By Matt Egan, CNN

New York (CNN) — Many workers fear artificial intelligence is coming for their jobs, an idea bolstered by warnings from AI leaders and anecdotes from a recent Federal Reserve report.

Yet new research finds the opposite is true – at least for now.

Jobs that are highly exposed to AI automation are growing faster than they did prior to Covid-19 – even faster than all other occupations, according to Vanguard.

The findings don’t necessarily signal an all-clear for workers worried about AI disrupting their careers. Some companies have recently reported they’re eliminating some positions because AI can automate entry-level workers’ tasks or make current workers more efficient.

Yet there’s no evidence the technology is doing widespread damage, at least not yet.

“At a high level, we have not seen evidence that AI-exposed roles are experiencing lower employment,” Adam Schickling, senior economist at Vanguard, told CNN in a phone interview.

The Vanguard analysis focused on roughly 140 occupations it deemed the most vulnerable to getting replaced by AI, including office clerks, typists, HR assistants, law clerks and data scientists.

These are jobs with the highest share of working hours performing tasks that AI systems could potentially automate with a high degree of autonomy.

In other words, these are the positions likeliest to shrink as AI explodes.

But that’s not happening. Not necessarily because AI isn’t a long-term threat to jobs, but because the tech just isn’t quite good enough yet.

AI-exposed jobs are growing

In fact, Vanguard found that employment among the occupations with high AI exposure increased by 1.7% during the post-Covid period of mid-2023 to mid-2025.

That’s a faster pace for these jobs than the 1% increase during the pre-Covid period (2015 to 2019).

By contrast, job growth has slowed for all other occupations, according to Vanguard.

Schickling said he purposely didn’t compare recent job trends with the 2020-2022 period because that was a very unusual time in the job market, making it an inappropriate baseline.

Wages are up, too

Vanguard found similar results for wages.

Occupations with high AI exposure experienced real wage growth (adjusted for inflation) of just 0.1% pre-Covid, according to Vanguard. But that has accelerated to 3.8% in the post-Covid period.

By comparison, all other occupations less exposed to AI have enjoyed a smaller acceleration in real wage growth, going from 0.5% pre-Covid to 0.7% post-Covid.

This finding is surprising. If AI were really damaging the job market, it should show up by shrinking paychecks.

“While AI may have started to change our workflows, its role in explaining the recent slowdown in job growth is overstated,” Vanguard said in the analysis.

‘We can’t just sleepwalk into it’

All of this data contrasts with the doomsday warnings from some economists and CEOs – including AI leaders.

In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned AI could eliminate half of all entry-level jobs in white-collar professions, spiking the unemployment rate up to 20% in the near future.

“It’s eerie the extent to which the broader public and politicians, legislators, I don’t think, are fully aware of what’s going on,” Read more

By John King, CNN

Mount Juliet, Tennessee (CNN) — Megan Schwalm is full of energy. She sees the excitement and ambition of every member of the coffee group she started three years ago. Yet she is often afraid to trust what she sees and feels — afraid she will be let down again.

“It’s a numbers game, right?” Schwalm said before a recent meeting of her Liberal Ladies Social Group. “And so while there are moments of hope for me, there are often overwhelming moments of hopelessness as well.”

The source of the competing hope and worry: a recent House special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. The Democratic candidate lost by 9 points. A year ago, Republican Mark Green won by 22 points. (Green resigned his seat in July.)

“There was so much excitement,” Schwalm said.

But the reality of where she lives is not lost on her. “The numbers are the numbers. If we can keep closing that gap, that’s incredible. But gerrymandering makes it nearly impossible to win.”

Nearly impossible. It’s worth remembering that. But the energy among Democrats here is palpable, and they are vowing to do all they can to make Nashville and its suburbs a most unlikely 2026 midterm battleground.

“There’s something happening,” said Lisa Quigley, who was chief of staff to the last Democrat to represent the Nashville area in the House. “And so as long as we are smart enough to put our best players on the field, I think we’re going to be able to take advantage of that. And I think that next November is going to be a big year for us.”

Quigley, too, is aware of the daunting math.

The old 5th Congressional District included all of Nashville and some of its suburbs. It was represented by a Democrat for 148 years — from 1875 to 2023. But Republicans who now dominate state politics redrew the lines before the 2022 midterms.

Nashville was carved into three districts that stretch from the city into the suburbs and out to reliably Republican rural areas. Republicans won the new 5th, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts easily in both 2022 and 2024. President Donald Trump’s 2024 margins were lopsided: 18 points in the 5th, 35 points in the 6th, and 22 points in the 7th.

“Not easy, but doable,” is nonetheless Quigley’s 2026 take on flipping at least two of those three House seats.

Conversations with Democrats here just after the special election persuaded us to add a Tennessee visit to our “All Over the Map” project, an effort to track major political developments through the eyes and experiences of voters. Democratic successes throughout 2025 give the party reasons to be bullish heading into 2026. But Tennessee is ruby-red, and it would be extraordinary if the House seats that include parts of Nashville are truly competitive come next fall.

Schwalm moved to Mount Juliet from Iowa just as the new lines were taking hold. She’s 25 miles from Nashville, but it seems much farther.

“When you are here, it’s very clear you are in the Bible Belt,” Schwalm said. “Beliefs are very different from beliefs in Nashville, and politically it’s very different going from Nashville to here.”

After her move, Schwalm decided to reach out to a handful of other liberals she had met, then started a Facebook page.

“Within a matter of like two months, the group had grown to over 200 people online,” Schwalm said. “Now we’re almost at 700, and we have a

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — In President Donald Trump’s telling, a land strike on Venezuela could come “soon.”

He’s been saying that since mid-September. In that time, he’s publicly hinted or outright promised US military action on land at least 17 times, according to a CNN analysis of his appearances.

The president’s rhetorical threat has been backed up by a massive show of force in the region, including roughly 15,000 US troops and more than a dozen warships, plus at least 12 strikes launched against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Last week, the US seized a tanker full of Venezuelan crude off the country’s coast. And on Tuesday, Trump announced a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving from Venezuela, applying new economic pressure on Caracas.

The Trump administration has sold its boat strikes as an effort to crack down on illegal flows of drugs and migrants from Venezuela. But its actions have also pointed to a sweeping pressure campaign on President Nicolás Maduro — whose ouster White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has suggested is the administration’s real goal.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will,” Wiles said of Trump in an interview with Vanity Fair that published this week.

Trump has been briefed by his team on a range of options for Venezuela, including airstrikes on key military or government facilities or drug trafficking routes — or a more direct attempt to take out Maduro.

But as the president appears to still be weighing a decision, he’s repeatedly invoked the threat of land strikes — even bringing them up unprompted at unrelated events.

“We’re telling the cartels right now. We’re going to be stopping them, too. When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats. And you’ll see that,” Trump said at a September 15 event on federal assistance for Memphis law enforcement in the days after the boat strikes began.

During October 5 remarks to US service members aboard the USS Harry S. Truman in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump warned, “They’re not coming in by sea anymore. So now we’ll have to start looking about the land, because they’ll be forced to go by land. … That’s not gonna work out well for ‘em either.”

He said October 22 while meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte that he planned to “hit them very hard when they come in by land.”

The president added: “And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that. We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land. We don’t have to do that.”

The following day at a homeland security roundtable, Trump said, “The land is going to be next.”

The president offered a “very shortly” timeline when speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on October 24.

At a FIFA task force meeting on November 17, he declined to rule out US troops on the ground in Venezuela. And as he spoke to US troops by phone on Thanksgiving, he said, “People aren’t wanting to be delivering by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop ‘em by land also. The land is easier, but that’s gonna start very soon.”

Convening his Cabinet on December 2, Trump signaled that land strikes would be “easier” than sea.

“We’re doing these strikes and we’re going to start doing those strikes on land too. You know, the land is much easier, it’s much easier,” he said.

December 3, he suggested that “we’re going to start very soon on land.”

At a December 6 Kennedy Center Honors dinner, he pledged, “We’re gonna start that same process on land be

Por Wayne Chang, Brad Lendon y Jennifer Hansler, CNN

Estados Unidos y Taiwán han anunciado un paquete de armas por US$ 11.100 millones que, de completarse, sería una de las mayores ventas militares de Washington a la isla.

El acuerdo incluye ocho compras separadas, que cubren sistemas de cohetes HIMARS, misiles antitanque, misiles antiblindaje, drones suicidas merodeadores, obuses, software militar y piezas para otros equipos, según detalles publicados por ambos Gobiernos.

El Partido Comunista de China reivindica a Taiwán, un país autónomo y democrático, como parte de su territorio soberano, a pesar de nunca haberlo controlado.

Tras anunciarse el acuerdo, Beijing afirmó que “se opone firmemente y condena enérgicamente” la medida.

“El intento de Estados Unidos de usar la fuerza para apoyar la independencia de Taiwán solo será contraproducente, y su intento de contener a China utilizando a Taiwán no tendrá ningún éxito”, declaró el portavoz del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Guo Jiakun, en una conferencia de prensa habitual este jueves.

Taiwán ha estado incrementando sus compras militares en los últimos años debido a la creciente presión de Beijing, con aviones y barcos chinos presentes casi a diario alrededor de la isla, así como ejercicios regulares a gran escala en y sobre las aguas circundantes.

“Estados Unidos… continúa ayudando a Taiwán a mantener suficientes capacidades de autodefensa y a construir rápidamente una fuerte disuasión y aprovechar las ventajas de la guerra asimétrica, que forman la base para mantener la paz y la estabilidad regionales”, afirma un comunicado del Ministerio de Defensa de Taiwán.

Washington mantiene estrechos vínculos extraoficiales con Taiwán y está obligado por ley a vender armas a la isla para su defensa. El monto total del acuerdo de armas con Estados Unidos lo convierte en el mayor en años para la isla.

“Desde 2010, el Poder Ejecutivo ha notificado al Congreso aproximadamente US$ 49.000 millones en Ventas Militares al Extranjero (FMS) a Taiwán”, indicó un funcionario estadounidense.

El anuncio estadounidense de las ventas se realizó a través de la Agencia de Cooperación para la Seguridad de la Defensa, que gestiona las ventas militares estadounidenses al exterior.

El pacto aún requiere la aprobación del Congreso, pero Taiwán cuenta con el apoyo generalizado de ambos partidos en el Congreso estadounidense.

El Ministerio de Defensa de Taiwán manifestó que entre los ocho artículos, cinco (HIMARS, misiles y drones) se pagarán como parte de un histórico presupuesto especial de defensa de US$ 40.000 millones que el presidente Lai Ching-te propuso a fines de noviembre, y que aún debe obtener la aprobación de la legislatura de la nación insular.

Ese presupuesto se centra en la adquisición de artillería de precisión, misiles de ataque de precisión de largo alcance, defensa aérea, misiles antibalísticos y antiblindaje, drones y sistemas antidrones, sistemas impulsados ​​por IA y armas desarrolladas conjuntamente por Estados Unidos y Taiwán.

También busca fortalecer las capacidades de defensa de Taiwán, particularmente el sistema de defensa aérea “T-Dome”, que Lai anunció en octubre sin proporcionar detalles.

Raymond Greene, director del Instituto Americano en Taiwán, la embajada de facto de Washington en la isla, comentó recientemente que esperaba que la legislatura de Taiwán finalmente aprobara el aumento del gasto militar.

“Cada cuestión presupuestaria tiene que pasar por el proceso legislativo, pero sigo confiando en que, al final, todos los partidos de Taiwán se unirán en favor de un mayor gasto en defensa, porque creo que hay un sentido compartido de las necesidades dado el entorno de seguridad regional y las amenazas que enfrenta Taiwán”, indicó Greene.

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