Desi Talk

www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 8 CITY VIEWS May 1, 2026 TECHNOLOGY T he seductive appeal of NewYork Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “affordability” agenda was on full dis- play in East Harlem this month, as he promised to open the first of five city-owned supermarkets. “We’re going to make it easier for NewYork- ers to put food on the table,” Mamdani said at the rally, adding: “At our stores, eggs will be cheaper. Bread will be cheaper.” Perhaps so. But fulfilling this campaign promise poses a major risk to the success of Mamdani’s mayoralty and the brand of socialism he promotes. Successfully establishing a well-run, well-stocked and inexpensive grocery store is no easy task, and Mamdani is asking for $30 million simply to fund the construction of his project. The operating costs are another matter. Supermarkets are a notoriously low-margin business with complex supply chains, and the city has no experi- ence managing them. Phil Lempert, an industry analyst known as the “supermarket guru,” has noted that super- markets are “a very complicated business that runs on volume and has an average of 1.5 percent to 2 percent net profit. It’s about efficiencies and operations, not some- thing that local governments understand.” East Harlem knows that reality too well, as the site of Mamdani’s project has recently struggled to sustain retail businesses. In 2023, Target cited “organized retail crime” and employee safety issues as reasons for closing a neigh- borhood location. “We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all,” Target said at the time. Mamdani’s “La Marqueta” will probably face a similar fate unless it contracts costly security funded either by higher grocery prices or by cuts to other tax-funded city services. The recent record of a similar experiment also pro- vides little reason for optimism. Kansas City, Missouri, invested $17 million over 10 years in the city-owned Sun Fresh Market. Notwithstanding the lower expenses of a government-owned storefront (the Mamdani market would similarly be exempt from property taxes), shop- pers stayed away because of crime. As revenue waned, the council had to invest more to restock the shelves. The market closed its doors last year. That’s one possible fate for the planned East Harlem market. But anyone rooting for the mayor to succeed should also worry that this project distracts from an agenda that shows some promise. Mamdani is promoting what he calls “sewer social- ism,” a reference to the early 20th-century socialist mayors in Milwaukee to whom the term was originally applied. “We have showcased a new kind of approach to gov- erning in our city - pothole politics,” he said as he joined street crews working to fix potholes. “Delivering public goods coupled with public excellence.” A close reading of the record of sewer socialist mayors would be worth Mamdani’s time. The term was coined to celebrate Milwaukee’s modern sewer system. But unlike Mamdani’s supermarket, the sewer socialists did not try to compete with the private sector. Instead, they focused on public infrastructure such as parks, schools, safe bridges and public health - the core functions of local government. For unpopular Democratic mayors plagued by the toxic combination of high taxes and poor services, the sewer socialism approach could be a positive one. But it can succeed only if attention and resources are not diverted to ideological glamour projects like a city-owned supermarket. The NewYork City Council will have to approve Mam- dani’s $30 million request - and its speaker, Julie Menin, seems skeptical. She has said she would review the plan and examine the impact on “consumers and local small businesses, including bodegas.” There are more pragmatic ways for Mamdani to ad- dress the problem of access to fresh food in poor neigh- borhoods like East Harlem. Instead of building a new supermarket, he could work with established stores such asWalmart to subsidize food delivery via apps like DoorDash, bringing fresh food right to people’s homes, even in East Harlem. That would bring down costs and avoid the uncertain investment of a brick-and-mortar location. The money that would have gone to the grocery store’s operating costs could pay for a lot of deliveries. Public housing projects could even set up central delivery points for residents, many of whom al- ready order groceries with their smartphones. Of course, police protection will be paramount - but that, too, should be part of sewer socialism. Perhaps just call it good government. Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. -Special to TheWashington Post By Howard Husock Mamdani’s Grocery Stores Undermine His Broader Agenda PHOTO:American Enterprise Institute Google Workers Petition CEO To Refuse Classified AI Work With Pentagon H undreds of Google employees sent a letter to the company’s CEO on Monday demanding that he bar the Pentagon from using Google’s artificial intelligence for classified work, two months after rival AI company Anthropic was dropped by the Defense Department for requesting a similar restriction. The letter was signed by more than 600 Google employees, many from its elite DeepMind AI lab, according to a copy of the letter seen by TheWashington Post. It asked the company’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, not to enter into any agree- ment with the Defense Department that allowed for uses of the company’s AI that are classified. The letter argued that such work would prevent Google representa- tives from knowing how the company’s technology was used. “We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways. This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond,” the workers wrote in the letter. “The only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads. Otherwise, such uses may occur with- out our knowledge or the power to stop them,” the letter said. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The letter comes as artificial intel- ligence is increasingly central to modern warfare, triggering debate in the tech industry over whether AI companies or their employees should have a say in how the military uses their technology. Pentagon leaders have recently asserted that it must have freedom to use commer- cial AI technology for “all lawful uses,” a phrase officials have said allows flexibility in different situations while still following U.S. law and military procedures. But some AI workers say such assur- ances are not enough. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened to bomb “every” bridge and power plant in Iran, an action that experts told The Post would violate international law. The Trump administration’s strikes on boats it alleges were carrying drugs have also been questioned by international law experts. “Human lives are already being lost and civil liberties put at risk at home and abroad frommisuses of the technology we’re playing a key role in building,” the Google employees wrote in their petition, without specifying which technology they were referring to. Anthropic, maker of the popular chat- bot Claude, saw its technology rapidly integrated last year into U.S. military sys- tems for helping to sort through data and identify potential targets, The Post has reported. But the company was abruptly barred from all work with the Defense Department in February after it sought to add a contractual clause to ensure that its technology would not be used for mass surveillance and to power lethal autono- mous weapons. The government and Anthropic are fighting in court over whether the Pentagon acted legally in cutting off the company. Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon increased the scrutiny on AI rivals such as Google and OpenAI, which both provide AI technology to the U.S. military. OpenAI signed a deal to provide AI for classified workloads in February, soon after Anthropic was dropped by the Penta- gon. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has said that he is confident its contract with the government means that its tech- nology will not be used for mass surveil- lance in the U.S. or for lethal autonomous weapons. The letter from Google employees sent Monday cites a report from tech news outlet the Information earlier this month, which said the company was in negotia- tions with the Pentagon for a similar deal to that of OpenAI. The letter urges Google to refuse any and all classified work to en- sure that its technology isn’t used in ways that might harm civil or human rights. Google has a history of internal debate when it comes to military use of its tech- nology. In 2018, the company decided not to renew a deal with the Pentagon that saw its AI software used to recognize objects in drone imagery after hundreds of employees signed a petition demanding an end to the work. Google introduced a pledge that its AI technology would never be used for weap- ons or surveillance after the 2018 protest. But in recent years the company has actively sought more military contracts. -TheWashington Post By Gerrit De Vynck