Recent Articles from TokenRing AI

The semiconductor industry is undergoing its most significant architectural transformation since the invention of the integrated circuit. As of February 2026, the era of massive, monolithic processors—where every component of a chip is etched onto a single, giant piece of silicon—is rapidly giving way to a modular "Silicon Lego" approach. At the heart of this [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the global race for semiconductor supremacy has reached a fever pitch, centered on a machine the size of a double-decker bus. ASML Holding NV (NASDAQ: ASML) has officially transitioned its High Numerical Aperture (High-NA) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems from experimental prototypes to the backbone of high-volume manufacturing. These "printers," [...]

As the artificial intelligence landscape shifts from a frantic gold rush for raw compute to a disciplined era of efficiency and scale, Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) has emerged as the silent architect behind the world’s most powerful "AI Factories." By February 2026, the era of relying solely on general-purpose GPUs has begun to wane, replaced [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the global semiconductor landscape has undergone its most radical transformation since the invention of the integrated circuit. The ambitious "reshoring" movement—once a series of blueprints and legislative promises—has transitioned into a phase of high-volume manufacturing (HVM). In the United States, the "Silicon Desert" of Arizona and the "Silicon Heartland" of [...]

As the calendar turns to February 2026, the artificial intelligence landscape has shifted from cloud-based novelty to a high-stakes war for on-device supremacy. At the center of this transformation is Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), a company that has successfully rebranded itself from a mobile chip provider to a full-stack AI powerhouse. With the recent commercial [...]

KAOHSIUNG, TAIWAN — In a move that underscores the physical infrastructure demands of the artificial intelligence revolution, ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:ASX) has announced a staggering $7 billion capital expenditure plan for 2026. The record-breaking investment, representing a 27% increase over its 2025 budget, marks a strategic pivot for the world’s largest outsourced semiconductor [...]

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the global semiconductor industry, the Chinese government has issued a series of directives instructing its leading technology firms to pause or significantly scale back orders for Nvidia’s latest high-performance chips, including the H200. This instruction, delivered by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the [...]

The infrastructure underpinning the artificial intelligence revolution just received a massive upgrade. On February 5, 2026, Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ: TSEM) confirmed a landmark strategic collaboration with NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) aimed at scaling 1.6T (1.6 Terabit-per-second) silicon photonics for next-generation AI data centers. This announcement marks a pivotal shift in how data moves between GPUs, effectively [...]

Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) has officially confirmed that its entire production capacity for High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is fully committed through the end of the 2026 calendar year. This landmark announcement underscores a historic supply-demand imbalance in the semiconductor sector, driven by the insatiable appetite for artificial intelligence infrastructure. As the industry moves into 2026, Micron’s [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the artificial intelligence landscape is witnessing a monumental shift in power. While the initial wave of the AI revolution was defined by general-purpose GPUs, the current era belongs to "bespoke compute." Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) has emerged as the primary architect of this new world, solidifying its leadership in custom [...]

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) has officially crossed a historic threshold, reporting a record-shattering fourth quarter for 2025 that cements its position as the premier alternative to Nvidia in the global AI arms race. With total quarterly revenue reaching $10.27 billion—a 34% increase year-over-year—the company’s strategic pivot toward a "data center first" model has reached [...]

The global semiconductor industry is on the verge of a historic transformation, with recent analyst reports confirming that the market is set to hit the $1 trillion mark by late 2026—nearly four years ahead of previous industry forecasts. In a series of blockbuster updates released in early 2026, leading financial institutions Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the global semiconductor landscape is witnessing a seismic shift as Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) officially enters the high-volume manufacturing (HVM) phase of its ambitious 18A process node. Following a string of turbulent years, the company’s Q4 2025 earnings report, released late last month, signaled a definitive turning point. Intel beat analyst [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the global semiconductor landscape has reached a fever pitch, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM) standing at the absolute center of the storm. In its most recent quarterly report, the foundry giant posted financial results that shattered analyst expectations, driven by an insatiable hunger for high-performance computing (HPC) and [...]

As of February 6, 2026, the artificial intelligence landscape is bracing for its most significant hardware shift yet. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has officially moved its next-generation "Rubin" architecture into mass production, backed by a staggering $500 billion order backlog that underscores the insatiable global appetite for compute. This transition marks the culmination of the company’s [...]

The global landscape of artificial intelligence reached a pivotal turning point this week as Beijing-based Moonshot AI officially launched Kimi K2.5, a model that signals the end of the "single-brain" era of LLMs. Released on January 27, 2026, Kimi K2.5 is not just another incremental update; it is a trillion-parameter behemoth built on a radical [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the landscape of consumer artificial intelligence has undergone a fundamental transformation, driven by Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) strategic pivot toward a "multi-vendor" intelligence model. Rather than relying solely on its internal research, Apple has spent the last year weaving together a complex tapestry of global partnerships to power "Apple Intelligence." [...]

In a landmark legal outcome that underscores the intensifying global struggle for artificial intelligence dominance, a federal jury in San Francisco has convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding on 14 felony counts related to the theft of proprietary trade secrets. The verdict, delivered on January 29, 2026, marks the first time in U.S. history [...]

In a series of candid warnings delivered at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos and during recent high-profile interviews, IBM (NYSE: IBM) Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna has sounded the alarm on what he calls the "$8 trillion math problem." Krishna argues that the current global trajectory of capital expenditure on artificial intelligence infrastructure [...]

In a landmark development for computational medicine, Mass General Brigham (MGB) officially announced the launch of BrainIAC (Brain Imaging Adaptive Core) on February 5, 2026. This groundbreaking artificial intelligence foundation model represents a paradigm shift in how clinicians diagnose and treat neurological disorders. By utilizing a generalized architecture trained on tens of thousands of volumetric [...]

The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence has often been framed through the lens of creative disruption, yet its most profound impact is increasingly found in the restoration of human dignity. ElevenLabs, the global leader in AI audio research, has moved beyond its origins as a tool for content creators to become a cornerstone of [...]

Since the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022, the world has been captivated by AI that can talk. But as of February 2026, the conversation has fundamentally shifted. We are no longer in the "Chatbot Era"; we have entered the "Agentic Era," catalyzed by the widespread rollout of OpenAI’s "Operator." This autonomous browser agent has [...]

In a shift that has fundamentally altered the trajectory of Silicon Valley, the gap between "walled-garden" artificial intelligence and open-weights models has effectively vanished. What began with the disruptive launch of Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B in 2024 has evolved into a new era of "Superintelligence" with the 2025 rollout of the Llama 4 series. Today, [...]

REDMOND, WA — February 5, 2026 — One year after its initial unveiling, Microsoft’s breakthrough World and Human Action Model (WHAM), codenamed "Muse," is fundamentally altering the landscape of interactive entertainment. By enabling developers to generate playable 3D sequences from simple text prompts and real-time controller inputs, Muse represents a shift from static generative art [...]

The landscape of personal productivity and academic research underwent a seismic shift over the last eighteen months, punctuated by the viral explosion of Google’s NotebookLM. What began as an experimental "AI-first notebook" has matured into a cornerstone of the modern information economy, primarily through its "Audio Overview" feature—popularly known as "Deep Dive" podcasts. By allowing [...]

In a move that marks the end of the "voice command" era and the beginning of true ambient intelligence, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) officially completed the nationwide rollout of its generative AI overhaul, dubbed "Alexa+," on February 4, 2026. This comprehensive "brain transplant" replaces the legacy decision-tree architecture that has powered Echo devices for over a [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the boundary between human and machine in the digital world has become legally mandated for the youngest users in the United States. Following the effective date of Senate Bill 243, known as the "Companion Chatbot Law," on January 1st, 2026, California has set a global precedent by requiring AI-driven platforms [...]

In a historic move to assert international oversight over the rapidly accelerating field of artificial intelligence, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres officially launched the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (IISPAI) on February 4, 2026. The panel, comprised of 40 world-renowned experts, is designed to serve as a "world-class evidence engine," providing a rigorous, scientific [...]

The global race for artificial intelligence supremacy has officially moved from the silicon of the microchip to the uranium of the reactor. As of February 2026, the tech industry has undergone a fundamental transformation, shifting its focus from software optimization to the securing of massive, 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) sources. At the heart of this [...]

SUNNYVALE, CA — In what is being hailed as the "iPhone moment" for robotics, Figure AI has officially launched the Figure 03, its first humanoid robot designed specifically for the domestic environment. Moving beyond the industrial prototypes that defined the company’s early years, Figure 03 is a sleek, consumer-oriented machine capable of performing complex, long-horizon [...]

SANTA CLARA, CA — As of February 5, 2026, the global landscape of artificial intelligence has reached a critical inflection point. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has officially moved its Blackwell architecture—specifically the B200 GPU and the liquid-cooled GB200 NVL72 rack system—into full-scale volume production. This transition marks the end of the "scarcity era" that defined 2024 [...]

In early February 2025, the landscape of digital information underwent a seismic shift as OpenAI launched its "Deep Research" agent. Moving beyond the brief, conversational snippets that had defined the ChatGPT era, this new autonomous agentic workflow was designed to spend minutes—sometimes hours—navigating the open web, synthesizing vast quantities of data, and producing comprehensive, cited [...]

In January 2025, a relatively obscure laboratory in Hangzhou, China, released a model that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, effectively ending the era of "brute-force" scaling. DeepSeek-R1 arrived not with the multi-billion-dollar fanfare of a traditional frontier release, but with a startling technical claim: it could match the reasoning capabilities of OpenAI’s top-tier models for [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the global race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has moved out of the laboratory and into the realm of heavy industry. Project Stargate, the unprecedented $500 billion supercomputing initiative led by OpenAI in partnership with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), has officially transitioned from a series of ambitious [...]

In a move that solidifies its dominance in the generative media landscape, Google has officially launched Veo 3.1, the latest iteration of its flagship video generation model. The update, which arrived in January 2026, marks a transformative leap from experimental AI toward a production-ready engine capable of generating high-fidelity 4K video and—for the first time—synchronous, [...]

In a historic leap for interplanetary exploration, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has confirmed the successful completion of the first Martian rover drives planned entirely by an autonomous artificial intelligence agent. Utilizing a specialized iteration of Claude 4.5 from Anthropic, the Perseverance rover navigated a high-risk 456-meter stretch of the Jezero Crater in late 2025, [...]

The artificial intelligence industry is bracing for what could be the most significant financial event in tech history. Rumors are intensifying that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in late 2026 with a target valuation of $1 trillion. Following a series of massive private funding rounds that most [...]

Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) has officially shifted the gears of the mobile industry into overdrive, announcing an ambitious roadmap to embed Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Gemini-powered artificial intelligence into 800 million devices by the end of 2026. This massive expansion, centered around what the company calls its "AX" (AI Transformation) vision, represents a definitive pivot from [...]

In a landmark release for artificial intelligence security, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) researchers have published a definitive study on identifying and neutralizing "sleeper agents"—malicious backdoors hidden within the weights of AI models. The research paper, titled "The Trigger in the Haystack: Extracting and Reconstructing LLM Backdoor Triggers," published in early February 2026, marks a pivotal shift [...]

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the artificial intelligence community, OpenAI, backed heavily by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has officially confirmed that it will retire its beloved GPT-4o model on February 13, 2026. The deprecation marks the end of an era for the model that first introduced "omni" multimodal capabilities, making way for the [...]

In a move that has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and Wall Street alike, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has officially unveiled a record-breaking capital expenditure plan for 2026, targeting a staggering $185 billion investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Announced during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call on February 4, this guidance represents a near 100% increase [...]

In a move that signals a tectonic shift in the artificial intelligence landscape, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has announced the imminent release of a completely reimagined Siri, now powered by Google’s (Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL)) Gemini models. Scheduled for rollout in March 2026 as part of the iOS 26.4 update, this "Siri 2.0" promises to finally [...]

In a move that cements the "circular economy" of the artificial intelligence era, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has finalized a staggering $20 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a broader $100 billion funding round. This infusion, confirmed this week in February 2026, values the San Francisco-based AI pioneer at approximately $830 billion—catapulting it into a rare [...]

The professional services industry is reeling this week as Anthropic, backed by tech giants like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), launched its long-anticipated "Claude Cowork" suite. Released in early February 2026, the specialized "agentic" plugins for legal and sales workflows have sparked an immediate and violent market reaction. Analysts are calling [...]

As the semiconductor industry hits the formidable "complexity wall" of 1.6-nanometer (nm) and 2nm process nodes, the traditional manual methods of designing integrated circuits have officially become obsolete. In a landmark shift for the industry, artificial intelligence has transitioned from a supportive tool to an autonomous "agentic" necessity. Leading Electronic Design Automation (EDA) giants, most [...]

SAN FRANCISCO — February 5, 2026 — In a move that industry analysts are calling the "extinction event" for traditional enterprise software, OpenAI has officially launched OpenAI Frontier. Positioned as a "Semantic Operating System" (SOS), Frontier represents a fundamental departure from the chat-based assistants of the early 2020s. Instead of merely answering questions, Frontier acts [...]

In a landmark demonstration of semiconductor engineering, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) has revealed an unprecedented AI processor test vehicle that signals the definitive end of the HBM3e era and the dawn of HBM4 dominance. This massive "system-in-package" (SiP) marks a critical technological shift, utilizing 12 high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) stacks to tackle the "memory wall"—the growing [...]

In a historic turning point for the global electronics industry, Japan has officially reclaimed its status as a top-tier semiconductor superpower. As of February 5, 2026, a series of strategic maneuvers by the Japanese government, anchored by massive subsidies and international partnerships, has successfully lured the world's most advanced manufacturing processes back to the archipelago. [...]

As of February 2026, the ambitious vision of the US CHIPS and Science Act has transitioned from high-level legislative debates and muddy construction sites into a tangible, high-volume manufacturing reality. The landscape of the American semiconductor industry has been fundamentally reshaped, with Arizona emerging as the undisputed "Silicon Desert" and the epicenter of leading-edge logic [...]

The semiconductor landscape has reached a historic turning point. As of February 2026, the once-unshakeable duopoly of x86 and ARM is facing its most significant challenge yet from RISC-V, the open-standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). What began as an academic project at UC Berkeley has matured into a cornerstone of high-end computing, driven by a [...]

In a definitive move to secure its infrastructure against the volatile fluctuations of the global semiconductor market, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) has accelerated the deployment of its third-generation custom silicon, the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) v3, codenamed "Iris." As of February 2026, the Iris chips have moved into broad deployment across Meta’s [...]

In a move that signals a seismic shift in the cloud computing landscape, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has officially unveiled the Maia 200, its second-generation custom AI accelerator designed specifically to power the next frontier of generative AI. Announced in late January 2026, the Maia 200 marks a significant departure from general-purpose hardware, prioritizing an "inference-first" [...]

In a decisive move to secure its dominance in the generative AI era, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has unveiled a massive expansion of its custom silicon roadmap, centered on the widespread deployment of its sixth-generation "Trillium" (TPU v6) and the seventh-generation "Ironwood" (TPU v7) accelerators. As of February 2026, Google has effectively transitioned its core [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the semiconductor industry has officially entered the era of "Bumpless" silicon. The long-anticipated transition from traditional solder-based microbumps to direct copper-to-copper (Cu-Cu) hybrid bonding has reached a critical tipping point, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE: TSM) announcing that its System on Integrated Chips (SoIC) technology has successfully achieved high-volume [...]

The semiconductor industry has officially crossed the threshold into the "Angstrom Era," a paradigm shift where transistor dimensions are no longer measured in nanometers but in the sub-nanometer scale. At the heart of this transition is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM), which has solidified its roadmap for the A16 process—a 1.6nm-class technology. With mass [...]

The semiconductor industry has reached a definitive turning point as of February 2026, marking the most significant architectural shift in transistor design since the move to FinFET a decade ago. Backside Power Delivery Network (BSPDN) technology has officially moved from laboratory prototypes to high-volume manufacturing (HVM), effectively "flipping the wafer" to solve the critical power [...]

As of February 2026, the global semiconductor industry has reached a historic inflection point. For over a decade, the FinFET transistor architecture reigned supreme, powering the rise of the smartphone and the cloud. Today, that era is over. We have officially entered the "2nm era," a high-stakes technological frontier where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: [...]

The era of brute-force artificial intelligence is facing a reckoning. As the power demands of traditional data centers soar to unsustainable levels, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) has unveiled a radical alternative that mimics the most efficient computer known to exist: the human brain. Hala Point, the world’s largest neuromorphic system, marks a definitive shift from [...]

The semiconductor industry has officially entered a new era. As of February 2026, the long-predicted transition from organic packaging materials to glass substrates has moved from laboratory curiosity to a critical manufacturing reality. This shift marks the first major departure in decades from Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF), the industry-standard organic resin that has underpinned chip [...]

As of February 2026, the global computing landscape has been fundamentally reshaped by a single piece of silicon: NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) Blackwell architecture. What began as a bold announcement in 2024 has matured into the backbone of the "AI Factory" era, providing the raw horsepower necessary to transition from simple generative chatbots to sophisticated, reasoning-capable [...]

In a landmark achievement that marks the culmination of the most aggressive turnaround in semiconductor history, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has officially launched the Core Ultra Series 3 processor family. Codenamed "Panther Lake," this new lineup is the first consumer platform built on the cutting-edge Intel 18A process node, signaling a definitive shift in the global [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the global semiconductor landscape has undergone its most radical transformation in decades. Following the enactment of Presidential Proclamation 11002 in mid-January, the United States has officially implemented a dual-track economic strategy targeting advanced logic semiconductors: a 25% import tariff on top-tier AI hardware and a controversial, first-of-its-kind revenue-sharing arrangement with [...]

In a move set to redefine the global AI supply chain, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM) has finalized plans to aggressively expand its advanced packaging capacity. By late 2026, the company aims to produce 130,000 Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) wafers per month, nearly quadrupling its output from late 2024 levels. This massive industrial pivot is designed [...]

As the artificial intelligence industry pivots toward the unprecedented scale of multi-trillion-parameter models, the bottleneck has shifted from raw compute to the networking fabric that binds tens of thousands of processors together. In a landmark announcement at the start of February 2026, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has officially detailed the full integration of Silicon Photonics into [...]

The high-stakes gamble for global semiconductor dominance has reached a definitive turning point as of February 2026. Following a turbulent year of political transitions and strategic "re-audits," the United States Department of Commerce has finalized the largest funding awards in the history of the CHIPS and Science Act. This milestone marks the formal conclusion of [...]

The landscape of personal computing underwent a seismic shift at CES 2026 as Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) officially launched its next-generation Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Plus processors. Building on the momentum of its predecessor, the X2 series represents a pivotal moment in the transition toward the "AI PC," moving local artificial intelligence from a niche [...]

In a pivotal shift for the global semiconductor landscape, Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) has officially cleared final verification for its sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4, for use in NVIDIA's (NASDAQ: NVDA) upcoming "Rubin" AI platform. This milestone, achieved in late January 2026, marks a dramatic resurgence for the South Korean tech giant after it [...]

In a move that cements the American Southwest as the next global epicenter for high-performance computing, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM) has successfully bid $197.25 million to acquire 902 acres of state trust land in North Phoenix. This strategic acquisition, finalized in January 2026, nearly doubles the company's footprint in Arizona to over 2,000 [...]

As of early 2026, the artificial intelligence industry has reached a critical inflection point where generic hardware is no longer enough to satisfy the hunger of multi-trillion parameter models. Leading this fundamental shift is Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO), which has successfully transitioned from a diversified networking giant into the primary architect of the custom AI [...]

As of February 5, 2026, the artificial intelligence hardware race has entered a blistering new phase. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) has officially pivoted from being a fast follower to an aggressive trendsetter with the ongoing rollout of its Instinct MI400 series. By leveraging Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (NYSE: TSM) cutting-edge 2nm process node [...]

In a definitive move to cement its dominance in the artificial intelligence landscape, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) has officially transitioned its next-generation "Vera Rubin" platform into full production. Announced as the successor to the record-breaking Blackwell architecture, the Rubin platform is slated for broad availability in the second half of 2026. This milestone marks a pivotal acceleration [...]

As of February 2026, the global semiconductor industry has officially crossed the threshold into the "Angstrom Era," a pivotal transition marked by the first high-volume shipments of ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ: ASML) Twinscan EXE:5200 High-NA EUV lithography systems. These massive, $350 million machines—roughly the size of a double-decker bus—represent the pinnacle of human engineering and [...]

In a seismic shift for the global semiconductor landscape, Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) has officially reached a 70% yield milestone for its second-generation 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process, known as SF2P. This achievement, confirmed following the company’s recent Q4 2025 performance review, marks the first time a competitor has demonstrated high-volume manufacturing stability on par with [...]

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has officially entered the era of High-Volume Manufacturing (HVM) for its cutting-edge 1.8nm-class process node, known as Intel 18A. Announced on January 30, 2026, this milestone marks the formal completion of CEO Pat Gelsinger’s ambitious "5 Nodes in 4 Years" (5N4Y) strategy. By hitting this target, Intel has successfully transitioned through five [...]

In a landmark shift for the global semiconductor industry, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and TSMC (NYSE: TSM) have officially commenced high-volume production of the "Blackwell" AI architecture at TSMC’s Fab 21 in North Phoenix, Arizona. As of February 5, 2026, the facility has reached yield parity with TSMC’s flagship plants in Taiwan, silencing skeptics who questioned [...]