the Nov. 19 release of Grand Theft Auto IV threatens to drain $1 billion from the US economy in one day alone, a Japanese video game company is giving its workers a five-day weekend to soak up the...

Nov 13 • 3:55 PM EST • Technology • nypost.com

The NVIDIA story is a BFD

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies and perhaps the most strategically important corporation to the future of the United States, resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair with a woman U.S. intelligence officials believe was a Chinese spy. This is a big fucking deal. Thanks, Captain Obvious. But my impression is that the political world is under-reacting to the Nvidia story. We’re overdue to have at least an initial newsletter covering it. I don’t expect this to become a Silver Bulletin obsession, but the overlap between politics and AI is well within our purview, and this story falls within those sightlines. I’m going to do this as one of those “13 thoughts” bullet-pointed lists that can make for a nice shortcut for these developing news stories. The usual ground rule is that I’m working through my thinking with you in real time, so treat this as provisional. To be clear, this is political analysis, not a scandal explainer. For more about the scandal itself, read Zvi or listen to these recent editions of Odd Lots or Search Engine: Basically, what those describe is that this story isn’t just about Jensen Huang having slept with an alleged Chinese agent, Alice Huang. As this New York Times graphic illustrates, there’s also a broader penumbra of suspicion related to a company called Megaspeed, which Alice Huang ran and which bought Nvidia chips through Nvidia’s hardware partners. U.S. authorities began investigating Megaspeed in 2024, during the Biden administration, over whether it diverted advanced Nvidia chips to China in violation of U.S. export controls. The Commerce Department’s work on the probe was paused in late 2025, and the case was “abruptly transferred” to the Justice Department, the Times reported. My 13 thoughts A canonically good bet is to “buy the rumor but sell the news.” In other words, to bet on people overreacting. That would have been good advice in the case of Haley Stevens’s endorsement of Mike Rogers, for instance. But I think there’s a case for buying the news when the news cycle is particularly busy. The political news world has been knee-deep in the midterms, which is an absolutely massive story given the magnitude of the Democratic sweep. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s one of the bigger political earthquakes of the century. However, public attention spans and journalistic bandwidth are finite resources. The timing might lead one to downplay the magnitude of the Nvidia story. It will probably build. In terms of the magnitude, the comparison that comes to mind is the onset of the Iran War, which also dropped amid a busy news cycle1. Nvidia is not the same sort of story, but it is of roughly the same shape and size, because there are tripartite implications for the economy, for geopolitics and for domestic politics.

Nov 13 • 3:08 PM EST • Politics • natesilver.net

Rick Snyder: Claims that Israeli business ties hurt Michigan’s economy are wrong

Michigan Israel Business Accelerator has delivered for Michigan's economy, the former governor says.

Nov 13 • 12:45 PM EST • Business • crainsdetroit.com

H.I.G. Capital backs a rollup venture in a bet on the creator economy

H.I.G. Capital launches Waveborn with a Jake Rosen Entertainment deal, signaling private equity's next bet on the creator economy.

Nov 13 • 8:00 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

H.I.G. Capital backs a rollup venture in a bet on the creator economy

H.I.G. Capital launches Waveborn with a Jake Rosen Entertainment deal, signaling private equity's next bet on the creator economy.

Nov 13 • 8:00 AM EST • Entertainment • businessinsider.com

Manufacturing remains economic engine as projects take shape

Iowa’s economy is largely concentrated around agriculture, finance and insurance and manufacturing, but no industry employs more people or contributes more to the state’s gross domestic product than manufacturing, according to a study from the Common Sense Institute. Manufacturing accounts for 17% of the state’s gross domestic product and contributes $35 billion annually to the…

Nov 13 • 7:00 AM EST • Business • businessrecord.com

How AI tools are quietly reshaping working conditions in hospitals

AI tools can degrade clinicians’ work conditions by increasing administrative pressure, and introducing gig-economy practices to nursing without adequate safeguards, according to panelists at AHCJ's fall summit.

Nov 12 • 6:36 PM EST • Health • healthjournalism.org

In a challenging year, Vermont’s outdoor business leaders are full of optimism

While federal policy has left some businesses on shaky ground, officials and business owners agree that outdoor recreation could increase its role in the state’s economy.

Nov 12 • 5:59 PM EST • Business • vtdigger.org

Small Business Owners Are More Confident In Their Own Companies Than In The Economy, And Two-Thirds Use AI

Sixty-one percent of small business owners say they're optimistic about their own business

Nov 12 • 5:22 PM EST • Business • cpapracticeadvisor.com

Column: America’s Innovation Economy Runs on Small Business

Small businesses are the engine of America’s economic and technological future, and the Trump administration knows it.

Nov 12 • 10:33 AM EST • Business • cpapracticeadvisor.com

Small Business Owners Are More Confident In Their Own Companies Than In The Economy, And Two-Thirds Use AI, Gusto Survey Finds

Gusto today released its 2026 State of Small Business report, a survey of 1,731 owners of U.S. small businesses with 24 or fewer employees. Sixty-one percent say they're optimistic about their own business, unchanged from a year ago. Only 18% feel that way about the U.S. economy, down from 29% in 2025, and 59% now describe themselves as pessimistic about it, up from 50%.

Nov 12 • 6:00 AM EST • Business • finance.yahoo.com

AI to stay dominant force behind US business investment in 2027, Goldman says

Nov 12 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs on Wednesday forecast annualized spending on artificial intelligence-related hardware and intellectual property will climb to $1.4 trillion by the end of 2027, equivalent to nearly 4% of the US economy.

Nov 12 • 3:51 AM EST • Business • sacbee.com

UK economy grows by 0.7% in third quarter despite high oil prices

ONS also says GDP rose 0.2% month on month in September, in a boost to the chancellor, John Healey

Nov 12 • 2:07 AM EST • Business • theguardian.com

The wiretapping scandal that threatens ‘open warfare’ among Indonesia’s political elite

Rift between president and Joko Widodo brings more upheaval to south-east Asia’s largest economy

Nov 11 • 7:35 PM EST • Politics • ft.com

How NRRI Can Rejuvenate Minnesota’s Natural-Resources Economy

The Duluth-based institute is poised to play a key role in new economic development up north.

Nov 11 • 2:48 PM EST • Business • tcbmag.com

Don't believe these 3 longevity myths, doctors say: The most important factors 'don't cost anything'

With the wellness economy growing, experts break down three of modern America's commonly believed longevity myths — and what you should know instead.

Nov 11 • 2:06 PM EST • Technology • cnbc.com

Principal Financial Well-Being Index: Business confidence falls as cost concerns rise

Employers across the country are becoming less optimistic about the economy and their business outlooks, although many companies describe themselves as financially healthy, according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index released today. The overall Well-Being Index fell to 6.02 out of 10 in October. The Principal Well-Being Index is a quarterly survey measuring U.S. business…

Nov 11 • 11:32 AM EST • Business • businessrecord.com

Iowa Economy recap: Leaders watch appointments, budget

After the mid-term elections on Nov. 3, including Rob Sand’s election as governor and changes to the Legislature, Iowa business leaders will be monitoring the governor-elect’s transition team, appointments to state agencies and the priorities outlined in his first legislative agenda. On the latest episode of the Iowa Economy Podcast, hosted by BPC President Chris…

Nov 10 • 4:51 PM EST • Business • businessrecord.com

Gov. Sherrill signs executive order to boost New Jersey's economy, reduce business costs

NEW JERSEY — Gov. Mikie Sherrill has signed an executive order establishing a statewide economic development strategy aimed at reducing business costs, attracting investment, creating jobs and making it easier …

Nov 10 • 1:29 PM EST • Business • wrnjradio.com

Chip Whitworth: Reliable power drives Tampa Bay’s business community and economy

Reliable electricity strengthens Tampa Bay businesses, resilience and economic growth.

Nov 10 • 12:54 PM EST • Business • floridapolitics.com

Sesame Street Day Sees Sesame Workshop Show Saved by Netflix, YouTube

As the world celebrates 'Sesame Street Day' today, the long-running PBS show has survived by embracing the creator economy and cutting deals with the likes of Netflix after its pact with HBO ended.

Nov 10 • 10:02 AM EST • Business • hollywoodreporter.com

NORC polling takeaways: Arkansans worried about economy, healthcare, data center impact

The midterm election last week handed Democrats historic wins across the country along with moderate gains in Arkansas' statehouse. The results of the election also revealed many of the top issues that drove voters' concerns.

Nov 10 • 6:00 AM EST • Health • arkansasadvocate.com

Druski On 'SNL' Marks Start Of Creator Economy’s Franchise Era (Commentary)

In a column, Hollywood executive Adam Goodman says now is the time for the entertainment industry and content creators to get in the franchise game.

Nov 9 • 3:45 PM EST • Entertainment • deadline.com

All INdiana Politics: Indiana Democrats make gains in statewide, congressional and legislative races

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Democrats made major gains in the election, winning two statewide offices, flipping a congressional seat and coming close to control of the Indiana House. Republican leaders and political analysts said the results reflected voter concerns about affordability, the economy and the direction of national politics. Democrats Beau Bayh and Jessica Bailey won […]

Nov 9 • 12:15 AM EST • Politics • wrtv.com

Israel has two years to restore its standing in the US before a potentially hostile president takes office

Opinion: With Israel's global legitimacy eroding, the next government must put diplomacy ahead of domestic politics, rein in West Bank extremism and pursue regional agreements before shifting US politics threatens the country's security and economy

Nov 8 • 9:41 PM EST • Politics • ynetnews.com

Pope Leo arrives in Argentina and tells Milei that people, not the economy, should come first

Leo’s visit to Argentina is by far the most politically delicate of his three-nation South American tour, and a place where Leo will also confront the complicated legacy of Argentine Pope Francis, who never returned home during his 12-year pontificate.

Nov 8 • 5:42 PM EST • Politics • pbs.org

Voters demanded economic relief. Trump and Democrats face tough choices on how to deliver

Voters have sent a strong election-year message to President Donald Trump and the new Democratic congressional majority to repair the U.S. economy damaged by inflation.

Nov 8 • 7:44 AM EST • Politics • clickondetroit.com

Business

News and features about the companies, people and trends shaping the economy around Boston and New England, from the Fortune 500 to small family businesses.

Nov 7 • 6:23 PM EST • Business • bostonglobe.com

Honolulu summit focuses on building AI-ready workforce for Hawaiʻi

Organizers of the fifth annual Hawaiʻi AI and Cloud Innovation Summit said the event drew hundreds of business, government, nonprofit, education and technology leaders to the Hilton Waikiki Beach Resort to discuss how artificial intelligence could affect Hawaiʻi’s economy and jobs. TRUE Initiative convened the summit with the state Department of Business, Economic Development and […]

Nov 7 • 2:00 PM EST • Business • mauinow.com

Inflation, housing, jobs and corporate earnings will dominate the business calendar this week

Inflation updates dominate the calendar this week, along with a checkup on the housing market and more data on employment in the U.S. The latest updates come a week after voters across the U.S. gave Democrats a sweep of Congress...

Nov 7 • 10:11 AM EST • Business • seattletimes.com

U.S. economy adds a robust 165,000 jobs in October

Nov 6 • 7:03 PM EST • Business • cnn.com

The 2027 Economy: Insights for Smarter Business Decisions

NJBIA.ORG

Nov 6 • 2:12 PM EST • Business • njbia.org

The Midterms Rattled AI Stocks. Here’s What to Watch in the Broader Economy.

Politics, policy, and markets collided this week as AI-exposed stocks faced a selloff after the midterms. There are reasons for cautious optimism despite the volatility, but two questions—how strong the economy is and what is driving the selling—will determine what comes next.

Nov 6 • 2:11 PM EST • Politics • cfr.org

Political Economy Forecasts: The 2026 Midterms -

Forecasting the 2026 US Midterm Elections Political Economy Forecasts: The 2026 Midterms By Charles P. Tien, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Michael S. Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa We employ a political economy [...]

Nov 6 • 2:00 PM EST • Politics • politicalsciencenow.com

5 things to know in life sciences: Week of Nov. 2, 2026

Each week we highlight five things affecting the life sciences industry. Here’s the latest.

Nov 6 • 10:52 AM EST • Science • realeconomy.rsmus.com

Business, nonprofit and government leaders reflect on the economy at annual State of the County summit - Santa Barbara News-Press

More than 300 people gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Goleta for the event hosted by the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce

Nov 6 • 10:13 AM EST • Business • newspress.com

U.S. Economy adds 165K jobs in October, stronger than expected

Nov 6 • 9:27 AM EST • Business • cnn.com

NH economy grows slowly

New Hampshire’s economy continued its lowgear, forward momentum in the spring, grinding away at a 2% annual growth rate that is slower than several of its Northeast neighbors and the country as a whole.

Nov 6 • 8:50 AM EST • Business • nhbr.com

After midterms, Trump is left to weigh his next move in Iran war that contributed to GOP loss

As Trump ponders his next move, the stakes couldn't be higher for Iran, the Middle East and the global economy writ large.

Nov 5 • 6:46 PM EST • Politics • pbs.org

Opinion | Politics Shakes Up the Markets

A tech correction could force Washington to focus on the economy.

Nov 5 • 5:40 PM EST • Politics • wsj.com

Businesses still struggling with sea border, Stormont reports find

The studies, which look at the practical impacts of the Windsor Framework were commissioned by the Department for the Economy.

Nov 5 • 2:48 PM EST • Business • yahoo.com

Lansing leaders meet to discuss how sports events can boost the regional economy

The Lansing Sports Commission held its first sports tourism summit

Nov 5 • 12:40 PM EST • Sports • wilx.com

Lansing Sports Commission holds sports tourism summit to boost local economy

Lansing leaders met Thursday to discuss how sports events can boost the regional economy.

Nov 5 • 12:39 PM EST • Sports • 1011now.com

Lansing Sports Commission holds sports tourism summit to boost local economy

Lansing leaders met Thursday to discuss how sports events can boost the regional economy.

Nov 5 • 12:39 PM EST • Sports • kptv.com

Small Business Insider: Election Response, Entrepreneurial Surge, Policy Update & More - Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

● Election Results Amplify Call to Address High Costs and Economic Uncertainty ● Kerrigan in the DC Journal: America’s Innovation Economy Runs on Small Business – Why Protecting Bayh-Dole Matters ● Featured Interview on BRN: Kerrigan on CHOICE Arrangements ● ICYMI: America’s Entrepreneurship Surge Continues – Nearly 5 Million Business Applications Filed Through September ● […]

Nov 5 • 10:09 AM EST • Business • sbecouncil.org

Lance Turner named communications director at State Chamber

The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/Associated Industries of Arkansas announced the hiring of Lance Turner as director of communications. Turner will oversee the State Chamber/AIA’s communications strategy, including digital and...

Nov 5 • 9:53 AM EST • Business • talkbusiness.net

Vance Breaks With Trump and Steps Into Political Abyss | WSJ Politics Newsletter for Nov. 5

Plus, Democrats’ disciplined messaging on the economy paid off on Election Day, and how midterm results threaten America’s AI boom.

Nov 5 • 7:01 AM EST • Politics • wsj.com

Inflation pushes young voters to Democrats in 2026 midterms

Younger Americans are worried about the economy and high prices. They also swung Democrat in the midterms.

Nov 5 • 5:00 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Commentary: Why aren’t employers hiring right now?

The economy is growing strongly, so why is nobody hiring? The latest data show growth hit 3.4% in the third quarter of this year, faster than expected. Yet during that

Nov 5 • 5:00 AM EST • Entertainment • thederrick.com

The U.S. spent 50 years trying to escape oil shocks. They still upend elections.

Even as the energy economy has changed radically, the politics of oil have not.

Nov 5 • 5:00 AM EST • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Centuries-old cemetery helps scientists link climate shocks to Industrial Revolution disease

During England's Industrial Revolution, when the country's farming-based economy transformed into an industrial one between roughly 1760 and 1840, pollution, harsh working conditions, inadequate housing ...

Nov 5 • 12:00 AM EST • Science • phys.org

Political Analyst: Midterms in Virginia were a rebuke of Trump

Randolph-Macon Political Science Professor Rich Meagher says Tuesday’s midterm elections in Virginia were a rebuke of President Donald Trump and his record on the economy.

Nov 4 • 5:14 PM EST • Politics • wric.com

Economic Report: Rancho Mirage Invests in Business, Housing, and Tourism

Rancho Mirage strengthens its economy through healthcare, tourism, new residential communities, and investments in infrastructure and sustainability.

Nov 4 • 5:00 PM EST • Business • palmspringslife.com

Trump-backed redistricting sought a midterm edge for Republicans. It didn't work

Republicans lost most of the Democratic-held seats they had targeted to flip, lost others they had banked on retaining and got swept out of power by a Democratic surge fueled by voter dissatisfaction with Trump, the economy and the war with Iran.

Nov 4 • 3:00 PM EST • Politics • pbs.org

Iran Holds Technology Olympics

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran has held the third edition of the Technology Olympics, an event aimed at identifying talented young people, strengthening their problem-solving skills, and connecting them with real-world industrial projects and the knowledge-based economy.

Nov 4 • 8:25 AM EST • Science • tasnimnews.ir

Letters: Credit card change could hurt small businesses

I recently read an op-ed in this newspaper arguing that the Durbin-Marshall credit card mandates would ease pressure on Louisiana businesses and keep our economy growing. As an entrepreneur, I

Nov 4 • 1:15 AM EST • Business • nola.com

AP Voter Poll: The economy and the state of democracy are voters’ top issues

About 4 in 10 U.S. voters nationally say the economy is the most important issue facing the country, as most express concern about gas prices and the cost of groceries. About 3 in 10 say the state of democracy is the top issue.

Nov 3 • 6:26 PM EST • Politics • pbs.org

What brought people to the polls? Northeast Ohio voters cite economy, national politics

Voters from across the region took to the polls to cast their ballots. We caught up with a few to find out what was on their mind this Election Day.

Nov 3 • 5:29 PM EST • Politics • ideastream.org

Early CNN Voter Poll results find an electorate deeply unhappy with Trump and the economy

Voters are broadly unhappy with the state of the nation, the condition of the economy and President Donald Trump’s job performance, according to CNN’s Voter Poll.

Nov 3 • 5:12 PM EST • Politics • cnn.com

From booth to business: How art markets grow Eugene’s creative economy

When Erick Wonderly Varela first arrived at the Whiteaker Community Market, they brought with them a folding table, three stickers, a handful of prints, and a little encouragement from their mother. As artist for as long as they could remember, Erick had never quite approached their creative practice as a business. At the time, they […]

Nov 3 • 1:32 PM EST • Business • lookouteugene-springfield.com

What's at stake in the 2026 midterms for Elon Musk, tech, economy

From inflation and AI backlash to Elon Musk's record spending on Republicans, here's what's at stake in the 2026 midterm elections.

Nov 3 • 6:01 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Want Your Business to Thrive? Don't Shelve Growth Plans During Economic Uncertainty

Growth-minded companies shouldn't sit and wait for the economy to improve before going ahead with plans to expand. The real risk to the business is doing nothing.

Nov 3 • 6:00 AM EST • Business • kiplinger.com

Wharton economist says his AI views 'radically shifted'

Wharton Associate Professor of Finance Sylvain Catherine says AI tools can boost the economy, but the AI race risks a "wild level of uncertainty."

Nov 3 • 5:51 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Georgia Football Needs a Strong Economy, Not an Uncertain Business Climate Under Keisha Lance Bottoms

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia football operates in an increasingly complicated financial environment. The Bulldogs compete against programs with enormous resources, sophisticated recruiting operations and growing NIL budgets. Maintaining that advantage requires Georgia to remain an attractive destination for businesses and major donors. Keisha Lance Bottoms’ proposed pause on new data center construction deserves scrutiny from…

Nov 3 • 2:52 AM EST • Business • sports.yahoo.com

Commentary: Alaska fishers need clean energy solutions to lower fuel costs

The war in Iran has sent fuel prices soaring, and that increase took a toll on my business and all the other small-scale fishing businesses that power Alaska’s rural economy.

Nov 2 • 10:21 PM EST • Business • alaskabeacon.com

The US Electorate Is Permanently Mobilized and Unable to Move

Voters are epically dissatisfied as we enter into the midterms. But our political economy and social world are not changing in response to that dissatisfaction.

Nov 2 • 12:33 PM EST • Politics • jacobin.com

U.S. economy could lose $1B as gamers plan to rob liquor stores, steal cars

Two of the biggest game franchises of all time — "World of Warcraft" and "Grand Theft Auto" — are getting new releases this month.

Nov 2 • 12:27 PM EST • Technology • cleveland.com

Calvert Farm Tour Puts Watermen, Bay Science in Spotlight

Calvert's Oct. 29 farm tour stopped at Bay research labs, Watermen's Wharf and Chesapeake's Bounty to spotlight the county's farm and seafood economy.

Nov 2 • 10:44 AM EST • Science • southernmarylandchronicle.com

Business Analyst: Economy top of mind on Election Day

Nov 2 • 9:52 AM EST • Business • yahoo.com

The AI economy is a small-business economy

For Goldman Sachs, the opportunity is helping small businesses move from experimenting with AI to integrating it into how they operate and grow

Nov 2 • 9:00 AM EST • Business • fastcompany.com

Business luncheon explores economy

At a Dorset luncheon, state chamber leaders said health care, housing, taxes and permitting challenges are delaying hiring and investment.

Nov 2 • 7:44 AM EST • Business • manchesterjournal.com

How Trump’s economic promises are holding up so far

On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump made a series of bold promises to voters about how he would rapidly drive down the cost of living and transform the US economy if they sent him back to the White House.

Nov 2 • 7:38 AM EST • Business • cnn.com

From the Editor: ‘Family-owned’ applies to many Maine businesses

Maine’s economy relies on family-owned businesses. But, like any business, those held by families need to keep pace with the times.

Nov 2 • 7:00 AM EST • Business • mainebiz.biz

More than 70 Minnesota children detained during ICE surge, state report finds

A preliminary report from a council established by Gov. Tim Walz details the toll of the federal immigration crackdown on children, schools and the state’s economy.

Nov 1 • 1:03 PM EST • Business • startribune.com

Zohranomics 101: How Mamdani is reshaping NYC's $1.3 trillion economy

A year after Zohran Mamdani's election, a slow-motion economic revolution is underway — from small wins and filled potholes to rent freezes.

Nov 1 • 4:11 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

North Carolina early voting tops 2 million as voters cite economy, health care concerns

More than 2 million North Carolinians cast ballots during early voting ahead of Election Day.

Oct 31 • 3:40 PM EDT • Health • abc11.com

Kerrigan in the DC Journal: America's Innovation Economy Runs on Small Business - Why Protecting Bayh-Dole Matters - Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

In an Op-Ed published in the DC Journal this week and now appearing in local newspapers across the country, SBE Council President & CEO Karen Kerrigan highlights the indispensable role of small businesses and startups in driving American innovation, technological advancement, and economic growth. Kerrigan points to the extraordinary success of the bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act, […]

Oct 31 • 9:05 AM EDT • Business • sbecouncil.org

US Rep Jim Clyburn says Colom election is key for voting rights laws

The economy is key for most voters in the midterm elections. The future of the Voting Rights Act is top of mind for many in the South as well.

Oct 31 • 6:06 AM EDT • Politics • clarionledger.com

Local business confidence concerns have eased compared with 2025, index shows

Southern Nevada business leaders are still feeling uncertain about the economy’s future, but fears have eased when it comes to hiring, sales and profits, according to a new report.

Oct 30 • 3:03 PM EDT • Business • reviewjournal.com

Lines Under the Sea: The Politics of the Middle East’s Data Corridors

The Middle East is using fiber to rebuild the transit economy it once framed around oil and the Suez Canal. Which routes get laid will depend as much on security and sovereignty as on engineering, with the question of Palestine central to the choice

Oct 30 • 1:24 PM EDT • Politics • thecairoreview.com

Why Hollywood Is Turning Food Into Its Next Business Opportunity

Explore how the 2026 L.A. Times Food Bowl, BLXST’s Everytable partnership and the creator economy reveal new business opportunities in food and entertainment.

Oct 30 • 1:22 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Small business Saturday, culinary edition

Small Business Saturday falls on November 28th this year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it’s the perfect time to strengthen the Island’s local economy by promoting the importance of small businesses. Because the reality is that supporting local businesses isn’t just about shopping, it’s about investing in the well-being of our community. When we purchase […]

Oct 30 • 12:53 PM EDT • Business • mvtimes.com

Column: America’s innovation economy runs on small business

Small businesses are the engine of America’s economic and technological future, and the Trump administration knows it. Administration officials have repeatedly cited startup formation and entrepreneurship as key to addressing the nation’s m…

Oct 30 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • thenewsherald.com

The politics of war

Israel went to the polls last Tuesday and it is the turn of the United States next Tuesday. The differences in the two elections are self-evident. Compared with the US, which has favourable geography and does everything at scale, Israel is tiny and part of an unstable region. For its elections, it has adopted an almost pure form of proportional representation based on lists. This encourages multiple parties and can make it almost impossible to form a government, as we can now see. The US system is complex in its own way but discourages third parties. Yet for all the differences in size, geography, and political systems, the fates of the two countries are closely connected. Israel has come to depend on the US to sustain its military strength, and over the past few tumultuous years that dependence has created resentment in the United States. The Biden administration was punished for appearing to give Netanyahu a blank check after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, and not holding Israel back as it employed ruthless tactics in Gaza. Because of the treatment of Palestinians, American views of Israel have grown progressively more negative over the past few years. Only a third now support the Israeli government. While on the left, this is largely because of how Israeli forces have operated in Gaza and, more recently, how the settler movement has behaved in the West Bank, for the American right the issue has been about how Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Donald Trump to forget his wariness about more Middle Eastern wars and agree to a joint attack on Iran, which has gone badly wrong. The Palestine question was not a big issue for the two large Jewish blocs in last Tuesday’s election. Both supported a tough response to Hamas after October 2023 and neither accepts a two-state solution. It was, however, the threat posed by the ethno-nationalist policies of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two extreme members of Netanyahu’s coalition, and their tolerance, even encouragement, of settler violence, that brought out the Arab voters. (In principle this should strengthen their position though to turn into real power would require the ‘Change Bloc’ overcoming their opposition to involving Arab parties. The alternatives are a National Unity government, defection from the Change Bloc to Netanyahu, or deadlock and another round of elections in the new year.) There was also broad support for the war against Iran among the Jewish parties. The difficulty here is that the objectives behind the war have yet to be met, and that continuing with military operations depends on the United States. In this way the two elections have come together at a crucial moment. If Netanyahu hoped that a victory over Iran would help him retain his majority, cementing his legacy as an Israeli war leader, it did not work out that way. Trump also expected a great victory about which he could boast. He promised at most the end of a hateful and aggressive regime, with a record of hostility to both the United States and Israel, or at least the elimination of Iran’s military capabilities and the end of its nuclear programme. Eight months on, there is not much to boast about; vital objectives remain elusive: the Iranian regime is even more hardline than before; the international economy is barely coping with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz; and Saudi Arabia is struggling with an unwanted conflict with the Yemeni Houthis. For all these reasons, the Iran War has been a dark cloud hanging over both elections. Yet the issue has been approached in different ways. Netanyahu sought to push the issue before the election while Trump has been more cautious. Trump’s essential claim is that there is nothing to worry about and he’s still working out what final steps need to be taken to provide a definitive conclusion to the conflict. Netanyahu’s final pitch was that there was lots to worry about. He focused on Israel’s dire security situation, with the Iran War unfinished and the prospect of imminent economic isolation because of international sanctions. For him it is imperative to defeat Iran decisively, and without delay. Why this different response to the same war? Part of the answer lies in how public opinion in the two countries responded to the war. In this post, I show how this came about. We await the outcome of the US midterms but know the result, at least in terms of the share of the vote if not yet the shape of the new government, of the Israeli election. With the elections out of the way Netanyahu is pressing for another round in the war. Trump is less sure. I conclude with thoughts on the importance of how he decides.

Oct 30 • 5:22 AM EDT • Politics • samf.substack.com

Duets Launches a New Ecosystem for Startups Building in Sports and Entertainment

LOS ANGELES, October 29, 2026--Duets launches today to help startups in sports, entertainment and the creator economy find the people, support and funding they need to grow.

Oct 29 • 12:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com

U.S. economy grew at a fast clip in 3rd quarter, thanks to consumer spending

The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent.

Oct 29 • 8:37 AM EDT • Business • washingtonpost.com

TAAG Angloa partners with AirFi to deliver In-Flight Entertainment

TAAG Angola Airlines, the national carrier of Angola, has entered into a partnership with AirFi to deploy AirFi’s portable streaming in-flight entertainment solution (IFE) across the airline’s mixed fleet of long-haul and regional aircraft. Together, the partners aim to enhance the digital journey for TAAG Angola passengers by delivering modern in-flight entertainment services, which they […]

Oct 29 • 8:28 AM EDT • Entertainment • economyclassandbeyond.boardingarea.com

Trump defends war in Iran, tariffs during Texas campaign swing

Despite polls showing most Texans disapprove of the president's handling of the economy and the war in Iran, Trump can’t stop talking about both.

Oct 29 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • houstonchronicle.com

A golden age of science is coming

It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science”. In 1996, science writer John Horgan even published a book called The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. The fundamental idea was that the Universe only has so many insights to discover, and that we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit. It was the idea that Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed when he said that “we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” As the big ideas and the simple ideas get mined out, we’re forced to throw ever more brains at the mysteries of nature just to keep scientific progress going at a fraction of its old pace: It looked like science was hitting a wall. Then along came AI. It’s far too early to tell how much AI will eventually speed up the growth of total factor productivity. But already we can see signs of a speedup in science. Anthropic Founder Jack Clark assembled some of the hopeful data points in a recent lecture: [ Dror Poleg@drorpoleg "If you pick different parts of science, you see the same pattern show up: Progress is accelerating, and it has started to accelerate in the last two years." Jack Clark @jackclarkSF I’m speaking at the IMF in an hour about the singularity and why I believe it has begun and the choices we'll need to make. Watch live here: https://t.co/Hj9HzcXx5h 6:08 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 21.2K Views 2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 123 Likes ](https://x.com/drorpoleg/status/2111882070376980529) Anthropic is accelerating its investment into drug discovery, and is already announcing some impressive preliminary results: [ BioTender@Junioryu136689 BREAKING: Anthropic unveils early results from six Claude-powered drug development collaborations. • 70% shorter CAR-T signaling domain • ~35,000 antibody designs • >10× tighter antibody binding • 89% less batch-record review time Still largely preclinical. Anthropic @AnthropicAI Over the past few months, Anthropic scientists have engaged in deep research partnerships with six organizations developing new medicines. We've also begun drug discovery efforts of our own. In doing so, we’ve learned much more about how Claude can support the many stages of 9:43 PM · Oct 27, 2026 · 11.2K Views 3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 205 Likes ](https://x.com/Junioryu136689/status/2115197821150495150) Claude also appears to be enabling rapid progress toward a treatment for food allergies. OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a possible breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Chief Scientist Pushmeet Kohli has a list of recent scientific advances that have been enabled by its new Gemini model, including breakthroughs in nuclear fusion reactor design, rare disease research, and quantum computing: [ Pushmeet Kohli@pushmeet Gemini 4 Argon is a step change in model performance. In recent weeks, it has had a transformative impact on the Science projects in our team at @GoogleDeepMind and our external collaborators, and helped make a number of remarkable advances across scientific disciplines. 🧵👇 4:47 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 36.5K Views 8 Replies · 41 Reposts · 497 Likes ](https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2110049807385702623) But as cool as these stories sound, they’re just very minor, preliminary efforts. There are a number of reasons to think that AI is going to propel us into a golden age of scientific discovery. That age might not last forever — AI might still run into diminishing returns eventually. But the next few decades are probably going to be an absolutely amazing time for human science. The number of “effective researchers” is no longer limited The most important input into science is scientists themselves. Until this year, that meant human brains — talented, highly trained human brains. The number of trained human brains could be increased by sending more people to grad school, but only to a point — the smartest people tend to be sent into the hardest research fields first, and if you 10x the number of researchers, the average quality will go down. This constraint was already starting to bite, as Ekerdt and Wu argued in 2024: We argue that a substantial portion of the downward historical trend in U.S. research productivity is a composition effect resulting from self-selection in researcher ability and the dramatic expansion of the research sector…[W]e find that this composition effect has lowered average researcher ability by between 37% and 53%[.] And of course, low fertility was making the problem worse, because fewer children meant fewer people who were able to become future scientists. AI just blows up this constraint completely. If an AI agent can function as an autonomous researcher, there’s no constraint on the number of researchers in the world — you can just build more of them, by building more computer chips and data centers that enable the running of more AI agents. Whether or not massive hordes of agents can collaborate to solve individual problems much faster, increasing the number of agents allows them to tackle many different research questions in parallel. What’s more, these AI “researchers” can be trained incredibly quickly compared to human beings. A human scientist takes decades to train, and more years to reach the frontier of their research field by diligent reading and conversation. This is the “burden of knowledge”, and it’s commonly believed to be one reason ideas have been getting harder to find — by the time human scientists can get up to speed, they’re often so old that their ideas are no longer novel. AI just annihilates this constraint — it can assimilate the entire literature and reach the frontier of research extremely quickly, and it can also tell human scientists where the frontier lies without forcing them to discover that for themselves. It can also pivot to new research directions more easily than humans can. And there’s also a self-reinforcing economic cycle here. Because scientific advances enable higher GDP, they enable more resources to be invested into the creation of yet more electronic “scientists”. Now that doesn’t mean the amount of scientific research goes to infinity — there may still be some essential bottleneck task that human researchers are still needed to perform. There are some indications that AI’s progress on open-ended conceptual research tasks is slower than in other dimensions, and it may be that humans are still needed to provide some of this long-term conceptual thinking. I’d bet against this being true for much longer, but it might be true for a long time. Even in this most “pessimistic” case, though, the amount of effective capital that scientists can use to leverage their work just went up by a lot. AI eliminates the theory bottleneck Science proceeds by an iterative process of theory and experiment. The theory part of that cycle is typically short, but non-trivial — it took a couple of years after the blackbody radiation spectrum was observed for Max Planck to come up with the quantum hypothesis to explain it, and decades longer before quantum theory as we now know it was created. It took about a year for Watson and Crick to figure out the shape of DNA after the requisite data was gathered. AI will basically eliminate the theory bottleneck entirely — or at least shorten the turnaround time between experiment and theory by an order of magnitude. AI is an absolute beast at math. Recently, an OpenAI model solved some of the most important open problems in computer science, math, and theoretical physics, and no one even batted an eyebrow because that sort of triumph is becoming increasingly commonplace. One of those solutions was a proof that the Standard Model of Particle Physics could be mathematically well-defined — a problem that human theorists had so far been unable to tackle. Not all research relies equally on theory, but understanding novel experimental results almost always involves some important component of either mathematical or spatial reasoning. That part of the task has now been made much, much faster. And on top of that, science is now open to a greater number of humans who aren’t naturally good at theorizing. AI can read the whole literature Much of the work of human scientists involves reading and understanding endless amounts of papers and going to endless conferences and seminars. The purpose of that work is to understand the existing scientific literature. Understanding the literature allows scientists to do the following things: Come up with new ideas for hypotheses to test Avoid doing research that someone else has already done Synthesize approaches from different areas or fields AI can reduce this effort to almost zero. Consider this excerpt from OpenAI’s blog post about their new research into neurodegenerative disease: The team divided the analysis among thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind, an approach we call distributed biological reasoning. The agents examined a whole-brain CRISPR atlas…a dataset showing how gene disruptions affect different types of cells across the mouse brain. Each agent investigated a gene disruption, analyzed cellular responses, searched scientific literature, and proposed explanations for the results. Their reports were combined into a reasoning atlas linking genes, cellular effects, relevant publications, and possible biological mechanisms. The research team estimated that comparable human analysis and literature review, conducted one perturbation at a time, would take months to a year. The agents reproduced findings from human analyses while uncovering additional leads. Their assessments of novelty and scientific value also aligned with judgments from blinded human experts. These findings help prioritize further experiments needed to test the proposed biological mechanisms. Some of these insights point to new leads for understanding brain disease. [emphasis mine] This is one case in which parallel work by a large number of agents really does make a huge difference: [ Haider.@haider1 this is actually insane openai deployed thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, work that could take human researchers months to a year also the agents uncovered new leads for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's OpenAI @OpenAI GPT-Rosalind surfaced a new lead for drug discovery: could restoring cholesterol transport protect neurons from degeneration? DCTN1 is a gene linked to Perry syndrome, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. In mouse-brain data, disrupting it increased expression of genes involved in 2:41 PM · Oct 21, 2026 · 51.5K Views 26 Replies · 95 Reposts · 1.26K Likes ](https://x.com/haider1/status/2112917197903540516) Not only does instantaneous literature review vastly speed up the research process, but it allows AI to make novel conceptual leaps from combining approaches from wildly different fields of research. AI regularly does this in math research, combining results, approaches, and theorems from far-flung places that no human mathematician would have thought to combine. It can do it in science, too. Much of scientific innovation, historically, has been “recombinant” innovation — scientists applying insights from one field to another. With AI, essentially all research is now cross-disciplinary — AI can read not just the literature on a particular subject, but the literature on a million other subjects that might have produced useful techniques or insights for the problem at hand. Superscience So far, all of the factors I’ve listed are ways that AI can speed up science as it’s already done. I’ve basically described how AI can send gigantic hordes of superhumanly fast, superhumanly well-read, superhumanly mathematically gifted researchers to re-accelerate scientific discovery. But it’s also possible that AI will enable types of discovery — and ways of understanding the natural world — that no network of humans, no matter how large or how brilliant it was or how long it had to work, would ever be able to discover. In a post back in July, I wrote about how that might work: What if there are lots of…aspects of the Universe that [are] too complex to understand in terms of simple laws, but not so complex that they just dissolve into unknowable chaos? It’s possible that we can reliably control these complex phenomena with AI, even if we never reduce them to the kind of principles that we can teach a grad student in a textbook… Another way of saying this is that there may be laws of the universe that humans can’t understand but AI can. I call these “cloud laws” — causal regularities that can be exploited by technology, but which are too diffuse and complex for an individual human being to either intuit or communicate… Perhaps social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science obey similarly complex regularities, and AI can help us find them. Perhaps there are physical processes — plasma, or topological materials, or aerial turbulence, etc. — that obey cloud laws instead of chaos?… [H]uman collaboration is bottlenecked — it’s limited by our ability to intuit patterns at an individual level, and to communicate these patterns from one individual to another. AI, being a computer, just doesn’t have this sort of limitation; it can work with vast, diffuse patterns without having to break them into pieces or simplify them in order to compress them into the tiny pipelines of person-to-person explanation… If much of the Universe turns out to be ruled by cloud laws, we could be on the precipice of a scientific renaissance. In order to discover cloud laws, AI will need huge amounts of data about the natural world. AI figured out human speech by assimilating essentially all of the text humans have ever written. If it’s going to figure out hidden patterns in biology, neuroscience, materials science, etc., it’s going to need similarly massive amounts of data from physical instruments. That data will be far, far more than humans — individually or collectively — would be able to parse, label, characterize, or model. But AI was built to do this. If scientists simply build huge arrays of sensors to measure complex phenomena like the brain, the cell, the economy, etc., they may be able to feed this flood of data to AI directly and bypass human cognitive intermediation entirely. AI would then learn about the world directly, and it might learn things that humans never could. This “superscience”, if you want to call it that, would actually go beyond the kind of science humans have done heretofore. Many of the technologies it yielded would be beyond human comprehension — indistinguishable from magic. But to the AIs, they would make perfect scientific sense. In any case, it seems clear that the scientific slowdown that threatened human progress will now be delayed — at least for a while. Unless humans have somehow found most of the actual exploitable regularities in our Universe, we’re about to enter a new golden age of science. Subscribe Share

Oct 29 • 5:55 AM EDT • Science • noahpinion.blog

Gallup: Economy, Health Care and Iran Top Voter Concerns Ahead of Midterms

The economy, healthcare, and the war in Iran rank highest in importance to U.S. voters ahead of this week's midterms, according to the latest Gallup poll. With the election five days away, voter responses reflect pushback against President Donald Trump's economic platform and foreign policy agenda.

Oct 28 • 10:51 PM EDT • Health • usnews.com

The midterms will decide who holds power. But who will answer for the broken promises?

Voters are demanding more than partisan rhetoric as they head to the polls to decide the future of the economy.

Oct 28 • 8:26 PM EDT • Politics • detroitnews.com