Brookings Institution

Editor's note: This is a companion piece to “Borrowed expertise: Why AI’s productivity boom may not survive the generation that built it,” published on TechTank on July 10, 2026. Read the first piece here. In a companion piece, I made an argument that I find more worrying the longer I sit with it. The productivity boom from generative artificial intelligence (AI) is real, but it is being powered by people whose expertise was built before the tools existed.

Coral reefs could fade into the history books. The Amazon rainforest could evolve into a new, hotter, and drier ecosystem. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the Atlantic Ocean circulation that moderates temperatures and influences monsoons and rainfall around the world, could slow or collapse. These futures are not entirely predictable, but they are foreseeable—and increasingly likely as global temperatures rise.

Global development has dramatically changed course since 2025, and a new agenda built on jobs and private capital mobilization is taking shape. To work in fragile states, this approach must attract investments while also building peace and stability.

On July 17, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a regulation that ends a longstanding U.S. government practice called “duration of status.” Duration of status or “D/S” historically allowed international students, scholars, physicians, and other specific types of temporary visa holders to remain lawfully in the country while they complete their program or degree.1 The DHS regulation replaces that flexibility with a new discretionary extension application.

A seductive number was set loose in African policy circles in recent months. The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) reported in April that the continent’s domestic (non-bank) capital pools had surpassed two trillion dollars, eclipsing a decade of foreign inflows. The careful version of this claim is noteworthy: It reframes Africa as the agent of its own financing. With care and diligence, continental savings can be transformed into powerful investments.

On July 1, the U.S. government declined to renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—but that’s not the end for the region’s free trade agreement. Kari Heerman spoke with Christopher Sands and Duncan Wood about what went wrong, what went right, and what comes next for North American economic relations. HEERMAN: On July 1st, the U.S. government declined to renew the USMCA agreement.

Editor's note: This background briefing guide was distributed to participants ahead of the Forum for Cooperation on AI (FCAI) dialogue on April 26, 2026. FCAI dialogues follow Chatham House rule, so remarks are anonymized. Global artificial intelligence (AI) governance networks continue to proliferate. Addressing the complexity and sprawl of the policy space is critical to support more coherent, coordinated policymaking.

Home Lessons from Sweden on co-investing in transportation to increase housing production Across the United States, local governments are struggling to manage the dual challenges of providing enough housing and maintaining high-quality infrastructure. While the extent of housing underproduction is the subject of debate, the presence of a housing shortage is generally accepted.

Chi’ishi1 is an Indigenous Qom teacher in Argentina who never dreamed of becoming a teacher as a child. She is part of the first wave of Indigenous teachers who, since the establishment of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in the country in the mid-1990s, now number 4,000.

Controversies over federal spending rarely used to make headlines. That’s no longer so. The attempt to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to pay victims of purported “lawfare” without congressional authorization or judicial oversight is the latest major news story involving the current Trump administration’s controversial and vast assertion of executive branch authority over spending decisions.