WSJ tech columnist and author of How to AI, the no-nonsense guide to what AI actually is and how to actually use it, for the rest of us
Baltimore, MD
Joined March 2007
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I wrote a book about how to actually get real value out of AI.
It's for CEOs and solopreneurs and skeptics and enthusiasts alike.
It's the no-nonsense, bullshit-free guide that a lot of people need, but were afraid to ask for.
You can pre-order it now.
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
Election Day special Odd Lots:
@tracyalloway and I talk to @NateSilver538 about polls, polling error, predictions, prediction markets, and why everything is pointing to Blue Wave podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
This is remarkable. Parts of Florida’s Space Coast have received up to *half a year’s worth of rain* in the last day and a half — as much as 27 inches in 36 hours, about 50% of an average year’s rainfall (radar estimate through 5 p.m. ET Monday).
The most extreme totals occurred in the stretch from Palm Bay to Valkaria.
What contributed to this:
• A deep flow of moisture from record-warm waters in the southwestern Atlantic
• Weak winds through the middle atmosphere, which kept storms slow-moving
• Background moisture levels boosted by a record El Niño, riding the tailwind of a warming climate
Wow. For the tech crowd: Desktop prices are up nearly 20%, and laptops are up more than 57%
An announcement that is as personal as professional:
18 months ago, we started collecting online prices in real time to track how Liberation Day tariffs were feeding into inflation.
A lot has happened since. The BLS commissioner was fired. The longest government shutdown in US history meant CPI wasn’t published for the first time. And the case for an independent measure of inflation became much stronger.
What started as a tariff inflation tracker has since grown into something much bigger:
The Bloomberg Price Project (BPP), our attempt to build the US CPI from the ground up using alternative data.
Today, BPP covers 87% of the CPI basket, across both goods and services (more new data will be added in coming weeks). Every month, we collect millions of prices from card transactions, e-commerce sites, grocery stores, pharmacies, rental listings, corporate data, Bloomberg Terminal market prices and government records. And more data are coming.
The payoff is detail. Official CPI data let you drill down to categories such as “uncooked beef steaks.” BPP goes much deeper — breaking the CPI basket into almost 700 line items, compared with roughly 200 in the official data.
Brought to you by: myself, Troy Durie, Daniel Ripperger-Suhler, Joshua Danial and Scott Johnson from across Bloomberg Economics.
Explore the Bloomberg Price Project at BECO MODELS BPP <GO>, or download the data at ECAN US BPI <GO>.
I believe the paywall on Bloomberg.com is coming down briefly so you can read this without a subscription (but you should subscribe!)
bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-…
"The results of 10 governors' races will help set the rules for 67.4 gigawatts of planned data centers — $2.5 trillion of AI infrastructure investment"
I wrote some of this here in @Axios axios.com/2026/10/31/data-ce…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
Are you someone who tried an AI agent like Muse but has given up on it? Gotten bored? Tried a few things but no longer have ongoing uses for it? I want to hear from you.....
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
Wall Street is starting to call the shots in America's AI buildout:
“The bar is going higher and higher in terms of proving to lenders that this investment will turn into sufficient revenue"
New from me, @RWhelanWSJ & @jackpitcher20
wsj.com/finance/the-new-bott…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
33 dairy herds infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus in Washington. 3 cases in Washington, all since mid-October, all exposure to infected cows. We are playing with fire.
A person in Yakima County, Washington, who caught bird flu after being exposed to infected dairy cows has died following a severe illness, county health officials said on Sunday. cnn.com/2026/11/02/health/bi…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
The price of Halloween candy has shot up 44% in the past 5 years, and the world's cocoa crop is in trouble.
But close to a dozen companies are racing to replace the chocolate in everyone's favorite treats, including with entirely vat-grown cocoa cells.
I tried it.
wsj.com/arts-culture/food-co…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
There’s another chip crisis: The world is running out of chocolate. Christopher @Mims explains how two groups of innovators are racing to meet growing demands in the face of the cocoa-bean shortage. 🔗 on.wsj.com/4f1SPnb
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
A week before North Korean hackers raided Binance, its founder issued a warning: “No crypto wallet is 100% safe.”
Then, in about 20 minutes, hackers stole at least $6.3 billion from the world’s largest crypto exchange—the biggest heist ever.
As billions drained from Binance wallets, executives in Abu Dhabi and blockchain investigators scrambled to trace the stolen funds.
Stablecoin issuers including Tether, Circle and World Liberty Financial raced to freeze the money before the hackers could move it.
The hackers used Aave, a decentralized lending platform, to borrow ether against stolen stablecoins—obtaining crypto that couldn’t be frozen.
Roughly $3 billion was frozen, but the hackers still held about $2.4 billion in assets beyond issuers’ reach.
Binance says a compromised engineer’s laptop may have helped attackers get in, but it has since found other points of breach. The company has pledged to cover all losses.
We reconstructed the frantic scramble behind what investigators say was a North Korean operation:
wsj.com/finance/currencies/b…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
There’s another chip crisis: The world is running out of chocolate. Christopher @Mims explains how two groups of innovators are racing to meet growing demands in the face of the cocoa-bean shortage. on.wsj.com/4BAn4va
The price of Halloween candy has shot up 44% in the past 5 years, and the world's cocoa crop is in trouble.
But close to a dozen companies are racing to replace the chocolate in everyone's favorite treats, including with entirely vat-grown cocoa cells.
I tried it.
wsj.com/arts-culture/food-co…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
Seems we're dealing with the biggest cyber heist of all time.
More: wsj.com/finance/currencies/b…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
“This spring, the U.S. military faced a similar dilemma in the Middle East. According to a Reuters report that cited Pentagon documents, U.S. forces used Starshield to pilot their drones for strikes against Iran. When SpaceX found out, it raised the price for Starshield service in that region from roughly $5,000 per terminal per month to $25,000. The Pentagon agreed to pay.
In Ukraine, Musk could be attempting a similar upsell.”
theatlantic.com/national-sec…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
The economy is booming... so why aren't we feeling it. Wonderful getting to talk with the great @LeilaFadel about GDP, affordability and why people aren't feeling the economy's success.
npr.org/2026/10/29/nx-s1-602…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
A fascinating, deeply-reported tale of Elon Musk's dealings with Ukraine and how he now holds the fate of the country in his hands, from @shustry & @isaacstanbecker: theatlantic.com/national-sec…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
This is the best piece of journalism published this year. Make sure you read it.
It’s a masterful piece of writing.
wsj.com/tech/apple-iphone-me…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
New big turn in our Singapore chip-smuggling investigations: U.S. officials believe the mysterious business woman seen with Jensen Huang in Taiwan in recent years is a Chinese intelligence asset. Pres. Trump was briefed but took no action. nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/po…
Christopher Mims 🤌 retweeted
SCOOP: Both Moonshot and DeepSeek distilled #OpenAI's Astra when developing their latest models (Kimi K3.1 & V4.1-Flash 1017), after Anthropic intensified the crackdown on distillation recently. w/ @JuroOsawa @QianerLiu via @theinformation theinformation.com/articles/…
