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March 26, 2025
Return of the Landline: A Regressive or Welcome Scenario?
If there has been one inexorable trend in the telecommunications industry over the past 30 years, it has been the decline of the household landline phone connection. While Figure 1 illustrates the case for the United States, the phenomenon is worldwide. The humble landline, with its single function and tethered to a single fixed location has given…
March 25, 2025
The Press Clause’s Disputed Meaning and Its Implications for Trump-Era Journalism
A burgeoning battle among academics and attorneys involving a centuries-old communications technology––the printing press––could impact journalists’ current claims to constitutional protection against President Trump’s ceaseless attacks on news organizations. Indeed, the dispute might profoundly affect lawsuits such as Associated Press v. Budowich in which a wire service is fighting to restore its press-credentialed access to…
March 20, 2025
DOGE, Open Up the MAX Database!
My most recent post “Haste Controls Waste!” sought to reconcile my misgivings about the speed of current government reforms with decades of staunch and thoroughgoing resistance. Now let’s talk about DOGE-y reforms that could be applied to democratic processes. When Elon Musk spoke about democracy in the Oval Office some weeks ago, many people focused…
March 19, 2025
How much might AI legislation cost in the US?
Policymakers are rushing to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), but the economic impact of these regulations remains largely unexplored. While the European Union and the United Kingdom have produced cost estimates, recent developments in the United States offer important new benchmarks. Recent amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and regulations implementing President Biden’s Executive Order on AI offer…
March 18, 2025
How the Founders Addressed Facial Recognition Technology
If you study Fourth Amendment law and jurisprudential trends, you can—at least in a figurative, tentative, hopeful, and possibly illusory sense—see the future. Subject to all those caveats, I have good news about difficult problems in Fourth Amendment law such as facial recognition and DNA. Curiously, my first writing on the topic I wedged into…
February 28, 2025
Connecting the Dots on the Chips
Recent posts by fellow AEI scholars Klon Kitchen and Claude Barfield separately highlighted two important issues that must be considered together if the United States is to truly benefit from—and lead—the inevitable revolution driven by artificial intelligence technologies. Klon Kitchen articulately laid out the argument that the Trump Administration vision for AI as a pillar of…
February 25, 2025
Trump as Information Gatekeeper: Controlling Access, Controlling Narratives
President Donald Trump increasingly is playing the role of information gatekeeper, striving to control access to venues—technological and physical—where important expressive activities occur. By dictating access on his terms, Trump seeks to ensure that narratives serving his agenda can flourish, while speakers––for example, Associated Press and broadcast journalists––who don’t amplify it are punished. In doing…
February 24, 2025
AI and American Dynamism
Last year, I published a report, The Age of Uncertainty, on the challenges in understanding and estimating the job and skill impacts of artificial intelligence. One of the big problems was how quickly expert estimates become outdated, not due to any fault on the part of the experts, but because of how rapidly AI is evolving….
February 20, 2025
Why Cutting Basic Science Funding May Amount to Economic Unilateral Disarmament
Earlier this month, Eric Berger of Ars Technica reported that the White Houses’ first budget request of Donald Trump’s second term could be a fiscal reckoning for America’s government scientific enterprise. The National Science Foundation, a cornerstone of the country’s research infrastructure with its annual $9 billion purse, might face particularly savage cuts. According to Berger, Intelligence…
February 13, 2025
The Intel Challenge and Trump’s Foolhardy Plans for Semiconductor Tariffs
Intel, the nation’s putative semiconductor “national champion” has fallen on hard times. Having led technologically for some decades, Intel fell behind demands for advanced chips after the iPhone emergence and most recently on the burgeoning demand for chips needed for artificial intelligence training. The Biden administration, and now the incoming Trump administration, seem determined to support and…