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April 22, 2025
America’s AI Future Needs Faster Permitting
The United States leads the world in artificial intelligence, but it’s not guaranteed to stay there. The bottleneck isn’t talent, ideas, or capital—it’s electricity. Electricity is the binding constraint for building and using hyperscale data centers, essential for training today’s advanced AI models. The Department of Energy projects that data center electricity demand will nearly…
April 21, 2025
Trump Comes for Climate Research
Last week Politico published a scoop related to climate research under the Trump Administration: The Trump administration is canceling funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the entity that produces the federal government’s signature climate change study, according to three federal officials familiar with the move. The move, which had been widely expected, is a potentially fatal…
April 21, 2025
Silicon Valley’s Consumer Eugenics
The orchid was once an expensive, highly cultivated symbol of refinement; now, cheaper cultivars can be found in almost any grocery store. Perhaps that makes it a fitting image for a new fertility company, Orchid Health, that seeks to encourage parents to breed better children. Orchid Health is one of several Silicon Valley start-ups that…
April 21, 2025
The Nuclear Race to Power the AI Economy
America’s nuclear paradox: Yesterday’s reactors are being resurrected to power the future. For example: At Palisades, Michigan, engineers rush to repair steam generators before an October 2025 restart, while at Three Mile Island—where a 1979 meltdown once buried the country’s postwar nuclear ambitions—Microsoft has committed billions for carbon-free electricity to feed its voracious artificial-intelligence operations….
April 21, 2025
Don’t Let the Senate Undercut U.S. Leadership In Crypto
“America First” is more than a slogan—it’s a guiding principle. For the Trump administration, it should guide policy across the board, including in the fast-moving world of cryptocurrencies. With the Trump administration now working to secure American leadership in digital assets, Congress must avoid undermining progress by giving foreign competitors a regulatory edge. Like it or not,…
April 19, 2025
What a Novel-Writing Organization’s Demise Teaches Us About AI
During a recent tour for my newly released book on what Jewish tradition teaches us about artificial intelligence, the third-most common question I received—after “What’s your book about?” and “What made you write it?”—was “Did you use AI to write your book?” Each time, I would answer that third question with an unequivocal “no.” But I would…
April 18, 2025
The Dangerous Road to a “Master File”—Why Linking Government Databases Is a Terrible Idea
A concerning development from the Trump administration has privacy advocates sounding alarm bells nationwide: a plan to consolidate data from dozens of government agencies into what would amount to a comprehensive “master file” on all American citizens. While proponents claim this massive data integration effort will help eliminate waste and fraud, the potential consequences for…
April 17, 2025
The Rigidity Cycle and the Pacing Problem
I was listening to Tyler Cowen’s Conversations With Tyler podcast with Jennifer Pahlka, rich and full of detail relevant to my previous post on the pacing problem. In addition to recommending this good conversation, I echo Tyler’s recommendation of Jen’s book Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better….
April 17, 2025
The New Rules for Experts
My friend and AEI colleague Tony Mills — director of the AEI Center for Technology, Science, and Energy — has been on a tear lately. Today, I share four of Tony’s essays published in the past month on public trust in science, reform of NIH, COVID’s long-term costs, and how virologists lost the gain-of-function debate. Enjoy, and see you…
April 17, 2025
Judge McFadden’s First Amendment Ruling Against the White House: Infusing Modern Speech Doctrines with History and Tradition
I recently addressed today’s debate over the Press Clause’s meaning 234 years after the First Amendment’s ratification. The rift involves whether the clause is “a technology-specific provision” that safeguards “everyone’s right to use a particular type of mass communication technology and its modern analogs,” or whether it protects the press as an institution that receives…