When you throw a ball in the air, the equations of classical physics will tell you exactly what path the ball will take as it falls, and when and where it will land. But if you were to squeeze that same ball down to the size of an atom or smaller, it would behave in ways beyond anything that classical physics can predict.

Or so we’ve thought.

MIT scientists have now shown that certain mathematical ideas from everyday classical physics can be used to describe the often weird and nonintuitive behavior that occurs at the quantum, subatomic scale.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, the team shows that the motion of a quantum object can be calculated by applying an idea from classical physics known as “least action.” With their new formulation, they show they can arrive at exactly the same solution as the Schrödinger equation — the main description of quantum mechanics — for a number of textbook quantum-mechanical scenarios, including the double-slit experiment and quantum tunneling.

Such mysterious phenomena, that could only be understood through equations of quantum mechanics, can now also be described using the team’s new classical formulation. In essence, the researchers have built an exact mathematical bridge between the classical, everyday physical world and the world that happens at dimensions smaller than an atom.

“Before, there was a very tenuous bridge that worked only for reasonably large [quantum] particles,” says study co-author Winfried Lohmiller, a research associate in the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory at MIT. “Now we have a strong bridge — a common way to describe quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, and relativity, that holds at all scales.”

“We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with quantum mechanics,” emphasizes co-author Jean-Jacques Slotine, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and information sciences, and of brain and cognitive sciences. “We’re just showing a different way to compute quantum mechanics, which is based on well-known classical ideas that we put together in a simple way.”

To infinity and far below

Slotine and Lohmiller derived the quantum bridge while working on solidly classical problems. The researchers are members of the MIT Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, which Slotine directs. He and his colleagues develop models to describe complex behavior in problems of robotic and aircraft control, neuroscience, and machine learning. To predict the behavior of such systems, engineers often look to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, which is one of the major formulations of classical mechanics and is related to Newton’s famous laws of motion.

The Hamilton-Jacobi equation essentially represents an object’s motion as minimizing a quantity called the action. Take, for instance, a simple scenario in which a ball is thrown from point A to point B. Theoretically, the ball could take any number of zigzagging paths between the two points. But the equation states that the actual path should be one where the ball’s “action” is minimized at every single point along that path.

In this case, the term “action” refers to the sum over time of the difference between an object’s kinetic energy (the energy that is generating the motion) and its potential energy (the object’s stored energy). The actual path that a ball takes between point A and B should then be a sequence of positions where the overall difference between kinetic and potential energy is minimized.

Slotine and Lohmiller were applying the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and the principle of least action, to a number of classical mechanics problems with constraints when they realized that the equation, with some mathematical extensions, could solve a famous problem in quantum mechanics known as the double-slit experiment.

The double-slit experiment illustrates one of the weird, nonclassical behaviors that arises at quantum scales. In the experiment, two slits are cut out of a metal wall. When a single photon — a quantum-scale particle of light — is shot toward the wall, classical physics predicts that you should see a spot of light on the other side of the wall, assuming that the photon flew straight through either one of the holes, following a single path.

But experimentalists have instead observed alternating bright and dark stripes. The reality-bending pattern is a result of a quantum mechanical phenomenon by which a photon takes more than one path simultaneously. In this context, when a single photon is shot toward the wall, it can pass through both holes at the same time, along two paths that end up interfering with each other. The pattern of stripes that results means that the photon’s two interfering paths must be wave-like. The experiment therefore demonstrates how a quantum particle can also behave, however improbably, like a wave.

Since the discovery of quantum mechanics, physicists have tried to explain the double-slit experiment using tools from classical, everyday physics. But they’ve only ever been able to approximate the experiment’s results.

Even the noted physicist Richard Feynman ’39 found the task impossible. He assumed that one would have to consider and average over every single theoretical path that a photon could take, whether it be a straight line or any variation of a zigzagging path through either of the two holes. Such an exercise would require calculating an infinite number of possible zigzag paths, which all contradict the classical smooth paths one would expect. 

This last point is what Slotine and Lohmiller realized could be tweaked. Where classical physics assumes that an object must only take a single path from point A to B, quantum mechanics allows for an object to take multiple paths and multiple states simultaneously — a fundamental quantum property known as superposition.

The team wondered: What if classical physics could also entertain, at least mathematically, this notion of multiple paths? Then, they reasoned that an infinite number of paths wouldn’t have to be calculated. Instead, a much smaller number of “least action” classical paths might produce the exact same quantum result.

With this idea in mind, they looked back to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation to see how they might adapt its principles of least action to predict the double-slit experiment and other quantum phenomena.

“For a while we thought it was a little too good to be true,” Slotine says.

A particle’s destiny is in its density

In their new study, the team adds another ingredient of classical physics: “density,” which is, essentially, a probability that a given path is taken.

“We think of density in terms of fluid dynamics,” Lohmiller explains. “For the double-slit experiment, imagine pumping a hose toward the wall. What will happen is, most of the water will hit the center, but some droplets will also go toward the sides. A high density of water at the center means there is a high probability of finding a droplet along that path. And there will be a distribution, which we can compute.”

He and Slotine tweaked the Hamilton-Jacobi equation to include terms of density and multiple least action paths, and applied it to the double-slit experiment. They found that with this formulation, they only had to consider two classical paths through the two slits, as compared to Feynman’s infinity of zigzag paths. Ultimately, their calculations of classical density and action produced a wave function, or distribution of most probable paths that a photon could take, that was exactly the same as what was predicted by the Schrödinger equation, which is the central equation used to describe quantum-mechanical behavior.

“We show that the Schrödinger’s equation of quantum mechanics and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation of classical physics are actually identical given a suitable computation of density,” Slotine says. “That’s a purely mathematical result. We’re not saying that quantum phenomena happens at classical scales. We’re saying you can compute this quantum behavior with very simple classical tools.”

In addition to the double-slit experiment, the researchers showed the reworked equation can also predict other quantum mechanical behavior, such as quantum tunneling, in which particles such as electrons can pass through energy barriers that would not be possible according to classical physics. They could also derive the exact quantum wave of the electron in a hydrogen atom from the classical orbit of a planet. Finally, they revisited from this perspective the famous Einstein-Podolski-Rosen experiment, which started the modern study of quantum entanglement.

The researchers envision that scientists could use the new formula as a simple method to predict how certain quantum systems and devices will perform.

“There could be important implications for quantum computing, where quantum bits have these nonlinear energies that physicists must approximate, or for better understanding problems involving both quantum physics and general relativity,” Slotine offers. “In principle at least, we should now be able to characterize this quantum behavior exactly, with simple classical tools, and show that it’s not so mysterious after all.”

Mitali Chowdhury ’24 and Christina Kim ’24 have been selected as 2026 Gates Cambridge Scholars. The highly competitive fellowship offers fully funded opportunities for postgraduate study in any field at Cambridge University in the U.K. Kim is a second-time Gates Cambridge Scholar.

MIT students interested in the Gates Cambridge Scholar program should contact Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.

Mitali Chowdhury

Chowdury graduated from MIT with a BS in biological engineering and minors in both urban planning and environment and sustainability. Chowdhury has had a longstanding interest in reducing inequities in global health. At MIT, she pursued research in point-of-care diagnostics to identify and treat disease with accessible biotechnologies. She also helped develop low-cost testing for bacterial contamination in water in South Asia.

Chowdury currently works at a startup advancing sequencing-based diagnostics. At Cambridge University, she will study for MPhil and PhD degrees in the Centre for Doctoral Training in Sensor Technologies. Her research will focus on CRISPR-based diagnostics to address antimicrobial resistance and expand equitable access to care.

Christina Kim

After graduating from MIT with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology, Kim worked as a researcher in women’s health at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K. 

As a 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholar, Kim pursued an MPhil in research at the institute, focusing on using bioinformatics and tissue engineering to design novel in vitro models. Her second Gates Cambridge scholarship will fund her PhD studies.

In a world leaning away from globalization, governments face a tough choice: Should they block dominant foreign companies to protect local businesses, or welcome them in hopes of fast-tracking economic growth and modernization? 

In his recently published book, “Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India” (Harvard University Press, November 2025), Jason Jackson, associate professor in political economy and urban planning in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, explains that these policy decisions aren’t just math, but long-standing and often heated moral debates over how businesses should conduct themselves, and who they serve.

Jackson argues that morality has a long history in economics and deserves more attention because, while ever-present in economic policy discourse, moral beliefs are often under-recognized or underappreciated.

“India is an exemplary case of ways in which moral beliefs shape economic policy decisions,” says Jackson. “But at the same time, I think it’s representative of a general feature of capitalism. It’s the perfect case.”

Jackson’s focus on India for this book stems from his interest in industrial policy and the politics of international development. Multinational firms have long been a source of controversy. They are seen as bringing two crucial resources to developing countries: finance and technology. However, while multinationals are potentially valuable contributors to economic development through the mechanism of foreign direct investment (FDI), they can also be monopolistic, dominating local industries and displacing domestic firms.

This long-standing tension in foreign investment policy became the backdrop for several emerging markets in developing countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) — in the early 2000s. India was growing at an extremely high level — 6-7 percent annually — and Indian companies were doing well, including those in industries that were seen as key to development, such as autos. Jackson wanted to understand why Indian companies were holding their own relative to foreign firms, which dominated more manufacturing in other places, and planned to focus on the period from the 1980s through the 2010s that coincides with the period of economic liberalization in India and, more broadly, with globalization. But while conducting field work, Jackson noticed that in describing how they made industrial policy decisions, Indian policymakers drew distinctions between firms that were fashioned in moral terms. There were some firms that policymakers believed would invest in technology and provide good jobs, and other firms — both foreign and domestic — seen as exploitative and not interested in engaging in activities that would advance economic growth and industrial transformation.

“I realized these distinctions had deep salience,” says Jackson. “My interlocutors would describe firms — especially foreign firms they saw as simply trading, or as exploitative — as ‘New East India’ companies, referencing the famous East India Company that was the governance authority in colonial India, but had been defunct for more than 150 years. That forced my research to become more historical, increasingly relying on archival work to make sense of these moralized distinctions between different types of business actors, whether foreign or domestic, and to understand how these beliefs became so powerful across Indian society.”

“Moral categories of capitalist legitimacy”

Jackson says there are several ways in which social scientists think that policymakers make decisions. One view considers the competing interest groups policymakers must negotiate with, in which case outcomes may depend on one group having more influence or power than others. Another approach assumes these individuals make decisions based on self-interest, particularly when their choices are perceived as corrupt.

“But what I found is that neither of these approaches gave enough credence to the ways in which policymakers in India grapple with quite technical and complex policy decisions regarding the type of development they want to promote in their country, and the types of companies they thought could help to achieve their development goals.” says Jackson. “Therefore, I was more interested in trying to understand what kind of ideas and beliefs animated their decision-making.”

What Jackson found was that Indian policymakers viewed both foreign firms and local Indian companies through what he terms “moral categories of capitalist legitimacy.” Would these firms invest in productive technologies? Would they provide good employment for the local population? Or would they be exploitative? These criteria were not only applied to multinational corporations. Even Indian family-controlled business groups were evaluated as to whether the gains accrued stayed within the confines of the extended family or whether they provided broader societal benefits. 

Coca-Cola goes to India

The story of Coca-Cola in India is an example of the tension experienced with regulating foreign investment where multinational companies were seen as exploitative. The company made its initial foray into India in the 1950s, and over the next two decades its reach became extensive. In the late 1970s, India’s Minister of Industry George Fernandes was visiting a village in Bihar — a state with one of the highest levels of poverty — when he asked for a glass of water. Instead, he was told the water was not suitable to drink, and was given Coca-Cola.

“This struck Fernandes as deeply problematic,” says Jackson. “He later recalled thinking that ‘after 30 years of freedom in India, our villages do not have clean drinking water, but they do have Coca-Cola — which, of course, is made with purified water, so safe to drink. How was this possible?’” Fernandes returned to his office in New Delhi determined to do something about it.

Just a few years earlier, India had passed a law, the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA), which required foreign companies to dilute their equity to no more than 40 percent. The law was explicitly designed to encourage technology transfer, but Coca-Cola had not complied. Fernandes told Coca-Cola that it had to take on an Indian partner or it would have to leave. Coca-Cola chose the latter. In the following year, IBM was also kicked out of India when it similarly balked at complying with FERA and sharing its technology.

“These companies were very much seen in the mold of the East India Co.,” says Jackson. “A firm comes from abroad and extracts resources from India while giving little benefit to the country. These are all very clearly morally coded beliefs that played a crucial role in these policy decisions.”

With Coca-Cola out of India, the beverage market became wide open, and several Indian companies emerged. Thums Up, an Indian cola brand — founded by Ramesh Chauhan ’62 — took off and became the dominant cola by the 1980s. Chauhan developed its own unique formula independently.

In 1991, India accelerated its economic liberalization, especially around FDI, and FERA’s standards were diluted. Coca-Cola returned to India, again without a partner. Other major brands, including Pepsi, had also entered the market. By then, Thums Up had a market share in India of well over 80 percent, but, concerned with its ability to compete in a war between the deep-pocketed American multinational giants, Thums Up sold out to Coca-Cola for $60 million in 1993, a figure that was later deemed to be small.

Trader, speculator, or captain of industry?

Jackson says that in India, there were two competing interpretations of this story. In one version, Fernandes kicking out a global multinational firm was seen as a developing country establishing its economic sovereignty by making a bold policy decision and “risking all kind of geopolitical blowback that might follow from the U.S.,” says Jackson. “In this view, the Indian government’s bold move allowed local entrepreneurs and local companies like Chauhan and Thums Up to emerge.”

Yet an important counter narrative emerged that challenged the view that companies like Thums Up and figures like Chauhan are enterprising entrepreneurs.

“Maybe they just took advantage of protectionism to form a company and make some money,” says Jackson. “So rather than being an intrepid captain of industry, observers wondered whether maybe Chauhan was ‘simply a trader’ who took advantage of policy protection, but sold out as soon as the market became competitive.”

Later developments added some credibility to this view. Ironically, Coca-Cola was unable to remove Thums Up and Limca, another soda brand from Chauhan’s company, from its product lineup, and both remained extremely popular and widely consumed. This suggested to many observers that Thums Up could have survived the cola wars had it not sold out to the American multinational. The public had acquired a taste for the distinctly Indian beverages that Chauhan had created.

“This narrative encapsulates this kind of tension policymakers face: If we provide policy support to our enterprising entrepreneurs and they thrive, will they also do well for the country? Or are they simply opportunists who will take advantage of policy support in ways that benefit themselves but have little broader benefits to the country,” says Jackson.

This episode was just one of dozens of instances of conflicts between Indian companies and multinational firms in the liberalizing 1990s and 2000s, which the government was often compelled to adjudicate. Throughout this period, the question persisted: How would policymakers identify the business figures who could be agents of industrial development and economic transformation, whether foreign or domestic? 

Ramesh Chauhan for one continued an enterprising path. He turned his attention to the bottled water industry in India and his brand — Bisleri — remains one of the country’s leading bottled water brands today.

The MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) showcased its high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology, essential for fusion energy and increasingly relevant to superhot geothermal applications, to Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass) during his March 12 visit.

High-field electromagnets are required to confine plasma in fusion reactors, and PSFC’s HTS technology enables dramatically higher magnetic fields, allowing for more compact and cost-effective reactor designs. The same HTS technology can also be applied to gyrotrons, which are high-power microwave sources that operate more efficiently at higher frequencies, enabling new energy applications.

One such application is millimeter-wave drilling for superhot geothermal energy, where microwave energy is used to heat, melt, or vaporize rock. Because drilling rates scale with input power and costs increase less rapidly with depth than in conventional drilling, this approach could overcome key economic barriers to accessing deep geothermal resources and enable scalable, baseload clean energy.

During Auchincloss’ recent visit to PSFC, MIT researchers explained the technology development and testing underway to take millimeter-wave technology from laboratory to the real world.

“I visited MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center to learn more about the science and engineering necessary to make this technology work at utility scale. Superhot geothermal uses microwaves to melt rock, going much deeper and hotter than is possible with contact drilling. This can generate clean, baseload power in America east of the Rocky Mountains, where the geology has conventionally not been suitable for industrial geothermal,” says Auchincloss.

“The technology is still years away from working in a state with ‘cool rock’ like Massachusetts, but the ultimate benefit for the Bay State could be tremendous. In addition to lower utility bills, a new industry with good jobs could thrive here. Indeed, this is already starting to happen, as spinouts from MIT — and the suppliers for these spinouts — are already setting up shop in Massachusetts,” he says.

Staff from MIT startup Quaise Energy participated in Auchincloss’ visit to PSFC. Quaise Energy, which has an office in Cambridge, completed a successful drilling demonstration using gyrotron-based millimeter-wave technology last fall in Texas. One of the first rounds of MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) seed funding provided support for PSFC’s initial development of the technology in 2008.

Superhot rock geothermal energy refers to tapping temperatures of nearly 400 degrees Celsius to generate large amounts of electricity. Conventional drilling approaches can fail at the great depths (several kilometers) and high temperatures required to reach this geothermal resource. The millimeter-wave drilling technology invented at PSFC and being commercialized by Quaise Energy could be faster and more effective than conventional drilling, especially at high temperatures and great depths. PSFC is planning a new laboratory facility to further study millimeter-wave drilling and test improvements to the existing technology.

“This initiative will leverage MIT’s extensive capabilities in geophysics, geochemistry, millimeter-wave technology, and AI, along with existing infrastructure including power, water, and experimental facilities. The goal is to anchor next-generation geothermal innovation within an integrated academic-industry ecosystem, accelerating both technology maturation, de-risking deployment pathways, and developing the needed workforce,” says Steve Wukitch, the interim director and a principal research scientist at PSFC.

Oliver Jagoutz, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geology and director of the Earth Resources Laboratory (ERL), also participated in the representative’s visit to PSFC. ERL is teaming with PSFC on the planned laboratory facility for testing millimeter-wave drilling under representative pressure and temperature conditions and on realistic rock samples.

Earlier in March, MITEI’s Spring Symposium, titled “Next-generation geothermal for firm power,” explored the current state of the geothermal industry, innovative technologies, and the opportunities ahead. During the symposium, Wukitch served as moderator of a panel on drilling advances and described the planned PSFC laboratory facility for millimeter-wave testing, and Quaise Energy’s Matt Houde described the company’s recent advances and future plans. On the following day, MITEI and the Clean Air Task Force co-hosted a gathering of MITEI member companies, next-generation geothermal companies, and investors for a GeoTech Summit, titled “Accelerating geothermal technology, projects, and deal flow.”

A national housing shortage is straining finances and communities across the United States. In Massachusetts, at least 222,000 homes will have to be built in the next 10 years to meet the population's needs. At the same time, there are numerous challenges in traditional construction. There's a shortage of skilled construction workers. Most projects involve multiple contractors and subcontractors, adding complexity and lag time. And the construction process, as well as the buildings themselves, can be a major source of emissions that contribute to climate change.

Reframe Systems, co-founded by Vikas Enti SM '20, uses robotics, software, and high-performance materials to address these problems. Founded in 2022, the company deploys microfactories that bring housing fabrication and production closer to the regions where the homes are needed. The first homes designed and manufactured in Reframe's first microfactory have been fully built in Arlington and Somerville, Massachusetts. 

Enti's experiences in MIT System Design and Management (SDM) shaped the company from its start. "Learning how to navigate the system and finding the optimal value for each stakeholder has been a key part of the business strategy," he says, "and that's rooted in what I learned at SDM."

Better tools for system-level problems

Enti applied to SDM's master of science in engineering and management while he was working at Kiva Systems, overseeing its acquisition by Amazon and transformation into Amazon Robotics. He found that the SDM program's fundamentals of systems engineering, system architecture, and project management provided him with the tools he needed to address system-level problems in his work.

While he was at MIT, Enti also served as an associate director for the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which offers students and researchers mentorship, feedback, and potential funding for their startup ideas. He realized that "there isn't a single formula for how businesses start, or how long it takes to get them started," he says, which helped shape his plans to start his own business.

Enti took a leave of absence from MIT to oversee the expansion of Amazon Robotics in Europe. He returned and completed his degree in 2020, writing his thesis on developing technology that could mitigate falls for elderly people. This instinct to use his education for a good cause resurfaced when his daughters were born. He wanted his future business to address a real-world problem and have a social impact, while also reducing carbon emissions.

Growing housing, shrinking emissions

Enti concluded that housing, with immediate real-world impact and a significant share of global carbon emissions, was the right problem to work on. He reached out to his colleagues Aaron Small and Felipe Polido from Amazon Robotics to share his idea for advanced, low-cost factories that could be deployed quickly and close to where they were needed. The two joined him as co-founders.

Currently, the microfactory in Andover, Massachusetts, produces structural panels, with robotics completing wall and ceiling framing and people completing the rest of the work, including wiring and plumbing. Eventually, Reframe hopes to automate more of the building process through further use of robotics. The modular construction process allows for reduced waste and disruption on the eventual home site. And the finished homes are designed to be energy-efficient and ready for solar panel installation. The company is set to start work soon on a group of homes in Devens, Massachusetts.

In addition to the Andover location, Reframe is setting up in southern California to help rebuild homes that were destroyed in the area's January 2025 wildfires. The company's software-assisted design process and the adjustability of the microfactories allows them to meet local zoning and building codes and align with the local architectural aesthetic. This means that in Somerville, Reframe's completed buildings look like modernized versions of the neighboring three-story buildings, known locally as "triple-deckers." On the other side of the country, Reframe's design offerings include Spanish-style and craftsman homes.

"Housing is a complex systems problem," Enti says, explaining the impact SDM has had on his work at Reframe. The methods and tools taught in the integrated core class EM.412 (Foundations of System Design and Management) help him tackle systems-level problems and take the needs of multiple stakeholders into account. The Reframe team used technology roadmapping as they devised their overall business plan, inspired by the work of Olivier de Weck, associate head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. And lectures on project management from Bryan Moser, SDM's academic director, remain relevant. 

"Embracing the fact that this is a systems problem, and learning how to navigate the system and the stakeholders to make sure we're finding the optimal value, has been a key part of the business strategy," Enti says.

Reframe Systems is set to continue learning through iteration as they plan to expand their network of microfactories. The company remains committed to the core vision of sustainably meeting the country's need for more housing. "I'm grateful we get to do this," Enti says. "Once you strip away all the robotics, the advanced algorithms, and the factories, these are high-quality, healthy homes that families get to live in and grow." 

People building the future of the social web — interoperable and decentralized — need to protect themselves against copyright liability. Like anyone who creates and operates platforms for user-uploaded content, the hosts of the decentralized social web can take preventive measures to reduce their legal exposure when a user posts material that violates someone’s copyright.

This post gives an overview of the steps to take. It’s meant for operators of Mastodon and other ActivityPub servers, Bluesky hosts, RSS mirrors, and other decentralized social media protocols, and developers of apps for those protocols — but it will apply to other hosts as well. This isn’t legal advice, and can’t substitute for a consultation with a lawyer about your specific circumstances. It focuses on U.S. law — the law may impose different requirements elsewhere. Still, we hope it helps you get started with confidence.

Why should I care? Copyright’s Sword of Damocles

In some circumstances, the operator of a platform that handles user content can be legally responsible for content that infringes copyright. That can happen when the platform operator is directly involved in copying or distributing the copyrighted material, when they promote or knowingly assist the infringement, or when they benefit financially from infringement while being in a position to supervise it. But these judge-made rules are often difficult and uncertain to apply in practice — and the penalties for being found on the wrong side of the law can be severe. Copyright’s “statutory damages” regime allows for massive, unpredictable financial liability. That’s why it’s important to limit your risk.

For Server Operators: Limiting Risk with the DMCA Safe Harbors

If you run a social network server, the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are an important way to limit your liability risk. The DMCA shields server operators from nearly all forms of copyright liability that can result from “storage at the direction of a user” — in other words, hosting user-uploaded content. But to qualify for this protection, there are steps a server operator has to take.

1. Designate A Contact To Receive Copyright Infringement Notices

First, you’ll need to provide contact information for someone who can receive infringement notices (a “designated agent”). That information needs to be posted in at least two places: on your server in a place visible to users (such as a “DMCA” page or post, or as part of your Terms of Service), and in the U.S. Copyright Office’s “Designated Agent Directory.” To post that information to the directory, you have to create an account at https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/ and pay a small fee. The directory listings expire after three years, and once expired, your safe harbor protection goes away, so it’s important to keep that listing current.

2. Respond Promptly to Notices and Counter-notices

When you receive infringement notices, it’s important to respond to them promptly. Notices are supposed to identify the copyright holder, the copyrighted work they claim was infringed, and the post they claim is infringing. By deleting or disabling access to the posted material, you protect yourself from liability with respect to that material.

The theory behind Section 512 is that hosts don’t have to be in a position of deciding whether a post infringes someone’s copyright — it’s up to the poster, the rights holder, and potentially a court to decide that. A host who takes down posts whenever they receive an infringement notice is well-protected. But it’s equally important to recognize that hosts aren’t required to take down content in response to every notice. Infringement notices are frequently wrong, misguided, or abusive, or simply incomplete. Hosts who want to stand up for their users’ speech can choose to disregard infringement notices that seem suspect. While this risks losing the automatic protection of the safe harbor in each instance, it can still be done safely with careful preparation, ideally using a plan crafted with help from a lawyer. Bear in mind that people sending false notices, including by failing to consider whether a post is a fair use before asking a host to take it down, can be liable for damages under the DMCA.

The DMCA also allows the person who posted the material to send a “counter-notification” asserting that they really did have the right to post and that there’s no copyright infringement. Responding to counter-notifications is a good way for a host to demonstrate that they look out for their users. When a host receives a counter-notification, they should forward it on to the person who sent the original takedown notice and let them know that the post will be restored in 10 business days. Then, after that waiting period has elapsed, the host can restore the posted material. Just like with infringement notices, a host isn’t required to honor a counter-notification that appears to be fraudulent, but there’s no penalty for honoring it anyway.

3. Have A Repeat Infringer Policy

The next requirement is to have a policy of terminating the accounts of “subscribers and account holders” who are “repeat infringers” in “appropriate circumstances,” and to carry out that policy. Yes, that’s a vague requirement. It doesn’t require a “three strikes” policy or any other sports analogy. It just needs to be reasonable. Be sure your policy is spelled out in your website terms or “DMCA” page.

4. Don’t Ignore Known Infringement

Hosts need to take down user posts whenever the host actually knows that the post is infringing. In other words, a host isn’t protected if they ignore takedown notices based on technicalities in the notices, or if they learn about the infringement some other way. But hosts don’t need to actively look for infringement on their servers — only to act when someone notifies them.

5. Don’t Encourage Infringement

Finally, make sure that nothing you post or advertise actively encourages copyright infringement. For example, don’t post examples of users uploading copyrighted music or video without permission, or insinuate that your server is a good place for infringing content.

There are some other technicalities in the DMCA that can affect the safe harbor, which is why it’s always a good idea to consult with a lawyer. But following these steps will help protect you when you run a social media server — or any other kind of user-uploaded content platform.

It’s an essential insight about our world: Innovation drives economic growth. For the U.S. to thrive, it must keep innovating. But how, and in what areas?

A new book co-authored by MIT faculty members focuses on six key areas where technology advances can drive the economy and support national security.

Those sectors — semiconductors, biotechnology, critical minerals, drones, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing — are all built on U.S. know-how but are also areas where the country has either yielded a lead in production or innovation, or could yet fall behind.

As the book explains, a roadmap for U.S. prosperity and security involves sustaining notable areas of innovation and the national research ecosystem behind them, while rebuilding domestic manufacturing.

“In each of these areas, there are breakthroughs to be had, where the U.S. can leapfrog competitors and gain an advantage,” says Elisabeth Reynolds, an MIT expert on industrial innovation and editor of the new volume. “That’s a very exciting part of this.” She adds: “These areas are front and center for U.S. national economic and security policy.”

The book, “Priority Technologies: Ensuring U.S. Security and Shared Prosperity,” is published this week by the MIT Press. It features chapters by MIT faculty with expertise on the industrial sectors in question. Reynolds, a professor of the practice in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, is a leading expert on industrial innovation and has long advocated for innovation-based growth that helps the U.S. workforce.

“All of this can be good for everyone,” says MIT economist Simon Johnson, who wrote the foreword to the book. “Out of that flow of innovations and ideas, we can create more good jobs for all Americans. Pushing the technological frontier and turning that into jobs is definitely going to help.”

Making more chips

“Priority Technologies” grew out of an ongoing MIT seminar by the same name, which Reynolds and Johnson began holding in 2023, often with appearances by other MIT faculty.

Both Reynolds and Johnson bring vast experience to the subject of innovation and production. Among other things, Reynolds headed MIT’s Industrial Performance Center for over a decade and was executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. She served in the White House National Economic Council as special assistant to the president for manufacturing and development.

Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, with MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and the University of Chicago’s James Robinson, for work about the historical relationship between institutions and economic growth. He has co-authored numerous books, including, with Acemoglu, the 2023 book “Power and Progress,” about the trajectory and implications of artificial intelligence.

As it happens, “Priority Technologies” does not focus on AI, instead opting to examine other vital, and often related, areas of innovation.

“We do not think this is the entire list of priority technologies,” Johnson says. “This is a partial list, and there are lots of other ideas.”

In the chapter on semiconductors, Jesús A. del Alamo, the Donner Professor of Science in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, calls them “the oxygen of modern society.” This U.S.-born industry has seen a large manufacturing shift away from the country, however, leaving it vulnerable in terms of security and the economy; about one-third of inflation experienced in 2021 stemmed from a chip shortage. As he notes, the U.S. is now in the process of rebuilding its capacity to make leading-edge logic chips, for one thing.

“With semiconductors, people thought the U.S. could lose the manufacturing, stay on top of the innovation and design side, and would be fine,” Reynolds says. “But it’s turned out to make the country quite vulnerable. So we’ve had a massive shift to rebuild semiconductor manufacturing capabilities here in the U.S., and I would argue that’s been a successful strategy in recent years.”

Bringing biotech back home

In biotechnology, relocating manufacturing in the U.S. is also key, using new technologies in the process. As J. Christopher Love, the Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering, puts it in his chapter, while the U.S. is the leader in biotech research, it “lacks the manufacturing infrastructure and expertise necessary to bring these ideas to the market at the same pace as it generates innovative new products.” Among other remedies, he suggests that smaller, more flexible production facilities can help the U.S. “leapfrog” other countries on the manufacturing side. Love is also co-director of MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing, which aims to drive advances in U.S. production across industries.

“We have tremendous biotech innovation, we’re the leaders, but we have a bottleneck when it comes manufacturing,” Reynolds observes. “If we can break through that with new technologies, new production processes, we’re in a position to make us less vulnerable, from a supply chain point of view, and capture more of what is going to be a $4 trillion market over the next 15 years.”

A similar story holds in other areas. Many drone innovations were developed in the U.S., while much manufacturing has shifted to China. Fiona Murray, the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship, writes that the U.S. has an “opportunity to rebuild its production at scale,” although that will also require significant strengthening of its supply chains, too.

Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor of Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering, recommends a multifaceted approach to help the U.S. regain traction in the production of critical minerals, including better forms of extraction, manufacturing, and recycling, to reduce potential scarcities.

And in the quantum computing chapter, two MIT co-authors — William D. Oliver, the Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a professor of physics; and Jonathan Ruane, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan — note that the sector could help accelerate drug discovery, materials science, and energy applications. Noting that the U.S. still leads in private-sector investment in the field but tails China in public-sector investment, they urge more research support and stronger supply chains for quantum computing components, among other recommendations.

“The country that achieves quantum leadership will gain decisive advantages in these strategically important industries,” they write.

The university engine

From industry to industry, the book makes clear that certain key issues are broadly important to U.S. competitiveness and growth. The partnership between the federal government and the world-leading research capacities of U.S. universities, for one thing, has given the country an initial lead in many economic sectors and promises to continue driving innovation.

At the same time, the U.S. would benefit from expanding and strengthening its domestic supply chains, in the process of building up more domestic manufacturing, and needs capital investment that will help hardware-side, physically substantial industrial growth.

“These common themes include supply chain resilience and manufacturing capability,” Reynolds says. “Can we help drive the country’s innovation ecosystem through expansion of our industrial system and manufacturing? That’s a big question.”

On the research front, she reflects, over the years, “It’s been amazing how much MIT-led research has aligned with national priorities — or maybe that’s not so surprising.”

The partnership between the U.S. federal government and universities as research engines was formalized in the 1940s, thanks in part to then-MIT president Vannevar Bush. According to some estimates, government investment in non-defense research and development alone has accounted for up to 25 percent of U.S. economic growth since World War II.

“Vannevar Bush realized it wasn’t about a stock of technology, it was about a flow of innovation,” Johnson says. “And that brilliant insight is still relevant today. I think that is the insight of the last century. And that’s what we’re trying to capture and reiterate and repeat.”

“This is not even the future. This is current.”

Scholars and industry leaders have praised “Priority Technologies.” Erica Fuchs, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, has stated that when it comes to “ensuring American national security, economic competitiveness, and societal well-being,” the book underscores “the positive role technology can play in those outcomes.” Hemant Taneja, CEO of the venture capital firm General Catalyst, calls the volume “required reading for anyone interested in building the abundant, resilient future America deserves.”

For their part, Reynolds and Johnson hope the book will draw many kinds of readers interested in the economy, innovation, prosperity, and national security.

“We tried to make the volume accessible,” Reynolds says, noting that the book directly lays out “challenges for the country, and what we see as recommendations for next steps in how we position the country to succeed, and lead globally. Each of these chapters has something important to say.”

Johnson also notes the MIT scholars participating in the project want to enhance the ongoing policy conversation, in Washington and across the country, about supporting innovation and using it to drive U.S. economic and technological leadership.

“One reason to write a book is, you can’t pound the table with a podcast,” quips Johnson, who co-hosts a podcast, “Power and Consequences,” on major policy issues. In conversations with political leaders and their staffs, he adds, there is a core message to be transmitted about America and technology-driven growth: We have the knowledge and resources, but need to focus on supporting innovation while trying to increase domestic production.

“Here are the technologies we currently need,” Johnson says. “This is not imagination, this is not fanciful, this is not science fiction. This is not even the future. This is current. These are the technologies needed to defend the country and its interests. And we need to invest in these, and in everything we need to drive them forward.”

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For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work.

This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short. EFF is not alone in raising alarms about Palantir; immigrants' rights groups, human rights organizations, journalists, and former employees have raised similar concerns based on reports of the company's role in abusive immigration enforcement. We focus here on Palantir’s own human rights promises.

At the outset, we appreciate that Palantir was willing to engage respectfully, and we recognize that confidentiality and security obligations can limit what it can say. Nonetheless, measured against Palantir's own human rights commitments, its decision to keep powering ICE with tools used in dragnet raids and discriminatory detentions is indefensible. A good-faith application of those commitments should lead Palantir to end its contract with ICE, and refuse new, or end current, contracts with any other agency whose work predictably violates those commitments.

Palantir’s Public Promises

Palantir has long said it performs comprehensive human rights analysis on its work. It has also worked with ICE for years, apparently in a more limited capacity than today. It has publicly embraced the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Additionally, in its response to EFF, Palantir says its legal responsibilities are only “the floor” for broader risk assessments.

That was the point of our letter. We asked what human rights due diligence Palantir conducted when it first contracted with ICE and DHS; whether it performed the “proactive risk scoping” it advertises, how it reviews work over time, what it has done in response to reports of misuse, and whether it has used “every means at [its] disposal”—including contract provisions, third‑party oversight, and termination—to prevent or mitigate harms.

For the most part, Palantir did not answer our accountability questions. It did correct one point: Palantir says it does not currently work with CBP, and available evidence supports that, though it also made clear it could work with CBP in the future.

Palantir also raised a red herring it often deploys in response to criticism. It denied building a 'mega' or 'master' database for ICE and denied creating a database of protesters, which some ICE agents have claimed to have been built. We call it a red herring because those denials sidestep the central issues: what capabilities Palantir's tools actually provide to ICE.

To be clear, EFF has never claimed that Palantir is building a single centralized database. Our concern is grounded in how Palantir’s tools allow ICE to query and analyze data from multiple databases through a unified interface—which from an agent’s perspective can be a distinction without a difference.

In the sections that follow, we compare Palantir’s account of its work for ICE with evidence about how its tools seem to be used, and explain why legality, internal process, and sustained “engagement with the institutions whose vital tasks exist in tension with certain human rights” are no substitute for real human rights due diligence—because respect for human rights must be measured by outcomes, not just process.

Palantir’s ICE Work Undermines Its Own Standards

Palantir says ICE uses its ELITE tool for “prioritized enforcement”: to surface likely addresses of specific people, such as individuals with final orders of removal or high‑severity criminal charges. But according to sworn testimony in Oregon, ICE agents use ELITE to determine where to conduct deportation sweeps, and the system “pulled from all kinds of sources” to identify locations for raids aimed at mass detentions, including information from the Department of Health and Human Services such as Medicaid data. A leaked ELITE user guide for 'Special Operations' also instructs operators to disable filters to "display all targets within a Special Operations dataset." Those details directly conflict with Palantir’s narrow description of ELITE’s role.

Additionally, Palantir's response leans on legal authority and the Privacy Act. But it does not identify any specific lawful basis for using Medicaid data in this way or explain how its software enables that access. Even if a legal theory exists, turning sensitive medical information into fuel for dragnet sweeps is hard to reconcile with its commitments to privacy, equity, and the rights of impacted communities. Its own human rights framework requires grappling with foreseeable harms its products may enable, not just invoking possible legal authorization.   

Reporting shows that many people detained by ICE had no criminal record, much less a serious one, and in many cases no final order of removal. An overwhelming percentage of those detained were, or appeared to be, from Central and South America, and nearly one in five ICE arrests were street arrests of a Latine person with neither a criminal history nor a removal order.

These facts raise obvious questions about discriminatory impact, racial profiling, and whether Palantir's tools are facilitating detention practices far broader than the company claims. Palantir's response does not meaningfully engage those questions, despite the company's commitments to non-discrimination and due process.

EFF’s letter asked Palantir to explain how it is honoring its commitments to civil liberties in light of reports linking Palantir-owned systems to facial recognition and other tools used to identify and target people engaged in observing and recording law enforcement, including in connection with the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The letter also cites an incident in which an officer scanned protesters’ and observers’ faces and threatened to add their biometrics to a “nice little database.” Palantir’s response denies involvement in any such database.

A narrow denial about a single database does not answer the broader question: if ICE, its customer, claims it has this capability, what has Palantir done to ensure its tools are not used to chill protected speech, retaliate against observers, or facilitate targeting of people engaged in First Amendment‑protected activity? For a company that claims to value democracy and civil liberties, this is not a marginal issue; it goes to the heart of its human rights commitments.

Legality, Process, and Engagement with ICE Are Not Human Rights Standards

As mentioned above, Palantir leans heavily on legal compliance. It says government data sharing is “subject to, and governed by, data sharing agreements and government oversight” and that any sharing it facilitates is done according to “legal and technical requirements, including those of the Privacy Act of 1974.” It describes its role in ELITE as “data integration,” enabling ICE “to incorporate data sources to which it has access,” including data shared under inter‑agency agreements.

EFF is very familiar with the Privacy Act—we are suing the Office of Personnel Management over it currently. But Palantir’s response does not clarify how ICE legally has access to this information, how Palantir ensures that it follows those legal processes, or how Palantir’s software may have enabled access in the first place. More critically, that is still a legal answer to a human rights question, and legal compliance alone is insufficient as a human rights standard.

Human rights due diligence requires assessing foreseeable harms, responding to credible evidence of abuse, and changing course when the facts demand it—something Palantir, on paper, recognizes. That’s why it stresses that its legal responsibilities are only “the floor for [its] broader risk assessments,” pointing to the way it built toward GDPR‑style data protection principles and incorporated international humanitarian law principles before those requirements were formalized. If those commitments mean anything, Palantir has to explain how specific practices—like enabling ICE to use Medicaid data in dragnet raids—square with that broader standard.

Palantir also leans heavily on process. It points to a “layered approach” to risk, frameworks that purportedly examine multiple dimensions of privacy and equity, and “indelible” audit logs that track how its tools are used. Audit logs are not sufficient for protecting human rights. There is a long history of authoritarian regimes keeping extensive logs of their human rights abuses. Those structures can be useful for protecting human rights, but only if they are used to detect harm, trigger reassessment, and lead to changes in design, access, support, or contract enforcement when credible reports of abuse emerge.

That is why we pressed Palantir to spell out clearly what reports of misuse Palantir has received, what changes it made, and on what timeline. Again, instead of offering specific examples, Palantir points back to its internal framework and its willingness to “move towards the hardest problems” as evidence of effective efforts. But human rights are an outcome, not just a process.

Human rights due diligence is not a one-time approval at contract signing; under the UN Guiding Principles, it is supposed to be continuous, with new facts triggering reassessment. Complaints, media reports, leaks, litigation, and sworn testimony are exactly the kinds of events that should prompt review. If Palantir has an account for that work— how often it reviews ICE contracts, who conducts the reviews, what triggers them, and how findings reach the Board— it had every opportunity to describe it. Instead, it offered a generic assurance that it remains committed to human rights without engaging in the specifics. Confidentiality may sometimes limit disclosure, but it is no substitute for accountability.

What Needs to Happen Next 

Palantir wants credit for “mov[ing] towards the hardest problems” and engaging with institutions whose missions it says are “in tension with certain human rights” while having a human rights framework. But when the record includes violent raids, dragnet detentions, use of sensitive medical data, discriminatory targeting, retaliation against observers, and deaths tied to immigration enforcement operations, pointing to a values page is not enough; it has to reckon with the results.

Voluntary corporate human rights policies often function as weak accountability mechanisms: companies can tout principles, publish policies, and answer criticism with polished statements while changing very little on the ground. Palantir’s response fits that pattern all too well. EFF will continue to challenge its role in abusive immigration enforcement and demanding more accountability for technology vendors whose tools enable human rights violations. We are also happy to continue a dialogue with Palantir to that end. For now, this much is clear: Palantir needs to reconsider its contract with ICE and with all agencies whose work predictably violate human rights.