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January 15, 2026

Data Centers Make Easy Targets For Rising Energy Bills, But They Are Poor Scapegoats

If we’re going to fix electricity pricing problems, we need to understand what’s actually causing them. Blaming data centers for rising electricity bills is easier than reforming how we allocate infrastructure costs, but only one of those approaches will actually help ratepayers.

By Will Rinehart

January 15, 2026

What Makes an App Succeed? Lessons from Competing on Apple and Google Platforms

In today’s digital economy, mobile apps are everywhere—and so are the entrepreneurs trying to build them. Over 3.8 million apps are available in Apple’s App Store, with new ones entering every day. But what determines whether an app breaks through to success—or quietly fades into the background? In our new research, we analyze over 400,000…

By Mark Jamison

January 14, 2026

British Industrial Policy

Key Points Read the PDF (text version below): Editor’s Note In 1986, the American Enterprise Institute published The Politics of Industrial Policy, a collection of essays edited by AEI Senior Fellow Claude Barfield and Hudson Institute Senior Fellow William A. Schambra. The volume emerged from an AEI conference convened in response to shifting dynamics abroad, especially…

By Jeffrey A. Hart

January 13, 2026

Kids’ Online Safety Requires Precision, Not Centralization

Parents have valid concerns about how online environments shape their children’s behavior. However, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee advances a comprehensive package of children’s online safety bills, the crucial question isn’t whether lawmakers should act, but how responsibility should be shared. How Congress assigns that responsibility will determine whether these reforms truly protect…

By Shane Tews

January 13, 2026

Restricting Minors’ Access to Social Media: Divided Ruling Over Florida Law Reveals First Amendment Rifts

An appellate court ruled in late November that a Florida law severely limiting minors’ ability to hold social media accounts and imposing age-verification and parental-confirmation requirements on platforms “likely” passes First Amendment muster and can take effect. The two-to-one decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Computer & Communications Industry…

By Clay Calvert

January 12, 2026

Protecting Youth Online: 2025 Update

In 2025, the landscape of digital safety for youth shifted from monitoring to integrated protection. Major platforms have moved beyond simple screen-time counters to introduce granular content filtering, mandatory age-appropriate defaults, and tools that bridge the gap between operating systems and individual apps. The following report detail the specific toolsets announced by Apple, Google, Meta,…

By Shane Tews

January 12, 2026

A Monument to Private Enterprise: The Lessons Zohran Mamdani Missed at His Swearing-In

There were ghosts in the old City Hall subway station when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the oath of office January 1. They were not the sentimental kind—not sepia-toned reminders of civic ambition—but the stubborn kind that insist on telling the truth about who really builds great things. They were whispering that New…

By Mark Jamison

January 9, 2026

2026 Tech Policy Predictions

With the second Trump administration settling into its second year, 2026 promises to bring continued evolution in technology policy. Our scholars are examining the developments likely to shape the year ahead across antitrust, AI infrastructure, broadband deployment, and emerging challenges in digital platforms. The Trump administration will continue reorienting antitrust enforcement away from its use…

By The Editors

January 8, 2026

First Amendment Lessons from the Shutdown About Government-Compelled Political Expression

Automatic-reply, out-of-office (OOO) emails are generally informative, innocuous and noncontroversial. They’re frequently formulaic—templates abound—and Microsoft offers instructions for their creation. However, the OOO emails at the heart of a First Amendment-based complaint filed by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) against the US Department of Education and Linda McMahon during last fall’s 43-day government…

By Clay Calvert

January 7, 2026

Disbanding the Federal Communications Commission

Abstract This paper argues that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has outlived the economic and technological conditions that justified its creation. The monopolistic telephone and spectrum scarcity environments of 1934 have been replaced by dynamic, intermodal competition across broadband, wireless, and satellite platforms, eroding the rationale for common carrier and broadcasting regulation. As its original…

By Mark Jamison